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There are some sites online which contain information on unused content in video games (The Cutting Room Floor being an example). Many of these sites contain GameShark codes to enter to enable or expose this originally hidden content. The Wikipedia page on the Nintendo 64 Game Shark Pro states that there was an in-game code search menu, I have not found any guides on how to use this code search menu to expose memory locations not accessible during normal gameplay.

How would I start searching for unused content in a game? Do I need to use a GameShark device, or if I have a dumped ROM of a game can I run that through a HEX editor?

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    I know this question is a little broad, but I thought it would spark some interesting discussion. Mods: if you feel that this question is too broad, I will work on narrowing it down to be more specific.
    – JAL
    Jul 25, 2016 at 20:18
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    Perhaps you could ask about tools to explore content on N64 cartridges similar to ResEdit or CanOpener for MacOS?
    – Michael Shopsin
    Jul 27, 2016 at 20:48
  • this may help for google searching: the term you're looking for is data mining
    – Badasahog
    Nov 29, 2018 at 16:52

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You should start with a dumped ROM (*.n64) and some utility for unpacking/previewing contents of this ROM. You can go the hardcore way - open the .n64 file in a hex editor like GHex, analyze the file, and save particular fragments that look like data that you're interested in - this approach needs a lot of knowledge about how N64 works and coding. You will probably also need a decompiler for this approach to be any effective. The second way is a lot simplier - you'll need some tools for unpacking and previewing dump contents (many usefull utils can be found here), and you should be able to get some data.

Besides that, it would also be neat to have a friend that played this game a lot and knows if something occurs/is shown in-game, or if you don't have any friends, a wiki for this game - it will help you to know if something was really shown in the game, or if it was your imagination playing tricks on you.

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