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Ignore this disclaimer if you want, but I would like to start this thing up by saying if you believe in these video game stories or urban legends, this is not the post for you at all. If you wish to carry on, you may do this if you like.

We all know Super Mario World, but did you know that you can hack the ROM of the game? I'm sure you know you do; there's a website dedicated to hacking the game, and Super Mario World isn't the only hackable Mario game out there; a lot of them are hackable, and it's easy to do so because I tried hacking Super Mario World itself; however, it was a bit hard to do.

Even if you never hacked the game, you might’ve played the hacks that the creative fandom made. I mostly played the creepier ones; of course, there are not any hacks I found creepy that would cause me to write a giant story about them. Unfortunately, I found a hack that would cause me to do that.

I first played Super Mario World on my Wii U, and it was on a virtual console, just like Super Mario 64, which I also own on the Wii U. I enjoyed playing both of them, and they are very good games in my opinion and, most importantly, my favorite games in the franchise.

I didn't have the games on their original consoles, the Nintendo 64 or Super Nintendo Entertainment System, but luckily, I had the games on the Wii U since my dad did get them before the Nintendo e-shop closed down as of now.

I had both of them for a long time.

At the time, I didn't know how to hack my games until I found out that you could emulate them; that's how I was able to try out my ROMs. Here's my story:

I stumbled across the website dedicated to hacking Super Mario World, smwcentral.net. The site had weird, funny, horrifying, and amazing hacks, and I tried each of them. Now, since I don't have any friends, I always had to be player 1, but as Mario. But I could get past that thanks to these hacks, and I could play as Mario’s twin brother, Luigi, as a lot of them have Luigi starring as the main protagonist instead of Mario.

However, one of these hacks made me laugh pretty hard, and it had no title or author at all. I downloaded the ROM hack and started to play out of curiosity and being very intrigued. The game started, and it showed the Nintendo logo, still in its golden design, and the lovely coin sound. The title screen popped up.

I started to feel uneasy, only to find out that the title screen had no title at all. You can give this hack any basic name, like the exaggerated Mario in all caps or the exaggerated Luigi in all caps, even though this hack has nothing to do with Luigi, at least not right now. I'm not playing with anyone, at least for now. But the true horror in the title is Mario himself; he had no face, only his nose; he was just walking there, and the walk cycle was repeating without anything changing in the title screen.

No credits either, not even from Nintendo or the author; I assumed the creator of the hack forgot to add them.

The fact Mario had no face was a bit weird, but I gave it a pass, and with the title missing, I thought the game was being laggy, as my computer can run laggy at times.

I continued, went past the title screen, and watched the game start. It started pretty slowly, but I got pretty concerned, so I checked my settings and other programs to see what was happening.

Each program and scanner said my computer was normal, so I thought the hack was slow and carried on after the game loaded. It took me to the introduction screen with Mario still missing his face, and nothing was changed during this part; it was informing the player about the plot of the game and King Koopa, aka Bowser, kidnapping the princess as usual. I stayed here for a while until I looked at my watch, feeling bored.

The game took me to the map; some bushes were missing, signs were broken, and cute faces on the longer bushes were missing as well. If you look at the image I added above, Iggy’s castle appears to look darker than usual, and I could swear, on the right side of the screen, I can see something in the water.

None of it was important, except for the title of the level itself.

YOURHOUSE

This didn't creep me out as much as if it was talking about my house in real life; it definitely doesn't look like that, unless I'm like the main characters from Adventure Time. I started the level, still waiting for my computer to start, yelling at it, assuming it could hear me. I do this normally sometimes; usually, it listens sometimes.

I entered the level, but the sky was an ugly yellow; this level seemed darker than usual with the birds missing, the fruit, even though there wasn't any, and the fireplace having seen better days. If you look on top, you may notice how the HUD looks blurry and low quality; it's not normal to see this, as the pixels for this game and everything about it look perfect.

Run-on sentences aside, I didn't care, as I thought the guy who made this hack was just screwing around with the ROM, so I did a small-throat laugh at it.

I looked at the puff coming out of the chimney, and for whatever reason, it was red, and you know exactly what the red is supposed to be.

Ketchup? Kool-aid? Strawberry? No, it's everyone’s favorite, blood. Are you surprised? I thought you were; maybe that’s where they ground up Mario’s face.

That's my guess, however, and the scary part is that I looked closely at the signs, and they had my address. Did this game seriously grab my address and know where I live now? Maybe I could prevent this from happening by simply playing the game until it ends.

I left my house, apparently, and I went to my level to the right, starting it immediately. The level started, familiar to the title screen; it was just a boring straight line, no enemies or anything; however, I could control Mario freely. What overwhelmed me about this level was the time, starting at 224, so I had to speed up a bit.

It made me happy that the HUD was back to normal, but suddenly, as I was controlling Mario in this boring level, the regular happy-go-lucky music started playing, except louder than usual, causing me to take off my headphones aggressively.

Putting them back on, and if you look at the image I attached above, I will describe the image to you if you can't see it somehow. I was weirded out at the coins and points bar; I collected about 10 coins somehow, and my points were 19350 when I didn't remember seeing any coins as I just loaded in.

Unless the game automatically collected the coins, I didn't hear it. Anyway, I reached the end and completed the level; however, the other level on the left was already completed, so I went to Iggy’s castle.

I have to admit, this was kind of clever, as the sign was nothing previously, but it was replaced with a simple question mark. However, the weird part about this is that the water was darker.

The reason I said this was clever is the title of the level.

#1 FEELINGEMPTYYET

I got it since I could see a question mark at the bottom, obviously asking me a question, and I answered my computer, assuming it could hear me, by saying yes. I entered the level. Again, it took a long time, so I waited for the level to load.

I was in a pitch-black room, and like anyone would do, I was walking forward until something happened, which something would happen, explaining why the other level was completed.

Mario stopped, and there was someone tall, green, and faceless like him.

He had overalls and a plumber's hat like Mario, and if you guessed Luigi, you’re correct; he stood there and started running until I started chasing him. I continued chasing him until suddenly, an image flashed on my screen. The image flashed again, and it was clear what it was now.

How can I explain this? It was an image of a mutilated and painted green horse, familiar to Yoshi, and the horse had a red saddle, again familiar to Yoshi. The unsettling part about the image is that there was a huge overweight man with the same familiar outfit as Mario, even though it was unsettling enough.

He was standing there, staring at the body; he didn't look scared—well, kinda; he looked like he was about to pee himself and take a dump in his pants at the same time. Dear God, it must’ve been the Italian food he's been eating. Anyway, there was a skinny guy identical to Luigi; looking like a stick figure, he was standing there looking at the horse with his wide little eyes. After all of that, the image finally goes away, and I'm finally caught up to Luigi. When I tapped him, the screen jumped out of the frame, and it took me to the final picture.

Mario and Luigi were very detailed, and the image used looked identical to the regular ending picture. No music was playing in the background.

The game then shuts off; however, when I came back to the website, the hack had been recently deleted without a single trace, and I might’ve been the only one to discover this hack.

Anyway, I would like to thank you all for staying here and listening to this post, but here's one thing before I close this thing off.

'''FACELESS. DOESN’T. EQUAL. SCARY. FOLKS.'''

Have a lovely day, afternoon, night, or whatever time zone you’re in.