Cold Relics

Tyler here. Normally, I’d be copying some other internet stranger’s supposed firsthand account that either disappeared from the web or fell into obscurity, but this time, I think I could be the only person who remembers this story ever being posted. This may have all just been a prank, but if it was, then it was a surprisingly elaborate one for a small gaming site from the mid-2000s.

While scouring the dark corners of cyber space for more stories, a nearly forgotten memory of my own worked its way out of the shadows and came running at me like an insect after you turn on the kitchen lights. It’s a small thing, a lost trinket of the golden age of an internet that wasn’t as homogenized and where content creators were trying to make their personal websites go big. An age where social media after Myspace was just on the horizon.

Back then, I was a bored high school student still obsessed with gaming, and I’d check the internet front to back for any scraps or rumors about the latest Nintendo or Sony games in the pipeline. For maybe around just a month or so, one of my many sources for information and experiences was a site called Game Hobby. That was the name; simple but effective. From what I can vaguely recall, it was run by just three guys a little older than myself, fresh out of college and looking to make a name in gaming journalism by showing that they had the talent and motivation to pull off an independent media channel.

Unfortunately, I don’t have names for any of them because they all only went by pseudonyms, typical aliases you’d find on a forum of the time. And they wrote in that kind of edgy gamer style that can be expected from the era, like they were on the forefront of what was hot or not and cheered on the anarchy of the post 16-bit console wars. The guy that ran the site created and maintained the design and wrote often sardonic editorials on the latest news and disappointments in the gaming world. Another wrote reviews for console releases and, as is typical, was very hard to please. The last writer is the person we’re interested in. He was more nostalgic, and liked to share stories of gaming memories, chronicling his experiences growing up with the classics and what they meant to him and his friends. He would also interview other like-minded gaming history buffs, tour private collections, and seek out auctions and sales for rare games. He had a soft spot for arcade games in particular, calling his youth spent in a local arcade the best way to possibly experience childhood—all while lamenting the “sad death spiral” of this segment of the industry. Very dramatic at times. Assuming he’s still around, I wonder what he’d have to say about the fact that arcades do continue to operate almost two decades later.

Anyway, this isn’t about the website itself. I want to share just one lost story, which was among the last published to Game Hobby before it went offline. I know, that always happens, doesn’t it? Like some sinister plotting power behind everything spends all day looking to disappear any information that leaks concerning something never meant to be discovered.

Actually, according to the last archival snapshot taken of the site before the domain name expired, stories continued to be posted for another three months after the one I’m talking about went live. However, there was a serious lack of effort from the arcade author near the end, who went by the unassuming alias Red Bird. The other two writers also showed a drop in quality after the story was posted. This is anecdotal, but I think they were convinced Red Bird was just making up crap for internet points, and a disagreement may have resulted that signaled the end of Game Hobby’s attempt to make a mark in the online journalism sphere. It wouldn’t have helped that Red Bird made a sizeable investment of time, money, and risk to tell a disturbing tale.

Whatever happened, I do remember reading the arcade story when it went up, being terrified of it, and then sort of brushing it aside as fake after it was removed from the site without explanation within a week of its posting. But after I suddenly thought about it again all these years later, I began searching my hard drives for any backups I might’ve made of it after the Internet Archive failed to give me a snapshot of the article in question.

This may be strange, but I back up pretty much every unique story, picture, video, or sound file I find on the web, whether that means downloading the files or an entire page, copying text, or just doing a screen capture, simply to make sure the obscure won’t disappear for all time. I was overjoyed to eventually discover that a copy of the story was still saved as magnetic ones and zeros on one of my dusty old spinning platters.

I’ll say no more, and from here on will give new life to a forgotten gaming article. To borrow a line from one of my favorite scary shows that I watched every Saturday night as a kid, I submit for your approval… The Tale of Daunting Depths.

Just so we’re clear, this isn’t what the original author called it.

The Most Terrifying Arcade Game of All Time

Written by Red Bird for Game Hobby, June 21st, 2004

Gaming was born in the video arcades of the 1970s and ’80s. It wasn’t until home computer technology reached the point where consoles could replicate and then surpass what the internals of a wooden cabinet put on a screen did these once beloved meeting spots of teenagers and college students begin to die out. As you readers know from my continuing series that keeps me on the road and takes me across America, in search of rare arcade games and the old or abandoned venues that once housed them, I value a good story as much I do a good title. And while I have yet to stumble upon my white whale of a tale—an emptied husk of an arcade that, inexplicably, has one single machine left inside and running—I may have recently stumbled upon the next best thing.

But, I warn you, there are aspects of this story that many will find unbelievable. Or, hopefully, terrifying. If I was just making all of this up, I would publish this story on April 1^st, or Halloween. Not in all my years have I dug so deeply into something, or typed with trembling fingers as I recount an experience. Arcade gamers, the dying breed that we may be, are always trying to stretch a quarter and get to that next level. Fans of Game Hobby… this is the next level.

It began when I had returned to western Oregon, around the Salem area, for an ongoing project. I’d been checking out small towns that once had an arcade on or just off of their Main Street, and then doing my best to find the adults that once frequented the establishment, or even better, knew the owner and if they were still around. The nostalgic surge of dopamine I get when I have a chance to document the Saturday nights of decades past is something I’ll never tire of. Painting another visual of the sights and sounds of hairsprayed teens in denim getting high scores under neon lights, with the knowledge that there was a time and place when such scenes were very real is what I live for. I can preserve a brief moment in time that will never reach such greatness again.

I don’t otherwise have an ulterior goal to achieve from these ventures. I just like collecting stories, or even mere feelings or memories of the first time a now busy working adult played a certain game. Every now and then, I’ll hear something truly unique, or learn of a title I didn’t know existed. There are many rare cabinets out there, some made by long-dead companies. Some lost to time entirely, never backed up to other hardware, their flashy wooden shells doomed to rot at the bottom of a landfill.

The third question I always ask whomever I interview varies with the mood of the conversation, but it more or less goes something like, “What game do you remember the most from those days? You didn’t have to play it yourself. Maybe you only ever watched others, because you thought it’d be too tough, or it was so popular that you didn’t want to wait in line or attract an audience. What cabinet has left the biggest impression on you after all these years?”

It’s Jeff who first brings a lost game to my attention. He’s an older man in his forties, and an arcade-goer from the very beginning. We meet for lunch in one of his town’s few restaurants; one of those roadside diners styled after eateries of the 1950s. He appears to think long and intensely about what left that mark, but as I look back on it now, it was evident in his eyes that he didn’t have to choose. Rather, he was processing emotions—working up the bravery just to talk about it. I like arcades for their atmosphere, but the games don’t often move me in some way. One of them had clearly affected Jeff.

“Daunting Depths,” is his reply, in a meek voice.

“Sorry?” I say back. “Daunting… what was it?”

“Um. Depths,” he says a touch louder. “Have you heard of it?”

“Daunting Depths…? I don’t think so. No. It sounds like some kind of dungeon crawler. Either something like Gauntlet… or an arcade version of Shadowgate. Am I close?” There’s a pause in my recording where Jeff feebly shakes his head. “Huh. Okay, tell me about it. The year it came out, roughly. The graphics, the plot, the controls. A gimmick. Anything you can remember.”

“Oh, I remember a lot. It’s hard to forget. And I hope there aren’t playable cabinets of it still out there.”

“Was it that bad?”

He doesn’t answer, but does go on to give me some basic details, “It came out late 1994, or ’95. Early 3D graphics.”

This is unique, and I reply with some surprise, “That’s early for a game with polygons.”

“They were simple, but still had textures. It only had a playable frame rate because so little was on screen at once. You were something, or someone, at the bottom of the ocean, and you can only see a few feet. There’s darkness everywhere other than a few flecks of pixels, like marine snow. The goal was to find some sort of… exit, by navigating the abyss. Every once in a while, you’d happen on the sandy sea floor, or come up to the side of an underwater cliff. If you were really lucky, a jellyfish or some mutant deep sea creature would swim by you. But there weren’t any enemies. Nothing you could see, at least.”

“Then what kills the player? Or do you just run out of time? And what happens when you beat it?”

“There’s something chasing you down there, and it’s an instant game over when it grabs you after you take too many wrong turns, or some invisible timer runs out. You don’t even get the option to put in another quarter and continue. No high score screen, either. So it was always a wonder to people why anyone would play it.”

“Yeah, that sounds bare bones and, well, bad.”

“And yet it still attracted players. There were a few months when playing the town’s only copy late at night, just before closing, became something of a rite of passage. I was already out of college by then, but my younger brother told me that in our high school, kids were either talking about their experiences with the game or daring others to play it all the time. Since I had tried it as well and knew what it could do, I wasn’t surprised to learn of its… mystique.”

“What made it so special?”

“Because it really was an experience. Hell, most people didn’t even refer to it as a game. Most of us didn’t know what to call it, so we just incorporated its title into every discussion. ‘You want to take turns playing some Dauntless tonight?’, ‘Hey, somebody saw a strange blue fish in the Depths yesterday, have you ever seen that?’, or, ‘Rumor is, someone beat DD last Saturday, and they’re in the hospital after a heart attack.’ You know how it is.”

“Is that last one based on anything?”

“I mean, it’s the kind of media where gossip like that is born. It’s impossible to faithfully explain, because unless you played it, you don’t have a frame of reference. You can’t know what it was like to stand in front of that screen with a sweaty hand nervously gripping the stick. It was more than ‘immersive.’ It was… visceral. Daunting pumped fear into you, and yet, for many players, it was the good kind of fear. It was like a drug, and it either scared you off on your first try, or kept you coming back for more.”

I’d become quite intrigued, and ask, “How did it manifest fear?”

“By doing much more than just giving you a world of cold darkness to stumble your way through. There were these sounds… like, organic noises that didn’t seem to come from circuitry and software. Everyone was affected differently, felt unique things. Have you heard of infrasound?”

“Sure. It can supposedly cause nausea or hallucinations. Even though we can’t actually hear it.”

“Yeah, well, this was sound you heard and felt. The longer you played, the stronger it got, and yet you have to rely on these feelings of terror to navigate the ocean. You use your body’s response to that unseen fear, and move in the direction where it’s lessened. Then you feel some relief and the symptoms abate for a moment, until you start to panic again as the sense of something getting closer behind you scares the hell out of you all over again. It comes in waves… which was appropriate, I guess. But if you can’t control and contain that fear, you get caught in a feedback loop, like a panic attack, and you’ll lose in seconds. You only win by learning how to stay calm, so you can follow an invisible path.”

And now this was too much. Jeff had me in the beginning, but surely he’s just yanking my chain by this point. I have to see proof if he wanted me to believe someone made a game that used psychological warfare.

“Okay, Jeff,” I continue, if just to entertain him. “And what company made this thing?”

“I… don’t remember. It wasn’t any of the major ones, and it’s not like there was some flashy attract mode on it flashing a memorable logo. I haven’t touched it in years, and I think our local copy broke down before the rest of the arcade closed.”

“But, again, what happens when you beat it? Does it have an ending?”

He looks at me without conveying any emotion and answers, “I don’t think I’ve seen anyone win. At least not around here. There were always rumors that someone did it, but no one ever caught a name. And, trust me, we’re a small town, so if someone did manage to do it, they would’ve been famous. You know—just a little bit.”

“Well. It makes for an interesting story, and while there’s nothing I love more than the search for a rare cabinet or even just a ROM board, I don’t really have enough to go on to start another one of those quests.”

“You don’t believe it’s real. I get that,” Jeff levels with me. “But you don’t have to hunt it down. I can give you a guy’s phone number, who lives just a few blocks away. He pulled the board from the town’s broken copy. Assuming he still hasn’t found a buyer, he should still have it.”

I’m not sure what to think. Was the game actually real? Even if it was, finding a copy was never this easy.

My skepticism fading, I ask him one last question, “If this game’s so infamous, if just locally or regionally, why would it be hard to sell?”

Jeff shrugs and states, “It’s not like the game is so great in a vacuum, without the proper hardware that makes it… special. There was something inside the cabinet that made what it did to players possible. But that’s all I know. And I expect that no one around here has managed to copy the board or restore the whole thing. Without some expertise, it’s just a chunk of solder and PCB.”

I take the phone number and thank Jeff for his time. As I head out of the diner, he suddenly feels the need to part with a word of caution. I was no longer recording, but I remember what he said clearly.

“If you keep looking into this, be careful. A machine like that… it might need proper calibration and maintenance to function safely. If it ever truly did. Any working cabinets still out there may be degraded and dangerous.”

I tell him that I always respect the craftsmanship of the hardware, and have handled hundreds of arcade games. He doesn’t look very assured.

After a quick phone call, I’m already meeting with another local who knows all about Daunting Depths. This isn’t how I pictured the day going; I had planned to be driving to the next town over, gathering more stories. Instead, a game that I hadn’t heard of that morning had upended my schedule. But it was worthy of a special investigation, if just to confirm or disprove the existence of an electronic curio.

This brings me to Trevor, who has a garage full of shelves of arcade boards archived in anti-static bags. He doesn’t want to be recorded, but that’s okay with me because this guy is a guru. We shoot the shit about the old days and the industry for a few hours before he even shows me his board collection, at which point I feel like I had gotten so much out of the meeting so far that I’ve nearly already lost interest in the whole Daunting Depths mystery. But then he rekindles things when he gets to talking about it, and he knows more than Jeff.

The company was called Emden, headquartered in Salem, just a hundred or so miles away from us for the length of its short existence. As far as anyone knows, they only produced one title, and it doesn’t seem that it reached a wider market. Trevor has been to every arcade in the American Northwest, and only ever saw the game in two states. Furthermore, it showed up exclusively in smaller towns, and he believes he saw maybe a grand total of twelve cabinets.

“Just a rough estimate,” he emphasizes. “It’s not like I was keeping count back when I drove around, looking for ‘gems’ like you do.”

It’s as if the game hadn’t left some unofficial testing stage, and the company only advertised their limited quantity of machines in less populated areas to keep the its existence under the radar. Given its mind-altering nature, if the game’s strange effects had resulted in injuries or psychotic breaks, it was also less likely to make national news. It was all very shady.

Unsurprisingly, this leads our discussion briefly into conspiracy theories and mind control, getting into the realm of the fabled Polybius arcade cabinet. But Trevor doesn’t think it was some government operation or anything like that. The company was just too small, their experimental gonzo tech unproven.

Even after sharing these facts, he regrets not being able to tell me more, as he didn’t really play the game itself while it was still making the rounds. He tried it one time, on the first weekend it showed up at the local place, but he had a bad reaction to its psychotropic impact and never touched it again. He acquired its board years later as a curiosity, thinking he’d one day get around to transferring its contents to a computer to immortalize it. But he still hasn’t, and by this point he probably won’t. Besides, he tells me, it’s not your typical board, making the effort even more of a motivation black hole.

He pulls out the treasure from the bottom bin of a smaller shelf in his garage library and hands it to me. I study the circuitry and other elements of the board within its translucent gray bag and can see the company name, but it’s otherwise unremarkable. The style of board is quite uncommon, though, and I’ve only seen a few others like it over the years. It’s far from the standard, like the typical Jamma board that I can hook up and dump onto a hard drive within minutes. It’s more of a weekend project, and I know I need to be surgical given that there are probably very few surviving copies out there. One wrong move could fry or damage the board, and I risk losing a chance at preservation.

“To be honest,” he tells me, and I’m paraphrasing here, “I’ll be glad to be rid of it. It gave me such a bad experience the one time I played, that it’s like it’s been this cursed object in my house ever since I got it.”

I thank him for his time and stories, and tell him I’ll gladly take it off his hands. But that doesn’t quite work, and he wants a hundred bucks for it. Still a good deal.

I postpone indefinitely the rest of my plans and research for the original story I intended to write, and get to work early on a Friday, the day after I came home from my trip. I bring the “cursed” arcade board into my workshop, look up some instructional guides, and rely on a little personal intuition to get it properly hooked up. I’m able to dump all twenty ROM chips onto my laptop at three in the morning on Saturday. By Sunday, I’ve gotten the files properly compiled. And after some tweaks to my emulator’s translation layer, I feel that great sense of accomplishment when I see the game’s title screen, in all its minimalist glory, pop up against my desktop PC’s wallpaper—which, I’m not ashamed to admit, is a take on the geometric colorful shapes of classic arcade carpeting.

Daunting Depths is in my possession, and now it will live on for as long as any other storage medium can be powered up and read. Partially, granted. Unless one of those generic chips on the board was actually something special, I had my doubts that I could find any hardware that provides the full experience.

I play it anyway. And I was… disappointed. Mostly.

To make a horror arcade game work, compromises were made even past the minimal onscreen graphics. You’re stuck in a first person view and never stop moving, so you choose directions with just a single joystick; left, right, up, and down. I only find one button input, which activates a brief speed boost useful for escaping from a game over, if only for a few more seconds. There’s no boost meter, or HUD at all, but you can either perform the maneuver again every ten or so seconds, or get lucky enough to “swim” through a bubble that grants an instant recharge. I put swim in quotes because it isn’t clear what you are.

Are you a human diver, trying to navigate their way out of an abyssal trench or underwater cave? Are you in a submarine? Or are you just a fish going about their day when you suddenly find a bigger sea creature stalking you? The game doesn’t say, and I think that’s the point. Who or what you are doesn’t matter; this experience really is just about the, well, experience of being chased by unseen terror. Use your imagination.

When you’re not passing by the occasional low-poly rock, coral, or other swimming sea life, you may find yourself in long stretches where the screen would be solid black if not for the marine snow and dim glow of the CRT. This makes navigation impossible and up to luck, so you must need the additional hardware that can allegedly guide you using fear itself to find your way. Other than a subtle swimming sound, you can only hear a faint heartbeat that gets faster as the thing behind you grows near—so at least you know when you’re about to lose. If you’re seconds from being grabbed, the game lets out one of those digitally distorted monster roars. And when you’re killed, for a brief instant a swarm of tentacles writhe along the edges of the screen, I assume just before you’re pulled into a gaping maw.

To complicate things further, the game seems to procedurally generate the correct path through the ocean each session. Given all these factors, Daunting Depths would have virtually no chance of victory when its big gimmick isn’t functioning.

Fortunately, by using an emulator, I can turn back time as often as I need to by using save states. I simply hit F5 on my keyboard to create a snapshot of my progress, and then F9 to reload it and try again.

Though even with that tool, it’s not easy. The invisible maze has wrong turns that you start down long before you reach the dead end, so I often have to go back to a save state I made a full minute ago in game time after realizing the branch I took had only false exits. This makes finding my way out of the demersal nightmare frustrating to say the least, trading fear for aggravation and the feeling that I was making no progress.

Still, at least I’m always running the same maze, so all I need is the patience to go through the trial and error process. It takes me over an hour, but eventually, the controls suddenly stop responding and my fish, diver, fish diver, or whatever I am swims forward to the shallows of a beach. The camera pans up to reveal a full moon, and I’ve found safe harbor at last.

“Congratulations!” pops up against the starry night, above the words, “You survived the Daunting Depths. The fear now leaves you.”

And in the middle of the screen, most interestingly, is this tantalizing sentence over the spot where you can put in a three letter player name.

“A cash prize of $1,000 may still be available if you were among the first ten players to survive the nightmare! Your initials will create your unique prize code. Be sure to write it down!”

This is a surprise. There wasn’t any indication of a reward for beating the game, and given that neither Jeff or Trevor mentioned it, chances are they really hadn’t heard about anyone pulling off the feat. A thousand bucks for triumphing over a tough game in the ’90s would’ve been a big deal, and not only because that was a decent chunk of change back then. Anyone who managed to claim such a victory would’ve instantly become a local legend.

So I put in my real initials, though there still isn’t some kind of high score list. A nine digit code of numbers and letters appears on the screen long enough for someone with a pencil and notepad to copy down; I just take a screenshot. Accompanying the code is an address to mail the digits and initials to so that the one grand can be claimed. As Trevor had said, the address for the business is in Salem, Oregon.

An expiration date on the prize isn’t shown, but of course it isn’t still available. Not after at least eight years. Right? I mean, the company isn’t even around anymore. I’m just glad to get the address since it makes my job easier. I don’t expect to see anything left of Emden, but know there’s a chance the people at a neighboring business might have information that could advance my investigation. It isn’t as if the company’s operating years are ancient history.

Well, readers, this is where the story takes another step up the staircase of weird. I Google the address and find that it’s now a UPS Store in the middle of a shopping plaza. Printing and shipping stores are pretty small, so it’s a wonder that an entire video game company, even a tiny one, could function in a retail space of that size. With my expectations low, I take a drive to Salem, find the plaza, walk into the store, and start up the following conversation with the elderly man behind the counter working a lazy Monday morning.

“Can I help you?”

“Hello. I was wondering if you knew anything about a small company that used to work in this space called Emden? They would’ve closed years ago.”

He stares at me for a moment, and then works his wrinkled face into a friendly grin before replying, “It’s been a while since I’ve had someone ask me about them. Yes, they worked from here on an arcade game a while back. But I’m afraid I don’t know much about them.”

“Oh,” is all I say, in a disappointed tone.

“But I met the owner, once. Mr. Caldwell. I don’t know his first name, or anything about video games, really. That was back when he sold the space, I think in 1998? He was moving on up with his company. But I never did look into if he and his employees settled into a larger building somewhere. You look at this place, and it’s hard to imagine it, but they had a few desks crammed up next to each other with fancy computers and six or seven programmers with their faces glued to the screens. I vaguely remember… fish décor on the walls, which were painted black. A little weird, if you ask me. Just a day after the sale is finalized, I come back here to see it emptied out, like they had left in a hurry.

“Funny thing, though. Before he moved out, we made an agreement. I run this store, if that isn’t obvious. He mentioned that his game has a prize if you win, and the address to claim it will still point to here. So… he leaves me in charge of the winnings, and in exchange, he pays the first three months of our lease. It’s an odd arrangement, I know, but I did agree to it and have yet to hear from him about wanting the money back.”

“And when did you give out the last cash prize?”

“Oh, it’s ongoing. There’s still some of it left in a safe in the back.”

I grin widely.

Then I give him my initials and the generated code, and he only has to see some ID to check that the letters match up. As this happens, all I can think is, “Man. Someone would’ve been pissed off if they didn’t put in their real name.”

My assumption that anyone else had beaten the game actually turns out to be right, as well. At the same time, I’m a little disappointed that six expert gamers (or people that can overcome fear or are unaffected by it) got the prize before I did. Then again, I did play on an emulator, so maybe I don’t deserve the cash at all. Even so, it’s a nice payday for my efforts… and I’m the first person to be awarded in over three years, according to the old man.

And that’s the story of how I rescued a cursed game from oblivion and got some instant karma for my good deed.

Okay, no, I wouldn’t leave you hanging like that, dear reader. Naturally, I do my journalistic duty and continue my investigation. A wad of cash isn’t going to satiate my curiosity, my need to find the why of the story.

I call Trevor and tell him that I had copied the game and beaten it. I don’t mention the prize; no need to make him feel bad for getting rid of the board without overcoming the Depths himself. I ask if he knows anyone at all that may have a full cabinet of the game, being in the business himself. He agrees to help me by getting in touch with some of his old contacts.

A few days later, when I’m already deep into writing this story and checking what facts there are to be found, Trevor gets back to me with some good news. One of his long-distance pals who has the room to collect entire arcade machines does, in fact, have a copy of Daunting Depths. I’m forewarned that it’s in rough shape, but all that matters to me is that the hardware is still intact and it’s playable. However, whatever piece of said hardware that creates the fabled “fear factor” of the title no longer seems to be working.

That’s disappointing, but it’s still very much worth the drive to see it.

The next phase of my journey takes me to the small town of Castle Rock in southern Washington. With the snow-capped Mount St. Helens in the distance, I pull up to a large hillside house with a double garage and sprawling veranda. I get a picture of the guy before I even meet him. Out front is a red Lambo that he probably takes up to the summit of the volcano on weekends, but the car is just another toy; the real treasures take up the garage space instead. A quick peek through its windows reveal to me a museum of arcade cabinets, lined up on flashy carpet. There’s even a vintage token machine.

Only someone both well off and at least a little eccentric would maintain an arcade in their car storage. It would be easy to say that he is more serious about this sort of thing than I am, but when you have enough money, you can turn anything into just another fun side hobby.

Steven comes out of the house wearing sunglasses and greets me like we’re old friends, even though he’s younger than me, looking fresh out of college and with nothing better to do in life. He’s pretty chill, and after I decline his invite to join him the partaking of a few… substances, I find myself bombarded by questions about arcading back when it was still a proper scene. It turns out that he’s never actually been to one. Rather, he had seen a few scenes in movies from the last couple of decades and decided that making his own arcade in the garage was worthy of both his time and money. After all, while his parents still own the house, they rarely come by anymore and the space would otherwise go to waste. While a Lambo sits in the driveway.

“And besides,” he tells me, “Dad always told me to invest in something. It might as well be stuff you like. I chose game cabinets.”

It’s all fun and casual between us, and I feel like I’m back at my university. He gives me a tour of his collection, and while he usually keeps the units off to preserve their screens, today he hits the breaker and brings them all to life for his guest.

“Sometimes I let them run for a bit at night,” he remarks. “I love being in there, surrounded by the colors and sounds of some idolized past. All I need are a bunch of mannequins dressed up in denim like teenagers from the ’80s.”

Sure, that’s cool and everything, but where is Daunting Depths?

He answers that question with, “It’s not one of the classics, and like I told our buddy Trevor, it doesn’t even really work. But I’ve heard the stories about how it makes people feel. I guess whatever hardware makes that happen is hard to maintain and breaks down easily.” And then he slips in some new information by adding, “I think it has to do with not replacing the oil.”

“The… oil?” I wonder.

“Yeah. I’ll show you.”

He leads me back into his family home, where he currently lives alone, and we go into a spare bedroom or something like that. It would be empty if it wasn’t for the dozen or so arcade cabinets in various states of disrepair, all of them covered in plastic tarp.

“These ones do work, mostly,” Steven explains. “I don’t buy them if they don’t turn on since I don’t know anything about fixing them, but these are still in less than ideal condition. Not display quality. But I still like them.”

He pulls off the tarp on a machine in the corner, and at last I lay my eyes on her. The rare title is held inside a solid black cabinet, other than the spots where the paint has peeled off or chipped away to reveal the balsa wood underneath. On its side are the words, “Conquer your deepest fears… in the DAUNTING DEPTHS.” They’re above eight tentacles coming out of the black, reaching out to grab the viewer like they do in the game. Painted on the console and swimming around the single joystick and button are a few of the fish sharing those depths with the player, but otherwise the art design leans toward barren.

He plugs it in, and the old built-in TV pops and fizzes to life. As the simple attract mode loops on the dim screen, I tell Steven that I’ve actually played it before on a dumped ROM. And he replies that he only tried it for a few minutes once, giving up after realizing it was impossible to beat in the machine’s current state. He’s only kept the unit because of its novelty.

I’m not going to turn down an offer to play on the actual cabinet, and while doing so is momentarily fulfilling, I too quickly call it quits after getting grabbed by the cephalopod pursuer several times. It’s nice to be able to say I touched the genuine article, but it offers me nothing but a worse experience against playing on a modern monitor at home, with a version I can actually beat.

Steven unplugs the beast and shows me the back of the machine, where the “oil” he mentioned is slotted. It’s a barely translucent white plastic cartridge, like the kind that holds ink for a large format printer. It’s clearly empty of any liquid, and is unlabeled except for the printed words, “Maintenance fluid for Daunting Depths game. Replace weekly so long as machine is powered.”

“Maintenance fluid?” I say in befuddlement as the mystery deepens even further. “What kind of arcade cabinet needs something like that?”

“I’m not sure what it is, or was,” Steven replies. “But it’s gotta be oil, right? Like, for some serious hardware? A motor, maybe?”

“You’ve never cracked it open to take a look?”

“I’ve opened it. But I haven’t messed with the big thing inside.”

This I have to see. Steven is fine with my request, maybe since we seem to be getting along, so we work together to move the entire unit into a work room filled with tools and spare arcade cabinet parts. We use a drill to undo the screws holding the backing in place, pull at the panel heartily, and out slides the guts of the game. It becomes obvious why the machine is so heavy.

Other than all the usual components like wiring, the coin bank, and the familiar ROM boards, there’s an unknown piece of equipment that takes up any remaining free space. It’s the reason the rest of the hardware nesting is so compact, with every component crammed right up against each other. Cleaning and repairing this cabinet must’ve been a bitch.

The item is a large metal canister, about the size of a water cooler jug, bolted into brackets at the bottom of the unit. Half a dozen wires of various colors and sizes are connected to it, and it even has its own power supply and pumping mechanism, like the air or a liquid inside it has to be kept fresh. It has no lid, no clear way to get it open. And there are warning labels discouraging amateurs from trying.

“DO NOT OPEN – Only Serviceable by Emden Technicians.” And then there’s a phone number and tons of smaller text, including, “Ensure uninterrupted power,” and, “Patent pending.”

The two of us briefly debate what it could be, with Steven already having some ideas of his own. Is it a giant capacitor, that might give me an equally giant zap if I mess with it? A spinning mechanism that makes ultra-low sounds? Some kind of large vacuum tube or amplifier? I give the tank a knock, and it feels solid. Nothing rattles. There’s no telling what’s inside.

“I would’ve tried to open it earlier,” Steven says. “But it never felt right, doing it without consulting some… I dunno, arcade expert.”

I’m not sure if I count as one of those, but my personal curiosity is itself dauntless, so of course I encourage him. We’ll find out together, and I’ll include him in what might become one of the internet’s craziest stories. After all, we know the machine already doesn’t work, so what do we have to lose? We are looking at the metal heart of the game. We have to see what makes it tick.

The wires and tubes all go straight into the tank, and the entry points have been soldered close. There’s no option but to cut them off. Afterwards, we carry the stainless steel container out to the backyard, as good a place as any to break it open.

And we quickly exhaust all the more elegant options. It’s too tough to get into with solid tools; even the diamond saw barely leaves a scratch. Luckily, my host just so happens to have an acetylene torch. He has every other power tool you can imagine, so of course he does.

Lacking the proper face covering, we don sunglasses and take flame to canister. Keeping the bright fire in place does the trick, and pretty soon a portion in the middle of it turns orange and is cut apart. But I wouldn’t call it a success, since what follows is utterly disgusting.

The instant we open up a hole an inch wide, we hear liquid sizzling and lay off the torch. Out pours an inky concoction of the foulest smelling rot my nose has ever breathed in. To describe decay as a sickly sweetness does no justice to the putrid fluid that emanates from the container. It’s as thick as oil and smells like it went bad years ago. Seeing that we had definitely just unleashed toxic waste onto a patch of Steven’s perfectly cut grass that will assuredly die within hours, we back off and wait for the top third or so of the tank to drain out. He runs into the house and comes out with a box of baking soda, which he spreads about onto the mini superfund site like clumps of snow.

“It’s all I have,” he explains with a shrug.

After a while, I hold my breath and seal the hole with several layers of duct tape, we drop the tank into three trash bags, and he’s nice enough to let me use his washer to get the stink off my clothes. Whatever the hell was inside of that thing, it wasn’t worth draining the rest of the muck to get to.

As the sun begins to set and it’s time for me to get going, enough hours have passed to let us laugh about the whole incident, and we chalk it up as one of those “well, that happened, and we won’t talk about it again” experiences. At least the mystery of what was inside it is solved, sort of. He wishes me luck with the story, and I head home.

The highlight of the trip was getting to spend those last few hours in Steven’s personal arcade. I got to check out games I hadn’t seen in many years, and we played a few two-player titles. It was a good distraction, but inevitably, my thoughts return to Daunting Depths. I was, of course, far from satisfied.

In fact, I wasn’t even sure I’d make this public if it had all ended there. I’ll always do everything I can for my readers. I’m not going to leave you hanging if I can help it, so I know what I have to do.

It’s time to expend all of my resources and knowledge into finding a fully functional copy of this stupid game, even if there is only one left in the wild.

I get in touch with everyone I know. I have long conversations with Jeff, Trevor, and Steven. I speak with their friends and old acquaintances who could have a cabinet, know someone who does, or saw it at some auction somewhere. I call current and former owners of arcades across the Northwest. And I look for anyone that once worked for Emden, to no avail.

After a month, any possible leads have run dry, and there’s nothing else left to squeeze from the three guys who had gotten me to this point. I give up, shelve this article, and another week goes by.

And then, out of nowhere, I get an email one night.

I don’t know who sent it, or if they had been in contact with anyone else I had talked to at any point in the past. We never meet, but I have suspicions right away that this person is higher up in the know and above us. An industry insider, a government employee… hell, perhaps they worked for Emden. Whoever they are, my investigation has caught their attention.

This is what they wrote.

“Are you the journalist looking into Daunting Depths?

It’s about time someone did. I’ve tried to get others to look into it, people who could write a story and convince the skeptical that it’s real. There’s no conspiracy here, no secret organization covering it up. It’s simply too small for anyone to notice or care. It didn’t happen in a big or important enough place.

If you’re the one who wants to broadcast the existence of this game to the world and be responsible for the consequences, then give me an address, a PO box, whatever works for you. I’ll mail you directions to a place and the key to get in. When you pull up to what you think is the wrong building, that means you’ve arrived at where the last known working machine is stored. It’s still plugged in, and inside a utility closet of a certain venue once owned by Victor Caldwell. It’s where he got his start, and enough money to create a small, short-lived, mismanaged media company. You’ll understand when you see it.

Caldwell never should have gotten into game development. He created a one-hit wonder of a gimmick that proved impossible to expand upon or mass produce, and had a short shelf life. Its components will always break down.

He liked deep sea exploration. He’d frequently leave the office for long stretches, even during the production of Daunting Depths, to go on his little adventures. Always trying to find inspiration for a new game that he’d never make. Trying to recapture his eureka moment. The first time he ventured down into the deep, he found something big enough to give him the idea to change professions. Terror, maybe. The first instance he truly felt it in his life. And he wanted to share the feeling of the abyss with others, through an interactive medium. It had to be perfect, as close to a genuine approximation as possible.

Don’t take it lightly. We buried the incidents, but the game put several people in the hospital. It permanently changed others. Although I’m unaware of anyone who lost their life to it. Other than Caldwell, in a way. He vanished a month before the company shuttered, just after the move. What’s left of him is probably at the bottom of an oceanic trench.

How far you’re willing to go to find the truth is up to you. Unplug the machine if you want when you’re done. Tear it apart for all I care. You’re my chance to put its fate in someone else’s hands, to free me from thinking about it and always driving out there to replace the ‘oil’ for the sake of preservation.

I hope you get a good story out of the trip.”

I don’t hesitate, and respond within minutes. It all sounds too good to be true, as much as the email forms a pit in my stomach. They were obviously close to Caldwell at one point. Probably an employee, or family. Maybe an investigator.

An old brass key arrives another week later, buried in the packing peanuts filling a shipping box. The directions and address point to a town on Washington’s coast. I don’t Google the address or look into it at all before driving off. It has either slipped my mind because I was so fearfully excited, or my subconscious demanded that I go there and be surprised for the sake of building suspense.

My journey brings me to Long Beach in the southern part of the state, one of its few towns along the Pacific Ocean, none of them large. It rests on a long, narrow peninsula, and it’s a place I’ve never visited that has little more to see other than harbors.

But just north of the town and a little further inland, there is something that sticks out. Surrounded by overgrowth and nearly empty roads, is an out of place and very small aquarium. It’s run down and falling apart, with a cracked and weedy parking lot. A faded sign features the words, “Caldwell Aquarium” and close-ups of several colorful fish. From outside the main gate, locked shut, I can see enough of the building to get a good estimate of its size. The whole piece of land is no bigger than a small department store. There’s a single large dried-up external enclosure that could have once held a couple of sharks, at most. The operation that ran here was more of a minor roadside tourist attraction than some reputable marine science institute.

The key that was mailed to me opens the lock on the front gate, and after I make sure that there’s still absolutely no one around watching, I push at the creaky iron and proceed. The front glass doors are covered by cardboard, and the key works on their lock as well. Before I go in, I read the posted notice taped between official papers about the building being condemned.

“The Caldwell Aquarium will be closed indefinitely while we work to rectify issues with water contamination. Thank you for your patronage over these last sixteen years.”

It doesn’t look like they fixed their water problem, but judging by the lingering smell around the area, they may have left some fish behind to rot.

But the overcast sky that followed me all the way from home begins to unleash a sudden rainstorm, so I go on inside.

The aquarium is thoroughly emptied out. There are no murals, signage, or pamphlets to be found anywhere. The interior is in rough shape, with broken tile and peeling blue wall paint. The acoustics are such that the rain pouring on the tin roof echoes about the building, and it’s dark enough that I have to navigate with a flashlight. I make a round of the tour loop and go past the square holes in the walls that once held fish tanks, finding nothing of note.

This is not the kind of building I’d ever expect to house an “evil” arcade cabinet. To make things stranger, the aquarium closed before Caldwell made his game, so someone had to move the machine here and keep the power running years later. My mysterious benefactor. I should have tried to get more information out of them, but at least they pointed me in the right direction. They mentioned a utility closet. There couldn’t be that many to check.

I open several “staff only” doors to empty rooms and supply closets. The rain outside comes down harder as my search goes on.

I return to the observation room that once gave a crowd a look through a glass wall at the enclosure outside, now partially filled with putrid green algae-infested rainwater. The glass is yellowed and dirty, and the carpeted material that covers the amphitheater seating is peeling and damp with mildew. There’s a door at the opposite end of the hallway entrance that I haven’t opened yet, and as I approach, I begin to hear something…

It isn’t loud, and it shouldn’t be audible over the rain. It’s low and rhythmic, almost pounding. A heartbeat, that I can somehow feel in my head. It pulls my legs forward, demanding my attention.

I open the door, slowly, and I see the room beyond. It’s eerily similar in size to a prison cell, and now I can hear the gentle hum of idle hardware. There’s a light switch, and I flick it to turn on a single bulb hanging above.

The room holds the pump controls for the enclosure, a circuit breaker box, a floor drain, a single empty shelf, and in the middle against the back wall… Daunting Depths, running and displaying its title screen. I’m so focused on the find that I’m startled when water leaking from the rotting ceiling lands on my shoulder. I can still hear the heartbeat, and it’s not a digital sound coming from the game’s speakers. Is it my own I’m hearing? I already have goosebumps. It isn’t the anticipation and excitement of finally finding the game in its full form, some version of my white whale, that is drawing me in.

It’s as if some base instinct has been hijacked and I’m being lured closer by a dangerous angler fish. If it was like this in the past for some or most of the arcade-goers, it’s no wonder they became engrossed in what appeared on the surface to be a simple game with basic visuals.

After shambling up to the machine, I take out my bag of quarters and drop one into the slot. The title disappears, and the game begins to auto-scroll on the sea floor. I grip the joystick, and when my palm wraps around its metal cover, my hand starts tangling. There’s an electric current going through the controls that wasn’t there with Steven’s copy. Is the machine faulty? If the voltage goes up and electrocutes me, the muscles in my hand will contract around the joystick and make it difficult to free myself.

Still, I risk playing. I can’t turn back now.

I settle into my typical stance, like I’m back home and on the scene as a teenager, on another Saturday night with friends. My bag of quarters is placed on the console out of habit; I don’t even know yet if I’ll have the stomach for a second round. I hit the boost right away so it can start recharging. I’ve become used to the depicted deep dark on display, so this isn’t a totally new experience for me. Or maybe it is, because less than a minute goes by before I begin to feel the effects.

It’s not all in my mind. I really do feel terrified as an unseen predator gains on me. It’s total and primal, like some ancestral memory has been awakened. Early humans pursued by forgotten monsters so frightening that they left an indelible mark in our genetics. And yet I can’t let go. If I do, I’ll get a game over in seconds, and I don’t want to know what that feels like. It’s inevitable, but my survival instincts still want to delay it as long as possible.

I evade capture, and then do so four or five times more. I fall into the tempo of the gameplay, but it will get tougher the longer it lasts. I haven’t had nearly enough practice to conquer Daunting Depths in real time.

The craziest thing of all is that the “navigation through fear” element actually works. I can’t put the feeling into words, and it’s likely something I’ll never experience again, but being in the know and having that frame of reference Jeff mentioned makes all the difference.

You don’t even really have to look in various directions using the joystick to find your invisible path out, so there’s no need to waggle it about. You can simply survey with your eyes and feel the response. Hell, I’d go so far as saying that merely thinking about which way to go can invoke a positive or negative gut reaction. I have no idea how that’s possible, but I swear it is.

It’s difficult to progress, but the game is still fair and beatable. It won’t cheat; you lose from mistakes. Concentrate, keep your cool as much as you can, and search efficiently. Focus on the feeling of “this way is safe,” and you’ll find the corridor that gets you to the next part of the maze. There’s a small reprieve each time that lets you exhale, and then you repeat the process under the duress of increasing difficulty.

I manage to impress myself. Once I know what to expect from the internal challenges I need to overcome, I feel like I can bear down and weather the psychic storm battering my senses. The worst of it is that the game fills you with confidence when you’re doing well, only to then rip it away.

On one hand, it really makes you feel like you’re a small helpless creature being chased by a monstrous predator. It will suffocate you as it pulls you in, then tear off your flesh and shatter your bones. At the same time, because you want to survive, you want to win. It’s like the feeling you get when you root for the hero in a horror movie, only multiplied by magnitudes.

With my body soaking in adrenaline, my sense of time of time is skewed, but roughly about halfway through the game, new effects start showing up. Or do they? It’s hard to say what’s in my mind and what is a genuine “fear feature.” Whatever the mechanism, I begin to hear whispers and a quiet chorus of screams; auditory hallucinations. In the game’s endless sea, shadows of nondescript human faces contorted in horrific pain flash in the darkness as the heartbeat sound is always getting stronger. Playing the toothless copy on my home computer was such a different, plainer experience.

And then there’s the increasingly powerful cicada-like noise. It’s similar to what the bugs put out, only in a much lower pitch. The reverberations fade before growing painfully loud again, and so much of it is on the low frequencies that it’s as if you’re standing next to a giant subwoofer while playing. You can feel it rattling in your gut, filling you with paranoia and nausea. Because this messed up game isn’t already doing enough to put you through a nightmare.

Try as I might, this is my first time playing Depths as it was meant to be, and I’m simply unable to withstand the onslaught a few seconds into the sounds of beating war drums. I still can’t tell if I imagined them or if the game generated the effect. At a point, it no longer matters what’s real or not. Our minds stop trying to make sense of what it’s going through and devolves into a scrambled mess. Reason goes out the window, and all it wants to do is get away.

I release the joystick, failing my prey character. It brushes up along the side of the trench, causing it to slow down enough to be caught. The instant that those tentacles drag it into its doom, all of the fear is released and the hallucinations stop as “Game Over” appears in small white text.

Could I have won, if I had more resolve, a stronger constitution? Perhaps. I didn’t die by swimming into a wrong turn. I just couldn’t take it anymore and my desperation for “safety” overpowered any will to continue. It doesn’t even feel like a conscious decision. My body just couldn’t take it anymore. And I don’t want to think about what the player has to suffer through in the final “stages.”

The aftereffects linger. The valve has been shut off and the game returns to its title screen, but damn are my nerves still overflowing. I can feel my trembling muscles begin to lock up, and I escape that confining closet before some serious cramping sets in. I nearly collapse on the floor of the previous room, where I try to settle down and let reality back in, steadily.

I’m down there for a half hour or more, listening to the rain and watching the outdoor enclosure’s filthy green water rise against the dirty glass.

As I write this, I wonder how my reaction compares to others. Had I felt the expected degree of terror? Less? Or did I have a “bad” reaction similar to Trevor’s that made him swear off the game after a single try? It’s hard to say. We all have different psychological responses, unique experiences that give some of us things like phobias. Any player could also come to quickly worry about what the game was doing to them. Its abilities are concerning.

While on the floor and waiting for my nerves to recover, I finally find a moment to ruminate on what the existence of the game meant. My other emotions had come and gone. The initial curiosity, then the wonder, and now the fear from actually playing it. The only feeling left is starting to emerge: anger.

Mr. Caldwell put something out into the world haphazardly, just because he felt like he could. I feel like Dr. Malcolm from Jurassic Park as I start criticizing the abuse of science Emden put on display. Was there even proper testing? How many were left with emotional and mental scars? Players could’ve been hurt on their first try of the game, or from pushing themselves too hard in their attempt to beat something that had been tormenting them, just to say they did. In an addict’s state of mind, you aren’t aware of how much you’re damaging yourself. So, this would be where I’d cut myself off. I’d never so much as touch the harmless ROM again, and I’m suddenly unsure if I’ll even share it.

My heart is still pounding, and I can feel the blood in my ears. It’s beating abnormally. I was potentially nearing a medical emergency, and if no one found me, some crappy decomposing marine zoo might have become my tomb.

Feeling a rising sense of revulsion about my obsession with this story, and for what Caldwell contributed to the library of bad ideas, I reach a conclusion.

I didn’t win against the real Daunting Depths, but there’s always another way to beat a game—in the physical realm, where they can’t fight back.

As soon as my strength returns, I get up and return to the closet where the cabinet tempts me again. It wants to be played, and I briefly stare at the joystick. I wonder about the electric current I had felt. It never got any stronger, and didn’t seem to enhance the gameplay.

I wonder about it, and come up with my last question. Was I connected… to something inside the machine? Had I been shaking hands with the unseen heart behind its terror?

I think about this, but I don’t actually care anymore. I reach behind the big bastard and unplug it. The sound of just the TV going off is unsatisfactory, so I proceed to grip the rear panel and pull forward. The unit is heavy, and only wobbles on my first attempt. I try once more, straining but unceasing. I refuse to give up any progress, and eventually, I knock over the bottom heavy cabinet completely. It smashes onto the floor with a delightful sound.

Poking out of a slot on the rear panel is the “oil” cartridge, but this one is still half-full. Getting rid of it will go a little further in guaranteeing the game’s destruction, so I gleefully yank it out.

It drips sludge. It smells strongly, but not of rot. It’s nothing out of the ordinary if you’ve spent time near fishing piers; the aroma of the sea and fish guts. Looking at the oozing material closely, just for a second, tells me that it’s some kind of mixture of ground-up shellfish.

And it suddenly becomes clear. It should have hit me before. There was never any oil, because there was never any machinery that needed it.

Just like that, I find myself reinvested in the mystery, one last time. I had come so far already, maybe screwed up my mind irreparably. I had only a final small step to take, and I could leave this story behind without any regrets.

I haven’t mentioned it before, but I came to the aquarium with one simple tool that has never failed me: a crowbar, which I would’ve used to pry open any door if I needed to. I hadn’t gotten any use out of it yet, but it does the job of removing the cabinet’s backing well. Or, more accurately, it excels at bashing through it and ripping it apart.

I spot the metal tank. It’s in rough shape, unlike the one Steven had. It has multiple bumps, like it was over pressurized… or an angry creature inside had been trying to escape all these years. I snap off the tubes and wiring with the crowbar, and lift the canister. My second wind is already fading, and I lack the strength to haul it anywhere, so I plop the heavy thing onto the floor of the closet to stare at it for a minute. And I listen.

There’s banging coming from inside. Its inhabitant senses a chance at freedom, and it’s angry. I know there’s a living thing trapped in there, its only purpose being to scare players who wake it from its sleep. And that’s enough for me; I no longer need to see the mystery, not when it’s a likely deadly creature. I can choose not to open the canister. It’s hardy, after all.

But I quickly learn that I am no longer in control, the moment that a pair of pale tentacles slither their way out through one of the tubes I had sliced open with the crowbar. I watch in stunned silence as they feel around and react to the open air. Then they start working together to widen the hole of the container. So strong is their muscle strength that the solid metal steadily gives way, and allows room for more tentacles that speed up the process.

Now I’m freaking out as much as I did while playing the game. At first, I think about attacking the emerging creature with the crowbar. But what would it do against a beast so strong? So I choose flight over fight, and turn to run.

Problem is, I’m trapped. When I knocked over the cabinet, its height was enough to reach and block the small room’s inward-opening door, and now I could only open it a few inches. I pull at it frantically, but I’ll never fit through the gap. I kick at the toppled machine, but it doesn’t budge. All the while, eight ghostly-white tentacles are tearing apart the container and writhing like snakes all around the opening.

Holy shit, I remember thinking. It really is an octopus.

I’ve always found the creatures creepy, and in this situation, it doesn’t help that they were also intelligent, could fit through narrow spaces, and were venomous. And this one is special in other ways.

Some of my wits return to me and I get on the floor to try and shove the cabinet off the door with both my arms and legs. I don’t make much progress before a shrill yet throaty and bizarre howl comes from the creature’s prison, sounding something like a baby wheezing but reversed. The noise gets me to look up, and there it is, staring back at me with those weird eyes that are like two pupils pulling apart. There’s no color or life in them, either; they’re a milky white, like the rest of the monster’s albino body that has never known sunlight. It’s got a long, slender shape for an octopus, as if it was crossbred with a squid. Ridges are spread along its body, and it must’ve been cramped in there as it has stretched to nearly half my size.

I freeze in place as we size each other up. A wrong sudden move could get me killed. Maybe it has to make the first move, or I should be careful not to show weakness. Hell if I know. I barely ever watch nature documentaries.

Well, it quickly decides it doesn’t like my company and lets out a pissed off hissing sound that startles the hell out of me. I lose balance and fall back, and all I can do is try to scoot away from it until there’s nowhere else to go.

This is a deep sea beast that was never meant to interact with humans, that Caldwell dredged up out of the abyss. He doesn’t show his newly found species to scientists, no—the first thought he has is to stick it into a mediocre game that never would’ve otherwise attracted any attention. Screw that guy.

As the octopus lurches toward me, it extends two wing-shaped membranes from its sides. I think it’s only a threat display at first… and then remember that this is a predator which can induce powerful psychosis. Knowing that in advance doesn’t benefit me, though, as there’s nothing I can do to brace against the most terrifying defense mechanism evolution had ever thought up.

The membranes vibrate rapidly, and are strong enough to move the air in the room. Without the shielding to contain the attack, I feel the full potency of its effects. I can’t hear anything but a thunderous cicada-like hum, and my hands drop from my ears as paralysis sets in and my mind goes into overdrive. My brain is filled with a hundred screeching animals, and it’s impossible to concentrate on anything for any length of time. The rest of my insides feel like they’re going into a seizure, and yet no part of my body can move. It is… total agony.

I’m unsure of how long this goes on. Maybe only seconds, though it feels unending. At some point, the assault loses enough of its strength and my body is released from the creature’s thrall. I can move again—but in my state, I simply crumple into a heap. After my head makes impact with the floor, all I can do is gaze up at the octopus, looking down at me from the top of the fallen Daunting Depths cabinet. It retracts its sonic weaponry, and its tentacles lift up into an aggressive posture. I’m dead, is the last lucid thought that comes to me.

And I black out. If I’m not already dying, then I’m at the mercy of the mollusk. I fall into a dreamless sleep, and lose sense of time or existence.

It’s a pounding headache that wakes me up later. My stiff arms gradually begin to move again, and piece by piece, my groggy, dehydrated, starving husk of a body slowly manages to get up. The closet’s light is still going, and any liquid the octopus tracked has long ago dried up like the blood running down my nose. As soon as I’m conscious enough to remember what happened, I look around in a panic, expecting the angry animal to still be lurking about, or waiting elsewhere in the aquarium for a rematch.

Relief washes over me when I discover that the closet’s drain cover has been forcefully removed. Glory to the octopus, intelligent and squishy enough to escape through a narrow pipe. Odds are good that it made it to the ocean.

Under a clear predawn sky, I get out of the building and return to my car, now covered with leaves. The engine starting feels like a minor miracle, and the radio’s clock reveals that it’s just past five in the morning. I had been out cold for over fourteen hours. No wonder I was in such pain.

In a stupor that will last for several days, I stop at the first McDonald’s I find, fill my face with cheap breakfast food, pop some aspirin, and then finish my long drive home. I lock myself inside and get some rest, but sleep doesn’t find me again for three days. Like the sting from a particularly venomous creature, it takes me several weeks to fully recover.

Thankfully, I believe that I do. At least my faculties are intact enough to let me recall everything that transpired and finish this story. I’m not going to attach some kind of moral to all this, or look back and say I learned a lesson. Sometimes weird shit of our own making just collides with someone else’s weird shit, and you’re simply glad to have survived.

If you haven’t learned anything either, then go out and look for Daunting Depths on your own if you want. Just don’t expect to have the full experience. With any luck, all that remains of the game is wood, PCB, and a few bad memories.

Thank you for coming along on this journey with me, readers.

All right, fine. There is one last thing I do still think about.

I’m sure the octopus didn’t have to spare me. Could there be a chance, however small, that it was grateful I freed it?

Maybe… we could have even been friends.

But I have no plans to go looking for it.