Supplied by taylorhatmaker via Wikimedia CommonsWithin any culture, be it Greek, Indian, Jewish, or Star Trek, there exists a realm of myths and urban legends about its history, values, and ideals. Whereas ancient myths were about explaining of the origins of its peoples or the causes of natural phenomena, contemporary myths are more concerned with the existence of the Loch Ness Monster or whether Han Solo or Greedo shot first. In the (relatively short) 70-year history of video games, fans have been fascinated and wondered about the mysterious and the macabre. Of this history, here my top five myths and legends of video game history that keep us wondering.
5. P.T.
The fleeting but iconic history of P.T. makes it a mysterious chapter of video game history. Quietly released as a free playable teaser in August 2014 on the PlayStation Network by an unknown studio, the game featured a silent protagonist trapped in a haunted suburban house on an endless loop where a grisly family murder took place, chased by a malevolent ghost named Lisa. The game featured complex puzzles that, when solved correctly, revealed that P.T. was a demo for the highly anticipated Silent Hills, in development by Kojima Productions, directed by Hideo Kojima and Guillermo del Toro and starring Norman Reedus in the lead role. Needless to say, the internet exploded with hype. This only became exacerbated when the game’s publisher fired Kojima and his staff due to prior creative conflicts. Silent Hills was cancelled, and P.T. was indefinitely removed from download, thus leaving behind a mythic and legendary legacy still in popular memory. All horror-survival game fans can do now is to wait for the upcoming Kojima x Reedus x Del Toro project, Death Stranding.
4. Polybius
One day in 1981, a new arcade machine sprung up in Portland, Oregon called Polybius. Players were reported to have a violent addiction to the machine, and later side effects included amnesia, insomnia, nausea, and nightmares. Players would suffer an extreme aversion to video games, with even one player said to have become an anti-video game activist. Every week, men in black opened the arcade machines, recorded its data, and left, until one day, they discreetly took the machine away, never to be seen again. Many claim that Polybius was part of Project MKUltra, the CIA’s mind control program, and were testing the arcade machine’s psychoactive effects on unassuming players, while others simply say that Polybius was a glitchy and photosensitive epilepsy-inducing early release of Tempest.
3. Atari Burial Site
The North American video game crash of 1983 was the near-apocalyptic destruction of the fledgling video game industry, and has left its unmistakable mark on its history. Oversaturation and corporate greed nearly killed video games forever, with some already declaring them fads of the ‘80s. The most powerful video game company of the time, Atari, had declared bankruptcy and buried thousands of unused consoles and cartridges in a New Mexico landfill only to be remembered in rumours and urban legends. While it was later excavated in 2014 and commemorated in documentaries and museum exhibits, it remains a cultural landmark of the golden age of video game consoles.
2. Lavender Town Syndrome
Legend says that after the Japanese release of Pokemon: Red and Green in February 1996, the ominous theme music in the game’s Lavender Town drove hundreds of young Japanese children to severe mental illness, self-mutilation, and suicide. The purported phenomenon has come to be known as “Lavender Town Syndrome.” The theme music was claimed to have played at such high frequencies that adults could not hear it, but regardless, the theme music was altered in later cartridges and in time for the American release. Even so, the in-game story of Lavender Town featured the spirits of dead Pokemon haunting the radio tower and possessing crazed Pokemon trainers, already lending a supernatural and deathly aura over the game for years to come.
1. Nude Raider
As one of the most famous sex symbols and leading ladies of video games, English archaeologist Lara Croft, of the Tomb Raider franchise, was bound to become the sexual object of many a male fantasy. This culminated in an unlicensed external patch called “Nude Raider” that allowed PC players of Tomb Raider to make Lara appear naked in-game. These rumours wandered into the console versions of Tomb Raider, and early Internet forums circulated of fake secrets and cheat codes to relieve Lara of her turquoise tank top and light brown shorts. In response to the “Nude Raider” phenomenon, the developer Core Dynamics purported that an official cheat code in Tomb Raider II allowed Lara to be naked, but in reality, caused her character model to blow up in spectacular fashion.
