|
Hrist posted:Calling's thing is actually a pretty neat gimmick. Basially the game has this whole system in place for when your chaarcter(s) encounter ghosts. But this one in particular never sets anything off. So the idea is eventually you get a number of letters directly from this ghost on your Wii. And after a specific one, in the game she will show up on the start screen. And thne she just never shows up again. And back o nthe Wii messages thing, you'll have another new letter. And it basically says she's happy she finally got to meet you.  She just wanted to hang out and chill with someone, that's surprisingly wholesome.
|
#
?
Jun 3, 2023 14:32
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 10, 2024 14:43 |
|
|
That's honestly so cool. I had never even heard of that game. Fun Twitter thread! Weird start, but I definitely was unnerved by the red screen as a kid so I get it. I also have memories as a kid of putting game CDs in the CD player (because when I did that with the PC port of Sonic CD I could listen to the music on its own!) and doing it with a Dreamcast disc at a friend's house, only to be greeted with a similarly-creepy monologue about how this is a Dreamcast game disc and you're going to break it by doing exactly what I just did. Also, man, it just makes me miss PT every day. That was an incredible experience from start to finish and is still one of the scariest things I've ever experienced. Silent Hills would've been something special. 
|
|
#
?
Jun 3, 2023 14:46
|
|
|
Hrist posted:Soon youtube historians will unironically discover gamecube games, and write 50 minute videos about how this was where creepypastas came from. They escaped the game after some sort of demon made ED. And Sonic.exe was a virus the company accidentally got from a phishing email, which infected the dev copies of Sonic Mega Collection on gamecube. It spread through the ethernet adapters everyone had in their gamecubes. They're all removed now, because of the horror! Or so the archeologists theorize. Right now they're just making videos about their console being the defining console of a generation when it sold worse than the Sega Saturn
|
|
#
?
Jun 3, 2023 16:28
|
|
|
Star Man posted:Right now they're just making videos about their console being the defining console of a generation when it sold worse than the Sega Saturn The 3D-O? (lol)
|
|
#
?
Jun 3, 2023 16:55
|
|
|
XkyRauh posted:The 3D-O? (lol) I had a 3DO and enjoyed the hell out of it. I'm also the only person I know that owned one.
|
|
#
?
Jun 3, 2023 17:07
|
|
|
Shooting Blanks posted:I had a 3DO and enjoyed the hell out of it. I'm also the only person I know that owned one. you've been shooting blanks since your preteen years eh
|
|
#
?
Jun 3, 2023 17:34
|
|
|
Shooting Blanks posted:I had a 3DO and enjoyed the hell out of it. I'm also the only person I know that owned one. Return Fire was good fun! Shame there weren't really any good games for the system.
|
|
#
?
Jun 3, 2023 18:01
|
|
|
Star Control II. If that doesn’t meet the criteria for a classic, I don’t know what does
|
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2023 03:09
|
|
|
So tangentially related to this thread, I recently heard about Boss Fight Books through The Video Game History Hour and picked up their book on Majora's Mask. The blurb seems that the book will be talking about the game as an object that inspires theories, essays, and urban legends, with what I've read of the prologue actually discussing the Jadusable/Moon Children ARG (or Ben Drowned, if you must). I'll report back on if it's a really interesting read when I get to it as I also bought their PaRappa the Rapper book and want to read it first but it feels like it could either be really cool or kind of lame. Most things I've seen that try and cover the Haunted Majora's Mask cartridge creepypasta-turned-ARG don't adequately capture what it was really like to be there as the first phase developed. It's almost sad that the most interesting parts of that whole thing are just glossed over for oooh spooky Elegy of Emptiness statue ooooh Ben Drowned by many.
|
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2023 03:23
|
|
|
Erin M. Fiasco posted:So tangentially related to this thread, I recently heard about Boss Fight Books through The Video Game History Hour and picked up their book on Majora's Mask. The blurb seems that the book will be talking about the game as an object that inspires theories, essays, and urban legends, with what I've read of the prologue actually discussing the Jadusable/Moon Children ARG (or Ben Drowned, if you must). I'll report back on if it's a really interesting read when I get to it as I also bought their PaRappa the Rapper book and want to read it first but it feels like it could either be really cool or kind of lame. I saw a video retrospective on The Blair Witch Project a few years ago which talked about the phenomenon of what they called "Expired Art", the idea that some works can lose a lot of what made them work by the mere passage of time. Blair Witch has been meme'd, parodied, mocked, explained, and think piece'd for so long and in so many ways that a lot of the immediacy of it is not merely lost, but lost for good. Once upon a time enough people believed it was actually for really real (or even just that it could be real), and you simply can't get that anymore. No matter how you try to approach the film on its own level and try and get into the headspace you need to feel it you'll never be in the same shoes as those theatergoers who were half convinced it was actual real footage. That's not a statement on the quality/lack of quality of the movie, it's just a statement that sometimes "You had to be there" is an objective statement about a work of media or a broader phenomenon. I imagine its the same for a lot of ARGs actually. The reduction of Jadusable/Moon Children to just "Ben Drowned haunted cartridge spooky statue", one thing in a veritable sea of imitators was probably inevitable, just as it was for any number of other internet horror story ARGs. Once a story is out for long enough and gotten big enough to have explainer videos something is lost, but for better or for worse it is just the nature of the beast. Heck, sometimes a genre or style of media is transformed by the simple act of becoming a genre or media. Blair Witch wasn't the first Found Footage film, but every Found Footage film since has struggled with the fact that nobody really truly in believes in them since the one time it worked for Blair Witch. Maybe internet horror ARGs lost that same level of genuine believability back with lonelygirl15.
|
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2023 04:06
|
|
|
Omnicrom posted:I saw a video retrospective on The Blair Witch Project a few years ago which talked about the phenomenon of what they called "Expired Art", the idea that some works can lose a lot of what made them work by the mere passage of time. Blair Witch has been meme'd, parodied, mocked, explained, and think piece'd for so long and in so many ways that a lot of the immediacy of it is not merely lost, but lost for good. Once upon a time enough people believed it was actually for really real (or even just that it could be real), and you simply can't get that anymore. No matter how you try to approach the film on its own level and try and get into the headspace you need to feel it you'll never be in the same shoes as those theatergoers who were half convinced it was actual real footage. That's not a statement on the quality/lack of quality of the movie, it's just a statement that sometimes "You had to be there" is an objective statement about a work of media or a broader phenomenon. The issue with ARGs is that they either have no budget or exist merely to sell a product which assumes you never interacted with the ARG. Its always going to be disappointing because of this. Majestic 12 showed that an ARG just for the sake of an ARG isn't going to make back its budget either. Maybe Unreal 5/AI will eventually fix the budget problems, but I doubt it because a lot of the real cool stuff involves interacting with it in the real world. Which brings up another issue, ARGs that show up in the real world are usually restricted to the local area of the people running the ARG, so only a handful of players will get an opportunity to experience that aspect of it.
|
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2023 04:27
|
|
|
IShallRiseAgain posted:The issue with ARGs is that they either have no budget or exist merely to sell a product which assumes you never interacted with the ARG. Its always going to be disappointing because of this. Majestic 12 showed that an ARG just for the sake of an ARG isn't going to make back its budget either. Maybe Unreal 5/AI will eventually fix the budget problems, but I doubt it because a lot of the real cool stuff involves interacting with it in the real world. huh, today i learned that majestic flopped on its own, 9/11 was not really a factor
|
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2023 04:33
|
|
|
LvK posted:the first time I ever got the red one I was up at like 1am with the lights off and high school me felt like he'd summoned a demon with my PS2. yeah, getting the anti-piracy screen in super metroid and then all my save data being reset put a deep fear of electronics goofing up in kid me for a while
|
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2023 04:44
|
|
|
Tungsten posted:huh, today i learned that majestic flopped on its own, 9/11 was not really a factor I'm not sure if you are being sarcastic or not, but player numbers were already dropping fast before that happened, and EA invested a lot of money in the project with no signs that it was going to break even.
|
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2023 04:48
|
|
|
I was trying to remember the (goon created?) ARG that ended with “twas all for boners” which I thought would be an easy keyword to google. It was the Wyoming incident but it took me like 15 minutes to get there
|
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2023 04:50
|
|
|
IShallRiseAgain posted:I'm not sure if you are being sarcastic or not, but player numbers were already dropping fast before that happened, and EA invested a lot of money in the project with no signs that it was going to break even. i wasn't, i only had the dimmest recollection of that game having existed and now i'm wondering where i got the 9/11 explanation
|
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2023 04:53
|
|
|
I think a lot of it too is that the cost to be incredulous has never been cheaper before in history. When Blair Witch came out, you’d probably have to invest some time in sitting down at a computer, dialing up to the internet, and sifting through AltaVista search results if you wanted to find some proof for your friends that the folks were just actors. Now, you can just yell “HEY SIRI IS BLAIR WITCH REAL?” at your phone and find out in 10 seconds. In short, information is so readily available for anyone interested that it’s hard for fictional mystery to bloom. Might also help explain some of the popularity of true crime (beyond rubbernecking, anyway).
|
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2023 05:02
|
|
|
Blue Moonlight posted:I think a lot of it too is that the cost to be incredulous has never been cheaper before in history. I was a teenager when Blair Witch came out. My recollection is that by the day of the release, most people were aware that the "found footage" movie wasn't real. The only questions were whether the Blair Witch legend were about whether the Blair Witch legends were real, and whether the movie itself was based on a true story. That said, the movie itself was groundbreaking. The marketing behind it was unbelievable, I've never seen anything like it before or since. I'd also completely forgotten about it until this page of this thread.
|
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2023 05:09
|
|
|
The funny thing is that there was a huge controversy when M. Night Shyamalan attempted to do his own Blair Witch Project with a fake documentary. I thought it was pretty obvious that it wasn't real, but people got really mad about the deception.
|
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2023 05:28
|
|
|
IShallRiseAgain posted:The funny thing is that there was a huge controversy when M. Night Shyamalan attempted to do his own Blair Witch Project with a fake documentary. I thought it was pretty obvious that it wasn't real, but people got really mad about the deception. Hahaha, I forgot about The Buried Secret of M. Night Shyamalan. IIRC, the 'big' reveal was pretty disappointing given that they had spent a couple hours hyping up something unreal and otherworldly only to find that... M. Night was legally declared dead as a kid and brought back to life? A thing that is so commonplace nowadays that there's an entire cottage industry of people writing books about it happening to them? I was hoping it was, like, 'the guy from The Sixth Sense is doing blood sacrifices in his basement', not 'he's got the same backstory as the lady in your mom's neighborhood who speaks at church events once a year'.
|
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2023 05:40
|
|
|
I'm pretty sure people gloss over 90% of the spooky Majora's Mask stuff because they haven't seen anything past the original video(s). I sure as hell didn't know it went into some deeper ARG stuff.
|
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2023 07:47
|
|
|
God I miss unfiction. Are there any other (good) places or communities that document & solve ARGs? I used to love pouring through trailhead threads for hours on end. ):
|
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2023 12:16
|
|
|
did this video fit into the ben drowned canon somehow? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=473G80r1T_w
|
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2023 14:47
|
|
|
A lot of people also watched Blair Witch as a lovely compressed camera-in-cinema pirated copy of the movie, which kinda enhanced the whole "found footage" feeling of it. To me it felt more "real" watching some download from the internet vs how I assume it would be watching it in a full size cinema.
|
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2023 15:21
|
|
|
Tungsten posted:did this video fit into the ben drowned canon somehow? kingkong.wmv happened months after the project slowly died after its Nth reboot. It was basically a tacit admission from Jadusable that the whole deal was over, and it was a really, really, really funny little April Fool's joke. For real though that whole first phase was such a fascinating thing to follow with the glitched videos slowly trickling out, the Moon Children website, and National Observe The Moon Day. It had a freshness to it. I love the Blair Witch Project comparisons because I'm old enough to remember the initial whispers about it but was too young to see it, and when I finally did a few years ago actually thought it was a fantastic and interesting piece of work that nailed the "college project" vibe and had a palpable sense of dread around it. It was just amateur enough for me to understand why it felt real to so many, but of course I knew I was watching a movie. I'm very interested in the context of how we experience a piece of art, and these are some really cool examples of how important context and lived experience can be.
|
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2023 16:10
|
|
|
Where did the Kanye Quest Ascensionism trail end?
|
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2023 16:28
|
|
|
The Bee posted:Where did the Kanye Quest Ascensionism trail end? Was made by an Aussie high schooler, these folks found the creator (the series is mostly-diversions until the last 2 eps) https://findingyeezus.com/. It wasn't really an ARG anywhere near the level people thought. The thing just got legs.
|
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2023 16:54
|
|
|
ymgve posted:A lot of people also watched Blair Witch as a lovely compressed camera-in-cinema pirated copy of the movie, which kinda enhanced the whole "found footage" feeling of it. To me it felt more "real" watching some download from the internet vs how I assume it would be watching it in a full size cinema. I can see that, but I have to say going with a dozen or so friends at a relatively young age late at night on opening night was definitely an experience that I'm not sure can easily be recreated again after everything that has happened and all that has changed since then. Someone might come up with some new concept or outside of the box thinking and dream up a similar phenomenon, but I can't currently imagine what that would be myself. Absolutely there are still big opening nights for movies, with things such as tons of Star Wars fans dressing up and waiting in line on opening nights or other similar things, but that's an entirely different beast. Standing in line and watching an entire theater of people slowly filing out with their jaws agape and still going "wait, what?" despite the fact that they just sat in the theater for who knows how long talking amongst themselves after the show was over, then doing the exact same thing with your friends an hour and a half later while walking past the next line of people and seeing them have the same curious reaction that you had to the previous crowd was part of it. There were groups of people still lingering in the parking lot near their cars not quite ready to abandon their conversation or that feeling. I've seen crowds exit a theater universally excited and talking to strangers hyping up the next line in wait, I've seen people walk out angry and warning people not to waste their money, I've witnessed people candidly discussing "their take" on a film, I've even seen people looking generally confused as to what they just saw. I can't say I have ever before or since observed the exact same combination of delightful bewilderment with group after group for that first week or so. There was somehow even a society wide "no spoiler" common mutual agreement for a while among most people. As far as a common collective movie experience goes, Avatar 3D early in its run might be the closest thing I can think of since then. In no way do I think either of those situations were anywhere as monumental or important, but that universal delightful bewilderment I mentioned might be the closest I will come to what people seeing the very first movies might have felt. I hope I'm wrong though, and someone comes out with "the next big thing" whatever that may be.
|
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2023 18:44
|
|
|
I do believe that someday something will come along that once again knocks people out exactly like that, it's just that those kinds of sea change experiences are very much by definition the things you never see coming.
|
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2023 19:01
|
|
|
The discussion of Ben Drowned led me to discover that two years ago in 2021, on the 10th anniversary of kingkong.wmv, Jadusable released the "sequel", a near-25-minute shitpost, and it's actually really well-edited and funny. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cE79iwURv4c also it's narrated by Elias Toufexis, aka Adam "I didn't ask for this" Jensen???????? Namnesor fucked around with this message at 19:14 on Jun 4, 2023 |
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2023 19:07
|
|
|
oh my god it's been over ten loving years?????????
|
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2023 19:10
|
|
|
Grassy Knowles posted:Was made by an Aussie high schooler, these folks found the creator (the series is mostly-diversions until the last 2 eps) https://findingyeezus.com/. It wasn't really an ARG anywhere near the level people thought. The thing just got legs. I looked back at the posts I made at the time, and other posters called that series "cringy", "extremely padded out", and stated "not liking their sense of humor" and I agreed with all of those things. I had mentioned skipping ahead just to get to the end of each video to see if there was actually any reveal, and after a while just ignoring them entirely until the last episode or two like you said. It's not so much that I'm doing the "I still want to believe" thing, but I still think their resolution has just as much of a chance of being fake as real, maybe even more so. Some extremely boring guy saying "I did it for a school project, it was me, that's the whole story" with nothing to back it up felt like it had as much credibility as the people who say "it was all me, I was bigfoot in a suit all along" and people say "what about the sightings from before you were alive or in different areas" and they go "nope those people are all crazy or fakers, I'm taking 100% full credit" while being pretty unconvincing about it. That's just an example, I don't have any strong feelings about bigfoot or whatever one way or the other, I'm just saying that video series felt like a slog and ended with a wet fart and it's just as likely they picked some guy and went "here's the answer, we finally unraveled the truth" and it's complete bullshit just so they could have the "definitive" ending to their series that they promised from the start as anything else. Omnicrom posted:I do believe that someday something will come along that once again knocks people out exactly like that, it's just that those kinds of sea change experiences are very much by definition the things you never see coming. Exactly, and I hope so!
|
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2023 19:11
|
|
|
Twenty Four posted:It's not so much that I'm doing the "I still want to believe" thing, but I still think their resolution has just as much of a chance of being fake as real, maybe even more so. Some extremely boring guy saying "I did it for a school project, it was me, that's the whole story" with nothing to back it up felt like it had as much credibility as the people who say "it was all me, I was bigfoot in a suit all along" and people say "what about the sightings from before you were alive or in different areas" and they go "nope those people are all crazy or fakers, I'm taking 100% full credit" while being pretty unconvincing about it. This reminds me. I think maybe a year or more prior to the series mentioned, Game Theory had a video or two where they also found the person who made the game. But it was someone completely different. I think it was some musician that claimed she had no idea anything she did was even being used for this or something. Or maybe she was the origin of the Ascension music label. But had no idea there was some fake cult based on the idea / logo. I'd have to look it up again to really remember any actual details. But the point is that yeah, there's been a handful of "No, I'm the real Kanye's Quest" already. I'm honestly more inclined to believe the musician thing. Like how Erratus turned out to be a big "check out my 2 view bandcamp uploads" thing. Stuff like this tend to just lead to someone having something else that they want to shift the attention to once they start to get figured out a bit. And like you said, it's super easy for anyone to claim they were behind it, no matter how much people discover.
|
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2023 20:53
|
|
|
Hrist posted:I think it was some musician that claimed she had no idea anything she did was even being used for this or something. Or maybe she was the origin of the Ascension music label. But had no idea there was some fake cult based on the idea / logo. If I recall correctly it was the latter. She had no idea what was going on. Kind of a bad climax for the lead in, as I remember. Lol.
|
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2023 23:42
|
|
|
Hrist posted:Or maybe she was the origin of the Ascension music label. Duderclese posted:If I recall correctly it was the latter. She had no idea what was going on. Kind of a bad climax for the lead in, as I remember. Lol. Yeah, I remember it being that way as well. The difference is that it was presented as "I was doing some digging and this is who and what I found, and we had some pretty strange conversations" and was actually interesting as there was still mystery there. On the other hand, those other guys were going "watch like and subscribe to our channel, new episodes every week (where they mostly made bad "jokes"), there's a big reveal at the end you don't want to miss so don't forget to tune in often and as always please use our sponsor links" and the "reveal" was a weak nothing of an anticlimax, despite if it was real or not. But as Hrist said, I don't think that was the first person to say they made the game, and I don't remember there being anything to back it up beyond some vague verbal claims that were barely followed up on, so I take that whole lame series with a huge grain of salt. Basically, the first guy was doing some research about a bizarre game and releasing his interesting findings, the other guys came across as sitting around a writing table and pitching ideas they could make a dumb show to hopefully cash in on and settled on Kanye Quest.
|
|
#
?
Jun 5, 2023 00:22
|
|
|
Near as I can tell, they were hired to do it in the style of two previous “weird rabbit hole” podcasts they’d done. Going immediately to “it was a kid I guess” probably wasn’t in the contract. You sure do have an axe to grind about two more or less inoffensive comedians.
Your Uncle Dracula fucked around with this message at 07:16 on Jun 5, 2023 |
|
#
?
Jun 5, 2023 07:08
|
|
|
Your Uncle Dracula posted:You sure do have an axe to grind about two more or less inoffensive comedians. Not at all, really, I don't even remember who they are or know of anything else they have done, sorry if you took it that way, but it's true, the series did suck, supported by the general consensus of the thread at the time. Just refreshing our collective memory about the differences between one set of videos and another, since it was recently brought up here again and people asked about it, in the weird video games and related hoaxes and mysteries thread.
|
|
#
?
Jun 5, 2023 08:14
|
|
|
Twenty Four posted:Not at all, really, I don't even remember who they are or know of anything else they have done, sorry if you took it that way, but it's true, the series did suck, supported by the general consensus of the thread at the time. Just refreshing our collective memory about the differences between one set of videos and another, since it was recently brought up here again and people asked about it, in the weird video games and related hoaxes and mysteries thread. the series was really good & funny, Alexei Toliopoulos is great and the Finding Drago podcast is a good laugh!
|
|
#
?
Jun 5, 2023 10:08
|
|
|
John Romero played MyHouse.wad https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIl_TqFJNO8&t=29s
|
|
#
?
Jun 12, 2023 19:23
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 10, 2024 14:43 |
|
|
The doomworld.com thread got locked for this for "doxxing" but the wife of the creator of myhouse posted a tour of the house with identifying info covered up. The attention to detail is pretty neat! https://www.tiktok.com/@bananapantsamy/video/7237150150819433771 https://www.tiktok.com/@bananapantsamy/video/7237151800221044011
|
|
#
?
Jun 13, 2023 18:43
|
|
