The Most Dangerous Video Game: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

{{quote|''[[You Fool!|You fools!]]'' Destroyer of Worlds ''will kill us all!''|Skips, ''[[Regular Show]]''}}

Lurking in the realm of [[Urban Legends]] as well as that of out-and-out fiction, the most dangerous video game occasionally finds its way into [[Real Life]], in the form of outcries from concerned citizens and [[Moral Watchdogs]] who claim that real video games incite violence, antisocial behavior, and other ills on those who play them. Be that as it may, most of these theories are of the "fringe" variety.

 

 

{{examples}}

* The virtual-reality game ''Greed Island'' in ''[[Hunter X Hunter]]'' really ''physically transports players to a real gameworld'' (a small, uncharted island) and only lets the player leave at certain [[Save Point]]s... which means you can be trapped in the game if you can't get that [[Last Lousy Point]], and if you die you're really dead.

* The titular game in ''[[Angel Sanctuary]]'' allows an angel to steal the body of the player.

 

== [[Comics]] ==

== [[Urban Legends]] ==

* ''[[Polybius]]'', an (entirely fictional) arcade game of American youth and urban lore that's become ubiquitous thanks to the Internet. The game, so the story goes, is a ''[[Tempest (video game)|Tempest]]'' knock-off that appeared in Portland arcades in 1981. The children who played it suffered from all three of the symptoms detailed above before [[Driven to Suicide|killing themselves]] in the middle of the night. The game disappeared shortly afterward, as suddenly as it had come - in some tellings, wheeled away by mysterious [[The Men in Black|men in black]]. Someone actually decided to make a [[Defictionalization|Polybius game]], purposely simulating elements found in the mythology (subliminal messages, supernatural things, and so on). Of course, they can be toggled on and off. [http://www.sinnesloschen.com/1.php See it here].

 

== [[Video Games]] ==

 

== [[Web Original]] ==

** That site now redirects to the forum for the 3rd arc of the BEN Drowned ARG. Right now, you'll have to view that story [http://inuscreepystuff.blogspot.com/2010/09/majora.html here].

** There's also a story about a hacked ''[http://tinycartridge.com/post/866743831/super-creepy-pokemon-hack Pokemon Black]'' (not the official ''Pokemon Black'' version for DS, though).

*** In both of these, the cause isn't explicitly supernatural. Indeed, both are simply about somebody finding what is most likely a morbid ROM hack on a bootleg cart. The games in question are hacked into chilling and even depressing stories about death. Pokemon Black {{spoiler|has you kill Pokemon and their trainers with Ghost until there's nobody left, then Ghost kills you}}. Lost Silver {{spoiler|has Gold [[Dying Dream|coming to terms with his own death]] at what could be years after the fact.}} One chill comes from just who would have the knowledge to do all this, then distribute them as bootleg carts instead of posting them on the internet. The [[Fridge Horror]] comes in when you realize that hacking games to the extent shown in the stories and writing them onto cartridges only became possible fairly recently, with the cartridges featured in the stories apparently being from the first gen years.

*** Note that in both these stories, the players aren't actually in any danger, so these might be considered extremely mild versions of this trope.

** There's also the [http://pastebin.com/f71e6728f Lavender Town Syndrome] story, which has plain old ''Pokemon Red and Green/Blue'' being a dangerous video game, and talking about how various things (Lavender Town's music, fake stuff supposedly from the tower and haunted video games) led to mass suicide. There are actually two stories tied to this one, one haunted and one having various in-game stuff causing illness and death.

* Stories of haunted / evil video games are a fairly common type of Internet meme. Games from ''[[Super Mario 64]]'' to ''[[Wolfenstein (2009 video game)|Wolfenstein]]'' and ''[[Sonic the Hedgehog]]'' have gotten this treatment.

* Parodied, to great effect, by [[JonTron]] in his "review" of ''[[Final Fantasy XIII]]''.