Super Mario 128

Mario has been a gaming icon for decades and has been in more games than can be counted. Although no year in recent memory has gone past without some type of Mario game being released, series fans will remember the nearly decade long drought of original Mario platformers.

From 1997-2005, there was only one new Mario platformer released: Super Mario Sunshine. During the second part of this drought (after Sunshine's release), the mysterious Super Mario 128 was the main focus of the fanbase.

No concrete information was given on the game and, eventually, series creator Shigeru Miyamoto claimed it had simply been a series of test concepts that were never intended to be an actual game.

The mystery faded from memory as the Mario drought finally ended and most people forgot about the game that had once been the center of every Mario fan's imagination.

The Mario drought corresponded with a bad era for Nintendo in terms of console sales. The Nintendo 64 and GameCube did not have the financial success of the earlier Nintendo Entertainment System and Super Nintendo, or the later Wii.

For a very proud company that relied solely on video games to make money, this was quite upsetting for the higher ranking employees that were attached to the company and felt its success or failure reflected on them personally.

Nintendo started working on a sequel to the 1996 Super Mario 64 shortly after the game was released, but during the late 90s it became clear that Nintendo was not winning the console war. The Super Mario 64 sequel was restarted from scratch, since the company believed that it was not a substantial enough improvement over the original to turn the tides of the market battle.

Seeing the generally more realistic and violent games on Sony's Playstation, the market leader, Nintendo considered making a Mario that was closer in tone to what the public seemed to want. There was quite a bit of internal ocnflict over how far to go with this new direction and the new mario was clearly not going to be ready until Nintendo's next console, the GameCube.

The only hint of this that was released to the public was a comment by Miyamoto that he thought Mario and Luigi should act "more like grown ups" in their games for the (then soon to be released) GameCube.

The new Mario project was ultimately split into two games: Luigi's Mansion, which reflected the darker tone that many felt the series should turn to (although it was still toned down quite a bit compared to what some Nintendo executives and developers wanted), and Super Mario Sunshine, which went in the completely opposite direction.

Both were released within a year of the GameCube and Nintendo felt confident that their new system and Mario games would return them to their former glory as market leader.

As those familiar with gaming history know, they didn't. The GameCube did even worse in market share than the Ninendo 64 and the mass market's taste shifted even more toward violent, realistic games.

During this period, the somber mood at Nintendo intensified and the darker Mario project was revived, this time code named "Super Mario 128." It isn't clear exactly what happened at Nintendo during this period. As we know, nothing called Super Mario 128 was ever released or publically shown.

The source that revealed the internal strife at Nintendo during the later N64 era refused to discuss what was happening during the time of the GameCube's failure, but released a prototype of Super Mario 128 online that can be played on the Wii homebrew channel.

The following is a recollection of my time playing it.

The game was clearly an early beta; the title screen was nothing but white text saying "Super Mario 128" against a black background. There was no options menu or save file selection, either. After the title screen, the game started. Bowser's laugh from Super Mario 64 looped in the background while a plain text box displayed this dialogue:

Mario,
I have taken Princess Peach and she will not live to see the sun rise tomorrow unless you take her place. You know what to do and where to go. Do not try to stop me unless you want to hasten her death.

The game certainly was going for a darker tone. After I made the text box go away, I was thrust right into gameplay. The first thing I noticed was Mario's character model. His body was as detailed as in Super Mario Galaxy (although a little more realistically proportioned), but his head was taken from his SM64 character model. Obviously his design wasn't finished yet.

The setting was a sky level. There were some simple platforms floating in the air. The rest of the area was just blue sky with several clouds scrolling in the background. The clouds seemed more realistic than the usual cartoony puffs in Mario games. They were quite graphically impressive.

There was no music or full voice samples from Mario, but there were sound effect/grunts when he jumped. The jumping was more subdued than in other Mario games. Mario didn't jump as high as he usually did and had little control over his movement in the air. The different types of jumps in every 3D Mario weren't present.

I played through the level. There was nothing especially notable about the gameplay - enemies didn't seem to have been added yet. I just jumped from platform to platform and it wasn't very challenging.

As I went through the level, I noticed the graphics gradually changing. The sky became more and more cloudy until it was entirely composed of clouds, and the cloud background gradually turned to a dark gray.

After this, it started to rain. I reached a small platform with a Toad on it. It looked like the Super Mario Galaxy model. When I landed on his platform, dialogue appeared.

We don't want you any more, Mario. You don't belong here. Just give Bowser what he wants. Die.

After the text box went away, I no longer had control of Mario. Mario just stood there for a while, then turned around and walked off the platform. His body seemed to go limp as he fell.

Eventually, it was revealed that there was a realistic, modern city under the sky. The buildings looked neglected, but there were people on the street.

Mario hit the ground with a realistic-sounding thud, but he didn't explode or show any visible wounds. He just lay there. The people in the city just kept walking by, ignoring Mario, although I thought I saw a few glance at him with cold, somewhat angry expressions.

This went on for a few minutes and eventually, people stopped appearing. Mario got up - I was back in control - but he couldn't jump at all and had a reduced walking speed.

The large buildings of the city didn't appear to be interactive, so I just kept walking down the street for a while. Eventually, I found a small house that seemed out of place among the larger buildings.

When I approached the door, Mario opened it. The screen went white and some black text appeared.

House of Torn Memories

This seemed to be the level title. When I pressed a button, the screen faded back to Mario. He was inside the house from before. Everything seemed bigger than it should. It wasn't gigantic, but scaled as if Mario was a very small child.

The house was filled with normal object covered in dust and signs of neglect. There were no people on the ground floor, just things like broken lamps and rotting food. I found a door that opened to a set of stairs going down, leading to a basement.

In the basement, I found a dilapidated couch and a broken TV. However, what really caught my attention was what was on the couch: two skeletons that appeared to be children, judging by their size. Due to the scale of the house, they were still larger than Mario.

I was starting to get really disturbed by now. How had a Mario game containing this been programmed to this extent?

I went up to the skeletons and tried pressing buttons to interact with them or the TV, but nothing seemed to happen. I was about to turn around and look elsewhere when i was nearly scared to death by a deafeningly loud crash coming from the game.

What appeared to be Bowser seemed to have broken through the floor from below and landed in front of Mario. I say "appeared to be" because this was nothing like the way Bowser is usually rendered.

The reptilian monster in the game had Bowser's basic brownish-yellow and green color pattern, but looked far more threatening than any Bowser model I had seem before.

It was not proportioned like the Bowser I knew. Its arms and legs were far longer in relation to its body and ended in razor-sharp claws. The green shell didn't look like it had spikes glued on; they were more jagged and organic looking with the same dark green color the rest of the shell had.

The face had small but intense pur black eyes and a mouth full of jagged teeth that took up far more of the face than it should have. Mario was cowering in fear from this thing. A dialogue box appeared.

You've kept me waiting long enough, Mario. I will taste flesh soon. Will you finally surrender, or does Peach have to die?

I still didn't have control. Mario just stood there, shivering for several seconds before nodding his head. Bowser impaled Mario with his claws. There was no blood, but it was clear from the animation and sound effects that the sharp digits of Bowser's hands had gone through Mario's body.

In one swift motion, Bowser dragged Mario up to his face and bit his head off. Again, there was no blood or graphic details left behind on Mario's neck - just Mario's character model being destroyed.

The screen faded to black. In white text, another level name appeared.

Mario's Eternal Home

Mario's character model was whole again when the level started. It was the only thing on the screen besides the black background. It was floating, as if in space. I could somewhat control it, but it felt more like I was deciding the general direction in which Mario would tumble than fully controlling him.

As I drifted towards no apparent destination, voices faded in. They were echoing, deep voices telling Mario that he was worthless...that the world no longer had any use for him and everyone would be better off if he was dead.

High pitched crying was layered onto the voices after a bit. It sounded like it was supposed to be Mario's cries. This really disturbed me and I found myself fighting back tears. For reasons I couldn't understand, this was effecting me on an emotional level.

The voices and aimless wandering went on for several minutes until I spotted a light grey speck in the distance. I moved towards it. It took a very long time to reach, and grew closer at a much slower rate than it should have.

When I was close enough to make it out, I saw that it was a tombstone. It was a very plain one with cracks in several places. When I got right next to the tombstone, I could see writing on it.

I turned off the system right after reading it. I'm not going to play the beta or hack or whatever this was again.There was a single word written on the tombstone.

Innocence

(This story is credited to a person called KI Simpson.)

Mr. Mix

Does anyone remember an old PC game from the early 1990s called "Mr. Mix?" It's mainly a typing game (similar to Mario Teaches Typing) where you have to type words into a box to make a chef (the titular Mr. Mix) put ingredients into a bowl.

Unlike most typing games, hoever, this game is notorious for having an insane difficulty curve. The game has a "Words per Minute" requirement for each level, being as low as 10 on level one and as high as 85 on the third. By level five, the requirement reaches over 500, effectively making it impossible to proceed any further.

One of the main things that people noticed about this game immediately was the background music. The music on the first level was an unsettling pattern of growls that got progressively louder as the level went on, often causing damage to early computer speakers that were designed to handle extremely high volumes of sound.

The second level had no music at all and the third had what sounded like an extremely low-quality recording of a hair dryer playing in the background. The remaining two levels had an extremely loud high-pitched ringing throughout the level that caused severe ear drum damage to those who managed to get that far.

Another rather disturbing aspect of the game was the design of Mr. Mix himself. He was a large, round-faced, overweight man with large beady eyes and red spots on his cheeks.

Most children who played the game reported having vivid nightmares of Mr. Mix speaking to them in a quiet, raspy voice and threatening them to keep quiet about something. However, none of them could remember exactly what that was.

One psychologist who saw many of these children reported being disturbed by the sheer amount of terror on the child's face as they recounted the details of the nightmare.

Many of the children broke down into tears in the process, begging for their parents to "save" them. However, no direct relationship to the game itself could be determined by these few cases, as not all children suffered the same adverse effects.

For obvious reasons, this game did not sell very well. It remained in relative obscurity until a few years ago, when PC hackers got hold of a ROM of the game and started digging through it.

Using memory hacking software, they managed to crack the game's code and bypass the impossible fifth level. What they found, however, was extremely disturbing and caused many of them to quit the expedition altogether.

According to the reports these hackers left behind, the game behaves very strangely if the fifth level is bypassed. The game crashes violently and closes, writing a bunch of files to the user's System32 directory to the point that the RAM was almost completely filled.

These files are reportedly pictures of people with horribly deformed faces, appearing to scream in pain and agony with their eyes appearing to be bleeding from their tear ducts and their outer layer of skin torn clean off in multiple places.

If the user attempts to delete these files, the computer will violently crash and blue screen, causing permanent irreparable damage to the user's hard drive.

The hackers found that this was caused by a lone byte in the game's ROM that triggered when the fifth level was completed. After removing this byte, they were able to proceed to the sixth and final level.

Unfortunately, all of the original hackers declined to discuss what they saw in the final level. All of them became extremely paranoid and reclusive, refusing to talk about anything related to the game and showing astonishingly extreme symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Most of them ceased to be able to form coherent sentences within a week and, within a month, all of them went missing. All remaining copies of the game were destroyed.

To this day, no one knows what was in that game that caused them so much psychological damage. Maybe it's better that way.

Two years after this incident, a man was arrested after trying to kidnap an eight-year old girl from a grocery store. Through DNA and fingerprint analysis, the man was identified as one of the original hackers who viewed the final level of the game.

He was wearing a white chef's hat and had a look of unspeakable malice and insanity on his face. When interrogated, the man would only say one thing.

"I'm Mr. Mix. Shhh."

(This story is credited to a person called ingx24.)

Memory Card

A few weeks ago, my parents were driving up to see my cousins. We always visit them during the summer. On the way there, we drove through a little village. Some church by the road was having a car boot sale. A massive banner told us it was in aid of charity.

My dad parked the car and got out, eager to have a little sniff around. He always had a thing for raking through people's old stuff and finding hidden treasures. While he was off treasure hunting, I decided to go off on my own little wander.

Most of the stuff on sale was the usual crap: cakes, ugly crockery, junk, etc. Someone was holding a raffle. An old woman was painting kids' faces, but only seemed to know how to do one animal; there were zebra-faced kids everywhere.

I remember a couple standing out over all the happiness and sense of community. There was just a man and a woman with dead eyes taking no interest in their customers at all. All they did was just stare into the distance.

Their table was full of kids junk. You know - toys, magazines, crap Playstation games, the usual. There were a lot of those Army Men games. A few sports games, as well. I reckon I missed all the good stuff.

I was losing interest when I spotted an old Playstation memory card out of the corner of my eye. Written on the front in chipped Tipp-Ex was the name SAM. Now this was a real hidden treasure. I bought it from the couple and tucked it into my wallet. Neither said a word or looked at me when they took my money.

After that, I found my parents once more. Eventually, we got back in the car and were once again on our way to my cousins' house. We stayed there for a few days. I enjoy hanging out with my cousins, so I was quick to forget about my purchase. In addition, neither had a Playstation, so it didn't matter anyway.

When I got back home, I retrieved my old Playstation from the attic and set it up. I had kept quite a few games, too. I had all the classics: Resident Evil, Final Fantasy, Tomb Raider, Metal Gear Solid, Future Cop, etc.

However, before I played any of them, I turned on the console without a disc in. I remembered you could do this to check out the contents of your memory card. I stuck Sam's into the slot and selected it.

There were a few save files on it. Some of them were corrupt - just strange symbols hanging there that displayed a strange series of characters instead of details. Others were games I had never heard of.

However, there was one I recognized: Metal Gear Solid. It was the VR Missions disc, to be precise. It said it had been completed 100%. I had both Metal Gear Solid and the VR Missions, so I decided to check it out.

I could remember quite a bit about the VR Missions disc, but the parts that stuck out for me the most were the giant soldiers, the murder mysteries, and the photo shoot mode. I remembered they were actually a lot of fun. I booted the game up.

When I loaded the save, something odd happened: the title music stopped. This sounded especially weird because I had turned up the volume on my TV so I could get right into the game, but there I was, suddenly plunged into silence.

On top of that, there were no sound effects as I scrolled through the menu options. It was a little eerie, but I chalked it up to the game or the console being old and worn out.

I remembered you could wait for Naomi's legs to uncross to take a photo in photo shoot mode and there was nothing there except a black space where a pussy should have been. It was a little empty void left by the creators to disappoint a million pubescent kids. Amused, I loaded up photo shoot mode and selected Naomi as my model.

When the level loaded, I remember thinking the music sounded a little strange. It was nothing eerie, just a little odd. Maybe it was slightly slowed down or something. AGain, I chalked it up to either the game or the console's old age.

I made Snake duck down and looked through the viewfinder, staring at Naomi's crotch and waiting for her to uncross her legs. I was determined to get that snap that had destroyed my perverted hopes and dreams all those years ago.

It took longer than I thought and the first time it happened, I missed it. Waiting again, I almost missed a second time. Luckily, my reflexes had been sharpened by generations of gaming.

Click. Gotcha! A perfect snap of the little black zone where her pussy should have been. I smiled to myself and shook my head. It was funny that I had gotten so excited over something all those years ago.

I was getting a little hungry, so I decided to take a break. I was just about to head downstairs for some food when I noticed something.

I could hear crying. There were little sniffles and short intakes of breath. At first, I had no idea where it was coming from. For a moment I noticed it was behind me. Then I realised it was coming from the game.

I remember getting confused, sitting there to listen to some voice coming from my TV speakers. I just couldn't work out why it was happening. It started getting louder and a little more hysterical. I figured it was coming from Naomi. I tilted the camera upwards, wondering what the fuck was going on. Just as I got to her face, a horrible wail tore from my speakers and scared the shit out of me.

Naomi was screaming at me. I just had time to register her twisted mouth and horrible eyes when I gasped and dropped the controller. It landed on the ground on a button and the game came out of viewfinder mode.

Snake was just kneeling there in front of her. I stood there, shaking, watching the characters seem to stare at one another. I could no longer see Naomi's face. I couldn't tell if she still had that horrible look across it. There was no one in my house. My parents were both still at work. I jumped forward and turned the console off.

A little while later, I was lying on my bed thinking about that horrible face when it dawned on me that the characters in the game don't actually have eyes, just a darker shade of pixels.

Their mouths never opened, either. They just nodded their heads whenever they talked. Naomi's mouth, however, had been twisted open and her eyes were almost photo realistic. What the fuck?

After a while, I convinced myself I had imagined the horrible details. You always do in situations like that. It was just some lame kid's save that he had someone fucked with and managed to scare the shit out of me with. I wondered what else he had managed to do to VR Missions.

Later that night, when I my parents were home, I finally got the nerve to turn the console back on. I selected photo shoot mode and chose Naomi as my model again.

When the level loaded, I knew right away that something was wrong. The stage was empty except for Snake. Naomi was nowhere to be seen. There was no music, either. It was just like the title screen. I ran around a little and the footsteps sounded louder than they should have been. They sounded real, too, like high-quality sound effects recorded in a great hall.

The whole thing was a little unnerving, but I kept telling myself that it was just some whiz kid's stupid experiment. Still, I couldn't shake the horrible sensation that something else was at play.

There was nothing on the stage except Snake. I decided to look through the camera's viewfinder again, to scan the level for, well, anything. Panning around, I realised that all those graphics that usually floated in the background were gone. All of that scrolling information wasn't there. The level was just floating in a black, silent abyss.

Still panning, I suddenly spotted something in the distance: a vague shape in the darkness. Before I could focus on what it was, it was gone. I had no idea what I had saw, but it reminded me of one of those ghosts from Metal Gear Solid you could see if you took photographs in the right places.

However, you could only see them when you left the game and examined the photos in the in-game photo album. They had been really creepy. I remember when I was a kid, I stopped looking for them because one had scared the shit out of me.

Still facing that horrible abyss, I took a photo roughly in the space I thought I saw something. I turned around and started talking photos all around me, a few being where Naomi was supposed to be standing. I left the game afterward. I was relieved to get out of that horrible place.

The menu still wasn't playing any music. There still were no sound effects when I scrolled through, either. I loaded up the photo album and began to shuffle through the pictures.

The first one was of the abyss that surrounded the level, or at least I think that's what it was. It was just a black image with no features. There were a few more like this, too. I remembered you could mess with the colors and contrast, so I played around with it, hoping I would see something. Nothing materialized.

Eventually, I gave up. I scrolled across to the next image - the first shot of where Naomi should have been standing. What I was faced with was something completely different.

It was a picture of a little boy, tied up against a bed. It wasn't an in-game photo, but a real one. It was a real boy on a real bed with real ropes. The picture was slightly pixellated, but nothing compared to the low-resolution of the game. Just at the edge of the picture, I could make out a leg. Someone was standing by the bedside.

Something told me to turn the game off. Something darker told me to scroll to the next photo. I listened to the latter. The next photo made my stomach jump. Gloved hands were holding the boy's eyes open. They were forcing him to look at something off-camera. The boy's expression ws of absolute terror. A part of me was glad I couldn't see what he saw.

I continued scrolling. They were torturing him now - cutting open his skin and mutilating him in ways I won't describe. The photos only became more and more disturbing, never letting up. Each one was worse than the last. They violated him and tortured his young body. I'd never seen anything like it. I never knew humans were capable of such acts.

My body was shaking and my hands could barely hold onto the controller, but I kept scrolling through the pictures. I was unable to stop myself.

I came to another image. I was relieved to see it was no longer of the boy. This relief, however, was short-lived. I squinted at the screen, wondering what exactly I was looking at.

Then it hit me. My insides did a little wet flip and I froze. I dropped the controller again, no buttons being pressed when it hit the floor this time. I was staring at the image, mouthing "what the fuck" to myself over and over. I stayed like that for a while, my body completely functionless as I gaped at the screen.

It was a shot of Naomi with her legs uncrossed. It was the very first photo I had taken after switching on the game. It was the photo that had started this horrible journey. Now, however, I could actually see her pussy. It was a real image of a pussy - not pixelated or anything. It was just sitting right in front of me in incredible detail.

If I were still a teenager, I'm sure I would have been delighted that all my hard work had paid off. I'm pretty sure every kid who tried getting a photo of her snatch back then would have felt the same, especially when compared to the black void that too many of us actually faced. However, I was far from aroused in this situation.

I noticed the pussy was moving, pulsing with every breath as though I was watching a movie instead of an image. It was like some voyeur's spy cam or something and it was squelching.

As I sat there, speechless, blood slowly seeped from the inside, dribbling over her lips and legs and spreading fast. When her pussy was completely caked in red, Naomi finally began to move her body. She was slowly leaning down towards the camera. I really didn't want to see her face, but I couldn't look away.

Then she was screaming and staring at me with those horrible eyes and twisted mouth. She wasn't looking at the camera, but at me. I screamed back before she lunged.

Out of nowhere, I found strength. I watched as my arm shot out from my body and hit the power button. Her scream cut short. The screen went blank. I tore the memory card from its slot and held it as though it was some potent drug. I realised I was breathing heavily. I kept staring at the name SAM in white Tipp-Ex as my lungs gradually relaxed. I never plugged it back in.

That was the last time I ever played VR Missions. I still have the memory card in my drawer, but I daren't open it. A part of me wants to bind the damn thing, but the other part won't let me.

Maybe one day I'll give it another go, just to see how messed up the rest of the game is. Perhaps I'll buy some of the other games and see how fucked up Sam's saves for them are. Maybe I'll try to figure out what games those other, corrupt saves are for. Maybe.

But for now...well...the memory card can stay in that drawer until I'm ready.

Modified

Most of the stories you read about haunted video games involve someone getting the game from a yard sale or from eBay. However, this is something I brought upon myself.

I love and collect Nintendo 64 games. I usually get them in boxes with other games I bought online and then takes the ones I want to keep and put them in my collection. The ones I don't put in, I mod. I've gotten kind of good at it, so I sold a few to some friends of mine.

About a month of time, one friend wanted me to hack a copy of Ocarina of Time for him. He told me he wanted it for a creepypasta he was writing. Personally, I like some of those sotries, but I didn't understand why he wanted the game for it.

I asked him why he couldn't just do the story without a game. He said he wanted to do a video of him playing it to make the story more "real." I just kind of laughed at the idea. At least I was going to get paid for it.

The story he sent me was nothing special. He gets a copy of Ocarina of Time from eBay. He plays it and odd things happen - pallate swaps, strange sounds, backwards music, bleeding eyes, jumbled text, and other cliches found in these stories.

As you know, modding can take a while. I finally finished two days ago and sat down to test it. I had everything set up to record my playthrough. Why? Because I wanted to see how it looked after I finished testing it.

I turned it on and everything was working fine. The game started with some static, but it was supposed to do that. Like I wanted it to, the game started up a file instantly. Link was standing in the middle of Hyrule Field at night.

Link's tunic and eyes were black. There was some low moaning and some thunder sound effects. The game played just like I wanted it to; it made me feel proud of my work. That's when things started to get weird.

I was walking through Kakariko Village when there was a high-pitched scream, followed by a strange animation from Link. He quickly looked from side to side, like he was in some kind of panic, and drew his sword. This freaked me out. I didn't program that animation, nor was the sound effect anything I had put in.

I sat down the controller and went over to my computer. I didn't remember programming any new animations and wanted to see what the problem was. I looked through my programs for a specific one.

Not that long ago, I got a program named Lace. It allows me to make custom animations for Link. According to the information on it, it was last used a few days earlier. Maybe I did use it, but forgot about it. But...what about the scream? I didn't have anything like it in any of my sound files.

Suddenly, there were noises coming from the game. I went back and Link was surrounded by ten Cuccos in a circle. They were just sitting there, looking at Link. I had made their eyes red to make them look creepy, and it sure did work.

As soon as I moved the analog stick, they all swarmed him and he was dead in an instant. If that wasn't enough, the Running Man (the guy you sell the Bunny Hood to) ran up. A dialogue box popped up for him.

"YOU POOR THING. IF ONLY YOU HAD MINDED YOUR OWN BUSINESS. YOU WILL LEARN. THEY ALL LEARN."

That's when the game froze. I didn't program any of that stuff. In a panic, I turned off the game and went to my computer. I looked at the video to confirm what just happened. None of what I had seen was on the video. The scream, panicked Link, the Cuccos, the Running Man...none of it was there.

It was just Link standing there for a while befor ethe game froze. I went through the game's programming and played it a few times again. I could never get that same thing to happen.I told my friend about it, but he thought I was just messing with him. I'm glad I no longer have that cursed thing.

I even got paid for it.

Luna Game

I found this cute little My Little Pony game about Princess Luna (I think that's her name. I don't watch My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic).

Click here.

I played it and thought it was really cute. The only problem is that it sometimes freezes up, but that's probably just partial incompatibility with Windows 7. Hope you guys have fun!

If your antivirus says the file has a virus attached to it, it is a false positive. If you really don't believe me, use VirusTotal to have it scanned through a number of virus scanners.

Nanashi no Game

Click this.

Basically, if you haven't heard, Nanashi no Game is a scary DS game. The scariest out there (compared to all other DS games), from what I hear. But it's always been in moonspeak and nobody in English land has been able to enjoy the game. Now it's translated. WOOOOOOOOO!

Go play it and not sleep. DOOOOO ITTTTTTT.

If you don't have a flash card to play this on (this is the generally better way of playing fan-translated games), get the emulator DeSmuME, since the game requires a 90 degree flip of the DS to play half the game.

According to that thread, you'll be needing headphones too. Good luck with that, then.

Yes, I know this is pretty useless post, but I had to tell you guys here since I know a lot of you don't check Twitter.

Pale Luna

In the last decade and a half it's become infinitely easier to obtain exactly what you're looking for, by way of a couple of keystrokes. The Internet has made it all too simple to use a computer to change reality. An abundance of information is merely a search engine away, to the point where it's hard to imagine life as any different.

Yet, a generation ago, when the words 'streaming' and 'torrent' were meaningless save for conversations about water, people met face-to-face to conduct software swap parties, trading games and applications on Sharpie-labeled five-and-a-quarter inch floppies.

Of course, most of the time the meets were a way for frugal, community-minded individuals to trade popular games like King's Quest and Maniac Mansion amongst themselves. However, a few early programming talents designed their own computer games to share amongst their circle of acquaintances, who in turn would pass it on, until, if fun and well-designed enough, an independently-developed game had its place in the collection of aficionados across the country. Think of it as the 80's equivalent of a viral video.

Pale Luna, on the other hand, was never circulated outside of the San Fransisco Bay Area. All known copies have been long disposed of, all computers that have ever run the game now detritus buried under layers of filth and polystyrene. This fact is attributed to a number of rather abstruse design choices made by its programmer.

Pale Luna was a text adventure in the vein of Zork and The Lurking Horror, at a time when said genre was swiftly going out of fashion. Upon booting the program, the player was presented with a screen almost completely blank, except for the text:

-You are in a dark room. Moonlight shines through the window.

-There is GOLD in the corner, along with a SHOVEL and a ROPE.

-There is a DOOR to the EAST.

-Command?

So began the game that one writer for a long-out-of-print fanzine decried as "enigmatic, nonsensical, and completely unplayable". As the only commands that the game would accept were PICK UP GOLD, PICK UP SHOVEL, PICK UP ROPE, OPEN DOOR, and GO EAST, the player was soon presented with the following:

-Reap your reward.

-PALE LUNA SMILES AT YOU.

-You are in a forest.There are paths to the NORTH, WEST, and EAST.

-Command?

What quickly infuriated the few who've played the game was the confusing and buggy nature of the second screen onward — only one of the directional decisions would be the correct one. For example, on this occasion, a command to go in a direction other than NORTH would lead to the system freezing, requiring the operator to hard reboot the entire computer.

Further, any subsequent screens seemed to merely repeat the above text, with the difference being only the directions available. Worse still, the standard text adventure commands appeared to be useless: The only accepted non-movement-related prompts were USE GOLD, which caused the game to display the message:

-Not here.

USE SHOVEL, which brought up:

-Not now.

And USE ROPE, which prompted the text:

-You've already used this.

Most who played the game progressed a couple of screens into it before becoming fed-up by having to constantly reboot and tossing the disk in disgust, writing off the experience as a shoddily programmed farce. However, there is one thing about the world of computers that remains true, no matter the era: some people who use them have way too much time on their hands.

A young man by the name of Michael Nevins decided to see if there was more to Pale Luna than what met the eye. Five hours and thirty-three screens worth of trial-and-error and unplugged computer cords later, he finally managed to make the game display different text. The text in this new area read:

-PALE LUNA SMILES WIDE

-There are no paths

-PALE LUNA SMILES WIDE

-The ground is soft

-PALE LUNA SMILES WIDE

-Here

-Command?

It was another hour still before Nevins stumbled upon the proper combination of phrases to make the game progress any further; DIG HOLE, DROP GOLD, then FILL HOLE. This caused the screen to display:

-congratulations

—— 40.24248 ——

—— -121.4434 ——

upon which the game ceased to accept commands, requiring the user to reboot one last time.

After some deliberation, Nevins came to the conclusion that the numbers referred to lines of latitude and longitude — the coordinates lead to a point in the sprawling forest that dominated the nearby Lassen Volcanic Park. As he possessed much more free time than sense, Nevins vowed to see Pale Luna through to its ending.

The next day, armed with a map, a compass, and a shovel, he navigated the park's trails, noting with amusement how each turn he made corresponded roughly to those that he took in-game. Though he initially regretted bringing the cumbersome digging tool on a mere hunch, the path's similarity all but confirmed his suspicions that the journey would end with him face-to-face with an eccentric's buried treasure.

Out of breath after a tricky struggle to the coordinates, he was pleasantly surprised by a literal stumble upon a patch of uneven dirt. Shoveling as excitedly as he was, it would be an understatement to say that he was taken aback when his heavy strokes unearthed the badly-decomposing head of a blonde-haired little girl.

Nevins promptly reported the situation to the authorities. The girl was identified as Karen Paulsen, 11, reported as missing to the San Diego Police Department a year and a half prior.

Efforts were made to track down the programmer of Pale Luna, but the nearly-anonymous legal gray area in which the software swapping community operated inescapably led to many dead ends.

Collectors have been known to offer upwards of six figures for an authentic copy of the game.

The rest of Karen's body was never found.

(This story is credited to a person called Ed.)

Pokemon: Tarnished Gold

Being someone who isn't nearly as computer savvy as someone from this generation should be, I know very little about what technology is capable of. Aside from email, IM, and the occasional download of something otherwise unobtainable for me at the moment, I have about the same amount of knowledge an eighty-year-old might possess about the electronic world.

For example, and for the sake of this tale I'm about to recount, I was totally unaware that someone is capable of hacking Pokemon games to make their own sub-story of the world - even less so that it was possible to make a physical copy of the game in a real cartridge.

However, I happened to learn about this one in one of the most disturbing ways possible.

When I was younger, Pokemon Gold was my very first game from the ever-popular franchise. I became very attached to the little creatures my character (name after myself even though the character was male) caught and often fantasized about the adventures we would go through had a preset storyline not been in place.

That isn't quite important, though.

What is important is the fact that I never truly let go of my childhood fantasies; the memories from that first game were far too cherished to set free. As such, I still have my old Gold cartridge, compleete with a total abuse of the copy glitch. I refuse to restart my game, though. I'm afraid too much of the old magic would be lost.

I wanted to play a whole new game of the version that I recall being the happiest with, but older cartridges are rather hard to find outside of the Internet nowadays; the most my local flea markets have are GBA games, with hardly any being Pokemon.

Fortunately for me, my grandmother still fully supports my long-standing love for Pokemon and often buys boxes of carts, toys, video tapes, and other items she comes across during her frequent visits to local auctions. Granted, very little of these things she gives me are in good condition; long forgotten items stowed away in a musty basement after the phase in their owner's life has passed hardly ever are. But, as gifts from a dear relative, I cherish them as if they were made of gold...pun not intended.

Most recently, she gave me a box with a brand new video tape containing episodes from early on in the first season, several hundred battered and well-used cards, and a game cartridge with no label.

The cartridge was the familiar metallic gold color of the game I had been looking for. Even though the label had been removed and a lard red X was drawin in sharpie in the place the sticker should have been, I could easily tell what it was. What other game had that color? You can imagine my excitement for finally finding another copy! I thanked her profusely and promised I would play it as soon as I got home, which I did.

Getting started was difficult - not because the game was faulty, but because I had sold my GBA to my little brother several years ago for some of his better Pokemon cards. Once something belongs to him, it's difficult to get him to lend it out to me. Such is sibling relations, I suppose.

After much bribery, I finally got my hands on my former GBA and quickly inserted the vandalized game. Chills ran through my body as the opening 'movie' for the game began to play, sending a wave of nostalgia crashing over me. It was good to see it again.

The game opened normally; the pixelated image of Ho-oh flying through the sky beneath the title presented itself before leading into the normal selection screen. The person who owned the game before me still had a game file, but I cared very little about what someone did before me. Considering the condition of their things, they must have been very young. I was bound to be met with a team full of Pikachu with ridiculous names.

I started a new game.

It was here that I realized something wasn't quite right with the game. The normal intro involving a Professor introducing you to the world of Pokemon didn't play out. Rather, it played like this:

It started out with a black screen, which was quite familiar considering that's how Gold, Silver, and Crystal begin. Instead of the normal "What time is it?" dialogue, however, I was met with something else.

"........

......

...

Pokemon are nothing more than tools.

Use them and throw them away.

........"

The black screen faded away, revealing an empty area at night. It looked familiar; I vguely remember it being a route in an earlier part of the game. Since I've been away from the game for so long, I couldn't place it.

In the silence of this scene, the sprite of your rival (henceforth noted as Silver) walked in from the left. He moved a little slower than normal, as if he were hesitant about something. Once he had moved to the middle of the screen, he stopped and turned back to look at where he came from, turned toward where he was going, and turned back towards where he had came once again.

For a moment, he stood there, simply staring towards the left side of the screen before a dialogue box popped up beneath him saying nothing more than "..." After that, he turned around yet again, only to continue off to walk off-screen.

The scene faded away to be replaced with Silver standing in the place where you first officially see him just outside Professor Elm's laboratory. It was clearly in a slightly later part of the game than normal as the professor and his assistants all exited the lab and went their separate ways: the assistants left the town and Elm walked further downward off screen. I assume that meant he left for his home and rmeained in town. The character of Gold was nowhere to be seen.

After that small scene, it stayed on Silver. I thought the game had frozen for a minute, but I finally realized I was able to move him. Honestly, I was a little excited. Silver was (and always has been) my favorite of the rivals. It was an interesting thing to be able to play as him.

I moved him a little further downward to see if I was able to explore, but it stopped me each time I moved one step away from the front of the lab. A dialogue box poppuped up that said, "I can't leave yet..." It backed me up a step afterward. I moved back up to the place he had originally been standing and moved into the window. It worked much like a door and it allowed me to ender Professor Elm's lab.

Aside from the regular equipment (bookshelves, computers, trash cans, tables, etc), the lab was empty. It was to be expected, since the employees had just left a moment ago. On the table was a single Pokeball. Being without one at the moment, I walked over and took it.

A dialogue box popped up and said "Obtained TOTODILE" but no 'item get' music played. Apparently, stealing wasn't condoned even by the game. After pressing A, it gave me the option of naming the Pokemon. I picked yes, as I love naming these things. As it took me to the naming screen, however, another dialogue popped up and interrupted the naming process.

"Don't name it! You'll only get attached.

Don't love it. Use it."

It was clearly the voice of the same person who spoke in the very beginning. I found it odd.

The naming screen faded away, leaving me in the empty lab. I quickly tried to leave through the front door, but was stopped by Silver saying, "Not through here..." Again, he backed up and I was forced to exit through the window I had come in from.

As if things weren't strange enough as they were, it was nearly impossible to get a random battle to start once I left New Bark Town and stepped in the grass. I go out of my way to avoid them later on in the game, but during the beginning it was something I enjoyed to get my Pokemon to level up. Being unable to find something to fight was a little frustrating.

After several minutes of walking back and forth in patches of grss, I finally encountered a Pokemon: a Sentret. It was nothing out of the ordinary, but when I sent out my Totodile and chose the only presently-useful move he had, Scratch, the Pokemon fled. I was rather confused; a wild Pokemon never ran, not so early in the game. After a few more tries, all with the same outcome, I continued on to Cherrygrove.

Just before I entered the city, I recognized the small area as the one Silver had walked through in the beginning. After entering the city, I bumped into Gold, who wordlessly challenged me to a battle.

His Pokemon, a Cyndaquil, was already a slightly higher level than mine (I was still stuck at level five, but he was already at level seven) and, even though I had the type advantage, he beat me. Before whiting out, his sprite switched out with the Cyndaquil's. He looked disappointed.

After exiting the Cherrygrove Pokemon Center (I hadn't used it prior, but it was apparently the only option I had), I walked back to the place he had challenged me only to find I was unable to battle him at this point again.

The game was getting a little annoying by now. I had no money, Pokegear, or Pokedex. I was also unable to battle wild Pokemon. Fortunately, once I entered route 30 onward, there were other Pokemon Trainers in which I could battle and easily beat, though none of them seemed eager to speak to me after I had won.

By the time I entered Violet City, my Pokemon's level was still too low to take on the gym leader. However, with the money I had won from the trainers I fought before, I was at least able to buy some potions. I felt I was set.

The lesser trainers of the gym were easy enough. I was only forced to use two of my previously purchased potions and I leveled up once. As I took on the gym leader, he proved to be too much and I lost yet again. Upon winning, he did the very same thing Gold had done: he looked disappointed as well.

When the battle ended, I didn't white out. Rather, I had to endure a lecture about treating Pokemon correctly from the leader. Once he finished speaking, I received a one-worded question: "Steal?"

I chose the only option given to me: "Yes."

Silver backed u one step and slammed into the gym leader, kicking him backwards. Another dialogue box popped up telling me that I had stolen the gym badge, TM31, and $500.

After that, I whited out.

This is how it continued on for the remainder of the game. While I was able to defeat lesser trainers on the paths to cities and in the gyms, I constantly lost to the leader and was forced to steal their badges. The steal option also worked on people who would normally give you items in the game; this is how I was able to obtain key items like the Itemfinder, the bicycle, the water pail, HMs, and more. They refused to give me anything otherwise.

Anyone I spoke to either refused to talk, greeting me only with "...", or lectured me a little on how to properly treat Pokemon. It was beginning to get that way with Nurse Joy, as well. By the time I had progressed to Goldenrod City, she would scold me any time I whited out.

Pokemon continued to avoid me, as well. If I wanted to better my team, I had to hope that the Pokeballs I used worked the first time. What was stranger about random battles is that even if I locked the Pokemon in battle with Mean Look, the Pokemon passed out. Literally. After my first attack of Mean Look (if I got the first attack, that is), the Pokemon would faint on its own before I could choose another attack.

The dialogue box proclaimed, "-POKEMON- forced itself to pass out!" and the battle ended.

The only thing that seemed to go normally for me was the battles with Team Rocket. I always won against them and they always treated me like a punk kid getting in their way.

The rest of the game, up until a certain point, isn't entirely important. Aside from win, lose, and steal, everything was more or less normal. While my Pokemon matured slowly due to frequent losses, they did grow to like me a little as I began giving them haircuts and other little things to boost our bond. The last I had checked, the person who rated their happiness (one of the very few people who spoke to me normall) said, "It's quite cute."

I know you must be thinking that this isn't disturbing at all and that I should just accept the fact that this is simply a hack made to tell Silver's side of the story... Well, I did. It was. However, I'm not quite finished yet.

Once I had finally made it to Kanto (continuing the process of win, lose, and steal), I ventured into Viridian City. The second I stepped foot into the city, the music cut off. I thought for certain that this was a glitch in the programming, that I was now to walk through a soundless game. As I stood there for a second, though, a very faint noise picked up and faded away.

I was now sure that the music had messed up, like it was trying to play but couldn't. I stepped back into the route I had just come from and the music picked up perfectly. It was only Viridian City that was silent.

I was now curious, so I stepped back into the silent town and began to explore. There wasn't a person in sight; no one was out in the open and no one was in the houses. There wasn't even anyone in the Pokemart or Pokemon Center. The city was entirely empty. All there was was the silence and the occasional soft noise, which I still hadn't identified.

As I walked towards the gym, the sound grew a little louder. I figured the noise was coming from inside, so I entered. There was no one there, either, but that was to be expected; the gym was always empty until much later.

The noise didn't play in here, but it was still dead silent.

I walked up to where the gym leader normally stood and, as I walked past the spot and into the wall (I do that sometimes. I like the noise) I was transported to another room. The wall had hidden a set of stairs.

This place was silent, as well, but the noise began to play yet again. It was much louder this time - a bunch of random high-pitched noises - but it sounded like screams.

By this time, as you could well imagine, my heart was pounding. I don't take screaming or anything that sounds like screaming very well. It's due to an unfortunate experience with a very graphic haunted house when I was three...but I digress.

Regardless of my pounding heart and my shaking hands, I explored the room. It was tinted in a muted red much like everything was in Pokemon Red. The room followed a sideways zig-zag pattern and the screams came at random. Some were short, but some were long and drawn out. It sounded as if someone was being tortured.

As I continued down the zig-zagging hallways, i came across several disturbing images: sprites of NPCs without their heads, as well as heads without bodies. Any time I tried to examine either of these, Silver would simply say, "Don't look..."

The bodies and heads became more frequent as I went on, clogging up the hallways and leaving only a small path for me to follow. The screaming was becoming more frequent, as well.

The screen began to flicker as I walked, just like it would if one of my Pokemon was poisoned. I was certain none of them were, however. Just in case, I opened my party menu to check. None of my Pokemon were afflicted with poison, but their health had started to lower. In an attempt to fix this, I picked a super potion out of my bag and tried to use it on my Feraligatr.

A dialogue box popped up and said, "It won't have any effect."

Now I was disturbed. I knew none of this was supposed to happen. Regardless, I continued on, hoping that if they all fainted from this, I'd be taken back to a Pokemon Center and things would return to normal.

It was stupid of me to assume that.

I continued along the morbid path, the screen flickering in and out. I began to notice that Silver himself was beginning to move a little slower, as well. I don't know what, but something was draining my Pokemon's energy as well as my own.

Finally, Silver stopped as the dialogue box had popped up telling me that all my Pokemon had fainted, but it didn't say what I had hoped.

It said, "ALL DEAD."

By now, I was ready to cry, but I couldn't stop myself from trying to get to the end of this disturbing experience. If I didn't do this now, I'd just be tempted to try it again some other time.

Finally, I reached the center room. The screen was tinted a deep red now. I assumed this was to simulate the fact that the room was filled with blood. However, there were only a few bodies scattered around it. In the center were a few live figures: a man, an unknown Pokemon, Gold, and another Pokemon I could only assume was his Typhlosion.

Gold's Typhlosion attacked the man's Pokemon, but it was quickly struck down. Its sprite turned red, then grey, then disappeared. The man's Pokemon had killed it.

Silver's sprite stepped forward on its own and the man finally acknowledged he was there.

GIOVANNI: "Ah, son, you've made it. Come to see your rival's demise, have you?"

This caused Gold to turn arund to look at Silver. The only thing he said was, "..."

Silver continued to move on his own. He approached the Giovanni and kicked him backwards. It obviously enraged the man.

GIOVANNI: "You're going to help him?

You've become just as weak as the others!

If he seems worth saving to you...

Perhaps I should show you that there's no sense in getting attached!

MEWTWO, take care of him!"

Mewtwo obeyed his creator's command and approached Gold. I'm still uncertain of what it actually did, but it struck Gold, causing a scream much louder than before as the prite of Silver's rival lost its head and faded to deep red and then grey.

GIOVANNI: "I told you long ago, Silver. Either manipulate or be manipulated.

Pokemon are nothing more than tools.

People are nothing more than tools.

After they've served your purpose, they're no longer useful...

...

MEWTWO.

Kill him!"

The Mewtwo didn't obey this time; Giovanni's words must have angered it. It turned to him and actually spoke.

MEWTWO: "...You're no longer useful..."

It struck Giovanni just as it had done Gold and Typhlosion, but the scream Giovanni produced was much longer than any other I had heard. Mewtwo was torturing him.

Finally, the scream faded away into nothingness and Giovanni's sprite did just as Gold's did, leaving only Silver and Mewtwo alive n the room. As Mewtwo turned to face me, I knew that wouldn't last for long.

MEWTWO: "...Not useful..."

It struck me, initiating a battle in which I was totally unable to participate. My sprite was in the place of any Pokemon; my health had dwindled past the halfway point, but I knew it didn't matter either way. I chose to run, but I couldn't. I chose to attack, but I had nothing to use. I jsut had to stand there as mewtwo use Psychic on Silver's defenseless image.

Even with the sound turned to a low level, the scream coming from Silver was disturbingly loud. Even as the battle screen faded away, the scream lingered until Silver's sprite turned from red to grey, which I now assume symbolizes the coldness of death. Silver, along with Gold and everyone else who had been unfortunate enough to wander into this place from Viridian, was now dead.

The screen faded to black, all except for Mewtwo's sprite, which remained in the scenter of the screen. My paranoid mind immediately made me think he was somehow going to turn on me next, but the word END simply faded in just underneath him and the screen cut to black, taking me back to the opening sequence.

I'm still unsure why this was made, why someone shoved it into a box to sell, and why I happened to find it. I can assure you I'm swearing off all randomly found games, too. Either it's new, or I'll never risk touching it again.

The game I just described has slipped out of my possession since that first playthrough. I have no idea where it is, but I hope it's rotting in a dump somewhere.

Buried Alive Model

Often referred to as its code name, the Buryman Script, the Buried Alive Model was to be found on the final story of the Pokémon Tower in the spot of what has been replaced with the Marowak ghost. According to the scripts assigned to it, the Buried Alive Model was intended to be the "boss" of the tower. Upon reaching the top floor, the following conversation would have taken place.

Buried Alive: You're...here.
Buried Alive: I'm trapped...
Buried Alive: ...and I'm lonely...
Buried Alive: ...so very lonely...
Buried Alive: Won't you join me?

After this, the battle would have been initiated. One in "battle view," the Buried Alive Model appears to be a decaying human corpse attempting to crawl out of the ground. It has been programmed to have two White Hands, a Gengar, and a Muk. Strangely enough, a protocol for Buried Alive's actions after defeat wasn't written.

In the case of the player defeating him, the game would freeze. However, an unknown programmer is said to have wrote a speciic ending that was supposed to play once Buried Alive was defeated.

In this ending, Buried Alive was to have stated, "Finally, fresh meat!" followed by several lines of Gibberish. He was to have then dragged the player into the ground surrounding him. The scene would finish with a typical "Game Over" screen. However, in the background an image of Buried Alive devouring the player was to have been shown.

Especially strange are the protocols for after this scene. The cartridge was to download this image to the small internal memory contained in the Game Boy, overwriting the title screen that normally accompanied a Game Boy turning on.

Afterward, whenever the Game Boy was started, the player would view this same image of Buried Alive devouring the player character from the Pokémon games as a sound file known as staticmesh.wav was played. The intended purpose for this effect, unlike many of the other factors leading toward LTS, is unknown.

White Hand Sprite

Known in the code as WhitHand.gif, this was scripted to appear as a Pokémon on the third floor of the Lavender Tower. It is divided into four separate animations: an introduction (the "cry" a Pokémon unleashes before a battle), an idle, and two attacks. These attacks are unknown, as they are listed simply as "Fist" and "Brutal."

While viewing the animation has been proven to be hazardous, viewing the individual frames of the model has been proven to have no adverse effects. The White Hand is depicted as a shriveled, slightly decayed hand with sprising attention to the detail: flesh is peeling back from the bone and several tendons dangle realistically out of the wrist.

The first attack is the hand balling into a fist and swinging forward. However, the "brutal" animation is missing several frames. The hand seems to open up, then cuts out. After a few seconds, it reappears, closed again. No record has been found of these missing frames.

Hommer.wmv

My friend passed away recently. His will said I was to get his journal. Most of it ended up being sketches he did for The New Yorker, but the last two pages were about a video he once saw called Hommer.wmv. Most of those pages described what happened in the video.

"April 19;

I downloaded a video called Hommer.wmv today. It had a few errors, but I managed to fix them. The episode started with a logo that looked like something from The Simpsons. It was badly drawn, too. The clouds were jagged and had straight edges. The logo itself said 'Hommer Simpson' in purple and black text. The latter half of the Simpsons title theme started, but ended up cutting off.

After the intro, it showed the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant. The outside was busy as always. After a few seconds, it cut to Mr. Burns and Smithers, with Burns sitting at his desk. They were watching Homer, who was being lazy, through the security cameras. Homer was staring at a donut-shaped button. After some time of this, Mr. Burns spoke. 'Who's that man staring at the button?' Smithers replied with, 'That's Mr. Simpson, sir.' The camera went to a close-up of Burns saying, 'Homer, you're fired.' I thought it was a bit out-of-character, but I decided to think about it later.

It cut to the Simpson's house, then to Lisa's door. Sounds of a saxphone being played came from inside the room. Homer stood in front of the door while thinking, 'Lisa, stop playing the saxophone. It's too loud!' He showed realistic feelings of anger and sadness.

It suddenly cut to the Simpsons sitting at the kitchen table. A pig head was positioned in the middle of the table. Homer, with some anger, said, 'Marge, where is my beer?' Lisa was arguing with Marge, saying, 'I don't want to eat pig!' Marge replied with, 'Then you can have some cold soup!' While Marge began pouring the cold soup, she said, 'Homer, Bart got bad grades at school.' Homer said, with an angry tone, 'Bart, you're my son. Why did you get bad grades at school?' Bart replied with, 'Eat my shorts.' Homer almost strangled his son before saying, 'Bart, I hate you.'

It cut to Homer crying in his room. The sobs sounded realistic. There was a knock at the door, followed by Bart's voice. 'Hey Homer, when are you going to Moe's?' Homer looked up and replied, 'Soon.'

After this, the file is too corrupt to continue. I'll need to fix it more later."

The second page is incomplete.

"April 20;

I watched Hommer.wmv again today. Oddly, it started where I left off. Bart was, like usual, prank-calling Moe's tavern. When the phone was picked up, Bart said, 'Is Hommer there? Hommer Simp-' Moe cut him off. 'Listen, you. Stop prank-calling me. Hommer is not here!' In a twist of fate, Homer entered Moe's tavern. He thought something, but all the words were reversed. I reversed them later and it turns out Homer said, 'I wish I could have a donue with Lenny and Carl. They hate me now.' After a few seconds, Moe finally said, 'I'll get you drunk. Where's the money?' Homer shook his head and replied with, 'I just want food." Moe's mouth began moving as if he was saying something, but the sound of his voice was muted. Eventually, Homer picked up the TV remote and turned on the TV. It turned on to show Krusty the Clown just as he pointed a gun at his head. The channel changed, but the scene changed so fast I couldn't tell what the next channel was. Homer was now in Maggie's Room. After a couple of minutes with the sound of buzzing flies, it showed Maggie in her crib. She had apparently died. Blandly, Homer said, 'DOH! Maggie died in her sleep.' Afterward, the file ended."

I watched Hommer.wmv after reading the last two pages of the journal. The description was...overexaggerated, to say the least.

Black Wind

I don't think a lot of people particularly awaited the release of Wind Waker, seeming as it had cartoon-like graphics. I did. I didn't care about the graphics, if it was a Zelda game, I was going to get it. I wasn't able to buy Wind Waker as soon as it came out due to monetary issues. I would walk by the game in stores over and over and drool on myself for it.

I was driving home from work at Walmart, and I noticed a few yard sales, I didn't stop at any of them, just gawked at them as I drove by, like most people do. I saw the dark and creepy house that I drove by twice daily. I never liked that house. It had spray-painted black windows, and the outside paneling was a faded white color. The house was an old two-story house, one of those that if it was refurbished, it could have been a sight to see.

There was only one table in the front lawn, with only one item on it, and a sign that hung on the table said: "Take what you want". I don't know why I pulled over and walked up to the table for, but once I set my eyes on the item, I had happy butterflies in my stomach. There, on that table, was a retangular item with ducktape on it, and it said: Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker in black sharpie across the tape. I ran to my car and pulled out of the drive way and continued my drive home. I probably should have known better than to take that game.

I got home, parked in a hurry, and ran inside, turning on my TV, and my Gamecube. I struggled with getting the tape off the game case, but once I did, I could behold the glory of the casing, just like those at Walmart I'd seen countless times. I opened the case, and it surprised me that the disk was only a black disk, no title, nothing on it. There was a memory card in the card holder, too. I slid the game and memory card into my Gamecube, and the title screen came up.

You could see immediatly this was not the correct Wind Waker opening, even though I never played it before. The sky was pitch black with nothing dotting the black wall. When the animation went down you could see the sea was a sickening red color, just like blood. Where it supposed to say 'Wind Waker' it said 'Black Wind'

Needless-to-say, I hit start as fast as humanly possible, and there was one other save file called "Evra". I erased it so that I could have the File 1 save slot, and I started my adventure naming Link Usagi. I usually kept Link's name, but this time I didn't. The little beginning story popped up, and I read it with excitement, temporarily forgetting the weird title screen. When the story was over, and the animation to take you around Outset Island came up, it definitely wasn't normal.

The sea was red just like in the beginning, the terrain was just red dirt, and burnt-down houses, there was no bridge, no pigs, no crabs, no nothing. No one was there, and there wasn't even the canoes on the shore. When the game moved to your grandma's house, all you could see apart from the ruins, was an arm that was barely visible underneith all the rubble.

The game immediately switched from that island to Windfall, where, I persume, our hero had escaped to by a canoe, since there was one floating a few feet off the shores of the island in the red sea. I could freely control Link around, and this town seemed undamaged from my point on the docks, but the music was not that of Windfalls, but it was a creepy tune.

I ran into the bomb shop that sat on the upraised part of Windfall overlooking a cliff, inside was an open coffin, and when I walked up to it and looked in it, I immediatly wished I hadn't. It was Medli, her eyes were open, but all that there was was two empty eye sockets, and dried up tear stains that had run down her cheeks from when she was still alive and had eyes. Her beak was bent and broken, and her body was torn and bloody.

I ran out of there, feeling sick to my stomach, and ran to where the grave was supposed to be where the Elvis-impersonator was supposed to be dancing. There was no grave or Elvis-like person. Just the Killer Bees. As you got closer, you could see that one was missing and they were standing over something. They were standing over their dead leader, who had a huge chunk of his stomach missing, and his blood was soaking into the other's clothes, as they had blood stains all over them. I ran out to that cove where the King of Red Lions was supposed to be, and found only the old man that would chase you and try to tell you of his missing daughter.

When spoken to, all he said was:

You better run... run... run... HE'll get you... Evra will...

I tried to head his warning, but to no advail, there was no way off this island. After a few more minutes of wildly running around, and trying to ignore dead bodies and people without eyes constantly trying to stare at you, the game seemed to freeze and went to a black screen.

Before I had the chance to push the power button on the Gamecube, a screen popped up, and you were at the Forsaken Fortress, with huge gusts of wind blowing everything around. The enemies would go flying out into the blood red sea. The wind wasn't shown with the normal white curly lines, but with black lines, and a huge cyclone started to head towards the fortress.

I ran into the interior of the fort, and to my intense dismay, there was a person hanging from the cealing, with stab wounds that were steadily dripping blood on the floor. The person was not one that should have ever been in the game. It was a white man, with only pants on, he had longish black hair. The stab wounds on his chest said 'Evra'. and the man who I had presumed was dead, opened his eyes, and the rope holding him to the ceiling snapped.

Link bounced and landed on the floor, trying to recover from falling, the man advanced apon my character, and I was unable to control Link, who just watched as the man walked to him.

The man I persumed to be the 'Evra' the man had talked about, drew out a knife, and the animation cut off to black, and an ear-splitting scream came from the TV. I turned the game off, and I threw the game into a garbage can, and set wood into the can, and set it on fire. I will never forget this hacked and twisted version of Wind Waker.

The Flood

Why did Hyrule flood? Was it the Gods, as Wind Waker claims, or was it something more?

After Link defeated Ganon/Ganondorf in Ocarina of Time, he was given the choice to either stay as an adult or go back to enjoy his childhood. If he decided to go back to his childhood, he would eventually go to Termina. Because Termina is a parallel universe to Hyrule, the Gods had created an exact replica of Link just in case Ganon was to return, as if they had no idea where Link was.

This brings up another question. Are there different gods in Termina? One could assume that after Link left Hyrule, he was brought out of the Gods' reach. If so, this explains why the Triforce wasn't depicted or spoken about in any way.

The Terminian gods may actually be the four giants. Although they appear to be in an eternal slumber, waiting to be asked forth in using their godly might, the giants are considered to be guardians (not deities); however, they have been told to have created the world.

However, if one considers the term deity, it may bring to mind the form of which Link takes from wearing the Fierce Deity's Mask. The physical attributes Link acquires in this state could only be put as that of a god's. He gains a huge stature, tribal markings, an enchanted sword, and near-invincibility.

The reason you would think he was too powerful is that the mask is only able to be worn during boss fights. The only way to counter this is to perform a glitch or enter a Gameshark cheat that allows you to wear it outside battle. When these requirements have been met, you can easily compare the drastic changes in the green hero's size to that of a normal Terminian.

On the opposite side of the spectrum, you have Majora. Was the beast from which the mask was carved considered a demonic being? All the factors explaining his malevolent personality point toward this.

The mask was sealed for eternity after being carved because of its extraordinary powers. At the end of the game, the Happy Mask Salesman gets his mask back, but its power is apparently drained. After this, he vanishes out of sight forever.

Now, take a look at Wind Waker. It's based several hundred years after the events of Ocarina of Time. The prologue explains that the hero had saved Hyrule from darkness and left Hyrule in peace. However, it then details an evil coming back to Hyrule, for which the hero didn't appear.

Maybe this hero was too busy somewhere else. Maybe he was in Termina. This could support the theory of Link returning back to his childhood and visiting Termina soon after, leaving Hyrule off-guard to dark forces.

But what exactly are these dark forces? One theory claims that the Happy Mask Salesman went back to Hyrule and used Majora's Mask to take over the kingdom.

From this brings an even more realistic idea. In the events of Majora's Mask, Link has to stop the moon from crashing into Termina. If this were to happen again in Hyrule, what would be the consequences? Could the moon have smashed into Lake Hylia or a bigger body of water to create a flood? Or was it someone else...someone who wanted to gain revenge for meeting his terrible fate? Someone who drowned?