Super Mario Sunshine

My friend and I were thinking of some of the games we used to play as kids, usually the fun adventure types on Gamecube and PlayStation 2. We talked about many games, and in fact, one filled us with such nostalgia that we had to go on for the hunt for it. The game was Super Mario Sunshine. Not as classic as the ones before that one, but it just brought back so many memories for my friend and I. We went to our local game shops hoping to find a copy. Most of them we found to be sold out. So we got very desperate not only looking in game stores but also yard sales, music stores, Walmart, etc. etc. Luckily, a young man about the age of me and my friend had a copy he let us have.

We made our minds up to keep it at my house and my bud came over and have me and him play it most of the day. I noticed on the cover Mario had a blank expression not like the original. He wasn't grinning, and his mustache looked somewhat like it was about to fall off. I asked him about it and he had a questioning look on his face like "What are you talking about?" I also noticed there was no Nintendo license on the back or front. I just ignored the spooky details and payed him the cash, and drove me and my friend home to sit back and play our game.

When we got there my friend (Paul, I'll just call him by his name now) had to go use the bathroom. As my impatience built up to pop the disk in, it felt like ages since he'd gone to the bathroom. I didn't want to start without him knowing; we enjoyed this game together as kids. But my senses got to me and I just pushed the goddamn start button and prepared for the best...or at least I thought was the best.

I noticed the "Nintendo presents" did not come up with the text reading "Super Mario Sunshine" in very bold text. I was thinking I got jipped and this was some bootleg seeing as there was no "Nintendo presents" or license anywhere to be found. The usual "select your file" screen came up and I noticed the sky was morbid and almost demonic looking. The music was playing very slow as if the soundtrack was slowed down. All the environment noises were the same though so I really didn't know what the issue was. The way you were supposed to select a file was hit a block like in the classic Super Mario Bros. for NES when Mario hits a block for a coin or a mushroom. There was only one block and that was it. There was supposed to be three if I recall. At this point Paul walked out of the bathroom and the expression on his face was indescribable. I saw his pupils reach pure dark nothing.

He sat down and said, "What in the hell did you do?" I explained to him that all I did was turn it on and waited for him and that was basically it. He said "Well, it must be some glitch." I agreed and selected my file. There was no cutscene of Mario, the princess, and the toads (mushroom guys) on the plane going to Delfino Island. We were both confused about this situation and wondered what in the fuck was going on at this point. It started with Mario without FLUDD (Mario's water squirting device). It was just Mario in some demonic looking land. There were buildings about. You couldn't enter them, it would just give you damage if you approached the door. Still I kept going, though I kept asking myself why I was doing this. I arrived the start of what appeared to be the ocean except the water had a gruesome, red, blood-like color. It looked like it was beyond the Gamecube's graphics capabilities.

I mean, it had complex texturing. I wasn't even sure what was going on. Curious, I swam to the ocean's floor to see what was causing the blood ocean shit. I saw a Pinata at the bottom laying flat on its belly. I assumed it was dead, but as I swam down to it, there was this awful loud screeching noise (almost loud enough to break my fucking windows and damage our ears for life). I rushed for the remote, hurriedly turning the volume down. The screaming and groaning stopped but the terrifying soundtrack remained. I swam back up to the ocean and realized I was somewhere else. It was a little island. I heard the sound of Pianta children screaming.

I heard cries for help and on the shore were torn open corpses of the Noki children. I was outraged with what I was playing. I wanted to turn it off but I couldn't. I had to go in this island. I walked up on the land, and on every tree there was a Pianta man or woman hanging. They were all dead. The music on my TV got louder and more intense. The TV volume was only at 17 and this was insanely loud. If it was at 100 everything in my house would probably die. It got louder every step I took. I asked my friend what he thought. He said he was feeling sick to his stomach almost about to vomit on himself. I scooted a little away from him with wide eyes, not looking away from my television. There were rapid flashes of dead, rotten bodies. I couldn't tell if these were Americans. It looked urban, and somewhat far from what I could tell. Every picture that came up I hit pause and observed it for quite some time. My friend couldn't handle the 4th picture and he threw up.

All of the photos were insanely vivid and clear, like the camera was a full HD camera. Like they did this for a laugh. Murdering kids and women. It was sickening. I was walking around the island more and more and found myself teleported to Delfino Plaza. It looked normal. Everything was right for that first minute. I talked to the fellow citizens. They responded with the answers I remembered from the first time I played it. I was happy until I saw that face.

The face was on the statue in the middle of Delfino Plaza. It looked devastated, like it got the news that everything it's ever known had been killed. I approached it and got sucked into it. It made horrifying white noise. It got so terrifying that I tried shutting the game off. Faces started flashing on the black screen. They were worse than they were on the island, except these faces looked familiar. There were pictures of WWII and pictures of Hitler and his army behind him. There were pictures of Jesus, except blood was pouring down from his eyes and down his face. The last frames Jesus looked at the camera and at you. There were far more of these pictures. Pictures of old serial killer incidents, like with Dahmer and Manson. Some picture were of him sitting in his cell, sulking and hitting the walls.

There were pictures of the Pentagon. There were pictures of some abominations in some huge tube with scientists in the background holding clipboards. I was so fucking scared on the last picture... it was a picture of Paul smiling, and the text under him was black, and the picture faded off of him rotting. His flesh becoming weak to the air.

I looked at Paul and I saw nothing but tears come from his eyes. He went to the bathroom to throw up repeatedly. I called my other friend Jason to come over and look at this. It was on pause of Paul's rotten face. Skin was hanging off of it and his eyes looked like they were about to explode. When Jason got there he freaked out also (even though he'd never played this game, he knew Mario never had graphic violence). "Why the fuck am I in this? What the fuck is going on?" Paul asked. He went to go lay down, whispering that he couldn't take it anymore. I unpaused the game and it finished with the graphic picture of his face falling to bits. After it was done, it went to a short cutscene of Mario laying on just a single bed. Everything else was nothing it was just black, like space without stars. Mario got up, looked at the camera and cried, whimpering over and over. It zoomed into a picture of Princess Peach laying in a blood filled bathtub with her throat completely unattached from her torso. She kept twitching like she wasn't fully dead yet. Mario's crying got louder and it all ended with Mario saying "Goodbye" and the game immediately shut off. Our eyes were wide. Our hearts were beating fast. I was so scared I had nightmares for days thinking of poor Princess Peach helpless to get out of that situation, and Mario's sulks were imprinted into my head forever. Never will I buy a copy from a unlicensed brand ever again. Although the Nintendo Incorporated text was at the bottom right of the screen and it flashed really fast as the pictures were moving on.

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