The cancelled Atari Jaguar game Tiny Toon Adventures: Plucky Duck in Hollywood Hijinks ran into trouble with its art direction. It originally used photorealistic backgrounds, uncharacteristic of the cartoon and described by a developer as "build and[sic] engine and insert your favorite licensed character here." Despite a complete reset being done to the game's art direction following this iteration, the art did not live up to Warner Bros.' standards for how the Tiny Toon characters and world should look, lacking color and brightness. After Warner Bros. provided model sheets with specific instructions for drawing the characters, the development team instead switched to taking photos of the TV show and converting those into sprites, which caused issues as the sprites would come out corrupted. Atari ultimately concluded that no artist at Telegames was able to create proper Tiny Toons art, requiring art duties to be swapped out to Digital Delirium, which also failed to deliver Warner Brothers-quality animation, which caused the game's development to start implementing pencil tests into their animation process, which slowed down the game's development significantly. Eventually, all of the art for the first 2 worlds was finished, however Telegames stated they did not need the art at that point, with the art (and its respective levels) not being implemented over a year later. Telegames laid out an offer where they would only release a milestone document if a fully laid-out stage map could be provided, something the developer who released this story believed was a stalling tactic, as they already had the art and mockup stage layouts. Shortly after this, the artist assigned to complete the level layouts was laid off, requiring Digital Delirium to be brought in-house, and some music was made for the game that was completely unfit for the source material.
CrazyBus' soundtrack is often said to be randomly generated - this is partially false. The game does use a random number generator for its music, but it uses an outdated psuedo-RNG that is not truly random, so every boot of the game will play the exact same tune. However, if you press a button that does not start the game, the RNG will shift and the music will therefore end up becoming randomly generated.
In the Japanese version's commentary with the game's composer Hitoshi Sakimoto, he stated that the original name for the song "Remnants" was "zun zurizuri zunzun" in reference to the rhythm of the opening motif. However, this name was too long, and it was shortened to "zun zun".
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On January 23, 2024, a Reddit user claiming to be an unknown developer on the North American localization of the game revealed that a hidden music track with the filename SEAMAN.ADX could be triggered by setting the Dreamcast's internal clock to the game's North American release week, the week of August 6, 2000, and then giving specific answers to 20 "tracked" questions in-game for the music to play. This techno track is made up of various voice clips of the game's narrator Leonard Nimoy and Seaman's voice actor Jeff Kramer, and is notable for ending with a unique and rare voice line by Seaman addressing an inevitable innuendo with the game's title:
"Listen, if my name was semen, I wouldn't be swimming in this tank. I'd be swimming in your mama."
The developer then explained how he snuck the Easter egg into the game:
"Seaman was the first game I worked on. (Implementing the English script into game logic.) […] it was late one night toward the end of development, there were a few mb left on the disc (Seaman has a TON of audio), and I wanted to put *some* sort of Easter Egg in the game. But I also kinda freaked out at the last moment - it was my first game, and what if it caused some sort of problem and/or was too easily discovered or problematic? So I ended up locking it behind the DC's clock - you have to have the internal clock set to release week. That, and you have to answer exactly as I would have. My recollection is there were about 20 "tracked" answers. I threw the song together in an hour or so using Sonic Foundry's Acid […] it was pretty popular at the time."
On January 29, 2024, the Steam version of Postal III received a large content update adding various features and improvements originally made by the developers of the Zoom Platform version of the game as well as fixes and content by the series' fan community. The update notably included streamlined mod support, a high quality release of the official soundtrack, several bug and graphical fixes pointed out and contributed by players, updated versions of the game's official German and Japanese localizations, three new localizations in Portuguese/Brazilian, French and Polish translated by fans, and worldwide access to the previously Russian-only Fart Gun DLC.
Lemmings was originally going to use a soundtrack of plagarised copyrighted music, something that was common in microcomputer games the decade prior, including pop songs and television theme songs. In the final game, these were swapped for public domain songs, though a sample of Don Messick as Scooby-Doo used for a cover of the Scooby-Doo & Scrappy-Doo theme song would be retained in the How Much is that Doggie in the Window? music track. The Mission: Impossible theme seems to have been chosen in reference to a fad on British television at the time of showing squirrels performing stunts to the song.
There were plans to include a vampire character in Killer Instinct 2, however the idea was eventually scrapped. The vampire's stage theme, "Bloodlust", however, was salvaged and made into the theme of Count Batula in Conker's Bad Fur Day.
A vampire character wouldn't be added to the Killer Instinct series until 2016, with the release of Killer Instinct's season 3 character Mira.
The NTSC release of the Nintendo DS version of Max & the Magic Marker has the entirety of the song "Wonderwall" by Oasis in its files, complete with audio tag metadata and the cover artwork of their album (What's the Story) Morning Glory?.
The song "LET THEM MOVE" is one of the few original songs by composer and former DDR sound producer Naoki Maeda to not be revived after its inclusion in 4th Mix. This is due to him feeling ashamed by the song. When asked in an interview on what his favorite memory of working on the Dance Dance Revolution Series was, he jokingly answered "LET THEM MOVE" before pretending to self-destruct..
The distaste towards this song also carried over to Jason Enos, manager of Dance Dance Revolution's American Console Titles. He attempted to lobby the song's exclusion from Dance Dance Revolution Konamix to no avail:
"[When] they wanted to put Let Them Move on Konamix, oh my gosh, I just went nuts. I sent the poll results. I was like, "Look. See the poll results? Let Them Move? Rank: Zero! Bottom of the list! Please do not include!" I just told them to please not include this song in there. Everyone hates this song. Do not put it in there. They wanted to put it in for the training, because it's a real easy song, and since it was going to be in training, they thought it would have been stupid not to make it a selectable song. Okay, well I can understand that, but I told them, "Can we just get something else besides that song?" But no, they kinda like that song. No one else likes it though. That song, I'm not very pleased about. Then again, I don't [want] any people ever selecting that song in the public".
According to composer Jonathan Dunn, RoboCop's theme song was concieved at his mother's restaurant when it was closed at night after its weekly live jazz night:
"At the time I was still living at home, which was above my mother's restaurant in Preston. We had a piano in the restaurant as my mum would have live jazz nights once a week. I would often sit at the piano after the restaurant was closed and come up with a few ideas. One of those was the chord riff for RoboCop. To this day if I'm near a piano I'm always tempted to play it; it's a lovely nostalgic feeling."
He did note how unfitting the song was to source material, but did not explain why it was chosen for the game.
The skin Dark Star Cho'Gath was made in collaboration with a critically ill League of Legends player named Bryan, who met Riot Games through a partnership with the non-profit charity the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Bryan wished to "meet the creators of Riot Games, and make a skin with them." Dark Star Cho'Gath was chosen between three skin designs and inspired by Bryan's love of outer space. The skin's theme music is based on a clarinet performance from Bryan. All profits collected from the skin until July 20, 2018 were donated to various non-profit organizations around the world.
If the Song of Healing in The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask is reversed, it sounds similar to Saria's Song from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. While this may seem unintentional, the inputs to perform each song are also reversed from each other, with Saria's Song being played by pressing Down, Right and Left, while the Song of Healing is played with Left, Right and Down.
According to the Song Production Information provided by D.J.Amuro (aka Takayuki Ishikawa), the song "A" was originally composed for Beatmania IIDX 3rd Style. However, the song was shelved until the release of 7th Style. This was due to the song being considered too difficult for the time, relative to player skill level.
The lyrics to Silver's theme, "Dreams of an Absolution", was based on songwriter Bentley Jones' relationship with his ex-boyfriend:
"Originally, I wrote "Dreams" about a bad ex-boyfriend who wanted to get back with me, and I couldn't shake off the past, and I was in this weird grey area that I didn't know if I wanted to move forward together anymore. Scandal! "Dreams" was written about a gay love story!"
The bridge of Silver's theme in 2006's Sonic the Hedgehog, "Dreams of an Absolution", has a similarity to the original Green Hill Zone theme from 1991's Sonic the Hedgehog. Songwriter Bentley Jones has said that this was not intentional, but in retrospect he did notice it.
Found within the files of Star Fox Adventures is an unused audio track for the WarpStone's introduction cutscene, which also includes verbal dialogue. This was clearly an earlier version before Rare had done a voice-acting retake.
Most notably, the music that plays in the background is a remnant from Dinosaur Planet, from the scene where Krystal first arrives in SwapStone Circle and thus meets her respective SwapStone, Rubble. In the final Star Fox Adventures, music performed by bagpipes is played instead in this particular cutscene.
The ending theme for Agent X II is plagarised from a popular British commercial for a product called "Shake & Vac". When asked for a reason why the jingle was used, composer Tim Follin responded: "None [referring to an answer]. Tight deadline probably."
The Commodore 64 version of Bionic Commando has a soundtrack provided by chiptune composer Tim Follin. Every song begins as a direct cover of its source material, but eventually completely changes into a techno-inspired tune with a more unique sound. The composition of these pieces was, according to Follin in the C64 disk magazine Lethal News, quite reflective of their production, where the job began as a port of the original song before naturally changing to something different:
"Actually it's an arcade conversion... or lets say it started like an arcade conversion! what happened was, i started converting the titletune, and it just developed, slipped out of my grip and became something, what was very different from what i had in mind, at the beginning. quite messy!"
Manga artist Sui Ishida (most famous for his work on manga series "Tokyo Ghoul" and "Choujin X") was responsible for the game's lyrics, character designs, in-game illustrations, and helped work on the worldbuilding. He decided to personally write the game's lyrics because he wanted the character's songs to better reflect them. To that end, he convinced composer Akira Kosemura to work on the game after being inspired by his songs.
The song "Cursed Cathedral", which plays in the Spoiler:upside down level after Sponge turns into a clone of Meat was not designed with Mario's Mystery Meat in mind, nor did it originate from another game. The song predates the ROM hack by 6 years, being released by composer RednGreen in a general music pack for Super Mario World modders to use.
Lemmings was originally going to use a soundtrack of plagarised copyrighted music, something that was common in microcomputer games the decade prior, including pop songs and television theme songs. In the final game, these were swapped for public domain songs, though a sample of Don Messick as Scooby-Doo used for a cover of the Scooby-Doo & Scrappy-Doo theme song would be retained in the How Much is that Doggie in the Window? music track. The Mission: Impossible theme seems to have been chosen in reference to a fad on British television at the time of showing squirrels performing stunts to the song.
The skin Dark Star Cho'Gath was made in collaboration with a critically ill League of Legends player named Bryan, who met Riot Games through a partnership with the non-profit charity the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Bryan wished to "meet the creators of Riot Games, and make a skin with them." Dark Star Cho'Gath was chosen between three skin designs and inspired by Bryan's love of outer space. The skin's theme music is based on a clarinet performance from Bryan. All profits collected from the skin until July 20, 2018 were donated to various non-profit organizations around the world.
