I remember reading that in the case of Atari 2600 Pac-Man, the original coder is still HORRIBLY embarassed.
Basically, he put together a quick and dirty demo to show that the game COULD be done on the 2600, and management said, "Great! Ship it!" against his protests. Certainly that was frequently the modus operandi of Atari-- Activision was formed as a protest against Atari's methods.