Sandbox / Racattack Force

Even sandboxes should be organized, y'know?

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Others

• A common complaint about Capcom's localization of the Ace Attorney series is the claim that despite the games being centered around murder mysteries and not shy about depicting brutal killings (including one impalement), there are frequent references to "grape juice" which appear to be an obvious Bowdlerization of wine. Oddly enough, it's grape juice in the Japanese version as well.
• Many Banjo-Kazooie fans pointed fingers at Microsoft for making the Xbox 360 installment Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts vehicle-based instead of doing a Collect-a-Thon Platformer more in-line with the N64 entries. Rare made the decision on their own, believing that general audiences had lost interest in the genre.
• Brütal Legend saw director Tim Schafer be blamed for misleading consumers and reviewers into believing the title would be a single-player action game and hiding the existence of its heavy Real-Time Strategy elements and multiplayer mode. Expect Schafer did nothing but talk about those aspects of the game whenever he could. It was publisher Electronic Arts that obfuscated the nature of the gameplay when advertising it, believing the game wouldn't sell otherwise.
• The English translation of Castlevania II: Simon's Quest for the NES is infamous for its poor translation, like the blatant in-game lies supposedly meant to tell you what your next goal is, how to reach that goal, and other such game-critical information. Except the original Japanese version was actually just as incomprehensible, and this was deliberate: the instruction manual for both versions explicitly warns you that "a few friendly villagers are town pranksters" that will outright lie to you, and the player themselves has to gamble on what NPCs to trust.
• Devil May Cry:
  • Hideaki Itsuno is often blamed for the divisive Devil May Cry 2, with fans viewing it was a disappointing misstep in his career. However, while Itsuno was the director for that game, he was specifically the replacement director; he had little involvement with DMC2 for most of its development, being brought in during the last six months to salvage what he could after the previous director was fired by Capcom.
  • The much reviled redesign of Dante in DmC: Devil May Cry caused a lot fan outrage, nearly all of it directed at developer Ninja Theory. Ninja Theory had originally planned to stick closer to Dante's design from the prior games, but Capcom rejected those concepts and insisted that Ninja Theory experiment more drastically with Dante's look.
• E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial often gets single-handedly blamed for The Great Video Game Crash of 1983, with people claiming that its poor quality lead to terrible sales, prompting Atari to bury the unsold cartridges in a landfill. However, this is isn't entirely the case, and just a small part of the entire story. For one, while the landfill does exist and there was mountains of unsold stock, this wasn't because the game was a failure; it was actually one of the best-selling Atari 2600 titles (selling a million copies), and contemporary reviews were mixed rather than universally negative. The actual problem was that Atari vastly overestimated demand and produced more copies than the number of 2600s that had been sold, resulting in retailers sending back a massive amount of unsold copies. Second, E.T. wasn't the only game to suffer from such high expectations; the prior year, the console's Pac-Man port sold a then-unheard of 7 million copies in its first year, but Atari was still stuck with dumping millions of unsold copies into the aforementioned landfill. Finally, there were other factors outside of Atari, including an over-saturation of poor titles flooding the market, competition with the growing home computer market, general inflation, and loss of publishing control due to an overwhelming number of third-party publishers being created to follow in Activision's footsteps. To sum up: While E.T. certainly was a contributing factor to the crash, it was quite far from being the reason.
  • Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari, often gets thrown in for blame, despite being forced out of the company and the industry as a whole in 1978, years before the crash.
• The Kinect Sports series is commonly thought to have been a case of Microsoft forcing Rare to make games for the [[Useful Notes/Kinect motion-tracking peripheral]] after a string of critical and commercail flops. However, it was actually Rare's own idea to focus exclusively on Kinect games in the early-mid 2010s, as the studio's executives were interested in the hardware.
• LJN Toys has a reputation of being a company that made nothing but bad licensed games for the NES, thanks to the games they published frequently appearing on The Angry Video Game Nerd. Keyword being published; though they're often mistaken for being a developer, the number of games they developed in-house can probably be counted on one hand. While they were clearly doing something wrong as a publisher, the developers behind many of their most infamous games include well-regarded studios such as Rare and Atlus. AVGN addresses this in his Beetlejuice episode:
  AVGN: Y'know, that's something everyone's always trying to correct me about (...) but it doesn't change the fact that every time [their] logo appears on a game, it's guaranteed to be ass!
• Metal Gear:
  • The Angry Video Game Nerd's review of the NES port of Metal Gear involved him complaining about butchery of a great game. Among the features he complained about were the fact that you can't open a door and wear your gas mask at the same time, forcing you to sacrifice some health when you enter or leave a gassy room. This element is present in not only the original MSX version, but would remain a quirk of the series for several subsequent entries. He also complained about Big Boss prefacing his misleading hints with the phrase "I forgot to tell you...", claiming it was a terrible translation — not only was this a better translation than the one in the European MSX version of the game, but Big Boss's hints really were supposed to be useless and annoying for plot reasons.
  • A lot of Metal Gear fans who never played the NES version of the game accuse Konami's American branch of changing the plot, with a story that (among other things) replaced the original Big Bad of Big Boss (an American soldier turned renegade mercenary) with Vermon CaTaffy (a pastiche of real-life dictator Muammar al-Gaddafi). In truth, while Metal Gear wasn't exempt from Konami of America's habit of making up new storylines for the games they published, this new storyline is only present in the manual. The game itself is faithful to the original MSX2 version in terms of plot aside a few minor changes. The non-canon Snake's Revenge also features a similar discrepancy between the game and its manual, with the manual identifying the bad guy as Higharolla Kockamamie (another pastiche, this time of Ayatollah Khomeini), but the actual villain of the game is revealed to be a cyborg Big Boss.
  • One of the many complaints lodged against Snake's Revenge is that the translation tells you the opposite of what you have to do during the train level ("THERE IS NO TRAP ON THE TRAIN"). Of course, the sequence was a deliberate callback to Metal Gear since it happens immediately before the person giving you the hints turns out to be a spy trying to make you fail, who you then fight in a boss battle.
  • Many people who played the fan-translated version of Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake assumed that the name of the enemy boss "Black Color", a misromanization of "Blackcollar", was a mistake by the fan translators. In reality, that's how it was spelled in the actual Japanese version (all of the bosses' names in the game were written in roman script).
  • Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes often gets a lot of scorn for its cutscenes, with the blame naturally falling to Ryuhei Kitimura, who directed said scenes. However, Kitimura himself originally intended to make a much more faithful adaptation of the source material; it was Hideo Kojima who requested that Kitimura redo all the cutscenes in his trademark over-the-top style as opposed to emulating that of the original PS1 game.
  • Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty gets a lot of blame for its rather absurd storyline placed on the translator/localizer, Agness Kaku. While she has her own personal gripes with the game's story and themes, she didn't do anything to alter the original plot whatsoever in the process of localizing it into English.
• Many people talk about the Sega Dreamcast as though it single-handedly killed Sega's console business, or at least was the biggest individual factor in them pulling out of that market. The Dreamcast actually sold respectably well, moving 11 million units in just over two years, compared to 9 million in four years for the Saturn. In actuality, the poor decisions made prior to the Dreamcast, much of them centered around the international failure of the Sega Saturn, destroyed the company financially to the point that the Dreamcast and its software would have had to sell unrealistically well if they ever wanted to get out of the red.
• Much of what makes Superman 64 a target of ridicule, from the gameplay to the plot, weren't wholly the fault of developer Titus: much of what they had planned was scrapped due to Executive Meddling, with Warner Bros. and DC Comic placing many mandates and restrictions on what they were allowed to do with the property (e.g., the virtual reality world that makes up the setting was their workaround for a "Superman can't harm people" rule), and delays that resulted from trying fight and work around these demands resulted in the game being Christmas Rushed so it could even be completed before the company's license to use the character expired.

• Some Super Robot Wars fans get huffy over Atlus's translation of some Original Generation pilot and unit names, specifically regarding "Zengar Zonvolt" becoming "Sanger Zonvolt" and his Infinity Plus One Mech Daizengar becoming the rather silly-looking DyGenGuard. These two instances actually make sense: for Sanger's name, Atlus simply left off the umlaut on Sänger, which is a German name and naturally katakana-tized as Zengar due to how it's pronounced. As for DyGenGuard, it's short for Dynamic General Guardian. The whole Daizengar ("Great Sänger") bit was an intentional pun, again due to Japanese pronunciation. Atlus's only fault in this was being lazy with their accent marks.
  • "Latooni Subota", on the other hand, probably ought to be Latune Cybota to stay faithful to typical Cyrillic transliteration (she's Russian. Ish.) Basically, Atlus is perfectly faithful to Japanese. It's European languages that they half-ass.
  • Meanwhile, strange Romanizations like "Hagwane" were preserved in the official sub of the anime at Bandai's insistence, as was a lengthy joke in the game Original Generation 2 that no longer makes sense when the names are pronounced in the English way. These could be considered cases of a translation being too faithful to the original work.
• Tales Series
  • Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World was yelled at by fans who complained about how "they took the wimpy way out with the bad ending" and instead of Marta killing herself, she just writes a sad letter. Marta didn't commit suicide, that was a mistranslation...but the Heroic Sacrifice of Emil was still there, as was Marta's Disney Death, and her Tear Jerker cry of EEMMMMIIIIIIIIIILLLLL!!!!
  • Many people blamed the translation team for Tales of Legendia not having any voicing at all in the second half of the game. Actually, they were not given the money to pay the voice actors for the second half, and were told it was an optional piece of the game.
  • When Tales of Phantasia finally got an official English release, many people complained about various edits and changes made to the game script. Actually, many of the differences were a result of an earlier Fan Translation by DeJap of the SNES version being less faithful to the original than the official GBA version. Of course, there's still that thing about "Ragnarok" becoming "Kangaroo" (as well as generally being a pretty bland localization and some consistency issues with the Tales of Symphonia translation), but despite what anyone says that's pretty much the only outright mistake.
    • There was still some sexual humor in the original Japanese (like Arche's infamous sex dream about Cless — which is still in the GBA translation, albeit in a more subtle, less blatantly obscene form — and Arche admiring Mint's figure in the hot springs,) but DeJap was far less subtle about presenting it, as well as ramping up Arche's pervertedness (also, Arche apparently fucks like a tiger).
• While Capcom does have a well-earned reputation for bad translations of games in the '90s, they are sometimes blamed for some they didn't do. In the case of the Breath of Fire series, they are often accused of creating an Inconsistent Dub due to certain names in the first game being altered in later entries. This was actually the result of the first game being localized in the US by Squaresoft, who changed names with little rhyme or reason. The later games were handled by Capcom and they usually reverted to the Japanese names in future titles.
  • More specifically, Capcom USA has been the subject of a lot of heat for their English translations of the company's Japanese-developed games, which typically mangle not only the dialogue but also the canon for some games, Street Fighter in particular. A revelation from former Capcom USA Senior Vice President, however, reveals that Capcom of Japan is responsible for the botched English translations that made their way overseas for years. Which begs the question of why a Japanese company would mix-up the translation of dialogue and plot written in their native language just for outsiders.
    • One has to consider that some of the Street Fighter games from the mid-to-late 1990s had American staff members working on them, so they had more input. However, most of the quotes and endings in the games, while a bit embellished sometimes (Guile never mentions Cambodia or Charlie in the Japanese version), had mostly accurate translations. Endings that were truly different, like Cammy's and Fei Long's, were often the exceptions rather than the rule.
• Electronic Arts:
  • The company receives a lot of flak for their exclusive license to make games with National Football League players and teams, with many gamers believing that EA simply threw a lot of money at the NFL to get the license. In reality, the NFL took bids from a number of video game companies before awarding the contract to EA, with them renewing it periodically due to having the sales satisfactory. Gamers, however, deny this, believing that the league would never willingly enter such anti-competitive agreements — never mind that the NFL's own actions in regards to television distribution and apparel licensing indicates that they not only willingly agree to, but also encourage these kinds of licensing deals.
  • Whenever the NBA 2K series gets bad publicity, many jump to blame EA — even though it's Take-Two Interactive that makes the game. EA does have a competing series in the form of NBA Live, which largely goes ignored.
  • EA was one of the major suspects to blame for Mass Effect 3's infamous ending that is almost unanimously considered to be terrible in the fandom. EA had little to do with the creative process; Bioware created the controversial ending where Shepard meets the Catalyst on their own.
  • EA in general catches a lot of flack for "ruining" any companies they purchase, but in many cases, prior to the purchase said companies weren't all that profitable, and in some cases they couldn't do what they did without EA's money. Full Motion Video Wing Commander and Ultima Online were feasible only with financial support from EA, as Origin prior to being bought by EA^note around the time of the release of WC2: Secret Operations 1; EA involvement with Origin is, in other words, older than the fandom thinks was, at best, "holding on", financially, in spite of the critical acclaim of their games.
    • Also funny, take a look at the publisher for System Shock 2. Notice anything? Yep. EA. Guess whose idea it was to make it a sequel to System Shock? EA. Accentuate the Negative at its finest.
  • They are often criticized for releasing essentially the same Madden NFL game with updated rosters year after year. While this is arguably true, football itself doesn't really change from year to year.
  • At a Q&A session at Dragon Con 2014, Richard Garriott went on record saying that blame for the quality of Ultima VIII should be spread around between himself and EA, stating that if he could go back and 'fix' just one game, that would be it. EA had been around no longer than Origin, but was far more (financially) successful, so Garriott assumed they knew what they were doing and didn't object when they insisted he cut his game to the bone (to the point where the cloth map no longer made sense) in order to make its release date. The problem was that EA had been making money by constantly updating the Madden engine (among others) and consistently releasing the latest version in time for football season, so they were anal about scheduling. This was...less than good for a complex action RPG. Of course, Ultima IX was the result of Executive Meddling pulling much of the staff to work on Ultima Online (which was dismissed as a dead concept before the paid beta). The cancelled sequel to Ultima Online was also against Garriott's wishes, who said it would be cancelled within a year and wanted to make Wing Commander Online instead.
  • Anthem: EA got the bulk of the blame for the maligned game, with many people accusing the publisher of forcing BioWare into creating a Destiny copycat. Granted, EA did cause some problems during the Troubled Production like mandating Bioware to use the Frostbite engine, which was designed for FPS games and not suited for RPGs, and EA offered little support as they were more interested at the time in creating the FIFA games. However, the majority of Anthem's production problems came from BioWare itself. Not only did EA actually give them 6 years to make the game, later extended to 7, but EA also interfered very little with the creative process of the production. The studio itself had little idea of what they wanted to do and was constantly scrapping ideas and going back to the drawing board, stuck 5 years in pre-production, during a time of intense stress during which many people took sabbaticals for their health or just plain quit because they couldn't take it, and all the ideas of the game came from BioWare itself. Ironically, EA's real error was being too lenient towards BioWare as their Executive Meddling was the reason for the game having its few saving graces, most notably the flying mechanic.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were angry at Ubisoft for not including any characters from the 1987 animated series in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Smash Up. This actually wasn't Ubisoft's decision: Mirage Studios specifically told Ubisoft to stick to the 2003 series as the basis for the game. In fact, Ubisoft actually defied that directive and stuck the Technodrome in as a background object in one of the stages.
• Some people thought that Loom was uncompleted for several reasons...either a), because Star Wars games made more money, or b) nobody bought it. The actual reason for not finishing Loom is way different. No, LucasArts didn't abandon it in favour of Star Wars...this was in the early 90s when point and click adventure games like Loom were all the rage and cash cows, especially when the Nostalgia Filter kicked in about 10 years later. And the sale figures certainly were not showing lack of public interest...Even one of the developers said it wasn't. Loom sold over 500,000 copies at the time of the interview - at a time when that was very impressive. But why was there no Loom 2: Forge despite that Lucas Arts would only benefit from another one, and fans would support it? The developers all got caught-up in different projects.
• The Circle of Eight mod for The Temple of Elemental Evil garnered complaints from fans for including a Buster Sword. The sword model was actually in the core game, used by a bugged sword that can only be accessed by console.
• While it is true that MLB, NFL, and the other leagues forced Backyard Sports to keep going, some reviewers put the blame on the leagues for making the series Jump the Shark by taking the games in a different direction. It wasn't even Atari, the publishing company, who did it. The real culprit is Humongous, Inc., a company formed out of the last remnants of Humongous Entertainment (who started the series); an employee said so in an interview.
  • Similarly, a lot of people like to blame Atari for the two 2003 Junior Adventures being unfaithful to the predecessors and being plagued with certain faults. The truth of the matter here is Atari was only their parent company at the time, and Humongous hadn't even gone bankrupt yet — that happened two years later. They were actually made after half of the Humongous workforce was laid off, and they still had yet to recover from deep financial trouble, this the reason the voice acting was subpar.
• Yahtzee is guilty of this in his review for The Conduit. He blamed all his issues with the game, such as the default control scheme on Nintendo. Nintendo had nothing to do with the game, as it was published by Sega.
  • He also made this mistake in reverse in his Metroid: Other M review. He blamed Team Ninja for everything he disliked, when it was actually Nintendo (specifically, series producer Yoshio Sakamoto) who were responsible for those elements.
• Valve was complained at for breaking a promise to release something for Team Fortress 2 on November 11th, 2009, which was also Veteran's Day. Only Valve never even hinted at the possibility of anything being released anytime that week. People started thinking Valve was going to do something, and people jumped on the bandwagon.
  • The Cold Stream DLC had been delayed for several months, causing Xbox 360 players to blame Valve for delaying the DLC for so long and demand that they should be allowed to help in testing the beta for free or release the DLC for free. Valve isn't entirely without fault, but the rest of the blame falls on Microsoft. Not only Valve has to make sure Cold Stream can run on the Xbox 360 without trouble, but Microsoft's DLC policies prevent Valve from giving Xbox 360 owners constant updates for a beta product and it is Microsoft that determines the pricing for DLC, not Valve.
• The fact that Conker's Bad Fur Day (amongst other demanded games) isn't on the Wii's Virtual Console seems to lead to people pointing fingers at Nintendo. One would honestly think that fans would actually be bothered to look at the developer and publishers for the Nintendo 64 game... Rare. Sure, they were second-party at the time of Conker's Bad Fur Day, but in 2002, they were bought out by Microsoft. Which is why there is a Conker game on the Xbox, not to mention Kameo: Elements of Power and Perfect Dark Zero as launch titles, and the original Perfect Dark later rereleased on Xbox Live Arcade. Nintendo had no involvement with Conker's Bad Fur Day.
  • This, compounded by throwing Activision into the mix as well (as they owned the James Bond video game license throughout that console generation), is also the reason why GoldenEye (1997) was not re-released for over twenty five years. every attempt ended with one or more of the three parties refusing whatever the current plan was, Hence Activision choosing to remake the game instead.
• A different company was responsible for developing Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier, which is why it (the plot, mostly) gained so much ire from the fans. However, if one would take time to watch the credits, one would find that those responsible for the story were the series' original creators. However, the same original creator had already worked on the title 3-4 years before its eventual release, before scrapping the project. Clearly someone realised their efforts would be best spent elsewhere.
• Xbox Live's userbase has been misblamed for the creation of the "juvenile and unfriendly" gamer. Within Xbox Live Arcade, games like Halo and Call of Duty get disproportionately blamed for this. Apparently people haven't heard of the theory of G.I.F.T, which has been in existence long before the Xbox. Live just brought the issue to light if anything. And when it's not Xbox Live that gets all the criticism for this, it's always something like Counter-Strike or Quake.
• Whenever you mention Gold-selling in-game advertisements or gold farmers, most people will think of World of Warcraft, but the practice is not exclusive to it and certainly did not start with that game. It's been around since Ultima Online, and was present in the original EverQuest and Ragnarok Online. The reason you hear about it in World of Warcraft so much is because the game has a huge, and unusually mainstream, playerbase. If you check some of the largest gold-selling websites you can see that they offer gold for many other games, Warhammer Online had Gold spammers from day one, as did Aion Online. On some servers of Final Fantasy XI, you almost had to buy gold. Not even RuneScape was immune to it!
• Class nerfs are always a source of utmost ire in any MMO, but among the World of Warcraft fanbase, most nerfs would usually be blamed on Greg "Ghostcrawler" (until he left the company) or a few other choice developers, when in fact the changes are discussed between the entire development team well in advance. The CMs (community managers) also get a ton of hate for changes; while ghostcrawler at least worked on the game, most of the CMs are just forum moderators who (try to) keep the boards a place of intelligent discussion and not constant flaming and fighting.
• World of Warcraft's Cataclysm expansion was plagued at the start by all sorts of bugs and glitches, among them a near ridiculous respawn rate where a mob you just killed would respawn while you were looting it or suddenly reappear attacking you while you were walking away. This was apparently Blizzard's intention; but in actuality it was a programming oversight made to avert one of the things that had happened around Burning Crusade where the mob respawn rates were actually too high and people would camp required mobs.
• Game Masters/Moderators in almost any online game tend to get blamed for every single occurrence that rubs any player the wrong way and are expected to fix every technical problem and rectify every balance issue on their own.
• The North American version of the Death Smiles Xbox 360 port got a lot of flak for having less slowdown than the Japanese versions, and some decided to point fingers at Aksys Games, who did the localization. In a forum post on the official Aksys website, an Aksys employee clarified that all of the programming for the North American version—the reduced slowdown included—was Cave's doing.
• Richard Garriott gets Misblamed for a lot of things surrounding "Richard Garriott's Tabula Rasa", despite his role merely being Executive Producer. It's often claimed that he arrogantly decided to plaster his name on the box, when it was more likely a marketing decision to hype up a game that wasn't very famous and had been sitting in Development Hell for some years. He's often insulted and blamed for many of game's problems due to him going to space during the game's life. Not only did he pay for the flight with his own money, but his Executive Producer role was probably hardly missed during the trip, and the trip ended up being tied into a marketing campagin anyway, which arguably did help the game (though clearly not enough). Finally, Richard Garriott ended up suing the publisher, NC Soft themselves, after a letter of resignation came out that he claimed he didn't write and was forged by them to pressure him into leaving without an investment he was due. He won the case.
• The translators of Ōkami are often blamed for the bizarre dichotomy that the manual for the game treats Amaterasu as genderless, while the actual game makes her fairly clearly female. Apparently, this was also the case in the Japanese version.
• Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • The 4Kids Entertainment voice actors used to get blame for the writing of the Sonic games they voiced in from 2005 to 2010, to the point that some received death threats over some of the story decisions. This is despite the fact that Jason Griffith and the other actors had zero involvement in writing the stories or scripts. A key example of this the infamous line: "It looks like being a princess isn't that easy" from Sonic 2006. Jason was trashed like hell for this line. Not the script writers or the translators, but just him.
  • Roger Craig Smith tends to receive a good amount of criticism for his deeper voice for Sonic compared to the more youthful sounding performances of Ryan and Jason. However, as Roger himself states in an interview, the older sounding performance was a deliberate move made by Sega, who wanted Sonic to sound older.
  • Sega themselves even stated once that they blame previous voice actor of Sonic, Ryan Drummond, for the fact that fans were complaining. While that is true written down, but given the context, the Sonic fanbase itself are overall the problem because of how toxic it can be to changes.
  • Another example: Now retired voice actor to Tails, Amy Palant, was reported to have been sent death threats after her role in Sonic 06. She apparently stated that the threats were based around the poor story and how Tails plays a crap role to which she stated she had no part in.
  • A non-dialogue related example is the creation of "Mobius". Many blame Sega of America for making such a place instead of staying true to the Japanese continuity, but until the 2010s, Sega's main Japanese offices were not only okay with different regions having their own lore for the characters, but they outright encouraged it as part of helping the brand more easily gain global appeal.
  • Dimps is not responsible for the odd-sounding music in the Sonic The Hedgehog 4; that would be Jun Senoue, who even then was disallowed from programming the music on an actual Genesis/Mega Drive due to Executive Meddling.
  • Ken Pontiac and Warren Gruff tend to receive the blunt of criticism for the divisive shift to a Denser and Wackier tone and shift in characterization in the games throughout the 2010s. They only localized the stories written by Sonic Team. Even the game they did write, Sonic Lost World, was done so using an outline given to them from Sega.
• Contrary to popular belief, League of Legends actually does have different people working on different aspects of the game — most notably the champion designers, maintenance people, and the map designers. Whenever Riot announces a new champion, the cries are often "Why can't you fix the lag/servers?" or "Where's the Magma Chamber?".
• A case of a fan mis-blaming other fans, EPM's Let's Play of Mega Man Battle Network 1 criticized some players for not knowing what is a Program Advance (P.A.) on the reason that they didn't talk to NPCs who mentions about it all the time even to the point of telling them off they need to be spoonfed with P.A. tutorials. The problem is that it's not that they didn't know about what it is, they actually didn't know which Battle Chip combinations form what kind of P.A. at the first place, aside from the most basic combinations like ZetaCannon and LifeSword. To make matters worse some P.A.s might get carried over to the next game but require different chips. It's like the Harvest Moon recipes, except that you cannot find the specific chip combinations for most P.A.s within the games.
• Harvest Moon:
  • Fans often blame Natsume, who are simply the localizers and translators in the Americans, for certain problems that were present in the Japanese versions. However Natsume has such a bad rep because they've caused so many glitches with the games, they change parts of the games, and their translations are often butchered.
  • Harvest Moon: Light of Hope received a lot of criticism for being inferior to past console Harvest Moon titles. However, much of the blame was put on Marvelous, despite the fact they have nothing to do with the title. Starting in 2014, Marvelous decided to translate the series with a different translator as Story of Seasons. The last "true" Harvest Moon game at the time of Light of Hope's release was Story of Seasons: Trio of Towns. Light of Hope is done in-house by Natsume (the previous translators) and is, in essence, as much of a Spiritual Successor as Stardew Valley.
• The Sims fans generally try to avert this by referring to "EAxis", when it's not known if a problem is EA's fault or Maxis'.
• The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is sometimes blamed for changing a bizarre Tamriel into a Medieval European Fantasy. Much of these complaints stem from the fact that the elven provinces, as well as Cyrodiil, had quite a few non-European traits that originated in older games like Redguard or Morrowind. For example, Cyrodiil was a jungle, had large rice fields, had a vaguely Tenochtitlan like capital, and had a strong tattoo culture. While those complaints may be justified, some seem to think that all of Tamriel lacked traits from Medieval European Fantasy.
  • Bethesda took a bit of heat during the Nude Mod debacle... despite it being a fan-produced mod that manipulated textures rather than exploiting some hidden feature as some commentators claimed.
  • Morrowind fans tend to single out Bethesda's Todd Howard for the design choices in Oblivion and Skyrim that they don't like, even though the last game that he was in a lead design role for was... Morrowind.
  • A cross-media example for the franchise - in the two tie-in novels (The Infernal City and Lord of Souls), it's related that a few years after the events of Oblivion, the province of Morrowind was effectively obliterated. A large meteor that Vivec had frozen mid-fall had resumed its flight - without having lost any of its velocity - and struck Vivec City with enough force to cause Red Mountain to erupt, rendering vast swaths of the province (which many fans still think of fondly from the game set there) to be destroyed and rendered uninhabitable. Many fans blamed the books' author, Greg Keyes, for this change to the setting. In reality; this string of events was heavily foreshadowed within Morrowind itself by Michael Kirkbride roughly a decade before the novels were released.
• Castle of Shikigami II was released in the US with notoriously bad translation. Turns out that although the translation wasn't great, the original was incomprehensible as well.
• Tomb Raider fans often blame Core Design for the fact that the sixth installment (and the last installment of the original continuity), The Angel of Darkness, was released in a clearly unfinished state. As it turned out, publisher Eidos pestered Core Design to rush the game in spite of the fact that Core were unhappy with it, and if they didn't get it out on time, they would be fired. They released the game, it failed, and Eidos fired Core anyway.
  • When the franchise was given a reboot starting with Tomb Raider: Legend and under the guide of Crystal Dynamics, Lara Croft's personality changed to be more soft and emotional while still retaining her wit and bold attitude. This didn't sit well with the fans that saw the changes as making Lara look weak, especially in Tomb Raider: Anniversary which showed Lara visibly freaking out over her very first human kill. Fans thought that Crystal Dynamics was behind the changes, but it was actually Toby Gard, the creator behind the franchise and the character, who vouched for the changes since he wanted to take Lara on a more softer change ever since the very first game.
• While Konami has displayed their fair share of incompetence in handling BEMANI games outside of East Asia, they also tend to get blamed for things that weren't actually their fault — many of the screwups with DanceDanceRevolution series from DDR SuperNOVA onwards in the US are the fault of Betson, which Konami contracted to handle distribution of the series stateside. Others were because they were Screwed by the Lawyers of the music industry. Then there was the disastrous attempt at a nationwide official DDR tournament in 2009, where they made the mistake of partnering with GameWorks, which then proceeded to screw up the tournament in every way imaginable and then some.
• Jack Thompson attacked Take-Two on two occasions for content in games it published. Both times he insisted that Take-Two was the company to create the content, rather than the independent publishers:
  • The first incident was the infamous "Hot Coffee" discovery in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. The game was developed by Rockstar Entertainment.
    • Rockstar itself was hit with this for the same thing - they were forced to rerelease the game with the "Hot Coffee" content completely removed (even going out of their way to make sure no mods could be installed^note unsurprisingly, one of the most popular downloads for the non-Steam PC version is a down-grade patch for people who want to play Multi Theft Auto), despite the content having already been Dummied Out and only becoming public knowledge by way of a Game Mod that nobody would be forced to download.
    • The second incident was the less famous "Nude Mod" for The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. The game was developed by Bethesda Softworks and, as mentioned previously, it was the product of a fan, not the studio.
  • On the topic of Grand Theft Auto, many fans initially blame the character striping glitch in Grand Theft Auto Online on Rockstar themselves. It was actually caused by bugs in NVidia's drivers, and a driver update fixed the issue (unfortunately, certain hardware configurations and cards older than the GTX400 series cannot use the update...).
  • Additionally, the radio music in GTAV is often considered bland and the fans blame Rockstar again for this. No, Rockstar actually outsourced the music choices to the DJs who they hired to host the stations. Kenny Loggins was responsible for the choices of the songs on Los Santos Rock Radio for example.
  • Many people think that Rockstar omitted planes from Grand Theft Auto IV out of respect for the events of 9/11, but the real reason for doing so was that the map was simply too small and densely packed for airplane travel to be viable.
  • When GTA V's modders started getting bans, copyright strikes and even the most simplistic modding tools were pulled of the internet, many blamed Rockstar for trying to stop modding despite promising they would allow mods in single player mode, presumably to sell more microtransactions. The copyright strikes came from Take-two Interactive, Rockstar's parent company, and they had nothing to do with them.
• SNK and other associated companies aren't exempt from this, either. As one of the chara designes for The King of Fighters, Nona often flak for the most recent entries in the series, due to their new art designs. While he was the art director for XII (and draws for the pre-fight exchanges in XIII), it's actually Ogura Eisuke, the artist for NeoGeo Battle Coliseum, who handled the artwork. For some odd reason, Nona is also being blamed for the story developments, an area that he has minimal influence in at best.
• Overkill Software is heavily blamed for removing some musical pieces in the game PAYDAY: The Heist and how they should have just paid the music composer of those tracks when it came to the release of the game's soundtrack. In actuality, the 2nd music composer in question is most likely already compensated for his work and the game's main music composer himself had to step in and say that in order for him to release the soundtrack, they had to have all the music be under his name in order to simplify the legal stuff surrounding the soundtrack release since the 2nd composer is not affiliated with Overkill anymore. People still demand for the old tracks to return.
  • Playstation 3 players that own the game also blame Overkill Software for dragging their feet with updates and patches for the system. While Overkill had promised in the past to try and get the updates out, many players don't realize that Sony charges a lot of money to developers that wish to update their game on the Playstation 3 (Microsoft has a similar policy with the Xbox 360) and Overkill Software isn't a big budget developer like other game studios such as Valve. Since Overkill was also developing Payday 2 at the same time, it's easy to see where the resources went.
    • The problem with patching for the console versions happened again when PAYDAY 2 was released. The Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 versions of the game did get patches right up to the Armored Transport DLC, but support for the console versions suddenly stopped and went nearly a year without any updates or patches while the PC version had updates every single month. Console players blamed Overkill for being lazy and slow with the updates while Overkill stated that Microsoft and Sony were to blame because their patches failed certification and had to be redone all over again (and patches in general for consoles get expensive quick) while try to stay within the size limits for patches that were enforced by Sony and Microsoft. News about console patches went quiet for months until mid 2014 when Overkill announced the console versions of PAYDAY 2 would get a major update with lots of new content and bug fixes, though it wouldn't be up to the current PC version. The long delay was also likely due to Overkill implementing a new way to roll out updates and reduce the total size of the game, which would benefit people having little free space on their hard drives and also meeting Sony and Microsoft's stingy patch size restrictions. Eventually, Overkill abandoned trying to update the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 versions of the game and decided to bring the game to the Playstation 4 and Xbox One instead since it was easier to update the game there, which pissed off a lot of fans.
• Both Sony and Superbot Entertainment of PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale got much ire for its roster that omits much-requested characters like Solid Snake in favor of more contentious choices like reboot Dante/"Donte" and Raiden. However, many of these characters are from franchises that, while almost exclusively released on the Playstation line, are owned by third party publishers. Even if Sony and Superbot wanted to add the original Dante or Solid Snake, Capcom and Konami would use copyright laws to ban their inclusion. In fact, the inclusion of Raiden was made by none other than Hideo Kojima himself.
• Minecraft is widely known as Notch's creation. He did a lot of things to the game, but hasn't gotten involved with the game at all after the game went gold in 2011. Despite Jeb taking charge of the game and Notch stepping down, many people still think Notch runs the game and blame him if there's a change they don't like.
  • Speaking of Minecraft, Bethesda is routinely Mis-blamed for "trying to sue Mojang for using 'Scrolls' in a title," generally with some erroneous assumption it was a financial shakedown or product of some completely irrational fear of product confusion. While it's true that there was a copyright dispute pertaining to conflict between Mojang's game "Scrolls" and the game series "The Elder Scrolls", this is incorrect on two major fronts:
    • The legally responsible party was not Bethesda, but its parent company, Zenimax.
    • Zenimax was often criticized for "trying to claim ownership over the word 'Scrolls'" - when the entire point of the suit was to prevent someone from doing exactly that. Mojang was attempting to trademark "Scrolls" as a title, which, based on similar past situations, would have given them a potentially abuseable copyright edge over any other related products incorporating that term in their names. For precedent, look at the number of times Edge Games has legally shaken down other related entities for use of the word "Edge" - and that's without the trademark simply being the word on its own.
• Many fans of Toontown Online, Pirates of the Caribbean Online and Pixie Hollow blame Club Penguin for the closure of those three MMOs. Actually, Disney closed them due to financial problems.
• Mega Man's appearance in Street Fighter X Tekken has been blamed on Capcom's contempt for the Mega Man franchise and its fans following how things ended between the company and Keiji Inafune. In truth, Inafune himself requested that as a joke about how the franchise had aged, also saying that the man's been in other fighting games and it would be less interesting for him to appear normally in this one.
• After the enormous Porting Disaster that was the PC version of Batman: Arkham Knight, many fans and PC players blamed Rocksteady for the terrible port, but actually, they didn't work on the PC version initially, it was ported by Iron Galaxy Studios, only 12 people worked on the port and they had a two-month deadline, the real fault is that studio and the publisher, Warner Bros Interactive Entertainment.
  • Another company who caught their share of misblame was nVidia, as within a matter of hours of the game's performance problems being known there were widespread accusations that the company's GameWorks technology (used in the game to provide physics and additional graphical effects) was deliberately crippling performance on all AMD hardware and even nVidia's older graphics cards, all in the name of making their then-new GeForce GTX 900 series cards look good. An accusation that might have carried a lot more weight if not for the fact that the GTX 900 cards also performed terribly, with or without the GameWorks effects enabled, and that there were other games around at the same time — most notably The Witcher 3 — that managed to implement said effects without performance tanking.
• Star Trek Online has a lot of players blaming Cryptic themselves for things they have no control over. Probably the big one focusing on the company themselves is ARC game launcher, something added by their parent company Perfect World Entertainment. It wasn't uncommon in the days when ARC was really taking off to have players sit there and constantly blame Cryptic for trying to force what they thought was malware into their systems. Another more recent one was when PWE fired a number of workers, some of them from Cryptic. Players instantly jumped on Cryptic to proclaim that this was because of the Delta Rising expansion before it was revealed that half of those let go from Cryptic came from Neverwinter.
  • Players are also happy to sit there and blame head developer Al "CaptainGeko" Rivera for anything and everything bad that happens. This descends into decisions that were made without him being around, a lot of this due to a major grudge many older players have towards him. Player gets kicked off of a player-ran podcast because of ego problems from the kicker? Geko's fault. Two developers decide to go their own ways? Geko fired them.
• The Japanese version of Dragon Ball Z: Dokkan Battle was hit hard with the 3.8.0 release, where a bug caused the drop rates on the gasha to plummet to abysmal levels, leading to players to accuse Akatsuki of rigging it. It didn't help this happened at the same time the Star Wars Battlefront II (2017) controversy was happening. Thankfully, Akatsuki pulled an Author's Saving Throw by revealing the code that caused the bug in the first place, gave everyone 300 Dragon Stones and refunded people for those who spent stones during that time.
• Michael Bay of all people picked up a lot of heat for the less-than-stellar reception of Need for Speed: The Run, despite having nothing to do with the game's development beyond directing a TV commercial for it. Admittedly, though, the game's marketing played up his name a lot, so it's not surprising that some people thought he had more involvement with the game than he actually did.
• Fans of Madou Monogatari typically finger Sega as the reason why no rereleases or remakes will ever come out for the series, instead putting all their focus on making more Puyo Puyo games. In reality, the series was more or less split in half due to legal reasons: Compile eventually bought back the Madou Monogatari name, but the characters were tied to the Puyo Puyo brand, hence Sorcery Saga using an original cast.
• Activision gets a lot of blame for the death of Troika Games, it being said they were forced to close by Activision after the initial failure of Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines. But in 2019 during an interview for The Outer Worlds, it was confirmed by the former studio heads that they survived a few more months but couldn't find a publisher for their next projects, which were mostly high concept pitches..
• Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game is infamous for having gotten delisted from online stores, but whose fault is it? Many will point fingers at Anamanaguchi, because of music licensing issues or such, but Anamanaguchi themselves will tell you that's wrong. If your next instinct is to blame the author of Scott Pilgrim, Bryan Lee O'Malley, he made it clear that he wanted to bring it back too. It was most likely the fault of Universal being a distributor who for whatever reason let the license expire in 2014 — it took until 2020 for O'Malley to be able to establish contact with them and Ubisoft to negotiate a proper re-release in 2021.
• Multiple games (Such as a few Castlevania games) have listed a "Gorgon" as a rather bovine like monster that can petrify you. Sadly Mythtaken, as everyone knows that a "Gorgon" is Medusa, right? Actually, even Dungeons & Dragons depicts a "Gorgon" as a rather bovine like monster that is closer to a Catoblepas than a more serpentine gorgon. Actually, this comes from a 1981 Rand McNally encyclopaedia which described a Catoblepas as an african version of the "Gorgon", along with multiple translations which compared them as similar. This also is another case of Common Knowledge since a petrifying gaze is something that only Medusa had - her sisters Stheno and Euryale were also gorgons but did not turn people to stone.
• Blizzard Entertainment merged with Activision in 2008, and since the late 2010s have seen their once-stellar reputation plummet amidst multiple controversies. This has prompted angry former fans to lament Blizzard selling out to Activision... except it was their former parent company Vivendi Games—which had owned Blizzard since 1998—who agreed to and permitted the merge; Blizzard themselves had no say in the matter. The fact that the merged company is called Activision Blizzard rather than "Activision Vivendi" doesn't help, as the name gives the impression that Blizzard themselves directly merged with Activision rather than their former parent company.
• Sanzaru Games alone is oft solely blamed for Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time being a Franchise Killer with a Downer Ending of a cliffhanger. However, they did want to follow up on it via DLC, and it was Sony who refused to allow them to continue with the series. Additionally, the planned film went into Development Hell due to the unrelated circumstance of Ratchet & Clank (2016) being a Box Office Bomb. While Sanzaru's not blameless, there were factors and decisions outside of their control that contributed to the series ending on the bad note it did.
• One criticism that the NES game based off of Home Alone 2: Lost in New York was allegedly stolen sound effects. Fans will claim THQ stole from Acclaim's library. In reality, most of the Simpsons games at the time were developed by Imagineering, which Acclaim published most of their Simpsons games, not developed. This was not helped when The Angry Video Game Nerd reviewed Home Alone 2 in late 2007.

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Nintendo Game Cube

The little lunchbox that could... and did when you duct-taped two of them together.

"Who Are You?"

The Nintendo GameCube (officially abbreviated as GCN) was Nintendo's entry into the sixth generation of the Console Wars, was released in late 2001.

The previous generation of consoles was a game changer, and for Nintendo, it may have been for the worse. For the first time since they entered the gaming business, their home console wasn't number one worldwide, as they were unceremoniously dethroned by a new rival of their own making: the PlayStation, born from the ashes of a failed SNES CD add-on. To call it a fight would be generous. The PlayStation outsold the Nintendo 64 3:1, thanks to marketing towards a young adult audience and grabbing all the third-party developers that scoffed at the N64's use of cartridges over CDs. Enter the new millennium: with Sony gearing up to release a follow-up to that runaway success, Sega mounting their final stand, and a new kid eager to prove themselves, it was time for Nintendo to prove that last time was a mere miscalculation and that they were still a major player in the industry. And the end result was that, by some metrics, this would end up being the last time Nintendo would compete directly with its competitors in the video game console market. But we're getting ahead of ourselves.

Recognizing where Sony went right and where they didn't, the first order of business was using optical media instead of cartridges. However, instead of using CDs and DVDs like everyone else, the GameCube would be using proprietary 8cm discs based on the miniDVD format due to a desire to cut down on piracy rates and avoid paying licensing fees to the DVD Forum, of which Sony was a member. These mini-discs still offered less storage than other systems (1.5GB vs. 8.5GB), but this was still enough room for most games of that generation. And if a single disc wasn't enough for any of the larger titles, multi-disc games was now a possibility that third-parties could take advantage of.

Next was courting back their old third-party partners, and what better way to accomplish that than by giving them the keys to the castle? While Nintendo was no stranger to licensing out their IP for small edutainment games, the GameCube was the beginning of the company allowing others to develop major installments in their biggest franchises. ^note Under supervision, of course: no need to have a repeat of Hotel Mario or the "Unholy Triforce". And none wasted the opportunity. Namco thought up the Donkey Konga series and produced Star Fox: Assault; Konami gifted us with Dance Dance Revolution Mario Mix; Sega (now out of the hardware game) delivered F-Zero GX; and Treasure gave us Wario World. To say nothing of all the multi-platform games whose GameCube releases boasted appearances from various Nintendo characters.

Finally, since it didn't seem to hurt them last time, the GameCube was made the most powerful system of its generation once again. The system's graphical capabilities were more than capable of surpassing the PlayStation 2, and its performance was on-par with the Xbox; Star Wars: Rogue Squadron III actually holds the sixth-gen record for polygon count at 20 million polygons. So naturally, all of this resulted in the Nintendo GameCube coming in third place, behind the Xbox and far, far behind the PlayStation 2. Alright, what happened?

By far one of the biggest difficulties Nintendo tried (and mostly failed) to surmount was their reputation as a "kiddy" company being "kiddy" games, which had solidified during the previous generation. Sounds like early message board console warring, sure, but the reality was that the most profitable demographic in gaming was now teenage and young adult males who wanted "mature" games. Games that Nintendo themselves certainly didn't make, and that their overseas branches (namely Nintendo of America) had outright discouraged other publishers from releasing on their systems for well over a decade, censoring content for games on their system to make them as family-friendly as possible, even if the ESRB had already slapped an M rating on the box. In fact, NOA doubled-down on their family-friendly position during the 1993 Congressional hearings that resulted in the ESRB to begin with. In short, Nintendo trapped itself the gaming equivalent of the Animation Age Ghetto, and releasing what looked like a purple lunchbox didn't help. Although they tried to shed that image by green-lighting more teen- and young adult-oriented games (as well as some brow-raising marketing decisions from NOA), these efforts were still deemed too tame to be meaningful, especially compared to the libraries of the PS2 and Xbox.

Most famously, Retro Studios rose to fame with the smash hit Metroid Prime and its sequel Metroid Prime 2: Echoes. Capcom was working on The Legend of Zelda: Oracle Games on Game Boy Color and liked the 'Cube so much they promised a few exclusive games for it, dubbed the "Capcom 5". They are, in order of release:

• P.N.03 (the only game to stay exclusive - and it still is almost two decades after release)
• Viewtiful Joe (ported to the PS2)
• Resident Evil 4 (ported to the PS2 again, among others)
• killer7 (ported to—you guessed it—the PS2)
• Dead Phoenix (cancelled)

had been a thing for years by this point. still just a fraction of Its The GameCube was the first Nintendo console to have fewer buttons on its controller than its predecessor; this was due to the introduction of a second analog stick to replace the N64's C buttons, though this C-stick was smaller than the primary analog stick; Nintendo wouldn't release a proper dual analog controller until the Wii Classic Controller five years later.

• P.N.03 (the only game to stay exclusive - and it still is almost two decades after release)
• Viewtiful Joe (ported to the PS2)
• Resident Evil 4 (ported to the PS2 again, among others)
• killer7 (ported to—you guessed it—the PS2)
• Dead Phoenix (cancelled)

By offloading the development (and its associated costs) of some of their less iconic intellectual properties to third parties, Nintendo managed to reclaim some of the losses incurred by the N64's poor performance in the previous generation. While the GameCube also failed to meet expectations (at one point, Nintendo had to halt production of the console, as they were manufacturing them faster than they could be sold), it did ultimately manage to turn in a consistent and overall profit.

Additionally, by the time of the GameCube's release, Nintendo had mostly removed its restrictions ensuring that their games met their family-friendly image (this process was in fact underway close to the end of the N64 era, with the release of Conker's Bad Fur Day), and indeed Nintendo would officially publish the M-rated Eternal Darkness to show that they were willing to break out of their "kiddie" image. This also helped encourage sales to older gamers.

Oh, and this thing is tough, as in physically. There are stories of people having dropped GameCubes off the top of tall buildings and finding them still perfectly intact. One G4 segment circa 2003 involved Morgan Webb abusing a PS2, GameCube and Xbox, with the GameCube surviving every single bit of abuse. It's gotten a reputation for being damn near-indestructible; someone once fended off a knife-wielding mugger with his GameCube and it wasn't even damaged. Intentionally trying to break it is just about the only way to go. Considering Nintendo's history of making their products Tonka Tough, there might be a reason for that.

Its code name during development was "Project Dolphin" and there are often little nods to this throughout later N64 and early GameCube games. Super Mario Sunshine is set on "Isle Delfino" (Italian for dolphin), Olimar's ship in Pikmin is called the "Dolphin", and there's a painting of a dolphin in Donkey Kong's house in Donkey Kong 64. Additionally, the water-centric gameplay of Super Mario Sunshine and The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker is thought by some to be a more subtle reference to Project Dolphin, for obvious reasons. All official games and products also start with DOL in their product code. An early rumored release name for the console was "Starcube", which was apparently dropped for copyright reasons (or because a Nintendo executive insisted the word "game" be in the name).

Nintendo received some criticism for not featuring DVD playback in their new console, bucking the trend set by Sony and Microsoft with their respective entries in the Sixth Generation. However, there was a stylish-looking variant of the GCN that played DVD videos and contained other multimedia functionality that saw limited release. Called the Panasonic Q, it was only sold in Japan, and nowadays can only be bought by those who do not care about the health of their wallet^note In fact, it wasn't in production very long due to its cost; it was actually cheaper to buy both a regular GameCube and a standalone DVD player than a Panasonic Q. There's also the fact that they're region-locked, although people have modded Qs to remove this limitation.

The GameCube, like the Sega Dreamcast before it, is a perfect case of Vindicated by History. During its lifetime, the GameCube was outsold by both of its competitors, and was Nintendo's worst-performing home console until the Wii U.^note This is not as bad is it sounds. The GameCube came in at a close third place, trailing only a couple million units behind the Xbox; meanwhile the PlayStation 2's utter dominance led to it outselling both systems combined. The Dreamcast, for its part, sold about half of what the GameCube did, though this may be due to its limited lifespan as much as anything else. In the U.S., at least, Sega's last hurrah had just a year and a half between its launch and its discontinuation. By 2004, the already comparatively low sales for the system completely imploded once people realized that Nintendo didn't have any more tricks up their sleeve in regards to their home console lineup. Up until the Wii became a record-breaking success, the idea of Nintendo exiting the home console market altogether and limiting their hardware development to handhelds (given that the Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS were still smash successes) seemed like a realistic possibility. This is, of course, ignoring the fact that Nintendo was the only home console maker at the time to actually make a profit off of their system, but to many, the low market share alone seemed like a good enough motivator.

By far one of the biggest difficulties Nintendo tried (and mostly failed) to surmount was their reputation as a company that made only children's games, which had solidified during the previous generation. This image was downright lethal in the early 2000s. For one thing, the industry's demographics had shifted, and young adults now made up the bulk of gamers. In addition, developers, gamers, and the gaming press had by this point begun to advocate for video games to be taken seriously as a new art form. In other words, Nintendo was trapped in a video game equivalent of the Animation Age Ghetto (and some consider that they still are). Although they tried to shed that image by green-lighting more teen- and young adult-oriented games (as well as some brow-raising marketing decisions from NOA), these efforts were still deemed too tame to be meaningful, especially compared to the libraries of the PS2 and Xbox.

Thus, the console received lots of undeserved hate due to its toy-like design and moves like The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker changing the semi-realistic and comparatively darker atmospheres of its two predecessors for a cartoony cel-shading art style. This decision prompted what was among the first (possibly the first), and probably biggest, examples of video game backlash on the Internet in the days before social media (in fact, it could even easily give many social media-driven backlashes a run for their money).

While the GameCube was capable of online like its rivals, it was extremely underutilized. Only 5 games with online support were ever created, only one of which was first-party, and an adaptor was required to hook up to the internet. The only online games to be released internationally (and take up most of the list) are the 3 versions of Phantasy Star Online, which were ported from the Sega Dreamcast with extra content. Phantasy Star Online on the Gamecube were also infamous for having an exploit which, by setting the port into a locally connected and specially configured PC, one can access homebrew and eventually offload dumped disc images. Homeland is also notable for being the only GameCube game to ever receive DLC. Online was rapidly gaining traction during this generation, which made the GameCube and its borderline nonexistent online less appealing, especially when compared to the newcomer Xbox and its robust Xbox Live online service.

Another major issue was third-party support. Nintendo managed to get a lot of companies on board for developing for the system, and it surely received many more third-party titles than the N64 ever did. However, the vast majority of these titles were multi-platform games. Very few companies dared to develop any exclusives for it, and most of the few that did were only because Nintendo struck deals with them by publishing the games or even partially producing them. On top of that, almost all of these multi-platform titles performed worse on the GameCube than on its two competitors, often significantly worse, so this support started to dwindle after the first couple of years; exactly why they performed so poorly on the GameCube is hard to pin down, but given that the system was more powerful and much easier to develop for than the far more successful PS2, the limited capacity of the GameCube's proprietary discs and/or developer underestimation of them in the wake of the N64's hugely limited cartridges may have been a leading factor. Couple this with the aforementioned "kiddie" reputation, and many T- and M-rated titles wound up getting released on the PS2 and Xbox, but not the GameCube. Probably the most iconic example of this was the fact that the GameCube was the only 6th Generation home console that never received a Grand Theft Auto game (it got both True Crime games^note in which you play as cops rather than criminals, but between the two properties, GTA was a far bigger name and had a much more rebellious image that appealed to older gamers).

It didn't help that many of Nintendo's first-party titles for the console were considered divisive when they first came out. Super Mario 64 and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time one generation prior were considered absolutely groundbreaking in their day, transitioning gracefully from 2D to 3D. Meanwhile, Super Mario Sunshine and The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (even leaving aside the aforementioned backlash) were less impressive transitions to the newer technology, and left some fans cold, with their new mechanics (e.g. the water jetpack/squirt gun FLUDD in Sunshine and the sailing mechanics in Wind Waker) being seen as clumsy and ill-conceived, among other criticisms; Sunshine would see its mechanics Vindicated by History later on, though with Wind Waker it'd still be regarded as so big of a Scrappy Mechanic that the remake 11 years later would go out of its way to address the issue. Other games like Mario Kart: Double Dash!!, Star Fox Adventures, Star Fox: Assault, Wave Race: Blue Storm and 1080º Avalanche were also contested, with Adventures having the added baggage of being a heavy Executive Meddling-induced retool of what was supposed to be a new IP in Dinosaur Planet. More damning still, while games like Luigi's Mansion and Pikmin received overall critical acclaim, popular enthusiasm for them is largely a matter of hindsight.

However, several of these games and others have become cult classics over time, or have simply been given their deserved accolades retroactively. It helps that the much more successful Wii was fully compatible with GameCube games until later in its life, making it easier for people to play games for the 'Cube without actually having to buy one. With critics putting increased emphasis on the importance of loading times in the modern age, the GameCube's design towards faster loads (in the form of smaller discs and special RAM caches) is also becoming more appreciated.

And of course, there are those titles that were absolute hits among gamers from day one. The clearest example of this would be Metroid Prime and (to a lesser degree) its sequel Metroid Prime 2: Echoes. While the first game's first-person perspective was initially met with a very cold reception upon teaser reveal (being yet another controversy Nintendo had to deal with during the first year of the console's lifespan), upon release it and the sequel brought back the Metroid series after skipping the N64 altogether. Many people consider these the best titles on the console, even to this day, a title only contested by Super Smash Bros. Melee, a game that was not only the biggest seller on the console, but also single-handedly created one of the biggest and most devoted fan communities in video game history and - much like Marvel vs. Capcom 2 used to be to the Dreamcast - maintains a thriving competitive scene two decades after its release, giving the GameCube a reason to live outside of the usual retrogaming circles way past its expiration date. The absolute masterful remake of Resident Evil, F-Zero GX, Star Wars Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader and Tales of Symphonia are other examples of exclusive titles that had a really warm reception even back in the day (though Symphonia did appear on the PS2 eventually). Then there's the GameCube version of Soul Calibur II, which was considered the best out of the three versions, in no small part due to Link appearing as a guest character (a practice that has become a staple of the fighting genre ever since).

Additionally, the GameCube's controller was also a case of Vindicated by History. The unorthodox layout of the face buttons, and the fact that it had two fewer buttons than the controllers from its competitors, (to be precise, it was one shoulder button and one "Select"-type button less) were common criticisms during its day, to the point that many third party developers considered it a liability for porting some of their titles. However, it has been consistently praised from day one for its comfortable design, which was ergonomically friendly for nearly all demographics. As with many other aspects of the console, the controller is now deemed one of the most, if not the most comfortable game controller ever designed (its limited versatility though is still a point of contention). The enduring popularity of the GameCube controller among Super Smash Bros. players eventually led to Nintendo re-releasing the controller specifically for Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, complete with a GameCube controller adapter for the Wii U and Nintendo Switch (compatible with only Smash on the Wii U but with considerably more games on the Switch including Mario Kart 8).

One of the biggest reasons of the growing appreciation for the system is the people who played with it when they were children reaching adulthood. Although the industry as a whole was fully focused on teenagers and young adults during the early 2000s, that's not to say that kids had become irrelevant. Even the PS2 and Xbox had their fair share of family friendly titles. However, kids were no longer the ones driving the market, not only because they had become a smaller demographic, but also because the discourse surrounding it had fully transitioned from the schoolyard to the Internet, where their voices were collectively all but silenced next to their older counterparts. But now that the children who played with the GameCube have entered their 20s, they've taken the opportunity to voice their appreciation for the console that marked their childhoods, turning it into probably the biggest "nostalgic" home console of the 2010s.

Oh, and the slow, haunting theme that plays when you turn the thing on and go into the menu? It's the start-up theme (Epileptic Flashing Lights warning) for the old Famicom Disk System, slowed down a whole bunch. Pretty neat.

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Video Game/Metroid Prime 4

Metroid Prime 4

Metroid Prime 4 is an upcoming FPS/Adventure game for the Nintendo Switch, developed by Retro Studios and published by Nintendo. Serving as the 7th entry within the Metroid franchise's Prime sub-series, the title is currently scheduled for a 2024 release.

Initially announced as being in development via a brief teaser trailer at E3 2017, no further news was given on the game until January 2019, when Nintendo revealed that the game was suffering from a troubled production. Metroid Prime 4 would be restarting development from scratch, with production moving from an unnamed development studio to Retro Studios, which developed the prior numbered entries.

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• Trilogy Creep: Prime 3 was advertised as the final chapter of the Prime series upon its release in 2007, fifteen years prior. With that in mind, the sub-series already had two spin-offs in Hunters and Pinball during the original trilogy, as well as Federation Force years later. In addition, both Prime 3 and Federation Force had sequel hooks in their post-credits scenes alluding to another major installment.

Trivia.Metroid Prime 4 Page

• Troubled Production: In 2017, Metroid Prime 4 was announced as entering development under an unknown, new development team before development troubles had Nintendo publicly announce in early 2019 that they'd be restarting the project from scratch and returning the reins to Retro Studios. Many sources claimed the original team to be Bandai Namco's Singapore branch, with one journalist elaborating that their sources said the game was being made in an "experimental ad-hoc development process." By the time a new trailer for the game was unveiled during the June 2023 Nintendo Direct, a whole other Metroid game had been announced and released, as well as an Updated Re-release of the first Metroid Prime.

YMMV.Metroid Prime 4 page

• Shocking Moments: The game's initial reveal. After the major Audience-Alienating Era that started with Metroid: Other M, continued with Metroid Prime: Federation Force, and was compounded by Nintendo taking down the Fan Remake Another Metroid 2 Remake via DMCA claims, the mere announcement of this game and Metroid: Samus Returns went a long way towards restoring much of the fanbase's faith in the series and Nintendo. And despite the reveal teaser being under a minute long and only showing the game's logo, it was one of the most publicized games at E3 2017 by gaming news sites, being second only to Assassin's Creed Origins in terms of social media discussion.

WMG.Metroid Prime 4 page

Pre-Development Reboot WMGs

Metroid Prime is still alive.

When all the Phazon was destroyed Dark Samus was turned back into Metroid Prime.

• This doesn't seem terribly likely, given that Metroid Prime carapaces can be found on Phaaze, suggesting that they only exist because of Phazon corruption. The design of Hopping Metroids also seems to allude to this, since they explicitly only take that form due to exposure to Phazon.
  • Whatever the Metroid Prime started out as, she seemed to ditch her metroid characteristics when she jacked the phazon suit as a body, and by the time of Corruption, the game was very clear that she was more phazon shaped like a power suit than anything else.

Metroid Prime 4 will have a Sequel Hook.

It will lead into Metroid Prime 5, or Metroid: Samus Returns, or Super Metroid.

• Possible, given that the Prime series has been stated to be an interquel between Metroid and Metroid II.

Meta Kraid will be a boss battle.

We have had Meta Ridley, so why not Meta Kraid? There is concept art for Meta Kraid for Metroid Prime 1.

Somehow, Phazon will return.

Possibly, given how massive the galaxy is, Phaaze will be revealed to not be the only planet that naturally produces Phazon.

• A planet such as the Pirate Homeworld?

Ridley will be a big antagonist.

Much like how he was a overarching antagonist in the original Metroid Prime game he will again be a looming threat that you will have to face in the end to make it to the last boss.

• This game may also explain how Ridley was able to shed his metal plating and become fully organic again for his appearance in Super Metroid.
  • This is at least partly explained in the semi-canonical manga, where he could eat any form of biomass to facilitate regeneration. He recovers from near-fatal injury this way, so it's likely the same ability that allows him to survive both the horrific experiments and the removal of his cybernetics.

The aftereffects of Metroid Prime: Federation Force will be an important part of the plot.

Apart from the obvious Sylux stealing the Metroid thing from The Stinger to that game, there's also the matter of Samus recovering from being captured and mind-controlled by the Space Pirates, as well as how the Mechs will contribute now that they're no longer the main characters.

• Don't forget The Stinger from MP3, where Sylux follows after Samus.

The game will have a multiplayer mode

There will be options for splitscreen, LAN, and WiFi, and in addition to Samus herself (with multiple skins based on other games in the series) you can also play as any of the previously seen Hunters, Dark Samus, and Anthony from Metroid: Other M.

To add to the above, there will be a ''Evolve style multiplayer mode where four players compete against one lone player taking control of a boss monster

One of the playable boss monsters will be Ridley, even if he doesn't make an appearance in single player.

• Nah, he's too big.

Metroid Prime 4 will explain how Ridley returned from his death in Corruption

The game will start off with Samus investigating rumors of a space pirate complex trying to resurrect Ridley, kicking the whole plot off. Bonus points if the subtitle is Resurrection.

Sylux, when he shows up in Prime 4, will come with a larger arsenal of weaponry and abilities to make him a more competent threat

At least one of Sylux's new weapons will be an energy-based whip with the power to tear enemies and buildings asunder. His Shock Coil will also be upgraded to fire powerful ball lightnings. New abilities will include the capability to propel himself into the air with an electric blast, as well as the power to cause an explosive burst when he lands from sufficient height.

• so Cole MacGrath?

There will be a Raid Mode inspired minigame called Bounty Hunter Mode

In this mode you play as Samus (and perhaps others) on different maps based on locations from throughout the series, taking on waves of enemies and earning points. With these points you can purchase upgrades, as well as cosmetic rewards (some of which may carry over to the main game). Some maps will have branching paths to accommodate different locomotive abilities. Co-op will also be supported.

Sylux's reasons for opposing the Galactic Federation will be revealed

Sylux's status as a self-made enemy of the Federation has always been one of the character's few defining traits. Later games in the timeline reveal a dark side of the Galactic Federation, a side whose quest to weaponize practically everything could make Umbrella envious. The top-secret technology that Sylux stole, the Shock Coil, is even stated to bear a suspicious similarity to a Metroid's energy siphon.
Could Sylux be aware of this darker side of the organization, and is motivated out of civic responsibility to stop it? Could Sylux have even been a former Federation employee who left out of disgust, possibly explaining how Sylux keeps managing to slip through all these darn GF facilities so well?

Ridley will finally be the Big Bad.

With the Metroid Prime/Dark Samus and Phazon as a whole dead and gone, Ridley could have A Day in the Limelight and become the Big Bad for the first time - and considering the last time he was seen in the Prime trilogy, he'll probably be in a new form while recovering from Corruption's events.

Sylux will turn out to oppose the Federation, but as an unsung hero and not a villain

Knowing in hindsight that the Federation does some extremely shady crap, with Metroids to boot(like the one Sylux stole at the end of Federation Force) it's not unreasonable to suggest that Sylux is someone opposing them in order to expose the more corrupt factions, and Samus is simply an obstacle. Hell, it could probably lead to an Enemy Mine with Samus.

The other Hunters will appear.

Sure, Sylux is the one with it out for the Galactic Federation and Samus, but the other Hunters potentially have reasons to get involved. Including reasons as straightforward as being paid.

• In Hunters, they were in the Amblic Cluster looking for "The Ultimate Power". If they all survived that (or Negative Continuity is in play), they could be motivated by revenge (especially so for Weavel and Trace), the existence of The Corruption (a good reason for Noxus or Kanden to show up), other hints on Spire's past, or just because the Federation is involved (hence Sylux).
  • Pretty sure that the other 6 Hunters all survived the ending of Hunters. Right before the Oubliette explodes, 6 colored lights, seemingly the ships of the other Hunters, can be seen departing before Samus herself does.
• Although, if they do show up, how cool would it be for at least a few to be Samus's allies?
  • If a few were to be Samus's allies, it would make the most sense for Noxus and/or Spire, since those two were the only ones who would likely not have come into conflict with Samus had the events of Hunters not happened. ^note Noxus wanted to make sure no one would get the Omega Cannon, and Spire wanted to use it to find out what happened to his people.

Mother Brain will make an appearance.

Why should Ridley have all the fun? Let's have the mind behind the monsters show up and cause havoc.

The Metroid Sylux hatched will parallel Samus' relationship with the Baby Metroid.

Sylux being the first thing that hatchling saw will likely mean it imprinted on him, like the Baby Metroid did with Samus. This could be used to draw parallels or contrasts between him and Samus as characters.

The game will end with Samus accepting a mission to SR388.

Hey, she's gotta go there sometime.

Predictions for new possible weapons

It's normal for each Metroid game to introduce new weapons/powers, and considering that Other M had no new powerups, it's likely that they'll introduce something new to make up for this. Possibilities include^note feel free to add your own suggestions here:

• The Gatling Beam, a beam designed for rapid fire, which when charged, would fire a long burst of beams, much like the Hyper Mode's Phazon Beam.
• The Combat Grapple, a pair of twin grappling beams that would allow Samus to slam her opponents together similar to the Strike Noir's rocket arrows. Could be combined with the Grapple Voltage to allow Samus to drain the energy from one enemy and then redirect said energy into another opponent.
• The Remote EMP Mines, which can attach to most surfaces and detonate when an enemy closes in on them. In the case of any invisible enemies (like a certain drone from the first game), this has the added effect of temporarily disabling their cloaking abilities.
• The Anti-Phazon Device, or APD (only applicable if there's more Phazon in this game), which launches a crystalline structure that causes Phazon to rapidly degrade, doing heavy damage to any Phazon-based enemies and destroying Phazite objects. However, as a safety measure, the compound does virtually nothing to organic material or machinery.

The game will be set after Fusion

And the Federation will be the main antagonist.

Metroid Prime/Dark Samus will be the first boss.

After the battle she will turn out to be a robot designed to look like Dark Samus, build by the Space Pirates' Science Team to scare Samus.

• It'll be half-dysfunctional, pretty obviously a fake as the battle goes on and ultimately ineffective. After all, the Science Team has vapor for brains.

The game is being developed by Next Level Games

Assuming the theory that this is a sequel to Metroid Prime: Federation Force is true.

• Jossed. It was originally developed by Bandai Namco, before development got rebooted and the game given to Retro Studios instead.

If Ridley is in the game...

He will be so horribly wounded from Corruption to the point where he becomes a full on Dark Lord on Life Support - his entire body is covered or implanted with mechanical parts, with cables and anesthetic tubes and all, therefore becoming a Non-Action Big Bad. He orders the Space Pirates around until the end of the game, where he recovers just enough to be able to fight Samus himself. Since Samus Returns is likely to take place after this, he won't have recovered fully until Super Metroid.

If this game does take place after Metroid Fusion, the ultimate suit upgrade will be Samus regaining her proper Varia Suit.

The Varia Suit is just way too iconic to be replaced by the Fusion suit. In addition, it's been established several times that the Fusion suit is far weaker than Samus' Varia Suit proper. It'd be fitting that the ultimate suit upgrade for her in the game after Fusion would be regaining her original power armor.

Samus will have to fight against Chozo

The 11th Chozo Memory from Metroid: Samus Returns features a rogue group of Chozo who have killed some of their own brethren.

If set before her mission to SR388...

This game will feature the Gravity Suit, initially as a Varia Suit Palette Swap before Samus — as in Metroid: Zero Mission — has to get a more powerful Power Suit, explaining its redesigned appearance in Samus Returns.

The game is being developed by Armature Studio.

They're comprised by a good deal of former Retro Studios employees that worked on the original Prime trilogy, so why not bring them back?

• Jossed. Bandai Namco started it, before their stuff was scrapped. Retro is doing it now.

The game will contain between 200 and 1000 suit upgrades.

After the large numbers of koroks and moons in recent Nintendo games, it seems like they wouldn't stop at 100 collectibles.

The four will be removed from the title

This would allow the game to remain outside the trilogy, and the number is just to signify that its a fourth Metroid Prime game on a console until they can come up with a better name, or they just want to keep the name a secret for now.

This game will use Proteus Ridley instead of Meta Ridley

A lot of people have speculated that Ridley's Phazon intake as a leviathan guardian overclocked his healing factor and eventually let him regain his biological form. Proteus Ridley will be used to illustrate him getting more of his original body back.

Post-2023 Re-Reveal

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i didnt know i was broken until i wanted a change

I Didnt Know I Was Broken Until I Wanted A Change

• Everybody Knew Already: Towards the end of the fic, when helping Catra summon up enough courage to take on her birthright as princess, Demeter casually notes that every Magicat has probably figured out her identity as Princess Fel'cty by that point. If it wasn't the tell-tale royal bloodline-defining heterochromia, it was her other physical semblances to C'yra, her magical prowess on par with Ri'ta, and the simple fact she followed both queens around everywhere and they clearly doted on her. As explained to Thom, who was the only Magicat who was ignorant about this until Catra formally took on her title, the general public never said anything because they respected that Catra clearly wasn't ready to address the issue.
• Secret-Keeper: Among the Princess Alliance, only Scorpia and Adora know that Catra is a princess. Catra tells the former of this newfound revelation shortly after the group arrives on Beast Island, while she tells the former a few days before she formally claims her title as heir.

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Gariben Jimi Moe Reijou wa, Ore-sama Ouji nado Oyobi denai

Gariben Jimi Moe Reijou Wa Ore Sama Ouji Nado Oyobi Denai

Gariben Jimi Moe Reijou wa, Ore-sama Ouji nado Oyobi denai (or "The Noble Girl With a Crush on a Plain and Studious Guy Finds the Arrogant Prince to Be a Nuisance") is a Romantic Comedy light novel by Tosaka Yūma.

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This work provides examples of:

• Bros Before Hoes: Discussed. After questioning Sharina, Angelica learns that her best friend would absolutely choose love over their life-long friendship, to her mild annoyance. Later, Angelica mentally pats herself on the back for being able to follow this trope, as she immediately decides not to even try pursuing a relationship beyond friendship with Riol when she realizes she might be developing a crush on the boy herself.
• Bystander Syndrome: Outside Sharina, Riol, and Angelica, there are two other students during the first story arc who were fully aware that the prince's attention was unwanted. However, they didn't say anything publicly until after the duel, where they back up Riol with their own testimonies. They stayed quiet when the duel was first announced because they feared backlash from going against the official story being painted by the prince and because no one would have believed them anyway.
• Cannot Spit It Out: Riol, once he realizes he returns Sharina's affections. He manages to say it once without thinking, before going three months without saying it again. He initially justifies it as wanting to save his proper declaration of love for another major event, such as winning a magic tournament, but when that plan falls south due to the unrelated machinations of the royal family, he admits he's just being cowardly considering that the two of them have been unofficially dating for months. So sneaks it in when she's least expecting.
• Cassandra Truth: Basically the plot of the first two arcs, especially the first two arcs. Everyone refuses to believe the protagonists' side of things due how incomprehensible it is that someone would choose being with a poor baron's son over potentially becoming queen. Whatever Sharina says or does is regularly warped to fit the other party's preconceptions; be it her as a naïve country girl who is pursuing the prince thinking that life is a fairy tale or a devious manipulator jumping from man-to-man as she pleases. It eventually gets to the point where, in the second story arc, Sharina and Riol are legitimately impressed that the second prince bothered to let Tobias talk, much less acknowledge what he's saying before dismissing it, since they've both gotten used to never even getting that far.
• Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: Several characters do this whenever they finally realize that Sharina really does love Riol, mentally or verbally going through a checklist of all the things that should be prove that the former has been aiming to become queen only to realize to their horror that everything that was supposedly her Playing Hard to Get or putting together a complex scheme to get riches and power was just a frustrated teenager who is happily enamored with her boyfriend and wanted nothing to do with any of them.
• I Should Write a Book About This: Angelica wrote a book based on the events of the first story arc for her own personal enjoyment after burning/giving away most of her romance collection. However it quickly got plagiarized by the bookbinder, who sold their copy of the manuscript to a traveling playwright, and within a few months the play is a national hit in a nearby kingdom. Sharina and Riol are impressed when they learn her role in this, while Angelica is deeply embarrassed that her private writing is now public knowledge.
• Make It Look Like an Accident: Averted. Prince Ronald attempted to invoke this when introducing himself to Sharina and Riol, but fails when Riol negates the attack, so his brushes it off as a test of their abilities.
• Prince Charming Wannabe: Prince Leonardo to Sharina, made worse by the fact that everyone assumes that the feeling is mutual. It takes Riol beating him in a duel and removing his right to the throne for it to finally click that Leonardo was chasing her, not the other way around.
• Rescue Romance: In the most mundane way possible. Riol simply warns her not to touch a plant in the school garden, noting that someone accidentally planted dangerous flora there. She immediately goes from barely grasping the concept of love to seeing this gloomy honors student as her soulmate.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: The main group correctly deduce that the Queen is making a Sharina a fiancée candidate to help her son save face, but also believe that she's aware that Sharina does love Riol. When we get the Queen's POV a few chapters later, it's shown that she thinks Sharina is a Gold Digger who is only with Riol as a temporary boyfriend while planning to marry into the royal family, and that Sharina purposefully manipulated the situation so that she has no choice but to make her Roland's fiancée.
• Show Within a Show: Angelica is a huge fan of a series of romance novels that, upon re-reading, realizes matches Sharina's recent romantic situation closely. Specifically, the official couple are an expy of Sharina and Leonardo and mirrors how their dynamic would have gone in a traditional romantic comedy situation. Meanwhile, the Beta Couple are expies of Sharina and Riol, right down to her book equivalent being completely apathetic about the concept of romance until her love interest alerts her that she's about to touch a deadly plant.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: Angelica starts out like this. She's an avid reader of romantic comedies and initially views real-life romance in the same way, so when Sharina starts sharing her gripes with the prince, she's confused that his actions would anger her; in a traditional romcom, his rude behavior would be charming and attractive. It isn't until Sharina starts contextualizing it by giving parallels to decidedly non-romantic things that it clicks.

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Misc

Sibling Switch Squick

A form of Adaptation Relationship Overhaul in which two characters that were siblings or otherwise family in the source material or in early versions of a work are overhauled to not just be unrelated, but now romantically involved (or vice versa). The squick part comes in the fact that long-time fans who are aware of the change may find it difficult to let go of this previous knowledge, causing a sense of dissonance whenever the two characters interact.

Another Code - Adaptation Deviation

Another Code: Recollection saw the original creative leads for Another Code: Two Memories and Another Code R: A Journey into Lost Memories return to these Cing adventure titles to create a remake that, in addition to a new visual style, voice acting, music, introduces several major narrative changes in the service of streamlining the story.

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Gameplay Changes

• All the puzzles in both games have been completely replaced. While the puzzles in the original releases acted akin to tech demo games in making heavy use of the hardware gimmicks of their respective Nintendo console — the touch screen and clamshell design of the Nintendo DS and the motion controls of the Wii — few of the new puzzles in Recollection use the unique features Nintendo Switch.
• Recollection completely overhauls the gameplay to be a third-person adventure title, as opposed to the top-down and 2½D side-scroller presentations of the original DS and Wii games. As part of this, the game is fully voiced, with conversations outside of cutscenes being presented in a two-panel comic book style.
• The mansion's layout is redone, now boasting multiple floors and a courtyard.

Character Changes

• Several characters have completely different outfits. 13-year-old Ashley now wears a hoodie and has a pouch on her jeans, while 16-year-old Ashley now boasts a flannel button-up, T-shirt, and a pair of mid-rise denim shorts.
• Ashley's interest in music is established in ''Two Memories', rather than being introduced in the sequel, by way of Ashley noting that she and Frannie are into piano.
• B Ill appears much earlier in Two Memories and now has moments of losing his composure while impersonating Richard, resulting in a brief story thread of Ashley disliking her "father" and wanting nothing to do with him.
• Richard is fair-haired in the original games, but has brown hair in Recollection.
• Dan Maxwell and Janet Rice are race-swapped from Caucasian to African-American.
• Janet was originally a classmate of Ashley's who also ended up vacationing in Lake Juliet during the summer. Here, she's a local resident who Ashley has never met before. She was also Elizabeth's cousin, whereas they have no such relation in Recollection (though she still calls Rex "Uncle" in the Japanese version).
• Sam Hillman and Lucy Graham were removed, with their roles integrated into other characters; the former has their role as the band's drummer taken over by Janet, while the latter has what little importance they did serve (explaining how to interact with Charlotte) taken over by Bob Fox.
• The motive for the main antagonist in Two Memories is now financial gain, wishing to sell the ANOTHER technology to various militiaries and governments, rather than desiring revenge towards Sayoko and her family.
• The main antagonist's backstory, motivations, and even actions in Journey into Lost Memories are completely overhauled from the Wii game. In Recollection, being the first test subject of a prototype ANOTHER caused Ryan to die, rather than become completely emotionless; the Ryan that Ashley interacts with throughout Recollection is a Living Memory clone born from the memory backup stored in liquid memory, interacting with the world by using the lab's technology to affect people's perceptions. He never manipulated Bill to kill Sayoko as he does in the Wii game, instead being horrified and saddened when he learns about it after the fact, and he certainly never attempts to kill Richard or delete his memories (he doesn't even know Richard, as Ashley's father had nothing to do with that original experiment). His desire to overwrite Ashley's memories are purely motivated by a desire to see Sayoko one more time before he passes on, rather than revenge over what her parents did to him. And rather than an attempted suicide and going to jail, deemed an unquestionable villain, Recollection dies a sympathetic death from the lake itself diluting his being, after having a heart-to-heart with Ashley over his existence as a Living Memory and their shared love for her mother.

Story Changes

Two Memories

• The game now starts In Medias Res, with Ashley in the forest walking towards the graveyard, before cutting to the boat ride from earlier in the day.
• In the DS version, Jessica seems to just guess that the DAS is coded to Ashley's biometric data, apropos of nothing. The remake explains that she discovered this by trying out the device after it arrived, and has her explain it when Ashley asks her to take a photo of her.
• The Captain's boat is named the Rosa, after his wife Rosa Fox, instead of the Martina. The island's dock is also now at the base of a cliff, instead of across a drawbridge.
• Captain no longer gives Ashley candy as a treat.
• Ashley only hears Jessica's scream after she approaches the gate of the Edwards' Mansion, having followed due to seeing her walk out of sight, as opposed to hearing her scream from the docks.
• In the remake, D outright explains that he is unable to consciously phase through walls and other solid objects, helping explain why he's been unable to extensively explore the interior of the mansion for so many years.
• In the original games, helping D recover his memories is a subplot that can be left uncompleted by the end of the game. Recollection ties it into the main plot, with the paper unable to progress without learning details about the mansion's former residents.
• While the story still makes sense without it, Recollection removes one of the details explaining why D's father was desperate enough to rewrite his father's will and attempt to kill his own brother; that being that D had a heart condition that required expensive treatment.
• Ashley's father or, rather, Bill Edward posing as him appears earlier in the story and has her search for the ANOTHER keys.
• After entering the lab, Ashley doesn't assume Richard is Bill and interrogate him, as just seeing him allows her to recall that he looks far more like what she actually remembers her dad to appear.
• There is now foreshadowing for the plot of Journey into Lost Memories in the form of Bill's laptop having an open chat window with someone at JC Valley.
• Since Recollection restructures the duology into one long story, the ending of this game seesa short interlude that segues into the beginning of the sequel.

Journey into Lost Memories

• The name is shortened to Journey into Lost Memories.
• Recollection introduces Matt into the plot earlier than the original game by having him be the one who steals Ashley's bag when she arrives at Lake Juliet, rather than Sofia.
• In the original Wii game, Matthew's subplot is Left Hanging, to be completed in a spin-off title that never happened. Here, it's resolved by the end of Chapter 6, with it being revealed that Matt's father is alive. He had spent the past few years trying to rebuild his life before attempting to request custody of Matthew back, while his friend Greg continued work on the Lake Juliet pollution story in order to clear his name. After a work accident, he had recently been left in a coma, but manages to recover just as Greg is explaining all of this (presumably thanks to the intervention of his late wife and daughter's spirits). At the end of the chapter, Ashley and Matthew part ways, with Greg taking Matt to see his dad.
• When the ANOTHER is used on Ashley, in the Wii original, she rejects the overwriting of her memories purely through her own willpower. In Recollection, the RAS activates, allowing her meet the liquid memory version of her mother, who guides and encourages her throughout the process.
• The end of the game following your final confrontation/conversation with Ryan. In the Wii game, this is a long cutscene depicting Ashley walking to the bus stop and various characters meeting her on the way to say goodbye. In Recollection, this is a playable segment where Ashley can explore the town one last time and say goodbye to everyone themselves.

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