EarthBound is my favorite game. It will continue to be my favorite game, despite what happened. Let me start from the beginning. I had beaten the game before on an emulator, but I really wanted to  play the game legally, on an actual console. I saved up all of my money for months until I had enough for the insanely-priced game. I ordered the game and it arrived within a week or so. No one else was home when it arrived. The cartridge was in good shape, a few scratches here and there but the label was intact. I popped it into my Super Nintendo and turned it on.

   The familiar file select screen came up showing that there were already two save files in use. The first one had the name of "Ness" and was at level 73, the second one had the name of "Andy" and was at level 9. Curious to see at what point in the game each file was at, I loaded up the "Ness" file.

   They were in the Cave of the Past, one of my favorite parts of the game. I absolutely loved the final stretch of the game so I said "What the heck" and went ahead to play through it on this file. Of course, I knew this part of the game so well it wouldn't take me very long. I checked the characters' stats; they all had the default names and were all around level 70. The items were also fairly normal for that part in the game. All seemed to be going well.

    After rearranging the equips to my liking, I began my journey towards Giygas. I soon encountered an enemy, and as soon as I had beat it, my stats went crazy. Each character leveled up until they were level 99. I checked the stats again, noticing that the characters' HP and PP were more than it should have been, even at level 99. The game was glitching like crazy, not like it was a bad thing though, being super powerful would make the Giygas battle incredibly easy.

    I had seen copies of EarthBound that had glitched like this before, so I continued playing. I flew through all the enemies as they were all insta-kills for me now. I noticed that the music started getting distorted. I'd seen the game do that before too, so it didn't really surprise me. The graphics seemed to be the only thing not screwing up at this point, that is until I got about half way through the cave of the past.

    On the edge of the pathway there was a random Mr. Saturn sprite. I went and talked to it and it offered me coffee like the Mr. Saturn at the hot springs does. I chose "yes" just to see what would happen. The coffee break scene began to roll. The music was distorted like the music in the cave had been and the background was acting funny. The text that rolled was just a jumbled mess of letters and such in different fonts. Every once in a while, there was an actual word or a phrase from the game, although I could've sworn that I saw my own name in there. Up to this point I had been laughing at all the glitches, but the sudden appearance of my name gave me an uneasy feeling.

    The scene ended and the Mr. Saturn sprite was gone. In fact, the entire Cave of the Past had disappeared. It was just the characters' sprites in complete blackness, almost as if I had somehow walked off the map. The music now was a distorted version of the Scaraba music (which in all honestly sounded cool). I continued walking blindly until I reached a Mani Mani Statue sprite. I talked to it and it gave me another jumbled mass of text which ended with "...Giygas". After that the sprite disappeared and The Cave of the Past and the music righted themselves. 

    I was now in front of the cave which leads to Giygas' lair. I went inside to be greeted by the usual array of intestines. Something was off about the place though. I realized that there was a new sound replacing the usual sounds of breathing. Listening closer I realized they were inhuman whispers, repeating what Giygas usually says in battle. They were better quality than the Super Nintendo could produce. I had no idea where these whispers had come from, they aren't anywhere in the game. Trust me, I've checked. They sent chills down my spine, but I did what any idiot would do, I kept playing.

    I made it to the Devil's Machine and the eyeball-like thing in the center of it displayed Ness's face as usual, but there was something wrong with it. His skin was pure white and his eyes were a dark red. For whatever reason, it felt as if he were staring into my soul. I know that doesn't really make any sense, I mean a 16 bit sprite that can stare into your soul? But trust me, this thing was pretty unnerving. Pokey then appeared, but instead of taunting the chosen four like usual, he just said "..." and the battle began. 

    Instead of the normal music that plays at this part, the whispers grew louder and a bunch of different songs and sound effects from the game began playing in the background. It was the sound of pure chaos. I noticed that Pokey's sprite seemed to have glitched a bit too, he no longer seemed to have a smug grin on his face. After I beat the first part of the game, all that Pokey said was "...Don't try" and then the Devil's Machine turned off.

    The sound effects and music had been slowly growing in the background and now it sounded as if every single sound in the game was being played at once. Thankfully, though, the horrible whispers were being drowned out by the discordant roar. Giygas seemed to be distorting more than he normally would, and every time he attacked, instead of  "You cannot grasp the true form of Giygas' attack" it simply said "...cannot grasp....".

    The sound began to become unbearable. I went to turn down the volume on my T.V., but to my dismay it did nothing to quell the noise. The game began to play itself, not letting me choose any attacks at all. I sat watching the screen with my hands over my ears, although it really didn't help stop the noise at all. Giygas let loose another attack and I heard four bloodcurdling screams. They sounded too realistic, like someone in a lot of pain. It scared me, but it also broke my heart to hear such pain. I picked up my controller again, desperately wanting to stop this, but the game still wouldn't let me have any control. The controller felt as if it were vibrating, but I realized that it was just my hands shaking.

    I couldn't do anything to help the characters. All I could do was watch as they got brutally murdered and listen to their terrified screams. I wanted to turn it off, but for some reason I stayed and watched it all. The characters' HP finally rolled down to zero. There was the sweet relief of silence as the game over screen appeared. Instead of just showing Ness though, it showed all four characters as their angel sprites which only appear when a party member is dead. Although there's not really much room for detail on these simple sprites, their expressions were different. It was almost as if they were asking "Why?". I was given no option to continue, the text box remained blank.

    I stared at the screen with tears in my eyes. All I could do was sit there and say "I'm sorry" over and over. Why was I apologizing? I don't know, I just felt so bad for the characters. There must've been at least five minutes of that, but I finally got up and turned the console off. Instead of it being hot like it normally is after playing a game, it was ice cold. I have played the game again, though. It has worked fine for me and hasn't had any glitches since. I have no valid explanation for what happened, for all I know it might've all been in my head. But then again, my neighbors did complain about screams coming from my house...