Video game
production stories
NOTE 26/07/2026: UPDATED THIS PAGE WITH BETTER FORMATTING.
NEW UPDATES COMING EVENTUALLY.
#################################################################
A Boy and the Blob
* The game's manual mentions a grape jellybean, which is not in the
final game. A member of Nintendo's senior management somehow separated himself
from his Blob and was unable to proceed. Despite it being an intentional part
of the game, the Nintendo employee viewed it as a bug and demanded a fix by the
next day. David Crane, the game's programmer and designer, quickly changed the
Grape Wall jellybean into the Ketchup Jellybean, which would summon Blob by
your side when used.
* To get the game finished by Christmas, David Crane and Garry Kitchen
worked 112 hour weeks. When it seemed impossible to finish in time, David
worked 20 hours a day, staying up 48 hours, and THEN had to demonstrate the
game at the Chicago Consumer Electronics Show. During demonstration they found
bugs, so back at the hotel they had to fix them in shifts while the other
slept, which went on for three days.
~ Source: Retro Gamer Issue
77, page 68
##################################################################
Age of Empires II
* To ease the strain crunch time had on relationships and families,
Ensemble Studios had a weekly 'family night' where family members of the dev
team come to the studio for dinner.
~ Source: Game Developer Magazine
issue January 2000, page 39
* A playtester had used cheats to win pretty much every game for over a
month, invalidating all the feedback from that group for the prior two months.
~ Source: Game Developer Magazine
issue January 2000, page 41
* To develop the AI a tournament was held where human players were pitted against various AIs to see which came out on top.
~ Source: https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/postmortem-ensemble-studio-s-age-of-empires-ii-age-of-kings
##################################################################
Alien Resurrection
* The game underwent troubled production:
- Pre-production began in 1996 after the cancellation of Star Fox 2; morale was low
- Fox Interactive would send Argonaut Games a weekly box of
material from the film
- Team members had to take long periods of watching VHS tapes of
film footage, whether it be alternate takes or deleted scenes or irrelevant
cutting-room-floor crap
- The xenomorphs were redone to be skinned 3D models, which
reduced enemy count due to memory limitations, which made the programmers mad
at the artists
- In November 1997, the dev team saw Alien Resurrection and were underwhelmed
- This in turn led to even less morale; a big change was coming
- In late 1998, around 1.5 years in, the game was changed from a
third-person to a first-person perspective
- The game was finally released in 2000, three years after its
conception.
~ Source: https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2018-09-09-the-making-of-alien-resurrection-for-psone
##################################################################
Alone in the Dark 2
* The early fights in the game are so difficult because the script
writer who made them tough quit in the last month of development. The
management wouldn't allow more time to tweak anything as they wanted to release
the game ASAP.
~ Source: Retro Gamer issue 98,
page 49
* Most of the dev team walked out after the management were given the credit for the first game’s success.
~ Source: https://junegloom.medium.com/161-alone-in-the-dark-2-695ccab61117
##################################################################
Alundra
* Yasunaga Oyama, the game's designer, has his health ruined from
working on the game for four years. Soon after the game came out he became an
erotic manga artist.
~ Source: Retro Gamer issue
98, page 59
* The game was already difficult but the localizers Working Designs made it even more difficult with increased damage taken.
~ Source: https://www.gogglebob.com/2020/06/08/fgc-501-alundra/
##################################################################
Ant Attack
* The game was originally going to feature Superman. Even though the
movie was out in theaters, the game did not change to capitalize on the movie.
* Developer Sandy White sent Sinclair a video tape recording of gameplay
as a pitch to be published out of fear of having the game code stolen. Sinclair
declined the game on the grounds they have no video recorder to watch the tape.
~ Source: Retro Gamer issue
119, page 93
* Almost all the game code was written on paper before being writing as hex format on the ZX Spectrum. The game art was likewise converted into hex data by hand.
~
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant_Attack#Development
##################################################################
Apidya
* The title screen has a II on screen as a gag: After Burner's title screen referred to a prequel they didn't know,
so they copied it.
~ Source: Retro Gamer Issue
67, page 67
##################################################################
Asteroids
* Some engineers would the hum tune to Tiny Bubbles by the Lawrence Welk’s to tease designer Ed Logg as he
worked on the game.
* The unofficial names for the two saucer ships are Mr Bill and Sluggo,
which are clay figurine characters from Saturday
Night Live. Ed Logg actually received a cease and desist letter from their
copyright holders, despite them being fan nicknames and not official.
~ Source: Retro Gamer Issue 67,
page 25
* The original concept, named Cosmos, was a 1v1 dogfighting game, but playtesters preferred shooting the giant rock.
~ Source: https://arcadeblogger.com/2018/10/24/atari-asteroids-creating-a-vector-arcade-classic
##################################################################
Aztec Challenge
* There are two different versions of this game because Paul Norman
turned the Mario Bros clone into its
own unique game, sold under the same name.
~ Source: Retro Gamer Issue
118, page 90
##################################################################
Backyard Soccer MLS
Edition
* The game underwent troubled production:
- The game cycle was shortened from 9 months to 6 months to be
released in time for soccer season
- A new team arrived late
- The interface lead arrived 3 months in and had his attention
divided between two projects
- The producer left, and then the associate producer left
- The test team had its attention shifted to another project for a
while
- The game was only tested very late in its development cycle
- The devs, Humongous Entertainment, underwent major management
changes; morale was low
- Employee burnout inevitably happened but the game did fairly
well with sales and reception
~ Source: Game Developer
Magazine issue February 2001, page 39-41
##################################################################
Ballblazer
* The prototype name of the game was Ballblaster.
Someone from the marketing department at Lucasfilm Games leaked it onto online
bulletin boards to be pirated. Some big names, such as future hire Tim Schafer,
pirated and played this early version.
~ Source: Retro Gamer Issue
116, page 234
##################################################################
Banshee
* The game had an automated difficulty setting adjustment that makes the
enemies shoot more and damage you more based on how good you were doing. Eventually
the enemies' bullets get so powerful they kill you in one hit. This caused a
bad bug: when your health goes from full to zero in one frame, the game
crashes. The dev team had to record gameplay via VHS and play it in slow motion
just to find and fix the problem.
~ Source: Retro Gamer issue
84, page 61
##################################################################
Battlezone
* Ed Rotberg, the game's programmer, pestered co-worker Owen Rubin into
making the background volcano erupt. Eventually Owen snapped and wrote the
code, and Ed found it at his desk the next day.
~ Source: Retro Gamer Issue 59,
page 52
##################################################################
Beatle Quest
* Garry Marsh sent copies of the finished game to Paul McCartney, George
Harrison, Ringo Starr, and Yoko Ono. George never replied; Paul's office sent
it back, thinking that the game was a request to publish it; Yoko's people sent
it back unopened; and Ringo took it to his solicitors, who tried to stop Garry
Marsh from selling it. They never undertook legal action with Marsh.
* The only bad review the game got was from someone called Simon Marsh.
He is not related to Garry Marsh, even though coincidentally Garry's eldest son
is called Simon.
~ Source: Retro Gamer issue
77, page 79
##################################################################
Big Mutha Truckers
* When released in the USA the developers Eutechnyx got death threats
from American truckers for their less-than-flattering portrayal.
~ Source: Retro Gamer issue
119, page 67
##################################################################
Black 9
This cancelled game had a troubled production:
- Majesco, the publisher, demands too much
- Majesco doesn't pay when goals are hit
- Majesco sends over two guys who steal the source code
- Taldren, the developers, tries to leave
- Majesco tries to scare
Taldren into working for free
- Taldren spites them by closing down
- Majesco gets sued by its shareholders
- Game cancelled
##################################################################
Body Harvest
* The game underwent troubled production:
- The game's conception started on 17th November 1994. The
finished game came out September 30th, 1998
- The game was destined to be a launch game for the Nintendo 64
- Nintendo was very hands-on and meddling
- The timezones meant that Nintendo's demands were delayed
- The game was meant to be a time-travelling edgy GTA clone
- Nintendo wanted a more kid-friendly RPG-based romp
- As a result of the compromise, both Nintendo and DMA dropped out
- Two years later the game was picked up for publishing
~ Source: http://www.dmadesign.net/manual-override/manual-override-development-hell
##################################################################
Carmageddon
* Was originally going to be a 3D destruction derby game.
* Was going to be a Mad Max
game, then a Death Race 2000
game.
~ Source: Retro Gamer Issue 105,
page 48
##################################################################
Carrier Command
* The game started off as Strategic
Carrier Simulator, whose initials (SCS) match a cancelled submarine game.
* Then the game name was changed to Archipelago
after the setting. The publisher Rainbird suggested a better marketable title,
and Carrier Command was one of the
few proposed.
* The front cover of the instruction manual was photocopied around fifty
times to achieve a faded ink stamp look.
* There were some Blues Brothers
references in the game. One of the islands is called Elwood and one of the
cheat codes is 'We're on a mission from god'.
~ Source: Retro Gamer Issue
111, page 47-51
##################################################################
Cassette 50
* Was advertised in Wales and yet got orders far and wide, such as
Madagascar.
* The address of developer Cascade Games was programmer Nigel Stevens'
home.
* The mail orders were delivered to that home address; if the game
failed, he might have been homeless.
* Developer Rick Vanner showed the Apple II port to a friend and got
sacked for divulging business secrets.
* The game was resold with calculator watches to cash in on that trend;
it worked and the game sold well again.
* They had to hire two postmen to shift the cheques for the game to
their office. Then the co-founders would dump the pile of cheques off at the
local bank.
~ Source: Retro Gamer Issue 109,
page 42-47
##################################################################
Castlevania: Symphony
of the Night
* Konami allowed the devs much creative freedom due to being preoccupied
with Castlevania 64. The devs decided to forgo the traditional Castlevania linearity
for Super Metroid’s exploration.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castlevania:_Symphony_of_the_Night#Development
##################################################################
Chariot Race
* The game sold almost 15,000 copies thanks to the programmer's wife.
She would go into a store, ask for the game, and when told they didn't have it
she would declare it a good game and then leave. The next day she would call
the store, saying she was from Micro-Antics with a game called Chariot Race.
~ Source: Retro Gamer issue
92, pages 77
##################################################################
Choplifter
* The game was made out of boredom of trying to sell his Los Angeles
home. The game took around six months to code; the real-estate marker was
sluggish in the early 1980s.
~ Source: Retro Gamer issue
51, pages 82
* The concept of rescuing people came from a guy who fixed his car that
recommended the game be like Defender.
The 1982 Iran embassy hostage situation was more of a coincidence than direct
inspiration.
~ Source: Retro Gamer issue 51,
pages 82-83
##################################################################
Colony Wars: Red Sun
* To boost morale, a "crap code of the week" section of the
team whiteboard was established. The dev team happily added crappy code to the
board, both their own and each other's,
~ Source: Game Developer Magazine
issue August 2000, page 35
##################################################################
Computer Space
* Ted Dabney turfed his daughter out of her bedroom in 1970 and turned
it into a workshop.
~ Source: Retro Gamer issue
93, pages 28
##################################################################
Crash Bandicoot
* The game started off as a character platform game called 'Sonic's Ass'
and was inspired by the dog they had at the time, a Labrador/Ridgeback mix.
Then the name was changed to Willie the Wombat.
~ Source: Retro Gamer issue
90, page 55
##################################################################
Crystal Castles
* Some levels have easter eggs: the level Hidden Spirals has the hidden
initials BBM, DES, and SSM; BBM for Brian McGhie, who got him into Atari. DES
stands for Desiree McCrorey, an arcade high scorer; and SSM is for Sam Mehta,
nowadays a game producer.
~ Source: Retro Gamer issue 51,
page 78-79
* The level Bethilda's Palace has the initials EDG and MAR; EDG for Eric
Ginner, arcade high scorer; and MAR for Mark Robichek, another high scorer.
~ Source: Retro Gamer issue
51, page 78-79
##################################################################
Dan Dare
* The game was technically impressive, especially the torch effect in
the caves. A reviewer from Computer & Video Games came to the office to
preview the game. He was astonished that such things were possible on a ZX
Spectrum and followed the cables to the monitor, utterly blown away.
~ Source: Retro Gamer Issue 73,
page 62
##################################################################
Dandy
* John Palevich missed out on potential royalties as the game Gauntlet was directly inspired by Dandy. Atari, however, put him off by
insisting that the ROMs had to be burned.
* In 1986, Electric Dreams made a version of the game for the major home
computers. Ironically, Atari took notice and accused Dandy of ripping of Gauntlet.
~ Source: Retro Gamer Issue
64, page 51
##################################################################
Dark Sun Online:
Crimson Sands
The game had troubled production:
- The dev team had little time to make the game, leading to
immediate panic and low morale
- Many art assets were taken from their previous Dark Sun games,
some of which had to be edited
- Artists kept leaving at inopportune times
- They had to resort to an external art house
- They had to use an external programming house for the online
coding
- Bad communication led to assets having to be recoded over and
over again
- They used peer-to-peer network for easier coding, making it
susceptible to hackers
- AT&T pulled the plug, causing a lack of funding
- Constant crunch time, especially the scripters who had to fix
the messy code
- In the end they signed with Total Entertainment Network... which
shut down a few years later
~ Source: Game Developer Magazine
October 1997, pages 32-35
##################################################################
Day of the Tentacle
* One of the in-game computers has a fully playable version of Maniac Mansion. The game is there
because of a bug; an animation crashed the SCUMM engine because the file was
slightly bigger than 64k. To prevent the crashing, Maniac Mansion was added to the game to balance everything out.
Having it playable via Weird Ed's computer makes it a fun bonus.
~ Source: Retro Gamer issue 81,
page 86
##################################################################
Diamonds
* There was a contest for this game: complete the 64th level and take a
photograph of the diamond that appears on screen. The winner would receive a
plaque with a real diamond embedded in it. 50-60 entries were submitted and the
winner was a guy from Wales.
~ Source: Retro Gamer issue
121, page 40
##################################################################
Die By the Sword
The game came out a year and a half after its expected release date due
to its troubled development:
- The art studio they hired to make the 3D models weren't
delivering acceptable quality on time, so they got an in-studio employee to do
them instead.
- The prototype was game director Peter Akemann's first C++
project. It was riddled with assumptions, which locked the engine to run at 18
frames per second.
- Because they only employed excellent people who adapted to the
latest tools, they couldn't employ enough people to do level design and art
within the deadlines.
- Lighting was cut due to lack of memory, so artist Chris Soares
painted the shadows into the textures. They then tried vertex shadowing, so
Soares had to go back and undo all the shading.
- Feature creep; the devs think that the Tournament Mode was a
lame waste of time.
~ Source: Game Developer
Magazine January 1999
##################################################################
Die Hard Trilogy
* Fox was so eager to get the game released before Christmas they
bullied Sony into releasing it early despite the game still have game-crashing
bugs in it.
~ Source: Retro Gamer Issue 69,
page 79
##################################################################
Dig Dog
* Taskset's first game Dig Dog
was named after Dig Dug after being
peeved that Namco seemingly stole the idea from the 1982 arcade game The Pit.
~ Source: Retro Gamer Issue
116, page 83-84
##################################################################
Donkey Kong 64
* Mark Stevenson, the 3D artist who worked on the game, had (likely for
a joke) edited Diddy Kong to be in a shiny red PVC rubber suit, complete with
squeaky noises.
~ Source: source: Retro Gamer
issue 83, page 36
##################################################################
Donkey Kong Country
* Rare couldn't figure out how to get the animation for Donkey Kong
working right. They visited nearby Twycross Zoo and spent hours filming real
gorillas, but they hardly moved and even then moved very slowly, so they made
DK run like a galloping horse.
~ Source: Retro Gamer issue
83, page 31
##################################################################
Doom
* The concept of Doom was inspired by a Dungeons and Dragons game that John Carmack was running. The world
started in 1990 and John Romero destroyed the world in 1991 by using a
Daikatana to free the demons onto the material plane. That got them thinking: Hell
released onto Earth. They wanted to go the sci-fi route with an Aliens game,
but 20th Century Fox wasn't being fair, so iD created their own IP.
~ Source: Retro Gamer Issue 75, page 81
* To create the monsters, they made clay models and took video snapshots
of them at the eight different angles for the game. Once they turned that raw
data into a sprite, they had some guy remove all the background pixels. A
decade later, that same guy met John Romero in a strip club and re-introduced
himself. Romero was more into the strippers.
* Greg Punchatz , who made the clay models, is on the cover of the game
as the demon that grabs Doomguy's arm. The cover was done by Don Punchatz, the
model man's father.
~ Source: Retro Gamer Issue 75, page 82
* Co-op multiplayer was planned from the beginning but deathmatch-only
maps were only made in the last two months of development.
~ Source: Retro Gamer Issue 273, page 21
##################################################################
Drakan: Order of the
Flame
* The original concept, proposed to Virgin Interactive Entertainment,
was a real-time strategy game. VIE wanted an arcade shooter. Surreal Software
went with an RPG action game after moving to Psygnosis.
~ Source: Game Developer Magazine
February 2000, page 32
* Bug testing was poor due to Psygnosis being reorganized by SCEE. This
caused half the playtesters to be let go and the other half to be in Europe,
which slowed communications. The bug reports were done on an Excel document,
which often would be corrupted or incomplete. They had over 1000 bugs and that
was a near-final build.
~ Source: Game Developer Magazine
February 2000, page 36-37
##################################################################
Driver
* Lead programmer Tony Oakden admitted that he coded the infamous
tutorial mission to test gamers for the challenges ahead. He has said that he
got very good at the tutorial but could never beat the infamous final mission,
The President's Run.
~ Source: Retro Gamer issue 72,
page 62
* Reflections, the developers, couldn't showcase the PS1 version of the
game at E3 because the devkit got destroyed during shipment.
* The infamous opening tutorial is based on a scene in the film The Driver in which said driver smashes
his Mercedes.
~ Source: Edge issue 111,
page 106-107
* The game started out on the Amiga 500 as a top-down driving game, much
like the first GTA. Designer Martin
Edmondson waited until better technology arose (i.e. the PlayStation) had
proven itself with his game Destruction
Derby.
~ Source: Retro Gamer Issue 116,
page 93
##################################################################
Druid
* Programmer Dene Carter accidentally deleted all the graphics and fonts
and had to rebuild them all from scratch twice during development.
* Druid was pulled from several areas of the USA's Bible Belt for being
too 'satanist'.
* Druid is similar to Gauntlet.
The dev team who worked on Druid
rushed to release their game before Gauntlet's
release, which is why it is buggy.
* When Dene Carter was pitching the game for release, it wasn't easy.
Dene's dad drove him all the way to Oxfordshire to see the director of Hewson
Consultants. The director tore the game a new one, expressing quite vocally how
he wasn't interested in it. Once the game went gold and hit the top of the
charts, Dene came across the director at a game show. The director expressed
remorse for his decision.
~ Source: Retro Gamer issue
86, pages 65-67
##################################################################
Druid II
* The Amiga version was ported by Taurus Impex, a business software
company. Who ported the game? Peter Molyneux, who used the experience to go
launch Bullfrog.
~ Source: Retro Gamer issue
86, page 65
##################################################################
Earthworm Jim
* Doug TenNaple came up with the character Earthworm Jim, his friend
Peter Puppy, and his foes Psy-Crow, Major Mucus, and Professor
Monkey-For-A-Head all within 45 minutes at his apartment in November 1993.
~ Source: Retro Gamer issue 120,
pages 15-16
##################################################################
Final Fantasy
Adventure
* The started off in 1989 as Seiken
Densetsu: The Emergence of Excalibur for the Famicom Disk System. It was
going to use five floppy disks! The ambitious project was cancelled. After the
release of Final Fantasy in 1990, Seiken Densetsu was resurrected and cut
down to be on the Game Boy as a spin-off.
~ Source: Retro Gamer issue 85, page 26
##################################################################
Flashback
* The game was originally supposed to be The Godfather. Delphine made it more a futuristic sci-fi game. US
Gold said their game was different than what they expected but they liked it,
so it became its own game.
~ Source: Retro Gamer issue 118,
page 21
* Delphine was able to convince Sega to produce a 24 mega-bit cartridge
for the game.
~ Source: Retro Gamer issue 118,
page 23
##################################################################
Frak!
* The walking animation came from making a guy walk very slowly whilst
the developer sketched his legs. The guy couldn't walk properly for days
afterwards.
~ Source: Retro Gamer Issue
60, page 93
##################################################################
Frankie Goes to
Hollywood
* The dev team admit that they are socialists and that the game is also
socialist, as evident by some of the political humour in the game.
* They also admit they deliberate designed the game so that you can only
get 99%. You don't win with socialism it seems.
~ Source: Retro Gamer Issue 64,
page 61
##################################################################
Frenzy
* Alan McNeil wanted to leave Stern Electronics shortly after making Berzerk due to an incident. There was a
theft problem at Stern Electronics. Gary Stern hired a guy with a lie detector.
McNeil was 'interviewed', questioned if he had stolen the VCR from the coffee
room. McNeil walked out.
* The final straw that made McNeil quit was when McNeil asked for his
team to get a raise and bonuses. The CEO told him that all the Space Invaders guys got was a watch, so
accept it. Alan walked out... until they called him to make Frenzy, doubling his salary.
~ Source: Retro Gamer Issue 72,
page 33
##################################################################
Full Throttle
* The character Maureen Corley was based on the girlfriend of Larry
Ahern, lead animator. However, his girlfriend dumped him during production,
which meant he had to look at her face for the rest of development.
~ Source: Retro Gamer Issue
62, page 75
##################################################################
Gabriel Knight 3
* The game underwent troubled production:
- The team was inexperienced with 3D games.
- Programmers were not given accurate scheduling, and regularly
lied to their bosses, which created a false sense of progress.
- Morale was low; everyone expected the game to be a flop, so they
didn't try very hard.
- A new engine was built, which created all sorts of bugs.
Naturally the programmers blamed the artists, scripters, and other
engineers.
- Several weeks were wasted trying to implement the SafeDisc DRM.
Since the DRM would drop performance considerably, they scrapped it and wrote
their own quick DRM.
- The 3D models were made before the engine was rebuilt. Since the
exported models couldn't be edited without breaking, they were stuck with some
weird short-armed models.
~ Source: Game Developer Magazine
issue June 2000, pages 31-39
##################################################################
Golden Axe: Beast
Rider:
* Lead animator Kaj Swift would demonstrate what animations he wanted by acting them out in person. One day he jumped around too high and cracked his head on the pipe overhead. He landed on knee, resulting in him walking on crutches for months and needing surgery.
~ Source: Electronic Gaming
Monthly Issue 226 (March 2008), page 26
##################################################################
Gran Turismo
* Sony rejected the idea of a realistic driving simulator, so development began in secret during the production of Motor Toon Grand Prix. Development started in 1992 and took 5 years to be finished.
~ Source: https://www.ign.com/articles/how-gran-turismo-changed-racing-games-forever
Grand Theft Auto
* Grand Theft Auto was originally going to be a dinosaur game. The
shearing algorithm in the game engine was better suited to rendering cities
than jungles, so the setting and concept was changed. The executable file for
the game, dino.exe, is in reference of GTA's
roots.
~ Source: Retro Gamer issue
122, page 60
* Grand Theft Auto was originally called Race'N'Chase and was meant to be similar to the top-down racing
games of the SNES.
~ Source: Retro Gamer issue 100, page 81
* You could originally play as a cop, but this was scrapped because
playing as a bad guy is more fun.
~ Source: Retro Gamer issue 122, page 60
* The original game engine was scrapped after noticing the similarities
with the game Syndicate Wars.
~ Source: Retro Gamer issue 50, page 47
* Many things were cut from the final version of the game. These include
a combine harvester, trains, a proper pager system, a lot of profane text, and
cutscenes.
~ Source: Retro Gamer issue
100, pages 82-83
* GTA didn't have a demo
released to promote the game; instead, they made a live-action video of the dev
team driving and enacting the gameplay. It is unknown if a copy still exists.
~ Source: Retro Gamer issue
100, page 84
##################################################################
Grim Fandago
* Tim Shafer's car broke down and burst into flames during the game's
development. No one at LucasArts could help him. Shafer got a friend from high
school - Paul - to help him fix it. Some of Paul's dialogue with Tim made
it into Grim Fandago as Giotti's speech.
~ Source: Retro Gamer issue 92,
pages 58-59
* In year three there was supposed to be a puzzle in which a giant frog
ate you. This was just one of many puzzles cut to get the game out.
~ Source: Retro Gamer issue 92,
pages 61
##################################################################
Guitar Hero II:
* The staff at Harmonix and publishers RedOctane pranked Project Lead
Daniel Sussman by pretending to add an Avril Lavigne song into the game.
Sussman threatened to quit if any of her songs were added. Eventually, after
weeks of teasing, they sat him down and sang a karaoke version of an Avril
Lavigne song with lyrics changed to admit they were joking the whole time.
Sussman still thought the suggestion was serious and was paranoid for the rest
of development.
~ Source: Electronic Gaming
Monthly Issue 226 (March 2008), page 27
##################################################################
Harvey Smith
Showjumper
* The week before the game's release Harvey Smith had an affair with
someone's wife. This led to numerous retail stores stating they won't stock the
game, which affected sales.
~ Source: Retro Gamer issue 120, pages 49
##################################################################
Haven: Call Of The
King
* Development took three years to make. Jon Burton, director and writer,
spent four months working 140 hour weeks, working to get the game complete
before the birth of his second son. At least the game came out on schedule.
~ Source: Retro Gamer issue 76, page 54
##################################################################
Heavy Metal: F.A.K.K.
2
* The dev team had a high turnover rate: development started off with a
team of 18 people and the game was finished with a team of just 11, only one of
which was in the original 18.
~ Source: Game Developer Magazine
issue December 2000, page 35
##################################################################
Henry’s House
* The game was originally Home
Sweet Home but the publishers English Software retooled it to take
advantage of the birth of Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex.
~ Source: Retro Gamer issue
121, page 43
##################################################################
Hogs of War
* Development notes:
- The game started off as a Command & Conquer clone rather
than a Worms clone
- The game was nearly cancelled twice
- The development cycle was three years because there were long
periods of nothingness when Gremlin Interactive got bought out by Infogrames
- A sequel was worked on for six months but cancelled due to the
original one not selling very well. The original was too British; not enough
global appeal
~ Source: Retro Gamer issue 103,
pages 68-69
##################################################################
Hudson Hawk
* For the Game Boy port Japanese translation, one of the dev team went
out and got some Japanese tourists to proofread the text for errors.
~ Source: Retro Gamer Issue
112, page 36
* The artwork of patients in hospital beds are caricatures of the dev
team.
~ Source: Retro Gamer Issue
112, page 39
##################################################################
I, Of the Mask
* The game had major crunch time: developer Sandy White worked like mad
for two weeks, getting around an hour's sleep max daily to get the game out
before the deadline.
~ Source: Retro Gamer issue
119, page 95
##################################################################
Impossible Mission II
* The game was developed on a Commodore 64 with the serial number
0000006, which came from Jack Tramiel himself.
~ Source: Retro Gamer issue 112, page
47
##################################################################
International
Basketball
* Another version with copyrighted ads exists. This version of International Basketball is pirated
version that came into being when the game's author, Andrew Spencer, handed a
version of International Basketball to
his local computer club.
~ Source: Retro Gamer Issue 57, page 60
##################################################################
Jet Set Willy II
* The game is basically the Amstrad CPC port of the first game but with
more levels, so much so that Software Projects ported the game back to the ZX
Spectrum as a sequel.
~ Source: Retro Gamer issue 87,
page 81
##################################################################
Joust
* The pterodactyl had its art changed to look better but it ended up
shifting the collision by a pixel. A savvy player could stand in an exact spot
and let the pterodactyls skewer themselves, allowing the player to idle and
farm points and lives. The ROM had to be updated and sent to distributors ASAP.
~ Source: Retro Gamer Issue 63,
page 40
##################################################################
Jr. Pac-Man
* The original death scene for Jr.
Pac-Man was for him to pause and then bleed and shrivel and then his upper
jaw falls off.
~ Source: Retro Gamer issue
85, page 68
##################################################################
Kane
* Developer John Darnell was recording screams to digitise them for the
game. His wife got home, heard him screaming, raced inside only to find him
just working.
~ Source: Retro Gamer issue 107,
page 75
##################################################################
Kid Chameleon
* When the game's programmer met Yuji Naka, head of Sonic Team at the
time, it was an awkward experience. They met at a pizza place, and Naka just followed
the team like a lost child.
~ Source: Retro Gamer issue
96, page 73
##################################################################
Klax
* the inspiration for this game came from a sketch from a television
show where the character in a bakery has to correctly add things to baked items
passing by on a conveyor belt.
~ Source: Retro Gamer issue 52,
page 73
##################################################################
Koudelka
* Hiroki Kikuta wanted the game to be like an action RPG a la Resident Evil. Everyone else wanted to
do a traditional RPG a la Squaresoft. Kikuta left the game afterwards due to
this strife and the company changed its name later on.
~ Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koudelka#Development
##################################################################
Lands of Lore
* The game had voice acting by Patrick Stewart. He gave the dev team a
cardboard cut-out of himself in his Star Trek uniform. For years the team had
fun with cardboard cut-out, placing it behind the snack bar, hanging upside
down from an air-conditioner vent, and even sitting at people's desks.
~ Source: Retro Gamer Issue 67,
page 64
##################################################################
Leather Goddesses of
Phobos
* The conception of the game was a prank. In 1983, Infocom was having
its first party since moving into its Cambridge offices. Steve Meretzky snuck
into the office and added the title 'Leather
Goddesses of Phobos' to the project chalkboard. The name became a running
joke for non-existent games until, in 1985, Meretzky seriously considered it.
Infocom supported it, and so it was done.
~ Source: Retro Gamer issue 82,
page 51
##################################################################
Legend
* The game sold well enough that over a decade later the game was remade
for the Game Boy Advance. Despite the game being 90% complete they couldn't
find a publisher, so sadly Legend Advance remains unpublished.
~ Source: Retro Gamer Issue
68, page 77
##################################################################
Lode Runner
* The game started off as Suicide
for the Commodore PET in 1980.
~ Source: Retro Gamer Issue 111,
page 21
* Developer Doug Smith promised 150 levels. To get them done in time, he
got his friends and neighbours to make them. The level editor was included with
the game.
~ Source: Retro Gamer Issue
111, page 24
##################################################################
Major Damage
* The original title of the game was Tollian's Web, named after the
episode The Tholian's Web from the original Star
Trek.
* Then the name became the Rex
Havoc, a pun on Wreaks Havoc.
* The little Breakout game
that plays on the intermission screen was a result of a bet: the game has 86
bytes on the ROM, so programmer Stuart Hunt was dared to make a game out of
that leftover space.
~ Source: Retro Gamer Issue 107,
pages 35-37
* There was going to be a sequel on the Jaguar but Atari wouldn't give
an advance payment, so the sequel never happened.
* There was going to be a sequel on the iPhone and iPad but Atari kept
slashing the budget, so the sequel never happened.
~ Source: Retro Gamer Issue
107, page 37
##################################################################
Metal Gear Solid
* Was originally conceived for the 3DO, but that console’s shrinking
market share forced the move to the PS1.
* The environments, like walls, crates, and guards placement, were created
with Lego first to brainstorm them before being added into the game.
~ Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_Gear_Solid_(video_game)
##################################################################
Micro Machines
* The dev team at Codemasters ate lots of sugary treats. They had to
shut the office doors and windows because swarms of wasps from a nearby swamp
were after the sugar.
~ Source: Retro Gamer issue 78,
page 51
* The game had no real quality assurance due to being unlicensed. Near
the end of development, the team found a major bug: at the start of a race, if
you reverse instead of accelerate you crash the game. The entire fix needed was
a single byte value changed. The Game Genie peripheral that came with the game
fixed the bug, but Nintendo sued (because they hated the Game Genie) but they
lost the lawsuit.
~ Source: Retro Gamer issue
79, page 53
##################################################################
Micro Machines V3
* The playable characters were to be 3D modelled by kids. They took some
kids to the studio farm for motion capturing. The experience was miserable and
the data too cumbersome, so they scrapped that idea.
~ Source: Retro Gamer issue 113, page 64
##################################################################
Mire Mare
* Was coded before Gunfright
but went unreleased due to Ultimate Play the Game getting taken over by U.S.
Gold.
~ Source: Retro Gamer Issue 105,
page 34
* The GBA version of Sabre Wulf
was going to have a stage called Mire Mare. It was hoped this would get Mire
Mare released at last.
~ Source: Retro Gamer Issue
105, page 39
##################################################################
Missile Command
* Originally, the cities you are defending used to be Californian
cities. Arcade operators would have been able to program the city names to be
more local and add more tension to gamers, but this feature was cut.
~ Source: Retro Gamer issue 88,
page 64
* Dave Theurer had nightmares of nuclear attacks during and after
production of this game.
~ Source: Retro Gamer issue 88,
page 65
##################################################################
Mortal Kombat
* Richard Kay, a programmer for Software Creations, was on holiday with his
family when he got a fax saying to return and fix game bugs. He refused. This
led to the publisher Acclaim not bothering to publish the game, leading to
Midway publishing the game themselves. An Acclaim executive later told him he
cost them $40m in potential money.
~ Source: Retro Gamer issue 122, page
75
##################################################################
Ms. Pac-Man
* The game started off as a Pac-Man
clone called Crazy Otto. Atari
threatened to sue the company that made it, General Computer Corporation.
Midway, tired of waiting for Namco to make a Pac-Man sequel, purchased the rights to Crazy Otto and told GCC to make it more Pac-Man. GCC made a female Pac-Man: Miss Pac-Man, but were afraid gamers would be turned-on if Pac-Man
Jr was conceived out of wedlock, so Miss
Pac-Man became Mrs. Pac-Man. Then
they changed it to Ms. Pac-Man for
marketability. These name changes all occurred within 72 hours.
~ Source: Retro Gamer issue 81,
page 42
##################################################################
Night Trap
* Dana Plato, an actress who was previous in Diff’rent Strokes, had a
drug and alcohol problem, which meant she was often difficult to work with. She
died in May 1999.
* In 1989, Hasbro pulled the plug on NEMO, which was the console the
team were working on. Night Trap and Sewer Shark were then re-purposed to be
on the SNES CD addon, but that never came to be. It finally found home on the
Sega CD, five years after it was started.
~ Source: Retro Gamer Issue
63, page 56
##################################################################
NRL Rugby League:
* Alternative Software moved onto this and other rugby games out of
necessity. A fire in 1997 had raged in a warehouse where they stored their
equipment. Almost bankrupt, they had to adapt to making sports games to
generate the revenue to survive.
~ Source: Retro Gamer Issue
107, page 54
##################################################################
Out Run:
* Designer Yu Suzuki drove all around Europe for a fortnight for
inspiration. One time at a European restaurant he ordered one bowl of soup, but
due to the language barrier he ended up getting four bowls of soup.
~ Source: Retro Gamer Issue
54, page 27
* There was going to be eight different characters and a variety of cars
to race as. There was also going to be events at checkpoints. All of these were
cut for time and budget reasons.
~ Source: Retro Gamer Issue
54, page 28
##################################################################
Panzer Dragoon
* The developers, Team Andromeda, didn't receive prototype Sega Saturn
hardware until halfway through development. Sega wanted this game to be a
launch title.
~ Source: Retro Gamer Issue
57, page 86
##################################################################
Parasol Stars
* The Commodore 64 port was cancelled when programmer Colin's Porch
alcoholic wife got drunk, smashed the disks, and ran off to Scotland with her
ex-husband. Ocean Software then said it wasn't worth working on it and so it
was cancelled.
~ Source: Retro Gamer Issue 120,
page 50
##################################################################
Pirate Adventures
* Scott Adams' wife was pissed off at him for ignoring her, so she put
the only copies of the game in the oven and threatened to burn them. He then
let her have some creative control, which is why she is credited as co-author.
~ Source: Retro Gamer issue
89, page 48
##################################################################
Point Blank
* The game was originally going to be a serious arcade shooter like
digitised photo graphics. It was later turned into comical minigames to fill a
niche in the market.
* Game designer Yutaka Kounoe would work from 3am until night, usually
by himself, doing all the game data. He was afraid of ghosts in the Namco
office!
~ Source: Retro Gamer issue
109, page 38-39
##################################################################
Populous
* Peter Molyneux was running Taurus Software at the time. He got a phone
call from the head of Commodore Europe, asking him to make a database program,
mistaking Molyneux's company for a German software company. Peter accepted the
free Amiga computers and quickly coded the database program, Acquisition. The money made selling the
software allowed him to start the company Bullfrog, and keeping the Amigas
allowed him and his team to create Populous.
~ Source: Retro Gamer Issue 71,
page 81
##################################################################
Prince of Persia
* The Shadow Man boss was created out of limitation, as the Apple II
only had enough memory for the Prince's animation frames. The shadow man was
made by bit-shifting the Prince's frames.
~ Source: Retro Gamer Issue 32,
page 22
##################################################################
Project Firestart
* The game underwent so much intense coding that it broke five Commodore
1541 floppy disk drives during development.
~ Source: Retro Gamer issue
95, pages 84
##################################################################
Project Gotham Racing
4:
- Most of the staff purchased fold-up scooters to race around the
office while they burned the game to DVDs. Bins were used as obstacles, but at
a blind corner everyone went through the glass in the administrative corridor,
nearly colliding into the disk-burning machine.
~ Source: Electronic Gaming
Monthly Issue 226 (March 2008), page 28
##################################################################
Ratchet and Clank:
Tools of Destruction
* There was a bug during development in which the Mr. Zurkon weapon was
fooled by your pirate disguise. This was not fixed until playtesters complained
of getting shot by Mr. Zurkon while in disguise.
~ Source: Electronic Gaming
Monthly Issue 226 (March 2008), page 27
* An artist gave Ratchet a crazy expression on his face by request of
the higher-ups. The lead programmer was not amused as it had the potential to
break the whole game.
~ Source: Electronic Gaming
Monthly Issue 226 (March 2008), page 28
##################################################################
Resident Evil
* Resident Evil was supposed to be an SNES remake of the Famicom game Sweet Home.
* The original concept was to be a fully 3D first person gameplay, like Doom.
* For the first six months of development director Shinji Mikami worked
on the game alone.
~ Source: Retro Gamer Issue 61,
page 47
##################################################################
Resident Evil Gaiden
* The game started off as a GBC port of Dino Crisis, but it was scrapped. Capcom then asked the developer,
M4, to make a Resident Evil game
using the same game engine.
~ Source: Retro Gamer issue 89,
page 79
##################################################################
Return Fire
* The maps were designed by placing fake trees and little miniature
vehicles on the floor so that you can inspect the map from different angles.
* The game has numerous in-jokes: the skeleton has the laugh of Robert
J. Mical, and the 3DO logo blowing up was in reference to the many arguments
the team had with Trip Hawkins over royalties for the game.
* 3DO got mad with Reichart Von Wolfsheild because he refused to market
the game, but he was happy just to be making a "great piece of
technology".
~ Source: Retro Gamer Issue
73, page 34
##################################################################
Revenge of the Mutant
Camels
* The game had a high score competition during its launch at a London
computer show. A lad named Justin won. Jeff Minter told the lad that he had won
a trip to Egypt. Minter's family went too and they had a swell time.
~ Source: Retro Gamer issue
87, page 41
##################################################################
Revolution X
* When Aerosmith arrived at Bally Midway to be digitised for the game,
they asked for alcohol and pornography before they got started.
~ Source: Retro Gamer issue 114,
page 94
##################################################################
Ridge Racer
* When demonstrating the prototype at the AOU Show (Amusement Machine
Operators' Union), the ROM died upon powering it up. It gave a scare but they
simply replaced the ROM and it worked.
~ Source: Retro Gamer issue 52,
page 83
##################################################################
Road Runner
* The game was originally going to be a Laserdisc game that would play a
clip from a Road Runner cartoon whenever Wile E. Coyote got hurt in-game. This
concept was canned due to pixelated image quality and slow Laserdisc loading
times.
~ Source: Retro Gamer Issue 65,
page 71
##################################################################
Secret of Mana
* The game was originally designed for the SNES CD-ROM. That peripheral
never came to existence as Sony took the project and made the PlayStation out
of it. Secret of Mana was cut down
heavily to fit on a cartridge. A lot of text and plot were cut, as well as
multiple routes that would lead to multiple endings.
~ Source: Retro Gamer issue 85,
page 26
##################################################################
Sensible World of
Soccer
* Developer Chris Chapman had to do serious crunch time for its Xmas
1994 release: five days in the office, sleeping up to eight hours total in his
chair. His wife thought he was having an affair. He washed his hair with toilet
water and couldn't shower.
* Despite all that crunch time, there was a bug in the code that could
softlock the game. A patch was rushed on for Amiga magazine disks and disks
sent to registered owners.
~ Source: Retro Gamer issue
110, page 39
##################################################################
Shenmu
* The game was originally set in China and Ryo could ride his bike
through a meadow. The setting and bike-riding feature was changed to fit more
in line with the Virtua Fighter
universe, before finally becoming its own unique game. Beating Shenmue II will unlock a video of the
Sega Saturn prototype of Virtual Fighter
version of the game.
~ Source: Retro Gamer issue 78,
page 60
##################################################################
Soldier of Fortune
* The game was originally going to be a fast-paced action FPS, and then
a realistic tactical team-based FPS, but the realism had to be toned down for
time and budget concerns.
~ Source: Game Developer Magazine
issue September 2000, page 41
* Raven Software sought out author Gonzalo Lira and Special Forces
veteran and author John Mullins. Gonzalo wrote them a story, most of which
wasn't used. Mullins provided realism advice, and as thanks they named the
protagonist in the game after him,
~ Source: Game Developer Magazine
issue September 2000, page 42
##################################################################
Sonic Speedball
* Sega wanted a Sonic game for 1993. Sonic Speedball couldn't be made in
that time, even with veteran Sega staff flown in from Japan. The dev team
instead wrote most of the code in C rather than assembly. This sped up the
development process dramatically - from barely playable tech demo to the finished
product in only 61 days - but it did compromise optimization and frame rate.
~ Source: Retro Gamer issue
85, page 38
* Just as the game was wrapping up, the little celebration party got
some startling news: Sega did not own the Sonic theme tune. Howard Drossin,
their music composer, had to create a brand new theme in two hours.
~ Source: Retro Gamer issue
85, page 39
##################################################################
Sonic Xtreme
* Chris Coffin and Chris Senn were hospitalised from working 15 hours
days to get a version of the game made on a new engine by Christmas 1996. Chris
Senn was told by a nurse he only had six months to live if he kept the pace up.
Chris Coffin developed pneumonia from the stress and almost died. Owing to the
immense toll the game was having on its staff, the game was sadly cancelled.
~ Source: Retro Gamer Issue
22, pages 36-38
##################################################################
Spy Hunter
* The game's original proposed titles include Spymobile, Startkey & Clutch, Lead Foot And Road Reamer, and Dukes Of Tron.
~ Source: Retro Gamer Issue 65,
page 25
##################################################################
Starblade
* The arcade game was designed so that 28 people can play at once. The
projection screen was made of concave glass. To test the machine, they placed
the machine in the garden of Namco's headquarters. The machine became so hot
they succeeded in grilling meat on it.
~ Source: Retro Gamer Issue
68, page 44
##################################################################
Star Trek: Voyager –
Elite Force
* For the first half of development there was only one programmer. The
next programmer they hired completely rewrote the navigation system. This
delayed the coding of the AI of the enemies until after the game was finished.
~ Source: Game Developer
Magazine issue January 2001, page 41
##################################################################
Star Wars (arcade)
* To get around Atari's policy of not crediting anyone, the game artists
hid the names of the developers on the side of the Death Star. By tweaking your
monitor you can see that the interconnecting lines form the names.
~ Source: Retro Gamer Issue
52, page 55
* It was originally conceived that you could hook two machines up for
co-op play. Another cut feature was diminishing fuel, essentially a time limit
to prevent gamers hogging the machine.
~ Source: Retro Gamer Issue
52, page 56
* You could have originally flown around in any direction like a real
dogfight but to prevent confusion from disorientation it was changed so you
could only stay right-side up most of the time.
~ Source: Retro Gamer Issue
52, page 58-59
##################################################################
Stellar 7
* One of the game's fans was acclaimed author Tom Clancy. He was
inspired by this game to get into the video game industry, starting with Rainbow Six.
~ Source: Retro Gamer Issue
51, page 59
##################################################################
Strider
* Director and designer Kouichi Yotsui one day went up to the rooftop of
the studio building to reflect on his mood. He then discovered that all the
doors had closed and only opened from the inside. He had to climb down the side
of the building, in the freezing winter with the threat of falling, in order to
reach the emergency stairs. The exhilaration of that experience helped shape
the gameplay of Strider.
~ Source: Retro Gamer Issue 76, page 43
##################################################################
Styx
* The river part of the screen supposed to be like Frogger, with logs and alligators to hop on, but the ZX Spectrum
only had 16KB memory, so piranhas were used instead.
~ Source: Retro Gamer Issue 117, page 42
* The game was supposed to be a tech demo from Matthew Smith. Bug Byte was
so impressed they published it straight away.
~ Source: Retro Gamer Issue 117, page 43
##################################################################
Super Metroid
* During the final six months of development, crunch time meant long
working hours into the night. The building had a nap room. Overworked and
stressed workers were allowed to sleep in there. The room wasn't taken care of,
so it smelled bad. They added an air freshener but it made it smell
worse.
~ Source: Retro Gamer Issue 65,
page 62
##################################################################
Super Pipeline
* The game was made on some Intertec Superbrains computers, which had
30kV going through them and no earth wire; just an electrical hazard waiting to
happen.
* The lobster enemy was inspired the development team's secretary. Her
boyfriend, a fisherman, put a lobster in the bath tub. Instead of coming home
to flowers, she got that.
* The sequel, Super Pipeline II,
placed well in the charts, but a retailer extorted them for money. Basically,
"pay money or your game won't be on my shelves".
~ Source: Retro Gamer Issue 56, page 62
* The game was originally set on an oil rig but the game setting and
backstory was quickly changed to sci-fi after the Piper Alpha disaster of 1988.
~ Source: Retro Gamer Issue 79, page 46
* The game idea was formed after experiencing a leaky pipe in the
office.
~ Source: Retro Gamer Issue 116,
page 84
##################################################################
Super Sprint
* The circuit boards would get very hot. Solution: stuff a foam coffee
cup to separate them.
* During final testing the team encountered a bug that reset the game to
the attract screen. It turned out a programmer cleaned the routines by removing
commented-out code but accidentally removed non-commented-out lines.
~ Source: Retro Gamer Issue
68, page 58-60
##################################################################
System Shock 2
* There was supposed to be a sequence where you ride the interior of the
Many in a hallucinatory platform segment. However, the Dark Engine the game ran
on did not support such complex scripts. The result was so many bugs that the
segment was cut.
~ Source: Game Developer
Magazine November 1999 page 42
##################################################################
Tekken
* The game had a wiki-style of development, which led to ideas being
worked on at leisure, daily changes and reverts. This clashed with other
designers who wanted things more traditional. The result was a very weird game.
~ Source: Retro Gamer issue 104,
page 34
##################################################################
Tekken 3
* There was to be a playable salmon in the game. Players could have
controlled the floppy fish. It was able to be wielded by Kuma, like
Yoshimitsu's sword. Due to the chaotic nature of the game development, the
salmon idea was veto'd by people working on their own personal ideas for the
game,
~ Source: Retro Gamer issue
104, page 35
##################################################################
The Chaos Engine
* In order for the game to come out in America, a lot of changes had to
be made: the game's title was changed to Soldier
of Fortune, the box cover art changed to lose the cyberpunk aesthetic, and
the Priest class was changed to the Scientist.
~ Source: Retro Gamer issue 122, page
72
##################################################################
The Great Giana
Sisters:
* The eponymous Giana took weeks and weeks of designing and tweaking to
the point the game would exceed the release window.
~ Source: Retro Gamer issue 50,
pages 87-88
##################################################################
The Legend of Zelda:
The Wind Waker
* Director Eiji Aonuma's son was born during development, so the talking
boat King of Red Lion's dialogue was written as if he were talking to his son.
Aunuma has since expressed regret for how forceful the dialogue seems, so it
was tamed in the HD remaster.
~ Source: Retro Gamer issue 121,
page 22
* Originally Link's eyes would change colour, such as glowing red during
combat. Since you're mostly looking at Link from behind, that feature was cut.
~ Source: Retro Gamer issue
121, page 26
##################################################################
The Lost Vikings
* One of the artist's children came up with the villain Tomato's name
and his Croutpnian Empire.
~ Source: Retro Gamer issue 117,
pages 52
##################################################################
The Pit
* The game started off as a bug. Andy Walker programmed Andromeda, a Defender clone, but that game had a bug in it. The spaceship
glitched its graphics, littering the screen with pixels, and going through the
pixels created a tunnel. Thus the concept of a game involving tunnels was born.
~ Source: Retro Gamer issue
85, page 54
* The game was going to have multiple screens with alien bosses on them.
The final screen had a battle with the Grand Dragon. When describing the game
to Japanese gaming businessmen, they misunderstood Walker's words. By saying
'blow it up', the Japanese thought he meant 'inflate'. They thought the game
was ripping off Dig Dug.
~ Source: Retro Gamer issue 85,
page 55
##################################################################
The Secret of Monkey
Island
* The manufacturing facility didn't have the capacity to fulfil the
initial orders, so the dev team had to hand-pack them themselves.
~ Source: Retro Gamer issue 116,
page 34
##################################################################
The Trivia Monster
* Paul Norman and a friend came up with over 2000 questions for this
gameshow game in around two weeks. There are over 200 questions about beavers!
~ Source: Retro Gamer issue 118,
page 90
##################################################################
ToeJam and Earl
* The original names of the aliens was FlowJam and Whirl, but programmer
Mark Voorsanger had a hearing problem and coded the names as ToeJam and Earl.
Sega liked the names so the team kept them. He later on admitted he made this
one up.
* Greg Johnson chose the 30 or so in-game presents items by writing
ideas on Post-It notes, placed them on the floor, and shut his cat in the room.
The notes stuck to the cat's feet were chosen. He also did this technique for
other things, but the cat often went under the sofa. Turns out he also made
this 'fact' up.
* Greg would often 'fix' Mark's code when Mark was in the bathroom. The
result was usually a Sega Genesis thrown at Greg. The team went through around
eight or nine Genesis machines by the time they finished the game.
~ Source: Retro Gamer Issue 71,
page 51
##################################################################
Tomb Raider
* Lara Croft started off as Lara Cruz, a South American beauty with
braided hair. The marketing department of Eidos changed her surname to Croft,
changed her ethnicity to British, and changed her status from peasant to
aristocrat.
* Toby Gard accidentally increased Lara's bust size by 20%. The team
liked it (of course they did) so the change stayed. Gard, however, was aghast
and quit Core Design in 1997 over the bigger bust botch-up.
~ Source: Retro Gamer issue 78, page 24
##################################################################
Toobin'
* The game was originally going to be kayaking game, complete with the
control scheme mimicking a kayak. It wasn't until someone pointed out that
people like tubing more that the game shifted concept.
~ Source: Retro Gamer Issue 65,
page 45
##################################################################
Uncharted: Drake's
Fortune
* Environmental modeller Christophe Desse would often sneeze very
loudly in the Naughty Dog studio, scaring the hell out of everyone. He got the
nickname 'Le Choo'.
* Another environmental modeller, Rob Adams, photoshopped
Christophe's head onto a child wearing a Thomas
the Tank Engine costume. The viral picture led to the team purchasing a
similar costume and Christophe wearing it at work for a whole day.
~ Source: Electronic Gaming
Monthly Issue 226 (March 2008), page 26
##################################################################
Unreal Tournament
* Publisher GT Interactive began promoting the game before the new
rocket launcher was made. As a result, the screenshots shown in previews still
have the Eightball Launcher from Unreal.
~ Source: Game Developer Magazine issue May 2000, page 31
##################################################################
Uridium
* The game was intentionally made harder by lead programmer Andrew
Braybrook to combat the talented gamer Julian Rignall, a staff writer at
Zzap!64 magazine.
~ Source: Retro Gamer Issue 106,
page 36
##################################################################
Vib-Ribbon
* The game started off as an advertisement game for the for the
Mercedes-Benz A-Class car. The original concept for the game was not wireframe
but rather polygon models. Mercedes-Benz withdrew the plans once they
discovered that the A-Class car had a tendency to tip over in strong winds.
This explains the look of the game: the car's headlights became Vibri's eyes,
and the road became the ribbon.
~ Source: Retro Gamer Issue 76,
page 58-59
* Sometimes the obstacles move back and forth, changing the order you
must hit the face button. That's actually a bug they liked, so they kept it in.
~ Source: Retro Gamer Issue 76,
page 60
##################################################################
What Remains of Edith
Finch
* The game started off as a Lovecraftian scuba diver simulator in 2007.
The whole plot with the house emerged out of necessity to string a plot
together.
~ Source: MCV issue #936,
page 92
##################################################################
Wolfenstein 3D
* The game was originally going to be like its predecessor Castle Wolfenstein, with stealth killing
guards and dragging their bodies out of sight. These stealth mechanics were
dropped in favour of the fast-action finished product.
* The sequel, Spear of Destiny,
was made before the dev team found out that there was a DC comic in the 1970s
with the exact same name and plot.
~ Source: Retro Gamer Issue
65, page 79
##################################################################
Wriggler
* The original concept was a snake. It was changed to a worm for added
complexity.
~ Source: Retro Gamer Issue 114,
page 62
* Due to a lack of memory on the ZX Spectrum, there was a stack overflow
that caused some glitched graphics. The glitched graphics made the mansion lift
have a smoking trail, so the devs left it in.
* The graphics for the spiders were inspired by big spiders the
Kempthorne brothers brought into their house. Their mother wasn't pleased about
that.
~ Source: Retro Gamer Issue 114,
page 63
* The ending was to be a lunar landscape but there was no room left for
any more graphics.
~ Source: Retro Gamer Issue
114, page 64
##################################################################
XOR
* The dev team had a tea break every hour and took it in turns to brew
it. They lived off Kit Kats during development. They would wrap the paper
around the foil to make a 'plonker' and then aim to throw the plonker in
another person's cup of tea. Then there was the 'superplonker' which is gaffe
tape rolled up into a ball. The team lost a few BBC Micros via the tsunami of
tea displaced out of the cups.
* The running gags within the dev team were added to the game but were
told to change the sprites. The Halley’s Hanky [a hanky wrapped around a
superplonker] became bombs, Swarfega [working-class Vaseline] became tins of
poison, Kit Kats became chickens, and the cups of tea became shields.
* The reason for the use of chickens was due to one of the desks in the
office having a message scratched into it. The message had something to do with
one of the department lecturers fucking chickens. Banging cock, yes...
~ Source: Retro Gamer Issue 74,
page 31
##################################################################
Zak McKracken and the
Alien Mindbenders
* The game was made at Skywalker Ranch. All the computers were named
after Star Wars planets. The dev
team's computer was called Kessel, a prison planet for slaves to mine spices.
~ Source: Retro Gamer Issue
60, page 52
##################################################################
Zub
* The Lightfarce minigame originated as a challenge within the dev team.
A running gag was that the programmers were challenged to program a game in a
day. John Pickford was the only one to take on the challenge and the result was
Lightfarce. The little game was coded into Zub
as an easter egg.
~ Source: Retro Gamer issue
86, page 37
##################################################################
more to come...
No comments:
Post a Comment