The game started development at the Utrecht School of the Arts in the Netherlands as a way to predict how the railroad station in Utrecht, the location of where it was being developed, would look in 10 years as a result of the then-recent reconstruction of the town. THQ was impressed with their work and bought the rights to it, eventually making it a fully-fledged video game that would become de Blob.
Ubisoft made a conscious effort to avoid tropes associated with romanticized views of pirates such as crossbones, hooks, and walking the plank, in favor of creating a “grounded sense of realism, of brutality.” They looked to the films "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World" and "The Mission", as well as the television series "Deadwood" for inspiration, and wanted the city of Havana to display more of the citizens' daily lives than the presence of the pirates because according to the game's lead writer Darby McDevitt: "There are pirates in this world, but it’s a much bigger world than just pirates." As a result of these imposed standards, the possibility of the Hookblade from Assassin's Creed: Revelations returning was shut down by McDevitt immediately after it was suggested by one of the developers for inclusion in the game.
According to the game's director Ayu Kyogoku, Animal Crossing: amiibo Festival was created solely as a way to get Nintendo to make amiibo for the Animal Crossing series.
"Initially when the Amiibo was announced, there was nothing really said about Animal Crossing Amiibos or any plans for that matter. But as the Animal Crossing team, we were confident that if there was one, it would be really cute... honestly, we just wanted Animal Crossing Amiibo. We wanted the company to make Animal Crossing Amiibo, so that's why we made a game that works with them."
The idea for a "Battle Royale" mode stemmed from battle-royale type games including PUBG: Battlegrounds, a game that had been released halfway through Fortnite's development. The staff at Epic Games loved these games so much that they decided to take the formula and make it a separate mode within the game.
According to voice actor Jacob Craner in an interview with Zelda Universe, he said the inspiration behind his voice of Robbie in the English-language dub was American actor Jack Black's performance in the 2006 film "Tenancious D in the Pick of Destiny", which Craner claimed he was obsessed with when it first came out. In addition, he said that during the audition process Nintendo localizers told him to give the character more of a cliché and stereotypical "nerdy scientist" affliction. However when it came time to record, they changed their minds and instead wanted the character to sound like a "crazy rocker" type of character, thus having Craner lean instead toward his Jack Black impression.
When Piranha Plant was revealed as the first DLC character, many fans were bewildered, as a generic enemy has never been a playable character in the Super Smash Bros. series before. Despite this, in an interview with Game Informer, Masahiro Sakurai has stated that he never intended to surprise people with the Piranha Plant, and that it was a character everybody would know of.
"The surprise element quickly fades once the announcement has been made. Rather, I believe it’s important to have a good balance as a game. In the past titles in the series, Mr. Game & Watch, R.O.B. and Duck Hunt Dog were some of the examples we offered outside of people’s typical expectations. However, if we don’t have these types of fighters, and we only had typical “hero/heroine” type fighters in the lineup, there’s not much difference. It’s probably not very interesting. Correct? Also, unlike some main characters from some (not widely known) franchises, Piranha Plant is a character everyone knows well."
According to animator and designer Tina Nawrocki, Baroness Von Bon Bon's design was inspired by Bebe Daniels, Betty Grable, Loretta Young, and Joan Crawford (specifically her appearance in the 1932 film "Letty Lynton"); actresses who were around during the early 20th century, as well as Marie Antoinette, the last queen of France before the French Revolution, whose execution by guillotine inspired the fourth phase of her boss fight where she throws her own head as a projectile towards Cuphead.
XSEED Games originally went by the name J-Taro, a reference to Momotaro of Japanese folklore. An unnamed industry titan, however, decided that they wouldn't work with a company that had such a ridiculous name. After consulting with various outlets, they decided on the name XSEED Games.
According to director Hidetaka Miyazaki, Gwynevere's character design was inspired by a group of female characters from the 1974 Fujiko F. Fujio one-shot manga "Yasuragi no Yakata", about a stressed CEO who is directed to a members-only club by his doctor where men are dressed in children's clothes and cared for by giant motherly women who treat the men like infants as they regress further into baby-like states.
Gwynevere's extremely large breasts were added by the artist who designed her, who was reportedly so proud of his work that despite Miyazaki's standards, he did not have the heart to tell him to change the design.
Miyazaki also originally wanted to include a mouth on Gwynevere's palm and created animations for it, but this element was scrapped from her design.
According to Street Fighter V director Takayuki Nakayama, Laura's Sunset Wheel special move is based on the Sunset Splash move used by Gunloc from the Slam Masters series.
In an interview with the development team, lead planner Akira Nishitani said that the reason why the attacks change depending on how far away you are from your opponent was because they wanted to implement rapid chains of attack similar to Final Fight.
"Ultimately, I think the results were very good, and it added depth to the moves, but originally the intent was quite different. The original intent was to have rapid chain moves like Final Fight. The norm is to have the same move come out if you press the same button repeatedly, but attacks in close range would eventually push the opponent away due to pushback on hit, so the idea was to have a different move come out in order to connect. We gave that a try and it didn't work out, so we tried adjusting the hitboxes in order to find a different use for the application."
Many of the new characters, story and new region of Parusa are inspired by Filipino culture & mythology. Examples given by the developers include Merga's armor being based off ancient Filipino armor, the characters of Aaa, Captain Kalaw and Askal being based off Philippine animals such as the tarsier, Rufous hornbill and askals respectively, and the ancient super-weapon Bakunawa being based off the mythological sea serpent of the same name.
The updated character designs for returning characters came from wanting to take advantage of the higher screen resolution and to give the game's characters more detailed and matured identities since the first game, rather than just making another Sonic the Hedgehog-inspired game. Lilac's new design had influences from Mega Man X's armor upgrades to show how much more responsible & experienced she had become, while Carol had minor updates showing she hadn't changed too dramatically, and Milla's more cleaned-up jumpsuit design showed how she grew to take care of herself since her tattered appearance in the first game.
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.
Lord Brevon was originally created as a Neopets fan character by Freedom Planet's creator, Sabrina DiDuro, back when the website was originally geared towards university students and had more "serious" fantasy themes. When Neopets was acquired by Viacom in 2005 and started focusing on more kid-friendly content, DiDuro felt the character did not fit in with the rebranding of Neopets and decided to develop Brevon into a fully original character.
Sarah Bryant was based on Sarah Connor from the 1991 film "Terminator 2: Judgement Day", one of the highest-grossing films made at the time, and was described by game designer Seiichi Ishii as being "an expansion" of Connor's image.
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."
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.
The plot of the Adventure Mode: World of Light, in which Kirby is the sole survivor of a cataclysmic invasion and must rescue the other fighters, was actually series director Masahiro Sakurai's original vision for the plot of Super Smash Bros. Brawl's Adventure Mode: The Subspace Emissary.
This early storyline was mentioned during a 2008 Iwata Asks interview: "I had envisioned a more serious tone for the story. Something with some misfortune like a single character escaping total annihilation of his squadron and then fighting back while rounding up his allies."
It should be noted however that Spoiler:this early storyline would be implemented somewhat closer to the end of The Subspace Emissary anyway when Tabuu decimates every fighter turning them back into trophies, while Kirby, Luigi and Ness are revived in separate locations thanks to the three Dedede Brooches.
According to animator and designer Tina Nawrocki, Baroness Von Bon Bon's design was inspired by Bebe Daniels, Betty Grable, Loretta Young, and Joan Crawford (specifically her appearance in the 1932 film "Letty Lynton"); actresses who were around during the early 20th century, as well as Marie Antoinette, the last queen of France before the French Revolution, whose execution by guillotine inspired the fourth phase of her boss fight where she throws her own head as a projectile towards Cuphead.
XSEED Games originally went by the name J-Taro, a reference to Momotaro of Japanese folklore. An unnamed industry titan, however, decided that they wouldn't work with a company that had such a ridiculous name. After consulting with various outlets, they decided on the name XSEED Games.
According to director Hidetaka Miyazaki, Gwynevere's character design was inspired by a group of female characters from the 1974 Fujiko F. Fujio one-shot manga "Yasuragi no Yakata", about a stressed CEO who is directed to a members-only club by his doctor where men are dressed in children's clothes and cared for by giant motherly women who treat the men like infants as they regress further into baby-like states.
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:
