Head localizer Janet Hsu struggled with the inclusion of real-life Japanese novelist Natsume Sōseki when localizing The Great Ace Attorney games. While Natsume is recognizable to Japanese players (his books are required learning in Japanese schools), his character relied on a natural cultural warmth towards him. This made it difficult to make the character as lovable for an audience who would likely not know who he is.
Although it had never been stated that Mia Fey had won all of her completed trials, Shu Takumi considered this to be true when considering how the game's fourth episode "Turnabout Beginnings" (which canonically features the first trial for both Mia and Miles Edgeworth, the latter of whom had been stated to have a perfect win record in trials prior to the events of the first game) would be resolved:
"Ayasato Chihiro! Became a defense attorney at 24 and was always undefeated! Mitsurugi Reiji! Became a prosecutor at 20 and was always victorious!
Yes. Their pasts were already set. A trial where “the undefeated” collides with the “ever victorious”. What could the verdict be…? There was only one answer to that on my mind."
Although Nickelodeon interfered signficiantly with the development of Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl, moveset and gameplay designer Thaddeus Crews has stated that he was surprised and grateful for the amount of creative control the game's teams were given:
"I'm just happy we had as much freedom as we did, because people can look at the game and very much see what feels like restrictions and make very, very valid criticisms based on that, which can be difficult from a developer view to not comment on, but it is at the same time, not entirely, wholly restrictive, the fact that movesets were able to be constructed by development team, and still would have to be approved through due process, but at its origin, were on our end, and then implemented by us - that is rewarding, that is more rewarding overall to work with these than it feels like pressure."
On the base platform of Irken Armada Invasion, there is a monitor that displays a static image of the Irken insignia. There are files suggesting that this was originally going to be an animation rather than an image, as animation textures exist for a set of clips of the Almighty Tallest taken directly from Invader Zim episodes, and there is an unused how-to-play graphic showing one of said clips on the monitor. It is not known if these clips were planned to be used or if they were placeholders for another animated graphic, and whether they were scrapped for licensing issues with TV footage, distraction issues on a stage made for competitive play, or something else entirely.
According to the Scandinavian manual for Mr. Gimmick, the girl Yumetaro must rescue is named Mary. In all other releases of the game, she is unnamed. During development, she was planned to be named either "Kasumi" or "Ayaka".
Following the Steam Early Access release of Palworld on January 18, the developers faced accusations of copying Pokémon models for the designs of the game's Pals. The allegations were made by a Twitter user named byofrog, who claimed that some of Palworld's creature models were directly copied and edited from 3D models ripped from Pokémon games. These allegations were criticized for scaling the Pokémon and Palworld models to be comparable in size, leading to claims that edited models were not reliable or accurate evidence. byofrog claimed in response that because the models from each game loaded into modeling software at different sizes, scaling them appropriately were the only necessary edits made to compare them, and that the models' meshes, proportions, and other fundamental features were not edited.
Takuro Mizobe, the CEO of Palworld developer Pocket Pair, denied the allegations, calling them "slanderous", and also stated that Pocket Pair has "no intention of infringing upon the intellectual property of other companies". On January 25, The Pokémon Company released an official statement confirming they were aware of a flood of inquiries about "another company’s game released in January 2024", and that they were currently investigating them.
Despite its status as a crossover game, both Level-5 CEO Akihiro Hino and Ace Attorney series creator Shu Takumi view Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney as a legitimate installment in their respective series, rather than as a simple spin-off. In an "Iwata Asks" interview, when asked if the game was ideal for those who hadn't played either series, Hino specifically said:
"Yes, I think so. This title is not a spin-off from either series. When we were working on the game, we always had the image in mind that it was a fusion of the two. As a result, I think this title outdoes both original series in terms of volume and quality. In that sense, I think that even people who don’t own a Nintendo 3DS yet have to get hold of this game. I’d consider it a “must buy”. (laughs)
The decision to add pigtails as a selectable female hairstyle in Dark Souls was the last request by a female graphic artist in the development team who had to leave due to an illness.
During the development of Dark Souls, a popular tactic among the development team to go past Blighttown's Blowdart Sniper enemies (who can inflict the player with Toxic, a poison effect that gradually reduces the player's health) was to use the Dung Pie item to inflict Toxic on yourself already. This is because the Toxic effect from Dung Pies are much milder and the Toxic effect in general does not stack. This was not intended, but was kept in because they felt it added extra depth to the game.
In a March 2002 Nintendo Dream questionnaire with Mitsuaki Hagishima (the general manager of Nintendo's Planning Department), it was revealed that Banjo & Kazooie were planned to be included in Super Smash Bros. Melee as trophies. However, time constraints and the complexity of the approval process (as Rare, the developers of the Banjo-Kazooie IP, were situated in the UK) lead to this being dropped, as well as other Rare associated characters (such as Joanna Dark from Perfect Dark) not appearing in the final game. This was brought up again in a September 2009 issue of Rare's Scribes, where it was mentioned that a lot of Rare character trophies were planned to be included in Melee, but it never happened.
Earthworm Jim: Menace 2 the Galaxy has unused text pertaining to Game Boy Printer support. It's thought that this feature would have allowed players to print out level passwords.
A prototype for Color a Dinosaur shows that the game was originally called Paint Me! and used black backgrounds instead of white. Despite the title not signifying that the game features dinosaurs, there is nothing to suggest that the game was ever going to feature any pages other than dinosaurs, as all the pages on the prototype are also dinosaurs.
According to series co-creator Ed Boon in a video/interview on Mortal Kombat's YouTube channel on May 19, 2023, Liu Kang was chosen to be on the cover of Mortal Kombat 1 to signify a new story arc, in turn diverting from Scorpion and Sub-Zero, who were regularly chosen for the games' covers.
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Within the game files, some of the game makers vented their annoyance over the game development process:
"I hate this game's coding. I can't see jack or shit of what's in it! Stream %d has read %d more bytes than the file size. Please tell Keith. If possible, save your debug output and mail it to him......Please also note the level on which it happened, how long you were playing for and what if any dialogue was playing Serious Shit. SOUNDSYS thread does not work.....SOUNDSYS secondary thread has started...Serious Shit. Second thread does not work request to free %d bytes of spu ram failed !!!!...things are shit. memory allocated above 2mb."
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According to a BBC News article from January 2003, Sony agreed to edit The Getaway after they received complaints from British Telecommunications (BT). BT was concerned about the misuse of a transit van bearing its logo and asked the developers to edit the game to remove BT's appearance entirely. The section of the game that BT objected to was the "Filthy Business" mission, where the main character Mark Hammond must attack and steal a BT van and then raid a police station to rescue another character. BT did not want attacks on its engineers to be portrayed in the game, and they were also worried that the game might incite real-life attacks on them. The section was removed from future releases of the game 12 days after its release, and all following versions of the game have a plain light-blueish van in the mission, with the dialogue also being altered to refer to it as just "a van" rather than a "BT van".
Originally, the game was passed with an MA 15+ rating on November 22, 2002. However, it was resubmitted and banned just five days later due to a cutscene showing the character Johnny Chai being tortured in detail. Another version of the game which censored version of this scene was released weeks later on December 13 with the identical rating.
These censorship changes are documented by the different releases of the game, starting with the 1.03 European version. This version included the Johnny Chai torture scene and the Ford Transit van with full BT livery and Ford badge in the cutscene model. After the game was initially banned in Australia, the developers altered the camera angles of the scene, focusing more on the characters' facial expressions rather than the violence. The cutscene model of the BT van was also re-textured, and the Ford badges were removed. This version is known as the 1.1 European version of the game, which was followed by the dispute from BT, resulting in their removal from future releases of the game.
According to series co-creator Ed Boon in a video/interview on Mortal Kombat's YouTube channel on May 19, 2023, Mortal Kombat 1's name was chosen because the developers consider it the beginning of a new universe and not a continuation of the Mortal Kombat 11 story. The characters have completely different roles in this new timeline, and the title is meant to emphasize that.
On September 25, 2010, Level-5 employee Jiro Ishii accidentally ousted the game's existence via a tweet to Square Enix employee Jin Fujisawa that stated in Japanese:
"Huh? Oh, Gyakuten XX. I'm making it, with Mr. Takumi!"
This started rumors of a new Ace Attorney game being developed by Level-5, due to the trend of newer Capcom games from established franchises being developed externally (i.e. DmC: Devil May Cry being developed by Ninja Theory). Ishii quickly covered up the mistake later that day, tweeting out:
"A misunderstanding seems to be spreading, so let me say that I'm currently working only on Time Travelers."
Due to long-standing copyright issues regarding the character Sherlock Holmes brought about by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's estate (which had previously delayed the games' release), the international release of The Great Ace Attorney games changed his name to "Herlock Sholmes". According to series creator Shu Takumi, this was done as an allusion to "Arsène Lupin versus Herlock Sholmes", a story collection by Maurice Leblanc.
Following the announcement of the name "Herlock Sholmes", various memes came about surrounding the character and the circumstances for the renaming in regards to copyright law. This got to the point where major news outlets began covering it, with some noting that the goofy-sounding name "fit with the comedic and sometimes irreverent tone of the Ace Attorney series, even if it does leave a few things lost in translation."
On the Name Entry screen, when attempting to submit an inappropriate name (i.e. profanity, sexual content), it will instead be replaced with a different, more appropriate name. Humorously, this also applies when attempting to submit the names DDR (an abbreviation for rival series Dance Dance Revolution) or 573 (The "Konami Number", Konami being the company behind DDR), as they will be replaced with "SMX" (abbreviation for StepManiaX) and 123 respectively.
According to character designer Takaya Imamura, each of the original Star Fox team members were modeled after his fellow Nintendo staff members at the time:
•Fox was based on Shigeru Miyamoto, with Miyamoto said to have a fox-like face. •Falco was based on Tsuyoshi Watanabe, as the development team laughed over how his nose stuck out like a beak. •Peppy was based on Katsuya Eguchi, with Eguchi said to have a mouth like a hare. •Slippy was based on Yoichi Yamada, with Yamada said to have large, round eyes.
Imamura has also stated that he based Andross on his "boss at the time". It remains unknown who at Nintendo he is specifically talking about, though it's been long rumored that Andross was intended as a caricature of then-Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi, who was known for his cutthroat and ruthless ways. However, it's also been speculated that Imamura is referring to Hiroshi Ikeda, the then-manager of Nintendo R&D4 (later EAD) who was also Miyamoto's boss, though it's worth pointing out that Ikeda had stepped down from his position in 1992.
On the base platform of Irken Armada Invasion, there is a monitor that displays a static image of the Irken insignia. There are files suggesting that this was originally going to be an animation rather than an image, as animation textures exist for a set of clips of the Almighty Tallest taken directly from Invader Zim episodes, and there is an unused how-to-play graphic showing one of said clips on the monitor. It is not known if these clips were planned to be used or if they were placeholders for another animated graphic, and whether they were scrapped for licensing issues with TV footage, distraction issues on a stage made for competitive play, or something else entirely.
In a March 2002 Nintendo Dream questionnaire with Mitsuaki Hagishima (the general manager of Nintendo's Planning Department), it was revealed that Banjo & Kazooie were planned to be included in Super Smash Bros. Melee as trophies. However, time constraints and the complexity of the approval process (as Rare, the developers of the Banjo-Kazooie IP, were situated in the UK) lead to this being dropped, as well as other Rare associated characters (such as Joanna Dark from Perfect Dark) not appearing in the final game. This was brought up again in a September 2009 issue of Rare's Scribes, where it was mentioned that a lot of Rare character trophies were planned to be included in Melee, but it never happened.
A prototype for Color a Dinosaur shows that the game was originally called Paint Me! and used black backgrounds instead of white. Despite the title not signifying that the game features dinosaurs, there is nothing to suggest that the game was ever going to feature any pages other than dinosaurs, as all the pages on the prototype are also dinosaurs.
According to character designer Takaya Imamura, each of the original Star Fox team members were modeled after his fellow Nintendo staff members at the time: