Did You Know Gaming? 2024 Highlights

DidYouKnowGaming is a respected channel dedicated to video game facts, trivia, and discoveries. They have a huge legacy dating back to its founding in 2012. Over the course of the year they’ve unveiled lots of new information that was either unknown or not translated into English. So, let’s take a look at what Nintendo information they immortalized this year.

February 1, 2024: We Preserved Pokémon’s Biggest Failure

This video covers Nintendo’s attempt at capturing the popularity of The Peanuts with a Pokémon comic strip. It was ultimately a failure, and even Did You Know Gaming admits most of the comics weren’t very funny. The entire comic series was scanned and archived by the Hi-Res Pokémon twitter account.

April 13, 2024: New GBA Game Facts Discovered

Numerous new facts related to the GameBoy Advance, its development and games were unveiled in this. Most of the details come from a 2001 64Dream interview with GBA designers Satoru Okada, Kenichi Suguno and Ryuji Umezu.

Details on games like Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, Mario Kart: Super Circuit, and Wario Land 4 were also translated. It includes tidbits on how these titles were developed.

May 4, 2024: Donkey Kong’s Lost 3D Platformer & The Decay of Activision Blizzard

This video is a 50-minute deep dive into the development pitch of a cancelled Donkey Kong 3D platformer. It was to be developed by Vicarious Visions, now acquired by Activision Blizzard. Video game researcher Liam Robertson did most of the research for this video. The story gives further insight into the company culture and toxic workplace environment of Activision Blizzard.

In August of the same year, Robertson also created a successor video chronicling the history of the cancelled Crash Bandicoot 5 and its relation to Crash Team Rumble.

May 12, 2024: We Solved Some Mario Mysteries

Did You Know Gaming looked at numerous sources to either prove or disprove the existence of seven cancelled Mario games. Specifically, four Mario Artist games, a Donkey Kong game for the Philips CD-i, a new Donkey Kong arcade game, and a Yoshi’s Island game supposedly developed by Argonaut Software. The video uses a format where viewers can “guess” if the games are more likely to be real or not.

July 6, 2024: Every Cancelled Nintendo 64DD (N64)

This isn’t just one video but a massive two-part series. Did You Know Gaming chronicled every single known game planned to release on the Nintendo 64 Disc Drive. For those unaware, the N64DD was an add-on to the Nintendo 64 system. It notably used discs instead of cartridges, and flopped commercially. Tons of games from Super Mario 64 2 to an Unreal port’s development and cancellations were discussed in-depth. Also, both videos were narrated by the Youtube channel Hard4Games.

July 14, 2024: NEW Nintendo GameCube Game Facts Discovered

Did You Know Gaming translated hundreds of Japanese and German magazines and conducted some interviews themselves. Through their work, they found information for Metroid Prime, Resident Evil and Mario Kart: Double Dash!!.

There’s the complicated story about how Metroid Prime’s morphball was developed and who developed it. As well as a funny story involving Resident Evil director Shinji Mikami visiting game stores in Osaka to make sure the demo units for the game had the ‘correct’ settings. The video even shares the origin of the two-seater kart mechanic in Mario Kart: Double Dash!!. And that’s just a small part of what this video shares.

August 30, 2024: NEW Nintendo 64 Game Facts Discovered

This video once again was made when Did You Know Gaming translated tons of magazine interviews not previously known in English. It covers games like Mario Kart 64, The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask and Super Smash Bros.

One of the new facts is the reason Kamek was cut from Mario Kart 64. There’s also information about the moment at which Nintendo first planned to develop The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask. And on a note more related to this website’s theme, information about how the development team at HAL Laboratory decided which characters to make first in Super Smash Bros.

September 2, 2024: Preserving Lost Japanese Games

In the 2000s, hundreds of big franchises like Metal Gear, Final Fantasy, Resident Evil and Pokémon received entries on now obscure Japanese phones. However, due to the advancement of technology these phones and games quickly were forgotten. And, unfortunately many of these games were not properly preserved.
In this video, Did You Know Gaming tells the story of these games, and the efforts made by dedicated fans to preserve them. They even worked with many preservationists to achieve the goal of preserving these games. However, due to technological limitations it remains a difficult task.

September 30, 2024: Nintendo Power - Nintendo’s Biggest Failure

Nintendo Power was Nintendo’s attempt at selling budget, downloadable versions of Super Famicom titles at Japanese convenience stores in the N64 generation. It’s unrelated to the Nintendo of America magazine of the same name.

This video shows how it worked, and why it wasn’t so successful. Did You Know Gaming were even able to get interviews with multiple Japanese Nintendo fans who made use of the service when it was available.

What I highlighted here was just a fraction of the work Did You Know Gaming was collectively able to achieve this year, and there’s still much more to come. If any of these videos interest you the link to their channel can be found here. It’s also worth noting many people work on these videos. Did You Know Gaming has a massive team of editors, narrators, translators, and script writers who work on each video they produce. The full details of who specifically worked on each video can be found in their descriptions.

Credits:
Writing: Champion of Hyrule
Editing & Thumbnail: @Zerp