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Franchise: Tomb Raider
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Attachment Nell McAndrews undertook the role of Lara Croft in 1998 through to 1999, during which time she posed nude for Playboy. At the time, Eidos threatened Playboy with a lawsuit. They were unable to alter the U.S. printing, but won a lawsuit forcing the U.K. printing of the magazine to cover up the Tomb Raider logo on the cover. This scandal was likely the reason she was replaced as the role of Lara Croft.
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Celebrity, General, Legal Affairs, Magazine, Real Life
person ShadowOfTheServer calendar_month October 2, 2013
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Franchise: Dragon Quest
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Longtime Nintendo Power writer Alan Averill used a photo of a plush Slime toy as his staff portrait, due to him being too camera-shy to print a photo of himself in the magazine.
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General, Magazine, Real Life
person Kitsune Hawk calendar_month April 28, 2017
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McDonald's Treasure Land Adventure
McDonald's Treasure Land Adventure (1993)
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Attachment In the April 2021 issue of the magazine Retro Gamer, Treasure's president Masato Maegawa revealed that entering a specific password on the game's password screen would allow access to a secret "polygonal display". After searching through the game's code and many brute-forced attempts, the method to access the display was eventually discovered:

Enter the password (shown in the attached picture) "Balloons", "Jewel", "M" and "Clown". Then, press Start three times until you hear the sound of an explosion and quickly hold Up+Left and wait. If done correctly, the McDonald's Password sign will turn from a 2D sprite into a 3D model, and the music will change to a song that sounds eerier than the normal password screen music.

Controls:
•D-Pad = Rotates the model
•B and C buttons = Zooms in and zooms out the model respectively
•Holding A and using the D-Pad = Moves the object across the background
•Holding A and pressing C = Switches the current object with a different one.

The viewable 3D polygonal models in this mode include the McDonald's Password sign, several cubes and squares of varying sizes and dimensions, the box in the Treasure logo, the "S" in the Sega logo, the entire Sega logo as a separate flat model, and a spaceship.
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Bonus Content, Easter Egg, General, Magazine, Secret
person MehDeletingLater calendar_month October 4, 2021
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Super Mario Bros.
Super Mario Bros. (1985)
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Attachment The Minus World glitch is believed to be first acknowledged by Nintendo in the third issue of Nintendo Power (November/December, 1988, page 55).
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General, Glitch, Magazine
person Axilie calendar_month September 3, 2023
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Super Mario Bros. 2
Super Mario Bros. 2 (1988)
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Attachment Super Mario Bros. 2 was the first Mario game to achieve the number 1 spot in the Top 30 section of Nintendo Power, securing the victory with 22790 points. The second place (The Legend of Zelda) had 6941 points.
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General, Magazine
person Axilie calendar_month September 3, 2023
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Carmageddon
Carmageddon (1997)
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Attachment Carmageddon was the subject of a major backlash from the British tabloid press for its violent content, with one issue of The Daily Mail running a large headline reading "BAN DEATH GAME NOW: POPE". If one was to read the smaller text below the headline, they would find out that the "Pope" in question was Greg Pope, Member of Parliament for Hyndburn, Lancs (1992 to 2010), and not Pope John Paul II as the headline would imply.
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Censorship, Complaint, General, Magazine, Real Life
person Rocko & Heffer calendar_month September 4, 2023
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Conker's Bad Fur Day
Conker's Bad Fur Day (2001)
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Attachment According to page 111 of the official Nintendo Power Player's Guide, Conker comments about Banjo & Kazooie being on the cover of Nintendo Power, stating that he will never be in the magazine's cover. This statement turned out to be true; as of Nintendo Power's final issue published in 2012, Conker never did appear on the cover of the magazine.
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Cameo, General, Magazine, Real Life, Suggested
person NintendOtaku calendar_month September 11, 2023
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Super Mario 64
Super Mario 64 (1996)
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Although the Headless Snowman is a minor character in his few appearances, he received some publicity in the form of a Nintendo Power joke published around the time of the main circulation of the "L is Real 2401" Super Mario 64 rumors.

In Volume 107 of Nintendo Power, in the April Fool's-themed "April News Briefs" segment, a "Luigi 64" article is present, where Nintendo states that Luigi fans had been campaigning to have the character in his very own game, and the company's response was to create a hoax upcoming game known as "Headless Snowman 64". This game was apparently intended to satisfy fans of the "second bananas" by featuring a cast of both well-known and obscure Nintendo characters, with the obscure characters including the Wave Race 64 announcer, "random audience members from Super Punch-Out!!", "the frogs in the meadow" from Diddy Kong Racing, and the Headless Snowman himself. Additionally, the game would supposedly contain some non-Nintendo characters such as "that bald guy from Blast Corps," and "the bikini woman in Cruis'n USA." Humorously, this never-made game was not going to feature Luigi, with a developer comment at the end of the article confusing him for "one of the civilian women in GoldenEye 007".
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Advertisement/Commercial, Magazine, Real Life
person NintendOtaku calendar_month September 12, 2023
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Luigi's Mansion
Luigi's Mansion (2001)
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Attachment The October 2001 issue of Nintendo Power included a page with preview screenshots of Luigi's Mansion, including a screenshot of an earlier build of the Safari Room with the caption: "When your ghoul-busting mission takes you to the trophy room, proceed with caution. If you meet up with the ghost of a hunter, he'll want to add Luigi to his collection." This sparked rumors among players that the Safari Room originally featured a hunter boss who wanted Luigi's head as one of his trophies, and that it was removed from the game for being too frightening to the target audience of children.

However, no evidence of a hunter ghost is present in the game's data despite the presence of other unused ghosts, and no direct mentions of the boss exist in previews prior to the game's release in Japan in September 2001. The caption was likely an attempt at hyperbole rather than a serious indication that a hunter-themed ghost was in the game, as the article was written after Luigi's Mansion was released in Japan, meaning all characters would have been finalized long before the article was published.
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Advertisement/Commercial, Magazine, Rumor
person NintendOtaku calendar_month September 13, 2023
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Metroid Prime
Metroid Prime (2002)
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Attachment To help development reach its finish, Retro Studios licensed out a PHP-based bug tracker called Mantis, working with Nintendo of America's product testing division to find bugs and the team's producers would enter bug reports.

Eventually, Metroid Prime went gold on October 29, 2002 at 2:21 AM, less than a month before the release date to give time to manufacture game discs. Programmer Zoid Kirsch described it as one of the most memorable days of his life, commemorating it by getting the development team's signatures on a magazine poster. Notably, none of the developers signed on Samus because they had a large amount of respect for the character.
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Development, General, Glitch, Magazine, Real Life
person MehDeletingLater calendar_month September 16, 2023
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Star Fox Adventures
Star Fox Adventures (2002)
subdirectory_arrow_right Dinosaur Planet (Game)
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Attachment Many fans today recognize Star Fox Adventure's Shopkeeper's name as "Shabunga". However, the game's development team never intended the Shopkeeper character to have a name, even as far back when it was still Dinosaur Planet.

"Shabunga" was initially the name of a cut NPC character from Dinosaur Planet, a mutant creature that Sabre/Fox and Tricky would come across in an area known as Willow Grove, the bridge between SwapStone Hollow (ThornTail Hollow in SFA) and Dragon Rock, which was becoming a strange and mutated land as a result of General Scales' and Drakor's actions within the latter area, which was also mutating its inhabitants. As such, Shabunga, and supposedly other mutants according to the Dinosaur Planet condensed story (though none appear in the leaked December 2000 build) were cast off and sealed away within Willow Grove by the ThornTails that lived in SwapStone Hollow, frightened by their now warped appearances.

This mutant character was said to be an alchemist and also one of the SpellStone guardians, and thus was required to revitalize General Scales' Kamerian Belt (or "Krazoa Star" as Shabunga puts it), to allow Sabre and Tricky to enter the mutated wasteland Dragon Rock unharmed, and would later be required activate the SpellStone acquired from defeating Dragon Rock's boss, the Kamerian Heart.

With Willow Grove removed in the final game, Shabunga would appear in SFA as an enemy type known as the "FireCrawler" that appears in Moon Mountain Pass and also all over Dragon Rock. His role as the SpellStone GateKeeper of Dragon Rock would then be given to a generic quiet ThornTail that resides in ThornTail Hollow.

Curiously, SFA's Nintendo Power guidebook and also official English website would both re-appropriate the mutant's name to the Shopkeeper, claiming his name to be "Shabunga", despite the actual game just merely referring to him as the Shopkeeper. It turns out there's a reason for this: looking at the Japanese localization for Star Fox Adventures, it appears that NCL did indeed repurpose the "Shabunga" name behind Rare's back for the Shopkeeper as he's called that both in-game and also all over its ancillary material. For example, in the Japanese version of SFA, the ThornTail Store is renamed to シャブンガの店 (Shabunga no mise), which translates to Shabunga's Shop in English.

Another notable example is when Fox is talking to the Blue SnowHorn in SnowHorn Wastes; in the English version, the latter has this to say:

This item was stolen from me many years ago. I believe it was around the same time that a strange floating dinosaur visited the Wastes.

Retranslating the Japanese subtitles in the Japanese version of the game, however, reveals:

何と･･･ これは昔ワシが盗まれた宝じゃ。シャブンガとかいうヤツが ここに来たのと同じころだったか･･･ (This is the treasure that was stolen from me so long ago. It was around the same time that Shabunga or whatever his name was came here...)

It would seem that whoever wrote the Nintendo Power SFA guide was given the memo about this.
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Development, Magazine, Regional Difference, Suggested, Unused Character
person Dinoman96 calendar_month October 28, 2023
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Hyle Russell of DKVine said that the SFA dev team members he talked to never intended for the Shopkeeper to be called "Shabunga":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQVY7FFJSyY&t=3170s

Dinosaur Planet condensed story:
https://rarethief.com/dinosaur-planet/

Shabunga the Mutant from Dinosaur Planet:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BctbH8x8j1k

Star Fox Adventures - The Quiet ThornTail:
https://youtu.be/EUVWSIcUMcg?t=134

Western SFA website calling the Shopkeeper "Shabunga":
https://archive.org/details/starfoxflash/shabunga.jpg

JP SFA website calling the Shopkeeper "Shabunga":
https://www.nintendo.co.jp/ngc/gsaj/sshot/ss08.html

Examples of in-game JP text referring to the the Shopkeeper and his store as "Shabunga":
https://youtu.be/XkpsayvEINU?list=PLNQca9Z15B3Cwq7rwz2GeE0Bkvcu546e8&t=988

https://youtu.be/nEDCKqE5VC4?list=PLNQca9Z15B3Cwq7rwz2GeE0Bkvcu546e8&t=573

Entire Reddit thread of this just for good measure:
https://www.reddit.com/r/starfox/comments/zrzun8/the_curious_case_of_shabunga_the_shopkeeper/
Inspector Gadget
Inspector Gadget (1993)
subdirectory_arrow_right Inspector Gadget (Franchise)
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Attachment Dr. Claw's face, a recurring mystery in the Inspector Gadget cartoon, is shown in the Inspector Gadget SNES game. The design of his face, which possesses spiky grey hair, matches up with an action figure released prior, which used a mystery box gimmick for his face. It does not, however, match up with Inspector Gadget character designer Bruno Bianchi's take on the character released in a French magazine contest, where he is instead portrayed as a frog-like alien controlling fake human hands from his chair.
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Adaptation, Backstory/Lore, Character Design, Magazine, Secret
person Rocko & Heffer calendar_month November 8, 2023
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Bio Force Ape
Bio Force Ape (TBA)
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Attachment Bio Force Ape is a game that was never released - it did, before it's cancellation, get a spotlight in Nintendo Power, creating a level of curiosity surrounding it within NES fan communities. Capitalizing off of this curiosity, a post would be made on the Digital Press forum in 2005 claiming to show screenshots of a leaked prototype. While the first post appeared legitimate, the hoax would eventually be unraveled starting with a screenshot of a glitched super move that was "so powerful [that] it messes up the game's graphics", which humorously made it appear that Bio Force Ape was unleashing a powerful fart attack, as a set of glitched graphics appeared next to a crouching animation. The poster, going under the username PaulB812, would refuse to dump the game and refer to anybody who asked for it to be released as either "communists" or "butter-slathered... hoarding fatties", before finally unveiling the prank with a game screenshot of a cutscene where a fat butter monster points out that the ape is "worth 2K monies[sic]", before the ape punches him while saying "EAT COMMUNISM!" A real prototype would be leaked in 2010.
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Cancelled Release, Hoax, In-Joke, Magazine, Meme, Politics, Prototype, Unreleased Content
person Rocko & Heffer calendar_month November 19, 2023
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Fido Dido
Fido Dido (TBA)
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Fido Dido was listed as being "out now" in an issue of UK magazine SegaPro, despite the game not being released.
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Cancelled Release, Magazine
person Rocko & Heffer calendar_month November 22, 2023
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Cool Spot
Cool Spot (1993)
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Attachment According to an Electronic Gaming Monthly preview article, Cool Spot was originally a Reversi clone like Spot: The Video Game, titled Spot II - the graphics used in Cool Spot seem to have been reused from cutscenes in the cancelled game.
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Asset Reuse, Cancelled Release, Early Idea, Magazine, Release Difference, Unreleased Content, Unused Cutscene
person Rocko & Heffer calendar_month November 22, 2023
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Platform: PlayStation 2
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Complaint, Magazine, Male/Female Gender, Real Life, Sales
person Rocko & Heffer calendar_month November 22, 2023
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Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration
Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration (2022)
subdirectory_arrow_right Swordquest: Fireworld (Game), SwordQuest: AirWorld (Game), Swordquest: Earthworld (Game), Swordquest: Waterworld (Game), Swordquest (Collection)
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Attachment The SwordQuest series was a series of 4 games developed by Atari, each one having an associated contest to win a one-of-a-kind item from the game made of real gold by finding clues in the game and using them to uncover hidden messages in the attached comic book, then coming to Atari headquarters to compete in a contest version of the respective game. The advertised prizes were:

•Talisman of Penultimate Truth, Earthworld's prize
•Chalice of Light, Fireworld's prize
•Crown of Life, Waterworld's prize
•The Philosopher's Stone, Airworld's prize
•The Sword of Ultimate Sorcery, the grand prize

Halfway through the series, the video game crash of 1983 hit, and it was put to a halt, leaving Airworld, the Philosopher's Stone, and the Sword of Ultimate Sorcery unreleased. The Chalice of Light is the only item known to still exist, with all others being believed to have been melted down at some point.

In Atari 50, a game based on Airworld would see release, though it was not based on the work done for the game back in the 1980s.
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Alternate Reality Game, Cancelled Release, Magazine, Merchandise, Remake, Sweepstakes, Unreleased Content, Unsolved Mystery, Unused Items
person Rocko & Heffer calendar_month November 26, 2023
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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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Kingdom Hearts
Kingdom Hearts (2002)
subdirectory_arrow_right Kingdom Hearts (Franchise)
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In each Dive to the Heart segment in almost every game in the series, there is a disembodied voice that can only speak through text that guides the characters (and thus the player as well) through the tutorial of each game. The identity of these voices has been unidentified in every game but Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep (where it is obviously child Sora) and the first Kingdom Hearts. For the latter, in the Kingdom Hearts Ultimania, Nomura was asked who the voice is for the opening of the first game and he finally gave it's identity as being none other than King Mickey. However, this interview was done in the early 2000's before most of the sequels were produced, so it's unknown if this explanation was retconned or not.
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Backstory/Lore, Cameo, Early Idea, Hidden Message, Magazine, Misconception, Retcon, Secret, Suggested, Theory, Unsolved Mystery
person PirateGoofy calendar_month December 7, 2023
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Company: Nintendo
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Nintendo's development philosophy is often described with the quote "a delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad," which is generally attributed to Shigeru Miyamoto. However, there is no evidence that he actually said the quote: a 2022 investigation by video game researcher Ethan Johnson revealed that it was first documented as "an industry catchphrase" in a November 1997 issue of Gamepro magazine. The quote was first tied to Nintendo in the June 1998 issue of Edge, in which an article about the protracted development of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time alleges that Nintendo saw it on a poster in a developer's office and took it to heart.

Over the next three years, the quote circulated among Usenet forum members when describing a variety of game developers, Nintendo included, and in 2003 it started being attributed to Miyamoto specifically. Johnson speculates that this came from people conflating it with comments Miyamoto made in a 2001 interview looking back on the making of Ocarina of Time, where he stated that "the entire staff starts to feel like 'if I let the game be released in this state, I will be ashamed.' Because if the development team doesn't end up feeling like craftsmen, artisans... then it won't be a good game." Johnson attributed the quote's longevity to the emergence of modern hype culture and growing public awareness about the significantly longer development periods needed for 3D games.
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Development, General, Magazine, Misconception, Real Life
person VinchVolt calendar_month December 13, 2023
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Article about Johnson's findings:
https://gamerant.com/miyamoto-famous-quote-delayed-games-good-misattributed/

Johnson's original Twitter thread, including a correction about his statement regarding the poster Nintendo allegedly saw:
https://twitter.com/GameResearch_E/status/1504850248107188234
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