DYKG's Best Videos of 2020

[Music] did you know one of shigeru miyamoto's earliest influences for super mario 64 came from watching his pet hamster wander around his room this experience likely influenced not only the size of mario 64's stages but its free roaming camera as well he was also inspired by miniature train sets and dioramas but miyamoto's first thoughts about a 3d mario came years earlier while working on the original star fox his team experimented with a prototype based on the snes super fx chip but the technology just wasn't there yet it ended up taking five more years for miyamoto's vision to become a reality mario 64 was the first nintendo 64 game to enter development in fact work began long before the n64 actually existed so the developers started by making prototypes on a computer and keyboard they didn't have a proper controller for the next six months so they modified some sega controllers for testing these controllers were likely xe1 ap sega genesis controllers which had an analog stick years before the n64 playstation or sega saturn were even conceived about 100 different n64 controllers were developed by nintendo rnd3 and each controller was tested with mario 64 to see if it was up to scratch according to r d3's manager genyo takeda they became more ambitious with each new controller even prototyping a motion sensor wristwatch the watch worked so well that they actually filed for a patent however when the wristwatch was playtested by a focus group full of kids they were confused by how it worked in the end r d3 had to abandon the idea did you know gaming asked mario 64 programmer giles goddard about the prototype controllers and if there was anything memorable from nintendo's tests goddard said there was one prototype joystick i worked on that stood out it was made by a uk company i think and it had the ability to programmatically constrict movement in two axes i thought we could use it to give force feedback or to give texture to certain movements but when i made some test demos with it it felt more like it was stuck on something instead still it was way ahead of its time as there was no such thing as haptics back then ultimately they settled on the n64 controller we know today even though miyamoto was still dissatisfied with it and actually wanted a second d-pad instead of the c buttons the game started out as just mario running around an empty grid with the next character added being mips the rabbit from there the team spent months just perfecting mario's movements and the game's camera ironing out these fundamentals before they built even a single stage assistant director yoshiaki koizumi made nearly 250 different mario animations about 50 of which got cut including a somersault that probably broke mario's fall after a long drop a few animations didn't get cut but ended up virtually useless like the crouching trip kick which koizumi says he made for beating specific enemies that never got programmed into the game to test out different camera systems developers ran experiments like creating a mountain and having marion mips race to the summit then switching the camera and going again they tested out thousands of different camera systems having it locked having it move having it so the player controlled it entirely and so on there was one programmer whose whole job was just working on the camera system and one day he finally came up with a camera miyamoto was happy with but it wasn't long before a nintendo lawyer ran upstairs and told them sega had a patent for switching cameras which sent shockwaves through the entire office they investigated what sort of legal consequences they might face by using sega's patent but ultimately decided to throw caution to the wind and use it anyway praying they wouldn't get sued and they never did mario's face on the game's title screen was originally made for a prototype of mario paint 3d which ultimately released as mario artist paint studio on the 64 dd the game's main menu has an interesting origin as well it's directly based on an sgi graphics demo called buttonfly sgi machines were used to make n64 games and the machine's tools clearly had an influence on how mario 64 was made another influence for mario 64 was licensed asset packs nintendo used sound libraries from the company's sound ideas which can be heard prominently in early versions of the game some early clips used samples of looney tunes actor mel blanc for mario's voice [Music] the game's art director was also influenced by these asset packs several researchers have come countless archives and asset packs to find mario 64's original textures many of mario 64's textures come from the japanese material dictionary datacraft series which have hundreds of photos of natural and man-made objects this use of stock imagery might also be why the background of the shifting sand land features the great pyramids of giza and why the wet dry world uses a photo of casares spain many textures also come from sgi workstations the game was developed on such as the texture from metal mario when it came time to build a mushroom kingdom stages were designed on a fixed path with a flagpole at the end just like classic 2d mario stages but the team decided it'd be more fun if players could wander around freely like miyamoto's hamster exploring his room so they replaced the flagpoles with a series of stars this also freed up cartridge space and reduced the level design workload the designers didn't use blueprints when making levels instead adding and subtracting from levels until they felt right the first stage made was bob battlefield which originally had a river running through it but when the team playtested it they realized the river's current was too strong and could be frustrating so they drained all the water and left a dry valley in its place programmer hajime ajima wanted stages to have destructible terrain which the game would remember one example he gave was the player destroying a block and the game remembering the block was gone for the entire playthrough according to programmer giles goddard half the team was focused on developing while the other half just focused on playtesting they even brought in some children including miyamoto's own son to play test babam battlefield and see what they thought as a director miyamoto was happy to see the kids were all having fun but as a parent he was concerned to see his son trying to run up an unclimbable hill over and over again after a few dozen attempts miyamoto started to wonder about his son's intelligence a couple months later co-director takashi tezuka told nintendo power they'd already made 32 stages and the final game might even have 40 plus bonus areas like the princess's secret slide however the stage count ended up being scaled back and the final game only had 15 stages the overall difficulty was dialed back too according to miyamoto there was a change late in development which made gaps easier to jump than in 2d marios as the team worried players might have a hard time judging distances in 3d this provoked a lot of booing from the staff who felt strongly that the game's difficulty should remain intact a large portion of mario 64's development overlapped with the production of the legend of zelda ocarina of time resulting in lots of ideas originally meant for one game getting switched to the other mario 64 had more puzzles than any previous game in the series with areas like shifting sandland's pyramid feeling more like a zelda dungeon than the mushroom kingdom that's because many puzzles were actually made for ocarina of time but were moved over to mario due to its development being behind schedule taking assets from zelda and putting them in mario 64 was an easy way to speed up development even the castle system itself was initially meant for zelda but got repurposed for peach's castle the nintendo 64 and its three launch titles were originally scheduled to release at christmas 1995 but the launch date was delayed twice so miyamoto had more time to flesh out mario 64. when the game finally launched in june 1996 critics praised it for setting a new standard in gaming it eventually sold 12 million copies making it the best-selling n64 game ever and spawned a whole generation of copycats a long-running trend miyamoto chalked up to nintendo's culture he said i believe we are not making japanese games but are making kyoto games the taste of a kyoto game is different from that of a tokyo game weak yodawites hate to follow the fashion but rather love to set the fashion we really did want to change the culture of gaming then it was in that spirit that we made mario 64. in miyamoto's view this explains nintendo's devotion to innovation and forging their own path while sega and sony's tokyo-based competition always left them following the trends despite all the delays mario 64 actually had the quickest development cycle of any game in the series and the stress took a heavy toll on nintendo's staff the entire game was made by just 15 people and afterwards two of them were so burnt out they quit programming and never worked on another video game ever again it was the end of an era for miyamoto as well mario 64 was the last time he sat on the director's chair in the 25 years since he's only worked as a producer supervising the work of directors and their teams when mario 64 first launched in japan it cost 9 800 yen roughly 100 us dollars miyamoto wins at the price tag and went on record saying mario 64 should have been closer to 60 dollars which ultimately became the price when it launched in america three months later the american version fixed some bugs and had other small updates like mario saying hello on the start screen and rambling in his sleep about spaghetti and ravioli in the original japanese version the princess didn't talk at all for the american update they added the voice of leslie swann the senior editor of nintendo power magazine and also had her localized the game's text 10 months later japan got their own update of mario 64 the rumble pack compatible version shindopaku tayo as the name implies the biggest update was a new rumble feature which stayed exclusive to japan the updates from the us version were brought over as well with more bug fixes the developers also let players summon 40 copies of mario's face on the game's title screen but even after all the updates and extra development months miyamoto still wished he had more time mario was the first game developed for the n64 so the team hadn't figured out how to take full advantage of the technology ultimately lots of content was cut including three separate modes incorporating luigi one was a split screen mode where mario and luigi started on opposite ends of the castle and ended up meeting in the middle another mode was more like a traditional co-op with a camera pulling back to fit both players on one screen earlier versions of the game were even called ultra 64 mario brothers referencing luigi's inclusion and the n64's original name the ultra 64. due to programming difficulties luigi got cut just months before mario 64 hit store shelves the team tried to make up for it by adding a mario bros style mini game with luigi but this was cut as the n64 was only bundled with one controller making multiplayer a rarity for most players at launch immediately after wrapping up mario 64 miyamoto started talking about a sequel in may 1996 he told reporters i couldn't put everything into super mario 64 that i really wanted so we've decided to continue working toward a sequel which will take about a year and a half at least for super mario 64 i believe we have utilized only 60 percent of the whole capacity of the n64 technology he later dubbed the sequel mario 128 and told fans a prototype was sitting on his desk that had luigi as a playable character but he wasn't satisfied just bringing back cut content from mario 64 and was exploring 4-player split screen like in mario kart 64. the sequel would change the gameplay add more enemies and retool the presentation miyamoto wanted to shake off mario's just for kids image by ditching his then iconic peace sign and having him stop smiling and laughing so much for no good reason he even did an interview in japanese playboy weekly to hype it up telling playboy that mario 128 would offer a fresh new experience but in the end the sequel was never finished and footage of it was never made public all the cut content from mario 64 along with all miyamoto's brand new ideas were either recycled into other games or left on the chopping block did you know speedrunning's earliest beginnings can be traced back to activision's 1980 atari 2600 game dragster not only was dragster one of the first commercial video games based entirely on beating a timer but the game's instruction manual also challenged players to achieve a time of under six seconds anyone who sent activision a picture of their sub six second time would join the company's world class dragster club making it the first video game included in a speedrunning contest as well the concept of speed running would resurface for the 1990 nintendo world championships according to the competition's rules players had 6 minutes and 21 seconds to achieve the highest score possible across super mario brothers rad racer and tetris there were also score multipliers for example collecting 50 coins in super mario brothers gave a times 1 score multiplier completing the course in rad racer granted a times 10 multiplier and getting a high score in tetris gave a times 25 multiplier eric omnigamer coziel author of speedrun science commented on the event's impact kosiol wrote doing even reasonably well in tetris would dwarf your combined score from the other two games the strategy became to complete super mario brothers and rad racer as quickly as possible the final time limit also spurred competitors to play for speed and tetris the nintendo world championships had unintentionally included all the makings of a modern speedrun learning the fundamentals behind your targeted games and mechanics exploring strategies for optimizing the time taken coming up with the best route and then finally performing that route however speed running wouldn't truly take off until the release of doom doom's contribution to the speed running scene came from it featuring saveable gameplay demos in short a demo is a timed recording of every single input all saved in order to a file the demo file can then be reloaded into the game where it's played back effectively producing a perfect recording demo files were commonly used in arcade games to record gameplay footage for attract modes but doom became one of the first games where players could make share and play back these demos this was groundbreaking as video capture and encoding tech was virtually non-existent at the time for hobbyists the demo files as small size also made them easy to share online which was essential due to the limited internet speeds of the time the team behind doom decided to include demos late in development largely for kicks and had no idea what impacted leave on the gaming community doom designer and coder john romero recalled we thought that demos would be shared for skillful play and we thought it'd be for showing really cool death matches but we didn't think about it for speedrunning in particular because speedrunning was not a thing we hooked into the game as a special way of playing it speedrunning was just a concept and it wasn't a big thing back then either it's something that some people did but it was very rare following doom's release a few online communities formed around sharing demos many demos were shared for bragging rights which led to the creation of challenge runs some were straightforward such as beating any level with 100 kills whereas others were more obtuse like the tyson challenge this challenge requires players to get 100 kills using only fists chainsaw the pistol or the berserk power up when simply achieving these challenges was no longer impressive players began to compete on who could complete them fastest romero stated speed demonstrates your skill at the game so you got 100 kills and how fast you didn't shoot anything with the pistol but how fast did you get it done so speed was always the highest ranked thing without the score being any part of it this is because it spoke to your knowledge of the game and how good you were anybody could achieve things slowly but that's not competitive one of the most important websites born during this time was compete n which had an online leaderboard for all the doom challenges players devised furthermore each challenge was categorized and graded on speed and runs could be easily submitted verified and watched by gamers from around the world these features led competent to become the first major organized speedrunning community in history doom's speedrunning scene continued to grow from there but the next step in the sport came from another id software game in 1996 quake much like doom quake allowed players to save and share demo files and once again online communities formed around sharing these demos among these websites was nightmare speed demos which hosted speed runs exclusively in the game's nightmare difficulty setting however the website's creator a speedrunner known as nolan radix fluge and various members of his community found bigger aspirations at the time most demos only recorded speed runs of single levels but radix and three other speed runners banded together to create a single demo file speed running the entirety of quake this was done by stitching together the demo files of the best individual runs for every level in the game to create a complete quick speed run known as quake done quick radix said there was a team of four of us that did the first quake done quick movie in early 1997. as a team we came up with all kinds of tricks that i don't think an individual would have then we did quake done quicker a few months later and then quake done quick with a vengeance came a few years after that eventually the nightmare speed demos quake done quick and other quake speed running communities banded together under a new website dubbed speed demos archive in the website continued to serve as the major quick speed running hub in the following years but speed demos archive eventually spread its wings with the help of retro studios as metroid prime in 2002. radix was a huge super metroid fan who sent his best completion times to nintendo power in his youth and was enamored by the metroid prime community on gamefaqs the board found several tricks and sequence breaks to play the game faster this along with the metroid 2k2 community pushed radix to complete a metroid prime speed run radix said so i decided gosh i have this device i can use to capture video i'm going to record myself playing metroid prime and see how fast i can do it after about 3 months i had completed my speed run and my time was 1 hour and 37 minutes so i thought well now i have to publish this but youtube didn't exist i did have this site called speed demos archive and that's nice and generic it doesn't say anything about quake in there so i thought i'll just post it there not only was his metroid prime speed run 30 minutes faster than the prior best run but it was also publicly available via direct feed video on a website with enough bandwidth to easily host it for all to enjoy although radix originally just decided to host the run on his website out of convenience the decision paved the way for a new age of speedrunning following the run's immense popularity speed demos archive began to accept runs from games besides quake while other speed running communities had their own websites typically focusing on a single gamer series speed demos archive became the major hub of the speedrunning scene for both pc and console games alike the next chapter in the speedrunning scene came from japan after a gamer under the name morimoto published a time attack video of super mario brothers 3 online that took the internet by storm in 2003 the impressive speed run used perfect jumps and glitches without a single mistake beating the entire game in 11 minutes and three seconds flat however morimoto later updated the description of the video stating the run had been achieved using speed hacks to slow the game down and that they used countless emulator save states to achieve the result this would be known today as a tool-assisted speed run or tas according to speedrunner pj de caesar the reveal proved to be polarizing stating morimoto's run was world shaking when it came out it was like what you can beat this game in 11 minutes that's crazy i just thought it was the coolest thing and i was interested in watching more videos like it then the classic misconception of tasses came out boo he didn't play the game he just stitched together a video frame by frame in all actuality morimoto's run was far from the first task ever created a website simply named tool-assisted speed runs collecting such runs from games like doom and others existed 4 years earlier in 1999 however the popularity of morimoto's runs spread awareness of the speedrunning scene and opened up a new world of possibilities to speedrunners of the day as emulators continued to grow improve and become more accessible into the mid 2000s so did the task scene advancements like frame counters frame advancing memory viewers lag counters input editing and more gave rise to better and better tasses as the year went on although the tas and speedrunning scenes got off to a rocky start at first relations warmed over time task video co-owner adela cat wrote morimoto's task was often misunderstood to be a real speedrun i think this led to speedrunner's initial impression of tasses as deceptive and cheating i think better understanding has made that friction largely go away tases often serve as research and the proof of concept movies that speedrunners can take adapt and practice in the early days speed running wasn't very collaborative these days everyone is sharing ideas with everyone else it truly is a communal effort everyone wants to see the best possible real-time and task movies and do what they can to contribute meanwhile the decision to open speedrun demos archived to any game quickly caused issues radix who ran the site by himself at the time was unable to confirm whether or not speed runs for games he wasn't familiar with were legitimate or used some kind of cheat this initially forced radix to only accept runs for games he personally knew such as quake doom half-life super metroid super mario brothers and the legend of zelda ocarina of time regardless even with this limited list radix struggled to keep up with the onslaught of runs that were constantly sent his way thus the verification process was born allowing others in the community familiar with the game to confirm if the run was legit or not during this time rules were established for what was and wasn't allowed in runs and how runs were ranked on the archive some significant decisions included determining speedrunning categories for each game only accepting direct game capture thereby denying runs that used a camera pointed at the tv screen and timing runs from the instant a player gained control of their character until they've lost it at the end of the game these rules have continued to evolve over the years alongside advances in technology and the speedrunning scene overall although improvements in emulation internet speeds and video capture technology help speedrunning become more accessible to more people the impact these advancements had on the popularity of speedrunning paled in comparison to the dawn of live streaming as live streaming took off in the late 2000s and into the 2010s speedrunning rapidly transformed from a solitary hobby where runners spent weeks alone perfecting runs to a spectator sport eric coziel wrote chat services accompanying most broadcasts enable direct interaction between runners and viewers with questions and comments breaking up the sometimes tedious task of grinding away at a run speed runs themselves were still largely personal projects but the act of finishing them was made that much more pleasant by sharing it with others on the flip side this loosened speed demos archives as dominance in the speed running scene over the years runners who didn't like the website's rules or couldn't stand waiting for their run to be approved found instant gratification by streaming records online in fact as many runners developed fan bases to support them during record attempts streaming rapidly became closely tied to the act of speedrunning itself according to coziel anyone who ran games was almost expected to stream as well but speed demos archive wasn't done turning the speed running community on its head quite yet as the website or rather its community led the charge into the next evolution of the scene marathons the speed demos archive community weren't the first to come up with the idea that honor goes to a group of speedrunners under the name the speed gamers who were inspired by desert bus for hope an event by comedy troupe loading ready run where members live-streamed a marathon of the mini-game desert bus for charity in march 2008 the speed gamers blasted through every single mainline zelda game within three days live to raise money for saint jude's children's research hospital in the first speed run marathon ever the speed gamers followed this up with seven more live marathons over the next two years although while each event proved to be successful they failed to break into the mainstream nevertheless the idea inspired the speed demos archives is community including site administrator mikuyama uyama recalled in summer of 2009 people on the forum saw the speed gamers as marathons and the community went we should do these marathons ourselves when i stepped in i said whoa this is a good idea but we need to give it some focus from here uyama decided the event should take place at the already established gaming convention magfest and that the game should focus on 8-bit and 16-bit games this led to the name classic games done quick unfortunately despite the group's best efforts last-minute internet issues with the magfest's hotel ultimately forced uyama to cancel his convention plans and stream the event out of his mother's basement regardless classic games done quick managed to raise 10 531 dollars for charity over january 1st to the 3rd of 2010 next in 2011 the group returned under the new name awesome games done quick allowing modern games into the marathon the event was also extended to five days this time around the team managed to raise 52 519 nearly five times as much as the year prior after this success they were hooked uyama stated right after the event there was this realization that hey this was really fun it had a real magic that speedrunning didn't have before let's do it again i've made a lot of mistakes from each marathon because there's always a growth and learning process but i've also had a lot of success and grown the community a lot because each marathon gets bigger and bigger the organization reached a turning point at the awesome games done quick 2014 marking the first time charity donations broke into seven figures with a total of one million thirty one thousand six hundred sixty five dollars as well as the first time spectating attendees outnumbered speedrunners today games done quick attracts thousands of attendees hundreds of thousands of live viewers online and millions of dollars every year the numbers have continued to grow annually with fifty thousand donors banding together giving three million thirty nine thousand five hundred ninety six dollars at summer games done quick 2019 speedrunnings evolution hasn't ended with marathons either the streaming age has helped many new and unique forms of speedrunning flourish such as speedrun races at its core speed run racing pits two or more speedrunners against one another to see who can beat a game the fastest in a single sitting this brings a whole new dynamic to speedrunning as restarting a run brings a heavy price making certain tricks and glitches incredibly risky while the speed run racing scene is still somewhat new a number of variations have already emerged there are multi-game speed runs where speedrunners race through a number of games in succession to see who can beat them all the fastest there's also blind speed run racing where runners don't know and often haven't even played the games they race on as well as randomized runs where runners go through a classic game that's been modded typically randomly switching out the locations of power-ups speed running has come a long way from its humble origins and its future looks bright koziel concluded i don't ever see speedrunning dying off the activity will continue to grow and change but the competitive drive at its core is part of human nature so long as humans are driven by a need to develop and improve skills there will always be room to add a timer on top to measure just how well it can be done [Music] did you know wind waker could have had a sequel on the game boy advance davides soliani is best known today as the director of mario and rabbids kingdom battle as well as the guy who cried when miyamoto acknowledged his hard work on the game but david's connection to miyamoto actually began 15 years earlier when he heard the legendary designer was visiting his hometown of milan italy after spending several days investigating which hotel miyamoto was staying in davide camped out 10 hours in the rain just to get a chance to meet him when wind waker hit store shelves a year later davide loved it so much he spent a month developing a wind waker sequel on gba nowadays he's ubisoft milan's creative director but back then he was a humble designer working on games like rayman and tomb raider and didn't have nearly as much clout as he does today so when he pitched a graphical prototype of zelda to the managing and studio directors they decided to kill the project before nintendo ever got a chance to see it davide's partner on the wind waker sequel was ubisoft artist fabio pagetti who told us a little more about how the pitch was born and why it got axed spaghetti said we were both in love with wind waker and nintendo handhelds were the major focus of ubisoft milan at the time so davide and i were wondering how wind waker would look on gba we were always talking and tinkering together about possible concepts and pitches for the studio and this looked like such a nice fit eventually i prepared this visual mock-up and we also worked on some 3d test scenes but we never got the opportunity to pitch the game to nintendo the idea of presenting it to nintendo probably scared ubisoft but maybe the game exists in some other fold of the multiverse according to davide and fabio the prototype and videos they pitched unfortunately no longer exist unless they're stuck on a hard drive somewhere so all that remains is this single image davide and fabio didn't know it but nintendo was working on a sequel of their own at the exact same time unfortunately nintendo's attempt was cancelled as well when wind waker launched in 2002 its reception failed to live up to nintendo's expectations and the game only ended up selling half as many copies as ocarina of time according to wind waker's director a.g aunoma his team spent the following year in the planning stages and early development for wind waker 2 but ultimately abandoned the idea of a cel-shaded sequel primarily due to financial concerns there are far more zelda fans in the west than there are in japan and nintendo of america made it clear that americans wanted a more realistic zelda and something closer to ocarina of time according to aonuma right after wind waker released we were considering a toon shaded sequel but a year later we settled on a more realistic approach i was told the tune shading gave the impression that wind waker was for a younger audience and that it was alienating the older teenagers that made up most of the fan base after hearing that i started to worry if wind waker 2 was something that would actually sell so the only thing we could do was give the american market the zelda they were asking for in the 2016 hardcover publication the legend of zelda art and artifacts designer manager satoru takazawa provided a little more insight on the direction wind waker 2 was headed before its development changed course he said the proposed setting for wind waker 2 was not on the sea but on land the desire to depict toon link on a horse riding around the great plains was great however with his small stature and short arms and legs it would have been difficult to make him look good on a horse it wasn't like we could make an adult version of toon link and that was about the time we heard that people were wanting a realistic looking zelda game again development was quickly redirected to be more in line with ocarina of time and although toon link did eventually return on the nintendo ds he never got a chance to ride a horse on the big screen as nintendo originally envisioned after three more years in development twilight princess released in 2006. it turned out nintendo of america was right realistic zelda sold more than twice as many copies as wind waker nintendo decided to capitalize on the game's success with a direct sequel just like they'd done on the nintendo 64. according to miyamoto the terrain created for twilight princess was vast i really thought there was more we could do with it so after we finished with the development of twilight princess i talked to the staff about whether or not we could do a side story with a big series like zelda we usually only release a new version every three to five years but we thought it'd be great to make something for those people that really enjoy twilight princess where they'd be able to keep playing in the same world the zelda team started pre-production on a majora style sequel but the idea miyamoto chose in the end was a small side story based on the wii zapper the zelda team was shocked when they heard miyamoto's decision as it meant killing all the big ideas they'd started working on some felt strongly he wasn't making the right call so miyamoto proposed a compromise they'd make a prototype for the zapper side story and have it play tested and if the focus group didn't like it the zelda team wouldn't have to make the zapper game the focus group ended up loving the prototype and the project ultimately evolved into link's crossbow training but miyamoto's team kept pushing to make it bigger so we ended up making a list of rules the developers couldn't add anything unnecessary to the game's simple concept and every stage had to be shorter than 3 minutes there couldn't be any story cut scenes and the game couldn't have any bosses but his team kept pushing according to miyamoto they kept bugging him to include boss battles so he finally gave in and agreed but said they could only make one boss despite miyamoto's orders they wound up making two the dark nut and the stall lord the zelda team was heartbroken when their ideas for a twilight sequel ended up on the cutting room floor but link's crossbow training proved to be the right business decision the game sold nearly 6 million copies almost 2 million more than wind waker not everyone was happy with the side story but crossbow training did have one very important fan series producer agnema he actually pitched a sequel with improved gameplay and online multiplayer as he explained to games tm in 2009 to tell you the truth i actually wanted to create link's crossbow training too i thought we should do something more and better in the field of the first person shooter based on our experience making the first game for example i was thinking maybe we could intensify the multiplayer mode the original was really just a solo game but i thought we could add a true multiplayer mode with multiple users playing together over wi-fi nintendo's higher-ups didn't share aunoma's enthusiasm however and told him he should focus on the main series after his crossbow training 2 pitch was rejected aunoma got to work making a majora style sequel to phantom hourglass which launched two years later as spirit tracks although most zelda fans have played every mainline zelda game few have played four swords which released alongside a link to the past on gba by connecting up to four gbas together with link cables friends could explore randomly generated dungeons cooperatively but also competitively as each player was ranked on total rupees collected two years later it was followed up with four swords adventure where each player used a link cable to connect their gba to a gamecube everyone shared the tv but if a player went off in their own direction gameplay switched to their gba screen partly due to the multiplayer hardware components adventures never managed to sell even a million copies but shortly before the ds released in 2005 miyamoto suggested the ds would make this hardware issue a thing of the past he said at the time of gamecube and gba connectivity you had to connect the system to four gbas so the price of entry was a bit high however the ds has two screens and wi-fi support so we feel the threshold is a lot lower we're thinking of bringing zelda four swords to the ds and in another interview the game's producer agnema told club nintendo the zelda team is already planning four swords for the nintendo ds this game will have a lot of connectivity and feature a lot of interaction between both screens it will be interesting but a year later aunoma backtracked on his previous quote suggesting four swords ds turned into phantom hourglass during the game's prototype phase the game's director daiki iwamoto eventually shed a little more light on how the four swords team ended up producing something completely different they stated it was around may 2004 right after we finished four swords adventures the ds hadn't been released yet and the game was in the experimental stage we started by trying many ideas on how to use the stylus and wanted to continue exploring the theme of connectivity between two different screens eventually anima said let's try something different so we started to think about a new type of zelda system one that would become a standard for the ds in the end the third entry in the four swords series was never produced but it's worth mentioning that the original gba game got a remaster on ds called four swords anniversary edition released in 2011 to celebrate the franchise's 25th birthday the ds remaster added lots of updates and brand new content including a single player mode wireless connectivity and new stages based on zelda 1 a link to the past and link's awakening the anniversary edition never got a physical release and was only available for digital download for 5 months on ds then for just 4 days on 3ds a few years later as a result it's been unobtainable since 2014 meaning most zelda fans never got a chance to experience the four swords remaster in 2009 rumors spread that retro studios was working on a zelda game for wii but those rumors weren't proven until may 2020 when concept art was found on an art station account for sammy hall who previously worked at retro studios on games like metroid prime 3 and donkey kong country returns according to hall the concept art was from a cancelled zelda project that would have taken place in the bad timeline the timeline were gannon defeated link at the end of ocarina of time instead of length the spin-off starred the last surviving male chica after the rest of the shika were wiped out in a genocidal event the last sheik's journey was planned as an origin story for the master sword and the plot used the gerudo's 100 year birth of ganon as a backdrop hall's notes reveal the project began in 2005 during the wii era but ended up being cancelled in 2008. retro's post-apocalyptic hyrule took some visual inspiration from twilight princess while also introducing lots of brand new ideas concept art included enemy types labeled clock kids as well as deku warriors the lord of the swamp and several designs that may be bosses there was also the dark value race creatures clearly connected to wind waker's velou some concept art was titled autumn implying a use of seasons possibly inspired by oracle of seasons according to sammy hall it was very experimental stuff but games in the zelda universe have very weird stuff and this game was setting out to be 10 times weirder three days after his artwork was first spotted by metroid fan site shine sparkers hall gave ign a brief statement explaining the game was still in pre-production when it got cancelled adding it was mostly handled internally at retro without much involvement from nintendo hq according to hall the game was cooked up by three retro leads including mark passini the director of metroid prime one two and three but production came to a halt when all three of them quit retro to start their own studio in april 2008. just a few hours after he spoke with ign hall's social media was deleted and even his patreon account got pulled down making fans speculate nintendo or possibly retro's legal department were the ones who pulled the plug since then anyone involved has been unable or unwilling to comment and no further details have been made public however it's important to note that sammy hall uploaded all this concept art after finding it on an old hard drive so it's possible that other retro employees still have more artwork and documents that hopefully someday might find their way onto the internet revealing more about the three-year project a few months after link's awakening was re-released with some updates on the game boy color capcom producer yoshiki okamoto approached miyamoto about remaking zelda 1 in the style of link's awakening perhaps wanting to avoid a repeat of the cdi debacle miyamoto blew him off but okamoto refused to take no for an answer threatening to produce a rip-off if miyamoto didn't say yes in a 1999 interview with german magazine total okamoto explained how the trilogy project came into existence he said i especially like the zelda on famicom but nintendo just wasn't interested in translating it onto the game boy color so i told mr miyamoto that i wanted to produce the game but nothing ever came of it so i had to threaten him the magazine probably shocked asked him to repeat himself you threatened him i said if nintendo doesn't want to do it capcom will make an identical game but just changed the name of the game and all the characters then he asked if he wanted to develop the game legitimately we immediately accepted eventually a deal was struck that after the remake was complete capcom would follow it up with a trilogy of brand new games called the triforce series as producer okamoto was meant to supervise the remake's development but ended up spending most of his time overseas so the project was led by capcom director hidamaro fujibayashi if that name sounds familiar it's because after the partnership between capcom and nintendo was dissolved fujibayashi was hired to work directly for nintendo and later served as director on breath of the wild and is currently directing its sequel in many ways breath of the wild was a reimagining of zelda 1 but at the time fujibayashi wasn't as enthusiastic about remaking zelda one as his boss okamoto the capcom team felt zelda one was too difficult for the modern generation of gamers so they ended up scrapping the remake and skipping ahead to development of the triforce series according to miyamoto the tale of power was originally planned to launch in late 1999 and focus on action followed up a few months later with the puzzle-based tale of wisdom and then a few months after that the trilogy would conclude with the tale of courage all three games would be connected with passwords so after completing one game fans could continue their adventure in the next installment it was expected that fans would play the trilogy in the order they were released but they were being developed in a way that fans could play the games in any order they wanted the triforce series was initially planned to make use of the mobile system gb a service that allowed fans to connect a game boy color to the internet by using a cell phone adapter miyamoto said the original idea for those games was for them to be more episodic in content and the development actually started with the notion of potentially trying to sell dungeons individually linking all three games together proved too much for the team however so okamoto made more than just a call for help he had to send out an sos for miyamoto to ride in on a white horse and save the trilogy from development hell to get the project back on course miyamoto cut the series from three games down to just two and any ideas involving online features were thrown out as well the games were temporarily rebranded as the mysterious seeds series but in the end the tale of power became oracle seasons and the tale of wisdom became oracle of ages after more than a year of delays instead of releasing episodically the games finally launched together in february 2001. bits and pieces of the cancelled zelda one remake found their way into seasons both games have a western graveyard and the first dungeon can be found inside a dead tree on a small island and even the dungeons internal layouts are similar six of seasons as dungeon bosses were also taken from zelda one as for the tale of courage also known as the mystical seed of courage it's impossible to know exactly how much made its way into oracle of ages and seasons but in addition to the online features we do know a few more pieces of the puzzle that got left out the two games that survived made use of magic items called the harp of ages and the rod of seasons while concept art revealed in the hyrule astoria suggests the last game in the trilogy was planned around the magic paintbrush an item that would have taken full advantage of the game boy color the oracle nairu plays a central role in ages and din stars in seasons while the third game was originally planned to feature ferrari since the game was never finished ferrari ended up with just a small token role in ages and seasons essentially as a password clerk in the hall of secrets some websites claim that capcom was also planning to remake zelda 2 for the game boy color but we couldn't find any credible evidence to support that claim even after talking to okamoto himself so it appears the idea of capcom remaking zelda 2 was nothing more than a rumor but there has been some legitimate interest in remaking zelda 2 over the years not only from outside studios but also from shiguru miyamoto himself miyamoto has gone on record more than once saying zelda 2 was one of his biggest regrets even referring to the game as a failure so in the early 90s he began working on a super nintendo remake with zelda and mario alumni yoshiaki koizumi if the game made heavy use of polygons it was probably running on the super fx chip a co-processor that allowed for incredibly advanced graphics for its time powering both star fox and super mario world 2 yoshi's island the project was ultimately cancelled but buzz surrounding a potential remake has continued to this day most recently in 2018 when inti create ceo takuya aizu said zelda 2 was his dream remake inti creates his famous for breathing new life into old games and big-ip belonging to other companies like they did with mega man 9 and 10 and bloodstained curse of the moon so we reached out to mr izu to ask what a zelda 2 remake might look like with him in the driver's seat izu told us if we were to start development right away i think it would be very aware of its famicom disk system roots but if this dream remake were to happen a few years down the road i think it would be made in a way that would be most suitable for players at that time using the best development techniques we have available at nt creates but if you talk too much about your dreams they cease to be dreams so i think i'll leave it at that he told us discussions with nintendo hadn't taken place at least not yet so we took the liberty of sending our email directly to nintendo in hopes that someday nt creates might get the chance to add zelda 2 to their long list of retro remakes everyone's had that moment playing mario party the game just started everybody picked a character and board now the dice is spinning over your head and you wonder if the die roll you're about to make is actually random or if there's some trick to stopping it on the number you want or maybe the game even had the number picked before you hit the button we actually touched on this topic back in 2016 with a tweet about mario party's dice being predetermined although we were pretty convinced the tweet was accurate it garnered a lot of disagreement and skepticism as to whether the dice were rigged so we figured we'd revisit the subject and try digging up a more definitive answer by doing some tests and talking to experts so let's investigate if there's really some secret technique to mario party's dice if it's just dumb luck or find out if the dice are actually rigged in a game of mario party a good die roll can mean the difference between winning and losing if you roll the highest dice at the start you'll take your turn first for the entire game giving you first dibs on buying stars before anyone else and reacting to changes on the game board and of course good rolls each turn let you move farther on the board and give you more to work with so as you can see it's worth understanding how the dice actually work in mario party games in the original mario party the dice spins over your head until you jump and stop it with the a button the game lets you decide when to jump so most fans assume this agency means they have some control over their own destiny and with proper timing it looks like you can stop the dice on any number you want but is that actually true to see if this was the case we investigated whether skill was involved by testing if identical circumstances yielded identical results to do this we'd use an emulator for easier testing and comb over videos frame by frame to confirm the timing we'd also only look at standard dice in mario party over the series history there have been many gimmick dice that let players influence how far they move in a turn there's also different kinds of roles such as the chance time where players could steal or lose stars and coins so to keep things simple we're only running tests on the basic rolls when we recorded our tests with the emulator we managed to hit the a button on the exact same frame quite a few times for accuracy's sake we did this across a 50 turn game and reloaded the same saved playthrough from the start with the same characters and board replaying it several times and observed if the frame perfect hits stopped the dice on the same numbers we not only looked at hits that were an exact number of frames from the start of the dice scene but also hits that lined up with visual cues such as every jump that took off when the die showed a six if we got the same number every time for either of these parameters it would suggest there is in fact skill involved but that's not what we found the resulting numbers from all the turns were completely random no matter when we hit the a button it had no influence whatsoever on the roll of the dice in other words the element of skill seems to be just an illusion probably implemented because the developers thought it was more fun to hit a die than just seeing random numbers appear but that brings us to our next point are the numbers actually random well sort of but in more absolute terms no not at all mario party's dice rolls are determined by a random number generator also known as rng despite the name rng doesn't generate truly random numbers it's a computer program that actually brings up numbers that appear to be random computers have a hard time producing truly random numbers since they're basically just machines that follow commands so instead they rely on rng formulas that essentially cycle through predetermined lists of possible results in other words if you play long enough you'll get the same series of dice rolls again and again as the cycle eventually repeats itself manipulating rng in a game is possible maybe you've seen it done for world building in minecraft or for catching shinies in pokemon it's even been found in games like super mario 64 that the rng formula used to determine things like a goomba's walk direction or how a coin falls uses somewhat simplistic variables unfortunately however although it's theoretically possible to work out what dice rolls will come up even the world's best mario partiers haven't figured out how to manipulate the dice did you know gaming spoke with world record speedrunner airshock22 who told us in a game like mario party rng is an invisible force that players are subjected to unfortunately as of making this video there doesn't seem to be a consistent way to manipulate it like other n64 titles in the original mario party the game actually determines the role of the dice on the results screen of a mini game so instead of deciding the dice rolls one by one and at different times the game actually decides all four players at once by reloading save files at particular instances we can see that no matter how long each player waits on the dice rolling screen the result will always be the same in other words mario party's dice are in fact predetermined you can't control them with timed jumps and they're not random either essentially they're rigged in the original mario party the dice are predetermined at the end of the mini-game results screen meaning nothing between the last game and the next can influence the dice roll no matter how long you wait to roll in the original mario party you cannot change the outcome of the dice or at least that's the case for the original mario party on nintendo 64. but what about all the sequels we also investigated mario parties 2 through 10 the handheld parties and finally super mario party on switch and we discovered the forces that govern their dice are different in each game except mario party ds which actually follows the same rules as the original despite being made about 10 games after going back to the n64 mario party 2 and 3 use a more sophisticated system where the rng is continually recalculated while the player waits to hit the a button and stop the dice to confirm we repeated the same experiment we did with the first game and analyzed footage frame by frame and also spoke with some seasoned mario partiers who provided further confirmation we noticed that the number that was displayed on the dice whenever the player hits it and the number that's used for the actual rolling is usually different we spoke with zoomzike a passionate mario party analyst who provided further confirmation zoom zike told us the shuffling numbers you see aren't accurate reflections of the computations the game is running on your dice block there's no skill or timing involved as you can't even see what number the game will give you but there's certainly less rigged than mario party 1 and mario party ds as players have some sort of control over them the dice mechanics in mario party 4 through 8 appear to be a little different but in reality they're the same as mario party 2 and 3. instead of the numbers on the dice changing 30 times a second they only change 10 times a second except for mario party 8 where they change 15 times a second the slower speed makes you think you've got a more realistic chance of stopping the dice on the number you want but the results are still 100 determined by the rng even with frame perfect inputs it's impossible to hit the dice on a specific number this is because the dice don't stop until the end of your jump animation which takes longer than 1 10 of a second and since the numbers don't loop in any recognizable pattern the results are entirely out of your control in some cases your jump animation can take up to 500 milliseconds which depending on the game could mean the numbers on the dice will change five additional times before you can actually touch them since the number changes aren't in a discernible pattern the number you roll is de facto random mario party advance is pretty unique in terms of gameplay and its dice roll the handheld title is notable as it's the only mario party that's really designed for a single player experience because of this we thought for sure that the dice would be different in this title after investigating it we discovered that mario party advance has random roles as well with a major caveat at the very start the game guarantees to give you high rolls to help you get through the game's single player tutorial once you're through that tutorial though the game uses pure rng letting you learn the ropes before throwing you in the deep end mario party 6 is pretty unique or at least it pretends to be the game came bundled with a microphone and in-game hints claim that shouting a number into the mic during solo mode will influence the dice rolls but some speedrunners we spoke with insist that shouting into the mic doesn't actually produce any noticeable results and we had the exact same experience playing the game ourselves so instead of innovating the series with a new shout for luck mechanic it appears mario party 6 is just the game that works the hardest to give a false sense of dice control mario party 9 on wii mario party 10 on the wii u and island tour on 3ds introduced physics space dice in 9 and 10 after you hit the dice it falls from the sky and rolls around the screen and in tour you flick the dice from the bottom screen and it rolls up to the top screen but in both games the results are still determined by rng they've just got a new way of delivering pseudo-random numbers in a way that looks like you've got some control over the situation but it's still just an illusion although arguably a more satisfying one as for super mario party on switch there was a popular rumor started in a youtube video that claimed you could guarantee high rolls by listening and reacting to a key sound while the dice is rolling we were skeptical so we tested the theory ourselves but we couldn't reproduce the results alleged in the video so we reached out to speedrunner air shock 22 again who'd done some tests of his own he said imagine the dice rolling audio like a wave or bell curve the top of the bell curve is the highest in pitch in the audio i hit the dice block in approximately the same place near the top of the bell curve every time i got different numbers each time it seems that even the rumor video doesn't hit the dice at consistent points sometimes it's at the top but other times he will hit it when there's barely any audio he's just selecting all the clips of him getting high numbers and claiming he hid it at the top of the audio queue from what i can see the sound theory is debunked and is not true in reality super mario party utilizes a similar formula as 2 through 8 with the rng continually recalculating before you stop the die although the game is different from the earlier games due to every character having their own unique dice with different values as each character has different probabilities there is actually a dice tier list which means some characters roll higher numbers on average like wario and daisy while others roll lower numbers like yoshi and rosalina so at least there's some strategy there from what we found not a single dice roll in the entire series actually involves any skill whatsoever no amount of timing listening to audio cues or shouting into a microphone gives you any control over your own destiny and the dice rolls aren't truly random either instead they rely on artificial randomness produced by different systems of rng that vary in complexity but to be fair that's how pretty much every video game operates some dice are just flat out predetermined especially early in the series but later games is more sophisticated rng produce results that were arguably less predetermined whether you want to call mario party's dice rigged or not depends on the game and if you want to get philosophical about it the term rigged is sort of in the eye of the beholder [Music] did you know although he's not a playable character diddy kong is actually in mario kart 64 he can be seen by looking closely at the bus in toad's turnpike driving the vehicle this isn't the only secret surrounding mario kart 64. in the earliest stages of the game's development director hideki kono bought some rc cars for testing purposes after researching their mechanics and physics his team made a mario kart prototype based on a computer simulation of the rc cars but the prototype ended up feeling too realistic to the point where it wasn't actually fun they even had some children try it out but the kids found it totally unplayable as a result the realistic physics were dialed back and very little from the rc prototype ended up in the game's final build later in development a newer prototype of mario kart 64 was shown off at nintendo space world 1995 in japan at this stage of development the game was called super mario kart r with the r standing for rendered as in rendered graphics the prototype featured a number of differences compared to mario kart 64 and even had some music that was never used in the final game which is what you're hearing right now super mario kart r also included kamek the magikoopa as one of its eight races kamek was the primary antagonist in yoshi's island the hugely popular follow-up to super mario world that launched just a few months prior to spacewald so it made perfect sense for kamek to appear alongside bowser and wario as the game's villains but one kidnapper ended up getting replaced with another kamek was replaced in the final game with donkey kong the vengeful gorilla that kidnapped mario's girlfriend super mario kart r also made use of the feather from the original super mario kart on super nintendo after getting cut during development the feather didn't reappear in the series until mario kart 8 deluxe 20 years later in addition to multiplayer horizontal split screen the prototype also allowed for vertical split screen this option was also cut during development but it's still hidden inside mario 64's internal data you can even unlock it and take it for a spin with a game shark and this cheat code the development process was long and arduous and the developers even suffered a hard disk crash at one point erasing some of their work but according to character designer tomowaki kurowumi the crash was actually a blessing in disguise the models on the character select screen were originally static unable to move or blink but the crash deleted all those models with no hope of recovery so the developers had to make brand new models this time giving them animations an extra layer of polish that wasn't originally supposed to be in the game a year after space world 95 and following an 8 month delay mario kart 64 finally launched in japan in december 1996. there were quite a few details in the japanese version that were changed in the game's international release with one difference right on the title screen in every other region mario is the game's announcer but in japan this role was played by hawaiian actor and radio host john hulettan mario grand prix jon told us that nintendo hired him to voice the announcer on wave race 64. then after the recording was finished they slid a piece of paper in front of him without explanation asking him to record just a little bit longer that mysterious piece of paper turned out to be the lines for mario kart 64. john's agent was pretty mad that he never got paid for the role and nintendo even spelled his name wrong in the game's credits five years later that same recording was recycled worldwide in mario kart's super circuit even in the english version without crediting john at all congratulations in fact he didn't even know his voice was used in super circuit until we told him luigi had been voiced by at least seven different actors in commercials and television shows throughout the 80s and 90s but mario kart 64 was the first time luigi ever spoke in a video game we've talked about julian bardikov before he's the guy who gave the first 251 pokemon all their french names a few years before that however julian was translating super mario 64 into french at nintendo hq during a break he was playing magic gathering with a mario kart r programmer one thing led to another and julian was invited to take the prototype for a spin at this point toad didn't have a voice yet so julian volunteered for the role free of charge longtime nintendo's sound director koji kondo managed julian's recording but afterwards told julian he didn't really sound like how he imagined toad but he did sound like luigi so julian ended up voicing luigi instead wario had never been voiced in a video game before either so condo brought in julian's friend thomas spindler one of nintendo's german translators according to thomas wario was originally conceptualized as a german character not an italian that's why nintendo brought in a german to provide his voice and why wario even speaks german in the japanese version of mario kart 64. he says so i missed which translates into english as oh crap when the game was localized for international release most of the characters voices were replaced including the announcer luigi and wario long-time mario voice actor charles martinez took over all three roles but the original japanese recordings did end up getting recycled for both the japanese and international versions of mario kart's super circuit as well as mario party 1 and 2. when charles martinez re-recorded the voices for mario kart 64 wario was rebranded as an italian rather than a german we asked charles if he knew anything about wario originally being german if maybe it was his decision to change the accent just like he switched mario's accent from brooklyn to italian a couple of years earlier charles said he'd never even heard about wario being german so it sounds like the switch to italian was probably the result of an oversight by the localization team they gave charles the script without any notes about a german accent so he naturally assumed he'd apply an italian accent just as he'd already done for mario and luigi wario has remained italian ever since but interestingly in mario striker's charged wario was given a traditional german fare as his theme music however it's unclear if this was an intentional reference to his german origins or just a strange coincidence most of the game's billboards were changed as well presumably to avoid trademark issues overseas in the japanese version the billboards were all parodies of formula one sponsors like a mario billboard imitating the marlborough cigarettes logo but internationally the marlborough reference was cut out instead the signs just say mario star likewise parodies of italian oil company egypt motor oil brand mobil 1 and gas station chain union 76 were also changed a mock billboard for the goodyear tire company was revised as well and had been an even more blatant imitation in super mario kart r where the sign originally said good ear when mario kart 64 was re-released on the china exclusive iq player in 2003 the game received brand new box art the game's name was also changed to just mario kart since the n64 never released in china and neither did the original mario kart game on super nintendo the iq version had some differences as well the billboards were all translated into chinese and the shot billboard was changed to an ad for iq the special cup was also renamed the iq cup mario kart 64's racetracks have more hidden shortcuts than any other mario kart as well as the usual shortcuts all but five of the game's 16 stages have shortcuts nintendo never intended what speed runners call skips common examples of this are jumping over the wall in wario stadium or one of the flying leaps on rainbow road in our hunt for secrets we spoke with beck apne the mario kart 64 150 cc world record holder according to apni the japanese version contains a skip not possible in the international release on luigi raceway you can hit yourself with shells to bounce over a wall and skip about 90 percent of the race but there are three stages in mario kart 64 with tricks that even apne can't pull off skips that are virtually impossible for humans but another speedrunner drew weatherton spent seven years perfecting a tool-assisted speedrun that could pull them off completing all 16 races in just 18 and a half minutes abney's the world's fastest racer but he will never be able to defeat the machines who have him beat by over 7 minutes hidden inside mario kart 64's internal data there's a function that allows you to alter the y values for every stage in other words you can make tracks steeper or flatter by just a little bit or by a huge amount including all the slopes walls and ramps you can even invert tracks so you're essentially racing on them upside down it's possible the developers created this mechanic just for testing and debugging purposes but considering the fact it's right next to the flag for mirror mode in the game's memory the developers may have intended scaling mode as an unlockable extra regardless of their intent the mechanic is still hidden inside the game and you can try it out for yourself with some game shot codes we've added to this video's description there was also a no item mode scrapped during development in an attempt to appeal to f-zero fans racers were given the option to play without items allowing for more serious competition where carts clumped together in the final lap edging each other out for fractions of a second but focus groups much preferred the game with items so developers just cut the no item mode completely according to tadashi sugiyama who designed most of mario kart 64 stages there were also some race tracks that were cut during development one was a large multi-story parking garage where you'd start at the bottom floor and race up to the top essentially racing in circles but in an upward trajectory this was tadashi's idea for a more realistic location but all the constant turning made some people feel sick so they cut it there was also a track that took place in a huge city with a pond and even a castle where players raced around different kinds of houses and buildings but tadashi says the stage took too long to race through so the city was scrapped too did you know pac-man has influenced the video game industry in profound ways so much so that even its spin-offs have impacted some of the biggest games in the industry the arcade platformer packland actually inspired the original super mario brothers on nes when pac-man creator toru iwatani was asked about pac-man spin-offs by geek culture he replied i worked on the sequel packland and pacmania and my favorite is pacland which is the pioneer of action games with horizontally strolling backgrounds mr shigeru miyamoto who developed super mario brothers told me super mario bros was influenced by namco's packland super mario brothers immense popularity was in part due to its horizontal scrolling which might not have appeared in the game if not for pacland pakland was a hit in its own right and was ported to several home consoles the nes version of pacland has an unusual control scheme where a and b move pac-man left and right and the d-pad is used to jump this was to more closely mimick the controls of the arcade release interestingly however the game does have a traditional control method with the d-pad moving pac-man but this is only accessed by plugging a controller into the second port other pac-man games have interesting secrets pac-man world has a few easter eggs such as pac-man's address the address 7650 is actually wordplay that references namco and series license holders seven can be spoken as na six as mu and five as ko which results in namuko when put together in an interview with pac-man world designer scott rogers he revealed that some characters names have references within them the name of tokman robots comes from an anagram of namcot a namco division that worked on console games from 1984 to 1995. pac-man's influence can also be seen in the competitive world of gaming and helped start professional gaming as a whole in fact some of the earliest pac-man high scores even became international news in 1982 eight-year-old pac-man player jeffrey yee claimed to have gotten a score of over 6 million in the game this score astonished anyone who had played the game including then president of the united states of america ronald reagan reagan sent geoffrey a letter congratulating him on his high score but this congratulations may have been premature yi's alleged score of six million one hundred and thirty one thousand nine hundred and thirty can only be achieved if the player gets past level 256 which is a kill screen for those unaware a kill screen is a stage in a video game that stops the player's progress due to a built-in software bug in the case of pac-man level 256 is glitched with half the board being a jumbled mess and maybe impossible to pass this is because the game's level counter is stored as an 8-bit integer with the highest value being 255. the level counter starts with zero but this value is read by the game and a one is added for the level counter on screen meaning the first level is actually level zero but is shown as level one and the second level is level 1 but reads as level 2 and so on the game illustrates this value using symbols in the bottom corner of the screen because of the overflow adding 1 to 255 would be 0 and due to a programming oversight with level 256 the game calls for far more symbols than usual these symbols are called up onto the screen resulting in half the level being filled with a garbled mess of graphical data but this graphical data doesn't just obscure the level it also interferes with the objects within it most importantly the graphical data renders all but nine pellets on the right side uncollectible for a level to win the game checks whether pac-man has eaten 244 pellets with the remaining nine pellets on the right side and the 122 on the left the player will be 113 short of 244 pellets and unable to progress to the next level effectively killing the game the current world record high score in pac-man is three million three hundred and thirty three thousand three hundred and sixty points which was first achieved in 1999 this score which has since been achieved by many pro pac-man players is often touted as a perfect score by those who believe it's impossible to get past the game's 256th level this is because it requires the player to eat every single pellet blinking energizer blob flashing blue ghost and point loaded fruit without losing any lives scores like jeffrey yee's which surpass three and a half million points require the player to beat level 256 this is largely the reason why such high scores are seen as suspicious especially when you consider that no score higher than 3 333 360 has ever been officially documented according to gaming record tracker twin galaxies professional gamer david w race appropriately has the fastest completion time of 3 hours 28 minutes and 49 seconds pac-man quickly bred a competitive scene with competitions popping up all over america one contest that's often referred to as the largest was a 1982 pac-man tournament in milwaukee the tournament had thousands of applicants and was eventually whittled down to eight finalists the reason this tawny is called the largest isn't because of the amount of applicants it's because the finalists got to play the atari 2600 version of pac-man on the jumbo screen at the milwaukee county stadium at the time it was the largest screen in the united states being 29 by 63 feet in size and made up of 30 040 watt bulbs but for as much success and impact the pac-man franchise has had it's also had a fair amount of failure pac-man world came about after another project pac-man ghost zone was scrapped ghost zone was also a playstation platformer being developed by namco home tech this would have been the first 3d pacman game to release on home consoles and got so far into development that it was shown at e3 and even had a box art and appeared in print media a handful of elements from ghost zone were repurposed for pac-man world including the title screen theme another scrap project was pac-man adventures in 2004 namco contacted legendary animator don bluth to make designs for a new game under the working title pac-man adventures don did concept art for the game but it was ultimately cancelled for unknown reasons some of the ideas for the game were later used in pac-man world 3. another interesting pac-man game that was cancelled is count pacula this was planned as a video game pinball hybrid game set to release in arcades in 1983. the game was similar to baby pac-man but instead of ghosts count pacula is chased by the pac-man family holding wooden stakes eating a power pellet would let players bite the pacman family members and turn them gray which would also make them hunt down and bite other family members the game was likely cancelled early on due to its subject matter not being very family friendly due to the game being developed in 1982 it's very likely it was based on an episode of the pac-man tv show titled pacula which features a dracula inspired pac-man during the spring 2001 tokyo game show namco announced that they would be renewing their support for the bandai wonder swan one of the games they announced was a pac-man title named super gps pac-man which would use the wonder gate and a gps add-on to generate a maze based on the player's location pac-man could explore the maze which would be filled with objects relevant to the player's gps location such as having cars for enemies if the player was on a road the project was cancelled for unknown reasons and the gps add-on was never released another scrap pac-man is super pac-man pinball which was planned to release for the nintendo ds around 2005. it was intended to be a sequel to pac-man pinball advance for the gba and was likely cancelled due to pinball advances negative critical reception and poor sales did you know zekram and reshiram weren't originally black and white in color according to gen 5's art director ken tsugimori they were initially more colorful as sugimari thought monochromatic designs were boring and wouldn't look good on the game's box art but later in development he was persuaded to remove most of their colors to better express gen 5's theme of polarity or extreme opposites the alternate artwork included in the game's manual actually depicts zekrom and reshiram from earlier on in the design process which ended up getting repurposed as what they look like when they're powered up but sugimori implied they were originally even more colorful than that so it's possible the dragon's unused colors made their way into black and white qram's designs a few years later on the other hand unova's elite 4 originally were all black and white with sean tall and grimsley in all black and marshall and caitlyn all white but before the games released color was added to the elite four while color was removed from the legendary dragons except for the spin-off games pokemon coliseum and gale of darkness which were set in the arizona inspired aura region the first four generations were all set in regions based on real-life places in japan but the trend was broken after series director junichi masuda visited manhattan on a 2007 promotional tour and was so impressed by the city's diversity that he decided to make it the basis of the next pokemon region just after gen 5's launch in japan he told nintendo power i visited new york for the launch of diamond and pearl and spent a lot of time wandering around i was impressed with how many different nationalities of people lived there and the individual communities with their special events and street festivals it had such an international feel like a world without borders it seemed like it would be an ideal setting for a video game and that inspired me to give it a try masuda later admitted to then nintendo president satoru iwata he also had a personal interest in choosing new york because in addition to being the series director he was also the music composer in the past the pokemon company hosted a series of concerts in all the japanese regions their games were set in including the real-life region of kanto masuda dreamed of seeing his music performed in the world famous theaters of new york on their next concert tour and this desire was part of his motivation to make new york the setting for the fifth generation masuda's favorite classical composer was igor stravinsky a 19th century conductor that influenced masuda while making music for pokemon games stravinsky played at new york theaters like carnegie hall and ultimately spent his final years in new york and died on 5th avenue so it must have meant something quite profound for masuda to follow in stravinsky's footsteps in the new york theater scene but after black and white were already finished masuda found out it would be too complicated and expensive to fly their japanese orchestra to the united states so the new york concerts he'd been dreaming about never became a reality if he had known that from the start gen 5 may have taken place somewhere else and have turned out completely different japan is one of the most homogeneous countries in the world with a population that is almost 98 japanese but new york is made up of countless different races and cultures so masuda was determined to make unova the most diverse region yet both with its human characters as well as its pokemon it was decided that gen 5 starters would stand for three unique cultures the snivy line would represent europe the tepig family china and the oshawa line would represent japan according to kensugimori superior was inspired by lady oscar the star of the 1970s manga the rose of versailles lady oscar was a girl raised as a man to take her father's role as the captain of the french palace guard but when the french revolution turned the country upside down she renounced her title and joined the lower classes marching on the bastille in the end she's shot by soldiers during the siege and dies of her wounds just as the revolutionaries take control of the prison tsugimori says embore was inspired by another fallen soldier zhang fei from the classic chinese novel romance of the three kingdoms based on a real historical figure from nearly two thousand years ago zhang fei was a war general known for his bravery and loyalty but also his drunkenness and hot temper his story comes to an end when he's killed by his own soldiers so they can defect to the enemy wu kingdom and present his decapitated head as a gift to the emperor the water starters however were never associated with a specific character instead sugimari says they're meant to symbolize the lifespan of a samurai from a child that grows into a military commander in their efforts to make the human characters as diverse as possible game freak also took body types into consideration gym leader clay represents a japanese businessman that moves to new york city seeking fortune and since the game didn't have any rotund gym leaders yet the designers made clay short and fat purely for the sake of inclusion gym leader skyla was created as a woman who is a leader of men which is why all of the lower level trainers in her gym are male workers and pilots game freak made lenora the series first black gym leader instilling her with motherly qualities and a work apron for digging up fossils but their good intentions backfired after lenora's design was interpreted by some fans as a racist depiction of the mammy housekeeper stereotype made even worse by the fact her gym leader title in the japanese version was natural born mama as a result lots of details surrounding lenora were censored when the games anime and manga were brought to the west starting with her title which changed to an archaeologist with backbone and her official artwork which was changed from lenora wearing her apron to having it thrown casually over her shoulder three episodes of the black and white anime had her aprons sensored out when they aired internationally and it was removed from the pokemon adventures manga altogether gen 5 was also the first generation to have a female professor this was thanks to sugimori who says professor juniper was originally a man until halfway into development when he insisted the character should be changed into a woman he said i went and complained to masuda i told him make the professor a woman i was the one who'd proposed the changes so i decided to design her myself i thought she'd be kind of a new yorker type in other words a real career woman just like the npcs many of unova's pokemon were made with a new york theme like trubish and garbodor who look like trash bags symbolizing the big city's pollution new york is also home to about 4 million pigeons so game freak filled unova with lots of pigeon pokemon the crooked isle family represents crime and the mob and scraggy and scrafty wear baggy jeans made from their shedding skin playing the role of urban youth who sag their pants the timber family are based on construction workers and watch hog is based on a road worker in a safety vest masculine was added late in development due to the region being short on standard water pokemon with sugimori saying they made it a bass because new york is a good place for bass fishing rather than new york specifically some unovan pokemon were themed after the whole country according to takao unno he designed rufflet and braviary by mixing native american imagery and symbols of uncle sam to make them as american as possible likewise buffalant is based on buffalo that roamed the open plains until they were hunted almost to extinction in the 1800s visually lgm and bgm borrow extraterrestrial traits from american science fiction movies like war of the worlds and close encounters of the third kind and their names are alien inspired as well lgm is a play on lgm an acronym for little green men while bgm is a play on b-e-m short for bug-eyed monster they most resemble the area 51 aliens with lgm's pokedex entry telling us that rumors of its origin are linked to a ufo crash site in the desert 50 years ago referencing the supposed ufo crash that landed in roswell and was covered up by the us government in 1947 but being pokemon games many gen 5 designs ended up drawing much of their inspiration from japanese culture pan sage panseer and panpour's poses are a nod to the three wise monkeys a common illustration in the japanese proverb see no evil speak no evil hear no evil an expression most often used to scold people who turn a blind eye to evil some variations of the proverb include a fourth monkey who represents do no evil or in other variations smell no evil but the do no evil monkey's pose usually depicts him with his hands covering his genitals so if gamefreak ever decides to add a fourth elemental monkey someday you can expect it'll probably be smelling no evil in its official artwork darumaka and dharmanitan are based on buddhist daruma dolls at the end of each year in japan there's a ceremony called the daruma kuyo where these dolls are returned to the temples where they were originally purchased the dolls are thanked for the good luck they brought over the past year and then are burned in mass then new daruma dolls are bought from the temple for the coming year and the cycle begins anew these dolls come in a variety of designs but when a member of the pokemon team attended a burning ceremony the doll they set on fire just happens to look like a gorilla which is what inspired them to make a family of fire type gorilla pokemon and this also explains why the pokedex classifies darumaka as the zen charm pokemon the litwick family was inspired by willow the wisps and hitotama souls of the dead that separate from their bodies and become balls of fire according to kensugimori early in development the litwick family was originally a flame that evolved into a candle then into a lamp but its initial flame stage ended up being scrapped and game freak added a chandelier to the ghost family instead many pokemon designs are based on japanese monster movies and tv shows especially ultraman and godzilla the godzilla franchise was created by japanese film company toho and they've actually been partners with the pokemon company ever since mewtwo strikes back in 1998. toho's been the japanese distributor for every pokemon movie ever made and they even let pokemon movies reuse a lot of their monster movie sound effects so it shouldn't come as a surprise that dozens of pokemon are based on touhou monsters including several in gen 5. sugimori says vulcarona originally had 4 wings but ended up receiving two more later on in development this is probably because volcarona is based on mothra from the godzilla movies in fact volcarona's german name is ramoff an anagram of the name mothra bisharp bears a strong resemblance to jet jaguar the heroic robot from 1973's godzilla vs megalon in its normal form jet jaguar is about the same size as bisharp but he can transform into a 150 foot tall giant earlier in development high dragon had eight heads and was based on yamatan orgy a legendary eight-headed dragon from japanese mythology but the design was too complicated so the head count was reduced to three but it retained six wings so its silhouette had the appearance of a nine-headed dragon according to sugimori this makes high dragon one head better than yamata no orochi its final design ended up looking a lot like king ghidorah also known as the three-headed monster one of toho's most famous kaiju but sugimari says even before the orochi motif the high dragon family were originally designed as a family of tank dragons and the purple treads on their bellies are leftovers from when they were still based on tanks this might explain why high dragon's family's shinies are green since pokemon's beta colors are sometimes repurposed as their shiny colors this may have happened to dwell as well who's got a red shiny and was probably fire type earlier on in development sugimori says duebel and crustal were originally furnace pokemon with shells made out of kiln-fired pottery but their designs were revised masuda told the design team to make gen 5's pokemon cooler than the pokemon from previous gens which led to most unova designs having sharper angles whereas earlier pokemon were much more round in a series of japanese magazines did you know gaming had translated for this video kensugimori revealed many secrets about gen 5's pokemon like that stun fisk was originally a blue goose fish and was created as the world's flattest pokemon but later in development stone fisk was revised into a brown flounder and had its water and electric typing changed to ground and electric sugimori's team also came up with an ant pokemon who would have been the world's smallest pokemon but it didn't make the final cut the petal family originally had three stages but one stage got cut due to unova having too many grass-type pokemon early in development there was also a family of snail pokemon who were meant to serve as prey and get eaten by the karablast family but they were replaced with the shellmet family who initially didn't have a connection with keroblast and haxaris was actually made during platinum's development making it the very first unova pokemon it was designed even before axio and fracture who were made by reverse engineering haxaris's design the same way bulbasaur charmander and squirtle were reverse engineered from venusaur charizard and blastoise during gen 1's development another secret is that lots of fans probably don't realize superior actually has hands it just keeps them folded behind its back so it looks regal early in development pokemon designer yusuke omura was visiting an aquarium and there just happened to be an otter exhibit right next to a live sea lion show which inspired him to make oshawat and otter evolve into samarat a sea lion and one other time omura was fishing and accidentally hooked a giant disgusting eel on his fishing rod inspiring him to make the electric family according to sugimori volabai uses dead pokemon's bones as a nest and grows up inside of them mandibuzz wears a jawbone as a skirt and our bones fit together to make an upside down skull in late 2019 pokemon designer james turner deleted 96 tweets he'd shared over the past few years which had lots of behind the scenes info presumably it was game freak who had asked him to delete the tweets but fortunately did you know gaming's own dr lava archived them all before they were deleted according to the tweets the game's planners like junichi masuda would provide a design brief covering the required elemental type of each new pokemon the number of evolutionary stages and the kind of environment they'd be found in like a cave or beach setting once the designer made their pokemon they presented it to the art director ken tsugimari to approve or suggest revisions about two-thirds of the pokemon were killed off at this stage with only 156 of the approximately 500 pokemon getting approved once a designer made a pokemon that was approved they'd make a reference sheet showing the pokemon from every angle after that what became of the pokemon was mostly out of their control game freak's battle team chose the move sets and stats and although the designer could make suggestions the pokemon company's lore expert usually chose the pokemon's name lore and pokedex entries as far as design inspirations james made vanillux as a nod to the stay-puft marshmallow man from ghostbusters as both gen 5 and ghostbusters are set in new york city he also tweeted out these images of snowless vanillite and vanillux saying their ice creams a sheet of snow hiding their true form which are just bodies of ice james also made a cannon mode for golurk which has never appeared in the mainline pokemon games at least not yet but it was featured in the 2011 wii game poke park 2. canon mode has also been seen more recently in episode 14 of the pokemon journeys anime where it's described as golurk's ultimate attack according to james unlike more recent gens the designers didn't get to choose the shiny colors of the pokemon they made for gen 5 and he wishes he could change goluk's shiny to quote make him look a bit cooler the first four generations of pokemon games were all localized into english almost entirely by one man nintendo of america freelancer nab ogasawara then the other versions like the french german and spanish were all based on nob's work in other words nob was responsible for lots of small details experienced by fans outside of japan he changed a hiker on route 10 from being high on magic mushrooms to having a bad case of hay fever and added lots of cultural references like gym leader fantina saying never give up never surrender an iconic phrase from sci-fi comedy galaxy quest did you know gaming spoke with nob as well as one of gen 5's translators david numeric who told us that after diamond pearl the pokemon company completely changed the localization process and due to contract complications knob ended up getting cut from the deal when the restructuring was complete the company made a new system that could handle everything in-house for a quicker turnaround and so every version was translated from japanese directly into every other language instead of being based on the english version this meant that the localization of gen 5 had a lot more cooks in the kitchen and if nob's reign hadn't come to an end lots of gen 5 pokemon names would be different as well but even though nob wasn't around after gen 4 his spirit lives on more than a decade later as a hiker just west of bill's house in let's go pikachu and evie once black and white's development came to a close it seems game freak didn't know what they wanted to do next the game's internal data external documents and lots of developer quotes all suggest uncertainty x and y's development began immediately after black and white were finished and at least one prominent designer told reporters gen 5 was done and that fans shouldn't expect any more unova games at one point masuda admitted they didn't know if pokemon grey or a 5th generation sequel should come next but the full story surrounding gray version is too long to cover here in fact it's a project we've been working on for over a year we'll release a dedicated video in the near future on pokemon grey so make sure you're subscribed if you don't want to miss it in 2012 junichi masuda even said there could be a black and white three but in the end pokemon's fifth generation came to a close with black and white too the first and currently last time game freak released numbered sequels the developers stated motivation for breaking precedent varied over the years but the official explanation they repeated more than any other whether you believe it or not was a desire to surprise fans and to continue black and white's story to quote them in their own words pokemon company president ishihara said that lots of players were expecting us to follow the same pattern so for the first time we decided to try adding a 2 for a pleasant surprise that sort of surprise is what gives this product its newness with the developers for the original black and white there was a lot more experimentation as they considered how best to reboot the franchise for example n was originally supposed to be a lot creepier before they dialed it back but for the sequels most of their effort was focused on finding ways to remix the unova region as a result there weren't nearly as many ideas scrapped in development but there was a significant amount of content originally planned for driftville city that didn't make the final cut in the two years that passed between black and white and black and white too a new facility sprung up in driftville called the pokemon world tournament where players took part in tournaments with prominent trainers like gym leaders and elite four from previous generations fans could also download three unique tournaments and battle against 12 real-life competitors from the 2012 pokemon world championship the 2012 pokemon world championship was held in hawaii and split into three age groups juniors seniors and masters the top four competitors from each age group as well as their pokemon teams were all added to black and white 2 as dlc tournaments enshrining those fans forever as part of pokemon history did you know gaming spoke with nitish manim one of the senior divisions final four who said they told the participants after the event that we'd be getting our own downloadable characters i was excited that i would have my own character however the full excitement didn't hit until my character was released and i was able to battle myself having my own in-game character meant a lot to me and i know it also meant a lot to the other competitors however hidden inside the game's internal data there are three more tournaments that didn't make it into the game the top 12 finalists from 2011 previous years pokemon world championships the programming for these tournaments was never finished depriving those 12 champions of their place in the history books we spoke with one of the champions inos shahar who was honored to be included in black and white 2's data but heartbroken he was cut from the game itself you know she told us i've played pokemon since i was little and it felt like the coolest thing to be immortalized in the franchise by literally being coded into the game i was really looking forward to being able to battle myself the in-game ai is usually pretty terrible but i still figured i'd get some laughs and even though it didn't make it to the final release i'm glad they added something for the pokemon world championships 2012. leaving a mark on the game we love to play is just so satisfying it was completely unexpected because they've never done something like that before at the end of pokemon gold and silver there's a battle against the strongest trainer in the game red from gen 1. fighting your previous self in mount silver was gentoo's biggest battle serving as the grand finale of the game a similar idea was planned for black and white 2 where the player would have an epic battle against hilbert and hilda the protagonists from black and white won the internal data includes text for the pwt building like meet hilbert the trainer some claim to be the strongest of all and dialogue where hilda tells you make your dreams come true someone once encouraged me to do that even now i'm continuing my journey to realize those dreams which is a reference to the final scene in black and white when n tells the player to make their dreams come true but unfortunately just like enosh and the rest of the 2011 champs gen 5's biggest battle ended up being cut there was also some content in the pwt building that wasn't cut but was made available exclusively in japan the only tournaments available for download internationally were the three based on the 2012 championships but in japan there were six more tournaments including one focused on lance the dragon trainer and two more focusing on legendary pokemon but the most memorable japanese tournament was the last one added to the game it was called you can challenge the unova league 2 consisting of 4 battles against ash's rivals from the black and white anime virgil cameron stefan and a final battle against tripp unfortunately none of the pwt tournaments have been available anywhere in the world since nintendo shut the server down in 2014. however all 9 events were preserved by project pokemon and fans around the world can still download them and experience them using a link in this video's description [Music] did you know there were over 50 games planned to release on the nintendo ds that were cancelled ever wonder what they were and why they were canned in this video we'll be covering all of them with a few exceptions we'll leave out certain titles such as games that were rumored to exist but have no evidence backing them like the rumored earthbound ds compilation and if a cancelled game was multi-platform we'll only talk about the ds version of it if it was unique since we're talking about the ds we'll start with nintendo's own scrap projects the metroid series didn't have much impact on the ds but one scrapped entry could have changed that a game called metroid dread circulated on a list of upcoming nintendo games at several outlets out of the list only metroid dread failed to release and rumors of it persisted throughout the 2000s at gdc 2010 ign asked metroid producer yoshio sakamoto about the game he acknowledged metroid dread was real but said the leaked details were just rumors ign later said dred's story was fully written and claimed to have seen it but by 2015 metroid dread was nowhere to be seen researcher liam robertson contacted those who saw dredd including staff of nintendo software technology apparently development on dred's prototype started in 2008 it was shown in private at e3 2009 seeming like a ds port of metroid fusion around that time the dread in the title was dropped by 2010 the project was dead altogether other nintendo franchises had scrap ds games retro studios once entered pre-production on a ds game featuring boo info on the boo game is limited but there were some details that were posted on an artist's portfolio concepts show a world map and booze taking on different forms and abilities other concepts humorously showed a hanukkah boo and a christmas christmas-themed boo ign reached out to the artist for more info and were told the game's ideas came from the leads at retro but the idea was dropped when they left to form their own studios another game from the same portfolio showed a male chica from a scrapped zelda game this retro-helmed zelda title would have followed the last male chica traveling across a destroyed hyrule while a dark gerudo tribe gave birth to a new form of ganon the game apparently featured an origin story for the master sword nintendo's x right hand studio rare had two games in mind for the ds that were canned on a youtube video showing beta assets from banjo-kazooie grunty's revenge an ex-developer left a comment apparently when the handheld team migrated to the des one of their first ideas was for a grunty's revenge sequel it would have retained the fixed camera from the original but with 3d graphics the developer added that donkey kong country 4 was considered for the ds as the dkc trilogy had just been released on the gba some time after dropping these details in the comments the same user got in contact with donkey kong fan site dk vine and elaborated after the team finished the third gba game they had an engine they could use relatively easily the idea of a 2.5 d donkey kong country sequel on ds occurred to them though ultimately nothing came of it as we've mentioned before c-man creator youth saito once had an idea for a game called mario motors in the early 2000s saito took up metal sculpting as a hobby while chatting with shiguru miyamoto and satoru iwata at a meetup he told the men about his game idea based on metal sculpting and they decided to give it a go the premise was that players sculpted engines out of metal and the properties of the engines determined how well their cars ran saito considered having players blow into the ds mic to accelerate their cars but scrapped it fearing children would faint though saito didn't say when the game was conceived one screenshot is dated august 2008 the game was quietly cancelled there's evidence that the ds was originally planned to get pokemon gray and not black 2 and white too in january 2009 several outlets reported nintendo had filed patents for pokemon black white and gray among others expectations for gray peaked eight months later when pokemon grey.com was registered by the same company nintendo used to register pokemon blackwhite.com there's other clues too the generation 4 box arts feature the creation trio with platinum having a new form for giratina within diamond and pearl's data there's a table listing every pokemon and how many alternate forms they were meant to have the table in diamond and pearl lists giratina with an alternate form revealing that game freak planned on platinum having a new giratina form years in advance a similar table can be found in black and white's data with kirum listed as having at least one alternate form planned but not necessarily two which is what ended up appearing in black 2 and white 2 despite black 2 and white 2 including 2 new curum forms at the very least this indicates game freak was uncertain whether black and white would have a single follow-up or more also in the data for the japanese versions of black and white on top of the light and dark stones there's an unused third stone called the god stone this stone was likely meant for kirum similar to how the light and dark stones interacted with zekrom and reshiram what's interesting is that the godstone is gray in color adding all this together seems to indicate that game freak once planned for a pokemon grey but ended up making black and white too instead a crash bandicoot game was considered for the ds called crash landed also known as i am crash bandicoot the game was being made by renegade kid around 2008 crash landed was a ds port of a console game being developed by radical studios all versions of the game were scrapped in 2010 but footage of the ds game turned up in 2013. the footage was confirmed real by renegade co-founder jules watson who added that the team made the demo in just two weeks curiously there's also evidence of a crash-landed pitch that was submitted by way forward in 2010 all that surfaced of the pitch however is a stylized 3d model of crash on a 2d plane the pitch allegedly became the basis for galactic taz ball afterwards in january 2007 ign's matt casamasina allegedly got to play an early version of halo on ds he compared the gameplay to metroid prime hunters praising the graphics and sound he also claimed the game was canned due to the egos of higher ups presumably nintendo and microsoft while many news outlets believe this to be a joke matt was insistent later that year matt finally showed what he said was a gameplay demo of the supposed port by that time however his claims had been brought to the attention of bungie's lead of marketing brian gerard at a halo 3 press conference in may gerard was asked about halo ds to which he responded he'd never heard of such a thing so what did matt play well a member of silicon era asked gerard and bungie member frank o'connor that question they said the idea of halo diaz had been pitched multiple times but what matt played hadn't come from bungie therefore it's believed matt played an unsolicited mock-up used for a pitch just before the ds's launch a few games were announced by namco two of these were rpgs xenosaga and baton kaitos ds both were in development by monolithsoft with namco publishing while xena saga ds was released to zena saga 1-2 in 2006 baton kaitos went missing monolith's president hirohite sugyura was asked by cube 3 if the game was still alive he responded saying please ask namco for this question because they sell the title we are strongly willing to develop this a namco producer later commented the baton kaitos ds project has been stopped once further development is currently undecided a month later sugiura again said development was pending and the team was waiting on directions from namco the game appeared again in a list of games pending release on namco's website in 2008 but was taken down almost immediately nothing has been heard of the game since sensory sweep studios had nearly 200 employees and was working on several ds games the first of which was eagle summoner eagle summoner was a puzzle rpg being made in 2008. its gameplay was similar to puzzle quest with the player fighting puzzle-based battles interestingly the fact this game was in development during 2008 would lead you to believe sensory sweep was still operating as a company that year however the company went bankrupt in 2005 yet continued to develop its games under two different name changes one of those names being fooptube but eagle summoner wasn't the only casualty of fooptube crash tag team racing on ds was too while tag team racing was developed by radical entertainment the game's ds port was left to fooptube in 2014 crash mania user bitmap contacted the game's artists one artist mike wood explained the ds port was based on the ps2 game they worked on it for nine or ten months and were just months short of finishing it before vivendi universal canceled the project the team was told the game was cancelled due to mario kart ds with vivendi believing tag team racing wouldn't stand a chance against it however it's suspected the real reason was due to issues between the publisher and fooptube management this isn't hard to believe by that time the studio's owner was accused of many illegal activities including tax evasion fraud and not paying his employees the department of labor got involved with some employees reportedly unable to pay for health care and mortgages shantae risky waters also known as shantae 2006 was a shantae game pitched for the ds matt bozon shantae co-creator theorized that with the ds gameplay would be possible on the top screen and the bottom screen at the same time the team made up a 13-page treatment of their ideas for the project one idea had players river rafting on one screen while simultaneously controlling a bird over the river on the other another involved digging caves on the bottom screen while battles raged on the top unfortunately no publisher was interested and the idea was scrapped some shantae fans believe some ideas from risky waters made it into shantae risky's revenge a dsiware game released in 2010. a boy on his blob was a sequel to the original game by david crane it was in production at skyworks technologies the studio that crane himself co-founded majesco revealed the game in its e3 2005 lineup and an early demo was shown on the show floor like the original game the blob would have performed different tasks by eating various jelly beans over 15 jelly beans and 15 levels were included in the game though the game was meant to release in late 2005 it was pushed back and ultimately shelved in october 2006. in 2018 five minutes of gameplay from the ill-fated game hit youtube giving fans a taste of what could have been suda 51 and grasshopper manufacturer's debut was a japan-only ps1 visual novel called the silver case while it eventually released in the west on pc in 2016 suda's first attempt to bring it over was with a ds port the team had a working version of the game on the ds but the project was canceled for two reasons first the japanese language can pack a lot more words into a smaller character count leading to more nuanced stories in a limited space on a smaller screen like the ds screen real estate was an issue in other languages the other problem was that they just couldn't figure out what to do with the bottom screen of the ds suda51 said since we were working on several other games at the time we just didn't have the energy to figure it out the team considered giving the game out for free at the tokyo game show but that would have cost the studio a large amount of money in the end the ds port was scrapped after the release of toe jam and earl on xbox in 2002 series creator greg johnson was itching to make another title toe jam and earl 4 was pitched to different publishers throughout 2007. it was meant to mostly be a remake of the first toe jam in earl but with extra features this included the rhythm aspect of the second and third games with players tapping to the music on the ds screen johnson was also hoping to add a multiplayer focus to the game unfortunately publishers weren't keen on the idea and the ds game was never picked up in 2008 interplay announced a new game for the dsi wear and we wear called clay fighter call of putty studio black games was going to develop it which boated well as its founder eric hart was the original programmer for the first clay fighter the release was planned for summer 2010. unfortunately summer came and went in november an issue of nintendo power supposedly listed a new release date for late 2010 or early 2011. we investigated and found no mention of the game in the magazine's november 2010 issue regardless clayfighter call of putty never came to fruition with no reason given for its cancellation in 2008 apogee software announced three duke nukem games were being made for ds and psp these games were known as the duke nukem trilogy of the three apogee only released one duke nukem critical mass as for the other games one was believed to be a port of the game duke nukem mobile which was originally made for the tap wave zodiac handheld in may 2004 whereas critical mass was a side scroller duke nukem mobile was similar to an fps the zodiac version came out in may 2004 and was ported to mobile in 2007 with a multiplayer mode and seven extra levels as the ds demo had these same features it's believed to have been developed around the same time in april 2020 a viewer of the youtube show de-escapades notified the channel that a demo card of the previously unknown port had been purchased from an ebay seller in oregon the game's developer machine works northwest is based in oregon which might explain how someone got a hold of the cartridge the escapades uploaded the first ever footage of this port to youtube in may 2020. a ds port of quake 3 arena was once suggested to be in the works id software co-founder john carmack spoke about it at quakecon in 2007. he said he may be working on a ds port for quake 3 arena then said i'm pretty sure i'm going to make that one happen he said he'd like the game to be limited to doom style controls utilizing the d-pad instead of touch controls nothing more was ever heard of the game at some point a katamari game was in development for the ds likely based on katamari damasi the game was featured in a list of upcoming titles in the march 2005 issue of nintendo power that month ign reached out to see if the listing was accurate namco's response was at this point we haven't made any announcement for the future development of this franchise while the series had additional installments including a spin-off title through dsiware katamari ds wasn't meant to be the cancelled geist ds was likely a sequel 2 or a port of the gamecube first person adventure game geist the developer nspace appears to have worked on geiss dx sometime during the mid-2000s while never officially announced traces of the game's existence were found within the realm of the ds version of call of duty 4 modern warfare which was also developed by nspace two files credits.bin and credits.txt contain a list of credits for geist ds for the nintendo ds then in july 08 early footage of the game was uncovered and uploaded online based on the 1985 arcade game of the same name gauntlet was a hack and slash dungeon crawler intended for the ds under development by backbone entertainment it was set to be released in summer 2008. since the original gauntlet was known for its multiplayer gauntlet ds would have let four players connect locally or online and to use the microphone to talk to one another when summer came and the game was pushed to an october 2008 release a demo was put on ds download to tide fans over gauntlet still hadn't released by late 2008 though reviews popped up in several magazines in june 2009 gauntlet switched publishers from eidos to majesco and was successfully raided by the esrb despite seeming ready for publication gauntlet never released that said gauntlet's engine was repurposed for backbone's port of gi joe the rise of cobra which was released in august 2009. on december 26 2013 a user on the assembler games forums dumped the us and eu roms of gauntlet both versions of the game were seemingly 100 percent finished super pac-man pinball was meant to be a follow-up to its predecessor pac-man pinball advance for the gba under development at rubik interactive super pac-man pinball would have pitted pac-man against his nemesis pack monocle there were three playable characters pac-man miss pac-man and peconius maximus the game also would have featured three multiplayer modes including a mode where players could mess with each other by shaking their table or turning their pinballs invisible there were also many games within single player mode with secrets hidden behind passwords spoken into the ds microphone this information was reported by ign but just three days later they reported the super pacman pinball was cancelled with no given reason to this day only two screenshots have ever been uncovered in december 2008 a 2009 lego racers set came out early with a surprise on the side of the box an advertisement for lego racers the video game despite the advertisement the game never surfaced in 2013 a firebrand games developer released screenshots of work he did for the lego racers game the screenshots used however showed a higher graphical quality than the ds could handle leading many to conclude the game was also being developed for the wii before it was cancelled another game based on toys choro q was also a racing game and was based on the popular line of japanese pullback car toys of the same name atlas was developing the game sometime in 2004 while choro q never got released we can assume based on similar choro q games that it would have had car customization and possible rpg elements it likely would only have released in japan like past choro q games ultima reborn was a ds port of ultima 4 pitched to ea in 2008 and developed under their montreal division project designer and lead artist stephane berlin said ultima 4 was his favorite game and wanted to make a worthy reboot the team chose to put ultima reborn on ds as the handheld lacked western rpgs the game only got 6 months into development before being cancelled however much concept art still remains showing a large departure from the series previous style including many scantily clad women a different artist who worked on the game said reborn was going for a pixel art style taking inspiration from street fighter metal slug and the work of stefan bhutan who worked on scott pilgrim vs the world shining legend would have been an action rpg made by korean developer blue side originally titled princess and knight in its comedic story a prince leaves his country to go study and returns home to find the king missing and the country in massive amounts of debt the prince has to pay back this debt in 800 days accompanied by seven princesses who would run away from a neighboring kingdom the princesses could aid the prince in battle as well as drop out of battle if the prince failed to impress them with 400 quests and multiple endings it would have been a truly ambitious game it was meant to be released in 2010 in japan with later releases internationally although shining legend never came to be blue side later made a tower defense mobile game called princess pajama which is slightly reminiscent of the old ds title canadian studio blossomsoft had three different ds titles in development that were all canned the studio's founder who went under the alias elder prince felt strongly about the projects one game called mimic book was something elder prince said was very very very special they said it would intensely please every type of rpg lover especially the ones in search of new taste a second project titled gunner was intended to follow mimicbook's release it was a side scroller adventure rpg said to include an undisclosed ingenious feature the game took place in a post-apocalyptic fantasy world vaguely inspired by norse legends the last project was titled sagrada guardians it was initially developed for the gba under the name western lords the game followed four characters and a legendary city of gold called the shining city sagrada guardians was to have real-time 3d graphics and voice-acted cinematics in 2008 both mimik book and gunner were confirmed to be on hold as elder's personal life led to some difficulty with development while mimicbook gunner and sagrada guardians haven't released prince did release a game for pc in 2008 and continues to make games the game's cerulean dreams was a shoot-em-up with rpg elements developed by mezco studios originally meant for the gba development migrated to the ds after the handheld was announced this was so the game could utilize 3d models scrollable menus via touchscreen and full co-op play the game was meant to be more than just a run-of-the-mill shoot-em-up it featured four main characters you could control and whose ships you could upgrade the last definitive news of the game came from mezco's website which noted they were working on a ds demo to shop to publishers since then it's fallen off the radar one curious case of a cancelled game is space agency this was an action rpg by audio inc where players are employed by a space agency to protect planets from space pirates players would have interacted with populations on the planet to learn skills like negotiation table manners and something called pheromone but what makes this game situation really curious is this in december 2009 a youtube video was uploaded showing art and screenshots from the game roughly two years ago someone from the team commented on the game and said they still had plans to develop it once certain personal matters were attended to despite this note no other information about space agency has surfaced to the great sadness of everyone on the planet the ds lost out on a game based on iconic painter bob ross in march 2006 ag frag entertainment announced a game titled the joy of painting for the ds wii and pc the studio got a licensing agreement with bob ross inc in 2006 giving them rights to all transcripts archived audio and bob ross's paintings nintendo's platforms were chosen for the title because of nintendo's sense of creativity which hatcher's team aspired to unfortunately in december news broke that the game had been shelved on the game's yahoo group agfrag announced they'd no longer be involved in bob ross related games when gamespot reached out to studio head joseph hatcher he said he couldn't say too much for legal reasons but wouldn't consider the project totally canceled later on the studio's website hatcher apologized for disappointing fans he said that in the future fans wouldn't hear about new games until they were nearing release there was no confirmation that ag frag ever found a publisher which could be a reason the game was cancelled in april 2009 reports surfaced claiming radical entertainment was making a new spider-man game that game eventually became known as spider-man 4 the name of both the cancelled sam raimi movie and a cancelled ds game meant to coincide with that movie's release though there isn't much info about the game screenshots of the home console version were shared by artist wayne dalton in june 2019 after the game's cancellation the developers incorporated much of their work on it into the game prototype 2. clueless fashion alternatively known as clueless and clueless girls in beverly hills was another camp ds game though based on the 1995 movie clueless the game straight far from the modern retelling of the classic novel emma rather clueless fashion seemed more like a barbie clone players would have taken control of an aspiring fashion designer via shopping socializing with friends and putting on fashion shows a separate summary of the game also mentioned playing cupid on a time limit attempting to set friends up with the right guys based on their fashion senses and interests despite these somewhat conflicting accounts of the gameplay players would still be playing as cher horowitz the film's protagonist tragically mean girls ds was another cancelled release this time in development under 505 games reports on its gameplay are somewhat murky it's been described as a puzzle quest rip-off by kotaku but its esrb listing described it as an adventure game with text-based conversations four obscure screenshots found on an italian website don't appear to support either of these styles of gameplay as they show multiple different mini-games one kotaku article listed mean girls's release as april 20th 2010. while some people believe the game did in fact release in a limited run there's been no concrete proof the game ever made it to market in 2017 a user from the lost media wiki contacted 505 games and asked him about the game the representative mentioned they had received many contacts from the wiki and revealed that the game never shipped and of course there is dirty harry dirty harry also known as dirty hairy extreme was a third-person shooter developed by the collective inc and was meant to be published by warner brothers interactive based on the dirty hairy film franchise the game was intended for release not only on nintendo ds but also on ps3 xbox 360 wii pc ps2 xbox and psp basically everything dirty harry was set to take place between the first and second films and was meant to add more depth to the protagonist while collective ink made the xbox 360 and ps3 versions sensory sweep was tasked with the wii ds ps2 and pc ports of the game because the developers wanted a similar third person shooter experience across all platforms the ds game had to be built from scratch consequently the ds version featured a more cel-shaded art style while development was apparently progressing smoothly collective ink's version was cancelled by warner brothers in 2007 the ds game was then cancelled soon after the sensory sweep team was reportedly very behind schedule and wasn't equipped for development on home consoles as it had only developed for handhelds in the past the west weren't the only ones with planned tie-in games initial dx was a racing game based on a street racing manga of the same name he was in development under sega sometime in 2007 and 2008. though never officially announced sega's website uploaded a few screenshots from the game in march 2008 these images were quickly taken down and nothing else was set of initial dx since decathletes was a sports title being developed for ds and psp its developers code monkey were known for their historic work on shrek treasure hunt and charlotte's web their goal for decathletes was to make a realistic athletic sim whilst maintaining a compelling pick up and play game style according to code monkeys adrian hurst the game would have had full character customization and would let players recreate their sporting heroes with mind-blowing accuracy decathletes also had a career mode where players eventually unlocked famous stadiums and bonus events the catholics also would have had a multiplayer mode supporting four players despite a promising premise the game never surfaced announced in 2008 matchman was a run-and-gun game by chinese studio tfh the studio signed a two-year agreement with lexicon games to publish matchman on the ds as well as on the wii and ps3 the game was based on brothers grimm and han's christian anderson tales it had a black and white drawn art style that was fairly unique at the time matchman also featured a commuter mode meant for players who were commuting to work according to marketing material this mode let people play with one hand around 2008 lexicon cancelled the project mamba game scooped it up afterwards but matchman hasn't been seen since black and white creatures was a ds version of the original lionhead studios game black and white both games are god simulators where players control the world as they see fit in black and white creatures the creature becomes more of a focus the player has to train them to do their godly bidding and is able to reward and punish the creature accordingly the ds game was planned to feature several different island locations as well as multiple never before seen creatures there were also new gameplay modes in which creatures were pitted against each other and a dancing mode in which you teach your creature how to get down black and white creatures was announced may 9 2005 and a rough demo was showcased at e3 the same month it was set for release in early 2006 but disappeared for unknown reasons how i spent my summer vacation was a ds game described by one developer as a survival horror game for kids in it a little girl named joanne armed with a chainsaw takes down evil zombies plaguing her summer vacation santa cruz games created a demo for the game before it was ultimately cancelled it's speculated santa cruz couldn't find a publisher for the project another entry by santa cruz chalice was a shoot-em-up being developed in 2008. based on screenshots the game would have been a 2d side scroller while a playable prototype did exist it seems the team was unable to find a publisher raid over the river was a vertical shooter under development at the polish studio nibris players controlled an air combat vehicle through a series of missions featuring an easy to learn but hard to master flight model the game began in peru where archaeologists uncover an artifact that can travel through time via other dimensions the game had two different storylines with one protagonist attempting to take down a sect of the knights templar bent on summoning the demon baphometanto power ups different vehicles multiple gameplay modes and co-op multiplayer further fleshed out the game the title also made use of the ds's mic with voice commands launching special attacks a wii version would have followed the ds version unfortunately nibris was unable to find a publisher for the game and closed down in 2010. hachi koi was also a love simulator or dating sim in development by electronic arts for the ds it was announced in 2008 with an enticing plot the god of death visits the player and tells them they are going to die on their next birthday which is one month away the only way out of this fate is to fall in love and make someone fall in love with them despite the exciting plot in 2009 it was announced in famitsu that hachikoi would never be released reportedly the gameplay would have primarily been about touching girls in various ways with the stylus such as rubbing suntan lotion on them given the premise and the racy screenshots found of the game it's likely hachiko would have only gotten a japanese release in 2008 taito attempted to bring back cult classic arcade game elevator action for the ds featuring similar gameplay and the original illustrator james harvey as the story goes harvey was on a trip to japan when one of his friends had a meeting with a taito representative harvey was asked to redesign the three main characters to make them look classic but still fresh taking inspiration from hip hop culture modern chinese street fashion and north korean military wear harvey turned the designs in only for nothing to come out of the revival moonlight fables was one of the first titles announced for the ds by a western publisher and was in development under cyber philharmonic it was meant to be released in 2005 by majesco as a side-scrolling action adventure with an interesting story the protagonist was 19 year old werewolf trista silver graduate of the officer school for international strike forces and heir to the wolfen empire using the touch screen players could change the phases of the moon to take advantage of her werewolf powers a range of weapons were available from blasters to trista's own teeth and claws though the game was ultimately cancelled a developer who worked on the game at least revealed why on unseen 64. they claimed the project was cancelled because of poor time management and conflicts within the team which was made up of only a handful of people when said developer joined the project was already behind schedule and when the deadline for showing a playable demo to majesco arrived they had nothing to show naturally magesco stopped funding the project from what the developer had to say the game had about 14 levels and the size of one level was bigger than an entire metroid or castlevania game my life coach was a casual lifestyle ds game it was designed alongside behaviorists and nutritionists with the end goal of helping players change their lives the game was won in a long line of my coach games by ubisoft aimed to help players learn skills get fit and practice for sats my life coach took the form of a virtual diary helping players set goals and adjust their habits this life-changing game was slated for holiday 2007 but unfortunately never released the game's cctv was made by john hare at nikitova games as a fairly original concept players work as a security operator and utilize cctv to catch criminals in the act capturing the moment of their crime they then have to use other cameras to track them down in a crowd selecting the wrong person will result in lost time the game featured progression with players starting out as a mall cop and working their way up to an international head of security 50 criminals an overarching plot with hidden information to find two player modes and an additional game on the wii cements this game's intriguing concept unfortunately hair was unable to find a publisher according to him it's very hard to sell an original game some companies expressed interest but their overall response was that's interesting i like the idea of that but it's too original three tribes was an action puzzle game developed by a dutch developer named two tribes in three tribes players became a shaman whose mission was to help the natives solve their problems it had an overhead perspective similar to 2d zelda games and was intended for all ages players would be able to climb swim and fly across the map with players being able to form their own solutions to puzzles instead of following one predetermined path as the game's website stated if you see it you can go there the ds game was set to have a multiplayer game editor letting players craft their own levels and share them with friends unfortunately two tribes had difficulty finding a publisher so the game was shelved indefinitely another game was in the works at two tribes called rewind it began development in 2005 as a twin rails shooter two tribes co-founder martin ruvvers revealed in 2015 that players could rewind time at which point the enemies would become slightly harder other than that the goal of the game was simple destroy everything the game world was said to be carefully scripted making use of a cd quality soundtrack for further immersion unfortunately the team discovered when they put the game together that it wasn't much fun in fact ruvvers said it really sucked thankfully the time spent on the game wasn't all lost as the concept of rewind and some of the game's elements were later repurposed for rive which released in 2016. in august 2004 a port of the ps1 and saturn rpg vandal hearts was listed as an upcoming title under konami but was ultimately canned nothing else is known about the project my personal diary was listed as a game in the works by ontario studio dreamcatcher interactive based on the name it's assumed the title was some sort of virtual journal while slated for a february 2009 release it never materialized dreamcatcher interactive was also making a game called paint ds it too was ultimately canceled though a similarly named game paintby ds did release from mercury games in 2008. living high killing low was a ds game developed by genki ko despite the intriguing name nothing is known about it except that it was cancelled in 2006. in december 2004 orbital media released a gba game called racing gears advance rather hopefully they quickly announced a sequel racing gears 2 for gba and ds nothing else emerged after the announcement gravity zero racing also known as zero g was a game in the works at midas interactive it was a futuristic racing game with tournament modes online modes weapons to take out other racers and advanced racing physics it was planned to release around october 2008 and even had a listing on amazon uk however gravity zero racing vanished without a trace world reborn unification was announced sometime in 2008 by neo-pong software it was a 2d shmup meant as a sequel to world reborn a gba title that also ended up getting cancelled according to a developer none of the publishers they contacted wanted to commit to the game while world reborn eventually released via rom download world reborn unification was never finished ninja jaja maru kun penwa ken yorimo kyoshida gozaru was meant to be a ds remake of a similarly named japan only 1985 action game the game was canned and its company jaliko later closed due to increasing competition in the video game market an ambitious game called emperor was being developed by frame studios it was an rts where players took control of either the greek roman or egyptian empire to conquer the world a trailer was published in 2010 but little else is known about the title a tie-in game based on the animal planet series the jeff corwin experience was once in development just like the show the game would have taught players about wildlife educating through fun it was going to be released on ds and psp but nothing came of it after its initial [Music] announcement did you know hitmonchan is named after jackie chan in the english versions of pokemon but that isn't the case all around the world in japan hitmonchan is named after japanese boxing champion hiroyuki ibihara and in france he's named after mike tyson in total there were six different language versions of pokemon's first generation japanese english french german spanish and italian and they're all different in their own unique ways some deviations were pretty minor like how the tv in pallet town is playing the movie stand by me in all six versions except for in france the game's french translator was a huge anime fan so he changed the tv's description to an episode of dragon ball but other changes were more significant like the one that gave birth to bim a poke god exclusive to the german fandom for today's episode we managed to hunt down some of the translators who worked on pokemon red and blue and they spilled the beans on how it all went down back in the 90s so i hope you'll forgive any mispronunciations on my part as we explore how the first generation of pokemon games were changed all around the world pokemon first launched in japan in early 1996 as pokemon red and green these versions featured the original 151 pokemon sprites none of which were ever used internationally about nine months later red and green were followed up with pokemon blue a new and improved version with updated graphics and fewer glitches in pokemon blue all 151 pokemon were given brand new sprites in trees grass signposts stumps and lots more visual details were upgraded as well and there were other small changes like new pokedex entries and a new layout for the unknown dungeon all the international versions were mostly based on japanese blue so the unique details only present in red and green like the original sprites weird glitches and old graphics were never seen outside of japan much to everyone's surprise pokemon became a massive success in japan even game freak was shocked when it climbed at number one on japanese sales charts the games got so unbelievably popular that nintendo decided to export the franchise overseas starting with the largest economy in the world the united states instead of red and green the games would be called red and blue this was a marketing decision as those are the colors of the american flag and could perhaps boost sales in the region but there was more to consider beyond just the game's titles localizing pokemon for the american market was a huge investment and nintendo viewed it as a gamble that was probably going to end up losing them a lot of money in 1999 pokemon company ceo ishihara shed some light on the situation at the time it was widely believed that american kids would never want to play games with a lot of texts so we thought pokemon only had about a 10 chance of success outside japan the first time we showed off some pokemon in the us we were told they were too cute the staff in america submitted their ideas for replacement designs but we just couldn't believe the kind of stuff they were proposing they turned pikachu into something like a tiger with huge breasts it looked like a character from the musical cats when i asked how is this supposed to be pikachu they said well look there's its tail right there seriously that was the kind of stuff being proposed but fortunately gamefreak put their foot down and refused to change the pokemon's designs if they hadn't the results could have been disastrous the pokemon designs were left intact but nintendo did end up changing most of the pokemon's names all the big words the ones in all caps like character and pokemon names cities items and attacks were created by nintendo of america staffer hiro nakamura with some help from nintendo treehouse and an assistant but all the small words comprising about 99 of the game's texts were all translated by just one man a canadian freelancer named nob ogasawara we got a chance to interview nob for this video and he explained to us how exactly it all went down he was working for some gaming magazines as a foreign correspondent in japan until one day he was lucky enough to get poached by nintendo of america to come work freelance as a video game translator a year later nob's bosses invited him into their office to quiz him on his pokemon knowledge fortunately he was already a big fan of the japanese games so he aced their test and they brought him on board but before we get any deeper into this story i'd like to point out that translating as an art form not a science a translator's skill personality and even their hobbies can all affect the way a translation comes out in the end in a lot of ways red and blue weren't only shaped by game freak they were also shaped by translators like knob for example in the japanese games when you reach viridian city your progress is blocked by an old man lying on the ground his granddaughter says you have to wait for him to sober up then after you've delivered oak's parcel he's back on his feet and says looks like i was pretty drunk my head hurts knob cut out all the booze talk in the english version instead having the girl say he just hadn't had his morning coffee yet likewise in japanese there's a hiker who laughs maniacally because he stoned on magic mushrooms but knob changed this text so the hiker just had a bad case of hay fever and in celadon city there's a house with a buddhist shrine inside which nob changed the description of to make it a diglett sculpture to be clear none of these changes were ordered by nintendo nob changed them all on his own and he even made some minor changes to siri's canon in japan there's a scientist in the selfco building who says there's another selfco branch along the pacomanaya tangaska river in russia but in english the scientist says the other silf branch is actually in tixi and russian no man's land which is located about a thousand miles distance from the river why did nob change the canonical location of southco's russian branch he says it's because pakamanaya tangaska river was just too long and tixi's much shorter at just five letters but in hindsight he now says he actually regrets making this revision some of nob's favorite music movies and tv shows made their way into red and blue as well a rocket grunt who wants you to join his gang on nugget bridge says he's gonna make you an offer you can't refuse an iconic line from the godfather and a hiker in the rock tunnel says hit me with your best shot then after you defeat him he says fired away two lines from the chorus of pat benatar's hit song hit me with your best shot initiating a battle a pokemaniac shouts pokemon fight ready go referencing the 90s anime mobile fighter g gundam where mobile suit battles always begin with the fighters yelling gundam fight ready go but for all the changes knob did make there were also some changes he wanted to make but nintendo didn't allow for one knob wanted to change mr mime's name because he anticipated that pokemon genders would be introduced in future generations which of course is exactly what happened in gen 2 awkwardly resulting in lots of female mr mime in virodian city there's a girl who's nicknamed her spiro in japanese is called oni-chan to better fit with american culture nob changed spero's nickname to brittany named after britney spears so it was something like britney spearo however the higher ups didn't like this joke one bit and changed spiro's nickname to spiri and told nob that any more of these sorts of shenanigans would end in instant termination there's a lot of knob in gen 1 but as a freelancer it wasn't until gen 3 that he finally got enough clout to start making the big decisions knobb's english translation was later used as a base and localized for the german french spanish and italian markets each language was handled by one or two translators a piece all working side by side in nintendo of europe hq in germany of the seven translators the most famous and historically significant is julian bartikov of france according to julian nintendo originally wanted to use the japanese pokemon names in europe because they thought it would be too complicated to trademark hundreds of names across different countries but julian explained to nintendo that the japanese names weren't going to play too well in france he told them squirtle's japanese name zenigami sounds like the french word for stoner and charmander's japanese name sounds like the french slang word for feces nintendo didn't seem to fully trust julian but ultimately they gave in and they let him give all the pokemon new french names and thanks to julian france may have ended up with the best name localizations of any region better even than the english games we interviewed julian and he told us that he implemented as many legends and fairy tales into pokemon names as possible for example he named the legendary bird trio after the nordic gods odin and thor as well as ra the egyptian sun god the french name for beedrill drew inspiration from the three musketeers dartanian and he named gyarados after leviathan the bible's gigantic sea serpent he named far-fetched can artichoke which means duck artichoke this confused a lot of fans because farfetch'd actually holds a leak not an artichoke but julian says this was actually his idea of a prank a way to trick fans into thinking that farfetch'd had an evolved forum that wields an artichoke knob almost got fired for nicknaming a sphero after britney spears but julian had a lot more freedom to make his mark on kanto in english versions there's a far-fetched nickname ducks but julian changed his nickname to julio named after himself of course and he nicknamed a few more pokemon after some of his best friends and just like nob julian injected many of his own interests into the games as well one of koga's lackeys in the fuchsia city gym references a japanese show that was popular in france at the time space sheriff gavin he says i want to be a ninja and jump from tree to tree like on tv like x-hog the space pig and in french the attack minimize was renamed lilliput because in the 18th century book golfer's travels gulliver was taken prisoner by a town of tiny people on an island called lilliput there are many more details that make the french localization truly unique probably too many to count but suffice it to say julian had a huge impact on the pokemon franchise in france thanks to julian germany ended up getting unique pokemon names as well like how geodude was renamed kleinstein after the famous german physicist albert einstein but the name kleinstein works on another level as well because in german kleinstein means small stone most english speakers are familiar with the magic incantation abracadabra al khazam but in germany magicians say abracadabra sim saw salabin so the germans changed alakazan's name to simsala but the final word of the incantation bin was missing so german kids were convinced there was a secret fourth evolution called bin american playgrounds were rampant with rumors for the so-called polka gods like mew3 and peek-a-blue but in germany ben was one of the most sought-after poke gods of them all lance the dragon trainer was renamed siegfried after germanic mythology siegfried the dragon slayer who killed the cursed dragon fafnir and bathed in his blood just like most everything made in germany their localization was efficient and accurate a pretty straightforward german translation of knobs english translation it didn't contain too many errors but also maybe didn't employ as much imagination as the french version unlike the other four languages italy and spain didn't get their own unique pokemon names they simply reused the english names we'd always wondered why so we got in touch with italian localizer elena fogozzaro who explained that nintendo already had an organized structure in place for translating french and german but not for italian and spanish in fact elena and her partner leonardo were the first italian translators that nintendo hired for any game ever translating red and blue into italian and spanish at all was an experiment for nintendo an experiment they didn't think would pay off but nintendo's lack of confidence ended up having consequences that echoed into the future to this day italy and spain still don't have unique pokemon names after passing on gen 1 it would have been weird to start in gen 2 so recycling english names just became the norm every localization has some mistakes but the italian and spanish versions have a particularly bad reputation for containing lots of translation errors for example in spanish when you hook a pokemon with a fishing rod like a magikarp for example instead of the game telling you the hook magikarp attacked it says el malvado magikarp attacko which means the evil magikarp attacked the attack slam was translated as portazzo which instead of something like a body slam actually means to slam a door as a result spanish kids grew up thinking that fish pokemon were evil and that pokemon routinely slammed doors on each other in italy the attack pound was translated as libra the form of pound used for weight measurements or for describing british currency glare was translated as bagliori which instead of a fierce gaze is the definition of glare that refers to a harsh light reflection like when sunlight shines on a tv screen spanish and italian fans have long wondered exactly how the translators made so many obvious mistakes when we asked elena she painted a picture of a translation process mired by disorganization and a lack of information starting from day one elena and her partner were actually hired to translate red and blue from german into italian and traveled to nintendo of europe headquarters to do just that but when they arrived they discovered the games weren't in german they were actually in english luckily they could speak english as well so they told nintendo they could do the translations anyway despite them essentially being hired for the wrong job elena told us everything was very badly organized for translation at that time we barely had a computer just one pc for two translators after waiting for two days we were given several lists of words to translate without any information zero context and with space limitations the lists were very long but due to secrecy reasons nobody told us what they were for nobody told us these were attacks or items or stats everything was mixed up and really difficult to understand in other words there were a handed list of words like slam and pound out of context and were only given a few weeks to complete the job so it's really no surprise that the spanish and italian versions turned out the way that they did the european localizations were all based on knob's english translation so a lot of the changes knob made were repeated around the world including some mistakes the most famous mistake can be found on cinnabar island in japanese red and green there's an npc who trades you an electrode for your raichu in japanese blue this was changed to trading your kadabra for his graveler and afterwards he'd say your cadabra evolved because of course cadabra evolves into alakazam when traded the english version of red used the original raichu electro trade from japanese red but the devs used the text from japanese blue where the npc says your kadabra evolved they swapped out kadabra's name with raichu in the dialogue but failed to realize this resulted in an impossibility with the npc now saying the raichu you traded to me wouldn't evolved two decades later game freak revealed that raichu originally had an evolution named guruchu that was cut from gen 1 due to a lack of cartridge space this led some fans to believe the dialogue about raichu evolving was a reference to gorochu that the developers accidentally left in the game but in reality it was just a coincidental translation error

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Length: 142min 30sec (8550 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 22 2021