Urban Legend of Zelda: Difference between revisions

[[File:urban-legend-of-zelda 6319.png|link=Super Mario 64|frame|A hidden clue! I think the inscription says, "L is real 2401". Or maybe "[[wikipedia:Paul is dead|Paul is dead, miss him, miss him]]".]]

 

 

Every popular game has a rumor around it that elevates into near urban legend, and perhaps due to an oversight or hanging plot thread it seems ''just'' [[Inferred Survival|plausible]]. It's not hard to believe them, since the games often have ''real'' secrets and glitches that are [[Reality Is Unrealistic|so bizarre that they sound made-up]] (such as the ''[[Sailor Moon]]'' and ''[[Star Wars]]'' parodies [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOxbkuD-JZI you can unlock] in ''[[Silent Hill]] 3'', or the fact that Iggy Koopa's fireballs in ''[[Super Mario World (video game)|Super Mario World]]'' will turn into glitchy blobs if you slide into them). Yet no matter how much evidence is eventually against it, the rumor just won't die.

 

 

Sometimes, the game's creators will include a character or a feature in the sequel because of these rumors. For instance, when a cameo appearance of Cut Man in ''[[Mega Man (video game)|Mega Man]] 7'' led to a rumor that he was in the game as a secret boss, Capcom added him as a secret boss in the Saturn port of ''8'' (he also appears as a secret boss in ''[[Mega Man X]] 8'', probably an [[Shout-Out|in-joke reference]] to this).

 

Compare [[Wild Mass Guessing]] and [[Gannon Banned]]. For more information, check out [http://www.gametrailers.com/game/pop-fiction/13123 Pop Fiction], an excellent Mythbusters-type show on this very subject.

{{examples}}

 

== The Legend Of Zelda ([[Trope Namer]]) ==

* ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time|The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time]]'' was caught by a rumor saying you could unlock the Triforce in the game, most likely caused by screenshots of the game in its early developmental stages which did in fact contain the Triforce. The final game did not contain the Triforce as an obtainable item, but that didn't stop people from looking for it anyway. These rumors were even backed up by photoshopped pictures of the "Temple of Light".

** A (comparatively) convincing theory involved learning a song called the "Overture of Sages" that allowed you to catch a glimpse of, but not actually obtain, the Triforce prior to pulling out the Master Sword. This was accompanied by (again, comparatively) convincing screenshots. Naturally, the person who revealed this declined to give certain details of how to learn the song. Learn that story [http://www.platypuscomix.net/websurfin/ariana.html here].

** The [[Dummied Out]] Unicorn Fountain was rumored to be accessed through an underwater door in Zora's Domain. A pathway ''does'' exist down there, but it just leads to an underwater dead-end with a black wall—and you don't just make a hard-to-get-to space like '''that''' for no reason...

** There was also the "El Puerco" rumor that circulated around [[GameFAQs]] for a while, involving a strange pig-like enemy that was said to have an ''extremely'' rare chance of appearing during the graveyard race against Dampe. General consensus now is that the initial "sighting", if not a complete fabrication, was the result of a player encountering a very rare, very odd glitch with the [[Re Dead]] enemy's model.

* What about the rumor of the ''Zelda'' movie? And that trailer was really realistic... {{spoiler|It was another famous April Fools prank.}}

* Perhaps the most insidious April Fools prank of them all: the realistic remake of ''[[The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker|The Wind Waker]]'' Electronic Gaming Monthly claimed was available with a Twilight Princess pre-order. The May issue included mocking letters from others who were fooled. Oops.

 

== Final Fantasy ==

* The death of {{spoiler|Aerith/Aeris}} in ''[[Final Fantasy VII]]'' shocked many players at first, so naturally a rumor started that she could be revived. This evolved into a more refined rumor that such a quest was left on the cutting room floor. The game's producers had categorically denied this, citing it as ruining the dramatic impact.

** One of the rumors regarding the resurrection of {{spoiler|Aerith/Aeris}} focused on the relatively-useless "Underwater" materia, which had no point in the Japanese version and only removed a time limit during an optional boss fight in the other releases. It was said that if the materia AP was maxed (something in itself that would take months of level grinding), you could travel underwater in the Forbidden City where {{spoiler|Aerith/Aeris}} bit it and bring her back to life. It turns out that maxing the AP of the materia just set it back to 0.

** It's also based heavily in Rinoa's private talk with Squall aboard the Ragnarok on disc 3 where she [[Not So Different|announces Ultimecia's goals as her own]]. While it's intended to be romantic, the way she carries on about making one moment last forever makes it easy to see where the rumor came from;

{{quote|''I don't want the future. I want the present to stand still. I just want to stay here with you.''}}

* There is a myth about ''[[Final Fantasy V]]'' involving a secret job class. When you ride on the submarine there is an underwater rock shaped like a human face; there are a variety of myths (beat the game, land a certain number of steps away from it etc.) that is involved in unlocking the Paladin class.

* It was popular for a time to claim that Shiva from ''Final Fantasy'' was named for a Celtic ice goddess, rather than the better-known Hindu deity. While this was untrue, there are vague similarities to the Hindu deity Shiva. Hindu deities are both male and female, and both the deity and Final Fantasy's Shiva have blue skin. (Although the former comes from ingesting poison, and the latter from connection with ice.) And the name was pretty obviously supposed to be "Shiver" anyway.

** If you use a [[Game Shark]] you can use a walk through walls cheat and go back there. It's a patch the height of your character and as wide as Bill's house with nothing in it.

* There's also the various myths about increasing your chance of a Pokémon being captured by [http://www.vgcats.com/super/?strip_id=8 mashing buttons] in a certain order or time. The fact that the official Nintendo website once confirmed this is probably to blame.

* Most (if not all) of these Pokegod rumors involved talking to various NPCs (some important, such as your Mom, Prof. Oak, and others just random) a certain number of times to get them to say something different.

** This was probably fueled by the fact that there was one situation where repeatedly talking to an NPC did something. (The gatekeeper outside the Safari Zone would let you in for free if you talked to him enough times.)

* Pokemon is also frequently subject to [[Creepypasta]], particularly original Red and Green versions. [http://www.rickey.org/?p=43703 Lavender Town]{{Dead link}} is frequently the subject of these stories.

** One of these stories was about [http://tinycartridge.com/post/866743831/super-creepy-pokemon-hack Pokemon Black] (not to be confused with one-half of ''[[Pokémon Black and White]]''), a rumor about either a hacked rom of Pokemon Blue/Red or an actual bootleg cartridge (which would also be a hack) with a black sticker on the front. Basically, you start out with a "ghost" Pokemon you can never switch out of your main party. It has the sprite of what all ghost Pokemon look like before you get the Silph Scope which allows you to properly see them. All other Pokemon are too afraid of your ghost to attack it. The ghost's only attack is a Curse which instantly knocks out almost all other Pokemon in one hit. The victimon's defeat cry is played in a distorted way. The ball that it was in disappears from your opponent's roster (unless you fought a wild mon). Once you win, you get the previously unavailable option to use Curse on your opponent directly instead of just his Pokemon. Your opponent disappears from the screen and never returns. Some versions of this story have a grave of him appearing in his place. Usually you can talk to anyone you have defeated. The game continues as normal until you beat the Elite Four. It then flashes forward to you as an old man alone in a town. You return to either your home where you first start the game or Professor Oak's lab who gave you the ghost in the first place. You then see the image of every mon and trainer you cursed. Then your once loyal ghost attacks you directly. All you can do is the struggle command which shaves off a little of your life and does no damage to the ghost. Once your HP hits 1 or 0 the mon Curses you. The screen goes black and will not change. If you turn the game back on you will find your save file erased.

== Super Mario ==

 

** ''Super Mario Bros.'' also had a supposed 'no death' trick by holding on the second controller's B button with your toe (or, presumably, with the help of someone else's toe. Or finger, for that matter), that one proved to be false also.

** Many people are convinced that something great will happen if you jump over a flagpole in ''Super Mario Bros.'' While this is possible to do in World 3-3 by using the scale lift at the end, there's nothing past the flagpole except featureless, infinitely repeating landscape. Then you just have to wait for the timer to kill Mario, because the [[Ratchet Scrolling]] won't let you go back.

** There was a rumor going around back in the late 1980s that if you beat the original ''Super Mario Bros.'' for NES twice in a row it would open up an option to play ''Super Mario Bros. 2''. Of the many rumors on this page, this one probably makes the least sense—if SMB2 had already been completed at that time, [[Revenue Enhancing Devices|why not just release it seperately]]?

*** What does happen when you beat it is that all 8 worlds repeat, with changes to the platforms and enemies to make everything harder. This fact probably led to the misunderstanding that rescuing the princess unlocks a whole new game.

* [[Super Mario World (video game)|Super Mario World]] has a real secret bonus world called the Star World accessed via a Star Road that paths from normal levels lead to once completed (generally after getting to an alternate goal and not the standard one). It contains several Star Roads itself that lead to various parts of the game's large world map... except for one hidden Star Road that instead leads to the even more secret [[Bragging Rights Reward|Special Zone]] that is accessed via the alternate goal of the last Star World level, which if completed will change the graphics from Summer to Autumn; a rumor persisted that if you did the Star World/Special Zone again you would get a Winter & Spring seasonal change respectfully.

** A SMW Game Hack/Patch DOES exists with graphic changes and ice-and-slippery snow everywhere where if you go through the Star Road it changes it back to normal game play, but sorry no spring-style dino islands.

** Fun fact: The game did, originally, contain a Purple Yoshi and a Brown Yoshi, during the beta phase. [[Dummied Out|They were switched out for some reason.]]

* Take any game where Luigi's not playable. There are rumors going around about how to unlock him in that game.

 

== Action-Adventure/Action/Adventure ==

** An ad in an American game magazine around the release of ''Tomb Raider 3'' for the game said something to the effect of "We've improved on everything you asked about... but sorry, still no nude code."

** Arguably the [[Ur Example]] of the Nude Code is the classic Australian magazine N64 Gamer. Then-deputy editor Narayan Pattison superimposed a topless picture of Elle Macpherson into a screenshot of ''[[GoldenEye 007 (1997 video game)|Golden Eye 1997]]'', with the caption "Write in and we may give you the nude code." The magazine received over 2000 responses from people asking for the nude code, and people were still asking for it over six months after the rumour was bluntly dispelled.

** Parodied by ''This Is Otakudom'', where they find a working nude code for ''[[Space Channel 5]]'', ("Dude, they have screen shots") but later realized that it's actually codes for Mario.

{{quote|'''Mario''': It'sa me! Mario!}}

* One persistent rumor on a few gaming sites said that jumping off of the Statue of Liberty 30 times in the game of ''[[Spider Man 2]]'' would let you play as Kermit the Frog. Sadly, this does not happen.

* Back in the C64 days there was a graphic adventure game named ''Castle of Terror'' which gained a reputation for being [[Nintendo Hard]] because it seemed to be impossible to kill Count Dracula at the end of the game. A gaming magazine publishing an account from a gamer who claimed to have been able to do it, but the gamer himself proved mysteriously uncontactable when attempts were made to verify his claims. Many years later the designers confessed the game was in fact [[Unwinnable by Design]] and it was impossible to kill Dracula.

 

== Beat 'Em Up/Fighting ==

** On the note of ''Street Fighter II'', a quite persistent rumor when the SNES port came out was that of a "Boss Code" that let you play as the four boss characters. Some felt this justified because there ''was'' a code that let both players use the same character in their ''Champion Edition'' colors, something not possible in the arcade version of ''World Warrior''; plus, the CPU (including the bosses) would always use their character's alternate color if the code was entered. There's no actual way to play as the bosses in the game short of using a game enhancer and replacing your character's sprite. They did became playable in ''Street Fighter II Turbo''.

** Theories abounded as to how to perform Ryu's "Red Hadoken" in ''Hyper Fighting''... Which was actually a random bug that was kept in the game. Then in ''Super Street Fighter II'', it was actually possible to deliberately perform a Red, fiery fireball...

* ''Electronic Gaming Monthly'', a veritable Urban Legend Of Zelda factory, claimed that ''[[Super Smash Bros.]]. Melee'' featured Sonic and Tails as unlockable characters, and gave a nearly (''very'' nearly) impossible method of unlocking them. Naturally, none of it was true, but not many gamers could find out for themselves before EGM confirmed that this method was actually their annual April Fool's Joke. To a lesser extent, someone online also said that Toad was unlockable. (The believability of the original rumor was enhanced by the fact that Sega had stopped producing its own game systems not long before, and the GameCube hosted the first Sonic game on a Nintendo system.) This rumor then moved to the game's sequel, ''[[Super Smash Bros.]]. Brawl'', and eventually proved to be true.

** [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcPyf8-uE4k This suggests] if you make Kirby suck up Mewtwo and then jump off a cliff, you'll get Mewthree. This version is adorable.

** Same with playing as Giant DK and Metal Mario in the original ''Super Smash Bros''., which were eventually acknowledged by the addition of Super Mushrooms and Metal Boxes in ''Melee''. If you use a Gameshark to play as either of them (or Master Hand, or any of the Fighting Polygon Team, for that matter), the game freezes at the end of the match, because none of those characters have an animation for the post-match "applause" screen. The same thing happens in ''Melee'' if you use the [[Debug Mode]] to play as any of its normally unplayable enemy characters (Giga Bowser, the Wire Frames and the Hands).

** When it was announced that there were non-Nintendo characters in ''Brawl'' (and were pretty much instantly identified as Sonic and Solid Snake), the rumors instantly started that there would be a third character from [[Capcom]] in the mix ([[Mega Man (video game)|Mega Man]] being the most popular guess). When the full roster was announced, with no Capcom characters, scuttlebutt was (and still is) that there was some sort of falling out between Nintendo and Capcom that led to the proposed Capcom entry getting left out.

*** [[The Other Wiki]] shot down ''almost-''legitimate screen shots of the full select screen (the picture of [[Star Fox (series)|Wolf]] was wrong, though Wolf really is in the game) shortly after the game was released in Japan... due to the fact that Bomberman wasn't on it. Seen [[wikipedia:Talk:Super Smash Bros. (series)/Archive 9#Japanse screen shot of Charcter Select|here.]]

** Let's not forget the rumor stating that Miyamoto (or maybe Sakurai) said on a radio program that Bowser Jr., Ridley and ''[[The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker|Wind Waker]]'' Link would join Brawl while Ice Climbers, Young Link and Game & Watch would be taken out. The Link part was true, but pretty much by coincidence.

** There are also persistent rumours that the otherwise useless Goldeen will use [[One Hit KO|Horn Drill]] under certain conditions.

** Goro however, could be legitimately unlocked for normal play in the Game Boy version. There is also a [[Department of Redundancy Department|glitch to (barely) control him in the SNES version through a glitch.]]

** The rumor that Sub-Zero could become a polar bear in ''Mortal Kombat 2'' was so persistent that the creators added in "Animality" transformations to the third installment. Care to guess what Sub-Zero turned into? {{spoiler|A polar bear.}}

*** Referenced in ''[[Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks]]'' (It was actually a requirement to progress in the Living Forest stage) and finally made into a real stage fatality in ''[[Mortal Kombat 9]]''.

** ''Mortal Kombat 2'' had a very well known rumor that you could knock people onto the hooks in the Dead Pool stage.

*** The beauty of the above 4 entries is that when they made Shaolin Monks, they took pretty much every widespread rumor that could be even remotely possible and made them true, so yes, you can fight Kano, feed Mooks to the trees in the Living Forest, knock them into the hooks in Dead Pool and fight Ermac as well. Subverted slightly in that they inserted a lot of even more fake rumors into the random "hints" the game gives you whenever you die, although those are far less likely to end up on this page.

** One they didn't insert was the common, highly juvenile belief in a secret character named Go-Nad. Or the similar hoax ''Computer And Video Games'' magazine put in one April issue regarding the second game, where they claimed one version contained Pedro, a Mexican brawler with a flammable anus.

** There was a long rash of rumors revolving around the SNES port of ''Mortal Kombat'', mostly about how to enter a blood code. The SNES was the more popular console at that time and most gamers only had one console, so a method of unlocking blood for SNES was the holy grail. Most of the rumored codes were nearly impossible, like entering a long string of buttons in some tiny time frame such as when Goro appears on the opening screens.

*** On the SNES version of MK, it actually was possible to use a Game Genie code to [[Palette Swap]] the "sweat" back into blood. However, there never was any way of restoring the original fatalities, since the necessary animation frames simply didn't exist in the ROM.

* Fighting games seem to attract these sorts of things. In ''[[Killer Instinct]]'', one of Orchid's finishing moves was flashing her opponent (though of course the player couldn't see anything). Reportedly, on one stage, if you positioned her in front of a mirror and performed the finisher, you could see her breasts. The developer's response? "I don't recall a mirror in that stage."

* There is a cheat that was in some early FAQs of the first ''[[Guilty Gear]]'' for the [[PlayStation]] that would unlock Justice, Testament and Baiken without having to beat the game all the way through. Turns out it really just increased the game's difficulty in Normal Mode.

* There was a rumor in Japan that if the player completes the Famicom version of ''[[Kung-Fu Master|Kung-Fu]]'' 24 times (the number equivalent to the letter "X", a reference to the Japanese title ''Spartan X''), the player will forced to fight Sylvia (the hero's girlfriend) as a [[Bonus Boss]]. It turns out the rumor was a started by a gag in a video game manga titled ''Famicom Rocky'', where the protagonist uncovers this secret after completing the game too many times.

 

== Driving Game ==

*** The official site for ''Diablo III'', specifically, the home page, has its own chat gem. After a massive thread on the Battle.net forums discussing whether clicking the gem a certain number of times would unlock the playable version of the gameplay demo seen when the game was released (started by a forum troll and helped by various random people confirming it), the matter was laid to rest when someone looked in the source code of the site, decompiled the flash that operated the chat gem, and determined that its only purpose was to change colors, changing the gem from "on" to "off".

*** This was directly referenced in the ''[[Warcraft]] III'' world editor, where there is a gem that says "gem activated/deactivated". When clicked multiple times, one of the characters will taunt you. It is functional, however: It makes it so that the units you spawn will say their "Ready" quote, and will do their death animation when you delete them.

 

* In early beta versions of ''[[Dungeons & Dragons]] Online: Stormreach'', there was a bug where using your "diplomacy" skill on a treasure chest caused it to give better loot. Although this bug was fixed well before the game went live, the rumor that using diplomacy on a chest gives better loot still remains, despite repeated debunkings by the game's developers on the official forums.

** ''[[Final Fantasy XI]]'' is a magnet for this. The game has a ton of dead end caves, background details, and sealed off portions of the world, which were placed to give possible expansion areas. The latter, in particular, draws a lot of rumors. Sealed off portions (presumably abandoned due to most of them being in the "old world") include the Mithra-only part of Kazham, the ship port in Norg, the Galka-only part of Bastok Mines, and the roped-off stairway in Tenshodo headquarters.

** There were also some rumors of classic ultimate weapons in the Final ''Fantasy'' series existing in ''[[Final Fantasy XI]]''. For example, the Ultima Weapon, the [[Infinity+1 Sword]] of the series, existed in the database of sites like Allakazam. Many claim that the weapons do actually exist in the game database, they just haven't appeared in the game yet.

 

== Shoot 'Em Up ==

* ''[[Star Control]] II'' had an extremely persistent myth of a cloaking device for the main flagship. Despite [[Word of God]] that such a device was not in the final game, screenshots of it were actually printed on the back cover of the game, and it wasn't until the source was released that it was confirmed to be absent. Likewise for the secret code that made the Pkunk Fury ship immortal.

** There was also the legendary Black Spathi Squadron, a splinter faction of the Spathi composed of brave warriors who fly Eluders painted jet black and fight bravely throughout the universe! They're not actually in the game, of course.

* In the past decade a legend surfaced of a game known simply as ''[[Polybius]]'' a mysterious arcade game that surfaced sometime in 1981 in a suburban Oregon neighborhood. Legend has it the game created [[Brown Note|adverse side effects]] including nausea, dizziness, even sleep disturbance and aversion to video games. Other claims surfaced that the side effects were more violent, selective amnesia, horrifying nightmares, suicidal tendencies and "the inability to become sad." The game was said to have vanished without a trace which has lead to speculation that the game was a secret government prototype created by the [[CIA]] and that shady [[The Men in Black|Men in Black]] agents would come to the arcades that housed the stations to collect information. The legend has been debunked as being simply a [[Game Breaking Bug|glitchy]] prototype of ''Tempest'' which was known to trigger mild reactions to those who were already photosensitive, but there are still those on YouTube who claim to possess authentic videos of gameplay, which are in actuality recreations of the rumors. The alleged game even made an appearance in [[The Simpsons]] after Bart enters an old arcade shop.

* Back in the Coin-Op days, there were rumors surrounding the old ''[[Missile Command]]'' game that the Pentagon kept track of high scorers, just in case.

 

== Simulation Games ==