Animal Crossing

Did you play Animal Crossing as a child?

If one game defined my childhood, it was Animal Crossing. It was like having an alternate, idyllic life. When most people play that game they only play for 15 minutes at a time, unless they have something important to do, like complete a festival or do some heavy-duty remodeling. I always played that game for hours and hours at a time: I had a insanely lucrative fruit growing operation that kept me busy as fuck.

My town’s name was Town (I was such an original little 10 year old) and the native fruit was Apples. The entire lower section of my map, from the sea to the police station and up near the rock cliffs, were all Oranges, pears...and money trees. I even got the game with the special memory card. I loved Animal Crossing, but games just slip away sometimes like real-life friends, and I guess that’s what happened in this case.

Animal Crossing and the Gamecube just became background dust, and when we got the Wii, the Gamecube disappeared completely. I only got 12 dollars for it when I traded it in, and that made me a little bitter. Animal Crossing wasn’t worth much at all, like 6 dollars, and I wish I’d never traded it, for both sentimental reasons, and for my sanity’s sake. But, now the 360 has taken the Wii’s place, and it’s the Wii’s turn to take up dust along side the lost Gameboy Colors and the obscure gameboy advance.

Today I decided to dust off the Wii and play a little Starfox Adventures. I normally keep that game in a large box filled with games, wires, controllers and memory cards, but I couldn’t find it today. I must have looked for at least 15 minutes, digging around through Tony Hawks and Grand Theft Autos and Pokemon- I was about to give up and just play the 360 when I dug up something from the very bottom. It was an unmarked game-case that I’d never seen it before, but upon opening it up...

I saw Animal Crossing, and in the little slot where you can store your memory card was the original grey one that contained the free NES game. I figured it must have been my sisters town, or a copy that a friend had left at my house, so I shrugged and put it in, mostly for old times sake.

You can notice when certain things are off pretty quickly, even more so when you grew up with the thing in question. The discrepancies are amplified, and right from the get go, I knew the theme music was off. I didn’t know what- but something was off. In the very beginning during the title screen, the music starts off with the steady drum beat, and then the piano comes in.

There was no drum beat, it just cut to the piano, and in a few seconds, the drumbeat came in...but it was off. Just by a little bit, enough to make me notice and cringe, almost like someone had taken the drums and tweaked the rhythm by a hair and took piano part and changed the pitch. The bright yellow, happy logo letters came were normal, but the white letters underneath, with the copyright and the 2001, 2002 Nintendo was missing altogether, instead, there was this weird symbol that looked like a sideways 8.

At this point, I thought the game was just a little weird- the graphics looked fine, and everything else was normal, so I pressed the start button.

Normally there’s this whole loading scene when you talk to one of the animals in your town and select your character. This was there, but it was weird: it wasn’t a character I recognized., He was a dog with the same head-shape as K.K Slider, but he was completely black and had glowing, yellow eyes. The character had no name at all in that little green bubble, but I placed him. He was an altered version of Lucky, that freaky ass dog wearing the bandages in both Wild World and the Gamecube version.

Another thing was wrong: the language. Instead of being cute gibberish, it was deeper and more pronounced, so it didn’t sound like gibberish: it sounded like some kind of legitimate, foreign language, and just something about the tone made it seem like it was more sinister and intense then I ever remember any aspect of that game being. The dialogue was pretty normal, but when you start a new town or play on a new memory card, K.K Slider is supposed to introduce you.

Obviously, that wasn’t the case, and the weird Lucky went through K.K’s normal speal, till the very end. He said that life on your own was lonely, but with friends, it could be even funner, especially when you’re friends with someone...FOREVER. I don’t know if you’ve ever reset your game before, but when Resetti, that fucking mole, gets pissed at you for reseting, the font is huge. Forever was just as big as Resetti at his angriest.

I mentally put two and two together: the symbol in the green name bubble was the infinity symbol. I was a bit unsettled, to tell you the truth, but before I could freak out or anything, it cut to the train scene.

I’m not going to say that I wasn’t freaked as fuck, but I WAS LIVING in a creepy pasta! I mean, come on, this kind of thing happens once in a lifetime! I thought, “what harm can a game do? It’s Animal Crossing.” I know in hindsight that I was being extremely fucking retarded. The train scene started alright. Rover came out normally, went through his thing: he asked me the date, I confirmed it, he called me a big help, laughed at his own joke, and then did the rest of his speech exactly how I remembered. It seemed normal, and it got me feeling better about this situation.

Until I noticed that old Boar lady, Joan, I think who sells the turnips on Saturday morning.

If you were attentive when you played Animal Crossing on the Gamecube, you’d notice that she sits behind you on the train, snoozing, and randomly waking up and looking around...well, first of all, Joan had noticeable bags under her eyes, and they looked much more sunken in, like she had take up meth or something. Every time she opened her eyes...they were fucking bleeding. The blood, and her pupils, here hyper-realistic: it looked like someone had videotaped someone with bloody eyes and pasted it onto her sprite. I fucking screamed and nearly dropped the controller: the game continued.

Rover asked my name. I didn’t type a response, but...something told him my name was Lucky. The little gamecube-controller keyboard thing on the screen was moving by itself, and the noise it made moving from letter to letter was a high pitched squeal, like a fucking pig. Normally, he’ll laugh at your name...but he was silent. He just stared. He then asked me (or whatever the FUCK was playing at that point) if I liked my name. The cursor moved to “Isn’t it cool?”

There was no text at this point. Rover just stared. I couldn’t move: the background music, which had been normal up to this point, started humming and screeching and overpowering everything else. I was transfixed: I couldn’t look away as Rover blinked. When his eyes opened again, they were just like Joan’s, except closer up, and you could see the blood running down his face and into his mouth. The music got to a point when I had to cover my ears before it stopped.

Everything fucking stopped. There was no noise: not the music, not the train whistles. Nothing. Rover started to bleed more in the silence, blinking and just staring. Blood started to pool on his lap, and trickled down to the floor. You could hear it hit the ground, even over the music. Plic. Plic. Plic.

Then the screaming started. I’ve never heard anything like it: long, hideously drawn out screams that filled my head and butchered every though inside. Rover started to melt away in front of me: his mouth just kind of bled into his face, his ears bled into his head, and his eyes bled through everything and coated everything in blood as the screaming grew louder and infinity symbols, of extremely low resolution, flashed in random places all over the screen, and then, as quickly as it started, the horror stopped. It was black. Everything was gone.

I forced myself up off the ground, and I think I might have vomited. It took all I had to fling myself at the wii and shut that thing off. I must have laid there for 15 minutes.

Before I shut the damn thing off, I saw something. It had eyes, and the eyes were waiting for me at the end of my bed last night. I woke up to him, just huddled there. I can see him now out of the corner of my eye. He’s waiting for me to do this.

This is my suicide note.

Goodbye.