Chapter 5: Entropy(part 1 )

In the original game, the 6th world was Pluto. Ironically, despite being the smallest planet, Pluto was the largest and most diverse world in the game. Entropy had a different layout, but was similarly huge and diverse.

The board music was played by a violin instrument, a melody that started out sounding mournful and then it gets rather...I guess I would call it "distorted"? It made me feel depressed and unnerved. Not something I would want to hear while trying to sleep.

Strangely, none of the levels from the previous worlds were present here, instead there were eight brand-new icons. The bosses this time were Megalon, Battra, and Mechagodzilla.

As usual, the first thing I did was go to the Quiz Level for another interrogation from Face. But I when I got there, I noticed something different; instead of the usual goofy GH1D0RA music, it was the Password theme.

The music change seemed to be intentional, because after the first two questions at the start, the quiz started to take on a darker tone;

Quiz 3
1. Do you like Ice Cream?
Answer: Yes, Reaction: Weird Face #1
2. Do you like clowns?
Answer: Yes, Reaction: Weird Face #10
3. Is time slipping through your fingers?
Answer: Yes, Reaction: Weird Face #2
4. Do you have any regrets?
Answer: Yes, Reaction: Hurt
5. Do some people deserve to die?
Answer: No, Reaction: Weird Face #3
6. Is it safe to go out at night?
Answer: Yes, Reaction: Weird Face #5
7. Do you find it hard to sleep at night?
Answer: Yes, Reaction: Weird Face #9
8. Have you ever killed anyone?
Answer: No, Reaction: Weird Face #7
9. Do you want to kill anyone?
Answer: No, Reaction: Angry
10. Are you actually accomplishing anything?
Answer: No, Reaction: Weird Face #4
11. Does life have any real meaning?
Answer: No, Reaction: Love
12. Do you like Mothra?
Answer: No, Reaction: Maniacal

I knew that last one was gonna be a gameplay related question, but I had no idea what the result would be. I answered honestly, because as I said before I never liked Mothra.

Nobody liked playing as Mothra in this game. And there was a good reason for that, every other time Mothra gets hit she gets slammed back to the left corner of the screen, and she sucks at fighting because her attacks are so weak. The only benefit Mothra had was being able to fly over obstacles in some levels.

So I answered No, and Face actually replied back to me, not only with the maniacal expression, but with text;

"TOO BAD!"

I was taken back to the map screen, and I was shocked to see that Godzilla and Anguirus has disappeared from the board, leaving only Mothra. Face had just fucked me over. Needless to say, I was pissed. But there wasn't anything I could do, and I'm willing to bet even if I had said "Yes", I would have been stuck with Mothra anyway. Face giveth, and Face taketh away.

I took a deep breath, and got ready to explore. There were two paths I could take through the board, I decided to take the lower one. This turned out to be a good choice for reasons I'll get to momentarily.

The first world ahead me of was a forest, so I started there. Almost immediately, I got an eerie feeling. There was something about this level that just seemed "off" to me, even more than the previous ones.

Perhaps it was the pitch black background. I've always been afraid of being in a forest at night. Something about all those trees, makes me feel surrounded and vulnerable.

And the fact that I was stuck as Mothra didn't help. Playing the game's previous worlds as Godzilla gave me a feeling of bravery, being in control of the King of The Monsters, I'd be able to handle just about anything in my way.

But it's not like that with Mothra. No feeling of strength, or security. Now I'm just a weak, easily overwhelmed bug, traversing into the unknown.

Back to the level. The music had new instruments, sounding like woodwinds, followed by slow, rhythmic drums and chiming bells. Gave me this feeling that I was intruding into some dangerous place I really should not be.

After a while, I encountered the first enemies of the stage. Or at least I assumed they were enemies. They were strange, long legged deer like creatures. Instead of attacking, they were just idly walking around. I went to approach them, and they ran away.

I thought about shooting one with an eye beam to see what would happen, but it seemed wrong. These creatures were harmless. So I passed over them and continued through the level.

About halfway through, I encountered groups of the deer-like animals, and also two new creatures: A sloth like creature with a beak climbing on a tree, and hairy raptor-esque beasts that were preying on the deer.

It was very surreal watching these creatures interact. I didn't feel like I was playing a video game, but rather that I was traveling through a forest in some other dimension.

The creatures ignored me for the most part, although the raptors did attack me when I got too close, or if I attacked them first. I know I shot one of them to help one of the deer creatures escape. I got clawed at, but confrontation was easily avoided by flying up to the top of the screen.

After that, I had to choose whether I wanted to play the levels with the hourglass, or the TV screen. I picked the latter. What I got was not at all what I expected.

When I pressed the button to start a level on the TV Screen like I normally would, this screen with an animation popped up. There was also music in the background, which was the goofy Gh1d0ra music that used to be playing in the Quiz levels.

I was somewhat unsettled by this because it was just so strange. I also found it a bit spooky because I had a shirt that looked just like that when as a kid. After starting the animation, you could go back to the board by pressing any button.

After that, I had no what to expect of the rest of these icons. I went to try an hourglass icon next. I was somewhat relieved when an actual level came up.

It was certainly an unorthodox looking level. All brown, with time measuring instruments floating in the air and gigantic grandfather clocks in the background. The music was the same as the board screen.

And very early in the level I encountered something else I didn't expect to see: Original enemies from the game!

And not just that, it seemed to be a whole fleet of them. And the yellow tanks, which were normally immobile, could now move. I took some damage, but it was nothing I couldn't handle. But the most interesting thing about this level was the colored hourglass items.

There were 3 of these:

1. A blue hourglass, that made time slow down and filled the level with enemies from the past.
2. A red hourglass, that made time speed up and filled the level with enemies from the future.
3. A green hourglass, that set time to the normal speed, and filled the level with the original game enemies.

I encountered the blue hourglass first. As stated, the game started to slow down, and I saw the "enemies from the past", which were five different types of prehistoric animals. I don't know much about prehistory, but I believe all of these enemies represent real animals.

The level went into another segment, and I encountered the green hourglass, and then I fought the original enemies again. It was the same five types so I didn't take any screenshots. But in the last segment, I encountered the red hourglass, and the enemies that must have been from the future.

Now, whether or not the game was showing me 8-bit renditions of creatures that will actually exist thousands of years into Earth's future, I have no idea. But with that thought in mind, I found this particular segment to be very eerie, and it was made more tense because everything moved faster.

One of the future enemies bore a striking resemblance to something I saw in a book once, called "Troodon Man". Another looked like some kind of organic spaceship.

There was only one of the fifth type of Future creature, and when it appeared, all the others ran for their lives, leaving me alone to battle it.

It could fly but its sprite didn't actually move, and its single attack was firing a lightning bolt from its "face". Even so, it was surprisingly powerful, and I suppose it could be considered a mini-boss.

After defeating it, it left a health power-up that restored the health and energy I had lost fighting it. Which was convenient! It seemed I would need all the help I could get to beat this world with Mothra alone.

After that previous stage I call "Time Warp", the next stage appeared to be a Toxic Waste Dump.

As you can see, the place looked grungy, and inhospitable. The music was a short looping of an ambient synthesizer song. Listening to it made me feel like I had sniffed some toxic fumes myself, and it was messing with my head the whole time. I even felt like I was choking while playing this level.

The enemies all seem to be mutated to some degree. In the above screenshot you can see green mummies with bird skulls, that jump out of the waste to spit projectiles. There's also a brownish cow skeleton monster with spider legs.

Halfway through the level I even saw one of the deer from the forest. It was alone, and when I saw it, it was drinking toxic waste out of a barrel with an anteater-like tongue.

I was moving over to try to make it stop, but then this flock of skull birds came out of nowhere and started attacking.

The deer was scared by this and ended up running off the ground into the toxic waste. I feel bad for it. One of the birds bit me, but I regained health quick from killing all of them, they were rather weak.

I pressed onward. Of all the levels in Entropy, this was probably the most "normal", in that there was little deviance from the "Move forward, smash things" formula in the original game.

I encountered more creatures through the level, like tentacled blobs, and some kind of deformed thing with human-like teeth. I didn't feel like provoking them into a fight, so I kept on flying near the top of the screen. I still had to deal with occasional flock of birds now and then.

At the end of the level was a large, bluish green lake, and there I encountered another mini-boss. Some kind of a monster with a long neck and a whale's skull. It attacks with a mouth projectile, and by charging into you. It also could go underneath the water and rapidly emerge from a different place.

It was harder to beat than the boss from the Time Warp, and it had a lot of health because it must have taken me three minutes to defeat it. It let out a really loud noise when it died, and then sank back into the water as I left the screen.

Back on the board, I went to the nearest level icon I hadn't seen yet, which was a white tree. As I guessed, the level was a winter themed recolor of the forest stage.

But unlike the regular forest, I didn't feel unnerved starting this one. I think the music had a lot to do with it. It was a gentle, calm song, it almost sounded romantic. It was quite stress relieving, and the forest itself looked much less ominous covered in snow.

I traveled through the first segment enjoying the atmosphere for four minutes, when suddenly I realized something: I haven't seen a single creature since I started the level. Where are all the animals? Soon after, I left the screen, and the next segment started.

In the second segment, I was still in the winter forest, but now the music was gone. I was starting to feel suspicious, but then I reminded myself that there were other empty levels in the game and this was likely another one of those.

But then...I heard something familiar. It was the twelve second looping music from "UNFORGIVING COLD" starting up. I could feel my heart sink as I came across this horrible sight:

It was a whole group of dead deer creatures, covered in snow. Judging from the blackish blue tone of their skin, they must have all frozen to death. On closer inspection, some were missing body parts. Now I was frightened. But I still had to keep going.

Before exiting the level, I was really hoping to see something resembling the previous forest animals in a living state. And sure enough, I did.

It was a creature much like the beaked sloth, except this thing had white fur and was more of a beaked gorilla. It was walking very slowly when I saw it, but I was happy to at least see something alive. However, it didn't stay that way for long.

A pack of raptors, who must have sensed that something else was still alive, came rushing in from the right side of the screen. The beaked gorilla didn't stand a chance, as one of the raptors immediately lunged at it and ripped open its back legs.

These "winter raptors" acted far different from their temperate relatives. While the other raptors only attacked while hunting prey or when provoked, the winter raptors seemed to have all gone insane. They attacked everything in sight, one was running back and forth clawing at nothing. Even the noises they made sounded different, more high pitched and enraged.

As I left this second segment, I even saw two Raptors fighting to the death. They were both covered in injuries, and one of the Raptors had been blinded in one eye. I took a screenshot, but I didn't stay to see who won the fight.

I only had to get through one more segment before I could go back to the board screen. But in this segment, I was no longer in the winter forest, but instead a very empty grassy plain, with a bright gray moon in the sky. The pleasant music of Winter Forest part 1 had returned.

And immediately, I started to feel dread. This is going to sound crazy but it's the absolute truth: The game made this level from one of my memories.

After a long stretch of nothing, I reached a lake. And then, the moon moved down from the sky, and begin to hatch like an egg.When it did, a curled up humanoid figure fell into the lake as the moon halves quickly disintegrated.

I heard a splash when it hit the water, then a moment of silence. Then the screen began to shake, and a new creature emerged from the water;

And thus I was introduced to a monster I call the "Moon Beast". This was the only screenshot I took, as I was focusing all my concentration on winning the fight. And it was the most difficult fight yet. Stronger than any of the previous bosses, this creature would have been hard to take down with Godzilla, and with Mothra it seemed nearly impossible.

I suppose I would consider myself fortunate that the beast lacked any attacks like Gigan's saw, because if it had I would never have won this. I barely had three bars of health when I finally killed this abomination.

But what happened afterward is hardly what I could call a reward.

...I've been trying to keep my promise and suppress this memory for years, but it seems as if I have to get it off my chest. This is a very painful memory for me, but the game already knows about it and I think you should too. I'll just tell you the important parts, because I don't like bringing this experience back into my head unless I have to.

Back when I was in Middle school, I had a girlfriend named Melissa. She suffered from some kind of mental disorder that caused her to go into "episodes".

When she was in an "episode", she would stand or sit perfectly straight and still, and her face would instantly lose any expressions she had before. She would speak very clearly, without any hint of emotion. When it was over, she would start trembling and sometimes bury her face in her hands, and remain silent for several minutes. I can't really convey the feeling it gave me in words, and I won't try. You had to see this in person to understand.

But despite this, she was a very kind person and I cared about her dearly. We liked to hang out in a field at night, and look at the stars. But one night she didn't say anything to me at all, she just stared directly at the moon, trembling. I tried to talk to her, but she suddenly sprung up, and ran right into traffic. I tried to stop her, but I was too late. She got hit by a truck, and was killed that night.

I looked her right in the eyes when the wheels went over her neck. That sight has always haunted me.

I know that the game knows about this because after I defeated the Moon Beast...this happened.