The Most Popular Video Game Urban Legends & Myths

Urban legends.  Everybody knows them.  Everybody loves them and gamers are no exception to the rule.  While many of the urban legends that surround gaming are more outright lies concerning cheats that a friend of a friend found in some vague article tucked in the back of a gaming magazine that none of us had ever heard of (the Mortal Kombat blood code for the NES and the Lara Croft nudity code come to mind) many of the more reputable urban legends actually have a hint of truth to them. 
Let us dive into the wild, whacky, and sometimes paranoid world of urban legends and see some of the best in regards to gaming. 
Here they are whether you want to believe them or not.


1) Michael Jackson Composed the Music for the Sonic Games


Sonic the Hedgehog has been in more video games than just about any character ever created (only Mario has been in more) which is kind of funny because Sonic is truly a commercial construction if ever there was one.  Nintendo had pretty much taken the reigns dropped by Atari and conquered the world in the 80s and with an iconic character like Mario leading the charge, no other gaming company really stood a chance.  Sonic was specifically designed by Sega’s marketing department (or at least with close supervision by that department) to compete with the cantankerous little Italian and as such, a significant amount of market research took place.  What did all that mean for Sonic?  Well, that he had to be blue (Sega’s logo at the time was blue and it’s the antithesis of Mario’s trademark red.)  But something more interesting and perhaps a trifle bizarre was the fact that Sonic got a pair of Michael Jackson shoes.  That’s right; the little marsupial is wearing a digital version of the shoes Jackson wore.  Why?  Because MJ was huge in ’91 when Sonic hit the scene.  However, Jackson did not compose any music for the fast and furryous little critter.  There is a good chance though that audio developers were instructed to copy . . . I mean “emulate” Jackson’s trademark style.



2) Mario Jumps the Flagpole and Unlocks Nirvana


This really isn’t an urban legend per se.  Apparently Mario can really jump the pole in level 3-3 (and maybe one or two more).  What’s legendary about this is that gamers believed that if they could get the little plumber up and over the pole, it would somehow unlike untold digital riches.  Unfortunately, all those who spent hours trying to perfect his trick got was the opportunity to stand around like a punk and wait for the timer to countdown because once Mario has crossed that invisible line in the sand, there’s no going back.


3) Atari Buried Thousands of Cartridges in the Desert


Atari was on the top of the trash heap in the eighties and really had the home console market cornered for a while but a series of bad decisions (including not requiring an official license for games released on its system) lead to other consoles such as Calico Vision gaining a good chunk of the market share.  Atari saw an opportunity to ride the coat tails of Hollywood to boost their failing sales stats when E.T. hit theatres and partnered with the Speilbergian entity in hopes for a hit.  Unfortunately, the game was utter crap and the endeavor completely backfired.  What did Atari do?  It pulled tens of thousands of cartridges (not just E.T.) out of stores nationwide, shipped them to Alamogordo, and unceremoniously steamrolled them into plastic confetti in a landfill.  Why this catastrophic corporate failure was elevated to the status of urban legend I’ll never know.


4) Wrap Your Xbox 360 in a Towel to Fix the Red Ring of Death


This one hits a little close to home.  I myself lost two 360 consoles to the Red Ring of Death.  I weep for them still today.  Okay, so it seems a little counterintuitive to think that in order to solve a problem caused by overheating (the warping of certain delicate electronic parts inside the guts of older 360 models) that the solution would involve cutting off the airflow and intentionally overheating your system.  However, this rumor flooded the internet and hundreds if not thousands of desperate folks wound up doing more damage than good to their expensive little time-sucks.  Part of the reason why this rumor gained so much steam had to do with Microsoft’s cagey responses to the question of “why is this happening?”  It took a lot of persuasion before the tech giant agreed to extended the warranty on its console and effectively offer the RRoD suffers free repairs or replacements but hopefully it put an end to the home console turban fashion trend.


5) Nintendo Teamed up with Sony to Create the Playstation


It’s not exactly true but there is an element of truth to it.  Sony and Nintendo entered into talks to create a CD-ROM add-on to their Nintendo 64 system but in 1989, just before the big announcement at CES, Nintendo pulled out of the deal, deciding to stick with cartridges.  Not only was that a monumental blunder on Nintendo’s part, it was a huge opportunity for Sony.  They had detailed plans for a CD-ROM centered gaming system and they ran with them.  Playstation outsold the 64 by leaps and bounds and became the best selling console for a great many years.


6) Polybius:  The Mind Control Machine


One of the most entrenched rumors and myths about the video game industry is that sometime in the mid 80s a secretive organization (whether it’s a corporation or the U.S. government depends on who you talk to) created an arcade game called Polybius and released it in a select few arcades in Portland Oregon.  The gamers who played the game were said to have displayed classic addictive behavior standing in line for hours.  They were also said to suffer from sleeplessness, night terrors, and amnesia.  Some wise guy also started the rumor that suited men often game by these arcades to collect data from these games after hours but never really seemed interested in the coins the games contained.  This one is really just too weird.  It sounds like something right of the conspiracy theorist’s handbook.  While it may be true that such a game existed, the symptoms these gamers claim to have exhibited could have easily been caused by photovoltaic interaction with their brain chemistry.  If you’ve ever had a photovoltaic seizure, you know what I’m talking about.  And seriously, what sort of data could a relatively unsophisticated arcade game collect back in the day?  Then again, maybe I’ve got a black suit in my closet and all of this is just disinformation.