I love useless game facts. Honestly I just love collecting useless facts about pretty much anything. So I decided that I would once again go out and scour the interwebs for another useless game facts article. Why you ask? Because who doesn’t like being able to trump their friends at parties or gaming events. Hell, you may even need this stuff at a midnight release somewhere, someday. It may win you money on Jeopardy. Probably not, but you just never know.
Half-Life 2
Originally, there was supposed to be a friendly alien that followed Gordon Freeman around in Half-Life 2 .Why would he be following Gordon around? To eat the bodies of the fallen enemies that Gordon had slaughtered, of course. The only real problem occurred when the folks at Valve tried to hammer out the programing for such a sidekick. Apparently it was just too much of an undertaking and the character was removed from the final version.
Scary Trash Bags
Back when Rockstar Games decided to create a game called Manhunt , there was going to be an enemy named Binbag. Binbag was a raging psychopathic character with a thirst for blood and violence. But somewhere along the way, the team at Rockstar became a little less engaged in the idea of Binbag. It’s most likely because he was a psycho killer dressed in black trash bags and that’s it.
Hit Me Like a Bomb
Speaking of characters removed from Rockstar games, The character named Darkel was removed from Grand Theft Auto 3 following the events of September 11th, 2001. The main reason for his ostracism from the game was that he was a homeless guy who ran around blowing things up by planting explosives inside buildings and using vehicles as rolling bombs as well.
A Link to the Sims
Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening has a host of memorable characters. So it’s no surprise that this one may have passed unnoticed to gamers who are unfamiliar with the Sims franchise. Dr. Wright shows up inside one of the many houses that Link can enter. Interestingly enough, Dr. Wright is actually named after Will Wright, who just happens to be the creator of the Sims series of games.
Not Real Enough
Back when the team behind Okami was trying to figure out how the game was going to look, yes they had to go through this process because the original game was supposed to look realistic but the PS2’s hardware couldn’t handle it, they ultimately stumbled upon the artsy and stylistic version we know and love. But don’t fret. If you ever want to see what the game could have looked like, all you need to do is finish the game and you unlock a video of the original concept.
Yep, It Really Almost Happened
When Nintendo was looking to create a new type of gaming platform, they looked to none other than electronics giant Sony. The funny end to this story is that Sony developed a disc-based platform for Nintendo but it was unimpressive to a company that had made its name building the cartridge game empire brick by brick. So Sony decided that, rather than wasting the manpower hours and design concept, they released it as the Sony PlayStation. And the rest, as they say, is history.
Flushed Away
Does anyone remember the early trailer for Metal Gear Solid: Sons of Liberty ? There was a quick scene in that trailer where Snake is running away from a wall of water to try and escape the sinking tanker in the first mission. Did you ever wonder what happened with that? Hideo Kojima decided to axe that scene of gameplay. He said that, while it looked incredible and was a very intense moment, it just wasn’t that fun to play.
Big In Japan
It’s hard to believe that Western game developers had never broken into the top ten of Japan’s video game charts until 2006. The first Western developed game to hit the Japanese charts was none other than Gears of War . It made its debut at number seven on the Japanese charts. This of course was two full years after the Japanese release of the Xbox 360. The funny part is that it only sold 33,000 copies to hit that mark.
Devil May Care
The Resident Evil series has gone through some serious changes over the years, but I guarantee you that you would never have guessed that Devil May Cry was actually supposed to be a chapter in the Resident Evil saga. Interestingly enough, the bullet juggle that Dante made famous was actually a glitch that the development team fell in love with and ultimately built Dante’s move sets around.
The Sonic Genome Project
SEGA’s blue blur is actually famous for something much more Earth-shattering and far less video-gamey. Sonic the Hedgehog used to be the name for the 7th Chromosome of the Human Genome. No kidding, it really was. Well, at least it was until recently when the scientists behind the human genome project decided to lose the ‘silly’ names that they had used as working titles for each chromosome and exchanged them for names that sounded more sciency and important. I mean, who wants to win a Nobel prize for discovering the human chromosome Sonic the Hedgehog, right?