10 Video Game Secrets Devs DIDN'T Want You To Find
3. An Incredibly Racist BNP Cameo - Front Mission: Gun Hazard
If the last entry was delightfully cheeky, this one is the exact opposite.
Front Mission: Gun Hazard is an understandably little-known game - it was a spin-off to an already niche franchise, and released on the soon-to-be obsolete SNES in 1996. However, if Gun Hazard's developers hadn't buried one of the game's audio files, it would likely have hit the headlines for all the wrong reasons.
Said audio file contains an atrociously-worded message from an anonymous BNP member, filled with racial slurs and threats of violence against minorities. This is, sadly, in line with how the BNP - a notorious white supremacist political party in the UK - act in real life, but the language used felt wildly out of place in a SNES shoot-em-up.
Video games are more than capable of handling heavy issues such as racism, but the language used in the audio file was clearly designed for shock value and nothing else (as seen by its removal having absolutely no effect on the rest of the game).
Squaresoft, the game's publisher, thankfully realized this and moved to bury the code in the final product, although diligent dataminers would later uncover the game's dirty secret.