I'm finally ready to tell the story.
I have to warn you though, it's.. disturbing. Please read at your own risk.
Two years ago, April 15th 2012, I invited a friend over to stay the night.
It had been a few months since I had last seen him, and I was eager to spend time with him again.
He got here around 5:00PM and naturally the first thing we did was play Halo and talk about what had happened over the past months.
He had gotten a girlfriend, and was doing much better in his new school. He said he must've just needed a change of scenery to improve.
We spoke for hours, and played all the games I had stocked on my shelves. This was about 2:00 in the morning.
My mom had gone to sleep hours earlier, so we had to be quiet.
In our sleep-deprived, almost drunken states, we decided that it would be a good idea to play some good old OG Mario.
After a few minutes of searching, I found a site that offered old game downloads for free, and also got Legend Of Zelda and Donkey Kong while we were there.
We extracted all the files from their zipped folders, but when I went to launch Mario.. the game file looked.. wrong. It had a glitched up picture of Mario's face for the icon, with his eye red, and blood around his neck.
But the most chilling part was the name. .
We didn't think long before starting the game, and to our surprise the game played like normal Mario.
The blocks were all in the right order, and the graphics were perfectly fine, so we played for a bit.
The next sign of something being off happened when we grabbed the first Fire Flower.
When you grab a fire flower, Mario would normally flash, and gain a new colored suit, complete with fireball throwing abilities.
But instead Mario burst into flames, and fell off the screen as the dying music played.
Something was wrong with the game, he said. It must be a glitch. But took control of Mario this life, as we were taking turns.
He got to the same point, and grabbed the flower. This time, the game functioned as normal, and he continued through the level as easily as anyone who had played before normally would.
But, after he grabbed the flag, Mario froze. We waited a bit, to see if the game had crashed, but it was still playing. The timer was still ticking away as if would if you were playing.
It must be a glitch, he told me. Something is wrong with the game.
But we waited patiently for the timer to run out, and as it did, the game finally crashed.
We re-started it, and played again, and managed to get back to the pole. and into the next level.
But here's where things started to get really creepy.
Normally, Mario would fall from the top of the screen, and land, and the classic 8-bit music would play.
But instead, the entire level was upside down! It must be a glitch, he said. Something is wrong with the game.
But we kept playing, and managed to navigate through the upside-down level to the warp zone.
Normally, the warp zone has three pipes, each labled with a number denoting the world it would send you to.
But instead of numbers, the pipes had weird symbols above them!
It's a glitch, he said. Something must be wrong with the game.
But we continued, and entered the pipe furthest right, with a % sign over it.
As Mario was sliding down the pipe, the game crashes again. So, again, we re-start.
But every time we click the file, the game keeps crashing. Before we even see the start screen.
After about five tries, we give up on playing, and decide to go to sleep.
As I go to shut off the laptop, suddenly, the Mario window opens! Playing the music on full blast.
We were startled and quickly turned down the volume, worried that we'd wake up my mother.
None-the-less, we press play, and start again.
The game plays as normal until we grabbed the flagpole at the end of the level. Instead of grabbing it, Mario did the death animation, and the dying theme played.
It's a glitch, he said. Something must be wrong with the game.
With two lives left, we kept playing. But we noticed something odd.
The music was silenced. We turned the volume up to see if we could hear anything, but not even a whisper.
The level had no enemies, either. Nothing except for Mario and the landscape.
Around halfway through the level, jumping over a gap, Mario seemed to stop in the middle. And fell into the hole, killing him instantly.
It's a glitch, he said. There's something wrong with the game.
But the level restarted as normal. Except, now, there was music playing. But.. it wasn't the right music.
It was instead the music from Bowser's Castle. And Mario seemed distressed. He kept looking over his shoulder, and seemed to hesitate before he jumped.
It's a glitch, he said. There's something wrong with the game.
But we pressed on, playing the game to the best of our ability, with one extra life left.
We went into the secret pipe, where normally all of the coins would be lined up in a rectangle for Mario to grab unhindered.
Except, this time, there were no coins. And the music stopped.
Mario dropped down, and we sat, bewildered for a moment, before pressing through and going through the pipe that leads out.
It's a glitch, he said. There's something wrong with the game.
Once we came out of the pipe, back into the normal level, except.. as soon as we left the pipe, a piranha plant came out from under us, and Mario dropped through the floor, as is the normal death animation.
Last life. This time, the level was normal. Except for one thing. All of the Goombas that would normally charge to their death, seemed to be running away from Mario.
None-the-less, we stomped on them, and got the usual amount of points, finishing the level, and going on to level 1-2.
The music played, and Mario dropped from the ceiling, with everything appearing as it normally would.
Again, we went to the warp zone, intent on finishing the game before the sun rose.
This time, the pipes were numbered normally, and so we tried to enter them. But.. Mario couldn't enter any of them. He just crouched, and nothing happened.
It's a glitch, he said. There's something wrong with the game.
But something else we noticed is that the game kept going. The warp zone had no wall on the right side, and allowed you to keep scrolling. So we pressed ahead.
It was a long and barren path, with nothing but Mario, and the blue bricks, along with the level's theme.
After about a minute of straight walking, there was another pipe. This one labled "WIN".
We were astounded! A hidden pipe that would allow you to win the game?
Naturally, we entered the pipe. Instead of winning the game, it placed us back at the beginning of 1-1.
Disappointed, we tried to continue with the level, but instead of Mario moving forward, the right key made him move backwards.
We got the hang of the inverted controls quickly, and worked through the game until we reached a green mushroom. The kind that give you an extra life.
Just before we could touch it, a fireball, like the kind that Bowser breathes out, flew across the screen and hit Mario, playing the death animation and taking our last life.
We sighed, done with this glitched version of Mario. The game closed instead of going back to the beginning screen, and we thought nothing of it.
We decided that we should go to sleep now, after removing the game from my computer.
I deleted it, but once I tried to remove it from my recycling bin, it re-launched. But instead of the main screen, there was a hyper-realistic Mario, lying dead on the brick floor, with Bowser standing over him triumphantly.
His blood was spilled all over the blocks below him, and the quality was far greater than this game should've been able to produce.
This game is majorly messed up. Whoever made this is a psycho. He said.
Slowly, the screen faded to black, and, fading in in it's place, in a blood red text, were the words
"YOU ARE D34D."
We were confused. You? Did it mean Mario, or us? I'm pretty sure we were still alive. This game had given me a virus.
We closed the window, and removed the game. And then scanned my computer, and found, sure enough, a virus labled " ". A trojan.
Removed, and cleaned, we went to sleep, sure the torment of the game would end there.
The next morning, around 11:00, I awoke to the sound of my mom screaming.
I sat up, and looked at her. She had walked into my room to wake us up.
I asked what the hell she was screaming at. And she pointed beside me, on the bed that we had pulled out for my friend.
There he laid, covers stained with blood, his body mangled and his throat slit. On the wall behind him were words, written in his blood.
"YOU ARE D34D." They read.
We called the cops, and after an investigation, they determined there was no way he could've been attacked this brutally without the killer leaving any trace of him being there. They tried to blame me! Me of all people.
He was my best friend. Of course I killed him.
But I knew the real culprit.
It was that game. The game had killed him.
The image of his body still haunts me to this day.
I just hope now that I've told someone, the nightmares will stop.
I awake every night screaming, the image of my friend burned into my mind.
Never play .
Never.