Hyper-Realistic, (doing this instead of work)

So my friend and I enjoy going to garage sales and flea markets and all that. On one particular occasion, we found a cartridge of the original Super Mario Brothers for the NES, perfectly standard in every way, except that on the back, HYPER-REALISTIC had been written in Sharpie.

Being nerds and fans of creepy-pastas, we chuckled at that catch-phrase, and got the cartridge for fifty cents (kind of a lot, if you ask me, but my friend paid for it, and itīs his money). We were curious what they meant by Hyper-Realistic. How could an 8-bit game be hyper-realistic? Figuring itīd be a fun experience, we went home and turned on his NES, set up a few cameras filming our reactions, and with screen grabs or video recording of the game. Well, I assume thatīs what it was, Iīm not the technical one.

So we turned on the game, joking a bit, kidding around and trying to scare each other by making monster noises like in screamer videos, and we had good fun. Everything worked normally, there were no differences in the graphics, music, title, anything. We selected a two-player game, and my friend played as Mario, so he got to go first. It was just a normal game of SMB, same controls, same enemies, same everything. We still were hushed though, anticipating something, ANYTHING, different.

He zipped through 1-1 like normal, and went on to 1-2, everything going hunky-dory. I told him to try doing the Warp Zone, as maybe this was one of those hacks that punished the user for "cheating" or exploiting glitches. He didnīt say anything, but went there anyways. Nothing unusual happened. He warped to 4-1. Same old, same old. Not even any spooky static, or anything. Just all the normal stuff. I was getting disappointed, and a bit bored, and was certain that someone had just written the sharpie on there just to mess with obnoxious internet nerds looking for a fun time at a flea market. I had to admit: it was a brilliant strategy for getting your old SMB cartridge off of your hands.

Near the end of 4-2, right before the flagpole, he suddenly stopped, looked at me and said "none of this is real." I responded, "...well, yeah, itīs a video game."
"No, NONE of this is real. None of it." He had a strange look on his face, one of contempt with a tinge of frustration. Obviously, something had changed, but I had no idea what.
"...can you elaborate a bit more on that?"
"Why bother, you wonīt understand."
"Dude, tell me what youīre thinking, the cameras are rolling, /x/chan will love this--"
"You donīt understand, no one understands! None of this is REAL!" The anger in his voice startled me a bit.
"...Okay, well, calm down, and try to explain it."
"No one ever wants to know, we all just want to watch the shadows on the walls." By this point, I was a bit freaked out. To say the least. "Fuck this, Iīm going to live. If you really want to know, play the game." And then--

Well, something happened. I have no idea what, but he was there with me one minute and completely gone the next. I canīt describe what happened in between, it was like... I didnīt understand what happened. Obviously, I saw something, but my brain had no way to interpret what I saw.

I looked back at the game, confused. What had he experienced that I hadnīt? I was afraid to do anything in the game, and like a pussy I just unplugged the NES from the TV and took out the cartridge. Nothing had changed physically on that, nor on the NES itself, nor on the TV. I quickly did a mental check on myself: nope, no existential crises here.

I suddenly remembered the cameras. The ones that had been filming this entire thing! At the very least, I could slow down and take a good look at what happened when he vanished.

The footage was fine, and showed nothing out of the ordinary. Just what you would expect to see, no glowing orbs, no scary demon faces, nothing. Finally, the part where he just vanished. Maybe seeing it from a different angle would shed some light. But no; it looked exactly the same as it had from where I had seen it in real life. Well, I mean, it was from a different angle, but the same thing happened, and I couldnīt make heads or tails of it on the digital recording either.

I put the digital file on the computer and played it, and tried pausing it in exactly the correct moment when he vanished. But looking at the frames one by one, it was like he was just erased. I played the scene through again, and the action of him vanishing happened again. So obviously it must have been something related to how it moved, how it all flowed together.

So I googled what he said: "No one ever wants to know, we just all want to watch the shadows on the walls." No results. Narrowed it down: watch the shadows on the walls.

The What Could Be, by Paul Larson. Possibly? Activity and toy ideas for 0-3 mos? Doubtful. Then, What is the Cave Allegory. More with Platoīs Cave Allegory.

Bingo. Hyper-Realistic suddenly made a lot more sense.

So, now what?




((the idea just came to me, I am not usually the best at writing creepypastas, but I wanted to kind of poke fun of the idea of something being hyper-realistic. If you can rework this into something better, feel free.))

I can't help but ask the same question. I really don't get the ending.

Cosby, Google "Plato's cave allegory."

That was pretty fun. An idea that's definitely been done, but a very fitting way to bring about the revelation - a game within the game.

I did.

I don't get how it correlates to the game.

Playing this game made the friend realize that reality itself was a game (Plato's cave allegory was created before video games, but poses a similar scenario, where reality is a shadow puppet show). He stopped playing.

Pretty good. In my opinion it would have worked better if it had been the protagonist effected by the "hyper realism", with everyone else in their lives becoming a falsehood and the protagonist feeling the sort of ennui and isolation which would come from that.

I thought that too, but then I realized that if the protagonist went through this, he wouldnīt bother to write a creepypasta over it. xD


And I donīt like the ending either, but I had work to do.

Jesus, I'm glad someone else thinks it's stupid when that happens in creepypastas. I like to call them '"AND THEN I DIED" stories'. Who the hell are you telling if you're dead? St. Peter at the pearly gates?

But you don't have a problem with every aspect of something in a non-documentary movie being recorded?

I really liked this! It didn't really get me in the gut like some 'pastas do, but instead gives you this great subtle existential thing.

Also, I agree on the "and then I died" stories. I've seen one or two pull it off, but even then the pasta is something the person wrote RIGHT BEFORE dying/being whisked away/whatever, and I think that would have shifted the tone of this into something completely different.

That's completely different.

Yeah, not sure what point you were trying to make there, Revereche.

It always felt about the same to me - the camera is taken as not existing for the purposes of the movie, but instead, is just an eye affording us a look at the adventure. For stories that are first-person narrative, I usually imagine an eye opening on the brain of the narrator, not an actual written/spoken account (particularly in the case of supernatural stories where we know this couldn't actually be happening, and especially in stories set in alternate worlds we could not possibly access any sort of recorded material from).

But sure, if you want to be boring about it.

No, the camera is supposed to be taken as existing for the purposes of the movie unless it's stated otherwise, because if it isn't then that doesn't make any sense for the same reasons as these creepypastas.

I meant in the context of the movie, dodoman. As in, in the context of the movie, a person with a camera is not following Jack Torrence around as he attempts to murder his family.