Unused original character designs found in Super Mario Strikers!

Back in February 24th, a Twitter user named Dogon McBanana decided to dig around in the files of the game Super Mario Strikers, which was released for the Nintendo Gamecube back in 2005. He ended up finding some unused characters - as well as other unused assets - for the game!

Pictured above: Mario's intended sidekicks. The guy on the bottom-right's textures are really messed up.

According to Dogon McBanana, these unused characters appear to be intended to be sidekicks for the Team Captains (Mario, Luigi, Peach, Daisy, Yoshi, Donkey Kong, Wario, and Waluigi for those who never played the game) and would've been styled after them.

Pictured above: Donkey Kong's intended sidekicks. The middle one kind of resembles Bluster Kong from the Donkey Kong Country cartoon show.

However, only Mario's and Donkey Kong's teammates were left in the game's code.

Luigi has a teammate as well, but it's nothing more than a duplicate of himself wearing his usual attire, which may suggest these original sidekick characters were scrapped early on. (and possibly replaced with the Toads, Koopas, Hammer Bros., and Birdos)

Additionally, some other interesting unused characters include a Security Pianta (which was initially found in the E3 Prototype of the game) as well as a 3D interpretation of the Dull Bones enemies from the Paper Mario series who are simply labeled "Medic."

There are also some models of a camera crew, specifically a yellow Pianta, a Shy Guy, and a TV Van. Dogon McBanana theorizes they were replaced with the futuristic cameras the game went with.

There are also a variety of unused banners, though the textures for them were coded differently compared to the other stuff, so Dogon McBanana didn't know how to properly fix it. (Even Diddy Kong gets a banner, even though he's not in the final game!)

Finally, a Goomba Guard was found that has ties to a cut stage in the game, "peach_palace." While it's not a lot, it does give one an idea on the stage's theme.

Would do you think? Would you have liked to see these original characters make the cut, or do you think Nintendo and Next Level Games make the right call scrapping them? Tell us your thoughts in the comments below!