As I mentioned already, Tomb Raider games have each been purported to have a nude code, fueling the fantasies of basement dwelling men everywhere. But Lara isn't the only one to have this rumor. Chun Li and Sonya Blade, were both rumored to have similar codes. I also heard that Killer Instinct had a finisher for Orchid where she performed her alternate finisher (the flasher) but that she faced towards the camera, rather than away.
Some myths exploit the emotional ties that we feel for the characters that we play as. Rumors abounded of ways that you could revive Aeris in Final Fantasy VII, and that it was possible to save General Leo in Final Fantasy VI. We the gamers get so attached to these little sprites on the screen that we desperately cling to hope that they might somehow be saved.
Some myths are just outlets for the dreaming overachiever. Jumping over the flagpole in the original Super Mario Bros., getting the triforce in Ocarina of Time, breaking damage caps in almost every rpg ever made, or fighting Kano in Mortal Kombat 2; all of these are persistent rumors of what can be achieved if you can complete some highly unlikely task or set of tasks. But perhaps the most common myths like this pertain to hidden areas or characters. I went to school with a guy who swore that he knew a code to make Reptile playable in the original Mortal Kombat. In an April Fools' joke gone awry, Electronic Gaming Monthly published a code that allowed you to play as Sonic and Tails in Super Smah Bros. Melee. This was total falsehood, but the Internet was flooded by excited gamers. Sonic 2 was reported to have a special area known as the Hidden Palace Zone, and everyone was looking for a way in. This myth actually had some truth to it. There had in fact been a Hidden Palace Zone planned for Sonic 2, but it had been scrapped, but not until after a beta containing part of the zone had been stolen. The most famous secret level of all, however, might be the cow level in Diablo. How this started no one knows, but at some point, the Internet was packed with ways that you could supposedly access the mysterious cow level. In response to this, Blizzard actually made one of the cheat codes in StarCraft the phrase "there is no cow level", but then relented and actually made a secret cow level for Diablo II.
Some myths, however, explore the darker side of human nature. One myth fed into political paranoia, claiming that in the year 2000, Saddam Hussein purchased 4,000 Playstation 2 units to power a military supercomputer. While this now seems even more ridiculous than WMDs, at the time, consumers had been flooded with advertising about how amazing the PS2 hardware was (and it was, my gaming computer actually has some PS2 components) and it seemed powerful enough to allow unprecedented computing power. In a more supernatural sort of myth, there was reported to be a curse on Sonic R for the Saturn. Supposedly, if you played as the Tails Doll, something bad would happen to you at some point. In truth, the Tails Doll is only guilty of being a little creepy, and the only curse seemed to be on Sega itself, as it continued to fall far, far behind other consoles.In the end, perhaps video game myths are nothing but silly ways for people to try to get the attention of the gullible and naive. But I think that I like the fact that in these days, where almost every game has a strategy guide with a full walkthrough, and every code is only a few keystrokes away, that games can still have a little mystery to them.
No comments:
Post a Comment