Trivia / Atomic Runner Chelnov

• Creator's Favorite: Chelnov was Data East's second most prominent character after Karnov. He made cameo appearances in many of their arcade games, and was promoted to final boss in Fighter's History: Mizoguchi Kiki Ippatsu!!.
• Distanced from Current Events: The arcade version depicted how the hero was born through a nuclear accident, and the Soviet Union mark featured prominently on the title screen. Combine that with the name Chelnov itself, which is pronounced in Japanese almost the same way as a certain Ukrainian city, and you can see why many people thought the game was based on the Chernobyl disaster, which occurred only a couple of years before its release. Unsurprisingly, several news networks called Data East out on this, claiming how immoral it was to take advantage of such a tragic incident. Data East then responded to this issue in an interview with a journalist: Chelnov was named after Karnov, and the two characters are cousins. (According to Super Arcade by Tane Kiyoshi, the game was developed under a completely different name until it was renamed at the last minute.) Not much is known about the aftermath, but it must've left a bitter taste to Data East, since they rewrote Chelnov's backstory for the Genesis port.