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Thread: Videogame Urban Legends

  1. Videogame Urban Legends

    After Playing the Mortal Kombat: DA game for a while, I waas reminded of a couple of urban legends I had heard based on this title, strangely, they are the only ones I have heard based on videogames, and MK is their common thread.

    I think it would be fun if anyone had any other GAME RELATED legends for the crowd here, So I will lead off:

    The first one I read in Videogames and Computer Entertainment Magazine, back when it was a competent, mature alternative to other magazines. Nothing more than a little blurb in their "Did You Know" section about a rumor of a man having spent all his life savings playing Mortal Kombat, which was fairly new at the time. The legend goes that he became so despondent that he committed suicide by hanging himself from a tree near some bleachers. In true Urban Legend irony, his head was pulled from his body, there are probably variations where his spine comes out too.


    The second seems local to Cleveland, and though to their credit, no reputable paper has reported it, it is a persistent rumor among arcade goers, strangely enough years after it supposedly took place.

    This also happened when Mortal Kombat was a new game, and the Leiberman was leading his first crusade against red pixels. It seems that the owner of our very own Space invaders Game Room had allegedly gotten nervous of all the press attention his MK machine was getting, especially when local reporters started coming in to interview young children playing the game. He was nonetheless dumbfounded when two teenagers were playing, and one suddenly took a bat and knocked the other to the floor unconscious.

    An employee wasted no time in rushing to the scene and punching the offenders's lights out while a customer attended the victim. The owner called the police and an ambulance and both came to investigate the scene. The victim was bruised, but not seemingly enough to warrant his unconscious condition. Reviving the victim was confusing until the paramedics managed to revive the boy who had swung the bat. Then all was made clear.

    It seems the victim had been caught in a sudden downpour without an umbrella moments before coming into the arcade. Such weather is not unusual in Cleveland where it can change in a matter of hours, even minutes, thanks to the lake effect. He had apparently neglected to towel off, simply making his way to the Mortal Kombat Machine, but his dripping hands and the puddle at his feet caused a short and proceeded to electrocute the hapless player.

    The other boy, being a little quicker on the draw, realized what was happening, and grabbed his wooden baseball bat and knocked the other player away from the machine. The boy was treated for burns and the other general unpleasant effects of electrocution, and the "Swinging Samaritain" recieved his apology, and even a commendation for his quick thinking.

    Too good to be true, it is! Lesser stories have made the papers in Cleveland. There are not even names of those involved, even from kids who swear they were there. But it is more charming than decapitation.
    Only you can stop sig pollution.

  2. In the MK vein...

    There was a switch inside of MK2 cabinet (by the coin mechs) that would allow you to play as Kano.

    Nude-alties.

    Somehow you could get Kano/Sonya out of the background in MK2 and fight them.

  3. #3
    I heard of this legend where scores of people lined up outside a department story shorty before midnight in order to snag a PS2 on launch day. The doors opened, and the people rushed in a stampede to the electronics section. If you weren't fast enough, you ran the risk of getting bulldozed by the herd. Then, once it was realized there weren't enough machines to go around, fights broke out over the remaining quantity.

    Oh wait...

  4. Hmmm... perhaps games are too new a medium for mainstream urban legends. But I won't give up, yet.

  5. Originally posted by Kidnemo:
    There was a switch inside of MK2 cabinet (by the coin mechs) that would allow you to play as Kano.
    That actually has something of a basis in reality. One of the counter settings in the Mortal Kombat II arcade machine is for "Kano Transformations". It wasn't real; Boon and Tobias just put that in there to throw everyone off. They did the same thing in Mortal Kombat 3 with "Johnny Cage Transformations".

    (Mental note: must start posting on topics/statements OTHER than MK ones...)
    For a dark man shall come unto the House of God, and the darkness shall be upon him, yea, even within him.

    -- From Noctropolis: Night Visions

    http://www.darquecathedral.org/images/drkcathedral.jpe http://www.mortalkombatonline.com/content/mko.jpe

  6. The true one (but I don't recall the facts like names) -- the man who played Stern's Berzerk and died of a heart attack. True, and the only known videogame-related fatality until this year.

  7. Uh...would he have died anyway if he wasn't playing Berserk? Or are you saying somehow playing the game gave him a heart attack? How does that work? Was Berserk too "intense" for him?

    "Oh fuck!! Evil Otto is coming!!!...Ack..Urk..*SPLAT*"

  8. Forgive my ignorance, please, but I do not know what happened this year.

  9. Originally posted by DArque Bishop
    That actually has something of a basis in reality. One of the counter settings in the Mortal Kombat II arcade machine is for "Kano Transformations". It wasn't real; Boon and Tobias just put that in there to throw everyone off. They did the same thing in Mortal Kombat 3 with "Johnny Cage Transformations".
    Now that you say that, I think I remembering hearing about it also.

    Them crazy MK's and all the diffirent versions (of each game) they'd put out...

  10. I remember the whole Nudality deal, I remember reading the announcement for MK3 in an Issue of Game Pro that said there were going to be the game. And I though about how weird it would be, and if I would ever be able to own the game before I turned 18.
    Barf! Barf! Barf!

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