Burnt Luigi



I love Nintendo. The console I grew up with was the Nintendo 64; the games on the console are alright, but the one I liked the most was Super Mario 64. Unfortunately, I just realized that I don’t have a copy of Super Mario 64; I looked everywhere and couldn’t find one—only a dusty Nintendo 64 console I have.

I shrugged and asked my parents if I could get Super Mario 64 again; they agreed, and I went across the street to the nearby GameStop next to Walmart, because it's a submall with GameStop—I found the game, brand new, and happily purchased it—but there was no short message written in sharpie on the cartridge or anything eerie from one of those haunted game stories I'd seen before.

I returned home, dusted off the console, and turned on my Nintendo 64 to begin playing, and the game began as it usually does: I was greeted by the head of Mario, I pressed START, and it played the cutscene where Mario jumped out of the pipe; I didn't find anything weird; it was like any other Mario game. Keep in mind that this game was not cheap; it cost the exact same as what you would expect from a Super Mario 64 copy.

Anyway, when I first started the Bob-omb Battlefield level, I collected stars one by one.

After I reached the top of the mountain, King Bob-omb came there to greet Mario and say his line. For some reason, his brother is mentioned in the text, but I don't remember what it said because I was focused on the good part of the level, fighting King Bob-omb. I did notice the text though; here's what he said:

"''I'm the Big Bob-omb, lord of all exploding matter, and king of global ka-booms! How dare you scale my mountain? By what right do you set foot on my imperial mountaintop? You may have eluded my guards, but you'll never escape my grasp. And you'll never take away my power star. I hereby challenge you, Mario! If you want the star I hold, you must prove yourself in battle. Can you pick me up and hurl me onto this royal turf? I don't think you can!

Don't disappoint Luigi.''"

I didn't care since there's nothing weird about hearing Luigi get mentioned in any of the Mario series. I finally collected the star after I defeated King Bob-omb.

Nothing really weird happens; it's just me having fun.

But I played the game until I unlocked the basement after defeating Bowser and getting the key; I didn’t go into any detail because nothing fascinating happened, and then I entered the basement.

This area always creeped me out as a kid; I don’t know why. I just walked around messing with my N64 controller for the fun of it; I don’t know what I activated, but I might’ve activated a secret, and eventually, I reached the part of the basement where the picture frame of Lethal Lava Land is.



For some reason, instead of the figure in the picture frame, it was Luigi. For some odd reason, this version of Super Mario 64 is so dedicated to Luigi that it's almost like the "Year of Luigi" thing is still continuing; I personally didn't find anything wrong with it since I like Luigi as a character after all.

Again. It didn’t seem too out of the ordinary because Luigi was planned to be in the game in the beta test days, but I just jumped into the picture frame, and I was sent to the level afterward.

Lethal Lava Land was the same as it normally should be, but some platforms were missing and coins were gone.



I began looking for stars to collect in order to unlock a level or star room. I eventually arrived at the platform where Mr. I was supposed to be, but instead of Mr. I, Luigi was standing there on the edge, not moving at all. I approached him to see if he was just Mr. I with a different model; this could have been a modded version of Super Mario 64, a personalized copy, or something, and I accidentally pushed him into the lava.

I felt very bad for him.

His screams and cries for Mario were not distorted or recorded by a different person; they were made by Charles Martinet, the voice actor of Mario and Luigi.

After Luigi’s flesh melts and he drowns in the lava, a star flies out of the lava, and I collect it.



I was instantly sent to Peach’s castle, but for some reason, I was knocked out of the picture frame like Mario does when he fails a level. I noticed that the water was red, almost like blood, and Mario had a terrified expression on his face.

Right behind him, Luigi looked different—almost like a zombie, his clothes were darker, and his skeleton was visible. His clothes were torn as well. Every time I tried to find my way out, it was like the endless staircase you need to go up to defeat Bowser. but every door was locked, and the gruesome imagery of Luigi will stay on my mind until the day I die. It sounds a little dramatic and morbid, I know.



But the eerie part is that Luigi in the picture frame had 1080p graphics, and it’s pretty eerie because the game doesn’t have decent graphics since it’s on the Nintendo 64. Let's be honest here. You've seen the games like Super Smash Bros. and the others, and the quality is not very good, in my opinion. The picture of Luigi's disfigured body in the picture frame threw the low-quality graphics out the window.

I was correct; the bloodied water rose, and Mario drowned in it while performing the drowning animation; there are no more lives since it took them all, and it returned me to the intro with Mario's head.

The Aftermath
This was originally planned to be in the game. I was searching through the game files on Super Mario 64 with my computer, and here’s what I found—the file name was "Burnt Luigi." Luigi's model was the same shape as the original Luigi model, but with some textures and polygons missing; there was even a bone in his right arm.