Nora

Back in 2005, several copies of a strange game called "Nora" were found. The game came on a grey cartridge with a white label that had the game's name printed on it in black letters.

The game itself appeared to be an educational game, but it was unclear as to what it was supposed to teach. The title screen was white and had the same logo as the label, with "PRESS START" underneath it. Underneath this was a sprite of a schoolgirl and the main character, Nora. The bottom of the screen had no developer's logo, only the year 1990, leading people to believe it was a bootleg until an unused graphic of the letters "HG" was found in the game files.

The player controlled Nora in a platformer-style school building, with several doors leading to classrooms. Upon entering a door, Nora would walk to the front of an empty row of seats and sit down. The teacher would be sitting at his/her desk and would stand up and start writing on the board. The only thing the player would hear would be some unintelligible mumbling, apparently the teacher. After a few seconds of this, the screen would cut to a closeup of the board. The board would show pictures of shapes or animated geometric patters, and were asked to find whether patterns were different or match pairs of similar things by selecting them with the D-pad and pressing A, one after the other.

After 5 levels of this type of thing, the teacher would be shown handing a paper to the player and a quiz would be shown on screen. The puzzles were the same ones from the 5 levels, but involved memorization. After the player answered every question, the game would freeze for a minute or so, then give the player a letter grade. The grades were A, B, C, D, and F. If the player was given an F, the game over screen was shown with Nora lying on the ground outside the school and the teacher throwing her backpack out at her, indicating that she had been suspended or possibly expelled due to her grades.

Despite the game's boring appearance, players found it to be fun and addicting. Those who became skilled at the game claimed that they could see the geometric patterns in their heads whenever they closed there eyes. They found it hard to think of anything elese, and recieved poor grades in school in real life. Continued playing of the games caused players to become nauseous or dizzy, but they could not stop. They spent hours on end playing the games and rarely ate or went to the bathroom and got no sleep whatsoever. While players' family members were eventually able to destroy the games and the players eventually recovered, two players never did. One of them was found to have lasting brain damage, still thinking he/she was playing the game long after the batteries ran out. The other locked himself in his/her apartment and died of thirst and starvation.

No additional copies of the game have ever been found, and the company that produced it is still unknown.