Nintendo; 666 millionth

Growing up with Nintendo, I always prefered it over Sony and Microsoft. Pokemon was really fun, the Legend of Zelda was undeniably amazing, and Mario was what started it all for me. I definitely tried the other consoles, but none stuck me as hard as Nintendo did, as its games just more and more fun. In fact, up until this point, I never saw Nintendo as anything else but the family brand that was available to all audiences. At least, that was what I used to think...

My friend and I wanted to get the Wii U as soon as we could. We waited until a few days after it came out to get the Deluxe Edition, as they were all sold out online. After we both got ours and we went home, I set up my Wii U right away. The first thing that bugged me was how long the loading screens were. I've heard other people complain about this, but it literally took me minutes to get to the first screen. Once I did, the music sounded kind of odd, and at times the pitch of the menu music would suddenly spike up for an instant. I tried not to let that bug me as I put in New Super Mario Bros. U. Like before, it took minutes to start the game up, and even though I was dedicated to Nintendo I found this quite irksome. There wasn't any sound either, and just when I was about to question if the game froze, I saw an empty text box. I thought it was a glitch at first, but more popped up and I knew something was wrong with my game. I pressed through what must have been the sixth or seventh text box when and preceded to start up a new file.

There was already a file on the game named "SOLD!". This didn't make any sense; I made sure I didn't get a used Wii U, and it came included with New Super Mario Bros. U. Was this yet another glitch by Nintendo? Apparently, the save file "SOLD!" was already at stage 5-4. I wanted my own file, so I created a new save I named "Dennis" (my name) and proceeded through the cutscene. Compared to the videos of it I've seen online, this opening cutscene skipped some frames and had characters appear where they shouldn't be. For example, Nabbit looked through the window in Peach's castle in the beginning and waved, and Bowser Jr. was shown standing on top of Bowser's airship. After the cutscene, I began the first stage. What caught my eye was that Peach's castle had a dark mist in the background. I know now that the dark mist was supposed to be created by Kamek later in the game, but I didn't know why it was there from the start. I proceeded through the level until Mario died for absolutely no reason. Confused, I retried the level, but this time I was underground. The Wii U started making very loud sounds (I assumed it was trying to process something), and the level was completely flat, with the exception of the bricks above. Mario wasn't making any sound when he jumped or got a power up, and there were no enemies to be found. I just kept running to the right for what seemed like a minute and nearly gave up trying to find anything when I found Peach. This made no sense to me; Peach was shown to be inside the castle at the beginning of the game, so what was she doing here? Mario just stood there, staring at her, and the Wii U started making loud crunching sounds as the game flickered and shut off. I clicked the power button again but it didn't seem to want to work.

After waiting a few minutes, I tried again, and the console finally turned back on. Immediately, without taking me back to the Wii U menu, the game started up and my save file was deleted. I gave "SOLD!" a try and wondered what this file was doing here. When it loaded, the colors of the world were completely inverted and the sound was distorted. I was already suspecting that my game was screwed up, but now I wondered if this was intentional. Mario had an angry expression on his face, and the castle or the mist surrounding it were not on the screen. I tried level 5-4 and the volume became WAY too loud. I got up to turn it down, but nothing worked. Mario just stood there and didn't go into the level, and I was out of options. The power button on my TV and Wii U weren't working; I knew it wasn't possible for a game to mess up your TV, and I was beyond confused. Mario screamed in anger, so loud it made my blood freeze. Out of nowhere, all the lights in the house shut off for a second. The TV turned off as well, and I took the game out and threw it away as fast as I could.

Nintendo Support didn't have any information about this, and I clicked on Wikipedia to find out about the system. Apparently, Nintendo's sales had just reached 666 million when I got my Wii U (look it up if you don't believe me). Did I have that one game that gave them 666 million sales? It's the only explanation I could think of for this.

The name "SOLD!" kept appearing in my head...Nintendo wouldn't do this, would they? I certainly don't believe in the devil or anything, but I DO want someone else to know about this. If anything in the beginning happened to you, please get rid of the game or return it to the store. You wouldn't want to go through this too.