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.
Vs. Ice Climber and its NES port were the first games that programmer Kazuaki Morita worked on at Nintendo. In a 2006 interview, he said that he considered the game to be a "warm-up on the NES" prior to working on Super Mario Bros.
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 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."
According to Ikuko Mimori, the sound designer for Pokémon Snap, two songs and an accompanying stage were scrapped from the game. Based on the names of the tracks ("Fantastic Horror" and "Theme of the Horror Boss"), it seems that the stage would likely have featured a Haunted or Ghost type theme. Concept art featured in the Pokémon Snap Official Strategy Guide portrays an early version of the game's setting, Pokémon Island, with an additional town and what appears to be a chapel, neither of which appear in the final game. This may be a depiction of the same cut stage, as "Fantastic Horror" uses bells that could be mounted in this chapel.
An unused, fully playable, ARM exists within the game's files under the name "GumShield." This ARM functions similarly to the Clapback, except incoming attacks stick to it instead of being reflected. The GumShield model also features a unique brand that went completely unused in the final game.
Although released in Japan on August 25, 1995, early in the Sega Saturn's life, Magic Knight Rayearth was the final Saturn game released in the United States, in late 1998. This long localization process was discussed in the game's US manual, where the localizers at Working Design shared details about the process and even acknowledged that it was likely the last Saturn game to be released in the country.
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.
Within the game's code are 22 unused reactions; while several of them are animations designed for interactions with Wisp, Gulliver, K.K. Slider, and campers, many others are standard emotions, leaving it unknown why these ones were removed. While additional reactions would be added in various updates, none of the 22 unused ones were among them.
Additionally, one unused reaction is the Shrunk Funk Shuffle; this was previously obtainable in Animal Crossing: New Leaf after obtaining all other reactions from Dr. Shrunk. Its presence in the game's code thus implies that at one point in development, players were intended to learn reactions from him like in previous titles. In the final game, players instead obtain them through a variety of methods (i.e. being taught them by villagers and Jack, purchasing Nook Miles rewards, attending aerobics classes for 50 days, and completing the Happy Home Paradise DLC), while Dr. Shrunk only appears as an occasional visitor in the Roost from Version 2.0 onward.
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.
Banjo-Tooie's Terrydactyland contains a sub area, dubbed the Stomping Plains, which in turn is home to the Stomponadon, a seemingly theropod dinosaur so enormous in scale that only its foot is visible. It functions as the main obstacle of this area as, hence its name, it will try to stomp on Banjo & Kazooie as they attempt to traverse the plains. The concept behind Stomponadon had its origins from Banjo-Kazooie's earliest prototype game, Dream: Land of Giants; footage of Dream released by Rare for the first time in 2015 showed that Edson (who was replaced by Banjo in the final game) was to have encountered a similarly large dinosaur that would try to crush him with its feet.
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.
One of the characters planned for Dream: Land of Giants before it was morphed into Banjo-Kazooie was Captain Cockeye, a friendly pirate character that was also described as being "a bit of a mad professor".
While this character wouldn't appear in the final Banjo-Kazooie game, Banjo-Tooie's character Pawno seen in Jolly Roger's Lagoon serves as a homage to him, by wearing his clothing as noted by former Rare character designer Ed Bryan.
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.
During an interview with Jungle Island (a fan website dedicated to the Super Monkey Ball series), concept artist Keith Webb revealed that the character Future AiAi came about after he came up with an idea for a space monkey that would appear at certain points in the game to give players power-ups (later spells), and was intended to be an homage to the Bomberman series by Hudson Soft. He was originally supposed to wear a white spacesuit, but before Webb could finish coloring in the artwork, the character modeler making the character in 3D chose a red color that ultimately stuck. Webb had later joked about the character being AiAi from the future (the reason why he had the power-ups was because he had gotten them from himself), and the idea stuck as well.
Within the game's data is a text file labeled "zzzz.zzz". Opening it reveals a message from a developer by the name of "Dave C." (presumably David Catlin, the game's technical director) which explains that it was a dummy file added in as a workaround for an issue that prevents the last 32 bytes of data on the disc from reading properly; the name "zzzz.zzz" thus ensures that it is always placed at the end of the alphabetically sorted file library.
Although Mike Tyson is not fightable in the original limited edition Japanese release of the game, he is nonetheless present in its data as a fully coded, yet unused opponent. Tyson's associated text and screens are also fully intact, though the code to bring up the "Mike is waiting for your challenge!!" screen is absent from the game's data. Additionally, his ring palette is not implemented, with the background consequently defaulting to a gray mat and orange audience not featured by any opponent accessible in any of the three versions of the NES release. Taken together, this implies that Tyson was already under consideration as the game's celebrity guest during the limited edition's development.
According to Ikuko Mimori, the sound designer for Pokémon Snap, two songs and an accompanying stage were scrapped from the game. Based on the names of the tracks ("Fantastic Horror" and "Theme of the Horror Boss"), it seems that the stage would likely have featured a Haunted or Ghost type theme. Concept art featured in the Pokémon Snap Official Strategy Guide portrays an early version of the game's setting, Pokémon Island, with an additional town and what appears to be a chapel, neither of which appear in the final game. This may be a depiction of the same cut stage, as "Fantastic Horror" uses bells that could be mounted in this chapel.
An unused, fully playable, ARM exists within the game's files under the name "GumShield." This ARM functions similarly to the Clapback, except incoming attacks stick to it instead of being reflected. The GumShield model also features a unique brand that went completely unused in the final game.
Although released in Japan on August 25, 1995, early in the Sega Saturn's life, Magic Knight Rayearth was the final Saturn game released in the United States, in late 1998. This long localization process was discussed in the game's US manual, where the localizers at Working Design shared details about the process and even acknowledged that it was likely the last Saturn game to be released in the country.
Banjo-Tooie's Terrydactyland contains a sub area, dubbed the Stomping Plains, which in turn is home to the Stomponadon, a seemingly theropod dinosaur so enormous in scale that only its foot is visible. It functions as the main obstacle of this area as, hence its name, it will try to stomp on Banjo & Kazooie as they attempt to traverse the plains. The concept behind Stomponadon had its origins from Banjo-Kazooie's earliest prototype game, Dream: Land of Giants; footage of Dream released by Rare for the first time in 2015 showed that Edson (who was replaced by Banjo in the final game) was to have encountered a similarly large dinosaur that would try to crush him with its feet.
One of the characters planned for Dream: Land of Giants before it was morphed into Banjo-Kazooie was Captain Cockeye, a friendly pirate character that was also described as being "a bit of a mad professor".
Although Mike Tyson is not fightable in the original limited edition Japanese release of the game, he is nonetheless present in its data as a fully coded, yet unused opponent. Tyson's associated text and screens are also fully intact, though the code to bring up the "Mike is waiting for your challenge!!" screen is absent from the game's data. Additionally, his ring palette is not implemented, with the background consequently defaulting to a gray mat and orange audience not featured by any opponent accessible in any of the three versions of the NES release. Taken together, this implies that Tyson was already under consideration as the game's celebrity guest during the limited edition's development.