When we talk about gaming and even a particular video game, there’s a ton of interesting facts that would not fit a single post, so we have added the ones that we consider most interesting.
1. Antonio Monteiro is the owner of the largest video game collection in the world. He has received a Guinness Award for having a total of 20,139 games, including titles for consoles from second to eighth generation and more than 100 devices to play them on.
2. Due to memory limitations of the first Deus Ex, the twin towers were not included in the recreation of the New York of 2052. The game’s story explains their absence as a result of a terrorist attack.
3. A shopping mall in China has incorporated booths for wives to leave their husbands there while they shop. They are equipped with a TV, video game console and massage chair.
4. Red Dead Redemption 2 was in development for 8 years. It took 700 voice actors, 300,000 animators, 500 motion capture actors, 500,000 lines of dialogue and over 1000 developers to finish it.
5. In GTA: San Andreas if your driving skill is low, CJ will look backwards when the car is in reverse. When you improve your skill, CJ will start using the rear view mirrors.
6. The reason why Crash’s character doesn’t have a neck is due to the technical limitations of that time (1996). They designed Crash that way to simplify him, taking complexity away from his geometry.
7. In Call of Duty: Warzone the heat sight does not allow you to see through window panes. This is true in real life, as thermal imaging does not work through glass.
8. The Playstation 2 has been so successful and popular that Sony continued to manufacture it until the Playstation 4 was announced this month.
9. The latest League of Legends championships in the United States have attracted more online viewers than the Super Bowl or the NBA Finals. Although they have not surpassed the traditional sports leagues in terms of attendance.
10. In Hitman 3 (2021) if you scan the QR code behind the head of the test subjects that appear in the mission “Chongqing” it shows you a picture of the developers.
11. In GTA V, if you go near the Parsons rehab center you can see the paparazzi in front of the entrance waiting for celebrities who fall into rehab.
12. Before the launch of Spider-Man PS4 a man tweeted Insomniac to ask them to include his marriage proposal as an “Easter Egg” in the game. The developer agreed, but then the bride left him for his brother three weeks before launch.
13. In Red Dead Redemption 2 the flag of the United States has only 45 stars because at that time (1899) there were only 45 states. The current one we all know has 50.
14. The face of the Waders in Bioshock is based on a World War I war veteran, Walter Yeo, who underwent facial reconstruction surgeries by the man who is considered the father of this specialty.
15. The factory in Japan that produces the Playstation has only 4 people working. The assembly procedure is automated and takes only 30 seconds.
16. In 2007, Rockstar provided a telephone for its fans to call in and give their opinion on what was wrong in the USA. The best calls were featured on one of the game’s radio stations, WKTT (We Know The Truth).
17. Sony’s original idea at first was to manufacture a console that would read Nintendo games in CD format (Super Disc). However, the deal fell through and Sony had to redirect its efforts to producing its own console.
18. A rather innovative FPS for its time, GoldenEye 007 was developed by a team of no more than 10 people, most of whom had not previously worked in the video game industry.
19. Barack Obama during the 2008 U.S. presidential election purchased advertising space in 18 video games through the Xbox Live service. The “Vote for Change” billboards appeared in games such as Burnout Paradise, Guitar Hero 3, NFS Carbon, NBA Live 08 and were targeted at ages 18 to 34.
20. In GTA IV, if you enter with a convertible car to the car wash the sequence will show that they make it go through the rollers instead of washing it by hand.
21. In Hitman 2 (2018) if you weigh Agent 47 on a scale it will give you 47.0 KG.
22. In 2014, the government of Denmark decided to recreate the entire country on a real scale in Minecraft. The server where they set up the project was vandalized by players, who found a way to place TNT and destroy parts of the map, as well as plant US flags.
23. In Project Cars 2, if the antenna of your car is damaged in excess by blows you will not be able to contact the pits.
24. Rockstar Games went so far as to pay people to leave negative reviews of the first GTA, with the intention of generating higher levels of controversy and selling more copies of the game.
25. During the first chapters of Mafia 2 all stop signs are yellow, just as they were before 1939 in the United States. Then the game jumps back in time to the 1950s where they become red.
26. In The Last of Us 2, if you run and drop to the ground repeatedly Ellie will get scars on her forearms and wrists.
27. Shigeru Miyamoto, the creator of Nintendo’s most famous franchises such as Super Mario, is forbidden to ride his bicycle to work because he is considered very valuable to the company and they fear the possibility that he could be run over.
28. When Pokémon Go was first launched in 2016, it increased activity in the US to an estimated 144 billion steps. On average, each player increased the number of steps per day to 1,473 in a month.
29. Epic Games founder Tim Sweeney is one of the largest land holders in North Carolina. He has been investing since 2008 in forest land for conservation purposes, to decrease deforestation.
30. The most expensive video game ever sold was auctioned for $660,000 in April 2021. It is a closed 1986 Mario Bros cartridge that remained in an unopened desk drawer.
31. The “ultimate gaming bed” from Japanese company Bauhutte has everything you need. It brings you all the comfort to have large gaming sessions without leaving the bed (except for going to the bathroom). Includes a drink and tablet holder, an also a snack shelf. It costs about $1,000.
32. Laura Cruz was the first name chosen for the protagonist of Tomb Raider (1996) but ended up being discarded. It was changed to “Lara” because Americans had difficulty pronouncing “Laura” and “Cruz” was replaced by the British surname “Croft” taken from the phone book.
33. The U.S. Navy began using Xbox 360 controllers to operate its submarine periscopes, as the previous controls were too clunky and cost about $38,000.
34. Gustavo Santaolalla features a cameo in some part of the game and he’s playing the banjo. He’s the actual composer of the soundtrack for The Last of Us 2.
35. The Xbox 360’s “red ring of death” became a widespread problem, affecting a significant percentage of consoles in 2007. It cost Microsoft more than $1 billion to repair.
36. Prince of Persia: Assassins was to be the name of the first Assassins Creed. It was originally intended as a spin-off of Prince of Persia. The story focused on two bodyguards of the prince belonging to the order of the Hashashins.
37. Grand Theft Auto V is the highest grossing entertainment product of all time, around 6 billion dollars. It managed to generate more money than any movie, album or video game. Even surpassing the figures of the highest grossing movie so far, Avengers Endgame with 2.7 billion.
38. It is possible to finish Far Cry 4 in less than 30 minutes by taking advantage of an alternate ending in which it is necessary to remain seated for 15 minutes in the antagonist’s house after being captured by his forces.
39. The SEGA chant shown at the beginning of Sonic: The Hedhegog took up 1/8 of the available space on the Megadrive cartridge.
40. The “Tetris effect” occurs when we perceive our reality as if it were a video game. This is what happened to many Tetris addicts, who admitted having the obsession of wanting to order what they saw on the street as if it were a game.
41. SEGA’s former president, Isao Okawa, donated the sum of 695 million in cash and company stock to save the company from going bankrupt after the commercial failure of Dreamcast. He died shortly after battling cancer.
42. Researchers from Oxford University found no relationship between aggressive behavior in adolescents and the time they spend playing video games with violent content.
43. Death Stranding asks you for your date of birth when you start the game, then shows you an Easter Egg in the form of a cake if you play the game on your birthday.
44. In the first Red Dead Redemption there was a glitch that caused human NPCs to start behaving like animals. From bird men to cougars that ran fast to attack you.
45. There is a street in a city in England that was named Lara Croft Way.
46. Bin Laden’s hard drives hijacked by the CIA had games such as Counter Strike, Half-Life, Final Fantasy VII, Devil May Cry, several emulated Nintendo games and Dragon Ball Z games.
47. A Reddit user recreated the iconic staircase from the movie Joker in Far Cry 5 in great detail.
48. Space Invaders was meant to always go at the same speed, but as you destroy more aliens the computer can render faster. This is why the aliens move faster as you get closer to the end of the level.
49. During Nintendo’s most successful period in the 1990s, its name was used to refer to any video game console. To prevent their brand from becoming generic, Nintendo promoted the term “video game console / game console”. This way they’ve managed to preserv their trademark.
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50. Doom became so popular in 1995 that it was installed on more PC’s than Windows 95 itself. Bill Gates thought about buying ID Software, but ended up settling for getting a team to port the game to his company’s operating system. The team came to be led by Gabe Newell, who at the time worked for Microsoft.
51. The first Mortal Kombat, one of the most successful fighting games of all time, had a development team of only 4 people.
52. The faces of the Half Life 2 characters have been modeled after real people. For example, Alyx Vance is a modified version of actress Jamil Mullen’s face.
53. In 2012, an 18-year-old collapsed and died after playing Diablo III for 40 hours straight in an Internet cafe in Taiwan without food or sleep.
54. A developer took 2 years to program Batman’s cape for the Arkham Asylum game using over 700 animations and sound effects to make it look more realistic.
Journey was the first video game to be nominated for a Grammy Award in 2012 for “Best Soundtrack Album for Visual Media”.
56. The creators of Pac-man did not design the game with an ending, but to run indefinitely. It wasn’t until 1999 that Billy Mitchell managed to reach level 256. In this level there’s a memory overflow and the screen fills up with symbols.
57. Some NES (Nintendo Entertainment System) games had a very high difficulty because Nintendo was losing money on game rentals. If it took players longer to progress, they had no choice but to buy the title in order to finish it.
58. To investigate how video games affect the brain, scientists in Berlin conducted a test with adults who played Super Mario 64. This study was conducted for 2 months and 30 minutes daily. The study showed a direct link between video games and increased brain plasticity in the test subjects.
59. The REDUX mod for Need for Speed Most Wanted (2005) is a collection of graphical optimizations for the PC version that also adds more than 100 cars to the base game. It can be downloaded for free.
60. During the development of GoldenEye 007, it was considered as a possibility that players would have to disconnect and reinsert the Rumble Pack (vibration module) in order to reload the weapon.
61. Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Serebrov was the first to play with a video game console in space. It was a Gameboy with the game Tetris.
62. Activision owns an organization called the Call of Duty Endowment that helps war veterans find job opportunities and training in order to reintegrate into the job market.
63. People who play video games are more likely to have lucid dreams (in which they have control over their dreams) than those who do not.
64. In the Japanese version of Fallout 3, the possibility of detonating the atomic bomb in the mission The Power of The Atom was eliminated to avoid touching a topic too controversial for the Japanese.
65. When Assassins Creed: Black Flag was released, the PETA organization lambasted Ubisoft for the inclusion of whaling in the game. The company dismissed this criticism by saying that they do not tolerate illegal whaling or a pirate lifestyle with lack of hygiene, looting and hijacking of ships, all part of a fiction.
66. An estimated 2.7 billion people have played video games during all of 2020. This increase is clearly due to the pandemic, as well as increased supply and growing demand.
67. According to a recent study, the average age of the gamer is between 35-44 years old, indicating that the market is growing well beyond even the teenage age. As more generations are born with video games the variety of choices will continue to expand.
68. Among the various genres of video games, there are some that teach programming, such as CodinGame, where players learn languages such as C++ to advance through the levels.
69. For a long time the burial of desert copies of ET for Atari was considered an urban legend, until 2014 when a group of researchers making a documentary unearthed 1300 copies in New Mexico.
70. The design of the Playstation is not original, it is based on a computer that Atari never marketed. This computer was the Atari Falcon 030 Microbox which existed only in prototypes.
71. In the final mission of GTA V we can choose between 3 different endings. Taking option C all 3 characters survive, but digging into the code of the game have found that at some stage of development was thought of the idea that Franklin dies and is replaced by a fully playable Lamar.
72. When you save the game while sleeping, the clock time that elapses varies depending on the character. Michael sleeps only 6 hours, Franklin for 8 and Trevor for 12 hours.
73. In the cinematics, when someone speaks to Michael’s right side he usually turns towards the person speaking to him. This is because the actor Ned Luke, who lends his voice to the character along with the motion capture, is almost deaf in his right ear.
74. Grand Theft Auto V cost 265 million dollars, which until then was a budget record for any video game, later surpassed by Destiny. Only with the presales they managed to recover that money and Rockstar even earned a billion with it in its first 72 hours from launch.
75. The peculiar arms merchant in Resident Evil 4 known as the Hawker is played by the same person who voices Leon but with a different voice register.
76. Portal is inspired by a game called Narbacular Drop, which was a project created by university students. Since Valve liked the idea, they decided to hire the entire team to develop the first Portal.
77. A man spent 3 years designing and creating the “perfect city” in Sim City 3000. The city named Magnasanti had the maximum population allowed by the game, 6 million, and had no crime or pollution.
78. In Portal 2, in one of the elevators prior to a camera, the panels change showing a BSOD, or more frequently known as a Windows blue screen.
79. Henry Cavill almost missed the role of Superman because he missed a call due to playing World of Warcraft. He had to call back to offer his apologies.
80. One player played through the first Dark Souls using a Rock Band guitar as a controller. It took him 11.5 hours to complete an already difficult game.
81. The first eSports tournament in history was organized during the 1970s at Stanford University. The so-called ‘Intergalactic Spacewar Olympics’ brought together 24 people to play Spacewar. Players competed for an annual subscription to Rolling Stone magazine as the first prize.
82. Joseph Deen from California is one of the youngest players to be signed by a professional eSports team. He has been training since the age of 6 for Team 33 until he was signed at the age of 8. While he is not allowed to compete in tournaments until the age of 13, he has signed a contract with the team receiving a $33,000 bonus and a $5000 game setup.
83. Carrie Swidecky is a woman who set a Guinness World Record by running a 138-hour Just Dance marathon. She played from July 11 to July 17 in 2015. Swidecky comments that the game led her to lose around 34 kilos.
84. A bug in the first GTA that made the cops overly aggressive was so well received by the game’s testers that it convinced Rockstar to abandon its concept as a racing game and rebuild the game around high-speed police chases.
85. Recently, Microsoft revealed that Minecraft has surpassed 140 million monthly players and 1 billion sales in its marketplace. More than 200 million copies of the game have been sold.
86. One of the first console RPGs was Dragonstomper for the Atari 2600. It laid the groundwork for what would become successive console games in its genre. It was released in 1982 and although it didn’t have much general notoriety, critics applauded its level of detail, ingenuity and depth for the time.
87. The development of Duke Nukem Forever began back in 1997, although due to setbacks and various conflicts its release was delayed for more than a decade. Finally the game was released in 2011 for PC, PS3 and Xbox 360.
88. In addition to being the first successful commercial game in three dimensions, Battlezone was used by the U.S. Army to train its tank gunners.
89. Among the GTAs with the largest maps, the first place goes to GTA V with 48 square kilometers of land area. It is followed by GTA: San Andreas with about 32km² and GTA IV with 8km².
90. FIFA 2001 was one of the PS2 games that used CDs with the Scratch and Sniff treatment. When the disc was scratched, it gave off a grassy smell. Another game that applied this technology was Gran Turismo 2.
91. To compensate for the growing gap with games released for personal computers, an expansion peripheral was created for the Atari 2600 called Starpath Supercharger. When inserted into the cartridge slot, it increased the RAM of the console and allowed for better graphics.
92. The voice actor playing MasterChief for the English version of Halo is Steve Downes, who has worked as a DJ for several radio stations in Los Angeles.
93. The game Manhunt was censored in New Zealand by the media classification office. The reason was that it was considered harmful to the public good.
94. Red Dead Revolver was originally a Capcom development, although Rockstar later managed to sell the rights to it. Red Dead Redemption is considered the spiritual successor to this game.
95. The Wilhelm Scream is the same scream that has been used in several movies and video games such as: Call of Duty 2, Assassins Creed 3, God of War, Spiderman 2 and Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault among others.
96. The N-Gage was a hybrid of cell phone and handheld console that accepted game cartridges in MMC format, had a 2.1-inch screen and featured FM radio, GPS and Bluetooth.
97. In 2001, a couple of students created a machine called ‘Pain Station’ with the classic Pong game, but with the peculiarity that it gave whips and electric shocks to the losers.
98. In GTA V if we rob a store when we return to commit the same crime the clerk will recognize you so the police response will be faster and with a higher number of stars.
99. In Assassins Creed Origins if you stay too long in the desert our character Bayek will suffer hallucinations of various kinds.
100. In the first Dishonored, if you take possession of a character while he is being poisoned or ingesting poison, you will also die with the on-screen message “you have been poisoned”.
101. In GTA IV there is a humorous message on the dashboard inside the helicopter that says “This helicopter might crash, but we don’t really care if it happens. Refer to the flight manual for help.”
Did any of these facts seem interesting to you? Comment below 🙂
This list has been compiled by Full Games Shop, which is an online store focused on bringing gamers a seamless experience. We know that these are difficult times for people who’re looking to build gaming rigs or update their current machines with the latest hardware. For gamers that are on a budget, we propose them to serve as an intermediary to get the best prices in steam gift cards and game keys.
