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Video Game Urban Legends
Status: Urban legends
Yahoo! Games has an article about urban legends involving video games. Though half the legends they list are true. Here's a summary:Donkey Kong was a mistranslation of Monkey Kong.
False. Donkey Kong was the original title. "Donkey" was apparently meant to indicate stubborn stupidity. "Kong" was a reference to King Kong.
Saddam Hussein tried to build a supercomputer out of Playstation 2s.
False. The rumor was offered as an explanation for a shortage of Playstation 2s, but if an evil dictator did want to build a supercomputer, using game consoles would be a bad way to do it.
Sony first developed the Playstation for Nintendo.
True. Back in the late 1980s Nintendo and Sony were considering a partnership, but negotiations fell apart and the two went their separate ways.
Million of Atari games are buried in the New Mexico desert.
True. Atari buried millions of games it couldn't sell.
A video arcade game called Polybius was actually part of a military mind-control experiment.
False. I posted about the Polybius legend back in 2004.
A man died by playing video games nonstop.
True. Apparently this has happened more than once. Technically, they died of exhaustion.
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Categories: Technology, Urban Legends Posted by Alex on Tue Jan 29, 2008 |
Comments (8) |
| More from the Hoax Museum Archives: | |||
1) WRONG. "Donkey Kong" was originally named: "Donkey Dong", but was dropped for obvious translational challenges (see: "No-Va") 2)WRONG. Saddam Hussein did indeed try to build a supercomputer out of video games, but lost interest after they changed the name of his favorite game (see: "Donkey Dong") 3)WRONG. Millions of Atari Games are buried in my Toy Room From Hell, condemned to eternal untidy overflow (see: "Erector Set, changed from Erection Set") 4) WRONG. The video game used by the Military Conspiratorial Indoctrinators was named: "Blood-Spilling Combat Amazon Sexbots", but was released for public consumption as: "Daisy Dukey Kong", an obvious misnomer, because Kong was never as tall as Goszilla, but hey, we'll let it go. 5) WRONG. Noone has ever died while playing a damn video game. Now you'll say that pe opl sometim die when thy bl ugh argh ahhhhhhhhh...... glrk
Posted by Hairy Houdini on Tue Jan 29, 2008 at 11:18 PM
Actually, building a supercomputer out of Playstations is a fairly cheap way of getting one and not quite as mad as you make it sound Alex. It was done a few years ago actually.
See here for deets:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0DE3D91231F935A15756C0A9659C8B63
Posted by Octavo in South Africa on Wed Jan 30, 2008 at 01:57 AM
See here for deets:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0DE3D91231F935A15756C0A9659C8B63
It was done again a few months ago with PS3s.
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9043942
Posted by KSho on Wed Jan 30, 2008 at 11:38 AM
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9043942
David Feldman, author of the IMPONDERABLES series covered the Donky Kong story in one of his later books, DO ELEPHANTS JUMP (page 38). He did quite a bit of research and Alex is right. There was even a lawsuit involved, the Universal Studios sued because they claimed it violated KING KONG; they lost. You might check out www.miyamotoshrine.com which has an interview with teh author of DONKEY KONG on the subject.
Posted by Christopher Cole in Tucson, AZ on Wed Jan 30, 2008 at 12:46 PM
Very true Ksho, it was done a few months ago with the PS3!!
Posted by Bill in PA on Wed Feb 06, 2008 at 02:06 PM
The Atari story of buried video games cartridges actually has an even moreinteresting story attached to it. the game itself was a tie-in to ET the movie, and was the first such attempt at a video game/movie comob. Sadly, what with primitive graphics and a poor gameplay idea, the project was panned like the Edsel by magazine reviews and players, so Atari dumped them all in a hole in Arizona. And, so they say, declined to do any more movie tie-ins, even going so far as to decline further Star Wars games as too risky as well.
So the story goes . . Any confirmation?
Posted by DFStuckey in Auckland New Zealand on Fri Feb 15, 2008 at 03:11 AM
So the story goes . . Any confirmation?
"Saddam Hussein tried to build a supercomputer out of Playstation 2s.
False. The rumor was offered as an explanation for a shortage of Playstation 2s, but if an evil dictator did want to build a supercomputer, using game consoles would be a bad way to do it."
Did you see the story about the kid who turned his PS3 into a password cracker? Turns out the PS3 is an AMAZINGLY fast password cracker ;o
Posted by MSX Security in USA on Mon May 19, 2008 at 07:23 AM
False. The rumor was offered as an explanation for a shortage of Playstation 2s, but if an evil dictator did want to build a supercomputer, using game consoles would be a bad way to do it."
Did you see the story about the kid who turned his PS3 into a password cracker? Turns out the PS3 is an AMAZINGLY fast password cracker ;o
Hasn't there been several people that have died in China harvesting gold in WOW?
Posted by Eric in San Francisco on Tue Nov 17, 2009 at 08:08 PM
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