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Gaming Misconceptions

Number Misconception Actuality

1   "The majority of gamers quickly abandoned the NES in 1991 when the SNES was released."   While that happened frequently with later video game systems, younger people often make the false assumption that this also happened with the NES. The truth is that the concept of getting a new replacement system every 5 years was very new to gamers and their parents in 1991, as a result new NES games were still being released into 1994 (the 10th and final year of the system in the U.S.) and NES game rentals remained popular with gamers who were not able to get the new hardware at launch.

2   "The Nintendo 64 controller was baffling or confusing."   At first glance it was surprising that the controller had three grips, and forum users, along with video makers, certainly made lame jokes about it being impossible to figure out, but that was just for "humorous" effect, not a real issue of the time. Your left hand simply uses the center grip for 3D games and the left grip for 2D games. There is nothing complicated or confusing about that.

3   "It's called the D-Pad."   Debuting in "Donkey Kong" for Game & Watch (1982), this device was originally called the "Plus Button". In the NES manual it is called the "Control Pad", which makes sense because it is used to control your movement. The Sega Master System manual called it the "Control Cushion", while the "Sonic the Hedgehog" Master System manual called it the "Directional Button" (D-Button). The PlayStation manual calls it the "Directional Buttons". It was not until 2001 (19 years after the fact) that the "Halo" manual called it the "Directional Pad". Since Nintendo invented the device and called it the Control Pad in every manual since the NES it's only fair to call it the "C-Pad". I can see how people who started with Sega would want to call it the "D-Button", but "D-Pad" was not an offical term until 19 years later, so that seems very incorrect. "C-Pad" is the most correct term, straight from the inventors, and the longest in use. It is time to stop calling it the "D-Pad".

4   "Gamers are basement dwellers."   The behaviors of certain video game channels are unfortunately promoting the unfortunate stereotype of gamers being unsociable isolated people who set up in their basement (and are somehow surprised by basement flooding when it is so common). Many gamers enjoy friendships, outdoor activites, gaming above basement level, and have no intention of setting up in the basement.

5   "It came out on the Mega Drive, not the Genesis."   Dude, it's the same system. It runs the same technology. It's not a different system. Just say it came out in this region, but not in that region. The same thing goes for the Famicom/NES, the Super Famicom/Super Nintendo and the PC Engine/Turbo Grafx 16.

6   "Calling it retro gaming is incorrect."   I can agree that retro games are "new games made in the old style" (not old games), however the ACT of playing "vintage" games is VERY retro, because you are bringing back an activity from the past. In short "retro gaming" is when you play a "vintage" game (not a retro game).

7   "Gamers have speech impediments."   While certain creators of video game channels unfortunately make such an impression, that is not representative of gamers in general.

8   "Gamers have social or mental disabilities."   While certain creators of video game channels unfortunately make such an impression, that is not representative of gamers in general. Naturally the lifestyle of running a video channel devoted to any hobby or subject attracts compulsive types.

9   "Why would I use a special move in a brawler if it reduces my health??"   The purpose of this move is to get yourself out of a tough bind. When you use it properly it actually SAVES health, because you only lose a little instead of being caught in a group of bad guys who pummel you, which takes away an even bigger chunk of health. Think before you speak.

10   "Game prices have not gone up. They've always hovered around $50-$70 at the high end."   In the early days you were buying a ROM chip on a circuit board which could include additional chips and a battery. These sturdy cartridges cost a lot more to manufacture than fragile compact discs or DVDs. This is why buying newly made cartridges for classic consoles is considerably more expensive than buying discs.
  In the early 2000s you could buy blank DVDs for less than a dollar each, and the company still made a profit. This means that when you buy a disc game A) you are getting less for your money, and B) game companies are making WAY more profit off of games on disc than games on cartridge. Therefore, even when you account for inflation, paying $60 for a disc game today is MUCH more expensive than paying $60 for a cartridge game back in the day because nearly all the money you are spending on a disc goes directly to profit while classic cartridge games had a much smaller profit margin. Think before you speak. A gold ring has much more monetary value than an aluminum ring, even if they perform the same task.
  Now that we can see games today are indeed much more expensive, we can also see the reason for the high rise in video games prices is that games today are much larger and made by bigger teams, so developing a game today takes much more time and work now than it did in the past.

11   "The reveal in Metroid that Samus is a female was a suprise because you just assumed you were playing a dude."   Incorrect. The reveal was surprising because the manual specifically calls Samus a man in order to trick you.

12   "To begin with, he wasn't called Bowser in America, he was called "King Koopa" instead."   This is categorically false. His first appearance was in Super Mario Bros. and the manual specifically called him "Bowser, King of the Koopa", both names have always been present in America. It was Peach who had a "name change" in America, because she was originally called "Princess Toadstool".

13   "Why in the world did they rubber band characters together in Knuckles' Chaotix? It's such an awkward design choice that comes out of nowhere."   The irony here is off the charts because the people who say this are the same people who complain about Tails getting left behind in Sonic 2. Clearly the rubber band mechanic in Knuckles' Chaotix is a direct attempt to resolve this problem. In fact, the same thing occurs in Super Mario Bros. Wonder to keep players from straying too far.

14   "The Sega Genesis used blast processing."   This is categorically false. Blast processing is real, but it was never used in a commercial game during the lifetime of the Genesis. Blast processing is simply a trick to use more colors at one time on a still image than would normally be possible.

15   "Super Mario World introduced Koopas who could walk upright."   This is categorically false. In the original Mario Bros. arcade game Koopas walked upright when they were outside of their shells.

16   "Mario has done 'everything but' plumbing."   The original Mario Bros. arcade game is all about plumbing as Mario & Luigi attempt to deal with turtles, crabs and other critters clogging up the pipes. The brothers also patch up some pipes in Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga.

17   "Why on earth does Darth Vader turn into a scorpion in the Star Wars game on Nintendo? It's so bizarre!"   Actually it seems like the same idea found in Super Mario Bros. where various minions are disguised as Bowser at the end of most castles.

18   "I can't believe they made a kids game for Nintendo based on an R-rated movie! That's so crazy!"   A) No one thought it was strange when the Ninja Turtles were adapted from a dark and violent comic book to a children's cartoon, the same can be said for the 90's X-Men.
  B) It's not like they were marketing the violent Robocop film to kids, there was a separate TV show and cartoon available that was more family-friendly.
  C) Why wouldn't they want kids to enjoy the more family-friendly versions? If that went well they would be into the more 'adult' version as adults.
  D) Many kids do have an interest in things thier parents watch that they aren't allowed to see.
  E) Many R-rated movies were not "no kids allowed" they just required "parental supervision/accompaniment/guidance" by parents who thought their kids could see it.
  F) If you consider the complex adventure games which ask the player to draw maps and solve obscure riddles, and the fact that many games are adaptations of things like Dungeons & Dragons, it becomes clear that video games were marketed to older teens as well, because young kids would not be able to do all that on their own.
  Thus, there are many reasons it's not strange that R-rated franchises were made into video games. Think before you speak.

19   "I know this is the correct pronunciation because that's how it was said in A) a western advertisment or B) the Japanese materials."   Often western advertising companies made the same uneducated guesses as anyone else or just made stuff up (it's also possible they misheard a syllable while listening to the correct pronunciation). Additionally, many people in Asian countries do not get all of our western words correct when they say them.

20   "The Game Boy has a ___-green screen."   The Game Boy screen is not pea-green, spinach-green, cabbage-green, or lime-green. It is olive-green.

21   "The title screen tells us the release date is..."   The year on the title screen is the copyright date, not the release date. Naturally you would copyright your idea before presenting it to others, therefore the year on the title screen may have been obtained a year (or more) before the game was released.

22   "Link never talks."   In Zelda 2 Link says "I found a mirror under the table." and in Ocarina of Time he says either "What if I am?" or "I hate Ganondorf!". The idea is generally not that your hero character is mute, but rather that his thoughts and words should echo your own.

23   "It's a PlayStation long box."   It is tall, not long.

24   "It starts with an 'X' so..."   When a word starts with the letter 'X', the 'X' sounds like a 'Z', think about the word 'Xylophone'. Xevious sounds like 'Zevious', Xexyz sounds like 'Zexyz', you get the idea.

25   "Blast Corps"   It is pronounced Blast 'Core', like a Marine Corps or a Drum & Bugle Corps. It is NOT pronounced Blast 'Corpse', a corpse is a dead body, not an organization. Blast Corps is about a group of demolition experts clearing a path for an explosive, it's not a game about repeatedly blasting a dead body. (It's also Contra 'Hard Core', not 'Hard Corpse' for the same reason)

26   "Nintendo 64 games were limited in size because they used cartridge technology instead of CD technology"   This is blatantly false. Nintendo could have loaded up cartridges with lots of memory chips, the problem is that would have been extremely expensive (like the Neo Geo home console and its games). The truth is Nintendo 64 games were limited in size because of cost, not because of cartridge technology. Nintendo wanted to keep the price down as much as possible.

27   "Neo Geo was the system that finally brought the arcade experience home"   The main problem with Neo Geo was the high price point, the average gamer could never afford to obtain one. The secondary issue was that the arcade games playable on the unit were predominantly SNK, which kept the selection narrowed in terms of developers.
  The system that ACTUALLY managed to bring the arcade experience home was the Sega Saturn, a system which did an AWESOME job of bringing tons of arcade hits home in excellent quality, on a system that was competitively priced (unlike the Neo Geo). At least it did an awesome job bringing arcade hits home in Japan, tons of Saturn games never came to western shores, and those that did were often trivialized or ignored due to the marketing craze for 3D exploration games at the time. It's truly a shame that we finally got an incredible system well-equipped to bring arcade hits into the home, and all that potential was wasted in the west.

28   "It's a black box game"   The so-called 'black box' games are not a series. While they are all early games, there is no overall aspect in how these games play to link them all together. So if we are only speaking of the visual box design, a better term for these games would be "Pixel Art Covers" or "Sprite Based Covers", because after all, some of them are gray and not black (see Metroid and Kid Icarus).

29   "This Pokémon name is a pun"   People are usually wrong when they say this. Pokémon names like Blastoise (a combination of Blast and Tortoise) are actually portmanteaus. Girafarig is a palindrome.

30   "Mario was a villain in Donkey Kong Jr."   This is blatantly false. Just because you are in control of a certain character does not mean said character is automatically a good guy. Mario and DK Junior are adversaries. In the first game Donkey Kong kidnapped Pauline and stole her away; that morally wrong act made Donkey Kong the villain, Mario's action of rescuing Pauline made him the hero for helping her out. What Donkey Kong did was wrong, and he deserved to be carted off in a cage for Pauline's protection. In Donkey Kong Jr. you play as the naughty little ape who is busting his father out of his cage, which is very likely to cause more problems (see Donkey Kong 3). Donkey Kong Jr. is one the earliest games where you don't play the hero. In fact Donkey Kong Jr. follows in Donkey Kong's footsteps in the Game Boy Advance game Mario vs. Donkey Kong.

31   "RPGs are so much longer than other games making it really hard to make such a time commitment."   With the generous save features present in most RPGs you can easily play in brief sessions of 30 minutes or less, while most other video game genres will require you to play for multiple hours in a single session. Bearing that in mind, RPGs are often an easier time commitment if you're not determined to beat the game in 1-2 weeks.
  On top of that, almost everything you do in an RPG will improve your stats and make you stronger, making advancing in the game practically unavoidable. You don't really need to worry about dexterity and timing in most traditional RPGs.

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Number	Misconception	Actuality
1	"The majority of gamers quickly abandoned the NES in 1991 when the SNES was released."	While that happened frequently with later video game systems, younger people often make the false assumption that this also happened with the NES. The truth is that the concept of getting a new replacement system every 5 years was very new to gamers and their parents in 1991, as a result new NES games were still being released into 1994 (the 10th and final year of the system in the U.S.) and NES game rentals remained popular with gamers who were not able to get the new hardware at launch.
2	"The Nintendo 64 controller was baffling or confusing."	At first glance it was surprising that the controller had three grips, and forum users, along with video makers, certainly made lame jokes about it being impossible to figure out, but that was just for "humorous" effect, not a real issue of the time. Your left hand simply uses the center grip for 3D games and the left grip for 2D games. There is nothing complicated or confusing about that.
3	"It's called the D-Pad."	Debuting in "Donkey Kong" for Game & Watch (1982), this device was originally called the "Plus Button". In the NES manual it is called the "Control Pad", which makes sense because it is used to control your movement. The Sega Master System manual called it the "Control Cushion", while the "Sonic the Hedgehog" Master System manual called it the "Directional Button" (D-Button). The PlayStation manual calls it the "Directional Buttons". It was not until 2001 (19 years after the fact) that the "Halo" manual called it the "Directional Pad". Since Nintendo invented the device and called it the Control Pad in every manual since the NES it's only fair to call it the "C-Pad". I can see how people who started with Sega would want to call it the "D-Button", but "D-Pad" was not an offical term until 19 years later, so that seems very incorrect. "C-Pad" is the most correct term, straight from the inventors, and the longest in use. It is time to stop calling it the "D-Pad".
4	"Gamers are basement dwellers."	The behaviors of certain video game channels are unfortunately promoting the unfortunate stereotype of gamers being unsociable isolated people who set up in their basement (and are somehow surprised by basement flooding when it is so common). Many gamers enjoy friendships, outdoor activites, gaming above basement level, and have no intention of setting up in the basement.
5	"It came out on the Mega Drive, not the Genesis."	Dude, it's the same system. It runs the same technology. It's not a different system. Just say it came out in this region, but not in that region. The same thing goes for the Famicom/NES, the Super Famicom/Super Nintendo and the PC Engine/Turbo Grafx 16.
6	"Calling it retro gaming is incorrect."	I can agree that retro games are "new games made in the old style" (not old games), however the ACT of playing "vintage" games is VERY retro, because you are bringing back an activity from the past. In short "retro gaming" is when you play a "vintage" game (not a retro game).
7	"Gamers have speech impediments."	While certain creators of video game channels unfortunately make such an impression, that is not representative of gamers in general.
8	"Gamers have social or mental disabilities."	While certain creators of video game channels unfortunately make such an impression, that is not representative of gamers in general. Naturally the lifestyle of running a video channel devoted to any hobby or subject attracts compulsive types.
9	"Why would I use a special move in a brawler if it reduces my health??"	The purpose of this move is to get yourself out of a tough bind. When you use it properly it actually SAVES health, because you only lose a little instead of being caught in a group of bad guys who pummel you, which takes away an even bigger chunk of health. Think before you speak.
10	"Game prices have not gone up. They've always hovered around $50-$70 at the high end."	In the early days you were buying a ROM chip on a circuit board which could include additional chips and a battery. These sturdy cartridges cost a lot more to manufacture than fragile compact discs or DVDs. This is why buying newly made cartridges for classic consoles is considerably more expensive than buying discs. In the early 2000s you could buy blank DVDs for less than a dollar each, and the company still made a profit. This means that when you buy a disc game A) you are getting less for your money, and B) game companies are making WAY more profit off of games on disc than games on cartridge. Therefore, even when you account for inflation, paying $60 for a disc game today is MUCH more expensive than paying $60 for a cartridge game back in the day because nearly all the money you are spending on a disc goes directly to profit while classic cartridge games had a much smaller profit margin. Think before you speak. A gold ring has much more monetary value than an aluminum ring, even if they perform the same task. Now that we can see games today are indeed much more expensive, we can also see the reason for the high rise in video games prices is that games today are much larger and made by bigger teams, so developing a game today takes much more time and work now than it did in the past.
11	"The reveal in Metroid that Samus is a female was a suprise because you just assumed you were playing a dude."	Incorrect. The reveal was surprising because the manual specifically calls Samus a man in order to trick you.
12	"To begin with, he wasn't called Bowser in America, he was called "King Koopa" instead."	This is categorically false. His first appearance was in Super Mario Bros. and the manual specifically called him "Bowser, King of the Koopa", both names have always been present in America. It was Peach who had a "name change" in America, because she was originally called "Princess Toadstool".
13	"Why in the world did they rubber band characters together in Knuckles' Chaotix? It's such an awkward design choice that comes out of nowhere."	The irony here is off the charts because the people who say this are the same people who complain about Tails getting left behind in Sonic 2. Clearly the rubber band mechanic in Knuckles' Chaotix is a direct attempt to resolve this problem. In fact, the same thing occurs in Super Mario Bros. Wonder to keep players from straying too far.
14	"The Sega Genesis used blast processing."	This is categorically false. Blast processing is real, but it was never used in a commercial game during the lifetime of the Genesis. Blast processing is simply a trick to use more colors at one time on a still image than would normally be possible.
15	"Super Mario World introduced Koopas who could walk upright."	This is categorically false. In the original Mario Bros. arcade game Koopas walked upright when they were outside of their shells.
16	"Mario has done 'everything but' plumbing."	The original Mario Bros. arcade game is all about plumbing as Mario & Luigi attempt to deal with turtles, crabs and other critters clogging up the pipes. The brothers also patch up some pipes in Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga.
17	"Why on earth does Darth Vader turn into a scorpion in the Star Wars game on Nintendo? It's so bizarre!"	Actually it seems like the same idea found in Super Mario Bros. where various minions are disguised as Bowser at the end of most castles.
18	"I can't believe they made a kids game for Nintendo based on an R-rated movie! That's so crazy!"	A) No one thought it was strange when the Ninja Turtles were adapted from a dark and violent comic book to a children's cartoon, the same can be said for the 90's X-Men. B) It's not like they were marketing the violent Robocop film to kids, there was a separate TV show and cartoon available that was more family-friendly. C) Why wouldn't they want kids to enjoy the more family-friendly versions? If that went well they would be into the more 'adult' version as adults. D) Many kids do have an interest in things thier parents watch that they aren't allowed to see. E) Many R-rated movies were not "no kids allowed" they just required "parental supervision/accompaniment/guidance" by parents who thought their kids could see it. F) If you consider the complex adventure games which ask the player to draw maps and solve obscure riddles, and the fact that many games are adaptations of things like Dungeons & Dragons, it becomes clear that video games were marketed to older teens as well, because young kids would not be able to do all that on their own. Thus, there are many reasons it's not strange that R-rated franchises were made into video games. Think before you speak.
19	"I know this is the correct pronunciation because that's how it was said in A) a western advertisment or B) the Japanese materials."	Often western advertising companies made the same uneducated guesses as anyone else or just made stuff up (it's also possible they misheard a syllable while listening to the correct pronunciation). Additionally, many people in Asian countries do not get all of our western words correct when they say them.
20	"The Game Boy has a ___-green screen."	The Game Boy screen is not pea-green, spinach-green, cabbage-green, or lime-green. It is olive-green.
21	"The title screen tells us the release date is..."	The year on the title screen is the copyright date, not the release date. Naturally you would copyright your idea before presenting it to others, therefore the year on the title screen may have been obtained a year (or more) before the game was released.
22	"Link never talks."	In Zelda 2 Link says "I found a mirror under the table." and in Ocarina of Time he says either "What if I am?" or "I hate Ganondorf!". The idea is generally not that your hero character is mute, but rather that his thoughts and words should echo your own.
23	"It's a PlayStation long box."	It is tall, not long.
24	"It starts with an 'X' so..."	When a word starts with the letter 'X', the 'X' sounds like a 'Z', think about the word 'Xylophone'. Xevious sounds like 'Zevious', Xexyz sounds like 'Zexyz', you get the idea.
25	"Blast Corps"	It is pronounced Blast 'Core', like a Marine Corps or a Drum & Bugle Corps. It is NOT pronounced Blast 'Corpse', a corpse is a dead body, not an organization. Blast Corps is about a group of demolition experts clearing a path for an explosive, it's not a game about repeatedly blasting a dead body. (It's also Contra 'Hard Core', not 'Hard Corpse' for the same reason)
26	"Nintendo 64 games were limited in size because they used cartridge technology instead of CD technology"	This is blatantly false. Nintendo could have loaded up cartridges with lots of memory chips, the problem is that would have been extremely expensive (like the Neo Geo home console and its games). The truth is Nintendo 64 games were limited in size because of cost, not because of cartridge technology. Nintendo wanted to keep the price down as much as possible.
27	"Neo Geo was the system that finally brought the arcade experience home"	The main problem with Neo Geo was the high price point, the average gamer could never afford to obtain one. The secondary issue was that the arcade games playable on the unit were predominantly SNK, which kept the selection narrowed in terms of developers. The system that ACTUALLY managed to bring the arcade experience home was the Sega Saturn, a system which did an AWESOME job of bringing tons of arcade hits home in excellent quality, on a system that was competitively priced (unlike the Neo Geo). At least it did an awesome job bringing arcade hits home in Japan, tons of Saturn games never came to western shores, and those that did were often trivialized or ignored due to the marketing craze for 3D exploration games at the time. It's truly a shame that we finally got an incredible system well-equipped to bring arcade hits into the home, and all that potential was wasted in the west.
28	"It's a black box game"	The so-called 'black box' games are not a series. While they are all early games, there is no overall aspect in how these games play to link them all together. So if we are only speaking of the visual box design, a better term for these games would be "Pixel Art Covers" or "Sprite Based Covers", because after all, some of them are gray and not black (see Metroid and Kid Icarus).
29	"This Pokémon name is a pun"	People are usually wrong when they say this. Pokémon names like Blastoise (a combination of Blast and Tortoise) are actually portmanteaus. Girafarig is a palindrome.
30	"Mario was a villain in Donkey Kong Jr."	This is blatantly false. Just because you are in control of a certain character does not mean said character is automatically a good guy. Mario and DK Junior are adversaries. In the first game Donkey Kong kidnapped Pauline and stole her away; that morally wrong act made Donkey Kong the villain, Mario's action of rescuing Pauline made him the hero for helping her out. What Donkey Kong did was wrong, and he deserved to be carted off in a cage for Pauline's protection. In Donkey Kong Jr. you play as the naughty little ape who is busting his father out of his cage, which is very likely to cause more problems (see Donkey Kong 3). Donkey Kong Jr. is one the earliest games where you don't play the hero. In fact Donkey Kong Jr. follows in Donkey Kong's footsteps in the Game Boy Advance game Mario vs. Donkey Kong.
31	"RPGs are so much longer than other games making it really hard to make such a time commitment."	With the generous save features present in most RPGs you can easily play in brief sessions of 30 minutes or less, while most other video game genres will require you to play for multiple hours in a single session. Bearing that in mind, RPGs are often an easier time commitment if you're not determined to beat the game in 1-2 weeks. On top of that, almost everything you do in an RPG will improve your stats and make you stronger, making advancing in the game practically unavoidable. You don't really need to worry about dexterity and timing in most traditional RPGs.