Games
Discover facts about games. Small discoveries that change the way you see familiar things.
Games
Reading printed strategy guides is totally obsolete
Online wikis are easy to search and update, leaving bulky printed guides more like expensive souvenirs.
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Micromanagement allows one unit to defeat massive squads
Repeatedly ordering an archer to attack, retreat, then attack again can let one unit defeat enemies far stronger than intended.
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Sega's Master System accepted games thinner than cartridges
Early models had a slot for Sega Cards as well as a cartridge slot. The thin cards held less data, so the compact format imposed tighter limits on games. The…
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Xbox Live enforced a strict limit of one hundred friends
Microsoft set the limit because it assumed users wouldn’t maintain more than 100 online connections, leaving popular players to constantly prune their friend…
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Dartboards severely punish you for slight misses
Low-value sections sit beside the highest-scoring areas, so a slight miss from a high-value target can land in a low-value section.
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Street Fighter Alpha 3 has a perpetually screaming announcer
Its announcer bellows through every round in a wildly over-the-top voice, giving the game a relentlessly high-energy feel.
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Nathan Drake claims descent from a real pirate
In the Uncharted games, Drake’s identity is built partly around an unverified claim that he descends from Sir Francis Drake, the English explorer and privateer.
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Traditional bocce balls function as heavy brass projectiles
Before synthetic resins, players used dense brass or wooden balls. Their weight helps them roll through uneven grass, giving a supposedly relaxing lawn game a…
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Animal Crossing weeds magically disappear over time
After a year away, weeds can overrun your village, but paying a sloth to clear them cleans up the mess quickly.
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Xbox achievements arrived in 2005—and changed gaming
Gamerscore gave completionists a reason to chase optional goals, helping make achievements part of games' reward systems.
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Animal Crossing lets you pocket a great white shark
You can pull a thrashing great white from the ocean and stash it in your pockets as casually as any ordinary item.
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Why skeeball rings are lined with cork
Cork absorbs the balls' impact, preventing them from ricocheting off the rings and back at the player.
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Square was named after the shape of their building
The studio behind Final Fantasy was called Square because it was based in a square-shaped building in Shikoku.
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Hosea Matthews previously worked as a stage actor
Before joining the gang, he traveled with a theater company. That stage background suits a character skilled at adopting fake personas and lying with…
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Baccarat shoes hold up to eight standard decks of cards
That’s 416 cards, fed one at a time from a plastic shoe to cut shuffling time.
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How Half-Life faked its famous train ride
The engine couldn't move a player inside a vehicle, so developers kept Gordon inside an invisible box and moved the world backward to create the illusion of…
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White chess pieces move first on every single standard board
There’s no coin toss: the fixed rule gives White the opening initiative, before either player has moved a piece.
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The card suit called spades has a name connected to swords
English inherited the name through the Italian spade, meaning swords, while using the French suit symbol known as pique. Names and symbols came through…
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Punch-boards leave thousands of tons of tiny scrap waste
Punching cardboard tokens out of their frames leaves skeletal sheets behind. Glue layers can make the leftover material difficult to recycle.
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Fall Guys beans simulate extremely clumsy soft bodies
Their top-heavy shape and awkward collisions make even a small bump send them tumbling.
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Legal disclaimers covering the entire back of the box
On many game boxes, screenshots and plot summaries get squeezed into a corner while copyright and trademark text fills the rest.
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Why coin pushers keep coins from sliding off
A slightly raised lip makes coins climb over one another instead of sliding cleanly off the edge. That creates friction and leaves the pile teetering in place.
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The office simulator where you can smash everything
Set in a future where robots recreate jobs as an amusement park, Job Simulator lets you ignore the assigned tasks and throw a coffee mug at a monitor or smash…
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Clue board corridors trap players in the corners
The board's awkward corridors make it slow to cross between rooms on dice alone, so the corner passages can be a quicker route.
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