He's one of GP's best-known readers. And now he has earned a place in gaming history.
Patrick Wildenborg, the Dutch modder who discovered the hidden Hot Coffee animations in Grand Theft Auto San Andreas was named by MTV as one of the "10 Most Influential Video-Gamers Of All Time."
Here what MTV had to say about PatrickW:
"'Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas' wasn't just Dutch gamer Patrick Wildenborg's favorite thing to play last year. It's also the game he inadvertently managed to get knocked from store shelves for a time after he discovered animations and controls for a half-cooked sex-game buried in the code. Hackers have been scouring game guts for years, sometimes finding cool extras developers never fully programmed (like a skateboard also found in 'San Andreas') or sometimes to fix games they think are broken (like the mangled ending of the second 'Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic'). But no previous discovery quite outraged U.S. politicians and parents, got a game re-rated for Adults Only and forced publisher Take-Two to re-print a sellable M-rated version at a $24 million cost"
Long-time GP readers may recall that Patrick's revelations on GamePolitics were instrumental in bringing the Hot Coffee affair to light.
Others named by MTV include University of Michigan professor Peter Ludlow for being kicked out of The Sims Online by EA for publishing critical stories in a virtual newspaper; top-scoring 1980's arcade player Billy Mitchell and the Penny Arcade team, Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins.
