Bandai Namco heavily assisted Nintendo in the development of their games Mario Kart Tour, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Arms according to the Products page on Bandai Namco's website. However, they chose to be uncredited for their work in the games' final releases.
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.
Kingdom Hearts' international release is the last game by Squaresoft released outside of Japan to have their logo and name adorned on its case before the company merged with Enix to become Square Enix in 2003. The Japanese version of Final Fantasy X-2 was last game ever to feature the Squaresoft logo in any region.
Kasumi was initially envisioned as a male character and was not going to be the protagonist. However, after changing the character's sex to female, series creator Tomonobu Itagaki became attached to her new design and decided to make her the heroine. Itagaki would go on to describe Kasumi as his “daughter”, and that she is “like a Venus” to him, as well as defending her sexualization among the rest of the series cast despite her canonical age of 17 years old being considered underage in countries with higher ages of consent like the United States. The now-defunct game journalism website QuickJump quoted him in 2007 as saying “in Japan, [the sexualization of a 17-year old] is okay. Maybe it’s 20 in America.”
Although Terry Bogard from Fatal Fury had made it into the game as a downloadable character, Masahiro Sakurai had initially planned to add Mai Shiranui alongside Terry. In the Japanese Nintendo Direct presentation of Terry Bogard, he explained further that he worried that CERO (Japan's video game rating board) would raise the rating from A (for all Ages) to a higher one which was why he reconsidered having her in the game, joking that Super Smash Bros. was only for "good boys and girls".
The Impossible Mission Force’s (IMF) Agent Organizer includes a Remote Control feature that functions as an actual universal remote, utilizing the Game Boy Color's infrared sensor by detecting a remote's signals, which the handheld receives and then functions as the remote itself.
Additionally, the Notebook entries found under Secret Files in the IMF can be printed out when connected to the Game Boy Printer.
During the final stretch of the side mission, "Kanbei and the Overlord", if the player runs to the locked door they can learn the name of the hidden Revenant before the second wave of enemies appears. Its name is Sugitani Zenjubo, a real-life samurai who was captured by daimyo Oda Nobunaga after the Siege of Kanegasaki in 1570 and sentenced to death by beheading. This event is alluded to in the Revenant's dialogue, and in its Blood Grave where it specifically names Nobunaga as the cause of death, the only instance of a Blood Grave with an identified culprit in the game.
Before the game series was cancelled by Disney, a fourth installment was quite elaborately planned and worked on extensively. The name would've been "Disney Infinity 4.0: Kingdoms" and it would have primarily been based of Disney's animated film Aladdin. It was to be developed by United Front Games who are associated with working on the Marvel expansion of Disney Infinity 3.0 as well as Sleeping Dogs, ModNation Racers, and Halo: The Master Chief Collection. It seems the game would have had a feature where characters of unrelated universes (ex. Star Wars, Marvel, Zootopia, etc.) can be played and seen in the Aladdin-based Story mode, which would have been unique to 4.0. (Although it does bare some resemblance to the Toybox Takeover feature in the previous game.) Pre-alpha footage of the game was uploaded to Vimeo in November of 2018 by a throwaway account, revealing the game's existence.
According to game's director Hideki Kamiya, the Umbrella Corporation can that gets stepped on at the start of the opening cutscene was supposed to have the Capcom logo on it, but when Capcom's management heard about it, they disapproved of the idea of their brand being stepped on, so the developers changed it to the Umbrella logo instead.
Samwise Didier, the senior art director for Blizzard Entertainment, drew a paladin for a friend's card game, which was left unused and instead ended up being used for World of Warcraft to create Uther. Didier carried over the paladin's mask to another character he drew, which was the inspiration for Ilidan, who he made concept art for back in 2000. The character Ilidan originally carved his eyes out to allow Demonics to sense demons which allowed him to use demonic energy against them back when he was a protagonist at one point during development.
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.
In the Japanese version of the game, Honoka and Marie's tag intro shows Honoka requesting to borrow Marie Rose's chest. This is meant to be a pun on both of their different bust sizes and a common Japanese phrase for requesting a sparring partner, believing power is derived from the chest. This interaction was changed in the Western versions to Honoka plainly asking for a practice round.
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.
In December 2019, the game was briefly removed from sale on itch.io over trademark infringement. According to itch.io's creator, the site received a takedown notice towards the game due to its page using in the description the phrase "choose your own adventure", a trademark owned by the company Chooseco.
The Japanese and PAL region releases of Spirit Camera: The Cursed Memoir have exclusive bonus content that can be accessed after completing Story Mode by scanning an augmented reality marker on the back of the instruction manual to the Wii port of Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly, released only in Japan and PAL regions under the name Project Zero 2: Wii Edition. Scanning the marker will unlock models of Mio and Mayu Amakura as they appear in that game to view in Spirit Photography mode. Because the Wii port of Project Zero 2 was never released in North America, these models were made inaccessible in the North American release of Spirit Camera: The Cursed Memoir.
Using Kombat Kodes (six digit numerical codes in sets of three, specified by Mortal Kombat iconographies) on the VS. character screen before a match, several messages can be conjured on screen when the match has begun. Several of these messages are developer messages and references to other games:
•999-999 = Displays a message indicating what version revision is being played. •550-550 = Displays the message: "Go see the Mortal Kombat Live Tour!", advertising the 1995 martial arts theatrical stage show of the same name. •122-221 = Displays the message: "Skunky! - E.F." which assumedly is an inside joke from a developer playing on the "Toasty!" gag by programmer Dan Forden. •987-666 = Displays the message: "Hold flippers during Casino Run". This is a reference to Jack*Bot, an arcade pinball cabinet produced by Williams Entertainment who has worked with Midway on the home console ports of Mortal Kombat titles. •004-400 = Displays the message: "Whatcha gun do? - E.B", a joke message from Ed Boon that possibly pokes fun at the fact of Mortal Kombat being a fighting game.
The Sega Saturn release of the game also features two exclusive developer messages:
•200-002 = Displays the message: "It should work!? - P.A.B." •300-003 = Displays the message: "PUB! - D.K.P."
In an article by Bloomberg, Kevin Bachus, ex-director of third-party relations at Microsoft, and Bob McBreen, former head of business development for the company, said that before Microsoft started development on the Xbox, Microsoft tried to buy Nintendo, but were reportedly laughed at for the majority of the meeting, before reaching out again to offer to provide hardware for future consoles, which they too declined.
Bachus: “They just laughed their asses off. Like, imagine an hour of somebody just laughing at you. That was kind of how that meeting went.”
McBreen: "We actually had Nintendo in our building in January 2000 to work through the details of a joint venture where we gave them all the technical specs of the Xbox. The pitch was their hardware stunk, and compared to Sony PlayStation, it did. So the idea was, “Listen, you’re much better at the game portions of it with Mario and all that stuff. Why don’t you let us take care of the hardware?” But it didn’t work out."
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.
Before the game series was cancelled by Disney, a fourth installment was quite elaborately planned and worked on extensively. The name would've been "Disney Infinity 4.0: Kingdoms" and it would have primarily been based of Disney's animated film Aladdin. It was to be developed by United Front Games who are associated with working on the Marvel expansion of Disney Infinity 3.0 as well as Sleeping Dogs, ModNation Racers, and Halo: The Master Chief Collection. It seems the game would have had a feature where characters of unrelated universes (ex. Star Wars, Marvel, Zootopia, etc.) can be played and seen in the Aladdin-based Story mode, which would have been unique to 4.0. (Although it does bare some resemblance to the Toybox Takeover feature in the previous game.) Pre-alpha footage of the game was uploaded to Vimeo in November of 2018 by a throwaway account, revealing the game's existence.
According to game's director Hideki Kamiya, the Umbrella Corporation can that gets stepped on at the start of the opening cutscene was supposed to have the Capcom logo on it, but when Capcom's management heard about it, they disapproved of the idea of their brand being stepped on, so the developers changed it to the Umbrella logo instead.
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.
In December 2019, the game was briefly removed from sale on itch.io over trademark infringement. According to itch.io's creator, the site received a takedown notice towards the game due to its page using in the description the phrase "choose your own adventure", a trademark owned by the company Chooseco.
The Japanese and PAL region releases of Spirit Camera: The Cursed Memoir have exclusive bonus content that can be accessed after completing Story Mode by scanning an augmented reality marker on the back of the instruction manual to the Wii port of Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly, released only in Japan and PAL regions under the name Project Zero 2: Wii Edition. Scanning the marker will unlock models of Mio and Mayu Amakura as they appear in that game to view in Spirit Photography mode. Because the Wii port of Project Zero 2 was never released in North America, these models were made inaccessible in the North American release of Spirit Camera: The Cursed Memoir.
