Alien Defense Force

I have to write this down. I have no choice. I can't play games anymore and it's making me fucking angry. You want to know why? Because a game haunted me. I don't know if it's supernatural or powered by some internet powered trickery, but thanks to a game's clever programming, it can pretty much cause my interest in computer gaming to dwindle.

Back around 2003-ish, when I graduated my junior year in high school, I decided to spend my hard earned cash from my terrible grocery store job on some video games. I just started to get into PC gaming after my friends told me about Half-Life, but I was hesitant to get into computer gaming, as the CIH computer virus was spreading thanks to a defect for demo discs for SiN, a shooter I enjoyed later on. I then jumped on the PC gaming bandwagon right when the new millennium started, and with some extra dough in my wallet, I decided to spend it all on games. To get it as cheaply as possible, I decided to go to thrift stores like Goodwill in search of games. I found some old games like Duke Nukem and Quake, but nothing new and interesting. But then out of my eye, for only 50 cents, I spotted one of those leather CD cases, and inside was a boatload of software, mostly games, but also some software for boring business stuff, alongside some game development tools and other miscellaneous crap. And best of all, all of the games we're amazing titles, from the early 90s up until today. I was amazed at what I found, and I immediately went to the cash register to buy the leather case of games.

When I got up to the cash register, the clerk started trembling at what I was about to buy. I was confused, and I asked him why he was so spooked at my purchase. He told me there was a piece of software in there that can “damage my life permanently” and told me it's not worth my time. I then coaxed him to get me the case, by telling him that I will ignore what is unnecessary and only play the huge amount of cool games I got in this case. I was able to buy it, and the clerk broke down into a verge of tears after I bought the case. I was confused, but I just passed it off as him having a bad experience. When I got home, I opened up the case, and for the next couple of months, I was rocking a lot of these games. First person shooters, real-time strategy games, role-playing games, weird games, a lot of stuff. Plus the guy who had the case had a chapter in the case dedicated to music, full of a lot of crazy shit from Rammstein to Slipknot. I was in for some good shit. Until about 3 months after my purchase of the case.

I was about to finish up one of the FPS games in the case, when I noticed below it's sleeve, there was a burnt DVD in the case. The disc said “Alien Defense Force” and it was copyrighted in 2004, despite it being around 2003 in this timeline. The game had no developers or anything on the disc, just the title written in a semi-sloppy cursive font. I thought the game sounded cool, and I decided to pop it in my computer to play it. The installer came up, and the graphics in the game actually look sick. It looks like a modern anime-esque art style, kind of like what Gainax or Trigger did years later. Has that kind of half-anime, half-cartoon kind of art style, pretty chibi but still normally proportioned. The artwork shows two teens, a boy and a girl in some pretty bad ass and glittery looking space outfits, using various weapons to defeat aliens, which look like ones from Starship Troopers, if anyone remembers that. The game already looked like if Splatoon and Starship Troopers we're combined, it felt pretty ahead of it's time, especially in 2003.

The game's installation took almost 3 hours, longer than any other game installation in my collection, which was weird since my computer had a pretty fast, state of the art hard drive in it, and I was on the latest update of Windows XP. But after 3 hours, the game finally installed, and I was ready to experience the game. I already saw screenshots while the game was installing, and it looked really amazing, like a more anime version of Unreal or Serious Sam. I opened up the game and the main menu appeared. The menu had an image of the two characters from the start of the installer, with more details added in since it was a wallpaper-like image than a side image, and the music was really amazing. Very poppy, chiptuney, but still badass since there were some elements of industrial and breakbeat in there. I checked the About box to see who made the game, with no developer sighted, but with a bit of text below the copyright date saying “Alpha Build – Expect Glitches – Use Cheats If Necessary”, so I knew something like that would come in handy later. I selected new game, and proceeded with the first level.

The game's plot is about two teenagers, doing typical 2000's teens stuff, like playing arcade games, eating sushi, etc. Suddenly, the middle of their city gets nuked by a laser from above, showing aliens planning to destroy Earth. Quickly, the teens beg a government agency to let them destroy the aliens, since that would be “hip and cool”. They say yes, and the teens suit up with their spacesuits and weapons, and proceed to launch themselves to the huge, planet-sized alien ship that was firing their lasers at earth.

I played the game for a good solid 2 hours, feeling very amazed by it's wacky weapons selection among other things. The game was very fast paced, like Quake or Serious Sam, and the weapons feel very anime-like, but also with some more traditional aspects to them. I was getting good at this game, until I reached the 2nd chapter of the game. Suddenly, the enemies were kicking my ass, mainly due to the game introducing more stronger aliens, combined with a lower amount of health packs. I was getting frustrated, I wanted to punch a wall, or punch someone in the face till they bleed, but I knew I didn't want to give up. I tried my best, as best as I could, but it was near impossible. Judging by the game having no sign of a developer, combined on what I saw on the main menu, and it's obvious this game was far from finished. Hesitant to finish it, and knowing this game was an alpha build, I saved the game, exited it, and checked the contents of the installation files for any text files or anything involving cheats. Eventually in some oddly named debug folder called “sacrifices” I found a text file named “cheats.txt”, that contains all of the cheats. All of them we're console commands, and I had to hold down Alt-Y to open it. The cheats file contained a lot of info, like getting weird weapons among other debug and joke stuff, among the more important cheats, like invincibility and infinite ammo. I took a screenshot of my desktop with the folder and cheats.txt as evidence later. Knowing I now had confidence thanks to me finding the cheats, I started back up my game with the save file.

Before I tried out the cheats, I tried doing the hard level again to see if I still sucked at it, and behold, I still sucked at it. I pressed Alt-Y to open up the console, and up came a separate blank window, which had a top bar resembling that of the early Mac OS computers. I then put in the invincibility cheat “BecomeGodlyBeing -true” and the console responded with “You are a god!”, and then inserting the cheat “GiveMeTheLordsWeapons -true” and the console again responded with “You have all the ammo in the world!” I then went back into the game, and I was able to get through the level, which made me happy. However, I was starting to notice graphical glitches in the game. It's almost like if dead pixels on my monitor were starting to work again, only for more to fail, like if black snow was appearing on my screen. I just scrubbed it off as just my monitor being a bit wonky, it is a bit old and dusty, so I continued.

I then reached the first boss, this Xenomorph looking thing that wasn't even that scary, and I couldn't aim my guns at the boss. It was hard to kill, despite me being invincible and having good ammo. I checked the cheats text file, and noticed a cheat for aiming accurately at the first boss, as his speeds were quick due to a bug. Quickly before I put in the cheat, I screencapped the console box to show proof to the people later on about this game, you can see it here. I inputted the cheat “DehumanizeInnocenceAim -true” and the console responded with “Better Aiming for 1st Boss Enabled.” I was then starting to get a little nerved at the console commands, as they were all named very horrifyingly and creepy, but it might've been an in-joke the developer made up, so I calmed my self down and prepared to finally beat the 1st boss. I was able to aim very accurately at the boss now, and I was able to defeat it. When I killed the boss, an extremely loud burst of white noise came out of my headphones, at the point were my ears were almost deaf. I was extremely confused on what happened, but I felt like the game was still unfinished, and they might've used white noise or some generic synth noises as temporary audio files. Then again, it was extremely loud despite my computer's volume being pretty low, so something was up. I then proceeded to go back to the game, and proceed with the next chapter of the game.



I entered the alien's spaceship, and noticed a boatload of enemies, however something was off. The wall's textures were extremely low quality and blurry, compared to the rest of the game, the aliens had no textures, all were colored in a very dark, but still light gray. And all of the sound effects were very staticy, like if it was distorted and or modulated with some audio effect, albeit I can hear the sounds clearly, it's just distorted slightly. Worst of all, I couldn't kill any enemies, despite me being on infinite ammo and having godmode enabled. But I knew something was wrong when one of the aliens killed me, despite me having godmode enabled. I looked at the big list of cheats once again, and saw a cheat for fixing the 3rd chapter's issues called “SacrificeThySoulChap3 -true”. I inputted the cheat into the console, and then I heard what sounded like someone screaming, I wasn't sure, but the game crashed, and I was back on my desktop. I tried to reopen the game, but Windows told me the file couldn't be found. Going to my Program Files folder, the game, for some reason, deleted itself. I was confused why it did this, was the game haunted by some spiritual being? Was the developer going mad crazy and implemented these disturbing bugs in the game, even making it worse when you inputted cheats? Or was the game just extremely glitchy? I thought I learned from the Goodwill clerk not to play the game, but I didn't listen from him, and I assimilated myself to this game. I ignored it, and for the next couple of years, I dared not to install it again after what I just witnessed.

Fast forward to today, and PC gaming is still my passion despite that incident. I play loads of new games, the stuff kids these days play like Fortnite among other shit. However, as I was playing something, the game suddenly closed out, and my games drive got wiped for some unknown reason. I refreshed the window, and out of my utter shock, the installation files for Alien Defense Force reappeared. I thought the game uninstalled itself ages ago on my previous computer, but for some ungodly reason, it has come back. I tried opening up Steam to reinstall something, only for it to get deleted right after installing. I was confused what was going on, but with no fucks given, with all my will, I decided to open up Alien Defense Force after about a decade and a half of experiencing it.

I opened up the game, and the menu was the same as before, but there was no music unlike last time, and the “Load Game” button was just a white button with black Comic Sans text on it, compared to the fancy looking buttons on the rest of the menu. I decided to click on it, and I could see my last save file from 2003. I opened it, and to my horror, I was in the 1st level of the 3rd chapter. Not just that, but now the walls' textures were glitchy, going from blurry to now doing some kind of seizure inducing pattern. The enemies were now just gray, low-poly spheres instead of being their own models, and my character looked more realistic, almost like if the model was from a game released nowadays, albeit this is the same game from the same time period. The noises were all low pitched, except for the gun, which had a large amount of reverb when used. I tried to kill the enemies, but they killed me, and I tried opening up the cheats text file, only for Windows to say that the file couldn't be found, despite it being right there. I didn't know what the fuck to do, so I force quit the game, and shut down my computer. I then took out my laptop to find answers, only for my computer to boot on a clean installation of Windows. The computer wiped itself for no reason, but with one exception. The installation files for Alien Defense Force was there. I was going extremely crazy.

I then started to think that the game had some kind of internet haunting feature, like a virus but worse, that when Alien Defense Force started to go crazy, it must've jumped onto a central server, and waited till a decade later to wipe out my computer's drive, and to reinstall it with a fresh copy of Windows alongside the game. It then would jump onto other computers I had with an active internet connection till that's wiped. I decided to find my old laptop from the early 2010s, which had no active internet connection, and to my surprise, it worked! No sign of Windows deleting itself, and no sign of the game installing itself. I didn't want to connect to the internet till I got some modern anti-virus software up and running on my computer. I just so happened to have a recent version of some good AV software on a USB stick that I had a year ago, since I was helping my friend with a computer issue. I took the USB stick, plugged it in, installed the anti-virus software, and decided to connect to my internet network. When I connected to the internet, the anti-virus detected the game trying to wipe my computer, and successfully stopped it, which made me very happy, before the computer shut itself off for no reason. I turned it back on, and to my horror, Windows reinstalled itself, wiped everything, and Alien Defense Force reinstalled itself. I was going psychologically crazy. With this game haunting me, with nothing to do but to experience it's horrifying visuals and audio, while it gets rid of everything on my computer, I was almost getting mentally crazy. I wanted to kill myself, or do something bad to the world, all because this game was deleting everything, and everything I loved. Especially computer gaming. I might have to stick using my smartphone for the rest of my life if this continues to happen.



Update 1:

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in">This is an update that I am writing down. I am still mentally ill from what happened earlier, but I think life is going to get better. After I wrote everything down, I proceeded to go to my parent's house in the basement to find the leather case with the original disc in it. To my surprise, I was able to find it, and I sent it off to the FBI with a note attached on what happened. I should be getting a response later on.

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<p style="margin-bottom: 0in">Update 2:

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in">I just got back from the FBI about this game. They sacrificed someone innocent to play the game on the computer, and started experiencing the stuff I experienced. Afterwards, the FBI started researching on what happened, and they came back with these results. The game was developed by a lonesome developer in Utah named Bill Redwood. Bill used to work at some game company in the 90s in Washington. The FBI said it might've been an internship at Valve or Nintendo, but they couldn't find any evidence. After Bill was fired for nearly killing one of the employees during a bar fight, he started work on a game in his house, alongside the friends who still trust him, and started development on Alien Defense Force as a way to calm himself down. However, the game's development was plauged with issues, mainly due to Bill failing to calm himself down after what happened. His anger and mental issues were secretly added into the game, from the glitchy graphics, temporary models, loud noises, and the virus. The same virus that affected me, and almost gave me a simmlar mental issue to what Bill had. Bill tried to spread his mental illness to me, by making the game as disturbing and haunting as possible, with cheats only making it worse. The FBI then informed me that the game's final build, the build I owned, was loaned off to an anonymous individual in my area, who then packed it in a leather case full of other games. Determined to get rid of it, he sold it off in his local Goodwill he was working at, before I bought it and experienced the horror. After Bill loaned the case off to the Goodwill employee, he shot himself, with his game development history and other info being extremely unknown to the public, until now.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in">I am writing this to show you that stuff like this is never enjoyable, even if it feels like fiction. I would've suffered the same fate as Bill, but the FBI was able to take down the virus's server right when I was about to go crazy, among having plans to find any copy of the game, and confiscate it for good. I will be destroying the disc, and if you go to Utah or anywhere in my area and find another build of the game, or a similar disc, DO NOT, FOR THE LOVE OF FUCKING GOD, PLAY IT. It will make you go insane. Destroy the fucking disc if you ever find one. I nearly went as insane as the developer, but I was quick enough to get help. I warn you, don't do what I just did during the past decade. I thought I was going to be in for a good treat, only for the game to treat me back with horror. I will be reinstalling the games I love alongside getting my computer checked for any remains of the virus or game, and I hope my life will get better from here. Do not research or look for Alien Defense Force, and if you find a disc of the game, or a download, OR ANYTHING... Do. Not. Play. It.

Credited to KrabsOnKrack