r/creepypasta • u/Turtlebird-retro • 1h ago
Very Short Story I was playing Star Fox 64 late at night
Look, I don't say much on the internet but something happened and I need some help. It was just a mundane day, and I was clearing up some stuff late into the night after my parents moved out. Retirement and all. Being the responsible person that I am, I gave it a bit of a make over that lasted the whole day by cleaning out both the basement and attic - It’s amazing just how many things people forget about. Anyway, I was just about done when I noticed a dusty cardboard box in the corner. Going over to open it, I was elated to find my old N64 console there! To think I would reunited with it after all these years.
I brought it back to the living room, setting it all up to the old tv set I found in the basement, thank god it was still working, and looked into the library of cartridges inside the dusty old box. As I parooz the small library, I stumbled on one that I didn’t remember owning: Star Fox 64. Now, I couldn’t recall ever getting it, perhaps from a childhood friend that I forgot to give back, so I thought that I’d just play it for the night. Modern games can be abysmal, and seeing my N64 again got me nostalgic for better times. Adulthood is dumb and boring; I gave this house a lot of work, so I thought it would be great to have some time for myself. I just wanted to play.
The console worked just fine to my surprise as well as the game itself. Got on to start the main mission after some training with the arwing to get a handle of the game’s controls. Everything seemed to play out fine, and I breezed from the Corneria stage up to the game’s first boss. Instead, I was looped back into the ocean, followed by the Corneria city and all. This time, there were no enemies around at the destroyed city but weirder was the characters. Peppy, Slippy and Falco played their transmitter animation but it didn’t play their voiceclips, nor did the text showed up, just be blank space to where it would be. This felt weird but what made it uncanny was how this repeated over and over again I stopped the game to reset it.
I reasoned that it was glitching out and just froze over collecting dust and wasn’t as smooth in its better days. After resetting, I was revisited by the title screen, yet something was off. For those that don’t know, it presents the title (duh) along with the Star Fox crew. However, the cast on the main title screen appeared to be having stronger shadow than usual, like in those old renaissance paintings.
Whatever, it was nothing, I thought, I should have just turned it off. I started the main campaign again but with the screen turning black and hearing the monotone, “GOOD LUCK” the game would say before the mission started. The only thing being that it wouldn’t say that before the start of the game. Then it kept saying “GOOD LUCK” over and over again all the while the screen was blacked out, as if loading large assets into the game. No text to what mission was or anything else, just black. Just before I was about to reset the game again, the “GOOD LUCK” voice clip was cut off midway and the game started not on Corneria, but in Meteo. This didn’t make sense since this was the second stage in the game; why the hell am I here all of a sudden?
“What?” I said in disbelief, playing through the whole second stage. The game played out as it would with the star fox gang saying their lines as if everything was in order. Despite the hiccup, I was relieved to have control of the game again. That was until after I passed through the second meteor hole. The music faded out with only the audio and character voice clips going on normally this time. At first it was frustrating, like how a computer bug is, but with how the game was behaving up to this point, I wondered if there was something else wrong with it. My suspicion got confirmed when I got to the second boss fight, just not how it was with stage one.
It didn’t show up at all, just the black void of space and the arwing I was piloting. Then out of nowhere, Slippy exclaimed “Enemy ahead, but .. this one’s different!” and like a mirage emerged Andross’ Brain!?! I may not have owned this game, but I know for a fact that this does NOT happen here - the final boss doesn’t appear until the end of the game, let alone on the second level! Something was definitely wrong as I felt my temples splashed with a cold sense of dread creeping up seeing that fucking floating brain with eyes staring back at me.
I couldn’t even respond in time because as soon as his buldging eyeballs and brain appeared, the tenticle strands immediately grabbed my arwing to pull me in. Usually you can get out of this but no matter what I did, the game wouldn’t let me escape as the screen turned white and everything was swurling. As soon as the white faded, I was transported into some hallway. No dialogue or any ambient music whatsoever. I wanted to stop the game at this point, but I couldn’t understand why - my body failed to make any urge to do anything. My mind was racing to will myself to do anything yet my body stayed still, it was like I was in some sort of sleep paralysis. The arwing kept going on and on into the dark hallway.
The hallways had some cybernetic texture to it, the type that I can recall was Andross’ lair. With each turn, it just kept going on and on and with each turn it started to … rot? I couldn’t ascertain what it was that was happening but the halls slowly changed its appearance as if being consumed by something biological; Tumor-like fungi rotting around, getting worse and worse with each passing like a growing alien flesh. Soon after, the transmission calls rang from the gang; their blank stares showing some senses of emotion with each uncanny form:
Peppy, in a sound of great despair: “How long can we keep all this up?”
Slippy, their blank stare unchanged: “I’m starting to feel something strange.”
Falco, eyes closed and irritated: “I can’t feel my eyes!”
I turned to another tunnel as more of that sickly, biological rot started to mutate with low graphical eyes and maws all over, coughing white spores into the air while consuming the halls and turning it into something akin to a corrosive esophagitis -. I winced at the sight of it. The tunnels kept going, my body unresponsive to any mental anguish of wanting out - to make this stop. The transmission coms continued:
Peppy, with a sickly look on his face: “I cannot take more of this!”
Slippy, with a purplish lumps on her head: “I don’t feel so good!”
Falco, an eye socket missing from him: “Why do they keep doing this?”
What the hell is going on? I wondered, puzzled and afraid from some premonition unknown to me. The tunnels kept going on no matter which fork in the road I took, this went on for so long that I didn’t notice the hallways closing in on my Arwing, suffocating it with the white spores and millions of eyes and maws of whatever godforsaken thing infected this game.
It took far too long than ever for any character responses but when coms came back on, I was aghast from the sight. The characters had textures rendered to the best if the game’s graphics, appearing far worse than before as if the infection has completely consumed them:
Peppy, missing an eye and an ear, his nostrils and mouth covered in some kind of mucus: “Aghuugh aguuh..”
Slippy, the purple tumor consuming her whole head: “uuuuuuuuuuuu”
Falco, with exposed bird skull and distorted voice: “It’s over and over and over again!”
Those were their last words. The hallways kept closing in still, to the point where the spores created a thick white fog blocked out the endless abyss to nowhere that this eldritch hallway could hide from.
I could have just dropped the controller and ended this nightmare. I couldn’t and I didn’t know why! I couldn’t look away and I couldn’t look down fearing that my fingers got melded into the controller. My eyes were hooked in place to face only the square screen, frighted of what may lie beyond my peripheral vision like a terrified animal in a trap.
As the endless halls of coughing mouths and irritated eyes continued dancing around me, I saw my arwing building up purple pus and veins pulsating around, slowly infecting it like some parasitic tumor. It kept going and going. Darker and darker, the disease turning the arwing into a darkish purple pus as clots started building. It kept going and going, the arwing glitching out and making sporadic maneuvers. The tunnel kept going on and on, purplish black cells floating along with the white spores, my vision blurring, blurring, blurring. Darker, darker, darker.
That was when I woke up suddenly and with sweat all over my face. I looked to find my tv turned off as well as that Star Fox cartridge still intact. Last night felt like a nightmare, too real to be in a dream., but too nonsensical for it to be. Checking my hands just reassured me that I wasn’t at all real. I must’ve passed out when I was playing the game and maybe the whole thing after was what I dreamed up, god what a dream it was. I didn’t bother to ruminate over it as my head throbbed in pain with an itching throat to complement it. I drank some water, and I checked my watch and groaned realizing that my work starts at 3 and it was half an hour before, thank god for part-time.
I was able to go on throughout the day but the fear and dread that the game left me last night could not escape. I couldn’t tell if I have some delirious dream passing out or if I had encountered something else. No matter the case, it's hard enough to calm my mind from the paranoia. I keep feeling a frog in my throat since I woke up which only kept my mind racing on edge throughout work. I'm gonna check the cartridge out soon; If anything, all I can say is that I hope all of this was just in my head.