The Most Obscure Unsolved Video Game Mysteries
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 9 ก.พ. 2025
- #lostmedia #mystery #mysteries #unsolvedmysteries #retrogaming #thesunshinefeeler
Jah discusses 4 relatively undiscussed mysteries regarding classic games from the retro era. One involving artwork for Space Invaders, one involving Namco’s former home division, one involving the origin of a certain Mario character’s name, and some involving a certain blue hedgehog…
Footage that isn’t mine:
• figma Space Invaders M...
• MTV and SEGA: Rock the...
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The Space Invader monster appears as a Boss in the Playstation remake and Namcot spelled backwards is Tocman the main Villian in Pac Man World.
I'm not sure where I originally read this, but apparently the Namcot name was chosen by Toru Iwatani and is a combination of "Namco" and "mascot", in this context referring to a pet animal. So it's communicating that Namcot games are like miniature versions of Namco arcade games that you can keep at home, like a pet! 🐶
Don't forget to take your namcot cartridges for walks!
“honey, did you feed the Pac Man for Famicom?”
That actually makes a lot of sense when you think about it.
(Edit: but what do I know)
That's the most logical explanation for it that I've ever heard.
Oh wow that's really smart. Not really provable right now, but I really like it and it makes sense.
Didn't know that Space Invaders initial name was Space Monsters. I learned something new about my favorite franchise today
There's like... a thing in Japanese entertainment where they put random English words in because they look cool. I think that maybe he read "cope" in a dictionary or something and thought "wow what a cool word with such a unique meaning!" and put it in Spring Yard because he was working on the textures at the time. "CPU" makes more sense though as the team was all working with computers and would have seen those letters quite often.
Yeah, that's obviously a huge aspect of Sonic in Japan. Sonic is like Terry Bogard to an extent, a lot about him is based on what his Japanese creators think is cool about Americans and a lot of the time, those things come across as a bit strange, if not endearing, to actual Americans, like his iconic finger wag, because a lot of times they'll just see or hear something and think it's supposed to be "cool" when it really isn't, but it ends up working that way anyways. And just like Terry, in the Japanese versions of the Sonic games, and even promotional material dating back to 1990, Sonic always throws out "cool" English words mixed in with his Japanese vocabulary.
But I'm guessing someone assumed "cope" was supposed to be an "inspirational" word, given the inspirational theming around those early Sonic games, with the inspirational box art quotes. That's probably what they were going for.
@ Yeah I agree. Definitely think they thought it was inspirational. Perhaps even they assumed “Cope” was an English version of “頑張っている！”
@ yeah. Like the japanese 'ファイト' too
This isn't even the first time Sonic had this experience. If you know anything about the development of Sonic 2, you'd know an unused zone had a temporary (or possibly used) name that went by "Genocide City"
@@RobertTheFoxxo Oh, I surely do! th-cam.com/video/G5ryFSh9RTw/w-d-xo.html
I just thought that Wolfy-Dude Invader was the pilot of the UFO
I like to think that COPE is a message put there by Eggman
Sonic, cope with your loss!
*Eggman laugh from sonic x*
COPE, SEETH AND DILATE
It’s possible that The Egg of The Dragon was retconned into being the Final Super Sonic Boss in Superstars since he’s born from an egg.
I had no idea they made a figure of the space invader "Space Monster", but now I want one extremely bad.
Should be " Mysteries" plural. I was wondering when the NAMCOT mystery would tie back into the Space Monster.
Sees Space Invaders. I click.
About the creature, it's sometimes referenced under the name "golem"
i've never seen him get referred as golem at all
I get the feeling that the "dragon's egg" may not of meant a literal egg, but type of container.
Because why would Knuckles think somthing huge on top of angle island as the egg laid by dragon that' was inside the island.
So the "dragon's egg" would be a way to say a prison of sorts that a dragon is sealed it, like the black onyx of Superstars.
This was a fascinating video. Really well done. I appreciate how you're clearly someone with a high standard of proof who isn't satisfied with easy answers or conventional wisdom.
I wouldn't be surprised if the reason why they added that T at the end of Namcot was to differentiate that division for legal reasons, it could have been one of those weird loopholes that companies like to abuse for taxes purposes and they continued using the name for branding reasons for a few years until unifying everything under the Namco name made more sense. Someone who actually knows about that stuff, cos I know next to nothing about it, should check if Namcot was it's own company back then or if it was just a brand.
There's also the possibility that the shenanigans were purely internal within the company and they wanted to distance themselves from that division for whatever reason.
Dude this video is awesome, you get straight to the point without a long drawn out intro and you've clearly done your research. So refreshing, keep it up man!
I guess a better localization for Jugem's name in Super Mario Bros would be Rumpel? Like Rumpelstiltskin, another notoriously long name but this time from Western folklore.
The Sonic stuff here are deep cuts, but for as much as I love to cope myself as a Sonic fan, I definitely think the Egg of the Dragon was just a weird manual thing that SonicTeam decided to revisit and reimagine with Chaos in Sonic Adventure. The Egg was probably just a justification for Knuckles to be less hesitant to work with Eggman, if a giant mystery ball fell on your home and a random dude came out of it, you wouldn't trust him no matter how naive you were lmao
Another reason I don't think Sonic 3 and Sonic Adventure were planned to tie together way back in 93/94 is because Sonic 3/& Knuckles was probably planned to be SonicTeam's last Sonic game, at least for a long while. There's a reason they started fresh with NiGHTS on Saturn, they were probably tired of Sonic, and to my knowledge they only made Sonic Jam to preserve and polish up the Mega Drive games for the Japanese audience that didn't care [since the Saturn sold way better in Japan], and Sonic Adventure seemed to start as a sort of favor for SEGA, to give the Dreamcast worldwide appeal instead of SEGA letting their gold team do whatever they wanted during the Saturn generation leading to the console selling like shit ass dicks outside Japan.
I wasn't trying to imply that they were trying to tie in to a game that they wouldn't make for another 4 years, that's ridiculous XD
I just think it's clear that the concept of a blue dragon creature connected to Angel Island was planned for Sonic 3 & Knuckles, but scrapped, and they revisited and retooled the idea for Sonic Adventure.
In regards to Lakitu, let it be known that he's a lackey, too.
this is cool, i love obscure things, especially obscure game things. Subbed!
i hope one day we find the space invaders monster artist
"Tuck-willa" is how the town of Tukwila is pronounced. It's always fun to hear others pronounce Washington state town names.
Anyone claiming to be from Washington can be easily discovered as an impostor by being given a list of city names to read aloud: "Puyallup, Tukwila, Anacortes, Yakima, Spokane, Tulalip…"
From the thumbnail, I mistook the Space Invaders monster for Ganon's game over sprite. Am I so out of touch?
……No. It's The Sunshine Feeler who is wrong.
9:02 there's another weird Namcot mystery
In Japan Namcot collection was released on switch with dlc games (games Namco published only such as Megami Tensei Famicom),
The western version "Namco Museum Archives" split into 2 volumes released on both ps4 and switch, you would logically think "oh yeah in Japan switch got Namcot collection on physical and digital, so should the ps4"
Wrong. Ps4 in Japan has the western version back into Japanese "Namco museum archives vol 1 and 2"
How bizarre
That proposed secret in Sonic & Knuckles sounds probable.
I remember (back in 1998) my middle school library carried a copy of 'Game Players' magazine which had a strategy article on S&K.
After mentioning Knuckles facing off against Mecha Sonic, the article when on to say:
"Knuckles' game finishes here -- sort of. Playing as Sonic gets you through 3 more levels Knuckles can't reach: Death Egg Zone, Doomsday Zone, and a super secret Final Zone that Sega won't even let us have a peek at yet!"
Needless to say, after beating the game all the way through at least a few times, Super Emeralds and all, me and my friends were VERY confused! We spent about a week asking ourselves 'What did we miss?' 'Is there a secret exit?' 'Do we have to beat Robotnik under 2 mins??' 'WHAT???'
16:47
Chaos has been compared to Biollante, a Godzilla monster, so that isn’t that surprising
Around 2002, in Argentina, there was a Space Invaders cabinet turned into a House of the Dead 3 😂
The creature design for the aliens in Attack the Block was in part inspired by the Space Invaders cabinet art.
The name “Space Monsters” makes total sense why that monster is on the side of Space Invaders👾
This is a good video, i love these type of obscure mysteries as it feels like most of the time a lot of the video's/discussion focuses on the same things over and over.
one of my personal mysteries is the cut bosses from dk64. The original 2nd boss was a giant snake but they cut it and just reused a different boss there.
Or the cut Mr X from the donkey kong country games
I feel like the ring matching the HUD in STT is the developers telling the player "yea TOUCH THOSE"
I've played sonic hundreds of time and never once noticed the words in the background
Namco / Namcot, what I learned years ago was that the "T" stood for technology and was the part of the company that released games for the home. So Namco stands for Nakumira manufacturing company + Technology.
I had that exact copy of Gameinformer as a kid and I never thought in a million years Inwould see that cover ever again. Holy shit you just unlocked some core memories my dude.
a good number of those that ended up releasing in the west would often use "namco hometek" in either the credits, the title screen or the pre-title logos. make of it what you will but i have a feeling the namcot debacle extends even further
honestly, most lost media regarding games regurgitate the same few things about them that we all know, or it's just all about obscure or forgotten games. all of these were genuinely things I had never thought of past "huh, that's weird" but delving into it is really intriguing. I definitely like this video since everything was brand new to me
Finding a mystery is like finding the real name for the model of a cpr training mannequin
You can look up the story of Resuscitation Annie
Space Invaders monster looks like a blackened version of the 10,000 Volt Ghost from Scooby-Doo
Hmmm...I also remember a REALLY old floppy disk text adventure game where a similar looking werewolf would appear as an obstacle.
I think it was called "Mystery House" and the werewolf that appears almost looks identical!
thumbnail caught me off guard!
I love these videos man
Let's just all agree that this mysterious Space Invaders character is canon.
The sea creature-like enemies and the UFO are alien ships,
and those Space Monsters are the ones piloting the ships.
🤓 Ummm akshually “figma” is the name of a toy line, the company that made the invader is called FREEing
The jugemu-jugemu thing with Lakitu is actually referenced in the obscure Mario anime OVA movie from the 80s, where he shows up at one point and keeps saying "jugemu-jugemu paipo paipo" over and over again.That OVA is a whole is very fascinating, and I'm sure there are lots of mysteries that are associated with that nobody really knows anything about just because a lot of people don't even know about the OVA in the first place. Like, what was going on with the designs of the Toads in that movie? On the poster they look a lot like how they look in the games, but naked for some reason, and there are other screenshots with the naked Toads that look like they came from a much earlier version of the movie. But then in the actual movie they're all women with white skin and big black eyes that kind of look like aliens. I personally really like that design, but I just wonder why they look like that. This is even weirder because there's another scene with Toads in the movie, and they also look completely different, so it makes me question how late in production the designs of the Toads were changed or finalized, to the point where they're not in promotional material, and even the final movie itself couldn't decide on a consistent design. If you ever make another one of these videos, that'd be something fun to talk about.
My theory about Lakitu’s name origins is that it is a corruption of Loki the Norse god’s name combined with the first two letters of turtle which makes sense as Loki has been described as being a chaotic character and Lakitu creates chaos if you don’t take it out fast enough since it constantly throws Spiny eggs at Mario and it was described as being a turtle in the game’s manual.
That Space Invaders monster reminds me of the one monster from Forbidden Planet in a way.
It actually reminds me a ton of the southern United States legendary cryptid "Sasquatch" mixed with "Bigfoot" and "Yeti".
Surprised that there was no mention of the shadow monster appearing in Space Invaders on the PS1 and being given the name "Golem".
Lakitu:
If it did originate as an anagram for that city in Washington, that's not guarantee it would keep all the letters. I use a similar strategy to name stuff in my own creative projects, & one observation is that when you start re-arranging letters like that the end result has a tendency to not follow conventional spelling rules. I find myself dropping or changing letters after I reverse the syllables or whatever so they look a little more normal & are a little easier to pronounce. The fact that I kind of hid the breadcrumb on where the name came from is irrelevant, generally the point is to just easily come up with names for stuff.
Bets are it was originally Lakitwu & then simplified.
Im going to be so real, the egg of the dragon in sonic 3’s manual may have been even MORE RECENTLY REFERENCED! Dragons are a big part of superstars story, eggman is looking for a big dragon egg the whole game and you fight one at the end. Plus izuka worked heavily on both sonic 3k and superstars so its possible that superstars focus on dragons is a reference to the manual of sonic 3… maybe.
The hud in Sonic triple trouble being in the background is due to the tiles having a higher render priority. As you can tell the VDP to draw certain tiles to be in front of all the sprites. And since the hud is a sprite, it gets overdrawn because of that. I know this because the gameboy and gamegear have similar architectures and I've worked on them both for homebrew projects. My current project being Eternal Memory for the gameboy
For some reason in the digital manual for the Wii Virtual Console version of Mario 3 the cloud powerup that you can use to skip levels is still called “Jugem’s Cloud.” I don’t know if they left it in the original manual or not.
0:20 Strange, I always thought the "crab shaped" Space Invader resembled a dog's head. 🤔🤔🤔
Good video! Glad it's getting you some good views.
My guess for "COPE" is that it was supposed to be "CODE", since that would fit with "CPU". "D" and "P" are shaped similar enough that soneone who doesn't speak English natively might mix them up.
By the standards of the day, the Space Invaders arcade game really saw an impressive roll out in arcades (around the world).
Perhaps what helped that, was some of the software architecture in the game (at that time). It was a little code, which recorded response/reaction times (in the players). This information, gave a global view of reaction times in players. This information was used by someone. And I have never seen it mentioned online. Worth investigating, imho.
If you think us not knowing the artist behind Space Invaders is wild, did you know we don't even know who drew the side art for Pac-Man?
It was Tadashi Yamashita. We don't know who drew the art for The North American cabinet, though, if that's what you're referring to.
@@The1SunshineFeeler Sorry, yes, that's what I was referring to lol.
I have a theory on the unsynchronized first ring from Triple Trouble. Perhaps someone wrote a neat bit of code that would allow for two separate ring rotation animations offset by about 180° by using the HUD animation and the game field animation. It would look nice to see a row of three or five rings that appear to be rotating independently of each other.
But, other issues came up during development and the feature was forgotten about, so all the levels were built with just the regular ring animations in the playfield. It wasn't worth it to go back and adjust every other ring, so they just left it as is.
I'm wondering if you might find a few more unsynchronized rings in the game in other places.
The mysterious case of the monsters from space.🤔
This is actually a very interesting and engaging video
If I had to guess about the Namco/Namcot thing, is that maybe the bosses at Namco watched the US video game market bottom out in '83, and were wary to put the Namco name on home console releases for fear of similar thing happening in Japan. That'd save the Namco brand from damage if Namcot turned out to be a failure.
It’s actually fairly common for a lot of old games to outsource their artwork, especially for work like the cover or the art for the side of a cabinet! The artist of the space invader monster may have been from over seas and likely didn’t play the game before drawing for it.
There’s a similar situation with the first two Castlevania games. It is known who made the cover art for Dracula’s Curse, Super CV4, and Belmont’s Revenge, Tom Dubois, an artist from Chicago, but it’s still not known who drew the cover arts for CV1 and Simon’s Quest. There’s been a couple guesses over the years, but I don’t think there’s ever been any official confirmation yet.
It’s also kinda a mystery as to what happened to and who were all the people who made those games too! Hitoshi Akamatsu’s name is known and there’s a couple pictures of him, but the guy just vanished after a certain point. Same goes for Satoe Tereshima, a composer. I believe there’s still some crew that are only known through pseudonyms still too.
Those are probably my biggest video game mysteries I want to see resolved, without disrespecting anyone’s privacy or wishes, of course. It’d be very sad if people pestered someone who didn’t want to be found, but the intent of finding out what happened to any of them would be to let them know their art is appreciated!
Excellent video. Subscribed.
I know that they decided not to have them in human like form in Space Invaders.
I've wondered about Namcot for some time. Home console division seems to be part of it, but why that name?
I always thought the space invaders monster was supposed to look like the special effect they used for the monster in the film Forbidden Planet.
A shaky angular outline, a sort of void in the center, glaring eyes.
I honestly never thought about who drew the cool space monster. I don’t think we’ll really know which sucks.
I had never thought much about the monster, I always thought it was very out of place and kinda unnerving despite looking cool.
My sentiments exactly!
11:34 “Duel Longest Name (Anime)” here on YT gives the full correct pronunciation 😄
Here's an explanation on the ring in Sonic Triple Trouble: In the 8-bit Sonic games, rings are drawn as a part of the level graphics, rather than sprites since the Game Gear is limited in how many sprites it can display. The problem is that if you want to overlay a ring on top of a spot where there's meant to be level graphics, then you have to make a version of the rings graphics with the background behind it. Instead of doing this for every little instance where a ring needs to be on top of something, there is a ring sprite for those special cases, which is used there so a ring can overlap the tree. It just so happens that sprite rings don't animate at the same rate as level tile rings.
8:08 I see Miles Power has done his Japanese homework. www
But honestly, I feel like when it comes to pronouncing stuff, the Japanese Katakana spelling usually serves as a good reference. You have no idea how many people mispronounce TAI-TO.
You had me at "obscure."
Is lakitu the character that represents Miyamoto the best because he throws away other game designers projects to die away? Hmm.. seems logical.
how much crack have you been smoking
Underated vid
Sometimes its pretty fun spend a bunch of time to try and figure things out even if they seem kinda pointless. For example the videogame for The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe has 2 text documents written like letters of sorts from one of the people that worked on the game in the files (and a developer phone number too) so I remember trying to work out who exactly it was from the first name (forget where I put the text document I writ it down in though).
Everybody knows Mr Person Face Guy drew it
I don’t know if this is a mystery or not, we know that Michael Jackson contributed to the BGM of Sonic 3 and then backed out, but I’m wondering why he got involved in the first place?
The Space Invaders art was supposedly created by a young lady called Michiko Takahashi, according to my best internet-fu, but sources are extremely scarce, so take it with a pinch of salt.
@@daveb1930 Where did you find this?
Wow, I actually do remember Namcot after seeing the Tekken cover. I always assumed it was Namco T and that it was just a console division or something because I knew of Namco
I always thought they were space werewolves
In the brazillian version of the legends core this monster is present as well
that was really interesting and the comments too, thank you! ;O)
NAMCOT = NAMCO Home Tek AFAIK Simply put, they consolidated because less annoyance regarding paperwork ie taxes.
Maybe they are creatures in ufo
13:58 I'm willing to bet it has something to do with loading the level. Notice that the Ring icon in the top left spins at the same rotation as that first ring. Perhaps there's a coding issue that reads the animation differently from the rings in the levels, and this first one slipped through by accident. I'm no programmer by any means so take my speculation with grains of salt.
LOL. There was once a comedy song recorded locally about the way non-locals pronounce Washington State place names. Like, how do you think "Puyallup" should sound? It's PYOO-allup. Similarly, Tukwila is pronounced TUCK-willa. T'kway-la would make a good Star Trek name, though.
To be fair, probably none of the modern pronunciations are all that close to the Native words they were based on....
One of video games greatest mysteries is as follows...
Who is the voice actor behind the original Pole Position? It's just a Korean woman saying "prepare to qualify!"
if they acknowledge an artist they might just have to give them a cut of whatever profits were/are made with its usage. i'll bet the artist was only ever provided the original title and nothing else to reference.
Oh yeah, Sonic Riders: Shooting Star Story. Sibilance bonus👍
I think it also didn't get a PS2 release in Japan as well..maybe they just wanted to name it after the FMV intro? I could've sworn the intro involved a shooting star..maybe you mentioned that in that video from a year ago. I haven't played ZG in a while, I'll rewatch the intro next time I get a chance.
Edit: Did you play ZG? I actually thought it was pretty tolerable. The music however is one of my favourite sonic soundtracks
I've only played Free Riders, unfortunately... I want to play the other 2, though.
@@The1SunshineFeeler IMO ZG's story takes itself a bit too seriously and also retcons some of Riders 1's lore, gameplay wise it is insanely mid, but it has a lot of really cool ideas. Shame they had to kill the series with Free Riders..
I think that maybe:
Tukwila -> タックウィラ( katakana)
(タ)ッ(ク)ウ(ィ)(ラ) > タ(クィ/キ)ラ
タキラ -> ラキタ
Since jugemu ends in U/Tukwila starts with "U" after the T
Rakita -> Rakitu
That's my theory
The Space Invaders thing is just like the Pac Man cabinet art thing too. Like that's supposed to be Pac Man when he looks more like a ghost??
Edit: And now I have to talk about the original bad guy from the Sonic 1 concept art. Sonic Retro found out his name is "Nightmare" or "Nightmare 13". I wonder if he's related to Twin Star too? I'd love to know more about this bad guy. And why Robotnik looked like a bee in that art too. XD
Nightmare 13 is in the Twin Star concept art.
Is it longer than Alfred E. Neuman's name?
It's hard to believe that I used to remember it to play the board game. I think it was longer than this post.
I read the pinned comment but I first thought that the name namcot was a play on words. I thought that the cot part of it was to signal home and therefore, it would be like namco home.
fascinating
Not sure if this is a good enough mystery, but in Dillon's Rolling Western 2, there are some lights that appear at night that apparently serve no real purpose but exhibit some weird behaviours, always thought there was something more to those lights, but no one seems to know what exactly they are nor what they do.
That's a throwback..I played the heck out of Dillion's Dead Heat Breakers. It's a shame the series is dead now..😢
@IntrestingYTObserver It's an amazing but overlooked series, wish they at least brought them to the Switch or Switch 2.
This may sound dumb, but about the Namcot name, maybe Namco added the “T” for “television” if most or at least more than half of the Namtoc titled games were for a television console.
**Namcot not ‘Namtoc”** (I’m so bad are spelling)
Okay I just realize , during about the mid 1990s, Namco was getting into some sort of financial, maybe Namco wanted to crease their other divisions, just to make things easier I the company. Btw, your created an amazing video, I really enjoyed it. :)
Namcot T for Television?
Commenting for the algorithm
The T was for Namco Televideo
They had one of these cabinets in a local pizza place when I was a kid. The monsters on the sides scared the shit out of me. I needed my mom to walk me past it (it was on the way to the restrooms).
Figma is not name of the company, just their action figure line.
I always thought that namcot was a bootleg added T of the pirate games on my country
I was assuming it was Namcot to convey that it was Namco working with another company... like, "Namuco to"... or as we would write it in English, "Namco&". Seeing it written in Japanese, however, it's more like... "Namuco'to", with the syllable before the "to" cut off early. So. No idea what it's supposed to mean 😂
Does anyone else find Lakitu, like, insanely cute?
12:28 Because of how the Japanese language works, Tukwila is really difficult to transcribe and pronounce.
Tukwila would become Takkūira or something similar like Takyuira but it is going to be kinda clunky and Japanese is notorious for dropping sounds in foreign languages that are just too messy to bring into Japanese pronunciation so the idea of dropping the W from the name really isn't much of a stretch, to the point that keeping it in the Japanese version of the name is more of a stretch than leaving it out (at least if you're familiar with how Japanese goes about things.)
@@jessl1934 What does Japanese have to do with it? Lakitu is his english name.
Interesting. However, whoever is playing the game there needs to brush up on their Space Invaders skills :)
I thought my epic fail at 2:12 was funny enough, I just left it in the video XD
Then I kept dying on purpose because I thought I had enough footage for the segment.
@The1SunshineFeeler haha fair enough I couldn't help but wince though 😅
Maybe the 't' stands for 'television'?
Are you sure Lakitu’s name is pronounced like that?
I always hear people say Lack it ooh on videos, I always said luhkeytoo, who knows
+1 for La-key-too here