Five Facts Episodes 2012

Game	Facts	Air Date	Links
Resident Evil 4	1. Resident Evil 4 was dropped and restarted in production four different times. The game was first started with director Hideki Kamiya but was eventually picked up by director Shinji Mikami. 2. A weapon found in the game is based off of a Capcom game of the same name, Killer7. 3. The movie "Léon: The Professional" is referenced multiple times throughout the game. Eg: A difficulty being named 'Professional' and there being a gun called 'Matilda' which is the name of Natalie Portland's character in the movie. 4. Though the story takes place in Spain, all of the villagers speak with a Mexican dialect. 5. Resident Evil 4 was the first in two presentation categories, the first Resident Evil game to be broadcasted in widescreen format and the first Resident Evil game to feature Pro Logic II surround sound.	September 11, 2012	1
Sonic the Hedgehog	1. Sonic's first video appearance was as an air-freshener in the game Rad Mobile, a 1991 Sega game that was released a couple months before the Sonic game. 2. The Sonic the Hedgehog game has been re-released 25 times. 3. The Sega intro at the beginning of the game took up 1/8th of the half megabyte cartridge. 4. Sega's original concepts for Sonic included him being in a band, having sharp visible fangs, and having a human girlfriend named Madonna. 5. Sonic was the first video game character to have a balloon in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, appearing in 1993 as classic Sonic and 2011 for his 20th Anniversary.	September 18, 2012	2
Elder Scrolls: Skyrim	1. Most if not all of the musical pieces presented in Skyrim are refurbished versions of the music in the Elder's Scrolls III: Morrowind, both were composed by Jeremy Soule. 2. The guards will often say, "Let me guess, somebody stole your sweetroll?" to the player. The stolen sweetroll has been a running gag throughout the Bethesda software games since Morrowind 3. In the city of Riften there is a family called the Blackbriar. Given Joan Allen's performance in the game, the family's name is a clear reference to the movie The 'Bourne Ultimatum' where Allen starred as Pam Landy, a chief officer of the CIA, who was kept in the dark about a program called Blackbriar. 4. Tim Roth is possibly named after the 6th century Danish king Hroðgar. The name has appeared in a few other Anglo-Saxon epics including 'Beowulf.' One of the names of King Hroðgar was also known as Ro. Ro in Skyrim is one of the second words you learn in the Dragon Shout, an unrelenting force you learn from one of the monks in High Hrothgar. 5. Max von Sydow and Christopher Plummer, voice actors of Esbern and Arngeir respectively, were nominated for best supporting actor in 2012 with Plummer coming out as the award winner.	September 25, 2012	3
Bioshock	1. Inside of the main character Jack's wallet, you will see an 'Irrational Games' business card, also the individual in between the two people in the photograph is the lead designer at 'Irrational Games,' Bil Gardener. 2. Some of the Splicers' faces are based off of World War I veterans who had undergone facial reconstructive surgery to repair violent injuries. 3. At one point the game was to feature bosses known as Savants, which were basically brains in jars. This was scrapped however because they realized that fighting brains in jars were not fun in terms of gameplay. 4. The original name for the Gene Bank was Plasmi-Quik. When play testers commonly avoided the machine because they were unsure of its purpose, they were renamed Gene Banks. The first video released of the game also showed the Plasmi-Quik machine. 5. In one of Dr. Suchong's audio diaries he discusses the science of Vita-Chambers. In 'System Shock 2,' an early game that Bioshock's FPS RPG gameplay was based on, you had to provide quantum entanglement samples to bring your character back to life after death.	October 2, 2012	4
Doom	1. At one point when the game was in pre-developement, the team at ID Software wanted to create a game based on the movie 'Aliens,' although the game wound up becoming Doom, ID didn't forget about their love of the movie 'Aliens.' Some elements from 'Aliens' made it into the game and another movie reference that chainsaw and supershot gun, which was in Doom II, were both inspired by the 'Evil Dead' series. 2. John Carmack, the man behind Doom engine at ID Software, decided to call the game Doom after seeing a scene from the Tom Cruise and Paul Newman film 'The Color of Money.' In the scene Cruise's character refers to what's in his pool-cue case as Doom. 3. Throughout the game you can see the space marine's face in the status bar change based on the situation he's in, however there is one expression you probably haven't seen, the shocked expression rarely made an appearance in the game due to a bug in the programming. 4. The Souls Sphere super charge power up was originally intended to act as an extra life, during development of the game the concept of having lives was dropped. 5. It is widely believed that ID Software's John Romero coined the term 'Deathmatch' while working with John Carmack on the land multiplayer for Doom.	October 10, 2012	5
Mortal Kombat	1. Originally Mortal Kombat creators, Ed Boon and John Tobias planned on creating a video game based on the Jean Claude van Damme movie 'Blood Sport', however the DLD's license fell through. Boon and Tobias continued their project to make a fighting game which turned into the first Mortal Kombat. 2. In the first Mortal Kombat game your character is actually participating in the 10th Mortal Kombat tournament. According to the storyline, if the Earth Realm loses ten tournaments in a row, humanity gets sent into the darkness of the out world. 3. In the arcade version of Mortal Kombat, there was a rumored glitch that caused Sub-Zero or Scorpion to turn into a red ninja. On the diagnostics screen of Mortal Kombat I, the phrase "ERMAC5", meaning Error Macro 5, was shown. People believed that the name had something to do with the red ninja. After heavy circulation of the rumors, the development team created a secret red ninja character named Ermac for Ultimate Mortal Kombat III. 4. The Mortal Kombat II arcade machine was so popular that many machines had deadlock security panels installed to keep people from stealing the motherboard and taking it home. 5. Mortal Kombat was one of the earliest games to feature the juggling concept; this refers to the idea that once the fighter is knocked into the air, they are helpless and susceptible to more damage or hang time. John Tobias later admitted this was an accident.	October 16, 2012	6
Gears of War	1. Gears of War started off as a vehicle based warfare game set in the unreal universe called Unreal Warfare, however development problems delayed the completion of the game. Around that time the Unreal Engine 3 was being developed and Epic chose to move the game to the newer engine. During the transition, Epic realized how different this game was in comparison to the other Unreal Games which led to the game eventually becoming the first Gears of War. 2. The game takes place on Sera, a planet consumed by past and present wars. Spelled backwards Sera becomes Ares, the Greek God of War. 3. Originally Epic planned on allowing players to choose the gender of Marcus' partner. A male choice would have led to Dom while a female choice would have led to Dominique, this was scrapped and players would not get a chance to play a female character until Gears of War 3. Lt Kim from the first Gears of War was also written as a female supporting character at first. 4. Epic had originally planned on calling the Locusts Geists, however Epic had to make a change due to a Nintendo game of the same name. 5. The famous chainsaw gun was almost cut from the game due to creative differences between Epic and Microsoft. Fortunately Epic fought to keep it in the game.	October 23, 2012	7
L.A. Noire	1. Developers used old photographs, taken by Robert Spence, of L.A. in the 1940's to model the city. 2. L.A. Noire contains over 20 hours of voice over work. 3. According to Team Bondi's Brendan MacNamara, the original three questions your character would ask during interrogations were coax, force, and lie. Force acted as the aggressive option and the audio for the game was recorded with that response in mind, however, when the game was released the questions were changed to truth, doubt, and lie. This led players to pointing out that Cole seemed to act crazy whenever doubt was chosen. 4. Many of the cases in L.A. Noire are inspired by real crimes that occurred in L.A. in the 1940's. 5. L.A. Noire was the first game to be shown at the Tribeca Film Festival. It was presented as a hour long film that ended with a Q&A section from the developers.	October 30, 2012	8
Borderlands	1. During the development of the first Borderlands, the art department wanted to completely redo the game's art style. Their goal was to change the art's realistic tone into a more creative shell-shaded art style. Gear Box president Randy Pitchford was initially hesitant but later agreed to the change. 2. Lilith, the Siren character, went through seven complete revisions before the art director was satisfied with her design. 3. Crazy Earl, Scooter, Claptrap, and all of the in game enemy battle dialogue is recorded by Gear Box employees. 4. Claptrap was the last character to be put into Borederlands. 5. Mikey Neumann, the creative director at Gear Box, performed the motion capture for the intro for Borderlands 1, this included Lilith's strutting and kiss blowing	November 6, 2012	9
Alan Wake	1. Originally Remedy Entertainment wanted Bright Falls to be a sandbox style open world city, similar to games like GTA, this was scrapped however when they realized it hurt the pacing and story telling of the game. 2. Remedy's president Matias Myllyrinne has said in interviews that he and his team set out to make a scary game with a town that is deliberately modeled after the TV show, 'Twin Peaks.' 3. The protagonist name is A. Wake, if you combine his first initial with his last name it follows Remedy's tradition of referencing game elements within their character's names. 4. James McCaffrey, the voice actor for Max Payne, voiced two manuscripts in the game called The Sudden Stop 1 and 2. 5. The game's enemies were created by pouring water over their concept art to make the ink run and to cause them to look just a bit off.	November 13, 2012	10
Fallout 3	1. Fallout 3 was originally being developed by Black Isle Studios under the working title Van Buren, however Black Isle Studios closed down and the rights were sold to Bethesda. Bethesda then scrapped all previous work from Black Isle and made Fallout 3 from the ground up. 2. At one point Fallout 3 was refused classification in Australia because of the in game use of Morphine to ignore limb pain. The developers decided to not only revise the Australian version of the game but all versions as well, regardless of the location. As a result, Morphine was renamed to Med-X. 3. Artist Grant Struthers developed a prototype for the V.A.T.S. camera system by filming his Incredibles action figures fighting. 4. The player character in the game is called the lone wanderer, executive producer Todd Howard's son voiced this character as a baby on his first birthday. 5. The cars in Fallout 3 are based on a nuclear power concept car that was designed by the Ford Motors Company in 1958.	November 20, 2012	11
Left 4 Dead 2	1. When Valve began to develop Left 4 Dead 2, the game was given the code name carnation in order to prevent information leaks. Valve also considered calling the game Back 4 More before deciding to keep Left 4 Dead in its title. 2. One of the development goals for Left 4 Dead 2 was to achieve greater variation and visual effects than the first game. After many simple changes in the character models, Valve was able to reduce memory usage for the infected by 50%. As a result a single character model could have up to 24,000 variations in the game. 3. After the announcement of Left 4 Dead 2, some Left 4 Dead players created a boycott group on Steam claiming that the sequel style was inappropriate and the release seemed too quick. As a result, Valve flew two of the group's most prominent members to their office to play test the game. The two members felt that the game was "Well done." 4. The original box art for the game was a back of a hand with all but the index and middle fingers ripped off. The SRB claimed that this was too explicit and in response Valve altered the art and simply made the fingers appear bent back. Unfortunately the UK cover had to be changed further after Valve realized that a two finger sign with a back hand is considered an insult. 5. The German version of the game had to be heavily censored due to content restrictions. To make up for this censorship, German players received exclusive weapons ported from Counter-Strike: Source. Extra Burnie Fact: 1. A forum member on the Valve forums proposed the idea for the Charger before the sequel was released. It was a controversy that the developers stole the idea from the user, including both the name and it having one small arm and one big arm.	November 27, 2012	12
Minecraft	1. It takes exactly 4 minutes and 10 seconds to break a block of Obsidian with your bare hand. 2. Soul Sand is slightly shorter than other blocks in the game. If ice is placed underneath Soul Sand you move even slower. 3. When Enderman are set on fire, they sometimes teleport to water for safety, however their weakness to water often results in suicide. 4. The idea for the Nether mainly comes from the transportation method used in the novel series The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan. The transportation method in the series is called The Ways. 5. Bedrock can not be destroyed by normal means, however Notch has stated that it does have a breaking point. Unfortunately an explosion with enough power to break it would crash the game entirely. 6. In Minecraft classic, Bedrock used to be known as Adminium because only Admins could break it or place it. It is still sometimes referred to it as such today. 7. Some of the paintings in Minecraft are pictures of Counterstrike maps. Two of the maps that are painted are Dust II and Aztec. 8. The sounds that Endermen make are simple phrases played backwards and distorted. Some of these phrases include, "Hi-ya!", "What's up?", and "Uh-oh." 9. Originally the Villagers that spawn in the game were going to be Pigmen, these NPCs would look like a standard player model, like Zombies, but with a pig skin. There is a skin in the second Xbox360 skin pack that references this idea. 10. According to Notch, Zombies used to drop feathers when killed because he did not have any idea what they could be holding and chickens weren't around back then. 11. The average human weighs about 1.062 grams per cubic cm, it can be said that Steve, also known as the player, weighs about 950 pounds. Using similar methods of measurement, Steve's height is believed to be 6'1 ft. 12. The texture file of a Zombie Pigman contains the hidden message "thx xaphobia", this is a reference to skin's original creator, 13. During a Redit ama, the composer and sound designer for Minecraft said that his cat does the sound effects for the Ghast enemies in the game. 14. According to a developer at Mohjang, a group of Enderman is referred to as a "haunting" of Enderman. 15. Minecraft, as of August 2014, is now consider to be the second best selling game title of all time, that is if you don't count every Tetris title as one game, as some sources do, than it is third.	December 4, 2012 March 4, 2014 August 5, 2014	13 14 15
Super Mario Brothers	1. Mario was originally named Jumpman, however Nintendo's US office was trying to come up with a better name, they were interrupted by their landlord whose name was Mario. 2. The original control scheme for Mario during much of the game's developing process was A to shoot bullets, B to dash, and Up on the control pad to jump. The control scheme was dropped however when the developers decided that jumping should be the main aspect of the game and the idea of shooting bullets was changed into fireballs. 3. Mario got his iconic look due to the hardware limitations of the NES. Realistic hair was difficult to design so Nintendo gave him a hat and the mustache and overalls were used to sharpen Mario's features as well. 4. Creator Shigeru Miyamoto originally designed Bowser as an ox, however his drawings were misinterpreted as a turtle by one of the animators. 5. According to an interview with Shigeru Miyamoto and Satoru Iwata, the first level of Super Mario is designed specifically to teach you mushrooms are good, running into Goombas are bad, and stepping on Goombas are good. This is achieved by making these aspects of the game almost impossible to avoid, especially for new players.	December 11, 2012	16
Halo 3	1. Halo 3 was initially conceived before Halo 2's release in 2004. While many Bungie employees were busy making extra content for Halo 2, some team members were working on the ground work for Halo 3. Things were kept quiet for two years until the game's official announcement at E3 in 2006. 2. During the three year development for Halo 3, Bungie reportedly consumed over 20,000 pounds of pizza, 24,000 gallons of soda and half a ton of bananas. 3. Halo 3 has over 39,000 lines of dialogue and 13,000 sound effects. 4. The final testing copy of Halo 3 before going Gold was code name Epsilon, unfortunately Epsilon was linked to the internet and Microsoft banned accounts seen playing the Epsilon copy until the year 9999. 5. Halo 3 does not render true HD like most other games on the Xbox360. A Bungie Weekly Update confirmed that the game renders at 1152x640 instead of the standard 1280x720. Bungie decided to use 640 to preserve the dynamic range of lighting in the game.	December 18, 2012	17
Pac-Man	1. The name Pac-Man comes from the Japanese term "paku paku" which describes the sound of munching on something. Pac-Man was originally called Puck Man in Japan. 2. Pac-Man was only 24 KB in size when it was released in 1980. 3. There 255 playable levels in the original Pac-Man arcade game. The 25 level is corrupt and unbeatable. 4. Each of the ghosts in the first Pac-Man have their own special tracking algorithms to keep the game play fresh. The red ghost likes to chase Pac-Man from the front, the orange ghost moves around randomly, the blue ghost moves towards Pac-Man at a center point, and the pink ghost moves 32 dots in front of Pac-Man. 5. When Google created a playable Pac-Man logo for its front page on May 21, 2010, the game was played for almost 5 million hours.	December 25, 2012	18