Sega Saturn: Track 3

"I don't know, it already sounds pretty bad," one of my friends uttered.

This was around 2002, just a few years after the Sega Saturn, which was among the company's biggest flops, was discontinued. We still played the hell out of the console, and as such became outcasts with the "cool kids" that owned a PlayStation 2, or an Xbox. I had both of those, but the origin on how we united over what people called a "sucky game system," dates back to 1997. My parents bought the Saturn because they were huge Sega fans, and they found the Sony PlayStation too expensive (I would later come to realize it was the other way around, I'm guessing that store sold the PlayStation at an unreasonably high price). There were only 2 games at the start: Sega Rally Championship, and one of the stripped-down console ports of SimCity 2000. Eventually I owned around 20 by 2002, which is where this story begins.

Anyways, as my friends came over for a few games such as NHL '97 (one of the EA Sports games on the Saturn, the last time EA supported Sega hardware) and Virtua Fighter, it was shortly after I learned about the "Sega discs on a CD player" Easter egg. Track 2 warns about your CD player's speakers being destroyed, and Track 1 is the game data that causes the terrible noise. The Internet was limited at the time, not as fast as it's supposed to be today, but I recall us seeing a forum post that warned about Sega Saturn game discs containing a Track 3, which was supposed to cause terrible consequences. We assumed this, because the post was basically:

''DON'T PLAY TRACK 3 OF A SATURN DISC! THERE'S MORE DAMAGE DONE THAN ON THE CD PLAYER''

You may think that we took this as a joke, and we did. At first we believed it (when the quote at the beginning takes place), then a couple minutes later we were laughing our asses off. "I can't believe we believed that for a second," one of us said, as an understatement. The Saturn was still on, with a game of NHL on pause. The system, for some reason, rebooted by itself. We were caught off guard when the startup noise played. I ejected the disc quickly, bringing us back to the Sega Saturn menu.

The odd part was, I recall leaving on a Saturn for around 4 hours, and nothing happened. It's been around 50 minutes we had the console on NHL.

After this, I looked for a Sega Saturn title that I didn't care much about: F1 Challenge. I've owned a Sega Dreamcast as well, and I've always wondered if it was backwards compatible with the Saturn; it wasn't, but I was thinking about playing the disc on the Dreamcast's CD player. Then I realized I didn't want to screw up the console (for me it's a treasure), so I put it into my computer's disc drive, as it would be easier to locate the mysterious Track 3.

The creepy audio warning popped up at first, and looking through the track list, there it was indeed. Clicking on it, it was a 20-second soundbite of weird sounds, a combination of alien noises and a public bathroom. No, seriously, somebody was shitting during the recording.

We did find it strange, but thought nothing of "it's the end of the world," until 6 o'clock news came around. My heart sank as I saw the headline: "Sega Saturn Can Kill People?" Much of the news report I STILL remember 18 years later.

''Around afternoon a quartet of teenagers played a Sega Saturn disc on a CD player. There was a hidden track within the disc that is described to "cause more damage than done on the CD player." The sounds weren't just game data, they were death-inducing, and their neighbors fell victim of sudden death. Was there a terrible secret within the console's history? Did this contribute to its poor sales? And most importantly, are we safe from a piece of technology?''

The news reporter said this while standing outside of a two-story house. Guess which one.

That's right. I did hear the question come from my parents, on why the house looked so similar to ours. I looked out the window. The reporter was standing right there. My parents scolded me, saying that I made us notorious all around the state of Michigan. They attempted to unhook my Sega Saturn, and the console turned on by itself, the wires becoming stuck on. The startup played at full blast, however, the Japanese startup noise played instead, and the logo was red, instead of blue. During this, the console began glowing and levitating out of my mom's hands.

Afterwards, the console exploded, and the power went out, except for the TV, which displayed a hyper-realistic image of a fried motherboard.

I ran out of the house, and that's when an SUV crashed into our mailbox. My friends came out, and said they were driving the car because the sidewalk started becoming "sentient aliens that defecated all over the houses," and decided it wasn't worth the risk. I took another peek at our living room TV, and it was displaying those odd Sega Saturn advertisements. Eventually, we saw a giant CD falling from the air, shattering once it touched the ground.

Finally, a flash of light came around, and lasted 20 seconds. When it began to die out, we saw that all of the madness had stopped.

While I still play the Sega Saturn, I make sure none of my games play on a CD player or anything like that. About that F1 Challenge disc? Either it was destroyed in the event, I sold it, or it's out there, spinning around in the air, looking for a CD player that can play Track 3 and haunt everybody.

Just recently, I saw on the news that a very close star had collapsed, with researchers calling it the "Sega Saturn."

Don't play Track 3 of a Saturn disc. There's more damage than done on a CD player.

Especially if you don't want to see fake shit like this.