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Ms. Pac-Man
Ms. Pac-Man (1982)
subdirectory_arrow_right Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (Game), Pac-Land (Game), Pac 'n Roll (Game), Pac-Man World Re-Pac (Game), Pac-Man Museum+ (Game), Pac-Man (Franchise), AtGames (Company), General Computer Corporation (GCC) (Company), Ms. Pac-Man (Collection)
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Attachment In 2019, AtGames, a company specializing in replica microconsoles containing compilations of retro or retro-styled games, acquired a portion of the rights to Ms. Pac-Man from General Computer Corporation, the company that made the original Ms. Pac-Man game for Midway and Namco - this led to a lawsuit over the IP, with an undisclosed turnout. After this, Ms. Pac-Man would begin to disappear from Pac-Man games, implying that AtGames won the case, with Ms. Pac being replaced by a character named Pac-Mom, who has a visual design resembling Ms. Pac-Man's mother from Pac 'N Roll.

Pac-Mom first appeared in the Arcade Archives release of Pac-Land through graphical modification to the original ROM, and would then be named for the first time in Pac-Man Museum+ alongside modifications to other games that originally featured Ms. Pac-Man such as Pac-in-Time, and would appear again in Pac-Man World: Re-Pac in place of Ms. Pac-Man.

Ms. Pac-Man's final appearance in an original title would be on the Pac-Land stage in 2018's Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.
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Acquisition, Character Design, Corporate Affairs, Legal Affairs, Name Change, Unused Character, Version Difference
person Rocko & Heffer calendar_month November 15, 2023
comment Comment (0) | Source
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Shark Jaws
Shark Jaws (1975)
subdirectory_arrow_right Jaws (Franchise), Horror Games (Company)
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Attachment Shark Jaws was originally intended to be an official Jaws tie-in game, but plans fell through - however, Atari still went through with the game, putting the word "JAWS" in large letters on the game's promotional but having "SHARK" be much smaller. To avoid a potential lawsuit, Atari released the game under the pseudonym "Horror Games", similarly to what it had done with Kee Games prior.
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Adaptation, Legal Affairs, Plagiarism
person Rocko & Heffer calendar_month November 4, 2023
comment Comment (0) | link Source
Franchise: Mary-Kate and Ashley
subdirectory_arrow_right Acclaim (Company)
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In 2004, Dualstar Entertainment, the company that represents celebrity twins Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen sued Acclaim for not providing a contractually-obligated $177,000 royalties payment for the video games starring the celebrities following the termination of the license. Dualstar described this incident in a letter as "the single dark spot on the otherwise unblemished success story of the Mary-Kate & Ashley brand."
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Celebrity, General, Legal Affairs, Real Life
person Rocko & Heffer calendar_month September 5, 2023
comment Comment (0) | link Source
Donkey Kong
Donkey Kong (1981)
subdirectory_arrow_right Donkey Kong Junior (Game)
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The development of the first Donkey Kong game was outsourced by Nintendo to Ikegami Tsushinki, a company who is believed but not confirmed to have previously worked with Nintendo on several of their early ventures into arcade games. They produced and sold to Nintendo somewhere between 8,000 and 20,000 printed circuit boards for Donkey Kong, and it is believed that Nintendo went on to copy an additional 80,000 boards from this batch without Ikegami's permission. Despite the sale, because no formal contract was known to have been signed between the two companies, Ikegami owned the source code to Donkey Kong as they had created it, and never sent it over to Nintendo.

In order to create a sequel on the coattails of the success of the first game, Nintendo employed subcontractor Iwasaki Giken to reverse-engineer Donkey Kong so Nintendo’s staff could develop the game's sequel, Donkey Kong Jr. Should this narrative be verifiably true, this would make Donkey Kong Jr. Nintendo's first "in-house" video game created by themselves without any assistance from outside development companies. Ikegami viewed this use of the source code as blatant copyright infringement, and sued Nintendo in 1983 for ¥580,000,000 (around $91,935,800). A trial in 1990 ruled that Nintendo did not own the source code to the original Donkey Kong, and the parties settled out of court the same year for an undisclosed amount.
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Copyright, Development, General, Legal Affairs, Real Life, Rumor, Source Code, Suggested, Theory
person MehDeletingLater calendar_month August 25, 2021
comment Comment (0) | link Source
Final Fantasy
Final Fantasy (1987)
subdirectory_arrow_right Final Fantasy (Franchise)
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The Final Fantasy series' title was long rumored to stem from the idea that it would've been Square and series creator Hironobu Sakaguchi's final game if it didn't perform well. According to these claims, Square was in dire financial straits in 1987, with Sakaguchi planning to quit the gaming industry and return to university studies. These claims appeared to be further corroborated when series composer Nobuo Uematsu affirmed them in a 2009 interview with Wired, claiming that Square's financial position was the main inspiration for the Final Fantasy name.

However, Sakaguchi debunked the rumors in a 2015 keynote address. In reality, Square always intended to give the first game in the series a name whose initials were "FF," as the Japanese pronunciation, エフ・エフ ("efu efu"), was considered pleasing to the ears. The developers' initial pick was Fighting Fantasy; however, it turned out that this name was already taken by a tabletop RPG series. Consequently, the title was changed to Final Fantasy. According to Sakaguchi, while Square indeed had their "backs to the wall" during development, "anything that started with an F would have been fine for the title."
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Corporate Affairs, Development, Early Idea, Inspiration, Legal Affairs, Misconception, Rumor, Title
person KnowledgeBase calendar_month May 28, 2015
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Franchise: Tomb Raider
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Attachment Nell McAndrews undertook the role of Lara Croft in 1998 through to 1999, during which time she posed nude for Playboy. At the time, Eidos threatened Playboy with a lawsuit. They were unable to alter the U.S. printing, but won a lawsuit forcing the U.K. printing of the magazine to cover up the Tomb Raider logo on the cover. This scandal was likely the reason she was replaced as the role of Lara Croft.
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Celebrity, General, Legal Affairs, Magazine, Real Life
person ShadowOfTheServer calendar_month October 2, 2013
comment Comment (0) | link Source
The Guy Game
The Guy Game (2004)
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One of the girls who appeared topless in The Guy Game was 17 years old at the time of development, making the game illegal to sell in territories where the age of consent is 18. However, this did not come to light until four months after the game's release, when the same girl sued the game's developers Topheavy Studios, Gathering of Developers (a subsidiary of 2K Games' owner Take Two Interactive which included Topheavy Studios), Microsoft and Sony (on which the game was released for the Xbox and PlayStation 2), as she was not informed that the footage of her would be used in-game and on the game's promotional website. A Texas county judge granted a temporary injunction against the production of copies of the game until her voice, name and image were removed from the game entirely.

The following year, Topheavy Studios released a DVD version of the game with additional content not featured in the original game titled "The Guy Game: Game Over". They appeared to take the controversy in stride, stating on the game's store page:

"The rumors are true! The most controversial video game ever created - The Guy Game - is no longer available!"
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General, Legal Affairs, Real Life, Version Difference
person gamemaster1991 calendar_month May 7, 2013
comment Comment (0) | Source
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Platform: Nintendo Switch
subdirectory_arrow_right Nintendo (Company)
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In 2020, hackers Gary Bowser and Max "MAXiMiLiEN" Louarn were arrested and extradited to the United States for money laundering and selling products meant to crack the Nintendo Switch's copy protection to run pirated copies of games. The two were members of Team Xecuter, a hacking group which specialized in similar measures for a large number of Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft consoles. In 2021, Bowser pled guilty on conspiracy and trafficking charges and was sentenced to 40 months in prison; Nintendo later filed a separate civil suit against him, which together with the prison sentence left him $14.5 million in debt. The company's legal department claimed during the court case that the unusually severe punishments were intended to send a chilling effect through the piracy world, intimidating would-be hackers by using Bowser's punishment as an example.

Following the case, multiple news outlets noted the irony of Gary Bowser's last name, which is shared with Nintendo of America president Doug Bowser and Mario series antagonist Bowser.
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Anti-Piracy, Corporate Affairs, Financial Affairs, General, Legal Affairs, Piracy, Real Life
person ProtoSnake calendar_month February 2, 2024
comment Comment (9) | Source
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