8. Unlock Sonic And Tails In Super Smash Bros Melee
Kids were spreading gossip that lifelong adversaries Sonic The Hedgehog and Mario The Plumber would one day team up in a single game, even in the heady days of the Console Wars when Sega were still actually a viable prospect as a video game company. You know, before they prefigured the future of online multiplayer with the Dreamcast a decade before anyone's internet connections could actually handle it. For years the prospect of Sonic and Mario ever appearing in the same game was the gaming equivalent of a meeting between Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny. After Sega bailed on the console game and focussed purely on development the rumours kicked into overdrive, with the Who Framed Roger Rabbit moment coming in the incredibly underwhelming 2007 Wii title Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games. Before that happened and everybody realised just how washed up the fastest thing alive and furry icon was, though, people were getting their hopes up that the character was hidden somewhere in the GameCube classic Super Smash Bros Melee. Like many of these elaborate hoaxes, the way you uncover the "secrets" is designed to waste the most time possible of the gullible people who actually fall for it. It was said that if you could defeat twenty of the wire frame enemies in the game's hard as balls Cruel Melee arcade mode, you would be rewarded with not only Sonic but his suicidal fox pal Miles "Tails" Prower as playable characters. Videos of people defeating between 500 and 1000 wire frames with no reward kinda put paid to that hoax.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
