I tried making another file today. It actually finally saved. I’ll keep you guys posted on that. So far it seems normal, save for the occasional weird sound and stuff. Here are my stats.
Name: AMBI
Dex: 12
Time: 2 hours, 39 minutes
Badges: 3
Pokemon: Quilava, Togetic, Noctowl, Politoed, Pichu, Metapod
I dunno if that info will be relevant, just feel like sharing it. Like I said I will keep you posted.
I’m sorry, this will be brief. Expect a lot to be brief. I’m really tired. I think I let the thoughts of the cartridge being haunted get to my head. I’ve been hallucinating a bit. I see faces outside my window sometimes. Well, a face. Some guy in his late teens, looks like. Lanky, sunken eyes… Probably the kid we’re doing all these lockdowns for. But I have to be imagining it. Both the hype about the cartridge being “haunted” and the lockdowns are messing with my head. Usually if I look away and look back, the face is gone.
Anyway, you’re probably more interested in an update about the game.
I started a new file, because obviously after that crash last time, my file was gone. I got fairly far in again before it crashed out again. It keeps doing that. I guess it might just be the age of the cartridge. But that old, glitched file stays there. I try to play it sometimes but it says it is corrupt. I once actually managed to load it, by trying just after one of my files crashed. There was no sound, even with my volume cranked all the way up. KRIS had a party full of glitch Pokemon, they were trainer sprites, but all weird looking. They all had solemn faces, some even crying. He had nicknamed them ordinary names like “george” “irene” and “victor”, and a few others… he had a full party, but I forget all the names. I just remember they were all in lower case, strange, considering he’d left his in allcaps. Looks like this kid was quite the morbid little hacker. Maybe he’d been trying to make a creepypasta cartridge of his own.
I closed his party, and all the townspeople were gone — KRIS had last saved in Celadon. He’d been standing where there is usually the old guy bitching about the Grimer or something. That man was gone, and in his place was a replica of the player sprite. I went to talk to it and nothing happened, so, a bit freaked out, I wandered the city a bit. Every NPC was missing, even the Nurse in the Pokemon Centre. More peculiar, though, was the fact that every now and then, I would run into the silent player sprite. It never talked, only stood there. Its only movement was to turn, as if watching me.
That’s really all the KRIS file did. I got bored and creeped out eventually (it was late at night) and I turned it off to try to get some sleep.
I’m sorry I haven’t updated. I have to make this short. There has been a series of lockdowns at my school. I don’t know what is going on, but they’ve mentioned something about a suspicious young man skulking around at night. The power’s been cutting in and out and I am really frustrated.
I’ll try to update you guys on the game soon. Nothing too new has happened yet. I hope something does.
I know all about creepypasta. I especially know about the video game ones. That’s why I was excited when I found an old copy of Pokemon Crystal at a flea market my parents dragged me to last weekend. The label is worn, as if it has been very well-played, possibly been handed down between many other players before it got sold to me. I wasn’t even sure if it would work. The little metal bits that the system reads are in bad shape, the plastic casing seemed like it would pop apart at any moment. I was certain that, if the old thing would even work, it would be glitchy, or hacked, or in some other way provide me with a “creepypasta” experience of my own. I was so excited.
As I was leaving the stall where I had bought the game, the man who was selling it quickly called out to me. I turned and he was holding a GBA SP. It was open, and the top half was flopping around, the hinges obviously were busted. It was also dented and scratched, as if someone had thrown it, possibly more than once.
“Please, take this too; you can’t play the game without this, that’s what my son told me. I’m not really sure how video games work,” he told me. He started muttering something about how they’re dangerous and he’d rather not have them around. I could see a hint of fear and possibly sadness in his face. But I already had an old Gameboy Color, and was looking forward to playing a GBC game on its proper system. I tried to refuse it.
“Sorry sir, I already have a system, it’s okay. I’m out of money too,” I lied. I still had a couple crumpled fivers in my pocket, set aside for any other trinkets I might find. I really didn’t want that shitty old SP. I guess it would add to the creepy effect of the game, but I honestly didn’t feel like spending more money on a system that looked like it would take a miracle to get working. He continued to beg me to buy it, eventually even just telling me to take it, for free. But at this point I was fed up and just started to walk away again. My dad had texted me telling me it was time to go anyway. I was a good few yards away from his stand when I felt a tug at my purse, and I whipped around to see the man from the stand behind me. He quickly zipped my purse back up, then darted off.
It was probably one of the most fucked up experiences I ever had at a flea market. But it made me even more certain that something weird might be going on, and I liked it.
At the end of the weekend, I headed back to my college dorm in Toronto. I always hate leaving my parents after a good visit, but I can’t afford to drive to Toronto and back every day, neither in time nor gas money. Since then, I haven’t gotten to play my quite possibly “haunted” cartridge much because of my busy class schedule. But this weekend I finally got to take it out. I reached into the back pouch of my purse where I had stuffed it, in its little white paper bag, when I felt something else in there. I pulled it out. That damn vendor had put that shitty, busted GBA SP in my bag! I knew I should have checked what he’d done when he was behind me in the flea market …
Of course, I tossed the dumb thing aside. I didn’t care that it was a newer system than my Gameboy Color. I wanted to play my Pokemon Crystal on its rightful system. I didn’t even have a charge cord for an SP, so what use was it? I shrugged it off, popped the cartridge into my Gameboy, and switched the power on. Predictably, it failed to boot up, crashing on the old “GAMEBOY” boot-up screen. I hadn’t bothered to blow into the cartridge, or my Gameboy for that matter, and it hadn’t been touched since I started high school, never even mind college. So I switched the system off, blew into the cartridge a couple times, then the system, and tried again. I don’t know what I was hoping for really, I mean like I said, the cartridge looked like crap, and my Gameboy is old. It took a few more tries, and I was about to give up, but the game finally started up. The sound seemed a little off, but that was probably just because I’d put old batteries into my Gameboy in the anticipation to play the old game. I’m kind of tired of saying things were predictable, but, predictably, there was already a save file. The name was KRIS, which I think is one of the default names? I dunno, I always skip through the intro so quickly anyway. The file info said that “KRIS” had 0 Pokedex Pokemon, 16 badges, and the time played was made of glitch characters. I was so excited at that point. Naturally, since I wanted to find something creepy, I went to load the file.
It was corrupt.
That bummed me out a little, but I guess with the info the save file had to offer, with 0 Pokemon yet all the badges, that was to be expected. But since one file was corrupted like crazy, I knew that if I started my own file, it would likely be chock-full of glitches as well. So I selected “NEW GAME” and it started up the professor speech. I rapidly clicked A; I didn’t have time to sit through the little lecture you get before every game. I guess I might have been hitting the button too fast, because when I slowed down, he was confirming if my name was KRIS. It was a little weird, because I am pretty sure the “NEW NAME” option comes before the default names. I selected “NO”, then “NEW NAME”, and typed in my usual, AMBI. Unfortunately, I had been set as male from my A-button mashing, but that’s what I get I guess.
Anyway, from there the early parts of the game went fairly normally. My mom gave me my Pokegear, I went and got the Egg from Mr Pokemon, fought my rival a few times … Nothing really strange happened except the game lagging a few times, and sometimes NPCs would flicker in and out of sight. I could also swear I occasionally saw my sprite appear for a split second in random places nearby. They were kind of creepy glitches, but nothing too special. Finally, at about 3am last night, I decided it was time to stop. It was late, and my eagerness to discover something creepy had started playing tricks on my mind. I was seeing the sprites flicker more and more, and it felt like ages between wild battles, which made grinding hard. I’d gotten a few badges and was on my way to Olivine.
I opened the menu and went to save for the first time since starting the game up. With the batteries almost being dead, I probably should have saved more, but it had worked so far. I could swear Pokemon games weren’t so persistent about not wanting you to write over your files. Don’t they usually just say “THERE IS ALREADY A SAVE FILE, DO YOU WISH TO OVERWRITE IT?” and then let you save? Because mine said that, then when I selected “YES”, it asked “ARE YOU SURE?” then gave me the yes or no option again. I selected “YES” again, and it started saving. Why would I even want to keep the old corrupted file? I’m not sure if my file is intact because I didn’t get to play it today, but just as it was finishing up saving, the battery died. I plan to play it again as soon as possible, and I will keep this blog updated with my findings… if there are any.
