The game's artist Kinu Nishimura, likely used a picture of Masutatsu Ōyama (more commonly known as Mas Oyama) doing his stance as a reference work for her illustrated work of Ryu.
On February 3, 2023, 9 days after Forspoken's release, Square Enix released the outline of the Results Briefing held on that day, which showed some insight on the publisher's takeaways concerning its recent game releases.
While the briefing primarily focused on the financial results of numerous underperforming "small and mid-sized titles" that released in the quarter of October-December 2022 to try and fill the gap for declining net sales in the "HD Games sub-segment", the company decided to make a comment on the sales and reception for Forspoken. On page 6 of the outline, Square Enix president Yosuke Matsuda stated the following:
"Reviews of “FORSPOKEN,” which we released on January 24, 2023, have been challenging. However, the game has also received positive feedback on its action features, including its parkour and combat capabilities, so it has yielded results that will lead to improvement of our development capabilities of other games in the future. That said, its sales have been lackluster, and while the performance of new titles with February and March release dates will be the ultimate determinant, we see considerable downside risk to our FY2023/3 earnings."
The effects of the game's negative reception would come to fruition on February 28, when Square Enix announced that its developer, Luminous Productions, would be absorbed back into Square Enix on May 1 to "further bolster the competitive prowess of the Group's development studios". Despite Forspoken's failure, Luminous Productions said that they would remain committed to the game in the meantime, releasing patch updates and working on the game's upcoming DLC "In Tanta We Trust", which would later release on May 26, after the studio's closure.
Between 2016 and 2017, male specimens of a new species of Nocticola cockroach were discovered at the Bukit Timah Nature Reserve in Singapore. The species' discovery was first published in 2023, and it was also announced that it had been named after the Ultra Beast Pheromosa, a Pokémon designed to resemble a "freshly-moulted" American cockroach, from the Generation VII games Pokémon Sun & Moon. The authors of the findings were fans of the series and noticed similarities between the two, including "having a long antenna, wings that mimic a hood and long slender legs." Unlike the hardy American cockroach, cockroaches in the Nocticola genus are very delicate and are known to be found in Africa, south-east Asia, and Australia. This species, Nocticola pheromosa, is the first scientifically-documented instance of a Nocticola cockroach in Singapore.
In a 2010 interview with the game's producer Yoshinori Ono published in the MTV Multiplayer Blog, before the release of Super Street Fighter IV, he revealed that he's a big fan of the character Rainbow Mika, and that he wanted her to be put in Street Fighter IV, especially in Super Street Fighter IV. He "basically harassed the director constantly" by just whispering in his ear "Rainbow Mika! Rainbow Mika!". Ultimately, the directors of either version of Street Fighter IV didn't listen to Ono for unknown reasons, and Rainbow Mika never appeared in any Street Fighter IV installments. She would later appear as a playable character in Street Fighter V.
In the 1992 interview with the game's designer/writer Oji Hiroi published in The Super Famicom magazine, an interviewer asked him in what ways was Tengai Makyou II an upgrade from the first game? He responded that the game cartridge could now hold 2 MB of storage. He went on to talk about how they wanted the first Tengai Makyou to be a CD-ROM game before the PC Engine system went on sale, but once they began the development, a variety of unexpected problems cropped up. They spent about a year prototyping and doing various experiments, and "for awhile it didn't seem like we were going to be able to make an RPG at all."
In a 2000 interview with the game's director Yoshio Sakamoto published in the Nice Games' Game Boy Navigator tankobon, he stated at the time, he had been developing Kaeru no Tame ni Kane wa Naru and 3D games were just beginning to emerge. Argonaut Software, an overseas company with a high degree of technical expertise, approached him and his team with the offer to make a 3D game with them. Sakamoto thought it would be a useful experience, so he took the job, but he noted it was hard, summing up the hardships he faced working on the game as "brutal". Sakamoto had not finished writing the scenario for Kaeru, so someone else was put in charge of his half-written scenario, and he told them to continue working on it until he returned. When the development of X was finished and he returned to see how Kaeru was turning out, the game was essentially content-complete, with the only thing left for him to do was to fine-tune the enemy placement and the balance of the maps himself. Despite his minimal involvement with that game, he thought that it turned out exactly as he imagined.
In 2/86 interview with the game's designer Masanobu Endō published in the issue of Famimaga magazine, while he was discussing with Shigeru Miyamoto about how hard it is to work with employees, he mentioned one incident when working on The Tower of Druaga where he proposed to his team that he wanted the player to be able to defend with his shield even when his sword is drawn. After constantly pleading: "Put it in, put it in, it'll be cool! It'll look good! Put. it. in!!!", he eventually convinced them to put it in.
In the 2/86 interview with the game's designer Masanobu Endō published in the issue of Famimaga magazine, he commented that one of the team's employees named Akira was nicknamed "Bakira", because he had a tendency to break things. This in-joke is likely a play on the kanji "爆" (baku), to explode/burst/roar. Endō then admitted he used his nickname as an inspiration for the enemies as "Bacura" enemies in Xevious, commenting:
"...my generation, the "Gundam Generation", we love to make up stupid reasons for every choice we make. Even if it's a lie. (laughs)"
According to a 1998 The PlayStation magazine interview with director/producer/writer Hideo Kojima & designer/artist Yoji Shinkawa, they commented about designing the character Psycho Mantis, specifically how elements such as him wearing a gas mask because he had "no face" were "part of expanding and developing the story", according to Shinkawa. Kojima clarified that while he didn't know why Shinkawa made those choices, he was not against them being made, stating that "unexpected things like this are part of the fun".
Early concept art of Psycho Mantis by Shinkawa includes notes that read: "His body is like a preying mantis, spindly and emaciated. He wears a mask to hide his ugly face." and "Is this Psycho's secret real face?"
In Episode 7 of the TV series adaptation of The Last of Us, Ellie and Riley are seen playing the arcade version of Mortal Kombat II. At one point, Riley uses Mileena's fatality on Ellie's character Raiden, with Riley being heard pressing four buttons to initiate the killing blow. Following the episode's release, a number of fans online claimed this was inaccurate, as one can simply just press and hold the Heavy Kick command during the "Finish Him!" prompt to initiate her Fatality. However, other Mortal Kombat players argued that the show's display of gameplay could possibly be correct, pointing out that there is an alternate way to do the fatality. Specifically, Mileena can perform the Fatality by standing close to the opponent, holding the Block button and tapping the Heavy Kick command.
In 1/92 interview with the game's producer Shigeru Miyamoto published in the edition of Famicom Tsuushin magazine, he was asked if the SNES version of Zelda would be the same as the Super Famicom version. He responded that him and his team thought about making some improvements to the SNES version, including a number of things they could not complete in time for the Super Famicom release. Zelda makes full use of the available 8 MB of ROM space, but they knew they were going to need extra space for the English translation. They initially planned to increase the ROM size by 1 MB to solve this, until the compression routine their programmers wrote actually allowed them to fit everything in the original 8 MB storage. Miyamoto joked that they would save those aforementioned improvements for the next game.
In 1/92 interview with the game's producer Shigeru Miyamoto published in the edition of Famicom Tsuushin magazine, he revealed that him and his team began developing the game at the same time as Super Mario World. Even back when they initially revealed the Super Famicom at the company in July, 1989, their plan had always had been to make and release the game alongside Super Mario World as a launch title for the new system. They were hoping to release the game in March of 1991, but it was delayed into the Summer, until it was finally released on the one-year anniversary of the release of the Super Famicom on November 21, 1991.
In June 2020, Chris Avellone, who helped with the game's writing early in development, was accused by three people of using his status in the video game industry for sexual harrassment and misconduct towards women. On director Stephen Kick's Twitter account, when asked if Avellone was still involved in the game following these allegations, Kick tweeted that he had not been involved with the game since 2017, and that Night Dive took the game's writing in a different direction after restarting development in 2018. The allegations were later retracted by the accusers following a libel lawsuit in 2023.
According to former Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata, Toshio Iwai was the only person that created Electroplankton due to the easy accessibility of tools at the time that helped people develop games.
The Sewer Crocodiles are based off the titular characters from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The crocodiles themselves are named Bill, Mark, Steve, and Gabe. These are references to Microsoft's co-founder Bill Gates, Facebook's co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, Apple's co-founder Steve Jobs, and Valve's co-founder Gabe Newell, respectively.
On February 7th, 2023, Tighnari's English voice actor Elliot Gindi announced on Twitter that he would be taking a break from his online activity to seek therapy, claiming that the "influx of fans and fame" he gained from his work in the game "really messed [him] up". The following day, two moderators for Gindi's fan Discord servers posted to Twitter alleged evidence of offenses that Gindi had conducted in private, ranging from emotional abuse, blackmail, sexism, and having sexual relations with underage fans, with other users also coming forward to accuse Gindi of further acts. Shortly after these documents were posted, Gindi posted a Twitlonger tweet confirming that most of the allegations were true, although he denied the allegations involving underage fans. On February 16th, the game's developer HoYoverse released an official statement revealing that Gindi would no longer be voicing Tighnari, with the official reason being a "breach of contract". They also confirmed that the character would be recast at a later date, and on April 11th, they revealed he would be replaced by American actor Zachary Gordon.
In a March 2023 interview with the game's director Stig Asmussen published in PLAY magazine, he explained why the game didn't appear on the last-gen PlayStation 4 and Xbox One consoles:
"Jedi: Fallen Order was a fantastic upgrade that really brought the game into its own. “[That version] was a good proving ground while we were considering how to enhance Survivor…We actually considered ray tracing for the new-gen Fallen Order because we were already building it into Survivor, but we ultimately scrapped it, because the environment art authoring between the generations was pretty different. But the process did help us define how we wanted to approach ray tracing on our modified version of the Unreal 4 engine."
"You’ll experience the benefit of the more powerful hardware throughout Survivor. Bottom line, we learned quickly that we could take advantage of the faster processors, larger/faster memory, better loading times, etc, to create much larger maps, with more detail, greater density, broader enemy/NPC variety, and overall fidelity. These features aligned perfectly with how we wanted to push the game. We didn’t want to break what we did in the first game because it was well received, but we wanted to evolve/enhance the experience. This new generation allowed us to do exactly that, and I believe it translates to a true new-gen experience in the Star Wars universe."
During an interview with Game Informer, co-directors Kazunori Kadoi and Yasuhiro Ampo admitted that Resident Evil 4's status as a "masterpiece" made it difficult to remake. Ampo stated by saying:
"Honestly speaking, I didn't want to do it. Among the RE series and even games in general, the original RE4 has become a legend. I knew that it would be difficult to successfully remake it, and if we made one mistake with any updates we made, we would anger its fans."
Kadoi would later add saying:
"When I first heard about remaking RE4, my first impression was that since the original is a masterpiece, a remake would be difficult. So I didn't want to do it."
Both directors would later get on board with remaking Resident Evil 4, and decided to approach the game differently compared to other remakes they have worked on. The team first decided to not "capture lightning in a bottle", noting that the original had such a massive impact and that the best thing to do was to stay faithful to the original and try and evolve it in smaller ways by replaying the original game to see what can be changed or evolved, which resulted in the removal of quick-time events and other gameplay changes to Ashley such as climbing ladders and getting less in the player's way.
In a post on the 2019 Valkyrie Profile Official Message Board, scenario planner Miho Akabane revealed that the inspiration for the story concept of the game came to him from watching a commercial for the original Valkyrie Profile, which showed Lenneth retrieving a man's soul as his aged mother grieved over the body. Akabane wondered that if the woman could see Valkyrie, if she would see her as a goddess of salvation, or of death.
The game's artist Kinu Nishimura, likely used a picture of Masutatsu Ōyama (more commonly known as Mas Oyama) doing his stance as a reference work for her illustrated work of Ryu.
Between 2016 and 2017, male specimens of a new species of Nocticola cockroach were discovered at the Bukit Timah Nature Reserve in Singapore. The species' discovery was first published in 2023, and it was also announced that it had been named after the Ultra Beast Pheromosa, a Pokémon designed to resemble a "freshly-moulted" American cockroach, from the Generation VII games Pokémon Sun & Moon. The authors of the findings were fans of the series and noticed similarities between the two, including "having a long antenna, wings that mimic a hood and long slender legs." Unlike the hardy American cockroach, cockroaches in the Nocticola genus are very delicate and are known to be found in Africa, south-east Asia, and Australia. This species, Nocticola pheromosa, is the first scientifically-documented instance of a Nocticola cockroach in Singapore.
According to a 1998 The PlayStation magazine interview with director/producer/writer Hideo Kojima & designer/artist Yoji Shinkawa, they commented about designing the character Psycho Mantis, specifically how elements such as him wearing a gas mask because he had "no face" were "part of expanding and developing the story", according to Shinkawa. Kojima clarified that while he didn't know why Shinkawa made those choices, he was not against them being made, stating that "unexpected things like this are part of the fun".
The Sewer Crocodiles are based off the titular characters from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The crocodiles themselves are named Bill, Mark, Steve, and Gabe. These are references to Microsoft's co-founder Bill Gates, Facebook's co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, Apple's co-founder Steve Jobs, and Valve's co-founder Gabe Newell, respectively.
