Media Research Failure/Video Games

Examples of fact check failures about video games.

"Reporter: Young people spend their days in front of a screen, stuffing themselves on "meuporg." ... "Meuporg" is the barbarian name of online role-playing games where we can meet virtual friends. That's the actual name, I'm sorry.
 * Did you know that Mario's nemesis is actually named Kerog? Well, Scholastic thought so.
 * That same book also claims Snide from Donkey Kong 64 to be a villain, despite that he actually helps the Kongs in that game.
 * Any publication that has Pokémon being called "Pokey-man". Such as the official Time Magazine archives. Similarly, anything that refers to "Pokémons" (Pokémon is both singular and plural, like sheep, deer, or samurai).
 * The Pokeman spelling is sometimes followed up with the fond belief that the plural is Pokemen.
 * Well you know, the whole point of Pokémon is to control spirits from the Dark Realm.
 * The Italian Mickey Mouse Magazine published a Pokémon article naming everyone with French names.
 * Countless publications in 1999 through 2000 seemed to think Marill was a new evolved form of Pikachu named "Pikablu". Then again, so did a lot of fans.
 * The name "Pikablu" also appeared in the Topps trading cards for the movie. One example includes Pojo's Pokémon magazine, which continued to refer to Marill and anything to do with Marill (cards, dolls, etc) as Pikablu, up to and after the blue mouse-ball's actual name was revealed and Pokémon Gold and Silver were localized. It wasn't until a little while afterwards that Pikablu was synced as Marill.
 * An issue of Gamepro Magazine contained an accurate yet not fully informative article about the glitch Pokémon Missingno., accompanied by an image of Togepi (with the caption "Missingno. is one Pokémon you don't want to catch", which also isn't entirely accurate).
 * An Italian electronic encyclopedia says that Pokémon are "64 horrid bug-dinosaur hybrids". Even the number is off, since the first games had 151 (with all but one obtainable through normal gameplay, provided one does a lot of trading, including trading between versions).
 * A Cracked article listing 9 insensitive depictions of 9/11 in media noted Pokémon Black and White's Route 4 roughly correlating to Ground Zero (upon lining up Unova with New York) as #5. So far, so good (albeit unintentional on Game Freak's part)... it then proceeds to claim that the desert was formed by a falling meteorite containing the legendary Pokémon Kyurem. Kyurem did crash-land in a meteorite, but the geographical anomaly formed in the process was the Giant Chasm, which is nowhere near Route 4. Less egregiously, the article gives Kyurem's height as 9'11" - its actual height is the admittedly extremely close 9'10", although Pokémon are designed first in meters and then converted to feet for the English release.
 * Then there's this hilarious bit of reporting on Poke Park Wii. Suffice it to say only Piplup is identified correctly.
 * Several fans (and even one commercial when it was released) for some reason refer to Sonic Adventure 2 Battle as "Sonic Adventure Battle 2". Of course, there was no "Sonic Adventure Battle 1", and SA2B is actually a Gamecube remake of Sonic Adventure 2 for Dreamcast. The "Battle" refers to the slight improvements made to the two-player mode of the game.
 * Gameplay footage on G4 which labeled the game as "Sonic Battle", which isn't helped by the fact that there actually is a game (for Game Boy Advance) called Sonic Battle.
 * Speaking of the actual game titled Sonic Battle, X-Play made an error on their review of it, where Rouge the Bat was referred to as "Rogue the Bat".
 * The word "Chao" from the Sonic the Hedgehog series works this way too (pronounced 'chow'), so it's annoying when people try to make it plural by adding an "s" on the end, making it a totally different word.
 * Not to mention that the same game introduced a character named Chaos (pronounced 'kay-os'), who is also directly related to the chao, which causes even more confusion!
 * At least in Brazil, most times Sonic is brought in on any kind of media, he's referred as a porcupine, not as a hedgehog. Translating "hedgehog" correctly should not be that difficult.
 * A review of The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap in a reputable British newspaper claimed that Link must rescue a petrified Princess... Peach.
 * The easiest test to see if someone is a gamer or not: Do they refer to the green-hatted, sword-wielding protagonist as Zelda?
 * Dear game journalists: Ocarina of Time /MajorasMask Link was the only Hero of Time. The other Links either have different titles or no in-game title at all. And he's not an elf, dammit.
 * Cracked.com actually made one of the most common errors of the criticisms at Final Fantasy X. In one article, they say "Get some better voice actors", and provide an example. Problem? The example was taken out of context; and was one of the most Mis Blamed things ever. The "Laughing scene". Anyone who had been playing the game at that point (or even read the script) and not having just taken the scene out of context would have known that Tidus and Yuna did the fake laughing on purpose. Not only do Auron, Lulu, and Wakka stare at the two with an odd look on their faces, but Wakka even says, "We thought you had gone crazy!" afterwords. What the journalists didn't seem to realize was that the laughing scene sounds just as weird in Japanese, as well.
 * Another article shows the gunblade as one of fiction's weapons that wouldn't work in real life. While good arguments could be made about it anyway, the article treats it as a gun with a blade, as in, something that shoots bullets at a distance, while in the game it's simply a blade with a trigger that causes a small explosion, increasing the damage you deal with your regular, melee attack. Also, note that the concept actually exists, although it's antiquated and differs notably.
 * There was a newspaper article about how "Sega's mascot Mario" was more recognizable than Mickey Mouse. If he's so recognizable, how do they not know what company he's from?
 * A magazine was trying to establish a link between the shootings at Columbine and video games. They used an interview with a survivor's family, while the survivor was playing the video game Diablo... which was described as "just shooting" and was punctuated by the survivor's character being blown up.
 * For those not familiar with Diablo, the only shooting is with a bow, and most of the time, your weapon is a sword or other melee weapon.
 * British teenage science magazine Flipside ran a small article on Metal Gear Solid 4 Guns of the Patriots: Guns of the Patriots, listing a handful of returning characters as being 'Solid Snake, Roy Campbell, and Quinton Flynn'. The latter is the name of the voice actor for one of the characters.
 * The BBC once did a report on Halo 3, and used footage from Killzone 2.
 * It's not unheard of for written articles or players talking about the series to put an "and" in the middle of "Master Chief," giving it the connotation that it's not one term and he is thus extra-badass for being both master and chief of something. In reality, "Master Chief" is short for the naval rank of "Master Chief Petty Officer," which is, indeed, his rank.
 * All of which could've been averted by just calling him a Sergeant Major like every other Space Marine, his friend Avery J. Johnson included (both MCPO and SgtMaj are E-9s, in the US military). But no, they had to be different—apparently Spartans are something like Navy SEALs.
 * The "pretty cool guy" meme does exactly this, with Halo  being the original.
 * A PC Gamer review of the Half-Life 2 mod MINERVA: Metastasis reported that it was created by a "team." Another review by PC Zone stated that "even Valve [the creators of the Half-Life series] should doff their caps and might want to take notes." Adam Foster, who singlehandedly created Minerva (aside from the music, which was by Joseph Toscano) actively sought out Valve's help in creating the last chapter, and got feedback on how to improve what he'd done so far (he'd been going to a modders' conference, which had gotten cancelled).
 * The official German Playstation Magazine reported that Final Fantasy IX was a continuation with a new character named Skylar Goodsworth. Turns out they were tricked by a Fan Fiction on what was then a rather obscure site, which not only lacked any form of professionalism, but came from a website hosted by Beepworld.
 * An early preview of Final Fantasy IX stated that it was to be a remake of the first game in the series. A writer clearly unfamiliar with Roman numerals claimed that Square had started development on "Final Fantasy 1 X".
 * Over Christmas 2003, a reporter on CNBC told the viewers, that the hit game for that season was "Final Fantasy times two"... (FF X-2, a sequel to FF X, ergo, tenth installment.)
 * A while back, the Offical Nintendo Magazine in the UK described one of the Final Fantasy games as being in the top 150 of games. No problem? Well, they say it's Final Fantasy III and it's getting a DS remake, but the picture beside it is unmistakeably Kefka. The magazine apparently got Japan's Final Fantasy III (which actually got a DS remake) and North America's Final Fantasy III (which was Final Fantasy VI) confused.
 * Understandable, considering Final Fantasy VII was the first main series Final Fantasy game released in the UK. The NES and SNES games are all examples of No Export for You, except for Mystic Quest.
 * Following Manhunt 2 being banned in the UK, an article ran in a local newspaper accompanied by a screenshot from Resident Evil 4.
 * The Fox News Mass Effect fiasco. Turns out that Cooper Lawrence, their invited speaker and a self-help author, hadn't even seen the game, and based her entire rant about the game's numerous, hardcore sex scenes and obsession with objectifying women on somebody in the studio saying it was "like pornography". Seriously, that comment was her entire exposure to the game. She finally apologised after watching someone play the game for two and a half hours, and after hundreds of scathing reviews of her latest book were posted on Amazon by gamers who had, of course, never read it.
 * The Fox News Mass Effect fiasco also came on the heels of an article by conservative columnist Kevin McCullough that described the game's "virtual orgasmic rape." Uh... you go with that.
 * Another pundit on the same show referred to it as "Luke Skywalker meets Debbie Does Dallas."
 * The best part of all this: Jack Thompson said there was nothing to it. Jack effin' Thompson.
 * An infamous video on YouTube shows Brazilian evangelist Josue Yrion demonizing popular games of the time. His most infamous quotes: "The most-- one of the most dirty and perverse games Nintendo ever created"-Yrion on the game that helped create the ESRB "Resident Eevil. The evil, resides in you (this is a nintendo). Evil possesses you. You are a slave of evil, you are martirized by evil, you serve evil and live on evil". "Doom Namba Too. Doom Número Dosssss. You can see the devil, Hell, souls going in. [Later he shows a magazine with the quote 'So, how's Hell?'] Look at what it says here: How. To go. To Hell!"
 * Popular Science once had a short article on upcoming first person shooter games that showed a screenshot that was said to be from Doom 3. The problem? Not only was the screenshot from Quake III Arena, but Doom 3 hadn't even been announced yet.
 * A fantastic example was created by English newspaper The Daily Mail, who wrote an article about CG images of Washington DC destroyed, claiming they were made by terrorists as a "terrifying vision". The reality? The images were promo shots for Fallout 3.
 * A videogame advert was banned for containing the sexually suggestive tagline: "Get your worm out for the birds." The game being advertised, according to the newscasters, was the curiously named Earthworm Joe.
 * Gamepro printed a guide to unlocking the secret characters in Super Smash Bros Brawl. In it, they made several glaring errors, such as calling Sheik Samus (funny, considering what the two have in common), and printing what they apparently thought was a picture of Marth, except it was a picture of Geoffrey, a totally unrelated Fire Emblem character who not only does not exist in the same universe as Marth, but fights with a lance instead of a sword, and on horseback. Apparently, everybody with blue hair is the same person.
 * Speaking of Brawl, the woman who sang the part of Ashley in the game's rendition of "Ashley's Theme" stated on her blog that she was chosen to do a song for the upcoming game, "Super Mario Bros. Smash".
 * In a preview for the original Smash Bros., IGN referred to Captain Falcon as "Blue Falcon," mistaking the name of his F-Zero vehicle for his name.
 * In an interview, even his voice actor in GX (the man who voiced Kalas in Baten Kaitos) called the character he voiced "Blue Falcon".
 * Even funnier if you know the original Blue Falcon.
 * They also once claimed that Bowser was a playable character in Mario Party 2 in their preview.
 * In a preview article for Resident Evil 5, GamePro stated that the story takes place ten years after Resident Evil 4, when it's actually set ten years after the first three games and the prequel Resident Evil Zero.
 * In this press release for Nicktoons Nitro (somewhat related to the Nicktoons Unite! series) they refer to one of the characters as "Avatar", even though that's the title of the character, not his actual name.
 * A St. Louis judge reviewed footage from four videogames to determine whether they (and, by extension, all games) were protected under First Amendment rights. Among the games he evaluated: "Mortal Combat" and, hilariously, "The Resident of Evil Creek."
 * A news report on video game violence in late 2000 pronounced the title Deus Ex as "Deuce Ecks" and said that it was controversial because it allows the player to become the killer. First of all, why choose Deus Ex of all games to epitomize video game violence? Secondly, the report acted like murdering civilians was the whole point and completely ignored the Wide Open Sandbox format of the game, including the moral choices the player can make with varying consequences.
 * The German report "Frontal 21" is quite famous for this. In "Videogemetzel im Kinderzimmer" (video slaughter in the nursery), "Gewalt ohne Grenzen" (violence without borders) and "Töten am Bildschirm" (killing at the screen), they said, between other things, that you can chop off the arms of grannies in Grand Theft Auto and described World of Warcraft as a WW 2-type shooter. That games in Germany are heavely censored (for example: no blood and no chopped-off parts in GTA) did not stop them: They simply displayed the uncensored original versions which are not legal in Germany, at least not for anyone below the age of 18. This all gets worse if you realise that this was hosted on a paid-through-taxes publicly owned television station, ZDF, which has a governmental duty to educate. Well, at least on paper.
 * They also described the GTA:San Andreas' Hot Coffee mod with the words "Like this game: whoever rapes the most women wins", later arguing on a message board that the player's ability to choose positions was where the rape part came in.
 * A report about violence in videogames by the german show Focus TV also showed what was going on at a LAN party. They first tried to convince the public that the freeware shooter "Cube" was outlawed in Germany and then went on to say that now the participants of the LAN had switched to Warcraft 3, which they described as "Ballern bis die Aliens kommen!" ("Shoot until the aliens come", paraphrasing the german saying " X tun bis der Arzt kommt" ("Do X (substitute X for whatever activity you like) until the doctor arrives!", an equivalent to "Party hard!"). The kicker? The footage shown was from "Starcraft - Brood War". Then they had an interview with the CEO at Cry Tek, stating that this was the developer responsible for 90% of the violent games published (or rather NOT PUBLISHED) in Germany. Even when all the games they had released at the time were "Far Cry" and "Crysis".
 * The german media at that time really enjoyed purposefully giving out false claims about video games. The Bild-Zeitung (a newspaper about as "good" as "The Sun") showed a picture taken out of the uncut version of Soldier Of Fortune 2 (which is outlawed in Germany, by the way, and our version has all the blood and gore removed and the enemies replaced for robots) taking heavy advantage of the damage system (Ludicrous Gibs) and said that it was a screenshot of Counter-Strike 2. This game doesn't even exist.
 * Nintendo Power has been known to misidentify the species of Krystal from Star Fox more than once. In one issue, they called her a cat (using this as a device to say she should've ditched Fox and hooked up with Panther by the end of Assault), and another claimed she was a ferret.
 * The same magazine also erroneously claimed in a Soulcalibur II article that Yoshimitsu is a ghost.
 * He's actually a ninja with a prosthetic arm who talks (and poses) like a demon-possessed Kabuki actor and frequently utters Mahayana Buddhist slogans like "Namu Amida Butsu" and "Your life is in vain." A ghost would be much more normal than Yoshimitsu.
 * One of their writers also seems convinced that Sonic the Hedgehog's buddy Tails is a mutant squirrel, even after someone wrote in to tell him that he's a fox. It's mainly just a Running Gag he uses to get a rise out of the fans.
 * There was a German Nintendo magazine that was available to fans (in the beginning, then not, then again) free-of-charge. When doing Mega Man X they wrote about "Die hübsche Reploidin Zero" (the beautiful female reploid Zero) helping X. Zero is male. Booblights and long blonde hair notwithstanding.
 * Not even Disney Adventures, the official magazine for the Walt Disney Company, was any good on their review of Kingdom Hearts, a game developed by, y'know, Disney and Square. Their blurb states that the Disney villains want to change the endings of their stories so the bad guys win. Already done in Disney Villains' Revenge, but firstly, that's not the premise, and second, the story's even deeper and darker than how they described.
 * According to this Die Zeit article, Grand Theft Auto is a Racing Game. Not entirely untrue, however, though most of the racing missions in the series tend to be optional and extremely frustrating.
 * Another GTA example: the Quebec newspaper 24 Heures claims that GTA: Chinatown Wars is focused on "the Asian gang" (The Triad) from Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City... Even if they meant Liberty City Stories, CW is part of the Grand Theft Auto IV era, which is as unrelated as possible (plotwise, anyways) to the Grand Theft Auto III era (of which LCS is a part of; and for the record, the Triad did appear briefly in GTAIV.). They also managed to switch around the text caption for the Resident Evil 5 and Final Fantasy XIII screenshots on the same article as said goof.
 * Also GTA: an article from a British paper claimed that the goal of the game was 'to kill as many people as possible'. Any player can tell you that doing so is actually a detriment to the actual goals.
 * Animal Crossing players (and just about everyone else), find yourself something big and solid for your head before watching the biggest, most spectaculary epic case of Critical Research Failure.
 * For those not familiar with the game, the turtle character that is supposedly a potential child molester is Tortimer, an NPC. Yes, in Animal Crossing, the game itself tries to seduce your children into sending it pictures of themselves.
 * In addition, interacting with other players over the internet is only possible by swapping friend codes with that particular player; this is not World of Warcraft.
 * Not that it matters in some jurisdictions -- according to a spokesman for the Mid-Missouri Internet Crimes Task Force,, just being an adult and owning Animal Crossing is apparently prima facie evidence of being a pedophile.
 * Which is even more absurd as the (at least the German) advertising for the game shows a mid-twenty woman playing the game.
 * For those who can't get the video in the original link to load, here's another video.
 * A Fox affiliate made a news report warning parents to look out for potential pedophilic activity on the Nintendo DS, but of course there's the daunting task of explaining how the DS actually works. Here's a video of the important bits edited into a (misinformative) Nintendo DS commercial.
 * This article probably sums up the major problems pertaining to video games quite well.
 * The Limbaugh Letter rails against Burnout Paradise for its hardline stance on global warming. Its what?
 * A TV report on Kwari, an MMO FPS in which you would actually earn real money for frags (at the cost of paying for ammunition via microtransactions) and other stuff. Said TV report used Crysis footage.
 * This article for Kirbys Return to Dream Land describes Kirby as "Everyone's favorite ghost".
 * This British newspaper article talks about Metal Gear Solid Rising starring Raiden, "the baddie from MGS2". He may have been unpopular with the fanbase but that's surely taking it a little far...
 * One would expect mainstream journalists to make this sort of mistake, when online gamestores do it the results can be hilarious. Some of them only Warhammer players will spot, but others are rather more blatant. They've listed player characters as enemies and NPCs, they've got place names wrong, called an Orc a troll and hilariously, called a Dwarf an Elf.
 * Online stores selling "Knights of the Old Republic" claim that you play as freedom fighters fighting the "last war" between the Sith and the Jedi.
 * "Nintendo Wii is a popular game".
 * eh kills Haloes and doesn't afraid of anything?
 * Count the number of mass medias who claim Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 to be a terrorism simulator just from taking the Wham Level "No Russian" out of context.
 * Most notable though, is the infamous Fox News Channel coverage. You'd think they'd learned a good lesson by now, did you? Not this time.
 * In the same fashion, fresh and new case here people: another anti-gaming segment on Alan Titchmarsh show (hit the link for more details). You can see some very interesting claims such as:
 * "Video games are not rated" - Apparently missing both relevant ratings boards.
 * "increased levels of depression and low self-esteem were linked to playing violent video games" - Erm... no, where did the Iowa State Uni give that conclusion?
 * Parodied by Loading Ready Run in this video.
 * According to the study "The Mural as Graffiti Deterrence", "All Your Base Are Belong To Us" is a "name of a Korean computer game popular in the 1980s". (Zero Wing was released in late 1989, so even the time period is wrong.)
 * The "Grog XD" report. Some dim-witted journalists found the famous "grog recipe" from The Secret of Monkey Island on Facebook and presented it as an example of "evil harmful alcoholic recipes available on the interwebs, that teenagers could drink before going out to dance!". They didn't realize it was tongue-in-cheek, nor noticed "XD" is an emoticon.
 * Later on, a vending machine with "Grog XD" showed up in the finale of Tales of Monkey Island, which for many was a Crowning Moment of Funny.
 * President of Venezuela Hugo Chavez has said on his radio show that "Those games they call 'PlayStation' are poison. Some games teach you to kill. They once put my face on a game, 'you've got to find Chavez to kill him.'" No mainstream games exist that feature Hugo Chavez's likeness.
 * There was a very egregiously innacurate documentary about video games on the Discovery Channel once (this was in Poland, so maybe it was localisation problems). The documentary stated for example that Nintendo systems were never ever released in Europe, that Nintendo and Mario went dead, forgotten and extinct just when the PlayStation was released (despite showing GameCube and Wii footage, consoles which came out years after the original PlayStation), that Grand Theft Auto III was the first GTA game, that Microsoft began its console gaming business with a gaming console called "Xbox Live", and such.
 * This 'What if video games were real' sketch features a joke based on Metal Gear Solid, in which Snake is instructed to "Infiltrate Otacon's new base". For those not versed on the MGS series, Otacon is pretty much the only character who is always on the same side as the player. Nor has he ever had a base.
 * For that matter, the joke is that hiding using a cardboard box is fairly ridiculous, and so the guard responds appropriately and shoots Snake. The joke falls flat due to this being how guards already react in the game. They even recognize boxes in inappropriate settings (a random box out in the jungle for instance.)
 * The early-morning show on the Midwest Radio station in the UK is rife with this, usually whenever the bumbling DJ presenting the show presents listeners with a game-related competition. During one such competition, in which one lucky listener could win a copy of Super Mario Galaxy 2, the question was "What occupation does Mario have?" the answer of course being "Plumber". When the answer was revealed, the DJ and his co-presenter claimed that you could tell that Mario was a plumber because "he carries a spanner (aka a wrench, to those across The Pond) around with him in the games". Um... no he doesn't (and most people who have never touched a Mario game in their entire life probably know this!).
 * In another instance, during a competition to win a copy of Mass Effect 2, the same DJ referred to the game - constantly, and presumably never realising his mistake and/or not having any of his colleagues point it out to him (either that, or he did realise and just hoped that no-one would notice) - as "Mass 2 Effect".
 * Although it's not the focus, an article about 1988, the last time the University of Florida lost three straight games, came out with this gem: "Nintendo released Tecmo Bowl." Putting aside the fact that the arcade version was released in 1987 and the NES version was released in 1989, most actual experts agree that it was Tecmo that released Tecmo Bowl.
 * This Fox News article states that Infiniminer was made by Markus Persson (Notch) as a prototype to Minecraft. Infiniminer was actually made by Zachtronics Industries; Notch only drew inspiration from it.
 * CBS reports on the recent Sega Pass hack incident: "Sega Genesis hacked!" Of course, the console doesn't have anything to do with the incident, and hasn't even been in production since 1997!
 * Public network France 2 gives us this helpful report on the perils of "meuporg" addiction.

Anchor: But how do you spell it?

Reporter: We spell it M-M-M-P-O-R-P-G."


 * When Rule of Rose was released in Italy, people started talking about it everywhere as a game where little girls bury alive other little girls to win. The main character is not a little girl, the bad guys are.
 * Ofcourse there was also outrage over the assumption that the player would be murdering children in the game, derived from the fact that the villains are indeed children. While child deaths occur in the game, they all happen off-screen, and the player isn't responsible for a single one of them. Incidentally, it's also the player character who gets (briefly) sealed in a coffin -- she's the victim, not the instigator.
 * And when the rumour spread to the UK people began assuming that the game promoted pedophilia, even leading to a criminal investigation in Poland. While the infamous trailer shows some disturbing, sexualized implications, their whole point is to be disturbing, and none are present in the game itself. The game opaquely hints at sexual abuse of a 16-year old girl, but it's played for pure horror.
 * In the Official US Play Station Magazine, they printed a picture of the main character from Digital Devil Saga 2 over a fan review of Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne.
 * At the time of its release, it was not uncommon to read about a game called "Jack and Dexter". There were even video game stores that carried it under that title. And it still happens: this video game blog for example uses the erroneous names. Twice. Likewise, there is a good number of reviews to be found on YouTube that consistently refer to Jak as Jax.
 * The author of this article on Dungeons of Dredmor made two simple mistakes. She assumed that all fantasy RPGs are also MMORPGs, and she also believed the flavor text in a Roguelike. The 'secret vegan cults' mentioned in the skill selection screen don't actually appear in the game, which is single player only.
 * This article about Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine. It caused quite a lot of internet backlash.
 * There's also quite a lengthy update which acknowledges the writer knows little about 40k, but also mentions he was referring mainly to gameplay rather than setting, which is more justifiable.
 * A while back, one of The Daily Telegraph's weekend magazines had an issue with the main article being about cosplay. One of the photos accompanying said article was of a cosplayer dressed as Genesis, with the caption listing him as being from Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Call.