Did you know? Interesting gaming facts...

[kernow]

Virtua Racing arcade should never have come out and was only a test, but it was so good internally they released it anyway.

[importaku]

THQ stands for Toy Head Quarters. The name is derived from THQ's background as a toy manufacturer. They branched into video games and in the early 1990's sold off the toy division to concentrate on video games.

I always thought it stood for Totally horrible quality I always feel a pang or nausea when i see their logo

[davek22]

I always thought it stood for Totally horrible quality I always feel a pang or nausea when i see their logo

Totally agree. They should have stuck to toys. "tee aitch q", its pavlovs bell for a ****e game on the way

Not sure if its been mentioned but the guy (Chris Roberts) who made the Wing Commander games also directed the film and made the move full time into the film biz. Possibly evidence of a film being too true the game being a bad thing for the general public. I thought it was ok but then again I love The Last Starfighter

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0730932/bio

[hudson]

Did you knows...

The photograph on the album cover for Neil Young's Silver & Gold, released in 2000, was taken with a Game Boy Camera.

[MattyD]

There was a band who made some tunes using a Game Boy Camera too but their name escapes me. They fed the camera into some kind of unit or software or whatever that turned the output into sound. I think they're on the Ant Zen label...

EDIT - I was right, the band is a German electronica outfit called Klangstabil. Linky

[ItsThere]

Freezepop also have a song about Game Boys. I thin kits called "I am not your Game Boy".

[toxicninja]

yeah thats the song, they also have one called robotron 2000. theres a whole genre of music based around artists using music chips from the nes and gameboy, i think its just called chip or something.

[Magnakai]

Chiptunes!

You get the full gamut of stuff from semi-psychopathic bleepcore stuff, which bombards you with as many blips and chirps as can fit into the human ear, to much more restrained stuff. I've heard plenty of chiptune ballads and stuff too.

The Blip Festival is a good place to start: http://www.blipfestival.org/

[sj33]

Alien Trilogy on the Saturn only uses 1 of the console's 2 CPU's. With that in mind, I think it's quite impressive it still ran at 30fps like the PS version did.

[JazzFunk]

Not really a 'fascinating fact' as such, and I remember mentioning this a few times on here in the past, but rap group the Arsonists made a pretty damn good beat out of the Tombi music on their track 'Pyromaniax' (and watch out for the Mortal Kombat homage...):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xl2r9GQ03Q0

[Akira]

One I've just heard about:

Hideo Kojima has a cameo in the Japanese film 'Azumi'. He's one of the many extras that gets offed in the final battle.

Going to have to dig the DVD out and look for it now

lol,superb!

[randombs]

here ya's go!

[randombs]

lol chipmusic. when i was in japan last month i got a flyer from a retro shop about an '8-bit holy night' at some club or other where they were gonna be playing that sorta stuff. the wham! last christmas remix sounded pretty groovy

[hudson]

chipsmusic is great.

In early 2005, Beck released an EP called GameBoy Variations. It contained 4 remixes of song from his Guero album. Chiptune artists 8-bit and Paza were the remixers.

Here you can see vids for a few of the tracks

Hell Yes (Ghettochip Malfunction)
Girl (Bit Rate Variations in B-flat)
Que Onda Guero (Gameboy/Homeboy)

Off-topic - The original Hell Yes video featuring Sony's abandoned 'Qrio' robots.

A pic of Beck rockin a Gameboy.

[egparadigm]

Don't know if this has already been posted. Was reading a reprinted Making of... Goldeneye feature by RG today.

Apparently, at one stage, Rare were going to have the player reload their gun by removing and re-inserting the rumble pak. Wow! Would've made it a whole lot more difficult to play!