Super Mario 64 Creepypasta Rom Hack Download
Brie Hoffler
MARIO is a Super Mario World ROM hack creepypasta by SMW Central user Adam. The patch can be downloaded here. It was made by SMW Central user M A R I O, whose avatar was a SMW Mario without a face. The account is disabled, but used to be active (one month of no activity makes you inactive on SMW Central); they would post mysterious and eerie things every now and then, up until they became inactive.
So, it all happened tonight of all nights. I was bored, obviously contemplating what I thought I could do to waste time as I chatted with the people in #smwc. We had good times, and shared a few laughs together. Out of boredom, I decided to patrol the "Hacks waiting to be moderated" section. Seems that we had quite a bit: 33, if I recall correctly. The first few hacks I saw when I sorted them by date were a couple of really horrible ones with bad screenshots to boot.
I naturally showed these hacks to the centralites currently on #smwc. We were laughing at how bad some of them were, but then I got to a hack called "MARIO". Just that; nothing more, nothing less. The description seemed quite odd, as if some Japanese hacker was trying to translate the original plot of Super Mario World, and failing horribly. I showed this to Kieran, and he started laughing at it. It read as follows:
Curiosity got the best of me. I decided to download the hack. I didn't know what I was in for, since the single screenshot of it was just the title screen with nothing but the letters "MARIO" from Super Mario World's title screen. I thought it was a little odd how there were no dates or anything either, as hackers usually place their names and dates in the titles to mark when the project was started.
So, when I opened the hack, I was greeted by 2 files. One called "3007014", a simple .txt file that was 27 KB in size, and the IPS file, simply named "MARIO". For some odd reason, I wanted to see what the author of the hack had to say, but when I opened the hack in Notepad, there was nothing but indistinguishable symbols and letters and punctuation, sort of like how when you open a ROM in a text editor like Notepad. Seems like the author just completely copied his ROM to .txt form, though I could be wrong. Taking a closer look, at the top of the .txt file mixed in with the gibberish, I found the only thing that looked like English there. Here is a piece of what I found:
To be honest, I didn't know what to make of this. I eventually decided it was simply to waste some of my time by making me find some text in the gibberish file. That, I'm willing to bet, no one will ever be able to make sense of.
I decided that, because my interest was growing steadily, I would start looking through my horribly disorganized download folder for a copy of a clean ROM (which I had downloaded a great deal of time before the events of tonight unfolded) and an IPS patcher. Of course, my choice for the job was Lunar IPS.
So, I then proceeded to move the ROM and the IPS patcher to the folder with the hack. I patched the ROM, not knowing what to expect next, and I quickly hurried to drag it to ZSNES and play what I thought was to be terrible in the form of a ROM image. I noticed on boot up that the author had taken the time to change the header of his hack. Instead of the usual "super marioworld" you normally see when booting up a rom in ZSNES, it just had the letters "MARIO" there again. At this point, I gained a little hope, because normally people who do horrible half-assed edits to the ROM generally don't know enough to change a header title. I thought I wasn't wasting my time with this, and my mood brightened slightly at the thought of seeing what the author had to offer in his interesting little hack.
The title screen loaded, exactly like it would with Super Mario World, except it had just "MARIO" on the title like I had mentioned earlier. Something else had grabbed my interest, more so than the unusual absence of layer 3 tiles on the title screen. Mario's normal bright colored and happy palette seemed, how can I put it... "dull". What was once violet-like red now seemed like grey with a slight red tint to it, and I'm fairly sure his pants were looking more grey than blue, too... I thought this was strange, and I wondered why he had decided to give Mario such a dull palette...
Regardless as to what his intentions were, I felt that something was... wrong. Not in the sense that the palette was slightly bad, but that the hack was empty, like something had happened. Upon pressing start and selecting a new file, like a lot of other countless Mario hacks I have played in the past, there was some sort of intro screen that basically described the entirety of the plot in a short paragraph just small enough to fit into a small black box. I began reading, and for the most part, the message stayed the same, but there was one key factor that made this interesting. Apparently the main antagonist of this hack wasn't Bowser at all... it was... Mario?!
What the...? "This wasn't the original message from Super Mario World," I thought to myself. Normally, I wouldn't think anything of this, seeing as how, over my nearly 2 years at SMWCentral, I have played countless hacks and have seen many different intro messages, but this one really stuck out. At this point, I definitely knew there was something odd about this hack. Upon letting the intro level music play, I pressed the start button on my controller to finally get to the overworld and begin my journey into this unknown hack.
Upon entering the overworld, everything seemed normal. Same old level paths, same old music, but the level names were different. Instead of "YOSHI'S HOUSE" like it always has been every time I've ever played Super Mario World, it was now simply just "YOSHI'S". The "HOUSE" part was gone. I thought this was strange, and I began to lose hope in the hack, because it'd seemed like barely anything had changed at all from the original. I was hoping to see something new. Well, unluckily for me, I got my wish, as you'll see when you read on.
I decided to enter the level out of curiosity. When I entered, the whole house that's normally there was gone. No more smoke, no more fire, no more little birdies, no more treehouse. All that was left was the message box.
At this point, I was on IRC telling everyone about how the hack was starting to weird me out, which yielded some sarcastic responses, but hey, I expected it. Anyways, after this, my interest level in the hack skyrocketed, and along with it, my paranoia. Oh boy, was in in for a fun surprise.
So, I decided to head left. Upon reaching what was before known as "YOSHI'S ISLAND 1", the level was labelled "never come back". Now I thought things were going to be all kaizo death trap, because generally that is what people name their levels in kaizo hacks to make sure the player doesn't go there. To my surprise, it wasn't quite that way, though I wish that it had been.
Upon entering level 105, I was greeted by the insanely loud clown car sound that Bowser's flying vehicle makes right before Peach falls out. Of course, with my headphones being moderately high, the sound scared the living shit out of me, which wouldn't have happened if I hadn't been so nervous beforehand. I decided at this time it would be best if I turned the volume on my headphones down, as to not get anymore unpleasant surprises such as that one.
When I entered the level, other than the music, everything seemed to be the same, except for the fact that the little Koopa that slides on the ledges wasn't there anymore, nor was the Banzai Bill. The Dragon Coin was still there; however, for some odd reason, I wasn't able to collect it, or rather any Dragon Coins at all. The author made certain of that. I also noticed that there was a brown used block near the spot where the Banzai Bill normally shows up. I can only assume this was a revisit to the level after I had beaten it like I heard in some half-assed creepy stories in other Mario games. Now I was wondering why things were like this, making me wonder about the intro message. Had Mario done something previously to Dinosaur Land? Was this from Bowser's point of view? I quickly dismissed the latter option, because it seemed kind of stupid. So that left me thinking that Mario at one point in time in the author's story did something, but what? What did Mario do?
My mind was nothing but rushing thoughts at this point. However, I quickly dismissed them and ventured further into the level, only to find that basically all blocks had been hit, all coins collected (save for the Dragon Coins, those were still there and unobtainable), that there were no enemies, and that I could no longer go down pipes. "What kind of bullshit am I playing here?" I kept thinking to myself. At this point, I felt uncomfortable, but I decided to keep venturing.
Eventually, I came across a message box, which I wasn't surprised was still in the level. Being the idiot I am, I went and hit the box. Upon hitting it, I was greeted with the familiar black box once again. The message was edited, obviously. I had figured that this was a given at this point. It read as follows:
Now I thought things were starting to get the vibe that the author was a twisted and warped individual, and that I was right about Mario having done something. At this point, I was basically rushing to get to the end of the level, so I just scurried by, and then came across another message box. However, this one was blank, with "POINT OF ADVICE" at the top and nothing else in it. I quickly disregarded it and headed off further to the right, hoping to free myself of the hell that was once level 105.
Upon reaching the end, I saw a Fire Flower in the top block where the 4-way block intersection used to be. However, it was too high for me to reach by normal means, so I just continued onward, like the blind, curious idiot I am would do. I finally beat the level, and as usual, the path to the Yellow Switch Palace was unlocked. I decided to head up the path that normally leads there, and I found that when I entered the main overworld, every other landmass and decoration besides the ghosts from the Ghost Houses and Yoshi's island itself were gone. Nothing really changed at the Yellow Switch Palace except for the switch message. All that changed was that -SWITCH PALACE- was changed to -MARIO WORLD-. Boring. Anyways, just when I thought I was done with this abomination that calls itself a hack, I found that Yoshi's Island 2 had also been edited. "Oh, joy!" I thought to myself.
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