As most gamers know, Hyrule can be a pretty scary place when the sun goes down. However, one unsuspecting gamer found out that Hyrule can be a very scary place, even in their own living room. The story begins with a player inheriting a second hand Nintendo 64 from a friend and then going to a local garage sale and purchasing a copy of Majora’s Mask. This copy, in the story, has a blank sticker on it with the word Majora written across it in Sharpie. The old man who sold the player the copy said that it belonged to a boy that vanished. Seeing nothing wrong with this, the player went back to his dorm room and began to play.
He booted up the game and saw that there was a save file for “Ben,” the previous owner who had gone missing. Being the normal gamer he is, he didn’t delete the save file right away, out of respect for the previous owner. He created his own save file, “Link” and started the game. There were some texture issues and buggy cut scenes, but nothing game ending, that was until the NPC’s began to call “Link” “Ben” instead. This unnerved the player a bit, and thinking that the save files had somehow combined he finally deleted the “Ben” save. This didn’t help the problem; now when the NPC’s said his name, there was a blank space, just adding an annoyance to the game. However, when the player attempted the 4th day glitch it didn’t go as planned. After attempting the glitch the player experienced this,
“I found myself in the Majora boss room at the end of the game (the trippy boxed in area), staring at Skull Kid hovering above me. There was no sound, just him floating in the air above me and the background music, which was regular for the area (but still creepy).”
The creepiness didn’t end there, Skull Kid continued to follow him around, never saying anything, just being in the way. Then after waiting for a minute or so, the player decided to reach for the reset button, but the screen flashed ““You’re not sure why, but you apparently had a reservation…” Which was from a very different section of the game. Then after another prompt from the game the player found himself in a very disturbing Clock Town. There were no NPC’s to be seen, no guards, not even the little dog that walks around. And the music was the worst of all, The Song of Healing was playing backwards over and over, coming to a frightening crescendo that led to nothing.
The game kept the player in a deserted Clock Town, even the Ocarina would not allow him to escape. The player then decided to take his Link to the Laundry Pool and drown himself. However while journeying there, the Link grabbed its own head and soon the Happy Mask Salesman was staring at the player. From that point on, the game pretty much went off the rails with Link performing weird animations that hadn’t been seen in the original game, statues following Link, Link looking directly at the player, different music playing backwards, random character spawn points, boss fights with Skull Kid, and very unique Link death animations.
After all of that craziness the game finally kicked the player back to the title screen and when he attempted to play again, his save file was gone. What he found instead was a save file titled “Your Turn.” When the player loaded this file he found himself on the clock tower again with the Skull Kid hovering over Link’s dead body with his laugh on loop. The player attempted to talk to the seller to no avail, the house had been sold and no one answered his frantic knocks. Upon his return home, he feared playing the game, and a sense of dread filled him in real life and followed him into his dreams.
The player continued as the game messed with him more and more with grim animations, and new game saves files that told of Ben’s horrible death from drowning. As the player continued further into this haunted cartridge, his own life got more and more difficult. He began to think that Ben was watching him. He stopped leaving his apartment and shut the blinds to make sure Ben couldn’t see him. But whenever he fired up the game, he knew that Ben was getting him to do his bidding in the game. Eventually the player stopped writing in the blog and the roommate took over, assuring readers that the player is okay and that he went back home to his parents to cope. The roommate was then tasked with the final reveal of the player’s experience; he was told to release the following video on September 15, 2010.
So what say you, fearless readers? Some websites have debunked this entire story, stating that some of the visuals in the videos are from Ocarina and are too graphically sound for the n64 console. If that is true, couldn’t it have been Ben switching that stuff up as well? Just something to keep you up at night.
Feel free to read the rest of the Gaming Urban Legends series!