Running on Hatred

I hadn't grown up with Nintendo and Sega like most of my friends, however I do love the games they created immensly.The list of games that I play frequently could go on for miles, but I downloaded the infamous ZSNES just to play Super Mario World, and I even downloaded the Sonic the Hedgehog for the SNES from the same site, which I later then deleted because of how pathetic it was. At least it was pathetic for me, at least. So I settled with playing Sonic games online. However, one day i came across something that caught my eye, exploring the infinite and some times terrifying world of ROM downloads.

It was a Rom for Super Mario world, and it was uploaded by a user called "ieSIesiEsolovaiD", and the website was one on one of those Weebly sites, where you can have a free website but it has to have ".web" or ".weebly" or something like that. I know that it's pretty sketchy to do something like this, but I downloaded it anyway, because the screenshots featured some pretty epic course layouts, like it was DESIGNED for pros. I like to think of myself as a pro, but this would be the ultimate test. There was a description, but it was in another language. I tried using Chrome's translator, but it wouldn't go through. I copied a lengthy paragraph and pasted it into Bing translator (I rely on Microsoft rather than some search engine created by a college) but I suppose that my trust was well misplaced as only a few lines came through. Why only a few lines, don't ask me I find it as weird as you problably do, but it read this:

Play as Sonic, buoni livelli, nemici difficili,  livelli sigrieta, u aktar! Men moet niet krijgen overhaast, ya que existen multiples sub-historias extranas que ciertamente pongo nervioso los debiles de corazon, soyez prudent, Jordan !

2 things caught my eye in that; "Play as Sonic" and "Jordan". Being able to play as Sonic in a Mario game is an EXTREMELY rare opportunity, so much so that one should not pass it up. Then "Jordan". My name. That stopped me from clicking the download link. Why would there be a mass of almost unreadable gibberish there, it just so happens to have my name in it? I seriously thought about Sonic.exe and Mario, but shoved those thoughts away and downloaded it anyway and I know, I know, terrible move as most people die in those famous creepypastas, but passing up playing a hardcore parkour as Sonic the motherfucking Hedgehog in a Mario game? Now let's not be rash here!

When it finished downloading, I put in in the WinRAR archive that held all my other ROMs and my ZSNES emulator, double clicked the .exe file, let it load up and booted up the new .smc file.

The intro was the same. Nothing weird about this so far, up until the file selection.

There were 4 files instead of 1, and each of them was already taken by someone. The first had the same name as the guy who posted the download file and owned the site (although everything's possible in a ROM hack, so not too surprising, and in case you forgot already, the name would be ieSIessiEsolovaiD), there was one called Sonic, another Luigi, and one last one classicaly named Mario. These titles barely phased me, as there was supposed to be some actiony stuff in these Mario games, and I would believe it if some modder made a ROM hack and he wanted to be a part of it, so he made his own custom file. I tried playing as iES (my nickname for him) but the game would simply show a "unable to load" textbox and kick me back to the title screen. I tried this again for Sonic, then Luigi, but no luck, as the same thing happened. I went into Mario, slightly expecting the same treatment, but instead I was lead to the exact same starting screen as any normal ROM file of Super Mario World. I played through and the only difference that I noticed was that the point of advice block at Yoshi's house had the text "Play to Bowser." I assumed that this meant to play up until the Bowser boss fight, so I continued to the Yellow Switch Palace, then over to beat Iggy Koopa, but when I got to the big red double doors and hit the up key, there was Bowser. Plain as day, there was the godfather of all video game bosses, just standing there. The platform didn't move, there was just Mario and Bowser staring at each other. Then some text boxes popped up. I'll list them as dialogue would proceed.

Mario: "You don't belong here"

Bowser: "You don't deserve to live"

At that comment, Mario seemed to get angry.

Mario: "You have no right to talk like this."

Bowser: "You cannot retaliate"

Mario: "I can. I can kill you. I can throw you, jump on you, stomp you and burn you, and no matter what, you cannot do anything about this. I am the hero. You are the scum. I will kill you again, and I will enjoy it."

Bowser simply crossed his arms at that.

Bowser: "That's just it, isn't it? When have I ever killed anything? Sure, I kidnapped your princess, but she was willing, and so forth came my children. You kill constantly, with no remorse or empathy towards everything you slay."

Mario's face turned red and he started to kind of hop in place now.

Mario: "I'll kill you and your chldren!"

Bowser: "I know you will."

Bowser unfolded his arms and stayed where he was. Mario had long since reached his peak, and lunged at Bowser, jumping on him over and over. The first jump brought him to cover his head with a hulkish arm, eyes closed tightly. The second brought him to support his body with one hand as he kind of slumped backwards, and kept one arm up blocking his face from Mario. The third one made Bowser go on his back all the way, fold up his knees and arms, trying to clutch to what defense he had. Mario's reaction went back to game default, although a small line of 4 small black pixels in the form of a grin betrayed how he felt about this.

He was loving every second of it. I wasn't even focusing on the small textbox that appeared as Mario mocked him as he was beating the life out of the Koopa master. Bowser's face was a shady red now, and I couldn't even recognize the sprite, his shell compresed into the platform, arms and knees busted into his torso, and his face, again shady red, with only 1 small white pixel to represent where his eye would be. Mario stopped and just stood there, observing his work on the opposite side of the platform, still grinning. Then with a classic "Yea-hoo!" as would be heard in Super Mario 64, he jumped high in the air and landed with a dull squish / thud on the remnants of the King. I was then treated with another textbox coming from the game that read "You have killed Bowser. Good Job." And with that, I was kicked to the file selection.

I just sat there, my mouth literally hanging open. That was by far the most fucked up and demented thing I had EVER witnessed in a game, especially a fucking MARIO game. I took in what had just happened; Mario killed King Koopa. King Koopa accepted his fate, and even had the audacity to claim that Peach was the mother of all the Koopa bosses throughout the game and that no matter what, Mario would be a killer and that he would always stay that way. I decided that I would maybe pick up on this later, saved under state 23 and shut the damn thing off.

The next day I decided to try and play the Mario file again, and it worked, although when I tried to go to Iggy's castle, a textbox popped up saying "Defeated." All the other levels played normally, although the Koopa boss fights always ended with some kind of small laugh or cry, and the Koopa sprites looked like they were crying slightly.

After beating the game up until the final Bowser fight (the game said "defeated" when I tried to enter the stone head in front of the Sunken Ghost Ship and I was kicked back to level select) I went again periodically going through the files, anxious, moderatly unnerved, curious and slightly enthusiastic about the prospect of playing as Sonic, although again only 1 file played (Mario's notwithstanding.) It was Luigi's file, and the game opened up with the familiar textbox  and settings that Mario would be in, only that, not surprisingly, the text was different. It stated "Mario has gone, King Koopa is dead, and the world is in chaos. Kill the princess."

Kill the princess? Why would I do that? Did she do something evil, or is this some new storyline altogether? I partially wanted to stop playing, but this was starting to get pretty intriguing, and I know the curiosity kills the palyer with a hyper-realistic bloody hand from a game cartridge bought off of Ebay that the player shrugged off as normal, but this game was like L.A. Noire, in the essence that you really have to respect why the game was made and you really just have to play through the storyline for it to really make sense, and even be entertaining. I doubt this game would be played for the entertainment factor, but I went along anyway, like a cliche'd idiot, and progressed as Luigi to Yoshi's House... scratch that, Yoshi's Grave apparently. The green and blue-clad sprite took control of itself and slowly walked over to a tombstone sticking out of the ground. The birds were gone, the tree was bare, and the house was a pile of rubble now. He walked over, bent down and stayed like that for several seconds. When he got back up, there was a fire flower in the soft earth in front of the tombstone. He then walked away slowly, blue pixels down his face for a moment, then I was at the level select screen again. I tried going in again, but a textbox popped up yet again, this time reading "It would be too painful." it said that each time I tried to enter, nothing changing, just the same textbox popping up again and again.

I the went through Yoshi's Island 1, only to find that the only remnants of the level featured no enemies at all, only shells at some points. The blocks were all already hit and some were smashed out, and the halfway marker tape was gone, as if I had already gone through it, even thoguh I know that I hadn't, because this was my first time playing as Luigi, and playing in Luigi's file. Everything was gone, except for some rare coins here and there, but other than that, everything was desolate. Even the final checkpoint that marks the end of the level hda nothing. No rising and falling strip of tape, or whatever you might call it, and when I went through it, the same end level theme displayed, but no star points that one would recieve by passing through the tape at certain heigths. Just a display of taking the time away and putting it into the score. He walked to the right, the black screen soon engulfed him and I could proceed again. All other levels I played, Yellow Switch Palace, the rest of Yoshi's island and the beginning part of Iggy's castle, all desolate. The point of advice blocks stayed the same however, and read the same text.

The entire Iggy's Castle level was exactly the same as the others. No enemies, rare coins, some shells and already hit blocks. This of course meant that I was still mini Luigi, and so I had a greater chance of dying, that is if there were more threats than rare fireballs, falling wood hammer-thingies, and fallign out of the world. that is, until I came to Iggy. He was as big as Bowser would be, and looked exactly the same, except light blue instead of Bowser's lime shell color.

Iggy just sort of... teleported. One moment he was there, the next Luigi was falling to the ground in the classic death sequence with Iggy standing where Luigi used to be. Whether Iggy killed him by touch or by fire or whatever, I don't know, it all happened too fast. I was back at the level selector, and I was about to go into Iggy's castle again, when the screen flashed black for what I feel was about 5 seconds, then a disturbing cutscene played.

Luigi was running away from the castle, on an almost completely flat course. Once again, Iggy just came out of nowhere, and grabbed Luigi by the neck. His body, being un-super, was completely covered by Iggy's massive hand, and his face was turning red, starting to turn blue. Iggy threw him to the right of the screen, and Luigi skidded across the ground, leaving red streaks when he hit. He didn't move, but he didn't die either. The hulking Koopa prince walked to Luigi, taking his time, enjoying what he was doing, when out of nowhere, Mario jumped out of the right side of the screen and jumped on Iggy. Mario kept jumping on him, and I found myself looking at almost the same scene I witnessed with Bowser, Iggy covering himself, practically praying for life, while Mario kept jumping on him, over and over again, no mercy at all, and the same small grin spread across his face, and when he stopped, Iggy looked exactly like Bowser had, pummeled into the ground, a maroon face with one white pixel, and his limbs beated into his body. He had died the exact same way as Bowser had.

Luigi was standing now, although he had trouble doing so. He was bleeding out of every oriface on his face, and he had trouble standing. He took a few shaky steps forward, then fell forward to his hands and knees. It looked like he spat, got on his feet and wiped his mouth, then fell face-down into the ground. Mario was looking at Luigi with a strange expression. Fear, pity, contempt, sadness? Whatever it was it had something to do with anguish. Maybe he didn't like seeing his little brother beaten up to such a terrible degree. I stopped thinking that when he went forward and put his foot on his brother's back. He then jumped of of him and landed witha disgusting thud / squish. Luigi didn't move. Mario just stood on top of the corpse, with an expression close to remorse. He jumped away, and walked out of screen, and I was kicked back to the file selection again.

Words cannot describe how disgusted I felt at that moment. Mario had killed both Bowser and his little brother. Why? Why did he kill Luigi? Bowser was understandable, but why did I have to kill the princess? None of this made sense. I just closed the program, not even bothering to save, and shut off my PC. I flopped on my bed, didn't care to turn the lights off and slept a dark, black, dreamless sleep.

The next day I deleted the ROM. I even deleted the emulator. I deleted everything with keyword Mario or .smc file. I couldn't even look at Mario without remembering the sick play that I had witnessed only yesterday. I went to Subway to meet up with some of my friends, so that I could tell them what had happened, but it was closed. Why is it closed? It was a Wednesday, so it should have been open at this time and date. No holiday was today, so I just went home and watched some Youtube when, out of nowhere, a new tab popped up. It lead to an online emulator, with a Super Mario World ROM hack playing. I shut the PC off. I don't care if it had popped up for some explainable reason, the fact it had happened unnerved me, and the next day I did a system restore. I downloaded Firefox instead of Chrome, reasoning that Chrome's the reason all that freaky shit happened, and got Steam and started playing some TF2. In the middle of a match the Steam browser opened, again unexpectedly, and again, to an online emulator. I went to turn it off, but something stopped me. A pixelated sprite was looking directly at me. It looked almost exactly like my Mii would on my Nintendo Wii.

The game loaded by itself and I was looking at Sonic the Hedgehog. He was looking forward, completely oblvious to the horrors that had passed to the others before him. I pushed the right arrow key on the keyboard, and of course he moved right. The sound of my scout dying in the background was soon forgotten, and I was playing through this sickening ROM once again. It played exactly like any other Sonic the Hedgehog game, only that it had the same item holder, score, time and life counter as Super Mario World. I went forward to find that this was indeed the first level to Green Hills Zone in the classic Sonic game. When I jumped through the big gold ring at the end of the level, I was taken to another super-flat level with nothing on it but walls on either side. It was fairly small, which made me think of it as an arena, and my theroy was confirmed when, out of all people, Mario came from the right side of the screen, the fury almost radiating from his pixelated and usually calm demeanor. Sonic looked pissed too, and Mario started talking. It's another dialogue sequence, so I'll just write it off as it would have been said from the respective sprite,

Mario: "You've no right to be here."

Sonic: "You've no right to kill."

Mario: "I did what was best."

Sonic: "For you."

Mario: "Mind your ignorance, pest."

Sonic: "You left nothing for your brother."

Mario: "He would not have lasted long in this cruel world."

Sonic: "He would have lasted longer, had you not ended his life."

Mario: "There can be only one."

Sonic: "Precisely."

Mario: "I was the first! You have no right to take away my spotlight!"

Sonic: "You were the first, but you are far from the best."

That moment lasted for an eternity as everything registered. That dialogue made everything come into place. Mario left nothing for Luigi in the levels. No coins, no powerups, nothing, because he predicted that it would be wasted on a runt like Luigi. Then he killed him because he was afraid that Luigi might get a foothold in the gaming empire and that one day, the people would eventually forget about him and move on to Luigi. And he was furious about Sonic. Mario came first, then Sonic walks along, not too long after and completely steals his thunder. Mario wanted to dominate, he wanted to control everything, so he eliminated those who stood in his way.

The screen faded to black, and when it came back, Sonic was dismembered, decapitated and gored. Entrails littered the ground and blood stained his limbs and torso. His head lacked eyes, gray matter hung from his eye sockets and blood trickled to the ground from his open mouth. Mario had a black eye, a shattered nose, limbs obviously broken beyond being able to recover and regain use. Everything about him was beaten beyond recongnition except his clothes, tattered, stained with blood and bits of organs, I had the blessing of not having to witness this horrifying brawl. After seeing this, the screen faded to black, and there was only one file left. The username file which I call iES. I started it, almost unconscious of my own actions. All I was really aware of was that once I completed this file, I would never have to see this again.

I was taken to a small dungeon, and the first thing I noticed was that Mario was in a cell. Like, in a dungeon-type environment. He was dead. Nothing too...graphic about it, he just didn't have eyes. Blank and completely white. Nothing else. The screen slowly faded to a image of a man with horse legs and horns, lying crippled within what appeared to be an altar of sorts. He too had white eyes, and his sprite looked like someone from Chrono Trigger. I was immediatly kicked to the title screen. No demo was playing. It was a black background. I pushed the spacebar (my start buton) and I came to the file select again. There was only 1 file to choose from, and it was labeled "Jordan" in bold lettering. I dumbly played it, stunned from everything that had just happened, and I saw my Mii sprite again, crippled, and lying in a pool of blood. Everything except that sprite was pure white. The background, the tiles, the GUI, everything blank. Just an image. I could only see a torn-up blue shirt, and the back of a head, as if it was curled up and facing the other direction, so that I couldn't see the worst of the damage.

I lost it when that happened. I literally threw the monitor on the ground, then kicked in the tower. I grabbed my jacket and shoes, then ran like hell. I didn't care what happened, I just lost my mind and went to the nearest subway. I then waited for the next train to arrive.

Victim was found dead on a subway railway. Clothing items included jeans, Fruit of the Loom briefs, Nike tennis shoes, a DC sweater, woollen socks, and a light-blue T-shirt. Strangest thing about the corpse is that it had no eyes present. Will be looking into the matter with intesnse interest.