this post was submitted on 07 Mar 2026
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Greentext

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[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 21 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Millennials invented Creepypasta for old Nintendo games. You'll find old video game horror stories smeared across everything from Pseudopod to SCP.

I swear to fucking God, you people have zero perspective. Who do you think wrote the Secret Level episode for Pacman?

[–] Randelung@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago

What do you mean you people? I'll have you know I belong to a fringe group so specific, it consists of only me! And the offense taken scales inversely to group size! Also, what you said doesn't even apply to us!

[–] Tattorack@lemmy.world 14 points 1 day ago

Well... Jacksepticeye, Pewdiepie, and Markiplier are all millenials and they're the ones that pioneered such reactions to the most mundane shit in videogames.

Zoomers didn't start talking like that in isolation.

[–] Dasus@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago

My grandma fucking loved Super Mario 64. Silent generation. She didn't play, but loved watching us play.

[–] phoenixz@lemmy.ca 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Aaaahhhh finally we've arrived at the point where millennials can look back to a next generation and go "....WTF?"

Welcome aboard buddies!

[–] shane@feddit.nl 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Generational divide is a tool of capital to divide the working class. You have more in common with your parents and grandparents than with a billionaire.

[–] luciferofastora@feddit.org 2 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago)

I also have more in common with a child slave toiling away under horrible working conditions than with a billionaire. It's really not hard, if you have even the slightest shred of worry about your livelihood and obligations. Even by orders of magnitude, my four-digit bank balance is closer to zero than to ten digits.

My point, in agreement with yours: so many divisions are arbitrary bullshit. Watch the children develop their own culture, shake your head in wonder, but save the division for the cunts that would see their joy and seethe with rage that they invented something for free instead of spending their free time producing even more fake wealth.

[–] drmoose@lemmy.world 15 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Nah all n64 games are spooky

[–] JackbyDev@programming.dev 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

An especially haunted copy of Hey You Pikachu

[–] Rcklsabndn@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 day ago

'Pikachu! Speak'

'Pika, your mother sucks cocks in hell, piii.'

[–] Dasus@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Tell me a single spooky thing in the Pokemon games. Stadium or Snap either one.

[–] FantasmaNaCasca@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

You 2 having this conversation

[–] WorldsDumbestMan@lemmy.today 22 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I am a millenial, and mining out huge caves in the darkness of Minecraft gave existential terror.

[–] JackbyDev@programming.dev 9 points 1 day ago

In general it wasn't too bad but there were some times playing late at night, deep underground when the ambient noise that plays when you're near caves or whatever would spook me.

[–] drosophila@lemmy.blahaj.zone 41 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Blatant historical revisionism.

Millenials were cooking up horrifically bad videogame creepypasta before any zoomer ever touched a keyboard.

[–] sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

lol.

BEN DROWNED

... I did kind of have my own creepy experience with an actual Majora's Mask cart I picked up at a used game store like a decade ago.

Had one single save file.

Only had the couples mask.

Had completely forgone basically the entire rest of the the main actual game, only focused on the couple, saved maybe 3 ish 'hours' before the impact.

Had focused the entire playthrough on ensuring that a relationship would work out... in a world left utterly doomed by the hero not being the hero.

And of course they ultimately abadoned the entire game, leading eventually to me buying it, being utterly baffled by this ... unconvential play through, the kind of person who would do that playthrough.

Early 2010s millennials were all about this shit and the popularization of horror game reaction videos.

[–] sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 22 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

On the one hand, yeah, Mario 64 is ... kind of hauntingly sparse in places.

It is kind of especially weird that when you get dropped into the world, after the very sonically and visually engaging start screen and menus... you get dropped outside of the castle, which has no soundtrack, beyond like occasional birds chirping.

Its a massive tonal shift. Its meant to be just literally quickly skipped through, but if you... don't play the game as much as explore the game... its dissonant.

Then you go into the castle, uplifting music, but... its empty. Echoey. Camera angles / Sight lines emphasize empty space... its meant to maximize your ability to to be acrobatic, but... if you just walk, slowly... very large empty space, full of huge rooms that seemingly only exist to have huge paintings in them.

Which you are... alone, in.

An entire empty castle... where is everyone?

Yeah, thats all weird.


On the other hand...

What's wrong with Zoomers? Alphas?

Oh, constant over stimulation and external judgement.

The absence of those things thus feels like a graveyard, where... you suspect those things somehow are there, they're just hiding... because normally, those things always are there.

Simplicity, minimalism and a lack of obvious direction and feedback thus = absence... a suspicious, meancing lack of engagement.

It leaves you alone.

With your own thoughts.

Your own unguided, undirected thoughts.

You could say the brainrotted are haunted by their own conditioned expectations.

[–] conartistpanda@lemmy.world 13 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Wdym alone the toads are there for you

[–] Cruel@programming.dev 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

They're ghostly lol

Fade away when you're not nearby.

[–] sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Aren't there like... 2, 3 of them, in this huge fucking castle?

And they never move...?

I don't know.

Its been like 25 years since I last played that game lol.

[–] Dasus@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

The castle really isn't that big, my man.

Also, we're there as Mario because Peach has been kidnapped (again) and Bowser has taken over the castle so... it's a miracle there are actually any Toads, and not Koopatroopas.

[–] cybernihongo@reddthat.com 9 points 1 day ago

I grew up with the Sega Genesis, PS1 and then PS2. The PS1 side had games that were more lively, less lonely than SM64. Compare the game to something like even the first Spyro the Dragon, and SM64 immediately feels empty. Add to that the overtly creepy level Big Boo's Mansion, or the less creepy Hazy Maze Cave, or the surreal Wet Dry Town with the creepy cave music, the infinite stairs at the top of the castle, rooms that are huge but sport almost nothing except paintings, only a single big clock, a population of only one or two servants to the princess, levels like Lethal Lava Land which is just otherwise inhabitable platforms on top of a lava ocean - the game ends up feeling creepy whether the ~~programmers~~ lawyers at Ninten intended or not. How about the room with the Tiny Bit Island paintings, one side is huge while the other side's wall is within arm's reach? Also Mario is always being recorded by the Lakitu cameraman, and you're watching him through that lens.

Besides, creepypastas were all the rage during the 2010s, and the 3D Mario had just enough ingredients to make them work - the ultimate culmination of all this being the B31133 romhack. (Correct me if I got the numbers wrong).

[–] JackbyDev@programming.dev 8 points 1 day ago

I've never seen zoomers get scared of this game

[–] pixxelkick@lemmy.world 161 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Mario64 does have kind of a creepy liminal vibe to it.

Long ass empty hallways, rooms with just a giant mirror, no sound except kind of haunting/enchanting music and the echo of your footsteps.

It is objectively a pretty creepy / empty vibe to it, because in the game bowser has taken over the castle, so its supposed to be a bit spooky/creepy in a bunch of spots.

[–] sem@piefed.blahaj.zone 14 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Til I'm a zoomer lol

[–] super_user_do@feddit.it 9 points 1 day ago

Zoomers actually like mario64

[–] Hudell@lemmy.dbzer0.com 102 points 2 days ago (3 children)

They aren't wrong though. Mario 64 (and even Ocarina of Time too) were great because of how much they evolved videogames as a whole, but as pioneers they have a lot of flaws that game devs took a bit longer to figure out.

[–] null@lemmy.org 43 points 2 days ago

I don't think OoT is as liminal because they put a lot of effort into adding atmosphere. There's a lot of background animal noises and bugs flying around. It's low tech, but the environments don't feel empty in the same way as the polished and clean Mario 64 environments.

[–] zurohki@aussie.zone 36 points 2 days ago (3 children)

IIRC the reason Luigi isn't in Mario 64 is that they couldn't afford the extra few kilobytes that would take.

It's not like they wanted parts of the game to be empty, cartridges were tiny. Mario 64 had a one megabyte cartridge. They had to cut things to the bone to manage to fit the game on that.

[–] MurrayL@lemmy.world 36 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Small correction - Mario 64 was on an 8MB cartridge.

There were some 4MB games, but a 1MB cartridge never existed.

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[–] cdf12345@lemmy.zip 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Also the reason why everything on N64 were just shaded polygons (to save space) and in the PlayStation it was all texture mapped

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[–] Borger@lemmy.blahaj.zone 58 points 2 days ago

The “every copy of Mario 64 is personalised” is a really old creepypasta / meme that was definitely a thing before most zoomers were active on the internet.

And the PTSD thing is just stupid, sorry.

[–] AllNewTypeFace@leminal.space 44 points 2 days ago (2 children)

When consoles were less powerful, all spaces were liminal, and as nobody expected anything else, none were. Now, the fact that it’s not bustling with photorealistic NPCs feels spooky and unsettling (along with the historical details, which feel creepy in the way that vaporwave makes you feel)

[–] cdf12345@lemmy.zip 9 points 1 day ago (2 children)

So you’re saying when say N64 was the cutting edge, everyone playing it was loving how new and realistic everything felt.

Now compare that to the younger generation that grew up with consoles way way more powerful and saw games that had fully fleshed out cities and citizens and systems to make places feel alive. So going back to tech that’s 30 years old feels very empty and unsettling by contrast?

[–] okmko@lemmy.world 6 points 1 day ago

I think this is exactly what's happening.

I thought every new generation of games looked "photorealistic" on release. Every time I thought it couldn't get more realistic, they got more realistic.

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Honestly I don't think it's even necessarily a matter of photo-realism but moreso that 3d games from even later into the generation were more cluttered visually. Funny enough I've played some PS2 games that emulate the open sparseness style of the N64/PS1 era to invoke horror vibes.

[–] Gloomy@mander.xyz 14 points 2 days ago

Any Austin on Youtube has a channel that is somewhat dedicated to exploring luminal spaces in games. His videos on SM64 give a good impression about how this applies there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OV_ZN-8uy4w&t=0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SybPxb_DjZ4&t=0

[–] rumschlumpel@feddit.org 34 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

Second quote sounds like a huge strawman. Did anyone acutally say anything remotely similar that anon heard or read about?

That said, I can kinda see it. SM64 looks super weird if you're not used to the style, and it adds that "early 3d graphics" weirdness to it that younger people might only know from horror games. And TBH Mario games have always been kinda trippy.

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[–] Etterra@lemmy.org 32 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Kids today will never understand what it's like when dealing with hard limits on computer and console was the default.

I remember when I was a kid, and we got our first two PCs (as opposed to the standard Apple IIe and occasional black& white Macintosh) in the computer room in highschool school and those machines struggled just so hard to run 90s Photoshop at all. Or having to install the memory expansion in that N64 just so it could play most games. Oh, or disk swapping (floppy or CD).

In grade school you played green-on-black Math Muncher and Oregon Trail or you got bullied up by the shithead kids who played sports.

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Honestly I felt the same when the game came out.

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