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possibly hacked sugar rush arcade machine
I just want to start off by staying this is NOT an attempted creepypasta or internet horror thing. I’ve made similar posts on different forums and they’ve all been deleted or clowned on. I’m just trying to ask a genuine question to hopefully get some answers. So please, just listen to what I have to say.
In 2011, my family drove down to Northern California to stay with some older relatives for a long weekend. My younger sister and I (being 8 and 12 at the time) didn’t have much to do since we were surrounded by elderly relatives and couldn’t go to beach cause of bad weather. My dad eventually realized how bored we were and took us to an old arcade he used to hang as a teenager. It looked run down from the outside but surprisingly there were a fair amount of modern games with the more retro stuff.
I wanted to play street fighter but I had to watch my sister and help her play what she wanted (mostly the fishing wheel game so she get a ton of tickets for prizes). After around 10 minutes, we found the arcade version of Sugar Rush; finally, something we were both excited about. We had several of the games on console and it was our favourite at the local Dave and Busters. My sister immediately ran to first machine to try and get Princess Vanellope, her favourite character.
But here’s where the freaky stuff starts. Ok, maybe not freaky, but definitely strange. We knew the arcade version’s character selection off by heart, with Vanellope in the dead centre. But with a disappointed “whaaaaat?” from my sister, I realized she wasn’t there. All the other characters were the same but Vanellope was completely missing.
But the slot wasn’t empty, it was filled by some guy named Candy King (don’t remember the exact name), a character I had never seen in any of the games before. I didn’t give it too much thought at first, I was more preoccupied by my sister’s whining, which I get. It sucks when your go-to character isn’t in the roster. I told her she probably just isn’t unlocked yet and to pick someone else for now. So she picked Taffyta and we played through the race as normal. After a bit, I left my sister at the ddr machine and wondered around.
And then it hit me; why would you need to unlock Vanellope in Sugar Rush? That’s like having to unlocked Mario in Mario Cart. And in the arcade version of sugar rush too? And who the hell was that candy king guy??? I rushed back to the machines and used a token. I tried pushing several buttons to make Vanellope appear but the timer ran out and I went into a race. I used another token, trying pushing even more buttons but ended up selecting the candy king. He was this old balding man with a little crown and his racing lines gave him the vibe of a passive aggressive mad hatter. I’ll admit, he did have a broken move set which made winning pretty easy.
But he felt so out of place with the other racers. I’m so used to Sugar Rush characters being these little candy children with pun names. Why was there a random old man? So I thought ok maybe the machine was modded or hacked. I’m not super knowledgeable about stuff like that so I don’t know if that’s even possible. And if it is, I don’t know why you would replace one of the main characters of an iconic racing game with some random man no one knows about. So I asked the guy at the prize counter (older man, probably the owner) about it and said he never touched it. I asked for my sister if there was a way to unlock Vanellope and he didn’t know who that was.
Since that day, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve searched variants of Sugar Rush Candy king, Sugar Rush King Candy, Sugar Rush arcade exclusive character Candy King and found absolutely nothing. I’ve gone back to our local Dave and Buster’s multiple times and never seen the damn Candy King. None of the mainline games have ever mentioned him. I’m not talking and Sir Sour Pop from Sugar Rush 2000. They looked completely different. And I know it wasn’t a dream or a false memory because I’ve asked my sister and she still remembers. I was never able to go back to the arcade to investigate. I’ve since moved away from the US. The arcade was called Litwak's Arcade. I can’t find if it’s still open.
So please, if anyone had been there or has any other ideas on what I saw, please let me know. I swear this isn’t some Ben drowned or Sonic.exe type of hacked game story.
I feel like I’ve been loosing my mind for 14 years. This is my last hope.