My Emulation Horror Story

[Waffles]

I figured I'd see the year off in style (or something that may resemble style) by sharing one of my weirdest gaming-related memories.

Now... before we begin, I wanna make two things exceedingly clear right off the bat:

1) This totally did happen. I'm not making it up.

2) I was so shocked and annoyed by it that I actually went and posted about it on every Pokémon, emulation and gaming forum I could think of to try and find an explanation for what had just happened... with zero luck.

This happened during one of the lowest points of my life, as I had just been released for the first time from what would eventually be an eight-month-long hospital stay, a devastating time of isolation that made me make a point of avoiding the internet entirely, as nothing hurt more than seeing my friends posting about their latest outings on Fotolog and other teen-centered social media while I was stuck home and barely able to move. As always, though, I turned to Pokemon to make my days more bearable.

At the time I was making gigantic progress on the Spanish version of Pokemon Crystal, and I had just made it to Saffron City with the goal of seeing what had changed since I had been there last (on Pokémon Yellow). I walked around the area a bit, got extremely disappointed by the fact that I couldn't dick around Silph Co, and then made a save near the Pokemon Center after healing my party -- you know, normal stuff... then, I missed with the mouse and instead of closing the emulator down for the night, I brought up the drawing I was working on on a different window, which was resting on the task bar. And you know what happened next? BGB (my emulator) and MS Paint fused. Suddenly my game was reduced to a tenth of its original size and found itself tucked in the bottom left corner of my stupid drawing. But it gets worse, so much worse.

Closing the emulator didn't help. Closing MS Paint didn't help. Rebooting the damn system didn't help. My game was completely lost, weeks of painstaking progress down the drain by a freak accident I couldn't even begin to comprehend. Could I have extracted the battery files and load my files onto a fresh install of the emulator? Maybe, but I honestly didn't even think about that at the time... and trust me, I was pissed and very stubborn, so I tried to keep on playing regardless of it, but it was no use. The reduced window size and the awkward placement of the game within the screen strained my eyes to the point of giving me headaches after a few short minutes. It was just no use.

I broke my "no internet" rule and made a post about it on my favorite gaming forum that same night... no-one had a clue.

I ventured further and made the exact same topic on a garbage place I was a semi-regular at. No dice.

Then I started checking Pokemon and emulation forums, because I was sure that they would know what to do next... and they accused me of lying, even with screenshot evidence that has since been completely scrubbed due to the demise of its image host (and the boards themselves).

Of course, that only fired me up even more and I ended up making it back to that exact same spot a couple of days later (since I wasn't even allowed to go to school at the time), beating the game with a level 100 Totodile just to give it the middle finger, but man... that one stung more than I care to admit. And I'm still unsure of what happened.

If you guys have theories about what brought this freak accident to life, I'd love to hear them.

In the meantime... Happy 2025!

 

[middler]

My theory: Microsoft ruins everything.

That said maybe mspaint treated the emulator as some kind of plugin, but since it wasn't an actual plugin things fell down in usual Microsoft fashion.

 

[Boo Man]

yeah MS paint is prob the worst emulator

 

[DunkeyKong]

Now I'm scared to open any programs
Imagine the thing from "The Thing" is living inside the system, that's probably what it is. Great read by the way!

 

[Stingy Perry]

MS hates everything that’s not theirs originally I suppose

 

[What's His Face]

I've experienced that with other programs, where using both programs will confuse Windows into thinking that one program is opened by another and it takes a bit to get them de-linked and data recovered, but not so much with MultipleSclerosis Paint before. I've heard of MS Paint doing other weird things before, though, but MultipleSclerosis has never been interested in fixing the program.

 

[prnzo x BOOZE-o ka-BEER-o]

a couple years or so before I got a hold of the mod that fixed the MS Live! proprietary obligatory sign-in that acted like Microsoft Live was always gonna be around n not take games that feature it's hoop-leaping requirements effectively down with it in its demise.... I was bored n didn't have exactly hundreds of Steam games at the time, so I went to play the PC SF x Tekken game that I had some kind of other makeshift-ramshackle fix to help run at the time... well, mid-match somewhere it crashed... but the launch button still said 'Running'... a half-hour later it still hadn't stopped n clickin that button was of no use, so I went out of Steam n back in.... still 'Running'... I restarted the computer. went back into Steam - 'Running'. I literally had go into the SteamApps/Common to its executable n other data n delete it all to stop this irritating shitshow.

I didn't reinstall until over a year later - prompted to by accidental discovery of the aforementioned mod that eradicated any sign of Microsoft Live's PC-port presence n implementation as well as throwin me the PS3-exclusive or w/e 4 additional chars. I guess it became the PS3 version, effectively? no idea but it runs fine ever since which was good since it quickly became far more trouble than its worth in that goofy erroneous, obnoxious scenario. (buLL)shit happens I guess.

Edit: Waffles, your situ is even-more puzzling but so many surreal things have happened in my life that it's hard to find just about anything truly mystifying. I mean, one time I yelled "F-U!" at a laptop years ago n it inexplicably shut off less than a sec later n that's one of the more plausible occurences... for all I know inanimate things have their own soul/ki/living energy? if everyone in the world suddenly found out that most of the truths that we have ever logically deduced are folly, I'm ready for it whilst most might panic crying out the "our entire history is a lie!" blues. I'll still likely be stunned n taken aback for a few min, don't get me wrong hehe

 

[WallachiaResident98]

I remembered one time I was playing Resident Evil 2 n64 (back then I only knew how to work N64 emulators, I was weird), there were no voices at all and the cutscenes were borked, and then I have NO IDEA how or why but one day when I was playing, the game suddenly had voices, but it wasn't really coherent.

It was like watching a Vinesauce Cartridge tilting stream, the audio was loud and REALLY warbly.
I didn't play Resident Evil 2 again until I got a legitimate copy of it on the Gamecube for Christmas a few years later, not because it didn't unnerve me or anything, but because it was really damned annoying.

 

[ObscureJigglypuff]

Aaaaaaand that's why boys and girls i don't use two programs at the same time xd

 

[RashFaustinho]

Do you want to know what true horror looks like?

Try drag and dropping a PS1 game into PCSX2 (yes, you heard that correctly)

It's... an experience.

 

[Ikagura]

Do you want to know what true horror looks like?

Try drag and dropping a PS1 game into PCSX2 (yes, you heard that correctly)

It's... an experience.

Are there videos?