That One Level
So, I picked up Mario Maker 2 the other week. Not so spectacular, right? It's just a game with user-generated content. Well, it becomes creepy at times. I was simply chilling, playing Easy Endless, and everything was normal. Seriously, I was about to break seven hundred levels already. Then I got what looked like another rendition of 1-1.
No, seriously. It was literally Super Mario Bros 1-1, except it was created in the SMB3 ghost house style. I stomped my way across the goombas to the goal post, only I realized too late that it was just spikes. Mario lost a life.
I was back at the beginning of the level, only the goombas that I had killed were now stretch ghosts. I thought that this was a weird gimmick. This made me try to go down the coin pipe, just to skip this odd level. When I sent Mario through the pipe, though, it sent me to what looked like a wholly different level. I traversed some simple platforming before ending up at a dead end with spikes. I thought there was something I had missed earlier, so Mario had to commit suicide.
The level re-started, and now, in addition to everything else, I now had to deal with one of those spherical ghost thingies that chase you when Mario looks away from them, only it went way too fast for a normal asset from the game. Again, I thought it was odd how this level adapted to everything, but when I tried to skip it, it didn't work. I couldn't even pause to save and quit. I tried to comment, but the game made an odd sound I didn't know it could do- speech. I heard Mario speaking in an ordinary but oddly eerie voice, "We have so much time. Why don't you stay and play with me for a while?"
Ok, now I was freaked out. My console wouldn't even turn off, and when I tried to get up, it was almost as if I was glued to my chair. May as well keep playing this level, I thought. After all, I had put a lot of time and three lives into it, and I wasn't going to stop now. This odd fear caused me to accidentally lose a life.
The level changed.
Now it was a 3D World castle, and right off the bat, it was vertical with rising lava, even though you can't go vertical until you reach the sub-area. Eventually, though, I reached a room inside the tower where I couldn't go on and had no choice but to let Mario burn in the lava. However, instead of simply dying, I had to see him flounder in the lava, his face melting off and screaming for help. This was disturbing, given that the game didn't even have a model for anything under Mario's skin.
I was now back in the same tower, but now I had Luigi instead of Mario, even though I didn't change characters, and the tower was now devoid of enemies. The lava didn't rise. Some sections were tricky without enemies, but I used some advanced tech and only lost a couple of lives. When Luigi finally reached the top, the room wasn't empty anymore- instead, it contained Mario's charred corpse and a single ghost. I lost control of the game as Luigi ran up to Mario, and suddenly my stereo system started blasting crying- loud, choking sobs, and the occasional scream directed at me. It was so loud it hurt, and then Luigi pulled a rope out of his overalls. It was far too realistic to be in a Mario game and somehow looped around items in the 2D background. Luigi cursed me and then hanged himself. I heard the snap, and one last curse directed at me.
"You will die as Mario had."
This level is still online. I have the level code and everything.
