Victim #1: Eyeballs were found.

EDIT: I go into more detail on it in this video here.


Hey folks. Not sure how much discussion this will actually generate, but this is an important enough piece of SMWC's history that I think it's worthy of a thread/notice anyway.

Even outside the rom hacking community, this site is pretty well-known for being the birthplace of the M A R I O creepypasta, which is still huge in the "creepy gaming" community; largely because of the following image:

(CW: Not gory or anything, but still a little disturbing nevertheless)



For the past few years, some guys I know have been trying really hard to find out where this image came from. When I found out about their efforts, I tracked down the man who made the image in the first place, who said he created it by photoshopping a random image of a woman that he found online. He gave me us a description of what it looked like, and a bunch of us spent the next couple years searching for it.

Two days ago, it was finally found, with the creator's confirmation that this was indeed the image he used:




A bunch of people have already tried recreating the edit, or making cool GIFs to show off how the images align:


(Thanks Stivi)




So yeah. If it wasn't for this image, I probably wouldn't even be on this site right now, so it's really cool to finally get some closure on it after all these years.

Discuss.


EDIT: I go into more detail on it in this video here.

---

Twitter

What's most bewildering to me is how a 10 minute photoshop job came to be an over decade-long mystery to track down what the original image was. Good job to all investigators!

MARIO may have gotten pretty old for everyone here, but we can't deny its importance to the history of the site. And it just keeps coming back.

That's some solid detective work! Now I'm really curious who that woman is. Imagine what a weird kind of fame this would be from her perspective, lol!

---

Feel free to visit my website/blog - it's updated rarely, but it looks pretty cool!

You guys should really apply as FBI employees judging by the degree of this investigation. Like really.

That said, great job! I very vaguely recall reading the MARIO creepypasta in my younger days, so seeing it gradually get a closure feels so satisfying.

What fascinates me most is that the whole MARIO hack could just as well have faded into obscurity and never been recognized for what it was. (I played it while it was in the moderation queue and just plain didn't get it, and another mod removed it.) No one here would be talking about it if Adam hadn't made his creepypasta thread a couple of weeks later.

It's also cool that the creator confirmed it. (I remember him posting in the forums occasionally bragging about how easy it was to satisfy the creepypasta fans.) (edit: oh, it's not the same guy)

---

 

Eh, that's debatable. I'm talking about something that's somewhat separate from the old hack, and is more connected to the history of SMWC as a whole, so.... I could see an argument for either forum.


Yeah, the image's creator isn't the same person as M A R I O here. The former made the image and put it on the internet well-before the smw hack was made, and then M A R I O downloaded the image and bundled it with the hack.

---

Twitter

I still can't believe this was solved. I knew about the story LONG before I even joined the site, and the image has always haunted me for a while, so seeing it unedited is just bewildering. Congrats to the ones who finally solved both the Image mystery and M A R I O's "ARG".

I still can't believe this was found lmao
So weird to see it without all the creepy stuff

---

<--- This is Ziggy. He is my friend :3

~ SMBX player since late 2014/early 2015 ~ Pokenerd ~ Zigzagoon Worshiper ~