Within the Nintendo Switch firmware prior to Version 4.0.0 (for Japanese, US and European systems only), there is a hidden NES emulator stub called "flog" that can be unlocked under very specific conditions. flog can only be unlocked on the Home Screen and when the console's internal clock is set to July 11th (if the date is changed in System Settings, but the console is connected to the internet and can see the actual date, this method will not work). The method to unlock it involves detaching the Joy-Cons from the console, holding them pointing forwards/downwards, then moving them to a vertical position and holding it for a few seconds. This gesture may take some time to hone due to it being a specific movement tracked by the Joy-Cons, but when it is matched, the system will check to see if flog is installed. When checked, an audio clip of a man saying "chokusetsu" ("直接"), the Japanese word for "direct", will play and the screen will cut to black and launch the 1984 NES title Golf. This emulator is unique in that it includes specific instructions in English and Japanese on how to play depending on how the Joy-Cons are held, and has a more stripped-down and simplistic appearance than the emulators that would be used for NES games on Nintendo Switch Online. Pressing the Home button while playing Golf will return you to the Home Screen without any visible software running there.
With Version 4.0.0, Nintendo removed all of the code required to launch flog and play Golf, but the company seemed unusually hesitant to even acknowledge its existence when asked by news outlets. One month before its removal, Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Amie released two statements regarding it when asked by Kotaku:
"So, two comments on this. It was identified by folks playing around in the firmware. We've got nothing officially to announce for that content or what the plans are for that content. So that's that. Certainly anything that pays respect to my friend Mr. Iwata is something that is near and dear to me personally, but in terms of that execution and what it was meant to do or what the plans are, we've got nothing to announce."
"I'm struck whenever I go back to Kyoto and spend time in our headquarters and spend time in the offices where Mr. Iwata, myself and others would be meeting. It's always personally touching. And so, again, no comment on that particular execution."
While this seems to allude that the secret emulator and Golf's inclusion were not authorized within Nintendo, this all but confirms that their purpose was to act as a tribute to Nintendo's late CEO Satoru Iwata. Iwata, who programmed Golf and previously hosted the company's Nintendo Direct showcase series, passed away on July 11th, 2015, with the method to unlock the emulator mimicking a gesture he used during Nintendo Directs. Japanese fans on social media referred to the Easter egg as an "omamori", an amulet purchased at Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples in Japan that if kept close are said to protect the bearer and bring good luck, speculating that Golf was included by Iwata as a secret charm to watch over every Nintendo Switch unit after his death.
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The July 2019 version 1.07 update renamed several alternate skins, likely due to unintended racial connotations caused by the original names:
• Watermelon Tawna is renamed Summertime Tawna. • White Tawna is renamed White Tiger Tawna. • Black Zem is renamed Solar Flare Zem. • White N.Tropy is renamed Carbon Fiber N.Tropy. • Red Papu Papu is renamed Crimson Papu Papu.
While most of the affected costumes were renamed due to the use of the terms "White" and "Black," which are also common racial designations, Watermelon Tawna and Red Papu Papu's names were changed due to them invoking racial stereotypes in combination with their designs. Watermelon Tawna depicts her with brown fur, dark hair, and a watermelon-themed shirt; the juxtaposition of these traits in combination with her costume's name was likely deemed too evocative of anti-Black stereotypes depicting African-Americans as having insatiable appetites for watermelons. Meanwhile, since Papu Papu is an indigenous Polynesian character, attaching the term "Red" to his costume's name was likely deemed too similar to the offensive practice of describing Native Americans as "red."
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According to a BBC News article from January 2003, Sony agreed to edit The Getaway after they received complaints from British Telecommunications (BT). BT was concerned about the misuse of a transit van bearing its logo and asked the developers to edit the game to remove BT's appearance entirely. The section of the game that BT objected to was the "Filthy Business" mission, where the main character Mark Hammond must attack and steal a BT van and then raid a police station to rescue another character. BT did not want attacks on its engineers to be portrayed in the game, and they were also worried that the game might incite real-life attacks on them. The section was removed from future releases of the game 12 days after its release, and all following versions of the game have a plain light-blueish van in the mission, with the dialogue also being altered to refer to it as just "a van" rather than a "BT van".
Originally, the game was passed with an MA 15+ rating on November 22, 2002. However, it was resubmitted and banned just five days later due to a cutscene showing the character Johnny Chai being tortured in detail. Another version of the game which censored version of this scene was released weeks later on December 13 with the identical rating.
These censorship changes are documented by the different releases of the game, starting with the 1.03 European version. This version included the Johnny Chai torture scene and the Ford Transit van with full BT livery and Ford badge in the cutscene model. After the game was initially banned in Australia, the developers altered the camera angles of the scene, focusing more on the characters' facial expressions rather than the violence. The cutscene model of the BT van was also re-textured, and the Ford badges were removed. This version is known as the 1.1 European version of the game, which was followed by the dispute from BT, resulting in their removal from future releases of the game.
In the original release of the game, the hidden ending that follows the optional final boss battle against Hasebe and Mami reveals that Spoiler:Kyoko and Misako are not actually Kunio and Riki's girlfriends, but rather are simply delusional stalkers, with Hasebe and Mami being the boys' real partners; Kyoko and Misako then angrily punch Kunio and Riki into the sky after being reminded of this. This was written as an inside joke regarding the Kunio-kun franchise's convoluted localization history, specifically the fact that River City Girls Zero (the only prior game where Spoiler:Kunio and Riki actually dated Kyoko and Misako) had not yet received an English localization at the time of this game's release. As River City Girls was developed with Western audiences in mind, the joke was thus meant to be that Spoiler:Kunio and Riki have no memory of a title that wasn't officially available for this game's target audience.
However, the esoteric nature of the gag and the plot holes it opened regarding the game's premise resulted in it generating backlash from players who were not in on it. Because of this, the game was updated on January 18, 2020, changing the secret ending so that Spoiler:Kunio and Riki go out for food with Kyoko and Misako, implying that the latter two actually are their partners.
The Game Boy Color version of Frogger's second print of US cartridges replaces the non-gameplay menu graphics, turning the 2D frog illustrations into promotional CGI images from the PS1 Frogger. While most of these replace the 2D images outright, the Game Over graphic simply copy-pastes a CGI Frogger head onto the 2D image from the earlier version.
In 1993, an enhanced version of the NES Mario Bros. was released exclusively in Italy and Germany, under the "Classic Serie" label, which reimplements the enemy introduction cutscenes and icicle hazard from the arcade version, and allows Mario to turn in the middle of jumping.
•The original version with Budweiser branding •The censored "Root Beer Tapper" version, which swaps beer for root beer and changes Tapper from a bartender to a soda jerk •The Japanese release that replaces Budweiser with Japanese alcohol brand Suntory
The Suntory version of the game also carries over minor graphical improvements from the Root Beer version of the game.
Stage 1 of Um Jammer Lammy was incomplete in the original PlayStation version, not being accessible in either multiplayer or PaRappa's story. With a GameShark code, a US player can access an unfinished version of PaRappa's stage 1, which has no animations and only uses triangle buttons. Stage 1 would eventually be finished for Um Jammer Lammy NOW!, released 9 months after the PlayStation version, with Rammy and PaRappa support.
Stage 1 is the only PaRappa stage to use the instrumental of the Lammy version.
In the Japanese version of Alex Kidd in Miracle World, Alex eats a rice ball at the end of each stage. The 1990 US revision of the game changes this to a hamburger.
In Alex Kidd in Miracle World DX, a Spanish omelette and fish & chips are added as options, possibly in tribute to the Master System's popularity in Spain and the United Kingdom.
Postal III was delisted from Steam on November 22, 2022 due to issues with the Steam version's DRM going offline. On October 12, 2023, Running With Scissors announced on the "I Regret Nothing Podcast" that the game had received some DEPOS updates to fix the issues keeping the game from being playable, and would be added back on Steam at a later date with some additional fixes from the ZOOM Platform version of the game.
In Super Fall Brawl, one of the many reskins of Jingle Brawl, the new character was intended to be Sheen Estevez from Jimmy Neutron, in promotion for his then-new spin-off series Planet Sheen. However, Sheen was not coded correctly, making him near-impossible to beat in a fight. The game's second update would remove Sheen and his stage completely, and he would never be added back in, making Fall Brawl the only Super Brawl game without any new combatants. Sheen would return in Super Brawl 2, though the House of Pain stage, based on the first episode of Planet Sheen, would be swapped for a Zeenu stage generally based on Planet Sheen instead of a single episode.
In the first demo for Big Boy Boxing, the tutorial opponent was called "The Hobo Dude". In a later trailer, his name was changed to "A Wild Dude", likely to avoid classist implications.
When you are locked onto a target in Metroid Prime, pressing the jump button does a sideways dash. This lets the player easily strafe around a target and dodge incoming fire. This sideways strafe jump sets a horizontal velocity on the player that continues to circle around the target while locked on, but if you unlock the target just as the strafe jump starts, Samus keeps the horizontal momentum without the lock-on pull. This trick, which the game's speedrunning community called the Scan Dash, allows for a larger horizontal distance traversal than a normal jump. Using this momentum can let Samus catch the edge of the cliff beside her ship in the Landing Site and get the Space Jump Boots early upon landing.
According to programmer Zoid Kirsch, creative use of the game physics and movement that results in acquiring items out of order allows for creative exploration of the game world. While sequence breaks like this are a crucial part of the Metroid series, this trick would actually be patched out in later releases of the game.
In Gimmick: Exact Mix, a black bird ally from the original game was recolored to resemble Kyorochan, the mascot of ChocoBall, a Japanese malt chocolate ball brand similar to Maltesers or Whoppers.
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Upon its initial release, the game attracted widespread attention for the unexpectedly hypersexual characterization of its party members, who were quick to propose sex with the player. At the start of September 2023, director Swen Vincke revealed that this was actually the result of a bug, which was in the process of being gradually tweaked via patches. According to Vincke, the game's relationship mechanic was "supposed to simulate how real relationships are," and that the initial hypersexuality of the cast would be "problematic" in a real-life context.
In the Street Fighter 5 Climax Arts Plus Zero to 6 book, the game's director Nakayuki Nakayama stated that Juri Han didn't originally wear a black top underneath the catsuit, and that this was added after many people said the original design was too sexy. Juri's original design can be seen in Cammy's character story, which was included in the base game before the release of the cinematic story mode A Shadow Falls in June 2016 and Juri's inclusion as a season 1 DLC character in July 2016.
If a fighter tries to footstool Piranha Plant while the plant is crouching, the footstooler will be met with a biting attack that takes 4% damage. This happens automatically every time even when the Piranha Plant player presses nothing during the footstool. This highly situational attack however can be easily dodged and countered by the attacked player making it useless in high-level play.
On February 7th, 2023, Tighnari's English voice actor Elliot Gindi announced on Twitter that he would be taking a break from his online activity to seek therapy, claiming that the "influx of fans and fame" he gained from his work in the game "really messed [him] up". The following day, two moderators for Gindi's fan Discord servers posted to Twitter alleged evidence of offenses that Gindi had conducted in private, ranging from emotional abuse, blackmail, sexism, and having sexual relations with underage fans, with other users also coming forward to accuse Gindi of further acts. Shortly after these documents were posted, Gindi posted a Twitlonger tweet confirming that most of the allegations were true, although he denied the allegations involving underage fans. On February 16th, the game's developer HoYoverse released an official statement revealing that Gindi would no longer be voicing Tighnari, with the official reason being a "breach of contract". They also confirmed that the character would be recast at a later date, and on April 11th, they revealed he would be replaced by American actor Zachary Gordon.
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Various fan-made mods were added to the game as part of the game's next-gen update for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S. However, CD Projekt accidentally added a mod titled "Vaginas for Everyone" which gives the female characters styled pubic hair and fully modeled vulvas. According to the modder, this mod was added without their permission, going against CD Projekt's previous claim that they obtained permissions from, reimbursed, and credited all modders featured in the final game.
Contrary to the official explanation about Kirby's lack of a Keyblade after inhaling Sora, there is an unused Keyblade model for Kirby, meaning that at some point in the development of the final DLC Fighter, Kirby would have indeed wielded Sora's Kingdom Key during the use of Sora's Neutral Special, but this idea was scrapped. The weapon can be found in the game's data but remains functionally unfinished, and even when the game is modded the Keyblade will not spawn in.
The Game Boy Color version of Frogger's second print of US cartridges replaces the non-gameplay menu graphics, turning the 2D frog illustrations into promotional CGI images from the PS1 Frogger. While most of these replace the 2D images outright, the Game Over graphic simply copy-pastes a CGI Frogger head onto the 2D image from the earlier version.
There exists 3 versions of Tapper
In Gimmick: Exact Mix, a black bird ally from the original game was recolored to resemble Kyorochan, the mascot of ChocoBall, a Japanese malt chocolate ball brand similar to Maltesers or Whoppers.
In the Street Fighter 5 Climax Arts Plus Zero to 6 book, the game's director Nakayuki Nakayama stated that Juri Han didn't originally wear a black top underneath the catsuit, and that this was added after many people said the original design was too sexy. Juri's original design can be seen in Cammy's character story, which was included in the base game before the release of the cinematic story mode A Shadow Falls in June 2016 and Juri's inclusion as a season 1 DLC character in July 2016.
Contrary to the official explanation about Kirby's lack of a Keyblade after inhaling Sora, there is an unused Keyblade model for Kirby, meaning that at some point in the development of the final DLC Fighter, Kirby would have indeed wielded Sora's Kingdom Key during the use of Sora's Neutral Special, but this idea was scrapped. The weapon can be found in the game's data but remains functionally unfinished, and even when the game is modded the Keyblade will not spawn in.