Vidya Rumors -

[Tranhuviya]

Basically all the "supa hidden secrets" and my "dad works for Nintendo" you'd talk about on the playground.

For example, the infamous "L is real 2401" inscription on the star statue in the courtyard in Super Mario 64. If you believed Little Timmy, if you did such and such, you'd unlock Luigi as a playable character. In reality, Luigi wasn't in the game and Timmy was a fucking liar.

 

[drtoboggan]

My dad works for Nintendo.

 

[Bugaboo]

Oh gosh golly this is my favorite weird topic to talk about.
Now back in the wee days of the internet there was a phenomenon known almost universally as "the pokegods" these rumors were circulated on 90's websites made in geocities or angelfire or whatever and were delightfully stupid but pokemon was a mysterious and uncharted thing at the time so it was incredibly interesting to the young mind. Mew was the big one, because he exsisted, everyone knew he exsisted but how the fuck do you get him? The most common "methods" were the truck next to the S.S Anne (which is actually there, if you get traded a pokemon with cut rather than getting cut from the boat guy the SS anne stays put and you can surf along the side to get to it. Why the truck is there is still up in the air, probably a leftover asset)
Pikablu (who would later be in Gold/Silver as Marill) Snubull, Ho-oh, Lugia, Pikaflare (an unused beta pokemon with artwork) and Mewthree were all big ones. Also locations from the anime were rumored to exsist too as well as the grass on either side of Pallet town and behind Bill's House. Eevee got a couple made up evolutions too (strangely they predicted Umbreon and Espeon as Solareon and Lunareon)

 

[John Titor]

Level 99 Dragonite can evolve into Yoshi
I remember the Mew truck thing but never did confirmed it. I think I'll go check it out now.

 

[alex_theman]

In the gen 1 remakes, there is a lava cookie under the truck.

 

[Doctor Druid]

The one I remember most is the one about the hidden temple in Ocarina of Time where you got the Triforce.

 

[Coldgrip]

Fight 255 Tyrannosaurs in the forest north of the Veldt and you'd get a potion to bring general Leo back to life.

Alternatively, if you used Ragnarok enough there was a 1-in-1,000,000 chance that it'd turn one of the Tyrannosaurs into the above mentioned potion.

If you go to the auction house in Jidoor at a specific time between certain events you could out bid the guy who always buys the imp robot for his kid.

 

[ZehnBoat]

Fight 255 Tyrannosaurs in the forest north of the Veldt and you'd get a potion to bring general Leo back to life.

DO THIS THING FOR [absurd long time]
AND USE [absurdly rare item]
ON [PERSON]
AND YOU GET AERITH BACK IN YOUR PARTY!
CUZ SHES DEAD NO MORE!

or use a phoenix down on [thing] at [plot point] at [time on clock]

 

[Feline Darkmage]

In reality, Luigi wasn't in the game and Timmy was a fucking liar.

Fuck Timmy, that kid tried to convince me trading him Mewtwo would make it a "Mewthree" and he never gave it back.

 

[Cunty Boo Boo]

All of the various ways you might revive Aeris.

 

[StallChaser]

I'm always fascinated by the playground rumors pre internet, because you never know if they were the same from location to location. Like, did kids in New York have the same rumors as kids in California? Did these things spread around? One that was popular when I was in grade school was that there was a chocolate world in super mario brothers. I've never seen that one on the internet, but it was all over my school in the NES days. Of course, it was a hoax. There were others that I thought were hoaxes for the longest time, but turned out to be real. All the weird ass fatalities / babalities / animalities / etc. in mortal kombat, for example. Once the internet came into play, the hoaxes were universal. Reviving Aeris or General Leo. Getting some sort of super powerup in Sonic Adventure that lets you run 4x as fast. And so on.

That kind of hoax doesn't even work any more, because the first place anyone looks is Youtube, and that stuff is really hard to fake.

 

[NumberingYourState]

There was a kid in my elementary school who obviously got a hacked up PS1 just to tell me you can bust through the roofs of each level in Crash Bandicoot 2 ala Super Mario Bros.

This was the kind of obliviousness I missed having as an eight year old.

 

[Watcher]

That kind of hoax doesn't even work any more, because the first place anyone looks is Youtube, and that stuff is really hard to fake.

It's also that games in general aren't built to be easy to make rumors about. Back when pokemon came out there was this fantasy that you could really discover a mew under the truck or that Missigno was an actual secret pokemon. The game was already full of implausible secrets hidden in the world. Modern games very rarely have actual "secrets"

There was actually a game that came out a few years ago that felt like it was almost designed by people who grew up with rumors about video games. It was Dark Souls

 

[MightyBiteySnake]

I remember one of the big things when I was a kid was rumors of how to get Jirachi and Deoxys in Ruby and Sapphire, usually involving the white stone in Mossdeep City or the Space Center. I also remember rumors of how to get the (then) new/rumored Pokemon Munchlax and Bonsly, by cutting every tree and using the snorlax areas in fire red and leaf green.

There was also the Stop n Swop items in Banjo Kazooie, but those have "legitimate" retrieval methods and were actually going to be used. Other things from that game included opening the doors in Klungo's lab to get to the unused beta levels and getting past the rubble and debris to access the rest of grunty's lair in Banjo Tooie.

 

[NumberingYourState]

Halo 2's IWHBYD Skull is probably the most controversial Easter Egg in the series history. At some point, rumors on how to alternatively get the I Would Have Been Your Daddy skull popped up left and right. People were desperate to try these unproven methods, but if you knew better the rarest Easter Eggs are not unlocked more than one way outside of Console Commands.

EDIT: How can I forget?

The Golden Warthog is literally TV Tropes levels of insane, as if billboards cannot exist in 2552 and be nothing more than that after the city goes down in flames. A modder shows up with a redesigned warthog with the gunner turret ripped off, and everyone was still stuck on it being obtainable at all.

 

[Alec Benson Leary]

Reviving Aeris

The unfinished map theories always gave me the willies in my youth, because there was some pretty substantive evidence that a lot of those prerendered maps were built with intended paths that never went anywhere.

 

[Not-NiGHTS]

I remember this rumor from an actual magazine way back when saying that if you beat 20 cruel wireframes in Super Smash Bros. Melee, you would gain access to Sonic and Tails in the game.

I was a dumb kid and didn't realize it was a hoax. But it was thrown around everywhere where I was because no one realized it was an April Fools' Joke.

 

[Doctor Druid]

I remember this rumor from an actual magazine way back when saying that if you beat 20 cruel wireframes in Super Smash Bros. Melee, you would gain access to Sonic and Tails in the game.

I was a dumb kid and didn't realize it was a hoax. But it was thrown around everywhere where I was because no one realized it was an April Fools' Joke.

EGM had the best April Fools shit.

 

[Tranhuviya]

EGM had the best April Fools shit.

This. Remember Sheng Long?

And then SFIII and SFIV came along to give us Gouken.

 

[TheFinalCountdown]

I spent hours trying to unlock Luigi in Mario 64.

Also, is it just me, or is this thread kinda... dead?