Introduction[]
I will say that I will not reveal myself for whatever audio files and text files I'll be transcribing and archiving onto this page. Nor am I responsible for the death of the original former owner of this laptop I stole from the police, which was going to be used as evidence for the supposed "suicide" of the original laptop owner.
For now you may refer to me by the nickname "01" as I want to hide my identity in order to prevent myself being found out and tracked down by the police and most likely getting arrested. The following archived text and transcriptions are all recorded by a supposed "Maxwell An," who was the original owner of this laptop.
When I first got ahold of this laptop, as I took an interest into the mysterious death of Maxwell An, I wasn't really expecting much, but upon opening up the laptop...
There were a multitude of folders. 10 of them to be exact were named "Findings," with a number attached to each name of each folder. One that wasn't one of the 10 of them was simply called "Findings Proof," and seemed to contain many image screenshot files including some .txt files with links to the videos he found while investigating in order to come back to them, or something like that, but those are just my assumptions I have no idea what was going on in the head of this murder victim, "Maxwell An."
There was also a strange folder simply titled "DO NOT PLAY." Looking in that folder, it contains one image file, a document file named "PLEASE READ," a Journal text file called "The Game," and an executable file simply named "RosswellEXPERMENTALAI.exe." I, of course, did not try out the executable file, as I figured that it would be best to not wind up suffering the same fate Maxwell An possibly went through after trying out that file, and because I have already read and listened to all of the many text files and audio files Maxwell had recorded and written in the "Findings" folders.
Now that I have gone over what I have so far found on this laptop, I will now show you all of the text written in every .txt document and transcribe all of the audio files that I have of course listened to and read on my investigation of this laptop.
The following text and audio transcriptions were found on this computer of someone whom I presume to be now dead. They seem to have been left as a private virtual journal of sorts relating to an odd phenomenon known as "personalized game copies." It details his adventures in investigating this massive rabbit hole.
Some of the things this person has found may be a bit too disturbing, unnerving, or uncomfortable for certain people who are reading this, and some of the videos and screenshots this person has recorded, taken, found around the internet may be a bit uncomforting, disturbing, scary, and unnerving for some people reading these archived texts and audio transcriptions.
Reader discretion is advised.
Findings 1 Text Files and Audio Files Part 1[]
The first text logs and audio logs consist of the following:
TextLog1.txt
TextLog2.txt
TextLog3.txt
AudioLog1.wav
TextLog4.txt
AudioLog2.wav
These are the archived text logs and audio transcriptions you will be reading for this section.
TextLog1.txt[]
"For anyone who might have discovered my personal investigative journal after something happened to me, I lost access to this laptop, etc., please hear me out. This "blog," or private virtual journal, is private for a reason.
You see, this isn't an ordinary virtual journal or diary or whatever. I made this to document my findings on a weird phenomenon I discovered on 4chan and got interested in quite recently... this phenomenon is something you may know about by now, albeit as nothing but a "fun creepy internet horror fiction cliche" or something like that.
What I am referring to is the "every copy of Super Mario 64 is personalized" shtick or meme or creepypasta, or whatever you like to call it, though I call it the “Personalization AI” theory.
Many people don't take me seriously, choosing to claim that the Personalization Ai theory is nothing but "innocent internet horror fiction" and I shouldn't be taking things like this too seriously, but there’s a reason why investigating this piques my interest.
You see, I remember owning a copy of SM64 in my childhood. However, it was nothing like how many people recorded it. It could have been a hacked copy or something, but still, I believe this "Personalization AI" theory might have some truth to it, so I thought it would be neat to look into this more, as I usually like to... go back on "investigating demons of my past," my friends would say. It's a weird saying but, eyy, everyone's weird and we live in a weird world like this.
For now, this .txt file will only pay off as an introduction to, well, what's to come, so yeah, and even though this IS a private journal, I know for a fact someone will come across my journal when I pass away, lose my laptop, etc."
TextLog2.txt[]
"Alright, so, beginning with my first investigation. The whole "SM64 is personalized" rumor all started out on 4chan's /v/ board, if I remember correctly. Now, I think I put a screenshot of it somewhere..."
Since each of these audio files and text files will talk about certain videos they've found and screenshots they've taken, I will add them along with the text. Here is the first screenshot right here.
"As this seems to have all started to someone on 4chan simply just saying this as like, some sort of meme. But I promise to anyone reading this, this is not some troll or prank or some sort of overly complicated shitpost. I will try my hardest to prove on what I am investigating is real.
Now for the more interesting stuff...
Ever since I started doing more research on this huge rabbit hole, it proves to me that it can get a lot more deeper then what I first found, during my many past investigations, I have found a ton of things that I found interesting, first let's go over some old not released beta stuff people have found.."
A couple of video links were found in this part of the text file upon reading. I will insert them here.
Scrapped Starman Theme
Developer Crash Handler
Anti-Piracy Screen
Sonic The Hedgehog 1990
Sonic 2 Sound Test Crash Handler
"These three videos in particular are what I have been finding first so far. I will say for some reason the Anti-Piracy Screen seemed a bit strangely familiar to me, as I remember seeing a similar Anti-Piracy Screen with my first copy of SM64 when I first played it when I was a 10-year-old youngster at the time.
I know this stuff may not seem interesting including the whole Developer Crash Handler possibly just might be fake, (like who would make a creepy looking crash handler in a kid's game?), but this is just small stuff, as I have been investigating a little more and I found this.
Now I am very skeptical of this video as it seems to most likely made as a joke or shitpost, but I will say it also showed me something else more interesting: that this rabbit hole seems to go way back before Mario 64, and this other video kind of further proves it.
Now, this second video seems more real to me. Not sure about the end though, seems like some weird glitch with the Sonic sprite losing its face textures or something like that. The text "please" could be the result of a weird text replacement glitch, but I am not sure. I decided that I am going to try and look more deeper into this starting off with SEGA's Personalization AI thing that might have existed for the first old Sonic games produced by SEGA... possibly as a tactic by SEGA in order to compete against Nintendo at the time? And Nintendo decides to copy the same idea for Super Mario 64 as like an option to try and get more customers again...? I... really don't fucking know... but this rabbit hole is starting to get pretty confusing for me as I look more into it.
I'm taking a break and going to look more into this later, I need to rest my head over this headache I got from investigating more into this and it's late at night... specifically 12... yeah."
TextLog3.txt[]
"Well good morning, journal. I am now awake again on the next day of my investigation journey. So now that the whole first investigation is over I am going to try and go through this whole "Personalization AI" thing chronologically.. so we will be starting with SEGA's involvement in being the possible start of this whole weird phenomenon.
From so far from what I have found, it seems the games that SEGA gave this experimental Personalization AI to as a way of competing against Nintendo and to get more people to buy their shit like all companies tend to do with their products in many ways to try and get people to buy their products.
The company itself seemed to have decided to add a new feature to their first sonic game "Sonic The Hedgehog 1" that will revolutionize the gaming industry, and help them on going up against Nintendo when competing against them in the gaming industry, this feature was the "Personalization AI" which they have added as a new unique feature to their first sonic game, which of course lead to it being a huge success. And seem to have decided to add this same AI feature to multiple of other sonic games they made, specifically "Sonic The Hedgehog 2" "Sonic The Hedgehog 3" "Sonic & Knuckles" (and possibly even "Knuckles' Chaotix"), "Sonic CD", "Sonic R", and after deciding to scrap the Personalization AI feature completely on adding to other games they'll make due to reasons unknown, as this is a theory that is in work in progress by the time I am writing this. They later in the 90s decided to have the feature return in their newest Sonic game for the Dreamcast "Sonic Adventure 1", as sort of a call back to old times for their older fans to enjoy I guess.
However the new remake of SA1, "Sonic Adventure DX" never brought back said old AI, probably because they were worried about some unknown thing of happening again, which is probably why they scrapped the whole Personalization AI thing for their future projects entirely, again this is just a theory I thought up and don't know much yet about this, recently I have just found some more videos regarding the personalized sonic game copies.
One of them seemed very interesting and could possibly be the reason of
Tails Doll Apparition - Every Copy of Sonic R is personalised
The video Maxwell was talking about..
why a particular Sonic character (who many know as "The Tails Doll") has some many strange and creepy urban legends, horror stories and rumors written and told about it, as you may see here.
As You can see it's a video of someone playing a copy of Sonic R, and the game suddenly glitching with it ending with the player supposedly being stuck in place at the beginning of the track while the Tails Doll characters starts flying towards their character, and the video ending what could be heard as the cries of a young baby and screams of a man of what I assume to be the player I think? I don't believe much into creepy gaming urban legends or whatever, and not sure if this video is real or not, all I know is that this video was recently uploaded by someone on YouTube, and the thumbnail of the video does not help either with the date "31 December 2020", could the AI be referring to some time in the future to scare the player or some shit or is this some weird future prediction?
Also I forgot to mention this but right when the video ends with the Tails Doll character reaching the Player's character Sonic, it also shows a weird Error Crash screen after the Tails Doll character reaches the player. now I don't know Japanese but I'm sure the text mainly just translate to something about how the game has experienced an error and the game must be restarted in-order to play.
Here are the next few videos I have also found upon my research
Sonic CD Palmtree Panic Boss Anomaly
Anti-piracy-screen.mp4
I would like to consider these next videos as weird malfunctions from the Personalization AIs on these particular games. However, the majority of these videos of people's experiences with these copies' Personalization AIs, seem to be a bit unnerving.
In the first video, before the start of Palmtree Panic’s boss fight, the game outputs a video of Sonic without a face, then cuts to a screen saying “Infinite Fun Sega Enterprises” with a background consisting of a strangely stylized drawing of Sonic.
I mean I heard some people speculate on how the "personalized copies" with personalization AIs have a tendency to well... Manifest the player's thoughts dreams and nightmares into the copies or some stupid shit like that, but most people say that for the "memes" and joking around like that, cause this whole "Personalized Copy" Phenomenon is so popular that most people don't take it seriously and mainly play it out for jokes.
I am trying my absolute hardest on Investigating this phenomenon, no matter how long it will take me to find the truth behind it, or how hard it will be for me to find some stuff more solid then what I just found right now. I
05 02 1993-0
am still very very determined on trying to find more answers to this huge rabbit hole and get some more answers on how this whole phenomenon might be the answer to some internet video game urban legends, but so far I only found one thing interesting, a multitude of strange videos, and nothing else interesting except for the Tails Doll one which possibly gave me an answer to why that urban legend came into existence maybe.. Anyways this is the end of TextLog3 I will be recording an audio file for my next log."
JAN. 5 1993
Sonic 1 Anti-Piracy Screen
AudioLog1.wav[]
The Audio file starts up a bit glitchy, like it was recorded with some old audio recording device or something like that, the glitches then end and the sounds of someone walking in the background, sort of similar to that of someone who is holding the device (Maxwell) walking while they record their voice for their first audio log. And the transcription begins.
"This is Maxwell again, I have gotten a hold of a kind old audio recorder my Uncle Tom had left in his basement while I was visiting his house. Nothing really too important, just my old uncle just thought I could use this audio recorder as a gift among other stuff.
Anyways now for the important stuff for my investigation, I have recently taken a break from writing and now recording .txt files and audio files for my investigation to try and focus on investigating more on what I may be able to find. And so far, I found some plenty of unique stuff after those couple of weeks, Recently an old best friend of mine named "Alex" found an old news article on an old newspaper that was in a box that was in the attic of his house, which used to be his old father's house before he passed away... The article itself was on the only copy of a newspaper that Alex claimed that his elderly mother claimed they had never even seen before back in her days.. But her husband (Alex's father) had seemingly found this News Paper dropped on the ground by someone next to one of those old Newspaper Selling Containers that sold a bunch of those newspaper copies in the past, but she then claims that after those newspaper copies were sold in the local area of Alex's father's neighborhood, the company that printed out those newspaper copies, news then got out that the company was then shut down by the local state government in the US, due to them printing some "news articles inappropriate for the public" which sounds like a load of bullshit to me, but I mean the Red Scare was happening back then in those days if I remember correctly?
Note: that this was recorded when Maxwell kind of gotten some years mixed up due to how the printing of the news paper's dates were all messed up with how it was printed.
Anyways the news article the newspaper contained was an article regarding someone playing a Sonic 1 game copy along with their whole family suddenly all died brutally mysteriously after playing a game copy of Sonic 1, said game copy from its console was also what caused the family's house to be caught on fire in the first place apparently.. In said article the police was unable to find out who murdered the family and set their house on fire.
Thought this news article my friend found was strange... I mean Alex's Father did love playing old video games when he was younger, as far as I know, so I'm guessing his father decided to keep this News Paper archived over in a box in Alex's House, which was originally his father's old house, just to keep as proof of something that happened in the past? For whatever reason, I really don't know.
Enough of that here's some other interesting stuff I have found."
The audio starts sounding like Maxwell is walking over to his laptop and opening it and is recording himself while looking through the laptop on what he found.
“The video I’m watching is called “December 12, 1992”. This video starts normally, as many of the others do, but instead of the Act End sign, there’s a sprite of Robotnik laughing with Tails lying at his feet. About two seconds after this sprite appears on screen, the game cuts to black, and after three seconds of that, the text “I Couldn’t Save Him” appears and the video ends.”
[This video has been provided to the right of this audio log.]
“It’s probable this player was afraid of what Robotnik could do offscreen, or wary of how immortal Tails actually was in-game, either of which culminated in Tails’ death scene. That said, I might be wrong about this, and the video might even be fake. But this scene seems rather subdued, like it was made just to show this specific person a nightmarish scenario.”
DEC. 12 1992
"I can’t be certain of what happened after the video stopped, but there was likely a crash screen which forced the player to restart to a normal version of this act, just like the Sonic R AI. Maybe the AI in all of these cases rendered the scary images to simulate the feeling of a crash, or to punish the player for pirating the game.”
The audio log then ends there suddenly as we now move onto the fourth text log.
TextLog4.txt[]
"forgot to correct myself on something I got wrong on my second text log, basically you know when I said "like who would make a creepy looking crash handler in a kid's game?" yeah, apparently Nintendo has been known for putting creepy Easter eggs and other stuff in their games, like for example
the "Hell Valley Sky Trees". Anyways that was just a simple correction, now for more stuff I found.
Upon further investigation throughout the internet, I later found a forum site dedicated to talking about Super Mario 64, simply called "www.neoseeker.com" , on the site there were of course many regular threads talking about Super Mario 64, But.... there were at least two threads that interested me.
One of them interested me the most. The two threads that interested me were named "Super Mario 64's "L is Real 2401" Mystery Gets Some Closure 24 Years & 1 Month After Release" and the thread that interested me the most, simply named "Strange SM64 Copy.. (NOT SM64 IS PERSONALIZED, SERIOUS DISCUSSION)".
As I was very interested in checking out the one about a "Strange SM64 Copy", so I decide to check out the thread.
The thread reads as follows:
"Hello everyone, If you have read the title of this thread (most likely you did), I have found a rather strange copy of Super Mario 64.
And You're all probably asking "why I did not just try playing SM64 on a emulator with a rom you download from the internet?". well... you see.. I wanted to get a physical copy of SM64 for my old N64 (yes I still had that old console in my basement) to try and revisit some old memories of me playing the game when I was younger. Unfortunately my original copy of SM64 was thrown away a couple of years ago after when I was 12 I did something that angered my parents in such a way they punished me by throwing away my copy of SM64 (yeah my parents were pretty strict but they weren't abusive and did care about me).
So because of that... I decided to go and look for some SM64 copies at my nearby neighborhood Goodwill to go and get a used copy of SM64 in-order to truly revisit my childhood favorite video game once again.
While in the Goodwill I was lucky enough to find a old used copy of SM64, of course it's label is missing and just as the acronym "SM64" written on the N64 cartridge with black marker cause it's a used copy, what did I expect, and I know it sounds cliche as fuck but that's just how I found the used cartridge.
So after buying the copy and bringing it back home I put it into my N64 and started up the console to play the game.
Things seemed normal at first but when I entered the first level, the title of the Bomb-omb Battlefield level was renamed to.... "Greetings to see you again Benjamin..." I was pretty weirded out by the new title and how it had my first name in it but I figured I might of gotten a hacked copy of SM64, and the new title was possibly referring to a different Benjamin.
I then began the level and things seemed fine except for the text box that appeared after I defeated the boss of the level, the text box read "regretting throwing me away?" I was very very weirded out by now but still feel the hack might be referring to something else that some "other Benjamin" had done, maybe this hack was made as a troll or prank towards said person? I was pretty confused. the game then crashed after that and well... my memory has been quite foggy on the rest of what happened for some reason... all I remember is the game having these weird messages then crashing... and I for some reason fell asleep..."
"I Found this thread very much interesting and looked into more of the replies of the thread, in each and every reply the supposed "Benjamin" makes, he explains more about this strange copy he has, but then stops replying after saying "hang on, I hear someone knocking on my door""
Conclusion for now[]
I decided that I am going to be cutting this short in-order to make this easier for me to take my time transcribing and archiving all of the texts and audio logs in multiple pages I'll be calling "Chapters" for now these are the files I have transcribed and archived for now.
Next (Coming Soon)