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Fact or Fiction?
Exposing the conspiracy behind one of the greatest games of all time.
Some of my greatest memories growing up comes from countless hours playing my NES. I had the setup some kids dreamed up. No, it wasn't a big screen TV with huge speakers. It was simply having a TV in my bedroom where I could play games anytime I wanted, or at least until my dad came into my room to yell at me for playing too long. I did have one nice trick rigged up. I plugged in my TV to an outlet that was controlled by my light switch. My NES, however, was plugged into a different one. Whenever my mom or dad came into the room and were fed up with me playing games, they'd turn off my light switch, thinking the problem was solved. Little did they know that my NES was still running, just waiting for it's friend the TV to be turned back on.
Anyway, that's besides the point and not the reason you are here. In all my memories, one game I distinctly remember playing is the Legend of Zelda. I remember getting it for my birthday. My parents took me to Children's Palace. The store is no longer in existence, but I remember the night of my birthday in a cold January when my family went out to get me 2 games and then go to Chi-Chi's afterwards. It's funny now to think how I picked out the two games. I chose Renegade and Zelda solely because they looked kind of like a couple arcade games that I loved. Renegade looked sort of like Double Dragon while Zelda, with it's overhead view and monsters, reminded me of Gauntlet. That's right. I didn't choose Zelda because of it 's rave reviews in the propaganda-ridden Nintendo Fun Club News or it's hip commercials. No, I chose it because it looked like a 2 year old arcade game.
Okay, fast forward to about one year ago. I thought I knew everything about the classic game until I came across this image:
What you say?
At first glance it looks very innocent. A happy little screen cap of a classic line in Zelda... OR IS IT!?
Most of you out there probably have forgotten, but the actual line you probably saw is THIS:
Yes. 'It's a secret to EVERYBODY" not EVERYONE.
Is this real or a forgery? I've heard rumors that the beta versions of the Zelda carts were a bit buggy and had a few seemingly minor differences. Could this be from a beta version? If so, who has that beta version now? If this is real, SOMEONE must have it in order to have screen capped this. I was browsing some newsgroups when I came across this:
"In the final days of the production on "The Legend of Zelda", Shigeru Miyamoto ran into some problems with some of the staff. Particular one of the main programmers, Nobiyuki Matsusaka. Nintendo has always been a company known for being intolerant of things like this, so word began to spread that Matsusaka was going to be axed. In a very odd move, Matsusaka began sabotaging the project before the official word came out."
Wow. This might account for the buggy beta versions... but would this have ANYTHING to do with the difference in the ENGLISH? Possibly... but then i came across THIS:
"In the early days of Nintendo of America, they hadn't put much thought into taking summer interns. They had a request from an employee to let his nephew, a business major, to do an internship. Back then, NOA was slightly less concerned about internal information leaks. They agreed and one Mike V. Rodgers was approved to do an internship. What NOA, or Mike's uncle, didn't know was that Mike was also a self taught programmer. Rumor has it that at the time of his internship, the final versions of the US cart was in house and being tested and tweaked. Rumor also has it that one evening, Mike Rodgers decided to ad a few unnoticeable changes to the game so that he could later brag to his friends over what he had done. Mike's 'work' was discovered but it was too late. NOA had to meet it's deadline and couldn't change what he had done. Since the changes were so minor, the weren't too concerned, however Mike lost his internship and all the college credit that went with it. Again, my uncle told me this. His best friend worked at NOA at the time as an internal project team leader. I've met the guy once and he seemed pretty honest."
TRUTH? Lies? We may never know.
If you've heard anything about this, email me
Next time... we'll dive into the racial prejudices featured in the NES classic, DOUBLE DRAGON!!
UPDATE!!: Sorry if I caused any problems. This was merely a simple gag I threw together in about an hour just to fool someone. According to my stats about 30 'other' people also saw this. I hope I haven't added any rumors to the Zelda lore. Check back another time. Doing this has given me some other ideas. I promise i won't fabricate any other screen shots and newsgroup postings unless it's blatantly obvious that they are fake. And I promise that the website will look better!
It's pretty scary when one person can slap something up on the web and fool people throughout the world into thinking any of this could be true. I guess that's the nature of the Information Age. The ONLY part about this entire thing that was factual was the story behind my days as a kid with my NES and getting Zelda and Renegade for my b-day. I haven't heard anything about buggy Zelda prototypes, personality conflicts with Nintendo employees, or interns. <--- that page that I'm linking to was also created by me as well. It was to add to further speculation, but it was never used. That may have taken it too far. This has gone on for about 12 hours, which is long enough. By the way, make every effort to check out the Zelda commercial that I linked to above. It's worth the download. That commercial justifies this webpage's existence.
And no moblins were injured in the making of this hoax. I only kill them.
