Random gaming trivia and shit

[Ryan Rash]

Let's post some. Mayhaps we'll learn something new. :3 I have a few to start us off:

-For the English release of the Sega Saturn game Astal, all the characters were voiced by one VA: Lani Minella (aka: Eve from Mass Effect 3, Ivy from Soulcalibur, Rouge from Sonic pre-ShTH)

-Once upon a time, some programmers were trying to make a racing game with the police chasing after players who ran into other cars. However, a bug in the programming for the police caused them to go apeshit and try to straight-up murder the player. Rather than try and fix this glitch, though, the programmers altered the game around it. Thus, Grand Theft Auto was born.

-Sega's Shinobi games for the Genesis were fairly notorious for seemingly ripping off comic books and movies for bosses. They got in a bit of trouble with DC Comics for a boss that beared more than a slight resemblence for Batman, and with Toho for another boss that was basically Godzilla. The game would be altered and re-released so Batman was replaced with a demon and Godzilla with a fossilized dinosaur skeleton.

 

[c-no]

I got some right here to share

-When the first Elder Scrolls game was being made, it was originally focused on having a team that engages in gladitorial combat with some sidequest. Eventually, the gladiator aspect was dropped along with having a team, thus being a game where you play as one person rather than a group.

-When Conker's Bad Fur Day was in development, it was originally being designed as a children's game called Twelve Tales Conker 64. After being called a kiddy game, Rare decided to revamp it as an M rated game on what people saw as a kiddy console.

- Solid Snake on the cover of the orginal Metal Gear (MSX, NES) was based off of Kyle Reese from The Terminator.

-The size of Daggerfall was two Great Britains. Daggerfall is also the only Elder Scrolls game where the glitches can actually prevent players from beating the main quest.

 

[Anchuent Christory]

-Capcom's Resident evil 4 went through many revisions before it was finally released in 2005. The first version featured a more action oriented and stylish main character with mysterious powers that would eventually be explained with biotechnology. It was decided that the game strayed too far from Resident evil's roots so it had it's setting changed and became a brand new game in it's own right and released in 2000. This game was Devil may cry.

The game continued to go through various iterations including features such as The protagonist, Leon Kennedy contracting the progenitor virus, possessing powers in his left hand, suffering from hallucinations and fighting more supernatural enemies before eventually becoming the vastly different game we know today.

This is footage of one of the scrapped iterations dubbed "hook man version"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=aN31-3og5SI#t=3s
Personally, I think it looks fucking brilliant.


-Q-games (pixeljunk series) Founder Dylan Cuthbert is married to Shigeru Miyamoto's daughter. Imagine having Miyamoto as your father in law!

-In 2010 a group of homebrew developers actually released a brand new game for Sega's Megadrive/genisis system. It was an rpg called Pier Solar. I comes on a 64 meg cartridge complete with Megadrive style box and booklet. It even has a feature to utilise the Mega-cd add on to improve the soundtrack, the only game to do so. It was originally sold at normal retail price, but now sells for a fortune on Ebay. But fear not, they started and successfully funded a kickstarter campaign to release it on other platforms such as PC, Xbox live and even Sega's Dreamcast!

 

[Da Pickle Monsta]

I love trivia and Easter eggs.

--In the first BloodRayne video game, there's a part where Rayne infiltrates a secret Nazi base in Argentina. In one of the storerooms, she'll find the Ark of the Covenant.

--In the game "Van Helsing" (the video game adaptation of the Hugh Jackman movie,) there's a scene where Van Helsing is trapped in a library in Transylvania. If you inspect the shelves, one captain will read something along the lines of, "many of Transylvania's most respected families are noted here. One book entitled 'The Belmonts,' catches your eye." This is an in-game wink to Castlevania, of course.

--Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw, the game critic who does "Zero Punctuation," did a review where he compared "Infamous" and "Prototype." Unable to determine the better game, he jokingly said that whatever development studio would send him a picture of their other game's protagonist in women's negligee would win. And then both game studios actually lived up to his challenge.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/article ... -Challenge

--Portal 2 has a rather infamous unfinished cut scene detailing

Spoiler

Caroline's transformation into GlaDos.

It apparently creeped out one voice actor so badly that he refused to record his lines and demanded that the scene be cut from the game, which it eventually was.

http://www.cracked.com/article_19332_7- ... found.html

 

[Ryan Rash]

-One of my favorite obscure games, Popful Mail, was originally intended to be redesigned as a Sonic game for its Sega CD release, tentatively titled "Sister Sonic". Fan outcry caused the plan to give the game the "Super Mario Bros. 2" treatment to be scrapped, and the game was given a more straightforward port. The fan outcry, surprisingly, was not from Sonic fans, but fans of the original Japanese PC version of Popful Mail.

-Famous Aspergian Satoshi Tajiri got the idea for Pokemon from two sources: his childhood hobby of collecting insects, and seeing two kids playing on linked Gameboys and visualizing those same bugs he collected crawling along the link cable from one Gameboy to the other.

-Ashly Burch, of "Hey Ash, Watcha Playin" fame, provides the voice of Tiny Tina in Borderlands 2. Her big brother/costar, Anthony, is the game's lead writer. In the DLC campaign "Mr. Torgue's Campaign of Carnage", a van Tina can be found by has a painting of a bald man with an eyepatch riding a unicorn, a reference to Papa Burch from HAWP.

-When Otacon is talking about Otaku and mechs in the original Metal Gear Solid, FMV footage from another Kojima game, Policenauts, is used (that game, btw, was never released outside of Japan). In the Twin Snakes remake, gameplay and FMV footage from Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner is used.

 

[Da Pickle Monsta]

--The original copies of the "Spider-Man: The Movie" video game (2002) had a cheat menu. One code, "THEGIRLNEXTDOOR," would allow the player to unlock a Mary Jane Watson skin. This cheat was removed from later printings of the game due to gamers being able to stage a girl-on-girl kiss during the game's final cutscene.

--Original printings of "The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time" included a number of changes from later editions. In the first editions of the game, Ganondorf would spit up red blood instead of green bile; giant stones had a crescent moon instead of a shield; and the Fire Temple included a chant in the soundtrack. These last two changes were made to satisfy complaints from Muslim interest groups, who believed that the crescent moon looked too similar to the Islamic moon and star and the chanting in the Fire Temple sounded to similar to a call to prayer.

--The Japanese NES version of "Star Wars" has Darth Vader turn into a scorpion.

--The game tie-in for the original Tim Burton "Batman" game has Batman throw the Joker off a building at the end of the game. They game programmers were probably trying to stay as close as possible to the source material within the limits of game technology (that is, the Joker falling to his death while trying to escape via helicopter) but instead presented Batman as terrifically out of character.

 

[BALLZ-BROKEN]

In 1987, Square was broke, but they had enough money to make one game. It was gonna be their "Final Fantasy" if it didn't sell. The game was a hit, they were in the black, and the rest was, well, history.

 

[Anchuent Christory]

--Original printings of "The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time" included a number of changes from later editions. In the first editions of the game, Ganondorf would spit up red blood instead of green bile; giant stones had a crescent moon instead of a shield; and the Fire Temple included a chant in the soundtrack. These last two changes were made to satisfy complaints from Muslim interest groups, who believed that the crescent moon looked too similar to the Islamic moon and star and the chanting in the Fire Temple sounded to similar to a call to prayer.

This one does the rounds regularly, but is not entirely accurate. Gametrailer's Popfiction show did a brilliant dissection of it.

http://www.gametrailers.com/playlist/vz ... ple-chants

For people interested in game myths and the like, I really recommend this show, some of them are really interesting.

 

[c-no]

From Software once made a game series known as King's Field, a first person game put in a medieval setting. The moonlight sword, an important plot-item, would not only star in the sequels but it would also appear in games like Armored Core and Dark Souls. The first game was released only in Japan a month after the PS1 was released. The rest of the world got the second game as it's first entry. Seath, the final boss of the third game, would later have his name appear as a boss in Dark Souls. King's Field was also the first game From Software had made.

 

[cypocryphy]

"Rings Of Power" easter egg -

Spoiler

 

[Ryan Rash]

Naughty Dog, indeed. X3

-Sonic was originally envisioned to be the vocalist of a band of animal rock stars. That concept was scrapped from the games, but one of the members would eventually find his way into future games, the retarded drummer known as Vector the Crocodile.

-The Genesis version of Sonic 3D Blast was never released in Japan. To make up for the fact that his soundtrack would not be enjoyed by Japanese gamers, lead sound and music director Jun Senoue made new arrangements of two themes from the Genesis soundtrack, Green Grove Act 1 and Panic Puppet Act 1, and included them in the soundtrack of Sonic Adventure.

-The original Japanese releases of Sonic Adventure and Jet Set Radio were glitchy as hell. As such, both received re-releases based on the western versions of the game: Sonic Adventure International Edition and de la Jet Set Radio.

-The original beta trailer of Phantasy Star Online featured an enemy called a Grass Assassin in the game's forest area. When the game was released, the Grass Assassin was nowhere to be found in the forest, as it was relegated to the caves.

 

[c-no]

The Shin Megami Tensei series and the series that preceded it, Megami Tensei was based off of a book called Digital Devil Story. Digital Devil Story was also given an anime OVA and its own video game.

 

[Ryan Rash]

-Metal Gear Solid 4 has shout-outs from other Kojima games, such as music from ZoE, Policenauts, and Snatcher that can be played on Snake's iPod, and an unlockable raygun taken from Boktai.

-Of the English voice actors for the MGS series, the only members to have actually played the game were David Hayter (Snake) and Kim Mai Guest (Mei Ling). Amongst those two, only Hayter played the series through to completion.

-Daisuke Ishiwatari not only created the Guilty Gear series and compose its soundtrack, but up until Guilty Gear XX: Accent Core, he was the voice of leading man Sol Badguy.

-Believe it or not, Bungie made games aside from Marathon and Halo. One of them is Oni, a third-person shooter/brawler heavily inspired by Ghost in the Shell, featuring Amanda Winn Lee as protagonist Konoko. If that name doesn't ring a bell, she was the English voice of teh rei from Evangelion.

 

[Da Pickle Monsta]

--Original printings of "The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time" included a number of changes from later editions. In the first editions of the game, Ganondorf would spit up red blood instead of green bile; giant stones had a crescent moon instead of a shield; and the Fire Temple included a chant in the soundtrack. These last two changes were made to satisfy complaints from Muslim interest groups, who believed that the crescent moon looked too similar to the Islamic moon and star and the chanting in the Fire Temple sounded to similar to a call to prayer.

This one does the rounds regularly, but is not entirely accurate. Gametrailer's Popfiction show did a brilliant dissection of it.

http://www.gametrailers.com/playlist/vz ... ple-chants

For people interested in game myths and the like, I really recommend this show, some of them are really interesting.

Well huh. Everything I know is wrong! Very interesting, thanks for the link!

--I'm a huge Castlevania fan, and some of the latest releases have some strange throwaway jokes in them due to IGA, who was the series producer. In no particular order:

1.) In Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow, there's a room in the Final Tower that contains a Succubus and a Lilith. There's also a rubber duck floating in the water behind them.

2.) In Castlevania: Curse of Darkness, Hector can find chairs hidden throughout the levels. These chairs include a toilet, an electric chair, and a recliner, among others. Every chair that Hecotr finds is then placed inside a special room of chairs, which is a hidden room inside Cordova town. Unlocking all the chairs in the game unlocks The Final Chair. Other than allowing Hector to sit in them, most of these chairs serve no real purpose.

3.) A similar gimmick exists in Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance, wherein Juste Belmont can find furniture scattered throughout the castle. Collecting furniture then allows him to furnish a special room in the bottom of Castle A.

4.) Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, Aria of Sorrow, Dawn of Sorrow, Portrait of Ruin and Order of Ecclesia all include enemies based on American folklore. These include versions of the Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Lion from the Wizard of Oz; the New Jersey Mothman; gremlins; and Bigfoot. Some of these enemies have special criteria that have to be met before they can be drawn out. In Dawn of Sorrow, for example, the Mothman can only be fought if a searchlight at the top of the castle is powered with electricity.

5.) Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow includes a hidden enemy called the "Tsuchinoko", which is only occasionally encountered in a single room in the Dance Hall. Tsuchinoko is based on a Japanese cryptid. The Tsuchinoko enemy also appears in Konami's other Grade-A title, Metal Gear Solid 3, although this is probably coincidence. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsuchinoko

6.) The original Castlevania game includes a Moai head collectible Easter Egg, which is a reference to Gradius. It will be hidden in the first level after the game is cleared once.

7.) Castlevania: Lament of Innocence includes an accessory called the "Piyo-Piyo shoes," which have little duck heads on the toes. Even more hysterically, they make Leon squeak when he walks.

 

[Ryan Rash]

The English dub of Persona 4 has the player character and Tohru Adachi voiced by the same VA, Johnny Yong Bosch. The fact is not easy to see at first in the game, but in the anime adaptation where the PC actually talks, it leads to some awesome "talking to yourself" moments. :3

 

[Anchuent Christory]

Well huh. Everything I know is wrong! Very interesting, thanks for the link!

You're welcome! I wouldn't have known myself if I hadn't seen that.

-The name "Donkey Kong" is a mistranslation of "Monkey Kong"..... Only it isn't! The Monkey Kong thing's been around for ages, and is a fairly common piece of trivia, but apparently Miyamoto himself says that he was actually named Donkey Kong because he wanted to convey the stubborn nature of donkeys with the Character.

 

[Ryan Rash]

-Persona 2: Innocent Sin was initially never released outside of Japan, due to the game having a homo love interest and Hitler as the final boss. The PSP re-release did make it westward with minimal alterations (Hitler being renamed to "Fuhrer" and being given sunglasses and a trenchcoat).

 

[Ryan Rash]

Kazuma Kaneko is most well known as the demon designer for the Shin Megami Tensei series, as well as the character designer for most of its earlier titles. He has also done work on other series, though, such as the Devil Trigger designs in Devil May Cry 3 (done as part of a deal wherein Dante made a cameo in SMT3: Nocturne) and the Orbital Frame Inhert for Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner.

 

[c-no]

-The Fallout series was influence by an old crpg game known as Wasteland.
-The Wizardry series was popular in the United Sates, having 8 games but when it came to Japan, it was HUGE to the point that it had an anime movie and to this day had more games despite the series ending with Wizardry 8. The current Wizardry game is Wizardry Online.
- The Ultima series was big in Japan to the point that it influenced the Eastern RPG genre. It was also an inspiration for Dragon Quest. The series also gotten it's own manga's. One reason the fourth Ultima game was created after Richard Garriot gotten letters from angry parents.

 

[Judge Holden]

Warcraft was originally an adaptation of the Warhammer tabletop game, but due to Games workshop not letting blizzard have any control over the game universe the deal fell through, and this is why so many think one is a rip-off of the other