Nightmare Creatures Hack
I have a love of the horror genre in general—movies, games, stories... I've even written a few scary short stories. But I feel that when we can interact with our fears, they are so much more real. Unfortunately, most of the games in the genre are just shooters with zombies in them.
Well, about five months ago, I heard about Pokémon Creepy Black while listening to Mr. CreepyPasta on YouTube. I was intrigued. Being a computer science student, I knew that someone could program a game to do all of the things the story described.
I began to research the art of hacking ROMs. It was much easier than I initially suspected, and soon I was creating my own creepy hacked games. The first two were simple, and not really very good.
But the last one...The last one just poured out of my fingers. It was pure inspiration, that divine moment when the world falls away and your conscious mind falls away. I must have written for about five hours none stop.
Then the world was back, and I was exhausted. The game wasn't finished, but I was proud of it so far. I went to sleep, forgetting to shut down my computer.
The next morning my computer was not only on, it had my webcam recording. The wireless antenna was off, so the footage wasn't going anywhere. I decided to check it out.
I was astonished. The video opens with me, looking into the camera with half opened eyes, before I open some more applications. Nothing really sinister happened. I was sleep walking, which was strange, sure. But there wasn't any demonic laughing or anything.
I decided to see what I had done, and checked to see what the most recently opened application was. It was my hacked ROM code.
The whole thing was a jumbled mess, and I couldn't tell what parts did what. I'm a piss-poor programmer when I sleep apparently. I was going to undo everything but then I decided to see if the code would compile, just to save myself some time.
It did so flawlessly. So I decided to give it a test run. The familiar N64 logo appeared, and my modded game opened. Nightmare Creatures.
For those that don't know, nightmare creatures is an old horror game that was rated M. It concerned a conspiracy in London. The came was spooky on its own, with the distorted growling and surprising monsters..
But in my sleep I had added so much more. It started off fairly innocuously, with the music randomly slowing, and speeding up. Sometimes it would play backwards for a few moments before returning to its normal procession.
After the first level, the monsters began acting strangely. Some wouldn't attack and would instead stare not at the character, but toward the camera. Others, would follow the correct animations, but would be blurry, the same creature overlaid on itself, but reacting a second after its doppelganger. Bits of text would pop up, but were indecipherable.
Eventually, I reached the end of the second level. The note that should appear there was altered. It simply said, "We are watching." When the note left the screen one of the bug monsters was staring into the screen. It was much larger than Ignatius (the male character of the game). Before I could react, the screen faded and I was in the next level.
I shivered a little. Sleepwalking me is a genius, apparently. I had never seen this level before, and I guess my sleeping self somehow had time to code it.
This level was choked with darkness, and it was hard to navigate. There were no monsters to be found, but the tell-tale sound of walking, growling beasts echoed from my speakers. I eventually found my way to a small room, with a thin man inside.
Text appeared. "We want control". the man stepped forward. as my cooling fan started to whirr loudly. I tried to get Ignatius to move, but he was unresponsive. The sounds were growing louder. "We are everywhere. We will have control."
Then another text box appeared. It seemed to be from Ignatius. "I'm sorry. I can't stop them anymore." The screen went black for an instant and then flashed back to light, filled with monsters tearing at Ignatius.
"Game Over."
I couldn't wait to release the game onto the web. The malicious part of me wanted to upload it as the original nightmare creatures, and let people step into a cliche Creepypasta in real life. So, I did.
I won't tell you where I posted it. It sure as hell isn't here. No, you have to find it yourself. Be warned though, the game digs into your mind. It has been about a month since I played it and every so often I still have a nightmares of distant, growling voices drawing closer to my sleeping body.
Have fun.
Credited to Stephen Grimm
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