Leaked development files for Yoshi's Island show graphics of a razor blade hazard or weapon, possibly intended to be thrown by an enemy. This was likely removed from the game over concerns of violence and/or imitability.
Across PaRappa the Rapper, you can you posters of a human pop star named "Pony Pony" - this character was originally supposed to be a member of PaRappa's friend group, but never properly appeared.
In 1992, after the failure of a deal to create a CD-ROM drive for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, Sony approached Sega of America proposing that they collaborate on a next-generation CD-ROM console to compete with Nintendo. While Sega of America was open to the idea and even started testing the waters between the two companies by having each develop a handful of titles for the Sega CD, Sega of Japan shot down the concept. Consequently, Sony would reorient their efforts towards what would become the PlayStation, while Sega would develop their own next-gen console, the Sega Saturn, in-house. In an interview with Sega-16, Tom Kalinske cited the veto as a factor in his decision to step down as head of Sega of America.
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.
The Case of the Missing Kelp Seeds was the first Humongous Entertainment game to use cel animation instead of computer-designed sprites. This was a last second choice that required all existing visuals and much of the game's code to be thrown away, and was done without a delay nor much in the way of cel animation knowledge from the team, requiring unpaid overtime. Despite this story's surface-level similarities to crunch practices, the challenge of remaking the game on such short notice was chosen and consented to by the Freddi Fish team, and developers of the game have reminisced on this period fondly.
Kabuto, the first boss of Alex Kidd in Shinobi World, is a parody of Ken-O, a recurring first boss in the Shinobi series - in prerelease screenshots, he is shown to be a composite parody of both Ken-O and Nintendo's Mario, known as Mari-Oh. While his appearance would lose its Mario-esque qualities in the final game, two elements of this parody would remain: Kabuto shooting fireballs, and Kabuto becoming small on his final hit point.
When Sonic R was first shown off at E3, many players gave up after running Sonic into the water and discovering how low his speed becomes - the first change game designer Jon Burton made to the game after that showing was increasing the speed velocity in the water.
Since Sonic R was one of the first non-music video games to feature vocal tracks during gameplay, the music toggle was defaulted to instrumental during development due to fears of how players would respond to the soundtrack. Game designer and programmer Jon Burton ultimately decided to make the vocal versions of the songs the default as he grew to enjoy TJ Davis' vocal performance during the game's development.
For the Fears to Fathom series, developer Rayll has encouraged fans to send him "real-life horror stories" to help build the narrative for future episodes. These fan-submitted stories have greatly affected the narrative style of the games, giving him "a clearer sense of what it might feel like to be in life-threatening circumstances."
The Tiger Electronics electronic Pokédex toy received major pushback from Nintendo HQ in Japan, which did not want the toy to have any kind of game function as to avoid cannibalizing sales of Pokémon Red & Blue. When two-frame animations of each Pokémon were implemented, they had to be scrapped as Nintendo thought they were "too close to the Game Boy game", despite animated sprites not being introduced until Pokémon Crystal in 2000. Despite this, both Nintendo of America and 4Kids were in favor of the animations.
According to designer Norio Okubo, Wario Blast was originally going to feature Mario instead of Wario - this was changed due to cultural sensitivity regarding bombs in certain regions, where it was decided that having a villain like Wario plant bombs would be seen as more appropriate than if a hero like Mario were to do so.
Contrary to popular belief, General Scales was never actually intended to be the primary antagonist and final boss of Dinosaur Planet, even before the transition to Star Fox Adventures, which jammed in Andross in the climax. That role would belong to Drakor, who appears in the final Star Fox Adventures as a turret boss in Dragon Rock.
Drakor's original backstory was that he belonged to an ancient race of alien dragons known as the Kamerians, that existed in the early days of the universe along with another race known as the Krazoa. The two races had a big intergalactic war with each other that nearly destroyed the galaxy and it ended above orbit of what would eventually be known as Sauria, the Dinosaur Planet, with the Krazoa narrowingly winning. One of the last great war dragons was killed in battle and its body fell onto the planet's surface, and it became something of a god figure to Sauria's dinosaur inhabitants who spawned right around the same time.
The twist was that, despite obviously his methods involving genocide and conquest, Drakor was actually trying to save the galaxy in his own way: The Krazoa themselves were also revealed to be actually extremely evil. As they go back in time to the time of the Great War in Krazoa Palace, Krystal and Kyte discover that the Krazoa were the ones who started the Great War against the Kamerians, because the latter didn't wish to be ruled by them and their god, the "Quan Ata Lachu". They manipulated Sabre and Krystal into finding each of the Quan Ata Lachu spirits hidden away in their shrines/test and depositing them at Warlock Mountain, planning on aligning the Majestic Eight planets their home world Animus and Dinosaur Planet belong to, promising that it will bring "peace" to the universe, when in reality they want nothing more than to set it into flames and remold it into their image/liking, spreading disease, terror and chaos as they please.
The final Star Fox Adventures game saw all of this scrapped in favor of Andross as the main antagonist. Drakor would be repurposed as a subordinate of General Scales, a mutant bioweapon that dwells within Dragon Rock as the guardian of the one of the SpellStones Fox (who similarly replaced both Sabre and Krystal as the main playable character) must collect. The Krazoa were more or less condensed into the Quan Ata Lachu spirits Fox must also collect, and also essentially replaced the Kamerian Heart as the deities the inhabitants of Dinosaur Planet worship.
As mentioned before, Andross' spirit would fulfill Drakor's original role as the manipulator behind General Scales and the SharpClaw's uprising, and would also fill in for the Krazoa's role, posing as one as he manipulates Fox into finding the Krazoa Spirits in promise of rescuing Krystal from her prison atop of Krazoa Palace (which was reworked from DP's Warlock Mountain), all of which results in his resurrection as the game's final boss.
Instead of a chicken who gets pushed backwards when run over, Freeway was originally going to feature a human protagonist who turns into a splatter of blood when killed. This version of the game is referred to by fans as Bloody Human Freeway.
The Atari Jaguar version of Rayman contains many messages for developers' family and friends that can be seen by using specific passwords, some written in French while others are written in English. Some notable ones include:
[translated from French]: The Jaguar is my friend, and so is Rayman, so let them live!!
[translated from French]: The world is kind Bettina is kind Fred and Fred are very kind Mom is kind Sophie is very kind Eric is very kind Rayman too is very kind Everyone on Rayman [the development team] is very kind. Oliver, Jean Christophe and Michel are very kind Signed: Bettina!!
[translated from French]: You see I can break your spine in two with this fist of mine!!! Signed: Serge H
[written in English]: I wanted to thanks[sic]: Konami and Nintendo for the great games they made!!!
[translated from French]: For Sale: Ascona (19XX) in wreck state Signed: Jean Marc G
[translated from French]: A beer... Gimme a beer, d'ooh... Everyone, let's go to Euro Disney!!!!!!! Signed: Bruno B
Contrary to popular belief, and unlike the other fairy tale mockbusters released on game consoles by Phoenix Games, the animated cartoons included in Peter Pan, Adventures of Pinocchio, Snow White and the 7 Clever Boys, Cinderella, and Hansel & Gretel were not made by Dingo Pictures, but rather Longsoft Multimedia.
While DVD video playback was a major selling point for the PlayStation 2, Sony didn't plan to support the feature at first, as they were already intending to manufacture standalone DVD players through their home entertainment department. However, after seeing a demonstration for the Nuon, a DVD player by VM Labs with video game support, Sony Computer Entertainment head Ken Kutaragi demanded that a similar level of multimedia functionality be incorporated into the PlayStation 2. The move was met with resistance from Sony's home entertainment wing, who believed that doing so would cause the console to cannibalize sales of their standalone DVD players. However, Kutaragi won out in the end due to the clout that the PlayStation brand had given him.
Kazutaka Kodaka began planning Master Detective Archives: Rain Code in 2016, while he was still working at Spike Chunsoft. It was designed to be different from the Danganronpa series, with a dark fantasy setting influenced by the works of Tim Burton. It also uses full 3D models throughout the game, as opposed to Danganronpa's blend of 3D environments and 2D characters: it does, however, still feature a similar psycho-pop aesthetic with neon colors.
During Chapter 3: Course Correction, after going through a brief Zero Gravity section on the way to the Engine Room, you have to proceed through a tunnel featuring blasting steam, flashing lights, and an extremely dense, loud noise lasting all throughout the room, referred to by some players as one of the scariest rooms in the game. According to series creator Glen Schofield in a 2019 Ars Technica interview, this sound originates from a recording of the trains in San Francisco's Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system.
For decades, BART trains were infamous for producing a "high-pitched squeal" during turns that stemmed from a conscious design choice when engineers started building it in the mid-1960s to make the train wheels solid axle (connected) so that they rotated at the same rate. This made the trains relatively quiet on straightaways, which make up a majority of BART's tracks, but because of the design, one of the wheels ended up dragging against the rail on turns, with this friction causing the noise.
During Dead Space's development when this was still an issue, audio director Don Veca recounted his experience riding a BART train to Schofield (the following quote paraphrased by him):
"'Glen, I was going in the BART train, we went under the Bay, and it's THE WORST SOUND IN THE HISTORY OF MAN!' or something like that, and I'm like 'RECORD IT!'"
The next day, Veca brought a microphone with him to record the noises. According to Schofield, the developers loved the resulting recordings, because it showed them a new way to use sound even more in the game's design by helping them realize how they could only use sound to scare people without relying on any enemies or other planned horror elements:
"-people are RUNNING in the room! They are just trying to get out of that room, it's so awesome!"
As for BART, they finally remedied the noise issues between October 2017 and February 2019, when they gradually replaced every train wheel in its fleet with new wheels designed to reduce the noise by as much as fifteen decibels, effectively making the riding experience "many times quieter than before".
Leaked development files for Yoshi's Island show graphics of a razor blade hazard or weapon, possibly intended to be thrown by an enemy. This was likely removed from the game over concerns of violence and/or imitability.
Across PaRappa the Rapper, you can you posters of a human pop star named "Pony Pony" - this character was originally supposed to be a member of PaRappa's friend group, but never properly appeared.
The Case of the Missing Kelp Seeds was the first Humongous Entertainment game to use cel animation instead of computer-designed sprites. This was a last second choice that required all existing visuals and much of the game's code to be thrown away, and was done without a delay nor much in the way of cel animation knowledge from the team, requiring unpaid overtime. Despite this story's surface-level similarities to crunch practices, the challenge of remaking the game on such short notice was chosen and consented to by the Freddi Fish team, and developers of the game have reminisced on this period fondly.
Kabuto, the first boss of Alex Kidd in Shinobi World, is a parody of Ken-O, a recurring first boss in the Shinobi series - in prerelease screenshots, he is shown to be a composite parody of both Ken-O and Nintendo's Mario, known as Mari-Oh. While his appearance would lose its Mario-esque qualities in the final game, two elements of this parody would remain: Kabuto shooting fireballs, and Kabuto becoming small on his final hit point.
Contrary to popular belief, General Scales was never actually intended to be the primary antagonist and final boss of Dinosaur Planet, even before the transition to Star Fox Adventures, which jammed in Andross in the climax. That role would belong to Drakor, who appears in the final Star Fox Adventures as a turret boss in Dragon Rock. 
