According to game's director Chihiro Fujioka in a 1995 Family Computer Magazine and Haou interview, he was asked about how the development of the game started. He responded:
"We started around the beginning of last year. During a business meeting with Nintendo, the topic came up of us working on something together. Nintendo has Mario, and Square has RPGs… well, why not simply stick the two together? Being entirely different things, we had no idea how this would turn out… but that’s actually what made it so exciting."
"Getting everything straight during that first phase of the development really took a long time. Mario is Nintendo’s character, so there was a lot of back and forth with them, searching for a way forward that would satisfy both Square and Nintendo. Miyamoto is also on the main team, so yeah, I mean it just took a really long time before we could get down to brass tacks."
The interviewer followed up on this, asking if Square handled the basic ideas and development, with Nintendo checking on Fujioka's work progress. He responded:
"Yeah. With regard to the graphics, Nintendo has a certain style they like. It was the kind of thing where you think you’d get it perfect, only to realize, “oh, wait, this is wrong…” Our graphics team cried a lot. (laughs)"
In a 1995 Game-on! magazine interview, the game's composer Yoko Shimomura stated that she loved the music of Mario series, and that Super Mario Bros. was her first encounter of the series and video games in general. After she got the job to write the music for Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars, she "let her imagination run wild" as she composed the game's music, trying to get the sounds that fit with "Mario walking around a town chatting people up, Mario sleeping, Mario just living his life…" and described the writing process as "SOOO fun!".
According to the game's development team in an interview published in the Megadrive Fan Attack Special book in 1993, originally the Achilles Sword could cast Bolt, but if it was used against Talos, he would absorb all the damage and it would not hit the surrounding enemies. The team later changed this so Talos could not be targeted with magic at all.
During the motion-capture scene where David Anderson knocked out Donnel Udina by punching him in the face so that Commander Shepard and his crew can go after Saren Arterius in the Normandy SR-2, the game's cinematic lead Shane Welbourn (suited up as Anderson), accidentally clocked the actor who played Udina in the jaw.
In a 1999 interview in E.G.G.'s Complete Guide, according to the game's scenario writer, planner and supervisor Hiroaki Hara, and game designer (and designer of the titular E.G.G. mech) Hidetsugi Watanabe, they were asked when and why the mech was named the "Elemental Gimmick Gear"? Watanabe stated that he didn't give it any particular name, when he was working on the model. But Hara stated:
"That was something we started thinking about after the planning phase began. It looks like an egg—so the “EGG” was a simple association. Alone, the name “Egg” felt too simple and boring though. This unique powered suit runs from some mysterious combination of human energy and natural energy, so “Elemental Gimmick Gear”, abbreviated as E.G.G., seemed to fit perfectly."
According to Chris Priestly, Tali'Zorah nar Rayya was almost not included in the game as a full squadmate. Writer Patrick Weekes was able to persuade the development team to include her in the game as a full squadmate.
According to Chris Priestly, Conrad Verner was almost cut from Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3, but enough members from the development team wanted him to stay that he was kept in both games.
According to the game's director and writer Shuntaro Tanaka in the Dreamcast Magazine interview published on September 10, 1999, he commented on the game's setting taking place in the skies:
"On a ship, you might scout a distant island on the horizon, but in the skies, things are hidden by clouds, and I think that makes the thrill of discovery all the more exciting. The seas have waves, but the sky has winds… we’ve prepared lots of little contrivances like that. At the beginning of the game, your map shows about 10 islands, but you’ll gradually find more—there’ll be exciting scenes where you discover whole new kingdoms beyond the clouds, lots of things like that."
"There’s all kinds of lands to discover, from huge continents to tiny islands. We want to have lots of varied terrain too, from vast sprawling deserts to smaller floating islands hidden within deep forests."
Since the game would have all kinds of varied terrain and islands, he elaborated that it would come with many different cultures to explore and discover. In particular, his team wanted to included a lot of “travelogue” elements, such as when the player heads to a new town, there would be many different shops and only local goods in that region.
In a June 1993 interview with game's producer and writer Hiroyuki Takahashi published in Dengeki Megadrive magazine, he was told about Shining Force II getting a lot of pressure for being better than the first Shining Force game and Shining Force: The Sword of Hajya (released in Japan as "Shining Force Gaiden II: Jashin no Mezame"). He commented:
"Yeah. I always feel like we’re “battling” with the previous games, so to speak. That’s why we talked a lot together as a team, about how to deliver a satisfying ending for players. We’d built this story up for them, from the opening to the mid-game climax, so we knew their expectations would be running high."
"Finding the right tone for that ending has taken a lot of trial and error. One day, as I was working on it, my brother Shugo sat down beside me and quietly said, “Seeing as this game has turned into such a big production… I want to cry at the ending.” I then spent about a month thinking about how to do that. I came up with something, but deep down I wasn’t sure if it was a good idea to do that to players at the end of the game. I showed the staff what I’d completed, not knowing what they’d think. Then one of the staff spoke, with tears welling up in their eyes, “This is really good!” So yeah, I’ve got some confidence in the story this time."
Later in an August 1993 interview published in the same magazine, Hiroyuki said the team objected to the idea of having an ending that would make people cry and would not include it in Shining Force II.
According to game's producer Akira Ushizawa in a 1998 interview published in volume 122 of Gamest magazine, he stated that the team originally designed the game hoping it would make it to home consoles because they did not think it would be played very widely in arcades.
In a 2001 interview with the game's designer Makoto Maeda published in Arcadia magazine, he was asked about why the characters from the first Giga Wing game did not appear in the second game. He responded:
"We thought a lot about it. Originally we had planned to have a character named “Ainosuke”, who was the child of Aisha and Shinnosuke. (laughs) If we had done that, though, all the dialogue would have become expositional, because we’d have needed to explain what happened. Then we thought, ok, why don’t we add 5 new characters to the original 4… but with 9 characters total, we’d have needed to prepare 36 different dialogue branches for every stage—way too much work. So we settled on swapping the older characters out for the newer ones."
In the 11/92 issue of Famicom Tsuushin interview with game's composer Nobuo Uematsu, he was asked why he wrote the Black chocobo theme "Mambo de Chocobo" as a mambo song. He responded:
"Well, it was a samba (Samba de Chocobo) in FFIV. Originally I was imagining the Balinese kecak music for the chocobos. I sampled it over and over, but just couldn’t bring out that same kecak atmosphere. After that I had the idea of using a human vocal sample, and the mambo just fit. I’m not sure where the original idea for it came from though."
According to Takaya Imamura in a 2002 interview published in Nintendo Dream magazine, he was asked how he came to create the game? He responded:
"At the time, the majority of “3D” shooting and racing games were achieved via 2D fakery; polygon technology was beginning to emerge, and Miyamoto really wanted to use polygons to create an authentic 3D shooting game with genuine depth. From there, talk began of the Super FX chip, and that’s when the prototyping started…
Actually, I worked on F-ZERO immediately after joining the company, and after that I worked on The Legend of Zelda."
In a 1999 interview with game's director and designer Masahiro Sakurai published in Nice Games magazine vol.3, he was asked if Super Smash Bros. appealed to a younger age group? He responded:
"No, I wouldn’t say that—at least judging from what I saw at the most recent tournament. The “height gap” between players was funny: you had adults playing matches with kids half their size. Of course the core players are middle school and elementary age, but I’ve seen kids as young as 3 and adults over 30. I would say Smash’s uniqueness lies not so much in appealing to a wide age range, as it does a wide variety of skill levels. I’ve had people tell me it’s a huge hit at their preschool, and other people tell me how great the combo system is for a versus fighting game."
The Japanese name of the Star Fox series' main antagonist, Andross, is アンドルフ (Andorf).
According to Takaya Imamura in a 2002 Nintendo Dream magazine interview, the name was deprived from “Andromeda”, and his name was changed to Andross in the Western localizations because of fears that his original name had "Nazi overtones", presumably suggesting the name's spelling had similarities to dictator Adolf Hitler, as アンドルフ can also be anglicized as "Andolf".
According to general producer Noritaka Funamizu in a 1997 Gamest magazine interview, he was asked why the rounds mechanic was removed in the game? He responded:
"The structure of the rounds is one element of fighting games that’s hard to change, but for this game, we didn’t want the flow of the fights interrupted. The Damage Gauge System was originally part of a different game’s system. We tried inserting it here and it turned out to be really interesting, so we kept it."
According to general producer Noritaka Funamizu in a 1997 Gamest magazine interview, he was asked why he wanted to make Darkstalkers 3 just two years after Night Warriors: Darkstalkers' Revenge was released? He responded:
"Well, we’d been planning to make a sequel since we finished Revenge. But there was a feeling we had of wanting to re-evaluate, from zero, the very concept of what it means to be a “monster.” We have a guy on our team who we call the “one many army”, who does planning work, and he handed us the initial game plans for Vampire Savior. From there we officially formed a team and got down to work. But the setting and story came first, in those plans."
According to the game's composer Yuzo Koshiro on his Twitter account, he found an internal document for "Stage 7: Munitions Plant" from Streets of Rage 2 that revealed the stage used ideas from the manga series Akira, and particularly influenced the second half of the level which takes place on an elevator.
In an April 2014 trailer for the game, there is a gameplay scene of Mecha-Naruto & Shisui Uchiha in the Uchiha Hideout (Destroyed) stage, but this scenario does not occur in the final release and was removed for unknown reasons.
On the game's Japanese cover, illustrated by Yoshiaki Yoneshima. Blaze Fielding's pose strongly resembles the same pose made by Hitomi Kisugi in an illustration by mangaka Tsukasa Hojo for a 1994 10 aizōban re-release of Shonen Jump's Cat's Eye.
The Japanese name of the Star Fox series' main antagonist, Andross, is アンドルフ (Andorf).
According to the game's composer Yuzo Koshiro on his Twitter account, he found an internal document for "Stage 7: Munitions Plant" from Streets of Rage 2 that revealed the stage used ideas from the manga series Akira, and particularly influenced the second half of the level which takes place on an elevator.
In an April 2014 trailer for the game, there is a gameplay scene of Mecha-Naruto & Shisui Uchiha in the Uchiha Hideout (Destroyed) stage, but this scenario does not occur in the final release and was removed for unknown reasons.
On the game's Japanese cover, illustrated by Yoshiaki Yoneshima. Blaze Fielding's pose strongly resembles the same pose made by Hitomi Kisugi in an illustration by mangaka Tsukasa Hojo for a 1994 10 aizōban re-release of Shonen Jump's Cat's Eye.