The FFR Scary Story Event

There’s this website game out there, called FlashFlashRevolution. You guys may not have heard of it, but it’s really quite a popular game. Albeit, not many people play it, but it does pull a lot of attention in public areas, especially when you’ve been playing it as long as I have. Seven years going into eight, even though I’ve been playing the game for a decently longer amount of time, stirring around songs at the end of 2006 in October.

When I began having an actual game name for myself, I didn’t talk on the forums that much, but I was pretty decent at the game. Most of the messaging I did was in PMs, between myself and my friends, to go onto multiplayer, and have some fun there, and talk about things that were happening, rumors, you know, idle chit chat between songs. One day, a close friend of mine mentioned that there were a bunch of older songs on the engine, but they were removed because they were too hard for people to pass. Not because of how many arrows were in the song or because of how broken it was, but because of the music. It was unbearable to listen to.

It honestly didn’t catch much attention to me. Maybe he’s right, maybe he’s wrong. Who knows? Not worth my time, until there was a point that I wasn’t able to play anymore. A day came by where I was unable to log into Multiplayer to go and play with a friend. It had said that I was already logged onto Multiplayer. As much as I refreshed the page, logged out, logged back in, and tried reconnecting, it didn’t allow me to connect. It gave me the same bold error message “You are already logged into Multiplayer!”. This was the first time I ever took to the forums and asked for help, because it’s never happened to me before. I legitimately thought I was hacked. Most of the replies coming back to me was that it was a bug and to give it a couple of minutes for it to disconnect itself.

I sat there and waited for the longest time, but it never disconnected. Upon refreshing the game page, I had noticed I received a PM, figuring it was from my friend that was wondering where I was, it turned out to be something entirely different. It came from a player that had no player name, and a title named ‘Opt-In’. The PM read as follows:

15, 17-20, 27, 34-38, 41-45, 51, 52, 70, 72-80, 82-84, 93, 99, 109, 114, 131, 154, 436, 437, 440-444, 446, 451, 452, 454, 456-460, 462-464, 472-487, 489-497.

You have been randomly selected to play-test song No. 497 before its release into the game, to give your full opinion before it’s exposed to the public. You will receive credits based on how structured your opinion is on the song, and be given a free title of FFR Veteran.

If you wish to play-test this song, please reply to this message with the string: Opt-In No.497

However, due to being able to play-test said song, your account will be unable to post in the forums or connect to Multiplayer until the song is released. No Worries though! If you want access back to the forums & Multiplayer immediately, please message an administrator with the phrase below, and they will promptly Option you out of testing to resume play. Otherwise, this message will expire in 12 hours, and allow you to continue play:

Opt-Out No.497

It was strange. I had never received something like this. It didn’t appear to be from any possible player, so I assumed it was a bot of some sort on the website. It also answered fairly clear as to why I was unable to connect to Multiplayer, but I had just been able to post on the forums. I checked my other tab to see if my thread had generated any more responses, but it locked me out of the forums saying that I had insufficient privileges to view this thread. That sealed the deal, they actually wanted me to look at a new song for them! I was so happy. I sent a PM message to my friend explaining what had happened and why I couldn’t get onto Multiplayer, and proceeded to send a reply to the message:

Opt-In No.497

I refreshed my page, only to find a second message already waiting for me with the same player title, and the same title ‘Opt-In’. It lead me to a downloader for something called FFR_Legacy(497).exe. I proceeded to download it and check exactly to see what was inside it, and who it was from. Checking the properties of the file, it said it was by Synthlight Studios, so it checked out ok in my book.

I opened up the .exe file after placing it in a folder and watched as it started up just like the legacy engine on FFR does. It didn’t stretch the window funny in any way for Multiplayer, it only had the normal gameplay screen for it. Guess there wasn’t much reason to incorporate Multiplayer when your account is locked down from joining Multiplayer. It loaded up my stats from FFR, my credit amount, and even my ranks. I clicked the Dance genre icon to reveal one song aptly named 497. I found it kind of odd that it was named 497, as I was kind of expecting a half-legitimate song name instead of a number. I clicked on it, waiting for the song to load, when I realized I forgot to put in my settings for my keys (because I used numpad instead of arrow keys at the time). As soon as the song started, I exited out, went to options, set my keys up, and restarted the song.

The beginning of the sound sounded a little bit like computer sounds. Not typing or anything, but whirling & whizzing from the computer, and sounds from a chair moving back & forth. All of a sudden, out of nowhere, was blood curdling screams. Tons of them, overlapping each other growing increasingly louder As if a woman was scared for her life on the other side of my computer screen. More joined in, all as different screams from different people. As part of a reflex, I reached for my audio speakers and turned them off, but the screaming grew only more intense and louder. There were no notes on my screen, only flashing images a mile a second. I started trying to boo myself out of the song, but none of the keys would register, not even my mouse when I was trying to click the window closed. I started taking screenshots like crazy to get captures of the images that were flashing while the screaming ensued, and caught a hefty ton of them. The notes for the song started playing around 15-20 seconds of constant screaming. I eventually started missing enough notes that the song itself (or screaming, rather) ended abruptly. Instead of going to the results screen, it went to a black screen showing a man in a striped suit whose face I couldn’t see, only the bottom part of his face. He grinned. The screen flashed white, and then black. My computer had turned itself off.

I tried turning my computer back on again, but it said that there was a hard-drive failure. I quit the game in its entirety after that, and had bigger things to worry about, like life. I was forced to use my mom’s old computer until I could get my own computer a decent while later around 2008. By that time, I was able to find out how to salvage old data off of destroyed hard-drives, and decided to try my old computer as a test subject. I was able to fetch tons of random data from my computer, but a lot of it was destroyed. One of the more interesting things that I was able to fetch was a screenshot that I took from the .exe, showing a shadowy figure in the corner of the screen when the notes started coming up, while being somewhat glitched because of the damage it had done to my computer. For a brief second though when finding the image and putting it on my computer for keepsakes, it reminded me of FFR so I decided to check how the website was doing.