“This room is an illusion!” Six times game developers trolled players

Have you ever had the feeling that someone is just messing with your head? Well, in these cases, they are! When you give someone the power to create an entertainment product that they know people are gonna love, you can’t be surprised if sometimes they abuse that responsibility and include something just to wind up their adoring fans.

Below are six times game creators indulged their mischievous side and put actual work hours into frustrating the very people they rely on for their income.

Contents:

1. Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty
2. Fat Shaming – GTA: San Andreas
3. Do it Again – Ghosts ‘n’ Goblins
4. Hestu’s Gift – Breath of the Wild
5. The Pendant – Dark Souls 
6. Arachnophobia – Evil West

Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty

Metal Gear Solid 2 is a game that hits you with the old 1-2 and trolls you pretty mercilessly twice over. First off, before the game was even released, all of the marketing had fans salivating at the though of playing as their favourite action hero, Solid Snake, again. However, once the game landed, gamers were horrified to find themselves playing as the whiny effeminate Raiden instead.

You do get to play as Snake for a later chunk of the game, but creator Hideo Kojima also hits you with one of gaming’s most unsettling fourth-wall breaks, which sees you running around naked as one of the other characters lectures you on how playing games for so long can ruin your eyesight and that it’s important to take breaks. Sorry, did you want some actual game with that trolling?

Fat Shaming – GTA: San Andreas

One of the many exciting new features added to the GTA series in the classic San Andreas was the option to change main character CJ’s body by exercising or overeating. To the delight of many, this meant that if you went on an eating spree at the latest Cluckin’ Bell fast food store, eventually you could cultivate some serious mass.

However, there was at least one major drawback to embracing those curves – you couldn’t start certain missions until you’d cut down a little. Upon arrival at the mission start markers, you would be told by the initiating character that you couldn’t start until you had ditched a few of those extra pounds. Rude!

Do It Again – Ghosts ‘n’ Goblins

In a warped, devilish twist on Super Mario’s infamous “Your princess is in another castle”, the developers of this maddening 1985 classic decided that completing the game once wasn’t enough. After you’ve slogged your way through this notoriously difficult and aggravating zombie-busting platformer and you stagger, battered and bruised over the finish line, the game informs you that if you want to properly complete the game, you’ll have to do it all over again.

After you finally limp to the finish the first time around, you are met with the eloquently worded message “This room is an illusion and is a trap devised by Satan. Go ahead dauntlessly! Make rapid progres! [sic]” (Shakespeare level stuff). Then, once you’ve done it all again, leaving you a shell of the gamer you once were, you are at last shown the fruits of your labour: “Congratulation. This story is happy end. Thank you. [sic]”

Hestu’s Gift – Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Even one of the best games to ever grace a console couldn’t resist the timeless collection quest. In Breath of the Wild, you meet a tree spirit named Hestu who asks you to collect Korok Seeds so you can get some extra inventory space. You need 441 to get all the upgrades, but there are 900 in total out there in the wilderness… surely if you collect them all, you’re bound to get something pretty cool, right?

Wrong! After you’ve finally finished scouring the land of Hyrule, left no stone unturned and finally delivered the last seed to Hestu, your reward is Hestu’s Gift – what looks like a pile of dung that “smells pretty bad” and allows you to come and watch Hestu dance any time you like. Brilliant.

The Pendant – Dark Souls

The Pendant was a seemingly innocuous and effectively useless item included in this fiendishly difficult RPG hack and slash adventure. However, it suddenly became a focus of much curiosity and intense scrutiny once developer Hidetaka Miyazaki suggested that the Pendant actually had a hidden ability by announcing that he would pick it at the start of the game.

Gamers subsequently spent hundreds of collective hours trying out every possible combination of attacks and gestures in front of every in-game object to see what amazing new ability could be discovered through this little trinket. In the end, Miyazaki revealed that the item is in fact purely decorative, leaving many fans crushed, but many more unconvinced and suspicious.

Arachnophobia – Evil West

What initially seems like a very thoughtful feature to include in your game – an “Arachnophobia” setting that allows you to remove all the spiders from the game if you’re one of the many who hate those eight-legged freaks – turns out to be one of the cruellest tricks in gaming history.

If you switch the setting on ahead of a spider-heavy cave section, it will remove all the nasty critters; however, if you switch it on and then off again, upon resuming the game, the screen will be filled with hundreds of them! It hasn’t been firmly established that this was a deliberate “prank” by the developers rather than an unfortunate glitch, but if it was included by design, the devs certainly live up to the game’s title.