The game's designers when creating the sprite animations for Mickey had to design the levels to accommodate for the higher number of frames of animation and subsequent extra distance in Mickey's jump. When asked about the inspiration for the game's high-quality sprite animation, producer Emiko Yamamoto told Game Informer in 2013:
"For animation we studied the [Disney] films frame by frame and worked very hard to recreate it in the game. For example, with Mickey’s jump, we wanted to fully express his body movement so we added more frames of animation. As a result, his jump ended up being longer than a jump would be in a normal game, so we had to design the levels so that the distance of his jump worked."
According to Yamamoto, the developers aimed for these higher-quality animations in the first place because they valued making the world and characters feel alive and only realized they were capable of achieving this after creating supplementary animations like Mickey's idle and wavering animations:
"Actually this was something the main programmer and animator came up with. I recall them coming to me and showing me what they created (the idle animation and also the animation for when Mickey was wavering at the edge of a platform) and I was pleasantly surprised. I asked them “Oh, we can do something like this? Sure, let’s do it!” Making sure the world and characters feel alive was very important to the team."
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In the ending cutscene in the Japanese version, Gruntilda's skull was replaced with a sack that resembles her clothing. This change was most likely made to comply with political outcry in Japan over the 1997 Kobe child murders, during which a 14 year-old boy murdered two fellow students on separate occasions, the first victim having been beheaded. The cryptic nature of these crimes garnered enough attention in Japanese media and politics to cause the National Diet to reduce the age of criminal responsibility in Japan from 16 to 14 years old in the year 2000, the same year Banjo-Tooie was released. Despite this change, Gruntilda's eyeball can still be seen falling out of the bag in the censored version.
Final Fantasy IX is notorious for having one of the worst official strategy guides made for a video game at the time of its release. The reason why was because Squaresoft decided to host essential tips and secrets that players would want to seek out on its PlayOnline website in an effort to promote that, and forced Brady Games to accommodate for the change in the printed guide by directing readers to the website. Brady Games were against the idea because they knew their consumer base would not like it and understood that buying a strategy guide was worthless when the information they needed was online for free. However, they complied because they did not want to lose the exclusivity rights to making a strategy guide for Final Fantasy X. In the end, Squaresoft abandoned this cross-platform strategy guide format following the negative reception from Final Fantasy IX's guide and stuck with printing physical strategy guides for future games.
Revealed in concept art by former Retro Studios employee Sammy Hall, Retro Studios actually worked on two major projects for Nintendo using two of their biggest IPs before Nintendo cancelled them for unknown reasons.
One of them was a project in the Mario series centered around the supporting character Boo. Little is known about the project outside of the Concept art, but hints released with the concept art tease that it would have been released for one of Nintendo's handhelds (such as the DS) as well as there being things in the game referred to as "possession powers" and "Broomies".
The other game, rumored to be centered around the character of Sheik from The Legend of Zelda series, was more elaborate. Hints leaked by Hall and released with the concept art suggest that it would of been about, and centered around, the origin of the Master Sword in the Bad Timeline and would feature "the last Sheik" as it's main character. The game would have also seen the Dark Gerudo tribe engaging in their decade-long birth to Ganon. The project was describe as an "Action/RPG".
In the hallway of the 8th floor "Paranormal Productions", there are posters that reference past titles that the game's developer Next Level Games worked on. In order there's a poster of Mario about to kick a soccer ball (Super Mario Strikers), a poster of King Boo and Luigi (Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon), A poster of the overhead silhouetted cast of Mario Strikers Charged, and a poster of Little Mac, Doc Louis, and Mr. Sandman (Punch-Out!!). If Luigi sucks the last poster with the Poltergust, it will reveal a green boxing glove resembling that of Little Mac's.
In a promotional article published by Gamefan magazine, the game's art style was stated to have been heavily influenced by the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote Looney Tunes shorts directed by Warner Bros. animator Chuck Jones. On top of this, he was credited in promotional materials for overseeing some of the game's art direction and for choosing the game's flat-shaded, polygonal graphics, but was not credited in the final product.
According to Mike and Matt Chapman, a representative of Sega of America offered them the chance to make a game based off Homestar Runner, but they declined their offer because they were not offered creative control over the game's development.
"There was a dude from Sega of America awhile ago that we were kinda just talking to. I was like, 'Is there any way that this wouldn’t just be put into the factory and stuck out on the other end with something that looks kinda like our characters?' And the guy was like, 'Ehhhn, probably not.' He was very up front, and we were like, 'Well thanks for being honest, we’ll pass.'"
They were later approached by Telltale Games who offered more creative freedom and they both believed the episodic format would work better for the characters of Homestar Runner, leading to the creation of Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People.
In December of 2012, Chris Prynoski, founder of the American animation studio Titmouse, Inc., posted several hashtags on Twitter hinting at a collaboration with Valve before posting a picture of himself with Gabe Newell in Titmouse's offices. The collaboration was most commonly speculated to be a video game based off of the Titmouse-animated Cartoon Network series "Megas XLR". In August of 2015, Prynoski clarified that the collaboration was scrapped due to licensing problems.
A pre-release screenshot shows an unused American bus modeled after buses owned by Coach USA, and was most likely scrapped to avoid copyright issues with that company.
There is a glitch whenever Jak walks in front of a mirror that causes a slightly different model of Jak with dark grey horns to appear alongside the "reflected" second model of the room, initially suggesting that Jak was used as a test model for shaping Dark Jak's horns. However, a 2003 promotional contest advertisement hosted by Cartoon Network's programming block Toonami features a higher resolution model of Jak with white horns instead, suggesting that the model sent to Cartoon Network still had the horns on them and they just altered the model for the advertisement, or that Jak was originally supposed to have visible horns like Dark Jak.
The plot of the Adventure Mode: World of Light, in which Kirby is the sole survivor of a cataclysmic invasion and must rescue the other fighters, was actually series director Masahiro Sakurai's original vision for the plot of Super Smash Bros. Brawl's Adventure Mode: The Subspace Emissary.
This early storyline was mentioned during a 2008 Iwata Asks interview: "I had envisioned a more serious tone for the story. Something with some misfortune like a single character escaping total annihilation of his squadron and then fighting back while rounding up his allies."
It should be noted however that Spoiler:this early storyline would be implemented somewhat closer to the end of The Subspace Emissary anyway when Tabuu decimates every fighter turning them back into trophies, while Kirby, Luigi and Ness are revived in separate locations thanks to the three Dedede Brooches.
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Starting with Hatsune Miku: Project Diva F and onward, SEGA has made changes to the game's edit/photo mode. In the Japanese version, if the player tries to lower the camera in order to get a panty shot of a 3D model, they will be met with a loud police siren and the model will suddenly disappear with a warning message appearing at the top of the right hand side of the screen. This was done in response to players creating custom videos and photos of Miku in NSFW situations upon the release of Hatsune Miku: Project Diva F. This change was also implemented across all other regional versions.
In the Dreamcast version, despite having only been released in Japan, the entire English localization is present in the game, even retaining the English title "Puyo Pop Fever", and can be toggled from the Options menu. This hints at a possible Western release of the Dreamcast version that never materialized due to the discontinuation of the console by the time the game was released elsewhere, making it the last Dreamcast game developed by Sonic Team, as well as the last first-party Sega title released on the platform. The Dreamcast version is also the only version of the game to use sprites instead of 3D models.
One of the primary Western influences of Ace Attorney is the American crime drama series "Columbo", of which series creator Shu Takumi is a professed fan, and who based his character profiles on the sharpness and secrecy of Lieutenant Columbo:
"I don't touch upon Phoenix's past in the games, and the players don't even know where his parents are. Fans often ask me about the birthdate of a character, or their bloodtype or favorite food, but I don't talk about them on purpose. On the other hand, my own personality might be shining through my characters... In the game, Phoenix's thoughts are shown as monologue, but those inner monologues are just my own, personal thoughts. So when people say "Phoenix is actually quite sarcastic", they're actually talking about me (laugh)."
In the 2015 interview the above quote came from, Takahiro Ookura, writer of the Japanese crime drama series "Enter Lieutenant Fukuie", commented afterwards:
"I can feel the influence of "Columbo" in "Ace Attorney". For example, there's the thing with the IV drops in "Turnabout Succession", episode 4 of "Ace Attorney 4". I won't go into details, but the part where it goes "the only way you can know about this if you were there at that time", that's a type of logic often used in "Columbo"."
Additionally, the character design for Detective Dick Gumshoe is likely modeled off of Columbo's actor Peter Falk; Gumshoe's squint and uneven eyebrows mirror those of Falk, whose signature squint was the result of using an artificial right eyeball stemming from a childhood eye surgery.
In the Super Mario World official guidebook interview, the game's composer Koji Kondo was asked how he came up with Mario's main theme, and revealed that it was originally very different, and went through multiple iterations. He commented:
"My first image was of “walking around an open grassy field.” That got me thinking about how carefree it must feel, and I wrote a relaxed, light melody to match. However, when I played it back alongside the actual game, it didn’t match the speed of the game or its rhythm at all! I tried adding a swing feel to it, but many people told me this made the melody sound weird, so that was out too. After trying this and that, I came up with the idea of a “cha cha cha” melody, and it all expanded from there."
A potential stage based on Super Mario Land was considered for the Nintendo 3DS version to represent the Game Boy. However, a stage based on Kirby's Dream Land was used instead for unknown reasons (the stage was renamed to Dream Land GB in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate to avoid confusion with another stage already named Dream Land).
A reversal of this kind also happened in the Wii U version, where a stage based on Kirby's Epic Yarn was considered, but was revamped into a stage based on The Great Cave Offensive from Kirby Super Star after the development team heard about the then-upcoming Wii U game Yoshi's Woolly World.
According to the PlayStation Blogcast with Seth Killian, Nathan Drake from the Uncharted series nearly got in the game.
He commented: “We were committed to try and provide some extra content to Sony and we were excited about looking at the different roster and seeing who was out there, and you know you’ve got all sort of cool characters like Nathan Drake, but you know Nathan Drake has kind of a nice Han Solo kind of everyman and he’s a comical guy but the Japanese team got really excited about Cole and the flexibility of his powers, projectiles, grabs, and all sorts of cool stuff.”
The original Xbox release of Shrek is noted as being the first commercial game to use "deferred shading," a technique where light is only calculated for the pixels it actually interacts with, meaning multiple light sources can be used at a lower cost than standard shading techniques and allowing the game to better imitate the ambient lighting of the original film. This technique would later be seen in Battlefield 1942, another game developed by DICE and released the following year.
In The PlayStation magazine interview with the game's art designer Kazuma Kaneko, he was asked about how the game's title 'Sin' (Persona 2: Innocent Sin) and the main theme of 'rumors' tied together in the game's story. He responded:
"My definition of “rumor” is when a person makes a judgment based on their own preconceptions and prejudices, and then recklessly disseminates that to the wider world. When that stuff circulates and circulates, you know… it could eventually become a sin. Even though we never intentionally think we’re committing a sin, I bet in our everyday lives this kind of thing happens a lot. A careless comment you make could have a major impact on someone else’s life. Those ideas are intertwined with the story of Persona 2."
The game's designers when creating the sprite animations for Mickey had to design the levels to accommodate for the higher number of frames of animation and subsequent extra distance in Mickey's jump. When asked about the inspiration for the game's high-quality sprite animation, producer Emiko Yamamoto told Game Informer in 2013:
Revealed in concept art by former Retro Studios employee Sammy Hall, Retro Studios actually worked on two major projects for Nintendo using two of their biggest IPs before Nintendo cancelled them for unknown reasons.
In the hallway of the 8th floor "Paranormal Productions", there are posters that reference past titles that the game's developer Next Level Games worked on. In order there's a poster of Mario about to kick a soccer ball (Super Mario Strikers), a poster of King Boo and Luigi (Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon), A poster of the overhead silhouetted cast of Mario Strikers Charged, and a poster of Little Mac, Doc Louis, and Mr. Sandman (Punch-Out!!). If Luigi sucks the last poster with the Poltergust, it will reveal a green boxing glove resembling that of Little Mac's.
In December of 2012, Chris Prynoski, founder of the American animation studio Titmouse, Inc., posted several hashtags on Twitter hinting at a collaboration with Valve before posting a picture of himself with Gabe Newell in Titmouse's offices. The collaboration was most commonly speculated to be a video game based off of the Titmouse-animated Cartoon Network series "Megas XLR". In August of 2015, Prynoski clarified that the collaboration was scrapped due to licensing problems.
A pre-release screenshot shows an unused American bus modeled after buses owned by Coach USA, and was most likely scrapped to avoid copyright issues with that company.
There is a glitch whenever Jak walks in front of a mirror that causes a slightly different model of Jak with dark grey horns to appear alongside the "reflected" second model of the room, initially suggesting that Jak was used as a test model for shaping Dark Jak's horns. However, a 2003 promotional contest advertisement hosted by Cartoon Network's programming block Toonami features a higher resolution model of Jak with white horns instead, suggesting that the model sent to Cartoon Network still had the horns on them and they just altered the model for the advertisement, or that Jak was originally supposed to have visible horns like Dark Jak.
One of the primary Western influences of Ace Attorney is the American crime drama series "Columbo", of which series creator Shu Takumi is a professed fan, and who based his character profiles on the sharpness and secrecy of Lieutenant Columbo:
