The Japanese and PAL region releases of Spirit Camera: The Cursed Memoir have exclusive bonus content that can be accessed after completing Story Mode by scanning an augmented reality marker on the back of the instruction manual to the Wii port of Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly, released only in Japan and PAL regions under the name Project Zero 2: Wii Edition. Scanning the marker will unlock models of Mio and Mayu Amakura as they appear in that game to view in Spirit Photography mode. Because the Wii port of Project Zero 2 was never released in North America, these models were made inaccessible in the North American release of Spirit Camera: The Cursed Memoir.
Using Kombat Kodes (six digit numerical codes in sets of three, specified by Mortal Kombat iconographies) on the VS. character screen before a match, several messages can be conjured on screen when the match has begun. Several of these messages are developer messages and references to other games:
•999-999 = Displays a message indicating what version revision is being played. •550-550 = Displays the message: "Go see the Mortal Kombat Live Tour!", advertising the 1995 martial arts theatrical stage show of the same name. •122-221 = Displays the message: "Skunky! - E.F." which assumedly is an inside joke from a developer playing on the "Toasty!" gag by programmer Dan Forden. •987-666 = Displays the message: "Hold flippers during Casino Run". This is a reference to Jack*Bot, an arcade pinball cabinet produced by Williams Entertainment who has worked with Midway on the home console ports of Mortal Kombat titles. •004-400 = Displays the message: "Whatcha gun do? - E.B", a joke message from Ed Boon that possibly pokes fun at the fact of Mortal Kombat being a fighting game.
The Sega Saturn release of the game also features two exclusive developer messages:
•200-002 = Displays the message: "It should work!? - P.A.B." •300-003 = Displays the message: "PUB! - D.K.P."
In an article by Bloomberg, Kevin Bachus, ex-director of third-party relations at Microsoft, and Bob McBreen, former head of business development for the company, said that before Microsoft started development on the Xbox, Microsoft tried to buy Nintendo, but were reportedly laughed at for the majority of the meeting, before reaching out again to offer to provide hardware for future consoles, which they too declined.
Bachus: “They just laughed their asses off. Like, imagine an hour of somebody just laughing at you. That was kind of how that meeting went.”
McBreen: "We actually had Nintendo in our building in January 2000 to work through the details of a joint venture where we gave them all the technical specs of the Xbox. The pitch was their hardware stunk, and compared to Sony PlayStation, it did. So the idea was, “Listen, you’re much better at the game portions of it with Mario and all that stuff. Why don’t you let us take care of the hardware?” But it didn’t work out."
The main intention of Sonic Forces was to bring the Sonic series back to it's more serious outings since the original introduction of Sonic's Modern redesign as opposed to the more casual & pop-oriented games at the time starting with Sonic Colors in 2010. The game's art director Miura Yoshitaka stated: "We wanted to achieve not only realism, but also the atmosphere of the design culture that existed in 80s graphics in 3D." In order to make these basic concepts compatible with the look of Sonic's world, they chose to work on an improved version of the Hedgehog Engine previously used for Sonic Unleashed and Sonic Generations called the Hedgehog Engine 2, which was built in-house and combined partition boot record-based image creation with character-driven expressions that are not simply focused on realism.
Both the game and the Hedgehog Engine 2 were developed at the same time over the course of three years, and because of this simultaneous development, the designers went through trial and error trying to adapt to the changing workflow for the first year until the engine was eventually optimized well-enough to complete production of the game at an easier scale for the smaller number of people working on it at the time.
Tommy Tallarico is a video game composer and the president of Intellivision Entertainment. In 2019, he discovered that the popular "oof" default death sound effect used in Roblox since 2006 was extremely similar to a sound effect he claimed to have created for the 2000 PC game Messiah.
Tallarico initially filed a copyright claim against Roblox and requests to him by the game's developers to present proof he owned the original sound effect produced nothing. However, after a year of negotiations with the developers, they worked out a compromise that involved them creating a new default death sound effect, and moving the "oof" sound effect behind a 100 Robux ($1) paywall after the implementation of the game's Developer Marketplace began. Since the dispute was settled, Tallarico released an official sound design kit for Roblox's Developer Marketplace with pricing ranging from $10 to $250 based on how many sounds are purchased.
The earliest version of the "cross" design for a directional pad, developed by Gunpei Yokoi and named by the patented inventor Ichiro Shirai as the "Multi-directional switch", was first developed, patented and introduced for the 1982 Game & Watch port of Donkey Kong.
As of August 2021, the RuneScape series holds 9 Guinness World Records with 8 applying to RuneScape and 1 applying to Old School RuneScape. These records in order from oldest to newest include: •Most bots banned in a week with 7.7 million bots (as of October 30th, 2011) •Most fish in a video game with over 8 billion fish (as of July 21st, 2012) •First MMO videogame to release an "old school" version with Old School RuneScape releasing on February 15th, 2013 (as of February 22nd, 2013) •Most video game-related forum posts per day with an average of 27,000 posts every day on the official RuneScape forum (as of June 19th, 2013) •Most complex HTML 5 code in a video game made up of 152,472 lines of HTML 5 code and a further 421,196 lines of client-side scripting (as of June 19th, 2013) •Greatest aggregate time playing an MMO or MMORPG video game (all players) with over 443 billion minutes (as of July 27th, 2013) •Most users of an MMO video game with 254,994,744 player accounts (as of July 25th, 2017) •Most prolifically updated MMORPG video game with 1,014 updates (as of July 25th, 2017) •Most original pieces of music in a video game (including expansions) with 1,198 pieces of music (as of July 25th, 2017)
The game's designers when creating the sprite animations for Mickey had to design the levels to accommodate for the higher number of frames of animation and subsequent extra distance in Mickey's jump. When asked about the inspiration for the game's high-quality sprite animation, producer Emiko Yamamoto told Game Informer in 2013:
"For animation we studied the [Disney] films frame by frame and worked very hard to recreate it in the game. For example, with Mickey’s jump, we wanted to fully express his body movement so we added more frames of animation. As a result, his jump ended up being longer than a jump would be in a normal game, so we had to design the levels so that the distance of his jump worked."
According to Yamamoto, the developers aimed for these higher-quality animations in the first place because they valued making the world and characters feel alive and only realized they were capable of achieving this after creating supplementary animations like Mickey's idle and wavering animations:
"Actually this was something the main programmer and animator came up with. I recall them coming to me and showing me what they created (the idle animation and also the animation for when Mickey was wavering at the edge of a platform) and I was pleasantly surprised. I asked them “Oh, we can do something like this? Sure, let’s do it!” Making sure the world and characters feel alive was very important to the team."
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In the ending cutscene in the Japanese version, Gruntilda's skull was replaced with a sack that resembles her clothing. This change was most likely made to comply with political outcry in Japan over the 1997 Kobe child murders, during which a 14 year-old boy murdered two fellow students on separate occasions, the first victim having been beheaded. The cryptic nature of these crimes garnered enough attention in Japanese media and politics to cause the National Diet to reduce the age of criminal responsibility in Japan from 16 to 14 years old in the year 2000, the same year Banjo-Tooie was released. Despite this change, Gruntilda's eyeball can still be seen falling out of the bag in the censored version.
Final Fantasy IX is notorious for having one of the worst official strategy guides made for a video game at the time of its release. The reason why was because Squaresoft decided to host essential tips and secrets that players would want to seek out on its PlayOnline website in an effort to promote that, and forced Brady Games to accommodate for the change in the printed guide by directing readers to the website. Brady Games were against the idea because they knew their consumer base would not like it and understood that buying a strategy guide was worthless when the information they needed was online for free. However, they complied because they did not want to lose the exclusivity rights to making a strategy guide for Final Fantasy X. In the end, Squaresoft abandoned this cross-platform strategy guide format following the negative reception from Final Fantasy IX's guide and stuck with printing physical strategy guides for future games.
Revealed in concept art by former Retro Studios employee Sammy Hall, Retro Studios actually worked on two major projects for Nintendo using two of their biggest IPs before Nintendo cancelled them for unknown reasons.
One of them was a project in the Mario series centered around the supporting character Boo. Little is known about the project outside of the Concept art, but hints released with the concept art tease that it would have been released for one of Nintendo's handhelds (such as the DS) as well as there being things in the game referred to as "possession powers" and "Broomies".
The other game, rumored to be centered around the character of Sheik from The Legend of Zelda series, was more elaborate. Hints leaked by Hall and released with the concept art suggest that it would of been about, and centered around, the origin of the Master Sword in the Bad Timeline and would feature "the last Sheik" as it's main character. The game would have also seen the Dark Gerudo tribe engaging in their decade-long birth to Ganon. The project was describe as an "Action/RPG".
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Within 14 review copies of Animal Crossing: Wild World (that had save data already on them) sent to media outlets to try out its compatibility with the then-upcoming Wii game Animal Crossing: City Folk, it was discovered that the villager Baabara's catchphrase "daahling" and the nickname she refers to the player as had been altered by an unknown party. The nickname was replaced with the colloquial ethnic slur "Ñiggá" with the first and last letters replaced with accented letters, and the catchphrase being replaced with the message "♥ u long time!!", a reference to a scene from the 1987 film "Full Metal Jacket".
Nintendo later put out a statement apologizing for the mistake and recalled the review copies, explaining that the game's wi-fi features (which allow catchphrases, appropriate or not, to be spread) were to blame:
"Previously played copies of the 2005 DS game Animal Crossing: Wild World were sent to 14 members of the media to demonstrate the ability of players to transfer items to the new Animal Crossing: City Folk for Wii." "We regret that an offensive phrase was included without our knowledge via a wireless function that allows user-generated catchphrases to spread virally from one game to the next. This version is limited to 14 copies created for media review purposes only and is not available at retailers. We sincerely apologize for the incident and are working with media who received the game cards to return them to Nintendo immediately."
In the hallway of the 8th floor "Paranormal Productions", there are posters that reference past titles that the game's developer Next Level Games worked on. In order there's a poster of Mario about to kick a soccer ball (Super Mario Strikers), a poster of King Boo and Luigi (Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon), A poster of the overhead silhouetted cast of Mario Strikers Charged, and a poster of Little Mac, Doc Louis, and Mr. Sandman (Punch-Out!!). If Luigi sucks the last poster with the Poltergust, it will reveal a green boxing glove resembling that of Little Mac's.
In a promotional article published by Gamefan magazine, the game's art style was stated to have been heavily influenced by the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote Looney Tunes shorts directed by Warner Bros. animator Chuck Jones. On top of this, he was credited in promotional materials for overseeing some of the game's art direction and for choosing the game's flat-shaded, polygonal graphics, but was not credited in the final product.
According to Mike and Matt Chapman, a representative of Sega of America offered them the chance to make a game based off Homestar Runner, but they declined their offer because they were not offered creative control over the game's development.
"There was a dude from Sega of America awhile ago that we were kinda just talking to. I was like, 'Is there any way that this wouldn’t just be put into the factory and stuck out on the other end with something that looks kinda like our characters?' And the guy was like, 'Ehhhn, probably not.' He was very up front, and we were like, 'Well thanks for being honest, we’ll pass.'"
They were later approached by Telltale Games who offered more creative freedom and they both believed the episodic format would work better for the characters of Homestar Runner, leading to the creation of Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People.
There is a memorial to YouTuber and video game commentator TotalBiscuit found north-west of Slepe. Examining the grave adorned with his signature top hat prompts the text "He was always there to ask and answer one simple question", which is a reference to the opening statement from TotalBiscuit's series "WTF is...?".
Before its release, a free one-shot comic book produced by Marvel Comics detailing the events just before the start of the game was used to promote it in America. The cover art for the comic, drawn by Bill Sienkiewicz, was also used as the game's final cover art in North America. The person on the cover and initial protagonist of the comic is S.T.A.R.S. Bravo team member Richard Aiken.
In the mid 1980's, Nintendo began producing Famicom Disk Writer Kiosks in Japan where a customer could pay ¥500 yen (roughly $5 US dollars) as opposed to ¥2600 yen (roughly $26) for a game and have the game's data written onto a blank cartridge, and replace that game with another game whenever they wanted for ¥500, as an alternative to renting video games which is prohibited in Japan. The Kiosk played a 6 minute demo reel featuring three original music tracks and a short remix of the "Ground Theme" from Super Mario Bros., and cutscenes primarily featuring Mario and Luigi (and a brief appearance by two unknown characters) demonstrating the transfer process using updated assets from Super Mario Bros.
A pre-release screenshot shows an unused American bus modeled after buses owned by Coach USA, and was most likely scrapped to avoid copyright issues with that company.
The Japanese and PAL region releases of Spirit Camera: The Cursed Memoir have exclusive bonus content that can be accessed after completing Story Mode by scanning an augmented reality marker on the back of the instruction manual to the Wii port of Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly, released only in Japan and PAL regions under the name Project Zero 2: Wii Edition. Scanning the marker will unlock models of Mio and Mayu Amakura as they appear in that game to view in Spirit Photography mode. Because the Wii port of Project Zero 2 was never released in North America, these models were made inaccessible in the North American release of Spirit Camera: The Cursed Memoir.
The earliest version of the "cross" design for a directional pad, developed by Gunpei Yokoi and named by the patented inventor Ichiro Shirai as the "Multi-directional switch", was first developed, patented and introduced for the 1982 Game & Watch port of Donkey Kong.
As of August 2021, the RuneScape series holds 9 Guinness World Records with 8 applying to RuneScape and 1 applying to Old School RuneScape. These records in order from oldest to newest include:
The game's designers when creating the sprite animations for Mickey had to design the levels to accommodate for the higher number of frames of animation and subsequent extra distance in Mickey's jump. When asked about the inspiration for the game's high-quality sprite animation, producer Emiko Yamamoto told Game Informer in 2013:
Revealed in concept art by former Retro Studios employee Sammy Hall, Retro Studios actually worked on two major projects for Nintendo using two of their biggest IPs before Nintendo cancelled them for unknown reasons.
In the hallway of the 8th floor "Paranormal Productions", there are posters that reference past titles that the game's developer Next Level Games worked on. In order there's a poster of Mario about to kick a soccer ball (Super Mario Strikers), a poster of King Boo and Luigi (Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon), A poster of the overhead silhouetted cast of Mario Strikers Charged, and a poster of Little Mac, Doc Louis, and Mr. Sandman (Punch-Out!!). If Luigi sucks the last poster with the Poltergust, it will reveal a green boxing glove resembling that of Little Mac's.
There is a memorial to YouTuber and video game commentator TotalBiscuit found north-west of Slepe. Examining the grave adorned with his signature top hat prompts the text "He was always there to ask and answer one simple question", which is a reference to the opening statement from TotalBiscuit's series "WTF is...?".
Before its release, a free one-shot comic book produced by Marvel Comics detailing the events just before the start of the game was used to promote it in America. The cover art for the comic, drawn by Bill Sienkiewicz, was also used as the game's final cover art in North America. The person on the cover and initial protagonist of the comic is S.T.A.R.S. Bravo team member Richard Aiken.
In the mid 1980's, Nintendo began producing Famicom Disk Writer Kiosks in Japan where a customer could pay ¥500 yen (roughly $5 US dollars) as opposed to ¥2600 yen (roughly $26) for a game and have the game's data written onto a blank cartridge, and replace that game with another game whenever they wanted for ¥500, as an alternative to renting video games which is prohibited in Japan. The Kiosk played a 6 minute demo reel featuring three original music tracks and a short remix of the "Ground Theme" from Super Mario Bros., and cutscenes primarily featuring Mario and Luigi (and a brief appearance by two unknown characters) demonstrating the transfer process using updated assets from Super Mario Bros.
A pre-release screenshot shows an unused American bus modeled after buses owned by Coach USA, and was most likely scrapped to avoid copyright issues with that company.