EarthBound Beginnings (1990 English translation of MOTHER)

On July 27, 1989, the Japanese video game company Nintendo released an RPG called MOTHER. Created by Japanese celebrity Shigesato Itoi and released for the Famicom, the game became a large hit due to a variety of factors, becoming notable for its unconventional elements (i.e. a modern setting rather than a medieval one and a lack of an overworld, with areas seamlessly put together in full) and spawning two more games for the SNES and GBA. The game's popularity in Japan motivated Nintendo of America to localize the game for American audiences, going into extensive detail to modify the game to be child-friendly and understandable to the nation. However, the project was eventually abandoned for economic reasons: the game would've been too expensive on shelves (due to the requirement of a save battery), the RPG genre lacked popularity in North America, and the game would've been overshadowed by the recent arrival of the SNES. By the time the project was cancelled, the localization work was 100% finished and would've been ready for release in 1990, even featuring some publicity in gaming magazines.

Eventually, a prototype ROM of the lost translation was found and circulated on the internet, where it was found to contain a number of changes from the Japanese version, namely censorship of mature and copyright-infringing content and minor graphical touch-ups, and was later re-released on the GBA as part of the Japan-only compilation cart MOTHER 1+2. However, the ROM was re-translated into Japanese, and the English version remains without an official release.