Games
Discover facts about games. Small discoveries that change the way you see familiar things.
Games
Why gamers collect games they never install
Digital storefronts turn gamers into digital hoarders who amass gigantic libraries of interactive masterpieces that they will entirely ignore in favor of…
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Tossing small objects into numbered sequential squares dictates intricate hopping paths
Hopscotch involves drawing a grid of numbered boxes on the pavement and carefully tossing a small marker into a specific square. The participant must then…
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Go has more possible positions than atoms in the universe
Despite having incredibly simple rules regarding placing black and white stones, Go offers unimaginable depth. The number of legal board arrangements is so…
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The Pokémon glitch that taught kids to hack memory
An incredibly popular handheld monster catching game shipped with a severe memory manipulation exploit that spawned a chaotic pixelated creature off the…
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How a 4,000-year-old board game was brought back
After remaining utterly forgotten for thousands of years, the exact rules for the Royal Game of Ur were painstakingly decoded by a brilliant museum curator…
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Some solitaire deals are impossible to win
Solitaire and similar digital puzzle games usually generate random layouts, but occasional algorithms create doomed scenarios. Some initial shuffles are…
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Carmack's reverse in 3D shadow mapping
While developing Doom 3, programmer John Carmack mathematically solved a critical shadow-rendering bug by calculating the shadows from infinity backward…
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How gamers solve routing problems faster than algorithms
The obsessive gaming community dedicated to finishing video games as fast as humanly possible frequently cracks complex mathematical routing problems. Their…
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The game guide that made players smell garbage
A uniquely bizarre marketing campaign for a classic role-playing game involved printing highly detailed strategy guides laced with terribly pungent…
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Pac-Man was designed to bring more women into arcades
In an era dominated by violent space shooters, a brilliant developer created a wildly colorful arcade game explicitly centered around the universal concept of…
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Sega's 'blast processing' was mostly marketing
Sega famously marketed the Genesis with an aggressive campaign touting its revolutionary blast processing power. In reality, it was an entirely fabricated…
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Why modern chess pieces look so simple
The standardized silhouettes of modern chess sets were not designed for deep symbolic beauty. In the nineteenth century, highly detailed ornate pieces were…
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The oldest dice were pyramids
While modern gamblers are accustomed to six-sided cubes, the earliest known dice discovered in ancient royal tombs were actually solid pyramids. Players would…
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The game that makes you drive for eight unpausable hours
Penn and Teller created 'Desert Bus' as an intentional counter-argument to the idea that games corrupt youth. It tasks the player with driving a bus from…
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Grandmasters can play dozens of chess games blindfolded
Elite grandmasters of chess are capable of playing astonishing blindfold exhibitions against dozens of opponents simultaneously. By entirely relying on an…
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Why you can jump after running off a ledge in games
Platforming games actively employ a hidden mechanic called coyote time to make movement feel fair. When a digital character runs completely off the edge of a…
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How games secretly help you stop losing
Many modern action games utilize dynamic difficulty adjustment behind the scenes. If the game detects that you are dying too frequently, the internal…
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Highest bowling score requires mathematical precision
Achieving a pristine, perfect 300 game in traditional ten-pin bowling demands exactly twelve consecutive strikes without a single flaw. To accomplish this…
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Chess players once stalled for hours on one move
In the mid-nineteenth century, high-stakes competitive chess tournaments had absolutely no official time limits per turn. Players would intentionally and…
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Doom almost became an Alien game
The revolutionary demon-slaying shooter Doom was highly influential, but it almost took a very different path. Early in development, the creative team was…
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Donkey Kong world records are still fiercely contested
Despite being decades old, the classic original arcade cabinet for Donkey Kong remains the center of a fiercely intense subculture. Grown adults spend…
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The original PlayStation startup sound hid loading times
The deep, booming ambient swell that plays when booting up an original PlayStation wasn't a standard digital file. It was a complex, synthesized masterpiece…
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Steve Vai played guitar on Halo 2’s famous theme
The adrenaline-pumping electric guitar riffs that defined the legendary Halo 2 main theme were performed by guitar virtuoso Steve Vai. The composers brought…
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A Rubik's Cube has 43 quintillion wrong turns
The globally adored Rubik's Cube seems mathematically simple on the surface, but its mechanical center allows for an incomprehensible amount of visual…
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