Random gaming trivia and shit

[Dr. Tremolo]

I was just reading some research on Lego Island 2. That game is remarkable. Seems like another nostalgic childhood game, but it's a real hidden gem for its unusually bad design. Shit should be studied and analyzed by any aspiring game designer.
So what's the deal? The game is infamous for its longass loading times - half of the game is staring at that spinning pizza. But why does it happen? That's where it gets interesting.
Nearly every single seemingly shared asset in the game is a duplicate. Every tree and platform and so on are not reused assets, but separate files. This was extremely tasking for 2001 PCs.
The ultimate crowning example is the asteroid belt minigame near the end of the game. You encounter 235 asteroids on your way... all of them separate files. There are two variations of them. So the game loads 470 files (for models and collision) for something that could've been achieved with four files. Make your own judgment of that.

 

[Watcher]

I was just reading some research on Lego Island 2. That game is remarkable. Seems like another nostalgic childhood game, but it's a real hidden gem for its unusually bad design. Shit should be studied and analyzed by any aspiring game designer.
So what's the deal? The game is infamous for its longass loading times - half of the game is staring at that spinning pizza. But why does it happen? That's where it gets interesting.
Nearly every single seemingly shared asset in the game is a duplicate. Every tree and platform and so on are not reused assets, but separate files. This was extremely tasking for 2001 PCs.
The ultimate crowning example is the asteroid belt in the game. You encounter 235 asteroids on your way... all of them separate files. There are two variations of them. So the game loads 470 files (for models and collision) for something that could've been achieved with four files. Make your own judgment of that.

Bare in mind Lego Island 2 is a game where all of the characters are lego.

So there's extremely little reason to make separate individual models for the game when they're supposed to be the identical.

 

[Dr. Tremolo]

Bare in mind Lego Island 2 is a game where all of the characters are lego.

So there's extremely little reason to make separate individual models for the game when they're supposed to be the identical.

Incidentally, the generic minifig model is one of the few models in the entire game that is stored separate and shared between levels. Everything else? LI2 has that gimmick that you can walk up to people and change their hats. The swappable hat models are the same for all of them but surprise surprise, each minifig has its own duplicate set of files of identical hats for all of them.
Also, all the references to files are hardcoded (ie. stored in the main exe file), which adds further to the clusterfuck.

 

[Jaimas]

Some of my favorites:

1. Arguably the first female video game protagonist was the bug in Yars' Revenge in 1983. She was not expressly identified as female until 1987, since, after all, she was a big flying cyber-bug. If you're talking confirmed female in-game, Samus Aran wins, having done this in 1986 in Metroid. For openly female from the start, it's Alys Landale from Phantasy Star in 1987.
   
2. Whilst Nintendo of America's "Nanny" policy resulted in a great many games being censored in the 1980s and 90s, quite a few games worked out interesting ways around this. The Dragon Quest series in the US used Olde English words and descriptions, making the argument that young children wouldn't be able to figure that shit out.
3. Sometimes attempts to censor failed. In early copies of Final Fantasy they replaced the crosses in the graveyards with Stars of David, making it look like Himmler just rode through town.
   
4. Sometimes the defense was the translation itself. Breath of Fire and its sequel have infamously horrible translations riddled with bad grammar and stuff that borders on SNK-glish. There's a reason for this: the stories for both games are exceptionally dark, even by the standards of the time, and with a lot of adult-oriented humor. This never could have gotten past NOA at the time, so the only defense was obfuscating stupidity. If you ever play the professional retranslation, you might be surprised with just how fucking horrifying - and hilarious - the game can really be.
5. Speaking of Breath of Fire, Breath of Fire II had a romance sub-plot that was cut short due to time requirements. Depending on the player's actions, Ryu could wind up hooked up with either Nina, Rin/Katt, or Bleu/Deis. Each of these was focused on building up their relationship points when they asked questions and stuff during their respective plot arcs using the Dragon's Tear. Nina starts the closest to the hero, Lin second and Deis last. Nina would usually win by default unless you showed preferential treatment towards the other two. Though the actual arc was cut out, a huge amount of it (and dialogue related to it) remains in the game.
   
6. A non-bootleg westernized release of Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake was not released until almost 25 years after its initial release.

 

[Watcher]

So in the lore to the game Space Station 13. The popular trollfic Woody's Got Wood has been circulated around more than the Bible.

Believed to have been written some time in the year 2009 by an unknown author, Woody's Got Wood spent the last 541 years becoming one of the most popular and widely read stories of the entire English language, with even wider circulation than the Bible. Woody's got Wood tells an epic tale of love and tragedy, all contained within just under 300 words.

Unfortunately as of late, those in Nanotrasen space have begun to grow tired and even resent this ancient love story. While reasons for this range from cultural theorists simply pointing out that after five hundred plus years, fads do die off, to conspiracy theorists believing the Nanotrasen executives to be secretly Space Mormons and wish to incite hatred towards sexual expression. The most likely explanation is that no one has ever liked Woody's Got Wood and after five hundred years hearing this fucking story again simply makes everyone want to kill you.

There have been recorded instances of people being brutally stabbed, shot, eaten, spaced, electrocuted, lethally injected, swirlied and even slapped for reading Woody's Got Wood to a large non-voluntary crowd. It is also well known that reading Woody's Got Wood can short circuit artificial intelligentsia as well as cybernetic organisms under the oft used Asimov Law Set causing the reader to find themselves declared as non-human.

 

[Tranhuviya]

If you stand in a graveyard in New Vegas long enough, you'll hear whispers.

 

[Count groudon]

In Luigi's mansion for gamecube, at a certain point in the game you get a message from the professor while in the phone room. When the lightning flashes during the message, if you look at Luigi's shadow it appears as if he's being hung from the ceiling. It's just a graphical glitch but still pretty unsettling.

Also, the NCR ranger gear, arguably the most iconic armor in New Vegas is actually a homage to an outfit that was originally planned to be in the first game. It was supposed to be a unique set of armor used exclusively by the follower Tycho, who is described in the game as a gritty man who wears a gasmask and a duster over a set of old leather armor. Also the alternate version of the armor, the desert ranger armor, is a reference to the desert rangers who were a major faction in fallout's predecessor wasteland.

 

[John Titor]

Kotaro Uchikoshi, the developer behind Zero Escape, was the 3D modeller for Pepsiman. He started writing when a producer saw some notes he did for fun and thought he had potential to write a story.

 

[Goofy Logic]

Rockstar North used to be known as DMA design. In the early 90's, after making a walking sprite animation to fit in a 8x8 pixel box, they realized that the sprite could be made into a game. The sprites were dubbed 'Lemmings', and the name stuck.

Grand Theft Auto was originally to be a racing game. A bug in the game caused police cars to home into the center of the player, and the developers observed test players instead focus on how much chaos they could cause.

In Wasteland, the Police Chief of Las Vegas is Faran Brygo, a play on Brian Fargo's name. If you shoot up his office, you will stumble upon a computer running Wasteland 2.

The development of Descent was initially funded by Apogee Software. Apogee cancelled the funding after helping Parallax software finish the demo, but helped them by getting by Interplay interested.

 

[Watcher]

The development of Descent was initially funded by Apogee Software. Apogee cancelled the funding after helping Parallax software finish the demo, but helped them by getting by Interplay interested.

Adding to this

The game "Descent: Freespace" was not intended to be part of the Descent series. The reason they added the "Descent" name to it was to avoid trademark issues with Mijenix Corporation's "FreeSpace" disk compression software.

The game Red Faction was originally supposed to be a sequel to Descent 3. It was to feature it's Geomod technology prominently to let you blow tunnels into the environment. This changed and the game was restructured as an FPS. And parts of the game's plot like the main character being named "Parker" stayed in the game.

 

[Goofy Logic]

Games that had Warren Spector involved in development often had a self insert of Spector or references to games he was involved in.

-Deus Ex had you rescue a man from MJ12 that was modeled by Warren.
-The bar in Hell's Kitchen is the Underworld bar, with the sign looking exactly like Ultima Underworld's logo.

-in Ultima Underworld, you encounter a 'Upset Spectre named Warren'. The Spectre is upset because Warren was not directly involved with the development, and sorely wanted to be.

-in Underworld 2, there is a sentient lion race called the Trilkhai, which is a play on the Kilrathi race from Wing Commander.

 

[Watcher]

Grand Theft Auto 4's OST had a lot of tracks made or altered specifically for it to include references to the game's setting.

The song Vagabond by Greenskeepers as far as I know was commissioned specifically for the game. It was featured in the many of the trailers to the game and on the radio station Radio Broker. The lyrics to the track are very reminiscent of the game's plot.

I wanna shoot you down now for the things you did
From far away I came, got away from seeing red
I came a long way to see you
Such a long way to see you
I came a long way to see you
Now I wish you were dead, wish you were dead

 

[Iä! Iä!]

Games that had Warren Spector involved in development often had a self insert of Spector or references to games he was involved in.

-Deus Ex had you rescue a man from MJ12 that was modeled by Warren.
-The bar in Hell's Kitchen is the Underworld bar, with the sign looking exactly like Ultima Underworld's logo.

-in Ultima Underworld, you encounter a 'Upset Spectre named Warren'. The Spectre is upset because Warren was not directly involved with the development, and sorely wanted to be.

-in Underworld 2, there is a sentient lion race called the Trilkhai, which is a play on the Kilrathi race from Wing Commander.

Adding to that list, both Worlds of Ultima games featured a certain Dr. Johann Spector as one of the Avatar's companions.

 

[Watcher]

In the game Far Cry 4 the main character's objective is to spread his mother's ashes in her native homeland. And he meets with her ex-boyfriend Pagan Min

At the start of the game the player is seated to dinner with Pagan while he hears a man getting tortured in the background. The player is expected to walk out and join up with a series of rebels who consequently manipulate him into serving their political agenda.

However, if the player remains seated for 10 minutes. Pagan then lets the player do what he intended to do in the first place, scatter his mother's ashes. And then the game ends as the player goes to shoot guns with him. It's regarded on /v/ as the better ending to the game.

 

[LazarusOwenhart]

The actor Richard Ridings who provided the voice for Daddy Pig in the childrens TV show Peppa Pig was also the voice of the advisor in the Dungeon Keeper games. Anyone with kids who watch that show now know why that voice seems so familiar. Imagine him talking about disembowelment.

 

[Count groudon]

In the early stages of tf2's developement, they were initially planning to strip away all the unrealistic aspects of the original such as double and rocket jumping, giving the Heavy a machine gun (that could only effectively be used by placing sandbags for it to rest on) instead of a minigun, and the spy was to only be able to disguise himself after discreetly strangling an enemy team member with his garrote and switching outfits with the body. There were also two additional classes, an officer who would litterally give pep talks that raised the speed and accuracy of nearby teammates, and a commander who wouldn't actually be in game but had a complete view of the map and would give orders using the teamspeak or chat. The medic would only be able to heal and revive other players and completely lacked the ability to defend himself, and the engineer could exclusively build turrents and sentry guns. But they felt that this version of the game lacked any charm, so they scrapped it in favor of the goofy, completely unrealistic game they have now.

 

[AnOminous]

In the early stages of tf2's developement, they were initially planning to strip away all the unrealistic aspects of the original such as double and rocket jumping, giving the Heavy a machine gun (that could only effectively be used by placing sandbags for it to rest on) instead of a minigun, and the spy was to only be able to disguise himself after discreetly strangling an enemy team member with his garrote and switching outfits with the body. There were also two additional classes, an officer who would litterally give pep talks that raised the speed and accuracy of nearby teammates, and a commander who wouldn't actually be in game but had a complete view of the map and would give orders using the teamspeak or chat. The medic would only be able to heal and revive other players and completely lacked the ability to defend himself, and the engineer could exclusively build turrents and sentry guns. But they felt that this version of the game lacked any charm, so they scrapped it in favor of the goofy, completely unrealistic game they have now.

Every one of those sounds like completely horrible ideas.

 

[c-no]

When Fallout was first being made, it was using the GURPS system. Once Interplay's use of GURPS from Steve Jackson was terminated, the SPECIAL system was introduced. On that same note, when Fallout was being made with GURPS, the setting was entirely different. To sum it up, it all came from one night of drinking when making the first draft of the script. It involved dinosaurs, time travel, dystopian future, and a fantasy land where one of the things you do is save a dragon from a princess. For the long version:
http://www.nma-fallout.com/article.php?id=60787

If that draft was pushed through, one could only wonder how that would of been.

 

[Watcher]

When Fallout was first being made, it was using the GURPS system. Once Interplay's use of GURPS from Steve Jackson was terminated, the SPECIAL system was introduced. On that same note, when Fallout was being made with GURPS, the setting was entirely different. To sum it up, it all came from one night of drinking when making the first draft of the script. It involved dinosaurs, time travel, dystopian future, and a fantasy land where one of the things you do is save a dragon from a princess. For the long version:
http://www.nma-fallout.com/article.php?id=60787

If that draft was pushed through, one could only wonder how that would of been.

There's a shitton of good Fallout 1 trivia

1. Tim Cain, the lead developer of the game who programmed much of the engine (and was the sole developer for much of it's development) is colorblind and required an artist to tell him specific things weren't colored orange and brown.
2. Fallout was originally a fantasy game and was that way because Interplay acquired the D&D license (which they used for Descent to Undermountain). What most people don't know is that they left a build of the fantasy version of the game on the Fallout disc
3. Fallout was created largely because they couldn't get the Wasteland license from EA. EA ended up making their own sequel to Wasteland called Fountain of Dreams that nobody played.
4. The game featured 1950's-isms to stand out compared to an influx of post apocalyptic games and media at the time. Tim Cain stated he wanted the game to feature "Robby the robot robots and not Terminators"
5. Interplay expected Fallout would fail, and told Tim Cain this numerous times. (Which is why he was the sole developer of the game for a good chunk of it's development). They frequently shifted developers from Fallout to Descent to Undermountain (which they expected to sell enormously well and they paid a lot for both the Descent engine and the D&D license. The game failed spectacularly).
6. After Interplay axed the fantasy idea Tim Cain set about making an RPG based on the game X-Com. Where the player is an isolated survivor of an alien invasion that conveniently avoided his town, and you have to venture out of your town using it as a home base to combat the aliens. After Interplay axed this idea, the game was made post-apocalyptic. However the idea of the player venturing out from an isolated place you'd use as your home base later morphed into Vault 13 and the main plot of the game.
7. Fallout released shortly after Diablo. And right when Diablo launched and became an enormous success Interplay demanded Tim Cain change Fallout to real time. The game was only a few months from launching and was practically done. It was only after a lot of persuasian that it would take at least double the amount of time to recode the engine in real time that Interplay decided to keep the game turn based. It's worth noting that both Fallout Tactics and Tim Cain's own Arcanum both featured a Real Time option and both were horribly awkward to play compared to Turn Based
8. All of the talking heads in Fallout were modeled in the designer's office before being modeled in a computer

 

[John Titor]

In the early stages of tf2's developement, they were initially planning to strip away all the unrealistic aspects of the original such as double and rocket jumping, giving the Heavy a machine gun (that could only effectively be used by placing sandbags for it to rest on) instead of a minigun, and the spy was to only be able to disguise himself after discreetly strangling an enemy team member with his garrote and switching outfits with the body. There were also two additional classes, an officer who would litterally give pep talks that raised the speed and accuracy of nearby teammates, and a commander who wouldn't actually be in game but had a complete view of the map and would give orders using the teamspeak or chat. The medic would only be able to heal and revive other players and completely lacked the ability to defend himself, and the engineer could exclusively build turrents and sentry guns. But they felt that this version of the game lacked any charm, so they scrapped it in favor of the goofy, completely unrealistic game they have now.

Things like these are why I think delays can do a game some good.