As a kid, like most kids my age I was in love with video games, being the younger sister my brother had the advantage in most of the games, and the consoles were his. I loved the N64, Zelda, Mario, all the typical games. When my brother moved out I was left with the N64, and a few choice games, but he took most of the others.
So years passed, I still played the games every once in a while, but got more interested in modern games. Sometimes I would go back to my childhood. The whole story started about 3 months ago, I had gone over to my brothers house, we joked around, played some games, the usuall stuff. When I was about to leave he asked if I wanted any of the old N64 games gathering dust in the attic, we went up to look at them. Most of them we decided to sell, but Star Fox 64 caught my eye.
As a kid I was never good at the game, maybe I couldn't move my fingers fast enough, but I had given up on the game. But I was always up to a retry, so I took it home. Being busy that day I put it in my shelf, forgetting about it for about another week. But I soon took out my N64 again, determind to beat it, unaware what was in store for me.
The beginning[]
As I took it out, blowing the dust out of the cartirdge nothing seemed to damaged. It was the same old game I had strugled with so much as a kid. Starting up the game I chose a new save file, ignoring my brother's completed one. (I deleted mine out of frustration years ago) The controls were more managable now, I soon got engrossed in the first few levels.
Looking back now I should have noticed the slight change in dialog, nothing major, Slippy and Peppy not thanking me when I saved them from being shot down, slightly more rude remarks from Falco, but I was oblivous. I wasn't noticing how low some of my teammates health was getting, often I would save them just in time. By the time I got to Fortuna, where Star Wolf first appears in the game, my fingers were beat, I was a complete spaz playing the game. I lost the level, letting the bomb go off.
As soon as they did the color palatte changed. Everthing became darker, this suprised me. Also the ground began to explode, in typical ingame explosions. I was pretty sure this wasn't supposed to happen, suddenly all of Star fox came into view, each ship then exploding in th typical game explosion that was usually used for enemies. The ships health was down to almost none, I saw a Star wolf ship, knowing I was beaten, and concerned about what was going on the massage that appeared on the screen shocked me.
Wolf popped up, he said "I'll abandon you, like you did to us", I stared at the screen, as Star Wolf flew off the camera panned out, showing Fox's ships alone flying above a still exploding Fortuna, as the screen darkened Wolf's words still showed very boldly. They faded after a few minutes, replaced by, "Retry" in dark bold letters, barely visible.
Retry?[]
Mind reeling I switched the game off, quickly running down the hall to get my laptop, I searched up footage of Fortuna, what I saw was much different them MY game. I called my brother, he was skeptical but came over anyway. I nervously turned the game one, once again everything was normal. I loaded up my game and came to the Fortuna level again, letting my brother play it. He beat it, easily.
But when Star Wolf would usually fly away Wolf flew close to Fox's ship, startling us, he said "I won't let you beat us, you abandoned us, BOTH OF YOU!" he then flew away. We just sat there in shock, for at least a minute. It was like Wolf had spoken to us, accusing us of abandoning the game. Unsure of what else to do, and feeling completely shocked we continued to play the game. More and more strange things began to happen, when teammates would speak they would say things like "Why did you do it?" or "Traitor!".
By the time we got to the last stage we were both deeply shaken, but completely transfixed to the game. When Andross came up he yelled so loud that I lept for the mute button, but it wouldn't mute. He said, "Why did you leave us, were we not good enough for you? Do you want to know how it FELT!?" Instantly destroying our ship, a black screen came up, it looked like the game had crashed, as I slowly got up to turn off the N64 words appeared boldly on the screen. They read "We hate you, we should kill you for what you did to us" in Wolf's voice.
I violentely unplugged the N64, but the words stayed plastered menecingly on the screen. I even tried to turn off the TV, nothing happend. My last, wild effort was to unplug the TV, when I did a loud, long, high pitched noise sounded, and the words faded. It was over. In that room, with my brother, I felt truely scared. For the first time in years we hugged each other for comfort. When we finally came to our senses, at least a bit, our first instinct was to do something, anything, to get the game away from us.
As I pulled it out of the console it nearly burned my fingers, the cartridge was hot. We put it on craigslist, Ebay, for very cheap. It sold in less than a day, with relief it was off of our hands. I still wonder if I subjected anyone else to anything bad. But as long as the game is gone, I really don't care.
