From 2009 to 2013, Capcom Japan collaborated with the all-female musical theater company Takarazuka Revue to produce three musicals based on the Ace Attorney series, the first time Takarazuka had ever collaborated with a game company. The first production, "Gyakuten Saiban: The Truth Reborn", sold out all tickets on its first day, and with the second musical ("Gyakuten Saiban 2: The Truth Reborn, Again...") drew a combined total attendance of over 50,000 people. According to series creator Shu Takumi, the musical's director Suzuki Kei cleared the first four Ace Attorney games seven times each before sitting down to write the script. Additionally, while he was not involved in the first musical's production, Takumi did contribute feedback midway through the second musical's production. The musicals were successful enough that it prompted the Revue to partner with Capcom again to produce a musical based on the Sengoku Basara series, and once more to produce "Dai Gyakuten Saiban: New Truth Reborn", a musical based on the The Great Ace Attorney spinoff games.
Sephiroth's inclusion as a DLC fighter was apparently so top secret that even certain members of Square Enix had not known that the villain was going to be included in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate until the corresponding show-stealing announcement at The Game Awards 2020 was made. Even Square Enix employee and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth director Naoki Hamaguchi was quite shocked and stated:
"[...] it was actually extremely confidential that he was even going to be in it, [...] So, none of the dev team knew, including myself. So it was more like when the whole world knew it, and that's when we knew it like, 'Oh, I had no idea!'"
In an interview with the game's co-director/designer/programmer Naoki Hamaguchi published in The Washington Post on July 2nd, 2021, he reflected on the evolution of Final Fantasy VII Remake's battle system, which drew inspiration from the original game's Active Time Battle (ATB) system. Hamaguchi expressed satisfaction with its current form "in which the strategic element of the command-based battle from the original co-exists with the real-time, action-oriented battle". Additionally, the "Intermission" episode featured in FFVII Remake Intergrade introduced combo moves where Yuffie and Sonon team up, which Hamaguchi stated he wanted to try leveraging along with other elements from "Intermission" as he worked on what would become Final Fantasy VII Rebirth.
In April 2023, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth's lead battle programmer Satoru Koyama discussed the challenges he aimed to tackle when working on the game, with his main aspiration being to enhance the capabilities of AI characters. He emphasized the desire to create an AI capable of juggling a variety of techniques and magic, going beyond the limitations of Final Fantasy VII Remake's combat system. He said his goal was to surpass the Gambit System introduced in Final Fantasy XII, which allowed players to set commands and actions based on specific conditions, providing a wealth of strategic options.
In an interview with Nintendo Player, Jason Bakutis, who designed the game's monster models and prosthetics, claimed that Viridis Corporation intended to commission English neo-psychedelia band Echo & the Bunnymen to compose the game's soundtrack. However, these plans fell through for unknown reasons. Ultimately, the soundtrack was provided by Mark Andrade, who also played Gaspra in the opening FMV; however, most of his compositions were omitted from the final game, which instead uses ambient environmental noises for the majority of gameplay.
In a 2020 interview, designer Koichi Ishii revealed that despite the NES hardware only being able to display three colors per sprite, he felt that he could not make a believable design for the game's jobs unless he "dug deep into the job's background story and what kind of character it will be." He was surprised when some of these design limitations stuck around for future games he did not work on like Final Fantasy Tactics, and elaborated on what he imagined the White Mage and Dark Knight jobs looked like as he originally designed them:
"The image I had is that the red part of a white mage's robe is embroidered from red threads imbued with magic when spun together, increasing the wearer's magical power. The reasoning for the red threads being on the sleeves is that magic leaves the body through the hands and wrists, so that area is most effective. I was very particular about the lore that equipment like wands and amulets are used as a catalyst to turn natural power into magic, stimulating the user's magic strength. That's why I was adamant about never giving magic users iron equipment; if they use normal metals, their magic power will disperse so at least go with mythril ore...stuff like that.
[...] when [the dark knight is] KO'd in battle only their armor is left, as if the body inside has disappeared. The reason for that, in my imagining, is that they have a dark pact where their body is engraved with dark magic runes, and when they're KO'd the dark magic runes take their soul and body so only the empty armor remains. I had that kind of unique image for each job as I was creating it."
Concept art for Star Fox 64 3D suggests that the development team at some point considered creating an all new Arwing model design, one that appears to be a mixture of the classic Star Fox 64 design and the sleeker, sharper Star Fox: Assault design, similar to how the Landmaster was redesigned to resemble its 64/Assault amalgamated design from Super Smash Bros. Brawl.
In an interview with the game's director Takumi Isobe published in Famitsu on February 22, 2024, Isobe explained that the game's title "Reynatis" holds deep significance to the game's story and is derived from two words. The first is "renatus", which means "birth" or "rebirth" in Latin. The second word is "rey" which means "king" in Spanish; additionally, "renatus" on its own can also refer to a "born king" in Spanish.
When the Grey Faerie's Neopedia article was released, a "Bottled Grey Faerie" item was found in the game's servers. Neopian Times Editorial #90 would later imply that a plotline involving the Grey Faeries was on the way, however nothing has been heard about this since, likely meaning that whatever plotline was planned was either cancelled or delayed indefinitely.
In a 2020 interview with SiliconEra, series co-creator Matt Bozon described the development and distribution of each entry in the series as reflective of various changes in the video game industry and its treatment of smaller developers.
The eponymous first title was pitched for multiple platforms, including the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, Game Boy, PlayStation, and PC before eventually landing on the Game Boy Color due to the industry relying on deals with big-name distributors; Bozon stated that "If retail and distribution deals had come together more quickly for SNES, PSX, or PC, Shantae would have launched there."
Nintendo's establishment of WiiWare and DSiWare allowed WayForward to more readily develop a follow-up in the form of Shantae: Risky’s Revenge thanks to the digital distribution model making it less expensive to develop and release a smaller-scale title for systems that were otherwise demanding increasingly complex games. Later, The Nintendo 3DS' "split delivery system" that allowed digital-only games to be released at retail prices was a boon to the making of Shantae and the Pirate's Curse.
Shantae: Half-Genie Hero and Shantae and the Seven Sirens meanwhile benefitted from the greater prioritization of digitally distributed games on home consoles by the start of the 2020s, with the rise of premium physical media imprints such as Limited Run Games further helping offset costs.
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.
During the 1995 Winter Consumer Electronics Show, Cyberdreams announced "Hunters of Ralk", a role-playing game designed by Gary Gygax, the co-creator of "Dungeons & Dragons". Not much is known about the game, other than that it was meant to be the start of a series and would have featured 3D combat in a first-person perspective and texture-mapped graphics. It was slated for Fall of that year for Windows platforms, but was never released.
In an interview with the game's director Takumi Isobe published in Famitsu on February 22, 2024, he mentioned that the Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy series significantly impacted his sense of values and influenced the development of Reynatis.
Tetsuya Nomura had requested for the character Oswald the Lucky Rabbit to be used in Kingdom Hearts III, but Disney responded that he would be "too difficult" to use, though they never clarified why. While his plans for Oswald had he been added to the game are unknown, it's worth noting that Nomura has admitted that Oswald is one of his favorite Disney characters.
"The Incredible Shrinking Character" was a cancelled action adventure game to be developed by Go-Go Interactive Studios and published by Cyberdreams for the PlayStation, Sega Saturn, and PC. Set in the year 1959, players would have assumed the role of a private investigator, hired to find Julie Caldwell (the daughter of a wealthy industrial family) after she had disappeared while visiting the castle of Dr. Warren Franklin. When the player arrives, however, the doctor springs a trap on them that causes them to start gradually shrinking. Thus, the player must not only save Julie (who is implied to be trapped in the castle's dungeon, due to the sound of a female screaming), but also find an antidote to their shrinking as they contend with otherwise harmless creatures (i.e. the doctor's house cat) that become more dangerous the smaller they get. The game would have included at least ten levels, with the player being smaller in each one, and would have included several size puzzles. The exact reason why the game was cancelled is unknown, though may have been in part due to Cyberdreams going defunct in 1997.
During 2004, Next Level Games was working on a game based on the WWE franchise called "WWE Titans: Parts Unknown". Planned to release on the Playstation 2 and Xbox as a 1-vs-1 fighter, the game was planned to have a radically different direction from past WWE titles, featuring a new art style that focused on exaggerated character designs and cinematic locales. Settings for the game included urban environments (i.e. rooftops in a city) and an old castle located in the snowy wilderness. Additionally, one stage concept was labelled "Cena Stage", likely in reference to wrestler John Cena. This suggests that some individual wrestlers would have received arena dedicated to them.
While the game would have featured several established wrestlers, Next Level also considered adding original cast members made specifically for the game. One piece of artwork for the game shows that there were plans for anthropomorphic characters (such as crocodiles and bears) and sorcerers. Not much is known about the gameplay, though art for the game suggests that destructible environments were intended to be a key focus. For unknown reasons, the pitch was rejected by the game's publisher, THQ.
On the 19th of February 2024, designer Kevin Baylis revealed a pitch he made for Killer Instinct 3 for the Nintendo 64. It was meant to be a prequel featuring younger versions of the characters, where players could hone the characters' moves, then gaining more before moving on to "the next chapters of their lives". The game didn't make past the concept phase because the people at Rare thought that "the fighting game ‘fad’ was over".
In early February 2024, one month prior to the game's release, multi-time WWE World Champion Brock Lesnar was removed from the cover of the "Forty Years of WrestleMania" showcase edition of the game in response to a sexual assault and sex trafficking lawsuit against Vince McMahon and WWE. Although Lesnar's name was not directly mentioned in the lawsuit, his reported connection to the case led to his removal as part of a wider effort by the WWE to disassociate from him. The cover was updated to feature a larger version of John Cena, where Lesnar used to be.
Content creators who got early access to the game on February 23 confirmed that both Lesnar and McMahon were no longer playable characters in WWE 2K24. While the extent of McMahon's removal is unknown, Brock Lesnar’s data remains locked away in the game due to his matches with The Undertaker at Wrestlemania 30 and Roman Reigns at Wrestlemania 31 being featured in the "Showcase of the Immortals" Showcase mode, and it being too far into development to remove them.
When "THE JOY OF CREATION" was still in development as "The Joy of Creation: Ignited Collection", the first game in the The Joy of Creation series was going to be remade as part of the collection, where it would have been known as "The Joy of Creation: Classic". However, on July 27, 2023, Nikson revealed that he had changed his mind about adding Classic to the collection, instead having it only include The Joy of Creation: Reborn and The Joy of Creation: Story Mode.
Banjo-Tooie has become somewhat infamous for its large-scaled and convoluted structure in comparison to its predecessor, Banjo-Kazooie, with far more larger interconnected worlds with longer, complex puzzles that typically require backtracking, in comparison to Banjo-Kazooie's more straightforward and compact, self-contained levels and objectives.
According to Steve Malpass, one of Banjo-Tooie's game designers, the game was designed more in the vein of an adventure game as opposed to a platformer, being heavily inspired by The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time in particular. The development team was aware of how overcomplicated the game's structure had become by its launch (the QA department was vocal about the backtracking and navigation issues), but it was ultimately too late for them to streamline it. The Warp Pads found throughout the worlds were actually included after the levels were designed, as an attempt to mitigate the aforementioned navigation issues.
In a 2020 interview, designer Koichi Ishii revealed that despite the NES hardware only being able to display three colors per sprite, he felt that he could not make a believable design for the game's jobs unless he "dug deep into the job's background story and what kind of character it will be." He was surprised when some of these design limitations stuck around for future games he did not work on like Final Fantasy Tactics, and elaborated on what he imagined the White Mage and Dark Knight jobs looked like as he originally designed them:
Concept art for Star Fox 64 3D suggests that the development team at some point considered creating an all new Arwing model design, one that appears to be a mixture of the classic Star Fox 64 design and the sleeker, sharper Star Fox: Assault design, similar to how the Landmaster was redesigned to resemble its 64/Assault amalgamated design from Super Smash Bros. Brawl.
In early February 2024, one month prior to the game's release, multi-time WWE World Champion Brock Lesnar was removed from the cover of the "Forty Years of WrestleMania" showcase edition of the game in response to a sexual assault and sex trafficking lawsuit against Vince McMahon and WWE. Although Lesnar's name was not directly mentioned in the lawsuit, his reported connection to the case led to his removal as part of a wider effort by the WWE to disassociate from him. The cover was updated to feature a larger version of John Cena, where Lesnar used to be. 
Banjo-Tooie has become somewhat infamous for its large-scaled and convoluted structure in comparison to its predecessor, Banjo-Kazooie, with far more larger interconnected worlds with longer, complex puzzles that typically require backtracking, in comparison to Banjo-Kazooie's more straightforward and compact, self-contained levels and objectives.