I want to play a little game
Button Mash's eyes lit up with glee when he finally found the rom he had been looking for. It had felt as if it had taken him all day to find it. Thanks to Nintendo's rampant purging and litigious assaults on rom site owners, finding reliable roms to run on his emulator was becoming an all but insurmountable task.
Button Mash happily sang the DuckTales theme as he clicked the download icon. "Life is like a hurricane here in Duckburg. Racecars, lasers, airplanes, It's a duck blur~"
The young colt then fell silent when he heard a sudden knock. He looked at the living room door, pushed himself away from his computer desk. He wasn't expecting company, his father was away on a business trip, his mother wasn't due to come home from work for at least a couple more hours, and his brother was spending the night at a friend's house. Who could it be? "Who is it?" he called out, cautious to not just open the door for a possible stranger.
"You know who this is... Button Mash." The door knob began to jiggle.
Oh, crap! Button thought, his heart sinking. That broken English was impossible not to recognize. It was Shigeru Miyamoto! He looked again at his computer screen, a bead of sweat trickling down from his brow. "Oh, double crap!" Button gasped, realizing that he had forgotten to put his browser in incognito mode when he downloaded the rom. Shiggy-san must have backtraced his ip to his location. How could he have been so careless!
The door, at this point, was being pounded on.
Button worked at a feverish pace to close out his browser and delete his history. But something was wrong. The cursor was frozen in place on the screen. He shook the mouse violently across the mousepad. "Come on, don't do this to me!" He hit ctrl+alt+delete, but the prompt wouldn't pop up. It was as if his computer was refusing to obey his commands. "C'mon, what's wrong with you, freaking windows 10!"
Suddenly a Laughing Man-esque icon of Reggie Fils-Aime popped up on his screen with the text 'My body is ready' circling it. The colt blanched, his pupils shrinking to the size of pinpricks. "What is this, some kind of rootkit?"
The pounding on the front door was now so violent it was making the house shake.
Button, with tears of panic in his eyes, dove under his computer desk and attempted to unplug his Power Supply, but the moment his hoof touched the cord he was greeted with a powerful electric shock. Button yelped as he drew his hoof back. "How are you doing this?" He shouted at his computer screen. Then his instant messenger popped up.
ChocoboXXX420: "yo, you up for popping some zed heads?"
Button immediately replied, typing frantically. Edgelord_The_Hedgehog: "Scootaloo you have to help me!!!"
ChocoboXXX420: "uh... ok wuts up?"
Edgelord_The_Hedgehog: "Shigeru Miyamoto is at my front door!!!"
ChocoboXXX420: "orly..."
Edgelord_The_Hedgehog: "Really!"
ChocoboXXX420: "...."
ChocoboXXX420: "ya and i got Kojima living in my pantry"
ChocoboXXX420: "he says yer ghey btw"
Edgelord_The_Hedgehog: "Im not messing around scootaloo FOR THE LOVE OF FREAKING CELESTIA HELP ME!!!"
There was a heavy thud. The door frame was beginning to splinter inward.
"Oh, Shnikies!" Button Mash leaped out of his chair and made for the hallway. He turned the corner, and his heart fell when he noticed the two Asian men from the 2006 Wii commercial standing side-by-side at the end of the corridor, smiling.
Button slid to a halt. "H-how did you get in my house!"
One of the men bowed slightly and presented a Wii mote. "We would like to play," he said menacingly, a six inch spring-loaded blade suddenly protruding from the top of the controller.
"Come -- play with us," purred the other man. "Forever, and ever, and ever."
Button backed away. "I-I don't want to play," he stammered, then heard the frightening sound of his living room door finally giving way with a loud woody crunch.
The Japanese men clad in expensive business suits started toward him at an unsettlingly slow pace. Rapid furious foot steps could be heard approaching from the entrance of his house.
Button knew he was surrounded.
Looking around in desperation, he discovered that he had only one course of escape. He threw himself with all his might into the hallway closet door. Once, twice, thrice, and the wooden barrier finally gave way. He pulled the string on the trap door leading to his attic and retreated up the folding stairs in a mad, desperate scramble.
He noticed the rays of sunlight shining down from the small round window set high above in the wall. Moving at a speed that not even he knew he was capable of, Button drew a conveniently placed ladder down from the pegs mounted to the nearby wall. And just as he was about to mount it, he was suddenly grabbed from behind and spun around. It was Reggie Fils-Aime, all six foot, two hundred sixty lbs of him. Sneering, he cocked back his fist. "Welcome to the family, son!" And the last thing Button felt was Reggie's big meaty man hand slamming him right in the face.
Button wearily opened his eyes. The dingy room in which he found himself was lit with nothing more than an old tube television flickering with hazy static. "Where... Where am I?" Button groaned, looking around.
The cold grey walls surrounding him were brick, and there was only one door. The room was narrow, approximately 5X10 feet, no larger than a small storage closet. He looked down and noticed he was seated in a steal folding chair. He raised on wobbly legs and tried the door, but it wouldn't open.
"Where am I!" he said again, the panic in his voice rising. That was when he looked back at the TV and noticed an old VHS tape on top of it, with a label that simply said 'Play Me' scrawled across its crude masking tape label.
Nervous, and eager for answers, Button inserted the old tape into the VCR slot of the TV, and was greeted by none other than the smiling face of Shigeru Miyamoto. He was sitting at a desk, with his hands neatly folded in front of him. He inclined his head. "Good afternoon, my little friend," said an evil voice, with Shiggy's' smiling lips clearly forming the words, 'Konnichiwa, chibi-yujin.' The Japanese CEO was speaking in his native tongue, but his oratory was dubbed over with the creepiest, distorted, nightmare-fuel voice the colt had ever heard. 'Demonic' was the only way to describe it.
Button swallowed. "H-hello," he replied, perfectly aware that he was speaking to a recording.
"I'm sure you're wondering where you are."
Button nodded.
There was a pause, as if the recording of Shigeru Miyamoto awaited his obvious reply. His lips then started to move. The English dubbed voice spoke. "Understandable, but it is not the question of where you are that you should be asking. It's what I want. Go ahead, ask me."
"Uh... Okay... What do you want?"
Shiggy steepled his hands beneath his chin, and smiled malevolently in a way that would make C Montgomery Burns fluster with envy. "I want to play a little game. Or, to be more accurate, you will be the one playing the game."
Button felt a cold tingle crawling up his spine. "Why are you doing this to me?"
"You downloaded a rom, knowingly pirated an illegally duplicated copy of one of our games. This is a very serious crime you've committed."
Button blinked. "Okay, first of all, that's an oddly accurate response, coming from a prerecorded video. And second, come on, I just wanted to play DuckTales. It's technically not even a Nintendo game. It was made by Capcom."
"But we published it!" The distorted voice growled as Shiggy slammed a fist on his desk. "If you want to play, you have to pay! Nintendo looks most unkindly on pirates. As well as letsplayers, livestreamers, and cynical reviewers... And Jim Sterling, don't even get me started on that piece of..." Miyamoto took a moment to calm himself. He cleared his throat and adjusted his tie. "Well, anyway, back on topic. Behind you is the door to your salvation. It's locked -- for now."
"How do I get it unlocked?" Button replied.
" 'How do I get it unlocked,' you're probably wondering," Shiggy said knowingly, his eye brow rising menacingly. "All you have to do is play the game I provided for you -- to its completion, of course."
"Seriously?" Button said, sceptical. "That's all I have to do?"
"Below the television is a console. A Nintendo Gamecube to be exact. I've provided you with one game. You must play it to its completion. The door will remain sealed until you do. Should you refuse or fail this challenge, this room shall be your tomb. Win or lose, live or die; it's up to you. Now..." He paused for dramatic effect. "Let the games begin." There was a short but unsettling moment of Miyamoto smiling silently at the camera, before the tape ended and the screen went to static.
"Beat a video game?" Button said, chuckling nervously. "Man, for a second I thought he was going to make me dismember myself with a hacksaw, or something." Indeed the challenge seemed easy enough, but he couldn't quite shake the feeling that there was a catch. The Nintendo Gamecube, while underrated, had a pretty solid library of gems... But it had quite a few turds as well. He felt cold when he realized that Mister Miyamoto neglected to tell him what game he would be playing. Surely it would be something decent, or at least playable. Miyamoto was a cruel man, but surely he wasn't a monster... Right?
Chewing his lip, he powered on the console below the television. The anxiety twisted his insides all around, while the quirky little intro of the purple cubes multiplying to form the console's logo filled the screen. And then, the colt's bowels turned to water as the game's title revealed itself. His fears had been confirmed.
"Aquaman: Battle For Atlantis?"
Button felt as if he was going to wretch. "No... Oh, no... Dear Celestia, no!" He threw his head back and howled in anguish, "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"
