Putting "sabotage" in the title sounds like they ruined the games somehow, but most of these are just Easter eggs that don't really affect normal gameplay.
Hidden messages in games aren't really "sabotaging" games. Sabotaging a game would be like, putting an impossible jump in Dennis or making a screen unwinnable in Robocop 3. Also examples you've mentioned before.
Superman on the N64 always comes to mind because the developers gave up because DC kept listing things the didn't want in the game so they ended up actually removing better elements from the game before it was released.
Wait...wasn't that Nintendo that did it to the developers? It was Nintendo that came in with a list of ludicrous demands causing the developers to create...well, what it is. I know the PlayStation version is a good game as Sony left the developers alone.
@@Sinn0100 The PlayStation version was never released. It was better because they had time to iron out the bugs, but it was cancelled at the end I believe before it was released.
@@Sinn0100 I'm pretty sure it was DC. Or at the very least, DC did it too. I remember hearing how the dev team would constantly be harped on; 'Superman would never hurt people' so out goes any combat. 'Superman would never destroy buildings' so out go any breakable objects. And so on. Nagging and nagging until there basically wasn't any game LEFT.
Yeah, having Nier Replicant here would have made more sense. Couldn't think of a bigger game that was made shit on purpose to demean players that like Action RPG games.
These don't seem like examples of creators sabotaging their own games, but rather programmers expressing their discontent. They all, I imagined, wanted to make a good game. I was thinking that I would be sure to see Fez on this list.
I don't think "sabotaged" is the right word. It's more like hidden easter eggs by disgruntled developers. The closest I can think of when it comes to developers deliberately making half-assed games is that one fellow behind Fight for Life on the Atari Jaguar.
One thing i never liked is developers who left out cool features in their game, just in case it got a sequel. Then "their" game flopped for being too generic, and won't get a sequel...
Well sometimes it's because marketing told to leave out features to promote a sequel, though other times the development was such a mess for what ever reason that there was no time to do those cool features and they had to left for a sequel or DLC.
@@cookieface80 True but that doesn't stop people from trying, especially some inexperienced indies who think features only get cut because of the "evil AAA publishers" and thus they end up with games that either never come out or come out as total mess due to feature creep.
Actually there were quite a few Easter eggs before adventure including Spitfire on the Fairchild F which is similar to Adventure because it displays the creator's name. When done correctly it says "Done by Michael K. Class".
True, that was in 1977. There are even Hardware Easter Eggs. Looking at some boards they make graphical letters in their ROM that can be seen under a microscope. Of course, by then there were only a few K on such a board, so that was rather easily visible if looked at it. Sadly I don't remember which game or program that was, but it had the name of the programmer like that. I think it was from the 1980s, though, so after Adventure.
Normally I'm a big defender of Larry - but sabotaging a game is taking action meant for the game to fail. The metal gear easter egg definitely isn't an attempt to tank the game. Konami did enough to tank the series on their own
Kojima tanked* Not to mention the repeated returning to Konami to ask for millions more for development... 4 times. But no. We'll just keep the "Kojima did no wrong" train rollin'. Not talk about how he stiffed Hayter and then didn't have the balls to have Konami pay for his lunch after being told he wouldn't be returning as Snake. Not talk about how the Japanese version of Snake is still the same voice, despite it being a totally different person.. Or the complete and total lack of any proper ending for the game. Dude wanted an unlimited budget to make the game he wanted to make, instead of making the game his budget allowed. And half that budget went to Keifer. I like Keifer, I think he's a damn fine actor. But he isn't Snake, and Kojima to this day still really needs to get that Hollywood bug out of his ass.
Wouldn't really call any of that sabotage. More disgruntled employee puts something in the game others didn't know about. So... Secret Easter eggs by disgruntled employee? To me, a sabotaged game is something more akin to Final Fantasy 2 (the NES one) where a developer made what was supposed to be the best magic spell in the game into the worst spell in the game. And changed it in such a way and late enough in development where no one change it back in time. That's sabotage to me.
It wasn’t late into development. It was just hidden/encrypted/whatever that it would have taken too much time to fix. Also I would call it sabotage as the employee did it on a mindset of “old stuff bad compared to modern stuff”
I agree with most comments here, most of these are just easter eggs of the F U variety. If you want Sabotage, look into what happened to Sonic Xtreme for the Sega Saturn. Sega of Japan wants Sega of America to work on development. They're not given a dev kit for the Saturn till halfway through the dev time, and then only given one so the level designers, and programmers have to share. And then they're actively restricted from using existing in house engines developed elsewhere at Sega for the Saturn, despite being PART OF Sega. It's honestly no wonder Sega left the console market.
I disagree (but I would!) Sim Copter was sabotaged because Maxis had to recall the game. MGS was left with an in game message that would leave Konami with egg on their face. Adventure left Atari’s PR dept with explaining to do as the hidden room went against corporate policy
@@dodgykebaab Fair enough. The MGS one's a bit weak though. The message isn't exactly some sick burn that made others mock Konami, and they've put much worse egg on their face from what they've released in the past few years. I guess when I read "Sabotaged Game" I'm thinking more the game itself (its quality, its release, etc.) was sabotaged, not "game used to sabotage parent company"
*Larry:* "Don't worry, I'm not gonna talk about the Easter Egg that was so famous that it was featured in Ready Player One." *Also Larry:* "Here's the Easter Egg that was so famous that it was a major plot point in Ready Player One!" I don't think this section was proofread...
Man, I've had a long 5-day stretch of my life, so it's a mighty pleasant thing to see Larry upload in one of my brief moments of respite. You do quality work, man. I respect your consistency.
Nice. I had a dream about guru stretching my @ssh0le out with grubby potato sized fingers last night. Going to watch this video while taking a huge shit now.
@@bootblacking No. Completely different circumstance. I just had to move while suffering under a debilitating cold across several days. Hopefully it didn't hit you too hard? Ian?
None of these really seem "sabotaged" by their creator. A few apologies for what publishers forced on the market, and a few easter eggs not meant to be normal gameplay, but nothing a dev ruined a game with. An odd choice for a title.
@@crystalgoddess4085 Possibly, but Fact Hunt normally backs up claims with proof. This one doesn't establish any intent. We don't know if it was just an inexperienced dev team that was forced to make the game after their seniors left in a mass exodus, or if it was deliberately bad to punish the publisher. The Easter Egg doesn't point to either direction, only that somebody on the dev team was loyal to Kojima.
This video was 100% poking a hornet's nest between the misleading clickbait title and being more of a condescending dick about opinions no one asked for than usual
Larry, I'm really disappointed. These are not cases of sabotage, sabotage would be something like making game unplayable for no reason other than to spite the fans (Warcraft 3 non-reforged, Overwatch 1). Also you missed part in Metal Gear Survive where they outright insult Konami's bosses. You brought up half of that easter egg.
This is such a clickbait, borderline dishonest title for a video about Easter eggs, it's as if you're trying to cut out the middleman of WatchMojo stealing it and repurposing it into something else
Back in the early B&W arcade game days, Atari had a space game called Starship 1 (later ported home as Space Raiders)...looks like they tried to update it and missed the mark
Developers back then had it tough, what about: "Boss! We did it! Had to crunch the crap out of it and work sixteen hours a day, but we got the Stadia game finished!" "Ooooh....take a seat..."
"Hello You"! Fact Hunt has to be my favorate video series on RU-vid. Learning all about gamings past and the shannigans that still effect the gaming industry to this day. Thanks for all your work Guru Larry!
If there's one game that I'll always see as sabatoged by their creators, it's Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly. Not only were there conflicts in production, Universal insisted that the game needed to be released by Christmas and refused to delay the game which lead to the game being completely rushed.
I wasn't there in real-time when it happened, but man did Konami trying to remove "A Hideo Kojima Game" from MGSV box arts spark a lot of outrage. Konami among the worst gaming companies, especially after what happened with Kojima, Konami screwing over every single one of their ex-employees, and the pachinkos.
I usually enjoy your videos, but the title on this one was extremely misleading. This is just a list of Easter eggs in games. Sure, some of the games listed were bad, but I didn't hear any suggestions from you that they were made that way on purpose, or that any of the devs intentionally tried to interfere with the making of the games (literally what sabotage is). And listing an entry on the list as Adventure only to go on and instead focus that entry on a different game was just strange. I love your videos, but you dropped the ball on this one.
13:00 Mike Hiddleston there, proudly maintaining the tradition of programmers not being able to spell for sh*t. I've never understood how programmers can be fluent in programming languages with super-strict syntax rules, where even one letter out of place means the code won't work, but somehow the comparatively forgiving English language completely eludes them. They're a strange breed.
the KJP Forever is from MGSV. theyre the names of the Wandering Soldiers you need to extract for Paz's side mission. It carried over to Survive. It didn't originate in Survive.
I guess a channel about retro gaming is going to attract a lot of people on the spectrum (no, not the ZX) but holy crap the amount of comments raging over 'sabotage'. Does it matter _that_ much?
Adventure's easter egg might not be the oldest, but it's probably the first to be discovered, unless the ones from Spitefire, the game with "Hi Ron!", and Moonlander were discovered beforehand.
Fight For Life was being made for the Atari Jaguar. Atari stopped paying Francois Yves Bertrand for his development, and Bertrand responded by shipping them unfinished builds of the game, holding back the more advanced ones until he was paid. Atari, being Atari, released one of the unfinished builds as the retail game.
Game creators sabotaging their own games is the norm nowadays. Just look at The Last of Us Part 2 and the Saints Row reboot. Games made specifically to anger old fans so they can get a new fan base, only to realize there is no such thing as a new fan base, and then they get mad at the old fans that didn't buy the game.
In college I was in a game development club and one of the developers had put in malicious code that would trigger based off the time clock at x date at x time and any time after that it triggered where the game would invert its matrix viewpoint making the game not play well as it would flip and make it upside down. I had discovered this when I was working on a linux port that I told no one in the club about until porting over the code I discovered this. When confronting him about this since he was the default defacto leader, not by choice or voted for but he would act as a dictator, he said he was going to make it a killswitch but then changed his mind and hide it in binary as the rest of the group didn't know binary, he didn't really either he just found a converter and couldn't get it working. He wanted this kill switch among others so he could soly lay claim to all of the games the group had worked on. He became obessed with making xbox exclusives and controll over all games the group had worked on even games he didn't really work on. I was trying to push the group to making PC games to get feed back without monetary gains as not allowed by the colleges rules according to him so the group could 1.Put it in a portfolio, 2.Upload it onto free websites to gain recognition, 3. To publish and release a PC online title to gain experience of doing so, as most in the group never had done before, and I encouraged them to do so even on their small side projects all of them were working on and 4. Attempt to get jobs for all of us. He would attempt to manipulate the college from disallowing all of this because he wanted to put in risky rumor in the code where it literally wouldn't matter. At the time I would make a bunch of small games as like demo reels I attempted to make for recruitment for the group, the supreme leader didn't like this, so I removed all branding of the group and released it on the webs, they are almost all gone now, but at least I got feedback.
Nice video, but I had a different impression of "sabotage" going in other than Easter eggs. For example, I thought that you were going to put how Kenji Eno basically lied to his publisher in order to get _D_ made the way he wanted to. That's more of a deliberate example of "sabotage", at least in my mind. Good video regardless, though.
@Marc Carran Great job... Users still needs to know eventually. When this Info still spreads wide... The truth may sting, but will set people free, especially innocent people, Larry is Innocent. He is only doing his job.
Larry is real big into recycling, so you'll be seeing this often enough if you watched this channel for a while. Should just start calling these videos 'Content Hunt'.
Sad days when even larry has fallen to blatant clickbait, barely the last could be considered a sabotage and that making a huge reach, the rest were at best message easter eggs that few people went out of their way to find.
Well, the original premise was to call the video "developers who admitted their game was crap, in the game" I really should have gone in that direction in hindsight.
@@Larry So sorry to hear that, Larry! Keep your chin up, because you'll get through this no matter what. We're all here supporting you through it all as well :)
"As I saaaaaay...I can't stand it, I know you planned it I'm gonna set it straight, this Watergate I can't stand rocking when I'm in here 'Cause your crystal ball ain't so crystal clear So while you sit back and wonder why I got this fucking thorn in my side Oh my God, it's a mirage I'm tellin' y'all, it's a sabotage!'
Vindicators is actually a lot of fun. It's even better if you play it on a real arcade cab, the dual yoke makes it so much more fluid than playing on a dpad or arrow keys. My main complaint with the game is the fuel system, really the only thing holding the game back imo but it would not be a challenge without it.
You should mention Sonic Xtreme, the creator Yuji Naka wanted to change game engine despite his initial permission to developers Sega Technical Institutes!
Honestly, a bit disappointed man. I look forward to your videos normally, but click baiting? Let's be realistic, none of these are sabotage. Sabotage is damaging something to make it not work. It's intentional harm. These are just angry devs hiding Easter eggs out of bitterness.
@@Larry I do agree with them, the title was a bit misleading. Still quality content, as ever, but I just expected it to be about a different topic. Maybe "Five developers who got the last laugh"?
@@Larry something along the lines of "5 Angry Easter eggs in games" or "5 Spiteful secrets in games". The word sabotage just implies far more damage actually done to the game. Something like those is probably a better description
I'm kind of suprised when mentioning the ports of Vindicators he completely ignored the NES port. It was passable and I remember having some fun, if frustrating, times with it.
Those old Sim games were great. Tower, earth, and life were pretty awesome too. And ant, such a weird run of games put out by a triple A game company, it's a shame that more big studios don't take chances like that anymore.
The very first secret or easter egg I ever found by myself was the one in Adventure. When it happened I was a kid that never picked up an Atari controller in my life by that point. The year was 1988 and I had both the Nes and Master System. I was visiting a family member in another state and they had a 2600 with a ton of games. I had never seen one before in action and of course I wanted to play it. Even though I brought my Master System with me I wanted to experience the new system and Adventure of all games captured my imagination. I played that game nonstop for days and found that secret in the wall. I was so confused by it I got my uncle to take a look and he too was blown away by it. I felt so damn proud that I was able to do something at 7 years old that my uncle of 29 could not. Such a cool memory...thank you Larry!
According to the game’s Audio Director, Shadow Man: 2econd Coming actually had a more polished build that was not published. Nobody knows the exact reason why, but it is speculated by some that it was an act of rebellion against the studio for the changes made to the franchise. Seems feasible considering damn near everyone quit during development and Acclaim Studios Teeside went under.
Reminds me of a similar situation where Sqeunix sabotaged the Deus ex series. Despite the augment your preorder debacle mankind divided out sold its predecessor but 'failed to meet its sales quota' and forced edios into the marvel mines. Hopefully we finally get a continuation now the SE sold them to Embracer. Thinking on it you could probably make an entire video of baffling SE cock ups.
Haa! 7:50 This Moonlander bit is pretty cool, i've never actually heard about it before. Matter of fact i haven't even heard of the PC\Console until now😅. It looks pretty cool for a monotone Black & Green screen, seems like quite a bit of detail for something so "old". This is Another wonderful video, thank you muchly Sir. Larry. 😄👍
Hey Larry, here's a thought: if you list the music you've used in the description then people like me won't have to go looking for it when we hear something we recognise but can't place, which means we can stay on the page and continue watching instead of going off on some goose chase 😅
None of these are really sabotage. Actually, every single one is just an easter egg.I know that it's very tough, and very important to draw people's attention so they will watch the video, but there's a fine line between doing what you have to to keep your channel going, and clickbait. Good video as always still, but may want to change the title.
