It sounded too good to be true. A 4.7GB DVD of Shadow of the Colossus , shrunk down to a 300MB zip file? Magic. Or malware.
It was the summer of 2007, and young Leo had a problem. His family’s ancient computer had a hard drive the size of a modern thumbnail. Meanwhile, his best friend, Marcus, had just gotten a PlayStation 3. While Marcus was battling next-gen aliens, Leo was stuck with a dusty PS2 that still worked like a charm—but a charm that required physical discs.
And physical discs were expensive.
“Next time, pay full price.”
Instead of the game's title screen, a white text prompt appeared on a black screen: Ps2 Games Highly Compressed
The console whirred. The pink Sony logo bloomed. Then, silence.
And that is why, to this day, Leo buys his games legally. Or at least, he buys a hard drive big enough to hold them uncompressed. It sounded too good to be true
He did the only thing he could. He ejected the disc.
Leo’s only currency was mowing lawns and returning lost wallets. But then he discovered a forbidden corner of the internet: a blogspot page with a lime-green background and blinking Comic Sans text that read, Or malware
“Still hungry… for polygons…”
“You compressed too much,” the voice said. It was the cube. Its voice was gravel and static. “You took my soul out. Now give it back.”