Why were rumours so much more common in the older games?

[Captain Jigglypuff]

I still have a few floppies lying around. I need to get a drive so I can read them again.

Weirdly, I miss floppies; there were floppy disk formats which could hold more data, but they required special drives, & none of them caught on.

Another thing which might've helped rumors spread: there were more gaming sites, & few of them bothered to check all the cheat codes readers submitted to them.

Fake cheat codes have always been somewhat interesting to read nowadays and seeing how gullible people were before fact checking stuff online was a thing. One of the most ridiculous cheat codes I heard about was that you could get Pikablu by evolving Pikachu in the basement of Cerulean Cave while Surfing and using something called a Mist Stone which was said to evolve any Pokémon including Mewtwo.

 

[Teravolt]

holy mother of the gods what is that
it sounds like someone put a speedcore track into a blender

 

[pacman000]

It is data, realized as audio. Fax machines make that noise too.

 

[Silver_Dx_79]

Es simple, internet, pero si le sumamos que antes cualquier rumor se tomaba como cierto, ya que la mayoría del público eran niños ...

 

[NovaBrunswick]

Another thing which might've helped rumors spread: there were more gaming sites, & few of them bothered to check all the cheat codes readers submitted to them.

So someone could just say "If you beat the Elite Four 100 times in a row without losing once, you'll receive Togepi/Pikablu/some other never-seen-before Pokémon", post it onto a gaming forum or even their own website, and everyone else would just take it as gospel?

 

[Captain Jigglypuff]

So someone could just say "If you beat the Elite Four 100 times in a row without losing once, you'll receive Togepi/Pikablu/some other never-seen-before Pokémon", post it onto a gaming forum or even their own website, and everyone else would just take it as gospel?

I know that older players didn’t believe in those types of rumors as much but younger players (11 and under) typically did. I saw fourth graders falling for the “defeat the Elite Four 100 times in a row to get Togepi/Pikablu” rumor but everyone older than that not even trying to test it. The hold down Up+B to catch Pokémon every single time without fail is what we all believed in and it oddly caught Pokémon almost every single time. None of us didn’t know it wasn’t true and I didn’t even know it was just a rumor until about 2013 and I still occasionally do it out of years of habit.

 

[pacman000]

So someone could just say "If you beat the Elite Four 100 times in a row without losing once, you'll receive Togepi/Pikablu/some other never-seen-before Pokémon", post it onto a gaming forum or even their own website, and everyone else would just take it as gospel?

Or they could email it to a cheat code site who’d post it without checking. The mix of real, working codes & fake codes was confusing.

Here, Cheat Code Central still has a weird mix of stuff which shouldn’t work: https://www.cheatcc.com/gb/pokemon.html

 

[RileyXY1]

There are two reasons. The first, was the internet. The internet was not as widespread during the late 90s than it is now, leading to there being less means to factcheck rumors. The only way you could was either to play the game yourself or hunt down an official game magazine or strategy guide. The second was the age of Pokemon fans. The Pokemon fandom back then was almost entirely comprised of children, who typically don't use the internet anyways, but are also prone to spread outrageous information on the playground. These are why these rumors are often called "playground rumors".

 

[Captain Jigglypuff]

I guess I should elaborate more on the supposed “Mist Stone” item rumor. Apparently it was this super rare one time use only item you supposedly got (not sure how as no one ever talked about it) and it could evolve every Pokémon into a Pokégod which I only heard two supposed names being Nidogod and Nidolord. Nidogod was for Nidoking and Nidolord was for Nidoqueen which always seemed weird to me as both names are masculine but it was the late 90s. Pikachu became Pikablu but it was said to be a regular Pokémon and not a Pokégod. I think Pidgeot or Fearow were said to become Ho-oh although everyone was calling it Hoho and I never knew how kids in my area were so close to the official name given someone just made up the name randomly. Hitmonchan and Hitmonlee were rumored in my area to evolve into each other somehow but that rumor didn’t last very long. Mewtwo was supposed to evolve into Mew using the Mist Stone. Then there was one kid who claimed Chansey evolved into a Pokémon called Lucky through something called a Super Rare Candy or something similar to that name and no description of what it looked like was ever given. This Super Rare Candy did exactly what a Rare Candy does except it was extremely rare and could evolve Chansey.

 

[pacman000]

I read you could get the Mist Stone, or something like it, in the pools in the Unknown Dungeon. It was an invisible item, but one which the Item Finder couldn't detect.

 

[NovaBrunswick]

Then there was one kid who claimed Chansey evolved into a Pokémon called Lucky through something called a Super Rare Candy or something similar to that name and no description of what it looked like was ever given.

Well, at least they were sort of right... Chansey did eventually get an evolution.

 

[Captain Jigglypuff]

Well, at least they were sort of right... Chansey did eventually get an evolution.

True but the supposed English name for the Evolution was Lucky which is the Japanese name for Chansey.

 

[TwilightBlade]

It was easier to spread rumours back before the internet was in the palm of everyone's hand. Also Pokemon was at its peak in the late 1990's so kids were more excitable about the franchise and likelier to spread rumours that they'd heard. :]

 

[jaden767]

I read you could get the Mist Stone, or something like it, in the pools in the Unknown Dungeon. It was an invisible item, but one which the Item Finder couldn't detect.

I remember the Mist stone rumor. I never believed it myself but some friends of mine took it seriously. But I never found out where they heard it. None of us used the internet so maybe it was word of mouth.

 

[Blood Red]

I wish GameFreak brought back the age of rumors and speculation in the games, especially since they can now release updates to the base game pretty easily. It would be amazing if, for example, Sword and Shield contained references to Zarude throughout the game. Just imagine how much cooler the reveal would've been!

 

[NeedsAName]

I wish GameFreak brought back the age of rumors and speculation in the games, especially since they can now release updates to the base game pretty easily. It would be amazing if, for example, Sword and Shield contained references to Zarude throughout the game. Just imagine how much cooler the reveal would've been!

We really could use more future teases, especially from the anime.

 

[Divine Retribution]

I think there's a difference between teasing content and spreading rumors. One thing you'll notice looking through this thread is that pretty much every one of these rumors ended up being false. Teasing content that will be released eventually just isn't the same thing. That's not to say that I'm against it; I actually prefer it to spreading disinformation.

 

[Nutter t.KK]

I think there's a difference between teasing content and spreading rumors. One thing you'll notice looking through this thread is that pretty much every one of these rumors ended up being false. Teasing content that will be released eventually just isn't the same thing. That's not to say that I'm against it; I actually prefer it to spreading disinformation.

Indeed, it was alot easier to pass off fake news as real news. Remember most people had no idea on how check this type of info. In the early 2000s just getting Japanese text to show on your Windows 98/ME PC was a issue. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mojibake (Many Windows PC didn't have support for text ouside the Latin/English Alphabet. That before working out which Japanese encoding was used.) While Rom hacking was a thing back, then it was not as easy as it is today and most kids wouldn't know about how it would make thing work. Plus todays games are lot easier to peek and understand the rom..

 

[NovaBrunswick]

I wish GameFreak brought back the age of rumors and speculation in the games, especially since they can now release updates to the base game pretty easily.

GF usually has a habit of teasing the next generation in the games and anime. Remember the Hiker who gave you a Strange Souvenir in X/Y? The in-game description said it was a sculpture of some kind of deity Pokémon who was worshipped in a region said to be a long way away from Kalos. That mysterious region later turned out to be Alola, and that Pokémon turned out to be Tapu Koko.

 

[E.Vladimir]

Now a days thanks to Serebii there is no being fooled by the evils of the rumormill haha.