I got a creepy old game delivered to me in the post.
The wind was sharp the night I first played it.
Howling gusts of cold air sounded like they could flay the flesh from an animal’s bones.
Wouldn’t be much of a story if I had come here merely to complain about the wind.
But yeah, windy as all fuck in Colorado at the moment. I live on Fossil Creek drive in Clarendon Hill, Fort Collins. It’s a quiet suburban cul-de-sac. So I usually can hear every single car that comes down our street. Which is weird, because I heard nothing the day the game was delivered. I’ve got a pretty good view from my lounge room window, and never saw anyone walk past my drive. I have been watching too, because the wind has blown over a few bins, sweeping up papers and junk.
The disk was wrapped all in black packaging, with some white writing on it. Knew it was unusual straight away, Ill share the video I took in a moment.
Was very suspicious from the beginning, and when I found a disk for the Sega Saturn, I was right away like ‘What kind of fucking joke is this? The Saturn?’
I thought it must’ve been a gift from my nephew John Phillip, who’s really into retro gaming. Still, I called JP, and he said he knew nothing about it. JP reckons the whole thing is a practical joke somebody is playing on me. Which would make sense. But can’t think of anyone who dislikes me enough to go to that much effort. The game sat on my bench for a week before I got around to borrowing JPs machine.
In that time of course, I’d finally done my own research on the game, but there was very little to discover. Not listed on any archive or database of the SEGA company, or their affiliates Konami or Midway.
Horrible storm since I sat down to play.
https://twitter.com/DeathCult3/status/1540993709084639232?s=20&t=vgqs2ov8K9-BdWpBHhemAA
https://twitter.com/DeathCult3/status/1541002754872983552?s=20&t=45BirQzeu5-_focmPp0urw
https://twitter.com/DeathCult3/status/1541003675694682113?s=20&t=45BirQzeu5-_focmPp0urw
https://twitter.com/DeathCult3/status/1541004262784004097?s=20&t=45BirQzeu5-_focmPp0urw
The characters names mean nothing to me, but I do reckon many of them sound Japanese.
Otsaya Fukira - the Samurai’s son
Leshelle Junjiro - the woodmaker
Tatsi Oyano - owner of the well
Laku Shianu - The Metal smith
https://twitter.com/DeathCult3/status/1541005862109868032?s=20&t=XUAFZ2QDWeEdFaPuB8t58A
I do know SEGA released a lot of games in Japan that were never released in the states.
Anyway, my initial hunch was probably right… that this was some unreleased dev or prototype that someone has fucked with as a joke. The weirdest thing happened when I reset the game a third time. Finally, it allowed me to select a character. I swear to God, the storm picked up and there was some kind of electric surge. It blew several fuses in the main box, and my microwave has completely died since.
https://twitter.com/DeathCult3/status/1541010154883547139?s=20&t=45BirQzeu5-_focmPp0urw
There were some horrible audible crunches, and as I went outside later, that was when I found the dead birds. Looked like they hadn’t been dead for long.
https://twitter.com/DeathCult3/status/1541012762578796544?s=20&t=45BirQzeu5-_focmPp0urw
There was a weird smell, like burnt almonds at nonna’s house, or spilled citronella oil. Was having trouble breathing, the air was so thick it was suffocating, thick particles of air, demonic little micro-organisms.
I don’t know how well the sound came out on the video, but I had heard the thumping at the time. Just dull little thuds on the roof and dirt. Later I saw even more birds out on the road.
They’d just plumetted out of the sky. The only explanation I can give is it was an electrical storm and that was what killed the birds. Couldn’t see anything on the news to confirm this.
https://twitter.com/DeathCult3/status/1541014781062426624?s=20&t=eULAtvuY6w1SgnBRN-N-8Q
I work at Ace Hardware of Firestone. The week following was slow, the wind has been around non stop since then too.
Jessie at work laughed at me for being scared of a video game, and of course I know the events are unrelated, just a coincidence. I was playing the game when the electrical storm happened. Just a coincidence.
But that video? What the fuck? Must’ve been filmed years ago, and then recorded back off on an old VHS cassette. Can’t even hear everything the weird guy with the sunken eyes is talking about, something about ‘…the organisation..’
Then, the fact someone had programmed it into the game. Lot of work for a practical joke.
Jessie is cute, I think she knows I’m attracted to her. Its a bit embarrassing, I did ask her if she wanted to research the game with me, but she declined.
That Thursday night, I jumped on all the SEGA forums to ask about the game.
https://twitter.com/DeathCult3/status/1541016172044632064?s=20&t=45BirQzeu5-_focmPp0urw
Nobody was very helpful at first. But then a user named Raekwoon5 pointed me in the direction of another forum called NRGiseternal. He told me that Death Cult wasn’t a real video game, and it was part of an old ARG, but that these guys on this forum would apparently be able to give me info about it. He also put me in touch with a group on discord to get the login details.
They were very accommodating, and did basically share this history of the game with me. They told me Death Cult was in fact a real game, in contrast to what Raekwoon5 seemed to think (that the whole thing was an ARG), so there you go.
Here’s the thread they shared with me.
https://ibb.co/nMxvtfk
Basically to summarise, the thread talks about a friend of the famous game creator Hideo Kojima.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hideo_Kojima
Kojima’s friend was a man named Ganamata Fakiro (who worked at SEGA) he is supposedly the creator of the game that was sent to me in the post. Long story short, he fell out of favour with the CEO of SEGA, and although hundreds of copies had already been sent to the public, the game was pulled from shelves and erased from SEGAs catalogue.
I felt strange, sitting in my garden and looking at the creepy cover of the game. With the feminine figure in a silver mask staring up at me. Whether the story was real, or the whole thing was just an ARG, it still felt unbelievably odd and made me anxious.
The dead birds were still scattered around because I hadn’t had the heart to go and dump the corpses in my wheelie. My garden was also getting overgrown, and the tall grass blew eerily in the breeze.
I feel a bit sick, and part of me wants to keep investigating this, while the other part is starting to wonder whether I wouldn’t be better to leave the whole thing well enough alone.
I guess I wanted to ask what other people think?
Should I try to play the game again? Or just throw it out?
https://twitter.com/DeathCult3