There was once a time when I loved to play video games. Oh, how video games were my life. I would play them every day, every night, whenever I could get time in. But that's not the case anymore. I remember how heavily snowing it was that day. A freezing, winter day. I used to have Super Mario Bros 3 on my 3DS. It was the best NES game of mine ever. I had loved it with all my heart. HAD.

I had the bright idea to take my 3DS outside in the snowing cold & play it there. I played it for a while, maybe several minutes. I kept until I grew too cold & just decided to head back inside to warm up. I forgot to take my 3DS with me. It was about to be the biggest mistake of my life that I would regret forever.

3 days had passed. I was relaxing in my room when I remembered I had left some device outside. Then it struck me- my 3DS. I ran outside, careful to avoid the slippery ice, & reached the chair to grab the 3DS that it was on without falling. I rushed back inside to check on it. I checked the battery power. Somehow none of it had run out. I reached out to touch it. It gave me a serious chill. I found it a little eerie. I figured it would warm up immediately when it was brought inside. But no; in fact, it felt COLDER. I thought it'd be a good idea to open up my chilly device to see if that would do the trick. It started up with my favorite NES game. But no; something wasn't right at all.

I had left off at the 6th world, Ice Land. I hated its music so much. It was the most annoying music I had heard in any game I ever played. And now, it even MORE irritating, with glitchy, discorded notes added into it. The evil melody seemed to grow louder. I felt like my ears were gonna burst, but I just kept moving on. Then I saw the horrid screen show up. Everything had a more reddish tint to it. The moving hills looked angry- no, furious- & they were staring STRAIGHT at me. I was getting super disturbed by all this. I should've just closed the damn thing, like any sane person would have. I wanted to turn away, yet I just couldn't take my eyes off it. I pressed A on the airship & continued on. More awful events awaited me.

The cutscene before the airship showed the horrific sight of the king impaled by an ice spear. Hyper realistic blood was spewing from his head. It had been splattered everywhere, turning the ice red. I heard an ear-piercing realistic scream come after. A frightened Toad ran over to him & hopped up & down with a worried expression on his face. Then he started talking. No dialogue showed up, like it was supposed to. "Mario, Mario! The king has been killed! Oh Mario, please sav-"

His words were cut off by a falling ice spear from above. It cut him right in half. His bloody guts flew out landed on the ice, turning it red. The blood & guts looked so realistic. Man, I swear they were gonna splash right out of my screen. How could an 8-bit game created in the 80s produce such a realistic, heart-wrenching site?! I wanted to just puke & quit right now, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. I kept going on with the level. The situation only got worse.

The airship was black instead of the usual brown. It was stained with dark bloodsplatters all over too. The fire that was supposed to come out of the rocket engines was replaced with more of those awful red spears. I barely touched them, being afraid of Mario getting torn up. Finally, I had reached the end of the level & headed down the pipe. I was then greeted the most horrible sight of all.

The room was much darker than usual. There were more ice spears around, covered with even more blood. And the floors were covered with several severed hyper realistic heads! On the far right, a hideous, grotesque sight that sill haunted me to this very day…

It was the boss, the one behind all the terrible violence, the one none other than Lemmy! He was covered with blood, & balancing on one of the severed heads! He gave a malicious glare to poor Mario. Before I could make a move, He suddenly waved his scepter, & out came an ice spear. It went straight at Mario, cut through his head, & pinned him to the wall. His realistic brains gushed out with it.

The dead plumber dropped to the ground with a bloody splash. Tear of fright began to stream down my face as I witnessed the sight of the disgusting corpse of my favorite hero.

My crying was cut short when I saw the evil koopaling look straight at me & gave an evil, devilish smile. I was too scared to turn away. But I should have, because suddenly, walked up even closer to the screen, still keeping his glare. Now I could see bits of high definition sticking out in between his red tinted teeth. It made go hysterical. "Lemmy, why would you ever do this?! WHY I ASK YOU?!" I yelled at the 3DS. At those words. the 3DS began violently screeching & vibrating. Out of utter shock & terror, I threw it at the ground. The screen shattered & it turned off on impact. I just stared at for a while, still sweating & tearing up from the panic I had just experienced.

It had been months since then. I finally got myself up to buy a new 3DS, one that wasn't so broken & freezing, of course. But I never brought Super Mario Bros 3 again, because I was so afraid that the past even that had transpired would happen again. Even to this day, every single night, I still have awful, horrific nightmares of Bloody Ice Land.