Tonight was hell at work, as was the usual on a Friday night. I didn’t have any friends, so my brother and I would meet up at a local arcade every night down the street from the Bed, Bath and Beyond where I worked. Like always my brother greeted me by calling me a tremendous moron and suggested someone please rape my face, but after those words he spoke, he mentioned the game we had been playing for weeks had been doing strange things lately, he even told the operator of the arcade about it, but the old man just didn’t believe him and told him to stay away and never to play it. When I asked what game, he uttered the two words that would change my life: “Cruis’n World”.
I asked him what was wrong with it and he just shook his head and replied “You’ll see”. I had played this game before but I usually played DDR all night because I’m a weeaboo at heart, Desu, but there I was staring down this two-seater arcade cabinet with a marquee that was just a piece of duct tape with the words “Cruis’n World” written on it with a black marker. One look at that and I thought to myself, “We dun goofed”. Needless to say I sat down and inserted my quarters to play like always. My brother just sat next to me and watched as I chose the stage I wanted to race, I had plenty of time to kill so I just chose to “Cruise the World”. Then I proceeded to choose my transmission, I chose manual because I’m pro like that, and then chose my favorite car, the Porsche 959, that’s when things got weird.
The car I know is a 6 speed manual transmission car but when I chose the manual setting on the game it said the car would be a 4 speed. I just had assumed this was some sort of glitch and proceeded to play on, but things only got worse from here. The first stage was Hawaii, like usual, but instead of traveling there with my car like a normal person I drove straight out of a garage on to the race track only to be greeted by a woman wearing a bikini, trapped in a black box and waving a checkered flag. I’ve watched enough NASCAR events to know that means the race is over but it had only just begun. I took off as fast as I could shifting through gears but other racers were passing me, and at the front of the pack was a red Toyota Supra that constantly antagonized me. I could never pass him, but I was assured if I came in first there would be a free race so I was trapped.
More strange occurrences happened, when I pressed the gas pedal twice my car would violently lurch forward in to a wheelstand with flames shooting out of the tailpipes, it shocked me so bad but I reassured myself that this was normal car behavior and continued with the race. I took a shortcut and my car went careening over a cliff ahead of the pack of racers and landed safely on the ground. This couldn’t be right, I would be dead but the game still allowed me to race. I eventually came in first, and another woman appeared wearing a bikini, heaving a huge trophy with a look of discomfort on her face as I magically was transported to the next race. Was she trapped too? When my high score for the fastest lap time posted, it went to the screen where you put your initials on a license plate, but they were already stamped out for me, it had the numbers 666.
My brother looked at me and said, “It only gets worse from here”. I was in Japan now, and the woman in the black box appeared again, and as I was driving a disembodied voice exclaimed, “Japan is so cool!” I was completely spooked; could it have been the same woman in the black box? I wasn’t sure but I had to race on. Now I was in Australia, I noticed some Kangaroos hopping in the road, and I mistakenly ran into one of them, and it exploded into tiny chunks, and even made a loud exploding sound, was I now part of some demonic government experiment? The disembodied voice exclaimed again, “That’s wild!” I thought to myself that this can’t even be real life anymore. How can a game get like this? Was it all some horrible glitch? Am I starting to lose my mind?
With those thoughts I soldiered on, racing through New York, Egypt, Germany, Kenya, England, France, Italy, China, Mexico, Russia, and finally I arrived at Florida. All the races were the same, they started with the woman in the black box, I even noticed that the people and animals, even the structures had a somewhat cardboard look to them. What the hell is going on here? Then the impossible happened, my car was stuck inside a shuttle and launched in to space. Something was seriously wrong. You would seriously be dead if your car was on the moon with you inside, how would you breathe? Then the impossible really happened, and all my nightmares came true.
Here I was face to face with Bill Clinton in a hot tub on the moon. I was speechless; my brother looked at me and just stared at me with no expression as I turned my eyes back to the screen. How was this possible? Barack Obama is the president, but a man’s disembodied voice announced, “And now the President”. Bill addressed me but I was too scared to even listen, and now I noticed my car had a license plate on it that said “2SPOOKY4U”, I screamed loudly, the most bloodcurdling scream ever. License plates only allow for a maximum of 8 characters in the United States! Then there they were, the dead bodies of astronauts came flying at the screen and made a splattering sound. These American heroes died from the curse of this game. It was all too much, as I watched the names of all the games victims come scrolling down the screen. I looked at my brother and his eyes were black and bleeding, he then opened his mouth to scream, and then a skeleton popped out. He was dead. I passed out in the middle of the arcade, and the people playing DDR proceeded to walk the dinosaur.