ERROR 53

ERROR #53
I used to love video games like The Legend of Zelda. You know, like RPG games. Games that have you play as the hero who has to save the world from some evil villain. But now, I don’t. And it was all thanks to a PC game. I don’t exactly remember when it was, but a new game was coming out on the internet, and it was downloadable, and even free. It was made in Japan though, as my friend told me, so a team of American game developers were working to translate, and hopefully dub the game in English, than release it on Steam or something. Unfortunately, the dub was never finished, so things like the title screen would either be in Japanese, or buggy. But for some strange reason, the game was released, despite being unfinished. It’s name on Steam was simply “Adventure”, but when I downloaded it, the file name was spelled in Japanese katanka. I thought this was weird, since I expected the name to be something like “Adventure.exe” or something like that. Regardless, and now that I think about it, careless too, I started the game to see what it was like. I was greeted with a 3D rotating image of a castle, and below that, A yellow-orange button with “PLAY!” on it. What I didn’t notice immediately was that there was no title. At all. Instead, there was red text reading “ERROR #53: CANNOT LOAD TITLE IMAGE!”, as if nothing was wrong. I didn’t think there was, so I clicked Play.

As soon as the game started, I thought of Minecraft. It had the same first person view, I had a sword in my hand, and I was in some kind of village. Not bad graphics, music was pretty good. Reminded me of Zelda. The NPCs in the village were pretty funny looking, they had only a pair of red shorts on, they were completely bald, and they had those black eyes that look like pills. When I walked up to one of them, a text box popped up, saying simply: “Greetings, friend!” So, I walked up to another. This one instead said: “ERROR #53: UNKNOWN”.This was weird, but for a game that was unfinished in it’s Americanization process, this was normal. What wasn’t normal, was another guy. He apparently was running into a tree. He was just, running in place at the tree. Quietly chuckling to myself, I head for the big castle in the front. It was the same castle from the title screen, except there was a king in front of it. And another bugged guy.

This one looked like he was sidestepping the castle. The king looked like everyone else, same overall body shape, eyes, no mouth, except he was dressed in yellow, had a gray-white beard, and a gold crown. When I walked up to him, he said, “Greetings, Adventurer! We are in need of your help!” I clicked the screen to continue. “That nasty old Jack and his henchmen keep sneaking in our castle at night to steal our gold!” The view changed to that of a scarecrow with a Jack-O-Lantern head, with two guards looking like samurai next to him. This was Jack, I suppose. “Please defeat Jack and get our gold back!” The king said again. “Head East of the town into the woods and you’re sure to find him there! Your reward will be great!”

Pretty simple. Find Jack, defeat him, get the gold. So I did just that. I headed East, toward a trail in between two hills. a few samurai tried to stop me, and I defeated them easily. A few more came, still easy. The music was different, fast paced, but with the same tone. Than something weird happened. A picture popped up. For a split second though, so all I could make out was that it was taken in night vision. Another popped up. And another, and another. Finally, I came to Jack. He laughed, saying “This will be fun”. I charged at him, and attacked, and well, stuff happened.

The second I hit Jack, he turned into some kind of armless corpse. The sky went pitch black, and the hills went gray. I was now certain this game was hacked. There was no more music either. I had no other choice but to go back to the village. Everything was back to normal apparently. Except for those pictures. I kept walking and found.... I don’t even know. It was some kind of alien looking thing. Possibly some leftover model that got stuck in the game, because every time I tried to hit it, nothing happened. It never moved, and I could walk right through it. So I did.

I then nearly fell out of my seat when a picture of some photoshopped ghost picture was thrown at me. It was followed by a loud bang, and all the textures just, fell into chaos. Sky was black, trees were white, and the ground was checkered pink and white. I could here some sort of 911 phone call going on, which had nothing to do with the game whatsoever. After that, I was back at the village. Now things were really getting weird. A knight from the top of the castle was now giant and just stood there. The screen blanked out at random times, and everyone I talked to know just said: “ERROR #53: UNKNOWN”. I was freaked out by all this, and when I walked up to the king, who, by the way, was laying on his side in mid-air, he too said the same thing. “ERROR #53: UNKNOWN”. And than, his text box was filled with this: “DEATH_DEATH _DEATH_ DEATHDEATH_DEATH#_#DEATH_”.

At this point, some of the buildings lost their texture, and were now pink. I kept on walking around, but when I passed a building, I got assaulted by another damn screamer, the ghost’s eyes staring at me blankly. Now, all the texture was gone, and my sword was upside down, the music was something out of “Dead Silence”, it was madness. I saw a row of figures heading my way. They just kept moving, and when they touched me, the game just crashed. I heard nothing but white noise. Then the title screen came up. But it wasn’t moving, or playing music. It just sat there, the same white noise, with that same damned error message. “ERROR #53: UNKNOWN”. I exited the game.

 

AFTERMATH
I told all this to my friend. I’m not sure if he believed me, because he recreated the game, and put it up on GameJolt. I’m still not sure how to respond to all this. A lot of famous YouTubers have played my friends recreation, like Markiplier, Yamimash, and Jacksepticeye. He asked me if it was accurate like my experience, and I haven’t told him. I didn’t want to. I don’t even know what I experienced. All I know is that I won’t ever forget it. It was the strangest, and possibly most messed up game I have ever played. You can play the recreation on GameJolt.