Mario Bros: Too Late
September 25, 2005
Probably one of the best games on the NES is Super Mario Bros. Even though this game came out years before I was born, I spent endless hours trying to speedrun all the levels, trying to collect all the coins that I could find, and that sense of accomplishment when you finally found Princess Toadstool, AKA Peach. Super Mario Bros. always had me coming back to it, trying to relearn my skills at the game. I played it until I finally lost it. Of course, I had my other Mario Bros games, but I was missing the original after years of years of playing the side-scrolling games. I wanted to relive it, and I didn't want to download an emulator for it. I wanted an actual copy of the game. I probably shouldn't have been so desperate.
I was walking down the street when I noticed a dark grey cartridge on a garage sale desk. I stopped in my tracks. Before I knew it, I was two dollars poorer, and I had the game, 'Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt' in my hand. I put it in my back pocket, and walked home again. Once there, I set up my parents' NES, popped the game in, and got ready for a nostalgia trip. For some reason, it skipped the choice selection screen and went straight to Mario Bros, which was okay, since that was the only reason I got the game. The game played fine, until the first castle.
When I hit the axe and Bowser fell into lava, the cutscene triggered, and in the chamber that the Toad says, "Our princess is in another castle." the toad wasn't there.
The text still popped up though, but it seemed it was doubled, like two text boxes appearing at once.
In world 2, the textures started to smear, making it hard to see what was in front of Mario. With hardship, I completed the five levels and moved on to the castle. The texture smearing was the worst here. Sometimes, Mario would suddenly shrink or die, the game thinking that he was colliding with an enemy. I managed to run to the room with Bowser, but he wasn't there for some reason.
I ran to the axe, and in the cutscene where you meet toad again, the text was unreadable. Two textboxes were displaying at the same time. A few seconds later, the splash screen for world 3-1 came up, but didn't provide any information but my health was at zero, even though my health was at five in the previous area.
3-1 was blank. Mario seemed to be floating in midair, and there was no HUD. I moved him forward, and the game emitted a high pitched buzzing noise. I jumped, and I desperately searched for my remote, since the volume buttons on the TV were broken.
After looking for about thirty seconds, I gave up, hoping the noise would stop soon. I moved on, and the buzzing faded out, with the castle theme fading in, getting slightly faster and higher pitched as I went along. Abruptly, a picture of Bowser hopped on the screen, and as soon as it went away, Bowser was behind me in hot pursuit, throwing his hammers at me and hopping while chasing me.
I hit the wall of the level, and Bowser caught me, a split second later showing a distorted pixelatated face of Bowser, red flowing out of his mouth, eyes bloodshot. The screen cut to black, and a line of text appeared on the screen, saying, "Give up, Jeremy?" I was amazed. How did the game know my name?
The screen cut to a level where you have the Lakitu throwing the spike turtles at you. There wasn't a HUD here either, just Mario and the level and there was something else as well. All of the music was playing at once. The overworld theme, the underground theme, the castle theme, the water theme, all playing at once. I progressed through the level, jumping over Pirhanna Plants, evading all of the enemies until I jumped a little to early over a Pirhanna plant and hit it. The screen cut to black, the speakers boomed out a loud noise, like one of those big bass drums.
The line of text popped up again, saying this time, "Give up Jeremy? You can't run forever."
The screen cut to another castle level, but no enemies were in sight. The music had completely stopped, and the HUD was back; I had five live again and the counter was counting down from 50 seconds. I ran to see if I could beat the timer, and after those few steps forward, the level seemed to repeat. Only flat ground was in sight. At the 10 second mark, I reached where Bowser was, and he was on the ground; as if cowering. Naturally, I hit the axe, and Bowser fell into the lava, and he didn't just fall as usual, he sank into the lava. The surface of it turning a burnt brown as Bowser sank. He did animations that were never in the game in the first place, like squirming to get out of the lava, and finally reaching out his hand as he was devoured by the lava.
The cutscene continued, and Mario walked right to Toad, who was finally there, and the text above him said, "Why didn't you give up? Now your punishment will be more severe."
The screen cut to a very pixelated picture of... me? The picture turned less and less pixely, and was displayed in high detail. My face was slowly being distorted, the pigment of my skin turning pale, scars scattered about my face. A big chunk was missing from my cranium, and the whites of my eyes were flushed out to red. My limbs were being torn off, no blood, but definitely disturbing.
Finally, with a crack out of the speakers, my head popped off. Right after, the screen cut to black with a line of text saying:
"That's what you get, for destroying my kin."
The two words, 'Too Late' were fading onto the screen, the font looking like it was written in blood, disturbing music playing in the background with murmuring in the foreign language, violins tremoloing, rising in the chromatic scale. I ran to the system and turned it off. As I looked into the reflection of the screen, I saw a man, supposedly behind me. I looked, and no one was there. It must've been my imagination.
—
"That's where the journal entry ends," said the detective. "The night before he died."
Mr. Lockwood wiped his eyes of tears, and managed to say, "This man killed my son. I want him behind bars."
"We are doing the best we can," said the detective.
"He will be found soon enough." He left, leaving Mr. Lockwood alone. Lockwood looked toward the TV, looking at the reflection of the same man who killed his son.
Credited to Takarashi282
Originally uploaded on January 5, 2013
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