"Yes! This book is the answer!"

Those vaunted 10,000 conjurable in-game items in Scribblenauts had to come from somewhere, but we had always assumed they came from the fevered minds of the development team, bouncing ideas off each other and being all "creative". As it turns out, the truth is far less interesting.

Developers 5th Cell - the talented minds and artists behind the DS's Lock's Quest and Drawn to Life - actually had a dedicated team of five staff spend six months doing nothing but research. That essentially entailed reading a lot of books, magazines, websites and anything else to glean ideas for the bizarre and comical items featured in the game.

Putting the equivalent of two-and-a-half man years' worth of reading into the game seems to have paid off - first impressions from other press sites has been very positive so far. Rest assured we'll bring you a full review of Scribblenauts as soon as it hits DS later this year.

[source kotaku.com]