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Recently I've become a fan of reading about video game hoaxes and urban legends. Most of the ones I find are complete bullshit, and always have to do with the original Pokemon games to some degree. For example, that the Lavender Town music made some kids commit suicide. Or stupid myths involving things in Zelda games that would even be technically possible on N64 hardware. However, I have stumbled across some good ones, some of which are more well known then others. If you know any, feel free to share them, I find this stuff really interesting. Shen Long in Street Fighter Probably the most famous one. One of the win quotes in Street Fighter 2 had a mistranslated version of the attack Shoryuken. The original victory phrase was "You must defeat my Dragon Punch to stand a chance!" It was translated as "You must defeat Shen Long to stand a chance!" This caused Electronic Gaming Monthly to create what was probably the biggest prank in video game history. They convinced players that Shen Long was a hidden character in Street Fighter 2, and to unlock him you had to complete the game in an absurdly difficult way. Eventually, it was revealed as an April Fool's Joke, and players were furious. The character Gouken in Street Fighter 4 is more or less based on Shen Long. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheng_Long Polybuis This one is a crazy urban legend that is said to have originated on Usenet. Essentially, a new prototype arcade game was released that proved to be incredibly popular. Many players became addicted, with cases of insomnia, nightmares, and suicide apparently. There were also rumors that the FBI was monitoring players that achieved high scores. To this date there is no evidence it exists, but I guess a ROM was released about two years ago. It seems like a pretty normal game, but I could see how it would bother someone with epilepsy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polybius_%28game%29 Killswitch This one is really bizarre and difficult to even explain. The gist of it is that it was a Russian PC game with a very limited run, about 10,000 copies. Upon completion, it would delete itself. It is (in)famous because there were puzzles and levels that players never found ways to complete. The game took place in a Russian factory that was inhabited by demons. Like I said, its difficult to explain what this game is even about, but you can read more here: http://invisiblegames.net/archives/killswitch/ Phantom The Phantom was a game console that basically played PC games. It had a ton of hype and then was never released. I really can't say much more about it because I can't find any information on it. I've heard it was some sort of investment scam. So if anyone else has any good ones, feel free to share!
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Aug 30, 2010 21:47
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I can't believe I forgot the Fallout 3 one. http://www.gamesradar.com/f/is-this-the-most-elaborate-gaming-hoax-of-all-time/a-2010080395712304064 There were messages hidden in Fallout 3 Morse code that you could pick up on the radio. You could only do so after killing Free Dog and going to very specific areas of the world. The creepy thing is what was actually IN the messages. Players decrypted the Morse code and this is what they got. Mainly these ones: quote:“The Queen has died today. The world mourns, as on days like these we are all Brits.” 4:02 March 19, 2014 quote:“I can’t believe they’ve actually done it. Not long left. They were warned, but they just had to keep pushing the boundaries of science. The noise. I can’t take the noise anymore. And the light, dear God! The universe is slowly unraveling around us. I’m not going to wait for death. I have a pistol in the attic.” This is actually the only message not preceded by a string of numbers. Now if you read that GamesRadar article, Bethesda denies all of it, including banning anyone on the forums that mentions it. But here's the thing..those messages are in the stock, vanilla version of Fallout 3. Someone put them there intentionally. Chalk this one up as a really creepy easter egg?
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Aug 30, 2010 22:10
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Magnificent Quiver posted:No it's not an easter egg it's literally just something a guy made up. Nothing of the sort is in the game. Alright, well that one is debunked. I've been reading about a "T-Virus" mass cell phone text spam marketing campaign for Reisdent Evil 4 back in 2004. Anyone have any information on this?
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Aug 30, 2010 22:16
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RBA Starblade posted:Hell with the other stuff, I want to learn more about this. Unfortunately I can't find any other information about it. I found a supposed "ROM" but its on Rapidshare so its probably a virus or something. Read about the other games on that page, they are equally bizarre.
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Aug 30, 2010 22:23
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Kizuna Encounter A really obscure fighting game by SNK. Really not that hard to find an arcade copy. What is hard to find though, is a copy of the PAL Neo Geo version. Apparently only 5 copies have ever been witnessed sold, making one of, if not the rarest game of all time. http://www.racketboy.com/retro/2006/10/holy-grails-of-console-game-collecting-2.html Were those five people full of poo poo? Makes you think if someone is holding on to a Neo Geo port that's worth 13 grand.
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Aug 30, 2010 22:27
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Ace Oliveira posted:Goddamn it, I love this kinda poo poo. Does anyone here remeber the Bigfoot myth and the Leatherface myth from GTA San Andreas? There were people even here in Brazil who had heard about that bullshit. Some even believed it. Oh hey I missed this one. Actually, I think in San Andreas there was a bug that would spawn an NPC that was texture-less and completely black. He popped out of nowhere so it scared a lot of players. Pretty sure it wasn't intentional though. The whole Leatherface thing might be based off that.
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Aug 30, 2010 22:34
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Ocarina of Time had a dumb rumor about the original Spirit Temple music being removed because it gave kids nightmares. The real reason it was removed was because it contained a verse from the Koran in the chanting, so naturally Muslims got pissed off. Ocarina of Time was actually censored twice. The other bit of censorship was changing Ganon's blood from red to green when you kill him at the end of the game. Also, to put this poo poo to rest, yes there is a legitimate way to get Mew in Red/Blue/Yellow without using a cheat device. It involves glitching the game in Ceruelan city. Its just that nobody found out how to do it until years later. SpaceBees fucked around with this message at 23:03 on Aug 30, 2010 |
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Aug 30, 2010 22:59
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RentACop posted:Ocarina of Time had a dumb rumor about the original Spirit Temple music being removed because it gave kids nightmares. The real reason it was removed was because it contained a verse from the Koran in the chanting, so naturally Muslims got pissed off. Pokemon Black is a really great hoax, but I think a lot of people that make up Pokemon hoaxes assume you can do a lot more with bootlegging cartridges then you actually can. Luigi Thirty posted:Killswitch may not exist, but the original version of Command and Conquer's uninstaller had a slight problem where instead of deleting the game's folder, COMMAND, it deleted COMMAND.COM. EVE Online one uped that when one of their updates deleted boot.ini.
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Aug 30, 2010 23:07
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Anyone have any information on Warcraft Adventures? Never was a Warcraft fan, but the story is interesting. It was a point and click style adventure game were you played as an Orc. The entire game was completed, but it got canceled at the last minute. Its just weird to think that in some office on some guy's hard drive is a fully complete Warcraft game that nobody will ever play.
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Aug 30, 2010 23:13
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Pokemon Black is fake, obviously, but a group of people are hacking a FireRed ROM to essentially make the game.
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Aug 31, 2010 03:22
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mew force shoelace posted:The book How to win at nintendo games made that up What? World -1 does indeed exist! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WG_xxm-HSRY
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Aug 31, 2010 18:15
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Rollersnake posted:It's one of the things that irritates me about Yume Nikki, because it is such a perfect jump scare, and it has such a small chance of occurring. Unless you already know it's there and are actively trying to get it, you'll never see it. And since it's the game's worst-kept secret, I doubt it'll surprise anybody again. A wasted opportunity. I pretty much heard about it before I played the game, so the suspense is completely ruined. When I play the game I'm purposely going to hit the trigger until it happens. Also, this video ruined any chance Uboa ever had of being scary to me: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Upe3Tqh2iHk
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Sep 1, 2010 01:35
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Heroic Yoshimitsu posted:I remember my friends and I falling for the dumbest hoaxes in Mario 64. One of my friends was absolutely convinced about this rumor that you get into a Cubs game in the game, and Mario would play baseball in there. It had to do with something in the Rainbow Ride level, but I don't remember exactly what it was. I was skeptical at first, but he said he saw a real screenshot of the event. After some failed tries I asked to see the screentshot, and it turned to be ASCII art of Mario wearing a Cubs hat. Magikoopa was scrapped and replaced with DK, so you'd be right. Speaking of Mario Kart 64, there seems to be an entire community built around the idea that there is a hidden character named "Marty". Marty is the caged Thwomp in the Bowser Castle stage, and apparently if you do stupid stuff nobody playing the game would ever do intentionally, the cage will open and you will unlock him as a playable character. Here is a video of somebody unlocking the cage: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9pKU9vyhRA Its total bullshit probably, because if they wanted to prove his existence they would actually make a video of someone playing as him. Still to this day whenever Mario Kart 64 gets mentioned on a forum somebody starts talking about him. If he does in fact exist, its probably the result of some ROM hacking. While we are on the subject of N64 games, Super Smash Bros was one that spawned a lot of bullshit between my very young friends and I. Mainly, who the hell the hidden character in the top left of the character select screen was. In my group of friends, virtually nobody knew who Captain Falcon was, and many of us thought Samus was a robot because we had never played or heard of Metroid before (I later rectified this by becoming a huge fan of the games, don't worry!) In other words, we basically weren't very familiar with are Nintendo franchises besides the super popular ones like Mario/Zelda/Pokemon. Eventually, we managed to unlock Falcon, Jigglypuff, and Luigi, but we were completely clueless as to who the fourth character was. The popular schoolyard rumor was that it was Metal Mario, and the conditions to unlock him were, as always, completely ridiculous. Of course, in time, somebody showed us a gaming magazine that showed it was Ness, and how to unlock him. At that age I still had no idea who this Ness guy was. To be fair, I had never owned a SNES and at the time he was only in one game that was released in the US, which wasn't exactly a household name like Mario or Zelda. So basically to us C. Falcon and Ness were weird rear end characters we had never heard of or seen. SpaceBees fucked around with this message at 02:58 on Sep 1, 2010 |
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Sep 1, 2010 02:49
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This isn't a hoax, and its not really an easter egg either, but since everyone keeps bringing up Ocarina of Time I'll post it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCig_h5pBLU A soldier that's been fatally injured by Ganondorf and his men in the back alley of Castle Town. Its a pretty sad scene, but most players never see it because they book it for Hyrule Field as soon after they enter the Temple of Time for the first time. This is in all versions of the game.
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Sep 1, 2010 04:18
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As far as hoaxes go, the ones that have some sort of "haunted" element are pretty dumb in my opinion. Especially the ones that have pictures of people's family. Games, and especially Nintendo games, have been completely taken apart code wise. If there was anything strange there, people would have found it. I really love the Killswitch story because it could actually happen. It seems pretty realistic, and although some may dispute a game being able to delete itself, it does seem believable. I remember my friend telling me there were sports cars that shot bullets in Age of Empires 2. I thought he was full of poo poo. Then I found out how to spawn them and hilarity ensued. A lot of these hoaxes seem to have a story that a developer committed suicide during the development of the game, but inserted some secret code into the games before he actually went through with it. There is something like that, but its much less morbid, and actually real. During the development of one of the Ratchet and Clank games (can't remember which one) one of the team members passed away. The developers actually included a whole secret room in the game as a memory for him. Its not morbid at all, and actually really cool. 
SpaceBees fucked around with this message at 00:23 on Sep 2, 2010 |
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Sep 2, 2010 00:19
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That Rough Beast posted:I mean the guy at the end isn't crying because the game has possessed his mind or something, he's crying because he doesn't have the strength to play the last copy the way he's supposed to and the way that everyone is expecting him to. I interpreted it as him uncovering the last bit of the story, which upset him somehow. The game sounded like it had some very depressing themes to it.
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Sep 2, 2010 01:00
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Maha posted:
How can you expect me to see stuff like that and actually be scared when I encounter him in game? He's just a lovable goofball. 
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Sep 3, 2010 05:13
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The problem with the Pokemon hoaxes (not the ones that involve stupid poo poo like kids killing themselves), is that in order to make something like Spooky Black, you would have to be a VERY skilled bootlegger. The other problem is, why the hell would you make ONE bootleg of a Pokemon game? I mean you go through all this effort to make a special version, and then give it to some pawn shop where it has a good chance of no one ever playing it. Too many holes in the story, which is the problem with most of these.
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Sep 4, 2010 01:25
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Remind me not to read the creepier stories in this thread before bed...goddamn.
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Sep 7, 2010 00:04
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Wandering Knitter posted:Seriously. I keep remembering Killswitch before I go to bed. Just trying to imagine what the game looks like creeps me out for some reason. I was more freaked out by the game that has you solve a puzzle to reveal a naked girl..and if you don't do it in time it displays a disturbing image. That just seems wrong. Especially if you're coming into it with no idea what happens if you lose.
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Sep 7, 2010 01:55
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Killswitch was (supposed) to be a platformer, with interactive elements like characters you could talk to and doors you could open, right? I got the idea that its a platformer with adventure elements, so you'd jump over to a door and then bring up a menu where you typed stuff like "open, break lock" etc. Its really vague but that's the impression I got. The only way this story works is if you think about it being made around 1990, which is when the story claims it was made. If it was made today, it would have been cracked wide open. Also, when it says "it deletes itself" maybe it just deletes your save game? That would seem a lot more reasonable.
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Sep 7, 2010 02:45
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Full Battle Rattle posted:Well, I mean, if you look at the website for killswitch it's fairly obvious that it's a work of fiction, and was never intended to be an urban legend in same way that, say, polybius is. Still, the idea for the game is really creepy, and I think it would be neat if someone actually went the extra mile and coded the game. The story does kind of fall apart though. Why the hell would the guy cry? Maybe because he was japanese and didn't understand english. Maybe because he finally figured out what it meant that ghast was porto's 'beloved.' Either way, it's a moot point because it's clearly a work of nonfiction and trying to find a copy to play would be like trying to go to Miskatonic U and trying to find their copy of the necronomicon. After reading this thread, I can't believe people were actually saying the things they were about the story, because it's pretty blatantly a story when you consider the source (it being on a website with short stories about a bunch of other fictitious games with creepy natures). Regardless, its a really interesting story and I thought I would share it with people. Polybius is a bit stranger, but the easiest explanation (as stated earlier in the thread) is that it caused some people with epilepsy to have seizures and thus was recalled.
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Sep 7, 2010 04:37
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mew force shoelace posted:That comes from something, if you are stepping through the game frame by frame for a speed run pressing up or B will advance the random seed by one step. Meaning if you want a pixel perfect game you have to do that sometimes. That mutated into 'holding up and B catches pokemon" The best way I've heard it put is this: "It might not of been effective, but it drat well felt like it."
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Sep 8, 2010 21:35
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Sorry guys, the Majora's Mask thing was really lame and relied on stupid jump scare tactics too much. You'd think a guy that good at ROM hacking would make something good instead of a lovely "creepypasta" video. I also really, really hate that word. I'm really hoping for more stuff like Killswitch and Polybius, or long time rumors about games that were never proved/disproved, instead of "MARIO 64 SHOWED PICTURES OF MY DYING FAMILY!" 4Chan has really ran this crap into the ground. edit: Someone make a Slenderman game were the entire goal is to stand behind trees and be partially visible while some idiot shoots some amateur camera footage. That's literally all Slenderman does. He stands behind things. SpaceBees fucked around with this message at 05:38 on Sep 11, 2010 |
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Sep 11, 2010 05:33
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JammyLammy posted:On the subject of hidden messages in games, this one is pretty amusing. 8-bit japanese game, pretty standard pachinko game Does anyone else have any more stories like this? I'm a sucker for stories of disgruntled developers hiding messages in games/software.
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Sep 13, 2010 00:56
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and drowning children, but still pretty amusing and I thought it fit in.
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The Majora's Mask story is pretty lame, but if actually managed to put code in the ROM that somehow plants an image of the statue on your PC, or sets it as your background or something, that's pretty cool.
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Sep 18, 2010 20:30
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RagnarokAngel posted:It'd also be pretty invasive and therefore not cool! I'm pretty sure this is why the ROM got removed.
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Sep 18, 2010 20:57
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yaoi prophet posted:I'm pretty sure that it would actually be impossible to do unless there was some kind of security hole in whatever N64 emulator you use to play it. Well I heard that it was putting pictures of the statue on people's desktops..but it was probably a bunch of 4Chan idiots making poo poo up. It was dumb of me to believe it. BEN! SPOOKY!
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Sep 19, 2010 20:19
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SRM posted:It was pretty much just among my friends from what I know, but in Super Smash Bros Brawl there's a whole hell of a lot of music. Among the songs included are two different Tetris songs. As a result there was a little speculation of there being a Tetris level, and some fun-sounding ideas on what one would be like. No dice though. There was a ton of music cut from the final release of Brawl: it may still be on the disc, I don't know. Its a shame because the music that cut was awesome. I honestly wasn't a fan of Brawl but the soundtrack was amazing.
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Sep 19, 2010 22:30
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I'm not gonna lie I'm pretty tired of all this BEN crap.
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Sep 21, 2010 04:53
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TheJoker138 posted:The office in Arkham Asylum was actually patched into the game with a title update, secretly. It was only in the game for a couple weeks before the devs finally told people what they did, not the entire time the game was out, as I'm sure someone would have found it after doing a data dump from the disc in that time. Valve does this kind of thing too. Its a really cool form of viral marketing and I hope more developers do it in the future.
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Jul 31, 2011 05:22
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Kill Switch is quite obviously a hoax. That much is now apparent. I kind of regret putting it in the OP now that I know how fake it is, but its still a cool story.
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Aug 5, 2011 05:21
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Red Octopus!! posted:I heard that Samus was going to be in a Marvel Alliance game until word got out the game was going to be mutliplatform, and then Samus got canned. Woah, hang on there. Are we talking Samus, like Samus Aran? That would have been awesome. Has Samus ever made a cameo as a playable character in a non-Nintendo game? I know she makes a non-playable cameo in Dead or Alive Dimensions for the 3DS. Link was in Soul Calibur 2 Gamecube version, but that's the only other time I can think of a Nintendo character being playable on the Nintendo console version of a multi-platform game. While were on the topic of Soul Calibur 2 and console exclusive guest characters, back when Soul Calibur 2 first came out, and a couple of years afterwards, I kept hearing about a "master" or "dev" version of the game that had all three characters playable on the same hardware. The logic was since there wasn't one "lead" version of Soul Calibur 2, the engine was developed across all three platforms simultaneously, and by extension so were the three guest characters. Then, when the discs were finalized, they were locked out in some form or another off the versions they weren't exclusive to, so you couldn't use Spawn on the Gamecube or whatever. If this did exist it would be pretty cool to see Link take on Spawn, or just see the absurdity of Link being playable on Microsoft or Sony hardware. Makes me wonder if Kratos is buried somewhere in the Xbox 360 version of Mortal Kombat's disc data. I mean it seems like it would be easier just to block him out then remove the code from the disc, and that kind of thing is really easy on consoles. SpaceBees fucked around with this message at 04:23 on Aug 6, 2011 |
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Aug 6, 2011 04:15
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A good hoax or urban legend is something that is completely plausible. So basically every cookie cutter "I bought an unlabeled N64 Zelda cart from a pawn shop and saw my dead parents!" is stupid. Its also the reason that Shin Megami Tensei one is so good because it is completely valid and something that could actually happen. edit: I guess I should clarify, in my opinion, a good hoax/urban legend, especially in regards to games, is one that is plausible. So anything that involves Pokemon death ghosts I kind of write off as silly.
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Sep 8, 2011 01:35
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Neito posted:You want to talk Final Fantasy bullshit? Let's talk about Absolute Virtue in FFXI. This is an enemy that, if you talk to Square-Enix, nobody has ever legitimately beat. I'm not quite certain when it was introduced, but according to FFXIclypedia, it can use every pre-Treasures of Aut Urgan 2 hour, so that puts it around 2006 or so. Supposedly, there's a way Squeenix wants you to defeat it that would result in a legitimate victory, but as far as I've heard, in six years, nobody's figured it out. Square put out a very obscure, obtuse video detailing what they say is the "proper" way. Didn't a guild spend 11 hours trying to kill that guy only to give up out of real world exhaustion. I remember there was some sort of discussion about it here at the time.
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May 19, 2012 16:54
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Tragedienne posted:Some AV fights went on that long early on, but the one you're probably thinking of is Pandemonium Warden, the Absolute Virtue of the Treasures of Aht Urghan expansion. It put the game in the news for a brief time in 2008 when a group spent 18 hours fighting it, and finally gave up. People were feeling sick and passing out. Yeah that name rings a bell, I was thinking of Pandemonium Warden.
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May 20, 2012 07:42
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