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.
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On the title screen, if you press the Run button at the exact moment when Momo changes from her civilian form to her powered-up form, a hidden options menu will appear that functions as both a sound test and a level select. The top half of this screen depicts Momo lounging in a bathtub, with a caption below reading "MOMO IZIRI". The latter is a play on words referencing the screen's contents, as it can be translated as either "tinkering with Momo" (i.e. playing around with in-game settings) or "groping Momo."
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?"
Red Dead Revolver originally began development with Capcom in 2000, when developer Rockstar San Diego was still known as Angel Studios. It started as "SWAT", a game with a four-person split-screen feature that allowed you to control four members of a S.W.A.T. team at once. Reportedly, after Capcom producer Yoshiki Okamoto watched the 1971 spaghetti western film "Blindman", the project quickly shifted to a western game, with "SWAT" now standing for "Spaghetti Western Action Title" before being renamed to Red Dead Revolver. After Angel Studios was acquired by Take Two Interactive in 2002 and renamed to Rockstar San Diego, they continued working with Capcom on the project until Capcom decided to cancel the game in 2003 due to a perceived lack of progress. Capcom eventually agreed to let Rockstar Games continue working on Red Dead Revolver the same year in exchange for having exclusive publishing rights in Japan.
There is an unused title screen in the Metal Slug bootleg game Terrifying 9/11 that suggests it was originally going to be released as a straightforward bootleg version of Metal Slug instead of a bad-taste cash-in on the September 11th attacks.
• Funny Kong • Kong the Kong • Jack Kong • Funky Kong • Bill Kong • Steel Kong • Giant Kong • Big Kong • Kong Down • Kong Dong • Mr. Kong • Custom Kong • Kong Chase • Kong Boy • Kong Man • Kong Fighter • Wild Kong • Rookie Kong • Kong Holiday
The name "Funky Kong" would coincidentally re-emerge as a character in Donkey Kong Country.
The developers of Purble Place do not recall where the name "Purble" came from, beyond it simply being alliterative and fun to say. During development, devs would frequently mistakenly refer to the game as "Purple Place".
The American entertainment and browser game website Newgrounds originally started as a fanzine called "New Ground", focusing on SNK's Neo Geo hardware and games, and being named after synonyms for "Neo" (New) and "Geo" (Ground). It was first circulated by founder Tom Fulp in 1991 in Perkasie, Pennsylvania, before being registered as a website in 1995.
When Street Fighter 6's preliminary logo was revealed, it was mocked for a variety of reasons, particularly a disconnect from previous series logos and aligning with a widely criticized trend of generic, minimalist or "oversimplified" logos. Some fans noted that the logo strongly resembled an $80 design for an "SF" logo posted on the Adobe Stock Image store by user xcoolee, which had previously been used for a sci-fi convention in France. xcoolee did offer to sell exclusive rights to the logo to Capcom, but was seemingly denied. It was also discovered that a Taiwanese electronics and appliances retailer, Sunfar, had a similar hexagonal logo. On the day after Street Fighter 6's logo reveal, the front page of their website displayed an advertisement with the logo featuring a paint splatter reading the number 6 promoting gaming products, most likely as a promotional parody. It is unknown if either resemblance was a coincidence on Capcom's part, and xcoolee did not state if they knew whether Capcom bought anything from their store or not. The logo of Street Fighter 6 would be updated to appear more stylized before the game's launch in response to the negative reception, although the fan reception to the new logo was not much more positive.
On March 25, 2024, Nikson revealed that the game's title was being changed from "The Joy of Creation: Ignited Collection" to "THE JOY OF CREATION". This meant the game was no longer a bundle, but drawing inspiration from the original Story Mode and Reborn titles to make THE JOY OF CREATION its own game in the series. Nikson claimed that the first title never fully resonated with him after deciding against including the Classic mode as a part of the games to remake. He made the change to emphasize that it was an entirely new project re-imagining elements of earlier games in the series instead of a remaster or update, which he felt did not quite capture the essence of the game.
Throughout 2022, there were several leaks in regards to the existence of Silent Hill: The Short Message. First, screenshots were leaked of a playable teaser for the game, where it was known under the working title "Silent Hill: Sakura". Then, in both September and December of that year, the game received age ratings in both South Korea and Taiwan, respectively. Additionally, when Konami began hiring for upcoming projects based on Silent Hill, one of the projects was an unannounced in-house game, which would later turn out to be Silent Hill: The Short Message.
X was originally pitched under the name Eclipse and was developed under the title Lunar Chase. The single-letter rename came at the request of Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi, who contacted director Yoshio Sakamoto early in the morning after playing the game.
The Lunar Chase name was retained for a planned English localization of the game, which was ultimately scrapped due to fears from Nintendo of America that international players would find the game's presentation and design too complex for a handheld title. Creator and programmer Dylan Cuthbert additionally blamed the cancellation on a presumed lack of interest from retailers in the United States. A prototype of the English version would eventually surface in 2020 as part of the Gigaleak, a massive leak of internal server data from Nintendo. The Eclipse pitch, meanwhile, was released to the public by the Video Game History foundation three years later.
This game had two working titles before the final Operation Genesis subtitle was instated: "Jurassic Park: Project Genesis" and "Jurassic Park: The Game".
In an interview with the game's director Takumi Isobe published in Famitsu on February 22, 2024, Isobe explained that the game's title "Reynatis" holds deep significance to the game's story and is derived from two words. The first is "renatus", which means "birth" or "rebirth" in Latin. The second word is "rey" which means "king" in Spanish; additionally, "renatus" on its own can also refer to a "born king" in Spanish.
In a 2005 interview with the game's producer Koji Igarashi published in the official Konami strategy guide, he explained the decision to change the series' title in the domestic Japanese market from "Castlevania" back to "Akumajo Dracula".
The title change to Castlevania in Japan initially occurred because the Akumajo Dracula games enjoyed a larger market share in Europe and America compared to Japan. Consequently, more reports and information about the games were available in those regions, and they were released there first. In the recent past, news from outside Japan was harder to access, but with the advent of the internet, Japanese users could now easily stay informed. However, there was a concern that Japanese players might not immediately recognize the equivalence between Castlevania and Akumajo Dracula, so the main title of the previous game Lament of Innocence was changed to Castlevania in Japan to address this.
Subsequently, for Curse of Darkness, the decision was made to revert to the original title because the team felt that the Castlevania name had become associated with trilogies, inadvertently making it challenging for fans to find information about the Akumajo Dracula titles. The team wanted to ensure clarity for Japanese fans and clear up any confusion among Akumajo Dracula fans about if Castlevania was supposed to be Akumajo Dracula.
Checkered Flag was originally called Checkered Flag 2 (referring the previous game with the title on Atari Lynx), before being changed to Redline Racing and finally Checkered Flag, positioning it as a remake/port instead of a sequel.
Yo! Noid 2 was made for a game jam called New Jam City, hosted by the Vice Waypoint community. One of the rules of the game jam was that its name had to be derived from an episode of the Waypoint Radio podcast, with "Yo! Noid was Ahead of Its Time" being chosen for the game, and the Noid himself being used as the protagonist. The name itself is not actually used in-game, but is used on its Itch.io page. The inclusion of dabbing in this game was in reference to this, with the joke being that the Noid would be so "ahead of his time" that he would dab in a late-1990s video game.
A prototype for Barkley: Shut Up & Jam 2 shows that, instead of the photo used in the final game, the title screen was going to show a cartoon illustration of Charles Barkley.
Sonic X Shadow Generations' title was leaked a day prior to its reveal by notable leakers and a URL registration. Following the leaks, some fans and gaming news websites jokingly noted that the term "Sonic X Shadow" had previously also been used on the internet since the 2000s to refer to fan art, fan-fiction and slash fiction depicting the hedgehogs as a romantic couple.