Da Multicart

ONCE UPON A TIME...(Wesley Willis reference)

I mysteriously received a Famicom cartridge in the mail. There was no label on the banana-yellow cartridge, just the name &quot;JEFURI&quot; (Jeffery) written in Kakatana with a black Sharpie. I was curious, so I plugged it into my NES via a Famicom conversion kit and saw what it was all about. As it turns out, it was a multicart. The menu screen had a sepia-toned, pixellated version of that unnerving Jeff photo. Oddly, an 8-bit rendition of Rose Sub's theme from Trio The Punch was the background music. There was no company info on the title screen, just &quot;JEFF THE KILLER&quot; in a blood-red &quot;drippy&quot; font against a black background. I decided this must have been a stupid prank meant to scare people. Well, it wasn't working, and actually made me sort of chuckle.

I decided to get this train wreck over with and went back to the menu. I wondered how whatever hacker put this together would try to scare me. All the names of the hacked games were, surprisingly, not altered in any way. They were, as follows: Parody World Monster Party (wait, I thought the Japanese version was never released!), Cheetahmen (not surprising, considering the Cheetahmen theme song being so popular in Japan), Master Takeshi's Adventure Island, Shinjinrui The New Type (known as Dino-Riki in the US), and one title I didn't recognize, which was in Japanese text instead of English. It said &quot;Gomen Nasai&quot; (I'm so very sorry.) I decided I'd save that one for last. Possibly a port of &quot;I'm Sorry&quot;, I thought.

As I suspected, the games were hacks of the ones the menu indicated, with title sceen hacks replacing the regular titles with &quot;spooky&quot; images and replacing the main character's sprite with a rough rendering of Jeff The Killer, as he's seen in xcomickittyx's &quot;Pasta Monsters&quot; comic. The &quot;scary&quot; graphical alterations were truly laughable and cliche, like the snails in Adventure Island being replaced with bloody-eyed skulls and the Giant Spider boss in Monster Party being a severed head. &quot;C'mon, REALLY?!&quot; I said.

You had to admit, though, whoever made this was really dedicated; the main character's sprite always stayed as Jeff and actually fit with each game's art style, unlike most &quot;graphic replacement&quot; hacks, like the one of The Flintstones where Mario's sprite keeps flickering back to the original Fred one.

The Cheetahmen game, unlike the original version, actually had a proper ending. It was a screen that said &quot;Stop playing! Now! Please! Before HE gets you!&quot; Sigh. Still not working, buddy. The altered version of Dino-Riki (which was much, much easier than the original) had a similar ending only it said &quot;I WARNED YOU!!&quot;

Eventually, it was time to tackle the final game. I selected it, and pressed START, and the menu froze and made a low, soft buzzing sound. I was about to shut off the NES when I noticed the background had changed. It was no longer an image of Jeff. It was a photo of a young Japanese man with a pleading look on his face. The buzzing stopped, and the names of the games dissapeared. New text appeared on the screen, in the same red font as the game titles.

&quot;I'm...I'm sorry. I had to do it. HE made me do it.

&quot;He's not satisfied with killing people in America anymore.

&quot;He wants to spread his terror all over the world now!

&quot;So he captured me and five other programmers and forced us to make the cursed multicarts.

&quot;He made us distribute them in electronic stores, drugstores, the black market, and other places such bootleg video games may be found. All over Japan.

&quot;When someone plays and completes all four games, it...sends a signal to him.

&quot;He somehow teleports into the person's house, kills them, and mails the cart to another soon-to-be victim. Or at least, that's what he tells us.

&quot;The cursed carts are spreading to China now. If that happens, they'll end up all over the world!

&quot;You must stop him! Please! In what little time you have left...

&quot;ARRRRGGHH...&quot;

The text cleared, and another new image popped up. It was Jeff again, only this time it wasn't the original image, and it was in full color. It was far too detailed and realistic-looking for an 8-bit system, and he was facing me. He had an even more deranged expression than usual. Instead of being in a closet, he seemed to be in some sort of warehouse with piles of yellow blocks behind him; these must have been the cursed cartridges the young man was talking about. As the text appeared on the screen this time, the mouth moved.

&quot;HA HA HA HA HA! It's too late!

&quot;Now the carts have finally reached China!

&quot;My plan worked! Soon they will be all over the world...

&quot;I will be unstoppable!

&quot;Prepare to die!

&quot;GO TO SLEEP!&quot;

The Famicom shut itself off automatically. &quot;That's weird,&quot; I thought. In any case, that last desperate attempt to scare me failed. I then heard a knock at the front door. &quot;Oh shit, what if it's Jeff?!&quot; I thought. Then I realized I was letting the dumb pirate game get to me. I cautiously approached the door. When I opened it, there was no one there. AND THEN JEFF POPPED OUT OF MY ASS!!! I died in the process, naturally.

Written by Furbearingbrick.