The now defunct Jurassic Park Institute website featured what appeared to be an unused 3D model of a Chasmosaurus for Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis. This would line up with the developer's comments about wanting to include more dinosaur species outside of the 25 present in the final game, although curiously, this species is not mentioned within the game's "Constant.ini" file, which mentions dozens of other unused dinosaur species.
The development team for this game experimented with baby dinosaurs midway through the project, attempting to use schemes such as scaling the adult dinosaurs down to make them infants. The team realized that this didn't look right and that making proper infant dinosaurs would require new models and AI, which would be similar to the work required for adding more dinosaur species. As a result, baby dinosaurs were dropped, along with any ideas for a "Dino Petting Zoo".
The final version of Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis includes only 25 dinosaur species. However, the development team had originally hoped to include 40 species very early on, with many of them implied to be sea-dwelling and flying creatures. Ultimately, this was whittled down to the 25 dinosaurs seen in the final game due to time constraints, and also the developers wanting to focus on creating fewer, but more interesting dinosaurs, as opposed to a larger number of less interesting dinosaurs. As such, they decided to make the dinosaurs they had count and focus on species that players would recognize from the films.
Only the PlayStation 2 version of the game includes proper shadows for the dinosaurs and guests. In earlier versions, shadows were originally apart of all entities (which also includes buildings and foliage) in at least the PC version of the game.
In a 2019 interview with Game Center CX host Arino Kacho, director and series creator Shigesato Itoi revealed that Ninten's asthma was inspired by his own experiences with the disease. According to Itoi, he would often play video games late at night while trying to fall asleep sitting up, as lying down would induce severe coughing fits. This resulted in him developing an interest in making a game with Nintendo, to whom he felt "indebted" for keeping him busy during a difficult part of his routine. Once development on Mother started, Ninten's asthma was one of the first traits that Itoi came up with. Itoi stated:
"I wanted a weak hero. The main character in Mother has asthma, and his dad is never around. That was the setup I had in mind when wondering what kind of adventure story I could make."
Race Ace is the only game in Don't Buy This to have been released as an individual cassette prior to the compilation's release, credited to Tony Rainbird, who helped create the Firebird label that Don't Buy This was published under, meaning its inclusion may have been an in-joke.
A port of Bubsy 2 to the Sega Game Gear was planned and seemingly completed, but never released. In the surfaced screenshots of the game's prototype, it appears to be a fully colorized version of the Game Boy version (playing the Game Boy version of Bubsy 2 on a Super Game Boy will give the graphics a slight red tint).
In the source code for Bubsy in Fractured Furry Tales, a string of text can be found reading "no smutty comments please", suggesting there were previously inappropriate developer comments in the code thet were deleted.
The developers of Bubsy in Fractured Furry Tales got very agitated with having to listen to Bubsy's catchphrases on loop, and would repeat them to one another mockingly. For one of producer Faran Thomason's co-workers, Bubsy's catchphrase "What could possibly go wrong?" became a 20-year long in-joke with other developers of the game (in spite of said catchphrase not even being said in Fractured Furry Tales outside of the ending text scroll).
Bubsy in Fractured Furry Tales was originally intended to be a straight port of Bubsy in Claws Encounters of the Furred Kind to the Atari Jaguar, owing to the Jaguar's hardware similarities to the Sega Genesis. It was ultimately decided that, due to the age of Claws Encounters at the time, it would instead be a new game built off of the older game's engine. Accolade were not able to provide source code for Bubsy 2 due to it not having been completed at the time.
Good-Feel being the development company behind Princess Peach: Showtime! was not officially revealed until the day before the game's release, where it was discovered via the game's credits. It was also revealed through the credits that the game had been directed by Good-Feel president Etsunobu Ebisu, who had not directed a game since Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon in 1997. Two weeks prior to this, however, Good-Feel's involvement was leaked via the code from the game's demo version. When asked who the development company was, Nintendo merely stated that it would be revealed in the game's credits.
BoKe Travelog was a PC browser game released exclusively in China that ran from 2011 to 2013 before shutting down. The game was very clearly inspired by Poptropica, though notably included a background story for the game's events, unlike Poptropica. Set in an alternate timeline where climate change forced humans to move from land to sea due to rising water levels, it follows a group of people known as "BoKe" as they confront the evil Dr. Hedra, who wishes to take over the world and has begun attacking the various islands left from the climate change to do so. The game also featured various visual similarities to Poptropica, namely with its map layout and the plots of each island, though it did use its own spin on the character designs.
BoKe Travelog had eight islands, each one of which was based on an island seen in Poptropica. The islands were:
• "Potato Island", based on "24 Carrot Island". • "Octopus Island", based on "Shark Tooth Island". • "BoKe Island", based on "Early Poptropica Island". • "Time Tangled Island", based on the island of the same name. • "Haunted House Island", based on the mini-quest of the same name. • "Diamond Island", based on "Counterfeit Island". • "Superman Island", based on "Super Power Island". • "Battle Island", which had various aspects of Poptropica's multiplayer interactions, such as the Paint war, Hoops, and Pathwise minigames.
Also like Poptropica, a book series based on BoKe Travelog (called "Mystery Island Adventures") was released, featuring stories unrelated to the in-game islands. The game was ultimately shutdown on December 22nd, 2013 according to a news post on the site: while the post does not state why it was shutdown, it emphasized that it was a difficult decision to end the game.
The Poostall Dude is voiced by a fan known as Christian Hunter, who also did uncredited voice work as the announcer for the Postal: Redux and Postal 2 DLCs of the game Zaccaria Pinball.
The developers of Super Mario Strikers were concerned that one of Waluigi's goal celebration animations, referred to by fans as the "crotch chop", would not be approved. When developers from Nintendo saw the animation, they did not say anything about it at all, so the developers did not bring it up to Nintendo, fearing that drawing attention to it would result in their approval board changing its mind. The game's director, Mike Inglehart, described the reasoning behind Waluigi's crotch chopping:
"The inspiration for that came from quite frankly like the shape – even though it’s a ‘V’, we thought it was a representation of part of the ‘W’, so that’s sort of his way of connecting into his first initial. Waluigi, we kind of depicted him as being – yeah, he’s a bit, I don’t know, a bit edgier than Wario. Wario’s kind of on-the-nose in terms of a bad guy, and Waluigi, we just wanted to explore him a bit more. He’s actually kind of mean to his sidekicks too. They’re both mean to their sidekicks but Wario’s about self-loathing and Waluigi is about blame, and everybody else has done something wrong."
The animation was also used in the game's sequel Mario Strikers Charged.
In the seventh episode of each course, the player is required to chase down and defeat Shadow Mario to obtain a Shine Sprite, which spawns from his dematerializing body as he teleports away. In actuality, the Shine Sprites are stored at fixed locations and are simply teleported to his location by the flag "appearShineFromKageMario". If the flag is replaced with "appearShineFromNPC", the Shine Sprites appear where they are stored, implying that these were their originally intended locations. The fixed points in "Shadow Mario Revisited", "Hold It, Shadow Mario!", and "Shadow Mario Runs Wild" also feature dedicated cameras for spawning cutscenes, corroborating the idea.
Of note is that the internal location for the Shine Sprite in "Shadow Mario Runs Wild" places it partially inside Pianta Village's golden mushroom, which further implies that this object had its height raised at some point during development.
When the company first started, their original first project was intended to be a side-scrolling action game for PC called "Evolver". However, the game was never actually finished, likely due to the company having very few staff members at the time (the company itself only consisted of president Patrick Ketchum, programmer John Krause, game designer Mike Dawson, and graphic artist Joby Otero).
According to art director Ikeno "Daigo Ikeno" Metaka, Dragon's Dogma's cover artwork was inspired by the Japanese covers of Dragon Quest, and also Dragon Quest II, because of the pawn placement on that cover. Both covers were illustrated by Akira Toriyama, and this information was revealed after his death was announced in March 2024.
Concept art for Paper Mario: Color Splash shows that the captain of the Violet Passage was at one point going to have a dark skin tone. This would've marked the first instance of a Toad with a distinct skin color (not counting usually-pale Toads under a transformation) in a Mario game, but not the first instance of a non-pale Toad in the Mario franchise as a whole. The Super Mario Bros. Super Show featured a one-off Native American Toad named Pronto, a parody of Tonto from The Lone Ranger, in the episode "The Provolone Ranger".
Pixar's higher-ups almost rejected the prospect of including Pixar content in Kingdom Hearts III, as none of them were gamers or knew what Kingdom Hearts is or how popular it was. Theme park creative director Tasha Sounart managed to convince them on how popular Kingdom Hearts is, and pointed out that catering to the series' teen audience lined up with Pixar's desire to be seen as an all-ages film studio instead of simply being perceived as targeting children and their parents alone. Sounart noted that, while the Pixar studio members familiar with Kingdom Hearts did not need to extensively detail the lore to those that weren't except when needed, it was needed to be clarified that the Pixar characters would not be meeting one another, or any other Disney characters aside from Donald and Goofy, as Pixar has an aversion to crossovers and shared universes outside of their signature Easter eggs.
In an interview with the game's developer Masaaki Nagaura published in STG Gameside #5 in 2011, Nagaura stated that he ended up working with the game's illustrator Tanaka "Tony Taka" Takayuki, because each of their companies were located close to each other, and they were already on friendly terms. Nagaura wanted Takayuki because shoot 'em up's already have a reputation of only being for hardcore players, and he felt that Takayuki's illustrations could help make it appear inviting to a wider, broader audience.
The now defunct Jurassic Park Institute website featured what appeared to be an unused 3D model of a Chasmosaurus for Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis. This would line up with the developer's comments about wanting to include more dinosaur species outside of the 25 present in the final game, although curiously, this species is not mentioned within the game's "Constant.ini" file, which mentions dozens of other unused dinosaur species.
Only the PlayStation 2 version of the game includes proper shadows for the dinosaurs and guests. In earlier versions, shadows were originally apart of all entities (which also includes buildings and foliage) in at least the PC version of the game.
In a 2019 interview with Game Center CX host Arino Kacho, director and series creator Shigesato Itoi revealed that Ninten's asthma was inspired by his own experiences with the disease. According to Itoi, he would often play video games late at night while trying to fall asleep sitting up, as lying down would induce severe coughing fits. This resulted in him developing an interest in making a game with Nintendo, to whom he felt "indebted" for keeping him busy during a difficult part of his routine. Once development on Mother started, Ninten's asthma was one of the first traits that Itoi came up with. Itoi stated:
A port of Bubsy 2 to the Sega Game Gear was planned and seemingly completed, but never released. In the surfaced screenshots of the game's prototype, it appears to be a fully colorized version of the Game Boy version (playing the Game Boy version of Bubsy 2 on a Super Game Boy will give the graphics a slight red tint).
The developers of Super Mario Strikers were concerned that one of Waluigi's goal celebration animations, referred to by fans as the "crotch chop", would not be approved. When developers from Nintendo saw the animation, they did not say anything about it at all, so the developers did not bring it up to Nintendo, fearing that drawing attention to it would result in their approval board changing its mind. The game's director, Mike Inglehart, described the reasoning behind Waluigi's crotch chopping:
According to art director Ikeno "Daigo Ikeno" Metaka, Dragon's Dogma's cover artwork was inspired by the Japanese covers of Dragon Quest, and also Dragon Quest II, because of the pawn placement on that cover. Both covers were illustrated by Akira Toriyama, and this information was revealed after his death was announced in March 2024.
Concept art for Paper Mario: Color Splash shows that the captain of the Violet Passage was at one point going to have a dark skin tone. This would've marked the first instance of a Toad with a distinct skin color (not counting usually-pale Toads under a transformation) in a Mario game, but not the first instance of a non-pale Toad in the Mario franchise as a whole. The Super Mario Bros. Super Show featured a one-off Native American Toad named Pronto, a parody of Tonto from The Lone Ranger, in the episode "The Provolone Ranger".
