The game had been conceived by Acclaim Studios Austin before Turok 2: Seeds of Evil had wrapped up development. A multiplayer feature was planned for that game, but wasn't completed in time to meet the Holiday 1999 deadline. The Nintendo 64 version of Rage Wars is the remnants of the planned multiplayer feature, with the Game Boy Color version developed by Bit Managers being a different game entirely.
The Game Boy Color version was created entirely from scratch, unlike the simple one-to-one ports Digital Eclipse often performed before this for existing games. Adding more stress was the three-month deadline developers faced while recreating the game for the console.
The game was part of a long list of installments planned for the Nintendo 64 Disk Drive add-on. When IGN interviewed developers Benoit Arribart and Arthur Houtman about the planned port in 1998, they said they did not have enough "time to really think about it".
Midway’s executive director, Roger Sharpe, claimed that wrestler Adam Bomb (whose real name is Bryan Emmett Clark) is in the game. Sometime later, one of the game’s developers, Sal DeVita, confirmed this, but he remained unfinished.
Mario and his Special Moves in this game are based off of the "Shoto" style of Fighting Game characters, most specifically the character Ryu from Street Fighter. For example, like Ryu, Mario has a Hadoken-like "fireball" attack with his Neutral Special (Fireball), A punching uppercut similar to the Shoryuken via his Up Special (Super Jump Punch), and a spinning tackle akin to Ryu's Tatsumaki Senpukyaku in the form of his Down Special (Mario Tornado). However, while Mario's moveset would change in later games to be less Shoto-esque, Ryu himself would be added into the Smash series and make his debut as a fighter in Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U.
Techland took inspiration from novels such as Albert Camus' "The Plague" and Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" for the game's story in order to "evoke similar emotions" and show how people can react to extreme situations.
The protagonist's name was originally going to be rendered as "Miss Pac-Man", but the developers then realized that because she was married and had a child, the "Miss" honorific was grammatically incorrect and would also imply she conceived out of wedlock, so the name was changed to "Ms. Pac-Man" (pronounced "Mizz Pac-Man"). However, this didn't stop future Pac-Man-centric games from mispronouncing the first part as "Miss", such as the Mario Kart GP games and Pac-Man World 3 among a few others.
The game was originally going to be run on Square Enix's Luminous Engine, but due to problems that arose during development that involved the Kingdom Hearts team not getting used to the engine in enough time, the game was moved to the much more familiar Unreal Engine 4, a move that caused a delay in development.
The game began development as a tie-in game based on the Alien franchise. However, because id Software wanted total creative control, negotiations with 20th Century Fox fell through. Instead, they took influences from the movie, as well as the Evil Dead franchise for the Chainsaw and Shotgun weapons, and dropped the use of aliens in favor of a "demons from Hell on Mars" theme.
In the North American and European releases of the game, the cigars being smoked by Flip and the Gorilla are removed. Despite this, the game's manual in these regions features artwork of the Gorilla smoking a cigar, and the Gorilla's sprite still has curled lips as if it were holding a cigar in its mouth.
On August 8th, 2020, an unused cutscene was discovered in the Chinese release of the game which was soon translated and uploaded to YouTube. The cutscene shows Goro Akechi Spoiler:in a rehabilitation center after the events of the game. This implies that he was able to escape from Shido's palace before his shadow self could kill him and turned himself into authorities.
In an interview with the game's director and designer Yu Suzuki published in the 2/86 edition of BEEP magazine, he revealed that Space Harrier began development after Hang-On's development was finished, and that they were not developed at the same time as Space Harrier began development in mid-July of 1985 after Hang-On's release in Japan.
In an interview with the game's programmer and planner Akira Saito published in the 1997 Gamest magazine, he was asked when were the game's plans first proposed. He responded:
"The plans for a game featuring trains existed as far back as 5 or 6 years ago. The opinion at the time, however, was that trains were kind of plain and boring, so the idea was warehoused."
"The planning for this development, then, officially got underway about a year ago. We decided it would be a large-cabinet style arcade game at this point, too. In July we entered the development phase proper, and the game was completed in the span of three or four months."
According to producer Keiji Inafune, Dead Rising was originally conceived as a sequel to the game Shadow of Rome to continue an initiative set out by Capcom to "decipher the North American market". The original plan was to scrap the stealth elements featured in Shadow of Rome and focus more on over-the-top violence, but due to a desire to make something different while retaining that concept, the game's story, setting and time period were morphed into what Dead Rising became.
In a 2010 Eurogamer interview, the game's director Hidetaka Miyazaki revealed that the game's Black and Blue Phantom multiplayer elements were inspired by his experience of driving on a hillside after some heavy snow:
"The origin of that idea is actually due to a personal experience where a car suddenly stopped on a hillside after some heavy snow and started to slip... The car following me also got stuck, and then the one behind it spontaneously bumped into it and started pushing it up the hill... That's it! That's how everyone can get home! Then it was my turn and everyone started pushing my car up the hill, and I managed to get home safely.
But I couldn't stop the car to say thanks to the people who gave me a shove. I'd have just got stuck again if I'd stopped. On the way back home I wondered whether the last person in the line had made it home, and thought that I would probably never meet the people who had helped me. I thought that maybe if we'd met in another place we'd become friends, or maybe we'd just fight...
You could probably call it a connection of mutual assistance between transient people. Oddly, that incident will probably linger in my heart for a long time. Simply because it's fleeting, I think it stays with you a lot longer... like the cherry blossoms we Japanese love so much."
Through the use of cheat codes, an early AI for Shaktool can be accessed that moves considerably slower than in the final game, and also features an unused attack fired from its head that deals a small amount of damage.
Right after Samus acquires the Morphing Ball, two Eye security cameras in the first room of Brinstar turn on that are implied to alert the Space Pirates that Samus has arrived on Zebes. As Samus travels further into Brinstar, the rest of the planet "awakens" and becomes swarmed with enemies, causing the Eyes to disappear for the rest of the game. The Eyes shine a yellow light that tracks Samus around their immediate area when she is near them, and they shut when she walks far enough away. Once Samus searches back around into a corridor in Crateria's central rocky cave, a small Item room featuring a Chozo statue holding a Missile Tank can be found on the left side. This Item room can only be accessed using Bombs, and under normal circumstances, there is nothing of note about the statue.
However, should this room be entered early through hacking or the "Spacetime Beam" glitch that resets item and boss placements in the current save file, the room will be dark and the Chozo statue will have nothing in its hands. When Samus walks close enough to it, the statue will shine the same yellow tracking light to that of the two Eyes and the room will brighten, suggesting that there is an Eye hidden in the statue. This Eye appears to behave the same way as the other two and disappears for the rest of the game once the planet awakens. While the X-Ray Scope does not reveal anything underneath the statue, through the use of a glitch technique that replicates the effects of the Spacetime Beam while creating numerous graphical glitches (most notably in this case causing Chozo statues to become transparent), returning to the Item room will reveal the hidden third Eye. This Eye has some different properties compared to the other two, such as having a blue eyeball rather than red, and will turn around and close when Samus walks far enough away rather than just closing where it is.
This Eye is likely an earlier version of the Eye found in the final game that was originally intended to be found in normal play at the start of the game and eventually scrapped, but was left intact, possibly because all three Eyes eventually disappear anyway, and was not intended to be found by players.
The games' most prominent subplot focuses on the conflict between Team Aqua and Team Magma in their efforts to gain control of the legendary Pokémon Kyogre and Groudon to change the climate in response to the effect of humans on the environment in order to create expanded environments for sea and land Pokémon respectively. Although it has not been confirmed by the developers, this subplot may have drawn direct inspiration from a real-life controversy that was a prominent issue in Japan at the time of the games' development and continues to be. The Isahaya Bay land reclamation project on the Japanese island of Kyūshū, which the Hoenn region is based on, aimed to expand the available farmland in one of Japan's last wetland habitats. This lead to fierce political conflict from environmentalists who argued that the project would cause long-term damage to the wetlands and the marine ecosystem of the area through agricultural runoff released into the sea, and from reclamation activists who argued that Kyūshū needed the land as Japan has very little arable land already and needs to produce enough food to feed its increasing population and keep up with rapid industrialization. The concept of Team Aqua and Team Magma draw striking parallels to each side of this issue (i.e. reclaiming land where there used to be sea and protesting to reclaim sea where there is now land) while being written as cultic villains akin to Team Rocket from past games without distinct arguments to their positions. This causes these parallels to be obscured and emphasizes the personal gain of expanding, or reducing land for the sake of certain land, or sea Pokémon to be won out from the conflict with little to no regard for humanity.
In Pokémon Emerald, the unified story featuring Kyogre and Groudon both being pacified by the presence of Rayquaza, a Pokémon heralding from the sky which in many religions and mythologies is where powerful gods and deities live, hints that a divine compromise between civilization and nature is the necessary solution, with how Hoenn is presented in the final game through the coexistence of different environments, humans and Pokémon being the result. This suggests that the preservation of Isahaya Bay while allowing for land reclamation elsewhere is the compromise this subplot is trying to get across.
Series producer Kensuke Tanabe stated, in an interview with The Verge, that Zip Lash would be the final game in the franchise if it wasn’t well-recognized or didn’t sell well. This became the case as the game was a critical and commercial failure, resulting in the series’ dormancy. Chibi-Robo!’s developer Skip Ltd. has also not released any new games since.
In the North American and European releases of the game, the cigars being smoked by Flip and the Gorilla are removed. Despite this, the game's manual in these regions features artwork of the Gorilla smoking a cigar, and the Gorilla's sprite still has curled lips as if it were holding a cigar in its mouth.
Through the use of cheat codes, an early AI for Shaktool can be accessed that moves considerably slower than in the final game, and also features an unused attack fired from its head that deals a small amount of damage.
Right after Samus acquires the Morphing Ball, two Eye security cameras in the first room of Brinstar turn on that are implied to alert the Space Pirates that Samus has arrived on Zebes. As Samus travels further into Brinstar, the rest of the planet "awakens" and becomes swarmed with enemies, causing the Eyes to disappear for the rest of the game. The Eyes shine a yellow light that tracks Samus around their immediate area when she is near them, and they shut when she walks far enough away. Once Samus searches back around into a corridor in Crateria's central rocky cave, a small Item room featuring a Chozo statue holding a Missile Tank can be found on the left side. This Item room can only be accessed using Bombs, and under normal circumstances, there is nothing of note about the statue.
The games' most prominent subplot focuses on the conflict between Team Aqua and Team Magma in their efforts to gain control of the legendary Pokémon Kyogre and Groudon to change the climate in response to the effect of humans on the environment in order to create expanded environments for sea and land Pokémon respectively. Although it has not been confirmed by the developers, this subplot may have drawn direct inspiration from a real-life controversy that was a prominent issue in Japan at the time of the games' development and continues to be. The Isahaya Bay land reclamation project on the Japanese island of Kyūshū, which the Hoenn region is based on, aimed to expand the available farmland in one of Japan's last wetland habitats. This lead to fierce political conflict from environmentalists who argued that the project would cause long-term damage to the wetlands and the marine ecosystem of the area through agricultural runoff released into the sea, and from reclamation activists who argued that Kyūshū needed the land as Japan has very little arable land already and needs to produce enough food to feed its increasing population and keep up with rapid industrialization. The concept of Team Aqua and Team Magma draw striking parallels to each side of this issue (i.e. reclaiming land where there used to be sea and protesting to reclaim sea where there is now land) while being written as cultic villains akin to Team Rocket from past games without distinct arguments to their positions. This causes these parallels to be obscured and emphasizes the personal gain of expanding, or reducing land for the sake of certain land, or sea Pokémon to be won out from the conflict with little to no regard for humanity.