Moonmist is believed to be the first video game to include a lesbian character in the form of Vivien Pentreath, a criminal artist who is stated to be jealous of her girlfriend marrying a man. It should be noted, however, that she is never actually referred to as a lesbian in-game.
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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Explosive Fighter Patton from 1988 is believed to be the first video game to use the swear word "fuck", referring to the Famicom Disk System as the "fucking box". It is not known if this is an in-joke or a translation error.
This is followed by Skweek for Amstrad CPC in 1989, whose development builds leaked to the UK market, featuring a variety of vulgar in-joke placeholder phrases. The swearing version of the game has not known to be preserved, but it is alleged that one of these quotes was "fuck your mother!". This would make it the first use of "fuck" to be known for a fact to have been intentional, even if its distribution wasn't.
1990's Paranoia, the Japanese version of Psychosis features an 8-bit sound effect upon stage clear that appears to be made to evoke the phrase "fuck you!", which is played in accompaniment with an alien flipping the bird. This is technically the first vocalized use of "fuck", but is not a recording of a human voice, and is the first for-a-fact intentionally included use of "fuck".
1991's Llamatron contained a voice sample of the word "oh, fuck!" which was cut off. A glitch made it so that if you paused the game upon dying, it would play uncensored, making it the first clear vocalised use of "fuck", even if still not intentionally added.
1995's The Orion Conspiracy contains one of the earliest known uses of "fuck" that was clearly spoken, uncensored, and known for a fact to not be an oversight. Also of note is Discworld, released in the same year, having an Easter egg referencing John Cleese's 1989 eulogy to the late Monty Python member Graham Chapman. While both games released in the same year, it is unknown which game came out first as Discworld is the only one of the two to have a known release date, coming out on March 17, 1995.
The first official crossover between a Nintendo property and a Sega property is often assumed to be either Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games or Super Smash Bros. Brawl. While these are indeed the first Nintendo-Sega crossovers within the gaming medium, there have been instances prior of crossovers in supplementary marketing material:
• A 1994 advert made by DIC for animation industry insiders showing their global reach through the Panda Club and Dragon Club TV blocks in China shows Sonic the Hedgehog waving through a TV screen while Mario pats him on the back, joined by Madeline from the Madeline book series and Billy Lee as seen in the cartoon adaptation of Double Dragon. • The infamous Fight for the FoxBox promotional film made by 4Kids Entertainment in 2003, which utilizes existing anime and cartoon clips to make a new crossover story, shows Dr. Eggman and King Dedede as allies alongside Dial-bolic from Ultimate MUSCLE, Dr. K from Cubix: Robots for Everyone, and Shredder from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles working for Wayne from The Cramp Twins in an attempt to shut down the titular television channel. Although the villains do interact in this half-hour film, the heroes mostly do not, with Kirby and Sonic never sharing screen time in particular.
This is, of course, discounting instances of unauthorised parodies and mockery at the height of the console wars.
The North American arcade release of Double Dragon 3: The Rosetta Stone is believed to be the first game to incorporate microtransactions, allowing players to purchase extra lives, characters, energy and moves by putting more quarters into the arcade cabinet. This would be removed for the Japanese release, and replaced with a conventional character select screen that lets you play as the previously paywalled extra characters, and the game's difficulty was rebalanced to be easier to adjust.
"いまきみに" ("Ima kimi ni") marks both composer Silentroom's first Konami Original composition and their last song prior to their hiatus in August 2022, planned to end in 2024. The purpose of this hiatus, according to Silentroom's website, is to focus on their main field of work.
In August 2015, location tests for DanceDanceRevolution (2014) were held in North America. This marked both the first time the series was location tested in North America since Dance Dance Revolution X2 and the first time eAMUSEMENT was officially supported in the region. The English translation was a more completed version of the one present in the Korean version. Furthermore, 47 songs were removed from this version due to copyright restrictions, mostly being licensed songs from previous entries and all the "U.M.UXBEMANI" songs.
In the end, DanceDanceRevolution (2014) was not released in North America, with the following game Dance Dance Revolution A becoming the first Arcade release in North America since Dance Dance Revolution X2.
From 2009 to 2013, Capcom Japan collaborated with the all-female musical theater company Takarazuka Revue to produce three musicals based on the Ace Attorney series, the first time Takarazuka had ever collaborated with a game company. The first production, "Gyakuten Saiban: The Truth Reborn", sold out all tickets on its first day, and with the second musical ("Gyakuten Saiban 2: The Truth Reborn, Again...") drew a combined total attendance of over 50,000 people. According to series creator Shu Takumi, the musical's director Suzuki Kei cleared the first four Ace Attorney games seven times each before sitting down to write the script. Additionally, while he was not involved in the first musical's production, Takumi did contribute feedback midway through the second musical's production. The musicals were successful enough that it prompted the Revue to partner with Capcom again to produce a musical based on the Sengoku Basara series, and once more to produce "Dai Gyakuten Saiban: New Truth Reborn", a musical based on the The Great Ace Attorney spinoff games.
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.
Alice from Balloon Kid, while not Nintendo's first female main video game protagonist, (being predated by Bubbles from Clu Clu Land and Samus from Metroid) was the first to be unambiguously female in all regions in which her game was released, as opposed to having her gender be a surprise reveal or having an androgynous design and being assigned as female in a Western localization.
On the day of the game's release, the character Kung Jin was confirmed by writer Dominic Cianciolo to be the first homosexual character in the Mortal Kombat series. This was notably hinted at during a conversation with Raiden in Story mode:
Raiden: "Go to the Wu Shi Academy. Join the Shaolin, like Kung Lao before you." Kung Jin: "I can't. They won't... accept-" Raiden: "They care only about what is in your heart. Not whom your heart desires."
When Tanya was added as a DLC character, one of her prefight interactions with Jin also references his lack of interest in the opposite sex:
Tanya: "Quite a handsome Shaolin." Kung Jin: "Barkin' up the wrong tree, sister."
In December 2023, a 13-year-old boy named Willis Gibson from Oklahoma became the first known person to "beat" the NES version of Tetris. At level 157 (which in itself was a world record), he reached the game's "kill screen", a feat only accomplished previously by artificial intelligence. A video of his victory was uploaded to his YouTube channel "Blue Scuti" on January 1, 2024.
According to The Cutting Room Floor, a website devoted to archiving unused content in video games, Tank is the first video game known to have unused content. Specifically, the game's score numbers are stored as one sprite even for double digit numbers, with the numbers going up to 63, despite such a score being impossible in the game due to the game's maximum 120 second timer and invulnerability frames.
Gran Trak 10 was the first video game to store graphics on the ROM instead of mathematically generating them, the first video game about cars, and the first video game with a steering wheel control scheme.
This is Football 2004 was the first Western video game to be officially localised into Arabic. In 2008, THQ would attempt to pass off the HD version of Wall-E as the first, using the rather dubious wording of "first current-gen game".
Predating Zoo Tycoon: Dinosaur Digs, the Triceratops is notably the first ever prehistoric creature included in the Zoo Tycoon series as a hidden unlockable within the first base game. Players could unlock it as an adoptable animal by completing the "Breeding the Panda" scenario, but it could also be unlocked earlier by renaming an exhibit to "Cretaceous Corral".
Notably, with the installation of the aforementioned Dinosaur Digs expansion pack, the Triceratops' sprite is modified to be much smaller in size and duller in color; it also now functions like the other dinosaurs, such as now requiring to be hatched out of an egg and be taken care of by a scientist (as opposed to a zookeeper), and will break out of all fences from the base Zoo Tycoon game.
Crazy Kong's sound effects were plagarised from Crazy Climber, another game about scaling a building that featured gorillas as enemies, and predated Donkey Kong
If one is to count Crazy Kong as an official Nintendo release, it would technically be the first instance of Mario speaking, predating Donkey Kong Goes Home by two years, as he says "Hi-yah!" whenever he jumps over a barrel, using a slowed-down voice clip from the Crazy Climber gorilla.
Just Dance 2023 Edition is notable for being the first game in the series' 14-year history to feature a story mode, titled "Enter the Danceverses". When asked during a discussion panel with Ubisoft Paris, the game's content director Franck Chapelat stated that they added the story mode because they "wanted to make a link between reality and the Just Dance universe."
The first official crossover between a Nintendo property and a Sega property is often assumed to be either Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games or Super Smash Bros. Brawl. While these are indeed the first Nintendo-Sega crossovers within the gaming medium, there have been instances prior of crossovers in supplementary marketing material:
The North American arcade release of Double Dragon 3: The Rosetta Stone is believed to be the first game to incorporate microtransactions, allowing players to purchase extra lives, characters, energy and moves by putting more quarters into the arcade cabinet. This would be removed for the Japanese release, and replaced with a conventional character select screen that lets you play as the previously paywalled extra characters, and the game's difficulty was rebalanced to be easier to adjust.
According to The Cutting Room Floor, a website devoted to archiving unused content in video games, Tank is the first video game known to have unused content. Specifically, the game's score numbers are stored as one sprite even for double digit numbers, with the numbers going up to 63, despite such a score being impossible in the game due to the game's maximum 120 second timer and invulnerability frames.
Predating Zoo Tycoon: Dinosaur Digs, the Triceratops is notably the first ever prehistoric creature included in the Zoo Tycoon series as a hidden unlockable within the first base game. Players could unlock it as an adoptable animal by completing the "Breeding the Panda" scenario, but it could also be unlocked earlier by renaming an exhibit to "Cretaceous Corral".
Crazy Kong's sound effects were plagarised from Crazy Climber, another game about scaling a building that featured gorillas as enemies, and predated Donkey Kong
