Intro
From dirty Easter eggs to crazy revelations on games we think we know, we
count 40 mind blowing facts throughout gaming history.
40
There’s an enemy in the German version of Link’s Awakening where a buzz blob says
‘not without a condom’ after you turn it into a Cukeman, also known as a Potatohead.
39
It wouldn’t be Silent Hill without the fog, but did you know that the fog was only put
there to conceal poor loading times?
38
It’s a long running joke that the fact that there’s more than 30 Final Fantasy games
(including spin-offs) makes the name more than a little incorrect, but the reason the first
game was called Final Fantasy is actually because Square was going bankrupt and thought
it really was going to be their last game ever.
37
Kurt Cobain is well known for committing suicide with a shotgun and it seems that
someone at Id software was a fan since there’s a level in DOOM 2 named Nirvana with a
shotgun found in the map.
36
Yup, arguably the most kid friendly game known to mankind, Kirby’s Dream Land 2, has
a hidden tits and vagoo in one of its levels, but don’t worry there’s a smiley face in there
as well! That totally makes it all better.
35
The towers in the PS2 splash screen weren’t just random ornaments for between game
moments, the amount of towers is directly related to the amount of games you’ve played
and their heights are related to the length of time you spent playing them.
34
The big N that makes up the logo of the N64 is actually made up of exactly 64 vertices
(or points) and 64 faces, cool right?
33
Space Invaders was so popular in Japan that it actually caused a nationwide shortage of
100 yen coins, which is roughly the equivalent of 1 dollar.
32
Fox isn’t just wearing metal boots, it’s stated in the manual that he and his crew cut their
legs off and replaced them with robotic ones in order to help deal with the intense
amount of G-force they experience when on planet-side missions.
31
There’s a weird sound made by Diablo when he appears on the final level, but it makes a
lot more sense when you play it backwards, have a listen: (play 31 ‘diablo sound
bite.mp3’)
30
Capcom seems to have a silly sense of humour because when you look at Doctor Wily’s
sprite in Mega Man 7 when you remove the foreground is his wonderful pair of tah-tah
bazoongas.
29
In Quake’s manual the grunts are said to have their bodies hardwired up to pleasure
devices every time they murder someone and if that isn’t fucked up I don’t know what is.
28
Silent Hill is, for reasons beyond anyone’s understandings, based on the town shown in
the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie Kindergarten Cop, maybe that’s what was playing
when the lead graphics guy was making the environment? Eh, I don’t know, I really
don’t.
27
Devil May Cry is a cult classic hack and slash, but did you ever notice how the first game
had a lot of weird angles and long door opening sequences? This is no coincidence,
because it actually started out its life as Resident Evil 4.
26
The original Donkey Kong was conceptualised to be a Popeye game, but the creators
didn’t like their game very much so Nintendo was forced to make up their own IP.
25
Halo was originally designed to be played on a computer, but that’s not the crazy part, it
was actually meant to be an RTS at first, but this was changed sometime around the tiem
when Microsoft acquired their company and wanted a title for the Xbox.
24
Few of us like Mass Effect 3’s ending, including myself, but did you know that the guy
talking at the very end of the game is moonwalked Buzz Aldrin? Pretty cool cameo if you
ask me.
23
The Simlish language isn’t just a garbled load of gobbledigook, it’s actually pieced
together with random amounts of Ukranian, Navajo and Talalgog, as well as trace
amounts of English.
22
Prisoners generally need to work during their imprisonment, but in some Chinese gaols
the prisoners are forced to farm gold in World of Warcraft so they can sell it to lazy
players with too much money and not enough time.
21
Space Invaders only speeds up the more you kill enemies on the screen because there’s
less enemies to render and thus the hardware forces the game to run faster, even the
music speeding up works like this.
20
There was a bug in Team Fortress classic where players would sometimes appear in the
other team’s colours, but instead of squashing this bug they turned it into an entire class,
the now well-known French accented Spy.
19
The NES controller was originally specced to include a microphone, this was planned to
be used in games like Zelda where you would scream into the mic to kill some enemies.
18
In Stockholm, the city where Mojang was created, playing on a Minecraft server is
included as a mandatory part of the curriculum for young students as a way of nurturing
creativity as well as to foster socialisation.
17
A large amount of the Sonic the Hedgehog 3’s soundtrack was actually composed by
Michael Jackson, although you wouldn’t be able to tell it by simply listening to it since
the MIDI tracks sound nothing like any of his songs.
16
Gordon Freeman didn’t always rock a goatee and look like a stoic smart guy, he was
originally designed to look like this, this model was even named ‘Ivan the Space Biker’ in
the game files, but it’s unknown if the name was anything more than a nickname coined
by the creator.
15
Before Minecraft Tetris was the most ubiquitous game in the world since the eighties,
but despite this fact the creator didn’t get any royalties for his work until well into the
nineties.
14
You may feel sorry for Rockstar since they get so much controversy in the news, but you
really shouldn’t since the very first piece of controversy was actually paid to happen by
Rockstar themselves.
13
Pokémon is one of the titles by Nintendo that many consider to be oversaturated, but
did you know that the second instalments of the series, Gold and Sivler, were actually
meant to be the last ever Pokémon titles?
12
Donkey Kong is portrayed as the bad guy in his debut game, but he was actually kept
rather cruelly as a pet by Mario, you can even see promotional art of him whipping the
gorilla.
11
In the Japanese version of Earthbound Ness walked around naked when he was
wandering around in his own mind, but they changed this to have him wearing pyjamas
when they ported it to the west.
10
The famous Konami code was never meant for the public, the developer of Gradius
made it for testing purposes but accidentally left it in the final game, strange to think that
we might never have gotten one of the most beloved cheat codes if a dev wasn’t so
absent minded.
9
Mario was actually designed with a lot of practical reasons, mainly due to system
limitations: his big nose was to make him look human, his moustache was to avoid
making a mouth and his hands were made big so he didn’t just look like a random
unassuming sprite.
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TAGS
blah,
Links:
Ideas
http://whatculture.com/gaming/10-insane-gaming-facts-will-blow-mind.php/6
http://whatculture.com/gaming/20-mind-blowing-gaming-facts-probably-neverknew.php
http://www.cracked.com/photoplasty_1260_27-mind-blowing-true-backstories-famousvideo-games/
http://www.houstonpress.com/arts/5-mind-blowing-facts-hidden-in-video-gamemanuals-6380517
http://infinigeek.com/50-epic-video-game-history-facts-you-probably-didnt-know-fromdid-you-know-gaming/
sources
1 [pres] SMB - The Bricks in Mario are actually People
http://thisisanothercastle.com/2013/01/15/mario-blocks-are-people/
2 [infi] Deus ex - predicted 9/11
http://kotaku.com/how-deus-ex-predicted-the-future-1616252703
3 [crkd] Pong - is a Rip off
http://www.cracked.com/article_20057_5-insanely-successful-video-games-that-weretotal-ripoffs.html
4 [infi] Skyrim - Mario & Paarthurnax same person, as is cortana, Peach and toad
https://twitter.com/vgfgamers/status/278719788832944128
5 [infi] Mario - Nintendo Owns Rights to 2 porn movies about Mario
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Hornio_Brothers
6 [crkd] Mrs Pac Man - was made by Hackers
http://strategywiki.org/wiki/Pac-Man/Versions
7 [crkd] The Playstation - was supposed to be a NIntendo Product
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNES-CD
8 [crkd] Metal Gear - was only a stealth game because of hardware limitations
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_Gear_(video_game)
9 [crkd] Mario - was designed around the NES's colour palette and resolution
edition.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/02/14/miyamoto.script/index.html
10 [crkd] Gradius - the Konami Code was left in Gradius by accident
https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/2re9cc/til_that_the_konami_code
_was_left_in_gradius_by/
11 [crkd] Earthbound - originally had a naked level
http://earthboundcentral.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/nakedness.png
12 [crkd] Donkey Kong - was Mario's pet
http://www.mariowiki.com/Donkey_Kong
13 [whtcl2] Pokemon Gold and Silver - Were Meant to be the last games in the series
http://www.serebiiforums.com/archive/index.php/t-443064.html
14 [whtcl2] GTA - Rockstar Paid Voice Actor to give GTA poor press
https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1mfi0y/til_that_rockstar_games_
paid_for_grand_theft_auto/
15 [whtcl1] Tetris - creator of Tetris didn't get paid until 1996
https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1s2uri/til_alexey_pajitnov_the_cr
eator_of_tetris1984_did/
16 [whtcl1] Half Life - Gordon Freeman was originally a space biker
http://half-life.wikia.com/wiki/Ivan_the_Space_Biker
17 [whtcl1] Sonic 3 - Michael Jackson Composed most of Sonic 3's OST
http://info.sonicretro.org/Michael_Jackson_Involvement_with_Sonic_3
18 [whtcl1] Minecraft - is part of school education in Stockholm
http://www.thelocal.se/20130109/45514
19 [crkd] Zelda - Originally you needed to scream into the NES controller to defeat an
enemy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Legend_of_Zelda_(video_game)
20 [crkd] Team FOrtress - Spies Inspired by glitch
https://wiki.teamfortress.com/wiki/Spy_(Classic)
21 [crkd] Space Invaders - Only sped up because of hardware problems
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Invaders
22 [whtcl1] WoW - Chinese Prisoners Forced to Farm Gold in WoW
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/may/25/china-prisoners-internet-gamingscam
23 [whtcl1] Sims - Simlish is a Jumble of a bunch of Real Languages
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simlish
24 [whtcl1] Mass Effect 3 - Buzz Aldrin is in Mass Effect 3
http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Stargazer
25 [whtcl1] Halo - was Originally an RTS
http://halo.wikia.com/wiki/Pre-Xbox_Halo
26 [whtcl1] Donkey Kong - was Originally a Popeye Game
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popeye_(video_game)
27 [whtcl1] Devil May Cry - started as RE4
http://residentevil.wikia.com/wiki/Devil_May_Cry
28 [whtcl1] Silent Hill - based off of kindegarten Cop
http://www.destructoid.com/silent-hill-based-on-kindergarten-cop-confirmed-219513.phtml
29 [pres] Quake - Grunts get off on murder
http://www.houstonpress.com/arts/5-mind-blowing-facts-hidden-in-video-gamemanuals-6380517
30 [infi] Mega Man 7 - Dr Wily has breasts
http://www.vgfacts.com/game/megaman7/
31 [infi] Diablo - says eat vegetables and brush your teeth
https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/19u0zo/til_when_diablo_is_released_in
_the_final_level_of/
32 [infi] Fox - Cut off own legs to withstand g-forces
http://starfox.wikia.com/wiki/Star_Fox_(team)
33 [infi] Space Invaders - caused shortage of 100 yen coin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Invaders
34 [infi[ The N64 logo has 64 vertices and faces
https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/2wrksp/til_that_the_n64_logo_has_exa
ctly_64_sides_and_64/
35 [infi[ ps2 -towers in PS2 Splash Screen represent games, more games you play, more
towers
http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/927750-playstation-3/63192143
36 [infi[ kirby - There's a naked lady in kirby's dream land 2
http://kotaku.com/5911890/kirby-2-sure-was-sexy
37 [infi[ DOOM 2 - nirvana and shotgun
http://doom.wikia.com/wiki/MAP21:_Nirvana_(Doom_II)
38 [crkd] FF - Final Fantasy name was chosen because he thought it would be the last
game
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Fantasy_(video_game)
39 [crkd] Silent Hill - The Fog in SIlent hill is there to hide long loading times
http://silenthill.wikia.com/wiki/Fog_World
40 [infi[ A buzz blob says 'not without a condom' in the german version of Link's
awakening
http://zeldawiki.org/Buzz_Blob
IMages
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http://earthboundcentral.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/nakedness.png
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https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&
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http://minnesotaconnected.com/wpcontent/uploads/2014/05/pokemon_remakes_heartgold-soulsilver.jpg
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http://icdn3.digitaltrends.com/image/alexey-pajitnov-tetris-creator-1274x849.jpg
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http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/halflife/images/e/ea/Ivan_model_views.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20100112124521&pathprefix=en
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http://www.destructoid.com/ul/247340-nightmares-hallucinations-and-craziness-part1/TwilightPrincess-620x.jpg
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http://img1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20140128130933/sims/images/a/a5/Simlish.png
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http://i.ytimg.com/vi/TZ0axpAwRso/maxresdefault.jpg
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http://www.halowars.com/images/screenshots/screenshots_1280_007.jpg
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http://www.hellomaltatours.com/Media/hellomaltatours/images/Popeye1.gif
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https://www.google.com.au/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rj
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HTVSw&ust=1439541763673710
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l8mfwjpg.jpg
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vision/latest?cb=20100830230556&path-prefix=en
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Fantasy_logo.jpg
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http://www.zeldauniverse.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Zelda-LinksAwakening.jpg