Image of game.
I remember the early days of YouTube. Those were the good old days. I am a true gamer and I was into web shows on YouTube that revolved around video games. One of my favorites was a series called 'Remember This Game?'. A series about obscure games narrated by YouTube user, jhfKilltron (who unfortunately deleted his channel.)
In October, he made an episode revolving around a banned computer game called VENTING. The game featured a lot of disturbing content and has since then been banned.
I thought the story made for a good creepypasta article without actually being one. While I can’t bring you the original video, I can give you a transcript.
Remember This Game? Ep14 - The Halloween Special
(theme song plays)
Remember this game? VENTING?
Hello. This is your video game wizard, here once again. Back in 2004, I was really into downloadable online games. There were many to pick from. Some I remember, some I don’t. One that I will never forget is VENTING. At first, I never played it. The website I downloaded it from was very generic and didn’t give off the sense of a fun game.
Then a friend of mine who had played the game told me not to play it and that it was the most frightening game he’s ever played. I became curious and decided to download the game despite my friend’s advice. Apparently the game came with backgrounds you can put on your computer. I’ll get into that in a few minutes.
(Poor quality footage from the game begins to play) It turned out to be a first person shooter, and there were a lot of fun ones back in those days. The game play itself was not all that fun and extremely generic. It didn’t look like the developers put much effort into the game. In consisted of twelve levels, and all of them were basically the same level design.
The environment was non-existent. The ground was in a 360-degree flat landscape with no textures. The sky was a light yellowish grey. The enemies were non-threatening and didn’t do anything. They just stood there without any movement whatsoever with the exception of occasional head turns. They were all the same 3D character model just copied and pasted into the level. Each Level had a different 3D model. You were supposed to shoot them.
Compared to modern violent games like San Andreas and Resident Evil 4, the game wasn’t as graphic, but it lacked any of the multiple objectives as those games. You shoot the characters and they just fall down as a little blood squirts, and the only objective to the whole game is to shoot people and nothing else. The sound in the game was also close to being non-existent. The only sound in the whole game is the song Für Elise being played on a synthesizer over and over again.
(Für Elise plays)
I was about to stop playing the game after the first level, but then I realized the whole point of the game was to kill a certain number of people. After killing all the copy and paste characters in the first level, you would be given a free computer background. A screen came up that read,
You killed 57 people. Click here for your free background --->
I clicked the button for the background and was horrified to see what the background was. It was photo of a dead teenage boy laying in a grass field near a park bench. His body had four bullet holes in it. The creepy thing is the boy looked like the character model in the first level.
The character model for the second level was an older bald man. After beating the level, you are given another background. This time, it is a photo of a dead bald man who looks like the character model in the second level. He also appeared to have bullet holes in him. His body was lying in a swimming pool.
I wanted to stop, but it felt like something was making me continue. I felt like I was uncovering some kind of murder mystery. After beating all twelve levels, I was introduced with the only cut scene in the whole game. We see the landscape of dead bodies, then we finally see the character you play as. It is revealed to be a stark white humanoid with no detail. Not even facial features.
After shooting all these people, it points the gun at its face and pulls the trigger. When its body drops to the ground, if you listen closely, you can hear the faint sound of someone crying as text reading, 'Game Over' appears on the screen.
(The sound of the crying plays)
I don’t know why but I saved the photos of the dead bodies. I gave them to my local police department. It turns out the game was developed by Jonathan Wynstone Banks, a self-loathing college game designer from North Carolina. The following day after putting the game on the internet, he died from a self inflicted gunshot wound to the head. He left behind a suicide note where he confessed to the deaths of eighteen people.
Twelve of which were the people in the photos. The website I downloaded the game from was deleted a week after reporting the photos to the police. The strange thing is that none of the people he killed were identified.
I know I shouldn’t do this but disregarding the whole back-story, this game was the worst thing I have ever played. No competition, no gameplay, no nothing. The only two reasons to play this game is the whole back-story and to get a feeling of what it’s like to see through the eyes of a psychopath. I won’t give a rating. Knowing about the game, I can’t give one.
Anyway, that is the whole story. Hoped it was informative, Halloween is a few days away, I hope you have a good one.
This is your video game wizard, signing off.