Since the other years of video recording games , young gamers have whisper secrets on the schoolyard and spent long hours attempt to make the most outrageous gambling myths hail dead on target . Some minor heard their serious friend ’s cousin see Mew under a truck in " Pokemon " ; others were utterly convinced there was a secret way to find the Triforce in " The Legend of Zelda : Ocarina of Time . " Before gamers banded together on the Internet and used their corporate cognition – and the ability to hack on into games and parse their codification – to decree out the impossible , any schoolyard whisper could turn out to be the the true .
Thevideo game worldis so parochial that you ’d have to be a dedicated gamer to even hear certain rumors and myths – the one surrounding a code that revive Aeris in the secret plan " Final Fantasy 7 " is a expert example . Other rumour are more shocking , like the one about a cheat code that allows players of " Tomb Raider " to defrock Lara Croft . But gaming myths hold out beyond underground fictitious character and gamer chit chat . There are myths about gambling , too – like the mind that gaming directly make wildness or that only boys play television games .
Because these ideas are risible , intriguing or just apparently misguided – and because we like expose myth – we now face 10 of the most common myths about video games .
10: There’s a Madden Curse
As far as silly video secret plan myths go , this one is fairly darn eerie . Around the yr 2000 , biz developer and newspaper publisher Electronic Arts began featuringfootballplayers on the cover of its popular " Madden NFL " secret plan every year . And a weird affair started happening . For several years , nearly every actor to grace the covering of the game cease up being injured the following season . Some but flex in poor performance . Star athletes were on the face of it struck down left and flop by the Madden jinx .
Of course , there ’s a coherent explanation for how the Madden curse come to be . Athletes pick for the cover are always coming off of great seasons , and football game is a crude game . It happens in the NFL all the time : Some jock turn in infirm seasons , and others get injured . The curse is well - lie with , but that does n’t mean appearing on the top of a video game as if by magic stimulate players to sprain ankles .
9: ‘Tomb Raider’ Has a Nude Code
In 1996 , " Tomb Raider " was a Revelation of Saint John the Divine . It was the atmospheric , adventure - laden Indiana Jones - mode video game we ’d always wanted . There were ancient ruins , mythical treasures and dinosaur . Lara Croft was gaming ’s new ikon , but that was due to her appearance as much as her game . The buxom adventurer was a strong , autonomous character , but her design was straight out of male fantasy . Naturally , hearsay speedily started flying around take there was a au naturel code in " Tomb Raider " that would strip Lara down to her natal day suit .
The code never exist , but that did n’t stop gamers from trying . Fake code and secrets made the rounds on the net ( in its former years in 1997 ) and throughout gaming civilisation . " Tomb Raider " actually does have codes that gamers can enter for other purposes , but nothing that start out Lara Croft naked [ source : CheatCC ] . Despite being a myth , the " Tomb Raider " nude code is infamous to this day – Lara Croft ’s condition as a game sexual practice symbolisation ensured that .
And in the conclusion , impish gamers gravel the last jape . While there ’s no nudity built into any of the " Tomb Raider " games , game modders finally created nude role models for Lara that could be loaded into thePCversions of the biz .
8: There’s a Sex Minigame in ‘Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas’
Rockstar Games ' " Grand Theft Auto " has long been a controversial series , but scandal erupted around " Grand Theft Auto : San San Andreas " when metier aid focused on a mod for the game called Hot Coffee . biz modders jab around in San Andreas and find oneself an abandoned sex minigame – the protagonist is invite into his girlfriend ’s house for deep brown , and naughtiness ensues . Outraged politicians and the media jump on the plot , and the Entertainment Software Ratings Board re - rated the game from Mature to Adults - Only . Rockstar had to re - release the game forPC , PlayStation 2and Xbox , and the whole ordeal cost its parent company Take - Two synergistic million of dollars [ reservoir : 1UP ] .
Now here ’s the crazy part about the Hot Coffee scandal : Almost no one could really play the minigame . It was n’t accessible in " GTA : SA " at all . It was n’t a part of the secret plan . But the content was still on the record , and modders found it . Only by modifying the game could gamers possibly play Hot Coffee . That was n’t too unmanageable on the PC , but some real work for the console version .
Parents naturally did n’t care about the preeminence , even though games with a ripe rating are n’t meant to be played by fry . Rockstar was scarce the first developer to leave unused code on a secret plan disc , but Hot Coffee served as a clear warning : Even if it ’s not an active part of the plot , someone ’s get to find it .
7: Video Games Are For Kids
Here ’s a shocker : Kids love video game . It ’s honest ! jillion of kids all over the worldly concern hump Mario and Sonic and Pikachu and the secret plan that spawn them . But there are many , many more gamers who maturate up playing " Mario Bros. " and " Sonic the Hedgehog " – or older games on the Atari – who are now adults and still lie with picture game . In many way , the video secret plan industry has grown up alongside them , propose more sophisticated and violent game like " Call of Duty " that are akin to R - rat activity movies .
In 2011 , 53 percent of gamers fall within the 18 to 49 years range . And within that mountain range , the medium gamer was surprisingly mature – 37 , in fact . " Casual " games , like Flash Web web browser app games and Nintendo ’s " Wii Sports " and " Wii Fit , " have brought old mass into the gaming world . Gamers 50 and older now play 29 percentage of the grocery [ beginning : ESA ] .
Only 18 percent of gamers are under the age of 18 , according to the Entertainment Software Association . There are plenty of games still out there for kids , but the modal gamer has emphatically grown up .
6: Video Games Lead to Social Isolation
Video game culture has a reputation for being a nerdy indoor hobby – gamers sit in their room or their mothers ' basements staring at the idiot box day in and day out , never work out of doors to socialise with their peers . Even if that simulacrum may be accurate for some gamers , the anti - social stain of TV play fans has never been less dead on target . net connectivity has been a part of microcomputer gaming since the 1990s with on-line multiplayer game like " Quake , " and since the launching ofXbox Livein belated 2002 , net play has rise into a huge feature article on console as well .
More and more games are designed with cooperative frolic or competitive multiplayer in mind ; time spend playing secret plan often means time spend socializing . While competitive play also bring out a lot of trash talk in on-line communities , online sport impart gamers the opportunity to spend time with distant Friend or make new ones .
5: Video Games Lead to Violence
Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris , the two teenager who carried out the 1999 Columbine High School massacre in Littleton , Colo. , were fervid " Doom " player . German 17 - year - sure-enough Tim Kretschmer killed 15 people a decennary later with relocation he stole from the biz " Counter Strike . " When juvenility engage in violent behavior , the brutal video games they played before they committed their crimes are more often than not cited as reason for their tendency . Logic plainly follow : Violent video game make kids tearing .
This theme remains established Wisdom of Solomon , although some field of kids and aggressive video games have twist up grounds to the opposite . One 2005 study of people eld 14 to 68 who were asked to flirt 56 hours of the massively multi - player character play game ( MMRPG ) " Asheron ’s Call 2 " in one month found no noticeable change in aggressive behaviour among players after the plot . Nor did the researchers turn up an increment in aggressiveness among gamers when compared to the command grouping who did n’t play [ source : PhysOrg ] .
Other studies have come to dissimilar conclusions , though some psychologists believe that many studies connect real - world violence to video games are colored [ reference : Kierkegaard ] . As it plow out , nothing does more to countermine the notion that TV plot increase violence in real life than crime statistic . While video games continue to sell – sales rose from $ 5.5 billion to $ 9.5 billion from 1999 to 2007 – violent criminal offense among juvenility actually declined . In 1999 , 1,763 multitude under age 18 were arrested for homicides in the U.S. ; in 2007 , that age group accounted for 1,063 murders there [ source : Safe Youth , FBI ] .
4: Girls Don’t Play Video Games
When the home video plot cabinet first became widely available in the early 1980s , game were generally asexual – or at least unisex . title like " Frogger , " " Dig - Dug " and " Q - Bert " lacked any sort of gender bias and play was n’t relegated to boy or girls . As play became more advanced , however , title began to skew more toward vernal male person than female .
Public perception of video games as an almost - strictly male child ' pursuit still remains ; the relative lack of popularity of even the most obvious effeminate titles bear this feeling . But does the fact that " Metal Gear Solid " immensely outsells Barbie statute title on PlayStation think of that girlfriend just do n’t act video games ? dead not .
In fact , from January to August 2008 , females ages 18 to 45 came in 2d only to males of the same age group as the self-aggrandizing Stephen Spender in video recording game industry ( 37 percent versus 38 percent ) [ source : Lee ] .
3: You Can Use Chips from a PlayStation 2 to Form a Guided Missile System
In late 2000 , news report emerged along both the grape vine and mainstream medium that Iraqi president Saddam Hussein was stockpilingPlayStation 2systems , which had debut that autumn . More than 4,000 consoles had made their way to Iraq in just a couple of month , having circumvented the implements of war embargo on Iraq imposed by the United Nations more than a decade sooner .
The plot console were , after all , fry ' toys at their nub , so what was the harm ? Further down in the reports of the PS2 reserve ( and often in the headlines ) was a more alarming idea – that Hussein valued the cabinet for their chips . Fears grew that the loss leader had found a loophole in the trade stoppage and was plan to string together 10 to 20 of the consoles to create a supercomputer powerful enough to direct projectile systems [ seed : ZDNet ] .
Reality would undermine this headache almost as quickly as it go forth . Technically , one could connect a series of PlayStation 2 consoles and use their 128 - turn processors in conjunction , but it would require unequalled software that Iraq would have need years to formulate after the PS2 debut . In other words , the hearsay was sodding myth .
2: Pong Was the First Video Game
History was made in Sunnyvale , Calif. ’s Andy Capp ’s Tavern on Nov. 29 , 1972 [ root : BartonandLoguidice ] . Ted Dabney and Nolan Bushnell – two electronic computer programmers who had just launch Atari – had adjust up and unveiled a young colonnade plot by the name of " Pong " that night . The game ’s debut represent the giving birth of the video gaming industry , which would attain global tax income of $ 38 billion just 34 years later [ source : ABIResearch ] .
The cosmos ’s first TV game was born . Except , it was n’t . " Pong " was have that day , sure , but it already had a few old sibling . The common construct that " Pong " was the world ’s first telecasting game is actually a myth .
really , another colonnade game had been liberate a full year prior to " Pong " ’s launching at Andy Capp ’s Tavern . Contrary to popular opinion , it turn out that the relatively little - known " Computer Space " holds the title of world ’s first arcade video secret plan [ source : Barton and Loguidice ] . It was based on a computer game called " Spacewar ! " that was a bit too unmanageable for gamers since , at that time , every gamer was a novice . " Pong " was slenderly more everyone ’s speed ; its popularity blew the door off of " Computer Space " and lead to the myth that it was the first video biz .
1: There Are Millions of Atari Cartridges Buried in the New Mexico Desert
Sometimes what vocalise like a myth is actually the truth – sort of . This is the type with the longstanding rumor that there are millions of Atari game cartridges buried in the New Mexico desert .
In September 1983 , 14 motortruck contain somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 million undesirable – hated , even – Atari game cartridges showed up at the Alamogordo landfill [ source : Snopes ] . They dump their loading there and went along their way , leaving behind evidence of the birth of one of the earliest video secret plan rumors .
The understanding for the raft dumping is a matter of public record ; Atari ’s fourth - quarter profits story for 1982 , to be precise . The company had a year that was far worse than have a bun in the oven , for the most part because it had stake so much on two pivotal release : its home console table version of " Pac - Man " and a biz based on the blockbuster flick , " E.T. " Both titles hit so far below company and public outlook that around 5 million transcript of each were returned to the company . amaze with one thousand thousand of the game , Atari prefer to sink them .
alas , nostalgic television game hunter who visit the landfill in hunting of a keepsake will be painfully disappoint . The companionship had the landfill owner crush the magazine with a juggernaut , and the whole bundle was pave over with concrete [ reservoir : Snopes ] .
