The Theater

The Theater
Have you ever heard of an old game called “The Theater”? Yeah, didn’t think so. Probably because many say it doesn’t even exist.

You see, The Theater was an old game released around the same time as Doom. Today, if you ever find it, it’s only available on crappy bootleg CD-ROMs, which, more often than not, don’t even actually contain the game.

The actual legitimate copies that they say were released back in the day feature a blank cover with nothing but the sprite of what has since been named 'the Ticket-Taker’. He is simply a poorly drawn, pixelated, bald, Caucasian man with large red lips wearing a red vest over a white shirt and black pants.

He is completely expressionless, though some say that if you smash the disc his face is shown as angry the next time you look at the cover, though this is just dismissed as an urban legend. What is peculiar about The Theater, though, is that there is no developer named on the jewel case, nor a game description on the back. It is simply the Ticket-Taker on a white background on both sides.

The game was initially known for its inability to install correctly. The installation process immediately locks up the computer when the user reaches the licensing agreement. Also strange about the licensing agreement for The Theater is that whenever the development studio is supposed to be named, the text is simply a blank line. Anyways, most people who have claimed to owning one of the original CDs say that they figured out how to install the game by simply rebooting their computer on the licensing agreement with the disc still inside. Then they are prompted to press ‘I AGREE’ on startup. Then they continue with the installation.

If a player supposedly manages to find to what they believe to be a *working copy*, they have said that the installer window will freeze and stop responding before you can click your first *next* but they do also say that their PC's do not lock up and it is only the installer that freezes. it is unknown if these are actual copies or fakes but it is widely thought that these *working copies* are just to draw internet attention with no proof of the installation effects.

Upon proper installation, the game then starts up without any introduction besides a main menu that is simply the sprite of a movie theater’s exterior on an empty city street. The title fades in and then the 3 menu buttons ‘NEW GAME, LOAD, OPTIONS’. Selecting OPTIONS immediately crashes the game to the desktop. LOAD is said not to function at all. Even if you do have a saved game, nothing happens when you press it. Thus, NEW GAME is the only working menu option.

Once it is selected you are in the first person view. You are standing in an empty movie theater lobby, with the exception of the Ticket-Taker standing in front of a dark hallway which one can only assume leads to the theaters themselves. There’s nothing to do but look at the poorly-drawn, mostly illegible movie posters or approach the Ticket-Taker. Once the player moves towards the Ticket-Taker a very low-quality sound clip plays saying “THANK YOU, PLEASE ENJOY THE MOVIE” along with a speechbox saying the same thing. You then walk into the hallway and the screen fades to black and you’re back in the empty lobby and you do the exact thing again and again and again.

While this may sound like a really horrible game, a number of peculiar things occur as you continue to play it. The number of times that you have to continue into the hall after giving your ticket to the Ticket-Taker before the strange events happen is unknown. Most state that it’s completely random and could take anywhere from the first playthrough to the four hundredth. What happens, though, has deeply disturbed some players.

The first occurrence is when the player fades back in after walking into the hallway. This time they will notice the Ticket-Taker is completely absent. The player then, without any other options, decides to walk into the dark hallway. The sound clip and text box mentioned previously still play in the absence of the Ticket-Taker, but when the player walks into the hallways the screen does not fade out. It goes pitch black as they walk deeper into the hall, but the player’s footstep sound clip is still playing as they continue to push the up button on their keyboard.

Those claiming to have played the original game report to have felt extremely uncomfortable walking down the hallway, anticipating the whole way something horrible happening. Well, eventually the player is unable to move forward. There is nothing for a few moments before a strange sprite that is described as ‘the Ticket-Taker but with a swirl for a face’ appears and stands before the player.

The original players of the game say their bodies immediately froze up and their stomachs churned they saw this sprite (which has been appropriately named the ‘Swirly Head Man’). Nothing happens as the Swirly Head Man stands before them. Then suddenly a piercing screech plays as the game glitches out. This lasts for a few minutes, with the screeching being continuous. Then the player is abruptly returned to the lobby with all the sounds and graphics being as they should be.

The game continues normally for the next couple of ‘cycles’ of entering the hallway, with a couple of the original players claiming the Swirly Head Man would briefly appear and disappear in the corner of the screen as a brisk ‘yelp’ sound effect plays. Then, at some point after meeting the Swirly Head Man, the player sees the Ticket-Taker pacing back and forth (though there is no walking animation - the sprite’s limbs are completely static, so he just hops up and down slightly as a substitute) with his eyes being wide and his mouth open to simulate a worried facial expression.

Some players noted that the movie posters had been replaced with images of the Swirly Head Man, which caused them to immediately turn their character’s head away from the posters and approach the Ticket-Taker. Then another, different, low-quality sound clip plays, but the speech box contains nothing but corrupted characters that cause whatever text that would have been in the box to be completely illegible.

Due to the extremely low quality of the sound, it is debated by players what exactly the Ticket-Taker says at this point, though it is widely agreed that he says ‘NEVER REACH THE OTHER LEVELS’. Then the screen fades out once again and returns the player back to their starting point in the lobby, but the Ticket-Taker is gone and the hallway is blocked by a large brick wall sprite. Touching the brick wall will immediately crash the game, and that’s all there is to it.

No one knows what the ‘Other Levels’ are or how to gain access to them, nor is it known why the Swirly Head Man causes such acute fear in those who have seen him in the game. All the original copies of The Theater have either been lost or destroyed. But the creepiest part is the fact that all the original players of the game claim to occasionally see a brief glimpse of the Swirly Head Man out of the corner of their eyes...

The True Story of the Theater
It’s not something whispered about in certain circles, it’s not something that comes in a plain-looking jewel case, it’s not by a nameless untraceable developer… and it’s certainly not supernatural.

The game in question is indeed called The Theatre (r before e), and was developed by a company called Salida Software. I’m fairly certain it’s an English company, despite the Spanish name. As far as I know, all they made was learning software (I have a maths suite from them somewhere around here), so The Theatre was probably meant to be some sort of edumentainment game. The game was obviously never finished, probably from lack of funding or the whole company going under.

The description in the story is actually pretty accurate; it’s in a first-person perspective, with flat sprites in a 3D(ish) environment, and glitchy as hell. The Ticket Taker has an egg-shaped body, and one of his hands is huge and misshapen, I think to look like he’s reaching toward you for your ticket. The description of the Swirly Head Man is also accurate, just a glitched version of the Ticket Taker, but I saw a few people saying that he looks like Giygas… That’s not the case. The features of his face are just swirled, and are red because his lips are gigantic. I have absolutely no idea why this happens, because while there are a few character sprites in the game’s resources, that isn’t one of them. Oh, and just to clarify, the sprite is a bit creepy. That’s all. It’s not terrifying, it’s never filled me with a sense of dread, it’s just a bit creepy.

The game plays pretty much exactly as stated in the story; so accurately, in fact, that I think the author just downloaded it somewhere and decided to make a scary story of his experiences. I’ll admit that some things in it can be unsettling, but not OMG crap-yer-pants scary. Like I said, the game is unfinished, and very glitchy.

I think the idea is to select a movie from the posters on the wall, enter the theater, and play a minigame. The minigames are glitchy (and missing resources) to the point of being almost unplayable, but there doesn’t seem to be a time limit on any of them, so you just have to plow through until you’ve done something right enough times to be dumped into the lobby. What’s described in the story is what happens if you don’t select a movie; you’ll be allowed to enter the theater, but since the parameter of which game to load hasn’t been set you’ll just be dumped back into the lobby.

Here’s where it gets a bit weird. If you continue to enter the theater without choosing a movie, odd, sometimes creepy things WILL happen. I’m not sure why, but if I were to make an educated guess, it would be that glitching past the minigames like this causes variables to reach values that they weren’t meant to, resulting in things appearing where they shouldn’t. Or, y’know, the game is just glitched to hell and back. It’s been years, but here are some of the effects I can remember:

-The Swirly Head Man

-Movie posters appearing out of their frame

-Textures changing color

-Legitimately disturbing audio issue

-Other characters

-Other areas

The last two are obviously the most interesting ones. Sometimes you’ll spawn in a small room with a black floor and green walls, which will crash the game if touched. Sometimes you’ll appear in a room similar to the lobby, with a concession stand… kind of. There’s a woman behind the counter, with an incredibly poorly-drawn popcorn machine and soda fountain, but it’s all just an image on the wall. It’s basically just a big yellow concession stand mural. I don’t remember if you can interact with it or not.

The only character that appears worth talking about is a guy in a brown jacket, who appears on the sidewalk outside the lobby. Looking back, I don’t think the story mentioned this, but to the left of where you start out the wall is a row of glass doors looking out onto the street outside the theater. If you glitch past the minigames enough, a man in weird-looking jacket (I think it’s supposed to be tweed? it’s a mess) with a huge smile on his face will be just on the other side of the doors, staring at you. I mean a HUGE smile, like Freaky Fred or Spark Brushel (Google image search if you want).

…Actually, since he has the same body shape as the Ticket Taker, he looks a bit like the mayor from The Nightmare Before Christmas. His smile isn’t creepy though, it’s just broad; what IS creepy are his eyes. While the Ticket Taker, ash tray, and other sprites will always face you, the smiling guy is anchored in place like one of the walls. His eyes, however, are always staring right at you. Just thinking about that gives me chills… Okay, okay, while there’s nothing overtly scary or supernatural about the game itself, that’s one thing that I will admit legitimately scares me. Like a porcelain doll…

Ahem. That’s pretty much all there is to The Theatre. If you can find it somewhere, I’d recommend downloading it just to see what it’s like. Oh! One thing I’d forgotten… As stated in the story, getting the thing to run is, to say the least, difficult. I think someone got a hold of all of the code and resources and just compiled it and added their own installer or something. Again, there’s nothing paranormal about the installation, it just doesn’t work well.