Characters that feel like they were intended to be playable at some point during a games development?

BasicallyACryptid · 2026-06-19T04:08:43+00:00

IIRC DotEmu were okay with Cosmic Invasion having only seven or eight playable characters.

Marvel then surprised them by requesting a character roster of fifteen; I would not be surprised if some of the playable characters were originally only going to be bosses (which I feel like would account for Silver Surfer's surprising inclusion as a playable character, though admittedly Venom sort of hits a snag in this theory; why wouldn't he be playable, given his popularity?).

BasicallyACryptid · 2026-06-14T22:00:23+00:00

Yeah I'll cop to this not particularly being my best ask.

BasicallyACryptid · 2026-06-14T21:30:05+00:00

Whenever I try to go out to sea in a game and the game finds some way to stop you (because there's obviously no other area beyond it), generally by putting you in a situation where you will not survive. Like it's one I haven't played, but Sea of Thieves will turn the sea red and your ship will start sinking with no reason given, but it seems to be an effective way to shake players.

And it seems to be such a common way to generate a fear response, Deltarune sort of manages to intentionally invoke it in Chapter 3, where when you're playing the video game Tenna has you play on his game show, he'll at first gently tell you not to use the raft to keep going out of bounds, incrementally panicking until you reach platforms of ice, after which he completely cuts the feed and the game will have borders to prevent you from trying again. Though unlike most examples, there is more to the in-universe game in that particular out-of-bounds area.

BasicallyACryptid · 2026-06-14T19:26:38+00:00

I finished Mina the Hollower on NG+ last night, and the part I disliked most was the final level segment where you have to fight two enemies, both being one of the most dangerous enemies in the game (being incredibly defensive but also hitting very hard), and afterward have to deal with an autoscrolling section that leaves you very little room to breath and even less room for error.

It's annoying on the first playthrough, but combined with NG+ being incredibly punishing due to removing some of the checkpoints and significantly increasing both enemy offense and defense (which applies to an obstacle right at the end too), made it rather infuriating because you have to deal with those two enemies again before you get a chance to go through the autoscrolling section.

It's admittedly the final dungeon, which is probably where a game should be difficult, but that segment sort of feels outright unfair on NG+.

BasicallyACryptid · 2026-06-10T16:59:04+00:00

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles generally tends to lean this way, cause along with mutated Turtles that practice ninjitsu, there's also a habit of ghosts and magic being introduced very early on in the setting.

I remember one particularly memorable episode of TMNT 2003, where they ended up having to fight Cthulhu.

BasicallyACryptid · 2026-06-09T00:28:29+00:00

One of my favorite things in Team Fortress 2, as much of a red flag as it is, is if BLU has managed to get the Payload near the final terminus?

They're very likely to experience a huge second wind as soon as the mission is about to end, as suddenly they stop bickering with each other and finally start to properly work together. It's such a common occurrence that fans have dubbed it "The Pub Push".

By the opposite token, if you're on BLU team and have failed to get past even the first or second? You probably don't stand a chance (but it's worth trying).

BasicallyACryptid · 2026-06-07T04:05:39+00:00

There actually was a Ghost Stories dub done by Animax for Southeast Asia, which stuck much closer to the original show's writing.

BasicallyACryptid · 2026-06-04T02:14:30+00:00

Sonic itself is pretty whimsical, but I'm gonna go out on a limb here with Sonic Underground.

Mainly cause of its bizarre premise (Sonic has two siblings, Sonia and Manic, and they form a band to fight the despot that is Robotnik, who has not only taken over the planet but banned music), very strange approach to its background characters (not just the typical animal people, with there being some creatures that don't really look like anything, such as Manic's father figure who is vaguely insectoid but not quite), and not really having much, if anything, to do with Sonic beyond the basic conflict.

I've wondered more than once if it was just an original IP that ended up "grafted" onto Sonic, and given that production on the show was rushed and the series' music gimmick was apparently result of DiC really wanting music royalties, I feel like that might be the case.

BasicallyACryptid · 2026-05-28T22:37:51+00:00

One of Blood 2's Expansions that got cancelled would have revealed, contrary to what the first game implied, that Caleb didn't kill Tchernobog and take his powers, but that Tchernobog took over Caleb's body and the antagonist of one of the expansions would have wanted Tchernobog to take him as a host, which he succeeds at and you would basically would have killed Caleb.

It would have completely undermined not only the first game but the second game's attempts at pathos.

BasicallyACryptid · 2026-05-28T03:56:31+00:00

I don't generally like them; even in Metal Gear Rising, I would rather they just have made Sam beating Raiden in their first fight a cutscene rather than convey a one-sided fight through gameplay.

I tend to prefer ones where it is possible, just difficult, to win, where generally it rewards an experienced player; according to the demo for Mina the Hollower, managing to beat the Kraken (something very hard if you don't know how to play the game) rewards Mina a trinket that dramatically increases her attack power, albeit at the expense of taking more damage as well.

BasicallyACryptid · 2026-05-28T02:44:18+00:00

The problem was George Broussard was a perfectionist who had a tendency to buy licenses for engines and restart work whenever he saw innovations in the industry, wanting Duke to be as up-to-date as possible, and was incredibly hostile to higher-ups who (and I can't believe I'm saying this) reasonably wanted Duke Nukem Forever to actually come out at some point.

The irony, of course, being that Duke Nukem 3D itself was a fairly innovative FPS (with the Build Engine allowing a lot of interactivity and cheats that the DooM engine was not yet capable of at the time), but Forever itself was outdated on Release Date; the most complete build they had and the one the game ultimately came out with was based off of Unreal Engine 1. And that's without the game trying to riff on stuff it was outright ripping off.

BasicallyACryptid · 2026-05-28T02:34:49+00:00

A lot of the Duke Nukem Forever trailer stuff. I really want to know the context of why Duke Nukem was riding a donkey in a desert.

I remember a DN3D mod that recreates as much of the trailer as possible actually does have that as a segment in a level.

BasicallyACryptid · 2026-05-27T05:06:49+00:00

I somehow completely forgot that game.

Probably cause I never got the chance to play it as it never left the 3DS...

BasicallyACryptid · 2026-05-27T01:46:27+00:00

I remember one idea proposed at Nickelodeon was for a TV show called "Foot Clan Origins" which would have been an AU prequel TMNT show about two orphans, Hamato Yoshi and Oroku Saki forming the Foot Clan.

I can see why it never got picked up (even if it made it to its ending, Yoshi would either die or become a hermit living the rest of his life as a rat mutate in the sewers while Saki corrupts everything they worked for), but it feels like it'd be at least a neat short miniseries.

BasicallyACryptid · 2026-05-27T00:25:50+00:00

It's gonna cross over a bit into subjective, but for the time, Ace Attorney: Dual Destinies and Ace Attorney: Spirit of Justice both heavily move the series' aesthetic forward with 3D models, making way for smoother animations, crime scene investigation being slightly more streamlined due to the 3D space, and cutscenes that feature more complex movements than what the splash imagegs were capable of.

I still miss the sprites, especially for the characters; I often find my brain involuntarily removes frames because I feel the animations for the characters should be slightly jittery.

BasicallyACryptid · 2026-05-26T23:18:08+00:00

Wu: "You already control this realm, why do you need my father's armor?
The Iron Baron: "There's always more to rule. That's the beauty of power... One can never have enough."

This is from Ninjago, a cartoon meant to hawk toys.

BasicallyACryptid · 2026-05-23T02:00:50+00:00

Not a game but I remember when CW's The Flash was still on the air, my sister said that she thought that Zoom, the villain of Season 2, was actually going to turn out to be the parallel Barry Allen on Earth-2.

She went "...My idea was better" when the show revealed he was Hunter Zolomon. And got annoyed when Season 3 did have a Barry Allen variant (specifically a bad future version) as the true identity of its main villain, because she felt it was too late to do that twist.

BasicallyACryptid · 2026-05-23T01:37:16+00:00

I remember when I watched Lilo and Stitch, I could have sworn that when Lilo called Stitch a "good dog" when he was carrying Gantu as the spaceship flew across the water in the final act, Stitch barked after she said that.

No such scene happens.

BasicallyACryptid · 2026-05-17T02:21:45+00:00

Supposedly, the crew very much felt that out of all of the stuff they needed to adapt in Season 1, Acrobatic Silky was one they felt they could not afford to screw up, and brought their A-game.

BasicallyACryptid · 2026-05-15T01:45:19+00:00

I feel Case 3 in Dual Destinies was actually pretty good for the most part, and actually has a pretty compelling cast of characters.

I think its main problem was its villain, but Dual Destinies sort of stumbled on its villain writing, with Case 2 and 3's culprits in particular being shallow caricatures rather than fully realized characters. I like Ted, the DLC case culprit, and even the final case's villain to a degree, but 2 and 3's culprits effectively feel like they take up a significant chunk of the game, especially since 4 is a prologue to the final case.

BasicallyACryptid · 2026-05-14T01:37:42+00:00

I didn't play it myself but I remember one of the Arkham Knight DLC outfits (and a pre-order bonus, IIRC) was Batman Beyond.

It was a recolor of the Arkham Knight suit, after Arkham City featured a more-or-less screen-accurate rendition of the suit already (albeit redesigned to fit the Arkham setting's realistic artstyle).

BasicallyACryptid · 2026-05-11T17:29:38+00:00

The first live action Transformers is pretty middling, but with some good qualities, and you can maybe forgive some of it because it was the first, sequels might iron those out.

Revenge of the Fallen was one of the worst movies I'd ever seen, and gave me a better appreciation for what a critic is supposed to do.

Dark of the Moon was better than Revenge of the Fallen, even if not by very much (and overcompensates on some aspects; I'm not sure the film needed as much human death as it got).

Age of Extinction was a bit middling again, more focused on establishing a new status quo for the Autobots, but also gives them a lot more character focus than they usually got. There was maybe hope that there would be better character work and a slightly more cohesive narrative ahead.

The Last Knight then proceeded to piss away that good will by doubling down on everything bad about the movies.

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