An urban legend is a form of modern folklore consisting of stories that may or may not be believed. In honour of Halloween week I’ve decided to explore the darkest corners of the web, and bring you creepiest legends in video game history… prepare to be spooked.
A few weeks ago Phil, Joel and and I went to visit the lovely Tim in Bristol, and he introduced me to the term ‘creepypasta’ for the first time (there’s a lot I don’t know about when it comes to internet culture and even more I don’t understand!). These are phenomena that typically consist of short stories shared across the web with the intent of frightening the reader and you’ll have heard at least one of them: for example, there aren’t many gamers out there who won’t have encountered Slender Man at some point.
Talking to Tim about MarbleHornets that weekend got me thinking (and playing Five Nights at Freddy’s got me screaming – keep an eye out for Friday’s article), and I decided what better way to celebrate Halloween than to come up with our very own collection of video game urban legends. The following list contains some of the scariest stories on the internet, and they may even force you to lock your doors and stop playing games at night…
7. The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask: BEN drowned
This tale begins with an American student by the name of Jadusable who was given a second-hand N64 cartridge with ‘Majora’s Mask’ written across it in black marker. After popping it into his console he noticed that there was already a gamed saved called ‘BEN’, but after starting anew and finding that the NPCs still referred to him using this name he deleted Ben’s file.
But the game became even more erratic and glitches included music playing backwards, skipping forwards to the final boss battles and Link repeatedly dying due to drowning. The protagonist began to be followed by the same strange statue that appears when you play the creepy Elegy of Emptiness on the ocarina, taunting him with threats and menacing laughter. Eventually the ‘BEN’ file reappeared on the cartridge along with another new file simply called ‘drowned’; and every time the student played afterwards, his character would simply die and a message would display onscreen: ‘You’ve met with a terrible fate, haven’t you?’
His progress was posted via YouTube videos and his blog posts reported that he started seeing Ben in his sleep. Jadusable eventually discovered the truth: that the young boy who had previously owned the cartridge had drowned… Although ‘truth’ probably isn’t the word that should use here, as he revealed the whole thing to be an experiment on testing the gullibility of readers when presented with a story written in a believable form – which is why this story goes at the bottom of the list.
6. Berzerk: Evil Otto
Berzerk by Atari is considered to be one of the greatest titles of the arcade-era of gaming and features one of the most iconic boss battles: players’ characters are pitted against their arch nemesis, a bouncy smiling face called Evil Otto. It also hold the morbid honour of being the first video game linked to the death of a person, before going on to kill again a year later.
The game had a staggering 64,000 levels and what both of Otto’s victims had in common were ridiculously high scores. Nineteen-year-old Jeff Dailey was the first to die after posting a score of 16,660 points in 1981; then ten months later in 1982 Peter Burkowski decided to play the game. Within fifteen minutes he had made the top-ten list twice, but then took a few steps away from the machine and collapsed dead.
Unlike Polybius (see below), Berzerk’s murderous rampage is a fact and you can find out more about it online. The cause of death in the cases of both Dailey and Burkowski was ruled as a heart attack, and maybe it’s just a coincidence… or maybe Evil Otto sought his revenge.
5. The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind: jvk1166z.esp
Legend has it that there is a sinister mod to The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind that could potentially drive a player insane. File jvk1166z.esp was originally thought to be a virus as it would freeze and corrupt all save game files when loaded, but it was soon discovered that it would work when ran in DOSbox.
All the main characters were already dead when the player started. Staying in one spot for too long cause their health to deplete and if they died in this manner a new character revealed himself: a man whose limbs were long and bent like a spiders’, and whom gamers started calling ‘the Assassin’. They noticed that if they paid close attention they could see him around corners or scurrying up walls for brief moments, but that wasn’t the only weird thing. Another creepy element was the fact that the characters left alive would come outside at night to stare at the sky, and attempting to interact with them would only cause them to say ‘Watch the sky’.
A new dungeon was also discovered, inside of which was what started being referred to as the ‘hall of portraits’ as it was lined with pictures which were in fact photos from the player’s PC. At the end of the hall was a locked door and nobody has ever been able to prove that they opened it (although it was claimed it would do so upon some kind of celestial event). Some gamers have alleged that after long hours of trying to do so, they began to hallucinate and see the Assassin scuttling around in real life… As made up as this story seems, the scariest part is that the mod does in fact seem to exist so download it at your own risk.
4. Killswitch: the game that never existed
Killswitch was supposedly created by Soviet gaming company Karvina Corporation in 1989, with only limited copies produced and proving very popular. The game itself was a pioneer in the survival-horror genre: players had to choose between two characters, a shape-changing woman called Porto or an invisible demon named Ghast, and the goal was to navigate through an abandoned coal mine whilst battling monsters.
As it was hard to do this with a transparent character most chose to complete the title with the female protagonist. But there’s no proof that anyone ever managed to finish with either Porto or Ghast – because upon beating the title, all evidence of it would be erased from your hard drive. Karvina apparently made the it in a way so that it could only be experienced once and as very few copies were made, it faded into obscurity over time.
But in 2005 an unopened copy of Killswitch surfaced on eBay where it was promptly bought for $733,000 by a man from Japan named Yamamoto Ryuichi. He had planned to document his playthrough of the game on YouTube… but the only video he ended up posting was of him staring at his computer screen and crying. This footage has too since vanished – or did it never really exist at all?
3. Twisted Metal: the note
Since the first edition was released on the PlayStation in 1995, Twisted Metal has had a strong cult following. In 2003 Sony were set to develop a follow-up to Twisted Metal: Black, called Twisted Metal: Harbour City, but only four levels were completed and the game was never finished. In March 2005 the six founding members of the team died in a plane crash and the project was cancelled shortly afterwards.
But things turned surreal when a note appeared in the developer’s headquarters, pleading with them to let fans play the levels mentioned above. Rather than being sent by one of the series’ hardcore fans, it was actually signed with the names of the six deceased team members and read: ‘We are disappointed to hear of your decision to keep the world from seeing the last of our work… We beg of you… Show them all what we have done… Show them our last earthly deeds… If you doubt our existence, look to The Dark Past for proof that we are who we say…’
The note is available to read online and The Dark Past refers to a documentary on the Twisted Metal: Head On disc, where groups of number appeared on screen and corresponded to letters of the alphabet. The fact that, when deciphered the message reads ‘Twisted Metal is coming on PS3’, has led many to believe that this was nothing more than an elaborate piece of marketing. Indeed, Sony used the note in the PlayStation 2 title Twisted Metal: Head On: Extreme Twisted Edition, where players would have to complete all levels in Lost most on the hard difficulty setting in order to ‘unlock its secrets’.
2. Pokémon Red: Lavender Town syndrome
The release of Pokémon Red in Japan in 1996 supposedly correlated to a huge spoke in illness and suicides amongst children aged between seven and twelve. Players succumbed after reaching Lavender Town, a haunted and ghost-filled area that’s home to the only cemetery within the series. The significance of this shouldn’t be underestimated: Pokémon rarely touches on anything more sinister than a plot to capture a legendary monster, so for a game to deal directly with death is unusual.
Red’s score was said to be the source of the suicidal tendencies and this was eventually dubbed ‘Lavender Town syndrome’. The music in the level was changed before the title was released outside of Japan and Nintendo have always claimed that this was because the high-pitched tones caused a strain on the Game Boy’s speakers. However, in 2010 someone who analysed the score revealed Unowns that spelled out ‘LEAVE NOW’… as if kids killing themselves over a creepy song wasn’t scary enough.
The reported six-hundred-plus seizures that occurred after the Porygon episode of the anime series was aired is true, which makes this urban legend seem all the more plausible. But if I included all the Pokémon-related legends within this article it would be at least three times as long, so who knows?
1. Polybius: a CIA experiment?
According to the legend, an arcade cabinet named Polybius appeared in several suburbs of Portland, Oregon in1981. It proved to be very popular with lines forming around machines and players fighting over who would get their turn next; could this have something to do with the subliminal messages it supposedly contained? It’s said that the title induced psychological effects and many complained of amnesia and night terrors, but some sources claim the side-effects were more severe with players experiencing suicidal tendencies.
As if that wasn’t scary enough, an unnamed arcade owner apparently reported that men in black coats were seen collecting data from the machines. This led some to speculate that it wasn’t a game but a CIA-type experiment, and the name of the company that produced it seems to back up this theory. ‘Sinneslöschen’ is the German word for ‘deletion of senses’: were they in fact a secret government organisation?
Around a month after its release, Polybius is said to have disappeared without a trace. A single machine has never been found and, while some have said that they worked on the title and others have attempted to recreate it, nobody has ever been able to produce definitive proof that it ever existed. The only evidence seems to be a shot of the title screen and a black-and-white photo of the cabinet.
So there you have it: the scariest urban legends in video game history. Before you go to bed this evening, you might want to unplug your PC or console just in case the pixels come alive…
