Damned titles with their own legends that no one remembers anymore: here we bring you some games that still give us chills
Legends are the oldest way of knowing stories. We know stories just for the simple fact that they have been told to us and this is where the legends take magic. Today, myths are not just a thing of the past, since with the rise of the internet, we are precisely more familiar than ever with them.
Video games are undoubtedly a very effective way to tell stories, and of course they have their own legends. We have been able to live many good stories with a controller in our hands, and many of them unknowingly hide their own dark legends. This time we bring you a collection of some myths and legends about cursed video games, or in other words, video games that supposedly had some coincidences with reality, strange as they may seem.
Polybius
nineteen eighty one
When the arcades were about to become the most popular in the 1980s, Polybius, a game created by the Sinneslöschen studio, stood out among many others in the halls of the city of Portland (Oregon). Its peculiar graphic appearance with colors and abundant light effects soon became popular among players. After the success in the rooms, many people addicted to the game said they found hidden messages in the game. Messages like “Don’t think”, “Suicidate”, “Conform” were part of this type of messages that their players found subliminally in the game.
In fact, the study itself has once indicated that it believes Polybius was an experiment by the United States government to manipulate the brains of many young people. And is that in addition to having controversial messages in the game, many young people indicated that they felt a great addiction to the game, and even had physical and psychological discomfort when playing it, among the most common: epileptic seizures, dizziness, nausea, depression and in some cases death. Not only that, but supposedly, and as legend has it, many players of the time indicate that they saw men in black entering the gaming rooms to change the game’s options to obtain data from their players and make it even more addictive. . Unfortunately not much could be investigated regarding the Polybius mystery, as shortly after its release the game was removed from theaters.
Taboo: The Sixth Sense
1989
Taboo is an NES title developed by Rare where we can get a tarot card reading in real time. After asking us for the name and age, the cards predict the future in the same way that it is obtained in any normal tarot deck. One of the peculiarities of the game is the covert presence of symbols of religions, Celtic crosses, images of nudes, and others that without a doubt today would not go through any censorship body and that, of course, it is difficult to understand that it was under the Nintendo license. The myths and legends that drag Taboo, is due to the fact that the game predicted the tragic death of some young players, and that soon after it occurred in strange conditions. Many players took the game seriously, and the recommendations found in its manual where we can read:
“We are not responsible for what may happen with Taboo, or any effect, influence, or miracle that may occur in relation to the game.”
The mystery of Taboo confirmed that the game announced the death of some young people, who therefore supposedly died. Nintendo, the great ally of censorship and political correctness, given the situation and to avoid possible lawsuits, decided to permanently remove the game from its catalog. A game that will remain in the memory of the company as one of the most controversial games of the last century.
Lair
2007
It was 2007 when the new Sony console (PS3) had practically just gone on sale and the Factor 5 studio published Lair. A game that initially promised a lot: air battles between armies on the back of a dragon in a fantasy world, represented with avant-garde graphics and, above all, a completely new control in which our Sixaxis command became the reins of our dragon . And is that just before its release in 2007, it was as if the game was trying to send a message to the studio not to be published.
The first time the video game was released was when a power outage occurred while the data was being transferred to the master disk, losing much of the game’s data. In addition to going through a series of misfortunes during its development, Julian Eggebretch and other team members announced that many people on the staff during the development of the game suffered from various health problems, various illnesses, deaths, and even family members who fell ill or died. suddenly. As if that were not enough, finally months after the launch the company that developed the game went bankrupt due to a large financial debt in May 2009.
Berzerk
1980
With the rise of robots in the film industry, video games couldn’t afford to be left behind in such a capitalized era. It was in 1980 when Stern Electronics developed the game Berzerk, a shooter that was published in its arcade version and for Atari 2600. The title is known not only for being one of the first shooters of the time, but also for being the title passed to the story for being the first video game to kill a player.
A real case, where 17-year-old Jeff Dailey lost his life from a heart attack in 1981 just after getting and recording his highest score in the game: 16,660 points. A short time later, the game is related to another death, that of 18-year-old Peter Bukowsky while he was just recording his score in the game. Both boys were young and without previous health problems. The phenomena caused such a stir at the media level that coroner Mark Allen concluded that the autopsy showed that these young people did not suffer from any health problem, but that the possible cause of death was due to the high level of stress that the game posed your players. He explains that although the autopsy revealed unsuspected scar tissue in the hearts of his victims that he was at least two weeks old, claiming that the stress of the game may in fact have triggered the heart attack in the youth. Around the game, more game-related deaths from other players were rumored and years later, the game even caused the murder in 1988 of Edward Clark, one of his last recognized victims after receiving different stab wounds for a fight shortly after save your last score in the game.
Project zero
2001
Starting in 1996 after the success of games like Resident Evil, the golden age of survival in Japan did nothing but take off. Fatal Frame (known as Zero in Japan and Project Zero in Europe) is a title that came out on PS2 in 2001 developed by the Japanese studio Koei Tecmo. In the game, we control Mafuyu Hinasaki and we will enter the Himuro Mansion to investigate it, since it is said that in this dark place there is a curse. After getting a camera, we must photograph every corner of the house in search of paranormal elements, where in the development of the photographs we will see things that normal eyes cannot see. In the game we meet the inhabitants of the mansion, being mainly the ghosts of the people who died there. Well, nothing is further from reality, since the most curious thing about the game is that, according to the study that developed it, the game is inspired by real police photographs and a true story that touched them closely.
Several team members indicate that the game is based on a true story and where they confirmed that the game’s Himuro mansion exists and is located on the outskirts of Tokyo. On the same property, there are three abandoned houses surrounding the mansion, which are rumored to share the same dark past. There is a legend that there is an underground network of tunnels linking houses, but no one knows who made these tunnels or for what purpose. After learning this news, the study has never wanted to reveal the location of the exact mansion, a house that they say killed 7 people, and where each of its inhabitants ended up on the verge of madness. The residents of the surroundings when learning about the crime began to photograph the mansion, and to visit it, where they indicate that they have been able to experience phenomena in their meat that they cannot explain today. Many unexplained phenomena that occur on the property have allegedly been reported or commented on on different digital portals. Images of bloody hands have been found stamped on all the walls, and even residents of the area indicate that they have seen spirits wandering around. From this event that marked the studio, its creator Makoto Shibata wanted to be inspired in this case for the development of the title.
Pokemon
nineteen ninety six
In 1996 Pokémon arrived on our portable consoles, one of the great successes of Game Boy from the hand of the Game Freak studio. A sales-smashing game that wowed many with its adorable Pokémon and RPG-style gameplay. On this occasion we are located shortly after its successful launch in Japan, a summer that registered 107 suicides of young people and children aged 6 to 12 years. They all had one thing in common: They were tremendously hooked on Pokémon. And is that the game, known for its characteristic cute Pokémon, hid a somewhat dark and gloomy location.
Lavender Town, is a location that we find in the game, where we can memorize the eternal rest of the deceased Pokémon. And yes, the Pokémon could die permanently and in Pueblo Lavanda we found a large Pokémon cemetery. With a setting far from friendly, the music in its Japanese version was even more chilling and shrill, causing some strange effects on its players. Some of the symptoms they shared were irritability accompanied by insomnia, gambling addiction and, in many cases, nosebleeds. A short time later, some players ended up suffering from depression, which, as we all know, is strange in those ages, and in that same psychological state led to suicide. The investigations found something else: since the young people who killed themselves shared that they played Pokémon, they reviewed the game, and apparently many of the victims before dying had kept their game in Pueblo Lavanda.
After the case even reached the media, Game Freak was ordered to fix Junichi Masuda’s original song in rest of the world and remaining versions in Japan. As if that were not enough, a report was found written in June 1996 by the same company Game Freak, in which an employee provided a list with names, dates and symptoms of children between 7 and 12 years old who suffered from various medical problems , supposedly related to playing their own game, Pokémon.
Sad Satan
2015
Sad Satan is a horror game in the first person that we will only find in the suburbs of the well-known “underground or deep Internet”, or also called Deep web. Since currently there is no other way to play it. The game consists of going through long tunnels in search of hidden objects under a very simple and dark aesthetic. In the game, we will find hidden messages, screenshots of threatening chats, cloudy images and audio sounds in the middle of the game. Its early players allegedly found the game on the Deep Web and shared it on their YouTube channel. And it is that when they shared the game with other users on their channel, they detected something strange in the game.
During the game, a blank screen with small black wings appeared subliminally. According to a Reddit user, he managed to decipher the code of the game where threatening phrases such as “Murder”, “You are on my list”, “I can find you and kill you” were found. At the end of the game, a black screen appeared with the phrase “Suffering does not end.” Supposedly, at the end of the game, many players who played it indicated that they felt watched for a while even began to receive strong anonymous threats. At the moment, the only thing known about the game is that it was developed under the name of ZK on a platform called Terror Engine, and that it is only found in the depths of the deepest internet.
Killswitch
1989
Killswitch is a platform game released in 1989 by Karvina Corporation studio. This title had a unique feature in that it could only be played once. The characters were Porto, a girl, and Ghast, an invisible demon, where as platforms we must advance with Porto through some mines. Once our character dies in the game or we get to the end of it, the game is completely erased, preventing further progress or his other Ghast character. With a total of 5,000 copies of the game, it quickly consumed the stock, and having the peculiarity that the game was erased, many were the collectors who were looking to get hold of it. Some players who demanded even the studio to release more copies to try to get past the story with another of their characters, Ghast, and were disappointed with a press release sent by Karvina in 1990. Where the studio stated:
“Killswitch” was designed to be a unique gaming experience: like reality, it is unrepeatable, unrecoverable and illogical.
Its legend dates back to 2005, when an Ebay user released the stamped game for a whopping $ 733,000. The man who bought the game, Yamamoto Ryuichi, indicated his intention to record a video of the game to post on his YouTube channel. After spending a large fortune and wanting to make the best possible video for his followers, something unexpected happened. At the start of the game we see Ryuichi sitting on the character selection screen crying and since then no other video has been republished. In fact, he allegedly left without leaving so much signal on his YouTube channel. Although many claim that the game and its story is not entirely true, the legend about the game and about Ryuichi’s whereabouts has vanished from the Internet as fast as the game self-deletes once completed.
ET: “The Extraterrestrial” by Atari
1982
Many of the legends related to video games are nothing compared to the mystery that has long surrounded the title “ET of Atari: The Extraterrestrial”. The 1982 film “ET”, directed by Steven Spielberg, which was a before and after in the childhood of an entire generation. Back then, the Atari console was having a lot of success, so they didn’t go to much length to buy a license to make a game based on the blockbuster movie. After several excessive agreements by Universal Studios to lead the title to success, the company gave the team only a month to develop the game since they wanted to have it in time for the 1982 Christmas campaign. With such a tight time It was understood that the results would not be the best. And indeed, it was.
The game was of a low graphic quality even by the standard of the time and of great difficulty, resulting in total failure. Given this situation, Atari, who had a much higher sales forecast, seeing the negative of the critics and the players of the game, was left with a surplus of millions of copies of the adaptation by Steven Spielberg. What did? The company was forced to bury its remaining stock in a New Mexico desert.
Despite many theories, on April 26, 2014, the legend was confirmed to be true. As part of a Microsoft documentary made by screenwriter Zak Penn, the burial site in Alamogordo, New Mexico, was exhumed. As the cameras rolled in astonishment, millions of copies were discovered buried in the desert. A scene that seemed ironically, never better said, a scene from another of Spielberg’s acclaimed films.
Madden NFL
Madden NFL is one of EA Sports’ best-selling football titles, and it is precisely that it is also known for being a supposedly cursed franchise. The game, which is equivalent to the FIFA that EA releases every year, used the image of its players on the covers of its games and the cover that a player starred in, this player was injured. Until 1999, all its covers were starring the player John Madden, until the company seemed to him a better idea to change the cover each year with a new image of another renowned player. However, all the sports figures who decided to lend their image on the cover of the game ended up seriously injured that same year. At least this has happened to 14 of the 16 players featured on the cover of the game. A true legend “The Madden Curse” that began to spread through its own protagonists: their own football players. Of course, there is no shortage who openly defies the “curse”, as the last Superbowl winner Patrick Mahomes.
Virtual boy
nineteen ninety five
In 1995 the Virtual Boy was launched, a striking desktop console with a catalog of up to 22 games that had the distinction of presenting 3D images, and that the result for its players was totally uncomfortable to use. The console was carried out by Gunpeo Yokoi, the responsible creator of hits like Game Boy and Game & Watch. And it is unfortunately his, he was responsible for creating the console that obtained one of the biggest failures of Nintendo. Despite the fact that Gunpeo was a primary forerunner of virtual reality games, Virtual Boy was not exactly well received by either critics or its players. Gunpeo Yokoi, who previously had a good reputation in the company thanks to the success of Gameboy and other previous works, with Virtual Boy saw his career cut short, where in 1996 he ended up leaving the company and just a year later he died. After trying to help accident victims on the road, he was run over up to three different times, killing him. Sadly, neither before nor after his death was his last personal project he was working on revealed.
These are some of the known legends and myths about cursed video games, you know, if you want to play, always do so at your own risk.
