Mostly Harmless: Difference between revisions

 

It was another one of those days where my homework was all done and I had no idea what to do for 3 hours until my brother got back from work. After sitting on the couch and talking to the dogs got old (which wasn't that long), I went on YouTube for a while. Somehow I went from watching Spongebob YouTube Poops to some weird thing called Ode to New Spongebob to a video about Sonic.exe to a review of Michael Jackson's Moonwalker on SEGA Genesis. It looked awful, but I couldn't help but think about how funny it would be to go around killing bad guys while hearing Beat It, so downloaded it along with a Genesis emulator. One that was on the Nintendo Wii, might I add. Believe it or not, it was just as bad as it seemed in the video. I proceeded to get some of the better Genesis games like Toejam and Earl, Earthworm Jim, Space Harrier, Battletoads and Double Dragon, and a bunch of others I can't recall. I skipped over Sonic the Hedgehog, though. As a diehard Nintendo fan(boy), that blue porcupine was the bane of my existence. Eventually I just had to give it a try, because what's the point of having a Mega Drive emulator without Sonic? That's like getting a Nintendo 64 to play Superman. I downloaded it, and instantly loved it. The graphics were all nice and colorful, the music was very Genesisy for lack of a better word, and the gameplay was addicting. It was fun watching him roll around at the speed of blast processing. I played the heck out of it until I knew where almost every enemy was. To up the challenge a bit, I looked around to see if there were any ROM hacks available. There was one called Sonic Megamix, but it looked boring, so I kept going. I found another that caught my attention by the name alone. It was called "An ordinary Sonic ROM hack". Ordinary? Clearly the title was supposed to be ironic and the hack was anything but ordinary, but how? Did it add some super cool new ability? Would the gameplay be completely different? Could I play as Mario, Simon Belmont, or something like that? Or, did it maybe show something so twisted and evil that it wouldn't even be possible to describe? After having watched Ode to New Spongebob, I tried to push that last possibility out of my mind. The question still persisted: what did this game contain? Maybe the author was being honest and it really was an ordinary hack. Clinging to this possibility, I renamed the file to "Mostly Harmless", after the 2 words that replaced Ford Prefect's 15 years of hard work on Earth. (Fun was definitely not infinite with InfiniDim Enterprises.) I kept my distance from the game, but it was always there, beckoning me to just play 2 levels of it. Eventually I said, "What's the worst that could happen?" and loaded the file.

Anyway, my favorite fighter became Mario. Yeah. Are you surprised? Sonic's number one rival, save for Dr. Robotnik? I would pit him against Sonic on the Perfect Chaos stage I had installed. Beating the heck out of him was better than ever. "Yeah, knock him out!" I would think to myself. "Who's better now, Sanic the Derphog?" I was beating Sonic inside the setting of his own game! But then I paused for a second. It just didn't seem right to bash the one who had given me a life-changing experience. Granted, it was a lesson learned the hard way, and it was, again, through a video game, but that would be like slapping your football coach or drill sergeant. I stopped the match and fought Samus instead. I needed cape practice anyways. As I fought, I kept thinking about fighting against Dark Samus from the Metroid Prime series. I found a suitable suit (like what I did there?), downloaded it, then extracted it. Unfortunately, right as I was about to put it in the game, I had to leave for marching band practice. Yeah, that's another thing I have to mention. I started getting more involved with after-school clubs and things like Boy Scouts. I could tell there would be too many opportunities out there to handle, and not all of them good ones, so I took as many as I felt I would like. Life was too short. Sure, I was a god, but not the immortal kind. Anyway, as soon as I got back, I set out to finish what I started. When I went into the folder I extracted, I noticed there was another folder without a title inside. Two files were present within. There was a readme and one named "So Long, and Thanks for All the Fun.gen", an obvious spin on the dolphins' last words before leaving Earth: "So long, and thanks for all the fish", which were misinterpreted as an attempt to double backflip through a hoop while whistling The Star-Spangled Banner. (I am such a compulsive liar.) I opened up the readme first. It said:

 

 

I just want to say that I'm real damn proud of you. You learned way more than I expected you to while keeping your friends, life, and sanity intact. I have tried to do the same on others before, and some didn't take my teachings so great. Remember those "heavy metal suicides" of the 80s? Do you still think that Ozzy and Judas Priest had anything to do with those? They didn't. I think I did it on a cart of Ninja Gaiden for the NES. As you would imagine, the gameplay was slightly different. It's been a while, but I think there was a boss that you couldn't beat no matter what, who was nailed to the wall in the shape of a cross. My objective was to make it clear that I could come in any form at any time, but it didn't quite work, mainly due to graphical limitations. The subjects I tested found themselves unable to stop thinking about the music I put in there, so they figured listening to their favorite bands would help it. It didn't. Keep in mind, this was way before the invention of the creepypasta, and people weren't used to seeing or hearing anything scarier than Nightmare on Elm Street. This was on the third day, when their moods got especially bad and the hints of suicide in the songs only enhanced the mood. I suppose they figured, "If this doesn't work, what will?", and pulled the trigger. I had to flee the scene before anyone put 2 and 2 together and figured out that my game could have had a hand in it, and thus, people blamed Tomorrow's Dream. It's been about 30 years since then. Technology has improved, making video games more popular than ever. I tried it through a Sonic ROM on one other kid who was just like you, only not as bright. He couldn't decipher anything I was trying to teach, and decided to upload it to the Internet as a prank. I quickly gave up trying to get through to him, and wanted to possess his computer and take the game down, but I figured "What's the point?" My plan was to distribute the game anyway. Wow. This has gone over 2 kilobytes, so I'll leave you with this: You're a good person, Mike, everything I couldn't be. Load the .gen file into your Genesis emulator. I think you'll enjoy it more than my first game.

 

I thought about that all. It made perfect sense, but I couldn't help but think that it was yet another prank by the programmer. Against my better judgement, I loaded up the file, expecting a display of absolute horror, and was again disappointed by what I got. Sonic appeared in his ring yet again, and the screen went to static like usual. It subsided, revealing exactly what I didn't expect. Sonic looked something like a combination of his werewolf appearance in Sonic Unleashed and Tempest from the Heroes of Olympus series of books. His entire body was covered in hair, all of it a mess, as though he was having a bad fur day. As for the color, it was just one shade lighter than black with a yellow streak down the middle of his head. It reminded me of something made using SonicParadox's guide to creating Sonic fan characters. That made me chuckle a bit. His eyes were marble white and completely blank. No blood here. He also faced the right instead of the left, sort of like Sonic's mirror image. He had his viciously sharp teeth showing and his hands raised as though he was about to attack something. He didn't move at all, not even to blink. He looked fearsome, but not sadistic and creepy like Sonic.exe. The background reminded me of the world behind the door from Super Mario Bros. 2. It was colored in with shades of blue and purple, as if it had suddenly turned to night, but more sinister-looking. The strangest of all was the title. Instead of saying "Sonic the Hedgehog", it now said, "ENJOY". So far, it looked like I would have to take the game up on that. I went into the game with high hopes. For the first time, it delivered what I wanted. To begin with, there was a character select screen, very much like...

Our "hero" then went on to live a good life. (I put that in quotes, because, really, he only saved his own arse.) He grew up to become a band director at *NAME AND ADDRESS WITHHELD*, but he did occasionally write novels, and was noted for his outlandish way of looking at everything ("'Am I inside the house, or outside of the world?'", says a character in one of these books) and ability to joke about almost anything ("'What, are you trying to interpret art?'" was the response.) When asked where he draws inspiration, he always answered, "Well, I do play video games a lot, if that answers anything." Most of the time, it didn't, but he always remembered, and so did I. His friend C.C. had to move because her parents got jobs on the east coast, so he ended up marrying whom we'll call Blinky because she had this uncanny ability to twitch her eyelids. They had 2 kids, a son and a daughter, who seemed to be the opposites of their parents. They shared the same good nature, but that's about it. Blinky liked modern pop music and reading, while the daughter listened to bands such as Godsmack or Mötley Crüe and liked movies. The son had no idea what he was doing with a computer, but that was right up Mike's alley. There were more differences, but you get the idea. But wait. Who's writing this right now? Have I been stalking Mike? Well, yes, to a certain extent. But who am I? The answer is quite simple, really.

 

 

Looking back on it, it's really quite amazing what a video game can do to a person. Would his life have gone differently if I never interfered? I don't know. One thing is for sure, though; Mike definitely changed. I was going along my regular possession route when I somehow ended up at his computer. There was a file named Mostly Harmless.txt, which is what you're reading right now. I figured, "Why upload the experiment when I can upload the results?" After I did, I stuck around for a bit. I did some observation and wrote the monologue above. Eventually, Mike noticed something was up with his computer, and did a scan. I was being careless that day, and even the most broken security software could have noticed that sonic.exe was making changes to files. To avoid being erased, I hurried out, accidentally corrupting his copy of An Ordinary Sonic ROM Hack on the way. I panicked and took it with me. But then I tripped over 7-zip and landed in his disc drive, dropping the file in the inserted CD. When he wasn't looking, I brought the CD with me too. After flying through the window and catching my breath, I realized that if I stuck around, someone would eventually find the CD and figure out what I was doing, so I created a portal at complete random and threw it in. After a few days, I realized that wasn't a smart idea, so I went to the same spot and went through the portal. I ended up in some small town, and later found out I was in the year 2010. I looked all over, but didn't see the CD anywhere. I've heard reports of people actually playing what's on the disc, but I haven't found anything. Can anyone help me find it? I think the file on it might have gotten renamed to Sonic.exe.

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