I was nearing the end of my playthrough of ''Super Metroid''. The SNES era was before my time, and as a huge fan of ''Metroid: Other M'', I had downloaded the relevant emulator and rom files to go back and explore the series's roots for the first time.
It wasn't until I made it to the final boss battle against Mother Brain
that weird things started happening. The boss fight started out much as I'd already seen from having played the NES ''Metroid'', but where victory music should have been playing when she finally perished, instead an eerie silence fell for seventeen seconds before, all at once, disturbing music blared from my ipod earbuds as the disembodied brain rose from the ground, now sporting a hideously disfigured body that combined with her rehabilitated brain into a form I now like to refer to as Niarb Rehtom (that's "Mother Brain" spelled backwards, now that she was only a twisted version of her former self). She snarled, and hyperrealistic saliva poured from her horrible maw.
Hands already soaked in sweat, I brought Samus's vast arsenal to bear upon the
mechanical monstrousity. For a moment, things seemed to be looking up, as I dodged Niarb Rehtom's projectiles and unloaded Super Missiles and charged Plasma Beams into her vulnerable cranium.
But then, something happened that would haunt me for the remainder of my short days. Niarb Rehtom's brain glowed and thrummed with what I instantly knew was some eldritch power, and I Space Jumped wildly to stay out of its path. My efforts were to no avail; a huge energy beam, colored an alien rainbow that made my stomach twist in revulsion, slammed unavoidably into Samus and pinned her against the wall, draining several Energy Tanks along with all of my remaining ammo before it ceased. When it was done, Samus spent a few moments catching her breath and
picking herself up off the ground in a disturbingly realistic fashion totally unlike the charming, cartoony world the rest of the game offered. That was the moment I knew for certain that this was not the way the final boss fight was meant to progress, and that left only one logical explanation: The rom was haunted.
I pressed on, though I was already gripped by Lovecraftian despair. Soon enough, Niarb Rehtom repeated her newfound tactic, a tactic I was helpless to do anything about beyond sitting back and watching Samus die little by little, until she couldn't summon the strength to so much as lift herself to her feet anymore even as the horrible beast used lesser attacks to whittle down her health almost to zero.
Finally, Niarb Rehtom readied her final rainbow death ray. I shut my eyes, unable to watch the carnage. But a strange new sound, profoundly disturbing in its own right, accompanied the death ray's sound, and I opened my eyes to see the giant Metroid from earlier in Tourian latched onto her head. It sucked her energy away until she was a dry, lifeless husk, before floating tauntingly over above Samus's head as it chirped and flexed its wicked talons predatorily.
I closed the rom before the Metroid could do to Samus as it had done to Niarb Rehtom. I couldn't bear to watch any further. Only a mind intimately familiar with the deepest crevices of Hell could think to inflict such horror and indiscriminate brutality upon a simple Nintendo game. I have seen into the abyss, and it has told me that God cares not for us. This will be my final word on this Earth; I have the pistol cocked and loaded resting in my lap even as I type this. Goodbye, everyone - I'm afraid I won't see you next mission.