Burning Hatred

I’m gonna make this clear right off the bat. None of what I’ll be talking about here involves a “haunted video game”. This isn’t about a game doing something impossible, or hell, something it shouldn’t have period.
Not a glitch, not a hidden message, not a mysterious ROM hack, or a tampered game. This is about a feature that I managed to unearth when I was a kid. A feature that, as far as I’m aware, no one else has managed to unlock.
That’s it.
No ghosts, no conspiracies, nothing of the sort. Just a well hid “secret” that none of us were supposed to find. Something that was meant to take a multi-billion dollar franchise in an entirely different direction, only to be scrapped and abandoned, never to be known by anyone outside of the people who created it.
This is what I can only assume to be the previously undiscovered alternate ending to Nintendo’s Super Mario World.
In 1993, I got a Super Nintendo, and a copy of Super Mario World for Christmas. I was obsessed with that thing for months before, pleading with my parents to buy it, hounding them for months. And lucky for 10 year old me, it worked, or at least, I thought I was lucky at the time that is.
After my dad set it up for me, I began to immerse myself in the new world that Mario had to offer. I remember how excited I was, what kid wouldn't be? My friends told me all about how amazing the game was at recess, alongside a few tricks they would use to beat sections of the game on repeat playthroughs.
Excited to try their tricks out, I quickly entered the menu. Strangely though, I couldn't pick what character I could play as. Of course, I knew this wasn't intentional, as I had watched my friends play the game with Luigi before. I was disappointed, but still, I just shrugged this off as a glitch and settled with playing as Mario.
After that, I played the game as normal, having a blast. It was hard to get used to at first, but eventually, I managed to get close to beating the entire game in a few hours, with my friend's tricks really helping me speed through things much easier. Things were normal up to that point, everything was as my friends described it. At least, that remained true up until I got past the Sunken Ghost Ship.
After I cleared the level, instead of the Bowser cave appearing out of the water, a path opened to a whirlpool on the right. Confused, I moved Mario over to the new level, only to find that it had no name. My friends never mentioned anything else aside from the Sunken Ghost Ship before the Bowser Cave, but I simply waved it off as me forgetting, or just them not bringing it up.
And hey, maybe the lack of name was just a bug or something. Either way though, I wanted to show my friends what I saw, so, I took my camera out of my closet and snapped a picture of my tv screen. I found myself doing this a lot, as you'll soon see why.
Anyways, I entered the level, expecting something like the Ghost Ship again. Instead however, I was greeted by the intro that plays every time before a castle level, just, underwater this time, with strangely, no background, unlike all the other underwater levels. This was rather out of place, as I had just cleared a castle level before this, and nothing of the sort happened beforehand.
Regardless, I convinced myself that this was a special castle or something and kept playing. After Mario entered the castle, he wound up in this passageway. At this point, what I was experiencing seemed more and more like a glitch or some unfinished developer area. 
The top of the passageway was just pitch black, I couldn't jump, and all I could really do was have Mario progressively go right while running at his highest speed. This went on for a couple minutes until eventually, some Boos appeared in the black area above the passageway.
After Mario ran past them, the Boos obviously chased him, just strangely faster than I remember. The further Mario ran down the passageway, the more Boos appeared above. Overtime, Big Boos would even start to accompany them, also chasing at a much faster speed. Not only that, but Bony Beetles started to appear in the passageway with me. I obviously couldn't doge them thanks to jumping being off the table, the Boos chasing me, the screen keeping me from going off, and Mario being down at one health.
But then, as he touched the Bony Beetle, nothing happened. The beetle just phased through him. Confused, I let one of the Boos catch me. Once again, nothing. Mario, for some reason, could not die. This further made me think that none of what I was playing was even meant to be accessible, at least not by players like me that is. Either way, I kept going, until eventually, the passageway led into a room with a pipe inside.
The pipe took Mario to another passageway, just far less narrow. At the end of the passageway lied a boss door and a question block. The question block held a cape, one that I happily accepted. I then entered the boss door and was taken to the arena. Instead of the boss already being there however, there was nothing. Mario just stood there for a second as I couldn't control him.
And then, abruptly, fire rained down from the ceiling, covering both the left and right sides of the arena. The fire was from Bowser's boss fight, but even stranger, it was recolored to green. And then, a familiar face appeared from the right, walking past the fire. A tall figure, dressed in green overalls, with a scowl on his face. Luigi.
It finally clicked to me why Luigi wasn't selectable on the menu screen, but that wasn't my only takeaway. Not only seeing Luigi here, but also, just him wearing an angered expression like that caught me off guard. As I was distracted by my thoughts, the game caught my attention back with what Luigi said to Mario.
"You thought Koopa worked alone?"
As Mario reeled back in terror, with an expression of worry plastered on his face, everything clicked. 
Luigi was always second banana to Mario, the player two, the one who never gets the princess. Despite how similar the two’s moveset was, with Luigi having the same bravery as Mario, at the end of the day, it’s “Super Mario Brothers” and Luigi is just, the brother, the second Mario.
Luigi, he must’ve hated Mario, despised him, as he got all the adoration and praise even though they both equally did the work in rescuing the Princess. 
Of course, this isn’t how their dynamic is nowadays, or at least, that’s not how modern day Luigi would see things, but, back then, that wasn’t who Luigi was.
And that line, Koopa hadn’t worked alone? It confused me at first, but then I realized, how did Bowser consistently kidnap the princess? And that’s when it clicked, since Super Mario Bros and onward, it was an inside job.
And now, Luigi seemed to have grown tired of Bowser and his minions failing to kill Mario across each game. He was finally here to finish the job himself.
And so, after the text disappeared, the battle began. Luigi didn’t act like the Koopalings at all, not only in attacks, but in how he acted. His AI was clearly more sophisticated than the Koopalings. Not to a groundbreaking degree of course, but still, a noticeable one. 
He could both hurl fire balls at Mario and cause ones from the Bowser boss fight to drop down, just like the ones from the intro of the fight. On top of that, he had more than three hit points, and could block, preventing me from dishing out damage to him. 
It was tricky at first, but eventually, I got the hang of things, jumping on Luigi’s head consistently. And as I dealt more and more damage to him, the floor of the arena began to collapse, as it did in other boss fights. Things got trickier as I needed to dodge Luigi’s attacks in a constantly shrinking space.
But eventually, I managed to deal the final blow to him, ending the fight. As Luigi sat down in defeat, Mario, still wearing his somber expression, used his cape to hit Luigi, causing him to barrel upwards, and then back down, falling into the lava bellow as he extended his hand out, before it slowly sunk down into the fiery depths.
As Mario looked on, he sat on the ledge of the bridge, weeping. The course clear text faded on screen, no longer accompanied by music, before everything faded to black. I could just tell, by how everything played out, that the death of Luigi was indeed a permanent one. It was saddening for me to see the brotherhood of Mario and Luigi shattering before my very eyes.
Luigi couldn’t handle not having the spotlight, not being Mario. So all this time, he had been secretly working against you throughout every game, and now, the villain I or anyone else didn’t even realize was there, had been wiped out.
I didn’t realize at the time, but now, I do. This was intentional, this was the direction Nintendo planned to take the series in, with Luigi being a secret antagonist. Of course, what I found was never complete, evident by the unfinished environments, lack of music, etc. 
Midway through development, Nintendo must’ve not liked this direction and scrapped it, going with what the rest of the world got to experience, all except for me.
As I awaited to be taken back to the world map, the game instead lingered on an empty, black screen, at least for a little while. And then, suddenly, something faded onto my tv screen, Luigi. Well, what remained of him that is.
It was highly compressed art of Luigi’s burnt, mangled corpse, with his face singed off and only having one eye left in its socket. His body was burnt and caked in blood. As I stared at the horrific image, red text appeared on screen.
“I hate you”
As I looked on however, I noticed some more text in the top left corner of the screen.
“Remove this before we show this build to Miyamoto.”
This slightly took the piss out of some of my fear as it clicked with me that this screen was some kind of dark gag between developers. 
Either way though, seeing Luigi in this state did spook me a bit. I had watched horror movies before this when my parents were asleep, so obviously it didn’t scare the shit out of me, but.
The fact that this was in a Mario game, and that it took place after such an encounter was rather rattling to say the very least. And that text, “I hate you”. It further drove the point home, the same went for how uncomfortable I felt.
After what felt like an eternity of staring at that fucked up Luigi, the screen turned to black before fading into the world map, a sight I had never been so relieved to see. Then, just like it should’ve after the Sunken Ghost Ship, the Bowser cave emerged from the water, allowing me to enter the final area of the game. 
Thankfully, nothing from that point onward had been altered or was in the same vein as that untitled level. Regardless however, I couldn’t get it out of my mind, even after playing through the normal levels.
And before I even knew it, I had beaten the game, with Bowser defeated and the princess rescued. As you’d expect however, the victory was bittersweet, as it would’ve been for Mario. And to further drive this point home, was the ending screen. Only Mario and Peach stood there, with the notable absence of Luigi present. 
Their expressions weren’t even sad, or anything like that, it was the same happiness there during the end screen when Luigi was there. I could tell though, Mario was hiding it. Whether it was for Peach’s sake or something else, I knew what he felt deep down.
As for Peach, well, maybe it’s just an adult me over analyzing things, but, her, I felt something different for her. She didn’t look like she was hiding anything, hell, it didn’t even feel like she realized Luigi was missing. 
And now, I just realize, Luigi was right. He really was just a lesser Mario, and nobody other than his brother would know he was gone, the person he betrayed, the person he hated. Regardless of Luigi’s betrayal, all of this is just somber to me.
After I finished the game back then, I stopped playing it. I threw it in a dresser in my closet and forgot about it for years, playing other SNES games and trying to forget what I saw. The idea of Mario for me back then, and even now, is just tainted. 
It’s no longer about a happy go lucky hero and his brother saving the day, it’s about a brother, starved of any recognition from his hard work betraying his loved one, and working against him in the shadows, only to meet a fiery grave.
I didn’t want to be reminded of that as a kid, so I chose not to, managing to completely forget overtime. Eventually, when I turned fifteen, I was rummaging through my bedroom, looking for things to sell for a garage sale, only to find that copy of Super Mario World.
At the time, I didn’t realize how valuable it was, even with the bad memories attached to it, so I chose to give it to my mom to sell at the garage sale, hoping the experience the game gave me would disappear forever.
I am now thirty five years old as of writing this. I managed to recollect all this thanks to the pictures I took from that day. I tried to search online to see if someone managed to witness what I did in the game and possibly talked about it but, so far, no dice.
I’ve been debating for a few days now if I should’ve made this, even with the pictures I have. I know few will believe a single word of anything I said here, but, that’s not my goal, not anymore. I want to archive what I experienced, no matter if a majority believes me or not.
All I can say now is, I’m thankful Luigi turned into the happy go lucky, lovable dork we have now, rather than the man burning at the bottom of a lava pit, forever loathing the man he was always stuck in the shadow of.
Category:Video Game Creepypasta
Category:Creepypasta
Category:Mario
Category:Creepypastas
Category:Video Games
Category:Retake