I'm John, 21 years old, and the following are a series of events which happened while trying to relive my childhood of playing good ol' Super Mario World. I would also like to mention that I am a person who blows things out of proportions. If you ever see a Bowser cosplayer, avoid him at all costs.
I've loved Super Mario World as a kid. I'd usually beat the game by reprogramming the RAM dynamically and causing a controlled crash, causing the game to skip to "THE END", but at times I'd play the game longer by taking the Star Road detour. The game was wonderfully glitchy and I loved it. It's a shame that I've sold this game, and after what has happened, I wish I never sold it.
It all began when I set off to a nearby flea market to find a seller who sells Super Mario World. At the flea market I was searching for a video game stall, when I bumped into a guy with a Super Mario World shirt. The guy apparently shaped his white hair into two horns, and had a slit for pupils. Furthermore, his skin was covered in scales, and he was yellow. He started to speak to me while flame came out of his mouth: "I am Satan, and I am selling Super Mario World. Would you be interested?"
Completely oblivious of the true monstrousity of this person who I thought was cosplaying Bowser, I immediately accepted his cartridge he sold for $6.66. When I took a look at the cartridge, it looked like a regular blank SNES cartridge without any sticker on it. There was something written on it with a black permanent marker, though. It seems like it read "totally not a haunted cartridge at all. also, super mario world". After buying this cartridge, I went home with satisfaction.
Exactly 574 seconds later, I popped the game into my SNES, and it booted up normally. Hearing the Nintendo Presents sound was nostalgic. However, something was a little bit off about the title screen. The background's color was black with a lightning effect on it. The music sounded more low-pitched and was slower, and had a loud static noise over it now and then. However, when I saw the following I gasped: Mario's eyes were pitch black with red pupils, and there were red pixels around his eyes, as if his eyes were bleeding. It looked hyper realistic. Mario also looked twice as fat. Furthermore, the titlescreen text said "FUCK YOU JOHN, YOU WORTHLESS PIECE OF SHIT. I WILL FUCKING KILL YOU." in all-caps red letters, instead of the usual colorful "Super Mario World" text. I just assumed this all was just a minor glitch and shrugged it off.
At the save file screen, I ended up selecting the empty save file A because I wanted to start fresh. After this, the screen then faded into the intro level. The usual message box came up, but to my horror the text was different this time, and it said: "What role does food play in your life?".
I immediately thought to myself "How does the game know that I eat?" and was starting to get unsettled. It was as if the cartridge knew about me, and my daily life, and was trying to hold a boring interview with me instead of displaying the Super Mario World plot. After 5 seconds exactly, the game started fading out into the overworld with a loud, pixelated screech.
And then I took a 1-hour nap, but during the nap I had a hyper realistic terrifying nightmare for 24 minutes about me having school today. I don't remember the rest of the dream, but it was probably about me taking an evil test of Bowser. Anyway, after my nap I was wondering if the cartridge was either hacked or haunted, then I turned on my SNES again and decided to continue because I had a good feeling about this.
Mario appeared on the overworld. The regular sea we once knew now was a sea of blood and looked hyper realistic, and Valley of Bowser music was playing instead of Yoshi's Island. Apparently I had 666 extra lives, and "YOSHI'S HOUSE" was renamed to "SATAN'S HOUSE". The blue color of the level's house icon was also yellow. Curiousity got the better of me, and I decided to enter the level.
Three drops of sweat rolled down my fat cheeks in exactly 2.5 seconds as I was nervously waiting for the screen to fade into the level. Before the screen faded in, music started to play. I recognized the music in LITERALLY a split-second; it was the music from the castle levels in Yoshi's Island, but reversed and played in G Major at twice the speed. Then the level itself showed up. It almost looked like the original Yoshi's House level, except the ground was stained with blood, and the area was covered with a hyper realistic fog of blood as well. Lightning was to be heard now and then, and the yellow tree-ish thing in Yoshi's, or rather, Satan's House had hyper realistic text written on it with blood, as if someone left a dying message there. It read the following...
"HI"
I started to shake with fear. The game ACTUALLY GREETED ME. Then I noticed that there was a message box in the level as usual, however, I was too scared to hit it, but I thought to myself that I came too far into the game to give up now. I gathered all the courage I had to hit the jump button. Then I heard the message box sound, and to my horror FOR ME, Again, FOR ME, the message box displayed:
"Do you have school today?
I hope you have school today.
p.s. this cartridge is full of BLOOD"
...At this point I was literally shitting my pants. The game was -communicating- with me. Then Mario turned towards me, then made an evil grin with his bloody teeth exposed, with things inbetween them. It is as if he ate... something... like, mushrooms. I was REALLY scared FOR ME so I decided to turn off my SNES and call it a day, but it wouldn't turn off. At this point I was pretty much convinced that the cartridge wasn't hacked, but it was haunted. The writing on the cartridge said that it wasn't haunted though. The Bowser cosplayer was a liar.
I tried to eject the cartridge but it wouldn't eject, it was as if something was pulling it into the SNES. I tried to unplug the SNES from its power source but the game still kept running. I tried to turn off my television but it wouldn't. Switching channels didn't work either. I unplugged the audio and video cables coming from the SNES, and even my television itself, but it still displayed the game. Then I started crying and grabbed a sledgehammer, and smashed my TV. All of the glass shards of the television displayed the school message from earlier. Then I realized that the message had a source, and looked at the cartridge. The cartridge had an evil grin drawn on it with a permanent marker with the "not haunted" message gone, but I don't remember modifying the appearance of my cartridge. Still shitting my pants, I smashed the cartridge along with my SNES. The excruciating image then disappeared from the glass shards, finally leaving me at peace.
The next week, I went to the flea market again to find the Bowser cosplayer who called himself "Satan". When I found him, I grabbed him by his throat and demanded to know what was going on. He simply told me "Dude, that cartridge had a hacked version of Super Mario World. It was a joke hack. Were you high on paranoia-inducing drugs or something?"