Once upon a time, I went to a video game rental store. Whilst I was there, I met a very obscure old man in a trench coat. He said to me, "Hey you! Take this game! But beware, this isn't your average video game." It was an N64 cartridge with no label, titled very crudely in felt pen, "Earthbound." I shaked the mans hand to which I replied, "Thank you."
I was excited, because as you all know, there was an unreleased installment to the Mother series planned for the N64DD. I plugged the game into my N64, and all I got was a red screen. At first, I was confused, because I had never seen such a screen. I let the video game sit on for a few seconds, before I reached for the console's power switch.
I flicked the switch off, but the N64 remained on, and the screen stayed red. At this point, I was very confused, and a little bit scared. I reached over behind the TV for the N64 AC adapter, and right before I was about to unplug the console, a piercing, high pitched scream, squealed from the TV. I jumped, and peed my pants, and looked around the room. Nobody was home, except for me. The lights in the room went out, and the Giygas battle theme began to play. I looked at the television, to discover that the screen remained red, with the words "Earthbound Press Start." I pushed the start button on my N64 controller. The music suddenly stopped, and in big letters on the screen, it now read:
"Would you like to play my game?"
Naturally, I'm a big fan of the Mother franchise, and I could not let an opportunity to play a new installment of the series go to waste. The game started with a flash! I looked, and saw Ness and Paula's sprite on screen. However, they were in their robot form, I noticed after a few seconds, they were in the final area leading to the Giygas boss battle.
No music was playing nor sound effects. I was a little disappointed, this appears to be the same game as the Super Nintendo installment with a few bugs. I moved our protagonist around the area, and suddenly I was back in Podunk town! At this point, my N64 controller rumble pack was on a violent and consistent rumble. The screen then flashed, then shook, and faded to black, and all of a sudden, on screen, there was a 10 minute timer. Under this timer is read "Doom" I was scared, I tried to turn off the console, but the TV started making very strange sounds, and suddenly, I was back in Podunk Town.
But this time, everything was a shade of red, and in the top-right corner of my screen, was the 10 minute timer going down. I flicked the Power Switch on and off several times, but the console remained on. I even unplugged the whole system from the TV, and power outlet, but the TV remained on, and the timer continued to go down. Ness and Paula began to walk on their own without and person controlling them. I reached quickly for them controller to stop them, because this wasn't natural.
As soon as I was about to hit down on the D-Pad, I heard, "Stop! You musn't!"
Pokey faded into the screen, and a battle engaged. Instead of Pokey's normal, smugsmile on the final boss fight, his sprite showed a frown, with one tear coming from his left eye. I didn't have any PSI and only 1 HP for both characters. Instead of PSI, it said, "Kill."
This was new, so I decided to press the command. Pokey then shouted in the battle, "NESS! It's futile to think you're stronger than me! Wait.. But this time *cough cough* no being can defeat IT. IT is coming *cough cough* and is it stronger than anything I have ever met. It can defeat everything with it's..." And suddenly, the timer in the top-right corner reached 00:00. The game froze.
I couldn't do anything. I tried to move around, but the sprites remained still. Then, the Giygas theme began to play once more. For one last time, the screen faded into a crimson shade of red, and shook violently as well as the rumble pack. The rumble pack fell out of the controller, and hit the wooden floor. Instantly, another battle had begun. It was the Giygas battle, with no background music playing. His sprite was frozen with his fetus outlining clearly showing. The battle continued as if it was a normal Giygas battle with no background music, except when you went to pray with Paula text appeared saying, "You can't pray, there is no hope now."
I continued to fight Giygas like normal, but after every single turn, NESS's sprite would look more and more frightened. After 7 or 8 turns, blood started to cover Ness's face. And about 15 turns, the same happened to Paula. Eventually, both were completely covered with blood, and then both the characters eyes were replaced with the letter "X" symbolizing they were dead. The game froze for a few seconds, and then the screen said, "EARTHBOUND, THERE IS NO HOPE."
After that night I sold the game at a garage sale and it is now in the hands of a young child who was fascinated by older video games that he never played. I never saw that boy again, nor the video game.