I’ve always been fascinated with trivia. In fact, when my officemates and I go for a fun trivia game like Cranium, etc, I usually emerge the winner. I pride myself with being able to identify aircraft and quote how often an airplane model has had crashes or problems. This is due to my personal fear of flying. Sigh.

Oh well, here’s an interesting piece from Games Radar. It lists some of the most trivial things we don’t know about our hobby – video games.

Do you know that Donald Duck’s name is “Fauntleroy”? Or how about that the play area of GTA San Andreas is 17 square miles? Or that in the original arcade Donkey Kong game, Mario was called Jumpman and he was a carpenter, not a plumber?

These and some more choice trivia after one more click…

Excerpts from the Games Radar article:

• The first ever product released by Sony was a rice cooker.
• There are 504 pieces of character equipment in Final Fantasy X on PS2.
• Michael Jackson, in some form or other, has appeared in Sonic the Hedgehog 3, Ready 2 Rumble Round 2, Space Channel 5 1 & 2, GTA: Vice City and, obviously, Moonwalker.
• FIFA 2001 is the first and only game to date to use a “scratch and sniff” CD. The disc smelt of turf.
• “Nintendo” translates as “Leave luck to heaven”.
• All of the carrier pigeons found in Capcom’s Killer 7 are named after female characters from Bond movies.
• Each of Gran Turismo 4’s 700+ cars took approximately one month for a designer to create.
• The Chain Chomp enemies in Mario games were inspired by a dog, chained to a post that belonged to a neighbour of Miyamoto during his childhood.
• Possessing a copy of Manhunt in New Zealand is a criminal offense.
• Max Payne’s face is modelled on the face of Sam Lake, who wrote the game’s story and script.

Enjoy!

GM T