Legend of Zelda: Link's Nightmare

I know there are a lot of creepy pastas out there based on old, childhood games, all of which are fake. This story, however short, truly happened.
The Legend of Zelda series is one of my favorite game titles, among Kirby and Pokémon. It was many, many years ago when I first learned about video games that a school friend showed me what is now one of my most beloved game ever: Legend of Zelda: Link’s awakening.
While I never owned a copy of the game myself, several years ago, a year or two after the game came out, my younger neighbor friend bought a legit copy of Legend of Zelda: Link’s awakening DX for the gameboy color, this sparked the small group of my friends (about 6 of us) to frantically see who could beat the game first, despite only having 2 games between us. While the fun discovery and victory was long, the challenge soon came to an end and both games were beaten with the defeat of the final nightmare: Dethl.
My friend let me borrow the game at that point, seeing as he already beat it (with my help of course). I was happy to finally play the game for myself, by then I already knew most of the game by heart, so I’d have no troubles myself. While playing normally in my house, with my neighbour friend watching, I did the entire standard set ups in the town.
Before heading off into the forest to get the Tail Key, though, I decided to farm rupees in the beach area south of Mabe, killing octoroks and leevers to slowing earn the 200 needed for the shovel. After finally earning the item after such a long time of farming, I really didn’t feel like working up the money to pay for the Bow, which was 999 rupees; so instead of paying for the item, I did the well-known trick of stealing it from the shop with the message “Guess what? You got it for free. Are you proud of yourself?” upon exiting and thinking nothing of it.
After finally beating Tail Cave, I was on my way back to Mabe, jumping around like a manic with my new Roc’s feather on the map tile M3 (going down alphabetically and across numerically on the game map) I missed jumping across the small gap like an idiot and fell into the right most pit. With a laugh from my friend, we quickly noticed that Link’s sprite didn’t reappear on the edge of the screen like normal, but instead the screen faded in a transition. Link’s sprite tumbled down into a cave similar to the well that contains a heart piece, except there was no heart piece and the fall wall was wide opened.
My friend and I freaked out and panicked, since we both knew this was not normal, it would be too weird to have a cave in an obscure place like that. I was about to shut off the game but my friend stopped me, he wanted to see what was in the weird cave, so as the player, I ventured passed the opened and down the wide dark hall. It was a long walk down the dark tunnel until the screen transitioned into a room similar to the first one with a staircase in the middle. This pattern continued down each time I entered a deeper tunnel with no way of going back up, the occasional Gel that comes out of the ground was the only attempt for the game to kill Link, but they were easily killed off first.
At a certain point (I can’t remember the floor number now, it was possibly floor 18 or 20), the owl that helped you throughout your quest flew in just as Link touched the ground, he gave off his usual hoots as he spoke, but his text wasn’t usual; most of his text was scrambled symbols similar to the glitch bits you’d see from missingno in Pokémon red and blue, but the end of his speech was legible:
“Don’t turn back.” As if I had a choice.
I kept going deeper into this cave, hoping for an end to this mess of a dungeon, but instead of an end until there was a change in scenery. At this point both my friend and I lost count of how many floors there were but now the cave looked like the inside of Turtle Rock, with the same patterned floor and lava instead of water, the music which was the normal cave music changed to a distorted, slow melody that I now realize was the ‘Ballad of the Wind Fish’ played backwards. As I saw this new texture pallet, a black text window similar to Dethl’s appeared reading:
“You will burn for your sins...” along with more jumbled bits.
I kept going deeper, the scenery not changing and enemies not appearing anymore, it was a simple, straightforward path now. The owl appearing once again with another mostly garbage message, the only thing readable was “You must continue.”
Still continuing on after the owl flew off and still refusing to turn off the game, more messages from the unknown character started becoming more frequent, the only ones I can remember from these ones were:
“You’ll be a killer...” and “You’ll pay with your life.”
After what seemed like another 10 floors and the distorted music becoming slow and having a more warped tone to it with every new floor, the messages stopping at this point. Link fell into a room littered with NPCs; I can’t remember what most of them said, but Marin was in the room blocking a door. I spoke to her. “Don’t you like it here? Don’t you like us?” the options ‘yes’ and ‘no’ appeared; being honest with my choice, I chose ‘yes’; “Then why did you want to destroy us?” was the response she gave before disappearing, letting me continue on.
The last room finally came into view once Link walked down short hall, lava was on both sides of a single line of tiles heading for a boss door, the music so warped we had to turn the volume down a bit. Despite not having a boss key, when Link’s sprite pushed up against the door it opened and Link when into the next room: the tool shop. Standing like he does at the far end of the room, the shop owner appeared; the room silent, the only noise the game made was that of the text.
“I am your nightmare.”
Like the other Nightmares that came into the Wind Fish’s mind to stop him from waking up, I realized the shop owner’s purpose was to stop Link from helping in the Wind Fish’s awakening.
Just as he does after you re-enter the shop after stealing something, he shot his spell at Link, quickly draining the 3 hearts I had left, and its noise sounded more like a scream than the buzzing it normally makes. After Link fell to the ground the screen showed a pixilated, frightening, twisted smile of the shop owner, reminiscent of the happy mask salesman. The game then when white, shut off, and never worked again.
My friend’s cartridge was unfortunately lost when he moved or he could have sold it to a pawn shop, I’m not sure, I wish I could have bought it from him even though it didn’t work. Even though I still vividly remember that pixilated face, it’s still one of my favorites to this day and although I don't own a legitimate copy, I still find ways to play it.
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