The Halloween Hack/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


These things about The Halloween Hack are subjective - not everyone will agree with all of them.

  • Alternative Character Interpretation: Dr. Andonuts is really liberal about calling Varrick and friends "faggots" during his boss fight. Is it just rage-fueled swearing from a madman consumed by anger and grief, or does it play into his role as an Armored Closet Gay?
  • Demonic Spiders: Most enemies are obscenely powerful and travel in packs, making any encounters with them horribly lethal unless you're willing to abuse the game's Useless Useful Spells to make them easier to deal with.
  • Heartwarming in Hindsight/Hilarious in Hindsight: This game marks the debut of Megalovania, a song that crops up in several works Radiation/Toby Fox is associated with such as Homestuck and Undertale. In Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, it would become a part of the game's soundtrack along with a Mii Gunner costume of Sans as DLC, coming full circle from an unofficial ROMhack to something an official Nintendo product, and one with plenty of Earthbound content, no less!
  • Hell Is That Noise: Several tracks from the original Earthbound used for unsettling or disturbing scenes are repurposed as battle music - the Evil Ecto's battle theme is the track used for Poo's infamously-harrowing Mu Training, while the Overrecycled's battle theme is the same as Giygas.[1]
  • Memetic Mutation: "Varik, I HAVE FUCKING HAD IT WITH YOUR SHIT. your bodies will be ripped in half i will shove your asses so far down your throats that when you crap you'll sing fucking beethoven tl;dr eat shit, faggots" - Dr. Andonuts' infamous pre-battle quote.
  • Seinfeld Is Unfunny: While the hack has many positive qualities - a haunting atmosphere, creepy spritework, amazing music, and an emotional story - the lack of polish, the resulting frustrating gameplay and the weird tone can make it much harder to get into when compared to Toby Fox's later games. This naturally leads to one wondering what all the hype was about, when they learn that it was an award-winning hack on Starmen.net back when it was first released.
  • Signature Scene: The final boss fight against Dr. Andonuts is easily the game's most memorable moment. Ignoring the fact that it's where Megalovania made its debut, Dr. Andonuts' obscenity-laden pre-battle tirade and the difficulty are absolutely unforgettable.
  • Tear Jerker: While the presentation is Narmy, the concept behind the hack is genuinely sad: A loving-if-flawed father thinks he's killed innocent children, his own son included, and goes insane from guilt and grief before turning into a Tragic Monster that has to be put down for the sake of the world.
    • Special mentions goes to the fight with The Id, the disgustingly bloated and ugly monster form Dr. Andonuts has been reduced to. He never attacks, and can only beg for mercy and to be left alone while this heartbreaking, unsettling track plays during the fight.
  • Unintentionally Sympathetic: The game really wants you to know that Varik is a sadistic killer-for-hire and a cowardly wannabe-badass, with Dr. Andonuts and the game itself taking you on a hell of a guilt-trip for trying to kill the doctor. But given that Varik himself shows no cowardly or cruel traits and he only tries to kill Dr. Andonuts after he goes insane with grief and becomes a dangerous psychic anomaly, it comes off as a really hamfisted attempt at Railroading the player into looking like a bad person - something that its spiritual successors Undertale and Deltarune would do a much better job at avoiding.

  1. specifically the phase after the Devil Machine is opened