100 Random Facts About Video Games

1. The first video game was created in 1958 by a physicist, William Higinbotham. It was a very simple tennis game, similar to the classic 1970s video game Pong.
2. The best-selling video game to date is Minecraft, a sandbox game where players can build and explore their own virtual worlds.
3. The first console to ever ship with an analog stick was the Nintendo 64.
4. The video game industry is larger than the movie and North American sports industry combined.
5. The character Mario from Super Mario Bros. was named after the landlord of Nintendo’s first warehouse, Mr. Mario Segale.
6. The first game to be played in space was Tetris, on a Game Boy, by Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr A. Serebrov.
7. Pac-Man, one of the most famous arcade games, was inspired by a pizza with a slice missing.
8. Playing video games can improve your decision-making and multi-tasking abilities.
9. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial for the Atari 2600 was such a flop that thousands of unsold cartridges were buried in a desert in New Mexico.
10. The character of Donkey Kong was designed to resemble a gorilla and a donkey, as creator Shigeru Miyamoto believed “donkey” meant “stupid” in English.
11. The video game industry was almost shut down in the 1980s due to a flood of poor-quality games. It was saved by the success of the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES).
12. The PlayStation was originally planned as a Nintendo console, with Sony set to design its electronic components. When Nintendo canceled the project, Sony decided to make a console anyway.
13. The Guinness World Record for the longest gaming session is 138 hours and 34 seconds, held by a man from Australia.
14. The Konami Code, a famous cheat code originally used in Contra, has been referenced in various web culture and other video games.
15. The game Pong was the first successful commercial arcade video game.
16. Sonic the Hedgehog was initially developed by Sega as a response to Nintendo’s mascot, Mario.
17. The first eSports event happened in 1980, where players competed on the game Space Invaders.
18. In 2020, the global eSports market was valued at just over $950 million.
19. The highest-grossing video game movie of all time is Warcraft.
20. The original Xbox name was DirectXbox, as it was initially designed to show how Microsoft’s DirectX graphics could benefit the console market.
21. The world’s largest controller, made for the NES, is reported to be around 30 times the size of a standard controller.
22. The iconic end of level flagpole in Super Mario Bros. was an idea to give players a sense of accomplishment.
23. Halo was originally intended to be a real-time strategy game, not a first-person shooter.
24. Video games have been found to be more effective at battling depression than therapy.
25. Angry Birds, one of the most successful mobile games, has over 263 levels.
26. Many video game characters have starred in their breakfast cereal, including Donkey Kong and Mario.
27. The game Spacewar! was installed in the computer labs of MIT in 1962, making it one of the first widely available video games.
28. Final Fantasy got its name from the fact that it was supposed to be Square’s last ever game, as the company was struggling at the time.
29. The Game Boy was the first cartridge-based system that could be powered by batteries.
30. The original PlayStation was the first video game console to sell over 100 million units.
31. The Pokemon franchise is the highest-grossing media franchise of all time, with revenue from games, movies, merchandise, and more.
32. The first video game to feature continuous music was 1975’s Gun Fight.
33. Lara Croft was originally going to be a man, but the developers decided on a female protagonist to differentiate the game.
34. The first game with a storyline and protagonists was Adventure on the Atari 2600.
35. The classic game DOOM was so popular in 1995 that it was installed on more PCs than Windows 95.
36. Video game addiction became recognized as a mental disorder by the World Health Organization in 2018.
37. The character Kirby was named after the lawyer, John Kirby, who defended Nintendo in a lawsuit against Universal Studios in 1982.
38. The video game crash of 1983, often called “Atari shock” in Japan, was a massive recession of the video game industry that occurred from 1983 to 1985.
39. The Legend of Zelda was the first NES game to sell over one million copies.
40. The popular game Fortnite was developed in just two months.
41. Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple, was so skilled at Tetris for Game Boy that his scores were rejected from Nintendo Power’s high-score list.
42. The PlayStation 2 is the best-selling console of all time, with over 155 million units sold.
43. Video games can be used for educational purposes, with games designed to teach subjects like mathematics, history, and coding.
44. The original concept for Resident Evil was a haunted house simulator.
45. World of Warcraft holds the Guinness World Record for the most popular MMORPG by subscribers.
46. The Creeper, an enemy from Minecraft, was created by mistake when developing the pig model.
47. Speedrunning, the act of playing a video game with the goal of completing it as fast as possible, has a large online community and charity events.
48. The concept of the game Portal was based on a project from the DigiPen Institute of Technology.
49. The original Grand Theft Auto (GTA) game was almost cancelled because of numerous development issues.
50. The classic 1972 game Pong was actually a training exercise for a new gaming developer at Atari.
51. The PlayStation 2 was so popular, it was produced up until the month before the PlayStation 4 was announced.
52. Nintendo is the oldest company in the video game console market, originally a playing card company established in 1889.
53. Mobile gaming revenue surpassed that of console and PC gaming revenue in 2015 and continues to lead the market.
54. The game “The Sims” was initially designed as an architecture simulator, with Sims only added to evaluate the designs.
55. In the 1990s, the U.S. Army used modified versions of popular games like Doom II and Quake to train soldiers.
56. The first 3D game was a pool game called “Virtual Pool” released in 1995.
57. Game designers often hide secret messages or in-jokes in their games, these are known as “Easter eggs”.
58. The iconic ‘warp pipe’ concept in Super Mario Bros. was conceived because the developers found the animations for climbing ladders tedious.
59. “Metroid” is one of the first video games to feature a female protagonist – though players don’t learn Samus Aran’s gender unless they finish the game quickly.
60. The first console to have an internal memory was the Sega Saturn, released in 1994.
61. The very first video game Easter egg is found in “Adventure” for the Atari 2600, where the creator’s name, Warren Robinett, was hidden in a secret room.
62. The first game to feature multiple endings depending on player choice was the RPG “Chrono Trigger”.
63. The code for the original game “Prince of Persia” was thought to be lost until it was found on a set of old floppies in the creator’s closet.
64. The highest-grossing arcade game of all time is “Pac-Man”, estimated to have generated over $2.5 billion in quarters by the 1990s.
65. A blue hedgehog named “Sonic” was created as Sega’s response to Nintendo’s mascot, Mario.
66. The first video game to feature parallax scrolling was Moon Patrol in 1982.
67. Street Fighter II introduced the concept of command-based special moves.
68. The first game to use a CD-ROM was “The Manhole”. It was a simple adventure game for kids.
69. The phrase “It’s on like Donkey Kong” was actually trademarked by Nintendo in 2010.
70. The highest-grossing game of all time is “Space Invaders”, which made over $13 billion.
71. The “Konami Code” is a cheat code that appears in many Konami video games, and some non-Konami games. It was first used in the game Gradius for the NES.
72. The first RPG (Role-Playing Game) video game is considered to be “Dungeons & Dragons”, released in 1974.
73. Video games were not always digital. Early games in the 1950s and 60s used analogue electronics.
74. The highest score possible on “Pac-Man” is 3,333,360 points.
75. Tetris was the first entertainment software to be exported from the USSR to the US.
76. The concept for the game Pokemon was inspired by the childhood of Satoshi Tajiri, who collected insects.
77. The sound of the lightsaber in Star Wars games is created by blending the hum of an idle film projector and the feedback generated by passing a stripped microphone cable by a television.
78. Video game controllers were not always wireless. Early consoles in the 70s and 80s used wired controllers.
79. The popular racing game “Mario Kart” was originally conceived as a sequel to “F-Zero”.
80. The first game to be played in a web browser was “Doom”, released in 1995.
81. The most expensive game ever made is “Destiny”. It had a total budget of $500 million.
82. The practice of speed-running games — trying to complete them as fast as possible — began in the 1990s.
83. The first game to feature voice-acting was “Sinistar”, released in 1982.
84. The fastest-selling console of all time is the PlayStation 2, which sold over 155 million units.
85. The creators of “Pac-Man” did not know how the game ended, as it was too difficult to complete during testing.
86. In Japan, gamers prefer the term “TV games”, as opposed to “video games”.
87. The cheat code was invented by game designer Kazuhisa Hashimoto, who found the game Gradius too difficult to play during testing.
88. The first video game to be exported from Japan was “Pong”.
89. The first video game to feature a continuous soundtrack was “Space Invaders”.
90. The fastest-selling video game of all time is “Grand Theft Auto V”, which generated $1 billion in sales within three days.
91. The average age of a gamer is 35 years old.
92. The longest cutscene in a video game is in Metal Gear Solid 4, clocking in at 71 minutes.
93. The original name of “Pac-Man” was “Puck-Man”, but it was changed due to concerns of vandalism with people changing the ‘P’ to an ‘F’.
94. The highest-grossing video game franchise of all time is “Pokemon”, with total revenue of over $90 billion.
95. The first video game console was the “Magnavox Odyssey”, released in 1972.
96. The oldest video game is “OXO” or “Noughts and Crosses”, made in 1952.
97. The term “Platform Game” comes from games where the character jumped between or over platforms.
98. The first video game character to have a balloon in Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade was Pikachu in 2001.
99. The first educational video game was “The Oregon Trail”, intended to teach school children about the realities of 19th-century pioneer life.
100. The most played MMORPG (Massively multiplayer online role-playing game) is “World of Warcraft” with over 100 million registered accounts.

Originally posted 2023-09-21 19:55:24.

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