Fact or Fiction: Video game myths revealed

[Cute Neko]

Everyone loves a good story. The problem is, some of the best ones are totally false.

That's especially true in the prone-to-exaggeration world of video games, which is rife with kooky legends and inaccurate information. As it turns out, however, some of the tallest tales are perfectly legitimate. Read on as we confirm or bust some of the biggest myths in gaming.

 

There's a South Park episode hidden in an old Tiger Woods game. 

South Park Long before South Park became an omnipresent television staple, it was all over the Internet. In 1995, creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone were paid $2,000 to make an animated short for a Fox network executive. The film, dubbed "The Spirit of Christmas," featured the then-unknown quartet of foul-mouthed tots from South Park and quickly spread like wildfire online.

An unknown developer at EA Sports was one of the many to download and watch it -- which wouldn't have been a big deal, except when the publisher mastered the game disc for the PlayStation version of Tiger Woods '99, it accidentally copied that folder off of the server as well. That meant the 5-minute short shipped with the game.

You had to put the game disc into a PC and dig around a bit to find it, but it was there - and ultimately EA had to recall the game due to the inclusion of the profane cartoon.

Fact or fiction? Fact!

 

The mafia developed a game console.

The Gizmondo Organized crime has at some point had its hand in virtually ever corner of the entertainment industry, but what about video games? You certainly won't find La Cosa Nostra's fingerprints on the Xbox, PlayStation or Wii, but dig a little deeper into the annals of gaming hardware and things get much murkier.

The Gizmondo, a handheld system released in 2005, never took off. In fact, with less than 25,000 units sold, it's the worst selling handheld of all time -- and for good reason. After the system died, though, more details came out about one of its executives: Stefan Eriksson, who allegedly ran a loose Swedish criminal organization known as "Uppsalamaffian" (The Uppsala mafia) before joining the company.

He left in spectacular fashion. After wrecking an Enzo Ferrari sports car (worth $2 million) in 2006, Eriksson's house was raided on suspicion of embezzlement, grand theft auto, drunken driving, cocaine possession, and weapons charges. He served three years in jail due to a plea bargain and has since been deported to Sweden.

Fact or Fiction? Fact!

 

A built-in code let you undress Lara Croft in the original version of Tomb Raider.

Lara Croft Lara Croft was a geek sex symbol years before Angelina Jolie donned the famous short-shorts.

Even the blocky graphics of the original PlayStation weren't enough to turn off some overly hormonal players, and it wasn't long before whispers began in gaming channels that the developers had created a cheat code for the original 1996 game that stripped Lara to her birthday suit as she quested for Atlantis.

It turned out to be little more than the fantasies of love-starved teens, however, as no code was ever actually built into the game. But the talk did inspire some modders (who obviously needed to get out more) to create a patch called 'Nude Raider' that accomplished the same goals. Eidos ultimately shut it down with a cease and desist order.

Fact or Fiction? Fiction!

 

Michael Jackson wrote the music for Sonic the Hedgehog 3.

Sonic the Hedgehog Michael Jackson created some of the most iconic music of the '80s and '90s, but did that include video game tunes as well?

The singer lent his image to Sega for titles like Space Channel 5 and Moonwalker, but after his death, rumors began to circulate that he had secretly worked with the publisher to contribute music to the third Sonic the Hedgehog game.

In 2009, Jackson's composer and musical director Brad Buxer addressed the reports in the French magazine Black & White (which calls itself the "official magazine of Michael Jackson"), saying Jackson did, in fact, write some Sonic 3 compositions, but the performer wasn't happy with the sound quality in the consoles. Frustrated by the process, he chose to have his name removed from the credits, but the music remained.

There's evidence to the contrary, though. And Sega still refuses to divulge the whole story, giving this myth nearly as much staying power as the King of Pop himself.

Fact of Fiction? Neither? Both? Let's go with the Mythbuster's hedge answer and call this one "Plausible."



E.T. almost killed the video game industry.

E.T. E.T. was as big as it got in 1982 -- but just one year later, the Reese's Pieces-munching, bug-eyed alien found that going home was much easier than going to the Atari 2600.

By rushing the development process and bypassing QA in its E.T. video game, Atari ended up with a confusing, buggy title that lacked any viable entertainment qualities. Consumers avoided it, and the company ultimately buried millions of unsellable copies in a New Mexico landfill.

Alongside a few other missteps, the debacle brought an abrupt end to that generation of consoles. Several publishers filed for bankruptcy in the following two-year period, prompting analysts to question whether home video games would survive. It was only the U.S. release of the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1985 that would turn things around for the industry.

Fact or Fiction? Fact!

 

 

Mario is a communist.

Mario He wears a lot of red and looks a little like Stalin, so it was inevitable that in the conspiracy-filled Internet someone would start to wonder if Mario was actually harboring a Communist agenda.

He was, after all, trying to overthrow a king. And the flag he put up at the end of every level had a red star. Building a case, block by block?

Alas, it's nothing but the usual rampant paranoia of chatrooms. Mario was designed to wear red and blue because the contrasting colors helped the character stand out against the background, and that famous moustache was simply an easier option than drawing complex facial expressions back in his early days.

It turns out has no ties to the Communist party -- just the Mario Party (all eight versions of it).

Fact or Fiction? Fiction, comrade!

http://blog.games.yahoo.com/blog/624-fact-or-fiction-video-game-myths-revealed

[Marck]

Interesting find.

[Rominzxx]

Mario is a communist.

I lol'd.

[Maria]

I lol'd.

As did I.

[Esileruf]

What else were people supposed to parody mario with? Because Plumbers didn't really last long.

[Istiku]

didn't we use to be a delivery company?
I wonder if anyone will understand why I put this here... xD

[aritus]

I'd like to add that E.T. made his way into the playstation games as well. He didn't fair much better there.

It's also a little known fact that the successful Sci Fi series Stargate SG-1 started out as a video game for the SNES  made by Acclaim Inc in 1994.

Another myth is that Final Fantasy VII branch-offs had been in production since Final Fantasy VII adding to their quality. This is completely false as Square Enix changed hands twice between then and now. (CEO of the time: Hironobou Sakaguchi who passed it down to his son who turned it over to, and forgive me if i spell this wrong, Yoichi Wada? I believe there was another guy between Hironobou Sakaguchi jr and Yoichi Wada and if memory serves he had an american first name but I cant remember for sure.) Another thing to note is back then Square was Squaresoft. Squaresoft moved with Enix almost immediately after the production of Final Fantasy 9 and then focused their efforts of creating games and game-branch offs. So much time was spent in attempting a take over of Tekmo and the successful takeover of Eidos it is unlikely that anyone was even thinking of Final Fantasy VII until Square-Enix decided to make a second attempt in the movie industry and reviewed their old games and decided to use Final Fantasy VII as their subject on account of it being the first full 3d RPG they made and thus being their best-seller. After the movie was created fans screamed for more games and Enix is a company of sequels. Square-enix reviewed the story created by Hironobou and decided there were a few holes that could be played on and it is now one of the most successful branch of branch-offs in the gaming industry.

and the last myth I contribute:
"Final Fantasy is called so just to get peopled attention."
This is not true. In fact in 1987 Hironobou Sakaguchi designed the game so that it would appeal to the immagination in a way that no other game could. It immersed the gamer in a whole other world of people and beliefs and played off mythology a lot when it came to names; "Shiva" (properly spelled Siva) is a major Hindu Diety. An Ifrit, though it isnt a horned fire demon, is an arabic djin which is a Genie which is free (djin can do as they please where-as a Genie was bound to an item and forced to grant 3 wishes to his/hor finder.) Quatzalcoatl is an indian god and the list goes on. But I digress. Hironobou says in an interview that he planned for to be FINAL Fantasy. Unfortunately one he was done with the story another nigh perfect fantasy game. The most likely reason for keeping the name Final Fantasy rather than creating another name can be speculated as each orriginal Final Fantasy was it's own story with little to no ties to the previous "final" fantasy. That is, until Enix came around.... (Easteregg - the opening credits of FF7 state that Hironobou Sakaguchi can be found in the Produce aisle)

[Metallifag]

tl;dr, FFVII is still overrated.

[I_c_u]

I love your threads Cute Neko :O!