Video Games History, Stats, Trivia & Everything In Between – 48 Facts

Despite being one of the most successful fighting games of all time, "Mortal Kombat" only had a development team of four people.

2. The Legend of Zelda was principally inspired by creator Shigeru Miyamoto's explorations as a young boy in the hillsides, forests, and caves surrounding his childhood home in Sonobe, Japan where he ventured into forests with secluded lakes, caves, and rural villages.

3. In Super Mario 64, a Shepherd Tone (a noise composed of sine waves that gives the illusion of constantly ascending or descending in pitch) was used in the soundtrack for the 'endless staircase' "to provide an unsettling feeling."

4. A man spent 3 years designing and creating "the perfect city' using Sim City 3000. The city named Magnasanti had the game's maximum population of 6 million, no crime and no pollution.

5. While developing the 1994 hit game "Donkey Kong Country," programmers found that real-life gorillas moved too slow for a fast-paced game. Instead, Donkey Kong's movements were based off a horse's gallop.

Sid Meier wasn't bothered about the online play in the first Civilization game, saying “if you had friends, you wouldn't need to play computer games.”

7. A man played a game of Civilization II for 10 years resulting in a never ending nuclear war between the player and two AI causing the world to become a 'hellish nightmare of suffering and devastation'.

8. Street Fighter II cost $69.99 in 1992. In 2013, that is equivalent to $116.18.

9. Metal Gear Solid 3 has a boss that can be defeated by not touching the game for a week.

10. Doom was so popular in 1995 that it was installed on more PCs than Windows 95. Bill Gates briefly considered buying its creator, ID software, but settled for getting a team at Microsoft to port the game to Win95. The team was led by Gabe Newell.

The popular series Red vs. Blue was captured using an in game glitch in Halo 1. This glitch was later recreated in Halo 2 for the sole benefit of the show.

12. Halo 2 was delayed for PC release because one of the developers hid a picture of his butt in it.

13. The Halo was originally supposed to be 3rd person shooter designed for Macintosh. In 2000, Microsoft bought Bungie and made it an exclusive for the original Xbox.

14. The original idea for Resident Evil 4 was supposed to be a "cool" and "stylish" change in the series. It was canceled and eventually became what we now know as Devil May Cry.

15. The Tetris theme is actually a Russian folk song named “Korobeiniki”, in which a street vendor flirts with a customer while haggling over goods.

Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto and his team wanted Mario to ride a dinosaur since just after the completion of the very first Super Mario Bros. game. It took 6 years, before technology could handle the release of Yoshi in Super Mario World.

17. The lowest score with which Super Mario Bros. can be beaten is 600 points.

18. In Super Mario Bros., the Hammer Bros. eventually chase Mario if he stands still long enough.

19. Portal 2 was supposed to have an ending where Chell spoke, but the idea was soon scrapped because game-testers couldn't figure out who was speaking.

20. Portal is based on a game called Narbacular Drop, which was a class project created by university students. Liking the idea, Valve hired the entire team of students to develop Portal.

The game 'Dark Souls' was originally going to be called 'Dark Ring' but had to be changed after the developers learned that in Britain ring is a slang for anus.

22. Denmark was the first country to be fully transplanted into the Minecraft games. The government hoped it could help make lessons more fun for students, until hackers ‘bombed’ the Minecraft version of Denmark in a cyber-attack.

23. There is an active ‘secret-seekers’ group that is still trying to uncover the final mystery of the 2005 video game 'Shadows of the Colossus.'

24. Prior to the release of Mass Effect 3, EA had copies of the game sent into space via weather balloons for lucky fans to track and find.

25. In 2012, a Taiwanese man collapsed and died from playing Diablo III for 40 straight hours.