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Sonic Heroes
Sonic Heroes (2003)
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According to designer Shiro Maekawa, there were originally going to be six teams with very different line-ups. Two of the teams, Team Sonic and Team Chaotix, had the same members as they appear in the final game, but the four early teams include:

• Amy, Cream and Rouge
• Chaos, E-102 Gamma and Big
• Fang, Bean and Bark
• Metal Sonic, Ray and Mighty

Due to time constraints and balancing purposes, the number of teams was reduced from six to four, and the members of Team Dark and Team Rose were swapped and adjusted after it was decided that Shadow Spoiler:would not be dead after the events of Sonic Adventure 2.
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Balancing, Development, Early Idea
person CuriousUserX90 calendar_month August 27, 2024
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Bushido Blade
Bushido Blade (1997)
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In a 1997 Dengeki PlayStation interview with the game's director Kunihiko Nakata, he explained that the core idea was to create a weapon-based fighting game centered around the concept of "ichigeki hissatsu" (one-hit takedowns) that would still feel fun. The goal was to make each hit feel decisive and impactful, giving players a sense of immediate victory when they land a strike that wins the match. This direction also influenced the choice to use swords as the primary means of battle in the game as they felt it made it easier for players to understand ichigeki hissatsu:

"I like fighting games with bare fists and staves and all, but I always felt it was weird when you'd take a bunch of damage in a match, and despite only having a sliver of life left, you could still fight with the same vigor. And that's why we wanted this to be a "one-hit kill" game. We could have accomplished that with just punching, but a cutting weapon is more visually convincing."
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Balancing, Controls, Development, General, Inspiration, Real Life
person ProtoSnake calendar_month August 15, 2024
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Hi-Octane
Hi-Octane (1995)
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According to developer Peter Molyneux in a 2019 interview, the different speed stats for the game's vehicles are entirely for show, and they all drive at the same speed. The lack of different vehicle speeds was due to time constraints stemming from a roughly six and a half week development period, but just seeing supposedly different speed stats when selecting a vehicle seemed to fool critics and players into thinking they were different at the time. Molyneux credits this concession for allowing Bullfrog Productions to focus more time into developing Dungeon Keeper, which would not release until nearly two years after Hi-Octane came out. It's rumored that early builds of Hi-Octane did have different vehicle speeds that were slowly worked on by the development team in their downtime as a side project. Molyneux claimed that this rumor was likely true, but that due to the same time constraints, they could not have made enough progress for the vehicle changes to be implemented into the final game.
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Balancing, Development, Early Build, Early Idea, False Advertising, General, Real Life, Reviews, Rumor, Theory, Unused Content
person MehDeletingLater calendar_month August 1, 2024
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Yeah! You Want "Those Games", Right? So Here You Go! Now, Let's See You Clear Them!
Yeah! You Want "Those Games", Right? So Here You Go! Now, Let's See You Clear Them! (2023)
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This game, also referred to by the shorthand title "Those Games", is a parody of mobile game advertisements, specifically those that depict fake minigames that are not representative of the actual game once it is downloaded. The game's producer Maya Ito stated at its release that it was developed in just eight months, and came about about from her own desire to play those minigames "thoroughly and to my heart's content!" She described the process of balancing each minigame and trying to turn them into fully realized games as being particularly challenging, and felt that she "could've done some things a little differently" after noticing that players at launch had found many different ways to play the minigames.
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Advertisement/Commercial, Balancing, Development, False Advertising, General, Inspiration, Level Design, Minigame, Parody, Real Life, Reference
person chocolatejr9 calendar_month July 28, 2024
comment Comment (1) | link Source
Danganronpa S: Ultimate Summer Camp
Danganronpa S: Ultimate Summer Camp (2021)
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Much of the game's development was spent balancing the gameplay between Danganronpa S's various modes. One part of this was by making it so that the different characters and their rarities did not affect the core gameplay too much, as which characters players unlocked was heavily luck-based. According to director Shun Sasaki, balancing wasn't finished until much later in development, on account of it being improved bit by bit with new features implemented. Supposedly, the game's microtransactions were added in order to prevent frustration from players being unable to get their preferred characters.
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Balancing, Development, Downloadable Content (DLC), General, Real Life
person chocolatejr9 calendar_month July 1, 2024
comment Comment (0) | link Source
Dark Souls
Dark Souls (2011)
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Every environmental object in Dark Souls has an associated damage and health value, with breakable objects having a defense value of 0, 3, 90, 199, or 999 and unbreakable objects having an HP of -1. The player is only capable of destroying objects with defense values of either 0 or 3 such as boxes or tables while certain objects like the breakable wall at Sen’s Fortress, or the raised platform above the Asylum Demon at the beginning of the game, have higher defense values and can only be destroyed by enemies or hazards.
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Balancing, Development, General
person Kirby Inhales Jotaro calendar_month February 24, 2024
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Nobunaga's Ambition: Awakening
Nobunaga's Ambition: Awakening (2022)
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In an interview with the game's producer Michi Ryu published on Siliconera on July 25, 2023, he revealed that the COVID-19 pandemic had a significant impact on the game’s development, which started just before the pandemic. The team had to adjust to an unfamiliar work style and structure, which made it difficult to exchange information with team members. Chat tools and video calls became crucial for communication during this period, which they normally did not use before.

Ryu mentioned another significant challenge during development was the unification of daimyo and retainers. The team wanted to show the theme of "living officers who think and act on their own", but found it difficult to decide to what extent retainers should act on their own. Some would act too smart and expand their territory if the player left them alone which Ryu believed would make for boring gameplay, but he also did not want to put extra stress on the player by making the officers stupid. Their solution to this was "not to indicate what is right to do but to let the players decide."

Conversely, Ryu could not recall anything that came together easily during the development process.
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Balancing, Crunch/Overwork, Development, General, Real Life
person ProtoSnake calendar_month January 27, 2024
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Dark Souls
Dark Souls (2011)
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During the development of Dark Souls, a popular tactic among the development team to go past Blighttown's Blowdart Sniper enemies (who can inflict the player with Toxic, a poison effect that gradually reduces the player's health) was to use the Dung Pie item to inflict Toxic on yourself already. This is because the Toxic effect from Dung Pies are much milder and the Toxic effect in general does not stack. This was not intended, but was kept in because they felt it added extra depth to the game.
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Balancing, Development, General
person Kirby Inhales Jotaro calendar_month January 25, 2024
comment Comment (0) | Source
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Flappy Bird
Flappy Bird (2013)
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Flappy Bird was not originally a difficult game, but during development the pipes were moved closer together as the game was found to be boring when it was too easy.
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Balancing, Development, Difficulty, Early Idea
person Rocko & Heffer calendar_month November 24, 2023
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Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl
Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl (2021)
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Lincoln Loud's neutral water gun move "The Splasher" had to be reworked during development; the original version of the move stunned opponents and could be cancelled into most actions in the game. This was a flawed move design however, as players could simply cancel the move into a waveland and then perform it again, making an infinite combo. If this move stayed in, Lincoln would have had to be banned from early competitive play, much as Michelangelo would end up being. In the final game, the water gun pushes opponents and cannot be cancelled.
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Balancing, Competitive, Moveset, Removed Feature
person Rocko & Heffer calendar_month November 17, 2023
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Sonic R
Sonic R (1997)
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When Sonic R was first shown off at E3, many players gave up after running Sonic into the water and discovering how low his speed becomes - the first change game designer Jon Burton made to the game after that showing was increasing the speed velocity in the water.
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Balancing, Development, Test, Trade Show
person Rocko & Heffer calendar_month November 16, 2023
comment Comment (0) | link Source
GoldenEye 007
GoldenEye 007 (1997)
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A common debate among GoldenEye 007 fans is whether playing as Oddjob in the multiplayer mode is cheating due to his short stature going below the auto-aim bullet radius. This would be addressed by lead environmental artist Karl Hilton and gameplay and engine programmer Mark Edmonds in an oral history article released by Mel Magazine in 2018, 21 years after the game released, who stated that they too thought playing as Oddjob was cheating, and they were aware of this during development:

Hilton: "We all thought it was kind of cheating when we were play-testing with Oddjob [due to his short stature, the auto-aim of the weapons goes above his head], but it was too much fun to take out and there was no impetus from any of us to change it. It's clearly become part of the culture and folklore of the game  —  I noticed playing GoldenEye as Oddjob was mentioned in Ready Player One, so ultimately, I think it's fine."

Edmonds: "It's definitely cheating to play as Oddjob! But that can just add to the fun when you’re all sitting there next to each other and berating/poking/hitting the person who chooses him. Personally I like to pick Jaws [who originally appeared in 1977’s The Spy Who Loved Me] and then beat the person with Oddjob just to show them! We could have put something in to stop this blatant cheating, but why not just let players decide on their own rules?"
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Balancing, Bonus Content, Cheat, Development
person Rocko & Heffer calendar_month October 31, 2023
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Valhellio
Valhellio (2011)
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In a 2011 interview with the game's developer Masaaki Nagaura published in STG Gameside #5, Nagaura was asked at what points did he struggle when porting the game from mobile phones to the PC? He responded:

"From the start I had planned to release it for PC and mobile phones, so there weren’t any particular difficulties. When developing a game, the graphics are always expensive to create, but once you start thinking about improving their quality there’s really no end to it, and I always struggle with where to draw the line. But since I started development on the mobile platform, which has hardware limitations, I knew what the minimum requirements were beforehand. From there I brushed things up for the PC version, and I think it was a really efficient way to develop. With the mobile version my goal was to make “the best shooting game ever for a mobile phone,” so I worked hard tuning it up."
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Balancing, Cancelled Release, Console Difference, Development, Early Idea, General, Real Life
person ProtoSnake calendar_month October 12, 2023
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Sonic the Hedgehog 2
Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (1992)
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The Game Gear version of Sonic the Hedgehog 2 has a reputation as one of the hardest installments in the Sonic franchise due to making minimal changes to already-challenging level layouts designed for the Master System's larger aspect ratio on the notoriously small Game Gear screen.

Because Sega prefers to release the Game Gear version of the game on newer hardware, and the original Master System version only being released in the Master System's most successful regions (Europe, Australia, and Brazil), most players are only familiar with the version generally considered inferior.
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Balancing, Complaint, Console Difference, Difficulty, Mistake, Regional Difference, Release Difference, Remake, Update Difference
person Rocko & Heffer calendar_month October 8, 2023
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Article that explains the Game Gear version's reputation:
http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/sonic-the-hedgehog-2-8-bit/

Level layout comparisons:
https://info.sonicretro.org/Sonic_the_Hedgehog_2_(8-bit)/Comparisons
Winnie the Pooh's Home Run Derby!
Winnie the Pooh's Home Run Derby! (2007)
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Despite being aimed at an audience of small children, Winnie the Pooh's Home Run Derby! has been noted for its relentlessly intense difficulty, with opponents having lightning-fast and unpredictable ball movement patterns (most infamously Tigger, who can throw invisible balls, and Christopher Robin, who has access to all other characters' ball movement patterns), combined with a high bar of successful swings required for progression through the game. Its reputation through word of mouth on the Internet became so notorious that Complex.com ranked it on its list of the hardest Flash games ever made higher than the likes of I Wanna Be the Guy and Meat Boy.
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Balancing, General
person Rocko & Heffer calendar_month October 8, 2023
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Adventure
Adventure (1980)
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Despite Adventure being a highly ambitious title released before the discovery of bank switching, the game had enough free RAM space in its cartridge (15 out of 128 bytes) to fit 3 extra dragons - though Warren Robinett chose not to as he thought the gameplay was fine as is, something he compared to what is now known as game balancing.
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Balancing, Development, Unused Character
person Rocko & Heffer calendar_month October 7, 2023
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Super Smash Bros. for Wii U
Super Smash Bros. for Wii U (2014)
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Inside the game's files are unused gliding animations for Meta Knight, Pit, and Dark Pit. This may suggest that gliding was supposed to return from Brawl. However, it's likely that it was cut for balance reasons.
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Balancing, Moveset, Unused Content
person GamerBen144 calendar_month April 11, 2018
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Pokémon X
Pokémon X (2013)
subdirectory_arrow_right Pokémon Y (Game)
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Attachment The reason Fairy type Pokemon were introduced was to balance out the game. Fairy type has an advantage over Dragon type, which was considered an overpowered type by Game Freak.
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Balancing, Development, General, Inspiration
person KnowledgeBase calendar_month June 12, 2013
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