Star Fox: Assault is notable for including three unlockable Famicom/NES games originally created by Namco:
• Xevious • Battle City • Star Luster
As explained by the development team in an issue of Nintendo Dream, this was done to highlight Star Fox: Assault being a collaboration between Nintendo and Namco, with the latter being its primary developer. With the Star Fox franchise being a sci-fi shooter series, Tsuyoshi Kobayashi and Takaya Imamura had carefully decided on which classic Namco games would fit the best with that vibe. There were considerations to also include Nintendo created Famicom/NES games (one person, for example, had suggested including Balloon Fight), but ultimately Imamura and Kobayashi couldn't come up with any games that would have fit the Star Fox world and atmosphere.
Unfortunately, as the Famicom versions of Battle City and Star Luster had never been released in Western territories, they in turn were excluded from all Western versions of Star Fox: Assault, leaving Xevious as the only unlockable Namco game outside of Japan.
Some of the death sound effects for the characters are taken from the first two episodes of the Star Wars prequel trilogy. Both Qui-Gon Jinn and Darth Maul get their death sounds from "Episode I: The Phantom Menace" when they are pierced by each other's respective lightsabers. Jar-Jar has two death sounds that come from scenes in The Phantom Menace where he gets frightened by a Colo Claw Fish and failing to balance some cans in Watto's Junkshop.
As for "Episode II: Attack of the Clones", C-3PO also has two death sounds; one from when he is excited to be reunited with Anakin and Padme, and the other comes from when he's lost in the Geonosis droid factory. Geonosians also get their death sound from a scene in the droid factory (and oddly enough, so does Watto despite being Toydarian). Obi-Wan's death sound originates from when he's struck by lasers from the Slave I during his duel with Jango Fett. Jango also gets his death sound from the same duel when he gets kicked by Obi-Wan off of a platform. Anakin and Padme both get their death sounds from the Geonosis arena scene; Anakin's is from when he gets dragged by the Reek and Padme's is a high-pitched version of her getting injured by the Nexu. Finally, Yoda's death sound comes from the beginning of his duel with Count Dooku.
One divisive element of Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl is how hard it leans into competitive play, which has been perceived as coming at the detriment of content aimed at casual players such as items and a story mode. According to Ludosity CEO Joel Nyström, Nickelodeon specifically wanted the game to be able to attract a competitive audience, and chose Ludosity as a lead development team due to the positive reception of their first platform fighter, Slap City, from competitive Super Smash Bros. players. 2 years later in 2023, the game's gameplay designer and community manager Thaddeus Crews would respond to a tweet from YouTuber TierZoo complaining about a focus on complicated competitive techniques in non-Smash platform fighters, as well as some replies to the tweet complaining about 1v1-based platform fighter design as a whole, with a clarification on why Ludosity's platform fighters have been marketed so directly at competitive players, as well as why he feels other games in the subgenre are marketed as such:
"Seeing a common misconception in the replies, so let's clarify that:
When an indie platform fighter has a priority on strictly versus gameplay, that is not, and has never been, "pandering to competitive". It's often all that team can afford to do alongside an "acceptable" roster
So when you have the budget for a single, core system, and all your time/resources will necessarily be put into said system, the logical consequence is that will be developed to make utilizing it as rewarding as possible
However, this puts marketing in a catch 22. You can't realistically showcase your singular system without appearing competitively focused, and you can't divert from that impression without straying from the "game" part of the game
Like it or not, they gotta reap what's been sown."
Ren & Stimpy were made a duo fighter in Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl to allow them to interact with one another, something that wouldn't be possible if they were two separate characters. Ludosity CEO Joel Nyström noted that it also allowed development time to be assigned to one extra fighter.
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When Software Creations' SNES Batman pitch first leaked, its ROM header was modified to read "Real Shitty Batman!"
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Pictionary on NES has a swear word filter. The full list of censored words include:
AHOLE ANUS ASS HOLE BALLS BASTARD BITCH BONER BOOB BREAST CLIT CRAP CUNT DICKHEAD DIKE DILDO DONG FAGG FART FUCK HOMO HORNY JERK JERKOFF MOTH NOOK ORAL PECKER PENIS PISS PRICK PUSSY QUEER SEX SHIT SHLONG SUCK TIT TURD VAGINA
Unusually, the list of forbidden words includes three rather innocent words amid the vulgarities and slurs: MOTH, NOOK, and FART.
South Park: Chef's Luv Shack has an unused minigame called WBALL, where the boys would throw water balloons at passerby from a tall building. It exists in the PlayStation version and a prototype of the Dreamcast version, but it is not currently known to be playable.
In 2005, IGN released an April Fools' Day article suggesting that Gyromite would be getting a release for Game Boy Advance in the Classic NES Series line of games, presenting it as having been leaked by a pennysaver newspaper with an image of the supposed "mini-ROB" that would be included. The article could be rather convincing to someone unfamiliar with ROB up until the final sentence, which contains a joke comment from a Nintendo representative forgetting about the existence of Stack-Up.
However, if one is intimately familiar with ROB and the Classic NES Series, there are a few red flags that could expose the article's joke nature even if one weren't to check the publication date, particularly that the miniature ROB isn't facing towards the screen of the GBA, while the original NES ROB used a light sensor in its eyes pointed at the screen; the box art has the "Robot Series" logo at the bottom, despite no other Classic NES Series releases of black box titles keeping the series logos; ROB using Stack-Up blocks instead of Gyromite gyros; and the box art provided not being a different shape from an average GBA game to account for the bundled ROB.
The article also had a link to a colour version of the box art included, but that has since been taken offline and is most likely lost.
According to an interview with Siliconera, Bannon Rudis considered adding Chris from River City Ransom: Underground as a playable character at one point during development before deciding on both Marian from Double Dragon and Provie from the former.
While Super Donkey is thought to have ultimately evolved into Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island, the project was likely tossed around as a Mario or Zelda game at various points in development.
Various development assets associated with Super Donkey, which were uncovered alongside the prototype in the 2020 Gigaleak, include sprites and animations for Link, Mario, and Donkey Kong; the animation files for Link are dated to fall 1990, while Mario's animation files are dated to winter of that year. Additional files for all three characters span overlapping periods in 1991. Link's sprites and animations indicate that Super Donkey was at one point planned to be a side-scrolling Zelda title similar to Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, while Mario's animations imply that the iteration that starred him and Donkey Kong eventually morphed into the 1994 Game Boy title Donkey Kong.
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Infestation: Origins is one of the first video games announced to feature the character Mickey Mouse following his entry into the public domain on January 1, 2024. Originally, the game was announced as "Infestation 88", in reference to the fact that the game takes place in the year 1988. However, many began to accuse the game of including Neo-Nazi references due to the usage of the number 88, often used by Neo-Nazis as a code to signify their ideology since the letter H is the 8th letter of the alphabet, thus meaning "88" stood for "HH", or "Hail Hitler". Not helping matters, the game's Discord server was noted to feature several instances of Neo-Nazi and anti-transgender comments. In response to this, a spokesperson said:
"While working on rebranding our game name and focused on other tasks, the game's Discord server was flooded with users posting hateful and Nazi rhetoric, which we once again strongly stand against and have no association with our studio. We should have had better moderation in place prior to setting our Discord live, so we also apologize for the lack of preparation on our part. We've temporarily halted chats, cleared discussions, and are working on bans while we set up better moderation."
The game's title was later changed to "Infestation '88" to better reference the year 1988, before ultimately being changed again to "Infestation: Origins".
Similarly, the game has been criticized for its use of what appears to be pre-paid assets (i.e. the WereRats from the Unity Store) and usage of an A.I. voice-over. While Nightmare Forge Games did not deny these accusations, they noted that there was a lot of work going into the project, and that due to time constraints they did use a premium version of Elevenlabs AI as a placeholder until they could hire real voice actors.
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.
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.
According to a 2005 Nintendo Dream interview regarding Star Fox: Assault, this particular poster was created by Takaya Imamura, the creator and character designer of Fox McCloud and the Star Fox universe.
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When Hogs of War released, advertisements were printed in the restrooms of British pubs, bearing the double-entendre "It's all about who's got the biggest weapon". This advert was kept in at least two pubs for decades following the game's release, with the ad having been sighted at the North Star in London in 2010 and at the Park Tavern in Stroud Green Road in 2024.
The "Make Milton Proud" achievement references the 1999 film Office Space, with the title itself poking fun at the character of Milton Waddams, and the achievement's description utilizing the same phrase expressed to Peter Gibbons from the movie.
Located within River City High School's First Floor A, there is a poster that reads "Try Hard", which is an in-game parody of the 1998 film Die Hard. Upon further inspection, there will be a vent hidden behind the poster and upon entering it, the player will be rewarded with the "TV Dinner" achievement, with the description referencing the same line said by John McClane during the air vent scene in the movie.
Star Fox: Assault is notable for including three unlockable Famicom/NES games originally created by Namco:
According to an unused file in Treasure Master, the game was originally going to have a Pizza Hut sponsorship alongside or before the MTV sponsorship.
In 2005, IGN released an April Fools' Day article suggesting that Gyromite would be getting a release for Game Boy Advance in the Classic NES Series line of games, presenting it as having been leaked by a pennysaver newspaper with an image of the supposed "mini-ROB" that would be included. The article could be rather convincing to someone unfamiliar with ROB up until the final sentence, which contains a joke comment from a Nintendo representative forgetting about the existence of Stack-Up. 
When Star Fox: Assault was first informally announced to be in development back in early 2002, Nintendo released a promotional poster for it featuring the Star Fox team in their Arwings (which utilized their more rounded look from Star Fox Adventures), with Fox in a communication box saying 全機、報告せよ! (which in English translates to "All aircraft, report!").
Located within River City High School's First Floor A, there is a poster that reads "Try Hard", which is an in-game parody of the 1998 film Die Hard. Upon further inspection, there will be a vent hidden behind the poster and upon entering it, the player will be rewarded with the "TV Dinner" achievement, with the description referencing the same line said by John McClane during the air vent scene in the movie.