It was about a few months back. I was searching in my room for my old Pokémon Fire Red game. I was trying to redeem myself with some old memorabilia after playing a ton of wi-fi battles (and won, mind you) and I knew my Pokémon Yellow game was gone. I couldn't find my Pokémon Fire Red game, but I knew I could still emulate the game through ROMs. Unfortunately, I dulged in ROM hacking, so I didn't have any free/clean ROMs for playing on.
So I decided to search up for a clean Fire Red ROM. Due to large bouts of wind flurries, the connection was very shaky. All the regular sites I tried to access had connection issues and I couldn't get onto them. I searched on Google on and on, until I found a lone site with a weird name. I can't really remember the URL but it was off. As if it wasn't something you'd normally encounter.
Either way, I managed to connect to it. When I started downloading the ROM, my PC's screen brightness went down slightly. I thought I had accidentally unplugged the charger, but both the plug and the output were still snugly in place.
Either way, I opened up Visual Boy Advance and fired up the ROM. I started the game, and started my new game. Something seemed off. For starters, there was no music. AT ALL. The only music was on the title screen. I walked down into the bottom floor, and instead of the normal text, the Mom said "Watch the TV" and nothing else. I decided to follow what she said. I watched the TV. It was the most shocking thing I had ever seen in a Pokémon game, Nintendo game, or any game for that matter. The TV said the following:
It has just been reported that the World Trade Center has been successfully attacked. Police were not able to save the people inside of the building. As of now, There are no recorded survivors.
After I viewed what was on the TV, I was mortified. I couldn't move. I could still move in game, but I couldn't move my fingers to control Red. I was horrified at what I saw. I pushed the down key and walked outside. There still wasn't any music. Gary's house and Oak's Lab were inaccessible. There was a tree blocking the entrance, so I could not enter.
There was a single person. It was the Captain from the S.S. Anne. I talked to him, and all he said was "..." I walked into Route 1, and I talked to the Poke Mart guy that gave you the potion, and he said the same thing. I couldn't encounter any Pokémon, as if they were too terrified to attack me. I went into Viridian City, and, instead of no music, it played the Lavender Town theme. All the exits of Viridian City were blocked by trees.
There was no one I could talk to, and only a single house was available. The other buildings just... Weren't there. I entered it. And it brought me to a heavily populated area, in which I could not talk to anyone. I walked left from where I was, and I saw two twin towers that looked like the Pokémon Towers. They were not enterable, and I found a person that looked like the Captain again. I talked to him, and this time he said "There were no survivors" and this box would not close.
I went through the entire ROM again, and nothing was different. I never found out about who created this hack, or why. Was it to simulate the despair from the 9/11 attacks? Or perhaps it was to show that 9/11 can sneak into anything? Either way. I have since deleted the ROM and I cannot locate the site where I downloaded it from. It did not appear in my history, and I could not find it in searches. What is even more weird, is that the Rom was last Modified on 9/11/10. The mystery of this accursed ROM continues.