The King in Black: Chapter 1

I hate the wannabe scary stories that are written these days, mostly the gaming stories. It is just so cliché with the whole, getting games in garage sales or cheesy game stores, then when you start playing it’s just like glitches, blue- screens, and bloody satanic sacrifices with demons telling you to kill yourself and so on. This story, however is true, problem is I don’t know how to describe my disturbing gaming experience in words, so I’ll try my best to make as much sense of it as I can.

It was my 12 birthday, and I got a new GameCube for my birthday, since my last one broke when moving to our new house, along with a bunch of games for it such as: The Legend of Zelda: the Wind Waker, Sonic Heroes, and Super Mario Sunshine. Months went by beating all the games I got, getting bored afterwards I decide to check my little bank hiding in my dresser obviously to see how much money I had and I had a $10 bill, enough to purchase another game to complete 100% in.

So asking my mother to drop me off at my local game store during a Saturday afternoon to see what they had in store for me. The store was called GameTrade, a dingy little store that I went over to often to get new games for my other systems it. Mark, the manager of GameTrade becoming a good friend of mine, was glad to see me again.

“Sup Mike, how ya been?” He said with a cheery smile.

“Nothing much, you?” I replied.

“oh, I am fine as ever.” Mark answered, “I have some new merchandise in the back if you want to check it out.”

I nodded and went in the back, and it was an audience of games, new and old, it felt like a library. After what felt like hours of searching, one game caught my eye, in which I do not recognize the games title, “The King in Black” it was called, made in a fancy font, along with a figure below the title, wearing a suit of black armor, and a hood covering its face, it reminded me of Death’s Reaper form in Darksiders II. I got out from the back and to the front desk where Mark was sitting, patiently waiting for me.

“Found something?” he asked with a grin on his face, handing him the game in which he checked out.

“$8.50” Mark said as I started rummaging through my pocket for my $10 bill, handing it to Mark and giving me the $1.50 in change.

“Enjoy your game.” Mark said waving goodbye to me as I walked out the door waving back.

Five minutes pass and my mother finally arrives, I get in the car and we head straight home. At the house, I run the my room, open the disc slot of my GameCube, and I opened my new game, checking the disc, not a single scratch was on it, and the art on the disc was pretty good with the same figure as on the cover, I popped in the game and got ready to play. There were no companies like Nintendo or Capcom showing up in the beginning it was just the intro, it was like a movie intro, with a narrator, who sounded really cool. His voice reminded me of the actor Morgan Freeman in the tone, but slightly deeper. The intro was about a heroic king that fell into madness due to the fear of his people turning on him, and that I play as the king.

After the intro scene, a cut scene started with a text appearing that said “chapter 1: The Battle”, it started in the castle, where the king was sitting on his throne. A knight came running towards the king.

“MY KING, THE DEMON ARMY, IT’S COMING!!!” He cried, “WHAT SHOULD WE DO!?!”

The king sat there for about a minute, rose up and spoke in the most badass voice I have ever heard in my life, “I knew this day would come” pulling out his sword, “send out the troops”. The knight ran off, and I was now able to control the king. To give it in detail the graphics were amazing, for the GameCube, and the game was polished very well, I don’t know who made this game but it was very impressive. Anyway, I fiddled with the controls a bit, and learned how to attack, cast spells, block, etc., I went out of the castle where in the horizon I saw huge mob of the demons screaming with pitchforks and torches in hand, the knight came back with the kings army behind him.

“We have the troops ready my king.”

“Very well” the king said “Now, ATTACK!!!”

I controlled the king towards the angry mob and his army following me, and as soon as both the mob and the king’s army collided, a loud screech made me almost shit myself, and I was introduced to a black screen, then the screen slowly faded back in, for about a minute, and I saw a horrible sight, corpses, of the kings army and the demons, or so I thought, the demons, weren’t demons, they were villagers, and the battle ground was the town these innocent bystanders lived in.

“It’s over” the king said, “The demons are all dead, now to take over their kingdom.”

I was so shocking to me, that I completely forgot that this king I was playing as was utterly mad. Then I saw it a, single text popped up on the screen “chapter 2: His Fury”.