In an age where so much happens online, urban legends and myths have found a home in the
form of creepypastas.
It only takes a quick google search to see that there’s a creepypasta about almost
anything, so it’s no surprise that the video game industry has its fair share of digital
horror stories that have been spooking players out for a handful of years now.
So today, we’re diving into some of the most compelling, most popular and most irksome
of these urban legends with our list of the top 10 gaming creepypastas.
10 The Perfect Video Game Starting off our list is a creepypasta about
a video game console.
Released back in the early 90s, this console had promised the most immersive games imaginable,
but it was quite different than other consoles released around that time.
It had no cartridge slot, no reset button, one controller port, and barely any were released
– less than 50.
One game in particular on the console was considered ‘the perfect game’ – incredibly
lifelike graphics, impressive gameplay, smart NPCs, and an endless amount of content.
Everyone who played it never wanted to stop.
The author began to search for this console, intrigued by its rumours, and interviewed
a few people who had played this perfect game.
They said that the better you got at the game, it started to sustain you-you didn’t need
food or water.
But the more you played, you would start to feel the physical impacts that your character
in the game would feel – if you were attacked by a whip, you would feel the impact in real
life.
In both accounts, their parents had to drag them away from the console and throw it out
and took them to the hospital.
The author researched further and eventually found some startling information – there
were 15 separate incidents where people had died in front of their TVs while playing a
‘bootleg console’, appearing ‘butchered’.
Their autopsies would later reveal that their internal organs had dissolved.
When authorities tried to contact the console’s manufacturer, the address and sticker on the
back of the system lead them to the site of a warehouse that had been demolished over
80 years ago.
Creepy.
9 Pikachu Lost Silver Moving on to a more depressing story, this
creepypasta is the tale of a gamer who wanted to replay his copy of Pokemon Silver for the
Gameboy color.
But he no longer had the cartridge; so instead, he had to hunt down a copy of it at GameStop.
When he popped it into his Gameboy, there was a save file already on it, so just for
fun, he decides to load it.
The game has 999 hours clocked, along with a full Pokedex, and all gyms beaten.
The character’s name is simply ‘…’ He takes a look at the character’s party of
Pokemon – it’s all Unowns, who just so happen to spell out ‘LEAVE’.
The gamer decides to keep playing with it, and the game becomes more and more glitched
as he goes.
Every pokemon he battles has really strange moves with morbid names.
He then accidentally stumbles along a glitch that lets him walk outside of the character’s
bedroom, and he transforms into a ghostly looking sprite version.
He keeps walking and eventually comes across a duplicate, seemingly normal sprite of the
main character.
And when he speaks to them, they say “Goodbye, forever.”
Then they use a move called Nightmare, and his own sprite spins around demonically before
the screen flashes white, and then reopens inside of a cemetery.
He opens up his pokemon party, and all of their icons have been replaced with skulls.
A Text box appears that reads RIP.
8 The Theatre The Theatre was a game released around the
same time as the original Doom in 1993.
While you can find bootlegged versions these days, the original ones that came out back
then were really odd – for starters, the case was completely white minus the caricature
of a man known as the ticket-taker; an expressionless man who is drawn badly.
The game itself is more curious – it never installs properly on your computer.
But if you manage to get the game open, you’ll see a menu screen with a lonely theatre and
three menu items – new game, load and options.
If you click options, the game crashes.
Load doesn’t do anything at all.
And new game opens up a first-person view of the empty movie theatre lobby, and the
ticket taker standing down a hall that presumably leads to the theatres.
When you approach him, he says “thank you please enjoy the movie” and you enter the
dark hallway, but then the screen fades to black, and you’re back in the lobby again,
with the only option being to repeat the same thing over and over again.
But as you keep playing, eventually the ticket taker will disappear, but the dialogue still
plays.
You walk forward, and it’s just nothingness, until eventually, the ticket takers head appears,
swirling.
This is when people starting noting that their bodies physically began to hurt.
They then hear a piercing screech as the game glitches out, and then returns you to the
lobby.
7 Tails Doll Sonic the Hedgehog has quite a few creepypastas
kicking around on the interwebs, and the one about the Tails Doll is perhaps one of the
most compelling.
It serves to justify the existence of the Tails Doll in 1997’s Sonic R - a racing
game that got a lot of mixed reviews and featured unlockable characters that some felt were
pretty lackluster.
One of those characters was Tails Doll - a mechanical doll version of Tails made by Robotnik,
similar to Metal Sonic.
Except unlike Metal Sonic, Tails Doll never really caught on.
Probably because it’s creepy AF.
The story tells of a boy whose father brought home a copy of Sonic R one day.
The two play it together and have a great time.
They finish the game’s main story, and as the credits roll by, the Tails Doll appears
on their tv screen.
That night, after the boy went to bed, the father decided to keep playing the game himself.
He saw that he now had the option to play as Tails Doll, so he went for it.
When he teamed up with Sonic in the game though, the screen went black and the system shut
itself down.
So the father decided it was time for bed himself.
He abruptly woke up at 2am, heading thuds against his door.
Thinking it was his son, he sleepily called out for the boy to go back to bed.
The thumping continued.
He got out of bed to investigate.
As he got closer to the door, he heard a whisper softly say “you are coming with me... forever”.
He opened the door to discover a blood-covered doll - the Tails doll - waiting for him on
the other side.
There are a few variations of this creepypasta, if you’re interested - seems like plenty
of people have bee creeped out by Tails Doll in the past.
6 NES Godzilla This creepypasta is about the 1988 NES Godzilla
game, Godzilla: Monster of Monsters.
Written by Cosbydaf, it’s notoriously long.
So the story goes that he found a cartridge of the game, and it seems really glitchy,
featuring unfinished areas and new monsters that weren’t in the game originally.
As he continues to play, things get weirder and weirder, and even included 'personality
tests' and featured monsters that graphically wouldn’t have been capable of existing when
the game initially came out.
One, in particular, a foe named Red, was next to impossible to defeat.
When Cosbydaf was defeated by Red, what appeared on his screen was chilling - the word “you
can’t win, Zachary”.
He asked the game how it knew his name.
Red replied, “I’ve known you for a long time.
I’ll tell you a secret”.
“I killed Melissa”.
It then challenged him to send his last monster - Godzilla - to try to defeat him.
Godzilla didn’t stand a chance.
That’s when Cosbydaf started to become numb in real life.
But before he passed out, a familiar character he encountered previously in the game appeared,
stating she was Melissa and gave him a new monster to use to fight Red.
He defeated Red, and the game ended.
The next day, he decided to sell the cartridge on eBay.
5 Come Follow Me – Pokemon The Lavender Town Syndrome urban legend is
one that most Pokemon fans are familiar with.
It’s the story of multiple children in Japan died after playing the original Pokemon Red
and Green games back in 1996.
They would become depressed and commit suicide after playing the games, specifically after
they got into the Lavender Town portion.
It was rumored that the score of the game and it’s high pitch is what was driving
these children insane.
Come to follow me is a continuation of that – this time, following the detectives who
were investigating the cases of these children, which also resulted in their own deaths and
the deaths of everyone close to them.
10 years later, the detective who originally found the evidence for the cases was drawn
to pop in one of the pokemon red cartridges into a Gameboy.
He started hearing a voice that said, come follow me, and fell into a trance, pulled
in by the voice as he played the game.
He began to hear the voices of all of the dead children.
The voice saying come to follow me lead him to his old gun, stored away in his apartment.
He then shot himself in the head.
4 Sonic.exe Sonic.exe is perhaps one of the most famous
creepypastas in video game history.
Essentially, it’s the story of a player who is given a PC port of Sonic the Hedgehog
for the Sega Genesis from his friend.
His friend also left him a note, saying to destroy it, saying it’s too late for him.
Confused, the player pops in the disc, which is marked simply as Sonic.exe.
As he plays, he sees that the game looks like a horrific version of the Sonic game he once
knew and loved, and the character select gives him the option to play as Tails, Knuckles
or Robotnik, but at first, he can only choose Tails.
He then proceeds to play as all of these characters, and things are really messed up.
Each stage is really horrific, and each character is chased by a demonic Sonic who eventually
seemingly kills them.
After he finishes with Robotnik, the demonic Sonic appears on his screen, along with the
message ‘Hide and Seek’.
Some versions of this end with Sonic coming out of the screen and killing the player.
Other versions end with the player being hunted down in real life, resulting in their mysterious
death.
3 BEN drowned BEN Drowned is the Legend of Zelda’s most
well-known creepypasta – and it has to do with the creepiest game of the franchise,
Majora’s Mask.
Initially, from 4Chan, this story tells of a haunted cartridge, and a player who, upon
starting the game for the first time, noticed that it had a saved file already on it, titled
Ben.
When he started a new game, all of the NPCs still referred to him as BEN, so he decided
to delete the saved file in hopes of fixing the issue.
But that didn’t fix it – the NPCs stopped referring to him altogether.
So, the player thought he’d try something out – the fourth-day glitch, which is the
glitch that allows you to play past the third day in the game, when the moon crashes into
the planet, and the game ends.
This is when things got really weird.
The player began to notice weird textures, NPCs missing from their usual locations, music
playing backward, and the constant repetition of the phrase “You shouldn’t have done
that.”
The player began posting videos of gameplay footage.
Then, the player apparently moved out of his dorm room unannounced, and his roommate replied
to his threat on 4chan, saying that the player left a final movie and text file behind, which
indicated the ghost of ben would soon break out of the cartridge.
2 Killswitch Killswitch is the game that no one has ever
played, but has one hell of an urban legend behind it.
It’s almost impossible to verify its existence, yet the myth has stood the test of time – the
game’s story is said to be about a woman who wakes up in a coal mine.
The game is said to be programmed to self-terminate if it’s ever completed, and only 5000 copies
of the game were created.
You play either as Ghast or Porto – Ghast is an invisible demon but extremely powerful,
and Porto was just a regular woman.
Typically people only played as Porto because not being able to see Ghast made the game
incredibly difficult.
When players finally get to the end of Porto’s journey, the screen turns white, and you’re
unable to play the game again – it deletes itself.
The game’s developers, Karvina Corp, released a statement saying that the game was intended
to give you a unique playing experience – like reality, it is unrepeatable, irretrievable
and illogical.
Death is final, death is complete.
One player decided to buy a copy of the game and record it so that he’d be able to share
it – Yamamoto Ryuichi from Toyko.
He bought it in 2005 for $733,000 at an auction.
The only video that has ever surfaced from his footage though is a one minute 45-second
clip of him sitting at his computer, crying.
1 Misfortune.gb The story behind Misfortune is a bit of an
obscure mysterious one.
So Misfortune is a game for the original Game Boy handheld console, but no known hard copies
or ROMS of it currently exist, so all information about it is passed on by word of mouth – or
rather, via creepypasta these days.
In the game, you play as a young boy walking around a Gothic building.
Eventually, you cross paths with a demonic looking character – it never identifies
itself.
A dialogue box pops up and reads “I exist within the very fabric of reality.
Do you want to challenge me?”
If you say yes, you end up solving a bunch of puzzles, periodically being told by the
demon things like “choose wrong and misfortune will befall your loved ones.”
If you ever make a mistake or fail to solve the puzzles correctly, the screen cuts to
black, and an image of the demon appears with a text box that reads “I am a god here”
in the text that looks like pixelated blood dripping.
Those who have allegedly played the game have claimed that after losing the game, they’ve
experienced severe depression and feelings of dread.
Others, who shared their tale online, disappeared, and were rumored to have died.
On forums, people would debate about whether the myth was true, some saying it was all
a joke.
Others speculated that the game was found within other cartridges, or rather, host games,
like Pokemon Red and Legend of Zelda Link’s Awakening.
Regardless, there’s a whole lot of unanswered questions about Misfortune.
And, fun fact, it’s speculated that misfortune, being one of the OG video game urban legends,
was what likely inspired the authors of other video game creepypastas, like Sonic.exe.
There we have it, friends!
Which of these freaked you out the most?
Are there other gaming creepypastas that you think should’ve made a spot on our list?
Give us a shout in those comments below and tell us what’s on your mind.
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