In an October 24, 2023 WIRED video/interview with the Marvel's Spider-Man series creative director Bryan Intihar, he revealed that when redesigning Venom, the development team wanted to take all the elements of Venom that both players and fans loved about the character. Whether it's Venom's size, symbol, teeth, mouth, eyes, transformation and power, they wanted to be respectful of the DNA of the character, but also not afraid to mix things up. Ultimately, the goal was to take all of this all into account to ensure that Venom is "pretty badass".
The appearance of Golden Capital Zone is based on concept artwork for the original Sonic the Hedgehog, from the appearance of the shuttle loops to the glittering temples in the background, with Japanese text in the concept art referring to it as a "gleaming, gold plated landscape with a Southeast Asian feel."
According to Super Mario Bros. Wonder's art director Masanobu Sato, Shigeru Miyamoto reportedly explained during the development of the first Super Mario Bros. that the reason why Goombas damage Mario when walking into them is because they bite Mario on impact. Due to graphical and hardware limitations, this could not be shown at the time. However, while Super Mario Bros. Wonder is thought to be the first game in the mainline series that shows this detail in gameplay, it's not the first game in the overall franchise to show it, as Goombas had been seen biting in earlier spin-off games like Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars.
The original plan for the game was a PvP, online MMO game known as Fate/Apocrypha. However, these plans were cancelled early in development. The project was later revived as "Fate Online Project Reboot" on the behest of publisher Aniplex wanting to make a mobile game to promote the Fate IP. According to head writer Kinoko Nasu, he never owned a smartphone prior to the development of Fate/Grand Order, but got one and played various free-to-play mobile games for reference. Fate/Apocrypha itself would later be revived as a Light Novel series.
Dutch electronics company Philips planned to release a Donkey Kong game for the CD-i as part of the deal with Nintendo that led to the release of Hotel Mario, Link: The Faces of Evil, Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon, and Zelda's Adventure. The Donkey Kong game's existence was alluded to in two "Gaming Gossip" articles by Electronic Gaming Monthly as well as a trade ad which depicted Donkey Kong exiting a limousine alongside Mario, Link, and Zelda. However, more concrete evidence for the game's existence didn't emerge until former Riedel Software Productions employee Adrian Jackson-Jones included a post on his LinkedIn page stating that he programmed the engine for it (the LinkedIn post incorrectly cites Australian visual effects studio Rising Sun Pictures due to them sharing initials). This information was then brought to public attention in 2022 by the LostMediaWiki, a website which documents searches for lost or otherwise publicly unavailable works.
An investigation by Time Extension led to writer John Szczepaniak getting in contact with both Jackson-Jones and Riedel Software Productions owner Michael J. Riedel. Both parties have little memory of the Donkey Kong game due to the amount of time that passed and the company's habit of erasing their data for cancelled projects. Additionally, Jackson-Jones revealed that due to a memory disorder, he recalls little about the game other than his direct experiences programming it. Despite this, Jackson-Jones was able to confirm his involvement with the Donkey Kong game, stating that one of the biggest difficulties during development was the CD-i's memory limitations, which were circumvented by only loading in assets that would be visible on-screen, using the player's movement to determine what to put into memory.
An early concept for Crash Bandicoot, back when he was originally known as Willy the Wombat, was to have the Cortex Vortex be a surplus of television sets used to brainwash the evolved animals into doing the bidding of Dr. Cortex. After being subjected to the Vortex's media barrage for 7 days and nights, Willy would've been given a tendency to speak and act in a series of bizarre nonsequiters that referenced classic literature, pop culture, or from radio, TV or movies. Some examples would've included "Loose lips, sink ships!", "But brushing with Best Toothpaste gives white, white, white teeth!", and "Don't fire boys, until you see the whites of their eyes!" His demeanor was similar to other hyperactive pop-culture referencing comedy characters from the late 80s and 90s, where he could be quoting from Rambo one moment before switching to Fred Astaire, to John Wayne, and then to Fred Flintstone.
According to Kane Carter, characters from titles released as part of The Fazbear Fanverse Initiative (such as Candy the Cat from Five Nights at Candy's and Popgoes the Weasel from POPGOES Evergreen) were eligible for inclusion in the game, as a manager from Illumix mentioned in a livestream that they were considered part of Scott Cawthon's official roster. However, this never happened as the game was shut down in March 2024 without any characters from these projects being added.
During the game's development, Lucas - the protagonist of Mother 3 - was briefly considered as a replacement for Ness by the development team. However, due to the delays surrounding Mother 3's original Nintendo 64 release (and that game's eventual cancellation), Ness returned instead as they originally planned.
Both Ness and Lucas would go on to be playable in this game's sequel, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, though Lucas' appearance would be based on Mother 3's eventual Game Boy Advance release as opposed to what is now commonly referred to in the fan community as "EarthBound 64".
The Venom Brigade, the game's antagonists, were originally moles as opposed to snakes. In addition to this, the fourth mole was yellow as opposed to Handy's blue coloration. The change from moles to snakes was done because Cruise Elroy wanted more distinction between the human Annalynn and the game's enemies.
In the Stillwater Loft where the Bachelor takes refuge during the course of the game, a map of the Town can be found. Almost everything on this map reflects the in-game map except for the Train Station, as the positions of the railways and station buildings are different. It's possible that this was an earlier version of the game's map used by the developers and was not updated as the layout of the Town changed.
In the game's code is evidence of an unused Event Pokémon. Event Pokémon are exclusive Pokémon throughout the franchise's history which usually have movesets or other unique properties that would not otherwise legitimately occur in normal gameplay.
A code string indicates that Diglett learns the move "Acid" at Lvl. 1, found at the end of Diglett's Generation 1 move pool, as this programming method was the manner in which the programmers ensured Event Pokémon transferred via the Game Pak to Stadium could function properly during gameplay.
To date, a Diglett with Acid being legitimately learned in it's moveset has never been released or distributed by an official Event by Nintendo nor Game Freak.
In the livestreamed playthrough of Chapter 1 conducted for Undertale's sixth anniversary, it was revealed that Lancer's childlike characterization was originally far more subdued. Toby Fox later chose to exaggerate these elements after playtesters instead assumed that Lancer was a Danny DeVito-esque adult.
In an interview with Satoru Iwata and Shigeru Miyamoto, it was revealed that an early, experimental build of the game had split-screen multiplayer, with Mario and Luigi as playable characters.
The game's planned multiplayer mode ended up being reworked into a Mario Bros.-style minigame thanks to the Nintendo 64's technical limitations making the split-screen concept unfeasible. However, in February of 1996 (just a month before E3 of that year), both multiplayer mode and Luigi were removed, in part because the Nintendo 64 was bundled with only one controller. These statements are corroborated by findings from the Gigaleak, a massive content leak of internal data from Nintendo in 2020 that included early assets from Super Mario 64. Among the leaked material was a model and textures for Luigi and sprites for "1P" and "2P" icons. Luigi's model is dated June 20, 1995, while the icons use the same generic font seen in the Shoshinkai demo from November of that year, rather than the custom font seen in both the E3 1996 demo and the final release.
In a pre-release gameplay video from 2018, at the end of a tour of the Home Base, a lit sign featuring the logo for the pizza restaurant chain Domino's can be seen hanging on a wall near the refrigerator. This sign would be removed in the final game, but within the game's files are several voice lines spoken by the game's main cast (Coco, Davis, Eva, Io, Jack, Louis, Mia, Rin and Yakumo) talking about eating freshly delivered pizza in an unusually glorifying manner without mentioning the company by name. It's unclear how these voice clips would have been used in the game, but when taken with the unused Domino's sign, it's believed that this was all part of a planned promotional tie-in that fell through when the game was delayed to 2019, where Domino's would have somehow survived the apocalypse in the game's story and adapted to the Revenants and the Lost.
In June 2012, game director Shun Nakamura expressed interest in making a port of Rhythm Thief & the Emperor's Treasure for the Wii U and a sequel for the Nintendo 3DS, revealing that he wanted "to create a virtual play version of the "Looting the Louvre" part because moving the body really fits into rhythm games." However, the plans for these games never materialized.
According to a tweet by dj TAKA, the song "ABSOLUTE" was originally called "Special Thanks". The name was changed after CG Designer VJ GYO and illustrator GOLI thought the name was "lame".
Anton was originally supposed to be an alcoholic in Antonball Deluxe, but the publisher forced the developers to remove that element, and he would drink sodas and floats instead. Anton would be made a drunkard in Antonblast, and the plot of the new game would revolve around rescuing his collection of "spirits".
Anton was originally created as series creator Tony Grayson's profile picture for a forum when he was 9 years old in 2007, under the name "Red Guy". Because the first Antonball was black and white, Red Guy was renamed to Anton. One of the Anton variant characters in Antonball Deluxe is named after Red Guy.
According to Fruit Ninja creator Luke Muscat in a comment on a YouTube video comparing the 1993 and 2023 Super Mario Bros. movies, there was a massive push following Fruit Ninja's success to have it be adapted for TV or cinema, something he attributed to other members of the studio feeling that the other 2 mediums were more "legitimate" in the face of an era where games were not taken as seriously. All of the characters and stories added to Fruit Ninja were made for the purpose of facilitating these unmade adaptations, something Muscat described as "divisive" and compared to having to try and adapt a film that does not exist into a game rather than the other way around.
Comment archived in case it gets deleted (YouTube link contains a comment hyperlink tag): "Great video Patrick and team. I was the designer / creator of Fruit Ninja, which obviously had absolutely ZERO story or character development. After the huge success of the game, (and as I was leaving the project), a push started to get film and TV adaptions made. For some at the studio, getting an adaptation made the whole thing more legitimate, like the property had "made it". Games were still struggling to be taken seriously despite being such a huge global business, but film and TV didn't have that problem. But given how narratively thin the source material was, new characters and story started getting added into the game specifically to support those future jumps to film and TV (and merch I guess). This was very... divisive. It was like having to adapt a film into an existing game... except the film didn't exist yet. It was a time."
Wuhu Island was originally created for Wii Sports before its debut appearance in Wii Fit. An early version of the island can be seen in a leaked development image for Wii Sports, and in footage of the unused Airplane sport in the E3 2006 demo for the game. The leaked image also indicates that the Airplane sport would have also given you the option to fly around the island with a Rocket Belt, an idea that would later be reused in Pilotwings Resort.
The appearance of Golden Capital Zone is based on concept artwork for the original Sonic the Hedgehog, from the appearance of the shuttle loops to the glittering temples in the background, with Japanese text in the concept art referring to it as a "gleaming, gold plated landscape with a Southeast Asian feel."
Dutch electronics company Philips planned to release a Donkey Kong game for the CD-i as part of the deal with Nintendo that led to the release of Hotel Mario, Link: The Faces of Evil, Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon, and Zelda's Adventure. The Donkey Kong game's existence was alluded to in two "Gaming Gossip" articles by Electronic Gaming Monthly as well as a trade ad which depicted Donkey Kong exiting a limousine alongside Mario, Link, and Zelda. However, more concrete evidence for the game's existence didn't emerge until former Riedel Software Productions employee Adrian Jackson-Jones included a post on his LinkedIn page stating that he programmed the engine for it (the LinkedIn post incorrectly cites Australian visual effects studio Rising Sun Pictures due to them sharing initials). This information was then brought to public attention in 2022 by the LostMediaWiki, a website which documents searches for lost or otherwise publicly unavailable works.
An early concept for Crash Bandicoot, back when he was originally known as Willy the Wombat, was to have the Cortex Vortex be a surplus of television sets used to brainwash the evolved animals into doing the bidding of Dr. Cortex. After being subjected to the Vortex's media barrage for 7 days and nights, Willy would've been given a tendency to speak and act in a series of bizarre nonsequiters that referenced classic literature, pop culture, or from radio, TV or movies. Some examples would've included "Loose lips, sink ships!", "But brushing with Best Toothpaste gives white, white, white teeth!", and "Don't fire boys, until you see the whites of their eyes!" His demeanor was similar to other hyperactive pop-culture referencing comedy characters from the late 80s and 90s, where he could be quoting from Rambo one moment before switching to Fred Astaire, to John Wayne, and then to Fred Flintstone.
In the Stillwater Loft where the Bachelor takes refuge during the course of the game, a map of the Town can be found. Almost everything on this map reflects the in-game map except for the Train Station, as the positions of the railways and station buildings are different. It's possible that this was an earlier version of the game's map used by the developers and was not updated as the layout of the Town changed.
In the game's code is evidence of an unused Event Pokémon. Event Pokémon are exclusive Pokémon throughout the franchise's history which usually have movesets or other unique properties that would not otherwise legitimately occur in normal gameplay.
In an interview with Satoru Iwata and Shigeru Miyamoto, it was revealed that an early, experimental build of the game had split-screen multiplayer, with Mario and Luigi as playable characters.
In a pre-release gameplay video from 2018, at the end of a tour of the Home Base, a lit sign featuring the logo for the pizza restaurant chain Domino's can be seen hanging on a wall near the refrigerator. This sign would be removed in the final game, but within the game's files are several voice lines spoken by the game's main cast (Coco, Davis, Eva, Io, Jack, Louis, Mia, Rin and Yakumo) talking about eating freshly delivered pizza in an unusually glorifying manner without mentioning the company by name. It's unclear how these voice clips would have been used in the game, but when taken with the unused Domino's sign, it's believed that this was all part of a planned promotional tie-in that fell through when the game was delayed to 2019, where Domino's would have somehow survived the apocalypse in the game's story and adapted to the Revenants and the Lost.
Wuhu Island was originally created for Wii Sports before its debut appearance in Wii Fit. An early version of the island can be seen in a leaked development image for Wii Sports, and in footage of the unused Airplane sport in the E3 2006 demo for the game. The leaked image also indicates that the Airplane sport would have also given you the option to fly around the island with a Rocket Belt, an idea that would later be reused in Pilotwings Resort.