This industry is about more than sequels and sales figures, you know. Behind every great game is a great team of regular people like you and me. These are people who get inspired, dream, work, fail, and get lucky just like the rest of us, and the industry is full of fascinating stories to prove it. Here I’ve collected 10 fun factoids about video games and the people who make them – facts that you probably didn’t know. Enjoy this behind-the-scenes peek, I think you’ll have a lot of fun.
Gotta Spend Some to Make Some
Microsoft is a big player in the console scene. It’s one of the three, so to speak, but it hasn’t always been that way. In 2001 the Xbox was the new kid on the block, and Microsoft was going all out to get its massive black box into homes everywhere. The strategy was four-fold: produce the most powerful and graphically advanced console available, make it easy to develop for, enable broadband internet gaming out of the box, and price it aggressively. And Microsoft did just that. In fact, Microsoft took one on the chin with every Xbox sold. So eager were they to move their new console, they priced the thing at $299, even though each box cost about $425 to produce. It’s estimated that over the course of four years, Microsoft ate about $4 billion dollars in losses. It was worth it – the Xbox 360 and Xbox One have done incredibly well, and we can’t wait to see Project Scorpio next year.
Telltale Towers
How many times have you watched this boot-up sequence? Without a doubt the PS2’s boot-up sights and sounds are among the most recognizable in all of gaming, but did you ever notice that those towers would look different from console to console? That’s not random, those towers actually represent save data for games on your memory cards. More towers means more games played, and taller towers represent more time spent on specific games.
Too Cool to be Evil
Devil May Cry was one of the most innovative and badass action games when it released on the PS2 in 2001, but would you believe it actually began its life as Resident Evil 4? Capcom began work on Resident Evil 4 after director Hideki Kamiya had the idea to take the series in a cooler, edgier direction. Deep into development, producer Shinji Mikami realized that the new gameplay, demonic enemies, and cool new protagonist simply didn’t fit in the Resident Evil universe; the game was straying too far from the series’ survival horror roots. He convinced the team to continue working on the game as a completely new entity. The protagonist’s name was changed to Dante, and Devil May Cry was born. Resident Evil 4 as we know it wouldn’t be released for another four years.
Death to Poke-Pirates
The Pokemon series has its fair share of conspiracy theories and creepy pastas. One of the most unsettling rumors concerns a line of text found within certain versions of the ROM for Pokemon Fire Red and Leaf Green . If you’re playing a pirated version of one of these games on an emulator, an NPC who takes your tickets for the Seagallop in Vermilion City will state at the end of an otherwise casual conversation: “By the way: If you like this game, buy it or die.” Many people claim to have found the text in the game’s code, and many have claimed it’s not there. Whether or not this was put into place by one of the developers or some random dude playing a joke is unknown.
The DualShock’s Destiny
The DualShock 4 is a wonderful, comfortable, functional controller; a huge step forward from the DualShock 3. It’s not the perfect controller by any means, and that light bar ended up being more trouble than it’s worth, but there’s no denying that for the first time ever, Sony’s controller is a viable, and often times preferred, option for competitive first-person shooters. Bungie actually had a lot to do with that. The Destiny developer worked closely with Sony leading up to the launch of the PS4, and Bungie’s head of community Eric Osborne stated in an interview that his team worked with Sony to make the DualShock 4 better for shooters. Their insight paid off, as the DualShock 4 really does have phenomenally precise analogue sticks and natural, responsive triggers. Now about that battery life…
The Hyrulean Lost Boy
Have you ever looked at Link from The Legend of Zelda and tried to figure out who he reminds you of? Who else wears a green tunic with a belt and sword on his hip? Who else rocks a pointed green cap and has pointy, elf-like ears? Who else has fairy following him around at all times? In a 2012 interview, Shigeru Miyamoto explained that the inspiration for Link’s appearance came from Disney’s interpretation of Peter Pan. They wanted their character to be recognizable and you can’t beat the power of a Disney hero. I do wish they would have made Navi a bit more like Tinkerbell, though.
Still Living the Dream
The Dreamcast has enjoyed enormous postmortem popularity. It’s my favorite console of all time, and my enthusiasm isn’t unique. Sega produced games for the Dreamcast long after it was doomed to fail; Puyo Pop Fever was the last game Sega produced for the console, which came out three years after the Dreamcast had been discontinued. Indie developers are still developing games for the Dreamcast, I kid you not. These can be found easily online, and due to the fact that burning and playing your own Dreamcast games is incredibly easy, the underground, neo-Dreamcast game scene is thriving.
Hello Games Says Hello
Hello Games, developer of No Man’s Sky , is a pretty cool bunch of dudes. As the hype around No Man’s Sky peaks with the game’s release, stories and information about Sean Murray and his studio are making the rounds. I was astounded to learn that if you 100% complete either of Hello Games’ last two games, Joe Danger or Joe Danger 2 , you were given a secret code and email address you could use to get in touch with the team. Stories abound of players getting personalized responses from Sean himself, thanking them for playing the games and linking them to exclusive behind-the-scenes and “making of” content. That kind of passion is why you can count on Hello Games to continue to succeed.
Not so Super NES
The Super Game Boy was like something out of the future. This $60 cartridge adapter allowed you to play Game Boy games on your regular TV, and even added color. It was so cool. What you might not have realized as a kid is that the Super Game Boy was more special than it appeared – this was no mere adapter. It turns out the Super Nintendo isn’t powerful enough to emulate Game Boy games. The Super Game Boy cartridge actually housed Game Boy guts on the inside, and it was the Super Game Boy that processed and played the games. Your Super Nintendo was just there for controller input, to add a little color, and get the image up on your TV screen. Don’t think too poorly of the Super Nintendo, though. Remember emulation is hard. In this age of 4K gaming and virtual reality, we’re just now perfecting the emulation of N64 and GameCube games.
The Nintendo PlayStation
Sony and Nintendo weren’t always rivals, you know. The Super Nintendo’s sound chip was produced by Sony, and back when CD-ROM add-on peripherals were all the rage, Sony and Nintendo joined forces to create their own CD-ROM add-on for the SNES. Called the SNES CD, or Super Disc, thie would have been a fairly bulky add-on device atop which your original Super Nintendo would have sat. It would have been a very similar setup to the Sega-CD. Sony had also planned to release a separate, hybrid console called – you guess it – the Play Station. The contract fell through and the Super Disc was never released to the public. At the time Squaresoft was developing Secret of Mana for the Super Disc, and had to scale content down in the end to fit everything on a cartridge. Of course, Sony went on to create the PlayStation on its own, which would eventually become Nintendo’s greatest competition, and Squaresoft’s next CD-ROM-based RPG would actually come to fruition in Final Fantasy VII .