According to Eidos Senior Project Manager Kevin Gill, he stated that the game came about when he ordered tapings of backyard wrestling footage during a Christmas party:
"[Later] I went to Rob Dyer, the president of Eidos Interactive, and pitched the idea to him. It went through the whole development committee, [and then] we had the task of finding who was the best-suited, most talented developer for the project. The first thing that came to my mind was, 'Well, it could be like Thrill Kill.' Then it was like, 'let's just go right to the source, you know?'"
Due to a loop hole with the Tolkien estate, Vivendi Games was able to make the game independently from Peter Jackson's film adaptations and have it more based on the book. However, despite this, the game's console and PC versions still open with a narration by Lothlorien Elf Galadriel where she describes the history, lore, and creation of The One Ring, which is something that happens in the very beginning of Jackson's Fellowship of the Ring film and not the original novel.
In 2018, in the Discord server of the Japanese gaming blog Gamecast, an anonymous former Sega AM2 developer revealed a previously-unknown Easter egg where at the end of the quick-time event at the New Yokosuka Harbor, if you input Hado Hado + A within 3 frames, you will perform a Shin Shōryūken as used by Ryu in Street Fighter III two years prior to Shenmue's release (Note that "Hado Hado" (or 236 236) refers to performing the command for the Hadoken move from Street Fighter by moving the D-pad down, down-right, right in rapid succession, twice in a row).
The developers had originally planned to include this in the game as a tribute, but producer Yu Suzuki stepped in and disabled it from being useable in the final release. For the average player to make the move, it takes 6 frames to perform, but the game lowers the window to successfully perform it to 3 frames, making it impossible to perform under normal circumstances. However, the secret itself was not removed, and would later be discovered and executed by a modder in 2019.
When asked why the Easter egg was added in the first place, the developer added:
"Although we were employees at Sega, we were far from staid workers, and all we wanted to do was make our games fun. We told ourselves we mustn't ever lose that way of thinking.
We attributed a minimum number of various events in parallel to all the characters, so even if the ending is the same, the path to get there will be different for every player. We were trying to do something like that. Quite different from multiple endings. The main story alone was followed without exception, but at the same time we wanted to give all the players a differing experience."
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.
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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."
According to Ayano Koshiro, Adam did not turn for the sequel because he didn't have a special play style compared to Axel and Blaze.
"You had Axel, your standard fighter, then Blaze, the speedy character. But there was also Adam in the first game…. but Adam had no real speciality… (laughs) So he was out. (laughs)"
According to Ayano Koshiro, all the visuals for the characters and their moves were inspired by having played Street Fighter II with her brother, Yuzo.
"I’m sure you’ve played Street Fighter II—my brother and I did too. We liked it so much we bought a cabinet and had it installed in the office at Ancient. My brother and I liked the way they fought in SFII, and between the two of us, a shared vision of the fighting of Streets of Rage 2 arose: two jabs, followed by a straight punch, then some heavy hit, and the enemy goes flying! That kind of flow had to be in there."
According to Daisuke Ishiwatari in an interview with PlayStation Magazine, Millia was initially conceptualized to fight primarily using knives around the time of the game's announcement. At some point, they realized her character was kind of underdeveloped and decided that she would fight with her hair instead.
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."
During the sixth episode of Destructoid's Bit Transmission podcast, Capcom's former senior manager of community Seth Killian stated that the project was originally meant to be a Star Wars game. However, Capcom wasn't able to obtain the Star Wars license, so they scrapped the idea and turned the game into it's own IP.
In a video interview with former Capcom game designer Shinichiro Obata, he stated that the reason why the character Pet Shop is so overpowered to the point of being banned in competitive play is because he was originally intended for the PlayStation version and not arcade one, as such he wasn't really intended for competitive play.
However when the updated arcade version JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Heritage for the Future was in development, Pet Shop was added as a playable character and Mr. Obata couldn't help but notice how weak this version of the character was. So he started doing everything he could to buff Pet Shop, with Mr. Obata himself remarking that he “might’ve overdone it”.
According to the game's illustrator Akira “Akiman” Yasuda in a 2003 interview, Chun-Li's design was initially based on the Chinese character Tao from the animated film, Genma Wars (or Harmagedon in the west). Yasuda then went on to make several additions to the design, which resulted in her appearance in the final game.
"My first idea resembled the Chinese character Tao from the Genma Taisen (Genma Wars) animated movie, with big wide-legged pants. She would also have that front and back apron. The character wasn’t very sexy though, and my design lacked visual impact and personality. So at the 11th hour, I experimented and made a bunch of frantic changes to the pixel art. First I tried giving her bare legs and a bodycon dress. That made her look like a female pro-wrestler, a sort of “fake” kung-fu fighter. It’s a little bit hard to describe in words, but it had a lot of impact, and I decided to go with it and release her to the world this way."
According to Kenji Sawatari in a 1998 Gamest interview, there were other female candidates were considered for the game before Jeanne D'Arc:
"Yang Guifei from China, and Cleopatra, were also proposed, but because Jeanne de Arc has armor, and wields a sword, we chose her. Not a lot is known about her as a person. There are many theories though. Some say she was an angel, others say that she only thought of herself and had a vindictive personality. We tried to strike a middle ground between those, and our Jeanne has two sides. She’s a girl out looking to get married, but she also has an extremely domineering, high-handed way of speaking sometimes."
According to Kenji Sawatari in a 1998 Gamest interview, when inquired about an initial "sexy" design for Jeanne, he responded:
"Actually, in the beginning, she didn’t have those black tights. The graphics for her legs were bare. Also, before that bare-legged version, she had tights that went to her thighs and a garter belt. Obviously, this was no good so we quickly updated her, but I do wish we could have made her slightly more sexy."
The game, which was formerly known under the tentative title of the "Sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild", began life as DLC for the original Breath of the Wild. However, producer Eiji Aonuma elected to make it a full-fledged sequel, because there were too many ideas the team wanted to include:
"When we released the DLC for Breath of the Wild, we realized that this is a great way to add more elements to the same world. But when it comes down to technical things, DLC is pretty much data--you're adding data to a preexisting title. And so when we wanted to add bigger changes, DLC is not enough, and that’s why we thought maybe a sequel would be a good fit."
An early title screen in the game data suggests the game's original title was "Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl Universe". For unknown reasons, the "Universe" part was dropped.
Because the NES had a higher resolution and the fact that it, in general, could fit more on screen and allow for bigger environments, Masahiro Sakurai claimed to have problems with Kirby's float ability as it became far more powerful then it was on the Game Boy. The game director and his team cleverly resolved this by creating the game's large information panel UI on the lower-third of the game screen, which was also perfect because the developers could show off unique artwork and info to the player based on the game's new copy ability system.
According to Daisuke Ishiwatari in an interview with PlayStation Magazine, Millia was initially conceptualized to fight primarily using knives around the time of the game's announcement. At some point, they realized her character was kind of underdeveloped and decided that she would fight with her hair instead.
According to the game's illustrator Akira “Akiman” Yasuda in a 2003 interview, Chun-Li's design was initially based on the Chinese character Tao from the animated film, Genma Wars (or Harmagedon in the west). Yasuda then went on to make several additions to the design, which resulted in her appearance in the final game.
According to Kenji Sawatari in a 1998 Gamest interview, when inquired about an initial "sexy" design for Jeanne, he responded:
An early title screen in the game data suggests the game's original title was "Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl Universe". For unknown reasons, the "Universe" part was dropped.
