\n
The Museum of Modern Art added SimCity 2000 to its halls in 2012, one of twelve games considered to be perfect heralds of applied design.\n Many of the games exhibited are playable to some degree.\n There’s a demo of SimCity 2000, which was explicitly designed for the exhibition due to the sheer size of the game.\n That’s right, both the leader of the Greybeards with the deep husky voice and Nintendo’s most iconic character with his high-pitched Italian accent is voiced by Charles Martinet.\n Some other notable people behind some of Skyrim’s voices include Lynda Carter (Miss World USA 1972), Christopher Plummer (Charles F. Muntz from Pixar’s UP), and Michael Hogan (Colonel Saul Tigh from Battlestar Galactica).\n During a flashback in the final episode of season ten of The Walking Dead, the season’s antagonist, Negan, can be seen playing Gears of War 2.\n While Negan is supposedly playing multiplayer with a couple of other players, keen-eyed viewers figured out that the gameplay footage was from a point in the game’s campaign, specifically Act 2.\n As far as zombie survival games go, Left 4 Dead 2 found a formula for exciting yet refreshing gameplay that’s incredibly hard to beat.\n Combine that with surprisingly good graphics for its time, and this is why ten years from launch, it still had enough of a dedicated following to warrant an expansion.\n Valve, the producers of the game, were initially planning to create a next-gen sequel but instead decided to make The Last Stand Expansion to what is commonly referred to as “the game that refuses to die.”\n In an attempt to add as much authenticity as possible to a game set in a fictional criminal underworld, the producers decided to shy away from “goofy LA actors,” who added little more than two dimensions to the characters they voiced.\n Quite a lot of the background characters are gangsters belonging to Latino and Black gangs, so Rockstar Games got a guy to go around and hire genuine gangsters to voice the part.\n Many who saw their scripts threw them on the floor, as they weren’t “real” enough, and they recorded their own version instead!\n Not only did Half-Life completely redefine the PC first-person shooter genre, but it also had an incredibly mind-bending sci-fi story to back it up!\n It’s no wonder that by 2008 it ended up selling more than 9.3 million copies at retail alone, being described by IGN at the time as the best shooter since the first Doom game.\n Many game critics and reviewers gave it a full ten out of ten, with PC Gamer awarding it the title of Best PC Game Ever in 1999, 2001, and 2005.\n If you haven’t played either of the battle royale giants, you’d be forgiven for thinking that they’re pretty much the same game.\n Bluehole, the company behind PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG), obviously thought the same as they attempted to sue Epic Games because Fortnite allegedly copied their battle royale game-style.\n The case was eventually dropped, which leaves us wondering whether they realized that the idea had been around for a while in other media formats \u2013 like the Japanese Battle Royale film released in 2000.\n First up, did you know that the Joker in Batman: Arkham City is voiced by none other than Mark Hamill, of Star Wars fame?\n It turns out that Hamill was a massive fan of Lost, so he managed to sneak in a reference to his favorite show during one of the Joker’s monologues.\n On top of this, if you wander around in the game long enough, you can hear some background crooks wondering out loud about whether the island in Lost was ever actually explained.\n Despite their games being instant cult classics, Looking Glass Studios were hit by financial setback after setback and were forced to close down in 2000.\n It’s thanks to the developer’s generosity that the unofficial yet incredibly well-made expansion pack Thief 2X: Shadows of the Metal Age was able to come to life.\n The game featured a range of new missions, cut-scenes, more than 3,000 lines of dialogue, and an entirely new playable character!\n It took five years of hard work from more than 60 people to make the expansion a reality.\n Originally referred to by the game studio as “gatherers,” the purpose of Little Sisters was to harvest a rare chemical called ADAM from the corpses you see strewn around the place.\n Some of the first concepts for BioShock‘s gatherers were equally horrifying. For example, there was, what appeared to be, a Doberman in a wheelchair and a frog that had some sort of funnel sticking out of its butt.\n Fortunately, the game studio decided to go with downright creepy-looking little girls to make the player sympathize with them.\n In many games having a keen ear and picking out sounds can mean the difference between life and death.\n The developers of Silent Hill 2 found that by randomizing the order and timing that sounds like footsteps, breathing, the shattering of glass, and even pig squeals, players were kept on edge and were unable to predict what might come next.\n From a development point of view, this method was an absolute genius move, but I still don’t think I’ll ever be able to forgive them!\n In the movie industry, it’s pretty much impossible to film anything without taking multiple cuts, which has influenced how we put together stories \u2013 not just in movies but also in the vast majority of video games.\n The creators of God of War (2018) wanted to try something different to pull the players focus more on Kratos himself and everything he was experiencing.\n By doing this, they were able to immerse players into the game at an entirely new level!\n In 1999, Minh Le and Jess Cliffe created the first version of Counter-Strike, in a custom map in Half-Life.\n By 2000, the pair had gone through five beta releases and created a website, which drew enough attention from Half-Life’s developers to buy them out and hire them to create a full version of Counter-Strike.\n Counter-Strike became one of the most influential first-person shooter games, developing many of the FPS game mechanics found in nearly all modern shooters!\n One of the best things about DOS2, if it’s even possible to narrow it down to a few things, is the witty yet refreshingly different dialogue you hear throughout the game.\n Sometimes it adds some insight into what you’re doing. Sometimes it’s your character being a sarcastic ass; either way \u2013 it really hooks you into the game!\n Amazingly, it was only after the initial launch date was pushed back that DOS2’s developers made the call to introduce dialogue, going over millions of lines of scripts before finally releasing the game in 2017.\n Lead developer Andrew “Redigit” Spinks announced in February 2012 that there would be no further updates to Terraria.\n He felt that it was time to move on from the game and wished to spend more time with his family.\n Fans didn’t take this news lightly, but they didn’t have to wait long for some good news.\n In September 2012, Terraria was ported to Xbox 360 and PS3. The renewed interest in the game led to many more updates to the PC version \u2013 we just hope that Spinks ended up getting some time with his family before returning to Terraria!\n The Gollop brothers first pitched their idea of the first X-COM game to Microprose back in 1991.\n Still, their initial game design document was so flawed and lacking in detail that the publishers almost rejected it, only giving the brothers a contract when they were able to explain the game in person.\n In 1993 Microprose was bought out by Spectrum Holobyte, who took one look at X-COM and told them to can the idea.\n Microprose ignored the official cancellation, kept the brothers working on the game, and successfully re-pitch the finished version to Spectrum in 1994!\n Bioware was founded in 1995 by three recently graduated doctors who shared a passion for medicine, video games, and role-playing games.\n Three years later, Bioware had released their second and most famous game \u2013 Baldur’s Gate, for which they were able to obtain a Dungeons & Dragons license, using the 2nd edition rules.\n It took so much time and effort to create Baldur’s Gate that two of the three founders dropped medicine completely to focus entirely on their new careers as video game developers!\n Some may claim that a few previous games were the first MMORPGs, but Neverwinter Nights was the first to follow a similar format to what would later become the standard MMORPG format.\n When Neverwinter Nights first came out, it cost so much to connect to the internet that just playing one hour of the game would cost you six dollars!\n By 1995 the game had reached peak popularity, and its servers could host up to 500 players at a time.\n Harmonix Music systems were the brains behind both Guitar Hero I and II.\n Still, they could not make other Guitar Hero games after the producer was bought out by Activision, and Harmonix themselves was bought out by MTV.\n It turns out that pairing Harmonix with MTV was the perfect combination.\n Harmonix had ideas lined up for a much more musically sophisticated game, while MTV had all the right connections in the music industry to land all the necessary record deals.\n Halo 3 set a new precedent for the Halo series, raking in $300 million during the first week of sales.\n By the time the billionth online Halo 3 match had been played in 2009, only 800 thousand games of Halo 2 had been played \u2013 despite it being released some three years beforehand!\n It’s no wonder that Halo 3, the game that was ranked as the most wanted game in 2007, is considered one of the most hyped-up games in video game history!\n Tensions were exceptionally high in Hong Kong during the early months of 2020, with a simultaneous increase in pro-democracy protests and strict anti-protest measures.\n Although Animal Crossing wasn’t released for sale in China, would-be players could access foreign copies of the game through various online sales platforms.\n Some pro-democracy activists were able to create custom anti-Chinese Communist Party messages on their in-game islands, which called for the freedom of Hong Kong.\n When CD Projekt Red first approached the author, Andrzej Sapkowski, he thought they would never make much money off the games.\n So Sapkowski pressed them to pay him up-front for the rights to The Witcher series instead of taking the more traditional percentage of total sales.\n It wasn’t until 2018, after the wildfire success of The Witcher 3, that Sapkowski demanded that CD Projekt Red pay him an extra 16 million dollars just for that title alone.\n The developers were surprisingly reasonable with the author, making a new private agreement in 2019 which seemed to leave both parties happy!\n Released in late 2010, you were finally able to control all soccer players on the pitch in FIFA 11!\n While that in itself was pretty awesome, this update finally allowed the ability for teams of eleven players to work together, and each play a fixed role in online games against other teams of eleven.\n Believe it or not, the history of e-sports began back in 1997, when Quake created the mold for the future of competitive gaming.\n About 2,000 competitors from across the US participated, with sixteen finalists battling it out in Atlanta, Georgia.\n The prize? Nothing other than a 1987 Ferrari 328 GTS convertible \u2013 something the winner wasn’t even insured to drive!\n If you played Pok\u00e9mon Red or Blue back in the day, you almost certainly knew about the glitch that allowed you to catch MissingNo., a glitched-out Pok\u00e9mon.\n It turns out that MissingNo. could appear differently, depending on the placing of certain letters in your character’s name.\n The five forms that MissingNo. could take were the “normal” form, with a glitched-out sprite. There were three forms that took on the sprites of Kabutops, Aerodactyl, and the ghost from the Pok\u00e9mon Tower.\n The final form is actually found in Pok\u00e9mon Yellow and has a glitched-out red and yellow sprite.\n Well, that’s not entirely correct \u2013 all of the colossi have names, but these names are unofficial nicknames that the game developers and fans gave them over time.\n For example, the first colossus you meet was nicknamed by the developers as “Minotaur A,” while fans gave it the much more exciting nickname of “Valus.”\n Fun Fact: There are only sixteen characters in the entire game that you can fight, and they’re all the boss-fight-level colossi!\n In fact, it was literally referred to by its own studio as “orcs in space,” as it was meant to be a rush-job game that would capitalize on the huge success of Warcraft.\n Coming from such an uninspired background, it’s no wonder that Blizzard was faced with huge criticism over their demo.\n The team behind Starcraft had some shake-ups, and it was decided to essentially re-do the entire game.\n Something that I, for one, am incredibly happy about!\n For decades after Street Fighter II‘s release, players wondered who the two mysterious characters seen during the intro were.\n The fighters were finally identified by Capcom in 2016 and Street Fighter V‘s release, although still not as playable characters.\n It turns out that they are Scott, who likes going to the lake but dislikes caterpillars, and Max, who likes sparkly things and gambling.\n As a game which in essence, allows you to battle your army against Communist armies, it’s not exactly the kind of thing that China would have wanted going around.\n Someone tipped the Chinese government off about this, so they banned Red Alert and its subsequent sequels.\n Other Command & Conquer games, ones that didn’t focus on the total annihilation of Communism, have been legally sold in China over the years with no issues.\n Back in 2003, Prince of Persia: Sands of Time was all the rage.\n Ubisoft, the studio behind it, tasked its developers with creating a game that would completely redefine the genre and use the full power of the next generation of video game consoles.\n The studio originally pitched the game they came up with as Prince of Persia: Assassins.\n However, as they got to building the game, they found themselves creating an entirely new beast and soon realized that it would have to be a completely different game!\n But wait, there’s more \u2013 Snoop Dogg worked with the surviving members of The Doors to create a new remix of Riders on the Storm.\n They also included many parts of the original recording by The Doors, including samples of Jim Morrison’s voice.\n Other than fat stacks of cash, we’re not sure how EA Games managed to convince musicians like The Doors or Snoop Dogg to even take part, but we’re certainly not complaining!\n Steve “Guinsoo” Feak first created Defense of the Ancients (Dota) as a mod for Warcraft III, back before it became a game in and of itself.\n Feak was later snapped up by Riot Games, who wanted him to be the brains behind their new operation: League of Legends.\n Feak’s influence on the games can be seen in a number of items and characters, such as Guinsoo’s Scythe of Vyse in Dota and Guinsoo’s Rageblade in League of Legends.\n Warcraft III was undoubtedly one of the best strategy games ever to exist, and its features like this that in our opinion, really made it just that little bit more special.\n For example, if you click a peasant too many times, it may start sassing you or even shout, “Help! Help! I’m being repressed” – a direct reference to Monty Python’s The Holy Grail.\n And let’s be quite honest here, the DK Rap itself is a little bit of a joke \u2013 but not in a good sense.\n When it was written and recorded, the DK Rap was just a fun little track where monkeys rapped about grapes and bananas, and it was never really meant to be anything more serious than that!\n That said, critics of the game instantly slammed it for such foolhardy attempts to produce anything of gravity \u2013 but hey, what do critics know anyway?\n In the second Mad Max film, Mel Gibson’s Max can be seen roaming the empty wasteland in the company of an Australian cattle dog.\n The developers of Fallout were obviously fans of the Mad Max films, as the playable character in Fallout 3 resembled Max in many ways.\n Fun Fact: Dogmeat is named after the dog in the not-so-smash-hit 1975 post-apocalyptic film A Boy and His Dog.\n There’s just one game in mind when it comes to the destruction of Nintendo 64 controllers and messed-up palms, and that’s Mario Party.\n While no severe injuries ever occurred, more than 90 official complaints were lodged to the New York State Attorney’s office against Nintendo of America for wounds to the hands.\n Nintendo of America eventually caved and settled the lawsuit, offering four sets of fingerless gloves to each household that owned the game.\n Science Fiction X, often shortened by the developers as SFX, was the code name given for Mass Effect while it was going through development.\n When it came time to give the game a name, many pushed for either Science Fiction X or SFX, not realizing they were too close to the game, and that would have been a truly awful name.\n Fortunately for everyone, the game ended up being named after one of the most powerful things in the game universe \u2013 the energy used to power much of the game’s technology.\n Back in 2005, when players first booted up Civilization IV and researched their first technology, they couldn’t believe the voice they were hearing.\n It was, of course, none other than the voice of Spock from Star Trek, calmly yet firmly narrating the purposes of all available technologies!\n It’s pretty likely that no game will ever dare to attempt what Nintendo did, considering it took them some 20 years to get there.\n Players of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate are not just able to take control of every single character that’s ever graced the previous Super Smash games, but a whole host more from other game franchises.\n There are more than 80 playable characters in total, including Banjo and Kazooie, and Sephiroth from Final Fantasy, from rival platforms!\n While this was never proven, it wouldn’t surprise us at all, considering that in its first year, it grossed more than $600 million in Japan alone!\n By 1981, the instant classic had raked in $1 billion from players at arcades around the world!\n Fun Fact: The dragon Paarthurnax in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is voiced by the same man who voices Nintendo’s Mario.\n
\nGears of War 2 was featured in AMC’s The Walking Dead.\n
\nLeft 4 Dead 2 was so popular that an expansion was released 11 years after the original launch date.\n
\nRockstar Games hired real-life gang members to voice background characters in Grand Theft Auto V.\n
\nHalf-Life was listed as the Best-Selling First-Person Shooter of All Time (PC) in the 2008 gamer’s edition of the Guinness Book of World Records.\n
\nThe creators of PUBG tried to sue the makers of Fortnite.\n
\nThere are multiple references in Batman: Arkham City to ABC’s hit TV series Lost.\n
\nThe studio behind Thief II: The Metal Age ran out of money, so they donated their tools to the game’s fans to expand upon the game.\n
\nThe initial designs for the Little Sisters in BioShock were absolutely horrifying.\n
\nThe background noises in Silent Hill 2 were randomized to keep players on the edge of their seats.\n
\nGod of War (2018) plays out like a movie that’s been shot in one single take, with no cuts or loading screens.\n
\nCounter-Strike was initially a custom mod you could play in Half-Life.\n
\nDivinity: Original Sin 2 wasn’t meant to be released with voiced dialogue.\n
\nIn 2012 the developers of Terraria tried to cancel further updates to the game.\n
\nX-COM: UFO Defense was nearly canceled twice!\n
\nBaldur’s Gate was developed by Bioware, the same developer who would later make the Mass Effect series.\n
\nReleased in 1991, Neverwinter Nights was the first successful MMORPG.\n
\nThe creators of Rock Band were the same people who made the first two Guitar Hero games.\n
\nIn the first 24 hours of its release, more than a million people logged into Xbox Live to play Halo 3.\n
\nDemocracy activists used Animal Crossing: New Horizons to spread messages that criticized China’s rule of Hong Kong.\n
\nThe author of The Witcher novels tried to sue the developers of The Witcher 3 for more royalty payments.\n
\nFIFA 11 was the first FIFA game to let you play as the goalkeeper.\n
\nThe first gaming event in the US to be held at a national level was the Red Annihilation multiplayer Quake event in 1997.\n
\nThere are five different forms that MissingNo. can take in the original Pok\u00e9mon GameBoy games.\n
\nThe Colossi in Shadow of the Colossus don’t actually have names.\n
\nThe first playable demo of Starcraft was essentially a re-skinned version of Warcraft, but in space.\n
\nThe two characters who fight during the intro to Street Fighter II actually have names!\n
\nCommand & Conquer: Red Alert was one of the first video games to be banned in China.\n
\nAssassin’s Creed was initially meant to be a spin-off of Prince of Persia.\n
\nSnoop Dogg created an exclusive track for Need For Speed: Underground 2.\n
\nThe same guy behind Dota created League of Legends.\n
\nIf you click the units enough times in Warcraft III, they will get annoyed at you and start talking back.\n
\nDonkey Kong 64‘s DK Rap started as a joke between the game designers.\n
\nDogmeat, the canine companion in Fallout 3, was modeled off the dog in Mad Max 2.\n
\nNintendo’s American branch was forced to offer gloves to everyone who bought a copy of Mario Party.\n
\nMass Effect was initially called Science Fiction X.\n
\nLeonard Nimoy of Star Trek Fame voiced much of Sid Meier’s Civilization IV.\n
\nAt its release, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate was the largest crossover game in history.\n
\nJapan was rumored to have run out of 100 Yen coins when Space Invaders was first released in 1978.\n
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