MARIO

Mario's first appearance was in Donkey Kong, released in 1981, and he has been in over 200 games since then, making the Mario Brothers franchise the most profitable game series in the world. It stands to reason then that there would be good Mario creepypasta out there somewhere and again, I'll leave it to the reader to decide if the story is real.

"MARIO" is a 'Super Mario World' hack posted on popular ROM site SMW Central. The story is written by a user of the site named Adam and the ROM patch was uploaded by a user named M A R I O though the latter account no longer exists. The original ROM can be downloaded here (though I haven't personally tested it): MARIO

The following is Adam's story.

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(Note: This is a true story, and sums up what was going through My mind as I was playing this, and I had no idea I was about to be bullshitted the way I was when I played this and I can say it is by far the creepiest hack I've played. If you were on IRC you would have heard me talking about it as well, but anyways it's late at night, and I don't have a lot of time, and I need to get to sleep, so this is all I have time for...)

So, it all happened, on tonight of all nights. I was bored, obviously contemplating what I thought I could do to waste time as I chatted with the people in #smwc. We had good times, and shared a few laughs together. Out of boredom, I decided to patrol the "Hacks waiting to be moderated" section. Seems that we had quite a bit, 33 if I recall correctly. The first few hacks I saw when I sorted them by date were a couple really horrible ones with bad screenshots to boot. Naturally showed these hacks to the centralites currently on #smwc. We were laughing at how bad some of them were, but then I got to a hack called "MARIO". Just that, nothing more, nothing less. The description seemed quite odd, as if some Japanese hacker was trying to translate the original plot of Super Mario World into English and failing horribly. I showed this to kieran and he started laughing at the description, it reads as follows:

"As you play the role of Super Mario plumber, verify that you are beautiful Purinsesutozutouru again Bowser kidnapped the evil king. It is your job to save her! This hack includes six levels of very long."

I simply dismissed this as someone trying to act Japanese and release a crappy hack with some edits, or so, that's what I thought this was, at first...

Curiosity got the best of me. I decided to download the hack. Not knowing what I was in for, since the single screenshot of the hack was the title screen with nothing but the letters "MARIO" from Super Mario World's title screen. I thought it was a little odd how there were no dates or anything either, as hackers usually place their names and dates on the titles to mark when the project was started.

So, when I opened the hack, I was greeted by 2 files. One called 3007014, a simple .txt file 27 KB in size, and the IPS file, simply named "MARIO". For some odd reason I wanted to see what the author of the hack had to say, but I opened the hack in Notepad but there was nothing but indistinguishable symbols and letters and punctuation, sort of like how when you open a rom in a text editor like Notepad. Seemes like the author just completely copied his ROM to .txt form, though I could be wrong. Taking a closer look, at the top of the .txt file mixed in with the gibberish I find the only thing that looks like English there. Here is a piece of what I found:

Luigi's Mansion

(You won't find this picture in the game but it was the original back drop for the "Game Over" screen that was scrapped for something a little less frightening.)


I'm sure everyone's heard of Luigi's Mansion but just in case, here's a recap.

Luigi is finally the star of his own 3D gamecube game. After receiving a strange letter from his brother Mario, Luigi travels to a mansion that he thinks he has won in a contest. When he arrives at the mansion he is greeted by mad scientist, Professor E. Gadd who explains to him that he just met, and lost, a man with a red hat. He then explains that the mansion had just recently appeared and is haunted by ghosts. He equips Luigi with a flashlight and the Poltergust 3000, a vaccum-like ghost container that resembles something from Ghostbusters, and sends Luigi on his way.

When it comes to graphics, Luigi's Mansion, though not quite as groundbreaking as Super Mario 64, has it's share of impressive effects. When it comes to dynamic lighting and attention to detail this game was pretty ahead of it's time. The shadows cast and areas lit by Luigi's flashlight behaved very realisticly and the movement of ambient objects affected by the Poltergust were extremely convincing. Fabric would stretch, fires would die from lack of air and small objects would race towards Luigi when using the vacuum. Shadows and highlights could be traced easily to their sources of light as through they really existed. And that's part of what makes this story so strange.

If you played the game before you may remember the telephone room. It was a small, simple attic room with a ringing telephone that you could answer. However, if you answered the phone and waited for a lightning strike, you could see something a little too creepy for a children's game in the back of the room. The shadow of Luigi's body, not touching or connected to the floor in any way, appears on the back wall and ceiling of the room, as though Luigi had hung himself.

Below I've outlined the shadow as best as I could to show what parts of the body are visible. I can't tell if the shape on the right is his arm or the Poltergust. Even if it is a glitch, it seems strange that it's the only glitching shadow area of the game.

I'll let you decide for yourself what the shadow really is, but don't forget about all the other creepy stuff you can find in pretty much any Mario game.

Four

I just want to preface this post by saying that I love pawn shops, comic book stores and buy-sell-trade video game places. The following story is like many of the others, posted anonymously on an internet message board and it follows the same basic "bought a used video game and something scary happened" line. It's called 'Four' and this is the tale:

Four

"I collect old video games; whether they're on the NES, the Genesis, the SNES, or even obscure things like the PC Engine. I visited a Pawn Shop in the city which was reputable for collectors of retro technology. While in there, I stumbled upon a game that was "given back" multiple times. The clerk gave me an SNES cartridge. It was oddly-shaped and colored, kind of like those unlicensed Bible games from Wisdom Tree. The cartridge was a very neon-ish Yellow tint to it, and the label seemed to have been hand-drawn, albeit with good detail.

The name of the game was simply "4", and had an illustration of four colored blobs all next to one another. Thinking it was a generic platformer, I took it home to play. When I started the game up, I was surprised to find out that the language wasn't English. I couldn't match it with a part of the globe, but I would have to say it best matches Southeast Asian typography. The first level of the game was mildly eerie. It was a Sonic the Hedgehog-inspired game where you played as four different characters. The multi-char thing was a ripoff of Donkey Kong Country, as you had to break them from rusty cages. The level was urban-themed, and involved the player escaping from (what seemed to be) blob-thing catchers. All of the sounds in the game were either taken from other SNES games, or seemed to have been recorded. I noticed many low-quality voices, grunts, etc. Besides the characters, the enemies and objects were terribly-rendered and designed. Most of them were geometric shapes, or sprite edits from other games. I noticed that every time you killed an enemy, the Hell Knight scream from the original Doom played, and a sentence of text appeared on screen.

As creepy as it was, the red flags started to appear. Each time you "lost" a character, the scenery and sprites changed to become darker, and less colorful, until everything is black and white. As you progressed further in a level (regardless of how well you're doing), the scenery becomes gory, and somewhat psychedelic. The levels are all cliche. Urban, forest, clouds, snow, etc. In the middle of the game, it appears as if it's designed so that the player cannot progress, and continuously dies. When you lose all four characters, the screen becomes very dim, and to my shock, a low-quality scream, as well as unintelligible sentences BLAST at high volume, accompanied by pixelated, low-res images of generic gore pics; presumably from wars. The final picture shown was a pixelated image of an Asian family at a wedding. The dimmed background turns white, as a sentence appears on screen, and a voice speaks the unintelligible language.

I thought the game froze, but upon inspection, it wasn't. I turned up the volume way up. A low buzzing noise could be heard from the game, as the screen dimmed again. The Game Over screen was a close-up shot on the four main characters looking happy. The screen gets darker, line-by-line. Their faces get visibly sadder and sadder, as a generic "Wah wah wah" song comes on. The game did another buzzing sequence, prompting me to turn up the volume. Surprising me due to the noise and creepiness, a loud, long sound byte was played; which sounded like a man + woman arguing. This went on for a while, when it just stopped. The screen turned black, and in white text, three sentences appeared on screen. I tried turning the SNES off, but I couldn't. I took out the cartridge, and the image on the screen became distorted, as the upper half was white. Becoming genuinely scared, I pulled out the power cord, and re-plugged it.

I couldn't turn my SNES on. The whole "Corny horror movie" emotion overwhelmed me, so I took the game back to the pawn shop. The clerk didn't give me my (small amount of) money back, simply because he said he wouldn't know the cash value."

Just as a side note, the Japanese word for death is 'shi'. It's the same pronunciation as the word for four.

Killswitch by Karvina

I suppose this is possible, but another game called Killswitch was made for PS2 a few years ago so it's nearly impossible to find useful information on the subject.

"In the spring 1989 the Karvina Corporation released a curious game, whose dissemination among American students that fall was swift and furious, though its popularity was ultimately short-lived.

The game was “Killswitch.”

On the surface it was a variant on the mystery or horror survival game, a precursor to the Myst and Silent Hill franchises. The narrative showed the complexity for which Karvina was known, though the graphics were monochrome, vague grey and white shapes against a black background. Slow MIDI versions of Czech folksongs play throughout. Players could choose between two avatars: an invisible demon named Ghast or a visible human woman, Porto. Play as Ghast was considerably more difficult due to his total invisibility, and players were highly liable to restart the game as Porto after the first level, in which it was impossible to gauge jumps or aim. However, Ghast was clearly the more powerful character–he had fire-breath and a coal-steam attack, but as it was above the skill level of most players to keep track of where a fire-breathing, poison-dispensing invisible imp was on their screens once the fire and steam had run out, Porto became more or less the default.

Porto’s singular ability was seemingly random growth–she expanded and contracted in size throughout the game. A Kansas engineering grad claimed to have figured out the pattern involved, but for reasons which will become obvious, his work was lost.

Pokemon Silver

Pokemon games are pretty popular for creeypasta! This one is based around a nameless character in Pokemon Gold with all the badges and money that you can get in the game. Apparently it's a hacked game bought used from a GameStop by another college kid. The meaning behind the scare factor is a little deeper than in some of the other stories, but still pretty creepy. Here's the full text.

"You see, I am a simple college student living alone in an apartment. I was very enthusiastic about the release of HeartGold/SoulSilver on the states. I have purposely locked myself out of all media and the internet aside for school purposes. That means no 4chan, no /v/, no Bulbapedia, etc.

As I was busy with the school year and being a poorfag at the time, I wasn’t able to buy SoulSilver on launch date. After my school year ended, I ordered SoulSilver on Amazon (sorry, I’m not a faggy pirate). However, it would take a week for it to arrive. I decided that during that time, I replay my Crystal version on my Gameboy Color.

However, I realized that long ago, my mom threw it away because I told her the save went dead, and I was very upset about it then. She also threw away my Silver version, so all I have is my Gameboy Color. As such, I set out to Gamestop and bought a used Silver version, as it’s the only Pokemon game left that they have for the GBC. Ten dollars – fairly cheap despite it being Gamestop.

I went home and started it up for a nostalgia trip. However, that’s where things started getting bizarre, and most likely the reason why you read this.

The Gamefreak logo started up as normal, but it just froze there. I thought the cart was just errored or something, so I turned it off and on. The same thing happened. I tried pressing A and Start over and over, and all of the buttons. Eventually, the logo vanished and there was a black screen for about five seconds. Suddenly, rather than going to the usual menu screen, I was already in the game in a previous saved file, which was odd as I was expecting all of these carts to have been wiped by the poor battery. Either way, I wasn’t complaining, as I would have chosen the “Continue” option to see what the previous guy did anyways.

Majora's Mask

Majora’s Mask, originally released for Nintendo 64, is probably the darkest game in the Zelda franchise, with most agreeing that Twilight Princess comes in a close second. The entire storyline is very different from any other Zelda game. Majora’s Mask is set in a parallel universe to Hyrule and Link has been stripped of Epona and his ocarina. The ever present danger of the moon crashing into this new world of Termina (note the clever and subtle reference to a “terminal” universe) and the world’s doom-accepting inhabitants cast a gloomy tint over your actions in the game. The main villain is a young man who has stolen a mask that causes him to become schizophrenic and attempt to destroy his own world.

What follows here is a story of a young man who found a strange copy of this game. Matt, or Jadusable, posted his story on 4chan’s /x/ discussion board which mainly focuses on paranormal stories. Jadusable hoped that telling his story would protect others from his fate and possibly help him figure out what was going on. He posted on the image board on two consecutive nights (Septmeber 7th and 8th of 2010) and had a friend post with his username on another night. He also uploaded some of the unexplainable footage that he took while playing the game and had his roommate upload the last videos and a text document of a sort of journal he kept on what was happening in the game. Below is his first-person account of finding, playing and trying to escape the game.

“I recently moved into my dorm room starting as a sophomore in college and a friend of mine gave me his old Nintendo 64 to play. I was stoked, to say the least; I could finally play all of those old games of my youth that I hadn't touched in at least a decade. His Nintendo 64 came with one yellow controller and a rather shoddy copy of Super Smash Brothers, and while beggars can't be choosers, needless to say it didn't take long until I became bored of beating up LVL 9 CPUs.

That weekend I decided to drive around a few neighborhoods about twenty minutes or so off campus, hitting up the local garage sales, hoping to score on some good deals from ignorant parents). I ended up picking up a copy of Pokémon Stadium, Goldeneye (fuck yeah), F-Zero, and two other controllers for two dollars. Satisfied, I began to drive out of the neighborhood when one last house caught my attention. I still have no idea why it did, there were no cars there and only one table was set up with random junk on it, but something sort of drew me there. I usually trust my gut on these things so I got out of the car and I was greeted by an old man. His outward appearance was, for lack of a better word, displeasing. It was odd, if you asked me to tell you why I thought he was displeasing, I couldn't really pinpoint anything - there was just something about him that put me on edge, I can't explain it. All I can tell you is that if it wasn't in the middle of the afternoon and there were other people within shouting distance, I would not have even thought of approaching this man.

He flashed a crooked smiled at me and asked what I was looking for, and immediately I noticed that he must be blind in one of his eyes; his right eye had that "glazed over" look about it. I forced myself to look to his left eye instead, trying not to offend, and asked him if he had any old video games.

I was already wondering how I could politely excuse myself from the situation when he would tell me he had no idea what a video game was, but to my surprise he said he had a few ones in an old box. He assured me he'd be back in a "jiffy" and turned to head back into the garage. As I watched him hobble away, I couldn't help but notice what he was selling on his table. Littered across his table were rather... peculiar paintings; various artworks that looked like ink blots that a psychiatrist might show you. Curious, I looked through them - it was obvious why no one was visiting this guy's garage sale, these weren't exactly aesthetically pleasing. As I came to the last one, for some reason it looked almost like Majora's Mask - the same heart-shaped body with little spikes protruding outward. Initially I just thought that since I was secretly hoping to find that game at these garage sales, some Freudian bullshit was projecting itself into the ink blots, but given the events that happened afterward I'm not so sure now. I should have asked the man about it. I wish I would have asked the man about it.

After staring at the Majora-shaped blot, I looked up and the old man was suddenly there again, arms-length in front of me, smiling at me. I'll admit I jumped out of reflex and I laughed nervously as he handed me a Nintendo 64 cartridge. It was the standard gray color, except that someone had written Majora on it in black permanent marker. I got butterflies in my stomach as I realized what a coincidence this was and asked him how much he wanted for it.

The old man smiled at me and told me that I could have it for free, that it used to belong to a kid who was about my age that didn't live here anymore. There was something weird about how the man phrased that, but I didn't really pay any attention to then, I was too caught up in not only finding this game but getting it for free.

Karazhan Crypts

Of the 13 million World of Warcraft players in the world, many of them have never heard of Karazhan Crypts. It’s not surprising really, considering that the zone known by that name has never been open to players except by hacking or glitching certain aspects of gameplay. The area was never finished, it seems, or maybe it was placed in the game with the intention of being used in a later expansion. Whatever the reason for its creation and current condition, it’s one of the most terrifying places in Azeroth.

In Deadwind Pass, just east of Darkshire’s graveyard, lies the Ivory Spire of Karazhan, once home to the evil wizard Medivh. Deadwind Pass was created by an explosion of unknown origins. The blast tore into the magical fabric of the world and laid bare a nexus of every magical ley line in Azeroth. These ley lines created a point of intense magical power and weakened the foundation of reality in the area. Karazhan was built on the exact point where the lines crossed, though it was never revealed by whom. Decades after Medivh’s murder at the hands of his apprentice he returned from the dead with his old accomplices to occupy his old home. Legend says that beneath Karazhan lay a dungeon that mirrored the Ivory Tower; a perfect inverse duplicate of the citadel. However, no such dungeon has ever been found. Instead there is a massive location beneath Morgan’s Plot that I would guess is a combination prison, torture chamber and burial ground. Below is what I found upon entering the Crypt.

Just past the gates in the mausoleum of Morgan’s Plot is where you will find the entrance to the crypts. There is a gate that prevents players from entering though you can manipulate the game and force your way in. In Burning Crusade it was possible to die near the gate and explore the underground city while in ghost form. That was quickly patched however, long before Lich King was announced. Still, there were ways in, you could duel a friend near the gate and could easily be feared or blinded through the gates. This was also fixed during BC and is no longer possible. Entering Karazhan is still achievable, most easily by rogues and druids though there are other methods for every class as of the writing of this article. (Remember that I do not endorse purposely glitching any aspect of World of Warcraft as it is against the Terms of Service and can get you banned.)

And now for the description of the crypt.

The first area you will encounter, just past the gates, is known as the Well of the Forgotten. Just in front of the gate you can see a small, nameless tomb, the only object of interest in this area other than the hole in the floor to the south. This hole, or well, is a long dark tunnel that bodies were thrown into at some point. The floor of this room is covered in long scratches in sets of 3 and 4, which leads me to believe that those thrown into the well were at least partially alive while falling to their deaths.

The Pauper's Walk is the labyrinth of tunnels that connects the different rooms that make up the crypt. The walk is littered with dismembered body parts, charred remains, mummified humanoids and the bones of animals and humans alike. Some of the remnants have turned a sickly green, others yellow and some black. A few of the body parts even look fresh, as though they were ripped from a recently dead corpse. I'm not sure why it's called the Pauper's Walk; I can't imagine anyone willingly working in this hellish place, no matter how impovrished.

GTA: San Andreas Ghost Stories

Ok, everyone knows that all of Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto games are packed full of Easter Eggs, pop culture references, and just a ton of random jokes and strange occurences. It should come as no suprise then that there are a few creepy stories hidden in this game, though I'm not sure if they're glitches or purposely inserted by the programmers.

The first is known as "The Ghostly Glendale"

If you're wandering out in the area named "The Back O' Beyond" just past the 'dissappearing pool", a small pond that will cause anything left in it to vanish, there is a small hill. If you go near this hill at night a Glendale, one of the cars from the game, will mysteriously appear and will roll towards you until it stops at the bottom of the hill.

Some people even claim it always swerves towards the player.

Also of note, is the fact that the car always spawns in a "wrecked" condition, with dents and scratches that cannot be caused by driving it around and bumping into things.

The next story is about the "Suicidal Photographer"

This photographer can be one of many different NPC skins, so he or she will not always look the same. The photographer will spawn in the trailer park near the Los Santos Inlet and will take a few pictures, facing east, before standing and walking straight into the water, and drowning.

It seems photographers aren't the only suicidal inhabitants of San Andreas though, there is a back alley where you can watch people continually spawn and jump off of "Lemming Tower", which is named both for the people who jump off and because Rockstar used to be known for a game called "Lemmings". (However, lemmings are known for killing themselves because in the 1950's Disney did a documentary on animals and chased a large herd of lemmings over a cliff while filming.)

If you get any closer to the jumpers than the back alley, they will dissappear. Also, if you wait for one to jump and then go look for the body, nothing is there.

Then there's the "Ghost World", aka "Blue Hell"

Mostly, this is just a game glitch. You have to have GameShark or something similar, and enter a few cheat codes to get into the ghost world, and once there, there's not much to do. It's just San Andreas without any NPCs, cars, or missions and an eerie blue and grey tint.

Lavender Town Tone

Since I was already on the topic of Pokemon Red and Lavendar Town tonight, I thought I would go ahead and post this too. It's not really a ghost in a video game but it is a pretty cool story that has to do with video games, and it's an older story which makes it even better imo.

Let me just preface this post by saying "As the story goes..."

In February 1996 Pokemon Red and Pokemon Blue were released in Japan, oddly enough, as "Pocket Monsters: Red" and "Pocket Monsters: Green". (Don't ask me why green got changed to blue for the American versions.) In these first editions of the games the music for Lavender Town, an area in the game, had a high pitched tone in it that had to be edited almost immediately after the game's release due to the health issues that the games was causing young children. Most of the information on this topic was leaked by ex-employees of Game Freak Inc. including Ms. Satou Harue who released a confidential directory compiled by her company that had on it a list of symptoms, dates, and the name of a child who had shown the following systems after playing the game:

April 12 1996: Obstructive sleep apnea, severe migraines, otorrhagia (bleeding from the ears), tinnitus (ringing, buzzing in the ears).
May 23 1996: General irritability, insomnia, addiction to videogame, nosebleeds. Developed into violent streaks against others and eventually himself.
April 27 1996: Cluster headaches, irritability. Eventually took mixed painkillers.
March 4 1996: Migraines, sluggish and slow behaviour, unresponsiveness. Developed into deafness, and went missing. Body discovered beside road April 20 1996.

Pokemon Black

Just for effect, you can listen to the Lavender Town music while reading this if you like.



Before I get into what I wanted to post here, I'm going to give you a little of the backstory of Lavender Town from Pokemon Red, in case you've forgotten. Lavender Town is one of the smallest towns in the original games, other than your home of Pallet Town. It is known best for Pokemon Tower which resides to the Northeast. Pokemon Tower hosts memorial services and the graves of hundreds of dead pokemon. However, Pokemon Tower is now haunted by the ghosts of many pokemon, and as you walk through the tower you are vulnerable to attacks from ghosts and possessed psychics. Occasionally during this part of the game, you can see little flashes of movement on the floor inside the tower that I assume are supposed to be ghosts.

You cannot attack the ghosts until you steal back the Silph Scope from Team Rocket in Celedon City. Once you have the scope you can fight off the ghosts in Pokemon Tower which are actualy Ghastly's and Haunter's. When you near the top floor you will be able to fight the ghost that has caused the resurrection of the other ghost pokemon. It is a mother Marowak that died defending her baby Cubone from Team Rocket and once she is defeated and put to rest, the hauntings stop.

Also of note: In the original Pokemon Red/Blue, when you encounter your rival in Lavender Town he asks whether or not you know what it's like to have one of your Pokémon die. At this point in the game, he no longer has his Raticate that he used in previous battles.

The following account has been posted on a few different websites in the past couple years though no one has officially come forward as the original author. Most likely, the story was created for an imageboard like 4chan.org and was written by an anonymous poster as a hoax. However, here is the full, foremost article on the subject.

"I’m what you could call a collector of bootleg Pokémon games. Pokémon Diamond & Jade, Chaos Black, etc. It’s amazing the frequency with which you can find them at pawnshops, Goodwill, flea markets, and such. They’re generally fun; even if they are unplayable (which they often are), the mistranslations and poor quality make them unintentionally humorous. I’ve been able to find most of the ones that I’ve played online, but there’s one that I haven’t seen any mention of anywhere. I bought it at a flea market about five years ago.

Herobrine

Hint: clicking and reading the picture will help you understand this article.

According to the originators of the story, Herobrine is an old username from some older, Swedish online-gaming databases. Herobrine is the retired username of a dead brother of 'Notch', aka Markus Alexej Persson, who is the creator of the game 'Minecraft'. Herobrine (or 'HIM') is a wandering figure with the same basic skin as the default character in single player mode, but instead of the standard eyes, Herobrine's eyes are completely white with a slight glow. If you enter a world with Herobrine in it you will often find evidence of his existance like clay or sand pyramids, tunnels that are obviously man (or computer) made, instead of the randomly generated ones, tree without leaves on them, underground chambers with immobile zombies, or large patches of forrest set ablaze. Others claim that they have used Cartograph (a minecraft addon that shows all the randomly generated parts of your single player map) and found things that require user crafting to exist.

(See: http://www.minecraftforum.net/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=97932)

Another strange part of the story is that the moderator's of Minecraft Wiki frobid a Herobrine page to be posted on their site. All of the stories claim that Herobrine will not interact with users in any way, but will simply walk into the fog or out of your viewable area. In this video there are a few still shots of Herobrine though about half of them are clearly faked; Herobrine is obviously just photoshopped onto a wall or window. The X-Files music is a nice touch though.



The story of Herobrine has been called everything from "possible" to "ridiculous". Notch has said before on Twitter that the only brother he has ever had is a half-brother whom he does not see very often, but that doesn't stop people from posting youtube videos, creating obviously faked sightings, and talking about HIM on forums all over the web. It is possible that Notch programmed him into the game to spawn every one in a million times a new world is created, but unless someone finds something hidden in the code, I guess we'll never know.

The purpose of this blog...

is undecided...