Games
Discover facts about games. Small discoveries that change the way you see familiar things.
Games
Among Us gave its little crewmates an official height
Innersloth describes the familiar crewmates as 3 feet 6 inches tall. The studio then stretched them into absurdly long versions for an April Fools' mode. A…
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Post-apocalyptic couriers survive on canned energy drinks
In his private room, the courier can drink a real-world branded energy beverage to restore stamina, even as ghostly beings roam the collapsed world.
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Hollow Knight's world is inside a dead giant bug
Hallownest’s caverns and haunting architecture are built inside the rotting corpse of a colossal ancient bug, turning the kingdom itself into part of the…
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In Red Dead Redemption, John Marston cannot swim
The game has no swimming animation, so Marston dies if he enters water deeper than his knees—even though he can survive bullets, bear attacks, and dynamite.
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Why ghost hunters type names in the dark
In the game, typing a ghost's full name is a legitimate survival tactic—even when players are doing it in a pitch-black basement.
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Alan Wake forces a frantic writer to collect random thermoses
The bright blue containers are collectibles rather than useful gear, so the game sends you on detours through the woods just to find them.
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Little Sisters were almost sea slugs
Early concepts for the Little Sisters featured repulsive sea creatures instead of children. The design changed to creepy toddlers because players were more…
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The video-game boss you can defeat by waiting
In Metal Gear Solid 3, the elderly sniper The End can die of old age if enough real-world time passes after you save during his encounter. Returning after…
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A creepy-looking beaver helped create Five Nights at Freddy’s
Scott Cawthon intended the characters in Chipper & Sons Lumber Co. to look friendly. Reviewers instead compared them to unsettling animatronics. He took the…
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Fallout 4's Dogmeat had a real dog behind the performance
River, lead level designer Joel Burgess's German shepherd, helped the team create the companion. Watching a real dog supplied movements and behavior that made…
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Early No Man's Sky had a resource called Thamium9
The original resource system mixed real-sounding and invented materials, including Thamium9 for fuel and life-support-related uses. Later updates reworked…
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Polybius is a famous urban legend about an arcade game supposedly deployed by the US government in 1981 to secretly brainwash citizens and harvest psychological data.
Polybius is a famous urban legend about an arcade game supposedly deployed by the US government in 1981 to secretly brainwash citizens and harvest…
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Flappy Bird's creator removed his hit instead of cashing in indefinitely.
Flappy Bird's creator removed his hit instead of cashing in indefinitely. Dong Nguyen pulled the game from app stores in 2014 and told Forbes he was troubled…
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Nintendo's Wii Sports caused such an aggressive spike in household property damage and physical injuries that medical journals literally coined the term 'Wiiitis' to describe the phenomenon.
Nintendo's Wii Sports caused such an aggressive spike in household property damage and physical injuries that medical journals literally coined the term…
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Pac-Man can take turns that the ghosts are forbidden to make.
Pac-Man can take turns that the ghosts are forbidden to make. In the original arcade maze, ghosts in their normal chase and scatter modes cannot turn upward…
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Horses in The Elder Scrolls V Skyrim possess the inexplicable ability to defy the laws of physics and climb near-vertical mountain slopes.
Horses in The Elder Scrolls V Skyrim possess the inexplicable ability to defy the laws of physics and climb near-vertical mountain slopes. Players could…
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Steve Jobs helped introduce Halo at Macworld in 1999, before the series became an Xbox flagship.
Steve Jobs helped introduce Halo at Macworld in 1999, before the series became an Xbox flagship. The project changed substantially during development before…
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Scrabble needed a new name and a new partner before it took off.
Scrabble needed a new name and a new partner before it took off. Alfred Butts developed his word game during the Depression, calling versions Lexiko and Criss…
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Barbie was already dating on a Commodore 64 in 1984.
Barbie was already dating on a Commodore 64 in 1984. The early game had players answer Ken's calls, choose outfits, and take Barbie out in her car. It…
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Chess boards with a crease in the middle were originally invented by an eccentric 12th-century priest who needed a clever way to hide his illegal gaming habits from his strict religious superiors.
Chess boards with a crease in the middle were originally invented by an eccentric 12th-century priest who needed a clever way to hide his illegal gaming…
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A legal threat helped turn D&D's hobbits into halflings.
A legal threat helped turn D&D's hobbits into halflings. Early Dungeons & Dragons used names from Tolkien's fiction. In 1977, a cease-and-desist demand from…
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Chess has a rule that ends a game neither player quits.
Chess has a rule that ends a game neither player quits. Under FIDE rules, 75 moves by each player without a pawn move or capture automatically end the game as…
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A nuclear laboratory let visitors play electronic tennis in 1958.
A nuclear laboratory let visitors play electronic tennis in 1958. William Higinbotham created Tennis for Two for Brookhaven's visitors' day, using an analog…
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Smash Bros.
Smash Bros. animations began with Sakurai posing little action figures. For Brawl, Masahiro Sakurai photographed articulated figures to show the team the…
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