User blog comment:Random-storykeeper/Pit of Concerns: Decompilation/@comment-1455034-20140408030756/@comment-1455034-20140408231654

I would assume that Mat was aware of unused content was found from decompiling the game. Here is what he said about unused content" ...where you bring up evidence about unused work or when you have found evidence to best guess at what we are up to are some of the most interesting parts of the Wiki..." . I asked him if I could talk about it on the Nitrome blog, he said yes (in the aforementioned quote).

Also, this "so-called 'unused text'", are you referring to to gibberish text, the empty scripts for text, (such as "tex2_stop"), or the random occurrences of "X" in changeType? Through decompling, I did find unused text that didn't really relate to the game (such as content relating to the miniclip pre-startup pop up, embedding miniclip high scores), but I excluded it because it wasn't meant to be used.

Decompiles are simple. You open the decompiler, then you open a .swf file in the decompiler. After that, on the left side of the screen are several folders which content relating to the game is categorized in. Using changeType as an example, there is a folder for:
 * shapes (all images in the game, including frames of animations)
 * morphshapes (I don't know what these are; generally just large coloured rectangles)
 * sprites (all the game's animations)
 * text (words used in the credits section of the menu, level completion screen, some other places)
 * images (same as shapes but includes more images which don't display for some reason)
 * sounds (all the game's music and sound effects)
 * fonts, (various large transparent rectangles with lots of black coloured letters/numbers/symbols; everything is unused here and often is the same or close to the same across many Nitrome games)
 * binaryData (this folder varies considerably depending on what game is decompiled. For changeType, it's the code for how a level is constructed)
 * frames (contains animated images of various pages of the menu, ending)
 * other (strange coding, copyright for fonts, coding for menu. Basically stuff that doesn't fit anywhere else.)
 * scripts (programming for the game)

This imaginary date appeared on the 2004 article, but with "citation needed" next to it. Other than that, it didn't appear anywhere else.

Yes, adding where it code was obtained would be helpful.