Board Thread:Spinoff Appeal/@comment-12324801-20130716220119

Hello!

I am writing this post because I recently attempted to submit a creepy-pasta that I wrote. Unfortunately the automated spam blocker detected that it was in violation of the "Spinoff" rule. I can understand why my story would be caught in such a system, but I believe this to be a false positive. I will post the story here following a brief summary.

Summary

The Nintendo Phantasm

"The story takes place when I was 14 and moving for the first time to a new house. While cleaning my very cluttered basement I discovered a prototype Nintendo console (The Phantasm). The machine and its games turn out to be disturbing and/or grotesque before culminating in the machine threatening my family, overcharging and catching on fire. The fire incinerates my house destroying that console, but not in time to save my baby sister."

Content

This is something that happened to me in the summer of 2006 right after the birth of my little sister.

It was a busy year for me and my family. My Dad had just gotten promoted at work, and we were moving to a brand new house. Of course I was 14 and taking it as well as a 14 year old takes anything.... badly. Why did we have to move? I liked my room, I liked my yard, I liked everything where it was. I gave my parents no end of grief!

So it was I found myself being given the worst chore in the world. Cleaning the basement.

Have you ever seen one of those shows where somebody has collected 20 years worth of pizza boxes in their garage stacked floor ceiling? Yeah, the basement was like that, except filled with knick knacks, bric a brac, “precious” albums, loose photos, old furniture, art projects, books, and many old televisions. There was only a narrow strip of floor leading to the lightbulb in the center of the basement.

My parents had left the house early that morning to take my sister to the doctor or something like that. They were going to be gone all day and gave me specific orders to clean out no less than half the basement.

Thats where I was when I found it.

It was behind a wall of old tube style televisions that probably still worked. I carefully worked my fingers into the crack between the wall and the first stack of TVs. I managed to get the leverage and swing the entire stack closest to the wall outward. It was when I was leaning down to shove the stack to the door that I noticed something strange. The space behind the TVs was not filled solid with junk!

Squeezing a bit, I forced my body between the tvs and the wall, and entered a  5 feet square clearing. In the center of the space, was what looked like an extremely old looking chest.

It had to be the coolest thing that I ever found. It was big, about 3 feet long and 2 feet wide and made of some kind of dark wood. It had a large metallic clasp on the front with a loop to put a padlock on. Lucky for me, there was no lock.

At first when my hand went out I hesitated. I tried to think of what was in there, the last thing I need was to find out my parents like to take pictures of themselves doing the deed. My curiosity got the better of me though, because I was 14 and what if it was Dad’s stash of other people doin’ it?

The lid lifted easily and noiselessly. Inside it was full of dark black cartridges. They looked like a cross between the boxy old nintendo and the newer n64 ones. In place of real labels were strips of masking tape with marker. I picked up a couple and looked at them more closer. The one was simply marked “Zelda” and the other “Mario”. As I went to put them back, I saw there was something else inside.

I reached into the box and felt the outline of a larger object. I pulled it out, rattling the cartridges as little as possible.

I held it up into the light. It was the same black color as everything else, but in dark red letters was written “Nintendo Phantasm”.

‘What the hell is this?’ I thought turning it around. I thought I had every system ever made! And what was it doing here in the basement?

Of course I needed to play it, right then and there. I rummaged around the chest some more and came up with the controller and a nest of wires to connect it. I slapped it together without any trouble and plugged in the largest of the televisions. A blare of static greeted me when i turned on the set and I quickly turned it down. I didn’t want my parents to come home early and hear me slacking off.

I decided to start with the more familiar title, the Mario. I put the cartridge in the top and hit the button. The static cut out and the screen when black.

“Its-a-me! Mario!”

I jumped back in surprise, letting the controller drop. The voice that came out of those speakers was not the familiar bright and sunny mascot. It was dark and clotted, like the voice of three pack a day smoker. Even creepier then that was was the face that appeared. It was just a floating head, like in the beginning of Mario 64, but this was not the typical mario, it was some kind of hyper realistic mario so detailed that I could make out every hair in his mustache and see the veins pulsing in his bloodshot eyes. I stood there for a moment just staring, then when I moved a little those eyes seemed to follow me. It was even blinking regularly, just staring at me.

Taking a deep breath I steadied my racing heart and picked up the remote. The screen had not transitioned to the game yet. When I moved the control stick the familiar cartoon hand swiveled into action. If you remember the original game, this was something a easter egg mini-game where you could pull mario’s face into a bunch of hilarious forms (my favourite had always been pulling his mustache up to make it look like sunglasses).

I decided to try this manoeuvre out on the new mario and moved the hand to grab the ‘stache. Its eyes turned from my to the hand as I hit the button to clamp Down. Instead of latching on to some intangible pixel, it grabbed up a handful of hairs. Mario’s eye glared down  at the hand gripping him, and seemed to try to turn itself away, pulling the mustache taught where I gripped it. I moved the stick up, but it was way too sensitive and the hand zoomed off carrying a hunk of hair. The face in the middle spun briefly before settling to face forwards again.

Now there was a big bleeding hole in his upper lip where I had inadvertently torn away the hair. Not only that but tears were streaming down his hyper realistic eyes, and his mouth was open in a silent scream. I watched this in my own silent horror for a moment before I moved the controller in a feeble attempt to reattach the mustache hairs.

The mario head reacted violently this time, it started spinning and gnashing its teeth as soon as I came close and once I was in range chomp down on the hand.

I frantically moved the stick and mashed the buttons. For a few moments the face was knocked back and forth by the hand, its cheeks bulging out grotesquely, but then the hand burst free in a splatter of blood and tooth chips, and I must have been holding the button because it was dragging a chunk of mario’s tongue.

The image of Mario weeping and trying to turn hide by turning away, blood and fluid dribbling down his chin was too much for me, i hastily pulled the plug on the machine and blissful static burst out on the screen.

I took a few minutes for me to calm down enough to think rationally. It had to have been a joke, whatever this thing was i was some kind of prototype and this must have been one of the developer's idea of a joke.

A few more minutes ticked by and my heart had returned to normal. Sure it was gruesome, I told myself, but it wasn’t that far removed from things like grand theft auto. Even the super realistic mario wouldn’t be too much of a stretch for old time hardware if thats all the game was.

And the graphics were really good....

I grabbed another game at random. This one didn’t even have a label. I gingerly removed the mario cartridge, tossed it back in the box, and popped the new cartridge in.

Once I plugged it back in and turned it on I found out the name of the game. In old school 8 bit flames crackled the name “Inferno”.

Now I was excited again, Inferno sounded like it going to be cool and old games with graphics like this could be awesome.

When the title faded a little box came up asking me for my name. I put in my handle ( DaBurninator69 … don’t judge me I was 14).

What happened next through me off balance again, it read ‘No, enter your True Name’ with a new enter box. I puzzled for a minute wondering how it knew, when it hit me, they knew nobody tried to use their real name so it pulled a little tricked. “Haha, nice, all right, I’ll play along” I said aloud to the game and entered my real name. ‘Enter your father’s name’ it said. Now I was confused again, but I humored it. ‘Enter your mother’s name,’ once again I complied.

As soon as I hit enter, the text box faded and a piercing scream ripped from the speakers of the television. It didn’t last that long, but continued to echo through the basement so that I had to cover my ears to stifle the sound.

I kept my eyes on the screen, even though now my ears were ringing. It showed a landscape that looked like an old eight bit game neighborhood like paperboy crossed with something out of a nightmare. I had a character on screen that I could move, it was in the center of a large road with houses on either side. The two houses I could see right now were nothing but shattered remains that looked like they had been exploded from the inside. Limbs and organs were scattered on the lawn, and arranged in a rude pattern that made me a little sick despite the older graphics.

I moved up the road, quick to get away, but it only got worse from there. I passed rows of houses with whole families staked out on the lines. Some were still writhing in agony even though they were impaled and one child was frantically trying to shove blocky eight bit organs back into a gaping stomach wound.

The whole time I could hear their tortured screams and moans of pains. I even heard calls for “Help Me!” and “Mommy!” all clear as a bell with no distortion at all. I raced my character forward as fast it would go, trying to escape the screams.

At last I came to the end of the road. There stood a house that looked eerily like the one I was in, same paint job and everything. The door stood open but the house was engulfed in flames.

I ran my character inside and almost vomited from the scene. It was a single room, and two npcs were staked directly to the wall, both in cross shapes. Unlike the other people these two had nameplates bearing the name of both his mother and his father. In the center of the room were two more NPCs, one of them had his nameplate. He (I?) was kneeling in front of the last npc with blocky 8-bit tears dripping down onto the other figure.

This last figure was a baby with my sister’s name in the nameplate. She was swaddled up with only her face showing, but her skin was blue and there were little Xs over her eyes.

Suddenly I could feel my heart pounding in my chest. My vision wavered for a moment and the world threatened to black out. The living room in the game burst into realistic flame but I hardly noticed because...

I had never entered my sisters name.

That was when the machine burst into real  flames.

Already freaked out I bolted. I don’t really remember much after that, we lost a lot in the fire but it wasn’t as bad as it could have been because we were already moving. I never talked about what I found in the basement, and the fire itself was ruled an accident due to faulty wiring (my cleaning was the longest the light switch done there had ever been on). I’ve since looked all over the internet trying to find information about the console but it looks like nobody has even heard of it before.

I finally decided I had to tell my story, no matter how many people think I’m crazy, because after so many years I know for sure that it was that bastard machine and if anyone ever finds another one, you have to smash it.

Smash it for my sister.

r.i.p......  