January 14, 2011- Game 97
I bet when you clicked on this you were pretty much thinking that this was just another cliché video game haunting story, but I still shudder when I even think of picking up my Ōkami game. Believe what you want, but everything that I manage to write down is true.
I'm a middle school student- seventh grade, with no less than a 97 in all of my classes. Thanks to the snow we'd gotten out two hours early, so I was in the house just before my mom got back from the post office.
She handed me a package; I was shocked since I hadn't ordered anything, and I didn't recognize the name in the label- "CID". My friends all knew I was a Final Fantasy fan, so I wondered if maybe one of them had sent me a gift randomly in an attempt to confuse me. Not being one to look a gift horse in the mouth I opened it, only to find that "CID" had sent me a game that I had been dying to get- Ōkami Wii version.
I already had the PS2 version, so I knew the game like the back of my hand. I opened the case just to be sure that the game was actually in there, and much to my surprise the disk was in it's spot. The book wasn't there- a small price to pay for a free game- but in its place was a slip of paper. I opened it up.
"You're next."
I examined the note for several minutes, trying to make sure that I hadn't missed something. But all it said was simply "you're next." I didn't know what it meant by that, but since I had been suspicious that it was just a joke from a friend I figured that it wasn't important. Without thinking I tossed the slip into the trash can and walked downstairs to go test out my new game.
I turned on the Wii, hesitating before I slid the disk in, worried that the game was going to make my system randomly combust. I shrugged it off- my Wii collection wasn't the biggest, and I had a Playstation 2, 3, Portable, a Super Nintendo, and a Gamecube, plus two Nintendo DSes. Video game-wise, it was worth the risk. I popped the disk in and nearly sighed with relief when the channel icon loaded.
Out of habit I hit "Load Game". I didn't expect to see anything since you save Wii games to the system, not the disk. But the Load page opened at the bottom of the screen, showing down to file 99. In the 97th spot there was a file, and I became suspicious of the new addition to my collection. Letting my curiosity get the best of me, I loaded Game 97- it was a golden save file at Shinshu Field with all 13 brush gods, max solar energy, and max ink pots. The only thing at that point that really had me freaked out was that instead of numbers for the play hours it said "Y o u ' r e N e x t".
At that point I knew my game was hacked, but I didn't care. Once the loading screen had closed I found that the game was not in fact in Shinshu Field. Instead it was at the final phase of the battle with Yami on the Ark of Yamato. There was no music, except when I used the Celestial Brush. Even then the music was choppy and jumped a lot. About halfway through the fight the screen went black and a screeching buzzing sound played for a few seconds.
My mom told me that she was going to work, leaving me alone in the house. The buzzing stopped once she'd gone and the screen went back to the fight.
Yami had gone from red to blue and the dreaded "smudged face" glitch had unleashed itself. Amaterasu now resembled a headless demon . I was tempted to hit reset and just start a new file, but something made me try to finish before the glitch caused the game to crash.
I became frustrated when Game 97 did finally crash and reset the game, scrolling to the bottom of the save files to try again. Now instead of the original play hours it said "T H I S I S N O J O K E", which of course made me laugh like it was a joke. I wondered what loser had gone through so much to hack a game like this just to scare someone a bit.
The game still said it was in Shinshu Field, but instead of loading in it's original place in the final battle it opened in Oki's house in Kamui. I was actually starting to become a bit freaked out because the game had opened in two places without Origin Mirrors. The frame rate in the house was very low and eventually the game froze. Since I already knew the ending I was just goofing around a bit and Amaterasu froze mid-jump, about to touch ground with her front paws. Solar Flare vanished briefly, and then added to my uneasiness by reappearing and moving. I watched for a minute- eventually everything started to move, but Amaterasu remained positioned slightly above the ground. I heard the sound effects of her yawning like when you stayed idle too long and tried moving again.
The wolf's head separated from her body and started to move around like it would normally when it was attached to her body, but the rest of her stayed in place. I thought that maybe if I went out of the house it would reload and the glitch would go away, so I did.
Instead of a completed wolf body I now had a mutated version of the realistic karmic transformer- the different polygons that made up Amaterasu's body were spaced out and her head was once more stretched to her foot.
The frame rate went down again and the screen went into the loading screen. It opened in Shinshu Field like I had just left Kamiki Village, only the entire place was a Cursed Zone. Instead of green demon scrolls they were yellow and they took up most of the space, although I could walk straight through them. I always loved looking at glitches and cheats, even for games I didn't have, and I had never heard of this happening to anyone.
I wanted to turn the game off, but something in the back of my head said that I should keep going. I went to the Moon Cave area, loosing one of Amaterasu's back legs in the process, and instead of a Guardian Statue Waka was standing there. He didn't have his hat and his head was halfway through the ground, but I had the option to bite him or speak to him. I chose to listen and the text from his introductory cut scene from Agata Forest appeared on screen.
Right after pressing the A button to scroll through the text a message appeared saying that the system had lost connection with the Wii remote. I had enough with the glitches and after re-connecting the remote hit the return to Wii menu button.
Instead of asking for confirmation like it usually did, a different message appeared: "y o u ' l l r e g r e t I t. c o n t I n u e?" Instead of yes and no the options were "E I d l l I w u o y" and "e s o o h c u o y r e v e t a h w". I automatically chose the second, since that was the one in place of no. I had no idea what the message said at the time, which I would later realize was "You will die" and "Whatever you choose" backwards. By now I thought that who ever had programed this must have implanted a virus into the Wii, so I took the game out immediately and unplugged the system.
The green light didn't go off when I took out the power cord. A fan of horror stories, especially video game hauntings, I changed the channel back to the Wii and as I expected the game channel for Ōkami was still available. I hit play and checked to see if the play time for Game 97 had changed, but the file wasn't there. I was starting to think that maybe I was delirious so I turned off the television and went upstairs. It was only 9:00, but I was tired and scared so I went to sleep.
I decided not to play the game the next day, especially since I had a very vivid dream about it. Amaterasu had been replaced by my fan character Zmaterasu- Ammy's daughter who happened to have the typical black fur and blue markings of an Ōkami OC with dark powers. Her head and body split apart like they had done in Oki's house, only with blood dripping where they separated. She cackled and whispered "esoohcuoyrevetahweidlliwuoy".
I asked everyone I knew if they'd sent me the game, but none of my friends had any idea. At that point I was honestly afraid; I wanted to know exactly who this CID was and why they had given me such a weird game.
I'm sorry that this is all that I will write for now, but even thinking of this experience sends chills down my spine. I still fear that cursed Ōkami game, and I'm more than a bit afraid to play my PS2 version.
/Game 97