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Playing a game for so long you start to see it IRL...


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So, seeing as there was a thread on videogame cravings...

I just recently worked myself into a Tetris mood and thought it was time I finally completed marathon mode. After blasting through endless mode for hours and hours I found that once I'd stopped I just couldn't stop making lines in my head. It got to the point that no matter what I did I was playing Tetris in my head. It's not just Tetris, me and my friends played the city mode on Kirby's Air Ride for so long I started to see the car markers out of the corner of my eye.

Just wondering if this has ever happened to you guys and how extreme!

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Yup used to happen to me alot. A good memory I had was from when I played Grand Theft Auto 3 too much, I wanted to hunt down all the cars for the "get the cars" side mission and one of them was a Securicor van (Yknow, armored vehicles that carry money) and in the game I just couldn't bloody find or get one for ages. So I was walking down the street one day in real life where I saw one of those vans and I got so excited I was about to steal it. I had to sort of slap myself and laugh.

The last game I probably did it with was Assassin's Creed. Oh man that really stuck in my head. I was working in a quiet village once and I couldn't help the notice that it had fantastic rooftops to do parkour on and it made me imagine how I'd rob a bank and totally get away on these fantastic rooftops (they were fantastic I can't emphasise enough). Also the best thing was how the Assassin would gently brush people aside to keep moving, I was in a club once drunk and it just stuck with me so I kept walking back and forward through the crowd brushing people aside, I was suprised how well it worked and the funny thing was I would accidentally just grab a breast every now and then (I know it sounds bad...) and it would totally go unnoticed because of how cool I played it.

Yeah...the end.

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While this didn't happen to me, it happened to a friend of mine a couple years ago. We were hanging out at his place playing Super Smash Brothers Melee, and at one point he went walking through a door frame. He did kind of a jump forward thing but tried to stay on the ground. He stopped for minute perplexed as to why he did this. Then he said "You know, I just tried to wavedash."

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I'm not sure what this says about me, but sometimes when I'm stalking about my college campus, I get a VERY "Left 4 Dead" feeling. It's probably a good thing I don't own a firearm, because there are several occasions where I'm all alone and I suddenly, out of nowhere, a horde comes at me in a claustrophobic corridor. I hate it when classes get out right next to tiny hallways...

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Yeah, back when I played ddr a lot it got to the point where sometimes I would close my eyes and just see arrows. Weird!

Also, sometimes after playing computer games a lot, I'll go back to real world and everything will look grainy and pixelated. weird...

DDR is awesome. After I got good at DDR, I joined a swing dance club around the same time. But at first I had to break myself out of the DDR frame because there were no arrows on the ground to guide the steps. It's harder than you would think. With DDR, you start looking at dance as a set of mathematical steps that are preselected, and it's not like real dance at all.

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Not a video game, but after having spent few to many evening playing Blokus (board game) with friends, we all kind'a saw colored blocks and patterns everywhere. Like in wallpapers, drapes, clothes...

Paying a visit to the bright colors and geometric arena of Megazone made things worse. It makes its way into ppl's dreams. At least one of my friends managed to combine the two in a dream. Not sure I did so myself too, or if I just pictured it hearing about his dream... but lemme tell you picturing it wasn't hard then. :D

Also, I've had a moment hearing Israfel's Pacman remix while being in a grocery story, and it just felt wrong to walk around the hallways picking snacks for a bus ride, with that remix too loud in my ears.

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A little ironic that you experienced it with tetris - that's the game that lent its name to the tetris effect.

I used to play diablo 2 on hardcore (meaning once your character dies you lose your character). I played so much that I could close my eyes and see the game, and imagine activity. I could even cause my heart to race by "seeing" my character's health bar reach empty.

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Ok, that tetris effect article scared the crap outa me. Not lying. I'm already OCD about shit, now I'm terrified to play tetris ever again!

But for serious, I had a friend who played F.E.A.R. constantly after I gave it to him. He wouldn't stop, he loved it, but the scary parts drove him nuts. He was staying up late doing engineering homework and playing the game so much that he lost track of time and didn't sleep. He went to class that day in a big lecture hall and started freaking out cause he kept seeing Alma crawling towards him over the seats out of the corner of his eye. He has not played any F.E.A.R. games since.

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Usually this doesn't happen to me.

But after lots of Dead Rising, every time I see a big crowd I want to climb on top of them and Zombie Walk to the other side

Oh and L4D leads me to believe I hear a witch crying IRL every once in a while.

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Ah so it's not just me! That Tetris thingy was scary, but yeah, as Bahamut said, it's really vivid sometimes. I can actually play it and remember where I've put blocks previously. Oddly enough though it never tends to automatically clear the lines unless I think about it...

That F.E.A.R thing is just crazy though...

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I did the "Tetris Effect" visions with Lumines and DDR most recently. And I know several people that act like they're playing on a Guitar Hero controller whenever they air guitar. There was also like a week where all I did was see DoTA Allstars whenever I closed my eyes.

There was a span of about three months where all I did was play fighting games, I would find myself repeating combo/super inputs to myself at work (and performing the appropriate motions). It was a lot like meditation, and it really made the day speed by.

Isn't it possible to have that sort of meditative response to any regular action though? Dishwashing, cleaning, roofing, reading, and writing all relax me and haunt my dreams if I do them too much. Except I'm sore after roofing.

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He has not played any F.E.A.R. games since.

Ahah awesome ...I mean, I should probably stop playing them too.

There's worst than seeing game in real-life: there's seeing them at night while trying to sleep.

I remember the first day I got F-zero on the SNES, I played so long, that when I went to sleep, the friggn road was still unveiling in my head.

The effect lasted for 2 or 3 days. I tell ya, that mode 7 was a nasty piece of work. :mrgreen:

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This happens to me from time to time, usually with the usual games like Tetris, DDR, and Guitar Hero. My psych prof back at my old college was talking about it happening to him once back with Mario Kart for the SNES. Said he couldn't get to sleep for a while because every time he closed his eyes he would be driving along in his head and slip on a banana peel. lol.

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after playing burnout paradise for a few weeks I was driving on the parkway and had this inexplicable urge to veer across two empty lanes and smash a brightly colored car into the guardrail. True story! Didn't happen though...

I would say the exact same thing. Though it had happened before as well when I got R4 for the PS1. I was just learning to drive then, and I had the OST in my car stereo. All I needed was a place tracker and a time limit somewhere in vision and I couldn't have told the difference. Glad you didn't wreck the car.

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Smash Bros. Except it's not so much merged with reality as it is an entire Smash Bros. match in my head (with me controlling 1 of the characters). I'm pretty sure it was only when I closed my eyes though.

There was also like a week where all I did was see DoTA Allstars whenever I closed my eyes.

Wow, I'd rather have the F.E.A.R. thing than DoTA stuck in my head =/

But I do get the tetris effect with RTS games occasionally.

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