The Press of a Button

It had been three weeks since I had gotten that fateful game, Peppa Pig's Carnival. Yes, I know it sounded soppy, but it wasn't. Cause it almost killed me...

It all started in late June, when my local game store, Game Subway, was having a weekend game drive-in where people could drive past a special booth and get a free DS game. They had Donkey Kong's Jungle Beat for boys under 15, and Peppa Pig's Carnival for girls under 15. At first, when I saw the advert on TV, my interest was piqued. But, after 3 hours of waiting in a queue, it started to drag on. A lot. So I was kinda relieved when our car reached the booth.

By the time I had gotten the DS game into my DS, it was almost bed time. But, at least it gave me a good half hour to get accustomed to the 25 minigames it mentioned on the back of the box. Pressing the A button when the game loaded, I was met with a shock. The words "Peppa Pig's Carnival" were there, but underneath them, two more words said:

"Hail Satan..."

Trying my hardest to ignore this, I looked at all the available profiles. One said Peppa Pig, one said George Pig, one said Mummy Pig and the other said Daddy Pig. And all of them had a Satanic Pentagram right next to the "Progress Made" bar. Feeling brave, I tapped the Daddy Pig profile. Instantly, a scrolling list of minigames came up on the screen. They were as follows:

Drawing Pentagrams

Sacrificing Peppa and George

Making blood rain

Poisoning candy

The rest of the games, however, had a pentagram item on them and each said "locked until you appease Satan with a minigame score of 1000 or more". After seeing this, I tried to turn the DS off but the screen froze. Except for the fact that a full-body image of Peppa with her bones sticking out and guts pouring through her mouth was vomiting through the screen. And it wasn't digitalized, crappy-looking vomit. It was like the real deal. Frightened, I put my DS (with the game) in the spare room.

"I'm going to speak with the game store about this." I muttered under my breath.

And so I did. Showing Mom the Satanic version of Peppa Pig, she marched me, the DS and the game up to Game Subway and demanded that the game Tech manager needed to have a look.

Three weeks later, we got our reply in the post. It read:

Dear Flynn Family,

''We apologize for the problem with your DS game, but we could not pinpoint it. We believe that the game was given a modification by a professional hacker before it left the factory. We shall be sending a replacement of the exact same game over to you and it should arrive with you on Monday.''

If you have any more problems, please don't hesitate to let us know.

Yours sincerely,

The Managing Board of Game Subway

93 Chesford Boulevard,

Atlanta

And the game did come. But we didn't want to take any risks this time. So we burned it. And I swear, when that game went up in smoke, I heard the voices of Mummy Pig and Daddy Pig say Hail Satan.

EPILOGUE
The day after we burned the game, we found the shape of a pentagram in the ashes with the words:

"All Hail Satan" written in blood underneath.

We had further proof that the game was Satanic, but when we sent the photos of this pentagram and the blood writing to Game Subway, they refused to reply, saying it was made up. They did, however, send us a $400 compensation cheque. So I guess that solves that. Or does it?

Some questions still remain. How did the game suddenly turn Satanic? And Why?

But I guess we'll never get an answer...

Loob88