I've always been into video games, ever since my father came home one day with an Atari 2600. Me and my brother would play for hours on end never minding the low end graphics or the light game play, it was just...fun.
It wasn't long though until Atari gave way to Nintendo and my brother left home to join the Army. Then it was just me playing Mario and Zelda for hours and hours into the night. Recently I had been thinking of those old times and decided I wanted to get back into “Retro” gaming, Oh God how I wish I hadn't.
At first it was innocent enough I still had my old NES and a few games, and there's even a game store in town that sells the old carts for only a couple bucks each. But then I found out about emulators, thousands of games to play. Some of which were never released for the NES and some that were made by other gamers like myself. These were my favorites, old classic games that had been modified by other gamers to include things that we always thought should have been there in the first place.
I decided I wanted to try it myself, I mean how hard could it be? I can program in C++ and Java, I was sure I could learn and alter the old 6502 the NES uses. So I downloaded a user made dev kit and got a copy of “Bible Adventures” by World Tree Entertainment. For one its a game I actually own which made me feel better about having the ROM image and for two it was never actually Licensed to be on the NES anyways so who are they to talk if I alter it? Right?
I booted up my dev kit and loaded the Bible Adventures ROM. It took me a couple of minutes of looking at the code to get a feel for how it was written. The commands were different than what I was use too and I had to look a couple of them up on the web but it wasn't much of a problem and before long I was reading it like it was English.
That's when I noticed it. A full section of code, some kind of subroutine was nulled out (marked to not be read by the assembler when the program was ran). Intrigued as to why someone would mark out a subroutine and not simply just delete it I began studying the code. Try as I might I couldn't figure it out, other than it called for some sprites and responses from the controller so I made the worst decision of my life, I unmarked the subroutine and re-assembled the code into the ROM.
I started up my emulation program and loaded the re-assembled version of the Bible Adventures ROM and started it up. At first all I got was a brown screen with a few ASCII letters placed randomly across the screen. For half a second I actually thought of taking the cart out and blowing in it lol, until I remember that this was a ROM. Disappointed and thinking the subroutine must be preventing the game from playing I went for the mouse to shut the game off.
But before I could touch the mouse the opening screen for the game popped up. It looked the same as the actual cart, a black screen with a picture of what I think is supposed to be Mary holding Baby Moses with a blue bubble next to the picture for a selection screen. Only this time there was 4 selections to choose from instead of the normal 3. Noah's Ark, Baby Moses and David and Goliath were still there but added to the selection was “The Revelation of St. John”
Then it dawned on me, the subroutine was another game selection intended to be apart of the game but for some reason was marked out of the program. I figured that the programmer must have ran out of time and was unable to finish the game, but then again why keep it? Why not just delete it from the file?
I selected the Revelation of St. John from the menu, expecting the game to crash. Instead I was greeted with a shocking image that filled the screen. On the screen was an image of a bloodied goat head with 7 horns and 7 eyes glaring into the screen. In 8 bit detail it almost looked comical but the subject matter made the acid in my stomach start turning like a washing machine. The game seemed to have frozen, and did not progress beyond the image but in the back ground there was sound. I could barely hear it but it was there, not music really but sound.
I left the room and got my headphones, plug them into the computer and increased the volume to max. The sound is hard to explain, kind of a buzzing, kind of a clicking, rhythmic but not music. I listened intently and started picturing strange things in my mind. I imagined myself on the top of a high bluff overlooking the ocean, an old sword was in my hand and a goat was before me chained to the ground. I brought the sword high above my head, intent on severing the goats head from its body when suddenly I was awoken by the scream of my girlfriend.
I opened my eyes to find I was kneeling in my kitchen. I had no idea how I had gotten there, a butcher knife was in my hand and my 3 year old son lay in front of me on the kitchen floor. Thank heaven he was fine, but the thought of what might have happened had Jill not come home when she did has nearly driven me insane.