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.
After grabbing the first star, the level didn't end. The music stuttered, dropped an octave, and became a low, vibrating hum. The sky turned from blue to a sickly orange. And standing on the far hill, motionless, was a polygonal figure.
The level was a twisted version of the castle basement. Water flooded the halls. Doors led to the same room. And in the center, sitting on a throne made of crushed Star icons, was Wario. He wasn't T-posing anymore. He was playing a controller. And on a cracked TV next to him, Marco saw himself—real Marco, sitting on his real couch, holding the real controller. super mario 64 wario apparition mod
Marco tried to walk toward him. The ground stretched. The more he ran, the farther away Wario got. Then, Mario's shadow flickered. Marco looked down. His shadow wasn't Mario's. It was Wario's. Fat, stubby, with two pointy ears.
The game booted normally. The castle grounds, the music, the Lakitu intro. Marco collected ten coins, jumped into the Bob-omb Battlefield painting. Normal. The camera light on Marco's laptop flickered on by itself
He paused the game. The pause screen was normal. He unpaused. Wario was gone. Over the next few days, Marco noticed the pattern. Wario would appear only after collecting a star, only for thirty seconds, and only in your peripheral vision. On the "Whomp's Fortress" tower. Behind the trees in "Lethal Lava Land." Staring into the mirror in "Big Boo's Haunt"—but when Marco turned Mario around, the mirror showed Mario, not Wario.
Wario waved.
He laughed. A bootleg. For five bucks, it was worth the chaos.