10 Video Game Secrets Devs DIDN'T Want You To Find
2. Meaningless Stats - Hi-Octane
Staying on the subject of obscure mid-90s games, does anyone remember Hi-Octane?
Built in only 8 weeks, Hi-Octane was the very definition of a cash-grab - a quickfire project greenlit by suits who saw how much money Wipeout was making and thought "I fancy a piece of that". As a result, many a corner was cut, most notably in the game's stat system.
Developer Alex Trowers would confess years later on Twitter that the stats underlying each car were entirely fictitious. To quote his tweet in full, "Not a mechanic per se, but in Hi Octane we simply displayed different stats for vehicles without ever actually changing them under the hood".
There's a joke to be made connecting Alex's lack of spellchecking ("persee") with his less-than-diligent approach to creating Hi-Octane's stat system, but we won't make it. The project was clearly foisted from above on Alex and his team, who did remarkably well in publishing a solid racer given the time constraints they worked under.