The game is loosely based on the H. P. Lovecraft novella "The Shadow over Innsmouth". Lead developer Joseph "Akabaka" Hunter struggled to adapt this story as modern scholarly interpretations of Lovecraft's works frequently make accusations of racist and anti-miscegenation allegories in accordance with what is known about his personal views. While the original story (like most of Lovecraft's works) attempts to play into the fear of the unknown, Hunter felt the monsters and creatures used were "just, you know, metaphors for the guy living down the street, which is hardly unknown." Hunter did not want to potentially alienate players, and in order to adapt the story without reproducing these aspects, he took inspiration from "Lovecraft Country", a 2016 horror novel that adapted the Lovecraft mythos by using the controversial themes present in the original works to portray the experiences and threats black people faced in the United States under the Jim Crow laws.
All three games in the Pilotwings series were launch titles for different Nintendo consoles in various regions, acting as a sort of tech demo for their respective systems. The original Pilotwings was a launch title for the SNES in North America, Pilotwings 64 was a launch title for the Nintendo 64 in both Japan and North America, and Pilotwings Resort was a Nintendo 3DS launch title in Europe and the United States.
The Famicom version of Nuts & Milk was the first third party game on the platform. In the process of being ported to the Famicom, the game was overhauled from a top-down maze game comparable to Pac-Man to a 2D platformer comparable to Donkey Kong.
In the original version of Amanda the Adventurer (retroactively renamed to Amanda the Adventurer: Pilot Episode after being picked up by DreadXP to become a full game), Amanda was voiced by Chelsea Lecompte due to the game having to be made in a single week as part of "DreadXP's Found Footage Jam" and being easy to cast as she lived with the main developer. When the game was picked up for full funding, it was decided to recast her in favor of Blair Greene-Osako, as Amanda was a black character (something proposed during the design process) yet was voiced by a white actress in the game jam version. While they felt it was acceptable at the time given the circumstances, they decided to recast her with a black actress once those circumstances had changed. Despite this, Lecompte does still provide voice work for the full game, specifically as the Say n' See toy and Gret-chan the doll.
The model numbers of the Game & Watch titles Donkey Kong Circus and Mickey Mouse (Panorama) appear to have been flipped by mistake, as Donkey Kong Circus has the model number "MK-96" while Mickey Mouse has "DC-95".
The Nintendo DS having two screens was suggested by former Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi to then-current president Satoru Iwata, and was inspired by the Game & Watch LCD game series' clamshell two-screen design. In a 2016 Retro Gamer interview with former Nintendo designer Satoru Okada, he delves into its origins:
"The project was moving forward at a good pace but during the development, something at unexpected happened. President Iwata then came to see me. He was obviously bothered and he said: 'l talked to Yamauchi-san over the phone and he thinks your console should have two screens... A bit like the multi-screen Game & Watch, you see?' [...] at the time, everybody hated this idea, even Iwata himself. We thought it did not make any sense. Back in the Game & Watch days, it was different because a second screen allowed us to double the playing area and the number of graphic elements on display. But with the modern screens, there was no point. We were free to choose the size of our screen, so why bother splitting it into two? Especially considering that it was impossible to look at both screens at the same time. This is why we did not understand his idea."
Pinball was the first released Nintendo game that was programmed by future president and CEO Satoru Iwata. Although he had previously worked on a Famicom port for Joust, the port ended up being released in 1987, years after Pinball.
Unlike past titles in the Life is Strange series, Double Exposure is a direct sequel to the original game. In order to respect both of the first game's endings, players are given the option to choose an ending organically rather than making one of the two endings canon. Game director Jon Stauder elaborated on this, stating:
"There's no canon ending in our book to the first game. Double Exposure will respect both endings in Max's thoughts, her journal, her SMS, her interactions with other characters, what she opts to reveal about her past to her new friends, it's all reflective of that final choice."
The names of Vibri's different forms are: • Super Vibri (スーパービブリ) • Frog-Vibri (ケロビブリ, "Kerovibri", a combination of 蛙/ケロ meaning "frog") • Insect-Vibri (ムシブリ, "Mushibri", a combination of 虫/ムシ meaning "insect")
A different version of the game was released in other Asian countries, including Hong Kong, that contained an English translation, making it the first Doko Demo Issyo game to be officially released in English.
The designs of the Tulpar crew are all loosely based on characters from popular horror media. Two examples that the developers themselves confirmed in a diary post are Daisuke and Anya, who are respectively based on Ryosuke Kawashima from the 2001 Japanese horror film Pulse and Wendy Torrance (as portrayed by Shelley Duvall) in the 1980 film adaptation of Stephen King's The Shining.
According to a Q&A hosted on the game's Steam page, every character in the game is voiced by audio designer Martin Halldin, including Curly, Daisuke, Polle, and "anything that isn't an advert in the tv sections". In the case of Polle's voice, the intention was to have it feel like they were pulling voice clips from random advertisements to string a sentence together. To that end, the words were all recorded individually and cut into sentences during post-production.
According to game designer Pascal Cammisotto, the developers of Piglet's Big Game were not given access to the script for its source material Piglet's Big Movie, and were simply instructed by Disney to make a Piglet-themed product. The game was directly pitched to Disney as "Resident Evil for kids", an inherently unusual pitch that, according to Cammisotto, was successful due to game designer Mark Albinet being particularly convincing. The developers felt they were making the game more for themselves while not talking down to the very young demographic most Disney iterations of Winnie-the-Pooh are aimed at, and Disney Interactive producer Risa Cohen supported their liberties from the source material as she felt it would be a quality game.
In 2015, developers Mind Candy and 55pixels were ordered by the United Kingdom's Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) to change the wording of their in-app advertisements in Moshi Monsters and Bin Weevils, arguing that said wording was directly pressuring young players to pay for subscriptions (Moshi Monsters claimed that members would be "super popular", while Bin Weevils' options for subscriptions were phrased as commands). They also claimed that certain phrases used in the games, such as Moshi Monsters' "The Super Moshis need YOU" and Bin Weevils' interpretive phrases such as "DOSH Top Up", put pressure on children to pay. Both developers conceded to the ASA's demands, with Mind Candy claiming it took its "responsibilities very seriously with regards to how we communicate with all of our fans, especially children".
In the late 1990s, Interplay co-founder Brian Fargo began working on a second sequel to Battle Chess known as Battle Chess 3, but it was ultimately cancelled. The existence of the game would not be revealed until years later in 2015, when Fargo posted footage of the game's prototype for the first time.
Despite being largely forgotten in favor of its sequels, the original Age of Empires remained popular decades later in Vietnam, due in large part to pirated copies of the game being bundled in Vietnamese computers and a long history of LAN matches dating back to the 1990's. Modern Vietnamese players often use custom rulesets, and top players have earned tens of thousands of dollars in tournaments viewed by audiences as high as the hundreds of thousands.
In 2023, this popularity in Vietnam was formally acknowledged by Forgotten Empires, the modern developers of the series, in their "Return of Rome" expansion for Age of Empires II, which ported and updated content from the original Age of Empires to Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition. The expansion included a new faction, Lac Viet, "in honor and recognition of ["The Rise of Rome" expansion from the first Age of Empires game's] phenomenal popularity in Vietnam."
Following the 2024 Splatoon 3 world championships, Nintendo released a commemorative Splashtag banner depicting the winning team, Jackpot. However, shortly afterwards, the team became embroiled in controversy following allegations of racist comments and behavior both in and out of the game. Nintendo subsequently issued a statement on Twitter announcing that Jackpot's victory would be rescinded and that their banner would be redesigned due to them violating the game's community guidelines. Consequently, the Version 9.0.0 update replaced the design with a placeholder one depicting generic Inklings and Octolings. Nintendo additionally removed footage and social media posts of the championship from their website and social media accounts and pulled the Nintendo Switch News article announcing Jackpot's win.
One of the oldest and most well-known rumors in the game was that the Iceberg to the northeast of Club Penguin Island could be tipped over if enough penguins stood on one side of it, or if enough penguins used the Jackhammer 3000 on the Iceberg by wearing the Hard Hat. However, this rumor was false and was never actually implemented into the game for most of its run.
From January 31 until the date of the game's shutdown on March 30, 2017, the Waddle on Party was held. As part of the celebrations, the developers decided to actually program and code the Iceberg so it could tip over. This was hinted at by one of the game's community managers, who revealed in the comments section of a blogpost detailing the Waddle on Party that "penguins could discover a special secret". The Iceberg could be tipped if at least 5 players in the room were wearing the color Blue, walking a Blue Puffle or any of its variants, and dancing while wearing a Hard Hat. If only 2 to 4 penguins fulfilled this criteria, the Iceberg would just shake. When enough penguins manage to tip it, the Iceberg would completely flip over, revealing a large dance floor, a bin of free Iceberg Tipper hats, a buoy numbered 11 frozen in the ice, and a plaque surrounded by many carvings and an inscription on it that read:
"Together, we can build an island, create a community, change the world... and even tip an iceberg. Waddle on."
According to former artist Chris Hendricks, when he rendered the design of the penguin avatars into 3D, he did so with rendering shadows turned on because he thought it gave them more depth and weight. However, this came with the problem of every graphic on the model casting a shadow and needing to be individually tweaked to remove unwanted shadows. Hendricks got fed up with the tedious process and did not want to do this for every clothing item in the game, so he decided that only the penguins would cast shadows, while the clothing items would not. He claimed that in all of his time looking at fan feedback while working as a moderator for the game, nobody complained about or pointed out this design choice.
The model numbers of the Game & Watch titles Donkey Kong Circus and Mickey Mouse (Panorama) appear to have been flipped by mistake, as Donkey Kong Circus has the model number "MK-96" while Mickey Mouse has "DC-95".
Despite being largely forgotten in favor of its sequels, the original Age of Empires remained popular decades later in Vietnam, due in large part to pirated copies of the game being bundled in Vietnamese computers and a long history of LAN matches dating back to the 1990's. Modern Vietnamese players often use custom rulesets, and top players have earned tens of thousands of dollars in tournaments viewed by audiences as high as the hundreds of thousands.
Following the 2024 Splatoon 3 world championships, Nintendo released a commemorative Splashtag banner depicting the winning team, Jackpot. However, shortly afterwards, the team became embroiled in controversy following allegations of racist comments and behavior both in and out of the game. Nintendo subsequently issued a statement on Twitter announcing that Jackpot's victory would be rescinded and that their banner would be redesigned due to them violating the game's community guidelines. Consequently, the Version 9.0.0 update replaced the design with a placeholder one depicting generic Inklings and Octolings. Nintendo additionally removed footage and social media posts of the championship from their website and social media accounts and pulled the Nintendo Switch News article announcing Jackpot's win.
One of the oldest and most well-known rumors in the game was that the Iceberg to the northeast of Club Penguin Island could be tipped over if enough penguins stood on one side of it, or if enough penguins used the Jackhammer 3000 on the Iceberg by wearing the Hard Hat. However, this rumor was false and was never actually implemented into the game for most of its run.