Secrets & Lies (page 2)

LEGEND: There's tons of hidden stuff still waiting to be unlocked in Mortal Kombat II.
FACT: False
More than most games, Midway's coin-op Mortal Kombat II was surrounded by a special air of mystery. After the original game's unlikely rumors of secret characters like Reptile and Ermac turned out to be true, hungry fans leapt on every detail of the sequel and let their imaginations get the better of them. Some stuff was true-secret characters like Smoke, Jade, and Noob Saibot existed, plus after 250 matches, you could play a game of Pong-but much of the other stuff was pure fiction. Sonya and Kano are not playable, but they appear chained as part of a background--surely there must be a way to free them! The operator's menu includes such cryptic phrases as "Kano Transformations"--which is "proof" that you can play as Kano! In the background of The Pit II, two small fighters can be seen squaring off-and one of them is on fire (fanatics dubbed him "Torch"). He must be a secret character! Weirder still were persistent rumors that Sub-Zero turns into a polar bear (for an Animality), Kitana takes off her clothes (for a Nudality), the weapons painted into the backgrounds could be used, that you could hang bodies on the hooks of the Acid Pool stage, that you could knock opponents into the mouths of the Living Forest trees, and you could fight a female ninja on that stage named Scarlet...even though nobody had actually seen such stuff with their own eyes. (Of course, that didn't stop enterprising Photoshop artists from creating fake screenshots of those things as "proof.") The game's main creators, Ed Boon and John Tobias, did little to quell the rumors; the truth is, "no comment" added to the game's mystique and was good for repeat business besides. But by late 1994, as MK3 was coming out, the team revealed the truth: You can't play as or against the guy on fire (it's actually Liu Kang's player model with extra art; he showed up for real as a secret character in MK: Deadly Alliance), Sub-Zero only turns into a polar bear in MK3, and chasing secrets is fun. "All the rumors come from the players themselves," said Tobias in an interview with Flux magazine. "And they either believe them or they don't."


LEGEND: The military has used video games to train soldiers since the early 1980s.
FACT: True
Okay, so maybe Missile Command isn't exactly a serious simulation, but the U.S. military has been using modified versions of commercially available video games for several years. The first was a customized version of Battlezone, a realistic tank simulation called Bradley Trainer (programmed by Battlezone's designer, Ed Rotberg). The cabinet looks like a regular Battlezone machine but with over a dozen extra switches and knobs on the front as well as a custom control grip to properly correspond with the controls of a Bradley M2 Infantry Fighting Vehicle (that is still in use today). Two prototypes were made in 1981, and only one is known to exist today. However, one element morphed and lived on; the Bradley controller bears a striking resemblance to the yoke found on Atari's Star Wars and Return of the Jedi games.

The most celebrated use of games as training tools was Marine Doom, a custom version of Doom II created to teach soldiers about teamwork, fog of war, communication, and the behavior of weapons like M-16s and M-249s. Oh, and it was kinda cool to play, too. "The fun factor is very important," said Project Officer Lt. Scott Barnett to the Government Computer News. "That's what makes our Marines want to use it. But it's an honest-to-God training tool: You can do mission rehearsal, mission planning." Enterprising gamers can download the Marine Doom files for free to try it themselves. (You'll need a registered version of Doom II to run it.)

Game-based training is only growing. NovaLogic has been enlisted to build a custom version of Delta Force 2: Land Warrior, the Navy gives a custom version of Microsoft Flight Simulator to all student pilots, and Rainbow Six: Rogue Spear is being used for urban warfare training. Now, with games like America's Army and Full Spectrum Warrior sneaking back into consumer gaming, the circle is complete.

LEGEND: The government made an arcade game that erased kids' memories and gave them horrific nightmares.
FACT: Inconclusive
Using games for military training is one thing; using games for mind control...well, that's something else. But there is a cryptic tale of an arcade game called Polybius that appeared in only a handful of locations in Portland, Oregon in the early 1980s. Credited to a company called Sinnesloschen, Polybius (named for a Greek historian who also dabbled in cryptography) was an abstract puzzle game that reportedly caused nightmares and memory loss in those who played it ("Sinnesloschen" is German for "sense-deleting"), and some supposedly swore off games for good. And to seal the deal, one arcade owner claimed that black-coated gentlemen would periodically come to collect data-but not coins-from the machines.

Unfortunately, the main thing that's missing is proof. While a ROM reportedly exists, it hasn't actually been located. A title screen is all anyone seems to be able to produce--and these are easy to create in Photoshop (the company name's font is the same one Williams used on several of its games, making cut-and-paste easy for an aspiring prankster). Also, nobody seems to be willing to name names or authenticate any of the tales floating around the Internet-nothing can be verified by a reliable source.

But still...what if it's true?

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