Messiah

Development

This game was in development hell for over 4 years.

The concept of the possession mechanic was inspired by the game Earthworm Jim, where, on one of the levels, the protagonist loses his armor and is vulnerable and helpless until he finds it again. The developers liked the feeling of changing from a weak character into a powerful one.

Marketing

The distributor, Virgin Interactive, came up with a magazine ad depicting Pope John Paul II smoking a cigar, with the tagline "What's possessed you? Messiah". Two magazines refused to run this somewhat controversial ad.

References

There is a scene that has you possess a worker in a radiation suit. When you approach some guards, they call you "Half Life." This is a reference to the game Half-Life.

One of the in-game locations is named "Club Kyd", after Jesper Kyd who composed the game music.

Sound effect

One of the sound effects in the game — namely, Bob's grunt of pain in the closing cutscene — later made its way into the game platform Roblox, where it was used as the default "death" sound. The sound effect, known as "oof", became an iconic internet meme, but its source remained obscure until a Twitter user pointed it out in 2019. In 2020, Roblox reached a settlement with the sound's original creator, Tony Tallarico: the sound would be removed from the platform, but any user could purchase it for a small fee to use it in their Roblox creations. (Source)

Technical

Messiah's engine is a lot more advanced that what it first may seem. It featured a LOD function (Level Of Detail) that would modify the polygon count in the scene in real time while the player was playing to keep the frame rate smooth. The faster your PC, the more polygons the engine would put in the models making them smoother. And you can see the adding subtraction of polys as you are playing.