Whatever happened behind the scenes.

• In Conker's BFD there is a single piece of chocolate that is out of reach. The location where the chocolate is located was supposed to lead into another area, but the area was scrapped, but the chocolate was still kept. In a Director's Commentary, Chris Savor (who also voices Conker) says the reason it wasn't removed cause he knew it would "fuckin' annoy people." Also from Conker, the idea of the Great Mighty Poo came about after the game's composer took a dump during work hours. the developers were so pleased with it, the poo became a boss in the game. With the composer providing the voice.
• Shadow the Hedgehog is a game infamous for being "edgy" and not a good game. The only reason the game was created was because alot of children requested Sonic to wield a gun. They thought having Shadow would be a better fit for the gun wielding character. Also the game was almost rated T, but was edited as the ESRB introduced the E10+ rating. Including changing the alien blood from red to green, and removing some cursing. The Sonic series has alot of gun imagery though.
• Duke Nukem: Forever was a game in development even before I was born. Which kept switching engines and consoles, until it eventually came out on Xbox 360 and PS3. Someone who pre-ordered the game waaaaaaay back when it was first announced was honored, being called "A patient man."
• Star Fox: Adventures is built off the Zelda N64 engine. Which is pretty noticeable, but this was the intention at the start. What wasn't intended was Fox being the protagonist, as the game was originally called "Dinosaur Planet" and was supposed to be released towards the end of the N64's life. The reason the games protagonist went from "Saber" to Fox, was because Shigeru Miyamoto, thought Fox looked like Saber. I am guessing this happened so Nintendo can retain any owner ship of these characters, as the game was released the exact same month Microsoft bought Rare.
• Relating to Rare, Microsoft actually believed they owned Donkey Kong. But the game was created by Nintendo, and developed by Rare.
• In Marvel Ultimate Alliance Link and Samus were going to be playable characters, demoed in a PS2 version of the game by a genius. And you knew what happened next.

If you want to look at videos relating to game development check out these YouTube channels and websites.
Wha Happun? - YouTube
Beta64 Episodes - YouTube
Video Game Facts and Trivia - VGFacts

 

Iwata printing off the source code of a game on the Friday, debugging it on paper over the weekend and then coming back on Monday having fixed it. Also the story about how the Pokemon team couldn't fit Gold/Silver on a GB cart, so he took it away for a few days and came back with a graphics compression system so good that it left enough room to include the region from Red/Blue as well.

There's that crazy story about somebody from a major Japanese company (probably Sega) allegedly getting some Yakuza goons to kidnap another another guy's sister (probably one of the dudes that owned Mitchell) for doing second party work for Nintendo and he called their bluff by buying one of their cabinets and having it smashed up in front of their building.

I'll probably think of some more later.

That story is massively exaggerated, it was actually just one clueless executive on a hospitality tour and not the company as a whole or the people actually running their gaming business.

 

Team Silent at Konami, which was responsible for making the first 3 Silent Hill games, was originally a losers club of underperforming developers. Konami basically threw them together as their last chance with the company. Konami told them to make an action game or something & instead they said “F it,” and made Silent Hill instead.  

That’s the gist of it!

 

Pretty much anything involving Kojima being told no by his team, like wanting The End’s boss fight in MGS3 to last actual weeks

 

Megaman 1 bombed, so Capcom was going to scrap part 2 & move on. The dev team convinced the higher ups to let them make part 2. The only catch- they had to make it on their days off while also working on another game. Turned out to be a huge hit & one of the best games ever made.

 

The Chocolate thing in CBFD I never knew about. They left it to troll players. lolololololololol
Greatmighty poo:  

I liked SDTH. It is no Masterpiece but the music was awesome. It got E10 rating and heard the words Damn and Hell but I'm believe Shadow used the word Shit.

DNF, the game teens waited until adulthood and I believe i speak for everyone who bought the game when I say I WANT MY MONEY BAAAAACK!!! Everything about it was outdated. Duke belonged to a time long since dead. If they never make another new Duke Nukem game, I would understand.

SFA was slow to my tastes but still fun. That shocking final boss though.

Lolol Microsoft, you're so silly.

 

A couple of my favorites...

Q*Bert was going to have the name "@!#?@!", and some marquees were made with that name, but then the developers realized no one would be able to pronounce it  

In Final Fantasy VII, shortly before the infamous Aerith death scene, there's a segment in the Forest Temple where Cait Sith "dies", only to reveal that he's a robot, then a replacement immediately shows up with everyone not really reacting all that much. Game director Yoshinori Kitase purposely put this in the game at this particular point, partly as a reference to TV shows and such where things quickly go back to the status quo, but also to throw people off when a major character actually permanently dies. I always thought that was a really clever way to manipulate players' emotions, making them think "she's coming back...right?!?" and it never happens  

 

Here's my favorite story but it relates to a NSFW game so...

Spoiler

BMX XXX was originally the third installment in the Dave Mirra series of games. During development they were brainstorming new ideas until someone said "Let's put strippers in it!" They laughed, and that became the vision. There are two sides of the story though. One was Dave Mirra hated the idea and left the project and the other was Dave Mirra loved the idea, but his advertising company refused to use his likeness and backed out. The game released, and is one of the many factors that made Acclaim bankrupt.

For a more family friendly game, Spongebob Squarepants: BFBB contains a dirty secret. The textures for the rock are no joke, literal shit. So... that's gross and I'll never see the game the same way again.

 

Possibly exaggerated, but I remember a story from when Bethesda was developing The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, they were really pushing for the whole NPC AI thing, where the random townsfolk would mill about on their own, without being scripted to do so. NPCs would be bound by many of the same rules that affected the player. In practice, this tended to lead towards massive, cascading failures. A beggar would attempt to steal some bread, get flagged as a thief, and end up with a regiment of armed guards being called in to catch him. The guards would barrel onwards, knocking a milk maid to the ground, causing her to push back and be flagged as an aggressor, and even more guards would be called to the scene to quell what rapidly devolved into a peasant riot. The situations would escalate to the point where whole towns would be dead, arrested, or just plain burned to the ground with no input from the player at all.

Needless to say, they had to dial way back on their ambitious AI plans.

 

• The white thing on Knuckles' chest is the Nike logo, meant for a cross promotion. This became one of the characters' signature details.
• The reason Rayman has no arms or legs is because during development of the first game, Rayman's limbs would constantly float away from each other.
• Pac-Man's original name was "Puck Man." But was changed when the developers were scared people would remove the "P" and replace it with an "F."

 

• In the instruction manual for Metroid, Samus is referred to with male pronouns. This was done on purpose to hide the fact she was a girl. Also originally in Super Metroid, Samus was naked when she died. But was changed when they asked: "Why have something, and change it for international audiences?" So Samus is clothed in all versions.
• In the level Mad Monster Mansion in Banjo-Kazooie, Grant Kirkhope had to re-record the "thank you" the pots said, as Nintendo thought he was saying "fuck you." I'd be doing that too if a bird was laying eggs in me.
• In Conker: Live and Reloaded, the developers wanted a character named "Bill" who would complain his Windows were broken, and kept crashing. But Microsoft wouldn't let them. The game was also originally uncensored, full f-bombs and all. But Microsoft forced them to change the content. In BFD another joke that had to be changed was the execution joke in Barn Boys. The paint bucket and paint brush wore white hoods, you know where this is going. But Nintendo refused.
• Deadpool almost wasn't in Marvel Vs. Capcom 3, as someone placed him on the "no-go" list. A list that included characters like Juggernaut and Venom. This was fixed, and Deadpool appeared on the final roster. Squrriel Girl was also meant to be playable, but the developers instead chose Rocket Raccoon. Marvel was said to be problematic during development. Capcom had to fight for characters like X-23 and Deadpool to be included.

 

Speaking of Conker, the game wasn't originally geared towards a mature audience. Partly through development, management at Rare showed the game to the Banjo-Kazooie team and asked them to make their game more like Conker. Problem was that they made their game almost exactly like Conker and got it out first so the Conker team had to go back and change things.

One of the last projects that Ralph Baer worked on was an interface that allowed you to play Duck Hunt by throwing foam balls at the screen. He entrusted it to the American Classic Arcade Museum in New Hampshire.

Screen scrolling was such a new technology at the time that the programmer for Jr Pac-Man had to create a physical mock-up for the game for Namco management to show off the technique. He drew a board on large piece of paper and then used a constructed a frame of manilla folders to demonstrate what the player could see with him moving the paper behind it. His boss had previously been concerned that it would require some sort of mechanical device to move the monitor out of the player's view.

 

I was gonna say Duke Nukem: Forever, but someone beat me to it.
I heard Pac-Man was originally called Puck-Man, but then Namco realized how people could vandalize the "P" in puck.

 

The NES game Journey to Silius was originally going to be a licensed Terminator game. The Terminator licensing/copyright text is still in the game files.

Of course, there's always the story of how the revolutionary combo system in Street Fighter II was simply a glitch, and was not part of the design.

 

John Romero called the AI in Dikatana "advanced." And it took them 3 years to make the game.

 

I've seen one. They were right. (I was young and thought it was just a knock-off.)

 

Seriously? I didn't know it was a glitch. I learned something new

I got that game for sh!ts and giggles to see if it is as bad as people said.
John Romero, I'll make you mah bish.

Can't wait to try Superman on N64.  

 

Yup. According to the Wikipedia page, they originally considered it a “bug”. It was too difficult to try to get the timings down, so they left combos in the game as a “hidden feature”.

A bug hidden feature that would revolutionize fighting games. Amazing when you think about it.

 

Capcom seems to have quite a history with "revolutionary" bugs.

Devil May Cry's combat system supposedly came about as a bug during the development as one of the Onimusha games. Juggling the enemies would've broken that game, but they earmarked it for use later because it was so damned cool. And without DMC, we would've lost out on 5 more games in that franchise, and also likely Bayonetta and even Nier: Automata. A lot of games/franchises owe their existence to DMC's specific brand of overkill.

 

The story behind the name of Guybrush Threepwood, the main character of the Monkey Island series. Lifted from Wikipedia:

The origin of the name "Guybrush" comes in part from Deluxe Paint, the tool used by the artists to create the character sprite. Since the character had no name at this point, the file was simply called 'Guy'. When the file was saved, Steve Purcell, the artist responsible for the sprite, added 'brush' to the filename, indicating that it was the Deluxe Paint "brush file" for the "Guy" sprite. The file name was then "guybrush.bbm", so the developers eventually just started referring to this unnamed 'Guy' as "Guybrush".[2][3] Guybrush's surname "Threepwood" was decided upon in a company contest and is derived from P. G. Wodehouse's family of characters including Galahad Threepwood and Freddie Threepwood (with whom he shares similar characteristics). "Threepwood" is also rumoured to have been the name of Dave Grossman's RPG character.

I miss the Duke Nukem Forever jokes. As the sun rises for the new year flowers will begin to bloom, the planets will continue their orbits, political parties continue to bicker, and Duke Nukem Forever is still in development. Screw it, that's still funny to me.

The behind the scenes stuff might never be completely clear, but according to multiple people that worked on it over the years the game engine used for it was changed at least twice, and the game started over almost from scratch each time. Apparently, the boss was fixated on DNF being one of the best game ever made and told the team to chase every idea that he came up with, constantly changing what he wanted the game to be. He denies that, saying that it was just never ready and the development problems were just normal problems. Truth is usually somewhere in the middle, but I lean more toward the former explanation.