In an interview with the game's director Takumi Isobe published in Famitsu on February 22, 2024, Isobe explained that the game's title "Reynatis" holds deep significance to the game's story and is derived from two words. The first is "renatus", which means "birth" or "rebirth" in Latin. The second word is "rey" which means "king" in Spanish; additionally, "renatus" on its own can also refer to a "born king" in Spanish.
When the Grey Faerie's Neopedia article was released, a "Bottled Grey Faerie" item was found in the game's servers. Neopian Times Editorial #90 would later imply that a plotline involving the Grey Faeries was on the way, however nothing has been heard about this since, likely meaning that whatever plotline was planned was either cancelled or delayed indefinitely.
In a 2020 interview with SiliconEra, series co-creator Matt Bozon described the development and distribution of each entry in the series as reflective of various changes in the video game industry and its treatment of smaller developers.
The eponymous first title was pitched for multiple platforms, including the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, Game Boy, PlayStation, and PC before eventually landing on the Game Boy Color due to the industry relying on deals with big-name distributors; Bozon stated that "If retail and distribution deals had come together more quickly for SNES, PSX, or PC, Shantae would have launched there."
Nintendo's establishment of WiiWare and DSiWare allowed WayForward to more readily develop a follow-up in the form of Shantae: Risky’s Revenge thanks to the digital distribution model making it less expensive to develop and release a smaller-scale title for systems that were otherwise demanding increasingly complex games. Later, The Nintendo 3DS' "split delivery system" that allowed digital-only games to be released at retail prices was a boon to the making of Shantae and the Pirate's Curse.
Shantae: Half-Genie Hero and Shantae and the Seven Sirens meanwhile benefitted from the greater prioritization of digitally distributed games on home consoles by the start of the 2020s, with the rise of premium physical media imprints such as Limited Run Games further helping offset costs.
"Wes Craven's Principles of Fear" was a planned collaboration between Asylum Entertainment and Cyberdreams for the PC meant to release in 1997 during the Halloween season, but this never happened. As its name implies, the game was based on a concept by film director Wes Craven (best known for films such as "A Nightmare on Elm Street," "The People Under the Stairs," and "The Serpent and the Rainbow"), and would have been his first time working on a CD-ROM game. Described as "the ultimate test of nerves", players assumed the role of an individual trapped in a house of darkness and forced to confront the "Seven Mortal Fears": Fear of the Bad Parent, Fear of the Predator, Fear of Immobility, Fear of Falling, Fear of Drowning, Fear of Loss of Self, and Fear of Chaos. Each fear was tested through various challenges, both real and imaginary. For example, spider webs would hinder the player's mobility, nightmares and hallucinations would feed into the fear of chaos, and supernatural stalkers would lead to a death match with the predator. The player's ability to reason with and come to grips with their inner demons would have been crucial to escaping the house.
According to David Mullich, a creative director for Cyberdreams, the goal was to create an action-adventure game that "encompasses all levels of human fear and conflict within a challenging game scenario,", adding:
"Many games today do justice in rendering ferocious combat, while others take great care in presenting a psychological challenge, but few successfully combine both elements. 'Wes Craven's Principles of Fear' does just that."
Every environmental object in Dark Souls has an associated damage and health value, with breakable objects having a defense value of 0, 3, 90, 199, or 999 and unbreakable objects having an HP of -1. The player is only capable of destroying objects with defense values of either 0 or 3 such as boxes or tables while certain objects like the breakable wall at Sen’s Fortress, or the raised platform above the Asylum Demon at the beginning of the game, have higher defense values and can only be destroyed by enemies or hazards.
During the 1995 Winter Consumer Electronics Show, Cyberdreams announced "Hunters of Ralk", a role-playing game designed by Gary Gygax, the co-creator of "Dungeons & Dragons". Not much is known about the game, other than that it was meant to be the start of a series and would have featured 3D combat in a first-person perspective and texture-mapped graphics. It was slated for Fall of that year for Windows platforms, but was never released.
In an interview with the game's director Takumi Isobe published in Famitsu on February 22, 2024, he mentioned that the Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy series significantly impacted his sense of values and influenced the development of Reynatis.
Tetsuya Nomura had requested for the character Oswald the Lucky Rabbit to be used in Kingdom Hearts III, but Disney responded that he would be "too difficult" to use, though they never clarified why. While his plans for Oswald had he been added to the game are unknown, it's worth noting that Nomura has admitted that Oswald is one of his favorite Disney characters.
"The Incredible Shrinking Character" was a cancelled action adventure game to be developed by Go-Go Interactive Studios and published by Cyberdreams for the PlayStation, Sega Saturn, and PC. Set in the year 1959, players would have assumed the role of a private investigator, hired to find Julie Caldwell (the daughter of a wealthy industrial family) after she had disappeared while visiting the castle of Dr. Warren Franklin. When the player arrives, however, the doctor springs a trap on them that causes them to start gradually shrinking. Thus, the player must not only save Julie (who is implied to be trapped in the castle's dungeon, due to the sound of a female screaming), but also find an antidote to their shrinking as they contend with otherwise harmless creatures (i.e. the doctor's house cat) that become more dangerous the smaller they get. The game would have included at least ten levels, with the player being smaller in each one, and would have included several size puzzles. The exact reason why the game was cancelled is unknown, though may have been in part due to Cyberdreams going defunct in 1997.
During 2004, Next Level Games was working on a game based on the WWE franchise called "WWE Titans: Parts Unknown". Planned to release on the Playstation 2 and Xbox as a 1-vs-1 fighter, the game was planned to have a radically different direction from past WWE titles, featuring a new art style that focused on exaggerated character designs and cinematic locales. Settings for the game included urban environments (i.e. rooftops in a city) and an old castle located in the snowy wilderness. Additionally, one stage concept was labelled "Cena Stage", likely in reference to wrestler John Cena. This suggests that some individual wrestlers would have received arena dedicated to them.
While the game would have featured several established wrestlers, Next Level also considered adding original cast members made specifically for the game. One piece of artwork for the game shows that there were plans for anthropomorphic characters (such as crocodiles and bears) and sorcerers. Not much is known about the gameplay, though art for the game suggests that destructible environments were intended to be a key focus. For unknown reasons, the pitch was rejected by the game's publisher, THQ.
On the 19th of February 2024, designer Kevin Baylis revealed a pitch he made for Killer Instinct 3 for the Nintendo 64. It was meant to be a prequel featuring younger versions of the characters, where players could hone the characters' moves, then gaining more before moving on to "the next chapters of their lives". The game didn't make past the concept phase because the people at Rare thought that "the fighting game ‘fad’ was over".
In early February 2024, one month prior to the game's release, multi-time WWE World Champion Brock Lesnar was removed from the cover of the "Forty Years of WrestleMania" showcase edition of the game in response to a sexual assault and sex trafficking lawsuit against Vince McMahon and WWE. Although Lesnar's name was not directly mentioned in the lawsuit, his reported connection to the case led to his removal as part of a wider effort by the WWE to disassociate from him. The cover was updated to feature a larger version of John Cena, where Lesnar used to be.
Content creators who got early access to the game on February 23 confirmed that both Lesnar and McMahon were no longer playable characters in WWE 2K24. While the extent of McMahon's removal is unknown, Brock Lesnar’s data remains locked away in the game due to his matches with The Undertaker at Wrestlemania 30 and Roman Reigns at Wrestlemania 31 being featured in the "Showcase of the Immortals" Showcase mode, and it being too far into development to remove them.
When "THE JOY OF CREATION" was still in development as "The Joy of Creation: Ignited Collection", the first game in the The Joy of Creation series was going to be remade as part of the collection, where it would have been known as "The Joy of Creation: Classic". However, on July 27, 2023, Nikson revealed that he had changed his mind about adding Classic to the collection, instead having it only include The Joy of Creation: Reborn and The Joy of Creation: Story Mode.
Banjo-Tooie has become somewhat infamous for its large-scaled and convoluted structure in comparison to its predecessor, Banjo-Kazooie, with far more larger interconnected worlds with longer, complex puzzles that typically require backtracking, in comparison to Banjo-Kazooie's more straightforward and compact, self-contained levels and objectives.
According to Steve Malpass, one of Banjo-Tooie's game designers, the game was designed more in the vein of an adventure game as opposed to a platformer, being heavily inspired by The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time in particular. The development team was aware of how overcomplicated the game's structure had become by its launch (the QA department was vocal about the backtracking and navigation issues), but it was ultimately too late for them to streamline it. The Warp Pads found throughout the worlds were actually included after the levels were designed, as an attempt to mitigate the aforementioned navigation issues.
Next Level Games once had a project pitch for an action game called "Catalyst" that would have been released for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. As the game was never officially announced, not much is known about it other than what is seen in the pitch video, which involves an unidentified man attacking a group of soldiers using a device called the "Catalyst" after they had betrayed him and kidnapped his daughter. The game was never released, likely due to not being able to find a publisher.
Sneakers' graphical style was originally going to look more like a picture book or two-dimensional cartoon, but after seeing a realistic fur CGI demonstration at SIGGRAPH, it was decided to use a more realistic style instead.
When Stellar Blade was first announced as "Project Eve", it was stated to be coming to the PlayStation 4, Windows, and Xbox One. However, during the September 2021 PlayStation Showcase, it was announced that the game would instead be exclusive to the PlayStation 5, after Sony Interactive Entertainment had agreed to publish the game.
In a 2005 interview with the game's producer Koji Igarashi published in the official Konami strategy guide, he explained the decision to change the series' title in the domestic Japanese market from "Castlevania" back to "Akumajo Dracula".
The title change to Castlevania in Japan initially occurred because the Akumajo Dracula games enjoyed a larger market share in Europe and America compared to Japan. Consequently, more reports and information about the games were available in those regions, and they were released there first. In the recent past, news from outside Japan was harder to access, but with the advent of the internet, Japanese users could now easily stay informed. However, there was a concern that Japanese players might not immediately recognize the equivalence between Castlevania and Akumajo Dracula, so the main title of the previous game Lament of Innocence was changed to Castlevania in Japan to address this.
Subsequently, for Curse of Darkness, the decision was made to revert to the original title because the team felt that the Castlevania name had become associated with trilogies, inadvertently making it challenging for fans to find information about the Akumajo Dracula titles. The team wanted to ensure clarity for Japanese fans and clear up any confusion among Akumajo Dracula fans about if Castlevania was supposed to be Akumajo Dracula.
According to a 2005 interview with the game's producer Koji Igarashi published in the official Konami strategy guide, he stated that the decision to set the game three years after the events of Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse was significantly driven by his love for the game. The introduction of the "Innocent Devil" system, where players have a demon servant fighting alongside them, prompted him to consider the game's placement within the Castlevania timeline. Given the demonic nature of the Innocent Devils, Igarashi decided the story should align closely with that theme.
The idea he came up with back then revolved around a hidden narrative during Ralph C. Belmont's battle against Dracula, where there existed someone who betrayed Dracula, and another individual who relentlessly pursued this traitor. Igarashi believed that despite these circumstances not being part of the officially recorded history in-universe, they still significantly impacted Dracula’s defeat, and in that sense the gameplay system came first and the story was woven around it,
Checkered Flag was originally going to be a simulation of an F1 car, but was changed into an unrealistic action game after playtesters complained about the controls.
In early February 2024, one month prior to the game's release, multi-time WWE World Champion Brock Lesnar was removed from the cover of the "Forty Years of WrestleMania" showcase edition of the game in response to a sexual assault and sex trafficking lawsuit against Vince McMahon and WWE. Although Lesnar's name was not directly mentioned in the lawsuit, his reported connection to the case led to his removal as part of a wider effort by the WWE to disassociate from him. The cover was updated to feature a larger version of John Cena, where Lesnar used to be. 
Banjo-Tooie has become somewhat infamous for its large-scaled and convoluted structure in comparison to its predecessor, Banjo-Kazooie, with far more larger interconnected worlds with longer, complex puzzles that typically require backtracking, in comparison to Banjo-Kazooie's more straightforward and compact, self-contained levels and objectives.
