Thanks to the internet the storm of misinformation that swirled throughout friendship groups and magazines are largely a thing of the past, with a few exceptions. There was something strangely appealing about all the whispers you'd hear on the breeze about how you could unlock various unbelievable content in various games, and we decided to honour that.
Check out the video below where we look at just five of the countless lies we were told in years gone by. Most of us even believed them, or at the very least wanted to.
Comments 46
I'm too young for these but, walugi in 64 DS I remember that well haha
My uncle works at Nintendo and said that the nx is named the Nintendo aardvarkasaurous, the size of a small car, has the operating power of 7000 ps4s, and will launch with legend of maroid: return to corneria. You all believe me right? Right?
Eugh... I used to have a Banjo Kazooie cart when I was a kid, and in my version there was missing parts in some of the levels. Namely in Treasure Trove Cove - the island where you're meant to get a Stop-N-Swop egg wasn't there. I always wondered why...
I hope I didn't get rid of a super rare beta cart or something.
When I was at middle school, friends also claimed that Mew was hiding in the grass either side of Pallet Town.
@Moon the island didn't show up in any version of the game until you entered in the codes in the sandcastle. It was removed shortly prior to release due to the new n64 model not functioning with their planned stop and swap method of transferring the eggs. They did forget to remove it in the ending though.
Remember the minus world in Super Mario Bros? When I was 6 or 7 my teenager neighbor showed me how to get into the minus world and then explained to me that if you manage to swim through the level 7 times before the timer ran out you then unlock secret levels. He went on to explain cool things these levels had, for instance, if you jumped on a Koopa Paratroopa you would get his wings and fly around and stuff like that. I believed this lie for a long time and would pull out the game every once and awhile to try and get the secret levels. When Super Mario All Stars came out I assumed that the lost levels were these secret levels I could never unlock and was confused why you never got to fly around on wings. I think I was in my 20's before it dawned on me that my neighbor had simply played a prank on me all those years ago.
My friends all used to tell about a "golden gun" with a magic one-shot kill in GoldenEye.
Those stupid kids all believed each other, but not me. There's no magic in 007. DUH!
Alex looks pretty good with his haircut like that.
@link3710 I hope you're right because it's haunted me for years. I am sure I used the codes, and even had a 100% completed file, but the island wasn't there for me... It was a long time ago now though so hopefully I'm misremembering!
Another one for RPGs, but particularly pokemon was pushing a (or sometimes B) when an attack landed to hit a critical, or pushing it when a pokemon was trying to get out of a pokeball in time with the sounds it makes, stuff like that. Good times.
You must defeat Sheng Long to stand a chance...
I remember there was a supposed way to unlock Reptile on Mortal Kombat 1.
Also Jade on MK 2.
@WolfyWardark
I know people who insist they were able to warp there using some glitch during the power plant, but I think they're just remembering the rumor and thinking it actually happened.
As a kid though I was obsessed with those patches of grass, and the water outside the barricades.
@NewAdvent Came here to write that one and see if anyone else heard of it. A Temple of Light in the 3DS remake would have been amazing, i really wish they would have added a dungeon or a little something in all the Zelda remakes they've done like they had with Link's Awakening. I'm certain they lost sales by making them nearly exactly the same, since i avoided buying the remakes for that reason myself.
Definitely fell for a bunch of Pokemon lies when I was still new to Pokemon since I really wanted to get the event only legendaries lol.
Nintendo: The world's largest employer of dads. All the dads work at Nintendo.
Naked Samus.
@theberrage I didn't believe the whole playing as Samus without armor in the original Metroid until I finally got online for the first time. The internet unlocked a lot of mysteries for me, including some I wished I haven't seen...
My favorites wete the Pokemon ones. Tbey had some kernal of truth to them to seem realistic enough. And the glitches the game had that were easily exploitable made the game world seem on the brink of collapse. Those glitches were canon to me, where messing with the delicate order of the world and Pokemon would break the world, Lovecraft-like.
I spent an entire summer as a kid playing Melee because I heard from friends and read in magazines that if you KO'd 20 people in the Cruel Melee mode you unlocked Sonic and Tails. I think the most I ever got was 7...
I remember going CRAZY trying to unlock Luigi in SM64, by the rock star fountain thing, by that "collect all the coins", by hitting the "secret mushroom" with the cannon in Tall Tall Mountain, but what took a crazy amount of time was that "Luigi was in the top of Peach's castle"...I went insane trying to do that and when I did, only thing I found was a lot of bugs...
I also remember believing that you could go back to Hyrule in Majora's Mask by that closed door.
The Mew one got me..
I grew up talking with my friends about Waluigi in SM64DS. I was still new to gaming, so I wasn't smart enough to know that there was a rumor about Luigi in the original that this one sprouted off of. Everyday at lunch me and my 3 friends would all sit at the very back table and report our most recent findings, absolutely determined to find Waluigi. There was also my own stupidity that sparked a rumor for myself in Pokemon Diamond. I had just gotten into Pokemon by then so I hadn't realized how many regions there were yet, or that it was one region per-game (minus Gen 2). When I saw the description on a medicine saying it was from Cianwood City, I thought it was some mysterious hidden city in Pokemon Diamond I had to find. Of course when I got Heart Gold I felt extremely dumb.
I never heard that Majora's Mask one before.
Hahaha Good times, i remember trying to get mew with my friends
I remember one that said you could unlock Game & Watch in Mario Kart Double Dash by beating every cup on every speed class as Toadette and Toad in Toadette's specific kart or something crazy like that.
I'm a little older, so the rumor I heard was in regards to the 2600 Donkey Kong. It was said if you pulled the cartridge out while the game was running, you would unlock the "pie factory" level. Kind of nonsensical, kind of malicious.
The Chocolate Factory in Super Mario Bros. I have no idea why Jeff Rovin started that rumour, but I remember people swearing it was real. Also, if you beat SMB 10 times in a row, Mario and the princess get into a limo and drive away. I remember testing that one myself in grade 3 and debunking it.
That "super secret characters" thing didn't begin with Melee, not in the slightest! For example, I remember in the early days of the original Smash Bros. (N64), people kept saying if you bought a GameShark Pro, you could unlock a Thunder Stone to evolve Pikachu in the game, unlock Squirtle, etc. Actually, the rumor continued that you could put any character in the game that you wanted to (since you can "make" your own codes with GameShark Pro)! Of course, I was bamboozled into buying it. What child can resist the promise of playing as ABSOLUTELY ANY CHARACTER, after all?
The mouthwatering lies about the GameShark Pro didn't end there, however. Another "definite truth" I was told about was being able to go past the Thunder Gate of Oedo Town in Mystical Ninja: Starring Goemon, that with the right code, it would form into seven pie-like pieces which would somehow allow you to pass through it and meet the "Thunder God" or something. Well, at least InterAct sent me a free video tape with purchase.
The ironic thng about all the Mew rumors is that years later a glitch to catch Mew that actually worked was discovered. Has any other gaming myth actually unknowingly turned out to be true after the fact?
There are 2 in particular that I remember really well.
First, ne and my friends all had this great DS game "Viva Piñata: Pocket Paradise". One piñata, the Yeli, was notoriously difficult to get. I never found it in any of the hours I sunk into it, and I only have it because my friend send me one from his hacked game on his R4. Meanwhile, there were all kinds of tricks to get it going around. You have to be a level 6 gardener with a Moon lamp that you have to water and destroy during the night with an upgraded shovel, it was crazy. And yet, still nobody found it without cheating...
The second one is one I know almost everyone falls for at least once in their life. I was still a (pretty gullible) kid at school, playing browser games, when sone kid tells me about this amazing cheat! Pressing ALT+F4 will give you an extra life! 😑
A Pokémon lie that later became somewhat true was the white rock outside of the Mossdeep Space Center summoning Jirachi to grant your wish of riding a rocket into space and battling Deoxys in the original RS. Riding into space and battling Deoxys came true in the Delta Episode of ORAS.
mew under the truck ... we had this lie in kuwait ... and i tried so hard to do it lol and failed since i had all the pokemons
Everytime it's a video article: /closes the article
lol, I've always been a simulation-game nut so I always fell for the "you can get married in [game you can't get married in]" type of rumors when I was younger. Finding the wedding veil in Wild World (and what looked like the Sims 2 marriage arch thing in MySims) didn't help, either.
Here's a pretty elaborate one that I was told once:
Some time before Pokémon Gold & Silver came out in the U.S., I remember a kid telling me that Ho-Oh was actually named 'Cybird', and that it could be caught in Red/Blue/Yellow with the Master Ball. At some point late in those games, you supposedly had to talk to an old man who says that he can take you among the stars. You'll then warp into the sky and walk around on clouds until 'Cybird' randomly appears. This, however, had a very low chance of even happening, and the only other Pokémon you'd encounter besides 'Cybird' are Goldeen...in the clouds. When I questioned that last bit, the kid responded 'Tsk Man, I don't know. I didn't make the game.'
I wanted to believe it, but it just sounded too dumb.
Mew under the truck? For me it was the lie, that you get a mew only when you collect all other 150 pokemons and fill your pokedex fully. But honestly, I spent more time trying to get Celebi in Gold in that forest! I know you actually could get it using a special-codes (available only in Japan?) but there still were plenty of rumours on how to get it other way... oh childhood
Unlocking Sheng Long in Street Fighter II. Boy, did that one annoy me.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheng_Long
@mateq
Only in Japan, and only in Crystal.
@Dankykong The big 'Video' tag above the article wasn't enough of a give away I see.
Although the Luigi 64 was very prominent where I live, one of the rumors my friend statrted, was that there was a invisible key that could be found in the mirror room, that when obtained, you could go through the invisible wall that kept you from getting to the bowser painting. And 6 year old me believed that ha.
My friends and I were obsessed with unlocking Michael Jordan in NBA Jam. We were obviously too young to understand that him having his own licensed SNES game meant that there was basically zero chance of him appearing. Good times, though.
@Damo
Yeah that one got a lot of us. I guess arcade owners loved it! It was especially believable, and cruel, since I learned that you could unlock a fight with Reptile in Mortal Kombat. So surely it was possible that Street Fighter could have a hidden character?
@AlexOlney I saw it on mobile. It doesn't show those tags for me on there.
Luigi in SM64 was a lie I first hearda about back in kindergarten like 19 years ago.
Great video. I had a friend who when he was younger had his dad buy him the laser scope https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaserScope
It was a voice activated controller. Yell "fire, fire" you get the idea. Well he bought one because some kid at his school told him that if you talk into it and say "beat the game" it would actually beat the game! So he brought it home and he said "beat the game but nothing happened! Sure we were all young once, but wow.... Gullible!
I remember hearing years ago, that it was possible to play as Kintaro in the home ports of "Mortal Kombat II". Some also said there was a code for Shang Tsung to morph into Shao Kahn, and a "Nudality" finisher for the female fighters. Another popular lie was the idea that you could use a shortcut in the Biggoron's Sword trading sequence for "Ocarina of Time", by equipping the broken Giant's Knife and entering a code on Death Mountain.
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