After throwing your copy of ‘Contra’, your NES and whoever was playing with you (who managed to walk too far forward, killing your character) out the bedroom window in 1991, who could’ve dreamt that video games would become the largest section of the wider entertainment industry in the world?

Any phenomenon as popular and wide-reaching as this will spawn a whole bunch of fringe stories, interesting individuals and quirky facts. Here’s a list of 10—some of the entries are short tasters for you to read about and research via the references. Some of these are less a trip down the rabbit hole than a full-own dungeon crawl through the Rabbit-God’s labyrinth. Enjoy!

10 Ancient Board Games That Inspired Modern Games

10 The Elder Scrolls Game That’s Bigger Than Britain

A lot of RPG gamers stick to the core quest/storylines. They listen intently to tutorials and methodically work through the remaining side quests once they’re done with the main game.

There is another sort of gamer—those who treat open world-type games as the name suggests. Many a gamer has delighted in taking to the open road, be it the vast frozen lands of Skyrim or the sprawling city of San Andreas from the GTA series, and randomly do whatever the hell they feel like. These worlds, however, have a border. You can only travel so far before you run smack bang into a game wall. Some maps are larger than others.

The map from the second installation of popular Elder Scrolls series from Bethesda Softworks, ‘The Elder Scroll II: Daggerfall’, is vast. Bethesda, the game’s publishers, claim that the world map roughly equates to the size of the island of Great Britain. Maybe a bit bigger. Where it takes most players a few tens of minutes to get across the map in your typical large, open world game, Daggerfall takes days. The best time thus far is 61 hours and 54 minutes (!) The record for running the 874 miles from Land’s End to John o’Gorates in Britain is 9 days—so Daggerfall is huge, but it takes longer to walk through a roughly equivalent real map—real humans tend to get blisters, though.

Then again, you won’t come across as many centaurs, spriggans and wereboars.

9 A Weird Dark Souls World Record

Gaming world records are usually quite mundane—speed-runs, high scores on arcade games and record times in racing games. One avid gamer, however, found a novel way to get his name in the record books.

Benjamin “Bearzly” Winn from Edmonton, Canada, set the record for successful completions of the PC version of the fiendishly difficult, Lovecraftian RPG ‘Dark Souls’, all whilst using different types of game controllers. He chocked up a total of 9 finished games with the different controllers, ranging from the mundane to the seemingly impossible—”Bearzly” used:

A Wiimote
An Xbox 360 controller (with 1 finger)
A Steering Wheel
A Dancemat
A Microphone (implementing voice control)
A ‘Rock Band’ Guitar
A ‘Rock Band’ Piano
A ‘Rock Band’ Drum Kit
And a pair of ‘Donkey Kong’ Bongos

Fair play.

8 ‘Duke Nukem Forever (Took) Forever’

The gaming community isn’t known for its patience. When gamers are made to wait an extra year for a promised game to be released, it’d better be at least a 9.5/10, lest you release a kraken of online hate.

One of the most notorious flubs after a long delay was ‘Duke Nukem Forever’. First, the game was held from release for 14 years (announced in 1997, released in 2011!). That’s as long as it takes a child to get from their birth to the end of elementary school, have a bar or bat mitzvah and have most of your non-head hairs come through.

Secondly, at the end of all that, your rewards was a copy of ‘Duke Nukem Forever’, one of the dullest games ever released. Luckily for the developers, the Duke’s ‘Enforcer’ (a twin rocket launcher) is not commercially available for former fans to purchase.

7 That’s The Name Of The Game

We all know ‘Tiger Woods PGA Tour’, ‘Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!’, ‘Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater’ and… ‘Emlyn Hughes International Soccer’? No? How about ‘Shirley Muldowney’s Top Fuel Challenge’? Ok, that’s less likely.

Over the years there have been many obscure celebrity endorsed video game titles -sometimes the game remains obscure, sometime it’s the celebrity that isn’t all that well-known, sometimes they’re downright weird.

Take 2008s Nintendo DS game ‘Who’s Cooking? with Jamie Oliver’, a cooking simulator where the player prepares some recipes from the English chef’s repertoire. That’s it. Some have said there is an easter egg hidden in the game—you can induce the mockney healthy-eating advocate to cry profusely onscreen if you manage to cook a turkey twizzler gumbo. But that’s probably just an urban legend.

Another strange one is 1986s Commodore 64/ZX Spectrum title ‘Peter Shilton’s Handball Maradona’, a soccer game where you control one player, as opposed to the whole team. That player is the then-England goalkeeper Peter Shilton. So why is legendary Argentine player Maradona in the title? Well, in the 1986 FIFA World Cup, Diego Maradona scored a very contentious goal (he very clearly used his hand, which is a foul), leading to England losing the match and getting dumped out of the tournament. In order to cash in on this sensational scandal, the game’s developers dumped the words ‘Maradona’ and ‘Handball’ into the title, seemingly to cash in on the prominence of the event. The teams in the game are all English domestic league teams, a league that Diego Maradona never played in.

One of the all-time-most-bizarre celeb-fronted games has to be 1991s Japanese game ‘Gorby no PipelineDaisakusen’ for the MSX2, Famicom and Fujitsu’s ‘FM Towns’ gaming PC variant. This Tetris-style game tasks you with building a pipeline from Moscow, then in the USSR, to Tokyo in order to improve diplomatic relations between the two states. ‘Gorby’ refers to Mikhail Gorbachev, the USSRs Premier, who’s featured in cartoon form on the game’s cover, birthmark and all! 3 months after the game’s release, the USSR dissolved. Plans for ‘Yeltsin’s Vodka Distillery Daisakusen’ never came to pass.

6 A Crowd-funded Nightmare

Waiting years and years for Duke Nukem Forever to be released must have been frustrating for fans, but that’s nothing compared to the ‘Star Citizen’ saga. After first launching a Kickstarter for developing the game in 2010, English game developer Chris Roberts, noted for creating “Wing Commander” series of games, still hasn’t given pledgers a release date. That’s all despite raising $339 million in pledges!

The ins, outs whys and wherefores are too numerous to cover in detail here; needless to say, if the ‘Star Citizen’ affair just fizzles out with no game released, it will be considered one of the biggest scams of the digital age.

5 Game Over

We’ve all done it—played some low or no-budget, crappy video game on Steam, or on miniclip.com (back in the day), or after buying some cheapo ‘300-in-1 PC Game bundle***INCLUDES DUNKY KANG!’ (way back in the day). These sorts of games have one thing in common—they are all shite.

The game that defines this sub-genre of games is the unlicensed craptastic shoot ’em up ‘Hong Kong 97’, published in 1995. It was designed by Japanese hobbyist ‘Kowloon’ Kurasawa, replete with terrible level design, graphics and an awful storyline —You play as ‘Chin’, A heroin-addicted super soldier and cousin of Bruce Lee, tasked by the Hong Kong government to kill the population of China—not a small number of people—because of a chaotic influx of migrants from the mainland to the island city-state after the 1997 handover from the UK… hell, maybe it was prophetic.

This game is often considered the ‘worst game of all time’. But a that isn’t why this game is notable amongst the 1000s of titles that float in the cesspool of shitty games.

There’s a photo of an actual corpse shown on the ‘Game Over’ screen. No joke here. A real dead person. There was a whole conspiracy theory borne from this (which was way more interesting than the game itself). Some claimed that it was the body of a Polish boxer named Leszek B?a?y?ski, who committed suicide 3 years before the game was released. Was he actually murdered—the still used in the game taken from a video recording taken by his killers? Did China have a hand in doing so, maybe as retaliation for him speaking out against the newly struck trade deals between the CCP and Poland?

Turns out the designer clipped a screenshot from a ‘Faces of Death’ mondo film that included Bosnian War footage. So, who was the corpse? A dead combatant from the war in Bosnia. God, this game sucks.

4 Chris Houlihan And His Secret Room

The title of this entry sounds a lot creepier than it should.

Chris Houlihan was not (as far as can be ascertained) a CIA torturer or a serial killer. He was once a kid who won a cool prize. Back in 1990, Nintendo Power Magazine ran an awesome competition—entrants had to send in pictures of themselves with Warmech from the Final Fantasy franchise. The winner was a young man named Chris Houlihan. His prize? He has his own secret room on the SuperNES version of the game “The Legend of Zelda: A Link To The Past”. Chris Houlihan is now immortal.

3 The Guy Who’s Been Playing Sports Management Simulator For 333 Years

Dedication to ones work is often held up as a primary ideal of modern society. Nobody represents this as well as Sepp Hedel, a German man who took it upon himself to work the often thankless, grueling, high-pressure job of managing a series of soccer teams. For over 300 years.

In a video game, of course.

The world record holder from Germany was playing ‘Football Manager 2017’. He started his virtual career with FC United of Manchester, staying with the club for 50 years. He then moved to India where he managed Bengaluru for 200 years. He finished off his career back in England with Hereford FC, taking the small market town’s team to 45 league titles over 83 seasons. How long did Sepp play the game in real terms? 81 days. Or 1,940 hours.

When life-extension biotech becomes commercially available, Sepp should probably go for the record of managing a soccer team for 300 years IRL. Or it doesn’t count…

2 How To Make A Horror Game Gorier

No matter how many flying intestines and geyser-level blood spurts you add into a game, there will always be the protective barrier that is the screen/monitor. You won’t be ‘in’ the game world itself…yet—it’s coming, though.

When ‘Resident Evil 4’ was released with much fanfare in 2005, players were treated to another top jump-scare-laden release for the franchise. But somebody, somewhere, must have expressed how disappointingly mundane the game was. This prompted NubyTech to release a special controller for the game, usable on GameCube or PS2—A blood-splattered Chainsaw controller. That, or this was yet another ‘collectible’ add-on to squeeze as much cash as is humanly possible out of gamers. Still, it’s another controller for “Bearzly” Winn to beat Dark Souls with.

1 Taking Obsession A Tad Too Far

There are a lot of urban legends and creepypastas associated with video games—from the ‘Ben Drowned’ story about ‘The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask’, to the infamous ‘Polybius’ urban legend about a 1980s arcade game rumoured to have caused various terrible symptoms, placed in arcades by mysterious men in black—the world of gaming is no stranger to scary tales. The case of the ‘Final Fantasy VII House’ actually occurred.

Probably.

Much like the ‘Star Citizen’ affair, the story of the ‘Final Fantasy House’ is too long and winding to cover in a listcicle (check out the above video), but here’s a breakdown to help you rappel down the rabbit hole—after more research, you can decide if you believe this strange tale:

The story, in short, is that two individuals referred to as ‘Jenova’ and ‘Hojo’ enticed people to live with them. Jenova then convinced these tenants that they were all reincarnations of characters from the game, coercing and controlling them like a maniacal cult leader.

Given the hours many people spend glued to screens, immersing themselves in an alternate reality where they can be a hero, maybe this urban legend is actually true.

10 Video Games That Impacted Gaming

About The Author: CJ Phillips is a storyteller, actor and writer living in rural West Wales. He is a little obsessed with lists.

Virtual Reality (VR) is still relatively new, and its gaming application is even newer. The first headset that was suitable for VR gaming was the Oculus Rift which didn’t become commercially available until 2016. Developers expected an immediate demand for VR games and headsets. In reality, the VR gaming market grew slowly at first.

There were problems with motion sickness and the lag between a player’s action and the feedback to the headset (called “latency” in the jargon). By the time Valve launched Half-Life: Alyx in 2020, the developers had solved some of these problems. Headsets became cheaper, and the range of games increased. Google has introduced a range of cardboard headsets, bringing the price down to an affordable level for everyone.

As people interact with a virtual world, their reactions are often funny to watch. The reason why we find watching VR gamers so amusing is easy to find. Players are immersed in a situation that we might be able to see on a monitor, knowing what is coming and that the game is completely fake. For the player, the VR world is real—even though they know deep down it’s just a game. Here are our top ten funniest moments in VR gaming.

Related: Top 10 Things That Will Shatter Your Perception Of Reality

10 A Screamin’ Good Time

In this video, the player repeatedly tells himself that he doesn’t like what is happening to him. Judging by his reactions, this is undoubtedly true, but it begs the question of why he doesn’t take the headset off. We’ll see other videos that make us ask the same question. I suppose the answer must be that he wants to see what happens next and is afraid of looking weak if he gives up.

Notice that the man does a fair amount of screaming. What good does he think that will do? Screaming is not rational, so why do we do it when we are scared?

The amygdala is a structure in the brain’s center that processes those emotions triggered by fear. A scream in the amygdala prompts our brain to be more alert and heightens our powers of analysis. This may help you escape a haunted house, but a fat lot of good it will do you if you jump out of a plane and your parachute doesn’t open.

Still, it’s funny to watch people reacting primitively.

9 Down the Rabbit Hole

You have to admire Mom’s persistence in this clip. She’s willing to give VR a go, even though she’s scared half to death. Her family finds her antics hilarious because they know she is safe at home and not where she believes. Of course, Mom would know this, too, if she could think about the situation rationally. But the thing about virtual reality is that it affects the brain on a more primitive level.

In Lewis Carroll’s enduring classic novel Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Alice follows the White Rabbit into his burrow and finds herself in a nonsensical, surreal world. Her experience doesn’t help her much in a place where her logical rules often don’t apply. Very similar to the experience of donning a VR headset.

Mom has gone down the rabbit hole, and, at one level, her brain is convinced that this is a true experience.

8 This Game Has Teeth

The girl here is a little wary about what her boyfriend tries to persuade her to do. He’s honest enough to admit that he hasn’t played the game before, so he doesn’t quite know what to expect. The girl has experience with VR gaming, so she is aware that this undersea world is artificial.

Still, on occasions, primitive emotions come to the surface. This game is distinguished by the fact that the player has no control over what happens to her. She is in a protective cage and is warned that something is coming. As many of our players do, she says she doesn’t like what is happening. Still, there’s not much she can do about it if she wants to finish the game.

An interesting advantage of VR gaming is that it can help people to get over phobias. If people can have fun with sharks, they may be helped to overcome their fear.

7 Stepping Off into the Deep End

This one is interesting because it’s a challenge shared by people you know who would probably be too ready to make fun of failure. As you will see, the premise of this game is simple. Players have to walk a short plank suspended high over a city. If they get to the end, they can step off the end and fall to the ground. The graphics clearly show an imaginary place; there’s no attempt to fool the players into thinking this is real.

Our brains are divided into the reptilian (or primal), the limbic, and the neocortex (although some use different terms). When our players are walking the plank, the reptilian section is dominant. This is the most primitive of the three parts and controls vital functions such as balance, breathing, heart rate, and temperature. Rationality is not part of its function; it is concerned with basic survival.

The dominance of the reptilian brain explains players’ reactions in all of our videos and explains why we, who are using more rational parts of the brain, find VR games hilarious to watch.

6 Releasing Steam

Although the player reassures himself that he is safe inside a room, rationality flies out of the window once he has his VR helmet on. He babbles occasionally and swears a lot. There’s a lot of swearing in some of our videos, and most of it is stronger than the occasional “dammit.”

Swearing is a safety release that allows us to relieve tension, and the stronger the swear word is, the more effective the action is. This player is always clear in his mind that his experience is completely artificial, taking his helmet off to give himself a break before plunging back in. A good idea if you are beginning to feel overwhelmed by the experience. But our player can’t resist diving back in. The VR world is challenging, fun, and addictive.

5 Safety First

Here, we see a mixture of experiences of people who are not used to VR gaming. We have seen them in other videos. The players shut their eyes, scream, and contort their bodies while onlookers laughingly remind them that they are safe.

What is particularly striking about this video is the number of times that people blunder into objects in the real world. This can be dangerous, especially for inexperienced users immersed in a virtual world with no spatial relationship with the actual.

I suppose the lesson is that you shouldn’t use VR technology unless you are in a safe environment. This is one reason why some gamers prefer to play in arcades. There they are monitored and can immediately share their experiences with others.

4 This Game is Sick

This compilation backs up what we’ve said about other videos. At one point, one of the players says, “I get dizzy,” and this can be a problem with VR technology.

Many players report feeling dizziness or nausea when using VR helmets. Basically, this is the difference between what the eyes are telling the player and what the body is actually doing in real space. For example, if a player is climbing stairs in a game, but the body knows that it is really on a flat floor, the player can get disoriented.

This feeling can be heightened by something under the impressive name of “vergence-accommodation conflict.” This occurs when, in VR, the eyes are focused on something that seems to be far away but which, in reality, is on a screen right in front of the eyes.

But watching people whirl and stagger as if they’ve over-indulged at the Christmas party can be comical.

3 Don’t VR Alone

This video highlights the fact that people shouldn’t use VR alone. You might find—in fact, you probably will—that everyone else in the room is laughing themselves sick. Not funny to you when you are going through a terrifying experience. Never mind, you will have your turn to laugh at the others, and it’s better to be safe than sorry.

I wonder if it might be a good idea to incorporate a proximity sensor into VR headsets so that people get a warning if they are too close to a real object.

2 With Metaverse, It’s Only Going to Get Better

The commentator on this video points out that space is important. He’s talking about having enough room to play safely. It’s a point we’ve already made, and it’s certainly true. However, in VR, two different spaces collide—the real world and the imaginary.

The fact that the Facebook group has changed its name to Meta tells us something about the unlimited ambition that drives the company. It is now dedicated to building a Metaverse. The idea behind a metaverse seems to be the construction of an alternative reality that is internally logical but allows users to perform actions in the “real” world.

Gaming will undoubtedly be an important feature of the Metaverse, and companies are developing new technologies to make the experience more real. More real and more fun for everyone.

1 Fast Food Futures

I don’t know if “funny” is the right word to describe this last clip. “Surreal” might be better. The normal activity of ordering a meal in McDonald’s becomes an interactive shooter game with graphics from an early Duke Nukem.

The only limits in VR are the limits that we place on our own imaginations. The gaming world is changing, and the changes aren’t just limited to gaming. VR can change the way that we interact with the world. How we live, work, play, and relate to others might change dramatically.