- Most people assume that Sonic and Knuckles' adventures in Sonic & Knuckles (and Sonic 3 & Knuckles) take place at the same time, but Knuckles' adventure actually takes place after Sonic's. There's a few subtle clues in the game that point this out, such as the fact Knuckles never comes across either Sonic or Dr. Robotnik (a robot takes Robotnik's place in the boss fights), the Death Egg does not appear at Launch Base Zone or Lava Reef Zone, the ghosts of Sandopolis Zone have already been released, and the fact that Angel Island is floating, meaning the Master Emerald is in place.
- The Jaguar console was another major failure for Atari. What did they do with all of the leftover parts? Sold them to a dental imaging equipment manufacturer, who repurposed the Jaguar chassis into a case for a dental camera. The optional memory cartridges sold with the unit are repurposed copies of Cybermorph, the pack-in game.
- The Elder Scrolls games are packed with references to other bits of pop culture. Morrowind has a particularly cool reference to Indiana Jones. You find his corpse crushed under a large rock, with a diary that makes references to his previous adventures (the ones that didn't involve hiding in a fridge for protection from a nuke).
- Most people will tell you that Pokémon games have become too complex due to the sheer number of creatures involved (now almost 500), but it gets much more complicated than that. It's common knowledge that a Pokémon grows stronger through natural training and fighting, rather than rare candies, but in addition to these visible statistics, Pokémon have a number of hidden statistics.
Effort values affect the strength of a Pokémon's statistics; each time you fight a battle, your Pokémon receive a number and type of effort value according to the type that it just defeated. Vitamins will also increase a Pokémon's effort values. A Pokerus can also increase the rate at which effort values are gained. You can have two Pokémon of the same type at the same level, but the difference in their effort values can put them into completely different leagues. Individual values essentially set the range for a Pokémon's power, and are randomly set when a Pokémon is encountered or bred. Knowledge of these values is crucial if you want to have a chance against serious Pokémon players.
- Before Guitar Hero: Aerosmith, the band was involved in another game; Midway's Revolution X, a really bad arcade light gun shooter which had you rescuing the band members from some new world order group. Revolution X was actually originally meant to be a Jurassic Park game, but Midway lost bidding war for the rights to Sega.
- For many years, Visual Concepts (NFL 2K) and EA Tiburon (Madden NFL) fought the battle for NFL football supremacy. Funnily enough, Visual Concepts was actually once the developer for Madden NFL – they were responsible for the later SNES versions of the game. Their relationship with EA went sour after Madden NFL 96 for the PlayStation, the only version of the game ever to be cancelled during development.
- Birdo from Super Mario Bros. 2 et al is actually male. In the manual for the Japanese release of the game (Super Mario Bros. 2 USA), Birdo is said to be a male that believes he is female and wishes to be called "Birdetta". Until recently, Nintendo of America had always listed Birdo as being female, but recently started referring to the character as being of "indeterminate gender".
- It's possible to skip rescuing Deckard Cain in Diablo II, despite the quest's mandatory status. If you don't go back to Tristram to fetch the old geezer by the end of Act I, he'll be rescued by the rogues, and you'll have to pay a fee for him to identify your items, which is a free service if you perform the task as intended.
- Before anime became popular outside of Japan, it was not uncommon for developers to completely retool their anime licensed titles for release in the west. For example, Dragon Power for the NES was originally based on Dragon Ball, Street Combat for the SNES was a Ranma ½ game, Last Battle was Fist of the North Star without the gore, Tecmo World Cup ditched all references to Captain Tsubasa and Alex Kidd in High Tech World was originally based on Anmitsu Hime (explaining the rapid departure in gameplay styles). Some games were still released untouched, such as Zillion on the Master System and Golgo-13 for the NES.
- As part of their hype campaign for Shenmue in Japan, Sega released a teaser demo called What's Shenmue? The demo featured a sequence where Ryo had to chase down then-Managing Director of Sega Hidekazu Yukawa, and protect him from some local thugs who were demanding a disc. When the sequence is completed, Yukawa realizes it was just a dream, after waking up to an office filled with unsold Dreamcast consoles which he vows to sell.
- Night Trap will always be remembered as one of the catalysts for the creation of the video game content ratings systems in Australia, but the Mega CD release that triggered the controversy was not the original version. Night Trap was originally developed for an abandoned Hasbro console called the NEMO, which used VHS tapes instead of cartridges. A video of Hasbro executives messing around with the NEMO can be found in the Mega CD version via a cheat code.
- You may have noticed that Adventure Island and Wonder Boy play very much alike. That's because they were made by the same company – Escape (later known as Westone). Escape and Sega teamed up to produce the original Wonder Boy, and when it was successful, Hudson Soft wanted to team up to make the game for the NES. Unable to use the Wonder Boy characters, they instead decided to make a different character and scenario. Later Wonder Boy games moved off into the action/RPG genre, while Adventure Island retained the original formula.
- In the early 90s, every company in the gaming sphere was trying to match Sega and Nintendo's success with their mascot characters, not just in the gaming industry, but with comic tie-ins and Saturday morning cartoons. Two such examples were Battletoads and Bubsy whose painfully bad pilot episodes were not picked up, sparing us from further torture.
- The 1993 Jackie Chan movie City Hunter features a sequence where the hero gets thrown into and electrocuted by an arcade machine. In the ensuing battle, he and his opponent take on the personas of various characters from Street Fighter II, including Ken, E. Honda and even Chun-Li.
- Despite the ridiculously revealing outfits and ever expanding bust line, Isabella 'Ivy' Valentine of Soulcalibur fame is, according to the story, celibate. This is because she believes that if she were to have children, they would bear the taint of Soul Edge. Surely it couldn't hurt to put a top on, then.
- One part of God of War II has Kratos going after Perseus' shield. Like Kratos, Perseus is looking for the sisters of fate, but for the purpose of bringing Andromeda back to life. Harry Hamlin, star of the 1980 film Clash of the Titans reprises his role as Perseus. Well, at least until he is thoroughly owned by Kratos.
- Most folks have fond memories of Earthworm Jim and its sequel, but nobody particularly cares for Earthworm Jim 3D. It's a damn shame the game is so bad, because it has a pretty amusing concept involving Jim being trapped in his brain. The super secret end boss is "Earthworm Kim", a personification of Jim's hidden desire to be female.
- A lot of Japanese RPG fans are becoming increasingly concerned about the degree to which their favourite games are requiring play guides. One such example is Final Fantasy XII; to get the Zodiac Spear, one of the game's ultimate weapons, players have to not open four specific yet unmarked chests at the start of the game – but the game mentions absolutely nothing of this. Opening one of the chests reduces your chance of getting the weapon to 1 in 1000. Imagine finding that out after 100 hours of play.
- Fallout 2 has a situation that's related to the above. After beating the game and returning to New Reno, your character can get a hold of the "Fallout 2 Strategy Guide", which instantly rewards you with 300% on all stats and 10,000XP every time you open it, to which your character remarks "Well, it would have been nice to have this at the BEGINNING of the damn game!"
- God Hand contains a small Chihuahua character named "Mikami's Head", a tongue in-cheek reference to director Shinji Mikami's claim that he would decapitate himself if Resident Evil 4 was ported from GameCube to PlayStation 2.
- Someone made a game based on Murder, She Wrote, but it's not an adventure game – it's a set of jigsaw puzzles.
- Fight Night: Round 2 for the GameCube was released during a period where Nintendo was trying to court EA by letting them use their characters in various EA titles, and as such features a realistically proportioned Little Mac as a bonus fighter, and the SNES version of Super Punch Out!! as an unlockable. Little Mac is a tad hideous, though.
- In the midst of the popularity of Mortal Kombat, Back to the Future screenwriter Bob Gale collaborated with Data East on a derivative effort called Tattoo Assassins. They intended to one up Midway by making their game gorier and more obscene with 200+ fatalities and "nudalities". The game was completed, but never went into production – only two copies were produced; one resides at Stern Pinball headquarters, while the other, part of a private collection, was destroyed during a flood. This video shows why cancellation was a wise decision.
- Speaking of Mortal Kombat, the continuity became unbelievably complicated. It turns out in Mortal Kombat Armageddon that a character called Blaze is central to the series storyline. Blaze is apparently the guy who was on fire in the background of the Pit II stage of Mortal Kombat II. I seem to recall saying that Armageddon would fix the mess – so much for that.
- Donkey Kong Racing was one of Rare's early planned titles for the GameCube, with an early trailer shown at E3 2001. Rumours persisted for ages about the game's fate after the company was bought by Microsoft. It turns out that the game was retooled as Sabreman Stampede, starring the Ultimate character of the same name on some sort of safari adventure, as you could see in this footage. The game was presumably canned or shelved due to the character's lack of popularity; a shame, as it looks kind of fun.
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Playing the Jaguar should be punishment for those who don't brush
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