It didn’t take too long to find them down in the family room.
“Hey James, bro is about to start the new game. Better come up if you want to see,” he smiled before looking at Amy. “Come on Amy, I really think you’ll like to see this.”
“You always say that…” Amy pouted, holding her Pooh stuffed toy with her. She didn’t exactly object though.
“C’mon, I’m sure you’ll love this,” James tried to assure the six year old with a comforting smile. “I hear it has all sorts of pretty girls and romance. You like that, right?” Probably best to leave out the existential dread and serial murders out from his pitch.
Amy was hardly old enough to really know the meaning of romance, but judging by the smile, she was intrigued either way. “Oh, okay!”
“Just make sure you’re all down here for dinner, alright?” Their mother smiled as she walked by. “Don’t want to be calling you down for 10 minutes.”
With a confirmation, the three of them went back upstairs, following the path back to Billy’s room. Looking inside, it was funny seeing Billy still tinkering with his decade-old console.
“Still trying to get it to work?” Tyler smiled and laughed a bit.
“Wait…” Billy muttered before finally plugging in the red AV cable, only to hear a familiar hum from his TV. “That should do it!” He then brought himself back around before pressing the good old power button on the Playstation 2, only to hear yet another familiar hum. “Tyler, the lights!”
“Roger!” Tyler saluted before running over to do just that. It was just about sundown, so just a tidbit of light came into the room now. Like it mattered as Tyler and James ran over.
“This is going to work, right?” Amy asked as she came over to take a seat herself behind the boys. “Didn’t you have trouble with the last game you tried on that?”
“Eh, I’m sure it’ll be fine. Right?” Tyler replied.
“Yeah, I’m sure it’ll be fine!” Billy chuckled before the TV began to flicker slightly. “I’m...sure that was just a glitch. James! The remote!”
“Right!” James nodded before picking the remote off of his friend’s bed and changing the television’s input to AV2. Soon enough, everyone is greeted by the beautiful chimes of the PS2 logo.
“Perfect!” the eldest boy cheered before starting to sit down in his perfectly comfortable gaming chair with his controller in hand. Now let the fun begin!”
And so, everything seemed to be going the way most of them had seen on the Internet. After the Atlus logo came the anime-like intro movie, starring Shihoko Hirata’s “Pursuing My True Self” which was quite the catchy tune that matched the game’s mystery theme. Despite the great tune, though, Tyler couldn’t help but catch something. For one thing, the movie seemed to be interrupting a bit, even more than it was supposed to given the TV theme. But then, there was a really glaring issue.
“Um, Billy?” Tyler slowly turned his head. “Is it just me or some characters missing from the movie? Is this an unlockable kind of thing?”
“I...I don’t think so…” the older brother muttered as he kept on staring at the screen. “Probably just a glitch or some dust in the old disc reader. Nothing major, I’m sure. As long as it doesn’t affect gameplay, we should be fine.”
Tyler just looked at James, who looked about as suspicious about it as he was. He hoped that it was nothing serious, but at the same time, he had never heard of a video missing stuff like this in a game. Usually if a game had a glitch, it would be during the actual gameplay. This mostly passed over Amy’s head, who wasn’t entirely familiar with it.
Eventually, the yellow tinted main screen appeared, but it still seemed to be missing characters. Adding to that, the screen looked like it was going in and out. At one point, the screen went static for a while.
“Okay...I think something’s wrong,” Tyler sighed. “Either something’s up with the console or we really need a new TV.”
“Please be the console, please be the console…” Billy muttered as he darted over to the console. He honestly couldn’t afford his brand new TV short circuiting or something. He immediately went for the disc tray’s eject button, only to feel a painful shock emanate from it.
“Ouch!” he cried out before starting to suck on his shocked index finger. “Okay, this is not normal. This...This can’t be normal.”
“Guys…” James muttered as the screen started to violently flash what looked like waves of black and white rectangles. He wanted to look away, everyone did, yet...they couldn’t...and soon, the entire room seemed to become enveloped in a blanket of pure light.
Yet, once the light finally subsided and the TV shorted out entirely, there was no one to be found within the room.
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