While creepy anti-piracy isn't an unseen concept in video games, fan-made concepts like this can take it to a whole other level of nightmarish.
- The "Piracy Is No Party" screen uses a repurposed image of the cast looking through a jail cell combined with music
that, while no doubt catchy, is also incredibly creepy. It's eerily simplistic, aside from creepy laughs and the points where police sirens blare and a female Japanese voice speaks. Some people have interpreted the imagenote as you, the player, being in jail, while the characters stare in disbelief/anger. - The event where the shopkeeper Monty Mole attacks you. After telling the player that he doesn't serve criminals, the Mole sends them into a modified version of Mole Thrill where they cannot move whatsoever, all while eerie static plays in the background. Once the mole gets to them, the character is moved to his hand while a loud screeching noise plays. The error says that the animation that was supposed to play couldn't be found. And then, there's the title and description of this modified minigame:RUNControls: None
- Sweet Sleuth gets modified too. At first, it plays out like normal... until the Shy Guy asks for Luigi, who runs towards him and then gets tossed into the now widely expanded mouth portion of his mask and presumably Swallowed Whole. Once again, this is accompanied by a droning static noise that slowly gets louder, up to the point where Luigi is consumed.
- The "Forced Character Removal" measure borders on Nothing Is Scarier. The round begins to play out like normal... or so it seems until the game pans around, one by one, to reveal that every other character except for the player is now gone. What happened to them? "They all left! Nobody wants to party with a criminal." Toad and Waluigi's are especially ominous, as the wording makes it seem less like they left and more like they just vanished. Afterwards, the space Luigi is standing on suddenly opens into a pit and drops him in, followed by the game crashing and the usual "Piracy Is No Party!" screen.
- If you let the game linger on the "Piracy Is No Party" screen, the result is not pretty. It turns out there's an anti-piracy self-report tool that brute-forces itself into connecting to the internet and calling the cops on you. If the title of the video is any indication, it can't be turned off, and some seriously unsettling music plays while it's setting up the connection. Once the connection is finally set up, it strongarms you into reading an on-screen prompt word-for-word requesting your immediate arrest. Given the supernatural properties and murderous nature of the game's host, DJ Hallyboo, refusal to comply would likely result in fatal consequences.
- Host Hoedown has several examples:
- The minigame description translates into a note from Hudson, practically demanding the developer of the anti-piracy mechanics to stop coding them - though still with all the subtlety to be expected of a Japanese firm - as it's eating up time that could be spent preparing the game for release. This rogue developer had been spending prolonged, obsessive periods of time devising methods to catch pirates - just who are they, and what made them so dedicated to stopping and tormenting pirates?
- Then there's the actual Boss Battle minigame. The only way to defeat D.J. Hallyboo is to "trace your apologies" before he uses his Unblockable Attack, which causes the screen to rumble before a One-Hit Kill by sudden Thwomp. Don't think for a second winning the minigame will save you from the anti-piracy screen: his boss fight becomes downright impossible if you somehow survive to his third phase, with the last word you have to tracenote suddenly moving around too rapidly to be completed normally.
- D.J. Hallyboo himself. Take the character he's based on, the already-kinda-creepy M.C. Ballyhoo, and take away anything endearing about him, and you get this guy: A man that's positively enormous compared to Luigi, with dark blue skin and glowing red eyes, a constant frowning grimace, and a hat with glowing yellow eyes and a mouth full of fangs. His stiff, low-poly animations also lend a great amount of Unintentional Uncanny Valley to him.
- This McDonalds commercial starts off seemingly normal, but the dimly-lit room, the complete stillness of the Toad-masked guy and the Luigi plush hanging from the blind cords behind them lend it an ominous air right off the bat. The commercial goes on to be silly and cheesy like most ads of its kind, but it all goes to hell when the guy dressed like Luigi speaks up. His mask is angrily swiped by what appears to be the hand of an off-screen Monty Mole, revealing a miserable Joey looking absolutely terrified before the camera cuts to black. And then... nothing. Absolutely nothing. We're given no explanation as to whatever happened: is this part of Joey's jail sentence? Is Nintendo involved? Or Hallyboo? What is Joey so afraid of? Perhaps we're better off not knowing...
- The finale, while mostly silly, has Joey sucked into a Nintendo DS by a fully-manifested DJ Hallyboo, who then smashes it against the ground and presumably kills or traps him for good. That cannot be pleasant.
