Video Games And Hard To Believe Real Stories

The mind-boggling Tennis news lately got us thinking about the weird stories behind video games. Being an integral part of the entertainment industry and the present pop culture, there are many tales attached to video games. Today we look into some of the fantastic facts related to video games that hard to believe.

•    There was a time that Nintendo shipped Super Nintendo consoles only during the night. The reason for it was the fear of the Japanese mafia and being robbed by them.
•    FIFA 2001 and Gran Turismo 2 both had a smell attached to them. The UK versions of the game came with the fragrance of soccer and racing. When the disc of each game was scratched or rubbed, the person would get the odor of a pitch or the pit-stop. The idea was to deliver an authentic experience.
•    The first game of Civilization had a peculiarity. The aggression level of Gandhi was the lowest in the game. It was set at 1 because he didn’t want to create wars. When the player chose democracy as a setting, the aggression rating would drop further by two points. This would have set the score to -1. But instead, the number changed to 255 i.e. the highest aggression score. In replacement of a peaceful Gandhi, you got one who was ready to launch the nukes.
•     Video games are not just for time pass or hobby. They are saving the world one eye at a time. In 2012, Daphne Maurer, a development psychologist, proved that if people born with cataracts played Medal of Honor their eyesight improved. Well, the research didn’t prove it, but it most emphatically suggested it.
•    Sonic the Hedgehog is also a gene inside our bodies. Robert Riddle, a post-doc in Britain named the gene after the character when he saw it in a comic book being read by his daughter. The then six year old girl was reading a Sonic comic when the gene, whose symbol is SHH, was discovered. The gene which has spiked appearance is responsible for separating the left side of the brain from the right side. It is also what determines that we have two eyes instead of one.
•    The guidelines set by US don’t allow drugs to be shown in video games. Therefore, in the game Final Fantasy Legend II by Game Boy the drug dealers sold bananas in the back alleys instead of opium. The censorship refused to sell the game in America until the opium smugglers a player encountered in the game were changed.
•    Video games are not just for playing. They are for politics too. When Barack Obama began campaigning back in 2008, he bought the ad space in eighteen video games. The games he chose were targeted to people in the age range of 18 to 34. Some of these games were Madden, Skate and Burnout Paradise. The games were run in over ten states in the US, and the ‘Vote For Change’ billboard would appear in them.