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36 Video Game Facts to Take Into Hyperspace, ‘Defender’-Style

November 11, 2023

Our favorite games were perfect just the way they were! So it can be hard to hear that some classics had some absolutely massive last-minute facelifts.

Donkey Kong, for instance, was originally meant to be a game about Popeye the Sailor Man. Luckily for the video game world as a whole, Nintendo failed to secure the rights, and settled for some big monkey who hucks barrels at some little mustachioed man in red.

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SUPER SMASH BROS. LUIGI MARIO DK LINK SAMUS C.FALCON NESS YOSHI KIRBY FOX PIKACHU JIGGLYPUFF 1PHMT 2PHN 3PHMN 4 HMN CRACKED COM Super Smash Bros. was pitched as a 4-player brawler, but Nintendo did not initially want their licensed characters to appear. After the small team of developers added Mario, Link and Samus anyway, Nintendo liked the demo so much they granted them permission to use the characters. — Source

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DONKEY KONG 1UP HIGH SCORE 2UP 000100 L=01 BONUS CRACKED COM Donkey Kong was made to be a Popeye the Sailor game, featuring Bluto, Olive Oil, and the titular Popeye. When Nintendo could not secure the rights, they settled on a King Kong inspired aesthetic with a mustached protagonist that ultimately changed gaming forever. — Source

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DR. MARIO DR.MARIN TM Dr.MARIO TOP 0010000 SCORE 0003400 LEVEL 10 SPEED MED CRACKED.COM ..Dr Marin Dr. Mario was titled Virus and did not feature the hirsute Italian in its first incarnation. Trying to recreate the success of Tetris, Nintendo needed to use their strongest IP to sell this new puzzle game, so the title was changed and a lab coat wearing Mario was added. — Source

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DOOM ALIENS - are 43 100% 2 DIS 100% AMAG HEALTH ARMS ARMOR CRACKED.COM The original Doom game was based off of James Cameron's Aliens, where you would presumably fight waves of dangerous Xenomorphs. When negotiations between the developers and 20th Century Fox deteriorated, the setting of the game was changed from space to Hell itself. — Source

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PERFECT DARK Position Image er ightness OK CRACKED.COM Perfect Dark was to have a face-mapping feature that enabled players to change the appearance of enemies into that of family and friends using their GameBoy Camera. Insurmountable technical difficulties caused the feature to be scrapped; that, or the eventual lawsuits sure to follow. — Source

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Sonic the Hedgehog can't swim because Yuji Naka, the co-creator of Sonic, assumed that hedgehogs can't swim. TIME 2:15 RINGS 1 He's wrong. CRACKED.COM — Source

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GRACKED.COM The sounds Minecraft's ghasts make are the sound designer's vocalizations and the noises of his cat being disturbed in its sleep. — Source

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CRACKED.COM WALL JUMPING STARTED AS A GLITCH. In the original Super Mario Bros, if Mario ran against a wall in midair, he would briefly register as being inside the object, which made the game believe he was on solid ground, allowing him to jump again. Developers liked this feature so much that they left it intact for ten years, until it became an actual in-game ability — Source

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Axton from Borderlands 2 is bisexual thanks to a code screw up. When playing as Axton and reviving another player, there's a chance a flirtatious dialogue will trigger. This was only supposed to happen when reviving female characters, however, a coding mistake resulted in him flirting with male ones as well. After people voiced their disappointment that it was just a mistake, the writers officially made Axton bisexual in the DLC. GRACKED COM — Source

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Sonic the Hedgehog

Sonic the Hedgehog was initially a rabbit. Developer Yuji Naka wanted to give the character a somersault attack, but later figured that it'd make zero sense for a rabbit to do so with its long ears, because it'd hurt itself while doing the attack. CRACKED.COM — Source

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Donkey Kong 64

Donkey Kong 64 was bundled with the N64 expansion pak because of a single bug. NINTENDO EXPANSION PAK DONKEY N OnlyFor INCLUDED! KONG64 - - - the Deeogram de - - Para E - .. DOLBY AVENUE G COLLECTOR'S EDITION YELLOW GAME PAK SURROUND PAL VERSION DONKEY NINTENDO IKONIC The mystery bug caused the game to crash randomly unless the pak was inserted. The game didn't really need the pak, but Rare convinced Nintendo to include it at great expense to fix that one stubborn bug. CRACKED.COM — Source

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L M Originally, Mario and Luigi were identical twins When Luigi was introduced in Mario Bros. and Super Mario Bros. his character was just the same as Mario, but green. L The Luigi we all love exists only because of the Super Mario Bros. 2 U.S. release, which was actually a reskin of an Arabian-inspired game called Yume Kojo: Doki Doki Panic. Luigi was redesigned to replace the tall, lightfooted Mama character from the original Japanese title. GRACKED.COM — Source

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MARVEL SUPERHEROES vs. STREET FIGHTER There's a pervert in the Japanese version of Marvel Superheroes vs. Street Fighter. He's an older man named Norimaro who dresses like a schoolboy. Не spends his time trying to take Chun-Li's picture. If you beat the game with him, he steals her panties. CRACKED.COM — Source

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Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker CRACKED COM While Japanese censorship seems to be more lax when it comes to nudity and religion, they take less kindly to torture. A scene where Snake is tortured with cattle prods was edited for the Japanese market so that he was instead being poked with laughing rods. — Source

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TLOZ's iconic title music was a last-minute patch. THE LEGEND OF ZELDA™ TM ©1986 NINTENDO CRACKED.COM They had planned to use Ravel's Boléro, but found out at the last minute that it wasn't yet in the public domain. Nintendo composer Koji Kondo had a day to whip up the iconic theme. — Source

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Street Fighter

STREET FIGHTER WAS BORN DURING A DULL MEETING. 100 STALEST FREHER Capcom programmer Takashi Nishiyama was getting really bored during a long meeting, so he started thinking about martial arts games, and the boss fights in those games, and wouldn't it be cool to make a game that was all about those boss fights. CRACKED.COM — Source

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The Team Fortress va Spy is a glitch that never went away. A bug in the graphics caused some enemies to render as teammates. They pulled the old it's a feature, not a bug, and developed it into its own wildcard class. CRACKED.COM — Source

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A PAINTING GIVES AWAY THE FATE OF THE JOKER IN BATMAN: ARKHAM CITY. JOKER THE CRACKED.COM Playing as Catwoman, you crack a safe that sits behind a painting titled Cain and Abel: The Duality of Man. Later in the game, Batman carries the Joker in the same manner, punctuating the twisted, good and evil, brotherly relationship between them. — Source

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A BANJO-KAZOOIE CHARACTER PREDICTS THE GAME'S SEQUEL. RIGHT, THAT'S IT! I'M OFF TO THE LAVA WORLD CRACKED.COM Gobi the camel tells Banjo and Kazooie that he is sick of being pounded on, so he's off to the Lava World. In the sequel, Banjo-Tooie, Gobi appears in the fiery Hailfire Peaks level. — Source

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Video Games

ARCADE GAME RAD MOBILE REVEALS SONIC THE HEDGEHOG. 19 RANK Round GRAGKED COM 41 Half a year before Sonic hit the Sega Genesis in North America, he could be seen dangling from the rearview mirror of a Ferrari 330 P4 Type in the coin-operated Rad Mobile. — Source

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Grand Theft Auto

GRAND THEFT AUTO CRACKED.COM Grand Theft Auto, originally titled Race'n'Chase, struggled to find its identity during development. The game first gave players the option to play as law enforcing police, but after realizing playing as a criminal was more fun, they decided to lean into the mayhem the series became known for. — Source

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GOLDENEYE 007 MAGNUM ECESE - 63 148 CRACKED.COM Since the team working on GoldenEye 007 was inexperienced and stretched thin, the game was initially intended to be a simple rail-shooter, lacking the immensely popular 4-person multiplayer that eventually made the game a bestseller on the Nintendo64. — Source

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SUPER MARIO BROS. 2 GRACKED.COM Super Mario Bros. 2 was originally more similar to the first game, although much harder. So hard, in fact, that developers didn't think Americans could play it, so they reskinned the Japanese game Doki Doki Panic with familiar Mario characters. — Source

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HALF-LIFE CRACKED.COM The early prototype for Half-Life's protagonist was a burly-bearded, strung out looking mad-man nicknamed by the designers as Ivan the Space Biker. As game production advanced, they changed Ivan into Gordon Freeman, with his iconic goatee and glasses. — Source

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PAC-MAN PAB-MAN READY! CRACKED COM Pac-Man was originally titled Puck-Man, based off of the character's disk-like shape, but the creators feared the impish Americans would turn the P into an F on arcade cabinets. — Source

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MORTAL KOMBAT CHOOSE YOUR FIGHTER FREE PLAY CRACKED.COM Mortal Kombat was originally supposed to star Jean-Claude Van Damme, who would fight a cadre of digitized enemies. When Midway Games couldn't afford the rights to Van Damme's likeness, his character was renamed Johnny Cage and joined the lineup of other fighters. — Source

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HALO: COMBAT EVOLVED CRACKED.COM Halo: Combat Evolved was almost a top-down, real time strategy game, a la StarCraft. It wasn't until Microsoft bought the developing studio, Bungie, and launched Halo as their flagship XBox title that it became the first person shooter we know. — Source

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John Romero's head behind the Doom II end boss was a joke the artists put in, thinking Romero wouldn't know. The head is behind the spot you shoot to kill the boss. Romero found out and, to tell them he knew, he made the boss speak (backwards): To win the game, you must kill me, John Romero. CRACKED.COM — Source

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Counter Strike started out as a free Half-Life multiplayer mod that was created by two college students. A year later, the mod got so popular it was immediately acquired by Valve, the company that created Half-Life. A 1905 ВБ DE R 201 402 CRACKED.COM — Source

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Fallbut 3 GRAGKED.COM Due to nuclear warfare still being a sensitive subject in Japan, the Japanese version of Fallout 3 does not give the player the option to detonate the Megaton nuclear bomb. — Source

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Nathan Drake in the Uncharted series originally looked a lot like Johnny Knoxville. Developer Naughty Dog based the character model on the Jackass star, but later decided to go for a less goofy approach, and turned the handsome up a few notches. The final product became a mixture of Knoxville and Drake's voice actor, Nolan North. CRACKED.COM — Source

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CRACKED COM A bug from another game inspired Devil May Cry's iconic feature where the main character can suspend enemies mid-air using continuous attacks. Coot ! e During the development of Onimusha: Warlords, they discovered a bug that caused the enemy to stay floating when being attacked. They thought it was kind of cool and adopted it for Devil May Cry. — Source

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Video Games

The corpses in Dead Space are medically accurate. After the producer deemed the initial designs for the corpses not scary enough, the developing team modeled them using photos of actual car crash victims and war casualties. CRACKED COM — Source

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36 Video Game Facts to Take Into Hyperspace, ‘Defender’-Style — Source

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A developer on Batman: Arkham Asylum spent two years on nothing but the titular character's cape. YOU ARE UNDER CLOSE SURVITILANCE - They had to create 700 different animations and sound effects for the cape. CRACKED.COM — Source

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