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Final Fantasy V
Final Fantasy V (1992)
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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 for 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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Eternity's Child
Eternity's Child (2008)
subdirectory_arrow_right Eternity's Child (Game)
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Eternity's Child features the first video game credit for DidYouKnowGaming creator and VGFacts co-founder Shane Gill, who contributed art and animation to the game.
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Credits, First, General, Real Life, Website
person DidYouKnowGaming calendar_month February 14, 2024
comment Comment (1) | link Source
Fallout 3
Fallout 3 (2008)
subdirectory_arrow_right Bethesda Softworks (Company)
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According to former character artist Jonah Lobe, the response from Fallout fans and the fan website "No Mutants Allowed" to Bethesda purchasing the series from Interplay Entertainment and developing Fallout 3 consisted of "a lot of excitement, a lot of enthusiasm, and a lot of death threats." Lobe claimed that while he and other employees at Bethesda were not "privy" to most of the details on the threats due to the company shielding them from its workforce, as a result of the overwhelmingly vocal and mixed responses from fans, Bethesda had to hire a security guard for the first time in its 21-year history.
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Complaint, Corporate Affairs, Development, General, Real Life, Website
person MehDeletingLater calendar_month April 20, 2024
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Cooking Mama: Cookstar
Cooking Mama: Cookstar (2020)
subdirectory_arrow_right Yum Yum Cookstar (Game)
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Yum Yum Cookstar appears to have been made as some kind of contingency over Cooking Mama: Cookstar's infamous legal disputes, being made by the same developers and publishers and having gone on sale on Steam a mere week before Cooking Mama: Cookstar was withdrawn from sale. While it is not known to what extent Yum Yum Cookstar is based on Cooking Mama: Cookstar, it does have a substantial difference in gameplay, having a psuedo-rhythm element that does not exist in the latter game.

Some prints of the box art have a printed sticker noting the game's connection to Cooking Mama: Cookstar, in spite of the controversy. The official website, TikTok account, and trailers for Yum Yum Cookstar proclaim the game to be made by "the creators of the best-selling hitgame[sic] Cookstar" (without acknowledging the Cooking Mama series by name) and use the slogan "This ain't your mama's kitchen!". The veracity of the claim of the first Cookstar being a best-seller is not known as sales figures have not been released.
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Advertisement/Commercial, Asset Reuse, Box Art, Complaint, Delisted, Inspiration, Legal Affairs, Social Media, Website
person Rocko & Heffer calendar_month April 11, 2024
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Antonball Deluxe
Antonball Deluxe (2021)
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2
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Anton was originally created as series creator Tony Grayson's profile picture for a forum when he was 9 years old in 2007, under the name "Red Guy". Because the first Antonball was black and white, Red Guy was renamed to Anton. One of the Anton variant characters in Antonball Deluxe is named after Red Guy.
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Character Design, Development, Early Idea, General, Name Change, Real Life, Social Media, Website
person Rocko & Heffer calendar_month April 3, 2024
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Another Code: Recollection
Another Code: Recollection (2024)
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Attachment The origami cranes scattered across the games feature a jumbled QR Code pattern that when put together links to the Japanese microsites for Another Code and Another Code: R.
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Easter Egg, Hidden Message, Product Placement, Website
person Adrot calendar_month March 5, 2024
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Origami cranes in the games:
https://wccftech.com/how-to/another-code-recollection-guide-how-to-find-14-two-memories-origami-messages/
https://wccftech.com/how-to/another-code-recollection-guide-how-to-find-another-code-r-origami-messages/

Tweet detailing the discovery:
https://twitter.com/Adr0t/status/1765119007584039105

Another Code microsite:
https://www.nintendo.co.jp/ds/anoj/index.html

Another Code: R microsite:
https://www.nintendo.co.jp/wii/rnoj/index.html

Method:
- Look up the file "ditem_PaperCrane" inside Textures2D of the game's data.
- Stitch the texture together into one complete QR Code if necessary.
- Scan it with any QR Code decoder like the one used in smartphones. Resize if necessary.
- QR Code should display the following: https://www.nintendo.co.jp/ds/anoj/index.htmlhttps://www.nintendo.co.jp/wii/rnoj/index.html

The code can be recreated by inputting these URLs exactly as they are shown above into the following Japanese QR Code generator:
https://qr.quel.jp/
Resident Evil
Resident Evil (1996)
subdirectory_arrow_right Disney's Goof Troop (Game)
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Some gameplay ideas used in Resident Evil - such as an action-puzzle-action-puzzle structure, and a restricted inventory system - were first explored in the very tonally opposite SNES cartoon adaptation Disney's Goof Troop, which was designed by Resident Evil's director Shinji Mikami. One rumor, originally claimed online in a Kotaku article by Tim Rogers, who claimed to have been informed of the connection by an unspecified "tech genius" friend, suggests that Resident Evil is built off of Goof Troop's source code.
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Asset Reuse, Development, Inspiration, Rumor, Similarities, Source Code, Unsolved Mystery, Website
person Rocko & Heffer calendar_month January 19, 2024
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Mother 3
Mother 3 (2006)
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Attachment On February 9, 2007, nearly a year after the game's release, director and series creator Shigesato Itoi set up an online quiz for fans who had completed the game, testing their knowledge about it. One question asks which Thief Jujitsu technique Wess uses, with the options being:

• "Super Sunset Miracle Chop Again"
• "Super Chop Miracle Sunset Again"
• "Super Miracle Sunset Chop Again"
• "Miracle Chop Super Sunset Again"
• "Miracle Chop Super Sunrise Again"
• "Miracle Sunset Super Chop Again"

None of this corresponds with anything seen in the final game, and a note attached to the question clarifies that it was based on something that was removed during development, telling fans to ignore it. Because the intended answer was never confirmed by anyone on the Mother 3 development team, it is unknown what the true name of the technique was. Similarly, the question doesn't clarify what the technique would've been used for, though the phrase "Thief Jujitsu" is most similar to the Secret Thief Arts Technique that Wess occasionally uses in battle.
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Development, Mistake, Unused Content, Website
person VinchVolt calendar_month December 19, 2023
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Wario World
Wario World (2003)
subdirectory_arrow_right Wario (Franchise), Nintendo (Company), WarioWare (Collection)
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Attachment www.warioworld.com was an official Nintendo website made as a hub for developers and publishers licensed to work on Nintendo hardware. The site used Wario as a mascot, something that may not seem strange as his profession is designing video games in the WarioWare series. However, the site was opened in 1997, predating WarioWare by multiple years, and also predates the Wario World game for GameCube. Instead of renaming the site to avoid confusion and using the URL for the game's US promotional site, the URL www.wario-world.com was used for the game's website, something that more than likely caused confusion for Wario fans. WarioWorld was closed in 2016, having recieved very few visual updates since the 1990s, and now redirects to a more modern and professionally designed Nintendo developer hub.
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Coincidence, Development, General, Name Change, Website
person Rocko & Heffer calendar_month December 18, 2023
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Archive of a Supper Mario Broth post about WarioWorld:
https://twitter.com/AJ_256652/status/1736456383774466136

Forum thread about Wario World's promotional website, showing a screenshot with the URL:
https://warioforums.com/threads/in-search-of-wario-websites.3431/
Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS
Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS (2014)
subdirectory_arrow_right Super Smash Bros. for Wii U (Game)
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As an early April Fools' joke, the fan-run Facebook/Blogspot group Operation: Power Up made a fake Super Smash Bros. website character page based on the ones used in the official website to "reveal" Nester, the mascot of Nintendo Power magazine, as a playable character. While the page itself is notably accurate to the source material, the screenshots shown at the bottom are of very low quality: not only is Nester's model poorly made, he's only ever shown alone in the pics and is clearly pasted on in some of them.
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April Fools, Artwork/Illustration, Fan Works, General, Magazine, Mascot, Real Life, Website
person chocolatejr9 calendar_month December 1, 2023
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GamePigeon
GamePigeon (2016)
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2
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In 2020, as an April Fools' Day prank in response to temporary school closures due to the COVID-19 pandemic, The Chronicle, the independent student news outlet for Duke University in North Carolina, published an article announcing that the university's athletics department added GamePigeon's Cup Pong minigame as an official varsity sport.
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April Fools, Minigame, Real Life, Website
person Kirby Inhales Jotaro calendar_month December 1, 2023
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Cuphead
Cuphead (2017)
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On August 24, 2017, a video was uploaded by gaming news outlet VentureBeat where lead writer Dean Takahashi, who specializes in general industry articles, strategy games and first/third person shooters and normally does not cover platformers or sidescrolling action games because by the outlet's own admission he was extremely bad at them, recorded a gameplay demonstration of him playing the Gamescom 2017 demo for Cuphead due to him being the only one on staff at Gamescom. This footage is notorious for the first two and a half minutes where he struggles to complete the game's tutorial, before struggling to play for another 23 minutes under conditions that were made intentionally easier for the game's demo such as increased health and instant access to some stronger unlockable charms like Spread. VentureBeat knew the footage was bad, but uploaded it anyways and drew attention to Takahashi's poor gameplay in the video title, calling it "shameful". However, VentureBeat initially did not explain the full context of the footage in the video description, and due to Gamescom being held one month prior to Cuphead's release, the clip was passed around out of context leading people to believe he was doing a full review of the game and trying to make a point of it being too difficult. In reality, the video was posted alongside an article about the demo by Takahashi to VentureBeat that regularly acknowledges his poor skill at the game; he also called Cuphead a fun game that showed "why making hard games that depend on skill is like a lost art". Regardless, the footage still drew extreme negative backlash and harassment towards him and claims that he was unfit to be a game journalist. Takahashi's response to the controversy spurred more controversy after he accused people attacking the footage of being connected to the 2014 #Gamergate movement, when one week prior to responding, he published an article promoting the idea of a "leisure economy" that stems from game journalists among others being paid to play games, and promoting the fact that he had been reviewing games for 21 years up to that point.
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Complaint, Controls, Demo, Difficulty, Meme, Misconception, Mistake, Real Life, Reviews, Social Media, Trade Show, Website
person Kirby Inhales Jotaro calendar_month November 23, 2023
comment Comment (0) | Source
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Pac-Man
Pac-Man (2002)
subdirectory_arrow_right Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Franchise)
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2
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Attachment The Neave Interactive port of Pac-Man was reskinned and packaged as a new game by many Flash websites. Most of these were amateur jobs, and among those cheap ports existed a reskin of the game on the official 4Kids TV website to promote the 2003 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series, titled Mutant Munchies.
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Adaptation, Plagiarism, Reskin, Website
person Rocko & Heffer calendar_month November 1, 2023
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Trivia about Pac-Man Neave Interactive port:
https://twitter.com/DailyPacMan/status/1705597897382002733

Mutant Munchies gameplay:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-SDUAy4GtQ
PAC-MAN Doodle
PAC-MAN Doodle (2010)
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The Pac-Man Google Doodle was not properly optimized for Firefox users, which led to the Pac-Man sound effects playing in sequence unprompted, even if Google was on a different tab, with many users mistaking the ghosts' movement noises for cartoon police sirens and believing to have caught a virus.

So many questions were posted on Mozilla's Q&A forums that, once they prepared an article to explain the Pac-Man glitch, the company's database server had slowed down to a point where the article took long to upload.
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Glitch, Mistake, Optimization, Real Life, Sound Effect, Version Difference, Website
person Rocko & Heffer calendar_month September 23, 2023
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Franchise: Kirby
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Series director Shinya Kumazaki maintains an art gallery on his personal website where he showcases paintings that he makes in his spare time. Several of these pieces depict dystopian surrealist versions of characters from the Kirby franchise, including Miracle Matter, Queen Sectonia, Taranza, and Drawcia.
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Real Life, Reference, Website
person VinchVolt calendar_month September 19, 2023
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Mario Tennis
Mario Tennis (2000)
subdirectory_arrow_right Waluigi's Foot Fault (Game)
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Attachment The September 2000 issue of Nintendo Power contains a "Nintendo Power Online" section on page 12, featuring an article titled "Mamma Mia! It's Waluigi!" The accompanying text introduces Waluigi to readers, reveals that he has his own website: www.waluigi.com, and claims to have an upcoming online game called "Waluigi's Toenail Clipping Party".

At the time of the Nintendo Power issue's release, www.waluigi.com was identical to the official website for Mario Tennis, www.mariotennis.com. One of the files hosted on the Mario Tennis website was the Adobe Flash file "toenails_coming.swf", which is an advertisement for the game instead titled "Waluigi's Foot Fault" depicting him showing his bare feet and unkempt toenails (he also occasionally blinks). Another file hosted on the website was "toenails.swf", which was supposedly the game itself. Catalogued alongside this file are two additional .swf files named "paint_the_lines" and "deface_painting", which could be evidence of other Flash games hosted on the Mario Tennis website.

However, the waluigi.com domain has since been turned into a redirect to the official Nintendo website. The toenails.swf file was not preserved, and as of 2023 has not resurfaced.
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Advertisement/Commercial, Filename, General, Title, Website
person NintendOtaku calendar_month September 13, 2023
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Skull and Bones
Skull and Bones (2024)
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Despite incorporating several elements common in a live-service game (i.e. an in-game store, a battle pass, seasonal events, and premium currency), Skull and Bones was given a price tag of $70. Yves Guillemot, the CEO of Ubisoft, justified this during an investors call before the game's release, stating:

"It's a very big game and we feel that people will really see how vast and complete that game is. So it's a really full triple-A, quadruple-A game that will deliver in the long run."

It's worth noting, however, that the game cost $200 million due to its decade-long development, with Ubisoft admitting that they did not think they would be able to break even due to its poor launch. Knowing this, it can be inferred that Ubisoft insisted on referring to Skull and Bones as a "quadruple-A" title not because of the scope of the project, but for how abnormally long it took to produce and raised the price to recoup costs, because this was not the first or only game they called a AAAA title in the past. It was discovered as far back as 2020 on the LinkedIn pages of several Ubisoft employees that they referred to Skull and Bones, the also long-delayed Beyond Good & Evil 2, and later Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, all games with development times lasting at least six years, as AAAA titles in their work experience.
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Corporate Affairs, Development, Financial Affairs, General, Real Life, Suggested, Theory, Website
person chocolatejr9 calendar_month April 29, 2024
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That's Not My Neighbor
That's Not My Neighbor (2024)
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1
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Attachment The player has a chance to randomly encounter an unnamed clown during their playthrough, who only appears once in the entire game to hand them a slip of paper. The note in question reads as follows:

"Ever Dream This Clown?

Every night, all over the world, hundreds of people see this clown in their dreams. If this clown appears in your dreams don't play any game with him. If you want more information go to:

nachogames.itch.io/unlikely"

The link in question leads to the Itch.io page for the game Unlikely, another game made by Nacho Sama. Additionally, the note itself appears to be a reference to "This Man", an urban legend created by Italian sociologist Andrea Natella about a mysterious individual who has appeared in the dreams of people all over the world since 2006.
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Creepypasta, Crossover, Easter Egg, General, Inspiration, Real Life, Reference, Website
person chocolatejr9 calendar_month April 5, 2024
comment Comment (0) | Source
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Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door
Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door (2004)
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1
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After Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door's announcement in 2003, some Mario fans incorrectly believed that the character of Madame Flurrie was going to be the ghost of Bowser's wife, based off of her character design and Japanese name. This is due to Flurrie's Japanese name, "Cloudia", sounding a lot like "Clawdia", a popular urban legend name for the Koopalings' mother supposedly created by the Mario fan website "Lemmy's Land", as well as Flurrie sharing a hair style with Ludwig and lip-shape with Wendy, who were at the time considered Bowser's children by Nintendo.
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Fan Works, Hoax, Misconception, Name Change, Regional Difference, Theory, Website
person Rocko & Heffer calendar_month April 1, 2024
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Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis
Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis (2003)
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Attachment The now defunct Jurassic Park Institute website featured what appeared to be an unused 3D model of a Chasmosaurus for Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis. This would line up with the developer's comments about wanting to include more dinosaur species outside of the 25 present in the final game, although curiously, this species is not mentioned within the game's "Constant.ini" file, which mentions dozens of other unused dinosaur species.
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Development, Model, Sprite/Graphical Animation, Unused Character, Unused Graphic, Website
person Dinoman96 calendar_month March 24, 2024
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