KILL SCREEN

Ever since I was 11 years old, I was a huge fan of Nintendo. I was massively captivated by their innovation with their game consoles year after year. I would spend hours and days on end on my Wii playing The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, a game that quickly became my favorite. It was true fun that could last forever, honestly. The days of the Nintendo Switch had soon arrived, and it was a masterpiece that spoke for itself – it acted as both a home and mobile console while keeping the intended gaming experience. Even today, I am still awed by Nintendo’s marvels. Time went along, and I quickly collected a plethora of Switch games, namely Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, 1-2-Switch, Double Dragon IV and my absolute favorite, World of Goo. Now I was only waiting to get Super Mario Odyssey from my uncle as a birthday gift. After I came back from school, I was greeted by my mother with the aforementioned game in her hand. I knew what was expected of me: I quickly did the small bit of homework I had to do for tomorrow and ran back to her, excited and unable to wait any longer… She handed me the game and I happily ran back to my room and turned my Switch on. Did it happily start, however? Well… I really wish it did. After the appearances of the famous Nintendo and Switch logos on the screen, I heard a deep, dark noise emerging from my sound system, followed by a slow fade-in of an ominous red-on-white error message that was out of the ordinary… “An unexpected error has occurred. Your Nintendo Switch (model no. HAC-001) has severely malfunctioned and cannot continue normal operation.” This startled me. Was this the inevitable result of that horrifying short-circuit in my room’s electrical wiring last night? I felt uneasy… Also, it is also worth noting that it did not give a standard 8-digit error code, but a long “Error ID”… I felt even more scared and defeated. I had received a game I have been wanting for months on end, and now I’m unable to play it? What the fuck. I stayed sitting on my bed, mortified, as I watched the screen fade back to black and the console shut off. After a few minutes of pondering, I grabbed the console out of its dock and turned it on again. This time around, the error screen had reappeared a lot faster, but with a more intense noise and a more striking message: “You are strongly advised to shut the system off to prevent any further damage.” Not only had that changed, but the Error ID changed to “666-666-666-666”… I felt my blood boil. I was breathing heavily. Did my system become haunted? I shut it off again, this time booting in into Recovery Mode. (Power + Volume Up + Volume Down) I was greeted with a message removing any liability from Nintendo for any arbitrary changes I did to the system, which was understandable. I accepted and pressed Volume Up three times to proceed. It took a rather unusual time to load, but I waited patiently since I knew my system wasn’t working properly. Then I was greeted with the worst surprise ever… “FATAL ERROR. Cannot access Recovery Mode. Partition is permanently corrupted. Please turn off the system now.” I fucking jumped off my bed! The sound was so piercing and unexpected, and the visuals were prone to triggering a bad seizure. Why would Nintendo concoct something so scary to inform the user that their Switch was defective? Have they really gone back to the Metroid Prime days where they made the death screens so dark that I once had to cry to my mom about some stupid scary shit? Wow, Nintendo… just wow… The Error ID had gone completely out of control; it was now just a bunch of randomly selected numbers and letters. I didn’t know what to do anymore… I just left the Switch there on my bed, still screeching and shrieking until another high-pitched noise came on, and I refused to care at this point. I left it on for 30 seconds until the sound drove me mad and I shut it off completely. I grabbed the Switch, the dock and all its cables, and I furiously walked out of my room and threw it in the trash can. My mom quickly ran downstairs to see just what the hell happened… “Son, what’s wrong?” “It’s over,” I replied. “That short-circuit last night? It’s dead. It’s all gone.” And then I walked out of the house, with a heart shattered and all hope lost… ~ I leave you all with one last thing... ~ aGVpbCB0b3lwb3AsIHRoZSBvdmVybG9yZCBvZiBraWxsIHNjcmVlbnMhDQp0aGlzIGlzIG9idmlvdXNseSBmYWtlLCBndXlzIC0gbGlnaHRlbiB1cCBhIGJpdC4NCg0KLS0gY3JlZGl0cyAtLQ0KREogREVFREFIWDogZWRpdGluZywgd3JpdGluZywgcGxhbm5pbmcNCkNIUklTR0hEOiBwbGFubmluZywgYnJhaW5zdG9ybWluZw0KDQpmaXJzdCBhdHRlbXB0IGF0IGEgY3JlZXB5cGFzdGEsIHNvIHllYWguIGRvbid0IGtpbGwgdXMu ~ music credits ~ Battlefield 3 - Interrogating BlackBurn (25% slowdown)