Waterworld on Virtual Boy and the Red Vectors of Madness

by Rory

Waterworld Manual Cover

It’s Halloween so I’ve dug up something positively horrifying for this great holiday. I have never played this game but I remember it being one of the more quirky titles on the Virtual Boy (and that is saying a lot). I still own my Virtual Boy that I purchased with Christmas money in December of 1995. Anyway, on with the story.

These scans came on a CD-R with an eBay purchase I made a few months ago. After prying open the shipping crate with a crowbar, the awful smell of dead fish filled the room. In the box was a brand new Game Genie; the disc with these scans; and a severed, scaly human hand. I swear I heard the word “doom” in the air as if it was whispered by a dying man in his last throes of senility and crippling illness. Submitted for your approval: The Book of Waterworld on the Nintendo Virtual Boy.

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WARNING: THIS PRODUCT HAS BEEN RATED BY THE ENTERTAINMENT SOFTWARE RATING BOARD. THERE WERE NO SURVIVORS.

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Look, this is your last warning. Abandon hope all ye who enter the icy depths of The Waterworld.

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Before Starting The Game

Are you really sure you want to go through with this? I mean, you have friends, right? Family members? You have a life worth living!

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Please adjust the Virtual Boy eyelid spanners for optimal mind-warping insanity.

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All this adjustment does is clear the reception with the bile-spewing demons of The Waterworld. Feel free to leave it at its default setting if you want to live a few minutes longer.

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Auto Pause? A placebo feature for sure.

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The Index of Insanity.

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(Click here to listen to the audio recorded at the time of viewing this page)

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(Audio recording continued)

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It looks like English but that’s purely a coincidence. It’s actually a highly-stylized ambigram of an arcane ritual. Reading this page aloud recites the incantation in reverse, which is exactly how it is meant to be performed.

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Did you notice how they don’t even ask you to read the warning? Just press the start button when it appears. Fools.

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This is your last semblance of control.

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The magicks of your own undoing.

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Nice try. While this spiritual gesture does work, it only resets the session, meaning you will only relive the horror long enough to watch yourself reset your life again…

and again…

and again.

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The following pages spell out your demise; each individual receiving a different tale of doom.

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Heh.

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Bestiary of the Dark Servants of the Damned.

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Dark Servants of the Damned (cont.)

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Charon, The Ferryman.

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All that remained of the photographer of this Tracker Shark was a bloody scrap of fabric (perhaps flesh) and a roll of film.

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There are no extra lives in the Deepest Hell of All-Hells.

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Tracker Sharks are soul-stripped humans in the form of vicious sea predators. They retained their upper limbs after transmogrification and wield rusty swords and harpoons.

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Shortly after publication the eight graphic artists were found in five oil drums in a New England port town. Their friends and families were contacted but had no recollection of their deceased relatives — they were unwritten from reality.

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They say Mike Mantarro had eight arms and flayed the skin from the backs of the innocent.

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If you are not satisfied with this product, simply return it to the ocean from whence it came. Not a single game pak was ever returned. Travelers to The Waterworld never leave.

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Even agents of Hell are worried about liability.

Waterworld Manual Back Cover

Still there? If you’ve made it this far, I’m afraid you’re already dead. You just don’t know it yet.

This video shows Milhouse breaking Billy Mitchell’s world record score on the rare Waterworld arcade game at the Funspot.