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30 Facts About Video Games That Are More Interesting Than the Games Themselves

Put the controller down for a second and read this, would ya?

30 Facts About Video Games That Are More Interesting Than the Games Themselves

January 02, 2024

When it comes to fact-spreading, we’ve had a pretty big week. We started off by popping some kid’s basketball to teach him that basketball was invented by a Canadian. We put a hole in another kid’s TV to teach him that World War II halted TV’s progress in the 1930s. Now we’re here to pause your game to drop dozens of little video game tidbits on you. That, or it’s stomp your controller, so… What’s it gonna be, kiddo?

30

STAR WARS: ROGUE SQUADRON SHOWS OFF PHANTOM MENACE SHIPS BEFORE THE MOVIE RELEASE. SELECT YOUR CRAFT NABOO STARFIGHTER SECONDARY WEAPON SEEKER TORPEDOES CRACKED.COM By entering a cheat code, players could select a Naboo Starfighter to pilot in the Nintendo 64's Rogue Squadron. It would be six months until this class of ship was revealed in The Phantom Menace. — Source

29

DEAD SPACE CHAPTER TITLES LITERALLY SPELL OUT THE GAME'S ENDING. Chapters E Edit Chapter 1: New Arrivals Chapter 2: intensive Care Chapter 3 Course Correction Chapter 4: Obliteration Imminent Chapter 5c Lethal Devotion Chapter 6 Environmental Hazard Chapter 7 Into the Void Chapter 8 Search and Rescue Chapter و Dead on Arrival Chapter 10 End of Days Chapter 11: Alternate Solutions Chapter 12: Dead Space CRACKED.COM The first letter of each chapter title spells out Nicole is dead, spoiling the twist that Nicole was a hallucination in Isaac's mind all along. — Source

28

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

27

Worst Video Games

E.T. the Extra Terrestrial RELEASED ON: ATARI 2600 E.T. THE EXTRATERRESTRIAL 9546 CRACKED.COM This infamous movie tie-in, considered the worst game ever made, was rushed out the door in 6 weeks by one guy, with no time to play test - and it shows. — Source

26

Chex Quest RELEASED ON: MS-DOS TO 112% CRACKED.COM 123% This Doom-clone features a humanoid piece of cereal fighting against... goo aliens? As weird as it is, it had no right being this good. — Source

25

Captain Novolin RELEASED ON: SUPER NINTENDO CRACKED.COM Funded by insulin maker Novolin, the side-scroller stars the titular (and diabetic) hero as he tries to save Pineville's (also) diabetic mayor, who only has 48 hours worth of insulin. This makes the stakes of the game distressingly realistic. — Source

24

America's Army RELEASED ON: PC CRACKED.COM Predating Call of Duty by one year, this US Army recruitment tool and propaganda vehicle spawned 7 sequels, an arcade port, and an untold number of Ford F-150's with a Punisher skull decal. — Source

23

Pepsi Invaders RELEASED ON: ATARI 2600 a = U I P S I S - L S 2:58 CRACKED.COM Coca-Cola made 125 copies of this Space Invaders reskin to hand out at a sales convention. This is the 1983 version of McDonalds making a VR game where you execute the Burger King. — Source

22

Hackers discovered where all the children are in Elden Ring. Parry Grafted Scion One of the first tough enemies players encounter, the disgusting homunculus Grafted Scion, is a terrible assemblement of body parts under a cloak. Upon closer inspection, players discovered that it's the result of stitching a bunch of kids together. CRACKED.COM — Source

21

One woman is the voice of tons of your favorite video game heroes. TWiTE Ashly Burch got her start all the way back in 2008 with a show she and her brother made called Hey Ash, Whatcha Playin'? Since then, she's lent her voice to huge games like Life is Strange, Valorant, and Horizon Zero Dawn. CRACKED.COM — Source

20

Sonic Statue

There is a mysterious, human-sized statue of Sonic The Hedgehog sitting in the woods. The Sega World Kadoma theme park in Takao, Japan closed in 2005, and the park auctioned off whatever people could carry away. A homeowner named Mr. Kadeo bought the statue to serve as a landmark guiding visitors to his house from the road. CRACKED.COM — Source

19

One indie dev's Superman demo was the highlight of the Unreal Engine 5 launch. THIS 15 OUR WOBLIS MUST YOURS! The demo, by indie dev volodXYZ, shows a promising look of what-could-be, with the detailed city landscape from the Matrix Unreal demo, that wipes all memory of Superman 64 from our collective memories. CRACKED.COM — Source

18

Space Invaders had its own term for repetitive strain injuries in the '80s. Snacks WIN . UP TO Space Invaders Wrist was coined by one writer to the New England Medical Journal in 1981. By the following year, BBC was reporting that each family doctor typically now saw one new case of Space Invaders Wrist every month. CRACKED.COM — Source

17

GRAGKED.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

16

PAC-MAN WAS ORIGINALLY NAMED PUCK-MAN PUCKMAY LA HIGH SCURE 25% 2590 OSCAR ICKMAN Dora Pr22LE egg THE NAME WAS PUCKMAN DU CHANGED FOR AMERICAN RELEASE TO PREVENT VANDALS FROM CHANGING THE P INTO AN F. GRACKED.COM — Source

15

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

14

DONKEY KONG 1UP HIGH SCORE 2UP 000100 EONUS 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

13

DR. MARIO DR.MARID TM Dr.MARIO TOP 0010000 SCORE 0003400 LEVEL 10 SPEED MED CRACKED.COM ...Dr Marin is-comium 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

12

POKEMON CRYSTAL Nintendo PoKéMoN Gotta catch emall! PHM TRAINER RED wants to battle! GRACKED.COM AME BOY. COLOR The Pokemon series was planned to end with Pokemon Gold and Silver, fighting your way back through the first game's gyms and using the original protagonist as the final boss was a fitting conclusion to the story. Of course, after the success of the previous games, the Pokemon Company decided to continue the franchise with Crystal. — Source

11

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

10

GOLDENEYE 007 MAGNUM BUC5 = 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

9

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

8

Super Mario Bros.

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

7

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

6

The brown-on-blue color scheme in the Atari 2600 version of Pac-Man was a result of the company having a rule against black backgrounds for non-space games. 396 SHARP KAD-M may CONDETTE - Programmer Tod Frye later said if CRACKED.COM he had known how important a blue maze on a black background was to Pac-Man's iconicity, he would have broken that rule. — Source

5

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

4

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

3

Diablo

30 Facts About Video Games That Are More Interesting Than the Games Themselves — Source

2

CRACKED.COM Katamari Damacy's eternally disappointed King of the Cosmos has the body of ballerina Tetsuya Kumakawa and the face of FREDDiE MERCURY — Source

1

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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