At one point in Team Chaotix's Grand Metropolis stage, Vector will say "Boy, it doesn't look good.", after which Espio responds saying "I'll handle it". The closed captions however instead say "Leave this to me!"
According to artist Chris Neuman's portfolio website, an MMO based on the MySims series (tentatively referred to as "MySims Online MMO") was in development in 2009, with Neuman having served as the lead artist on the project. Based on the art shown and the description provided, it would have had character customization, an art style that provided a more "vinyl" look for the series cast, assets converted from the various Wii games, new and returning locations (such as Gino's Pizzeria from MySims Agents), and different minigames such as one taking place on a dance floor. Additionally, one of the art pieces shared featured several characters from throughout the MySims series (specifically Madame Zoe, DJ Candy, Chef Gino, Skip Rogers, Zack and Sapphire), suggesting that pre-existing characters were planned to appear here.
In 2010, development began on a MySims game for the Nintendo 3DS titled "MySims Friends", being made by Behaviour Interactive, the developers behind MySims Racing and MySims SkyHeroes. It would have featured extensive customization options (most notably the ability to customize the environment around you) and would have been an online-only game, requiring features such as StreetPass and Nintendo connectivity. It was cancelled after EA decided to move the The Sims franchise into a new direction, one that did not include the MySims series. Years later, art director Xavier Garcia would release pieces of concept art for the game.
If you beat Story Mode and then play through it again, the captions for Jonathan's response to Dio kicking his dog Danny in the jaw are slightly altered. Instead of reading "何をするんだ" ("What the hell are you doing?!"), it will now read "何をするだ" ("What the hell you doing!?"), which is identical in meaning, but omits the hiragana character "ん". The typo in the second playthrough is deliberate and references a mistake made in that scene when it was published in the manga's original 1987 print run. This typo stuck around in reprints for almost 15 years, becoming a meme among Japanese fans for making the intended line sound like a "country-like scream", until it was finally corrected in a paperback release in 2002.
A sequel to MySims Agents called MySims Agents 2 was planned, but was ultimately shelved in Fall 2009. Years later on May 12, 2023, designer Brian Kaiser shared an old completed story outline for the game on his Twitter account. Based on the outline, the plot would have revolved around the player investigating a series of strange events involving an unknown energy source (later revealed to be seeping through portals from the Nightmare Realm), all while contending with the new S.P.A. director Morgan (a reworked version of the scrapped character Vice Admiral Morgan from MySims Kingdom) and her advisors Dragomir and Svetlana (reused from MySims SkyHeroes), who has shut down several branches of the agency as part of "restructuring" and captured Walker after he began to investigate them. Several characters from the original game would have returned, with Roxie Road, Jenny, Dr. F, Buddy, and Vic Vector all being part of the player's team as they solve cases all over the globe. While full gameplay details are unknown (aside from a new grapple hook mechanic), some pieces of concept art have been released since, such as designs for Morgan's various monster forms.
Naughty Dog's name was inspired by their first company mascot Morgan, a Labrador/Rhodesian Ridgeback mix born in 1989 who was the pet dog of co-founder Jason Rubin starting with the development of Rings of Power. During the development of Way of the Warrior, Morgan lived with both Rubin and co-founder Andy Gavin in poor living conditions and she was often fed some of their meals from the fast food chain McDonald's. While she first appeared in a game as a Special Thanks credit in Rings of Power, Morgan technically became part of the company when she was given her own photo ID card after Naughty Dog moved onto the Universal Interactive Studios premises for the development of Crash Bandicoot. She was credited as a member of Naughty Dog on their four Crash Bandicoot games and Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy. She died in 2002 at the age of 13 during the development of Jak II, and several tributes to her were put into Jak II and Jak 3.
Jak II's manual and end credits feature a standard In Memoriam dedication for Morgan, but there are two more hidden tributes in the game. There is a green neon sign spelling Morgan's name written in the Precurian language inside the Hip Hog Saloon located to the left from the door. Additionally, in the Power Station in New Haven City, a set of random scrolling Precurian messages can be found on the large computer monitor. Translating these to English will reveal the following:
• "Morgan I miss you" • "Morgan" • "Thirteen years hard time" • "There will never be another" • "Good dog" • "I will always love you"
Another message can be found on computer screens you can view at eye-level, which reads "Morgan is still missed even after a year has passed". These computer screen messages are re-used on the monitors in both the Power Station and the Freedom League buildings in Jak 3. Since Morgan's death, Naughty Dog have credited more pets as members of their team and/or company mascots, with the first successor being a Labrador puppy named Osiris who first appeared in the credits of the first Jak and Daxter game alongside Morgan.
Early on in the game, after finding out the town was ruined during the night, King Roland wonders if Buddy, Lyndsay and "their friend" could come help, but concludes that they are too busy elsewhere. This is a reference to the Wii version of the game, where Buddy, Lyndsay, and the player (the aforementioned friend) travel across the various islands in the kingdom to help solve their problems, implying that the events of the two versions occur simultaneously.
To avoid loading everything in memory when the player visits the HQ, recruitable agents are given separate archives for their models. Several Sims who are not recruitable have separately stored models in addition to their regular map models, suggesting they were intended to be recruitable at some point. The Sims in question are Chef Gino, Ol' Gabby, Barney Cull, Dr. F, DJ Candy, Alexa Lexington, Chaz McFreely, Chef Watanabe, Justice, Tim (whose files were used in an earlier build of the game), and Proto-Makoto (a character who was scrapped from the game entirely).
Faith Connors from Mirror's Edge and Natasha Volkova from Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 were planned to appear in the game as guest characters, but were both scrapped for unknown reasons. Despite this, Faith makes a cameo as a picture on the wall of Gal Force 4's base, and Natasha has leftover files in the game, suggesting that she was cut late in development. Additionally, artwork exists of an old man character who would have appeared in the game as a member of Crescent Moon, but was also scrapped.
When traversing the drainage pipe that leads to Barnsworth, the player can spot graffiti that reads "PAY NO POLL TAX" and "DING DONG THE WITCH IS DEAD!" These reference slogans from opponents of former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher.
The former references the Community Charge, a controversial policy of the Thatcher administration that resulted in her 1990 resignation following widespread protests (it was ultimately replaced by the Council Tax three years later). The latter message references a campaign by anti-Thatcherites following her death in 2013 to inflate the chart position of "Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead", a song from the 1939 film adaptation of The Wizard of Oz, under the pretense that the BBC would be forced to play it over the radio. The network ultimately compromised by including a brief snippet in a news report about the campaign. The presence of both references ties in with the game's setting in Northern England, where anti-Thatcherism is particularly pronounced.
Originally, an island known as Shipwreck Cove (designed by producer Jason Kim) was going to appear in the game, with much of its data remaining in the game files. Despite how finished the remaining materials look, designer Brian Kaiser claimed that the developers did not get very far into production on it. The full level layout can be found in the unused data, meaning that the island can be stitched together using several models. Four NPCs were intended to appear on the island, those being Vice Admiral Morgan, Neema, Theodore, and Mira (who would later be reworked into Mira Cull, the daughter of series regular Barney Cull in MySims SkyHeroes; it's unknown if she was intended to be related to him in this game). Additionally, five music tracks related to the island are also in the game files, the names of which suggest that planned landmarks for the island include a Pirate Lighthouse, Mira's House, and Neema's Shack.
In 2008, an animated series based on the MySims series was announced as part of a deal between Electronic Arts and the United Talent Agency to turn their games into motions pictures and television shows, alongside a film based on the The Sims series announced the year prior. However, while The Sims film has since received numerous updates on its development, the MySims series has not been acknowledged since, suggesting it was eventually cancelled.
While Grimace's Birthday seems to be a web-browser game mimicking the "retro" graphics of the Game Boy Color, it is actually a real Game Boy Color ROM being run in an emulator, and it's possible to extract the ROM and play it on a Game Boy Color or hardware that is compatible with its cartridges. Because the game was designed specifically for the system, its data includes an error screen typical of those found on other Game Boy Color titles that are incompatible with the original Game Boy. However, because Grimace's Birthday is intended to be played on McDonald's official website (which does not allow the player to switch between Game Boy and Game Boy Color mode), this screen is not viewable.
Both the NES and Famicom saw official releases in British Hong Kong, but the region received the NES first despite it being a later hardware revision of the Famicom. Because of this, the Hong Konger Famicom was itself marketed as an upgraded model despite the opposite being true. A switch was also added to the back of the system that toggles the Famicom's output between PAL 50Hz and PAL 60Hz outputs.
The title "Caladrius" was lifted from a legendary bird prominent in medieval European and Roman mythology that was thought to be a divine messenger of God. Caladrius would appear before those who were ill, and if there was a chance for recovery, it would fly away, carrying the illness with it. In a 2013 interview with the game's director Hitoshi Hoshino published in Shooting Gameside #7, he compared the design of the character ships to the bird's appearance, and added, "the title conveys that question: will there be any salvation or not?"
According to an Electronic Gaming Magazine interview (published in Issue #224, January 2008) with Naughty Dog co-president Evan Wells and the game's director Amy Hennig, they were asked if they ever had plans for a different final boss battle after the interviewer expressed disappointment with it. Wells stated that the boss battle was designed to fit within the confines of the island and world they created, and that they could have made it more elaborate if they had a few extra weeks, but the overall direction remained consistent with their original plan. Hennig added that many games face the issue of jumping-the-shark at the end, as they need to escalate to a climax. She contrasted this with movies, which "get away with less" as they focus more on narrative and emotional experiences, and suggested that game design might benefit from shifting away from traditional boss battles to creating peaks in the overall experience.
Five Nights at Freddy's: Into the Pit was originally going to be a novelty 16-bit SNES-style cartridge game before slowly venturing out into a full-fledged modern PC and console game. Many of the early 16-bit sprites and animations can still be found in the game files.
According to a 2018 Rely on Horror interview with the game's producer Yoshiaki Hirabayashi, they decided to streamline the game's narrative by merging the A and B scenarios when playing as Leon or Claire in the original game (which was four scenarios total played in a dual perspective) into a single, cohesive story for each character. This was meant to remove the repetition from that approach while ensuring that players can still enjoy the depth and intensity of the narrative without having to play through multiple scenarios to see everything.
If you beat Story Mode and then play through it again, the captions for Jonathan's response to Dio kicking his dog Danny in the jaw are slightly altered. Instead of reading "何をするんだ" ("What the hell are you doing?!"), it will now read "何をするだ" ("What the hell you doing!?"), which is identical in meaning, but omits the hiragana character "ん". The typo in the second playthrough is deliberate and references a mistake made in that scene when it was published in the manga's original 1987 print run. This typo stuck around in reprints for almost 15 years, becoming a meme among Japanese fans for making the intended line sound like a "country-like scream", until it was finally corrected in a paperback release in 2002.
A sequel to MySims Agents called MySims Agents 2 was planned, but was ultimately shelved in Fall 2009. Years later on May 12, 2023, designer Brian Kaiser shared an old completed story outline for the game on his Twitter account. Based on the outline, the plot would have revolved around the player investigating a series of strange events involving an unknown energy source (later revealed to be seeping through portals from the Nightmare Realm), all while contending with the new S.P.A. director Morgan (a reworked version of the scrapped character Vice Admiral Morgan from MySims Kingdom) and her advisors Dragomir and Svetlana (reused from MySims SkyHeroes), who has shut down several branches of the agency as part of "restructuring" and captured Walker after he began to investigate them. Several characters from the original game would have returned, with Roxie Road, Jenny, Dr. F, Buddy, and Vic Vector all being part of the player's team as they solve cases all over the globe. While full gameplay details are unknown (aside from a new grapple hook mechanic), some pieces of concept art have been released since, such as designs for Morgan's various monster forms.
Naughty Dog's name was inspired by their first company mascot Morgan, a Labrador/Rhodesian Ridgeback mix born in 1989 who was the pet dog of co-founder Jason Rubin starting with the development of Rings of Power. During the development of Way of the Warrior, Morgan lived with both Rubin and co-founder Andy Gavin in poor living conditions and she was often fed some of their meals from the fast food chain McDonald's. While she first appeared in a game as a Special Thanks credit in Rings of Power, Morgan technically became part of the company when she was given her own photo ID card after Naughty Dog moved onto the Universal Interactive Studios premises for the development of Crash Bandicoot. She was credited as a member of Naughty Dog on their four Crash Bandicoot games and Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy. She died in 2002 at the age of 13 during the development of Jak II, and several tributes to her were put into Jak II and Jak 3.
When traversing the drainage pipe that leads to Barnsworth, the player can spot graffiti that reads "PAY NO POLL TAX" and "DING DONG THE WITCH IS DEAD!" These reference slogans from opponents of former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher.
While Grimace's Birthday seems to be a web-browser game mimicking the "retro" graphics of the Game Boy Color, it is actually a real Game Boy Color ROM being run in an emulator, and it's possible to extract the ROM and play it on a Game Boy Color or hardware that is compatible with its cartridges. Because the game was designed specifically for the system, its data includes an error screen typical of those found on other Game Boy Color titles that are incompatible with the original Game Boy. However, because Grimace's Birthday is intended to be played on McDonald's official website (which does not allow the player to switch between Game Boy and Game Boy Color mode), this screen is not viewable.
Both the NES and Famicom saw official releases in British Hong Kong, but the region received the NES first despite it being a later hardware revision of the Famicom. Because of this, the Hong Konger Famicom was itself marketed as an upgraded model despite the opposite being true. A switch was also added to the back of the system that toggles the Famicom's output between PAL 50Hz and PAL 60Hz outputs.
