The lights are on
For those familiar with my blog, it may be apparent that I have a certain propensity for pranks. My favorite target is usually my father, but plenty of dorm residents were on the receiving end back when I went to the University of Kansas. One of my favorite targets was a friend named Ryan, and he lived a couple rooms down from mine. He also happened to be a gamer, and was going through hell trying to figure out how to unlock Liu Kang in Mortal Kombat: Deception.
You see, back when Deception came out, many of its secrets weren't discovered immediately. Ed Boon has always been a fan of hiding content deep within the game that can only be unlocked after super-specific criteria were met. Even in the internet era, he's been successful at keeping fans guessing for quite a while after a game's release. Unsurprisingly, Liu Kang was one of the most desired unlockables in Deception, and no one seemed to know how to unlock him.
Most secrets were unlocked through the huge Konquest mode. It wasn't a particularly exciting mode, and primarily consisted of running around gigantic, sparsely-populated areas and opening chests. Every once in a while you'd run into someone who wanted to fight, at which point it would go into a standard MK bout.
Ryan had been posting on message boards for a few days trying to find Liu, and nothing he tried was working. I owed him for a prank he had pulled on me, so took it upon myself to make a fake account on the board he was posting on. I responded to his plea for help by listing the following criteria to unlock Liu Kang:
This is ridiculously hard for numerous reasons. It's really difficult to beat Scorpion or Tanya even once without getting hit, much less three times in a row (and in Tanya's case, using only one button). Also, the Chaosrealm map took forever to get around.
To back up my post, I created a couple other fake accounts and posted confirmations of the Liu Kang "solution." Apparently Ryan didn't realize that all of these accounts had zero posts, and he decided to take on the nearly impossible task.
For the next several hours, I heard screaming and a string of profanities emanating from his dorm room. I'd drop by every once in a while, and he'd usually be restarting the process after getting hit by Scorpion. Eventually, he got the pattern down and could consistently beat Scorpion, but would often restart after accidentally straying from the wall or getting his path blocked while running around Chaosrealm. Each time he restarted, he'd erupt in profanities and I'd have to leave the room to keep myself from laughing.
This continued for a downright stupid amount of time. After he had spent the majority of the day attempting this, he finally got to the second of three Tanya fights. She immediately hit him with a move, and he looked utterly defeated. Even though this prank was in retaliation for one he had pulled on me (which I don't specifically recall at the moment), I couldn't let it continue any longer. I logged onto the fake message board account from my room, and edited the post to read "You're an idiot. Signed, Dan."
When I returned to his room, he was starting the process again. I told him to refresh the message board post to see if there were any new replies. When he read the post, I think it took everything he had to not tackle me through the dorm window. Drinking copious amounts of alcohol is a way of life in college, but I think he required a couple extra beers that night to erase the memories of wandering Chaosrealm for hours on end.
Have any game prank stories? Share them in the comments or reply on Twitter if you do.
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Good stuff. I remember pissing off this one guy on a Smash Bros forum by telling him my friend managed to unlock Sonic and Tails in Melee. Unfortunately, his dog accidentally ate his memory card where the data was stored (hmmm?), so I just left the post for the guy to explode on (which he did). That's my tale of BS.
I'm all for practical jokes and pranks... but this is just sick!
J/K, it's actually effing hilarious!
That's good. I had a friend of mine convinced that if he could make it through the entire game of Batman: Arkham Asylum without ever getting hit, then you would be able to actually meet the Riddler face-to-face. Needless to say, my friend isn't the brightest bulb, and he lacked access to a computer to verify this. He made it through most of the game, saving A LOT and retrying multiple areas. Once he reached Poison Ivy, I told him I was just messing with him, at which point he proceeded to attack me with his controller in a fit of nerd rage. He collects Batman comics and the Riddler is one of his favorite villains. He wanted to see Arkham Asylum's version of the Riddler sooooooo bad.
Your hero pic fits this story perfectly.
Dan Ryckert: Master of all Pranks.
This made me bust out laughing. You are the master of pranks!
LOL! That is great. Very well thought out plan.
Wow that's just diabolical, one of my buddies once erased my perfect metroid prime file, that sucked. more of this would be hilarious
Back in our Sega Genesis days, I once told my younger brother that in order to fully beat Ghouls 'n Ghosts you technically had to go through it twice. For some reason (probably because I'm generally a horrible brother) he didn't believe me. Needless to say, he eventually 'beat' the game only to realize that I had been right the entire time. This isn't a prank, per se, but the look of utter defeat on his face after countless wasted hours playing and failing was hilarious.
That's just diabolical, dude.
That was so funny, now I'm inspired to pull some pranks. Great job Dan.
I have pulled numerous pranks on my friend who is not the smartest guy when it comes to video games. I mean, in Portal it told to him to wait at a spot so he ended up sitting there for 20 minutes waiting for something to happen. But multiple times I have told him that doors will open if he just waits or that to kill an enemy he has to keep trying even though it will be a specific move. I should really try to be nicer to him haha
Mister Rykert, where does this rank when compared to your cups-in-the-hallway spiel style April Fools jokes?
If I pulled any video game pranks I can't remember them. I'll still share a story.
During my Junior year of high school there was construction going on outside the church. Oh this is a military school btw. We were outside for breakfast formation and I told my buddy Seckinger that Davis was in the porta-potty. I pointed out the fact that the door was unlocked and told him to go open it in front of the whole school.
He was reluctant at first, laughing about the idea but too nervous to do it. With a little help from other friends we goated him into doing it. He walked up to the door, opened it really fast and yelled, "AHA!"
Well the joke was on him as it was a construction worker in the porta john and not one of our friends. Seckinger went running back up to his room and I didn't see him until after breakfast. By lunch time the construction crew had sectioned off the porta-john with the orange mesh fence and we were told it was off limits to cadets.
I’m an ***hole
This isn't really a video game prank, but it was priceless.
The other day I found out that Nine Inch Nails had a Alternate Reality Game to go along with Year Zero. Being the ARG nut I am, I dove right into it. I came across a website, http://www.freerebelart.net/, that let you enter someones name and a phone number. Once you entered the number, you would get a call, stating you by name and asking for the password. If you say "Resistance", the voice would say that you are under arrest for pleading guilty to treason.
After the awesomeness of the call wore off, I decided to mess with my friend. I entered his name and phone number into the site, and waited till I was sure he had hung up. I then texted him, saying "password; resistance". I entered the number again, and about 5 minutes later, I got a call from my friend, and he was freaking out. He actually thought that he was being watched. It was great.
back in the days of memory cards i was with one of my friends with a gamecube. we had a pretty big obsession with the first NBA street game and after we got good at it we started a new file. We were going to try to get all the unlockables(characters and such) without getting beat. we had a record of 98-0 and still didn't unlock everything. Then i told him i had heard a rumor that if you turned off your gamecube while it was saving it would unlock everything. He said "but it warns you to never turn it off while saving!" to which i replied "yes, thats why! they don't want you to cheat through the game!" 98-0, erased....forever. mean? yes but it was HIS memory card so....explain to me again why i dont have many gaming friends?
Truly minacious and evil... I like it!!!
he did that for a character? quite pathetic to me
me and my brother once told a kid to say no to the star in mario party 4 to get multiple stars. He said no