Red (Creepypasta)

Red is the primary antagonist in the NES Godzilla Creepypasta. It is a demonic presence that somehow seems to possess and control a second-hand copy of the 1988 Nintendo Entertainment System cartridge, Godzilla, Monster Of Monsters, and seems to have played a direct role in causing a great tragedy in the past of the protagonist, Zach.

Given a second hand copy of the classic game bought by a friend at a garage sale, Zach begins to play it again, and at first is swept away by nostalgia. Yet strange things begin to happen in the game, things that Zach attempts to explain away. When the screen glitches oddly, he assumes its dirt and cleans the cartridge. When past Godzilla foes not seen in the original game show up, he assumes that he has latched onto a prototype or beta not widely released. When Godzilla foes not in existence when the game was made show up, he assumes someone hacked it (a very hard thing to do with a cartridge-based game). Yet things begin to quickly pile up that he can no longer ignore, such as the sound and graphics improving vastly past the point the old NES could ever dream of delivering.

Slowly but surely, the familiar, simple, and repetitive levels are replaced by ever more bizarre ones, replete with minor and major foes that become gravely disturbing, capped off by a personally invasive quiz level with questions that seem to be straight out of the Bridge scene in Monty Python And The Holy Grail. Even the background shows mind-bending horrors and almost emanate a sense of despair. The Godzilla foes start to warp and shift, finally bearing no resemblance at all to their origins. King Ghidorah is replaced by a creature amalgamating all the twisted bosses fought so far, and he is far from being the last enemy in this version. Despite the aid of new monsters and even an angelic figure, Zach first glimpses and then outright sees the one who has directed all this.

He calls the creature Red, and it starts by chasing his daikaiju across a landscape screen, able to kill even Godzilla with one shot. It soon becomes clear that this is no mere game-image, as Red seems to look at him from the screen, going so far as to threaten and taunt him. Red even tells him that the suicide of his late girlfriend Melissa was all his work, possessing her as he has now possessed the game. Unable to let himself give up and wanting revenge on Red, Zach presses on and determines to beat the altered game. But Red is not above stretching the rules and even cheating. Even with Godzilla, Mothra and others to call upon, Zach is in for the fight of his life--and very possibly, a fight for his life, even perhaps his soul.