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Dog's Life
6
Dog's Life holds the Guinness World Record for "Most Named Characters Voiced in a Videogame by a Single Actor", with 32 of the game's characters being voiced by Kerry Shale.
Final Fantasy V
5
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.
person MehDeletingLater calendar_month December 24, 2023
Pizza Tower
subdirectory_arrow_right Antonblast (Game)
5
Attachment In response to fans of Antonblast and Pizza Tower attempting to start an arbitrary rivalry between the two games, Anton creator Tony Grayson tweeted "Why not both?" with an illustration of Anton and Peppino kissing.
The Mysterious Murasame Castle
5
Attachment In 1986, Nintendo and Fuji Television produced a 70-minute TV special based on The Mysterious Murasame Castle for the weekly one-shot drama series "Getsuyou Drama Land" (Monday Drama Land). The special, like many other episodes in the later years of Getsuyou Drama Land's run, featured members of the popular J-Pop girl group Onyanko Club as cast members, and starred Masaki Kyomoto as the game's protagonist Takamaru. The special aired once on December 8, 1986, almost eight months after the game's release, and never aired again. It was later released on DVD in 2005 as part of the box set "Onyanko Club in Getsuyou Drama Land DVD Box 2".

The special's existence and DVD release flew under the international radar until 2023, when a user named Ruka, after being prompted in a 4chan thread to verify claims that the special was lost media based on an uncited edit on the game's English Wikipedia article, discovered that copies of the box set were actually being offered on Yahoo! Auctions. Ruka subsequently placed a bid and won a copy from the auction, and YouTuber Haruko Please uploaded the special to YouTube the following week. With its rediscovery, it's thought to be one of the first live-action adaptations of a video game, and is also the earliest known product to come from Nintendo's collaborations with Fuji, which after this special's airing continued with Yume Koujou: Doki-doki Panic.
person MehDeletingLater calendar_month November 8, 2023
Super Mario Bros. Wonder
5
Super Mario Bros. Wonder marks the first game to not feature performances from long-time voice actor Charles Martinet, who voiced Mario and Luigi (and Wario and Waluigi in other games in the series) since 1990.

Nintendo announced that Martinet would retire from portraying the Mario Bros. permanently and become a "Mario Ambassador", nearly two months before the game's release.
Donkey Kong Country
5
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".
person Raccoon Sam calendar_month September 3, 2023
Page 406 of SNES/Super Famicom: A visual compendium by Bitmap Books. ISBN 978-0-9956586-2-2
Wild Woody
subdirectory_arrow_right Shady Lewd Kart (Game)
4
On April 1st, 2024, Shady Lewd Kart added Wild Woody from the game of the same name as a free DLC character. Notably, it was revealed in a comment on the DLC's announcement trailer that Sega did not actually own the rights to the Wild Woody IP, instead being owned by the original creators. This was further emphasized on the DLC's Steam page, which includes a disclaimer that Shady Corner Games was in no way associated with Sega, and that they were given permission to add Wild Woody to the game by the creators of the IP. Wild Woody's original voice actor Joseph Kerska also reprised his role for the appearance and a story campaign, and that despite the date it was released, the DLC was not considered an April Fools joke.
person chocolatejr9 calendar_month April 2, 2024
Eternity's Child
subdirectory_arrow_right Eternity's Child (Game)
4
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.
Tetris
4
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.
Sea of Stars
4
Originally, YouTuber Jirard Khalil (most famous for his webseries "The Completionist") made a cameo in Sea of Stars as an NPC named "Jirard the Constructionist", who you could donate building plans to to help construct new buildings in the town of Mirth as part of the "Home Neat Home" achievement. This cameo came after Khalil had previously featured unique builds of Sea of Stars, including one featuring Jirard the Constructionist, during his annual indie game spotlight charity event "IndieLand", which was run by his official charity organization, the Open Hand Foundation. In November 2023, a few months after the game's release, Khalil was accused of committing charity fraud through the organization, spawning a controversy that prompted the game's developers to release a patch for the game that removed his cameo, and replacing him with a generic NPC named Bob. Considering Bob is a builder, this new character may be a reference to the children's animated series "Bob the Builder".
person chocolatejr9 calendar_month December 16, 2023
Company: Rare
4
Attachment Contrary to popular belief, Rare's name was never "Rareware", even before the Microsoft buyout in 2002. On an old Rare Scribes post dated June 19, 2000, it was confirmed that the name "Rareware" refers to the company's products, not the company itself. It's essentially a portmanteau of "Rare" and "Software". The company itself was always internally named Rare Limited.
person Dinoman96 calendar_month November 24, 2023
Rare Scribes - June 19, 2020:
https://rarewhere.neocities.org/1998_2000/june1900

Example of official Nintendo website referring to them as Rare Ltd. (Banjo-Tooie game page):
https://web.archive.org/web/20020204040759/http://www.nintendo.com/games/gamepage/gamepage_main.jsp?gameId=53
Collection: Brain Age
4
Dr. Ryuta Kawashima turned down over ¥3,292,377,000 JPY ($22 million USD) in Brain Age royalties, and instead donated them to Tohoku University’s Institute of Development, Aging and Cancer, where he works, to help build a laboratory.
Super Smash Bros. Melee
subdirectory_arrow_right Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (Game), tobyfox (Company)
4
Attachment Before his career took off as an indie developer, Toby Fox used to play Super Smash Bros. Melee competitively under the old username 'Radiation'.

He is currently the only known competitive Super Smash Bros. player to have a character he has created represented in the series. Alongside the release of Banjo & Kazooie as a fighter, a Mii costume based on Sans from his game Undertale as well as an original remix of the song "Megalovania" were both added to Super Smash Bros. Ultimate on September 4th.
person LegacyTag calendar_month October 7, 2023
There's not much info about Toby Fox playing competitive Melee as he doesn't talk about it publicly too often, the VoD provided is the only publicly-known footage of him playing a set to my knowledge:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nzh3NUO4szE

According to people, he was known as a bit of a local celebrity due to his work on the webcomic Homestuck, though that is more hear-say than anything definitive.
Alfred Chicken
4
Attachment In 1993, Alfred Chicken publisher Mindscape attempted a publicity stunt by having Alfred Chicken run for a seat in the UK Parliament in the 1993 Christchurch, Dorset by-election, having an actor in an Alfred Chicken costume appear at the British House of Commons constituency of Christchurch as votes were read out. The Alfred Chicken Party ranked at second last with 18 votes, exceeding the Rainbow Alliance (a party intent on abolishing Parliament) by 2 votes. The Alfred Chicken Party was cited - alongside the "Buy The Daily Sport Party" - years later by the Liberal Democrats as a reason for increasing the number of signatures required for a party to get on a ballot.
Glover
subdirectory_arrow_right Glover 2 (Game)
4
In 2018, an indie studio named Golden Mushroom claimed they were working on a sequel to Glover for the Nintendo Switch. However, it was soon discovered that they had only applied for the trademark to the name "Glover", and not the copyright, meaning they didn't actually own the rights to the IP. In reality, the copyright had been acquired by Piko Interactive, who had purchased it from Atari SA (the company that had purchased Hasbro Interactive in 2001).
Wreck-It Ralph
4
In late 2018, a trailer for the film's sequel "Ralph Breaks the Internet" premiered on TV as part of Disney Channel's "Movie Surfers" series. The first half of the trailer used almost 40 seconds of cutscenes from the 2012 Wii game based on the first movie, and used unreleased higher quality renders of these cutscenes rather than the compressed footage released in the game. This trailer also features a noticeably bad, ad-libbed narration from an unknown actor portraying Ralph; this actor does not sound like the original film's actor John C. Reilly, nor the soundalike actor used in the Wii game and commercials Brian T. Delaney. Considering the overall confusing cheapness of the trailer, it's not known why the show's producers chose to use unreleased HD renders of these cutscenes instead of footage from the first film, which they had to have had access to and would have matched the visual quality of the film's sequel better.
Fallout 2
3
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.
person chocolatejr9 calendar_month April 11, 2024
3
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.
person chocolatejr9 calendar_month April 6, 2024
Palworld
3
During Palworld's development, Pocket Pair hired over forty additional employees on a budget of one billion yen. Some of the staff hired notably came about under varied circumstances. For example, the character animator (despite having no prior industry experience) was hired by Takuro Mizobe after seeing his works on YouTube, where he posted combat animation videos and fan content based on the game Girls' Frontline as a hobbyist animator. Likewise, the director applied for the role during a Twitter recruitment run despite already lining up for a position at NetEase at the time. Finally, the main character designer for the game's Pals was initially rejected during a separate recruitment drive dedicated to finding illustrators that occurred in October 2020, but was ultimately hired after reapplying in February 2021.
Princess Peach: Showtime!
subdirectory_arrow_right Good-Feel (Company)
3
Good-Feel being the development company behind Princess Peach: Showtime! was not officially revealed until the day before the game's release, where it was discovered via the game's credits. It was also revealed through the credits that the game had been directed by Good-Feel president Etsunobu Ebisu, who had not directed a game since Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon in 1997. Two weeks prior to this, however, Good-Feel's involvement was leaked via the code from the game's demo version. When asked who the development company was, Nintendo merely stated that it would be revealed in the game's credits.
person chocolatejr9 calendar_month March 22, 2024
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