How to Get Your Book Published: Windows Media Video

How to Get Your Book Published: Windows Media Video
Find out how Arielle Ford has helped launch the careers and create bestselling books for Deepak Chopra; Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen, Chicken Soup for the Soul series; Neale Donald Walsch, Conversations With God; Debbie Ford, The Dark Side of the Light Chasers; and Dean Ornish, Love and Survival and many, many other notable authors.

How to Get Your Book Published: Quicktime Video
Find out how Arielle Ford has helped launch the careers and create bestselling books for Deepak Chopra; Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen, Chicken Soup for the Soul series; Neale Donald Walsch, Conversations With God; Debbie Ford, The Dark Side of the Light Chasers; and Dean Ornish, Love and Survival and many, many other notable authors.

7 Greatest Video Game Urban Legends
Written by kezins.com We all have heard of them, swore to have done them or know someone whose cousin has. That’s right, I’m talking about Video Game Urban Legends (VGUL). No, I’m not going to talk about the munchkin in the back of “Wizard of Oz” who supposedly hangs himself from the tree. Not also talking [...]

Written by kezins.com

We all have heard of them, swore to have done them or know someone whose cousin has. That’s right, I’m talking about Video Game Urban Legends (VGUL). No, I’m not going to talk about the munchkin in the back of “Wizard of Oz” who supposedly hangs himself from the tree. Not also talking about how their is a ghost in the window in “3 Men and a Baby” who died in that house. Not Bigfoot or Loch Ness. I’m talking Video Games…. I’m talking Urban Legends in Video Games.

I have searched high and low to bring to you, our latest installment of these Urban Legends, and finish up with a wide known but not seen VGUL.

Tomb Raider

The Urban Legend - Lara Croft appearing Nude in Tomb Raider

The System - PSone

This story goes as far back as the game was first launched. It was almost like every video gamer wished this one to be true. I’ve heard it all from, “if you go in the water, you’ll see her nude”. Sorry to tell you folks, this one is a big fat lie.

Street Fighter II

The Urban Legend - Beat every character without losing a round or match let’s you play as the four bosses Balrog, Vega, Sagat, and M. Bison

The System - SNES

Well, this is an urban Legend that I believe all Street Fighter 2 players have tried. Now, while it isn’t that impossible, is was very hard. The rumor of playing as one of the bosses, went cross country. It always seemed that the more you went unbeaten the tougher the opponent got. I recall playing one whole day trying this one out, and after going unbeaten straight through Balrog, Vega became impossible. He would hang off the fence and “huaaahhh” with his blades onto my head. Of course, I used Ken and the timing of a shyruken was hard.

No doubt, once I completed the game unbeaten I realized it was a hoax. With people then saying “You have to perfect every round” back I went to the SNES and 15 years later…

Playstation 2

The Urban Legend - Iraq had purchased 4,000 PS2’s to launch missiles.

The System - PS2

World Net Daily claims that both the FBI and the US Customs Service are investigating the transfer of thousands of consoles to Iraq. According to a secret Defence Intelligence Agency report, 4,000 PS2s had been bought in the US and shipped to Iraq in 2000.

Some US military experts believe that several PS2s could be linked together to form a “supercomputer”, which could control a missile or an unmanned aircraft. They fear that the console, which contains a 128-bit CPU, could provide the power for Iraq to launch chemical weapons at its enemies.

It’s also very unlikely that bundling any number of PS2s together would actually work, as it would be extremely complicated to have a number of processors accessing shared memory and splitting up the computation. The complex software required would take years to develop. Sony refused to say whether it was possible to link PS2s together to form a supercomputer, explaining that it did not comment on speculative stories.

Super Mario Bros.

The Urban Legend - Jumping over the flag pole at the end of the level

The System - NES

In 5th grade, Kevin Diley once told me how he jumped over the flagpole in Super Mario Bros. I’ve called him on the telephone while I tried, he came over to try, I even asked him to video tape it on his VHS camcorder. He was never able to reproduce it. Till this day, I do not know a single person who was able to jump over the flagpole. I’ve heard of mods, and hacks that allow this. But until I see this:

1. Cartridge being blown into the bottom
2. Popped into an original NES
3. Original NES controller used to jump over flagpole

This will not hold true to me and Kevin Diley will continue to be a liar!

Legend of Zelda

The Urban Legend - There is a dungeon level in the Legend of Zelda that is a swastika.

The System - NES

Now although this is not completly an urban legend, it is more of a terrible version of the game telephone. It starts off with one person saying what they say, and it gets turned and twisted into an Urban Legend. So, let me explain. The third dungeon has the shape of what appears to Western audiences as a left-facing swastika. This shape is actually a “manji”, which is a Buddhist symbol of good fortune. In Japan, where this game was initially released, swastikas and similar shapes are relatively benign, which explains why a symbol so offensive to many Western audiences could be included. In the United States, there were surprisingly few complaints about the manji, but years later, when Pokémon became popular in the United States, Nintendo was forced to alter one of the cards due to complaints regarding a manji.

So take a chill pill, it’s just some Manji - Word of the Day.

Mortal Kombat

The Urban Legend - A code that enabled the “Blood Code” instead of a grey smokey splat

The System - SNES

This one is fairly easy to explain because it never existed nor was it an Easter Egg. Nintendo was/is very censored so they never allowed blood in their Mortal Kombat game. It was said that the Genesis version of MK sold better because of the fatalities and blood. Nintendo then tried using Genesis’ decision of incorporating blood as a negative, but that never flew. So now you had those Genesis freaks soaked up to their ankles in Hawaiian Punch and it was cool.

Polybius

The Urban Legend - A government run arcade cabinet was used to collect data. Once played this game would cause seizures, memory loss and people were brainwashed.

The System - Arcade

This game was out for a very short trial run of one month in small arcades in Portland Oregon in 1981. Produced by the company Sinnesloschen ( A German term meaning “sense-deleting,” or “Loss of senses.”), the game gave many players nightmares and many who played it completely swore off all video games afterwards. Others complained of having blackouts and memory loss. Employees of the manufacturer, in black coats came and collected data from the machines as part of a lease agreement. After only one month, all of the machines were removed. ROM’s of this game are rumored to be in the hands of some collectors but at this time they are not generally available. Check out more info here at Polybius Theory.

Game-play: There are two explainations for game-play.

1: Action/Puzzle game. Rumored to have a rotating 3D Puzzle, along with logic puzzles, and mazes resembling the playing style of Pac-Man.

2: You were flying through a tunnel and had to dodge things in your path. Lights flashing at rapid rates to heighten the effect. Said to resemble a pro-type for Atari’s “Tempest.” (Which was a shooter game. In an article about Tempest, it was said that the prototype caused motion sickness after a period of time.) The basis of the game was to get through a maze without being caught in a trap or a mine. Apparently, the further the levels went, to make the game more difficult, the background would start flashing much like a strobe light, and the spinning of the mazes.

ShareThis

Visit the Book Publicity Gallery to see Documents and Photos of Successful Book Publicity Tours and Information.
Visit this link for a whole gallery full of scans from the NY Times and Publisher's Weekly.

How to Launch Your Career as an Author, Get Your Book Published and Get Book Publicity: MP3 Audio
Find out how Arielle Ford has helped launch the careers and create bestselling books for Deepak Chopra; Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen, Chicken Soup for the Soul series; Neale Donald Walsch, Conversations With God; Debbie Ford, The Dark Side of the Light Chasers; and Dean Ornish, Love and Survival and many, many other notable authors. Visit www.EverythingYouShouldKnow.com for more details

Write a Book and Get Your Book Published: Subscribe to America's Most Successful Book Publicist's Newsletter Today
Sign up for the free HOW TO GET YOUR BOOK PUBLISHED and PUBLICIZED newsletter from Arielle Ford. In case you don't know Arielle by name, she's publicized hundreds of authors and books. 11 of which are #1 Bestsellers. Her clients include Deepak Chopra, Wayne Dyer, Neale Donald Walsch, Dean Ornish, Jon Gordon, Debbie Ford, Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen. Arielle has compiled a list of nearly every question a first-time or experienced author wants to know about publishing, publicity, building a platform and the book business. Every issue is jam-packed with answers to the questions that get your book published and you booked on radio, television, newspapers and magazines.

SES NYC the value of authoritative links
Good PR (public relations, not PageRank) can influence search ranking

I spoke today at a session at Search Engine Strategies in New York City. Even though we were the second-to-last session on the last day of the show our session was very well attended.

 

 

I talked about HerRoom.com and their sports bra BounceTest videos.  The videos show women running on a treadmill wearing a sports bra so that you can see whether that make of bra does in fact reduce the movement of the breasts.

We looked for a news hook to get more coverage and build links to these videos and found that Dr. Joanna Scurr, a bio-mechanics professor in the UK, had done some research into breast movement and damage to breast tissue caused by exercising without proper support. Dr. Scurr's research had received a fair amount of attention from mainstream media - such as USAToday and MSNBC.

HerRoom hosted a podcast interview with Dr Scurr and put out a search optimized press release about this research and the Bounce Test videos.

A search on Google shows that this press release has been published on sites like Reuters and WSJ.com

Bloggers wrote about the podcast and the videos.

A month ago this page on HerRoom was not in the first 100 results. With some on page optimization and a news angle that created links to the page it is now on page two at #14.

Stay tuned - with a few more high profile authoritative links we should make it to page one. Online media relations is an undervalued SEO technique. But it does take an understanding of news and good PR skills.

Arielle Ford, Publicist biography
Arielle Ford has helped launch the careers and create bestselling books for Deepak Chopra; Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen, Chicken Soup for the Soul series; Neale Donald Walsch, Conversations With God; Debbie Ford, The Dark Side of the Light Chasers; and Dean Ornish, Love and Survival and many, many other notable authors.