Creeptales

It all started on a Friday afternoon. I was watching a couple of Ducktales (the NES game) videos on YouTube, so I decided to go find a copy and play it. I had gone to a nearby game exchange. "I wonder if I can find a copy here." I went in and looked around. The games were usually in the back. I was scrolling through their selections of NES games, and I noticed there was a copy of one left. "Can someone help here?" I asked. One of the workers came by, opened the case and pulled it out for me.

I looked at the game and noticed something odd: the cover was torn and marked with I assume was red marker, and Scrooge's face was missing.

"Must have belonged to someone with kids," I guessed. I paid ten dollars at most for it.

When I got home, I was excited that I finally found a copy of Ducktales to play. I put it in the NES and started playing it. The title screen popped up and there were the selections for the type of game: Easy, Normal, Difficult. "I'll go with normal first." I selected Normal, and the screen went black and the game brought me back to the title screen.

"What the hell?" I chose Easy, then Difficult, and it did the same thing: back to the title screen.

"What's going on?" I decided to pull it out and blow on it, then I put it back in. Then it got weirder. The title screen music didn't play and Scrooge's eyes were facing right instead of looking at the screen.

"What in blazes is he looking at?"

I tried to pick a level, but nothing happened. I then pressed on the D-Pad to go right and it went past difficult. "Where did it go?" I tapped every button to make it come back. I hit A and the game turned dark red, then went black. When it came back on, Scrooge was on top of the pillar that had the treasure box (the one you race Flintheart Glomgold to). The Transylvania theme wasn't playing. "This is really weird." I was about to return it, but... curiosity was one of my weak-points.

(His money meter said $99999999999999999999 and the time was 999, but wasn't going down.)

I made Scrooge jump off the pillar and the screen followed Scrooge down to the floor. I decided to walk to where the mirror was. I had Scrooge jump in and it led me to the room with the false wall. I walked past the false wall and tried to jump down the hole and continued to progress back to the beginning of the level. There were no enemies and there were duck skeletons laying there as they usually would during the game.

When I got to the coffin, there was something interesting on it. Instead of having the letters R.I.P., it had a red bloody arrow on it and it was facing left. "Left?" I was even more curious at that point. I decided to progress left and I saw the mirror (the one that takes you to the Skull Key). Instead of black, it was red, like Scrooge's outfit (On a side-note, why isn't Scrooge's outfit blue? If the game is based on the show, at least make it blue.). I jumped into the mirror and the screen played the teleport noise, but the screen went black and flashed multiple colors. Red, blue, black, the works!

"What the hell is going on with this game?" The game loaded the Amazon stage. The sky was black, the ground was blue and the rocks were red. The Venus Flytraps didn't attack and looked all glitched up and dead looking. "This... what is... what? Is the game bugging out?" I noticed that Scrooge's eyes looked like they were sick and exhausted. When I did the pogo attack, there were no sound effects and it only went halfway.

I continued to scroll left, and when I reached the part with the rope, it wasn't there. Instead, there was a pit and the arrow on the sign was facing down. I jumped down the hole and the game teleported me to another stage.

This one was the Himalayas.

Halfway through the first part, the music started playing again. But it only would play the first 5 notes, then drag the 6th one out very long, like a low scream. When I got to the part with the pit, there was one of Scrooge's nephews (Huey, I think). I decided to walk over to him and press A. The message he gave was weird.

"Money. Even with it, you cannot escape death. No matter how much you gain, no matter what you do... in the end, we all go the same way... dead and forgotten."

"That's really... dark."

The game then flashed and glitched out, and I was on the Moon stage. The ground was blood red and the sky was totally black. The music wasn't playing right. It was jumping between loud and silent. The ropes to the ship were gone. "I wonder what would happen if I fell into the hole?" I decided to do just that, but all that happened was I would stand on an invisible hole.

I continued to scroll to the right until I reached the hole where one would climb down to the boss level. There, there were Dewey and Louie stand on both sides. They were both facing Scrooge, but one looked at the screen, staring at me, while the other looked down a hole. No matter how many times I clicked A, they wouldn't talk. So I decided to jump down the hole. When I did, the screen just went black.

I was able to scroll right, then the screen started to fade in. To my surprise... SCROOGE HAD NO ARMS OR PUPILS! His eyes were completely white! In my horror, I decided to scroll right more, and to my surprise, all of the bosses were facing right, I wondered why. As I continued to scroll, there was a coffin (the one from earlier) was standing there. I got up close to the coffin and clicked A. A message box said "We live, we learn, but for what purpose? To die? This seems to be the way of life. Thus, you will die and be forgotten like a memory..." The health bar disappeared and Scrooge was knocked into the coffin. The screen then faded to black and another message box said "No matter what you do, what you earn... you will die. There is no escape..."

I destroyed the game as soon as I finished, but to this day, I am still bothered by the message the game left in my mind.

"We all go the same way..."

- The End -