The Halloween Hack

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"The Halloween Hack" (also known as "Press the B Button, Stupid!") is a Fan Sequel ROM Hack of the 1995 SNES cult-classic EarthBound, created in October 2008 by someone known as Radiation. You probably know him better as Toby Fox.

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This is THE most descriptive, shocking, and most psychologically warping game you will ever play. You’re a bounty hunter who is given the duty to track down a mysterious creature who mutilated and ate a little girl’s parents and encounters various horrible things as the adventure goes on. This game isn’t your average Halloween game; its content is comparable to games like Silent Hill and Yume Nikki. This game also has the added effect of making you depressed as you played. Counting real games and fan games, this could be one of the most traumatic and horrifying games in the world, and we're not joking. This is easily one of the most disturbing hacks to come out... well, ever, really. —The description of The Halloween Hack on Starmen.net

Yes, that Toby Fox.

You can find out more about it here, as well as download it.

For far Lighter and Softer EarthBound hacks, see Hallow's End, another Halloween hack which this is often compared to, and Arn's Winter Quest, another Earthbound hack by Toby Fox.

Tropes used in The Halloween Hack include:

• Absurdly Spacious Sewer: The Twoson sewers, which are filled with hippies and rats. It takes you across the ocean to Winters, with the waters becoming blood red, the hippies zombified, and mutated roaches and blobs emerging.
• All There in the Manual: The Monster Book item gives a short explanation of which Standard Status Effects affect which types of monsters. It serves as a major hint (albeit one easy to miss) that those typically neglected status-effect PSI are gonna come in handy down the line.
• Animate Body Parts: Dearkhart and the Anxiety Attack enemies. The "NO NO NO" boss combines this with Cognizant Limbs, as defeating the "chest" takes out the other two.
• Apologetic Attacker: The Desperate Survivors.
• Art Style Dissonance: From recolors of normal Earthbound enemies to more visceral and dark resprites to completely original art, and then back every so often.
• Autobots Rock Out: "Dr. Andonuts' Rage", better known as "Megalovania".
• Blob Monster: Evil Ectos, which are palette swaps of Soul Consuming Flames.
• Bittersweet Ending: The 'good' ending. Despite Varik's best efforts, Dr. Andonuts is too far gone, forcing him to kill the scientist anyway. The monsters have been stopped, but at the cost of Dr. Andonuts dying in terror, convinced he killed his family and the Chosen Four. Varik is rescued and returned to Twoson, finally able to rest after having saved the world, and having grown into a competent and brave man.
• Bizarro Universe: Dr. Andonuts' Magicant qualifies, especially the Onett found within it. The music is slowed down to give a melancholy feel, and various enemy sprites appear to chase you - but not only do they not trigger a battle, you can't actually interact with them period, and all they do is get in your way. The only actual enemy is the Remember Me?, fought by approaching a stationary sprite of B. H. Pirkle, and it's barely even a danger outside of repeatedly solidifying Varik with its hugs.
• Bloodier and Gorier: From the sprite editing to the text for entering new locations, and even the descriptions of enemy actions... The game really doesn't let up on the carnage.
• Beef Gate/Border Patrol: Super Doom Shrooms and Blue Antoids are Palette Swaps that roam outside Twoson, and boast utterly ridiculous stats that Varik has no hope of matching. They exist solely to prevent Varik wandering too far off; while unbeatable by any normal means, they can still be avoided.
• Broken Aesop: Regarding the endings. The narrative does its best to shame you for trying to kill the broken wretch Dr. Andonuts is reduced to, despite giving you little choice in the matter, and the scientist himself will constantly berate Varik for his persistence. The game even hands you the 'bad' ending for doing what it tells you to and killing him early, but defy it to Take a Third Option and you get the chance to gather up Andonuts's remaining fragments of courage, along with his memories of the other Chosen Four, and... end up killing him anyway in the 'good' ending.
  • This Aesop ends up a lot less broken once you consider that entering Dr. Andonuts's Magicant is the only way to learn how and why the scientist ended up in this sorry state, and presents the only chance anyone has to possibly bring him to his senses, even if it ultimately proves futile. Thus, only by taking advantage of one of the few choices you're given and defying the game's orders do you get to experience the full story, gain context for Dr. Andonuts's madness, and ensure that Varik comes out of it alive - which lines up pretty well with the themes explored in Toby Fox's later works.
• But Thou Must!: The game is insistent on having you kill a specific monster, and it seems there's no way around it... except by pressing the B Button, which causes Varik to abandon the attempt on Dr. Andonuts's life and jump into his Magicant.
• Darker and Edgier: Ridiculously so. You barely get a minute or so in before you're presented with the protagonist awakening from an explicitly drunken stupor (in a pile of his own vomit no less). He is then explicitly hired to solve a brutally gruesome murder, and once you go through that door in the sewers...
• Despair Event Horizon: Dr. Andonuts so firmly believes he's trapped the Chosen Four in the past or killed them, he ends up hitting this pretty hard. When you finally get to talk to him, he's convinced that he's responsible for killing everyone in the universe and that his own life is meaningless, and quickly devolves into near-incoherent terror upon realizing that Varik might kill him.
• Developers' Foresight:
  • Reach the Peaceful Rest Valley entrance without the Border Patrol wasting you and you'll get... a rock permanently blocking off the cave, with an angry note from Brick Road attached.
• Downer Ending: Pressing the A Button when told to kill the monster. Dr. Andonuts is killed without a fight and dies terrified, while Varik seems to go completely catatonic afterward (and is implied to have died as well).
• Eldritch Abomination: Wouldn't be an EarthBound hack without 'em.
  • The Desire Dog appears as a Zombie Dog in the overworld, but in-battle its body is half tentacle-like pseudopods that it frequently uses to attack, and upon death it collapses into an array of wriggling tentacles.
• Everything's Deader with Zombies: The Overrecycled (zombie hippies) and Remnants (molten Starmen).
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: It's an EarthBound ROM Hack set on Halloween.
• Fan Sequel: Set around Halloween in an alternate timeline of EarthBound. The Chosen Four successfully defeated Giygas in the past, but were sent to a whole new timeline, while everyone believes them to be dead in the original one.
• Faux Horrific: An NPC in one of the bathrooms prior to a branching path warns Varik of "demons that don't wash their hands". Check one of the doors later on, and sure enough...

"...Haha, didn't even wash my hands!" ("Character KO'd" sound plays)

• Final Boss: Dr. Andonuts.
• Gorn: Everything from the Twoson sewers on drowns the player in several sentences of gory details.
• Guide Dang It: Without looking it up or else thinking to buy the Monster Book in Burglin Park, you're not likely to realize the importance of the status effect spells this time around - and given how... rough this hack is, odds are not knowing will possibly kill you a few times over at minimum.
• Mood Whiplash: In spades. A solid chunk of the edited dialogue causes this (even in the earliest parts of the game), which reflects its overall nature: a charming, irreverent and silly adventure similar to the original EarthBound that hides a much darker and harrowing tale... And then you enter Dr. Andonuts' Magicant, where things start to zig-zag and just get downright weird.
  • The 'good' ending has Varik returning home victorious from the tragic final battle with Dr. Andonuts, only for a ghost to fart in his face as he tries to relax.
• Multi-Armed and Dangerous: The Remnants, though only explicitly mentioned in their death message:

The Remnants, damaged, choked itself to death with its many hands!

• Never Say "Die"/Non-Lethal KO: Heavily averted, with man of the normal KO messages exchanged for unique and often messy deaths.
• Nintendo Hard: Even with the knowledge of which spells work against which enemies, you'll be doing a lot of Level Grinding to avoid being ground into paste, at least in the early game. Even with proper leveling, Varik's low PP means every single spell of his will count.
• Nothing Is Scarier: Commonly used throughout the hack.
  • One of the trash cans in the sewers doesn't give any items or even open properly. It just sits there... shaking.
• Our Ghosts Are Different: Evil Ectos are ectoplasmic Blob Monsters that let out creepy yells and assault the party's minds with Brainshock α. Thankfully, they tend to go down in one hit.
• Our Monsters Are Weird: In typical EarthBound fashion, taken Up to Eleven and then some.
• Our Zombies Are Different:
  • The Overrecycled are undead New Age Retro Hippies.
  • Remnants seem to be the animated molten remains of Starmen.
• Palette Swap: All over the place at first; simple recolors such as Stench Elementals and Frankensteams give the appearance of a more "standard" hack, though it's subverted alarmingly fast midway through the Twoson Sewers. From that point on, most enemy battle sprites are either heavily edited or else made from scratch.
• Purple Prose: The narration, enemy introductions, their attack messages, even their death messages... this hack can get pretty wordy, and trying to read it all isn't helped by the auto-scrolling text in some cases.
• Remixed Level: Many of the EarthBound maps are reused in different contexts.
  • The Twoson Sewers is edited from the original game's Fourside Sewers.
• ROM Hack: One of the earliest EarthBound hacks, and incredibly detailed for the standard of what was possible at the time; it was one of the first to go beyond simple palette swaps.
• Rule of Funny: Also in typical EarthBound fashion and then some.
  • Black Comedy: Even as the tone goes pitch dark, the dialogue is eagerly sprinkled with morbid quips.
• Shout-Out:
  • One of the clocks in Andonuts' Magicant says "Adventure Time?"
  • Blue Antoid is the name of a well-known Starmen.net forum user.
• Skippable Boss: You can actually run from the fight against NO NO NO since it's technically not a boss, as subtly indicated by the Fight Woosh; the plot progresses the same regardless of what you do.
• Spoiler Title: Pressing the B Button at a critical point is what allows the player to see the rest of the game.
• Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors: Whiteshock Sleepstun and Timestop. The first is most effective on undead enemies, the second works best on living enemies, and the third works well against non-living objects.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: Desperate Survivors are bloodied and weeping men that appear as sprite-edited palette swaps of the Annoying Old Party Man. They will always run from you in the overworld, and should you chase them down to fight them, they will rarely attack, instead apologizing repeatedly or else coughing and wheeze pitifully; even when they do attack, it only does Scratch Damage, and their death message has them say "sorry" one last time... The only possible benefit from fighting them outside of the meager experience is the guaranteed Last Ration drop (which can restore roughly 40 HP), and while Word of God discourages fighting them, there is no real punishment beyond feeling like a massive prick.
• Wham! Episode: Once you open the door inside the Twoson Sewers, the hack drops its facade completely.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Dr. Andonuts.
• You Cannot Grasp the True Form: Downplayed with the Remember Me? and NO NO NO, who can inflict slight damage by becoming "a little hard to think about again".