Video Game 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.

Technology Urban Legends

Posted on Tue Jan 29, 2008


Comments

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  09:18 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  on  Tue Jan 29, 2008  at  11:57 PM
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  09:38 AM
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 http://www.miyamotoshrine.com which has an interview with teh author of DONKEY KONG on the subject.
Posted by Christopher Cole  on  Wed Jan 30, 2008  at  10:46 AM
Very true Ksho, it was done a few months ago with the PS3!!
Posted by Bill  on  Wed Feb 06, 2008  at  12:06 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  on  Fri Feb 15, 2008  at  01:11 AM
"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  on  Mon May 19, 2008  at  06:23 AM
Hasn't there been several people that have died in China harvesting gold in WOW?
Posted by Eric  on  Tue Nov 17, 2009  at  06:08 PM
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