Trivia Browser

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Mario's Super Picross
Mario's Super Picross (1995)
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Attachment The Virtual Console versions of Mario's Super Picross replace three puzzles, likely due to legal issues:

• The likeness of Marilyn Monroe, which was replaced by a tortoise.
• A set of Tetrominos from Tetris, which was replaced by a hermit crab.
• The painting The Scream by Edvard Munch, which was replaced by a chameleon.

Despite The Scream and Monroe's likeness entering the public domain in 2015 and 2012 respectively, the Wii U; New 3DS; and Switch versions of the game keep the replaced puzzles.
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Console Difference, Copyright, Legal Affairs, Version Difference
person Rocko & Heffer calendar_month November 26, 2023
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Flappy Bird
Flappy Bird (2013)
subdirectory_arrow_right Flappy Birds Family (Game)
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Flappy Bird was removed from app stores by creator Dong Nguyen on February 8th 2014, due to being overwhelmed by its success and feeling guilt over the addictive, frustrating nature of the game, which he had originally intended to be relaxing. Although many speculated that the game was taken down by Nintendo due to the game's pipes and their similarity to the pipes from the Mario series, both Nguyen and Nintendo denied this.

Nguyen claimed that his worries about the game had lost him sleep, and removing the game from sale managed to restore piece of mind. Despite this, Nguyen did promise a Flappy Bird comeback, albeit in a less addictive form, which would eventually come with the release of Flappy Birds Family for Amazon Fire TV.

Some eBay users attempted to sell the iPhones with the original game installed for up to $99,900, but the listings were removed due to eBay's rules against selling technology that has not been factory reset.
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Apology, Complaint, Corporate Affairs, Difficulty, Legal Affairs, Meme, Plagiarism, Sprite/Graphical Animation, Theory
person Rocko & Heffer calendar_month November 24, 2023
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Platform: PlayStation
subdirectory_arrow_right Game Boy Advance (Platform), Arcade (Platform), Super Nintendo Entertainment System (Platform), Game Boy Color (Platform), Sega Mega Drive/Genesis (Platform), Neo Geo AES (Platform), Sega Game Gear (Platform), Game Boy (Platform), Nintendo Entertainment System (Platform), Sega Master System/Mark III (Platform)
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Attachment In 2018, rapper Soulja Boy attempted to sell his own line of video game consoles, called the SouljaGame line, sold for $149.99 for a console and $99.99 for a handheld. Advertising claimed that the consoles would be compatible with a variety of consoles' games, including modern platforms like the PlayStation Vita, Nintendo 3DS, and Nintendo Switch. They obviously did not have such compatibility, and were rather a generic retro emulator console one could find on small business-oriented retail websites such as Wish and AliExpress loaded with pirated and modified games sold at a markup. Game libraries featured included the Neo Geo, NES, SNES, Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, Sega Genesis, Sega Master System, Sega Game Gear, and PlayStation. The only difference from these pre-existing consoles is a photograph of Soulja Boy printed onto the box. He would eventually stop selling SouljaGame consoles, with the website for the console redirecting to Nintendo's 3DS website.
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Celebrity, Complaint, Emulation, Legal Affairs, Piracy, Plagiarism, Technology, Website
person Rocko & Heffer calendar_month November 18, 2023
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Soulja Boy selling SouljaGame line article:
https://variety.com/2018/gaming/news/soulja-boy-selling-cheap-consoles-1203084022/

Soulja Boy ends sales of SouljaGame line article:
https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/01/02/soulja-boy-stops-selling-souljagame-game-consoles

SouljaGame unboxing and teardown showing the packaging:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fo-qNU7Qu3k

Rerez video reviewing the console SouljaGame was based on, showing the console list:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqXuAuTFXpA#t=595
Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System
subdirectory_arrow_right Nintendo (Company), Atari (Company)
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Shortly after the Famicom's launch in 1983, Atari approached Nintendo offering to distribute the system outside of Japan as the Nintendo Enhanced Video System. Negotiations for the arrangement stalled when Atari saw a demonstration for the Coleco Adam home computer system that used the ColecoVision port of Donkey Kong as a demo title. Because Atari previously gained the exclusive PC port rights to the arcade game, they assumed that Nintendo was also working with Coleco behind their backs. By the time the misunderstanding was cleared up, the North American video game industry had crashed and Ray Kassar had stepped down as CEO of Atari, causing the agreement to be called off entirely. The Famicom wouldn't reach international shores until 1985, when Nintendo began distributing a revised version in North America themselves as the Nintendo Entertainment System.
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Console Wars, Corporate Affairs, Early Idea, Legal Affairs
person VinchVolt calendar_month November 18, 2023
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Power Punch II
Power Punch II (1992)
subdirectory_arrow_right Mike Tyson's Intergalactic Power Punch (Game), Punch-Out!! (Franchise), Mike Tyson (Franchise)
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Cancelled Release, Celebrity, Legal Affairs, Misconception, Name Change, Rumor, Theory, Unused Character, Unused Content
person Rocko & Heffer calendar_month November 17, 2023
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Franchise: Sonic The Hedgehog
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Artwork/Illustration, Cancelled Release, Character Design, Complaint, Copyright, General, Legal Affairs, Multimedia Adaptation, Politics, Real Life, Social Media
person chocolatejr9 calendar_month November 17, 2023
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Pajama Sam 2: Thunder and Lightning Aren't so Frightening
Pajama Sam 2: Thunder and Lightning Aren't so Frightening (1998)
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J. Langston III's original name during development was J. Langston Popsicle III, or "Popsicle" for short, but had to be changed due to Popsicle being trademarked by Unilever. Multiple lines were spliced to remove "Popsicle", though one was removed and one was re-recorded.
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Copyright, Development, Legal Affairs, Name Change, Unused Audio, Unused Content, Unused Text, Voice Acting
person Rocko & Heffer calendar_month November 17, 2023
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Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood
Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood (2008)
subdirectory_arrow_right Sonic The Hedgehog (Franchise), Sega (Company), EA Games (Company)
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Upon the release of Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood, Ken Penders, a former writer on the Archie Comics Sonic comics, sued Sega and EA for supposedly using Sonic character concepts he had independently trademarked prior - particularly the Nocturnas Clan, a futuristic echidna tribe which he deemed as too similar to his own Dark Legion, a futuristic echidna technocracy. This lawsuit came months after Archie Comics filed their own suit against Penders due to a breach of contract after the trademarking, causing Archie to allow their contract with Sega to expire so they could negotiate new terms for the rights to create Sonic comics. This legal fiasco ended in Archie settling the case with Penders, losing the exclusivity to produce Sonic comics after negotiations with Sega, and causing them to write the "Super Genesis Wave", a super-charged energy blast utilizing the Chaos Emeralds that acted as a massive continuity rewrite where over 500 original characters and concepts created by Penders and other writers for the Archie Sonic comics were retconned. The Sega case on the other hand ended in a stalemate due to the statute of limitations, and will not be able to continue unless Sega uses characters from The Dark Brotherhood again.
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Character Design, Complaint, Copyright, General, Legal Affairs, Multimedia Adaptation, Real Life, Retcon
person Rocko & Heffer calendar_month November 16, 2023
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Ms. Pac-Man
Ms. Pac-Man (1982)
subdirectory_arrow_right Pac-Man Museum+ (Game), Pac 'n Roll (Game), Pac-Land (Game), Pac-Man World Re-Pac (Game), Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (Game), Pac-Man (Franchise), AtGames (Company), General Computer Corporation (GCC) (Company), Ms. Pac-Man (Collection)
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Attachment In 2019, AtGames, a company specializing in replica microconsoles containing compilations of retro or retro-styled games, acquired a portion of the rights to Ms. Pac-Man from General Computer Corporation, the company that made the original Ms. Pac-Man game for Midway and Namco - this led to a lawsuit over the IP, with an undisclosed turnout. After this, Ms. Pac-Man would begin to disappear from Pac-Man games, implying that AtGames won the case, with Ms. Pac being replaced by a character named Pac-Mom, who has a visual design resembling Ms. Pac-Man's mother from Pac 'N Roll.

Pac-Mom first appeared in the Arcade Archives release of Pac-Land through graphical modification to the original ROM, and would then be named for the first time in Pac-Man Museum+ alongside modifications to other games that originally featured Ms. Pac-Man such as Pac-in-Time, and would appear again in Pac-Man World: Re-Pac in place of Ms. Pac-Man.

Ms. Pac-Man's final appearance in an original title would be on the Pac-Land stage in 2018's Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.
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Acquisition, Character Design, Corporate Affairs, Legal Affairs, Name Change, Unused Character, Version Difference
person Rocko & Heffer calendar_month November 15, 2023
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Shark Jaws
Shark Jaws (1975)
subdirectory_arrow_right Jaws (Franchise), Horror Games (Company)
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Attachment Shark Jaws was originally intended to be an official Jaws tie-in game, but plans fell through. However, Atari still went through with the game, putting the word "JAWS" in large letters on the game's promotional but having "SHARK" be much smaller. To avoid a potential lawsuit, Atari released the game under the pseudonym "Horror Games", similarly to what it had done with Kee Games prior.
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Adaptation, Legal Affairs, Plagiarism
person Rocko & Heffer calendar_month November 4, 2023
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Dottori-kun
Dottori-kun (1991)
subdirectory_arrow_right Head On (Game), Arcade (Platform)
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Dottori-Kun, a 1991 demake of Sega's 1979 maze game Head-On, was created not to be played, but rather as a legal loophole around Japan's Electrical Appliance and Material Control Law which claimed that all arcade machines must contain a game when sold. Dottori-Kun allowed Sega to sell generic Astro City arcade machines which the arcade owner could swap the contents of at their leisure, and included test features to ensure the machine worked properly before installing a proper game. The game did not support coin insertion, and therefore was not a viable option for arcades even if an owner believed there was an audience for its simplistic gameplay and graphics, leading to the board being scrapped most of the time.
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Corporate Affairs, General, Legal Affairs, Placeholder, Remake, Technology, Unused Content
person Rocko & Heffer calendar_month November 3, 2023
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Franchise: Mary-Kate and Ashley
subdirectory_arrow_right Acclaim (Company)
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In 2004, Dualstar Entertainment, the company that represents celebrity twins Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, sued Acclaim for not providing a contractually-obligated $177,000 royalties payment for the video games starring the celebrities following the termination of the license. Dualstar described this incident in a letter as "the single dark spot on the otherwise unblemished success story of the Mary-Kate & Ashley brand."
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Celebrity, General, Legal Affairs, Real Life
person Rocko & Heffer calendar_month September 5, 2023
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Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (2018)
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Tetsuya Nomura, one of the creators of Kingdom Hearts and the series' recurring director and lead writer, admitted in an interview with Game Informer that it was actually him, not Disney, that was almost hesitant for his character Sora to get into Super Smash Bros.:

"Obviously, I was very happy that we were able to have Sora make an appearance in Smash Bros. Ultimate. Most of the feedback when Sora was [announced] for Smash Bros. Ultimate was, ‘I can’t believe Disney okayed for him to be in this game.’ Behind the scenes, I was actually the one being very picky about his appearance in Smash Bros. Disney was the one that was like, ‘Go ahead! This is a great opportunity.’ I thought it would be tough to pull off because it might clash with the established lore in Kingdom Hearts and the Disney worlds, so it was an opportunity I had to consider very carefully. After seeing how happy everybody was in welcoming Sora to Smash Bros., I feel like the end result was really great."
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Copyright, Development, General, Legal Affairs, Real Life
person PirateGoofy calendar_month September 23, 2022
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Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (2018)
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A Famitsu column with game director Masahiro Sakurai revealed that Sora from the Kingdom Hearts series was able to get into the game because of a chance meeting that he had with a Disney executive at an unspecified awards ceremony where they expressed how cool it would be for him to be a part of the Super Smash Bros. roster. This soon led to negotiations between Nintendo, Square Enix, and Disney that eventually got the extremely highly requested character in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. Before then, Sakurai admitted he and Nintendo thought getting the Disney-owned character was a total impossibility.
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Bonus Content, Copyright, Development, General, Inspiration, Legal Affairs, Real Life, Update Difference, Version Difference
person PirateGoofy calendar_month October 28, 2021
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Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (2018)
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Attachment When Kirby absorbs Sora and then uses his Magic, it is immediately clear that Kirby does not get a Keyblade of his own. Instead, Kirby uses an ethereal glowing weapon that resembles a keyblade but is entirely made out of light and sparkles that changes color depending on the spell. While this can be interpreted as being a restriction by Disney over the Keyblade's imagery, Masahiro Sakurai on Twitter chalked it up to being done for lore reasons as he said "...only Keyblade Wielders can use Keyblades..." implying that Kirby isn't "chosen" as barer of one and thus has to use the three spells differently.
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Censorship, Copyright, Development, Easter Egg, General, Inspiration, Legal Affairs, Real Life, Reference, Suggested, Theory
person PirateGoofy calendar_month October 27, 2021
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Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (2018)
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Attachment When the Hollow Bastion stage turns into the Dive to the Heart segment, the different Stations of Awakening in the background that reference key Kingdom Hearts characters appear to be censored of any reference to Disney characters such as Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and Goofy. However, these censored Stations are actually close replicas of the designs used on coasters that Square Enix produced in celebration of Kingdom Hearts' 15th anniversary, which also omitted the Disney characters.
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Censorship, Copyright, Development, Easter Egg, General, Legal Affairs, Real Life, Reference
person PirateGoofy calendar_month October 18, 2021
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Donkey Kong
Donkey Kong (1981)
subdirectory_arrow_right Donkey Kong Junior (Game)
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The development of the first Donkey Kong game was outsourced by Nintendo to Ikegami Tsushinki, a company who is believed but not confirmed to have previously worked with Nintendo on several of their early ventures into arcade games. They produced and sold to Nintendo somewhere between 8,000 and 20,000 printed circuit boards for Donkey Kong, and it is believed that Nintendo went on to copy an additional 80,000 boards from this batch without Ikegami's permission. Despite the sale, no formal contract was known to have been signed between the two companies, meaning Ikegami owned the source code to Donkey Kong as they had created it and never sent it over to Nintendo.

In order to create a sequel on the coattails of the success of the first game, Nintendo employed subcontractor Iwasaki Giken to reverse-engineer Donkey Kong so Nintendo’s staff could develop the game's sequel, Donkey Kong Jr. Should this narrative be verifiably true, this would make Donkey Kong Jr. Nintendo's first "in-house" video game created by themselves without any assistance from outside development companies. Ikegami viewed this use of the source code as blatant copyright infringement, and sued Nintendo in 1983 for ¥580,000,000 (around $91,935,800). A trial in 1990 ruled that Nintendo did not own the source code to the original Donkey Kong, and the parties settled out of court that year for an undisclosed amount.
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Copyright, Development, General, Legal Affairs, Real Life, Rumor, Source Code, Suggested, Theory
person MehDeletingLater calendar_month August 25, 2021
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Cooking Mama: Cookstar
Cooking Mama: Cookstar (2020)
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While the game was briefly released physically and through the Nintendo eShop on the Switch, the game was later made unavailable for purchase. The original rumor was that the game was using the Switch's hardware to mine cryptocurrency, but this was later discredited by the game's producers. It was revealed that the reason for the game's quick removal from sale was due to a lawsuit between the game's publisher, Planet Entertainment, and IP owners Office Create. The lawsuit claimed that Planet Entertainment's license to use the Cooking Mama IP expired the day before Cookstar's release.
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General, Legal Affairs, Rumor, Theory
person KidDivinegon calendar_month November 19, 2020
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Final Fantasy
Final Fantasy (1987)
subdirectory_arrow_right Final Fantasy (Franchise)
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The Final Fantasy series' title was long rumored to stem from the idea that it would've been Square and series creator Hironobu Sakaguchi's final game if it didn't perform well. According to these claims, Square was in dire financial straits in 1987, with Sakaguchi planning to quit the gaming industry and return to university studies. These claims appeared to be further corroborated when series composer Nobuo Uematsu affirmed them in a 2009 interview with Wired, claiming that Square's financial position was the main inspiration for the Final Fantasy name.

However, Sakaguchi debunked the rumors in a 2015 keynote address. In reality, Square always intended to give the first game in the series a name whose initials were "FF," as the Japanese pronunciation, エフ・エフ ("efu efu"), was considered pleasing to the ears. The developers' initial pick was Fighting Fantasy; however, it turned out that this name was already taken by a tabletop RPG series. Consequently, the title was changed to Final Fantasy. According to Sakaguchi, while Square indeed had their "backs to the wall" during development, "anything that started with an F would have been fine for the title."
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Corporate Affairs, Development, Early Idea, Inspiration, Legal Affairs, Misconception, Rumor, Title
person KnowledgeBase calendar_month May 28, 2015
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Pokémon X
Pokémon X (2013)
subdirectory_arrow_right Pokémon Omega Ruby (Game), Pokémon Alpha Sapphire (Game), Pokémon Y (Game)
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Attachment If the player visits a Pokémon Center on their birthday in any of the Generation VI Pokémon games, they will receive a special message wishing them a happy birthday.

In the Japanese versions, the Pokémon Center will additionally play a music box rendition of "Happy Birthday to You", which is replaced by a similar version of the Pokémon Center theme on subsequent visits that day. The international release omits the former song, only playing the latter even on the player's first visit. This is owed to the fact that "Happy Birthday to You" was still nominally under copyright in the United States, not officially falling into the public domain until 2016 after a three-year legal battle (the song was declared de facto public domain in 2015, but the final settlement was not issued until the following year).
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Copyright, General, Legal Affairs, Music, Real Life, Regional Difference, Version Difference
person RadSpyro calendar_month October 22, 2013
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