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The Guy Game
The Guy Game (2004)
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One of the girls who appeared topless in The Guy Game was 17 years old at the time of development, making the game illegal to sell in territories where the age of consent is 18. However, this did not come to light until four months after the game's release, when the same girl sued the game's developers Topheavy Studios, Gathering of Developers (a subsidiary of 2K Games' owner Take Two Interactive which included Topheavy Studios), Microsoft and Sony (on which the game was released for the Xbox and PlayStation 2), as she was not informed that the footage of her would be used in-game and on the game's promotional website. A Texas county judge granted a temporary injunction against the production of copies of the game until her voice, name and image were removed from the game entirely.

The following year, Topheavy Studios released a DVD version of the game with additional content not featured in the original game titled "The Guy Game: Game Over". They appeared to take the controversy in stride, stating on the game's store page:

"The rumors are true! The most controversial video game ever created - The Guy Game - is no longer available!"
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General, Legal Affairs, Real Life, Version Difference
person gamemaster1991 calendar_month May 7, 2013
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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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Final Fantasy
Final Fantasy (1987)
subdirectory_arrow_right Final Fantasy (Franchise)
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The Final Fantasy series' title was long rumored to stem from the idea that it would've been Square and series creator Hironobu Sakaguchi's final game if it didn't perform well. According to these claims, Square was in dire financial straits in 1987, with Sakaguchi planning to quit the gaming industry and return to university studies. These claims appeared to be further corroborated when series composer Nobuo Uematsu affirmed them in a 2009 interview with Wired, claiming that Square's financial position was the main inspiration for the Final Fantasy name.

However, Sakaguchi debunked the rumors in a 2015 keynote address. In reality, Square always intended to give the first game in the series a name whose initials were "FF," as the Japanese pronunciation, エフ・エフ ("efu efu"), was considered pleasing to the ears. The developers' initial pick was Fighting Fantasy; however, it turned out that this name was already taken by a tabletop RPG series. Consequently, the title was changed to Final Fantasy. According to Sakaguchi, while Square indeed had their "backs to the wall" during development, "anything that started with an F would have been fine for the title."
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Corporate Affairs, Development, Early Idea, Inspiration, Legal Affairs, Misconception, Rumor, Title
person KnowledgeBase calendar_month May 28, 2015
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Cooking Mama: Cookstar
Cooking Mama: Cookstar (2020)
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While the game was briefly released physically and through the Nintendo eShop on the Switch, the game was later made unavailable for purchase. The original rumor was that the game was using the Switch's hardware to mine cryptocurrency, but this was later discredited by the game's producers. It was revealed that the reason for the game's quick removal from sale was due to a lawsuit between the game's publisher, Planet Entertainment, and IP owners Office Create. The lawsuit claimed that Planet Entertainment's license to use the Cooking Mama IP expired the day before Cookstar's release.
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General, Legal Affairs, Rumor, Theory
person KidDivinegon calendar_month November 19, 2020
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Donkey Kong
Donkey Kong (1981)
subdirectory_arrow_right Donkey Kong Junior (Game)
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The development of the first Donkey Kong game was outsourced by Nintendo to Ikegami Tsushinki, a company who is believed but not confirmed to have previously worked with Nintendo on several of their early ventures into arcade games. They produced and sold to Nintendo somewhere between 8,000 and 20,000 printed circuit boards for Donkey Kong, and it is believed that Nintendo went on to copy an additional 80,000 boards from this batch without Ikegami's permission. Despite the sale, because no formal contract was known to have been signed between the two companies, Ikegami owned the source code to Donkey Kong as they had created it, and never sent it over to Nintendo.

In order to create a sequel on the coattails of the success of the first game, Nintendo employed subcontractor Iwasaki Giken to reverse-engineer Donkey Kong so Nintendo’s staff could develop the game's sequel, Donkey Kong Jr. Should this narrative be verifiably true, this would make Donkey Kong Jr. Nintendo's first "in-house" video game created by themselves without any assistance from outside development companies. Ikegami viewed this use of the source code as blatant copyright infringement, and sued Nintendo in 1983 for ¥580,000,000 (around $91,935,800). A trial in 1990 ruled that Nintendo did not own the source code to the original Donkey Kong, and the parties settled out of court the same year for an undisclosed amount.
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Copyright, Development, General, Legal Affairs, Real Life, Rumor, Source Code, Suggested, Theory
person MehDeletingLater calendar_month August 25, 2021
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Franchise: Mary-Kate and Ashley
subdirectory_arrow_right Acclaim (Company)
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In 2004, Dualstar Entertainment, the company that represents celebrity twins Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen sued Acclaim for not providing a contractually-obligated $177,000 royalties payment for the video games starring the celebrities following the termination of the license. Dualstar described this incident in a letter as "the single dark spot on the otherwise unblemished success story of the Mary-Kate & Ashley brand."
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Celebrity, General, Legal Affairs, Real Life
person Rocko & Heffer calendar_month September 5, 2023
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Dottori-kun
Dottori-kun (1991)
subdirectory_arrow_right Head On (Game), Arcade (Platform)
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Dottori-Kun, a 1991 demake of Sega's 1979 maze game Head-On, was created not to be played, but rather as a legal loophole around Japan's Electrical Appliance and Material Control Law which claimed that all arcade machines must contain a game when sold. Dottori-Kun allowed Sega to sell generic Astro City arcade machines which the arcade owner could swap the contents of at their leisure, and included test features to ensure the machine worked properly before installing a proper game. The game did not support coin insertion, and therefore was not a viable option for arcades even if an owner believed there was an audience for its simplistic gameplay and graphics, leading to the board being scrapped most of the time.
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Corporate Affairs, General, Legal Affairs, Placeholder, Remake, Technology, Unused Content
person Rocko & Heffer calendar_month November 3, 2023
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Shark Jaws
Shark Jaws (1975)
subdirectory_arrow_right Jaws (Franchise), Horror Games (Company)
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Attachment Shark Jaws was originally intended to be an official Jaws tie-in game, but plans fell through - however, Atari still went through with the game, putting the word "JAWS" in large letters on the game's promotional but having "SHARK" be much smaller. To avoid a potential lawsuit, Atari released the game under the pseudonym "Horror Games", similarly to what it had done with Kee Games prior.
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Adaptation, Legal Affairs, Plagiarism
person Rocko & Heffer calendar_month November 4, 2023
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Ms. Pac-Man
Ms. Pac-Man (1982)
subdirectory_arrow_right Pac 'n Roll (Game), Pac-Land (Game), Pac-Man World Re-Pac (Game), Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (Game), Pac-Man Museum+ (Game), Pac-Man (Franchise), General Computer Corporation (GCC) (Company), AtGames (Company), Ms. Pac-Man (Collection)
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Attachment In 2019, AtGames, a company specializing in replica microconsoles containing compilations of retro or retro-styled games, acquired a portion of the rights to Ms. Pac-Man from General Computer Corporation, the company that made the original Ms. Pac-Man game for Midway and Namco - this led to a lawsuit over the IP, with an undisclosed turnout. After this, Ms. Pac-Man would begin to disappear from Pac-Man games, implying that AtGames won the case, with Ms. Pac being replaced by a character named Pac-Mom, who has a visual design resembling Ms. Pac-Man's mother from Pac 'N Roll.

Pac-Mom first appeared in the Arcade Archives release of Pac-Land through graphical modification to the original ROM, and would then be named for the first time in Pac-Man Museum+ alongside modifications to other games that originally featured Ms. Pac-Man such as Pac-in-Time, and would appear again in Pac-Man World: Re-Pac in place of Ms. Pac-Man.

Ms. Pac-Man's final appearance in an original title would be on the Pac-Land stage in 2018's Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.
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Acquisition, Character Design, Corporate Affairs, Legal Affairs, Name Change, Unused Character, Version Difference
person Rocko & Heffer calendar_month November 15, 2023
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Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood
Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood (2008)
subdirectory_arrow_right Sonic The Hedgehog (Franchise), Sega (Company), EA Games (Company)
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Upon the release of Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood, Ken Penders, a former writer on the Archie Comics Sonic comics, sued Sega and EA for supposedly using Sonic character concepts he had independently trademarked prior - particularly the Nocturnas Clan, a futuristic echidna tribe which he deemed as too similar to his own Dark Legion, a futuristic echidna technocracy. This lawsuit came months after Archie Comics filed their own suit against Penders due to a breach of contract after the trademarking, causing Archie to allow their contract with Sega to expire so they could negotiate new terms for the rights to create Sonic comics. This legal fiasco ended in Archie settling the case with Penders, losing the exclusivity to produce Sonic comics after negotiations with Sega, and causing them to write the "Super Genesis Wave", a super-charged energy blast utilizing the Chaos Emeralds that acted as a massive continuity rewrite where over 500 original characters and concepts created by Penders and other writers for the Archie Sonic comics were retconned. The Sega case on the other hand ended in a stalemate due to the statute of limitations, and will not be able to continue unless Sega uses characters from The Dark Brotherhood again.
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Character Design, Complaint, Copyright, General, Legal Affairs, Real Life, Retcon
person Rocko & Heffer calendar_month November 16, 2023
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Pajama Sam 2: Thunder and Lightning Aren't so Frightening
Pajama Sam 2: Thunder and Lightning Aren't so Frightening (1998)
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J. Langston III's original name during development was J. Langston Popsicle III, or "Popsicle" for short, but had to be changed due to Popsicle being trademarked by Unilever. Multiple lines were spliced to remove "Popsicle", though one was removed and one was re-recorded.
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Copyright, Development, Legal Affairs, Name Change, Unused Audio, Unused Content, Unused Text, Voice Acting
person Rocko & Heffer calendar_month November 17, 2023
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Franchise: Sonic The Hedgehog
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Artwork/Illustration, Cancelled Release, Character Design, Complaint, Copyright, General, Legal Affairs, Multimedia Adaptation, Politics, Real Life, Social Media
person chocolatejr9 calendar_month November 17, 2023
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Power Punch II
Power Punch II (1992)
subdirectory_arrow_right Mike Tyson's Intergalactic Power Punch (Game), Mike Tyson (Franchise), Punch-Out!! (Franchise)
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Cancelled Release, Celebrity, Legal Affairs, Misconception, Name Change, Rumor, Theory, Unused Character, Unused Content
person Rocko & Heffer calendar_month November 17, 2023
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Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System
subdirectory_arrow_right Atari (Company), Nintendo (Company)
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Shortly after the Famicom's launch in 1983, Atari approached Nintendo offering to distribute the system outside of Japan as the Nintendo Enhanced Video System. Negotiations for the arrangement stalled when Atari saw a demonstration for the Coleco Adam home computer system that used the ColecoVision port of Donkey Kong as a demo title. Because Atari previously gained the exclusive PC port rights to the arcade game, they assumed that Nintendo was also working with Coleco behind their backs. By the time the misunderstanding was cleared up, the North American video game industry had crashed and Ray Kassar had stepped down as CEO of Atari, causing the agreement to be called off entirely. The Famicom wouldn't reach international shores until 1985, when Nintendo began distributing a revised version in North America themselves as the Nintendo Entertainment System.
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Console Wars, Corporate Affairs, Early Idea, Legal Affairs
person VinchVolt calendar_month November 18, 2023
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Platform: PlayStation
subdirectory_arrow_right Sega Master System/Mark III (Platform), Game Boy Color (Platform), Game Boy (Platform), Arcade (Platform), Game Boy Advance (Platform), Sega Mega Drive/Genesis (Platform), Neo Geo AES (Platform), Super Nintendo Entertainment System (Platform), Sega Game Gear (Platform), Nintendo Entertainment System (Platform)
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Attachment In 2018, rapper Soulja Boy attempted to sell his own line of video game consoles, collectively called the SouljaGame line, sold for $149.99 for a console and $99.99 for a handheld. Advertising claimed that the consoles would be compatible with a variety of consoles' games, including modern platforms like the PlayStation Vita, Nintendo 3DS, and Nintendo Switch. These, quite obviously, did not have such compatibility, but rather were a generic retro emulator console one could find on small business-oriented retail websites such as Wish and AliExpress loaded with pirated and modified games from the Neo Geo; NES; Game Boy Advance; Game Boy Color; Game Boy; Sega Genesis; SNES; Master System; Game Gear; and PlayStation libraries sold at a markup. The only difference from these pre-existing consoles being a photograph of Soulja printed onto the box. Soulja Boy would eventually stop selling SouljaGame consoles, with the website for the console redirecting to Nintendo's 3DS website.
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Celebrity, Complaint, Emulation, Legal Affairs, Piracy, Plagiarism, Technology, Website
person Rocko & Heffer calendar_month November 18, 2023
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Soulja Boy selling SouljaGame line article:
https://variety.com/2018/gaming/news/soulja-boy-selling-cheap-consoles-1203084022/

Soulja Boy ends sales of SouljaGame line article:
https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/01/02/soulja-boy-stops-selling-souljagame-game-consoles

SouljaGame unboxing and teardown showing the packaging:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fo-qNU7Qu3k

Rerez video reviewing the console SouljaGame was based on, showing the console list:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqXuAuTFXpA#t=595
Flappy Bird
Flappy Bird (2013)
subdirectory_arrow_right Flappy Birds Family (Game), .GEARS Studios (Company)
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Flappy Bird was removed from app stores by creator Dong Nguyen on February 8th 2014, due to being overwhelmed by its success and feeling guilt over the addictive, frustrating nature of the game, which he had originally intended to be relaxing. Although many speculated that the game was taken down by Nintendo due to the game's pipes and their similarity to the pipes from the Mario series, both Nguyen and Nintendo denied this.

Nguyen claimed that his worries about the game had lost him sleep, and removing the game from sale managed to restore piece of mind - despite this, Nguyen did promise a Flappy Bird comeback, albeit in a less addictive form, which would eventually come in the form of an official sequel: Flappy Birds Family for Amazon Fire TV.

Some eBay users attempted to sell the iPhones with the original game installed for up to $99,900, but the listings were removed due to eBay's rules against selling technology that has not been factory reset.
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Apology, Complaint, Corporate Affairs, Difficulty, Legal Affairs, Meme, Plagiarism, Sprite/Graphical Animation, Theory
person Rocko & Heffer calendar_month November 24, 2023
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Mario's Super Picross
Mario's Super Picross (1995)
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Attachment The Virtual Console versions of Mario's Super Picross replace three puzzles, likely due to legal issues:

• The likeness of Marilyn Monroe, which was replaced by a tortoise.
• A set of Tetrominos from Tetris, which was replaced by a hermit crab.
• The painting The Scream by Edvard Munch, which was replaced by a chameleon.

Despite The Scream and Monroe's likeness entering the public domain in 2015 and 2012 respectively, the Wii U; New 3DS; and Switch versions of the game keep the replaced puzzles.
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Console Difference, Copyright, Legal Affairs, Version Difference
person Rocko & Heffer calendar_month November 26, 2023
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Super Brawl 3: Good vs. Evil
Super Brawl 3: Good vs. Evil (2013)
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Gold Ranger and Xandred from "Power Rangers Samurai" were originally included in the US version of the game, but were later removed. While never actually confirmed, it's believed to be due to rights issues regarding the Power Rangers franchise.
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General, Legal Affairs, Real Life, Regional Difference, Removed Feature, Update Difference
person chocolatejr9 calendar_month November 27, 2023
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Pengo
Pengo (1982)
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Attachment The first two versions of Pengo use "Popcorn" by Gershon Kingsley as the background music, in the third and fourth, they were swapped for an original tune.
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Copyright, Legal Affairs, Music, Plagiarism, Update Difference
person Rocko & Heffer calendar_month November 27, 2023
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Company: Nintendo
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Despite Nintendo's current image as a family-friendly company, their initial success came from ties to organized crime. When the company was founded in 1889, hanafuda, which Nintendo manufactured cards for, was becoming increasingly controversial due to it being one of few betting games not covered by the Japanese Empire's anti-gambling laws, resulting in it becoming popular among the yakuza. While other companies were slowly exiting the hanafuda business as a result, founder Fusajiro Yamauchi pressed on, resulting in Nintendo becoming the country's most successful playing card manufacturer thanks mostly to strong sales among gang members.
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Corporate Affairs, General, Legal Affairs, Real Life, Sales
person VinchVolt calendar_month December 5, 2023
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