Doom The Final Secret

First off, let me explain myself. Not once will you hear me claim something demonic or out of this world was happening. You will never hear me claim that I bought a game at a strange and out of place game store or garage sale and no; I didn’t find this game just lying in the trash. It just so happens that I owned this game and for one reason or another, I can’t explain what happened one evening when I was playing it.

It was one week from my 22nd birthday and I decided I would have some friends over to celebrate my birthday early seeing as how I worked the whole week of my birthday. We were just reminiscing and sharing some old stories of the good ole days back and forth and then we heard a series of small taps. We all decided to investigate and find out what was going on. Honestly, I think we were just trying to look tough in front of one another. I for one will admit I was a little uneasy when I heard these unexplainable noises.

Upon further inspection, we did not find the source of the noise but on the bottom shelf of my entertainment center laid a cord just sticking out of the swinging doors on the cabinets. When I opened the door to push the cord back in half hazard like, I saw my Super Nintendo. So did my friends evidently. I could tell by their faces and the fact that they kept talking about some of the old games we used to play. So for their sake and a bit of nostalgia, I decided to plug it up and pop in one of the games from my small collection; Doom.

We all sat back and prepared to have a blast from the past, so to speak, as we started to play. We all were trying to one up each other on difficulty setting and then we decided to put it on the hardest setting titled “I am a death incarnate.”  No that’s not made up. That’s the real name of the difficulty.

After a few hours of constantly dying on the final part of the game, (part 3/3) we decided to go to the beginning but keep the difficulty and slowly work our way down. So, we reset our game and picked our difficulty once more; “I am a death incarnate.” We picked the first part. Mainly just few small and easy yet challenging levels basically so people can get their bearings on the game as they continue to play. This is when the unusual things started to take place.

The first few enemies you encounter are known as cyber demons. These are easily dispatched with the pistol and ammo is never a rarity. In a normal situation when you kill one of these enemies, their bodies would fall to the ground in a pixelated gore of a mess. It was sort of satisfying as an indication of death. So you can only imagine how surprised I was that when I would kill one instead of leaving a pixel mess on the ground they stood on, they would just disappear as the screen flickered a bit as if getting some sort of interference like the antenna on an old television.

We shrugged it off as just an old game showing its age in glitches. I just felt a little uneasy though as if someone was watching over us as we played after the “glitch” occurred. After a few more hours of playing a few friends went home and it was just me and one more friend named Damien. We both decided that it was a long enough day and that we were maybe a little too tipsy and just wanted to get some sleep. So I showed him to the guest room and I wished him goodnight and closed the door.

On the way back to my room to get some rest I heard the small taps we heard earlier. This time it was just a little louder than before. I decided to pay it no mind since we couldn’t find the source earlier and shrugged it off as just some rodents in the roof knocking stuff down in the walls. I was half way to my bedroom and started to yawn. Sleep was going to be the best thing ever in a few minutes. Then I tripped and almost fell on my face. When I looked down to see what I had stumbled upon, I was shocked to see the manual for Doom lying on the floor.

I looked at it puzzled for a second. I didn’t even remember owning the manual. Feeling a little more uneasy I picked it up and shoved it in the entertainment center. The taps had stopped so I felt that I should sleep while the rodents were being quiet.

The next morning, I woke up and wandered out to the living room in a half daze. Damien was still asleep so I thought I would sneak some of the left over pizza from last night as breakfast. After scarfing that down and chasing it with some mountain dew, I thought I would welcome the day with a little bit of call of duty on my Xbox 360. To my surprise when I turned on the system it would flicker on the shut off. I thought it was acting up but was a little confused because we had just played with it the night before. So I stood up a little disappointed and went to the kitchen to put my dishes away and came back to the living room.

I was shocked and frozen when I saw that my Super Nintendo was turned on and the doom soundtrack was playing. I thought Damien was playing a prank on me and I went to the guest room to confront him. No sign of Damien; just a note stating that he had gone home. At this point I was scared. I went to sit on the couch and looked over and the manual was sitting neatly next to the controller. I know I put all of this up before we went to bed.

So out of either fear or stupidity I began to play Doom. I had nothing else to do anyway. The glitch that I mentioned earlier about the cyber demons death sequence was no longer taking effect. This was due to the fact that I could not find any enemies. I took the cartridge out and blew into it like everyone does to clean them out. I put it back in and started it up and still nothing to fight. I decided I would just spend some time looking for secret areas and see if I could find anything I missed as a child while this glitch was going on.

I started to feel like I wasn’t controlling the character like someone else was telling me where to find the secrets. I felt like someone was whispering over my shoulder ‘hit the A button on that wall. Yeah that one. Now go to the computer terminal. Good… Good.’ I just following these “whispers” and soon enough I had found everything. At least I thought it was everything. The tapping began again.

It seemed like they were telling me when I was close to something. They would get louder the closer I got to a secret and quieter the farther I got from it. I eventually ran into a computer terminal. Then it wasn’t tapping anymore. It sounded like a loud stomp in my attic. It shook the house. I interacted with the computer terminal and it sent me to the final boss battle. Basically a fight with the devil.

Before you enter the chamber with the “devil”, you are in a room and circled and surrounded by enemies. The odd thing about these enemies though is that they did not attack me. They just breathed loudly and watched me as I made my way to the end of that room and the entrance to fight the devil. I could feel their eyes just following me even outside of the game I felt like I was being watched and observed while I play and before I knew it I was at the entrance. The final entrance, to the final room, to the final boss fight in Doom. I had only seen this area once and back then I was I think six years old and I had never beat it. I played the boss once and after dying only once I gave up.

Before I could enter the room I could the other enemies whispering things. I could barely make it out but what I could make out was things like “back for more Jake?” or “Round 2 already?” or even “You know you wont win.” I took it as if it was just a nice touch by the creators because the voices sounded pixelated just like everything else in this game. I went in the room and fought the devil. I fought him for a long fifteen minutes and even then it seemed like it would last even longer. Finally, it was done. I had won.

After beating the devil, my game flickered and I could see the devil fall to his knees I cheered over this pixelated victory. Then I knew something was wrong. My game started to flicker more as if there was even more interference then static. The static became louder and louder till I was afraid the neighbors would call the police over the noise. Then black screen with a simple message. “I hope you are happy.” Then something happened. The devil was shown again with his face looking toward the ground in shame as he had been defeated again. Then he looked at the screen and a pixelated demonic laugh could be heard. His face became distorted and I was becoming more and more disturbed the longer it lasted. Then a loud high pitched scream then silence as the system shut off.

I tried to turn the game back on and it wouldn’t work. All my other games did and I just shrugged it off. Pretty much in a cocky manner like “Screw it! I beat Doom! It doesn’t need to work anymore.” I went through the rest of my day with a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment. I even went back and beat my other games. Super Mario World, Chrono Trigger, and Legend of Zelda: A link to the past. Then I went to bed with a day of victory still in my head. Then I heard a tapping. Nope it wasn’t going to bother me. I beat the game the tapping will stop. Then my door opened. Nope nope still not fazing me then I heard in a high pitched squeal like voice “Well are you happy?”  and then I remembered the distorted face of the devil after I beat him. Fearing that would be the next thing I would see or hear I asked quietly, “What do you want?” Then I heard a response. I guess it should have been an expected one. I heard in the same whiny voice a drawn out sounding “YOU”.

I went  to the living room. The tv was on and the super Nintendo turned on. Doom turned on. The face. That horrifying distorted face. Just frozen with a caption under it “Happy?” I took the game out and walked outside. Not knowing if this would help me or not it made me feel better in the end. I began to smash it with a hammer. Afterwards I went back in my house and went to bed. No more tapping. No more voices. Just silence. Then I began to smile. I thought too myself as I lay in my bed “Am I happy? Now I am.”