Taito's 1991 beat 'em up Warrior Blade: Rastan Saga Episode III is being released today on the Nintendo Switch eShop and PS4, leading some online to draw attention to the game's hidden Easter Eggs and secrets that may escape most players.
The arcade expert ohfivepro, for instance, recently posted on Bluesky about a fun set of references that most players can miss that can be unlocked during its game over screen whenever the player is asked to enter their name.
As he states, if you enter the name of a popular Japanese game developer and press enter, the game will potentially switch it out for a reference to one of the company's games, depending on whether Taito's developer included it in its database. Interestingly, these names typically come with letters redacted, which is likely a move from the developers at Taito to prevent any legal repercussions from using another company's trademark without their explicit permission.
The example ohfivepro chose to highlight is what happens when you type in Konami, with the name being switched to "GRDUS" — a reference to Konami's Gradius series of arcade shoot 'em ups. But there are also several others to find, with The Cutting Room Floor having posted a bunch of other examples on their website, which you can view in full here.
Entering Sega, for instance, will reveal a reference to Out Run, while Capcom will see the name get swapped out for "CHN L" — a nod to Street Fighter's Chun Li. There are also equivalents for Namco, Jaleco, Deco (Data East), UPL, Toaplan, Irem, and SNK, but we won't spoil them all here just in case you want to discover them for yourself.
As The Cutting Room Floor notes, this isn't just used to hide a bunch of hidden references to Taito's competitors either but is also used elsewhere to filter out profane terms, such as "ASSHOLE", "F**K YOU", and a collection of names featuring the word "SEX" for a list of humorous and self-referential alternatives.