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Video & Computer Game Urban Myths

GNC

King-Sized Canary
Joined
Aug 25, 2001
Messages
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I'm reading a great book on computer games at the moment, and it's touched on the feeling you get that the game you're playing has been better explored and generally succeeded with more than you have done.

So does anyone know any good urban myths about computer games? The ones I recalled from the book were stuff like Marvel's Ghost Rider character chasing you back the way you came at the end of Wheelie, a handy trailer for your vehicle hidden somewhere in Lunar Jetman or the mythical April Showers room in Jet Set Willy. All old ZX Spectrum games I'm afraid, but that's my era of gaming.

Any more out there?
 
According to the book, the trailer in Lunar Jetman myth came about because of the trailer on the front cover illustration. It's on the cover, therefore it must be in the game, was the thinking.
 
As someone who used to work in the PC/console industry, I can tell you that what people say is in any given game (even aside from extras) can sometimes be somewhat wide of the mark. People can imbue even the most basic games with a fantasy life ;)
 
True, but the room was always there - even though it was inaccessible.

Room 47 was re-coded by hairy hacker Dave Nichols in Your Spectrum 18 (the *April* issue!) as a new room, which was called April Showers. Your Spectrum ran a competition to find this new room (it was above The Beach) and the April fool joke was that we were all playing JSW again, months after it was released.

jswremakes.emuunlim.com/faq

Also, there was a JSW urban myth.

There were some rumours about JSW that said if you wait long enough on the Bow, a raft comes and takes you away to a desert island. Were those rumours true?

Yes, but only partially! In the JSW Part One absolutely nothing happens, no matter how long you wait, but in the JSW2 (The Final Frontier), the author inspired by those rumours made it possible!
 
Does anyone remember the UL about the experimental arcade game, think it's set in Seattle, that was supposed to erase your memory or try to turn you into a manchurian candidate or something - it's quite a good one that may involve secret German microchips and MIBs emptying the coin box?

I think I read it somewhere either here or on snopes, but b*ggered if I can find the thread again...
 
I read that Atari buried so many millions of copies of E.T. somewhere in the desert after it bombed and pretty much sent them bankrupt.

Never have really cared that much to find out if it's true or not.
 
BlackRiverFalls said:
Does anyone remember the UL about the experimental arcade game, think it's set in Seattle, that was supposed to erase your memory or try to turn you into a manchurian candidate or something - it's quite a good one that may involve secret German microchips and MIBs emptying the coin box?

I think I read it somewhere either here or on snopes, but b*ggered if I can find the thread again...

There's an urban myth in this book I'm reading that says that games such as Asteroids or Space Invaders secretly took pictures of the highest scoring players who typed their initials into the scoreboard and later on, kidnapped them to work as slaves on military space ships.

Probably not true, but I never got a high score on anything so I'd be rejected like Bill Oddie in that Close Encounters episode of The Goodies.

The Atari ET thing is true, though - the game was so awful no one wanted to play it.
 
Such stories sound vaguely to a short story called Vurfing the Gwrx, by Michael Scott Rohan. This involves an arcade game addict fighting a space war from via an arcade machine. Kind of like The Last Starfighter, but completely earthbound. At the end of the story, IIRC, he manages to blow up the arcade when he uses the 'Verf' ultimate power up ;) The story featured in Peter Davison’s Book of Alien Monsters (stories chosen by the former Doctor Who himself, back in 1982).
 
Jerry_B said:
Such stories sound vaguely to a short story called Vurfing the Gwrx, by Michael Scott Rohan. This involves an arcade game addict fighting a space war from via an arcade machine. Kind of like The Last Starfighter, but completely earthbound. At the end of the story, IIRC, he manages to blow up the arcade when he uses the 'Verf' ultimate power up ;) The story featured in Peter Davison’s Book of Alien Monsters (stories chosen by the former Doctor Who himself, back in 1982).

last starfighter was genius, must track that down on dvd.
 
gncxx said:
The Atari ET thing is true, though - the game was so awful no one wanted to play it.

Yes the game was bad but they did not end up in land fill. What happened was that the chips were pulled out and the plastic cartridges re-used. They made far to many of them, more games than there were consoles, but why bury them? The carts can be re-used as still happens today. Combat cartridges (a game that came with every console) are being re-used to make new games today. As you can see here A lot of the black cartridges start as combat. They have now found someone to make new ones for them hence the red and blue
 
As a big video game nerd, I've heard a lot of these. The one that sticks out is everyone swearing that you could take the last boss's machine gun from him in the arcade version of Double Dragon. Thanks to the wonders of ROMs I have debunked this one personally. :)
 
BlackRiverFalls said:
Does anyone remember the UL about the experimental arcade game, think it's set in Seattle, that was supposed to erase your memory or try to turn you into a manchurian candidate or something - it's quite a good one that may involve secret German microchips and MIBs emptying the coin box?

I think I read it somewhere either here or on snopes, but b*ggered if I can find the thread again...

Sounds like the Polybius intarweb legend
(might need to invoke the internet archive for some of these links):
http://coinop.org/g.aspx/103223/Polybius.html
http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/weblog/comments/996/
http://www.clubskill.com/Game_Specials/ ... ro_Special
http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/hoaxes/roundup.asp
(Also note the write up on the SEGA / Beta 7 story on the same page at Snopes.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polybius_(game)
 
Thanks for that Philo_T:D It's such a great UL. It's the Sinnesloschen bit that really does it for me:)

Might as wel copy some of that across so we can find it again.

From The Halloween Retro Special link:


Since the dawn of Pong, people have always played video games to escape. Ask any gamer and he or she will tell you that they play games to feel like their in a different world. You can get emotionally attached to polygons, get caught up in the beauty and fantasy of other worlds. For a few hours, you can leave reality and enter another dimension. But what happens when that fantasy becomes reality, and where does the line begin and end? Are you the kind who believes...or the kind that doubts?

You've heard it all before. Everquest players committing suicide because a date from across the planet virtually dumps them. Men in Asia dieing after nonstop Starcraft marathons. Carjackers and murders claiming they did it for Grand Theft Auto or Doom; These people force these games into their reality. But when normal, everyday kids commit suicide, forget who they are, and have nightmares from a game; you have to wonder what really happens to our minds in video games. This is the legend of the arcade game Polybius, the game that leads everyday people like you and me into insanity.

It's 1981 in Portland, Oregon. Arcades are the hang out spot for teenagers who have nowhere to go, dumping their allowances into machines for short spurts of fun. Some of the greatest games of all time like Ms. Pacman and Donkey Kong are released this year recapturing the imaginations of people of all ages. Good times are all around in the heyday of coins and extra lives. New companies churn out machines to get in on the craze and the kids always come back for more. A small, unknown, German company named Sinneslöshen Inc. introduces a game to a limited release in one or two arcades in the suburban neighborhoods of Hillsboro and Beaverton. Some say that the game was immensely popular, with people lining up around the block to play. Others say that everyone ignored the game in favor of the more popular titles. The only thing everyone seems to agree on though, is what happened after... Kids who played the game suffered from amnesia and forgot everything about their lives: who they were, where they lived...They would wake up screaming in the middle of the night with unbearably terrifying nightmares. Some committed suicide and some never played a video game again, becoming anti-game speakers. One person who met an anti-gamer claimed that he said the machines disappeared after a month or so. "I vaguely remember this game." says an old Portland native, "Years ago I spent the summer with my aunt and uncle in Lake Oswego, Oregon. I think I was 16 or 17 at the time: I'm 32 now. Anyway, I would drive into Portland to visit this arcade there where you paid a dollar or so to get in, then each game was a nickel. Well, I remember playing this game there. If I remember correctly it was only there on two of the times I went there. Really weird, I don't remember the gameplay but I remember not liking the game when I played it. The second time I was there I remember avoiding the machine. I never had nightmares or anything weird like that but I do remember not liking the game, and back then I loved anything inside an arcade cabinet. I'm guessing only a few were released and not much interest in them was shown so they weren't produced on a large scale."

According to the owner of one of these arcades, mysterious men in black coats would show up every so often and take High Score lists and data from the games but would never take the coins. Rumor has it that the game was a CIA testing platform for proprietary behavior modification algorithms which control nerves in the brain. These men were taking psychological data. The game was supposedly a fast-pace, abstract puzzle game with weird music and graphics.

The mystery has taken the classic gaming world on a spin. Some claim to have the Polybius ROM but refuse to distribute it out of fear of punishment from the government. The word Sinneslöshen means "sense-delete" in German. Only two pictures exist of the game: one screenshot and one rumored picture of the machine itself. People all over the internet are searching for this game, following any clue or hint and researching info. So is it real? Did the government destroy the minds of innocent children for research, or is this simply a gag? Many may dismiss this article and think that this is all a hoax, but in when it all comes together you have to ask yourself again:

What type of person are you? The kind that believes...or the kind that doubts?


Supposed appeal for info att coinop.org:

Game Summary
We need information.

Hardware Platform: -Unique or Unknown-
Game Details
This game had a very limited release, one or two backwater arcades in a suburb of Portland. The history of this game is cloudy, there were all kinds of strange stories about how kids who played it got amnesia afterwards, couldn't remember their name or where they lived, etc.

The bizarre rumors about this game are that it was supposedly developed by some kind of weird military tech offshoot group, used some kind of proprietary behavior modification algorithms developed for the CIA or something, kids who played it woke up at night screaming, having horrible nightmares.

According to an operator who ran an arcade with one of these games, guys in black coats would come to collect "records" from the machines. They're not interested in quarters or anything, they just collected information about how the game was played.

The game was weird looking, kind of abstract, fast action with some puzzle elements, the kids who played it stopped playing games entirely, one of them became a big anti videogame crusader or something. We've contacted one person who met him, and he claims the machines disappeard after a month or so and no one ever heard about them again.

Until the ROM showed up.

Here's what we've found so far:

* Found english strings "insert coin" and "press 1 player start" and "only" - looks like a 1 or 2 player game.
* Text in the game says "(C) 1981 Sinneslöschen" Maybe a German company?
 
Sounds like a good film.

if not, it should be made into a cheesy 80s revivalist film...
 
(Liveinabin's husband and Atariphile)

That article is almost entirely wrong throughout. It entirely fails to mention the actual reason for the great videogame crash of 84 (which affected everybody, not just Atari, and only had as much to do with ET as every other piece of shovelware that polluted the market, turning kids away in droves).

No ex-employee of Atari that has been asked (and there have been many) including, as my wife rightly said, Howard Scott Warshaw, the author of ET, agrees with the landfill theory. Although ownership of Atari did indeed shift from Warner to the Tramiel (of Commodore fame) family, the 2600 remained a viable (if creaky) console until it was retired in 1991, so for all that time, cartidges were sold.
Reason I mention this is that an Atari cartridge, when the label is off, can be simply unscrewed and a new ROM board can be dropped in. Dumping all of those cartridges would have been SO much more expensive than simply reusing the boards and shells.

For anyone who's interested, this topic has been done to death on the forums at Atariage.com where greater nerds than I have given up on the whole landfill idea.

Sorry, it is almost entirley an urban myth :)
 
Looks like it's a classic judging by the amount of conversation it has generated.

I'm quite happy I mentioned it now. At last I know the truth and can stop having those nightmares about little turd like aliens clawing their way out of a mass grave.


That's not sarcasm by the way, I am moderately interested in what actually happened. Although I don't have nightmares.
 
How about people losing their jobs to Massive Multi-Player Online Role-Playing Games (whew!)?
I can give support to this one. Back in the mid-90's my friend and I played on MUDs (which are the text precursors to games like Everquest). There were people who said they were blowing off work and even losing their jobs so they could stay up all night doing large, difficult zones. I remember one fellow in particular stayed on the MUD for a straight week without sleeping or logging off on a hefty bet. It was fun to log in every day and find him more incoherent and loopy than the day before. I can't remember if he made the week, but he made it at least 4 days. If old text games and produce this behavior I tend to think it probably happens with the big new ones.
Never heard of anyone killing themselves over one except for one fellow in southern Asia, I think. They take their online games mighty serious over there...
 
i remember a game , by sega i think, which was in an arcade in southport, and it was a kind of table top, with a glass dome, and two holograms of gunfighters inside, and it was a kind of shootout, but no-one i know remembers it...

found it, after 14 years of searching it took this thread and ten minutes on google...

here's a link if anyone is interested:

http://www.klov.com/game_detail.php?letter=H&game_id=10590
 
what a pity, even by todays standards it looks like a way cool game.
 
Not so much an urban myth but a legend that's always evaded my best attempts at acheiving a result.

The character known as Ermac from Mortal Kombat. I've seen pictures of him on screenshots from the very first game and he's supposed to exist in every version as a hidden warrior (I think he was made a main character in MK5 though) but I've never been able to unlock him.
 
I heard that in Metal Gear Solid, Snake can creep into a ventilation duct and watch a woman exercising but if you do something special first, he watches her undressing. Perv.
 
Speaking of mortal kombat, there were quite a few UL floating around about it as the programers were fond of the odd easter egg or 2.

One of the UL's that wasn't true was that of the gore cheat on the snes version of mortal kombat 1. In order for the game to be released on the snes the 'blood' (a one tone red sploge when ever someone was hit that fell to the floor) could not be included, so they never bothered programing it in in the first place on that version. Most of the magazines at the time blamed it on a dictat from Nintendo's head office saying that they would not alow a game with blood on their console as it did not fit with nintendos familly image. Fact is that if Nintendo disagreed with a product all they did was not give the game the 'nintendo seal of quality', which is what happened to codemasters after they produced the game genie, so more likely the ultimate factor that lead to the blood being left out in the snes version was just that it would have caused slowdown on the snes version.

Because the blood was left out and this was one of mortal kombats selling points this lead to many a prepubessent lad who'd bought the game for the snes fealing agreeved as they wanted the forbiden fruit of the red sploge but the poor little darlings had to do with out. As far as fighting games of the time went mortal kombat was quoite good so they should have been happy, but because they weren't this led to many magazines printing complex cheats that had to be entered in some tiny amout of time to activate the 'gore mode'. One magazine ('Total' I think) even claimed as an april fool that you had to sallotape an old 10p to the top of the cartridge as this would weigh the cartridge down just enougth for the conecting pins to reach where the codeing for the gore mode was present and then input some long string of button taps and holds to activate the gore mode. Total got hundreds of letters from gulibul readers who were so desperate to belive this that they asked for clearer instructions, what they were doing wrong and was there anything they could use instead of the old style 10ps as they couldn't find any.

Neadless to say none of the cheat codes worked as blood wasn't in the snes version anyway, or someone would have just unlocked it using a game geanie/ game shark/ action replay and the best the action replay can do is turn sweat from white to red in the game.
 
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