Discussion TroubledProduction / VideoGames

What about this?

http://franklyspeakingnews.com/2015/05/the-origin-of-the-pokemon-phenomenon/

https://www.destructoid.com/game-freak-nearly-lost-pokemon-red-and-green-338982.phtml Examples are As you’ve probably realized, Capsule Monsters eventually became Pokémon Red and Green (Blue in the US), which came out in Japan in 1996. Even today, 6 years is considered a long time for a game to be in development – for a game to be in development that long back then was very unusual.3 There were many reasons for this delay. Game Freak released 7 games in addition to Pokémon between 1990 and 1996, of which only two were for Game Boy. Their equipment wasn’t great, and they weren’t good about backing data up – sometimes they lost as much as a month’s of work in a crash.4 Game Freak was also woefully understaffed, with only four programmers, two of whom also pulled double-duty with another aspect of the game creation.5 Pokémon underwent a lot of changes during development, with the staff continually asking themselves if a particular concept was as good as it could be.6 For instance, the dual game mechanic was not in from the start – it was suggested by Shigeru Miyamoto, creator of Mario, as a way of encouraging trading and letting siblings each have something different

This long development process caused problems in the future. When Nintendo decided to bring over Pokémon, it turned out that the code was so much of a mess that they couldn’t simply replace the Japanese characters with the English alphabet – much of the code had to be rewritten.11 And when Nintendo wanted to release the N64 spinoff Pokémon Stadium, which would let people battle with their Pokémon on TV, there was no documentation of the battle code, so it had to be reverse-engineered by the team at Nintendo.12 The first generation of Pokémon games was notoriously glitchy, as well. One Pokémon, Mew, which was supposed to be a secret, showed up accidentally in some Japanese copies.13 The Missingno glitch in international copies was well known enough that Nintendo Power, the official Nintendo magazine, felt obligated to address it.

The turbulent start of Pokémon did not prevent it from being successful as time went on and its potential was realized. Pokémon today is the second best selling video game series, losing only to Mario himself. The 20th anniversary is coming up next year, and it shows no signs of slowing down. Perhaps we can all see this as a lesson for ourselves – initial struggles shouldn’t make us stop!

So, Troubled Production means many bumps were hit, but nothing as bad as Development Hell? If so, Sonic X-treme would more likely fit in development hell, as people were literally working for weeks on end. I won't move the trope myself, but if anyone feels like doing so, be my guest. Edit: unless troubled production means more along the lines of programming, in which development hell would be unrelated.