Creepy video game urban legends

[dlevere]

Jonathan Kaulay collects ten of the best. [via Alan White]

In 2005, an unopened copy of the self-deleting game Killswitch surfaced on Ebay, where it was promptly bought for $733,000 by a man from Japan named Yamamoto Ryuichi. Ryichi had planned to document his play through of the game on YouTube.

The only video Ryuchi posted was of him staring at his computer screen and crying.

[bungholio]

Those were kind of interesting to read, especially Morrowind Mod jvk1166z.esp. They sound a bit odd though. Pokemon causing many kids to commit suicide because of the music in Lavender Town?

[PEOPLECANFLY]

Those were kind of interesting to read, especially Morrowind Mod jvk1166z.esp. They sound a bit odd though. Pokemon causing many kids to commit suicide because of the music in Lavender Town?

A song in Pokemon makes the kids commit suicide? This shit makes me hate Pokemon a lot more than I hate it before. x(

[bungholio]

The thing about everything on the list was that it was rumors and myths. There might not be a single truth in that whole list. It strikes me as very strange that gameboy music was assumed to be causing many children in Japan aged 7 to 12 to kill themselves. It's probably just a bunch of crap. The Morrorwind mod was still the most interesting of everything to me. A creepy spider-like guy stalking you 24/7 that screams, very dark graphics, creepy NPCs focusing on the night sky that abandon towns and move into caves, never speak and keep bleeding out of their eyes, strange NPCs that stay very far away hidden in the dark just barely out of sight always following you, creepier dark enemies, and whatever else. I just liked how creepy the whole thing sounded, but from the little research I think it was all entirely made up. The whole list seems like made up junk.

[OldSchoolGamer]

Jonathan Kaulay collects ten of the best. [via Alan White]

In 2005, an unopened copy of the self-deleting game Killswitch surfaced on Ebay, where it was promptly bought for $733,000 by a man from Japan named Yamamoto Ryuichi. Ryichi had planned to document his play through of the game on YouTube.

The only video Ryuchi posted was of him staring at his computer screen and crying.

Where is the video of this game? I can't find the 1:45 minute video with Yamamoto Ryuichi crying at the end.

Is this game real? It's kind of hard to believe. If it is real, that's crazy.

---

Also, as for the Pokemon Lavender Town Syndrome, what made them think of this level specifically that caused these illnesses and suicides? ... let alone the game itself.

[Hybrid]

urban legends are fake hense the legends part

[OldSchoolGamer]

When I finally buy my custom arcade machine in a few years, I was thinking of naming it Polybius. But ultimately decided against it because then it would have to have no artwork except for the marquee. And I want my cabinet to look really nice with custom artwork from some of my favorite, obscure arcade games. That's one of the things that I'm looking forward to the most... coming up with the custom artwork for my cabinet.

[OldSchoolGamer]

urban legends are fake hense the legends part

So the PC game Killswitch from the year 1989 never existed?

[dlevere]

You won't find the YouTube video, I tried, too.

[olala]

those article fake!who will belived that comicly stories(-.0)
what a bulls

dood

[dlevere]

Killswitch

[QUOTE=OldSchoolGamer;69895]Where is the video of this game? I can't find the 1:45 minute video with Yamamoto Ryuichi crying at the end.

Is this game real? It's kind of hard to believe. If it is real, that's crazy.

Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Killswitch

In the spring of 1989 the Karvina Corporation released a curious game, whose dissemination among American students that fall was swift and furious, though its popularity was ultimately short-lived.

The game was “Killswitch.”

On the surface it was a variant on the mystery or horror survival game, a precursor to the Myst and Silent Hill franchises. The narrative showed the complexity for which Karvina was known, though the graphics were monochrome, vague grey and white shapes against a black background.

Slow MIDI versions of Czech folk songs play throughout. Players could choose between two avatars: an invisible demon named Ghast or a visible human woman, Porto. Play as Ghast was considerably more difficult due to his total invisibility, and players were highly liable to restart the game as Porto after the first level, in which it was impossible to gauge jumps or aim.

However, Ghast was clearly the more powerful character–he had fire-breath and a coal-steam attack, but as it was above the skill level of most players to keep track of where a fire-breathing, poison-dispensing invisible imp was on their screens once the fire and steam had run out, Porto became more or less the default.

Porto’s singular ability was seemingly random growth–she expanded and contracted in size throughout the game. A Kansas engineering grad claimed to have figured out the pattern involved, but for reasons which will become obvious, his work was lost.

Porto awakens in the dark with wounds in her elbows, confused. Seeking a way out, she ascends through the levels of a coal mine in which it is slowly revealed she was once an employee, investigating its collapse and beset on all sides by demons similar to Ghast, as well as dead foremen, coal-golems, and demonic inspectors from the Sovatik corporation, whose boxy bodies were clothed in red, the only color in the game.

The environment, though primitive, becomes genuinely uncanny as play progresses. There are no “bosses” in any real sense–Porto must simply move physically through tunnels to reach subsequent levels while her size varies wildly through inter-level spaces.

The story that emerges through Porto’s discovery of magnetic tapes, files, mutilated factory workers who were once her friends, and deciphering an impressively complex code inscribed on a series of iron axes players must collect (This portion of the game was almost laughably complex, and defeated many players until “Porto881″ posted the cipher to a Columbia BBS. Attempts to contact this player have been unsuccessful, and the username is no longer in use on any known service.) is that the foremen, under pressure to increase coal production, began to falsify reports of malfunctions and worker malfeasance in order to excuse low output, which incited a Sovatik inspection.

Officials were dispatched, one for each miner, and an extraordinary story of torture unfolds, with fuzzy and indistinct graphics of red-coated men standing over workers, inserting small knives into their joints whenever production slowed. (Admittedly, this is not a very subtle critique of Soviet-era industrial tactics, and as the town of Karvina itself was devastated by the departure of the coal industry, more than one thesis has interpreted Killswitch as a political screed.)

After solving the axe-code, Porto finds and assembles a tape recorder, on which a male voice tells her that the fires of the earth had risen up in their defense and flowed into the hearts of the decrepit, pre-revolution equipment they used and wakened them to avenge the workers.

It is generally assumed that the “fires of the earth” are demons like Ghast, coal-fumes and gassy bodies inhabiting the old machines. The machines themselves are so “big” that the graphics elect to only show two or three gear-teeth or a conveyor belt rather than the entire apparatus. The machines drove the inspectors mad, and they disappeared into caverns with their knives (only to emerge to plague Porto, of course).

The workers were often crushed and mangled in the onslaught of machines, who were neither graceful nor discriminating. Porto herself was knocked into a deep chasm by a grief-stricken engine, and her fluctuating size, if it is real and not imagined, is implied to be the result of poisonous fumes inhaled there.

What follows is the most cryptic and intuitive part of the game. There is no logical reason to proceed in the “correct” way, and again it was Porto881 who came to the rescue of the fledgling Killswitch community. In the chamber behind the tape recorder is a great furnace where coal was once rendered into coke.

There are no clues as to what she is intended to do in this room. Players attempted nearly everything, from immolating herself to continuing to process coal as if the machines had never risen up. Porto881 hit upon the solution, and posted it to the Columbia boards.

If Porto ingests the raw coke, she will find her body under control, and can go on to fight her way out of the final levels of the mine, which are impassable in her giant state, clutching the tape containing this extraordinary story. However, as she crawls through the final tunnel to emerge above ground, the screen goes suddenly white.

Killswitch, by design, deletes itself upon player completion of the game. It is not recoverable by any means, all trace of it is removed from the user’s computer. The game cannot be copied. For all intents and purposes it exists only for those playing it, and then ceases to be entirely.

One cannot replay it, unlocking further secrets or narrative pathways, one cannot allow another to play it, and perhaps most importantly, it is impossible to experience the game all the way to the end as both Porto and Ghast.

Predictably, player outcry was enormous. Several routes to solve the problem were pursued, with no real efficacy. The first and most common was to simply buy more copies of the game, but Karvina Corp. released only 5,000 copies and refused to press further editions. The following is an excerpt from their May 1990 press release:

Killswitch was designed to be a unique playing experience: like reality, it is unrepeatable, unretrievable,and illogical. One might even say ineffable. Death is final; death is complete. The fates of Porto and her beloved Ghast are as unknowable as our own. It is the desire of the Karvina Corporation that this be so, and we ask our customers to respect that desire. Rest assured Karvina will continue to provide the highest quality of games to the West, and that Killswitch is merely one among our many wonders.

This did not have the intended effect. The word “beloved” piqued the interest of committed, even obsessive players, as Ghast is not present in any portion of Porto’s narrative. A rush to find the remaining copies of the game ensued, with the intent of playing as Ghast and discovering the meaning of Karvina’s cryptic word.

The most popular theory was that Ghast would at some point become the fumes inhaled by Porto, changing her size and beginning her adventure. Some thought this was wishful thinking, that if only Ghast’s early levels were passable one would somehow be able to play as both simultaneously.

However, by this time no further copies appeared to be available in retail outlets. Players who had not yet completed the game attempted Ghast’s levels frequently, but the difficulty of actually playing this enigmatic avatar persisted, and no player has ever claimed to have finished the game as Ghast. One by one, the lure of Porto’s lost, unearthly world drew them back to her, and one by one, they were compelled towards the finality of the vast white screen.

To find any copy usable today is an almost unfathomably rare occurance; a still shrink-wrapped copy was sold at auction in 2005 for $733,000 to Yamamoto Ryuichi of Tokyo. It is entirely possible that Yamamoto’s is the last remaining copy of the game.

Knowing this, Yakamoto had intended to open his play to all enthusiasts, filming and uploading his progress. However, to date, the only film which has surfaced is a one minute and forty five second clip of a haggard Yamamoto at his computer, the avatar-choice screen visible over his right shoulder.

Yamamoto is crying.
(This story is credited to The Archivist on Invisible Games.)
Posted by Inunah at 8:04 PM

[BeyondTheStatic]

And I want my cabinet to look really nice with custom artwork from some of my favorite, obscure arcade games. That's one of the things that I'm looking forward to the most... coming up with the custom artwork for my cabinet.

What do mean by "coming up with?" Will you be drawing the images yourself, finding pre-made artwork online, or hiring an artist? I'd be willing to create artwork for your cabinet, and my prices are low. I take great pride in my work: I simply can't stand to put out bad art

[OldSchoolGamer]

The artwork that I would want, probably doesn't exist. I plan to look at pre-made artwork, but I doubt I will find anything I would want. So, it would have to be custom artwork. I won't be drawing the images myself... I'm not that good to do that. So I planned to look into if there is an arcade cabinet company that creates custom artwork... whether they have an artist on their payroll. Because they are going to have to "attach" the artwork to the cabinet, so I figure/hope that it would be cheaper to have them do it (instead of a third party) since they are already going to have to copy, blow up, and attach the artwork and build the cabinet, etc. But I haven't looked into it yet. I'm not sure exactly how all that works.

That being said... if I can't find a company that does custom artwork, then I would look into hiring an artist such as yourself. I'll let you know when the time comes, it won't be for a few more years though.

[OldSchoolGamer]

Have you ever done custom artwork for an arcade cabinet? If so, I'd like to see it. Or even if you've never done custom artwork for an arcade cabinet, if you have any artwork in general (paintings, drawings, etc.) that you'd like to share. I enjoy and appreciate art. It's a shame that Art classes have been taken out of the curriculum from so many public schools. They don't understand the benefit to students of having Art classes.

[BeyondTheStatic]

Hey OSG, sorry for the late reply. You'll probably want an artist that will keep in touch more often than I do :\

Have you ever done custom artwork for an arcade cabinet? If so, I'd like to see it.

No, I've never produced artwork for arcade cabinets; the only professional work I have done was for publishing companies, making vector illustrations for trucking books and software. But I do have a heavy background in cartooning, 3D rendering and technical illustration. I can also produce accurate graphite renderings from photographs.

Or even if you've never done custom artwork for an arcade cabinet, if you have any artwork in general (paintings, drawings, etc.) that you'd like to share. I enjoy and appreciate art.

I have nothing I wish to show at this time, but if I do upload something using my BeyondTheStatic moniker, I'll post back.

You should note that the artwork you wish to have produced may use characters that are copyrighted, and some printing companies will not print said artwork. An example: a few years back I made a beautiful Thundercats logo and wanted it printed on a t-shirt, but the printing company simply would not do it. How long has it been since Thundercats were popular? A long time, yet the company just would not do it

It's a shame that Art classes have been taken out of the curriculum from so many public schools. They don't understand the benefit to students of having Art classes.

I agree. Like playing with LEGOs, practicing art can help a person cultivate many useful skills in so many other fields of study.