Ever since the boom of video games back in the 80s, there have always been urban legends
surrounding games that are cursed – ones that can inflict serious damage to players
in real life.
Whether or not these whispers of curses are true, one thing is for sure – there’s
a whole history of games that have been called cursed by players for years, and today, we’re
going to dive in an explore those titles with our list of the top 10 cursed video games
you should never play alone.
Some of these games on this list are next to impossible to find or track down.
Others have long disappeared from existence, to the point where there’s speculation as
to whether they were even real at all.
And some are games that we’ve all played at one point in our lives.
So with that in mind, let’s get to it!
10.
Polybius Polybius is perhaps the most notorious of
tabooed games – this is because there’s a lot of speculation as to whether or not
it ever actually existed.
Despite this, it’s found its way into all aspects of pop culture – hell, the Simpsons
even references it.
So what is Polybius, for those of you unaware?
As the story goes, back in 1981, during the boom of arcade culture, Polybius was a machine
that appeared at an arcade in Portland, Oregon.
It was said to produce psychoactive and addictive effects in players who played it.
According to the legends, ‘men in black’ would visit the machine periodically, data
mining it to study the effects it had on players – it was believed to be a government run
psychology experiment.
So did it ever actually exist?
Using the Freedom of Information Act, an investigation was conducted about the machine’s existence,
which came back as negative – there is no proof it ever really did exist.
But it still has inspired a ton of copycat versions of the game, including a recent 2017
version for the PS4 developed by Llamasoft.
9.
Stay Alive Stay alive is a game that has its roots in
a 2006 slasher film.
The movie follows a group of friends who play the game, Stay Alive, and end up getting killed
in real life, dying in the same way their characters did.
At the time of the film’s release, there were rumours that the game was actually being
developed – a game that was supposed to be as difficult as Dark Souls, in which if
your HP drops below zero, your avatar disappears forever.
And apparently, playing this game is supposed to cause you to go mad, suffer from horrible
nightmares, and even commit suicide in an effort to get peace.
No Stay Alive companion game was ever released publically upon the film’s distribution.
8.
Berzerk Berzerk is one of the few titles on our list
that actually has resulted in confirmed deaths.
For context, it’s an arcade game, a multi directional shooter that was released in 1980
and has you taking out rooms full of armed robots.
If you get shot by a robot, touch a wall in the game, touch a robot or get hit by the
game’s main antagonist, a smiley face named Evil Otto, you’d die.
Back in 1981, a 19 year old named Jeff Dailey had managed to get a high school of 16, 660
in the game, and as he typed in his initials, he died of a heart attack.
A year later, an 18 year old named Peter Burkowski died in the exact same way.
Urban legends surrounding the title suggest that Evil Otto is the one responsible for
the deaths, but really, it could just be the fact that they both suffered from heart conditions
combined with the exhaustion that comes from playing hours and hours of the game to get
a high score?
Regardless, many believe the title is cursed, even to the extent that people refuse to play
the newer iterations of the game available today.
7.
Petscop Petscop is an ongoing let’s play series
that focuses on a fictional obscure PS1 game – in the fictional game, the player, who
in the series on YouTube is a guy named Paul, is supposed to collect pets from their cages.
But after inputting a cheat code into the game, things get quite dark.
It gets weirder.
Those who watched the series spawned a fan theory about it, and it’s connection to
a child abuse case of a 10 year old named Candace Newmaker that died from a 70 minute
re birthing session as part of attachment therapy.
Rebirthing sessions is a controversial treatment in the US in which adults wrap a child in
a blanket and sit on them as a means to reconnect them with their parents, re-experiencing birth.
Newmaker was adopted and had behavioural issues.
The game has various moments throughout that some noticed had eerie connections to the
girl in real life, which has been disputed though since Newmaker died 3 years after the
game’s copyright date.
6.
Hall of tortured souls While Microsoft Excel is a program that some
people prefer to avoid these days, back in 1995, it actually contained a very intriguing
secret – there was a hidden Doom-style mini game called the Hall of Tortured Souls that
you could access.
Despite it being a really creative easter egg, there were rumours that the game was
cursed and depicted ‘anti-christ imagery’ to some.
Others have claimed that the game contained horrible secrets about it’s creator, the
team who developed it at Microsoft.
5.
Fortnite Funny enough, Fortnite made our list.
Now before you go off questioning our judgement, consider this.
There’s a reason why Fortnite creepy pastas are so popular.
A handful of players since the battle royale mode of the game launched have claimed that
when they play late at night, weird things have happened.
Whether or not those can be chalked up to glitches on the server though is to be determined.
In addition to that, in the Save the World mode, players have heard the singing, laughter
and crying of a little girl, dubbed the ghost girl, whose source has never actually been
found.
4.
Killswitch Killswitch is a game that is said to be so
rare that only a handful of people have actually played it - so much so that it’s actually
difficult to determine whether or not it even exists.
Killswitch follows a woman named Porto who wakes up in a coal mine and must survive encounters
with the undead and demons in order to make it out alive.
There’s another player character too – Ghast – who is invisible, and nearly impossible
to play, to the point where no one has ever finished the game as ghast.
Killswitch is designed to self-terminate after being completed, with only 5000 copies of
the game ever being created.
Naturally, rumour has it the game is cursed, being what some gleaned a metaphor for communism,
but whether or not that’s actually true is a mystery.
3.
Sad Satan Sad Satan is a title that has been surrounded
by speculation.
A youtube channel called Obscure Horror Corner had posted about the game, which features
monochromatic corridors with random audio samples that play and loop.
These audio samples consist of sound bites from various murderers, including Charles
Manson.
As you walk through the hallways, images will randomly appear that cover their screen, preventing
them from progressing for a few seconds.
These images reference child abuse, crime, individuals accused of murder, and even political
figures, including Margaret Thatcher.
There’s also images of victims containing violence and gore, and even beheaded individuals.
The game is filled with NPC children that stand there and stare at you, and can’t
be interacted with, until the end of the game, when one of them follows you and begins to
cause you contact damage.
The player will eventually die since there is no means of healing damage.
After posting footage of this happening in the game in 2015, Obscure Horror Corner’s
channel went entirely silent.
Since, there has been a ton of rumours surrounding the effects the game can have on individuals,
if they manage to find the right download link to play it.
2 Pokemon Red & Blue Anyone familiar with the Pokemon franchise
will surely have heard about this urban legend – there’s a myth that says in Japan, children
who played Pokemon Red and Blue (or rather, Red and Green as they were in that country)
would sometimes suffer strange illnesses and even commit suicide thanks to something known
as the Lavender Town Syndrome.
In Lavender Town, after arriving, you’ll notice that the entire place has fairly eerie
music, fitting of the fact that it’s home to essentially a giant Pokemon grave site.
There were rumours that in the original Japanese versions of the game, the music that played
in Lavender Town had extremely high frequencies causing negative effects on children aged
7 to 12, since their young ears were more sensitive and could pick up the frequencies,
with the majority complaining of severe headaches and other common illnesses, and some having
more extreme effects, which eventually led to suicide.
This music was revised for the North America release of the game.
True story or a creepy pasta?
Share your thoughts with us in those comments below!
1.
Taboo: The Sixth Sense Taboo The Sixth Sense is a tarot card reading
simulation, created by Rare for the NES and released back in 1989 in North America.
Marketed as a party game, but is the only game in the history of the system to have
two warnings – the first being that the game is meant for those ages 14 and up, and
the second being that it was intended only for entertainment purposes.
You’ll see why in a sec.
The game consists of players inputting their name, gender and date of birth, along with
a question.
The NCP dealer then shuffles the cards and generates a reading.
It would then use algorithms to ‘tell the future’.
According to urban legends, the game on several occasions predicted that players would die
– a prediction that actually panned out, resulting in the game being taken off the
market.
There are additional rumours about the game making children under the age of 14 extremely
irritable.
There we have it friends!
What other cursed games can you think of?
Give us a shout in those comments below and let us know!
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