Gamers are a
superstitious bunch. It’s hard to earn our trust, and even harder to keep it. But like any community,
gamers are just as susceptible to believing half-truths. So in honor of doing with our gut, here are some
urban legends and conspiracy theories with a gaming twist.
1
The Madden Curse - Every NFL football fan has heard of Madden. Every year Electronic Arts releases a new game in the Madden franchise, promising developments, and improvements that we’ve never seen before. And every year the cover art of the game features the most impactful player in the NFL from the previous season.
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You’d think such recognition would be a great thing, but you’d be wrong. Historically speaking, NFL players that have been featured on the cover of Madden have ended up having horrible seasons and sometimes injuries the following year.
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To this day, it’s been said, that it’s better not to be on the cover of Madden and possibility keep your career intact than it is to get the publicity from it. And though Mahomes did injury himself, he is the only one so far capable of rising above it.
4
The Madden Curse was broken in 2020 when Patrick Mahomes won his first Super Bowl while being featured as the cover athlete for Madden. So while it was fun while it lasted, this superstition can be put to bed.
5
Satanism in Dungeons and Dragons - Yeah really. Back when D&D was first released, parents across the country were convinced it was a hotbed for Satanism. These concerns were heightened when news of a young man's death rattled the nation and spooked parents everywhere.
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James Egbert the III is the most notable of these deaths example. The child prodigy suffered from depression and had an intense desire to self-harm. He sadly disappeared from his university’s dorm room one day and was later found in the university’s sewer tunnels, after committing suicide.
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James Egbert's death was blamed on the so-called "demonic" imagery of Dungeons and Dragons, which led to a much larger conversation about D&D and its connection to Satanism, something parents were highly fearful of during the time.
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Alas, things eventually changed and parents stopped associating depression with Satanism and roleplaying. Now, these fears from parents might seem insane, but when put into context, (looking at you, parents who didn't let your kids read Harry Potter) it isn't that crazy after all.
9
Killswitch - the game that deletes itself. Killswitch was a game allegedly released in 1989. Its unique hook to gamers was that after you completed the game, it would completely erase itself and you’d never be able to play it again.
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Add to that, the fact that supposedly there were only 5000 copies released of the game and you have a recipe for something every gamer will want to get their hands on. The only problem with that is, supposedly the game never existed.
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Yeah, that's right, the game was supposedly released in 1989, but despite people knowing about the game, and those who have claimed to have played it, there is no record of the game ever existing.
12
PS2’s Used for Terror - This might be the funniest urban legend on this list. In 2020, Saddam Hussein decided that he wanted to build weapons of mass destruction, so he, bought thousands of PS2's? We know what ended up happening, the United States invaded Iraq looking for WMDs, that were never found.
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But what you didn't know is Sadam purchased a ton of PS2's and collected the consoles' CPU chips in hopes of using them to build a supercomputer. Yeah, really, the guy with 'WMDs' had to breakdown consoles to help him build his evil weapons.
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Wonder what he ended up doing with all the PlayStations.
15
Blowing on N64 - We’ve all been there, you get a game and try to play it on launch day, and for whatever reason, it doesn’t work. Or you’ve had your game of choice for a while and it’s just not playing. My copy of Resident Evil 4 just stopped working on PS2 and I had to buy it again on PS3 to complete it. Back in the N64 days, gamers used to pull out the cartridge of their N64 game of choice.
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The thought behind it was you’d be cleaning off the dust and fix whatever problems there were with the game. Turns out dust wasn’t ever an issue, it was just a matter of the cartridge not making a proper connection with the console itself. Blowing on the cartridge didn’t do anything, pulling the cartridge out and reinserting it was what fixed the issue.
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The irony is that none of us ever turned the damn thing around because if we had, we would have seen the message "Do Not Blow In the Edge Connector." Oh well! You live and you learn.
