10) Pokemon: Green- Lavender Town Syndrome
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The area of Lavender Town in the Pokemon Red, Green, and Blue games has to be the creepiest thing in a children's game I've ever encountered. Lavender Town is literally a town of death. The whole town revolves around a Pokemon graveyard. Understand that in the 90's, especially in Nintendo games, death wasn't something frequently encountered in games. Especially a children's game. Hell, Nintendo went out of their way to censor blood, and death out of the SNES port of Mortal Kombat. Everything in Nintendo games was either knocked out, or fainted. So, when players reached the area known as Lavender Town they were shocked, and horrified to find out these cute, adorable creatures have an expiration date. The chilling tale of how Team Rocket MURDERED a Cubone's mother was just salt in the wound. However, Lavender Town may have a more sinister story behind it.
No, it has nothing to do with the fucked up Pokemon fan fiction out there.
Now, it's no secret that Game Freak had experimented using binaural beats in the Lavender Town section's music. Binaural beats are a type of auditory illusion in which a different frequency is heard in one ear than in the other: causing a phenomenon in the brain known as"frequency following responce". This response can cause a range of psychological effects ranging from changes in mood, loss of awareness, and even physical ailments such as headaches/migraines.
It's hard to pinpoint exactly when the first mention of the Lavender Town Syndrome was posted, but versions of it can be found back as early as March of 2010 on 4chan's /x/ board. The rumor, in essence, states that Nintendo had to recall the beta releases of Pokemon Green because the music for the area of Lavender Town was causing peculiar side effects in children, especially those who wore headphones while listening, which ranged from depression, nausea, headaches, anxiety to more sinister effects such as bleeding from the eyes/nose/ears, suicidal thoughts/tendencies, and even a few cases of suicide itself. This urban legend has been thrown around the internet so much that if you've never heard of it I would assume you never used the internet until now.
Now, this one is low on my list because as unsettling as it is this rumor is also the easiest to refute. Even in experiments specifically for testing binaural beats no one has ever attempted suicide. In a worst case scenario someone may experience mild hallucinations, headaches, and/or night terrors. Also, there has been no news coverage of any of this. Not even in American media, which pretty much demonized Pokemon from day one.
I've refuted this rumor before, and don't really want to get into it again. Maybe some other time. All in all, though, this one still interests me.
9) Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask- Ben Drowned
On September 7th, 2010, 4chan user Jadusable posted a thread about his experiences with a haunted
Majora’s Mask cartridge for the N64. He explained that after receiving a
suspicious looking Majora’s Mask cartridge from an old man, he went to
his dorm-room to play it and noticed it had a save file named “BEN” on it. He decided to ignore it and created a new file, but during the course of the game characters would refer to him as “BEN” at various moments. Figuring it would help the problem, Jadusable deleted the “BEN”
save file, but this caused characters to not refer to his name at all.
He then attempted to perform the “4th day glitch”, a hack that allows
players to get an entire extra day to the game, and was ported to the
Majora boss battle at the end of the game. He noticed that text was
being displayed incorrectly, and the music being played was a reversed
version of the game’s “Song of Healing” before being ported back to
Clock Town. At Clocktown he discovered that the textures were missing,
the music was distorted and the town was empty of the normal characters.
This particular creepypasta interests me for two reasons. The first is that the creator, Jadusable, actually started to make YouTube videos about his supposed findings in the game. Now that's dedication. The second being, despite Jadusable admitting that this is all a fictionalized story, many people still take it as fact. Just type "ben drowned cleverbot" into Google Images, and watch the madness unfold. This just goes to show the power of good story telling.
8) Killswitch
Killswitch
is a game that was supposedly created by Soviet gaming company Karvina
Corporation in 1989. Only limited copies of the game were produced
(between 5,000 to 10,000 copies) and it was very popular among Soviet
gamers. The game itself was a pioneer in the survival horror genre.
You had to choose between two characters, a girl or an invisible demon.
The goal of the game was to navigate through an abandoned coal mine
while battling demons and coal monsters. As it was hard to navigate the
game with an invisible character people choose to complete the game
with the girl character. Unfortunately, No one ever completed the game
with the demon, because upon beating the game all trace of it would be
erased from your hard drive.
This creepypasta is interesting because none of it has ever been officially verified. Evidently this game has deleted all trace of its existence from any official source. It can neither be confirmed, nor denied. It also raises a question. Why? Why would developers, and publishers go out of their way to delete from existence a game they've worked on. There are several theories spun out of this. The most popular being that the game was some sort of experiment by the Soviet government.
Supposedly, in 2005, an unopened copy of the self-deleting game surfaced on Ebay
where it was promptly bought for $733,000 by a man from Japan named
Yamamoto Ryuichi. Ryichi had planned to document his play through of
the game on YouTube. The only video Ryuchi posted was of him staring at
his computer screen and crying. I have yet to find any video of this recording by Yamamoto, or any evidence that the game was sold on Ebay. I guess that was deleted as well.
7) Final Fantasy VIII- Squall is dead
Final Fantasy VIII is probably the most polarized of the series. Final Fantasy fans either love it, or hate it. There seems to be no middle ground. The game was very much ahead of it's time in graphics, narrative, gameplay, and characterization. The hero of this game is named Squall. Squall is very typical in the sense of Final Fantasy heroes (especially after VII). He's a lone wolf, rogue-like bad ass with a shady history. What's even more shady, though, is what his fate was according to popular fan speculation. That being that Squall is dead for over half of the game.
At the end of disc one, Squall is impaled by an ice shard while fighting
one of the games main bosses, Edea. Squall awakens at the beginning
of disc two with no wounds at all from the battle and no one ever brings
up that Squall was killed. It is also at this point when the game goes
from being a fairly realistic fantasy game to being an over the top,
fantasy where all realism goes out the window. I mean a good portion of
the plot takes place in outer space. It is believed that Squall
actually dies from his wounds that he suffers during his fight with Edea
at the end of disc one. The rest of the game is simply a dream Squall
is having as he passes away.
Now, this would explain why the game has such a surrealist tone after disc
one. It would also explain the collage of images we see at the end of
the game as Squall’s life flashes before his eyes. Among those images
is a shot of Squall without a face which just screams "Sleep is for pussies!".
Good luck with that dreaming thing you had planned on.
6) Minecraft- Herobrine
Minecraft is one of my all time favorite games. This is a game that has proven something I've been preaching for just shy over a decade now. It proves that you don't need cutting edge graphics, or even convoluted mechanics to make a game great. The paramount feature that any game needs to be amazing is simply fun. Minecraft has fun by the bucket loads (a little pun for all you Minecraft fans out there). However, like with any popular game, it is not without it's mystery. This mystery comes in the form of a mysterious player known as Herobrine.
Herobrine first appeared in a single image detailing an encounter. It was posted on the 4chan's
/v/ board (I can't find the original post for the life of me), and gained very little attention. It stated how Herobrine
had appeared in someone's single-player game, littering the map with
various pyramids and tunnels. It is the first media to name him as
Herobrine.
So, who is Herobrine? There are many fan theories spanning from a hacker that was good enough at coding to hack into single-player games, to, and probably the most bizzare, that Herobrine is the ghost of Minecraft founder Markus Persson's (aka Notch) brother. Notch later shot down this theory with a tweet stating that he has no brother. Only a half brother. The only logical explanation I can find is that this is all an elaborate hoax.
5) Super Mario Galaxy 2- Hell Valley Sky Trees
In Shiverburn Galaxy, if you look up to your left in first person view, you'll see an odd trio of creatures looking down at you. Since they aren't actually NPC's in the game, but rather part of the the level's backdrop, they seem to follow you around wherever you go.
Here's where things take a sharp left turn into WTFville. A user of Go Nintendo by the username Girrrtacos hacked the game disc, and found out the name of the sky model for Shiverburn Galaxy is called "BeyondHellValley Sky", and the model for those mysterious creatures is called "HellValleySkyTree".
There are many fan theories as to what these things are. The two most popular theories are that they're either a race of nomad aliens that inhabit Shiverburn Galaxy, or that they are Kodamas; spirits of Japanese folklore that are said to live in trees. Regardless of what they are, the Hell Valley Sky Trees have taken the internet by storm, and aren't leaving anytime soon.
4) Luigi's Mansion- Luigi's Suicide
Luigi's Mansion for the Game Cube has to be, in my opinion, the most underrated title in the Mario game series. In Luigi's mansion you play the role of the lesser known of the Mario Bros, Luigi who has just inherited a creepy mansion only to find out that his brother, Mario, has been kidnapped somewhere inside said mansion. It is up to Luigi to save his brother by sucking up ghosts in a vacuum cleaner straight up Ghost Busters style.
Remember earlier when I said in parenthesis that there are plenty of creepy easter eggs in the Mario universe. Well, according to rumor, if you stand near the telephone on the third floor of the mansion, and wait for lightning to strike, you will see the shadow of what appears to be Luigi hanging from his neck as if he just committed suicide. Creepy shadows in a game about a haunted mansion. Crazy talk, right?
I know some people consider Luigi to be annoying, but isn't this taking it a bit far?
There are several videos on theories as to what this shadow actually is. The most common is that its a glitch that was overlooked in the testing process. Still, its circulated a lot of discussion around the internet.
3) Earthbound- Giygas is a fetus
Earthbound is one of my all time favorite RPGs. I could write an entire blog about how great this game is. Also, I could write an entire blog about all the creepy, fucked up easter eggs/references in this game. For a game that is outwardly full of cutesy monsters and towns Earthbound goes to some pretty dark places. Since I don't have time to list all of my favorite rumors/urban legends I'll just name my top one.
As I mentioned before, Earthbound isn't known for having intimidating enemies. Hell, even the bosses look like something from a Saturday morning cartoon special. So, when reaching Giygas we expected the same. A cartoony, cutesy creature with some sort of pun from his name. Boy, we couldn't have been more wrong.
In one fell swoop millions of childhoods were tarnished forever.
Now, as if that sight wasn't disturbing enough, there's an ever more unsettling theory behind Giygas' final form. Many have speculated that the final form of Giygas is, in fact, a fetus.
Defeating Giygas essentialy meant practicing your first abortion.
But that's just fan speculation, right? I mean, Nintendo would never allow something like that to be put in their game. Right? Well, unfortunately, no. In an interview with Earthbound creator, Shigesato Itoi, said that he based the final battle with Giygas on a traumatic experience when he accidentally walked in to the wrong movie, The Military Policeman and the Dismembered Beauty, during a rape scene (which wasn't actually a rape scene...but a chick does get murdered). He stated that the battle with Giygas was supposed to represent a "loss of childhood innocence". So, there you have it. Anyone who has beaten Earthbound is a baby murderer.
2) Polybius
You all probably saw this one coming. For those that don't know, Polybius is a supposed arcade cabinet that appeared in a handful of arcade cabinets in Portland Oregon during 1981. Polybius was said to be similar to the arcade classic Tempest with the exception of logic puzzles, and mazes. Oh, and causing teenagers to absolutely lose their fucking minds. The cabinets were pulled from arcades after a few months. Some arcade owners reported that men in black suits would frequently visit the cabinet, and collect data from it.
Any research on this game would be futile as literally thousands of people have been recreating the game based on it's description. Some people speculate that Polybius was part of the MKUltra project. Most generally agree that it's a hoax. A very elaborate hoax, but a hoax nonetheless. I mean, it is kinda strange that the earliest reports of a game that supposedly came out in 1981 have only surfaced in the last decade or so.
Still, Polybius goes down in urban legend infamy. It has all the classics of a great urban legend. Mystery, creepiness, and dead teenagers. Hell, Polybius once made an appearance in The Simpsons.
1) Super Mario Universe- Mario is the villain
I think I can justifiably say that Mario is the most recognized video game character of all time. Our mushroom popping plumber is loved, and revered by gamers all over the world. But, is Mario really the hero we think he is.
There is a theory tossed around the internet that Mario isn't a hero at all, but in fact a sociopathic lunatic with an insatiable blood lust. This urban legend is at the number one spot because it is the hardest to refute. Let us begin with Mario's humble beginnings.
In the arcade classic Donkey Kong you play as a plumber named Mario, originally named jump man, who is trying to save our damsel in distress, Pauline, from a mad ape hurling barrels. Or are you? According to the game's manual, Donkey Kong was actually Mario's pet ape. The reason Donkey Kong escaped in the first place was only because Mario was abusing him. That's not just some crazy theory, either. That's the actual story. In the game Donkey Kong Jr, Mario is actually the title's villain.
But how does that tie into his exploits in the Mushroom Kingdom? Well, according to several theories, Peach and Bowser are actually a couple. This was halfway confirmed in Super Mario Sunshine when Bowser Jr tells Princess Peach that she's his mom, and she doesn't deny it. So why does Bowser Kidnap her? Maybe he's not. Follow me on this one. There is some speculation that this is all some form of schizophrenia Mario suffers from, and he only sees the situation as he's the hero saving a princess; when in actuality he's doing more harm than good.
There's even a hack that sort of plays off that theory. In this hack you the game of Super Mario World has several distinct changes. For example, the intro clearly pitting Mario as the villain. There are several texts through out the game that say things like "I hate you", a message suggesting that Mario trapped the Yoshis, and this creepy message. There's also some garbled code that came with the hack that can be scripted to a picture which looks like this:
Hey there, sugar lips!
So, is Mario the villain? Maybe, maybe not. I don't like to think so. I mean there was that thing with the two original Donkey Kong games, but they were based on a completely different character, and back stories were kinda glossed over back then. So, they didn't recieve that much attention
My closing statement is this: We as gamers have created for ourselves our own culture. With the inclusion of the internet in more and more households that culture is expanding faster than any of us could imagine. With that expansion comes the introduction of ideas, and theories about our favorite past time. And with more people turning on to gaming than ever before that bubble of ideas keeps growing. There's plenty of neat stuff out there if you look hard enough.
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