The original office for Argonaut Games was located in Colindale, London before at some point being moved to the Argonaut House in Edgware. After the company was reopened in 2024, Justin Scharvona (a composer who worked on various games for the company, most notably Croc: Legend of the Gobbos) posted a video of himself visiting the location of the original company office, which has since been converted into a furniture showroom named the Sea Horse Furniture Centre.
According to designer Ste Pickford, the reason Nintendo hired Software Creations to make Tin Star was as a form of compensation for not assigning them to do a follow-up to Ken Griffey Jr. Presents Major League Baseball despite them developing the original, with the sequel instead being developed by Rare as Ken Griffey Jr.'s Winning Run.
In a 1989 interview with designer and writer Yuji Horii and director Koichi Nakamura, they discussed their focus on enhancing the player’s experience in combat and storytelling. Nakamura explained that they wanted to make battles more enjoyable and less repetitive, moving away from the grind-heavy nature of older RPGs. He highlighted that the team worked to ensure each battle felt engaging, and tried to prevent the common tendency of players to run from strong enemies due to the monotony of repeated encounters.
They also discussed the expanded battle options in Dragon Quest III, including a greater variety of spells, the ability to attack party members, and character positioning in the lineup having an effect on battles. They emphasized that even support spells, which were often underutilized in previous games, had been made more "effective in their own right". They believed every spell in the game now served a meaningful purpose, adding depth to combat, and contributing to their goal of creating an experience where players would be curious and eager to experiment with different strategies.
In August 2024, it was revealed that Concord would serve as the basis for an episode of "Secret Level", an animated video game anthology series released on Amazon Prime Video. However, the servers for Concord were shut down on September 6th, just two weeks after launch and much earlier than the show's planned release on December 10th. Despite this, it was confirmed the day before Concord was taken offline that the episode would remain in the show's lineup.
The game was directed by Eliot Nelson, a former reporter for the Huffington Post who began developing it in 2018 after leaving the company. Although based on his experiences as a journalist, Nelson also drew inspiration from various other video games, namely sports titles such as NBA 2K and Madden NFL as well as other simulation games like SimCity. One particular inspiration was The Oregon Trail, specifically in regards to its structure, with Nelson stating:
"It's that simple formula that we're trying to recreate with Political Arena, Oregon Trail never had any lessons in it. You never just stop and answer a quiz. It was a fun and immersive and - dare I even say? - addictive game that has did [sic] such a successful job of familiarizing tens of millions of people with its relatively arcade corner of American history."
Unlike the Persona series, which was made by the same team as Metaphor: ReFantazio, the player is not given the ability to romance their party members. According to director Katsura Hashino, this is because the player character Will is more focused on his relationship with the people and trying to become king than starting a romantic relationship like the player characters in Persona games, and that they wanted to maintain a respective sense of realism between Metaphor and Persona's different settings:
"A lot of our games are based around the idea of teenagers living their lives. What teenager doesn't want to have romance in their life? It's part of the realism of the setting. We know people really like this system and it's really popular, but for [Metaphor] specifically, it's not about teenagers. It's about a person trying to become the ruler of the land."
According to series creator Masahiro Sakurai in a 2024 video, ideas for the series' name were first brainstormed by team members at HAL Laboratory, while the "Bros." part of the name was picked out by its president Satoru Iwata during a meeting with him, Sakurai, and Ape Inc. founder Shigesato Itoi. Iwata's reasoning for adding Bros. to the title was that despite the game's roster not all being "brothers", he believed the word added the nuance that they were "friends who were settling a little disagreement" instead of just simply fighting.
Every game featured in the collection imposes restrictions commonly found in games released during the 1980s, such as using only thirty-two colors across each game. Despite this, none of the games force slowdown and sprite flickering due to the developers believing they would make the games less enjoyable.
Patrick's costumes in the game are all references to episodes of the SpongeBob SquarePants show:
• "Under Construction" is a reference to the episode "My Pretty Seahorse". • "Elastic Man" is a reference to the episode "Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy V". • "Marching Band" is a reference to the episode "Band Geeks". • "Hot-Rod" is a reference to the episode "Driven to Tears". • "Gorilla Suit" is a reference to the episode "I Had an Accident". • "King" is a reference to the episode "Rule of Dumb". • "Captain Scarfish" is a reference to the episode "Pull Up a Barrel". • "Patrick-Man" is a reference to the episode of the same name. • "Glove World", "Barnacle Boy", and "Goofy Goober" are all based on recurring outfits seen in the show.
Barnsworth, the game's setting, is loosely based on Barnsley, a market town in South Yorkshire, England and the hometown of the game's developers Coal Supper.
During the development of Super Mario Bros., a 16x32 pixel square represented the player character. After asking to see sales figures from the head of Nintendo's Sales and Marketing Division, Takashi Tezuka and Shigeru Miyamoto decided to make Mario the game's protagonist due to the success of the Famicom port of Mario Bros.
In a 2024 Famitsu interview, Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater producer Noriaki Okamura expressed uncertainty about his team developing future remakes or installments in the series. He felt they could not make remakes of the first two MetalGear games or Metal Gear Solid in the same way they remade Snake Eater, and that they would have to make many new parts, and significant changes and deviations from the original games' playstyle to meet contemporary standards. As for new installments in the series, he felt this depended on the feedback they would get from the Snake Eater remake and a concerted effort with Konami to preserve the longevity of the series:
"The number of staff members who worked with the original staff at the time is dwindling considerably. Before everyone who was involved in the original is gone, we need to create a path to preserve the Metal Gear series for 10 or 50 years into the future. I think this is something we have to do."
In 2024, Ubisoft faced controversy over two instances related to the game's marketing prior to its release being delayed. The first instance revolved around them using a flag created by the Sekigahara Teppo-tai, a Japanese historical re-enactment group, as part of the game's concept art and marketing materials without the group's permission. Ubisoft Japan would later issue an apology for this, agreeing to remove the flag from the game's website, but stated that it would likely remain in the concept art as part of the game's printed art book, something that the Sekigahara Teppo-tai would later request be removed as well. On July 23, Ubisoft posted an apology to Twitter for including material in their marketing that "caused concern within the Japanese community".
Two months after this statement, Ubisoft would face criticism again for a collectible figurine produced by PureArts featuring the protagonists Yasuke and Naoe standing in the ruins of a one-legged torii gate. This drew ire from critics who were already upset over Ubisoft's handling of the game's historical background, as the only known one-legged torii in Japan is located at the Sannō Shrine in Nagasaki. This torii was one of the few surviving structures after the United States' atomic bombing of the city in 1945. It became one-legged as a result of it being within 900 meters of the explosion's hypocenter, and serves as a local reminder of the bombing today. On September 24, just a few days after the figurine's announcement, Ubisoft cancelled their appearance at Tokyo Game Show for "various circumstances" (likely including these prior marketing controversies among other development factors) and later announced that the game's release would be delayed into the next year to allow for more time to polish it. PureArts' pre-order page for the figurine was removed from their website around the same time. They later released a statement on October 15 apologizing for the "insensitive design" and stated they would redesign the figurine for a later release.
The V.I.P. Bot "Robotic Sucker" (based on the titular character from Mister Mosquito) is depicted irritating Astro Bot as he is trying to take a bath. This appears to be a reference to Stage 4 of Mister Mosquito, which infamously involves the player attempting to suck blood from Rena Yamada as she is trying to take a bath.
Due to the success of the Croc games, Fox Interactive considered creating an animated television series based on them. A show bible was written by Flint Dille complete with backstory and six episode synopses, but plans for the series were scrapped. These documents were considered lost for over 25 years until 2024, when Argonaut Games announced that the show bible (as well as accompanying meeting notes) would be included in the remaster of Croc: Legend of the Gobbos as part of the game's Crocipedia.
In Archie's Sonic the Hedgehog comics, the G.U.N. Commander (who was unnamed in the games) was given the name "Abraham Tower". According to writer Ian Flynn, the reason he was given a name was because he "didn't want to be trapped by calling him 'Commander' or 'sir' every stinkin' time". The name (originally used by a character from a fan-made comic that Flynn never finished) was meant to evoke an idea of authoritative power: "Abraham", whether in regards to the biblical figure or the U.S. historical figure, lends itself to the notion of an influential leader, and "Tower" was in reference to how he was "tall, rigid, standing over all others". Although the name was exclusively used in the Archie comics, it would later be made canon to the game continuity when it was used for the character in the webseries "Sonic X Shadow Generations: Dark Beginnings", which was also written by Flynn.
Twin Breaker: A Sacred Symbols Adventure features characters based on Colin Moriarty and Chris "Ray Gun" Maldonado, the hosts of Sacred Symbols, a weekly podcast dedicated to discussing modern PlayStation consoles and games. Moriarty was credited as the game's writer, and would join developer Lillymo Games as its Chief Creative Officer three months after the game's release when he acquired a 49% minority stake in the company.
When Astro Bot released, many players noted how there was no reference to Cloud Strife from Final Fantasy VII despite how important that game was to the original PlayStation, or any sort of Square Enix content in the game for that matter. During an interview with Game File, Nicolas Doucet (studio head of Team Asobi) hinted that the team had considered adding a cameo from Cloud, but were unable to get permission from Square Enix, stating it was "difficult to comment on that".
The Special Coins that appear throughout the game were directly inspired by the DK Coins in the Donkey Kong series. Lead developer Dopply revealed this while watching a livestream of Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore by Frich's voice actor, Vinny Vinesauce, posting a comment in his Twitch chat after he highlighted the similarities.
In certain scenes in Portal 2, the player is required to quickly place a portal to get out of a dangerous situation. According to developer Dave Saunders, during playtesting, it was noticed that lots of players were dying during these segments because they placed the wrong color portals, so the developers specifically changed it so that clicking any button will result in the correct colored portal.
In 2024, Ubisoft faced controversy over two instances related to the game's marketing prior to its release being delayed. The first instance revolved around them using a flag created by the Sekigahara Teppo-tai, a Japanese historical re-enactment group, as part of the game's concept art and marketing materials without the group's permission. Ubisoft Japan would later issue an apology for this, agreeing to remove the flag from the game's website, but stated that it would likely remain in the concept art as part of the game's printed art book, something that the Sekigahara Teppo-tai would later request be removed as well. On July 23, Ubisoft posted an apology to Twitter for including material in their marketing that "caused concern within the Japanese community".
The Special Coins that appear throughout the game were directly inspired by the DK Coins in the Donkey Kong series. Lead developer Dopply revealed this while watching a livestream of Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore by Frich's voice actor, Vinny Vinesauce, posting a comment in his Twitch chat after he highlighted the similarities.
