The expanded version of myPOPGOES has a challenge named "Mini-P," which makes pizzas cook faster, but restore less hunger. This is a reference to one of Scott Cawthon's characters from the 2015 troll game FNaF World: Halloween Edition, also named Mini-P, which has the appearance of William Afton's "Purple Guy" sprite, just smaller and with red glowing eyes.
In a 2011 Iwata Asks interview, Shigeru Miyamoto expressed discontent at the Virtual Boy being marketed as a video game console. He believed it was simply a novelty toy and that it succeeded in that field despite its commercial failure as a game console:
"It was the kind of toy to get you excited and make you think, 'This is what we can do now!' […] as just a fun toy, it's a big success if you break just 50,000 […] [Its] sales generated some buzz, and crossed 100,000, then 200,000, then 500,000-quite a good pattern […] [But] when you think of it as a gaming platform, it becomes a failure."
The title card for the Underworld stage contains a typo as the word "Summoning" is instead spelled as "Summning". This typo is only present in the USA and PAL versions.
Bubble, a failed DVD game console that exclusively had licensed games based on preschool TV properties, had 6 cancelled games: •Angelina Ballerina •Bob the Builder •Dora the Explorer •The Koala Brothers •Pingu •Postman Pat
Mecarobot Golf is a partial reskin of Birdie Try, a generic, non-robot-themed golf game starring Japanese professional golfer Nobuo Serizawa. Only the characters were changed, and the only sci-fi element in the US version is Eagle, the titular Mecarobot. Otherwise, the game remains a generic golf game, and the other three introduced characters are two white women and one white man, replacing the Japanese version's three Asian men.
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In 2013, Square Enix published a novella titled "Final Fantasy X-2.5 ~Eien no Daishō~" ("Price of Eternity"), to commemorate the release of the Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD remasters that year. It was written by both games' scenario writer Kazushige Nojima and never received an official English release. The only existing fan translation as of 2024 was translated from Japanese to French to English. The book was heavily criticized worldwide for its vague writing style, introducing violent and sexual elements uncommon to the Final Fantasy series, and weakening the impact of both games' endings. For context, X's plot builds up to Spoiler:a negative ending where Tidus dies and Yuna has to accept his death and move on, while X-2 turns it back around to Spoiler:a positive ending where Tidus is brought back to life. What X-2.5 does to weaken this is Spoiler:immediately kill Tidus and just as quickly resurrect him for the express purpose of setting up future stories, removing the emotional weight and finality from him being truly dead or alive.
X-2.5's plot takes place between the first ending of X-2 and its secret ending. It has two sections written from Tidus and Yuna's own perspectives and a third section with both perspectives. After reuniting, Yuna briefly leaves to address recent developments on Besaid Island. Tidus later goes sailing to look for her, falls asleep, and wakes up finding her in the boat. On their way back to Besaid, Spoiler:they get lost in a storm and are marooned on an island resembling Besaid, having transported 1000 years back in time. While there, Tidus inexplicably gets hit in the head with an object resembling a Blitzball that is actually a bomb. When he goes to pick it up, it explodes, decapitating Tidus and sending his head flying near Yuna with a surprised expression on his face. She faints and sees a vision of a god-like figure who helps her resurrect a ghost-like version of Tidus through Beckoning, where someone thinks of a person they knew who died, summoning an illusion of them from the Farplane made of Pyreflies, but if the illusion learns they are not actually alive, they will fade away.
The rest of the story involves Yuna Spoiler:going back and forth from the past to present trying to keep Tidus' spirit from vanishing by interacting with new characters. These include Briar and Kush, who also turn out to be Beckoned spirits from the past and vanish at the end of the book, and Ifarnal, a summoner who tells Yuna that Tidus must kill Kush if they want to return to the present together and later gets killed by another bomb. Through the subplot with the new characters, it's established that one way to create "cores" used to summon Aeons (these Aeon Cores are said to be very similar to Faytes but have differences) is implied to be through consensual sex in two scenes. One where Yuna is transferred the knowledge on how to create them and blushes in embarrassment, and one where Briar discovers Ifarnal and a half-naked Kush in bed together. At the end of the book, there is a small time-skip to the secret ending of X-2, shown in a different context now knowing the events of X-2.5, and ends on a "To Be Continued" cliffhanger.
Final Fantasy X-2: Last Mission takes place after X-2.5. Since it was released years before, it does not acknowledge the events of X-2.5, but the HD remaster does include a continuation that is relevant to both. It is a 30-minute audio drama that was dubbed internationally called "Final Fantasy X -Will-" and was also written by Nojima. The story follows two summoners, Chuami and her assistant Kurgum, who gradually meet the cast of X/X-2. During this, Yuna discovers Spoiler:that Sin is among a horde of souls being beckoned back from the Farplane. In what seems to be an effort to prevent the still undead Tidus from sacrificing himself to kill Sin again, she breaks up with him by lying about being in love with another man, and the summoners go to fight Sin, appearing to set up the plot for a potential Final Fantasy X-III.
Tweenies: Doodles' Bones unusually credits the costume actors for the Tweenies TV series in the credits, despite no live-action footage or screenshots of them being present in the game.
According to creator Tony Grayson, possibly in a joking manner, the Anton characters are all multicoloured as a result of a nuclear war that left only Japan and their home country of the Backburner Peninsula, and are not meant to be any real-world enthicity. Grayson jokingly compared the skin colors of the Anton characters to The Groovenians, a 2002 Cartoon Network pilot that was not picked up for a series.
Girls' Frontline started out as an inspiration work based on Kantai Collection, but with a premise revolving around anthropomorphized firearms instead of anthropomorphized warships. This was in part due to Mica Team anticipating that similar games using "moe anthropomorphism" would become popular in China.
When Street Fighter 6's preliminary logo was revealed, it was mocked for a variety of reasons, particularly a disconnect from previous series logos and aligning with a widely criticized trend of generic, minimalist or "oversimplified" logos. Some fans noted that the logo strongly resembled an $80 design for an "SF" logo posted on the Adobe Stock Image store by user xcoolee, which had previously been used for a sci-fi convention in France. xcoolee did offer to sell exclusive rights to the logo to Capcom, but was seemingly denied. It was also discovered that a Taiwanese electronics and appliances retailer, Sunfar, had a similar hexagonal logo. On the day after Street Fighter 6's logo reveal, the front page of their website displayed an advertisement with the logo featuring a paint splatter reading the number 6 promoting gaming products, most likely as a promotional parody. It is unknown if either resemblance was a coincidence on Capcom's part, and xcoolee did not state if they knew whether Capcom bought anything from their store or not. The logo of Street Fighter 6 would be updated to appear more stylized before the game's launch in response to the negative reception, although the fan reception to the new logo was not much more positive.
Throughout development of Shipwrecked 64, Squeaks D'Corgeh would make references to a non-existent character in the game named "Duncan Dolphin". This even included a fake death animation for a character named "Drake Dulfin" (likely intended to be the Spoiler:Starling counterpart of Duncan) being shot in the face by Spoiler:Brandon Lester in his Bucky Beaver costume in what appeared to be a Wild West-esque setting. This continued after the game's release, where one of the patch notes for the Hotfix 2 update stated "Removed Duncan Dolphin", likely as a reference to the "Removed Herobrine" gag seen in updates to Minecraft.
However, on April 1st, 2024, an April Fools update was released that added Duncan to the game as a New Game+ bonus. If the game's True Ending has been reached, he will appear in The Theater at Midnight and ask Bucky for help activating his "New. Radical. Mechanism!!" due to losing the trinkets needed to make it work. This will take the player to a new area called "Garten of Duncan", a recreation of the Testing Sector from Garten of Banban made using assets from The Plaza. Clearing the map will take the player to a previously unused location called "Layer 4 Elevator", where an audio tape reveals that the player can input console commands to access other unused locations as part of the update. Entering the door will take the player to another new area, known simply as "Sample Area", but only a few seconds after entering the player will be kicked out to the encounter with the Spoiler:Studiogrounds Husk at the end of the game.
Notably, in the "Layer 4 Elevator" area, Chief Wulf can be seen on top of the tallest building in the area. If the player uses console commands to reach him, he can be spoken to, revealing that Spoiler:he has relived the same days over and over again, watched Stumbler O'Hare die over and over as part of that, and believes that he will be forgotten after his death.
The first official crossover between a Nintendo property and a Sega property is often assumed to be either Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games or Super Smash Bros. Brawl. While these are indeed the first Nintendo-Sega crossovers within the gaming medium, there have been instances prior of crossovers in supplementary marketing material:
• A 1994 advert made by DIC for animation industry insiders showing their global reach through the Panda Club and Dragon Club TV blocks in China shows Sonic the Hedgehog waving through a TV screen while Mario pats him on the back, joined by Madeline from the Madeline book series and Billy Lee as seen in the cartoon adaptation of Double Dragon. • The infamous Fight for the FoxBox promotional film made by 4Kids Entertainment in 2003, which utilizes existing anime and cartoon clips to make a new crossover story, shows Dr. Eggman and King Dedede as allies alongside Dial-bolic from Ultimate MUSCLE, Dr. K from Cubix: Robots for Everyone, and Shredder from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles working for Wayne from The Cramp Twins in an attempt to shut down the titular television channel. Although the villains do interact in this half-hour film, the heroes mostly do not, with Kirby and Sonic never sharing screen time in particular.
This is, of course, discounting instances of unauthorised parodies and mockery at the height of the console wars.
Two of the game's core themes are eyes and different types and expressions of love. This is reflected in the game's title, AI: the word itself is pronounced "eye", and is derived from "ai" (愛), the Japanese word for love. The title also has additional meanings, namely how it's pronounced similar to the English word "I", and how the title is short for "artificial intelligence". Additionally, the word "somnium" in the game's subtitle is taken from the Latin word for "dream", in reference to how the game's plot involves entering dreams in order to solve cases.
The player has a chance to randomly encounter an unnamed clown during their playthrough, who only appears once in the entire game to hand them a slip of paper. The note in question reads as follows:
"Ever Dream This Clown?
Every night, all over the world, hundreds of people see this clown in their dreams. If this clown appears in your dreams don't play any game with him. If you want more information go to:
nachogames.itch.io/unlikely"
The link in question leads to the Itch.io page for the game Unlikely, another game made by Nacho Sama. Additionally, the note itself appears to be a reference to "This Man", an urban legend created by Italian sociologist Andrea Natella about a mysterious individual who has appeared in the dreams of people all over the world since 2006.
Ys vs. Trails in the Sky: Alternative Saga has an anti-piracy feature activated if the game detects the PlayStation Portable's system firmware is illegitimate. During a match, the collisions for walls and some floors will be turned off at random points, occasionally causing players to clip through walls or fall out of bounds before respawning back at the starting location. Additionally, some bosses and enemies will not respawn if they fall off the map, making fights with them unwinnable.
For the game's English dub, Spike Chunsoft requested that NIS America keep Monokuma's name intact. He would end up becoming the team's favorite character to localize, working to keep him both funny and threatening like in the Japanese version. This, however, led to difficulties finding a suitable voice actor for the character, as they wanted somebody that could embody Monokuma's "hyperactive psychopathic nature", not helped by how beloved the original Japanese voice actress was. When asked what Monokuma was like in the English version, script editor Phoenix Spaulding stated:
"We like to think he’s not all that different from the Japanese version – which is to say, kind of all over the place. He’s bossy, condescending, smarmy, goofy, quick to anger, quick to forgive, quick to anger again, devious, and totally lovable."
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BMB is a Russian video game studio known for making bootleg Sega Genesis games that feature violent content in their game over and continue screens. Some of the most graphic instances of this plagiarized fan content depict characters such as Mario, Felix the Cat, Iron Man, and Ben 10 as either being bloodied, their head decomposed into a skull, or in more gruesome scenarios like Felix's skin being peeled off of his face. Oftentimes this is accompanied by text directly alluding towards the featured characters' deaths and the consequences of the villains' victories. The background music for these scenes is typically reused in each game, either using the title theme from UWOL: The Quest for Money and/or Corneria's theme from Star Fox. Additionally, while not a game over, BMB's bootleg hack of Angry Birds Star Wars ends with Darth Vader's mask being lifted to unveil a bloodied Bad Piggy.
The "Woohoo!" sound effect played when rescuing a Bikini Bottomite in Drawn to Life: SpongeBob SquarePants Edition appears to be a plagiarized, sped-up sound effect of Homer Simpson from The Simpsons.
During a Q&A with Kotaku in 2015, it was noted that both Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc and Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair had a female character that appeared to have been designed to be the player/main character's favorite, the former game having Kyoko Kirigiri and the latter game having Chiaki Nanami. When asked if this was intentional, series creator Kazutaka Kodaka stated:
"For number one, I didn't really specifically think of any female characters as the heroine. In regards to Kyoko Kirigiri specifically, it was just the idea that she was a detective and she had a good thought process that drove her to be perceived in that role for the player. On the other hand, wanting to specifically create a heroine is what drove Chiaki's creation."
The final twist in the game, where it's revealed that Spoiler:the entire Danganronpa franchise was actually a reality television show spanning fifty-three seasons, was made with the intention to "bring a more interesting idea to the fans". As noted by Kazutaka Kodaka:
"We put what we felt would be fun and interesting into a game and this goes for Danganronpa V3 too. We don’t think about making a game that would fit what fans would expect. We are proud of the ending because lately there aren’t many games that have fans debate over the ending.
The Western culture really likes Spoiler:reality TV and it’s really popular there. Because of that, I feel the Western culture will have different views on the ending and I’m excited to see if the Western gamers would be able to accept the ending more compared to Japan who is focused on the characters and character popularity. If you are focused on the characters you might find the ending strange or very sad."
The title card for the Underworld stage contains a typo as the word "Summoning" is instead spelled as "Summning". This typo is only present in the USA and PAL versions.
When Street Fighter 6's preliminary logo was revealed, it was mocked for a variety of reasons, particularly a disconnect from previous series logos and aligning with a widely criticized trend of generic, minimalist or "oversimplified" logos. Some fans noted that the logo strongly resembled an $80 design for an "SF" logo posted on the Adobe Stock Image store by user xcoolee, which had previously been used for a sci-fi convention in France. xcoolee did offer to sell exclusive rights to the logo to Capcom, but was seemingly denied. It was also discovered that a Taiwanese electronics and appliances retailer, Sunfar, had a similar hexagonal logo. On the day after Street Fighter 6's logo reveal, the front page of their website displayed an advertisement with the logo featuring a paint splatter reading the number 6 promoting gaming products, most likely as a promotional parody. It is unknown if either resemblance was a coincidence on Capcom's part, and xcoolee did not state if they knew whether Capcom bought anything from their store or not. The logo of Street Fighter 6 would be updated to appear more stylized before the game's launch in response to the negative reception, although the fan reception to the new logo was not much more positive.
The first official crossover between a Nintendo property and a Sega property is often assumed to be either Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games or Super Smash Bros. Brawl. While these are indeed the first Nintendo-Sega crossovers within the gaming medium, there have been instances prior of crossovers in supplementary marketing material:
The player has a chance to randomly encounter an unnamed clown during their playthrough, who only appears once in the entire game to hand them a slip of paper. The note in question reads as follows:
The "Woohoo!" sound effect played when rescuing a Bikini Bottomite in Drawn to Life: SpongeBob SquarePants Edition appears to be a plagiarized, sped-up sound effect of Homer Simpson from The Simpsons.
