Oldest game or console rumor(s) you remember

[shin kai]

There's a few that I remember at least being spread around at school right when I was in elementary school and Pokemon was new to the States. The most obvious being the truck rumor with Mew underneath or catching Mewtwo with a Pokeball with DOWN+B (boy the number of times I fell for that one)

A few years later I remeber news about PSONE (the slim redesign) and because I didn't keep up with Sony then, I heard from someone that PSONE didn't require a modchip to play burned games.

When rumors of PS2 came out, I remeber stuff like the ability to load a DVD and watch it while waiting for the game to load or expecting Toy Story quality animation from this powerful hunk of a system (though now, the watching DVD thing while loading a game sounded ridiculous now). I remember hearing that it could even make the graphics of PS1 games better (as a kid, you didn't really understand that stuff wasn't true you just went along with it). I remember seeing footage of PS2 gameplay and thinking "Wow, how can graphics get any better than this?" but this was way before news of XBOX or GC came out.

I saw a contest once for Fruit by the Foot once and one of the prizes was Game Boy Color but on the screen, they'd edited it so that you saw the peace sign Mario does in Mario 64. This led me to believe that a Game Boy capable of N64 games but in the form of GBC was happenining. And that was before news of GBA ever happened.

Lastly, I remember rumors of when PS3 was being prototyped and it was about 6-8 PS2's hooked up for crazy power. Depending on when you heard it, kids loved to exaggerate it.

[LeftyGuitar]

I remember all those old rumors. Not having the internet, you never knew what was true and what wasn't. I remember trying to do the mew trick, but it did nothing. The internet has made it easy to disgunish what's fact and what's ficition, you just gotta go through multiple sources to confirm. Of course questioning things also helps. Though that's not to say rumors are entirley bad, they can build up hype for a game.

[Iamerror]

Remember the one about Luigi appearing in Super Mario 64? Has anyone heard the rumor about the Polyibus game? This rumor goes back to the early 80's. Supposedly this game was created by the government, and was designed to "brainwash" kids. It was only distributed to the pacific northwest(Oregon or Washington). People claimed that men in black collected data, not coins from the machines. You guys should look it up, it's a crazy rumor. The weirdest part of this rumor is that there is no evidence this game existed. That's the oldest rumor I know.

[camb702]

Toy Story quality animation from this powerful hunk of a system...

Off topic but it was actually Microsoft's marketing department for whom we can attribute that particular stigma re: XBOX. The press merely latched onto it re: PS2. Meh.

Lastly, I remember rumors of when PS3 was being prototyped and it was about 6-8 PS2's hooked up for crazy power.

That's a lot of duct tape!

Me? I can't remember anything of significance. Maybe the fake Akuma unlockable in Resident Evil 2?

Start the game for the 7th time and enter your name as AKUMA on the lab...

Never again.

[garrendesares]

pikablue.... nugh said

[LeftyGuitar]

Remember the one about Luigi appearing in Super Mario 64? Has anyone heard the rumor about the Polyibus game? This rumor goes back to the early 80's. Supposedly this game was created by the government, and was designed to "brainwash" kids. It was only distributed to the pacific northwest(Oregon or Washington). People claimed that men in black collected data, not coins from the machines. You guys should look it up, it's a crazy rumor. The weirdest part of this rumor is that there is no evidence this game existed. That's the oldest rumor I know.

I remember reading about that on wikipedia. I live in WA, and have never heard of or seen any such game.

[Elin]

The biggest one for me as a child was Hidden Palace Zone in Sonic 2. Of course that one was grounded in reality since it was a zone that is mostly complete in betas, and you can even listen to its music and access an extremely glitched up version of it in the retail version, but after a magazine here did a little bit on it in one of their issues, I remember all sorts of rumours in school about what it was and ways to make it actually work properly.

[foggy_han]

Well, I had a somewhat big block of text nearly ready...
... and then my PC sudenly crashed for some reason.
So, to whoever reads this post, be glad that such thing happened.

I remember all those old rumors. Not having the internet, you never knew what was true and what wasn't. I remember trying to do the mew trick, but it did nothing.

I remember in my 7th grade many pokemon red/blue gamers talking a lot about Missingno, saying that is
how you catch Mew, and I did not believe them. Then I tried that thing to clone items and I was kinda
amazed with that. ... still no Mew though. ^^'
But thinking about pokemon, there sure were a lot of rumours in those earlier games, especially about Mew.

... catching Mewtwo with a Pokeball with DOWN+B (boy the number of times I fell for that one)

Well, I was tricked too, but it was not for Mewtwo. They told me it was for any legendary,
or any pokemon (I do not recall it well) but I am pretty sure I did that with a Zapdos once...

The biggest one for me as a child was Hidden Palace Zone in Sonic 2. Of course that one was grounded in reality since it was a zone that is mostly complete in betas, and you can even listen to its music and access an extremely glitched up version of it in the retail version, but after a magazine here did a little bit on it in one of their issues, I remember all sorts of rumours in school about what it was and ways to make it actually work properly.

In my country I do not remember seeing magazines about games (back then) but I do remember that, after I got my fourth Mega Drive game,
(Genesis... you know. ^^') Sonic & Knuckles (which I still love ) when Knuckles was something new, most of the boys (I don't recall any girl
commenting about that specific subject, but it was the 3rd grade, and fortunately, we were a group with harmony between girls/boys and we
just got along very well with each other... I miss that group... )

And... I lost myself...

So, most of the boys were saying that Knuckles was this funny little creature:



And I remember insisting many times that he was an Echidna, and they would go like "what's that"?
So I usually explained (since very little I always loved shuffling through animal encyclopedias ^^)
with much details as possible, that Echidnas were mammals from Australia that had spikes in their
backs, just like Hedgehogs, eat ants and (incidentally) lay eggs. And they would go and laugh like
total looneys. ^^' I usually ended up smiling, although clearly "pissed" (if I may) because they
never really took me seriously. However, now that I am wondering about their point of view,
I really think it must have been hilarious, I mean... just read about Echidnas.
(Still, I guess my 3rd grade self would prefer to be listened to... )

But in the end, that wasn't really a rumour, right?

[badog1000]

I remember in my 7th grade many pokemon red/blue gamers talking a lot about Missingno, saying that is
how you catch Mew, and I did not believe them. Then I tried that thing to clone items and I was kinda
amazed with that. ... still no Mew though. ^^'
But thinking about pokemon, there sure were a lot of rumours in those earlier games, especially about Mew.

-I'm with shin kai- I heard that you had to trade a pokemon that knew cut to your game so you could keep the S.S. Anne from departing, then you had to come back later and SURF to the right of the entrance to the ship and use STRENGTH on a truck that was there. It would move revealing a hole that you fell down into and encountered Mew. Or you could catch "Pikablu" which was actually a leaked Marill picture? Does anyone remember that? lol Yeah. It didn't work. And I tried for a long time...

But the BIGGEST crazy rumor I heard somewhere, (i think from some kid at school) was that they were going to release a DOLPHIN system. It was an xbox, ps2, and gamecube all smashed together with just one disc tray that would play any game from any of the systems.
Haha looking back at that, It's crazy I even thought for a second it was true...

[brandonba]

the one rumor i heard was that if you burned a black cd-r that the psx would read it, tried it coarse it didnt work

[Stark]

For me the oldest rumour was that there was a secret character on mortal kombat called Ermac, and to play as him you had to tap the top of your snes with a 2 Pence piece. Think I read that in a gaming magazine, back when I didn't have the internet.

[rengoku349]

The oldest rumor I've heard besides the Pokemon ones is that Sonic and Tails would be unlockable characters in SSBM on the GCN. would've been cool, but of course never happened.

[ChalkTaster]

Off topic but it was actually Microsoft's marketing department for whom we can attribute that particular stigma re: XBOX. The press merely latched onto it re: PS2. Meh.
.

Sony claimed 'movie quality 3D graphics', the press changed that to 'Toy Story graphics'.
You can find references to it from 1998/1999. So the rumor dates back to that.


Microsoft actually used the phrase 'Toy Story quality', though.

[Kool Aid Man]

I remember a rumor about Samus appearing naked if you can beat Super Metroid under 1 hour.

[shin kai]

It's definitely refreshing to see some old rumors even I haven't seen before and read about them. Unlike in-game rumors where they tend to be always true (I'm thinking the Rumors option in conversations in FF: Tactics Advance when you talk with the cavern owner) there's lots of exaggeration going on with rumors around us.

If you guys haven't heard of it, I definitely suggest checking out gametrailers.com for their Pop-Fiction section. Think Mythbusters except for games, some new but mostly old.