Addiction Virus

The Addiction Virus is kind of a cut on gaming addiction. I kind of just had this on my desktop and desided to refine it a bit and share it.

The Story
I work at gamestop. No big serprize, right. Everyone works at gamestop. I dident particularly LIKE the job, being I wasent a HUGE gamer and there were just some guys here I could just deal without. Just another way to make money. I never expected it to be anything but.

It was an early afternoon, things were winding down and people were starting to less and less show up. I was placeing stickers on lables as this kid came in threw the door. He slamed a disk on the table and demanded a refund from me, being I was the only one on the shop floor. I asked what was wrong with it and he said it was a hacked disk and that we sold it to him, saying it was a genuine copy of New Super Mario Brothers. Of corse, I went threw the prosedures of checking it over for scratches, chips and what not. Nothing out of the ordanary. I wasent sure about what to do. Most likely the boss would like to see it. I gave the guy his $20 back and went to my boss with the disk.

My boss wasent conserned about it. When I told him it was a hacked disk he told me not to reshelve it and throw it in the grabage. Despite my fair judgement, I pocketed the disk and took it home with me in a pertective sleeve from the trash.

I got home and popped the disk into my computer, desideing to gut the disk and see what was on it. I was most intrested in the textures, desideing I could use some of the textures for my digital art projects. What I found was not what I expected. All kinds of eyeballs and creepy faces littered the texture files. It dident bother me too much. It was all B-rated movie stuff. Nothing too obsessively gory. I copyed the textures to a folder and popped the disk out. I looked at it for a second and really wanted to know what the kid had played. I turned on my wii and pushed the disk in, the into screen was ok, but once I pressed start, mario was holding a shotgun and everytime I pressed the numchuck trigger, he fired. How cool. And instead of all the useal enemys, they were zombifyed. How was this a big deal? I would have kept it.

I played threw the game, mowing down zombie koopas and actualy enjoying the game. This was actualy fun. But the level seemed to go on forever till the game eventaly overloaded and crashed. I was bummed out. I looked up and saw it was 1:00 in the morning, shrugged and went to bed.

I woke up with an incredable headake. I was too into my game I guess. I took two aspren and headed out. Not like it was any different then any day. At the end of the work day, my boss told me I looked rather pale. I dident notice anything wrong, but as soon as I walked out the door, I puked and passed out.

I woke up in the hospital, kind of dased, but normal. The docters told me they couldnet find anything wrong with me, so they discharged me. This made no scence to me and I asked, pleaded even to stay a few extra days to have them look me over more, but they simpley sent me walking.

I dident know what to think this time. I simply popped the game in, from last night, that hacked New Super Mario Brothers "Apocalipse Edidtion", what I started calling it now, and just had at it till it got late and I went to bed, and every morning I'd wake up with a headake. If I dident play the game the previous night, I'd be fine the next day. But wha rare, as I enjoyed blowing the heads off zombifyed critters.

Two weeks later, it got drastic. I played the entire day, and next day I felt my head had split open. My ears were rinnging and the room was spinning. It was almost like I was on a litteral high. I never played that disk again. I realised the game was not worth the pain and I sold it to a friend of mine.

The next morning I found out my friend was hospitlised and was a littral vegitable when they got him to the hospital. I was in "wtf" mode at this point. This dident make any scence. Did that game do it to him? Was it cursed? I always questined that but never actualy put enouth energy past work to really get into detail on the whole issue. His parents would probley think I was crazy if I told them a video game did this to him.

I like games alittle more now. Mostly games like Silent Hill and Left 4 Dead, but I dont play for more then an hour at a time, as I'm still afraid I'll get the "Addiction Virus" that destryed my friend last year.

Story Ideas and Final Notes
The whole idea of this odd, short story was to make gaming addiction act like a odd drug addiction. I'm not poking fun at gaming or nothing. The storys more of a odd "wive's tale" layout, mostly telling a short tale to scare little kids to pervent them from doing things, in this case, being overly addicted to video games.

Anyways, thats the story. Hope you enjoyed.