I’m pretty sure everybody of you will think: Yay another Gaming-Creepypasta full of clichés. Well keep on reading and see for yourself.
My Story[]
My story doesn’t begin with a Game I bought on eBay, some suspicious corner Gameshop or at a Garage Sale. My story begins with me cleaning up the attic, finding my old SNES and the few games I had for it. My favorite was always “The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past”. I don’t know why but when I was younger I played the hell out of this game. As I stood there in my attic I didn’t know what to do. Shall I keep it for good old memories sake, sell it or just throw it away.
I decided to keep the SNES with its games. I even plugged the console into the TV so I could send Link on this adventure one more time. As I looked onto the cartridges I noticed that they were really dusty, although I cleaned the attic every year. The cartridges were up there for like 10 years. I cleaned the cartridges one after another so they can work properly.
As I then put the Zelda cartridge into the SNES and turned it on I was surprised that the old console could still run this smooth after all those years. I took the controller and skipped the Intro. As I got to the-character-selection screen there was one save-file. I decided to delete my old save and start a new game. Although I didn’t play the game for 10 years I still knew every single trick I used to have the easiest game. I played until the first temple in the shadow-world.
That’s where things began to get strange. As I was struggling my way through the maze in front of the temple I noticed that this monkey, which I needed to open the gate at the temple wasn’t appearing. I thought that this is strange but I thought maybe there was a bit of dust in the cartridge, which didn’t let this trigger happen.
I saved the game, took out the game and gave it a good blow. I put it back in and wanted to load the game up again. But the character selection screen gave me a choice of two files. But none of both was mine.
I just loaded up the one which was the one further ahead in the adventure. The game loaded and I don’t know why but it gave me the shivers as the game loaded the game in the shadow-world. I mean I saw this place like hundreds of times but this time it was kind of strange. Link stood with his face to the sun, which was strange because normally if you load up a game Link looks into the direction of the camera (or down if you want). It was silent and I couldn’t move Link.
Then a textbox appeared with a binary-code inside it.
The binary:
01001000 01101111 01110111 00100000 01100011 01101111 01110101 01101100 01100100 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01100110 01101111 01110010 01100111 01100101 01110100 00100000 01100001 01100010 01101111 01110101 01110100 00100000 01101101 01100101 00111111
I was interested what was standing on my screen right now so I wrote it down on a piece of paper, which I put onto my desk. Then after the text box disappeared the full melody of the ocarina played. I always loved this song (I’m trying to learn it on my ocarina as well). After the song ended the screen cut to black and returned to the main-screen. I pressed start to get forward to the character selection screen to see what the other save was saying but my plan was about to fail. The screen showed me my save file again but no other ones.
I wanted to play but I wanted to know what the binary said even more. I googled for a translator and typed in the binary. As I was waiting for my answer something gave me the shivers again. As I was done with shaking and wondering why I looked to my screen and was shocked what stood there.
“How could you forget about me?”
I was confused. Did Link ask me that? I wasn’t sure but it would be possible. I spent hours on that game to let Link finish his adventure every time. And then I suddenly wasn’t playing anymore. I forgot about the SNES. I forgot about Link. And now Link asked me how I could forget him.
In this night I could only sleep barely because I had nightmares. I dreamt that I was on this glade where the boy with the ocarina was in the game. I had my ocarina in the dream and was able to play my beloved song of the game. Then someone approached me. I looked up and saw it was Link crying. He asked me again how I could have forgotten about him, but I found no answer. I was near tears when I looked into his eyes. But as he got no answer and I just stood there without any weapons it looked like he saw his chance in revenge for all the years of separation. As he pulled out his sword I was about to dodge, but he was able to make an incision with his sword in my left arm. I woke up instantly because of the shock I thought. I looked onto my left arm and there was a scar, where Link got me with his sword in my dream. I was sure I never had that scar. After this I fell asleep again. This time without a nightmare. After work the day after the incident (the incident was on a Thursday) I got myself ready for an evening with my best friend in our favorite club. As I was looking for clothes the scar began to hurt. I thought nothing of that and just proceeded with dressing. I got my best necklace and took a final look of it with the black glass on my dresser, which can be used as a mirror. As I looked into that piece of glass I noticed a shadow behind me. I turned around but there was nothing. Strange I thought but when I looked into the glass again there was nothing but me to see.
I was a bit nervous but doubt it quickly. However I went to the club to meet with my friend. The first thing he asked me was: “Where did get this scar from? Wait. The better question is ‘Since when do you have this scar?’ It’s fully healed but the cut can still be seen. How can this be? You didn’t have had it 5 hours ago on our shift.” I told him to wait and that I tell him the full story later that evening.
Later then, as we arrived at his home (His home is closer to the club so I can get sober there after a long night) I told him the story. I could tell from his eyes, that he didn’t believe me. “Your drunk”, he said. But none of us drank only a drop of alcohol that night. As he realized that we both were sober he began to think that I only had a bad nightmare. But this wouldn’t explain why I got this scar on my arm. However we didn’t continue thinking and got to sleep. As I got up in the middle of the night I went to the toilet and came down the hallway across this mirror hanging as always there.
But this time it was strange. As I walked by it seemed like 2 people were walking next to each other in the mirror. I took a step back and looked into the mirror. There was this shadow again. It was blurry but I could figure out it was a person standing next to me. This scar began to hurt again. It seemed like this shadow was Link leaking into our world to get his revenge. I felt breathing in my neck. It was cold like ice. I stood there for felt five minutes, figuring what’s going on. Finally I decided to look away for a second because I thought saw something moving on my right. As soon as I looked back to the mirror, the shadow was gone. I went to the bathroom to get some cold water to my face so I could think better. But nothing else happened that night.
I went back to the living room to go to sleep again. The next morning I told my friend what happened. It seemed like something haunted me. Anyway we decided to meet up again in the evening at the same club. We split up in the city. As I was walking alone I got the creeps. Like something or someone chased me. I got home finally and spent the day watching TV and playing PC-Games. Then in the evening I dressed up again and checked again in my black glass. I almost got a heart attack. I saw Link. Like in my dream. He stood there with his sword pointing at me. Shocked I took a step back, tripped over my chair and hit the back of my head so awfully on my desk that I was bleeding. It wasn’t a big wound so I got a shower again to wash the blood out of my hair. The whole evening nothing more in that way happened.
On the third day of these happenings I decided to sell my cartridge. I posted it on eBay for only 5 euros (a new one costs from 99€ up). I got the first bid in less than 3 minutes. The buyer would even give me 50 euros for it, because it was on a good condition after all. I just deleted the save files and let the transaction happen. After I got rid of this cartridge I felt a lot safer. As it was the next Friday and me and my friend went out to the streets again something got his attention. It was my arm. The scar that was on my arm just vanished. Like nothing ever happened.
(Three months passed since then)
I felt like playing this one Zelda again. So I downloaded an emulator and the game. Nothing happened in that emulator or with my SNES ever after. I asked the buyer if he was satisfied with the game. He replied with yes. I asked if he noticed something strange. He said no and asked why I asked that question. I told him: “Just to know if something went wrong while the game was shipping.”
I still wonder why my cartridge was acting like that. And I hope that this will never happen to someone again who owns the cartridge.
Thanks for reading. Let me know what you think.