Video Game Fun Facts You May Not Know…But Should!

It’s a wild world of gaming out there. The video game industry’s history is decorated with its share of scandals and silly moments. Spoiled by the Internet’s ability to serve us with inside scoops as they happen, there are some stories that many missed of days past. Here are some fun facts to beef up your trivia arsenal…

PlayStation Was Almost A Nintendo Product

Back in the 16-Bit console wars, there was a lot of pressure to move on to the “revolutionary new technology” known as CD-ROM. Nintendo was still king of the hill, but was losing some ground due to the Sega CD and PC Engine. Nintendo began working with Sony to produce a CD-ROM drive for their SNES. It was named the “Play Station.”

Where the Big N made their gravest error was then going behind Sony’s back to more seriously pursue a deal with Phillips to engineer the CD-ROM add-on instead. Furious, Sony took the technology that it had already developed and invested in releasing their own competitive console. And Sony has been one of Nintendo’s most aggressive rivals ever since.

The Atari Landfill

The early 1980s were a dark time in video game history. The market had been flooded with so many crappy games that it suffered a near-fatal crash. The final nail in the coffin appeared to be ET: The Extra-Terrestrial for the Atari 2600, universally agreed upon as the worst video game of all time. They literally couldn’t give the game away, resorting to distributing the game as the free prize in breakfast cereal.

At the end of it all, Atari ordered all remaining copies of ET, as well as many other titles they were unable to sell to be driven out into the desert by the truckload, and buried in a landfill. Somewhere in New Mexico now rests an Atari graveyard, filled with thousands of unsold cartridges. Don’t think about seeking relics of gaming’s past, since Atari chose that particular landfill due to its no-scavenging policies and every cartridge was thoroughly crushed to bits before being buried.

Most Games Are Developed By The Same People

Whenever a video game company wants to knock out a game, but reserve all their in-house talent for the blockbuster titles, they outsource it to another development house. The house often turned to is Tose. Tose has developed games for Sega, Capcom, Square-Enix… just about everyone.

Most of Tose’s work involves the annoying task of porting titles across multiple consoles, including older SNES and PlayStation titles getting ported over to handheld systems and downloadable services. Tose also creates complete games as well; usually spin-off titles from popular franchises. What keeps them successful is part of their relationships with other publishers is the agreement that they will never become a publisher themselves. They’re the modern video game industry’s dirty little secret… and that’s just the way they like it.

Parents Are More Involved With Their Children’s Game Habits

Whenever some tragedy is blamed on kids playing Mature-rated video games, the quick reaction is to blame the parents for buying the game in the first place. A valid argument, but the wonderful truth is that such unfit parents are in the minority. According to the Entertainment Software Association’s annual survey, we can rest more at ease by the following findings:

• 94% of parents are present when games are purchased or rented.
• 88% of parents report always or sometimes monitoring the games their children play.
• 63% of parents believe games are a positive part of their children’s lives.

Those are some good numbers! I suspect that as more gamers of the most recent generations have more kids of their own, those stats will increase.

Pre-Ordering Games Is A Waste Of Time

With all the hype of highly-anticipated titles that slaps us in the face on a daily basis, naturally you want to make sure that you get yours on the big day. Many retailers offer the ability to pre-order a title so that you won’t have to fight among the hordes of other bloodthirsty geeks.

The truth is that most publishers want to make sure that enough copies of a game are available at launch. If the closest video game retailer does run out, you’re easily just a phone call away from finding the next-closest store that will have some on its shelves. Unless the store offers a discount or there’s some sweet promotional swag that the publisher offers, it’s best to keep that money in your pocket rather it sit in the retailer’s bank collecting interest for them between now and the release date.