Games
Discover facts about games. Small discoveries that change the way you see familiar things.
Games
Shigeru Miyamoto drew the core inspiration for The Legend of Zelda from his childhood experiences of wandering around the countryside near his home in Kyoto and bravely exploring dark, unknown caves with a lantern.
Shigeru Miyamoto drew the core inspiration for The Legend of Zelda from his childhood experiences of wandering around the countryside near his home in Kyoto…
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Assassin's Creed origins developers discovered that their incredibly detailed horse-riding mechanics were completely broken because the animals kept twitching violently during motion capture sessions.
Assassin's Creed origins developers discovered that their incredibly detailed horse-riding mechanics were completely broken because the animals kept twitching…
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Barbie Fashion Designer was the first wildly successful game marketed explicitly to young girls, selling over half a million copies in its first two months in 1996 and completely outpacing Doom and Quake.
Barbie Fashion Designer was the first wildly successful game marketed explicitly to young girls, selling over half a million copies in its first two months in…
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Super Mario actually breaks blocks with his fist and not his head, a detail hidden in plain sight since the original 1985 instruction manual.
Super Mario actually breaks blocks with his fist and not his head, a detail hidden in plain sight since the original 1985 instruction manual. For decades,…
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Long before it featured those iconic red and white plastic pegs, Battleship was a rudimentary pencil and paper game played by actual Russian officers prior to World War I.
Long before it featured those iconic red and white plastic pegs, Battleship was a rudimentary pencil and paper game played by actual Russian officers prior to…
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Shigeru Miyamoto and his development team famously designed all the original levels for Super Mario Bros entirely on pieces of graph paper before programming a single line of code.
Shigeru Miyamoto and his development team famously designed all the original levels for Super Mario Bros entirely on pieces of graph paper before programming…
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Billy Mitchell achieved the first perfect score in Pac-Man in 1999 by navigating two hundred and fifty-five boards without losing a single life and eating every dot, fruit, and…
Billy Mitchell achieved the first perfect score in Pac-Man in 1999 by navigating two hundred and fifty-five boards without losing a single life and eating…
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Boxer8 launched a Kickstarter campaign in 2012 for the Ouya, an open-source Android gaming console that raised over eight million dollars on the promise of revolutionizing the…
Boxer8 launched a Kickstarter campaign in 2012 for the Ouya, an open-source Android gaming console that raised over eight million dollars on the promise of…
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Shigeru Miyamoto and his team revolutionized 3D gaming with Super Mario 64, but navigating the new dimension required an entirely new mechanic, leading to the creation of Lakitu…
Shigeru Miyamoto and his team revolutionized 3D gaming with Super Mario 64, but navigating the new dimension required an entirely new mechanic, leading to the…
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Nokia released the N-Gage in 2003 as a desperate attempt to merge a cell phone with a handheld gaming console, requiring users to completely remove the battery just to change the game cartridge.
Nokia released the N-Gage in 2003 as a desperate attempt to merge a cell phone with a handheld gaming console, requiring users to completely remove the…
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Blizzard's release of StarCraft in 1998 triggered such a massive cultural phenomenon in South Korea that it basically birthed the entire concept of modern esports, complete with…
Blizzard's release of StarCraft in 1998 triggered such a massive cultural phenomenon in South Korea that it basically birthed the entire concept of modern…
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Skyrim players spent years spreading an elaborate internet rumor that the game's famous arrow in the knee quote was actually ancient Norse slang for getting married and settling down.
Skyrim players spent years spreading an elaborate internet rumor that the game's famous arrow in the knee quote was actually ancient Norse slang for getting…
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Resident Evil was originally conceived as a simple modern remake of a virtually unknown nineteen-eighty-nine psychological horror game called Sweet Home.
Resident Evil was originally conceived as a simple modern remake of a virtually unknown nineteen-eighty-nine psychological horror game called Sweet Home.…
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Clue was invented in 1943 by an English musician named Anthony E.
Clue was invented in 1943 by an English musician named Anthony E. Pratt during the suffocating boredom of World War II air raid blackouts, serving as a grim…
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Barbie for the original Nintendo Entertainment System features a soundtrack composed by Mark Van Hecke, who inexplicably reused the intensely creepy music he had previously written for A Nightmare on Elm Street.
Barbie for the original Nintendo Entertainment System features a soundtrack composed by Mark Van Hecke, who inexplicably reused the intensely creepy music he…
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Doom was programmed so efficiently in 1993 that modern tech enthusiasts have made it a running internet joke to port the legendary demon-slaying shooter onto literally any…
Doom was programmed so efficiently in 1993 that modern tech enthusiasts have made it a running internet joke to port the legendary demon-slaying shooter onto…
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Katsuya Eguchi explicitly created the original Animal Crossing as a weird sociological tool to help lonely Japanese salarymen feel connected to their families despite their crushing work hours.
Katsuya Eguchi explicitly created the original Animal Crossing as a weird sociological tool to help lonely Japanese salarymen feel connected to their families…
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Nintendo’s D-pad design boxed out competitors
Hardware competitors had to create absolute monstrosities like circular discs and segmented buttons for decades. The cross design was legally locked down,…
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Realistic water could melt your computer
Accurately simulating liquid requires calculating the flow and refraction of countless particles. Most creators just slap a shiny blue texture on a flat plane…
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High mouse DPI settings make cursors uncontrollable
Dots per inch measures how far the cursor moves based on physical input. Cranking it up to twenty thousand means shifting your wrist a millimeter will…
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Why racing-style gaming chairs can hurt your back
Bucket seats were designed to keep racecar drivers from flying out the window during tight turns. Slapping them onto wheels for someone sitting stationary at…
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The sky in video games may be a painted box
That stunning sunset over the distant mountains is entirely fake. The entire level is encased inside a massive digital box with a panoramic image plastered on…
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Server tick rates dictate exact responsive precision
A server updates the environment state a specific number of times per second. If the tick rate is low, you will swear you dodged an attack, but the server…
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Why movies add light streaks your eyes never see
Human eyes do not produce cinematic streaks of light when looking at the sun. Creators specifically add artificial lens flares to simulate the effect of…
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