Toad is a character from the Super Mario Bros. franchise whom is often seen as a unlikable character by many. Nintendo never seemed to acknowledge the toadstool very much and often restricted him to a supporting character or one of the many Mushroom Retainers, being a playable character (in the main games) was a rare occurrence and he had only starred once in an obscure spin-off puzzle game titled Wario's Woods.
I often felt some sort of sympathy for the guy, as he was the whipping boy of the fandom with the reasoning for his hatred being a identity crisis; being mistaken for the seven Mushroom Retainers in the original game. Toad's first real appearance was in Super Mario Bros. 2.
There were rumors of a lost Mario game starring the mushroom guy, with very limited information from those who claim to have played and completed the obscure platformer. I assumed that it was just a lost hack that got deleted by the original hacker, but still decided to look for this lost treasure.
I located one of the original players and communicated with them via the use of Steam's chat feature. I started off with a casual discussion which involved the Mario games and how underrated of a character Toad is before eventually asking him about the aforementioned, vague game. He immediately sent a ROM file under the the name "toadsadventure.zip" and warned me that the game isn't what it appears to be before going offline.
My curiosity was at its peak as I downloaded the file and opened it, I was ready to play the ROM. Judging by the user's warning, I assumed that "toadsadventure" was to be a horror game of some sorts.
The title screen opened up and depicted Toad running through a grassy field with blue skies and tall mountains in the distant background. The name "Toad's Adventure" took up a quarter of the screen in the font, color and style of Super Mario World. In the bottom right corner of the screen, depicted in white text, were the words "© Nintendo".
I initially thought that the game was some sort of hack, not an official, lost game by Nintendo. To my surprise, there didn't seem to be anything wrong with the game in terms of creepiness.
Almost everything looked as if it came from Mario, except the Goombas. The Goombas looked different from their usual brown mushroom-ed figures, instead they were bright orange and were depicted with large semi-circle shaped eyes and teeth-less smiley mouths. Though they looked strange, I found them cute and assumed that Nintendo was trying something new.
I proceeded onward by starting the game, which sent me straight into the first level.
The background was the same as the title screen, the blue skies, tall colorful mountains and green grass. Bright red bricks and yellow question blocks were the norm throughout the level, as expected.
Toad walked into the scene and I was given control of him, his controls and 'skills' were that of Mario's. The only difference being that Toad was much faster at the cost of lower jump height. He showed a rather disgruntled expression, which was rather strange.
1-1 itself was simple enough, with little to no signs of difficulty despite the change in Toad's running/jumping mechanics. At one point I almost fell down a gap, but managed to avoid my seemingly inevitable doom with the use of wall-jumping which I came across by mere accident.
I came across the cheery enemies, but strangely enough I couldn't kill them, instead I'd bounce on their heads and they'd remain hopping along the grass. It was something I found odd, but I didn't think much of it.
The collectables weren't coins, instead they were mushrooms with the color scheme of Toad's cap (white with red spots). There were no power-ups, but considering that Toad isn't seen as a real hero, it made sense in a way. However, this rendered the question mark blocks useless.
The music was a bright and cheerful, upbeat tune which I found to be pretty catchy for Mario standards. It used Super Mario World-esque instrumentals and was a 15-second loop, though it appeared to go out of sync after a while.
I completed the level by collecting all the mushrooms, as this appeared to be an important element of the game.
A cutscene played in which the bothered shroom headed into a mushroom-shaped house, which I presumed was his, everything went silent for a couple of seconds before Toad exited and walked to the side of the screen.
The second level, 1-2, looked different. The blocks, the grass, the background, everything looked slightly less colorful. The enemies took on a darker tone and looked less cheerful than before with neutral expressions in place of their former smiles. The soundtrack took on a similar neutral tone with lower-pitched notes and padded out bricks, and lasted longer than the previous track.
Toad looked slightly less angered and showed a similar expression to the enemies.
The world strangely felt more empty than it did previously. The dense amount of enemies added on to this thought and left me curious as to how this game would fold.
I finished the level, collecting the needed mushrooms along the way, and it cut to another cutscene involving Toad entering his house and performing a silent off-screen task. The only difference was the fact that like the level I just completed, the environments were less cheery than usual. I heard a faint buzzing sound and was disturbed as I raised the volume a tidbit to hear it.
Afterwards, I proceeded onward to the next level; 1-3.
At this point, I was starting to notice a pattern as the environments, ambience, and enemies were more depressing and depressed than usual (and were far slower, taking numerous a decade of seconds to reach one side of the platform to the other). The somber, catchy "piano" tune set the mood. Strangely, Toad's expression was that of happiness; a curved smile. Why was he being so cheerful in a rather depressing environment?
There were less enemies in the level, to the point where they almost didn't exist. Not like it mattered, as they didn't seem to do any sort of harm.
Another thing to point out was the damage done to the environments and blocks as I went through these progressively darker levels. There were noticable cracks and wear and tear in the blocks, withered grass and flowers, the useless question mark blocks were non-existent at this point, and the clouds took on a more sinking, "broken" feature.
The third cutscene was like the previous two, the buzzing sound was louder and I could hear faint whispers which was starting to make me question the whole point of these seemingly pointless moments in the game.
1-4, was when things started to get interesting.
The game appeared to have been "frozen", I was still able to transverse through the much darker world but nothing moved or did anything, there was no music to keep me occupied and Toad seemed to run faster and jumped slightly higher than usual. Why was Toad smiling so much? Did he like the darker worlds? Was he more satisfied with the darker worlds?
Near the end of the level I found a lone Toad, his face was turned away from the screen and left me expecting a jumpscare of sorts... but then I remembered that nothing was sentient or moving in this world and so I ran past the strange toadstool.
At this point, finding enemies was comparable to finding star power-ups in the original Mario games. If I ever did so, they'd sit in one spot, completely still and un-moving with a really upset expression on the verge of crying.
The predictable cutscene was different, as Toad briefly went into his house and came out with a box. What was shown in the box was left to the player's mystery as Toad exited the screen, the box in his hands and a unnerving grin on his face.
The fifth level, 1-5, was the surface of the game's dark side.
The enemies were gone, nowhere to be seen. Everything felt completely empty with no brick blocks around and a startling, eerie repeated buzzing sound being the only audible soundtrack. Needless to say, I could now understand why the player warned me not to experience this disturbing romhack/lost "Nintendo" game.
This left me wondering, was Toad's Adventure really a lost, almost undiscovered Nintendo game? Or just some ROM hack that had no true purpose than to serve as a game starring the underrated toadstool character?
I still trudged onward, as I noticed a new hazard; unstable, crumbling platform blocks which would send Toad into the damp, dirty river of water below.
Toad looked absolutely insane, as his grin from the previous cutscene became wider and more sadistic than before. I can only assume that his mind is racing like hell from the dark environments coming up ahead.
I finished the level and feared the next cutscene as I watched Toad pull a large sack towards a pit... which he proceeded to throw the bag into. Whatever was in that bag leaves me disturbed and rather confused.
The sixth level, had already proven that this wasn't anything that Nintendo would come up with. The buzzing was changed to some sort of heartbeat soundtrack, it was obviously unnerving and almost felt like it was going at the same rate as my current heartbeats.
Toad was essentially in pure Hell at this point, as the background depicted a darker, edgier depiction of Bowser's world. It didn't look like anything you'd see from a Mario game and went in contrast to the friendlier worlds beforehand.
The most disturbing part of the whole level though, was Toad himself. His crazy expression remained the same, but he was making grunting/growling noises and showed signs of distortion as he would sometimes clip or disappear for split seconds as he trans-versed through the Mordor that was 1-6.
I completed the level, as the next cutscene depicted Toad Town. Everything was empty, with notable signs of broken windows and abandoned items lying around. Needless to say, it gave me the same creepy feeling as before. I could only assume that Toad was behind this mess, and this led me to believe what was really in that bag.
Sadly, the game didn't end here.
1-7 was even worse than the previous course, Toad was growling like an animal infected with rabies and started to occasionally crawl on the ground. He looked deranged and out-of-sorts, his cap was showing signs of decay and his vest, pants, and shoes looked worn and nearly torn to shreds.
The environments were almost pitch black at this point with the beastly-like, clothes-less Toad and the unstable, worn platforms being the only visible objects on the level. The heartbeats were thumping faster and a faint low pitch chord accompanied the eerie soundtrack.
The cutscene that played after completing the level depicted nothing but a black screen, with heavy breathing and growling being the only audiable sounds. It was, unsurprisingly, disturbing and made my stomach churn.
The eighth level seemed to be the bottom layer of the game's dark side, the background, environment, and level in general were pitch black with a beastly, on-fours Toad hissing and screaming as he ran blindly through the completely dark area. There didn't appear to be any hazards of sorts and the soundtrack was complete silence.
This was the longest level, as Toad scampered through the stage for around six minutes before reaching the end.
The final cutscene showed the newly-transformed beast that was once a toadstool, Toad, scampering around the hellish, pitch black landscape that was once the Mushroom Kingdom. The beast screeched once more as he succumbed to the darkness... the game crashed.
I was petrified and utterly confused at what I just played, I just completed and sat through a ROM hack... a lost Nintendo game?
Needless to say, I passed on the ROM hack to another user.
This has to be known.