Homeworld's closing theme "Homeworld (The Ladder)" was composed by the British progressive rock band Yes for the game. It was originally released on the band's 1999 album "The Ladder" eight days before the release of Homeworld. The collaboration was spearheaded by lead singer Jon Anderson who wanted a piece of Yes' music to be worked into a video game, which resulted in the band discovering and becoming interested in Homeworld's plot and development, writing lyrics that fit with the themes of the game such as "thoughts that we're all trying to find our way home". Sierra Studios CEO Alex Garden commented that they tried to do as much as they could to tie the real world into their games to enhance the experience and provide a grounding in reality, and that the collaboration with Yes just came together with that philosophy.
This trivia has been marked as "Not Safe for Work". It may not be appropriate for all visitors and definitely isn't appropriate for work or school environments. Click here to unhide it.
▲
1
▼
The game's creators Marcus Smith and Drew Murray pitched the game to numerous companies, but all of these pitches broke down over Insomniac's condition that they own the IP for Sunset Overdrive. They ended up pitching the game directly to Microsoft several times, who were more open to Insomniac owning the IP, and they ended up publishing the game as an Xbox One exclusive. The "main pitch" that presented the core ideas of the game to several executives however was noted for being unconventional, with Murray arriving wearing his "lucky shoes", riddled with holes, which he had not changed in two weeks:
Murray: "We're presenting, and I have these wet socks up in Seattle. I swear, there must have been six or seven levels of [Microsoft executive] hierarchy at this thing."
Smith: "It's the guy we know, and his boss, and his boss, and his boss... But it started off with us cluing into the speaker system in the conference room and playing the sample from the beginning of MC5's 'Kick Out the Jams', where it's like, "kick out the jams, mother fucker,' not knowing that one of the executives there hates swearing. And then it ended with Drew on top of a chair, mimicking how the game was going to play, and the last minute heroics. It was epic, and I'm shocked they didn't walk away from the table at that point. But for some reason, here we are."
Nintendo Power held a Turok contest where the Grand Prize winner would have their likeness used in Turok 2: Seeds of Evil. Juan Gaspar won the contest and was also given a trip to Iguana Entertainment to have his image digitized and voice recorded for the game. His face can appear on the Life Force tokens by activating the "HEEERESJUAN" and "YOQUIEROJUAN" cheats on both the Nintendo 64 and PC versions.
When completing Arcade Mode as Bridget, one possible ending depicts her coming out as a transgender girl, having previously been depicted in earlier games as a cisgender boy who was raised as a girl. This plot development attracted rumors that it was a "bad ending" exclusive to the English localization and that Bridget was still a crossdressing boy in the Japanese release. Eventually, director Akira Katano and developer Daisuke Ishiwatari confirmed on their "Developer's Backyard" blog that Bridget was indeed intended to be a trans girl in the Japanese version and that the game's endings were not written under the pretense of them being "good" or "bad," stating that they simply showcase different, coexisting aspects of each character, indicating that Bridget's trans identity is in place across both of her Arcade Mode endings.
Although the lack of Final Fantasy characters in later Kingdom Hearts titles (such as the base game of Kingdom Hearts III) was met with backlash from some KH fans, Nomura found this to be quite bizarre as he always viewed the series as not at all being the "Disney and Final Fantasy crossover" that it is commonly seen as.
"I understand there weren't that many Final Fantasy characters in Kingdom Hearts III. One thing I want to clear up is that a lot of fans are saying that Kingdom Hearts is this collaboration between Disney characters and Final Fantasy characters. But I really feel like that's not the basic concept of Kingdom Hearts; that's not exactly what Kingdom Hearts is.
When we released the first title, we had only a few original Kingdom Hearts characters. When they were interacting with really well-known, beloved Disney characters, I felt nobody really knew these new characters, so it was harder for them to stand their ground just yet. And so, we had a lot of Final Fantasy characters involved to lend a hand for everyone to get to know these [original Kingdom Hearts] characters better.
Now, there are so many original characters from Kingdom Hearts that are so well-loved, and people want to see more of those characters. With Kingdom Hearts III, since we did have so many original Kingdom Hearts characters, it was hard to find room for including more Final Fantasy characters. We're trying to find a good balance for that. I know that some fans were concerned about that and weren't too happy and wanted to see more Final Fantasy characters. That's something we definitely are thinking about. But just with the sheer number of original characters that we have now, it's hard to say what the exact balance is going to be [in future games]..."
According to Tetsuya Nomura, he said that he did not expect the side characters from 358/2 Days and Birth by Sleep (i.e. Roxas, Xion, Axel, Saix, Terra, Ventus, Aqua, etc.) to be incredibly popular among fans, especially compared to the main reoccurring cast.
"I really didn't think that the characters from these two titles would become this popular. I had thought that players wanted to see more of characters like Sora or Riku. It was kind of unexpected that the characters from these two titles were so well received. [...] So, if possible, it would be great to include more of them or continue to share more of their story in future opportunities."
Tetsuya Nomura, one of the creators of Kingdom Hearts and the series' recurring director and lead writer, admitted in an interview with Game Informer that it was actually him, not Disney, that was almost hesitant for his character Sora to get in Smash.
"Obviously, I was very happy that we were able to have Sora make an appearance in Smash Bros. Ultimate. Most of the feedback when Sora was [announced] for Smash Bros. Ultimate was, ‘I can’t believe Disney okayed for him to be in this game.’ Behind the scenes, I was actually the one being very picky about his appearance in Smash Bros. Disney was the one that was like, ‘Go ahead! This is a great opportunity.’ I thought it would be tough to pull off because it might clash with the established lore in Kingdom Hearts and the Disney worlds, so it was an opportunity I had to consider very carefully. After seeing how happy everybody was in welcoming Sora to Smash Bros., I feel like the end result was really great."
According to Masahiro Sakurai in a video uploaded to his YouTube channel, the game started out as a requested NES adaptation of Kirby's Dream Land, but Sakurai and HAL Laboratory successfully negotiated with Nintendo to make a new game in the series for the home console instead, which became this game. Sakurai also said he and his team wanted this game to be on the SNES, but they simply didn't have the money or resources at the time as HAL was also on the verge of bankruptcy.
This trivia has been marked as "Not Safe for Work". It may not be appropriate for all visitors and definitely isn't appropriate for work or school environments. Click here to unhide it.
▲
1
▼
The game contains a lot of debug text, starting at offset 0xC6370 and mixing with the rest of the game's text. Of note, two dates appear in the debug text that may be the dates the game finished development in North America and Europe:
North America: Jun 6 1997.21:45:51 Europe: Nov 17 1997.20:23:27
The rest of this submission contains a few examples of the debug text scattered throughout the ROM. Most of it is routine stuff, but there are some interesting gems in there. The developers were certainly not in a good mood or this was "kinda" a joke from them. Note that "tell dave" likely refers to David Pridie, one of the programmers:
"*** GAME CRASH CONFIRMED!!! ***
ERRRRRRORRR
*** WARNING! generatelevel.c -> PlacePiece is going to plot z+1!
*** ERROR! generatelevel.c -> PlacePiece did not function to avoid breaking a piece!
In 1984, Namco's sound team released Video Game Music, a compilation album produced by Yellow Magic Orchestra bandleader Haruomi Hosono that gathered together various songs from Namco's arcade games. While not the first album to incorporate video game music (being predated by Yellow Magic Orchestra's self-titled debut in 1978), it was the first to consist entirely of it. In turn, Namco composers Shinji Hosoe, Nobuyoshi Sano, Takayuki Aihara, and Hiroto Sasaki would later form Oriental Magnetic Yellow, a parody group based on Yellow Magic Orchestra.
In an article for the September 2000 issue of Nintendo Power, Jason Leung, the writer for the game's English-language script, claimed that the South Clock Town Business Scrub's allusion to his work keeping him away from his wife is a nod to the tribulations that the developers at Nintendo of Japan were going through while working on the game.
This trivia has been marked as "Not Safe for Work". It may not be appropriate for all visitors and definitely isn't appropriate for work or school environments. Click here to unhide it.
▲
1
▼
Previews for new fighters being added to the game showed that one of Jenny's intended pre-battle quotes was "You wouldn't like my brain! It's all circuity and metallic!" This was removed from the final game due to it being associated with a pornographic My Life as a Teenage Robot parody animation, which edited the line to replace "brain" with "body."
Thaddeus Crews, a member of the development team and community manager, initially expressed disgust in a now-deleted tweet (the tweet he replied to also having been deleted) that the line was in the game and announced its immediate removal. He later explained that the line was likely added due to a lack of awareness about the parody, the end result of the team being "spread out and not on the same page", while adding that "Most likely someone on the team did know what they were doing by adding it", despite Crews himself being previously aware of and publicly associating the original line with the porn parody prior to its removal from the game.
On the roof of a settlement in Regno, Citate Di Ravello, a pair of women can be found wearing two differently colored dresses. This was first discovered and posted in the game's Steam community, where users were initially confused over whether or not the dresses had the same color, or were different, until another user uploaded a photo proving they were different colors in-game.
This is a reference to a 2015 meme where a washed-out picture of a blue and black dress posted on Facebook sparked widespread debate as to whether it was colored blue and black, or white and gold, highlighting differences in human color perception.
Masahiro Sakurai claimed in a YouTube video he made about the game's development that he got a lot of push-back from his Nintendo developer peers over his choice to make the game extremely easy, casual, and accessible, something that would eventually become a series staple. This was because developers like Nintendo usually made games incredibly difficult at the time due to low memory storage space on the game cartridge, which lead to a need to make the gameplay feel longer so it felt like gamers were getting their money's worth.
According to Masahiro Sakurai in a YouTube video he made on Kirby's Dream Land, the character's signature float came about as a way to avoid losing a life when simply missing a jump in a heavy platforming section, as he found such an occurrence in games like Ninja Gaiden and Castlevania, among others, to be particularly frustrating.
According to Masahiro Sakurai on his YouTube channel, he thought a lot about how to implement the unique gameplay element of Kirby using each of his enemies as an attack, which originated from Sakurai's need for a "Risk-Reward" system for his game. He even revealed that an early concept of this was Kirby using a long tongue, instead of his signature vacuum, to catch and consume enemies, and he further stated that this concept predated Yoshi's tongue attack too.
This trivia has been marked as "Not Safe for Work". It may not be appropriate for all visitors and definitely isn't appropriate for work or school environments. Click here to unhide it.
▲
1
▼
At the Farris Halstead Library train station in the Loop, if you follow the tracks to the east, you will discover a junction where opposing straight tracks from the north and south intersect with the eastward tracks. These eastward straight tracks are unusual in that they appear to continue and stop before the edge of the elevated platform with no bumpers to mark the end of it, appearing unfinished, although it should be noted that no trains traveling eastward will actually go down these straight tracks all the way due to the curved transition tracks guiding them away. In the real-life Loop in Chicago, this spot would be located at the junction right after the Harold Washington Library train station, which unlike its depiction in Watch Dogs has no straight tracks continuing after the curved tracks at all.
This detail is notable because the day before Watch Dogs' release in May of 2014, an anonymous developer claiming to have worked on the game posted to 4chan their insight on the game's development and experience working with Ubisoft Montreal, including details on how the train tracks worked in earlier builds of the game that may be talking about this unfinished intersection:
"Earlier when we were just working on world buildings etc, Montreal said we need to create a path for the L-train so that's what they did, but they put fucking 90 degree turns on the tracks! So I asked them for time/resources to fix this, they respond "we don't see your issue."
So I went ahead and sent them a video of this, showing how retarded a train running at 80mp/h looks when turning 90 degrees, they tell me "We see your issue but it's too late, maybe we'll patch this later." This was back in October [2013], before the delay announcement etc although you can probably still see in the game tracks marks left of that, which we missed cleaning up. In the October demo that was shown with the train if it went any further you'd see the 90 degree turns."
In 2020, an early build of the game dated to September 21st, 2013 was dumped online by YouTuber JustAnyone, but it's currently unknown if this mistake existed in this build.
At one point around November 2004, Capcom Japan sold the rights of the Street Fighter IP to its American subsidiary Capcom USA. The rights were reacquired by Capcom Japan in April 2021.
Nintendo Power held a Turok contest where the Grand Prize winner would have their likeness used in Turok 2: Seeds of Evil. Juan Gaspar won the contest and was also given a trip to Iguana Entertainment to have his image digitized and voice recorded for the game. His face can appear on the Life Force tokens by activating the "HEEERESJUAN" and "YOQUIEROJUAN" cheats on both the Nintendo 64 and PC versions.
The North American box art appears to feature a less-detailed replica of Sleeping Beauty Castle at Disneyland in California.
In 1984, Namco's sound team released Video Game Music, a compilation album produced by Yellow Magic Orchestra bandleader Haruomi Hosono that gathered together various songs from Namco's arcade games. While not the first album to incorporate video game music (being predated by Yellow Magic Orchestra's self-titled debut in 1978), it was the first to consist entirely of it. In turn, Namco composers Shinji Hosoe, Nobuyoshi Sano, Takayuki Aihara, and Hiroto Sasaki would later form Oriental Magnetic Yellow, a parody group based on Yellow Magic Orchestra.
In an article for the September 2000 issue of Nintendo Power, Jason Leung, the writer for the game's English-language script, claimed that the South Clock Town Business Scrub's allusion to his work keeping him away from his wife is a nod to the tribulations that the developers at Nintendo of Japan were going through while working on the game.
On the roof of a settlement in Regno, Citate Di Ravello, a pair of women can be found wearing two differently colored dresses. This was first discovered and posted in the game's Steam community, where users were initially confused over whether or not the dresses had the same color, or were different, until another user uploaded a photo proving they were different colors in-game. 
At the end of the second phase of the France level (known in-game as round 2) there's a sign that says that the player is going to an airport (called aeroport in-game). The Japanese version mentions the real life Charles de Gaulle airport while the international version removes the name and changes "AEROPORT" into "AERO PORT".