When PETA released Cooking Mama Kills Animals, a satirical flash game parodying the Cooking Mama franchise, Mama series publisher Majesco responded with a press release condemning the game and stating that Mama, while not a vegetarian, supports humane treatment of animals:
"Mama wants people to know that World Kitchen includes 51 recipes from around the world, ranging from vegetarian fare like miso soup and rice cakes to international delicacies like ginger pork and octopus dumplings. "I would never put rat in my Ratatouille," said a feisty Mama while beating some eggs. "Like any accomplished cook, I create my recipes to appeal to a broad range of tastes and preferences. My only goal is to ensure you leave the table well fed." Cooking Mama World Kitchen includes more than 25 vegetarian-friendly recipes including delicious breakfast, dinner, dessert and snack options. And, while Mama is not a vegetarian, she fully supports the humane treatment of animals, particularly for her canine protege Max who makes his doggie debut in World Kitchen."
When Science Papa was announced by Activision, many journalists believed the game was trying to cash in on the success of Cooking Mama. When asked for a comment by Kotaku, Mama series publisher Majesco wrote an allegation writen in-character by Mama, stating Science Papa to be her ex-boyfriend:
"So you want some dirt on "Science Papa" to splash on your site? I'll shovel it. We dated briefly (when he had much better hair). And now he clearly wants a piece of the best-selling pie by associating himself with an incredibly successful, and I'll emphasize, happily married, woman. Frankly, he never appreciated my cooking and I grew weary of his tedious "experiments." You want real mind-bending science, go figure out how to make Toulouse Cassoulet for your next dinner party of 20 and let me know how it goes, Papa."
The fly species in Yars' Revenge, the yar, and their home planet, Razak, are reversals of then-Atari CEO Ray Kassar's name. Creator Howard Scott Warshaw told a marketing executive this was the name's origin, but did not inform them that Kassar was unaware of the name's origins, leading them to believe the name was coined by Kassar and preventing them from informing him and getting the name changed.
Among the files uncovered in a massive 2020 breach of internal server data from Nintendo are documents surrounding Project BB2, a never-released, iQue-branded version of the GameCube for the Chinese market. According to an executive summary from January 30, 2004, this system would've played games off of CD-ROM and DVD-ROM discs rather than the GameCube's proprietary format; consequently, it also would've been compatible with audio CDs and DVD video like the Panasonic Q. Project BB2 was also intended to feature karaoke support, owed to karaoke's high popularity in China.
Among the material uncovered in the 2020 Gigaleak, a large-scale data leak from Nintendo's internal servers, was a series of documents surrounding Project INDY, an early iteration of the Nintendo Switch co-developed with ST Microelectronics. Project INDY was envisioned as a successor to the Nintendo 3DS and was halfway between it and the Wii U in terms of processing power.
The system would've carried over many of the 3DS' features, including dual-screen functionality, touch controls, stereoscopic 3D, motion sensors, augmented reality functionality, and StreetPass support. The system also would've featured backwards compatibility with 3DS game cards, Bluetooth connectivity (including support for wireless speakers and headsets), GPS functionality, a videotelephony app, the ability to wirelessly project games to a TV screen via Miracast, and support to quickly convert a commercially released unit into a developer system, easing development costs for independent studios. Many of these features would be carried over to the Switch in modified forms.
Technical documents for Project INDY show that while prototype software was developed for the system, Nintendo were unsure about its specifications and came up with various alternative options, such as support for 120 fps video, an 800p display, and a design with a single, oblong touchscreen that spans the full face of the device save for two joysticks near each end. The latter design was the final iteration that Nintendo came up with before ceasing work with ST Microelectronics in late 2014. By this point, Nintendo had devised the Switch's final name, listing it on the design's blueprints.
An earlier iteration of this oblong design would also become the basis for a hoax image created in the interim between Nintendo president Satoru Iwata's announcement of the Switch's development in March 2015 and the company's first public reveal of the device in October 2016. The image is a 3D-printed mockup of the Switch based on a patent filed earlier in 2014, which itself reveals that Nintendo was still considering stereoscopic 3D, backwards compatibility with 3DS games, and videotelephony support.
In 1986, Nintendo and Fuji Television produced a 70-minute TV special based on The Mysterious Murasame Castle for the weekly one-shot drama series "Getsuyou Drama Land" (Monday Drama Land). The special, like many other episodes in the later years of Getsuyou Drama Land's run, featured members of the popular J-Pop girl group Onyanko Club as cast members, and starred Masaki Kyomoto as the game's protagonist Takamaru. The special aired once on December 8, 1986, almost eight months after the game's release, and never aired again. It was later released on DVD in 2005 as part of the box set "Onyanko Club in Getsuyou Drama Land DVD Box 2".
The special's existence and DVD release flew under the international radar until 2023, when a user named Ruka, after being prompted in a 4chan thread to verify claims that the special was lost media based on an uncited edit on the game's English Wikipedia article, discovered that copies of the box set were actually being offered on Yahoo! Auctions. Ruka subsequently placed a bid and won a copy from the auction, and YouTuber Haruko Please uploaded the special to YouTube the following week. With its rediscovery, it's thought to be one of the first live-action adaptations of a video game, and is also the earliest known product to come from Nintendo's collaborations with Fuji, which after this special's airing continued with Yume Koujou: Doki-doki Panic.
When actor Rahul Kohli's likeness was used as a trooper card in the 2023 remake of Like a Dragon: Ishin!, he expressed a feeling that there were notable differences in corresponding with Western and Eastern game studios. In an interview with Digital Trends, he was quoted as saying:
"I definitely saw a difference between working with Western and Eastern studios. Our correspondence with Sega and RGG was so involved and sweet. They really cared, and it felt so much more collaborative. Nothing specific, but when I've been involved in other things, it's like, 'Just do the voice, mate," and then you never hear about it again. I never expected to have the back and forth of RGG constantly checking in to ask, "Is Rahul happy with this? Does he like the artwork?" I never said no to any of it, but I'm sure if I had any type of gripe, they would have obliged, so I felt very welcome and involved."
Pepsi Invaders was made for Coca-Cola's 1983 sales convention with the purpose of boosting the morale of employees - despite this, most copies that were given away were thrown out.
subdirectory_arrow_rightAtari (Company), Kee Games (Company)
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Most geographic areas had two arcade video game distributors in the 1970s. Atari founder Nolan Bushnell tried to sign exclusive deals with as many of these distributors as possible, and then got his neighbor, Joe Keenan, to run a second studio known as Kee Games (named after Keenan, who led the company), which would sign an exclusive deal with the other distributor in the area, selling clones of Atari games with minor alterations. Bushnell would then move Atari workers into Kee Games - to avoid signaling that Kee has ties to Atari, Nolan Bushnell would release a fake press release condemning Kee for supposedly stealing staff. Eventually, Kee would release its first unique game, Tank!, which proved to be more popular than any of Atari's original games at the time, leading Kee to be officially merged into Atari in 1974 as Atari no longer needed exclusivity deals. Kee Games would be closed by Warner Telecommunications in 1978.
subdirectory_arrow_rightHead On (Game), Arcade (Platform)
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Dottori-Kun, a 1991 demake of Sega's 1979 maze game Head-On, was created not to be played, but rather as a legal loophole around Japan's Electrical Appliance and Material Control Law which claimed that all arcade machines must contain a game when sold. Dottori-Kun allowed Sega to sell generic Astro City arcade machines which the arcade owner could swap the contents of at their leisure, and included test features to ensure the machine worked properly before installing a proper game. The game did not support coin insertion, and therefore was not a viable option for arcades even if an owner believed there was an audience for its simplistic gameplay and graphics, leading to the board being scrapped most of the time.
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Um Jammer Lammy character designer Rodney Greenblatt expressed disappointment in the US print marketing campaign for Um Jammer Lammy, which highlights the midriff of a live-action human Lammy and has copy text describing how players "might even score groupies out of this", particularly due to what he perceived as a double standard in how this commercial was allowed in the US, but the level in which Lammy goes to Hell had to be censored into an island for that same demographic. He would say and reiterate in an interview:
"I don't like it. I think it's just Sony trying to torture us. Sony told us we couldn't have the hell part of the game for the US market (seen in the final level), and then they bring out these ads, which totally flaunt, well, you know. They're just torturing us."
The game's co-creator Masaya Matsuura had a more muted response to the ad, calling it "a little too sexy".
Sony Interactive Entertainment America's president, during the early lifespan of the PlayStation, was staunchly opposed to two-dimensional games. PaRappa the Rapper, known for its paper-puppet-styled characters, only managed to release abroad thanks to its success domestically. When it proved to be a worldwide success, SIEA eased up on 2D games.
Star Fox Adventures features many smaller, transitional puzzle areas between the main areas, obviously a way for the game to mask loading times to create the illusion of a seamless world. This is primarily noticeable on the mainland Dinosaur Planet itself.
One of these transitional areas, within CloudRunner Fortress, was cut between the E3 2002 kiosk and the final game, presumably because of time constraints with the impending Microsoft buyout in September 2002. It was meant to bridge the top CloudRunner Fortress map with the area where Fox would have to race against the SharpClaws on the jetbikes to acquire the area's SpellStone. Fox would enter by climbing down a series of ladders and then run through a storage room of some kind with conveyor belts, and then from there he'd encounter General Scales and some SharpClaw who are trying to steal the SpellStone.
This was scrapped in the final game, where Fox instead falls down a long ladder through a cutscene and, then after cutting to black, is then rather awkwardly plopped right in the middle of the room prior to where he encounters General Scales and the SharpClaw.
DarkIce Mines, the first SpellStone area in Star Fox Adventures, was another area that was more complex in design in earlier iterations of the game than in comparison to the final release. The leaked December 2000 build of Dinosaur Planet showed that DarkIce Mines was meant to have an extra set of puzzle rooms on the right side of the map that would wound up connecting back to the waterfall room. These extra areas were also present in the E3 2002 kiosk for Star Fox Adventures, suggesting that they were very late cuts, very likely as the development team was being crunched to get the game out in time of the Microsoft buyout in late 2002, similar to what happened with Dragon Rock.
The Jaguar version of Zoop was intended to have "snazzier" graphic effects, but these had to be rejected due to Sony wanting the PlayStation version to be the best rendition of the game.
Despite being synonymous with the "edgy" 2000s era of the Sonic franchise that Sonic Frontiers hearkens back to, Shadow the Hedgehog is completely absent from the game. No official comment has been expressed on why Shadow is omitted, however, a month before Frontiers' launch, the game's writer Ian Flynn would quote retweet a screenshot of an interview with writers for the Sonic Boom cartoon claiming that Sega are restrictive on Shadow's portrayal to the point where it's preferable to omit him in spite of his fan-favorite status than work with Sega's restrictions, with the caption "[quote-retweeted] without comment".
Similarly to Donkey Kong's origins as a Popeye game, Alex Kidd in Miracle World was originally intended as a Dragon Ball game. Alex's creator, Kotaro Hayashida, said in an interview:
"Sega were planning on making a Dragon Ball game... I guess this happened long enough ago that it's okay for me to talk about this! The project began as a Dragon Ball title, not as a direct competitor to Super Mario Bros.
But when we were told we could not use the Dragon Ball licence any more, we were forced to come up with our own ideas instead. For example, when it was Dragon Ball, Goku fought with his Power Pole, but we changed that to a punch attack. It was only after we came up with the plan to restart the project as Alex Kidd in Miracle World that we starting thinking about Mario, and looking for ways in which to differentiate the title from it."
A classic Dragon Ball influence can be observed in the final game, such as Alex's laser bracelet resembling a kamehameha and the use of Janken (Rock, Paper, Scissors) in boss battles, as well as certain character and object designs with resemblance to those from Dragon Ball, and shared influences from the public domain Japanese story Journey to the West.
At an unknown point after 3D Pinball: Space Cadet's removal from Windows hardware starting with Vista, there was an attempt within Microsoft Garage (Microsoft's program for experimental, non-profitable employee projects) to revive the game with compatibility for current Windows operating systems. While the port was finished, it could not be publicly released due to the 1994 contract with Cinematronics (now merged into THQ Nordic) stipulating that the game could not be released as an independent entity, only bundled with Windows hardware.
In the weeks prior to Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2's release, a near-complete prototype build of the game leaked online. The Twitter account for the game's main developer, Fair Play Labs, accidentally retweeted a GIF of SpongeBob dancing from an unrevealed sound test mode and promptly deleted it. Community manager Thaddeus Crews expressed that, while he didn't have a particular moral problem with fans playing the leaked build, he advised against competitive players using it for practice due to how outdated it is.
Tetris: N-Blox was originally a fangame by Paul Neave, well-known for his unofficial ports of other vintage games like Pac-Man and Frogger, but would eventually become licensed as an official Tetris product.
Among the files uncovered in a massive 2020 breach of internal server data from Nintendo are documents surrounding Project BB2, a never-released, iQue-branded version of the GameCube for the Chinese market. According to an executive summary from January 30, 2004, this system would've played games off of CD-ROM and DVD-ROM discs rather than the GameCube's proprietary format; consequently, it also would've been compatible with audio CDs and DVD video like the Panasonic Q. Project BB2 was also intended to feature karaoke support, owed to karaoke's high popularity in China.
Among the material uncovered in the 2020 Gigaleak, a large-scale data leak from Nintendo's internal servers, was a series of documents surrounding Project INDY, an early iteration of the Nintendo Switch co-developed with ST Microelectronics. Project INDY was envisioned as a successor to the Nintendo 3DS and was halfway between it and the Wii U in terms of processing power.
In 1986, Nintendo and Fuji Television produced a 70-minute TV special based on The Mysterious Murasame Castle for the weekly one-shot drama series "Getsuyou Drama Land" (Monday Drama Land). The special, like many other episodes in the later years of Getsuyou Drama Land's run, featured members of the popular J-Pop girl group Onyanko Club as cast members, and starred Masaki Kyomoto as the game's protagonist Takamaru. The special aired once on December 8, 1986, almost eight months after the game's release, and never aired again. It was later released on DVD in 2005 as part of the box set "Onyanko Club in Getsuyou Drama Land DVD Box 2".
Most geographic areas had two arcade video game distributors in the 1970s. Atari founder Nolan Bushnell tried to sign exclusive deals with as many of these distributors as possible, and then got his neighbor, Joe Keenan, to run a second studio known as Kee Games (named after Keenan, who led the company), which would sign an exclusive deal with the other distributor in the area, selling clones of Atari games with minor alterations. Bushnell would then move Atari workers into Kee Games - to avoid signaling that Kee has ties to Atari, Nolan Bushnell would release a fake press release condemning Kee for supposedly stealing staff. Eventually, Kee would release its first unique game, Tank!, which proved to be more popular than any of Atari's original games at the time, leading Kee to be officially merged into Atari in 1974 as Atari no longer needed exclusivity deals. Kee Games would be closed by Warner Telecommunications in 1978.
Star Fox Adventures features many smaller, transitional puzzle areas between the main areas, obviously a way for the game to mask loading times to create the illusion of a seamless world. This is primarily noticeable on the mainland Dinosaur Planet itself. 
DarkIce Mines, the first SpellStone area in Star Fox Adventures, was another area that was more complex in design in earlier iterations of the game than in comparison to the final release. The leaked December 2000 build of Dinosaur Planet showed that DarkIce Mines was meant to have an extra set of puzzle rooms on the right side of the map that would wound up connecting back to the waterfall room. These extra areas were also present in the E3 2002 kiosk for Star Fox Adventures, suggesting that they were very late cuts, very likely as the development team was being crunched to get the game out in time of the Microsoft buyout in late 2002, similar to what happened with Dragon Rock.
In the weeks prior to Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2's release, a near-complete prototype build of the game leaked online. The Twitter account for the game's main developer, Fair Play Labs, accidentally retweeted a GIF of SpongeBob dancing from an unrevealed sound test mode and promptly deleted it. Community manager Thaddeus Crews expressed that, while he didn't have a particular moral problem with fans playing the leaked build, he advised against competitive players using it for practice due to how outdated it is.
