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SCP-4054: The Seventh Door

Author: The Great Hippo

Images: Link, Link, Link, Link, Link, Link, Link, and — finally — Link.

Music: Lavender Town (Japanese Version of Pokemon Green and Red)

More by The Great Hippo:

SCPs

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SCPs

[SCP-3034]
The Counting Station

DO NOT LET HER FINISH

[SCP-3035]
Science Bugs

case_of_the_mondays.png, case_of_the_mondays (1).png

[SCP-3054]
Cragstaff Sanitarium

You are sick. You are broken. We will fix you.

[SCP-3045]
bzzip.exe

HAMLET: I am no longer moody.

[SCP-3043]
Murphy Law in… Type 3043 — FOR MURDER!

Forget it, Fred. It's Chinatown.

[SCP-3057]
Fossil Fuels

…witnesses provided confirmation that instances of SCP-3057-4 did, in fact, have feathers.

[SCP-2639]
Video Game Violence

i need to know how many people i've killed

[SCP-437]
Summer of '91

That was a pretty crazy summer, y'know? Sometimes I really miss that place.

[SCP-3079]
300 Tricks: Stage Magic Made Easy

NOTE: No method for accomplishing this trick is provided.

[SCP-2753]
Let's Play Jenga!

High art carries high risk!

[SCP-2679]
The Many Graves of Jeannette Parslov

Whatever it takes, do what you must; whatever the cost, come back to us.

[SCP-3074]
Kafka's Parking Garage

Thank you for choosing Izatova Parking Center. Have a pleasant day.

[SCP-2571]
Cragglewood Park

Mr. Blair, have you always been an only child?

[SCP-2419]
The Laughing Men

Throw them back into the incinerator where you found them.

[SCP-3143]
Murphy Law in… The Foundation Always Rings Twice!

When it comes right down to it, me — them — hell, even you — we're all just characters in that trashy dime-store novel called life.

[SCP-3089]
That Old Time Religion

Remember how we explained that successful people don't actually need any of their toes to walk? Well, that's going to come in handy for Secret Number Six.

[SCP-3117]
A Monster-Shaped Hole

I'm not talking to you.

[SCP-3128]
Let's Play Monopoly!

Hey, guys? I'm, uh. I'm using this.

[SCP-3138]
A Sepulcher by the Sea

Should it prove feasible, all non-canonical corpses are to be extracted, examined, and catalogued.

[SCP-3241]
The SS Sommerfeld

It makes me wonder what an old monster like myself is even doing here, anymore. And then? Someone special comes along and reminds me.

[SCP-3219]
This Sour Earth

Notably, no reports describe any attempt to examine the residence's storm cellar.

[SCP-4028]
La Historia de Don Quixote de la Mancha

Justine eventually re-unites with her sister, Juliette. Alonso strikes down a lightning bolt intended for them both, then challenges the narrator to a duel.

[SCP-3546]
Doggone it, I Fold!

Specifically, fan-art of Sonic the Hedgehog, a video-game character produced by Sega in 1991.

[SCP-3561]
An Unfinished Work

Despite multiple reports from neighbors who claimed to have witnessed members of his family standing at the windows, no trace of Theodore Holdstock's wife and children could be found.

[SCP-4054]
The Seventh Door

SCP-4054 is The Seventh Door, an unlicensed platform adventure game released for the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1988.

Fig 1.1: Box-art for The Seventh Door.

Item #: SCP-4054

Object Class: Safe

Special Containment Procedures: Three NES1 consoles modified to run SCP-4054 are to be kept for testing purposes. SCP-4054 is to be stored on-site in a secure locker. Access is limited to Level-3 personnel and above.

Foundation agents monitoring flea-markets, yard-sales, and property auctions for anomalous activity are to be briefed on the existence of SCP-4054. Any NES cartridges suspected of being copies of SCP-4054 are to be purchased for examination.

A Foundation-operated bot (I/O-SAURON) is to monitor online gaming communities for discussions regarding the existence of SCP-4054. A joint operation involving MTF Mu-4 ("Debuggers") and MTF Gamma-5 ("Red Herrings") is to be conducted to investigate these discussions and determine whether the participants are aware of SCP-4054.

Fig 1.2: Title screen.

All copies are to be recovered, and action is to be taken to discredit the existence of SCP-4054 as a hoax or urban legend. Any screen captures or videos of SCP-4054 are to be removed or otherwise replaced with doctored images to further perpetuate this narrative.

Description: SCP-4054 is The Seventh Door, an unlicensed platform adventure game released for the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1988. The contents of each cartridge vastly exceeds the storage limitations of its ROM (read-only memory) chip. Extracting SCP-4054's PRG ROM produces a data-file too large to be contained on any currently available device.

Because of its limited publication (three hundred units), inability to be copied, limited replay-ability, and incomplete state, functional copies of The Seventh Door are highly valued by vintage NES collectors. The game is also notable for its unique method of bypassing the North American version of the 10NES lock-out system.2

Fig 1.3: Level 5 (Catacombs).

Each cartridge includes two transistors that function as a voltage inverter. When activated, this component produces a negative-charged voltage spike that can temporarily disable early versions of the console's CIC,3 bypassing the authentication lock and allowing unlicensed cartridges to run. Later iterations of the NES would add a series of 1k resistors along with diodes and grounds to prevent this technique from circumventing the lock-out unit.

However, a defect in this voltage inverter's design causes irreparable damage to The Seventh Door's SRAM4 with each successive reset. This produces an increasing number of glitches which will inevitably render the cartridge non-functional.

The Seventh Door was shipped prior to completion. As a consequence, several core components of game-play differ from what is depicted in its instruction manual and box-art:

Fig 1.4: Level 7 (Buried City). Note several sprites and tiles failing to load correctly.

The protagonist has no extra lives; upon dying, all progress is lost. The cartridge resets.

All power-ups described in the manual are absent save one (the Hand of Glory,5 which prevents monsters and platforms from moving for ten seconds).

All monsters are absent.

Falling into a pit does not kill the protagonist. The protagonist will instead continue to fall off-screen as the game-over sound loops.

Memory overflow errors periodically cause sprites to load incorrectly.

The prisoners use the protagonist's sprite rather than their own.

After unlocking a door, prisoners provide no clue regarding the location of other keys (the text boxes are empty).

The protagonist dies at apparently random intervals (typically after a period of remaining still). This occurs regardless of whether or not the game is paused.

To date, researchers have uncovered several hundred levels beyond the seventh (described in the manual as the final level, and the location of the seventh key). These stages consist of vast networks of crypts, prisons, abandoned factories, and empty underground cities. The precise number of additional levels beyond the seventh has not yet been determined, but vastly exceeds the storage capacity of the cartridge's ROM chip.

The seventh level does not contain the seventh key.

Addendum 4054.1: Video Stream

Fig 1.5: Footage taken from user inky49's video stream.

In 2004, Charles Rogers (an amateur NES cartridge collector) posted a thread at www.opening-the-seventh-door.int (a defunct online forum that was dedicated to The Seventh Door) under the user-name 'inky49'. There, he suggested using an NES Game Genie6 to directly set the value associated with the protagonist's number of keys to seven.

Several days later, Mr. Rogers posted a link to an online video stream where he intended to attempt and beat The Seventh Door using this exploit. Part way through his run, the video abruptly stopped. A follow-up investigation determined that Mr. Rogers had gone missing; authorities suspected foul-play after discovering several fingernails torn from Mr. Rogers' left hand inside his NES console.7

To date, SCP-4054 has been linked to 25 disappearances. It remains under investigation.

Footnotes

1. Nintendo Entertainment System.

2. The 10NES lock-out system was designed by Nintendo to prevent unlicensed cartridges from operating on their consoles.

3. Checking Integrated Circuit.

4. Static random-access memory.

5. According to European folklore, a Hand of Glory is the left hand of a man who has been hanged for murder. When used as a candle, those who perceive its light cannot approach its holder.

6. Produced in 1990, the Game Genie is a 'game-enhancing' module that attaches between the NES cartridge and console. It permits direct modification of reference addresses in the ROM of the cartridge via strings of characters, or 'code'.

7. No copy of The Seventh Door was recovered.