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This April Fools’ Day, we look back with a sick mixture of irritation and awe at the pranks played on us by the friends we least suspected: our videogames.
Videogames have a unique ability to suck us in: We quickly suspend disbelief and immerse ourselves in the worlds that game designers create for us. One of the first things we do is test the rules of the game to find out what results from our actions. Armed with this knowledge, we set out to master the game’s world.
But some game designers play with our expectations. Sometimes they deliberately trick us by sending fake-out signals. Sometimes they play on our assumptions about videogames, then show us that their game doesn’t work the same as the rest. Either way, we feel tricked — but to be surprised is to be entertained.
Here are Game|Life writers’ 10 favorite ways that videogames have messed with our minds over the years.
Important Note: Big, big spoilers follow!
10. Batman: Arkham Asylum
Batman’s multiple encounters with Scarecrow, in which the mind-warping criminal played with our perceptions of reality, were the highlight of 2009 adventure Batman: Arkham Asylum . Borrowing some parlor tricks from Eternal Darkness, the scenes included whispering voices and bugs on walls that were meant to mess with the player’s mind.
The pièce de résistance was a lengthy sequence that made the game appear to crash, then restart. As players cursed the buggy software, the gag became apparent when the scene showed the Joker checking Batman into the asylum, in a reversal of the game’s real opening scene. There’s even a fake “Game Over” screen. –Daniel Feit
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9. Karateka
Contains spoilers!
Prince of Persia creator Jordan Mechner’s first game, Karateka, gave us a few glimpses of the designer’s playfulness — and his fondness for hidden traps. One of the first things you learn while playing the game is to always approach enemies in your fighting stance, or else they’ll kill your dumb defenseless ass with a single hit.
After fighting through a gauntlet of absurdly difficult enemy karate masters and defeating the evil Akuma, your beloved Princess Mariko awaits. But if you approach her while still in the offensive stance, she responds to your aggro behavior by kicking you right in the dragon balls. Lolz game over! Reload your last save! Oh wait, there is none, because it is 1984. –Chris Kohler
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8. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
Contains spoilers!
This 1997 PlayStation game let vampire hunters explore Dracula’s massive castle at their leisure, wandering hither and yon in search of secrets. But there was a catch: Should a player neglect to find a particularly out-of-the-way item before squaring off against Richter Belmont, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night comes to an abrupt end, with credits sequence and all.
Diligent players who figured there must be something more could break the spell over Richter and discover that the game was only half over. Symphony ‘s second act — and the final battle with Dracula — takes place in an upside-down castle that some poor saps might never even have found. –Daniel Feit
Image courtesy Miserable Pile of Secrets
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7. Shadow of the Colossus
Contains spoilers!
When you arrive at the temple in the center of Shadow of the Colossus ‘ strange world and put your dead girlfriend on the altar, a disembodied spirit tells you that you can bring her back if you use your magic sword to kill the 16 colossi that roam the land.
Not a bad videogame plot, right? Joke’s on you: Eventually, you learn that what you were actually doing was helping break the seal on an evil spirit. Every time you killed a colossus, a little chunk of that guy entered your body, and now you’re a demon. Eventually, an army of men slaughter you, just as you so ruthlessly killed the giants. –Chris Kohler
Image courtesy Sony
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6. Animal Crossing
Contains spoilers!
Nintendo’s innovative life-simulation game Animal Crossing used the GameCube’s internal clock, so whenever you entered your virtual village, your animal neighbors knew what day it was. The persistent world meant you needed to remember to save your game before you turned it off. Nintendo’s way of reminding you was an obnoxious mole named Mr. Resetti.
If you reset the game, Resetti would pop out of the ground the next time you turned it on and lecture you about the dangers of quitting without saving. It was a punishment. You couldn’t get back to your game until you paged through his minutes-long diatribe. Sometimes he’d even pretend to reset the game in his attempt to scare you straight. –Chris Kohler
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5. Super Mario Bros. 2
Contains spoilers!
Super Mario Bros. 2, the Japanese sequel to Nintendo’s breakout smash (known as “The Lost Levels” elsewhere), begins just like the original: You see some blocks to jump up and smash, and the very first row contains a happy-looking power-up mushroom.
“Oh joy!” you think to yourself. “I am about to experience the familiar pleasures of a Mario game.” But this mushroom doesn’t give you a free life or make you double in size. Instead, it instantly kills you. The Poison Mushroom is a bitter joke from the heartless sadists in Kyoto who designed the game, and the message is crystal-clear: This is not going to be like the first Super Mario. It’s just a little taste of the agony that awaits in this brutally difficult sequel. –Chris Baker
Image: Chris Kohler/Wired.com
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4. BioShock
Contains spoilers!
Didn’t you love Atlas? With his charming Irish brogue and his sad life story, the narrator of BioShock helped you along throughout the game, giving you guidance and a friendly shoulder to lean on as you made your way through the ruins of Rapture.
Yes, Atlas was a perfect friend in every way — except for the fact that he didn’t exist. He was actually Frank Fontaine, the game’s true villain. Oh, and also he was controlling your every action, making you do all sorts of bad things. And you probably did them without even thinking about it, because he was just so gosh-darned nice. –Chris Kohler
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3. Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem
Contains spoilers!
Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem is one of the first games we think of when we think of pranks on the player, mostly because it was filled with them. A horror story with a heavy H.P. Lovecraft influence, Eternal Darkness featured a “sanity meter,” a gauge of its protagonists’ mental stability. If their sanity dipped, the hapless characters would start having freaky hallucinations: Stately portraits on the walls would become gruesome death masks; players’ heads would fall off and they could pick them up and add them to their inventories; etc.
But the best “sanity effects” were those directly targeting the player: The screen would go blank with the word “Video” in the corner, as if the signal had been lost, and we’d hear the character being attacked. Sometimes jumping into the menu screen would bring up a dialog box that showed the player’s saved games being deleted. –Chris Kohler
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2. Super Mario Bros. 3
Contains spoilers!
Princess Toadstool has a sick sense of humor. In the first Super Mario Bros., you traversed treacherous worlds to rescue her, only to hear that little bastard Toad say you got the wrong castle. At the end of Super Mario Bros. 3, she walks out and delivers the same old line, leading you to believe that there’s another, even more difficult, castle ahead.
Assuming you haven’t smashed the console in anger at this point, the leader of the Mushroom Kingdom goes on to say that she was just messing with you. Oh, real funny, lady. Real funny. –Chris Baker
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1. Metal Gear Solid Series
Contains spoilers!
No single game creator has taken more pleasure in screwing with players than Hideo Kojima. First there was the Psycho Mantis scene in Metal Gear Solid, in which he reads the player’s memory card and tells them what other games they’ve been playing. This is followed by a boss fight in which the only way to win is to unplug the controller and insert it into the second player’s slot.
But the real mindfuck — the single biggest joke ever played on gamers — was the entirety of Metal Gear Solid 2. Kojima told players it was another adventure starring supercool secret agent Solid Snake, but when everyone brought the game home, they found that the protagonist was actually whiny milquetoast Raiden.
Seriously, look at Metal Gear Solid 2 ‘s official European site. Note that the entire thing is a lie. Oh, we laugh about it now, 10 years later, but at the time all we wanted to do was hit Kojima in the face with a giant robot. –Chris Kohler
Image: Konami
