It’s impossible to know everything about the gaming industry, so here’s a few facts that you (maybe) didn’t know. Got a fact to share? Leave a comment!

Twenty years ago, a service called Gameline was designed for users to download games to their Atari 2600s using phone lines. The idea never took off, but later turned into America Online, which was once the world’s largest Internet service provider.

The Sony PlayStation was first created as a CD add-on to the SNES system. Due to licensing conflicts, Sony developed the PlayStation as its own console.

Pong, an Atari game, was the best-selling game console during the 1975 Christmas season.

Super Mario World, designed for the SNES, took 29,000 hours to program. The Mario series is the best-selling game franchise in the world.

1999’s Sega Dreamcast was deemed one of the most important and innovative products of the year by Popular Science magazine.

The largest gathering of people dressed as characters from video games took place in London. There were 376 participants.

New Yorker Danny Johnson scored 985,206 points on DragonForce’s Through the Fire and Flames, the most difficult song in Guitar Hero 3: Legends of Rock. He set this record on May 30, 2009.

Remember the Super Mario Brothers cartoon? Rival gaming companies attempted to match the characters’ popularity by producing cartoon versions of games like Battletoads and Bubsy. The pilot episodes were never picked up.

After the NYC terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, Darkel, a homeless character who rigs buildings with explosives, was removed from Grand Theft Auto 3.

The Xbox’s original name was DirectXbox – it was created by a group of DirectX developers.

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