Arcade Urban Legends - Then and Now | Renegade Cut
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- Опубліковано 27 вер 2024
- It's 1993. Mortal Kombat II, NBA Jam, Samurai Shodown and Super Street Fighter II: The New Champions have been released in arcades. Rumors swirled about hidden characters. This is the true story about untrue urban legends.
#videogames #urbanlegends
/ renegadecut
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Dude, there's genocide going on and you're making this shit?
Congratulations, your comment is so hateful and unkind, that I am pinning it so that everyone can see it and re-read the post I made earlier this year. Copied and pasted:
I would immensely appreciate it if my wonderful, socially conscious audience would please stop asking me to make yet another video about a miserable, heartbreaking, soul-crushing topic.
I'm sorry if this is not what you want to hear, but I have recently accepted that doing these kinds of videos non-stop for 14 years, video after video, week after week, month after month, year after year, has had a profoundly deleterious psychological effect on me.
I'm pleased with my career in the sense that I do not wish to return to wage labor, but I am not pleased with what I have put myself through. Making videos like that requires an enormous amount of research, and most of that research is about war, poverty, abuse, discrimination, racism, dead civilians, and in some cases, the literal end of the world.
It's too much. I have been working on myself lately, and this conclusion is simply unavoidable. I think I have been slowly killing myself by doing this. No more.
I'm a UA-camr living in a studio apartment, not a rich politician with an obligation to the community that elected them. I'm not a leader, I'm an anarchist. I hate leaders.
People write comments like “You're doing really important work.” all the time. No, I'm not. I earnestly believe what I say, I'm no grifter, my politics are sincere, my beliefs are devout, but I have never claimed to be important. I hope my work has been helpful to people, I really do. I don't have children, and my work is my only real legacy, but these “compliments” put so much pressure on me, and I would like that to stop, please.
Another UA-camr went through a similar crisis of faith a while ago, and God, I wish I had listened. I can't change the world. I hope I've done enough, but can I just continue my career as a video essayist making stuff that's mostly fun?
(Not actually requesting. I'm gonna.)
People sometimes notice this and write “Your content is a little too serious and sad for me to watch all the time, so I'm gonna have to pass on this one.” You and me both, buddy. Why didn't I listen to you?
IMPORTANT: If you don't make such requests, then this next part is NOT about you. Relax, much love. But if you have ever pressured me or told me that this is an obligation I have, well, no.
Lately, I've received even more comments than usual like “If you don't make a video about [catastrophe], then you tacitly side with [catastrophe].”
I have been getting those for years but now more than ever. I need you to know that this is HORRIFIC to me, and I do not respect this.
There is an enormous, galaxy-sized difference between “Please don't use your platform irresponsibly.” and “You have a obligation to produce what I have unilaterally decided, no matter how you feel, and if you don't, it's your moral failing.” There is a difference between "Are you planning to make this video?" and "Why haven't you made this video yet?" Because the former, although still a bit unwelcome, feels at least earnest whereas the latter is an accusation. Worse still, it's an accusation that I have not fulfilled an obligation that I absolutely, positively do not have. Even worse still, it's an accusation that does not take my own mental health, my own life, and my own autonomy into account.
It's usually not worded quite like that, but sometimes it's even worse. Sometimes it feels like a threat. No matter how it's worded, the message is the same, and it's not something that a complete stranger gets to tell another complete stranger. It's monstrously self-righteous, and I do not have to acknowledge it as legitimate.
Anything even resembling this is unacceptable. Please see that.
“Why haven't you made a video about [worst thing in the world this week]?”
I don't know, man. Because I'm dying inside? Because I was raised in an intensely Catholic environment (school, church, altar boy, confession, nuns, sin, Hell) to feel guilty about everything that I did? Because my conscience told me that in order to be a good person and be right with God, I needed to do more and more and more and more and more and more, even though the more-and-more was just a bunch of UA-cam videos.
Putting life-or-death responsibility on someone who has no life-or-death power will always be wildly disproportionate, not to mention myopic, ignorant and borderline immoral.
If you don't do this, I thank you sincerely, but if you have done this to me lately, BACK. OFF.
I make videos on the internet. I didn't take an oath of office. More importantly...
I am a person. I am not a UA-cam channel. Please stop telling me that the absence of a video on my UA-cam channel means I don't care or that I don't engage with this elsewhere. I attend protests, I give to charities and the homeless when I can, I signal-boost topics that are important to me, and I write political opinions on the internet outside of my UA-cam channel. I'm a human being, and I live even when you're not watching my videos. I do not blink in and out of existence when you press play and pause.
I think this would be easier if I actually were a grifter chasing trends, like if I didn't really care, but I do care, and it hurt me too much. I'm not quitting UA-cam, this is my job, but PLEASE stop asking me to make a video about the next big massacre. It's not going to happen, and the presumed expectation that it must happen or will happen soon is painful to me.
There are already thousands of videos and articles about whatever you think is so vital that I, specifically, have a moral obligation to do, too. It's an extremely online opinion to think that me groaning into my mid-tier microphone for my mid-tier UA-cam channel is going to solve a global catastrophe or even make a grain-of-sand-sized difference. My video is not going to be the one thing to stop what you and I both wish would stop, and condescendingly telling me that not making a UA-cam VIDEO is a “dereliction” of a “duty” that I did not actually agree to but has been assumed of me is genuinely, completely bonkers. (That is a paraphrased quote I received recently, that making a funny video instead of a miserable video was a dereliction of duty.)
That's too much pressure. My new format is “whatever I want” and that's the way it is.
If I want to talk about sitcoms and goofy nonsense, I will. If I want to talk about the next big bad thing that killed everyone, I will, but don't hold your breath, and PLEASE don't ever ask. I'm ignoring any such request for me to do so, and such a call will not be welcome no matter how much you want me, individually, to help solve a global crisis from the edge of my bed where I write UA-cam videos.
I'm sorry if any of this comes across as hostile, but it seems like saying this in more polite terms and in private didn't seem to work.
I'm turning 42 in May, and I need to start taking better care of myself for the second half of my life.
P.S. - My comments are moderated and do not even appear outside of my UA-cam dashboard until I click Approve. It only looks like your comment appears automatically because it can be seen in your account but nobody else's account. That's where most of this onslaught has occurred: sent directly to me through my dashboard for my APPROVAL. Don't reply to this, because I won't be clicking Approve on any of it, and if you can't help yourself, then I'm blocking your account. I apologize if that sounds aggressive, but the replies are moderated for a reason. You can just not reply, because this isn't about you.
If you make a response video or response stream, even in support of me, I won't watch it because I don't watch videos about myself. Never have, never will. I can't stop you, it's your life, but I firmly, actively discourage this behavior. This is something I'm telling you, not something I am asking to discuss. It's not up for debate, because I make all the decisions in my life, just like every other person on Earth.
Peace out, home slice. New video in about a week, and it's almost entirely about video game music.
Bye for now.
You're free to watch another channel. Leon doesn't have to cover the genocide. There are plenty of channels you can watch that can inform you of it.
"Home slice" 😎🤌
@@renegadecut9875 Hey, I just want to sincerely apologize because I was pos for immediately making a request. I now realize I added myself to the list of people who have done this (selfishly)
You've made it clear that you didn't want a response to your community post, but I just wanted to apologize for being inconsiderate. I was completely ignorant and I should have stopped and remembered that you are a human being. Not to mention undermining the video you have taken the time to make.
That said, I just want to say thank you.
There's genocide going on and you're browsing youtube and making comments? I have arbitrarily decided you in particular should be doing something about the genocide with your time!
This video made me remember my first time going to an arcade. My cousin and I had roughly $10 and split the tokens. Nearly out of tokens, I attempted to play a fighting game I forget the name of. It wouldn't start after eating my token. Thinking it needed more, I put in a few more. It didn't work. So I went to ask the guy at the ticket prizes for help. He grabbed a bucket, opened the game cabinet, and emptied the token collector. Someone stuck garbage inside making it unusable. I thanked him and was excited to start playing.
But then he sat the bucket in front of me that had ALL the tokens that game had inside and told me to have fun.
It was the best day ever. I hope that guy is doing well.
The blood bubble scepter is such an incredible leap of child logic that now I want it to be real.
Hey Leon, I just wanted to mention that I've enjoyed the lighter format, then saw the pinned comment and my stomach turned.
I had actually fallen off your content, up until your shift in focus, for all the reasons you'd talked about in the video. I supported your doing it, but I started managing how I engaged with social media as a means of supporting my mental health and feeling like I was just purposelessly becoming drunk to the gills with anger that I couldn't do anything with. I keep up with what's going on but I can't help but feel like I was just ruining my life and relationships with media designed to wind me up to no conclusion.
Thanks for making this content. I've even really enjoyed that not only has the subject matter been lighter but the ideas being interrogated aren't, like, reaching to be deep or reach any kind of meaningful conclusion but more to just push an idea around as if to scratch an itch.
I also came to say something nice, then was reminded that everything is terrible, too, when I saw the pinned comment, after I had already written mine. Instantly the pleasant nostalgia was soured.
I am one of the target groups for political violence. I don't need to be reminded to never relax. I am reminded nonstop. Knowing how that makes me feel, why would I think that creators want to make miserable stuff?
If it's a responsibility, it's so distributed that nobody should ever be hassled. These topics are very well-covered on YT, and YT videos aren't going to make Biden not a zionist.
Sigh.
The delivery of the line "Pinball Science Officer aboard the USS Enterprise" made me burst out laughing
Imagine Data playing Pinball for the first time in one of the Holodecks!!
'No it's gotta be real, it's printed in EGM!' - We were so gullible.
I think if there's one business model that I love and have seen work well in this day and age is the flat price model. Basically, have a big arcade full of classic machines and pinball on free play, maybe even a section with console games, and charge basically a day pass to the arcade for 10 to 20 bucks. This allows families to spend an afternoon at an arcade where dad and mom can share their favorites from their childhood with their kids and it's a huge value if you play more than ten or so games. I haven't seen such a win win business model like this before and there's an arcade near me that does it and it has worked well.
One of the best times I’ve had in an arcade was buying a birthday party at a full arcade in the 80’s and playing four-player Gauntlet with infinite credits. It was such a trip to just walk through huge crowds of ghosts, taking thousands of points of damage without caring
“I HAVE NOT SEEN SUCH BRAVERY”
Free Play in the DFW area in Texas does this, and it's a great place for Gen X parties.
Add a bar and you have a place in Seattle
I need to find a freeplay arcade. Seems a lot of people go to cons for the game room these days.
I need to find one. This sounds so wonderful!
I remember kids on the arcades I used to visit saying that there was a way to pick up the rock on Chun-Li's stage and throw it to your opponent. That there was a way to play as the ninja referee in Samurai Showdown. And outside of the arcades, I still remember the legends about how there was a way to save Aerith in FF7. Lies... All filthy lies...
Also, finally someone who gets why Sheeva is best girl, guess I'm not alone in the universe after all 😎👍
that is funny to me bc they actually gave a character a rock toss special move later on when they put Cody from final fight in there
Shiva gives the best hugs.
A NEW LEON VIDEO ARRIVES TO BRIGHTEN MY DAY
It's not Miss Pacman, it's Ms. The "Ms" prefix is ambiguous and I feel soooooo smart for bringing that up 😂😂😂
Thank you, god, it's one of my pet peeves. That they aren't the same is the whole point of Ms.
Damn it, you beat me to it.
If anything, this just supports the forbidden love theory. They use the ambiguous one because they don't want anyone to know...
Miz haha
I was so happy when people started using Ms. in the late 70s. I use it exclusively. People thought I was so sensitive to the double-standard, and forward-thinking. I like to think so…but the biggest reason is I can never remember who’s married.
"I wanted to see Sheeva naked. Because I was a freak."
No. No... I was in the same boat.
Ya'll were freaks.
Freaks of the internet, stand proud!
I got good/bad news for you!
My arcade era predates this by a few years, but one thing that united Arcade Type D in the 80s was their decoration: lurid carpet patterns and black lights everywhere. Usually had background music, too. The ultimate form of Type D had a live, very surly attendant to make change for you.
I love your blood bubble idea
I have this memory from my youth of being inside of a 7-11 wathing soneone play the craziest game of Street Fighter 2 I've ever seen. The guy playing Ryu was shooting multiple hadukens while multi-jumping so high that he went off screen with the fireballs coming down the track the opponent. As I grew older, I convinced myself that this memory was likely a false one because I had grown more familiar with the game and franchise, and these actions weren't possible with what I knew about the game. Fast forward a few decades, and I encounter a youtube video about bootleg arcade cabinets and romhacks showing that very same (or similar) crazy version of SF2.
Rainbow Edition. It was a bootleg hack of the arcade machine. Fun times.
Great video. My parents use to call mortal combat "murder combat."
Oh, this one really awakened my childhood through early adulthood.
By the MK2 point. I was so good in my area, that people would pay others to beat me.
I couldn’t get my parents to let me go to the regional tournaments, so I could qualify for World Championships.
I beat the regional champ 20 times in a row, when I first got to play him.
He played me one other time, then just wouldn’t play me again.
Not at Street Fighter, Tekken, Samurai Showdown, Killer Instinct, etc.
Loving this one.
*Street Fighter 2: Turbo was my SF favorite.
I remember Pigskin 621 A.D. at a bowling alley. I think I ever only played it once as I was on the younger side with little to no money and even less competence at the games due to the courage to mingle amongst the "big kids" just to see what all the hype and excitement was by the pool tables. Smoking indoors was still a thing then too, with giant and rustic brown panel cigarettes vending machines.
As a lifelong gamer of 42, this episode hits at the core of my gaming memories.
So interesting to hear the perspective about growing up in a city with arcades and knowing that even in small town Indiana, arcades were pretty pivotal to me and my friends growing up too. We mostly had Arcade Type As in rural Midwest, more just rooms or corners in a laundromat or, in my town's case, a dairy queen. It's also how we kind of cultivated relationships in friend groups because we couldn't really walk there. We could barely ride bikes because the roads weren't entirely safe to go down being that a lot of people drive kind dangerously getting off highways, so generally you'd have older friends or older siblings that could drive.
I only bring that up because a lot of the lies and mythology were kind of shut down pretty quick because we'd be talking to those older kids who had been playing the games for a lot longer than we had. That also led to them to lying or being wrong about stuff too and being genuinely shocked to find that out. When it came time for us to start being the older sibling or friend that would drive, a lot of the time we'd just continue that trend of trying to shut down legends but also just kinda bullshitting for no reason other than to exert that kind of "authority".
I didn't get it very long though, when I hit high school, Halo 2 was coming out and the age of even going to those smaller arcades was more limited to playing if we were going to dairy queen anyway but this video really made me remember that brief window in time and kind of realize how the mythologies in my rural small town really work.
Happy 42nd, home slice -- wish you the best for your next solar orbit on this crazy rock.
In laundry mats in grocery stores ... You never knew where your next electronic adventure may lay.
I played the Super Mario Bros. game in a Laundromat in Chinatown.
I have been following you for years, I love everything you make, but this is probably one of the most heartfelt and magical videos I've ever seen you put out
Love this type of content! Thank you!
Despite the naysayers, I, for one, appreciate you sharing your obtuse, video game related therapy with us.
So much of this overlaps with my childhood experience. I remember that Superman game, and how quickly those lies about random nude characters got around. It was weird to go to college and find out that so many other people grew up with those rumors. We were from all over the planet, but those fake stories united us.
Really loving this new era of Renegade Cut. Each video feels like a much needed breath of fresh air
Incredible video as always. Much as you cover some very heavy topics it can refreshing to look back on those underrated eras that made an impact in our psyche. Being only a year or two behind you I experienced many of the same half baked myths which surrounded both the home console and arcade scene. Mortal Kombat 2 was definitely a major one, your Kano/Sonia story brought to mind a ton of my own bizarre theories which turned out completely off the way impossible.
I remember encountering this one game on a Neo-Geo arcade machine that I would play every time I was in this Arcade Type A minigolf pizza joint. I adored the game, and I think I even saw it on Nick Arcade (the best game show ever), but I never bothered remembering what it was called because I was, like, eight years old at the time and kinda dense.
For so much of my life it was my lost Lenore, when I eventually moved away from that minigolf place and never saw the game again. I had such vivid memories of it, but could never place the name. I remembered it was a Neo-Geo game some years later, but that was it, and once I saw how much those machines could cost I just gave up on ever encountering it again.
It showed up again on the Wii Virtual Store even more years later. It's called Blue's Journey, and even though I only played it once after buying it, it was worth every penny just to know I wasn't crazy and my memories were real.
Good times.
So happy to see a local Ann Arbor arcade featured. Did you know Pinball Pete's was set to close this year until they found a new location? The new spot will be larger and should be in a better part of downtown. It is a local icon so it surviving is great news!
Oh no, a rush of nostalgia is flowing through me as I try to remember when and where did I hear some of these. 😂
It's really hard to explain to my kids just how magical and incredible arcades were when I was a kid. In the early 90s, I would have rather spent a week in a dirty cigarette smoke filled arcade than at Disney World. There was just nothing else like that feeling of walking into a dimly lit room full of arcade cabinets. The home consoles couldn't touch what those machines were doing. Walking up to a new arcade game and just staring in awe at the attract mode running, showing off what the game was like. I don't feel like anything today could ever replicate that experience.
It's nice to see you take a break from the heavy stuff; i hope you had as much fun as it sounds!
This video is relatable as hell. Miss these days, I won't lie!
Edit: I was wondering if you'd mention Polybius :) that's a weird one.
Hey Leon, I’ve been following you for a long time, and think I’ve watched most of, if not all, if your videos, both political or media culture related.
You don’t owe anyone anything. Your contributions on UA-cam are a net positive to the world. No matter what the content is, it’s always consistent quality.
I’m glad you’re doing what makes you happy. :)
Fun(?) fact, in Germany arcade games were legally viewed as gambling aimed at children and thus banned. Not a hard ban, you could find some cabinets in adult only areas but they were very rare because their target audience was not allowed to see them.
Growing up poor in NE Ohio in the 80s and through the 90s, it was a rare luxury to go to Chucky Cheese. AYCE salad bar and kids would get free tokens with food purchases. We'd order one drink with 2 waters and my dad, cousin, and I would run to the fountain with those same red textured cups (and we weren't getting water if you catch my drift)! Ah man......the roar of Colossus from the X-Men cabinet was always my calling to every arcade! They were a Type C place (of course), but they had such a huge assortment of games! Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Primal Rage, Killer Instinct, Dragon's Lair, Sunset Riders, NBA JAM.....they even had Time Traveler (it was a holographic 3D game, amazing technology for the time)! Even if I couldn't play, just walking around and watching everyone else play was so much fun! But those times I saved up enough tokens, I beat Captain America and The Avengers and X-MEN.
An AMAZING assortment well into the 90's, they even outdid places like Geauga Lake, and before they closed there was a game where you were in a car but would fly around and shoot stuff, I would think back to it from time to time. The sands of time slowly eroding the memory of this game and I found a playthrough of it a year ago! Night Striker was the name! That feeling like finding a song you haven't heard in 30 years and it instantly takes you back!!
In 1994 MKs were funny more than anything else. The sound effects, the moves, the fatalities were always hilarious. But since I bought the books and printed out the release notes with bug reports, I kind of spoiled the mystery aspect. The whole nude-ality thing never held much water. We would usually come away thinking that there was probably a color palette glitch that would turn a character's uniform the same color as their skin making them appear nude by mistake but certainly not deliberately.
The delivery of "their love would be an abomination before God" was incredible
I played that superman game in a laundry mat but also never saw it anywhere else. I remember the Player 2 model had a red costume I thought was cool
"In NBA Jam, the jammiest of games, we could Boom Shaka, our entire Lakas, for a measly twenty-five cents." (8:31)
You never fail to bring a smile to my face :)
There was one arcade I used to go to as a kid that would give you five tokens for a dollar. I don't remember if it was Chuck E Cheese's or a regional chain.
This little video essay felt like a poetic eulogy ✨💖👾💖✨
I'm happy for you that you took a breath and made a fun video. I remember all those rumors flying around. I didn't get to play stuff often, so I didn't have any lies to tell my peers. I do remember a few things, but the NBA Jam secret characters? I had no idea before just now!
I'm an anarchist and a gamer so I'm happy to watch whatever you feel like making
No BROWN RYU when you fuck up getting Akuma? Lmao that was my childhood
Urban legends were fun. The closest thing I've come to this in the last decade is when Meltan kept appearing in Pokémon Go
I've commented on every video you've made since your move away from strictly political videos, and I came to a realization about why this is so incredible and why I enjoy these videos as much as I do. After reading your reply to the pinned comment I realize that we're kind of on the same trajectory. I used to keep up on every single terrible horrible awful thing of the day/week/month/year and felt my sanity slipping, after some time with a therapist and some real long hard thinking, I came to the same conclusion. Ingesting all that soul crushing garbage all day every day was ruining my life I had to stop, so I deleted all my social meda apps (twitter/facebook/instagram/tiktok) and just tried my best to enjoy my day, I still talk about politics and still strongly (more than ever) identify as an anarchist but I just can't continue to care about things I'm totally powerless to stop.
All this to say, Thank you for making yet another incredible video that brought me immense joy.
I was born too late to experience arcade rumors. I lived in the suburbs so the only arcades around were a car drive away; walking wasn't an option. I never got to visit a dedicated arcade establishment, but I did go to Chuck E. Cheese's twice for birthday parties and a Dave & Buster's once. I think my parents were against spending money frivolously on arcades or vending machines. It was good policy that has stuck with me.
we gotta bring back calling the homies "HomeSlice"
7:00 Oh wow! I love MK and was obsessed with all the urban legends/secrets as I got older. This one is completely new to me! 😱
Excellent video, homeslice! 😎🤙🏽
Wish I could have experienced arcades more than I did- here in my country the arcade business was heavily regulated against, and the ones that existed where in stuff like amusement parks or on cruise ships and so on. I can only recall a few places where like, a corner store had put in a machine where people could just go and play. Never enough to make arcades into casual places where you could just hang and enjoy games with each other (or beat each other up for more coins, whichever was more likely).
Great video! Around 1993, I was living in a small town in Ohio where one of the only things to do was go to the big bowling alley. So while my parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles were bowling or shooting pool, my cousins and I were playing Street Fighter II, Pac-Man, or Galaga. Everything you bring up in the video is spot-on and took me right back there. Thanks for the trip. As for arcade bars today, I've been to one, and it was fun and nostalgic and all, but maybe my age has taken away some of the gloss.
The one I remember most fondly from the 80s was that Spyhunter had a level where the car turned into a plane or copter. A friend told me he had seen someone get that far and that you had to get past the boat level three times to get to it. :D
I gravitated more toward Street Fighter 2, but it really has to be said that "Reptile" really defined the "Someone is watching and assessing you" narrative that fighting games still use to this day. There are other games I think take it further, but I think that's how much of a range Ed Boon and John Tobias had. Really sick.
I remember the Mortal Kombat "nudality" rumor being huge in elementary school amongst the nerdy set. It was bigger than the Sheng Long Street Fighter fight where everyone seemed to have their own method that allegedly unlocked it.
15:21 I totally forgot about Pinball Pete's! There was one of these at my college, I used to live within walking distance of it. I only got into fighting games recently and, had I been more savvy at the time, I probably would have spent way more time there, rather than being limited only to conventions to see cabs.
I remember the first time I was actually given the agency to play on a stray arcade machine. I was 16, on a road trip with my mom in the middle of nowhere Utah. Staying in our nearly empty hotel, I was hungry, and I had a cup of instant mac and cheese I'd been looking to heat up. The microwave was in a backroom of the hotel, and directly across from it was an Addams Family themed pinball machine. I looked at that machine, went back to the hotel room, and asked my mom for a dollar because I couldn't recall if I had ever actually played pinball on a real machine.
I heated up my mediocre mac and cheese cup with the phineas-and-ferb-shaped pasta and played actual pinball for the first time.
I distinctly remember a kid at school who swore up and down that he used E Honda's punch attack to knock Chun Li's top off
I like the gaming content. I love your political content too, but this is a nice change from all the terrifying doomer shit I see all day every day anyway.
my favorite part is the early segment on Polybius. thanks, homeslice!
Here in Johannesburg in the 80's, Type A were the norm in the corner cafe (before 24hr petrol station shops). The 3 or so arcades were emptied of 20c pieces by external reps. Jackpot was they came to empty it while you were playing. They'd always ring up 20 credits for you before they left.
Awe yeah! A fresh renegade cut!
15:00 My personal "I thought I made it up" was The Real Ghostbusters arcade game. Only saw it once, maybe twice as a wee little thing, and never again until it popped up in a MAME list decades later.
Mad props for content lately. Keep posting your conscience as needed, but these fun ones are even better 😄
You seem like you're having so much fun with these videos! I've really been enjoying them too :)
I enjoyed the nostalgia trip with this one RC, thank you.
My favorite video game urban legend was the various secret bonus levels of Donkey Kong Country. We said there were multiple bosses so big that they couldn't fully fit on the screen.
Last week I played the fully hydrophilic version of Outrun in a "barcade" it felt so smooth. Forgot how good that game is.
6:34 "I did not want to see Sonia Blade naked. I wanted to see Sheeva naked, because I was a freak." Respect to a fellow man of culture. *tips hat*
Video game renegade cut is pretty cool
This took me BACK!!! The local pizza place in my neighborhood had a type B arcade with MK II. I would also walk there to play. Those were the days!!!
I have an extremely vivid memory of playing Super Mario World at Costco while my parents were shopping and playing a secret level in the middle of the Forest of Illusion with giant versions of the enemies. I spent hours and hours trying to find it on my own. And now as an adult all the websites are telling me I imagined the whole thing.
Love this…
Unrelated slightly, but I have 3 cars form 93. So it’s always a throwback when I drive one. Especially for the Nissan NX or Geo Storm
I remember that Superman game. There was this steakhouse-like place in my town for a while that had one, along with X-Men and a few other arcade cabinets, a couple of pinball machines, and one of those basketball things.
Every day with a new r-cut is a great day. 🙏🏼
Thanks for making this. I've been thinking a lot about how different my childhood was compared to my children's, because of this fundamental information asymmetry. We just couldn't easily know the answer to most questions. People have always told lies that we've had to discern and wade through, but back then even true things were hard to get at. Hours spent sitting on the carpeted floor of the barnes & noble reading game guides and taking notes (because I couldn't afford to buy them) was the only way figure out how to get those last few heart pieces. Even the experience of reading the game manual cover to cover, trying to absorb every last piece of the limited knowledge they held. There's something missing for me that all of my information comes through the same medium these days. I miss the discovery that comes with a book store or a blockbuster (or even better a small town video store, with aisles you have to slide into sideways because they have way more videos than is reasonable for the small space they can afford to rent). Thanks for giving voice to this aspect of nostalgia, the tactile part. So much of our media landscape these days is built on exploiting nostalgia, but it's often not satisfying because it's just reproducing the ideas, not the embodied experience. Your media analysis videos give me that feeling of embodied nostalgia.
My memory of arcade machines in Australia in the 90s was that they were crazy expensive. No one ever waited to play a game. You could walk right in and play whatever you wanted. If you had your entire lunch money to spend on one game. $1 for a single go at Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter. $2 for a racing or light gun game. Or you could have a pie and a drink. I know what I chose every time.
Another great video, Leon! My own personal video game urban legend: I was convinced there was a "Red Rock" accessory you could get in Chrono Trigger that would enable the ultimate triple tech attack in the game. I don't have any idea how that notion got into my brain, I probably just invented it myself, but me and my best friend spent HOURS AND HOURS scouring every inch of that game for this ridiculous thing that didn't exist! Fun times! 😄
A Circle K by my house in the late 80’s had a game I never found anywhere else that I loooved. Gondomania. So good.
Ahhh, my favorite arcade game lie was the time a kid told he played Mortal Kombat 3 a year early when he went to Japan over the summer. MK was always developed by an American team.
And the Sheng Long hoax is what indirectly led to the creation of Gouki/Akuma
triangle man, triangle man, triangle man meets particle man~
Glad I'm not the only person who still remembers that song.
The distribution of arcade machines in different countries is weird. When I was a kid in Ireland in the 80s and early 90s, I ususally only saw them when I was at the airport, but at some point in my teen years they removed the machines, to the point of finding Space Gun in a ferry terminal in Wales in 1995 was a novelty. By the time I was independent enough to roam Dublin on my own, there were a bunch of dedicated arcades and snooker clubs that had plenty of machines. I have some fond memories of my dad bringing us to one particular snooker club where he'd get a couple of games in and hand my brother and I some change to play games, but I'd also haunt the same place with my friends after school. Going to the US for a holiday in 1993 was the only time I saw arcade machines in like a McDonalds or anything, it was a totally alien concept!
But at this point, all those snooker clubs are gone or ditched the arcade machines, and the coupld of arcades that are still open converted to casino setups, replacing the games with video poker, one-armed bandits and other gambling machines. There was one combination restaurant and vintage arcade in my neighbourhood (the only place I've ever seen the exchange cash for tokens thing!), but they announced this week that they're closing in June. They were doing great business but the operating costs were skyrocketing and they didn't want to raise their prices.
Holy crap. I’ve never seen that MK2 glitch. Wild.
In my region, it was "home skillet". It must have been real satisfying getting that blood drop to line up with the scepter. Even if it didn't work, you still had to wait for the stage to come up, make sure they were defeated on the right spot AND execute the fatality, which idk, mostly just wasn't that easy for me to pull those off.
I had a friend who said if you used the ATV in Cruisn World you could use the gun on top to get rid of the opponents
Are creepy pasta the evolution of urban legends? I guess they exist in and are mostly about digital spaces 🤷
Love it, such a random and specific aspect of my childhood highlighted by one of my fave lefty channels
The last time I felt something remotely close to the gaming urban legend era was the few few blessed months of Dark Soul's release... That pendant...
Oh wow! This one really hits home. I used to play Robocop and Shinobi at the back of a Vietnamese run convenience store. Those days were nothing but sunshine, and imagination. Tokens suck. That Superman game was cool.
Highly recommend the game Arcade Paradise, which you can grab if you have gamepass. You take over a laundromat and convert it into an arcade
I hereby nominate this video for a Nobel prize in the field of Critical Nostalgia.
May Gif have mercy on us all.
This is fun and well done. My only gripe/peeve/note/uncomfortability is having the prototypical arcade as Type "D." The quintessential gaming experience - its auditory and visual assault, its sensory overload - should occupy the pole position as Type "A." (Yep, the reference to the classic racing game was intended.)
Arcade Type E (the Barcade) generally sucks in my experience as the machines don't get maintained properly
8:47 4 player NBA Jam arcade had a secret 3D FPS game that could be play without quarters, if I recall correctly you had to push down + all three buttons on player 1 and 2 for a few seconds after the logo and it would pop up
Thanks homeslice this video was wicked cool. Peace dude.
Leon, you are a gem. 💎 I'm glad to share this planet with people like you. 🌎
SF2, two young guys from Japan would come in and talk about secret things you could do; the Guile handcuff was easy to do, but the "invisible boomerang" seemed like a legend, until they did it one day right in front of me. Not only did Guile throw an invisible boomerang, but the opponent jumped over Guiles head, and was still hit... I had the MK2 moves page ripped out of a magazine and would bring it in to practice.
Okay, after looking into it, it was an invisible throw that guile can do. It was rumored to be an invisible boomerang. lol
I hope you got to go to your local arcade! And I'm thankful for you giving us younger than you a glimpse at the past
I love arcade urban legends. It reminds me of the horror anthology film Nightmares (1983). Specifically the short "The Bishop of Battle" where Emilio Estevez has to make it to the rumored "final level."
WOW I completely forgot the haunted MBA Jam rumors 😂
Ah, for me it started in '85. Mom had taken me to the local Taco John's to get tacos and potato Ole's. There was a Centipede cabinet in the lobby, and w/out quarters I pantomimed playing the demo screen. The next day I snuck out of the back yard, through some other backyards, across a golf course and 2 lanes of busy traffic. Of course Mom freaked out when she couldn't find me, sat and thought, where would he go, and remembered my enthusiasm for that game. When she arrived at Taco John's the employees told her Id been there for an hour, fake playing the game. This was about a quarter mile from our home, and I was 4 years old. Been casually playing since, and now trying to stretch my writing hands into screen adapting different PS1 IP.
Imagine a meta movie about the mk characters realizing they are in a simulation and Baraka awakens from the "matrix" known as the mk universe to save his people from this infinite cycle of doom. I'd watch that, Baraka is low key one of my favorite characters