Lanolin the Sheep, a character introduced in IDW's Sonic the Hedgehog comics, was created by artist Adam Bryce Thomas as a background character in Issue #2. He would continue drawing Lanolin in subsequent issues he illustrated for, often with a new look. Comic writer Ian Flynn would eventually confirm her name on Twitter. She even appeared in an early draft of Issue #30's A cover (drawn by Thomas), but was edited out in the final version. Starting with Issue #57, Lanolin began to have a supporting role in story arcs: according to Ian, this is due to how her appearances had evolved to the point of gaining a role in the story, and her increase in prominence lead to a more developed personality. By her own admission in Issue #58, she is "bossy and inexperienced", being rather new to her role as a leader. Despite this, some fans have criticized the character for having a tendency to act as if she is just as experienced as her peers (i.e. critiquing Silver in Issue #63 despite having no experience with psychokinesis, and her interactions with Tangle in Issue #62 giving the impression that she had a genuine problem with her, despite the scene's comedic nature). This has resulted in comparisons to Sally Acorn, a character from the 1993 "Sonic the Hedgehog" cartoon who was a main character throughout the Archie Sonic comics, due to their status as no-nonsense leaders able to keep even Sonic in line. These similarities also lead some fans (particularly those who don't like Flynn's writing) to accuse that Lanolin was an attempt to replace her despite having gone on record stating that he wanted to incorporate Sally and the Freedom Fighters into the IDW comics.
In an 2023 interview with Capcom producer Yoshiaki Hirabayashi at that year's Tokyo Game Show, he was asked why it took over a decade for a sequel to Dragon's Dogma to be made and if there was a driving factor to getting Dragon’s Dogma II made? He responded:
"Dragon’s Dogma is a really valuable IP to us. We knew we wanted to make a sequel at an early stage, but there wasn’t really one particular thing that just changed from no to a green light. It was more that we needed a lot of things to fall into place.
First and foremost, if Itsuno-san doesn’t have time to be the director of the game, it can’t really get made. So having an opportunity to have him spend the time he needed on the game and being able to bring together the other resources needed, such as a large team to work on a game with this scope, just took some years for that all to really fit together. And then once it did, we got started."
Eri Kamataki, who appears as a party member in Yakuza: Like a Dragon, was modelled and named after a real-life actress by the same name. The real Eri Kamataki (entrant no. 7) won a contest of more than 1000 entrants to appear as "Ichiban's female co-star" and so appeared as a playable character in the game.
Disney's Animated Storybook: Toy Story and Toy Story Activity Center were developed by a devision of Pixar known as the Interactive Products Group, which exclusively made video game content. The division was closed down when the Toy Story 2 movie entered production, and merged into Pixar's main movie animation staff, as the animators behind the first film were working on A Bug's Life and the IPG had already proved itself by making as many frames of animation for their games as there was in the first Toy Story, with a near-identical quality. Due to the shuttering of the IPG, later Pixar PC games using pre-rendered graphics, such as A Bug's Life Activity Center and Monsters, Inc. Scream Team Training, would have significantly lower quality animation than the movies, and Toy Story would be the only Pixar film to have an Animated Storybook based on it.
In a promotional video by Limited Run Games for the game's re-release on modern consoles, various staff members noted how difficult it is to give people a reason to buy what is considered one of the worst video games ever made. To that end, they wished to help "re-contextualize" the game, making it available to a modern audience in order to satiate their inherent curiosity about the game. They also argued that the game was historically important, due to representing "something that was really unusual for the console space".
It was also noted that there was a strong argument that the preservation of the worst games ever made was just as important as the best games ever made, with the more "experimental" efforts being more interesting to look back on than something that was good. The game is noted to give a "slice of life" of what the game market was like at the time, being described as a "time capsule" of the era.
Iroha Nijiue's design was heavily inspired by Kise Yayoi from the anime series "Smile PreCure!", as LINUJ had been inspired to create original characters similar to his favorite characters in other media. When the game first began, LINUJ thought this was easy to notice due to lack of development. Iroha's crybaby personality was one of the aforementioned similarities to Kise. Her first design was directly based on Kise, but with certain changes to make her design her own. LINUJ later redesigned Iroha when coming up with ideas for the story, before Void was officially created. At the time, Iroha wore a pair of boots instead of shoes, and her skirt had a different pattern that was removed later on. When more of the story was created, LINUJ began to start the process of redesigning Iroha, as well as many other characters, coming up with a design that was closer to what her finalized design was: the only difference before she received her final design was the pattern on her socks.
LINUJ has stated that Iroha is his favorite character from the series, but had attempted to be as unbiased as possible with her involvement and fate. During Chapters 3 and 4 specifically, LINUJ began to have more fun when writing the dialogue for her during the later part of the series and eventually reached a point where he didn't think much about what she was saying, as Iroha "doesn't think about what she's saying" from his perspective. He also worried that many people wouldn't like her, but was surprised when she later began to gain popularity in the Korean and Western fandoms.
In 2019, UK bargain store Aldi attempted a publicity stunt known as the "Teatime Takedown", where parents would send Aldi their childrens' usernames on gaming platforms (with the service being provided for the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 consoles, and unusually the streaming platform Twitch) and the supermarket would send professional gamers to defeat the child in-game so they would eat their food, though Aldi claimed that the effectiveness of the program may vary. Despite a released commercial for the campaign showing children "rage quitting" FPS games, the hired eSports teams, originating from Veloce, specialized in racing games. This sparked massive backlash within the UK eSports community, to the point where Resolve eSports offered to send its players to help kids fight back against the bullies. Aldi would eventually cancel the campaign and send coupons to those who complained as a form of apology. Print adverts were made, but are not known to have been printed in any magazines or catalogues, and radio and till reciept ads were planned.
The game was originally planned to release on PC and it even had a completed port. However, this didn't happen. According to Patrick Deupree (one of the game's programmers), this was "due to powers beyond our control".
Maestro was conceived as a tie-in to Tubular Bells 2003, a re-recording of English progressive rock musician Mike Oldfield's 1973 debut album, Tubular Bells, for its thirtieth anniversary. The game was originally titled The Tube World because of this, and snippets of the re-recorded album are featured as part of the soundtrack.
Unused animations for Ichiban Kasuga riding a skateboard exist in the data for Yakuza: Like a Dragon, suggesting he was intended to get around the world map on a skateboard at one point. Skateboarding would later be implemented in Lost Judgment.
Leftover files for Yoshitaka Mine, the antagonist of Yakuza 3, can be found in the files for Yakuza Kiwami, suggesting that he may have been planned to appear in a substory in a similar way to how Yakuza 2's main antagonist, Ryuji Goda, was a substory character in Yakuza 0.
In Kinoko Nasu's first draft of Fate/stay night that he wrote while in high school, he had planned for Saber to be a man and the player character to be a woman in glasses. While the two genders were eventually flipped for the final game, this idea was revisited in "Fate/Prototype", an original video animation released as part of the Carnival Phantasm OVA collection. Fate/Prototype portrays Saber and the primary Master as described in the early drafts, but as of now, the full story of "Fate/Prototype" has yet to be told, with the animation and short story details being the only known aspects of this particular adaptation.
The developers originally considered having the game be called "The New Legend of Zelda" similar to the New Super Mario Bros. series, but instead went with A Link Between Worlds to go with how it mainly borrows from A Link to the Past, only this time it has the story pass between two worlds instead of "linking" between different time periods.
In Speed Highway, several billboards can be found depicting an unknown female character. In 2020, Satoshi Okano, a former designer at Sega who worked on Sonic Adventure, revealed that this was a scrapped spider character he designed with the prototype name "Spider Girl", and posted an old sketch of the character alongside a sketch of another scrapped character, a bat named "Fly the Vampire". In 2023, Okano posted an inked version of the original Spider Girl sketch from the same time period alongside several inked sketches from the development of Samba de Amigo. Spider Girl's appearance on the billboards in Sonic Adventure suggests that the character lasted far enough into the game's development to receive a 3D model, but the character was ultimately scrapped for unknown reasons, and this 3D model has yet to surface on its own. It's unknown what role either Spider Girl or Fly were intended to have, though fans have noted that Spider Girl has some similarities to Rouge the Bat from Sonic Adventure 2, namely that both characters have large bosoms and prominent heart-based/romantic imagery.
A TV adaptation of the de Blob franchise was in production around 2010 to be aired on the SyFy TV channel on a new children's block, which would've used Blob in its branding. This deal got so far that SyFy Kids' logo was included on trailers and promotional items for de Blob 2. Due to the sequel's underperformance, the cartoon would be cancelled, and given Blob's prevalence in preliminary branding and the lack of knowledge on what other series were being planned if any, the cartoon's cancellation likely also led to the SyFy Kids block being cancelled too. SyFy Kids would later be revived in 2013, but airing on the Asian and South African versions of KidsCo with a lineup almost entirely comprised of reruns and syndicated programming.
subdirectory_arrow_rightSon Son (Game), Capcom (Company)
▲
1
▼
Capcom's first two games, Vulgus and SonSon, were developed at the same time. There were only about 8 people working at the company at the same time, with 4 each working on either game.
When creating Doubutsu no Mori, directors Katsuya Eguchi and Hisashi Nogami set out to create a game "unlike any that came before", not fitting into any kind of existing genre. However, since it was required for games to be classified into one genre for the retail packaging, they decided to call it a "communication" game.
Hideo Kojima, best known as the creator of the Metal Gear series, is a fan of the Ace Attorney series and tried to recruit some of its developers to Konami after the release of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, including Shu Takumi and Shinji Mikami.
The second case, Turnabout Sisters, was originally going to be the first case of the game, but it was thought to be too long for a prologue, so a new case, The First Turnabout, was created. Series creator Shu Takumi commented that he wrote some of the key twists of The First Turnabout in just 10 minutes (i.e. Spoiler:the passport and the time zone difference).
Lanolin the Sheep, a character introduced in IDW's Sonic the Hedgehog comics, was created by artist Adam Bryce Thomas as a background character in Issue #2. He would continue drawing Lanolin in subsequent issues he illustrated for, often with a new look. Comic writer Ian Flynn would eventually confirm her name on Twitter. She even appeared in an early draft of Issue #30's A cover (drawn by Thomas), but was edited out in the final version. Starting with Issue #57, Lanolin began to have a supporting role in story arcs: according to Ian, this is due to how her appearances had evolved to the point of gaining a role in the story, and her increase in prominence lead to a more developed personality. By her own admission in Issue #58, she is "bossy and inexperienced", being rather new to her role as a leader. Despite this, some fans have criticized the character for having a tendency to act as if she is just as experienced as her peers (i.e. critiquing Silver in Issue #63 despite having no experience with psychokinesis, and her interactions with Tangle in Issue #62 giving the impression that she had a genuine problem with her, despite the scene's comedic nature). This has resulted in comparisons to Sally Acorn, a character from the 1993 "Sonic the Hedgehog" cartoon who was a main character throughout the Archie Sonic comics, due to their status as no-nonsense leaders able to keep even Sonic in line. These similarities also lead some fans (particularly those who don't like Flynn's writing) to accuse that Lanolin was an attempt to replace her despite having gone on record stating that he wanted to incorporate Sally and the Freedom Fighters into the IDW comics.
Eri Kamataki, who appears as a party member in Yakuza: Like a Dragon, was modelled and named after a real-life actress by the same name. The real Eri Kamataki (entrant no. 7) won a contest of more than 1000 entrants to appear as "Ichiban's female co-star" and so appeared as a playable character in the game.
Early designs of the Toadies in the ys_romX_0 prototype of the game show that they originally resembled Snifits.
Iroha Nijiue's design was heavily inspired by Kise Yayoi from the anime series "Smile PreCure!", as LINUJ had been inspired to create original characters similar to his favorite characters in other media. When the game first began, LINUJ thought this was easy to notice due to lack of development. Iroha's crybaby personality was one of the aforementioned similarities to Kise. Her first design was directly based on Kise, but with certain changes to make her design her own. LINUJ later redesigned Iroha when coming up with ideas for the story, before Void was officially created. At the time, Iroha wore a pair of boots instead of shoes, and her skirt had a different pattern that was removed later on. When more of the story was created, LINUJ began to start the process of redesigning Iroha, as well as many other characters, coming up with a design that was closer to what her finalized design was: the only difference before she received her final design was the pattern on her socks.
In 2019, UK bargain store Aldi attempted a publicity stunt known as the "Teatime Takedown", where parents would send Aldi their childrens' usernames on gaming platforms (with the service being provided for the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 consoles, and unusually the streaming platform Twitch) and the supermarket would send professional gamers to defeat the child in-game so they would eat their food, though Aldi claimed that the effectiveness of the program may vary. Despite a released commercial for the campaign showing children "rage quitting" FPS games, the hired eSports teams, originating from Veloce, specialized in racing games. This sparked massive backlash within the UK eSports community, to the point where Resolve eSports offered to send its players to help kids fight back against the bullies. Aldi would eventually cancel the campaign and send coupons to those who complained as a form of apology. Print adverts were made, but are not known to have been printed in any magazines or catalogues, and radio and till reciept ads were planned.
In Speed Highway, several billboards can be found depicting an unknown female character. In 2020, Satoshi Okano, a former designer at Sega who worked on Sonic Adventure, revealed that this was a scrapped spider character he designed with the prototype name "Spider Girl", and posted an old sketch of the character alongside a sketch of another scrapped character, a bat named "Fly the Vampire". In 2023, Okano posted an inked version of the original Spider Girl sketch from the same time period alongside several inked sketches from the development of Samba de Amigo. Spider Girl's appearance on the billboards in Sonic Adventure suggests that the character lasted far enough into the game's development to receive a 3D model, but the character was ultimately scrapped for unknown reasons, and this 3D model has yet to surface on its own. It's unknown what role either Spider Girl or Fly were intended to have, though fans have noted that Spider Girl has some similarities to Rouge the Bat from Sonic Adventure 2, namely that both characters have large bosoms and prominent heart-based/romantic imagery.
A TV adaptation of the de Blob franchise was in production around 2010 to be aired on the SyFy TV channel on a new children's block, which would've used Blob in its branding. This deal got so far that SyFy Kids' logo was included on trailers and promotional items for de Blob 2. Due to the sequel's underperformance, the cartoon would be cancelled, and given Blob's prevalence in preliminary branding and the lack of knowledge on what other series were being planned if any, the cartoon's cancellation likely also led to the SyFy Kids block being cancelled too. SyFy Kids would later be revived in 2013, but airing on the Asian and South African versions of KidsCo with a lineup almost entirely comprised of reruns and syndicated programming.
