6-4

Author's note: Just a note beforehand: This is my first Pasta, so feel free to give criticism where it lacks in quality.

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The Pasta

My name's Jim Harris, I'm a regular member on an emulation forum which has been shut down for unknown reasons which have been only told to the administrators. While the forum was on, I got a message from a regular on the forum regarding a file called "2515212391111.z64", which has not been tested yet. He attached the file to the PM, sending it to me and telling me to give it a test run. Excited as I am to be one of the few selected to test the rom, I began the download and eventually managed to get it onto my emulator.

The rom happened to be a renamed version of Super Mario 64, so far everything has seemed normal on the title screen. When I had come to the save page there were three saves present in the game, one with four stars, another with nine stars and the final one had five stars in it. Eager to test this rom out, I chose my file and proceeded to the courtyard area ingame.

When I came out the pipe, I noticed that the Lakitu that normally held the camera never arrived and that the dialog box at the beginning was blank. Despite this "Error" the camera still followed Mario around, though the icon showing you which camera type has also gone missing. When I entered the castle, everything seemed normal at this point, the dialog, the characters, most the things in Peach's Castle were actually identical to those in Super Mario 64, so I took a sigh of relief that this wouldn't turn out to be glitched for the entire game.

The first thing I decided to do was go to the Bob-Omb Battlefield. On the star select screen, only one star was present, which was labeled "a". My chest began to tighten at this point forward and once I entered the level, I realised why the rom was referred to as mysterious. The Level was identical to the Bob-Omb Battlefield with several exceptions, the first difference is the sky, which was the same one generally used in Lava Stages, which made the level appear unsettling. The second difference is the dialog that the NPCs say. All the NPCs in the level now say "Turn Back", and nothing else. This made my veins go cold and caused my anxiety to rise a fair bit. I swore at the game while I talked to the third friendly Bob-Omb and it looked at me through the screen, so I decided to run as soon as possible. By the time I reached the mountain, I knew something was wrong with this rom. The mountain was now a flat plateau with debris, with a single sign placed in the middle again saying "Turn back". I had instead decided to collect the red coins, instead of having to go and do anything else. By the time I had collected the red coins, the level ended and I got back to Peach's Castle.

When I had come back to the overworld Castle area, a message saying "KEY" appeared on screen and caused the game to glitch. Mario's model was then deformed, his limbs overly stretched and twisted and some of his body parts have been enlarged. The other NPCs in the castle have had the same effect and made me begin to sweat. By the time I went up to the door for the boss, I realised I could actually go through to battle Bowser for the first time. Jumping into the trap-pit, I was set to challenge Bowser, despite the deformed limbs I had got from the "KEY" message.

When I entered the stage, it instantly took me to the arena, where Bowser had got the same effect ad the other NPCs and had a much smaller shell and twisted, elongated limbs. When the battle began, a dialog box saying "You're too late to help me" popped up and the battle begun. Once it started, I had no control over my character and once Bowser's mangled body rammed me, I lost all my lives and the Game Over screen came up, despite the fact I clearly had six lives. The screen went black and my computer froze. I had to force it to turn off and once I did, I laid back and wiped the sweat off my face, I had enough of the rom and decided to set off to sleep, to keep the thought away from me.

By the next day, I recycled and deleted the rom permanently. I contacted the admin about the deformed models, the Turn Back dialogs and the missing Lakitu, he claimed it was only a hack, however with the Bob-Omb staring into my screen at my face, this may not be the case.

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Credited to DisturbedCrow
Originally uploaded on June 23, 2012

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