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Mother 3
Mother 3 (2006)
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In an interview with Nintendo Dream conducted roughly three months after the release of Mother 3, director and series creator Shigesato Itoi stated that the Magypsies were designed as a deliberate contrast with the game's otherwise "macho" setting. Rather than responding to violence with violence, they intervene through peaceful means and live fully aware of and comfortable with the inevitability of death.

In the same interview, Itoi also stated that he made representation a big part of the game's cast: the Magypsies were inspired by friends of his (though he did not specify if this referred to their philosophies or their depiction as nonbinary figures who take after drag culture), and Duster was given a limp "because there are handicapped people in our world." According to Itoi, the idea behind this was to encourage an anti-discrimination message.
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Development, Inspiration, LGBTQ+, Real Life
person VinchVolt calendar_month March 30, 2024
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Baldur's Gate 3
Baldur's Gate 3 (2020)
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Baldur's Gate 3 was originally revealed with a CGI trailer at a conference for the Google Stadia cloud gaming service in June 2019 as part of an Early Access exclusivity deal that would ultimately be cancelled when Stadia was shut down in 2023. The game's director Swen Vincke touted the service at the time for its purported accessibility, and the potential for in-game community feedback to directly affect the game's development and playthroughs via Stadia's Crowd Choice feature. However, Vincke later expressed regret over having the game be revealed this way, calling it "a really stupid deal" due to the challenges of releasing an Early Access build to a second platform, but that "it allowed me to pay for the CGI."
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Advertisement/Commercial, Cancelled Release, Complaint, Development, Early Build, Early Idea, General, Trade Show
person Rocko & Heffer calendar_month March 29, 2024
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Seaman
Seaman (1999)
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5
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Development, Easter Egg, Filename, Music, Regional Difference, Secret, Title, Voice Acting
person MehDeletingLater calendar_month February 4, 2024
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Tekken
Tekken (1994)
subdirectory_arrow_right Tekken (Franchise)
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5
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In an interview with Polygon, the series lead Director, Katsuhiro Harada, confirmed that King's motion capture was performed by Japanese pro-wrestling star and MMA pioneer, Minoru Suzuki. The wrestling star made King's fighting style with a mix of Mexican lucha libre and Japanese puroresu. Harada also said that Suzuki also invented original moves for King and Michelle (as well as Julia in future games). Harada also says that Suzuki also offered to choke him out, to which he said "Yeah, of course dude, I want you to choke me out" and that "it felt like taking a refreshing nap."

King's backstory was inspired by Sergio Gutiérrez Benítez, a catholic priest who moonlit as the masked wrestler Fray Tormenta to raise funds for his orphanage, while the character's jaguar mask design was inspired by Tiger Mask, a recurring masked persona first portrayed in real-life by mixed martial artist Satoru Sayama, and a character licensed out to Japanese professional wrestling companies from the 1968 manga of the same name by Ikki Kajiwara.
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Character Design, Development, Inspiration, Motion Capture, Moveset, Real Life
person DrakeVagabond calendar_month January 20, 2024
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Polygon video about Katsuhiro Harada interview snippet:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibweoMXd5RI

Kotaku article featuring Tiger Mask:
https://kotaku.com/in-japan-wrestling-masks-arent-just-for-half-naked-dud-5845062

"Cheating Death, Stealing Life: The Eddie Guerrero Story" by Eddie Guerrero (page 91):
https://archive.org/details/cheatingdeathste00guer/page/91
Virtual Lab
Virtual Lab (1995)
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5
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Attachment In an interview with the Bad Game Hall of Fame, Megumi Ayase, who programmed Virtual Lab singlehandedly, stated that the large-breasted woman who appears next to the playing field was based on the idealized image that she wanted to attain as a transgender woman. This is reflected in her name, Megu, a truncation of Ayase's given name. Ayase also stated that the decision to make Megu 13 years old was done without her consultation, and that she didn't find out about this until she read the game's manual, much to her surprise.
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Artwork/Illustration, Character Design, Corporate Affairs, Development, Inspiration, LGBTQ+, Real Life
person VinchVolt calendar_month December 26, 2023
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Final Fantasy V
Final Fantasy V (1992)
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5
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Attachment The translation group RPGe's 1998 English translation of Final Fantasy V is considered to be one of the most widely-played and influential fan translations in video game history. It gained this reputation because it released before Squaresoft's first official translation in Final Fantasy Anthology in late 1999, and despite RPGe primarily consisting of inexperienced teenagers, it was regarded as a better translation than the official one, leading many Western players to first experience the game through it.

The first translation attempts stemmed from widespread confusion over Squaresoft not releasing three FF games in the West: Final Fantasy II, Final Fantasy III, and FFV. Their decision to release Final Fantasy VII internationally under its original numbering after Final Fantasy VI was released in the West a few years earlier as the "third" game in the series also contributed to this.

The co-creator of RPGe, named Shadow, was inspired by an incomplete FFII translation by users Demi and Som2freak (the latter having later lent Shadow tools to work on FFV), and started translating FFV by making flashcards for which hex code corresponded to each Japanese and English character in the game's data. He promoted his efforts online using photoshopped FFV images and recruited other users to create RPGe, including translator David Timko, and a computer engineering major named Hooie who also asked Japanese instructors at his university to help translate some enemy names. RPGe's plan was to directly edit their English script into the text files of a ROM of the Japanese version, but their work was slow and tedious due to them having little experience with fan translations and being out of touch with fledgling emulation communities. This lead to technical issues with their text and sprite editing software, and English characters being poorly displayed under conditions that were originally designed for larger Japanese characters. The group also suffered from internal factionalism, and since Shadow promoted himself as the public face of the project, he found that he could not handle the attention and controversy that came from how seriously he took the project and RPGe itself, seeing the translation effort as a vital service to the Squaresoft fan community. After Demi published a lengthy post parodying Shadow, he "snapped" and left RPGe. The co-founders of RPGe would also eventually step down, but other users would take over and start their own work.

A user named Myria, who had argued against RPGe's hex editing approach to no avail, split off from their efforts beforehand to work on a separate translation. Sharing similar setbacks to them, she gradually parsed through the code used to handle the text files, and edited it so it could recognize English characters of different sizes and fit more in a dialogue box. Som2freak helped translate the script for a time, but then left the project after bringing on a new editor, named harmony7, who started heavily revising Som2freak's translations to his chagrin despite seeing several issues with it.

One of the most controversial aspects of the translation was the main character's name. Squaresoft's later English translation named him "Bartz", but RPGe's translation named him "Butz", which many joked sounds like "butts". Myria claimed that Butz was the most accurate translation based on documents and official merchandise using it "the way we'd written it" (for reference, the Romanized version of the Japanese name "バッツ" comes out as "Battsu"). However, Butz is used in real life as an actual German surname with a different pronunciation, the vowel being an "oe" sound like in the English words "put" and "good". Therefore, Bartz would make more sense to match up with the vowels in the Japanese name than Butz, and also fits better as a German first name since Bartz is a pet name for Bartholomäus (Bartholomew).

The bulk of Myria's technical work ended in October 1997, with harmony7 still working to revise the entire script until something unexpected happened. An early version of the fan translation mysteriously appeared on a Geocities website with others taking credit for it. This prompted RPGe to release their work up to that point as "v0.96" on October 17, 1997, with the final patch eventually being released in June 1998. The translation patch received acclaim for its technical aspects and near-professional writing quality, and influenced other players to become translators, including Clyde Mandelin who would later create the English fan translation of Mother 3. Squaresoft never contacted RPGe about the translation, and while their 1999 localization of the game was seen as inferior to RPGe's, Myria would later opine that Square Enix's 2006 localization in Final Fantasy V: Advance was better than theirs. Myria continued hacking and reverse-engineering games and eventually earned a job at an undisclosed major video game company.
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Cancelled Release, Complaint, Development, Emulation, Etymology, Fan Translation, General, Leak, Merchandise, Mistranslation, Modding, Name Change, Parody, Real Life, Regional Difference, Social Media, Technology, Website
person MehDeletingLater calendar_month December 24, 2023
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Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (2005)
subdirectory_arrow_right Gyakuten Saiban (Game)
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One early idea for the game involved Phoenix Wright being an anthropomorphic hamster character. Later versions of the character would give him a hamster as a pet, but this was ultimately cut in the final release.
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Character Design, Development, Early Idea
person Kirby Inhales Jotaro calendar_month December 17, 2023
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Tekken 7
Tekken 7 (2015)
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5
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Development, Early Idea, Inspiration, Politics, Real Life, Unused Character
person ZpaceJ0ck0 calendar_month December 14, 2023
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Sonic and the Black Knight
Sonic and the Black Knight (2009)
subdirectory_arrow_right Adrenix (Game), Black Dawn (Game), Sonic The Hedgehog (Franchise), Tommy Tallarico Studios (Company)
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Tommy Tallarico, credited composer for the "Molten Mine", "The Cauldron", and "Great Megalith" music tracks in Sonic and the Black Knight claimed in 2022 to have been the first American to work on the Sonic the Hedgehog video game series. Even if one refuses to count external work such as localization, marketing, and multimedia adaptations, this is not true, as Americans have worked on art, programming, and music for Sonic titles as far back as the 16-bit version of Sonic the Hedgehog 2, with Tallarico having previously shown awareness in 2014 of American pop star Michael Jackson's involvement in Sonic 3 & Knuckles. In 2023, his involvement in writing the three tracks came into question when it was discovered that they contained similarities to several demos originally credited to Todd Dennis, a composer at Tommy Tallerico Studios in the 1990's, and originally written for the games Black Dawn and Adrenix.
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Credits, Development, Hoax, Music, Plagiarism, Similarities
person Rocko & Heffer calendar_month October 5, 2023
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Tallerico's original claim:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FP5uOMZoGRo

Tallerico acknowledging Jackson's work on Sonic 3 & Knuckles:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FF8XeZdh2Jc

Article questioning Tallerico's involvement in writing Sonic and the Black Knight tracks:
https://www.sonicstadium.org/news/games/sonic-and-the-black-knight-composers-contributions-questioned-r1810/
Donkey Kong Country
Donkey Kong Country (1994)
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5
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Attachment In an interview, Steve Mayles recalled that during the development of Donkey Kong Country, "Rareware had the most Silicon Graphics machines in the world next to Boeing" with Kev Bayliss adding "I seem to remember we actually received a phone call from the Ministry of Defence asking why we'd got all of this powerful hardware and what were we actually doing with it".
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Development, General, Real Life
person Raccoon Sam calendar_month September 3, 2023
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Page 406 of SNES/Super Famicom: A visual compendium by Bitmap Books. ISBN 978-0-9956586-2-2
Collection: Ōkami
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According to former Clover CEO Atsushi Inaba, the series' trademark Celestial Brush mechanic was directly inspired by the ukiyo-e art style. In a 2006 interview with GameSpy, Inaba stated "Once we fixed ourselves on a graphical style and got down to the brushwork, we thought, 'Wouldn't it be great if we could somehow get the player involved and participate in this artwork instead of just watching it?'" These comments also explain why in both games, activating the Celestial Brush renders the current frame as a scroll of washi paper.
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Artwork/Illustration, Controls, Development, Inspiration
person VinchVolt calendar_month January 20, 2024
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Final Fantasy VII Remake
Final Fantasy VII Remake (2020)
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Character Design, Complaint, Development, Mistranslation
person Kirby Inhales Jotaro calendar_month December 18, 2023
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Platform: PlayStation 2
subdirectory_arrow_right Nuon (Platform)
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While DVD video playback was a major selling point for the PlayStation 2, Sony didn't plan to support the feature at first, as they were already intending to manufacture standalone DVD players through their home entertainment department. However, after seeing a demonstration for the Nuon, a DVD player by VM Labs with video game support, Sony Computer Entertainment head Ken Kutaragi demanded that a similar level of multimedia functionality be incorporated into the PlayStation 2. The move was met with resistance from Sony's home entertainment wing, who believed that doing so would cause the console to cannibalize sales of their standalone DVD players. However, Kutaragi won out in the end due to the clout that the PlayStation brand had given him.
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Console Wars, Corporate Affairs, Development, Inspiration, Real Life
person VinchVolt calendar_month November 13, 2023
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Super Mario Bros. Wonder
Super Mario Bros. Wonder (2023)
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One scrapped idea for a Wonder Flower transformation was an eight-heads-tall, life-size, live-action version of Mario that hummed to the background music and exclaimed "Boing" when jumping. This idea was pitched by series composer Koji Kondo, but was scrapped due to it being "hard to see the connection between pre-Wonder effect and during Wonder effect. And it's hard to imagine the gameplay changing much by having Mario turn into a live-action, human proportion version of himself." However, this did end up leading to the Sound Off? badge being created to keep the voice sound effects idea in the game. Incidentally, Kondo provided the voice acting for all of the sound effects included while wearing the badge.
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Development, Early Idea, Inspiration, Music, Real Life, Voice Acting
person NintendOtaku calendar_month October 19, 2023
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Mortal Kombat 1
Mortal Kombat 1 (2023)
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4
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Ed Boon revealed that he had hoped to include John Wick from the franchise of the same name as a guest character in Mortal Kombat 1, but that said plans didn't work out. While the exact reason why is unknown, it's worth noting that John Wick's actor Keanu Reeves had said in 2021 that he did not think the character was a good fit for the Mortal Kombat series.
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Development, Early Idea, Real Life, Unused Character
person chocolatejr9 calendar_month September 27, 2023
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Criminal Girls
Criminal Girls (2010)
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3
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Censorship, Development, General, Minigame, Regional Difference
person chocolatejr9 calendar_month April 19, 2024
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Super Paper Mario
Super Paper Mario (2007)
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3
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Attachment The South Korean version of the game (released two years after the original Japanese edition) contains eleven unused maps not found in any other release, featuring fully 3D environments which do not line up with any locations present in the finished product. All assets related to these maps are dated after the game's Japanese release, with intervals ranging from five days to just over three months. Additionally, the maps' texture names are written in Romanized Japanese rather than Korean, indicating that they were not created by Nintendo of Korea.

Two of these maps, kri_04 and kri_05, additionally feature various cat NPCs, all drawn in substantially different art styles compared to not only each other, but also the final game. Each one is named after a developer from the Super Paper Mario staff: yamada_neko02 (Koichiro Yamada), koba_neko (Sayuri Kobayashi), tuka_neko (Naoko Tsukamoto), and kawa_neko (Chie Kawabe).

Of these four, kawa_neko is the most unique, and was apparently designed as a player character. Firstly, the cat's name is only given to its mesh, with its sprite instead being named bc_all.1. Additionally, kawa_neko features an animated tail and a mesh that is centered on the ground rather than the middle of the room. Furthermore, new_neko_18, a redesigned version of kawa_neko with white fur instead of black, can be found in kri_08, kri_09, and kri_10; new_neko_18's mesh is explicitly labeled "PLAYER" in the data for these maps.

Taken together, all of these elements imply that these early rooms were created as a proof-of-concept for an original project by Intelligent Systems that ended up cancelled for unknown reasons.
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Cancelled Release, Development, Sprite/Graphical Animation, Unused Character, Unused Code, Unused Content, Unused Graphic, Version Difference
person VinchVolt calendar_month April 13, 2024
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Fallout 2
Fallout 2 (1998)
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3
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Fallout 2 is notable for being the first video game to feature same-sex marriage through opportunities to marry Miria or Davin, a sister and brother working at the slaughterhouse in Modoc. According to game designer Chris Avellone in 2019, nobody at Black Isle Studios working on the game was against the inclusion of same-sex marriage, and noted that "fans didn't seem to care" about it when playing the game. He believed the reason for this reception was because of it only being offered in Modoc, a tight-knit small town "where things can get wild and weird" that was more receptive to it than a more "modern" location like Vault City.
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Backstory/Lore, Development, First, General, Inspiration, LGBTQ+, Real Life
person chocolatejr9 calendar_month April 11, 2024
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Franchise: Sonic The Hedgehog
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Attachment Ben Hurst, one of the writers for the 1993 "Sonic the Hedgehog" animated series, attempted to pitch a continuation of the show to Sega in 2002 as either a third season or a movie. He consulted DiC Entertainment, who produced the show (as well as two other Sonic cartoons, "Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog" and "Sonic Underground"), and was given the name of a Sega executive who wanted to talk with him more about the idea. Hurst then received a call from Ken Penders, at the time the head writer for Archie's Sonic the Hedgehog comics, who had been made aware of Hurst's interest in making a movie based on the series. Hurst offered to include Penders in the project, and told him his strategy for the pitch was to develop a satisfying storyline to conclude the show, and simultaneously giving Sega ideas for new games. This resulted in a long-standing controversy where Hurst claimed that Penders sabotaged his plan by telling Sega that he was trying to co-opt the franchise, resulting in Hurst's dismissal from the project. Over 13 years after Hurst's death, Penders would give his side of the story in a 2023 blog post, claiming that Hurst's joint proposal between the two would involve asking Sega to pay them to produce the series, and doubted that Sega would even schedule a meeting to let them pitch it if Sega funding the pitch was the premise, stating that "the owner of any IP is looking for a payday when it comes to using the rights for their properties."

In September 2003, Penders pitched his own concept for a Sonic the Hedgehog movie, titled "Sonic Armageddon". Four pieces of concept art were produced, and even a homemade pitch video was made to show to Sega executives. From what is known about the pitch (which seemed to borrow elements from both the 1993 series and the Archie comics), it would have involved the planet Mobius being destroyed and changed the depiction of the roboticization procedure to something much more gruesome than what had been previously seen. Notably, several major characters (such as the Freedom Fighters sans Sonic, Tails and Sally) are not shown in either the pitch video or the concept art, and the characters that are shown are given major redesigns. A common belief is that DreamWorks Animation was Penders' choice to produce the film, but Penders would later state in 2019 that he had pitched the idea to Sega only, and that DreamWorks had no involvement. The film never materialized; Penders would later claim on separate occasions that the idea was dropped because of "massive corporate upheaval", as well as the development of the animated series "Sonic X" affecting talks regarding the film.
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Backstory/Lore, Cancelled Release, Character Design, Corporate Affairs, Development, Early Idea, General, Misconception, Multimedia Adaptation, Pitch Bible/Proposal, Real Life
person chocolatejr9 calendar_month April 6, 2024
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Doubutsu no Mori
Doubutsu no Mori (2001)
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The source code for Doubutsu no Mori contains references to a variety of non-Nintendo Famicom ROMs that would not appear in the final game, including Arkanoid, F1 Circus, and most bizarrely, the bootleg port of Tekken 2 by Hummer Team.
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Development, Emulation, Fan Works, Piracy, Source Code, Unused Code, Unused Content
person Rocko & Heffer calendar_month April 1, 2024
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