Games
Discover facts about games. Small discoveries that change the way you see familiar things.
Games
Real trauma inspired Dead Space’s monsters
The art team studied police photos of car-crash and trauma victims to make the Necromorphs’ injuries look grotesquely realistic.
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Mass Effect 2 makes you budget for getting lost in space
Travel between stars in the galaxy map burns the Normandy's fuel, while exploring planets uses probes. Run out of fuel and the game consumes valuable…
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Left 4 Dead grew from Counter-Strike bots armed with knives
Developers found it fun to face swarms of knife-wielding bots with a small, heavily armed team. That experiment helped supply the foundation for the…
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Pac-Man was designed to be endless, but a severe integer overflow bug in the original arcade cabinet's code makes the 256th level physically impossible to beat.
Pac-Man was designed to be endless, but a severe integer overflow bug in the original arcade cabinet's code makes the 256th level physically impossible to…
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Sonic 3's music became part of its rerelease story.
Sonic 3's music became part of its rerelease story. Sonic Origins replaced several familiar tracks from the 1994 game. That made the soundtrack itself a topic…
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Gandhi's infamous obsession with nuclear weapons in the original Civilization game was caused by an integer underflow glitch.
Gandhi's infamous obsession with nuclear weapons in the original Civilization game was caused by an integer underflow glitch. His aggression rating began at…
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Minecraft creator Markus Persson accidentally created the iconic Creeper while trying to code a completely normal pig. He kept the misshapen design, gave it a sad face, and made it explosive.
Minecraft creator Markus Persson accidentally created the iconic Creeper while trying to code a completely normal pig. He kept the misshapen design, gave it a…
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The famous Tomb Raider nude code was never real
The code was a hoax: no button combination could undress Lara Croft. Core Design even threatened to sue magazines that kept publishing it.
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GoldenEye's defining multiplayer mode arrived late in development.
GoldenEye's defining multiplayer mode arrived late in development. Director Martin Hollis said the mode was implemented around March or April before the…
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Nintendo's broken deal helped send Sony toward PlayStation.
Nintendo's broken deal helped send Sony toward PlayStation. Sony was developing a CD-ROM project with Nintendo when Nintendo announced an agreement with…
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Divers kept an underwater Monopoly game going for 45 days
A Buffalo dive club's 1983 marathon lasted 1,080 hours, with divers taking turns to maintain play. The record depended on shifts rather than one person…
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Old disks helped recover material for Tomb Raider's remaster
Developer Paul Douglas said he spent a long weekend searching floppy and Zip disks after Aspyr contacted him in 2022. He supplied source code and assets he…
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The Sims grew out of rebuilding a real home.
The Sims grew out of rebuilding a real home. After the 1991 Oakland fire destroyed Will Wright’s home, replacing possessions made him think about what people…
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Barbie Horse Adventures: Wild Horse Rescue holds a sacred place in hacker lore because it contained a specific exploit used to permanently mod and crack the original Microsoft Xbox.
Barbie Horse Adventures: Wild Horse Rescue holds a sacred place in hacker lore because it contained a specific exploit used to permanently mod and crack the…
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A Civilization II player reported returning to the same save for about ten years.
A Civilization II player reported returning to the same save for about ten years. By the in-game year 3991, three superpowers were locked in a nuclear…
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Toru Iwatani famously conceived the iconic shape of Pac-Man in 1979 while staring at a pizza with a single slice removed during his lunch break.
Toru Iwatani famously conceived the iconic shape of Pac-Man in 1979 while staring at a pizza with a single slice removed during his lunch break. He wanted to…
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Hasbro says a Monopoly game once lasted 70 days.
Hasbro says a Monopoly game once lasted 70 days. The company included that extraordinary duration in its anniversary trivia. Treat it as a publisher-reported…
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Space Invaders launched in Japanese arcades in 1978 and became such an immediate cultural obsession that it sparked a widespread urban legend claiming the game caused a nationwide shortage of 100-yen coins.
Space Invaders launched in Japanese arcades in 1978 and became such an immediate cultural obsession that it sparked a widespread urban legend claiming the…
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Nintendo was making playing cards in Kyoto before video games existed.
Nintendo was making playing cards in Kyoto before video games existed. Fusajiro Yamauchi founded the business in 1889 to produce hanafuda cards, decorated…
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The Egyptian board game thought to reach the dead
Played in Egypt as early as 3100 BC, Senet gradually became a religious ritual simulating the soul’s journey through the underworld. Successful players were…
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Pokémon once planned for Gold and Silver to be the finale
Pokémon Company president Tsunekazu Ishihara said the developers approached the second-generation games as a finale, pouring everything into Johto because…
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Magic’s patent included turning cards sideways
Magic: The Gathering’s patent application described “tapping”—turning a card sideways to show it had been used—as part of the game’s mechanics; it wasn’t…
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Skyrim's fast travel moves the clock as well as you
Selecting a discovered location on the map skips the journey on screen, but in-game time advances according to the distance traveled. A horse travels with you…
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Halo's visor became part of how players use the world
For Halo Infinite, the team developed the visor display into an in-world interface language rather than a set of disconnected screen elements. Menus and…
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