7 WTFacts (Videogames I)

1. Super Smash Bros. used licensed Nintendo characters without initial permission.

EArly in development, the game was just random polygons fighting other random polygons. The creators had to come up with something that would make people want to buy Super Smash Bros. (N64). So they took a gamble. They took four Nintendo characters (Mario, Samus, Fox and Donkey Kong) and made them playable characters, without consulting with Nintendo about it. Being a second-party Nintendo developer, this could only end in two ways: great success, or a patent-infringement lawsuit. Luckily for them, it ended in a great succes, and six other Nintendo-patented characters entered the roster, making the Super Smash Bros. we know today. (source)

2. In Pokemon, ‘Ditto’ are failed experiments to recreate the legendary Pokémon ‘Mew’

This one is just theory, but it does make sense. In the original Pokemon Red and Blue (and Yellow),  Ditto is just a shapeless blob. It knows only one move, called ‘transform’. There’s only one other Pokémon that knows that move: Mew. They share the same colors, in regular form and even their ‘shiny’ form. They share the same basic statistics. The evidence keeps piling up. ‘Mewtwo’, the legendary Pokémon from the first generation, has in its description “the only succesful clone of Mew”. Where did they try to clone Mew? In the laboratory on Cinnabar Island – incidentally a place where you can encounter lots of Ditto’s. Even though this has not been confirmed by Nintendo as of yet, the evidence for it is so convincing, it has earned a place in my list of facts. (source)

 

3. In the original ‘Legend of Zelda’, the Tri-force was meant to be three computer chips used by hero to switch between time periods, making him the ‘link’ between worlds.

Link, protagonist of ‘The Legend of Zelda’, earned his name in a quite literal sense during early development of his first game. The first concept of the game would use a present and a historical timeline as its basis. The tri-force, consisting of three triangles, would have been computer chips. These would have been used by Link to switch between these timelines. The ‘present’ timeline was ultimately dropped by Nintendo for unnamed reasons, and the ‘historical’ timeline remained, giving us the game we know today. (source)

 

4. EA had to recall all copies of Tiger Woods PGA Tour ’99, because it had the full South Park-pilot hidden on it.

The year is 1998. South Park has been broadcasted since a year ago. Developers of Tiger Woods PGA Tour ’99 are almost finished making their game. Because discs at that time had storage up to 700 mb, the developers had some room to spare. Normally, they would just use a dummy file, an empty file consisting of only 0’s, which means they do amount to data but don’t contain any. One developer thought it would be nice to include something else, and surprisingly, the pilot episode of South Park had just the amount of data still left on the disc. So he added it. EA printed the copies, before finding out it was there. Due to copyright infringements on the episode, they had to recall all of them. (source)

 

5. Japanese Kirby game covers have a smiling Kirby, while American covers have a mean-looking Kirby.

Japanese people are somewhat weird, that’s a fact. Judging from the amount of tentacle-based porn they release, it might be actually turning a profit over there. But Americans can be strange to, with their movies containing extreme violence getting a 12+ rating, but once there’s a boob on-screen, it gets an 18+ rating. If you look at some of the most popular sports in the US, like Ice Hockey and American Football, those are packed with violence as well. Thus, when Japanese people try to market something to the US, they want to use the violent aspects of the product. With Kirby, this isn’t really a possibility, because everything is pink and cuddly. So instead, they make Kirby, one of the most cutesy Nintendo characters, look angry. (source)

 

6. In GTA: San Andreas, some missions won’t start when the character is too fat.

GTA: San Andreas has a lot of easter eggs, and even the Hot Coffee Mod, where you can have polygonal intercourse which spawned a lot of lawsuits from sheltered suburban moms. But one of these easter eggs is too good to not make the list. Let’s start out with explaining some things: in GTA: San Andreas, the main character CJ can gain weight by eating a lot, and losing it by going to the gym or riding a bike. You also have some missions which requires CJ to use a jetpack. Adding 1+1, if CJ is too fat, the jetpack can’t carry CJ because of his weight. Players have to go to the gym to lose some of it, to make progress in the story line. (source)

 

7. Fallout: New Vegas contains a reference to one of the many factual inaccuracies of Indiana Jones IV.

If you’ve seen Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, you might’ve felt cheated. There are so many factual mistakes, you end up feeling cheated by Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. Well, Obsidian Entertainment (makers of Fallout: New Vegas) also disagreed with some parts of the movie, and one in particular. You know which one, the one where Indy crawls up into a refrigerator to avoid getting blasted by a nuclear detonation, and miraculously makes it out alive unscathed. Obsidion put a wrangled fridge in the middle of the desert, and if you’d open the door, it shows a skeleton wearing Indy’s traditional clothing, including the hat. Take that, Lucasarts! (source)

 

 

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