Apocryphal Retro Gaming Stories

[Code Monkey | 2,011]

Ermac in Mortal Kombat. I've tried tracking this one down pretty extensively and eventually found out it was just a palette loading error that occurred under certain circumstances in the arcade. An error macro would run and the developer shortened the command of error macro to ermac which is what displayed instead of the character's name.

Then there were others that happened more recently that I found quite interesting.

The Jolly Rancher story finding all the Nintendo prototypes, World Nintendo Championships cartridges and Campus Challenge cartridge at a single garage sale.

A guy that claimed he had a box for the Atari 2600 game Air Raid on a forum and nobody believed him because one had never surfaced. It was only speculated the game was called Air Raid because there is no name on the cartridge and no title screen. Someone once said they saw a box in the 1980s and claimed it was called Air Raid but that's all the community was relying on until this guy came along. A few days later he dug it out and indeed did post photos of the box which were scrutinised all the way to the forum owner (Albert) travelling to meet the owner and verify its authenticity. The box / cartridge sold for $30,000 and it was assumed there were no instructions until the story blew up and someone else claimed they had a box as well. They went into storage (filmed and posted on YouTube), pulled out their copy and when they pulled the game out, the instructions fell out behind it. This copy sold to the same buyer for $33,000. I read every post in a more than 100 page thread on Atari Age about this.

The discovery of Red Sea Crossing. Someone posted their find of an Atari game at a yard sale and asked questions about it but people figured it was something home made. He posted game play and people got very interested when they realised it was unique game play and not just a re-label of another game. It turned out to be the first found copy of a religious based mail order game and since then one or two other copies have surfaced. Another 100 page thread I read all the way through.

My find of the unreleased NTSC Mario Bros. Classic, though either people weren't as blown away by it as me or the right people just didn't pick it up. I thought it would blow up more but I also didn't really push it at all.

The discovery and inspection of the Sony PlayStation prototype from someone claiming to have it, all the way to Ben Heck taking it apart.

Discovery of NES Earthbound prototype and Sim City prototype.

Tim Atwood sharing the story of how he obtained 3 sealed master cases of Stadium Events and over 100 sealed master cases of other NES games.

[AlternatorDelux | 60]

On 1/22/2022 at 3:59 PM, CasualCart said:

I've always wanted to know more about this one. Was he ever directly credited as a composer for the game?

-CasualCart

You might find the Sonic videos in this channel useful: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3hwP25TVdY8VLtR9w7cX4w