Because the staff was unsatisfied with Freeman's earlier designs, the game's planner, Yasuyuki Oda, opted to create a completely different design for the character which ended up becoming the final design.
According to a 1997 interview with the game's designer Masahiko Sato published in The PlayStation magazine, "in April 9th, on a Sunday afternoon, 2 or 3PM", out of nowhere, he came up with the idea for I.Q. that was "just like" the final game that was later released. After being asked again if the final version was the same as the original idea, he repsonded:
"Excluding the music, yes—visually it was almost exactly the same. I saw humans standing in an abstract, open space, with giant cubes coming at you. There were about 7 people, and in my initial vision, there were also dogs."
"At that time, I also imagined that, in addition to cubes, there would be blocks with more complex shapes: ones that were two stories high, for instance, or ones were more flat and oblong. However, when I actually made them, I realized that they made the game incomprehensible to human beings. The problem was that once the blocks became too complex in shape, people could no longer predict how they would move. Once I got into the actual development and created rules that humans could actually predict, that was when I first discovered the gameplay of I.Q."
"Gameplay, to me, is about finding the right balance. For example, take a game like Tic-Tac-Toe: it has a simple 3×3 board with players alternating between Os and Xs. This kind of game is easy to understand just by looking at it. But on the other hand, you have games like Othello and Go, which introduce a degree of non-intuitiveness that I think is handled well. When I ask myself why these games have continued to be played for so long, I think it’s because they strike just the right balance in having a moderate degree of complexity."
"My own initial image for I.Q, however, was far too complicated. It was too difficult and hence not very interesting. Gradually I refined the gameplay and the game changed accordingly."
"However, despite changing the number of humans on the game board, the one thing that remained nearly the same as my initial vision was the tone and atmosphere of the game."
Duke was originally designed to be a younger man in his twenties with a Japanese sword, similar in appearance to Shinnosuke Kagami from The Last Blade or Kain R. Heinlein from Garou: Mark of the Wolves. He was specifically made to seem as though he's suppressing himself from his true potential. Duke later underwent a number of retakes until the development team requested for a "strong-bodied and serious man in his thirties".
According to a 1996 interview with the game's director Masaya Kobayashi published in the GSLA archive, he stated that he loves snowboarding, that he wanted to make a sport game about it, so he then drew up the initial plans. He also stated that it's like car racing, but racing in snowboarding by jumping and soaring through the air, and he thought including these elements in the racing game would be interesting.
According to the character designer, Tatsuhiko "Falcoon" Kanaoka, both Meira brothers were initially conceptualized to be the KOF counterparts to the Bogard brothers, given the game's setting, Southtown, is the same in Fatal Fury. Several of the brothers' prototype designs were assigned to other characters' alternate outfits; in this case, Alba's prototype design became Rock's alternate outfit, and Soiree's prototype design became Maxima's alternate outfit.
Critical Bursts were not originally going to be featured in the game. The staff did not see them as a priority at the time and did not add them to the demo. However, the game's director, Yohei Shinbori, thought they were an interesting idea and added the mechanic into the game's E3 playable build. After receiving positive feedback, an improved version of Critical Bursts became part of the final product.
According to a 1993 interview with the game's programmer Kan Naitou published in the 5/93 issue of Famicon Tsuushin, he stated that the game took a lot of inspiration from George Lucas and Steven Spielberg’s movies. He also stated that a single action in the game took 7 frames of animation, an idea which came from Disney's animated movies.
According to a 2003 interview with the game's director/writer Yoshio Sakamoto published in GSLA, he stated that after Super Metroid on the Super Famicom, they couldn't use the underpowered Game Boy Color for a new Metroid game. When the Game Boy Advance was released, a console whose specs surpassed the Super Famicom, the team from the mobile games division really wanted to work with it.
In a 1995 developer interview featured in the game's guidebook, the game's staff were asked what their concept for the development of this game was. They responded:
"A new Fatal Fury, one that both beginners and experienced players could enjoy, punched up with loads of snazzy visual effects. That was our image, but of course, the way newcomers and veteran players enjoy a FTG is dramatically different, right? Newcomers play relatively casually, and want to be able to perform lots of different special moves; meanwhile, veterans are more interested in precise timing and big combos. We tried to appeal to both, but above all, to make it the kind of game that jumps out at you visually."
"This may be too subtle to notice on first glance, but did you see how most of the stage backgrounds are done in darker colors? We did that so the flashy HIT marks and player graphics would stand out all the more. We asked ourselves, what do players really want to see in a FTG game today? And what you see in Real Bout Fatal Fury is the answer we came up with."
"I think you can say this about any game, but if it looks good, it will look fun to players. With that principle as our basis, we endeavored to make a game that truly anyone could enjoy."
According to a 1992 interview with the game's director/original story writer Makoto Ogino published in BEEP Megadrive magazine, he stated that while playing The Legend of Zelda, he held a strange fascination for it and loved the game, despite not caring for other games before then, and always wondered why there wasn't a game like it that came out since. He claimed that "it's good when games have a simple system like Zelda. It's got a lot of depth. I want King Colossus to be like that too."
According to a 2007 interview with the game's planner/graphic designer Yukio Takahashi published in the book Game Shokunin, the interviewer commented that the ending scene where the main character removes their helmet to find out that she’s actually a woman was the first game to make such a surprise twist. He responded:
"This was influenced by the anime Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind. Actually, a bunch of things were influenced by Nausicaa: the protagonist you just mentioned, the side-profile perspective of the paccets, and the Blue Worm boss… Also, as I mentioned, because people during the development were so enthusiastic about slaughtering all the paccets they could, as a contrast to all that cruelty I wanted at least in the final scene to have something cute and adorable, so I drew those ending images."
In an interview with the game's director and planner Kengo Morita, which was published in the All About Puyo Puyo Tsu guidebook in 1995, he was asked why the Mega Drive version didn't have the endless mode (“Tokoton Puyo”)? He stated that he was so busy focusing on the main game that he forgotten about it because from the developers' perspective, they always thought that endless mode was more of a side-dish. He also stated despite complaints about the lack of manzai demos in user surveys during development, they were left out due to time constraints.
The game's official art book, The Art of Super Mario Odyssey, includes concept sketches for a never-realized scenario where Bowser uses his own version of the Capture ability to possess Princess Peach, who would adopt Bowser's physical characteristics.
The concept art attracted attention online following the book's publication, as it coincidentally predated the creation of Bowsette, a viral fanmade design for Bowser wearing the Super Crown power-up from the Nintendo Switch port of New Super Mario Bros. U. Like the concept art, the Bowsette design mixes together attributes from both Peach and Bowser. The original comic depicting Bowsette was itself a parody of Super Mario Odyssey's ending, Spoiler:depicting Mario going out on a date with the Super Crown-wearing Bowser following Peach's rejection of the two.
One of the early ideas for this game was an story driven game where the player would interview various people in a village to see if they were worthy to be sacrificed to the monster train. Gavin Eisenbeisz of Two Star Games scrapped the idea because it was considered too weird and because he decided to put bigger emphasis on gameplay rather than storytelling.
In the Alpha build of the game and its E3 2015 demo, it would have originally revealed storyelements in the form of "Epitaphs", small gravestones spread throughout Lothric which upon offering a flame to it will display a text blurb with a lore-related message on each. In the English version of the Alpha build, some Epitaphs have no text due to the feature having been scrapped by that time, however in the Japanese version of the Alpha build, the data for all Epitaph texts and most of their physical placements on the game's map exist, albeit some are out of bounds or clustered together as their locations had not been finalized before being scrapped.
In early pre-release screenshots and in the first playable demo of the game, Link could ride a canoe in Ordon Village's river, although this feature was removed from this area in the final game. These screenshots also suggest that the river was planned to be bigger and potentially a Fishing Hole before being sized down, although Hena's pond in the final game bears some resemblance to this area.
Interestingly, an unused yet fully implemented feature for canoes allows dogs to hop on and ride with Link on the bow, and then hop off when returning to land. However, dogs and canoes do not appear together in any location in the final game unless they are modded in. Seeing as Ordon Village has two dogs inside different houses and was originally meant to have canoes, it's possible this place would have done more with this feature before it was scrapped.
At Lakehill Seattle Hospital, while Ellie is looking for Nora, she holds a guard named Whitney at knifepoint, who is seen during the game playing a PlayStation Vita. The game she is playing is Hotline Miami, as indicated by the second floor of Chapter 7: Neighbors on the Vita's screen and the song "Hydrogen" playing in the background.
In a 2020 Eurogamer interview with the game's co-director Neil Druckmann, he revealed that they were originally going to use a previous Naughty Dog game in that scene, until they thought:
"Okay, is there an opportunity here to just make some meta-statement about the kind of narrative we're after? And we're also just huge fans of Hotline Miami - like, I love that game. I love the engine of that game. So we reached out to those guys, and they were nice enough to let us put it in there."
The game was originally a completely original IP during its early development stage. However, Itagaki was asked to title the game Ninja Gaiden so the game could be easily marketed to foreign markets.
The first stage of development was to create the game on the Sega NAOMI arcade system. They then planned to move the project to the Dreamcast console for further development and release, but this was abandoned when Sega ended the console's production in 2001. The game was then planned to be a launch title for the PlayStation 2. However, the game's producer, Tomonobu Itagaki, changed the development towards an Xbox exclusive after being impressed with the software development kits for the console.
Early designs of Kevin Rian show that he originally was going to have a cybernetic arm that turned into a gun.
According to the character designer, Tatsuhiko "Falcoon" Kanaoka, both Meira brothers were initially conceptualized to be the KOF counterparts to the Bogard brothers, given the game's setting, Southtown, is the same in Fatal Fury. Several of the brothers' prototype designs were assigned to other characters' alternate outfits; in this case, Alba's prototype design became Rock's alternate outfit, and Soiree's prototype design became Maxima's alternate outfit.
The game's official art book, The Art of Super Mario Odyssey, includes concept sketches for a never-realized scenario where Bowser uses his own version of the Capture ability to possess Princess Peach, who would adopt Bowser's physical characteristics.
In early pre-release screenshots and in the first playable demo of the game, Link could ride a canoe in Ordon Village's river, although this feature was removed from this area in the final game. These screenshots also suggest that the river was planned to be bigger and potentially a Fishing Hole before being sized down, although Hena's pond in the final game bears some resemblance to this area.
At Lakehill Seattle Hospital, while Ellie is looking for Nora, she holds a guard named Whitney at knifepoint, who is seen during the game playing a PlayStation Vita. The game she is playing is Hotline Miami, as indicated by the second floor of Chapter 7: Neighbors on the Vita's screen and the song "Hydrogen" playing in the background.