CREEPYPASTA'S

Zelda Bootleg

One of my all-time favorite video games ever is unquestionablyLegend of Zelda: A Link To The Pastfor the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Ever since I was a youngster, I'd play the hell out of it; collecting rupees, slaying bad guys, solving puzzles, you get the idea. And although I loved the game, I also thought it had a few bizarre and even frightening factors. Regardless, I still loved that game to death.

In addition to being such an avid fan of the game, I'm also a fan of retro video games. Nowadays, I just can't seem to enjoy video games the way I previously did. A lot of them nowadays are all cheap knock-offs of each other, like FPS games for instance.

Anyway, as I said, I love old-school video games. I primarily played Nintendo as a kid. Unfortunately, I had broken my original Super Nintendo many years ago, and at the time, I had no idea how to download an emulator. I became upset because, even in my youth, I loved 8-bit and 16-bit video games. Nowadays, I can play or watch an old video game with the typing of a few keys and the click of a mouse.

But there's one game that I would absolutely not play if it wasn't on an old-fashioned gaming console: A Link To The Past.

Luckily for me, I had met a good friend of mine in the eighth grade. His name was Ray, and he was into video games, comics, and movies. He too was a fan of retro video games (and modern ones, but don't ask me as to why he likes them) and had a working SNES.

About a few months back, Ray and I had finished our college semester and we wanted to celebrate. We both attended a community college, and we were both majoring in difficult subjects. So it's only natural that we have a little fun after such an arduous three months. I inquired that we go over to his house and play a few classic games.

So we did, and I couldn't wait to get my hands on A Link To The Past.

The only problem was that Ray didn't have it. Regardless, we still played the shit out of all of the classics; Super Mario World, Mortal Kombat (despite not having the blood we've come to know and love), Donkey Kong Country's 1,2, and 3, Killer Instinct, Super Castlevania IV, Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island, and all those 16-bit gems.

But the urge to play ALTTP was still burning within me.

The next morning, I suggested we go to our local comic book shop and we purchase a copy of it. He eagerly agreed.

I'm not much into comics, but let me tell you, they had a treasure trove of comics, video games, action-figures, posters, and various other paraphernalia. I saw that they had an enormous library of SNES games (along with Genesis, Atari 2600 and Nintendo 64 games), and for sureALTTP was among them.

I scanned the shelves slowly with my index finger, and then voila, I found it. I pulled it off of the shelf and took a look at it. There was a sticker underneath the sticker that displayed the game's title. It said, "USED" in all capital letters.

In all honesty, I hate purchasing used products, especially something as cherished as this. I tried to find another copy that didn't say anything, but to my chagrin, I couldn't.

So I settled for the used copy. I wasn't going to let something as petulant as a game being used get in the way of me having hours of fun.

We both got to Ray's house and I popped it into the SNES cartridge slot. Before we began playing, he went downstairs to go snatch us some snacks and soda. I pulled the game out of the slot and examined the game's cartridge.

It looked normal enough; no signs of damage, and it was in fairly good condition. That is, when I turned it around, the text on the back of the cartridge informing the player as to how to clean the cartridge and how to properly use it...was writtenbackwards. It was still legible if it was held up in a mirror, but why would anyone do that?