Top 10 Gaming Myths

Myths, legends and gaming fables, you hear them all the time, well you did before you could check everything instantly on the internet. But some stories still pass the test of time and seep into the collective unconscious so that they almost become true. Except they’re not. So enjoy this list because there are some video game stories that just can’t be true, or can they? Ahh…

Naked Lara Croft

Gaming’s first ‘It girl’ made a massive impression on the imagination of the young boys who got their hands all over her, er, controls and, sod it, triangular baps. But imagination can only take you so far and so began rumours of the elusive ‘make Lara naked and then she will love you’ code. Of course there was no code and aside from jiggering around with PC code there was no way to see an angular Lara naked. You could make her explode, however, and that was always fun.

Myth?: Yes

Darkel in Grand Theft Auto 3

Who is Darkel? What was he supposed to do? Well he was a revolutionary kind, a violent street urchin apparently, and in Grand Theft Auto 3 he was supposed to be in the game to hand out the Rampage missions. He was fully voiced (by Bill Fiore from television’s Law & Order and Laverne & Shirley) as well giving Claude another person to stare blankly at until you accepted the mission. But then he was taken out when Rockstar decided to use icons to dish out the Rampages instead.

Myth?: Sort of

Sheng Long in Street Fighter II

It’s a classic April Fool’s joke perpetrated by Electronic Gaming Monthly that transcended time and space and became part of Street Fighter culture. All you had to do was take on Bison for a stupid number of rounds (ten) without your character or Bison taking any damage. Then Sheng Long would appear and beat you down after killing Bison. It’s in part a mistranslation of Rising Dragon Punch which lead to Ryu’s infamous win quote, “You must defeat Sheng Long to stand a chance” and people wanting to believe there was an unlockable character. Eventually the joke might have had influence on the creation of Akuma and Gouken, especially as Gouken is Ken and Ryu’s master.

Myth?: Yes

SNES Mortal Kombat Blood Code

Nintendo baulked at the idea of digitised characters ripping their spines out and bleeding everywhere. And so the blood was replaced with grey goo and the Fatalities were changed to fairly innocuous versions of those in the arcade game. Mega Drive owners were hard which is why they only had to enter A, B, A, C, A, B, B to enable the blood in Mortal Kombat. Which only added fuel to the fire for people searching for the SNES blood code, which never actually existed.

Myth?: Yes

Always remember to bring a towel

The Xbox 360 is famous for being prone to the Red Ring Of Death caused by the console getting too hot and the solder melting on the circuit boards, allegedly. And one of the ways to remedy this was to wrap the 360 in a towel, turn it on, leave it for a bit, turn it off again and then, magically it should work! We tried this and it did work! For about ten minutes and then it broke again. As a fix it sucked and as a temporary solution? Well it still sucked. It’s best just to send a bricked 360 back to Microsoft.

Myth?: Yes

Revive Aeris in FFVII

Aww she dies. And no amount of Phoenix Downs will ever bring her back (even though they work perfectly well on your other characters when they die in battle, but that’s cutscenes for you). And then the rumours started that you could bring her back to life. Adding fire to these rumours is her ghostly appearance in the church in Midgar but let’s make it clear right now and forever more – she’s dead, she ain’t coming back and nothing short of fiddling with the game’s code will ever resurrect Aeris.

Myth?: Yes

Ocarina Of Time’s Triforce

The Triforce is the ultimate relic in the Legend Of Zelda series, or one of those ‘how many triangles can you see?’ puzzles you get in terrible puzzle magazine sections. Usually Link counts all the triangles but forgets about the big one… okay usually he collects the triangles, puts them together and wins! But in Ocarina Of Time there is no Triforce to collect and no amount of running around looking for three triangles will ever fill in the gaps in Link’s inventory. This screen is from the Beta Trailer which started all the rumours.

Myth?: Yes

Duke Nukem Forever

“Well it’s taking forever to come out!” goes the typical joke and everybody laughs at the clever wordplay while shaking their heads at the most famous piece of vapourware ever. But it has to come out eventually right? You can’t have a game in development for that long (since 1997) and not do anything with it, ever, forever, and ever. Even if the entire internal development team at 3D Realms has been laid off… forever.

Myth?: No, well maybe

Excel’s Flight Sim

So it’s 1997 and you’re working away on your spreadsheets while waiting for the dotcom bubble to burst and you need a distraction from the ever growing list of negative numbers. But rather than playing Hover or watching Weezer’s Buddy Holly video again you stab in some codes and as if by magic, or hidden video game programming, you’re playing a rudimentary flight simulator – in Excel! Or just faffing around over some purple hills.

Myth?: Nope, it’s real

Atari Dumps ET

Possibly one of the most famous video game myths. The sort of myth that everyone deep down knows is true and that’s probably because it is. ET was an abysmal game knocked up in someone’s lunch hour and when it didn’t sell the vast quantities it was expected to, Atari was forced to dump truckloads of unsold cartridges in a land fill in New Mexico. A few copies still exist today, but they’re still not worth much more than a fiver.

Myth?: It actually happened