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Games that caused random unconscious behaviour

polg

Member
2 samples

1) We are all well aware of the Meteos hallucinations. Play it before bed, and you won't sleep well. (I even heard Starii sounds for a couple of days after an intense session trying to get those pink meteos)

2) During my Resident Evil 4 1st run, I was sleeping and my partner arrived late from the office. As I saw the shadow in the dark I jumped to the opposite side of the bed and screamed like a little girl. We are both glad I didn't have a shotgun or knife under de pillow.
 
polg said:
2 samples

1) We are all well aware of the Meteos hallucinations. Play it before bed, and you won't sleep well. (I even heard Starii sounds for a couple of days after an intense session trying to get those pink meteos)

2) During my Resident Evil 4 1st run, I was sleeping and my partner arrived late from the office. As I saw the shadow in the dark I jumped to the opposite side of the bed and screamed like a little girl. We are both glad I didn't have a shotgun or knife under de pillow.

It's you dude, it's you. ;)


Seriously, the only thing i remember that was bizarre is when i was playing through Ocarina of Time, there was a night i couldn't sleep, always having the god damned "hey" and "listen" from the god damned fairy repeting in my head.
 
Back when my friend and I were heavy into the original diablo we kept hearing the ring drop sound randomly. The wierd thing is we would both hear it at the same time, so we were interpreting some random sound from the environment as that *ting* sound rings used to make.
 
polg said:
2) During my Resident Evil 4 1st run, I was sleeping and my partner arrived late from the office. As I saw the shadow in the dark I jumped to the opposite side of the bed and screamed like a little girl. We are both glad I didn't have a shotgun or knife under de pillow.

Your partner? You mean like your Science Fair partner?


...it's not video game related, but GHOULIES use to make me paranoid about using the toilet when I was a young man.
 
There was a period of my life where i would constatnly dream about PSO...

And also, everytime after i play a long run of battlefield 2 (i mean 5-6 hours long), i always end up on a higher state of alert than the usual (as in, everytime i heard something i'd think it was the sound that the uav makes, or that maybe i should turn around as a tank is prolly coming to maul me down)..

Obviously i knew it couldn't possible be it as i wasn't playing... but yeah, i'm insane like that.
 
whenever I play too much at night and go to sleep without doing anything like watching tv or reading I usually have repeat dreams about the game I was playing, most of the time I'm stuck in a part of the game that doesn't exist, and I keep trying and trying and each time I fail, I wake up and turn around only to dream the same thing again. Needless to say, I feel completely wasted the next day, and swear I'll never do it again, only to repeat it next week :lol


one of these dreams was about ocarina of time, except that when I started the game, instead of the file select screen I saw a scene of ganondorf lying on a coffin being revived by the spiritual stones, after that I get to hyrule field and there is a windmill in the middle of it, after I enter in it, the game fucks up, and all of a sudden I'm playing with a small gray creature that can roll around in high speeds, then the game suddenly crashes, I think I saw that dream about 20 times that night....
 
fiddlestick said:
gayming-age

lol.jpg
 
TheJollyCorner said:
Your partner? You mean like your Science Fair partner?


...it's not video game related, but GHOULIES use to make me paranoid about using the toilet when I was a young man.
Ghoulies? So true. Until today I'm paranoid... :(
 
A very long time ago, I had a dream where I had a whistle that played the flute theme from Zelda 1. And when I played it a huge sandstorm came to whisk me away. I remember something else about a pyramid and finding the Triforce.

Not really a dream, but if I play Katamari Damacy too long I start thinking about rolling everything up. I'll start looking at shit and thinking, "How big would my katamari need to be to roll that up?"

Nathan
 
Occasionally I'll be playing a game and it'll trigger a memory of what I was thinking when I played it before. Sometimes as far back as 10 years. It's really strange.

EDIT: is GAF getting an unusual amount of traffic today? this is the 2nd avatar I've gone through today...
 
One time I played a few hours of GTA, and when I was driving I had the urge to go on the sidewalk. Yeah luckily I realized what I was doing and stopped myself.

Also, I played RE4 so much that I got the soundtrack and put the songs on my MP3 player. I had it on random and it hits the Ganado I theme (where an enemy approaches you), I start getting paranoid as fuck. I realize I'm just being silly and move on, but honestly, I expected a Ganado to start to come around the corner for a second.
 
The first few levels of Tomb Raider and all of Silent Hill 1,2,3, and 4 (especially the hospital levels) make me paranoid. I still can't play any of the Silent Hill games in the dark, and I'm not one prone to irrational outbursts of fear and/or paranoia, these games just have a profoundly unsettling effect on me. I guess that's what I miss about the first Tomb Raider, you really felt like Indiana Jones treading on long-forgotten ground never knowing what may await you......the later games seem to have lost that aspect.

Oh yeah, and Lumines, when I play enough, I start to relate all my common everyday problems to 4x4 blocks. Curse you Lumines!!
 
LakeEarth said:
One time I played a few hours of GTA, and when I was driving I had the urge to go on the sidewalk. Yeah luckily I realized what I was doing and stopped myself.

I used to do that after Crazy Taxi. Whenever i would see one of those big carrier trucks that have the ramps in the back, i would want to drive up it do a crazy jump, then i'd be like "What the fuck is wrong with you?"
 
Ninja Scooter said:
I used to do that after Crazy Taxi. Whenever i would see one of those big carrier trucks that have the ramps in the back, i would want to drive up it do a crazy jump, then i'd be like "What the fuck is wrong with you?"
Oh my god. I'm glad I'm not the only one. :lol
 
For months after playing Goldeneye, I would try to strafe down the halls to save time between classes... sadly I'm not joking. Also, whenever I would see security cameras, I would plan ways to shoot them out without them seeing me.
 
When I first started playing Beatmania IIDX, my eyes would actually trail the notes as they fell. On top of that, when I first started playing, I played for hours on end.

After each session, it looked like the world was melting downwards. And I don't think I'm the first person to get this effect.
 
whenever I play an mmorpg for a big sitting, and I mean big, I get these really weird moments in my life. I played FFXI for a year, and I've put a lot of time into guild wars. Several times I'll have dreams where I'm in the game, healing my friends left and right as they are blasted by spells and hit by melee attacks. Then one day I woke up after a long run on guild wars, and only getting one hour of sleep, and I stood in the middle of my room......waiting for a party. I've since tried to cut my mmorpg gaming down a bit.
 
GMUNYIFan said:
whenever I play an mmorpg for a big sitting, and I mean big, I get these really weird moments in my life. I played FFXI for a year, and I've put a lot of time into guild wars. Several times I'll have dreams where I'm in the game, healing my friends left and right as they are blasted by spells and hit by melee attacks. Then one day I woke up after a long run on guild wars, and only getting one hour of sleep, and I stood in the middle of my room......waiting for a party. I've since tried to cut my mmorpg gaming down a bit.

you're gonna end up killing somebody in your sleep.
 
Too much of the Metal Gear Solid series in the brain before. I found myself either humming the theme music outloud or in my head. The tendacy to wallpress myself under security cameras has passed my mind as well as ground rolling to to a stop and peaking around corners....then I realize I'm a idiot.
 
i've had dreams and stuff, but never actually done things irl as a result of playing games alot.

you're all weird :P
 
Sometimes if I'm driving after playing a lot of FFXI I'll press down with my left index finger at random times as if to press L1 to auto-run down the highway. :(
 
There's always the Katamari Effect; once you figure out the game and get heavy into it, for the next few days, you start looking at things and immediately calculate rolling them up. Buildings, shingles, if it looks like a small modular object, and particularly if there's a lot of them laid out a certain way, you end up mentally working it out before you know it. My sis mentioned the exact same thing happening to her once she picked up the game.

And I never did anything because of it, but driving after playing too much Burnout is never a good idea. If only life was as arcadey. :P
 
Three I can think of in my life:

1) Tetris when I was a kid and Lumines/Meteos now... sometimes when I'm trying to fall asleep, I'll start solving game puzzles as if they're being illuminated on the back of my eyelids... it is really amazing how similar to the actual games these imaginations are.

2) Back when I played DDR, sometimes when I closed my eyes an hour after playing, I'd still see residual arrows climbing from the floor to the ceiling. Really strange sensation. (I only played like an hour at a time... so strange)

3) And don't yell at me for giving Jack Thompson ammunition, but if I try driving within half an hour of playing any of the 3D GTA games, I'm really asking for a speeding/wreckless driving ticket.
 
Kulock said:
There's always the Katamari Effect; once you figure out the game and get heavy into it, for the next few days, you start looking at things and immediately calculate rolling them up. Buildings, shingles, if it looks like a small modular object, and particularly if there's a lot of them laid out a certain way, you end up mentally working it out before you know it. My sis mentioned the exact same thing happening to her once she picked up the game.

Haha, yeah, this has happened to me too.

I have to agree with the Lumines mention as well. After a long play session, I start seeing square patterns everywhere.
 
When my girlfriend plays a lot of Pikmin, she says she's constantly sizing up small objects on the street (bottlecaps, cigarette butts, etc.), wondering how many Pikmin it would take to carry them.

I can personally corroborate the Tetris/Meteos/Lumines effects, as well as the DDR eyes-closed rising ghost arrows. And lately I've been having lots of dreams about Castlevania...again...
 
My boss once took me into his office for a chat. he was an odd fish. On his wall was a picture of James Joyce that happened to look exactly like Michael Douglas. He would test people by asking them if they knew who it was. Failure in the test meant nothing, but success meant a window into his psyche.

He said to me, "Stinkles, I think you're a T-block in this team."

Now this was before easy internet access to shocked owl jpegs, so I says, "WTF?"

And he says, "I think of all my employees as Tetris blocks. You're T block. You fit in easily and I can use you to complete most projects."

I was flattered and he was about to continue when a kid known as 'Spawny' approached. "Sssh," confided my boss. "Here comes Spawny. He's a zig-zag block. Fuck that kid."
 
I played Advance Wars DS for about four hours straight, right before I went to sleep. I had a dream where I had to get through this tunnel filled with tigers that would eat me. And there was this one little tiger kitten that would say to me "we're gonna eat you!" However, since this was a dream where I was in the 3rd person, I had a little meter at the top right of my vision that looked exactly like the CO power meter in AW. It was called a "respect meter" and the more it filled up, the more safe I knew I would be.

Once I got to the end of the cave, I had to beat this guy to the end, because whoever is in there last would be eaten. So I start running on all fours, with the tigers chasing after me. And when I reached the door and grabbed it, my vision melted away, like when you go to a new door in RE4.
 
Everyone has those crazy instances in their mind where they will think

What if I just crossed over into oncoming traffic?

Most people don't act upon it though.

I got similar ideas from playing GTA. I would think, what if I went off the road and just took out all those people.

The thing is, I would NEVER do anything like that. But playing that game makes you think crazy things.

Oh no, I've said too much!

murder4a.jpg


Jack Thompson am get me!
 
When i'm stuck on a puzzle in an adventure game, I often dream about working the solution out...ONCE the dream I had was actually what i had to do in the game which was awesome.
(Return to Zork was the game....I've had dreams about other games like some of the Myst games and a bunch of the lucasarts ones, monkey island..day of the tentacle..etc but they diddn't work when I woke up :P)
 
ratcliffja said:
For months after playing Goldeneye, I would try to strafe down the halls to save time between classes... sadly I'm not joking. Also, whenever I would see security cameras, I would plan ways to shoot them out without them seeing me.

I'm glad I wasn't the only one. The urge was hard to resist :/.
 
It's wierd how puzzle games can burn into your retinas. I would try to lay down after a marathon Tetris, Zuma, Bejeweled session and still see the game in my mind.

Back when I used to play Maniac Mansion and Zak McCracken, I would dream about the game and actually solved a minor puzzle in my dream! Bizarre.
 
Meteos effect for me too. I also played Final Fantasy Tactics all night once in my dreams while at the time I was playing the actual game.

One time, after playing Vandal Hearts 2 with intermittent bouts of Metal Slug, I ended up playing Vandal Slug in my dreams. It looked exactly like Metal Slug 2, but Marco moved like an SRPG character, with a yellow cursor box.
 
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