The Sega Saturn and PlayStation ports of NBA Jam: Tournament Edition feature no credits. Decades later, interviews with Iguana Entertainment employees confirmed that these ports were mostly co-developed by Darren Tunnicliff and Chris Kirby respectively at the studio's UK branch. The two ports shared much of the same C code translated from the arcade version's assembly code, despite being released on competing hardware.
When localizing the game into English, Xseed Games' editors found themselves challenged by the game's script, which has approximately 1.5 million Japanese characters in it. According to lead editor Jessica Chavez, many other companies had been put off localizing it specifically because of its length, and during the process she had "worked from home 11-14hrs a day, 6 days/week, lost 7lbs, cut off 18inches of my hair and used the XSEED twitter account to further the cause of bacon on more than one occasion". Ultimately, the company had to employ three translators, two editors (one of whom was brought on to help finish chapter 4 of the game), and "one or two other helpful Sora no Kiseki experts that didn’t mind spontaneous Instant Messages asking about whether or not certain characters would be at home saying things like, 'Lo! I am hoist with my own petard!'".
Some players and game journalists have persistently accused the game's developers HoYoverse of perceived cultural appropriation and discriminating against people with dark skin colors through the game's character designs. This started in April 2021, when it was noted how the only dark-skinned playable characters at the time, Xinyan and Kaeya, were described in-game as "exotic" and "scary" respectively. The release of version 3.0 in August 2022 introduced the Sumeru region, which while being based on cultures from the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia, depicted many playable characters and NPCs from the region as being light-skinned. In March 2023, the character Dehya was released; while hailing from Sumeru and being one of the few dark-skinned playable characters in the game, she faced similar accusations due to some fans perceiving her abilities as underpowered and dysfunctional. In July 2024, HoYoverse released a trailer announcing they would be adding a new region to the game named Natlan, which was inspired by pre-Columbian Mesoamerican cultures, Africa and Polynesia. The character designs used for Natlan were once again criticized due to the majority of the characters being depicted with light skin despite the darker-skinned native races of its inspirations. The difference this time was that seven of the game's voice actors also joined in the criticism, including Khoi Dao (Albedo), Zeno Robinson (Sethos), Valeria Rodriguez (Sucrose), Jenny Yokobori (Yoimiya), Alejandro Saeb (Cyno), Allegra Clark (Beidou), and Anne Yatco (Raiden Shogun).
In an interview with Miketendo64, Nihon Falcom president Toshihiro Kondo stated that if Nintendo ever decided to ask the company to use one of its characters in Super Smash Bros., he would most like to see Adol Christin from the Ys series. His reasoning was that unlike many other characters created by the company, Adol has been the main character of several games and has been around for a long time. He also noted how unlike The Legend of Heroes: Trails series where the protagonist changes every arc (i.e. Van Arkride being the main character of the Calvard arc started in The Legend of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak), Adol has had a consistent presence in his series, thus making him more recognizable as a character.
In 2020, Gangs of London was adapted into a television series by Gareth Evans and Matt Flannery. In an interview with Sky News about the show, Evans revealed that he was originally hired to make a film franchise based on the game, but felt that if they went this route then they would have "two-thirds of our running time focused purely on our central characters, and then only a third left to explore the side characters that populate that world". Feeling this wouldn't be able to do justice to the diverse cultures and ethnicities that make up London, Evans proposed making it a TV show instead because "you can afford to go off and detour for 10 to 15 minutes and spend time with other characters, and learn about them in more detail."
EVA's English voice actress in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater and Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker was credited under the name Suzetta Miñet. Fans widely assumed that this was a pseudonym as she had no other credits in anything, which sparked years of speculation as to who she could be. One of the most leading theories was that EVA was voiced by Debi Mae West, the voice of Meryl in Metal Gear Solid and Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. However, while West acknowledged that the characters sounded similar, she denied she was the voice of EVA in 2015. Konami would eventually confirm in a 2024 behind-the-scenes video promoting Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater that the pseudonym belonged to Jodi Benson, who was best known for voicing Ariel in Disney's 1989 adaptation of "The Little Mermaid". Benson explained that she used the pseudonym at the recommendation of the game's English voice director Kris Zimmerman Salter, because of her association with Disney and other family-friendly roles aimed towards younger audiences at the time. The name itself was based on a pet dog Benson owned in her childhood named "Suzette Monet".
Originally, the South Asian area of the game was specified to be Bangladesh, but this was changed due to a complaint from the Bangladeshi government regarding the portrayal of the region, with a Sony spokesperson stating:
"The SOCOM franchise has never depicted any government or country as a terrorist operation, and any depiction of independent terrorist groups is purely from a fictional standpoint. Within the storyline of SOCOM 3, there has never been any reference to Bangladesh supporting, or harboring terrorists and/or other criminal activities."
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The game's title screen and "Did Not Qualify" screen for when you fail to enter the main race feature two women wearing strapless corset teddies, an outfit commonly associated with Playboy Bunnies from the nightclub chain and magazine of the same name. This is not a coincidence, as the sprites of the women featured are traced and edited versions of former Playboy models from the early 1970's, specifically Mercy Rooney on the title screen, and Claire Rambeau on the Did Not Qualify screen.
Unlike the development of the first game, series creators John Garvin and Richard Ham both had a complete vision of what Syphon Filter 2 would be like prior to development, with Garvin stating in an interview with PlayStation Blog:
"The entire team was given a week off and [Richard Ham] and I were sent off to write up a script for Syphon Filter 2. I think I spent a weekend and wrote the entire screenplay. Rich and I got together and he helped revise the second half of the game, introducing all the Moscow stuff, making the end of the story more espionage-like and exciting. When the team came back, we spent the next year building exactly what we had written. That was the first time that we had a vision up front, which we followed until the end."
In a 2024 GameRant interview with the game's director and designer Jens Andersson, he went into detail about Bethesda collaborating with Lucasfilm Games, what input they had on the game, and how much creative freedom Bethesda were given. Bethesda director Todd Howard originally came up with the idea of making a game about the Great Circle, but the game's story was entirely devised by Andersson and his team after the first two months of development. Lucasfilm Games gave feedback on the story, and Bethesda cooperated because they were fans of the franchise and felt Lucasfilm Games were on the same page in regards to their goals. They trusted Lucasfilm as a whole to know how the Indiana Jones character and IP should be treated in order to create "something that felt like an Indiana Jones experience".
Mouthwashing uses a visual style inspired by games released on the original PlayStation, with low-poly visuals and a retro style. The game's art designer Johanna Kasurinen was introduced to this style by Puppet Combo, an indie developer that frequently uses it for their games as far back as their debut title Babysitter Bloodbath. While not promoted as "PS1-style", this visual style gained traction over time, with Kasurinan stating:
"I think people may be surprised by how long this [horror] subgenre has been going on, but part of why it is so popular and enduring is the community. I would never have been able to learn how to recreate this style of graphics if it wasn't for many artists before me making videos and tutorials explaining the process."
In Astro Bot, the V.I.P. Bot "Brave Biker" is based on Deacon St. John, the main protagonist of Days Gone. While the game's developer Bend Studio praised the cameo, the game's writer and co-director John Garvin did not. He claimed that the character had been "reduced to promoting other games" and sarcastically remarked about how Bend Studio was "protecting its legacy", starting a back-and-forth argument with fans on Twitter. This negative response stemmed from complaints and tensions with Bend Studio and its workplace culture that Garvin tweeted about in a rant in 2022, two years after departing from the studio. He blamed Days Gone's mixed-to-average reception on bugs, critics who didn't even play the game, and "woke reviewers" who did, prompting Bend Studio to release a statement distancing themselves from him and his views.
The Japanese text for Papetoon, the home planet of Fox McCloud, is "パペトゥーン". Amusingly, this is also the Japanese text for Puppetoons, a Hungarian-American puppet and cartoon series created by George Pal. As the Star Fox series was inspired by Shigeru Miyamoto's love of old puppet dramas such as the Gerry and Sylvia Anderson "supermarionation" television series "Thunderbirds", it could be said that this is a joke that Fox originated from this show.
The original office for Argonaut Games was located in Colindale, London before at some point being moved to the Argonaut House in Edgware. After the company was reopened in 2024, Justin Scharvona (a composer who worked on various games for the company, most notably Croc: Legend of the Gobbos) posted a video of himself visiting the location of the original company office, which has since been converted into a furniture showroom named the Sea Horse Furniture Centre.
During the September 2020 Game Boy lot check leak, it was discovered that Magnetic Soccer was at one point planned to have a Japanese release under the name "Kick Attack!!". As part of this, alternate versions of the game's title and sound test screens were found: along with the logo and copyright changes, the colors of the player's skin and outfit were swapped (a change that applies to both screens), the ball uses different shading, and the player shouts "Fight!!" and "Go! Go!" in text form, something that does not happen in the European version.
According to designer Ste Pickford, the reason Nintendo hired Software Creations to make Tin Star was as a form of compensation for not assigning them to do a follow-up to Ken Griffey Jr. Presents Major League Baseball despite them developing the original, with the sequel instead being developed by Rare as Ken Griffey Jr.'s Winning Run.
According to two interviews with Famitsu in 1998, Shigeru Miyamoto cited Rare's exceptional graphical and technical work on Banjo-Kazooie as a factor for why The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time was delayed, as Miyamoto and his team felt they needed to compete with it. He thought a 3D action platformer of its kind running that well on Nintendo 64 hardware was "so amazing that we don't want to be outdone", and "if Mario's a makunouchi bento, Banjo's a deluxe makunouchi bento." Some reviews of Ocarina of Time at its release compared its graphics, frame rate and textures with Banjo-Kazooie's, and felt Ocarina of Time did not perform as well in that field.
According to designer and writer Yuji Horii in a 1987 interview, Dragon Quest III first began development at a big company retreat in the town of Hakone in January of that year.
In a 1989 interview with designer and writer Yuji Horii and director Koichi Nakamura, they discussed their focus on enhancing the player’s experience in combat and storytelling. Nakamura explained that they wanted to make battles more enjoyable and less repetitive, moving away from the grind-heavy nature of older RPGs. He highlighted that the team worked to ensure each battle felt engaging, and tried to prevent the common tendency of players to run from strong enemies due to the monotony of repeated encounters.
They also discussed the expanded battle options in Dragon Quest III, including a greater variety of spells, the ability to attack party members, and character positioning in the lineup having an effect on battles. They emphasized that even support spells, which were often underutilized in previous games, had been made more "effective in their own right". They believed every spell in the game now served a meaningful purpose, adding depth to combat, and contributing to their goal of creating an experience where players would be curious and eager to experiment with different strategies.
In August 2024, it was revealed that Concord would serve as the basis for an episode of "Secret Level", an animated video game anthology series released on Amazon Prime Video. However, the servers for Concord were shut down on September 6th, just two weeks after launch and much earlier than the show's planned release on December 10th. Despite this, it was confirmed the day before Concord was taken offline that the episode would remain in the show's lineup.
