Nintendo’s always been touted as the “kiddie” company – the one that doesn’t care about hardcore gamers and the one that only wee children play. Now, some of this may be true. Nintendo doesn’t cater to hardcore online gamer, or the one that loves it some gratuitous violence, but they have a few skeletons in their closet. These are just three of the hugely morbid rumors that’ve clung to some of Nintendo’s most major franchises, each of them with just a bit too much of an eery truth to them…
Luigi’s Dead
Originally launched for the Nintendo Gamecube, Luigi’s Mansion was pretty darn spooky for a Nintendo game. A frightened Luigi would wander around a haunted mansion and suck up ghosts, money, and jewels while trying to save a trapped Mario from a painting. After fighting Boos and getting farther and farther into the mansion by clearing rooms of their haunted residents, you find yourself on the phone. While on the phone, lightening’s flashing through the windows and when the light appears there seems to be a shadow of Luigi hung from the rafters.
Some say this is a glitch in the game’s lighting and that it was just meant to be a shadow on the ground of Luigi on the phone. Others say that Luigi has been dead the entire time in the game, and that this mansion is some sort of purgatory for him. Which makes sense, he’s always in the shadow of his brother, so why wouldn’t he have to save him over and over much like the god Prometheus, who’s punishment for giving fire to man was to be chained to a rock and have his organs eaten and regrown every day for an eternity. No one knows why Luigi’s hanging there, but it adds a really creepy layer to one of Nintendo’s forgotten gems.
Starfox
This legend, while very true and rather scientific, is probably the most honest-to-god gruesome for a Nintendo game. Fighter pilots have to wear a special G-suit that keeps them from becoming unconscious during flight because all the blood would rush to their legs due to the zero gravity.
If you take a look at the characters in Starfox universe you’ll notice that they all have nice shiny silver boots on right? Wrong. They’ve had their legs amputated so that the blood doesn’t rush to their head while they are doing a barrel roll. Pretty morbid huh? Not something you’d expect from good ‘ole Shigeru Miyamoto.
Pikmin
PNF-404’s the name of the uncivilized, if not utterly familiar planet that you crash land on in Pikmin. The set-up’s all there – the Pikmin find items for you that look like they’ve fallen out of our timeframe onto this planet…weird, huh? Then the end of Pikmin 2 gives a hint to this mystery. Once you make it safely off planet, you see a familiar blue orb in space – Earth, maybe? Thankfully, Pikmin 3 ends that debate.
When you’re in your ship, you get to see the planet that you are trapped on, one that looks strikingly similar to earth. The continents aren’t in the correct place though, so it must be a different planet in our huge universe. Right? If you look closer, you’ll notice that the position of those continents shows what earth would look like 250 million years from now in the shape of what scientists believe was the ancient continent of Pangaea Ultima. Miyamoto must think we’re doomed.
The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask
Majora’s Mask has been one of the most divisive entries in the Zelda series. Some people love it, some people hate it, and some people have no idea what’s going on. Everyone has their theories and one of them’s that Link’s dead for the entire game from a snapped neck after falling off of Epona. Whether this is the case remains to be seen, but what’s certain is that the game strays from the usual path of any Zelda game.
As you progress through the game, you take Link (who may be dealing with his own death) through the stages of grief, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance according to popular theory. Grief keeps you in this endless cycle, which is why Link must relive the three days, until he finally accepts that he’s dead and the game ends as does his three-day do overs. The transformation masks belong to deceased characters in the series, the Goron mask is Darmani, the Deku mask’s the shriveled up tree you encounter in the beginning of the game and the Zora mask who is Mikau, also dead. The Elegy of Emptyness, a song that allows you to make a statue of your current form is another sign pointing to a dead Link.
When you play it with a transformation mask on, you create an effigy of sorts – of Darmani, Mikau and that Deku, all of whom are dead. When you play the song as Link, you get a statue of him, so Link must be dead. Then there’s the icing on the cake, a line uttered almost as much as “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”
When the Happy Mask Salesmen first meets you, he says “You’ve met with a terrible fate, haven’t you?” which, at the begining of the game makes you think that the terrible fate is turning into a Deku shrub. However, whenever you allow the Moon to crash into Termina, the game over line is that same, accompanied by the laughter of the Happy Mask Salesman, so why would Nintendo link (see what I did there?) that phrase to death unless Link was dead? I see no reason for Nintendo to do that at the time, other than it’s a pretty cool quotation.
So what say you, faithful reader? Are these theories just bedtime stories to scare little gamers? Are Link and Luigi dead in some horrific Nintendo timeline, or was it a graphics glitch and Zelda fans blowing things out of proportion? I mean, both of the dead characters names do start with “L”– wait, is that another Gaming Urban Legend?