Tags

On May 23, 1999, wrestler Owen Hart passed away due to an equipment malfunction during his entrance into the wrestling ring, dropping him to his death. In light of this, the game was delayed from its original June 3, 1999 release date to August 5th that year, and they dedicated it to Hart in the Nintendo 64 and PlayStation versions.

The Dreamcast version, however, completely omits the dedication due to a wrongful death lawsuit brought against the WWE (then known as the WWF) from the Hart family. However, he is still a playable character in the game.

The game was released for the original PlayStation under the title “M&M's: Shell Shocked.”

The fifth and sixth stages are different between the Arcade and console versions.

In the arcade version the fifth stage is a high-rise building where you fight a militia working for the main villain, and when you reach the rooftop you fight the fifth boss of the game. The sixth and final stage is made of a boss rush where you fight all the previous gangs while chasing a big crime boss in the harbor. After defeating all the gangs, Spoiler:the crime boss gets killed and the final battle against Martha Splatterhead ensues.

In the console version the boss rush takes place in the fifth stage instead, right before facing the militia. The sixth and final stage is simply the final boss battle set atop the rooftop of the high-rise building, with the harbor stage being completely removed. Additionally Spoiler:the crime boss from the arcade version is missing in the SNES port, which establishes Martha Splatterhead as the leader of the gangs early on.

The original arcade release features a very minimalistic story, with the only cutscene being a short monologue that plays after beating the game. The console release expands the story by introducing cutscenes that play before and after fighting a boss, as well as an opening intro explaining the plot and a different ending.

The arcade version uses numeric values to represent the player's character health, while the console version uses a life bar.

The console release features short cutscenes that play after defeating a boss. The Super Famicon version features blood on the defeated boss' portrait whereas the Super Nintendo version has no blood. Depending on the portrait the blood was recolored to look like either saliva or tears, or it was completely removed.

Hardware limitations of the original PlayStation caused the development team to cut the frame rate in half and have only a handful of enemies appear on the screen at a time, among other technical restraints.

"Blast processing" is a marketing term coined by Sega of America to promote the Sega Genesis as the cooler and more powerful console compared to the SNES. It was such an effective campaign that it caused Nintendo to spend millions of dollars to ramp up their own smear campaign to rebut the claims, helping to create the textbook example of a "console war" between two rivaling video game companies through aggressive marketing and advertising. It is true that Blast processing as presented in advertisements at the time does not exist in any released Genesis game, but its creation was based on a real feature that ultimately went unused by developers: a low-level processing method that was progressive for its time.

The basic idea is that the hardware's video processor is "blasted" continuously, with the Genesis' 68000 processor working flat-out to change the color of every individual pixel during an active scan, a process where the "guns" on a CRT screen move from left to right and then down to the next line and so on. It was believed at the time that this function could be used to increase the Genesis' somewhat constrained color palette to showcase 256 color static images if timed right (this number would be exceeded by other developers like Jon Burton from Traveller's Tales who later discovered the trick).

Sega of America Senior Producer Scott Bayless claimed that Sega technical director Marty Franz first discovered the trick by "hooking the scan line interrupt and firing off a DMA [direct memory access] at just the right time", as firing it off at the wrong time would result in the scan lines appearing out of phase. This timing/synchronization issue, on top of the more pressing issue of the feature using all of the 68000's CPU time (meaning that while you could run the feature, you couldn't actually play the games that use it), effectively made it useless for cartridge games, and no shipped Genesis games ever used the feature. It’s speculated that it could have been used for Sega CD games, as the add-on had its own CPU that could run the feature, but this also did not come to pass.

The people responsible for the name "Blast processing" are Bayless and Sega of America's PR team. They interviewed him about the specs of the console, and he described to them how the feature could "blast data into the DAC's [digital-to-audio converters]". When talking about how the name came about, he assumed the PR team just liked the word "blast" without understanding what Bayless was explaining, and Blast processing was invented by them to more easily and vaguely sum up the technical capabilities of the Genesis when marketing it. Bayless later expressed reservations about the phrase, calling it "ghastly".

It should also be noted that this feature was not exclusive to the Genesis. In 2020, former Sculptured Software programmer Jeff Peters claimed that they discovered a similar technical trick on the SNES before Sega started using the phrase, but it was focused on audio rather than graphics. He claims that when porting Mortal Kombat to the SNES, Sculptured Software encountered an issue where the amount of graphics data being put onto the cartridge meant that sound had to be cut back drastically. To overcome this problem, Peters and his team used a homegrown system which allowed them to read sounds from the cartridge one at a time and blast them directly to a buffer in the sound memory. While the two tricks were achieving different things, it's interesting to note that both were possible on either console, despite Sega's insistence that only the Genesis could achieve Blast processing.

In the PlayStation and PlayStation 2 versions of the game, Vallery Irons only fights with a purse. However, the game box covers shows her holding a handgun, despite the PlayStation version's instruction booklet also stating that Vallery Irons has a dislike for guns. Additionally, in the Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance versions of the game, Vallery Irons is equipped with a handgun, although the game box covers for those versions have her without one.

In Episode 205 of "The Angry Video Game Nerd" in which the Nerd reviewed Doom, game designer Sandy Petersen claimed that the lack of music on the Atari Jaguar version was due to a monetary issue regarding the game's composer, stating in the composer's contract that he was supposed to be compensated the same amount of money for the Jaguar version as he was for the PC version, despite the Jaguar version selling less copies. Sandy Petersen ended by saying:


However, designer John Romero disputed this claim on Twitter shortly after the episode's release, claiming the lack of music was due to a lack of memory and CPU space available on the Jaguar cartridge.

Parasoul's original wakeup animation (featured in the original 2012 XBox Live Arcade/PlayStation Network release) showed the character's buttocks and underwear as she stood up from the ground. This was changed in the 2013 PC release, with her dress being longer and thus removing the partial nudity.

According to former lead design director Mike Zaimont, "Her skirt was actually the wrong length in the original version, it was fixed because it was off-model."

The Paintings on the walls of Hogwarts in the PC release are copies of famous portraits that have their heads replaced with the developers' heads to avoid copyright infringement.

Midway through making the game, PC version developers KnowWonder had to do a hard reset and completely restart their development of the game after the lore restrictions employed by Rowling made their original game uninteresting and a "glorified walking simulator", as they put it. Specifically, much of the KnowWonder's ideas had to be abandoned or worked around because many of the spells they wanted to adapt to gameplay they couldn't because first year Hogwarts students didn't have access to such abilities.

Going back to the drawing board caused the redone game to be rushed and the developers to experience crunch, but despite this, they still "found their groove" that helped them create the final game. The team also greatly understood Rowling's strict demand as they were huge fans of the source material.

Rowling also helped KnowWonder by creating a new spell for the team which didn't appear in her novels or on-screen before: Flipendo, a movement spell. Developer Christo Vuchetich opines that Rowling knew what went into making a game by giving his team vague and simple descriptions for the list of first year spells (i.e. "Flipendo moves things").

Despite being developed by different studios, in all versions but the Game Boy Color version, during the final battle with Voldemort Spoiler:/Professor Quirrell, the player must use the Mirror of Erised in the middle of the room in order to strike and defeat him. This does not happen in either the book or movie version of the story. Spoiler:In those stories, Harry involuntarily "defeats" Lord Voldemort when the villain tries to touch him only for Lily Potter's protection spell that she put on Harry to disintegrate Quirrell and in turn Voldemort's physical vessel.

Due to a loop hole with the Tolkien estate, Vivendi Games was able to make the game independently from Peter Jackson's film adaptations and have it more based on the book. However, despite this, the game's console and PC versions still open with a narration by Lothlorien Elf Galadriel where she describes the history, lore, and creation of The One Ring, which is something that happens in the very beginning of Jackson's Fellowship of the Ring film and not the original novel.

In a video interview with former Capcom game designer Shinichiro Obata, he stated that the reason why the character Pet Shop is so overpowered to the point of being banned in competitive play is because he was originally intended for the PlayStation version and not arcade one, as such he wasn't really intended for competitive play.

However when the updated arcade version JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Heritage for the Future was in development, Pet Shop was added as a playable character and Mr. Obata couldn't help but notice how weak this version of the character was. So he started doing everything he could to buff Pet Shop, with Mr. Obata himself remarking that he “might’ve overdone it”.

On the Credits of the PC version, switch from the Scrolling Credits over to the Photo credits featuring headshots of the developers who worked on the game. From this point, quickly click on the photos as they appear on-screen. After an unknown amount of clicking, a secret minigame will begin where you must click the photos before they disappear to score points.

In the SNES version, the main antagonist General Akhboob is sent to prison, unlike all other versions of the game where he is sentenced to the electric chair for his crimes. In regards to the final boss fight against his giant head, the SNES version depicts his muscular final form as dark green, while all other versions depict it as being red human muscle.

To detect if the Steam version of the game is a pirated copy, the game registers a fake DLC ID with SteamAPI. If a Steam emulator unlocks all DLC, the game won't progress past the first chapter and will open browser windows to the Steam page of the game every frame, potentially freezing your computer for having too many tabs on your browser.

pack/database/stat.rbrb also contains this text about a popular Steam emulator. It's referenced in the exe so it's not completely unused, but if it actually triggers anything is unknown.

"steam_api.dll.ali123
ALI123.INI
- STEAM NOT DETECTED! RESTART GAME TO ENABLE STEAM FUNC! -"

As of 2.00 the game also checks the integrity of steam_api.dll and will softlock after defeating a boss in Chapter 2 by disabling your controls.

In the original arcade build of Pac-Man, there is a specific area on the board that can be used as a hiding spot where the ghosts cannot see you. To access it, enter the upward tunnel, located just to the right of where Pac-Man spawns in on the board, from the right underneath, and keep Pac-Man facing up (do not do this as your first move when the level immediately starts, move slightly before trying this, for instance looping around the small left pathway from where Pac-Man starts and then going to the hiding place). This exploit can be used the same way on every level in the game except for the Strawberry level (the second level of the game). The Strawberry level has a slightly different way of pulling it off that can only be done there, requiring you to enter the same tunnel, but entering it while traveling left towards Pac-Man's spawn spot instead of entering by going to the right.

The A.I. for the ghosts works in two different modes, Chase and Scatter. The ghosts start in Scatter and aim for their own corners of the board while ignoring Pac-Man. In Chase mode, they can see and will actively chase Pac-Man. The ghosts will alternate between scattering and chasing Pac-Man in set intervals, and after the fourth Scatter, they will chase Pac-Man until you die or win the level. Due to a programming oversight, the ghosts cannot travel up in the "T"'s above and below the ghost spawning area, forcing them to move right past you. The ghosts also have unique methods of targeting Pac-Man, and all of this info put together allows the hiding spot to be possible. However, there is one exception to this trick. When Blinky switches from the fourth Scatter back to Chase for the rest of the level, he will come down from the top-right corner of the screen, and it is possible for him to enter the tunnel from the right entrance and kill Pac-Man, making it crucial not to perform this trick right before the fourth Scatter switches back to Chase to avoid the risk of death.

This exploit was patched out of future ports of Pac-Man, although ports containing the original arcade build will still retain it.