Then the screen cut to black. Text appeared:
It was the title screen. But Mario was gone. The "Start" option was grayed out. And standing where Mario should have been, waving slowly, was Wario. His mouth moved, but no sound came. Except—Marco turned up his TV volume. A whisper, reversed, playing on a loop.
He recorded it on his phone, reversed it himself.
Then he noticed the second star.
The camera light on Marco's laptop flickered on by itself. He closed it, heart pounding. For a week, nothing happened. Then his phone gallery started filling with screenshots—not from the game, but from his own bedroom, taken from the phone's own front camera while he was asleep.
But wrong. His overalls were purple. His eyes were black voids with tiny white pupils that didn't move. He was just… there. T-posing.
The user wrote: "He stops being an apparition. He starts being the player." super mario 64 wario apparition mod
Marco found it at a garage sale in a box labeled "Old Nintendo Junk." The cartridge was a faded gray, not the usual yellow of a Mario 64 NTSC. The label was worn, but he could make out the title: Super Mario 64 in the correct font, but below it, someone had scratched in permanent marker: "feat. Wario."
The only accessible painting was the one to "Tick Tock Clock," but the painting was different. Wario's face, smiling, teeth jagged. Marco pressed A.
He laughed. A bootleg. For five bucks, it was worth the chaos. Then the screen cut to black
But Marco could still hear it. Late at night. A faint, reversed whisper from the drawer where he threw it.
The mod forums had no record of this. No ROM hack, no texture pack. Just a few dead links and a single archived post from 2007 titled: "DON'T GET THE 30TH STAR."
"I'm in the save file now. And you just autosaved." A month later, Marco sold his Nintendo 64 on eBay. The buyer left feedback: "Console works fine, but the save file on the memory card is weird. Says 'MAR10' but the picture is a fat guy in purple. Also, my phone keeps taking pictures of my closet at 3 AM. 5 stars." The "Start" option was grayed out
"You're not collecting stars anymore. I am. And I'm collecting you." Marco tried to reset. The save file now had 30 stars—but the file picture wasn't Mario's face. It was Wario's. The console made a grinding noise. He turned it off, pulled the cartridge. When he plugged it back in, the game booted to a black screen. Then text appeared, pixel by pixel: