Buzz
Back in 1991, after hurling your 'Contra' game, NES console, and your co-op partner (who, in a moment of carelessness, wandered too far and lost your character) out of the bedroom window, who would have predicted that video games would grow to become the largest sector of global entertainment?
Any cultural phenomenon that achieves this level of popularity inevitably spawns quirky tales, eccentric personalities, and fascinating facts. Here’s a compilation of 10—some are just appetizers, others are deep dives, so be ready to explore further. Prepare yourself for some truly unexpected adventures!
10. The Elder Scrolls Game That's Larger Than the Entire United Kingdom
Many RPG enthusiasts focus on the main storyline and quests, absorbing every bit of tutorial advice before tackling the side missions once they’ve completed the primary narrative.
Some gamers take the concept of open-world games to heart, embracing the freedom to explore vast landscapes and do whatever they desire. Whether it’s the snowy wilderness of Skyrim or the sprawling streets of San Andreas from GTA, these players roam at will. Yet, every open world has its limits, and no matter how big the map, there's always a point where you hit an invisible game boundary. Some maps just happen to be larger than others.
The world map of ‘The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall’, the second game in the renowned series from Bethesda Softworks, is massive. Bethesda claims the map is roughly the size of Great Britain, maybe even bigger. While most open-world games let you travel across the map in a matter of minutes, Daggerfall takes days to cross. The current fastest recorded time is a staggering 61 hours and 54 minutes. To put this into perspective, it would take 9 days to walk the 874 miles from Land’s End to John o’Groats in the UK—so Daggerfall is massive, but it would take even longer to walk a similar real-world distance, although humans would probably get blisters along the way.
Of course, you won’t encounter as many centaurs, spriggans, and wereboars in the real world.
9. A Truly Bizarre Dark Souls World Record
While most gaming world records are about things like speed-runs, high scores, and racing times, one gamer managed to earn a spot in the record books in a much more unconventional way.
Benjamin “Bearzly” Winn from Edmonton, Canada, set an extraordinary record for completing the notoriously difficult, Lovecraftian RPG ‘Dark Souls’ on PC. What makes this achievement even more impressive is that he accomplished it while using various types of game controllers. Bearzly managed to finish the game 9 times, each time with a different controller, ranging from the conventional to the absurd. Here's the list of controllers he used:
A Wiimote An Xbox 360 controller (using just 1 finger) A Steering Wheel A Dancemat A Microphone (with 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 is notorious for its lack of patience. If gamers are forced to wait an extra year for a promised release, the game better live up to its hype with at least a 9.5/10 rating. Otherwise, prepare for a storm of online criticism that might feel like unleashing a kraken.
One of the most infamous blunders following a lengthy delay was ‘Duke Nukem Forever’. Initially announced in 1997, the game was delayed for an astounding 14 years before it finally launched in 2011! That’s as long as it takes a child to grow from birth to the end of elementary school, celebrate their bar or bat mitzvah, and watch most of their non-head hairs grow in.
And after all that waiting, what did players receive? A copy of ‘Duke Nukem Forever’, one of the most lackluster games ever released. Fortunately for the developers, Duke's iconic 'Enforcer' twin rocket launcher remains unavailable for purchase by disappointed fans.
7. The Name Says It All
We're all familiar with titles like 'Tiger Woods PGA Tour', 'Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!', 'Tony Hawk's Pro Skater'... but what about 'Emlyn Hughes International Soccer'? No? Or how about 'Shirley Muldowney's Top Fuel Challenge'? Yeah, probably not.
Over the years, there’s been a plethora of celebrity-endorsed video games. Sometimes it’s the game that fades into obscurity, sometimes it’s the celebrity who isn’t as famous as we thought, and sometimes, they’re just downright bizarre.
Take the 2008 Nintendo DS title 'Who's Cooking? with Jamie Oliver'. It's a cooking simulator where players prepare recipes from the famous English chef's collection. That’s the entire premise. Some people claim there's an Easter egg in the game that makes Jamie Oliver cry if you successfully cook a turkey twizzler gumbo. But that’s probably just a rumor.
Then there's the bizarre 1986 release for the Commodore 64/ZX Spectrum, 'Peter Shilton's Handball Maradona'. It’s a soccer game where you control one player—England's goalkeeper Peter Shilton. But why does the title include Maradona? Well, in the 1986 FIFA World Cup, Maradona infamously scored a goal using his hand, which led to England’s loss. The game's developers added ‘Maradona’ and ‘Handball’ to the title, hoping to capitalize on the scandal, even though Maradona never played in the English domestic league teams featured in the game.
One of the most eccentric celebrity-fronted games ever made was the 1991 Japanese release 'Gorby no Pipeline Daisakusen' for MSX2, Famicom, and Fujitsu’s FM Towns. This Tetris-style game challenges players to build a pipeline from Moscow (then part of the USSR) to Tokyo to improve diplomatic relations. The title refers to Mikhail Gorbachev, the USSR’s leader, who is featured on the cover in cartoon form, complete with his signature birthmark. Just three months after its release, the USSR dissolved, and any plans for 'Yeltsin’s Vodka Distillery Daisakusen' were shelved.
6. A Crowd-Funded Catastrophe
Fans who endured years of waiting for Duke Nukem Forever must have been frustrated, but that’s nothing compared to the saga of 'Star Citizen'. After launching a Kickstarter campaign in 2010, developer Chris Roberts, known for the 'Wing Commander' series, still hasn’t provided backers with a release date, despite raising an eye-watering $339 million in pledges.
The intricate details and endless debates surrounding ‘Star Citizen’ are far too many to dive into here. But if the game project ultimately fizzles out without a release, it will undoubtedly go down as one of the biggest scams of the digital age.
5. Game Over
We’ve all been there—playing some low-budget or downright terrible video game, whether on Steam, back in the day on miniclip.com, or from a bargain-bin ‘300-in-1 PC Game bundle***INCLUDES DUNKY KANG!’ These games share one thing in common: they are absolutely dreadful.
The poster child for this category is the unlicensed disaster ‘Hong Kong 97’, released in 1995. Developed by Japanese hobbyist ‘Kowloon’ Kurasawa, it features horrendous level design, terrible graphics, and a nonsensical plot. You control ‘Chin’, a heroin-addicted super soldier and Bruce Lee's cousin, who’s sent by the Hong Kong government to wipe out China’s population due to a migration crisis after the 1997 handover. Maybe it was a strange kind of prophecy.
Often dubbed the 'worst game of all time', ‘Hong Kong 97’ stands out not just for its awfulness, but because it holds a peculiar place in the pantheon of terrible games that flood the digital abyss.
One game featured an actual photo of a dead body on its 'Game Over' screen. No joke—an actual corpse. This sparked a conspiracy theory far more intriguing than the game itself. Some speculated that the body was that of Polish boxer Leszek B?a?y?ski, who had tragically committed suicide three years prior to the game’s release. Was his death a murder, and was the image taken from a video shot by his killers? Did China have anything to do with it, possibly as revenge for his outspoken criticism of the trade deals between the CCP and Poland?
Turns out, the designer just grabbed a screenshot from a ‘Faces of Death’ mondo film that included footage from the Bosnian War. So, the corpse? A fallen soldier from that very war. Well, that game was a real winner, wasn't it?
4. Chris Houlihan And His Hidden Room
The title of this entry sounds a lot more sinister than it really is.
Chris Houlihan wasn't a secret agent or a notorious criminal. He was just a lucky kid who won a cool prize. Back in 1990, Nintendo Power Magazine held a competition where entrants had to send in pictures of themselves with Warmech from the ‘Final Fantasy’ series. The winner was Chris Houlihan, and his prize was a special honor—he earned his own secret room in the SuperNES version of ‘The Legend of Zelda: A Link To The Past’. Chris Houlihan, forever immortalized in video game history.
3. Taking Obsession A Tad Too Far
Video games have spawned their fair share of urban legends and creepypasta stories—ranging from the haunting tale of ‘Ben Drowned’ about ‘The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask’ to the eerie ‘Polybius’ myth, which claims a 1980s arcade game caused terrifying side effects after being placed in arcades by shadowy figures in black. The world of gaming certainly has no shortage of unsettling stories. But the tale of the ‘Final Fantasy VII House’? That one is said to be true.
Probably.
Much like the infamous ‘Star Citizen’ saga, the story behind the ‘Final Fantasy House’ is far too long and complicated to fully unpack here (check out the video above for more). But here’s a quick summary to pique your curiosity—after some digging, you can decide whether or not to dive down this strange rabbit hole:
In essence, the story goes like this: two people, named ‘Jenova’ and ‘Hojo’, managed to convince people to live with them. Jenova then manipulated the tenants into believing they were the reincarnations of characters from ‘Final Fantasy VII’, controlling and coercing them as though she were a deranged cult leader.
Given the hours many people dedicate to staring at screens, diving deep into virtual worlds where they can play the role of a hero, maybe this urban legend is closer to reality than we think.
2. How To Make A Horror Game Gorier
No matter how many flying organs or explosive blood spurts you add to a game, there's always that protective barrier—the screen. You're not actually *in* the game world... yet. But that day may not be too far off.
When ‘Resident Evil 4’ launched in 2005, fans were treated to yet another terrifying addition to the franchise. However, somewhere along the line, someone must've thought the game needed an extra layer of gore. Enter NubyTech, who released a special blood-splattered Chainsaw controller for GameCube and PS2. Was it to make the game scarier, or just another ploy to cash in on the frenzy? Either way, it's another controller that “Bearzly” Winn could use to play Dark Souls.
1. The Guy Who’s Been Playing Sports Management Simulator For 333 Years
Dedication to one’s craft is often celebrated as a key value in modern life. Few embody this more than Sepp Hedel, a German man who took on the challenging, often thankless task of managing a series of soccer teams. For over 300 years.
In a video game, naturally.
The world record holder from Germany was immersed in ‘Football Manager 2017’. He began his virtual journey with FC United of Manchester, staying there for 50 years. He then moved to India to manage Bengaluru for 200 years, and rounded off his career back in England with Hereford FC, leading the club to 45 league titles over 83 seasons. How long did Sepp actually play? 81 days. Or 1,940 hours, to be exact.
When life-extension biotech becomes a reality, Sepp should aim to break the record for managing a soccer team for 300 years—this time in the real world. Unless, of course, that doesn’t count…
