Paul revived the videogame creepypasta genre, the icebergs and personalized copies brought them back into the popular gaming culture

Great video as usual! I like the theory that Eric isn’t afraid of literal water. It’s worth noting that in one of the Community posts while he’s staying with Meg, he mentions (kind of off-handedly, too) that he floated face down in her pool just to prank her. Kind of shows that irl water doesn’t scare him as much as he might let on

Also, I'm not sure if it's relevant and I may have missed something, but there's a couple of times in the Beta Archive that Argonaut software is mentioned. For anyone that doesn't know, Argonaut was a British game development studio that worked with Nintendo to bring 3d onto the SNES- Star Fox was their collaboration. As far as I know, Argonaut was let go by Nintendo when they cancelled Star Fox 2 and used that code in SM64 (Also heard through the grapevine this was cause Miyamoto was low key pissed that there were better looking games from Nintendo that weren't Mario and Zelda), and the Argonaut staff wasn't happy about this. Given that, it's interesting how in some of the videos there are hints (in universe) that Argonaut is working on Super Mario 64 and the related projects that are the subjects of the videos. Other clues are the fact that everyone in the training video sounds English, and that Eric talks about living in Japan in another (like Dylan Cuthbert and the Argonaut team did for Star Fox.) May be a red herring to add that authentic touch, could be bullshit or a genuine writing mistake, but felt it was worth bringing up.

It is an incredible ARG, I have no idea how they or how he managed to create such high-quality convincing models, and such fun and detailed videos, like their Nintendo mega 64 cleaning guide, and the several gameplay videos. I love that they all manage to intrigue and slightly unsettle the viewers without being so in your face about it

😊

Or...maybe he was the human reference used for Mario’s animations? You know, the one who DROWNED? I do agree that it could have a double meaning, with drowning also representing Eric being figuratively drowned by work.

Boy the foreshadowing of the way beta archive ended in this video is STRONG

1:03 Oh Hey! Lol. That's my video over there! I'm sad it's over, but glad It happened! It was my favorite channel about the Sm64 Iceberg! :)

that error screen with the shadowy mario figure never ceased to creep me out a little bit

Speaking of Ben Drowned, it finally ended back on Halloween. The finale was incredible

It's a shame that this ARG ended up getting canceled. I was so invested into this story. Hopefully somebody would be able to recreate this in the near future.

dare you to check out Catastrophe Crow.

DUDE legit I was just watching the entire Petscop playlist the other day, and to see something about my favorite game/iceberg is so awesome.

Hell yeah. The only guy I want analyzing a creepy arg is on the case. Glad I caught this early! Correction: web series. Not arg that I can tell.

Been looking forward to this vid since the live stream! I have some thoughts on the SM64BA but I feel that the work is a bit too early to really say what the story is about just yet. The biggest things that stand out for me though are: 1. Many of the bug check and system crashes are very violent against the QA people. Not violent as in gore but violent as in 'emotional and psychological punishment' for causing the game to fail a check. This honestly reminds me of the "chimes of death" that older mac's would play on a hard-stop startup error. It honestly freaked me out as a kid getting to experience once since it was like morbid and haunting over something that was emotional racing as well. (30yrs later and I can still remember the first time and still get chills right now.) 2. On top of being violent to the QA, the use of real reference footage in conjunction with some of the 'death' animations would mean that the visual artists we're also being forced to watch and re-create traumatic experiences with real world consequences. This leads me to believe that "Dan" might of been a product manager who had some ulterior motive with SM64. 3. Finally, the "gigaleak" provided a ton more information to the world as to how human and fallible the company actually is. Much like Disney, Ninten does a ton of work to polish every surface as to not see any of the grit or grime that goes into making games. The end result is the facade of perfection that is held together with unseen sinew and bone in the backstage. I have a feeling that we might see future videos start to show us what the backstage actually looks like. My theory is that Dan has some occult body horror going on in the world before the SM64 textures are placed on top and the uploader (Eric) is the last person to know the truth. 😳

I play tested nascar 2002 for Xbox team at ea sports at their Orlando hq which at that time QAed nascar, madden and 1 other title I can’t remember. Anyway yeah it’s hell. It’s the worst. The way you have to find bugs starts out easy but then progressively gets harder and harder. Ie the first few months you find small things like oh trying to move in put stop screws stuff up. But final days of testing are like hey if on lap 96 of a 100 lap race you go backwards for 5 seconds the game glitches slightly. On top of it they had this insanely antiquated system where you had to search for the bug you were about to report cause if you reported the same bug someone else did the leads would yell at you and I don’t mean a simple warning I mean they would take the whole team into a room and cuss us out. I could go on and on about the 12-20 hour working days where we brought pillows to work to pass out while bug finding, but I think you get the point.

Super glad you are doing this one. If you're up for more - besides Catastrophe Crow - then please check out CONCLUSE and DIMINISH. Both are severely under-reported on and really interesting.

It's kind of sad that the project is over. For those who don't know due to some internal issues the project ended in January.

Taking something familiar and making it alien. Very Junji Ito, in a conceptual sense.

i'm so glad that this became a trend now. i feel like after the internet became so widespread, mysteries in videogames stopped happening. everything was so dry and factual, made games so much less interesting when you could just look something up and get a definitive answer. this whole mario 64 thing sparked that old feeling of mysteriousness games had and i love it. the idea that such a simple game could actually go layers and layers deep filled with dark secrets is so much fun!

One tangential bonus from this is that it feels like an unintentional (or even intentional) throwback to those old SM64 machinima series.

And thus, gaming creepypastas were revived

6:18 right after he says the word amazing there is either the beginning of another word being spoken or something just before you hear the other person say Only on the Ultra 64. Listen closely.

incredibly solid reading of weird internet---this video is a dime.

The drowning metaphor makes no sense until you mention Eric's cousin Casey (which you've seemed to forgot)...

Yknow the animation test where there were real people with tracking and then there was drowning? thats why eric is afraid of water. Cause HE was the one who`did the drowning animation. he had almost drowned for an animtion.

This is my favorite series of 2020.

the meme kinda reminds me of that enders game chapter where peter appears in the game

I feel right now in the arg Eric and meg are on the run from somthing

after 20 plus years we discover that sm64 is in deep a dark game ..

I need to make a compilation of everytime David says the message of the work is "capitalism bad"

Hey!! Have you ever heard of Catastrophe Crow? I ran across it while looking for N64 review content and it seems right up your alley!! It has a real petscop vibe to it :D

Wow, incredible video.

I read copy as cop and was intrigued but afraid

I'm not quite sure I know how I feel about the idea of "every copy is personalized" creepypasta. It really feels like the basic idea of Ben Drowned, done to remove the supernatural element and be more credible in a meta sense while being more vague. That said, the Beta Archive's videos are fairly well done, they actually look the way VHS and sound the way audio cassettes from the 90s would have been, and use assets from the real life beta leaks of Mario 64 in a way that builds up a real sense of authenticity. It's also a breath of fresh air at least that they don't throw tired tropes at us like "I think the game is watching me oh noes" or "I came back and the game changed my save files!!!111!!1"

erics copy be like: water

"I might do an in depth analysis when the series has progresed" that aged poorly not that I'm trying to be mean but unfortunately the mario arg got cancelled

I think it would do some good to familiarize yourself with the Mario 64 Iceberg, or the MILS Hole community at large, as the series plays with that mythos heavily. For example I think Eric's fear of water may stem from one area of the game in particular: Wet Dry World. That level specifically is one of the more disturbing in the game due to potentially possessing a negative emotional aura (and potentially being a simulation of a human brain). There's a good video by Mish Koz that goes over the iceberg that i recommend.

1:40 actually, algorith can just pick a random number or generate a random number from time to create a 'seed' which can be used to 'personalize' game. As long as we talk about romhax, anything is possible.

Haven't watched the series but these kind of things always stumble trying to come across as genuine, for me at least. Like, all unfinished builds and prototypes would be in japanese not english. Same for the training video. Also the art style in that training video just doesn't fit the mid 90s. Also the self aware video game gimmick is getting old tbh I like the basic idea but I find it really hard to suspend my disbelief on this one

brb gonna unionize the webkinz staff

Why does your voice sound like a mix between WILDCAT and VanossGaming?

kzfaq.info/get/bejne/qMxkY5CJrN6wgIU.html New Nightmare Masterclass? Let's a-fucking Go!

I have the mario 64 1995 cartridge

Mine personalized copy was so strange

Great video Pls don’t revisit The Eric Show

Open source creepypasta

Ayyyy

Algorithm food

never played it, only nintendo i had was the nes

I think this is some MK ULTRA shit. Im no really sure but the experiment uses colors to associate with certain traumas for mind control. Maybe this is something like that...

All memes come from /x/

interesting

Nl ghost 👻

How do we know the person who created this project was a man or only a man?

No super mario 64 beta archive is only beta 1995 no final game

first

It seems all the games coming to be real or something about it if I was tast the game with fnaf sl it's going to be hard or worst me going crazy if I was a funtime foxy But anyway 😅 if this game mario 64 turn out to be real they don't wanna let him do it or anyone to find out about it about anyone come from the door or a black van to erase the people memory or anything else far I know