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28 Trivia Tidbits About Video Games

The very first Easter egg was left by a disgruntled Atari employee

28 Trivia Tidbits About Video Games

July 06, 2024

Luckily for us, video-game facts are hunted and gathered by much smarter, nerdier brains than ours. Brains that work to figure out that Mario’s mushrooms look exactly like the hallucinatory Amanita muscaria mushroom. They then pass that information off to our brains to make jokes about Mario tripping balls for a good portion of his quest.

Okay, we’ll shut up now, and let the good brains share some more video-game knowledge.

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GEOMETRY WARS STARTED AS AN ANALOG STICK TEST. While working on the Xbox prototype hardware, the developers of Project Gotham Racing encountered issues with the analog sticks on the controller. They decided to make a test app in order to find a fix for the problem and input it into Project Gotham Racing. This test app ended up becoming Geometry Wars. CRACKED COM — Source

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GRACKED.COM Overwatch sound designer Paul Lackey wanted the game's hit confirmation sound effect to be satisfying to hear but couldn't find one, until he opened a bottle of beer one night. Не then reversed the sound and programmed it into the game. TECATE — Source

26

Fallout 3 CRACKED.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

25

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

24

Devil May Cry

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. Cool ! 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

23

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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28 Trivia Tidbits About Video Games — Source

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Oblivion's original Radiant Al was too smart to ship. In one case, a quest became impossible to complete in testing because skooma addicts kept killing a quest NPC to take the skooma from his corpse. Seriously, sometimes it's gotten so weird it's like dealing with a holodeck that's gone sentient. - Emil Pagliarulo, Bethesda designer CRACKED.COM — Source

20

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

19

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

18

SILENT HILL The creepy fog in Silent Hill is there to hide the + game's slow load time. It sets a creepy atmosphere, and prevents players from seeing monsters until the last second, but it's actually there to conceal the fact that the scenes take a while to render. CRACKED.COM — Source

17

MONKEY ISLAND Monkey Island was inspired by Pirates of the Caribbean, and vice versa. In 2000, ILM began conceptualizing a + movie based on The Curse of Monkey Island, which was inspired by the Disneyland ride. The movie never got made, but writer Ted Elliott went on to write Curse of the Black Pearl. CRACKED.COM — Source

16

METAL GEAR Metal Gear is a stealth game because it started + out on a slow system. It was originally designed to run on a computer called an MSX2, which could only support a few characters (and bullets) at a time without crashing. CRACKED.COM — Source

15

SPACE INVADERS Space Invaders' increasing speed is because of a + hardware problem. Even after a year working on the hardware, the invaders moved really slowly. They only sped up when there were fewer of them on the screen, because they'd been shot. Hence the slowly accelerating pace. CRACKED.COM — Source

14

LEGEND OF ZELDA Zelda originally had you defeat an enemy by + screaming at it. EEK! Originally the Japanese NES had a microphone, and the way to defeat a Legend of Zelda monster called Pols Voice was to scream into the mic. CRACKED.COM — Source

13

ASTEROIDS Spacewar is just like Asteroids, only better- + and it came first. Spacewar was a two-player game where you could shoot the other player, there was a black hole in the middle of the screen, and the star field was based on actual star fields. Asteroids: 1979. Spacewar: 1962. CRACKED.COM — Source

12

DONKEY KONG Donkey Kong was supposed to be the hero, not the villain. DK The game manual explains that Donkey Kong was Mario's pet, and he escaped because Mario mistreated him. CRACKED.COM — Source

11

SUPER MARIO (ETC.) Mario's mushrooms look like hallucinatory Amanita + Muscaria mushrooms. Developers needed a way to make Mario fit into the game environment properly, so they picked mushrooms. They claim the resemblance to the psychedelic shrooms is coincidental. CRACKED.COM — Source

10

GRAND THEFT AUTO Grand Theft Auto was inspired by a bug in + another game. Race'n'Chase Game Design Version 1.05 March 22. 1995 1995 DMA Design Lat Rockstar released a driving game called Race'n'Chase, and early testers panned it until they found a glitch. It + was a bug that caused the police to try to run players off the road. So instead of running missions, players screwed around while the police tried to run them off the road. And GTA was born. CRACKED.COM — Source

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28 Trivia Tidbits About Video Games — Source

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28 Trivia Tidbits About Video Games — Source

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28 Trivia Tidbits About Video Games — Source

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MARIO Everything about Mario was created to + conserve pixels. Mario's creator Shigeru Miyamoto added: A hat, so he wouldn't have to draw hair, a nose and mustache, so Mario's face wouldn't just be a blob, and overalls, to give Mario's arms definition. CRACKED.COM — Source

5

CENTIPEDE Think you're a space ship shooting lasers, in Centipede? You're not. You're an elf named Oliver who lives in a magical forest. You usually get along fine with the centipedes, but a wizard enchanted them to attack you. Now you're fighting them off with your wand. CRACKED.COM — Source

4

ADVENTURE The first Easter egg was created by a disgruntled + Atari employee. ADVENTURE معر VIDEO COMPUTER SYSTEM GAME PROGRAM 3 GAMES VIDEO THE SKILL SEVELS ONE PLATES Lteated Warren Robinett, the programmer on Adventure, knew he wouldn't get credit for his work. So he created a secret room with his name written on the floor. By the time it was discovered, the games had hit the shelves. Atari decided to tell people it was a hidden feature, and coined the term Easter egg. CRACKED.COM — Source

3

KIRBY Kirby was a placeholder for a to-be-designed + character. Game designer Masahiro Sakurai dropped a circle into his game as he was designing it, figuring he'd flesh out the character later. Eventually he decided he liked the little sphere as-is, and added a few little details to give it personality. CRACKED.COM — Source

2

FINAL FANTASY Final Fantasy got its name because its creator + figured he was done. Square was out of money after a + string of unsuccessful games. Hironobu Sakaguchi chose the name Final Fantasy because he thought it would be his last game. CRACKED.COM — Source

1

SUPER MARIO The Chain Chomp monsters in Mario games + are based on a dog. When Shigeru Miyamoto was a child, his neighbor had a chained dog who constantly barked. CRACKED.COM — Source

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