Games
Discover facts about games. Small discoveries that change the way you see familiar things.
Games
A nursery rhyme acquired a plague story long afterward
The familiar explanation of Ring Around the Rosie connects flowers, sneezing, and falling down with epidemic death. Folklorists trace that interpretation to…
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Pokémon almost had a very different name
Satoshi Tajiri first pitched “Capsule Monsters,” inspired by Japanese gashapon toys, but struggled to trademark the name. The title became “Pocket Monsters,”…
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Ceramic chips generate higher frequency acoustics than plastic
Ceramic tokens' denser structure makes them ping when they collide, rather than thud like plastic.
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Jet Set Radio heavily popularized cel-shaded comic styles
Its graffiti-tagging skaters were rendered with bold outlines and flat, cartoon-like colors, helping make cel shading a recognizable video-game look.
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Orthographic rendering mathematically removes perspective
It renders distant and nearby objects at the same scale, so they don't shrink with distance as they do in perspective rendering.
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Why gamers keep admiring their character mid-game
After spending hours customizing a character, players may pause mid-game to admire the result—and sometimes walk off a cliff.
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In Super Monkey Ball, you tilt the whole world
You steer by tilting the level itself, not the monkey's sphere, so gravity rolls him across the platform.
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Post match loser interviews structured to be awkward
The questions can come moments after a devastating loss, with bright lights and a microphone waiting before the athlete has had time to process it.
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Amnesia can tell you you're being chased before you dare look back
In The Dark Descent, a harsh alarm-like sound accompanies a monster pursuing Daniel. It gives the player urgent information without requiring a safe view of…
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Wordle began as a gift for one crossword-loving partner
Josh Wardle made the daily game for his crossword-loving girlfriend; it later became part of millions of people’s morning routines on Twitter.
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In Katamari, cleaning up means rolling up continents
The cleanup starts with tiny objects like paper clips and loose change, then scales up to rolling entire continents into a ball for the cosmic king.
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Why a hundred-sided die takes forever to stop
With 100 tiny facets, the die behaves more like a golf ball than a cube. It can keep rolling for a long time before friction finally stops it.
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Hopping diagonally on colorful cubes while swearing loudly
Q*bert's isometric pyramid made diagonal jumps central to play. When he fell, a symbol-filled speech bubble stood in for his profanity.
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Minecraft's enchanted armor wears its upgrade on the outside
Enchanted equipment has a moving glint that distinguishes it from ordinary gear. The shimmer is a visual signal, not light thrown into the surroundings.…
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Doom chainsaws require gasoline to continuously operate
Even on futuristic installations, the marine's main melee weapon can run out of gas, forcing players to scavenge for bright red fuel canisters.
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Build orders require exact timing down to the literal second
In real-time strategy games, a second barracks at 3:00 instead of 2:40 can throw off the timing of later steps and the economy behind them.
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Crash Bandicoot collects fruit to gain extra lives
In the game, every 100 floating apples earns Crash an extra life.
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Why some PlayStation owners turned them upside down
Some early consoles developed worn plastic supports in the optical pickup mechanism, leaving the laser poorly aligned with the disc. Players found that…
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Nintendo was making playing cards before electronic games existed
The company began in Kyoto in 1889 producing hanafuda cards decorated with seasonal imagery. Its earliest products were small physical objects used to play…
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Polyominoes dictate strict tile packing mathematics
A five-square piece cannot fit into a four-square space without overlapping or being cut: it has one more unit square than the space.
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The musician behind Sonic's unforgettable sound
The studio hired the bassist from the Japanese band Dreams Come True to compose the bouncy synth tracks that became Sonic's signature sound.
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Essential movement keys fade entirely from keyboards
After hundreds of hours of frantic strafing, the movement keys can wear down until their letters disappear, leaving polished blank squares.
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The secret code that put blood back in Mortal Kombat
Nintendo changed the blood to gray “sweat” on the SNES, while Sega hid the gore behind the code A-B-A-C-A-B-B.
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Shiny glowing objects signify extreme importance
In games and other visual media, a glow makes important objects—like a key needed to advance—hard to miss.
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