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According to programmer Zoid Kirsch, the reason why Metroid Prime had elevators were because, as a mainstay of the 2D Metroid series, they were used for three primary technical reasons that were also present in the series' first 3D game: world maps could only be up to a certain size, sound banks needed to be changed, and the transitions helped to clear up any memory fragmentation.
1. The world size limit was due to floating point precision. If Samus got too far from the origin, her movement would start stuttering since the values would get too large. When this story was originally posted to Twitter in 2022, Robin Lavallée, a former lead programmer at Ubisoft, suggested that Retro Studios could have shifted floating points where after a certain distance, everything would be shifted back closer to origin, citing this as something done during the development of Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag. However, Kirsch replied back that the team deliberately avoided doing this out of concern that it would cause bugs. Instead, Samus moves consistently through the world as it loads around her.
2. For the sound banks, the MusyX sound system can stream music but it couldn’t for sound effects. Each world had a different set of sounds that were loaded while the elevator cut scene is running.
3. The GameCube doesn't have any virtual memory and everything is allocated from the physical RAM. The elevator loads caused all memory to be freed between the worlds, cleaning up any fragmentation.
One of the game's tech leads Jack Mathews hardcoded the different elevator cutscenes into the game. It's not a "room" at all, nor is it a prerendered video file, but it's coded directly in C++ and does not run through the usual game systems for camera control, etc. They also feature crossfades since it had fixed rendering, one of the only places the developers could afford to render overlapped scenes.
1. The world size limit was due to floating point precision. If Samus got too far from the origin, her movement would start stuttering since the values would get too large. When this story was originally posted to Twitter in 2022, Robin Lavallée, a former lead programmer at Ubisoft, suggested that Retro Studios could have shifted floating points where after a certain distance, everything would be shifted back closer to origin, citing this as something done during the development of Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag. However, Kirsch replied back that the team deliberately avoided doing this out of concern that it would cause bugs. Instead, Samus moves consistently through the world as it loads around her.
2. For the sound banks, the MusyX sound system can stream music but it couldn’t for sound effects. Each world had a different set of sounds that were loaded while the elevator cut scene is running.
3. The GameCube doesn't have any virtual memory and everything is allocated from the physical RAM. The elevator loads caused all memory to be freed between the worlds, cleaning up any fragmentation.
One of the game's tech leads Jack Mathews hardcoded the different elevator cutscenes into the game. It's not a "room" at all, nor is it a prerendered video file, but it's coded directly in C++ and does not run through the usual game systems for camera control, etc. They also feature crossfades since it had fixed rendering, one of the only places the developers could afford to render overlapped scenes.
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The infamous DK Rap was featured in the 2023 film "The Super Mario Bros. Movie", with the chorus portion used to chant Donkey Kong's name as he enters the Great Ring of Kong to battle Mario. Donkey Kong's voice actor Seth Rogen reacted to the DK Rap prior to the film's release, referring to it as "objectively one of the worst rap songs of all time." The original songwriter Grant Kirkhope expressed excitement upon hearing about the song's inclusion in the film but was dismayed upon seeing that he was not credited as the song's original composer in the movie's credits.
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During development, Chrome Dino was named "Project Bolan" affter Marc Bolan, lead singer of the band T. Rex.
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In an 2000 interview with the game's composer Atsuhiro Motoyama published in the Great Mahō Daisakusen OST liner notes, he stated he had a great deal of personal affection for the first game in the Mahō Daisakusen series since he wrote the music for it. Before he started to compose Dimahoo, he chose to go back and listen to the old songs from Sorcer Striker for reference.
In Sorcer Striker, he stated that the approach he took to the songs was "melodious and colorful", but for Dimahoo he decided to try something else, not over-emphasizing the melodies and instead attempting to evoke a sense of atmosphere. In his mind, by contrasting these two approaches he was trying to explore the theme of what background music is supposed to be:
He also stated that he was not only plagued with technical difficulties with his sound equipment, but his air conditioner also broke. This made his working experience worse for a few days as Motoyama was "extremely sensitive to the heat":
He also thanked composer Manabu Namiki for assisting him with assembling the game's music data, saying he was "very indebted" to him. The way Namiki handled the music data for Dimahoo was different compared to the way he normally did it. Although he endeavored to keep his original data clean and simple to understand, it ended up being "idiosyncratic and confusing", and Namiki ended up spending many extra overtime hours dealing with it. So, he expressed his gratitude towards him by thanking him for cleaning all that up.
In Sorcer Striker, he stated that the approach he took to the songs was "melodious and colorful", but for Dimahoo he decided to try something else, not over-emphasizing the melodies and instead attempting to evoke a sense of atmosphere. In his mind, by contrasting these two approaches he was trying to explore the theme of what background music is supposed to be:
"When a video game composer writes melodic, busy pieces with tons of notes, and lots of progressive, complex chord structures, those songs make a good impression on the listener as songs, and they can also be quite effective in making the stages seem more exciting… but if you make a single misstep in this approach, it's very easy for the BGM to stand out too much (of course, if you can pull it off, the results can be spectacular). For Dimahoo I tried to do "both" (melody and atmosphere)… but how do you think it turned out?"
He also stated that he was not only plagued with technical difficulties with his sound equipment, but his air conditioner also broke. This made his working experience worse for a few days as Motoyama was "extremely sensitive to the heat":
"The sun would gradually heat the room up by midday, and on top of that, there was heat from the three computers and a rack full of music modules… I wasn't going to get through this with some dinky little table fan! The repair guy couldn't come for three days, and during that time I filled a bucket with ice water and put my feet inside while I worked (yes, I really did this). Damn! Now I can't use the damper pedal on my keyboard!"
He also thanked composer Manabu Namiki for assisting him with assembling the game's music data, saying he was "very indebted" to him. The way Namiki handled the music data for Dimahoo was different compared to the way he normally did it. Although he endeavored to keep his original data clean and simple to understand, it ended up being "idiosyncratic and confusing", and Namiki ended up spending many extra overtime hours dealing with it. So, he expressed his gratitude towards him by thanking him for cleaning all that up.
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Nintendo fans generally acknowledge X to be the first game to implement "Totaka's Song," a 13-note melody composed by Nintendo music veteran Kazumi Totaka.
Totaka often implemented this melody for games he worked on, including Luigi's Mansion, The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, and the Animal Crossing franchise.
Totaka often implemented this melody for games he worked on, including Luigi's Mansion, The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, and the Animal Crossing franchise.
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The music used in the game's opening cutscene, main menu/map screen, and end credits is taken almost note-for-note from Max Steiner's "Polka Melody", featured in the 1933 film adaptation of the novel "Little Women".
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In a 2011 interview with the game's composer Harumi Fujita published in issue #2 of STG Gameside magazine, she stated that at the time when she heard about Tokuro Fujiwara starting his own company named Whoopee Camp, she went to him and asked him to “Please use me somehow!”. Both of them had been working together on Famicom games since they worked at Capcom.
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In an early unused version of the "Mountain of Rubble" cutscene, Fiona is voiced by a different voice actress, but she is completely silent in the final version. In addition, there's a unique music in the cutscene that was removed in the final version, and the dirt effects when Fiona falls back down were originally brown instead of grey.
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If you listen closely to the music being played in the Divine Beasts, you can make out Morse code for "S.O.S." This is very likely a distress call the Champions made when they were attacked by the Ganon Blights 100 years prior to the start of the game.
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Milla from Freedom Planet was added as guest character in the Version 1.1 update.
Her theme song is based on her theme from Freedom Planet 2.
Her theme song is based on her theme from Freedom Planet 2.
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The game's title theme sounds similar to the Space Junk Galaxy theme from Super Mario Galaxy.
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On the first round of Planet Sonata, after delivering the last metronome to the bird robot, if you sit and wait for nearly a minute before going to the boss, a rendition of the nursery rhyme "Mary Had a Little Lamb" will start playing.
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Part of Grape Garden's background music greatly resembles the song "Silver and Gold", sung by Burl Ives, from the animated holiday musical film "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer".
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The music for Frosty Village seems to be a faster-paced, copyright-law-friendly version of the popular Christmas song "Winter Wonderland".
Part of the Walrus Cove theme also resembles Gene Autry's "Here Comes Santa Claus" in the same regard as well.
Part of the Walrus Cove theme also resembles Gene Autry's "Here Comes Santa Claus" in the same regard as well.
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In the PlayStation version of Innocent Sin, if you wait on the Load screen for 4 minutes and 15 seconds, a short acoustic version of the game's ending theme "Next to You" will play.
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In the Castle, in order to obtain Love from the castle guard Fred, Spoiler:if you wait on the balcony above Fred and Bilby's bedroom until night time, at some point, Fred will emerge and walk to the castle's throne room. If you follow him there, you will be treated with an extravagant rock performance where Fred is dressed up as his idol and namesake Freddie Mercury, the frontman of the British rock band Queen.If you go into Fred and Bilby's bedroom, Spoiler:Fred's side of the room is adorned with Freddie Mercury and Queen posters, even on his bedsheets, hinting at this connection.
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As Mario and Luigi approach Ludwig's hotel, Mario comments "We ain't afraid'a no Koopas!", a reference to the theme song to the 1984 film "Ghostbusters".
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After Mario, Luigi and the Princess run out of Lemmy's hotel, a giant fan is switched on blowing Lemmy and the hotel away, to which Mario says "Hey you! Get off of my cloud!". This is a reference to The Rolling Stones' 1965 song "Get Off of My Cloud".
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Homeworld's closing theme "Homeworld (The Ladder)" was composed by the British progressive rock band Yes for the game. It was originally released on the band's 1999 album "The Ladder" eight days before the release of Homeworld. The collaboration was spearheaded by lead singer Jon Anderson who wanted a piece of Yes' music to be worked into a video game, which resulted in the band discovering and becoming interested in Homeworld's plot and development, writing lyrics that fit with the themes of the game such as "thoughts that we're all trying to find our way home". Sierra Studios CEO Alex Garden commented that they tried to do as much as they could to tie the real world into their games to enhance the experience and provide a grounding in reality, and that the collaboration with Yes just came together with that philosophy.
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Normally, if you change the music selection to "Choose" in the Audio menu, the game will not allow the track "Prophetic - Title" to play. However, a glitch in the European version causes the song to play if the player loops through the list by pressing D-Right after the last song. This is the only way the song can be played in-game, though the game will change the song to "Azule Lux" every time a new level is loaded.
This is most likely caused by the game trying to play "Extol", as it was the last track in the US version. Since its placement was changed, the game loops the list and plays "Prophetic" instead.
This is most likely caused by the game trying to play "Extol", as it was the last track in the US version. Since its placement was changed, the game loops the list and plays "Prophetic" instead.