then after weeks of this he brought an N64 cartridge with him onto the bus. it was, sure enough, Deadly Arts. he tried to tell me that he sent a letter about this game idea of his "to Nintendo" and they made it a real game and sent him a free copy
he was not pleased when I flat out told him that this didn't make any sense to me
I don't have a moral or anything here, it's just something I remember every so often. though in looking for the box art to make this post I found out that the game was universally critically panned which makes it very funny to me that he chose this game for his "Nintendo made my game real" long con
I had an almost identical experience regarding Star Control II (1992). I became acquainted with this kid after I mentioned that I'd like to make a video game some day, and he bragged that he was "way into development" on a video game of his own. Naturally, I was skeptical, but was quickly convinced by the complexity of the worldbuilding. Over a period of weeks, he brought in sketches he had made of the various aliens, ships, and even the interface, and explained how everything would work. At this time (in the early 90s), there isn't really an Internet that I had regular access to that could be used to verify any of his claims, and he was careful to insist that he "hadn't decided what the name of the game would be," so it's not like I would have had too many keywords to go on anyway.
Eventually, a different friend who didn't know this kid (someone I knew in another class) told me about SCII and lent me his copy, and I was blown away when I realized that all those sketches I had seen were just crude graph paper recreations of the game's pixel art. Not only that, but the game was a sequel and although Star Control (1990) was not as narrative in its game design, a bunch of the names and designs for the aliens and their ships were old enough that this other kid couldn't possibly have come up with them first, unless he had shipped a game in elementary school.
Naturally, I felt like I'd been bamboozled pretty hard, so I confronted the faker as soon as I next saw him, and he got real upset and insisted that he'd had all these ideas first and that Toys For Bob had stolen all his ideas. He was completely resolute that he'd never heard of SCII (although he knew the developers by name, unprompted) and that his game was going to be way better than this other game I was confused about.
I remember having the realization during that argument, "Oh, this kid's actually nuts." It was my first really stark recognition of what I would later understand was narcissistic behavior.
