Top 9 Urban Legends of Gaming
Steve Barton
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Pokemon Creepy Black
Game: Pokemon Red (Hacked)
Pokemon may be widely recognized as a relatively innocent affair, but its benign exterior belies quite a few disturbing realities. Take Lavender Town, for example — nothing about the muted town (or its theme song) is comforting. The tale of Pokemon Creepy Black relies on this fact to weave such a devilishly creepy tale. As the legend goes, a bootleg Pokemon release known as Pokemon Black (before the release of the actual DS entry into the series) made the rounds with some chilling contents. Of course, it was simply a hack of Pokemon Red, but it was convincing enough to merit its own title.
An unnamed player discovered a peculiar Pokemon known only as Ghost in his team of six, right after obtaining the Silph Scope, used for identifying the various Pokemon in Lavender Town’s Pokemon Tower, where the spirits of deceased Pokemon still roam. Typically the Ghosts are later revealed as Gastlys and such, but Ghosts are not obtainable for battle. This Ghost was playable, and could use the ability “Curse.” Rather than simply halving the Ghost’s HP and “cursing” the opponent’s Pokemon with losing ¼ of its max HP each round, it simply KO’ed the opponent’s active fighter and removed it from the benched team. Not only did it relatively erase the Pokemon from existence, but a quick cut to a black screen and a distorted cry of the cursed Pokemon rang out briefly as well. Of course, this was all meant to signify the “death” of the Pokemon.
The player found this new and bizarre version of Curse made it a breeze to plow through the modified version of Pokemon Red, and continued on past the Elite Four’s defeat — essentially, the end of the game. But after the credits rolled, a disconcerting epilogue was next.
The player, now the sprite of an old man, was studying the very same tombstones of Pokemon Tower. He had no Pokemon, and the overworld was now entirely devoid of NPCs or other sprites Lavender Town’s sinister theme looped over and over as the player wandered back to Pallet Town. The chain of events that occurred afterward were enough to chill anyone to the bone. A sequence of each Pokemon and trainer the player had used the curse on rolled past, eventually culminating in a battle with the very same Ghost the player had aligned with throughout the game, which ended up being a futile affair. Ghost could not be defeated, and the battle eventually came to a head with a sharp cut to another black screen. The player was forced to turn off the game and reset to return to a playable state…only to find the game file had been erased.
Of course, it’s pretty obvious that this didn’t actually occur, but fans and believers have created their very own extensive ROM hacks that attempt to mirror the events from the story. They’re quite accurate, and serve up some delectably creepy alterations to the familiar Pokemon adventure.
Porto and Ghast
Game: Killswitch (Fictional)
The case of the “haunted” video game Killswitch is a widely circulated piece of creepypasta that relies on some very obvious fears to frighten readers: the possibility that a company could actually release a title that deletes all traces of its existence upon completion, for one thing is pretty disconcerting. While not actually feasible, Killswitch’s legend is certainly one for the books — quite literally, as you’ll find out soon enough.
Supposedly released in the spring of 1989, Killswitch existed as the brainchild of an obscure developer/publisher known as Karvina Corporation. It was to be the grandfather of sorts to later survival horror/adventure classics like Silent Hill or Myst, and possessed some similar elements.
It allowed players the option of completing the game as invisible, fire-breathing demon Ghast or randomly growing and expanding Porto, a human avatar, across an eerie, monochrome world (an abandoned and collapsed coal mine, no less) all the while accompanied by agonizingly simplistic Czech folk tunes. Players were said to gravitate toward playing as Porto, as Ghast’s invisibility rendered him nearly useless as a character, and thus explored her side of the narrative. Porto climbs through the several dank and disgusting levels of the mine, gathering evidence about the mine’s earlier collapse — as it turns out, Porto had been an employee there before it occurred.
Along her strange, meandering journey out of the mines, Porto uncovers damning evidence of inhumane treatment of miners, many of them old friends and comrades. She’s left to encounter demons and boxy, red-coated inspectors, but there are actually no “true” boss battles — just the seemingly random growth and shrinkage of Porto. More evidence is uncovered — shocking and gruesome, especially for this early of a release, and Porto discovers workers having been mangled, caught in the gears of enormous machines.
Though the game seemed to have an obvious focus, aiding Porto in escaping the mine with evidence of the grisly accidents and abuse as well as those involved, the journey is obtuse and difficult to understand. The flow is erratic, and puzzles seem incoherent. Never mind the fact that avatar Ghast is absolutely impossible to play as.
Upon what players took to be completion of Porto’s saga, Killswitch was said to have completely erased itself from existence, keeping players from ever reaching the end through a second playthrough as Ghast or another chance to relive the extraordinary experience. Like a shadow, like a memory — erased completely.
Of course, this was all intentional on Karvina Corporation’s part, having “made” Killswitch an adventure that could only be experienced once. Very few copies were distributed, and slowly the game faded into obscurity — but funnily enough, it was never real to begin with. It’s only a creation from the mind of author Catherynne Valente. But its tale is so very chilling and believable it could have certainly lived on for quite some time, flirting with reality, as so many other urban legends do.
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