The game store was almost empty, except for a few die-hard gamers rummaging through the latest releases.
My eyes were drawn to one particular aisle, eerily deserted, like it was cursed or something. In the age of digital downloads, seeing people in a game store at all was rare, let alone avoiding an entire section. The few who still bought physical copies were either nostalgic purists or collectors who liked to show off their shelves full of untouched games. I wasn't exactly different.
I headed to the store first thing in the morning, hoping to snag something for next week's streaming session. I mostly played modern games, but my seven loyal fans had a weird obsession with classic ones. I didn't mind having a few classics on hand to keep them happy, even if I didn't plan on playing them seriously. Honestly, I was bored of the current trend in games. They all felt like soulless cash grabs. What happened to games that were fun, innovative—an actual adventure?
I avoided popular games like the plague unless all my friends were playing them. I didn't enjoy those games; I just bought them to have something to talk about with my friends. Friends… if you could call them that. We barely had anything in common anymore, except for a few games, ironically.
As I stood in front of the deserted aisle, two thoughts crossed my mind: either it was a section full of crappy classics, or these games were so bad that even the collectors didn't want to touch them. Black-and-white game covers lined the shelves—dusty, neglected. Among them, one title caught my eye: 'Tale Tale Fantasy'. The name was bizarre, almost comically redundant.
> "Embark on a new adventure in Soman—the world of lies and deceit."
I snorted. It sounded like a bad joke, but that only intrigued me more. Eight discs were packed into the case. I didn't even own a DVD player, but I figured I could pick one up cheap at an antique shop. "Why couldn't you just be a typical PP install?"
The game looked ancient, probably from the PS5 era. It was labeled as a VRMMO, though, which piqued my interest. Could it be compatible with current RVR systems? It was dirt cheap, only ten bucks, which was practically giving it away for a supposedly AAA title. The graphics on the box didn't scream AAA, more like AA at best, but I decided to take a chance.
"This one, please," I said to the automatic cashier, sliding the game across the counter. I left the store immediately, clutching my find like it was a treasure. I was supposed to browse for more, but I was too eager to get this game home.
As I walked back to my tiny one-bedroom apartment—conveniently located just a block from the store—I couldn't help but feel a twinge of excitement. My apartment was as lonely as I remembered. It was a cramped space with junk scattered everywhere, except for my gaming room. That was my sanctuary, doubling as my streaming studio. It was the only place I bothered to keep clean, mainly because my viewers liked to see a neat setup during my weekly rants about how much modern games sucked. I hadn't streamed last week, so I wasn't sure if I even 'had' subs anymore.
Before diving into Tale Tale Fantasy, I caught a glimpse of myself in the bathroom, I was average height, maybe a bit on the shorter side, with messy brown hair that refused to stay in place no matter how much I tried. My eyes were a dull shade of green, always half-lidded from too many late-night gaming sessions. I had a habit of slouching, and my black hoodie hung loosely over my skinny frame, making me look even more withdrawn than I actually was. Not that I cared much. My fans couldn't see me behind the screen anyway.
I attempted to load the game, only to realize there was no disc drive on my PC. "Of course," I muttered. With a sigh, I ordered a DVD player online, then settled in for the three-hour wait, hoping the delivery guy wouldn't flake out on me. With nothing better to do, I started Googling Tale Tale Fantasy, trying to dig up anything about it.
Information was scarce. All I found was a single Reddit post, calling the game "an absolute garbage piece of shit." Great. Even if it was as bad as they said, it was still mine now. Worst case, I'd shove it on a shelf and brag about owning a rare piece of gaming history.
Eventually, I stumbled onto an old article buried deep within Google's endless pages of ads. TaleSoft, the developers, had gone bankrupt after the game's release. It was their first and last attempt at making a game. The title was initially a colossal failure, but over the years, it gained a cult following as one of the worst games ever made. Its servers were kept online purely out of some twisted sense of nostalgia, but who knew if they were still up? The article was five years old, and a lot could happen in that time.
"Lucky me," I muttered, "Finding this relic of failure for ten bucks." But maybe it wasn't luck. Maybe the guy who priced it had no clue it was a rare game. Or maybe they did, and it was so bad that even collectors avoided it. Well, even if it was shit, it was mine now.
The DVD player arrived sooner than expected, breaking my train of thought. "That was fast." I tipped the delivery guy five bucks, half out of surprise, half out of appreciation for not making me wait any longer. The player itself was cheap—five bucks for the hardware, ten for the game, twenty total. There went today's earnings, but it was worth it. Or so I hoped.
I popped the first disc into the player, expecting the install to start, but no. "Great, just great."
With nothing else to do, I started the tedious process of installing the game. To my annoyance, you had to copy all eight discs before the install option even became available. The DVD player was slow—painfully slow. To kill time, I hopped into one of my usual MMOs. At least those games had friends, and even if I wasn't exactly thrilled by them, it was better than staring at a progress bar.
Zargon: >Yo, UUC23 is back!
BladeMaster4U>Man, you need to log in more!
Me: >Guess so. Let's go kill the Kraken.
Zargon:>Again?
BladeMaster4U:> Man, you really love Kraken, huh?
Text chat was the norm, even though we could use voice chat or stream our voices directly into our characters. Gaming was fun when you had friends. But as for my real-life friends, they were unreachable as usual. I tried calling a few to brag about my "legendary" find, but everyone was busy.
"You've reached—"
I sighed. Why didn't I get the hint? I wasn't that important in their lives.
My in-game friends were probably all deep into real-time VR, spending their days in hyper-realistic virtual worlds. RVR was the latest craze, where you could touch, feel, and even smell things. Of course, taste had been disabled after too many people started abusing it in obscene ways.
Finally, the discs finished copying, and I began the installation. Eighty gigabytes for an eight-disc game seemed low, but considering its age, it made sense. Then, of course, the game needed to download another 267 gigabytes of updates. "Why not just do that with the first disc?" I grumbled. Forty minutes to download, twenty to install—this game was testing my patience.
At last, I was in the launcher. I clicked "Play Now," and a registration page popped up, asking for my social security number. "Seriously?" I typed in a bogus number—777-777-777—and to my surprise, it accepted it. "What the hell is wrong with this thing?"
Registration complete, I was finally logged into the game. The RVR connection was seamless, and with a beep-beep, all systems were green. I slipped on my helmet, feeling it wrap snugly around my head, and stepped onto my treadmill. The suit hummed as I logged in, my vision going white before a screen appeared with options: Continue (greyed out) and New Game.
New game it was.
> Please give your name.
I typed in all caps: SIRANCHA.
> Please select a character.
The character selection screen was filled with basic classes: knights, archers, scholars. Nothing exciting. I picked the most generic one—Adventurer. "Heh."
> Are you sure?
Yeah, I was sure.
A flash of light, and suddenly, I was standing in the middle of nowhere. Literally. A small patch of grass, and nothing else.
I was taller in game, I had no idea how my face looked but judging by the shirt and pants I was wearing, I probably looked generic.
>>System update. All previous progress erased. Start afresh!
"What the—" I cut myself off, not really surprised. This game was already living up to its reputation. I started walking around, trying to get the hang of the controls. Movement was fine, and I could interact with the environment—if you could call grass an environment.
"Still, it's damn empty, huh?"
There was nothing around. No towns, no players, not even a tree—except, wait. There was a tree in the distance. Did it… just teleport?