Solomons-key

Solomon's Key [Tecmo, 1986][related: Michiharu Hasuya]
A 1987 NES title in which a Taoist Monk ¹ releases the horde of demons described in The Legemeton after accidentally finding the key to the Constellation Sign. Based on a succession of 50 stages of exponentially increasing difficulty oriented around the signs of the Zodiac, Solomon's Key is commonly known as the most difficult title to ever be released on the system, with no reported successful completions. It is widely speculated that either stage 48 or 49 (known colloquially as the Hidden Levels ) represents the vanishing point of forward progress, though various Wiccan "mystic-hacks" have been reported successful in allowing progress to the game's mysterious final stage, including the drawing of pentagrams using an E-Pen and the chanting of "Bael" through a techno-hack vocoder. The 1998 Japanese horror film Ringu was reportedly based in part on urban legends surrounding various unexplained and unsubstantiated spectral and metaphysical phenomena associated with Level 50. Music by Michiharu Hasuya ² .

¹ Leading to accusations of Judeo-Christian centrism and the malicious orientalism of Eastern worldviews seen by many to have taken root in World War II and the subsequent Japanese Economic Miracle.

² Including an experimental soundtrack to one of the games "[[hidden-level|hidden levels]" representing the video game industry's first instance of poly-tonal, aleatorically generated scoring. The theme was reportedly originally scored for string quartet and then transcribed by hand for 8-bit realization and includes a rudimentary algorithmic component allowing it to continually morph for an indeterminate and reportedly infinite length of time. Later leaked on the internet as a deep web live stream, the theme lead to numerous reports of apeirophobic attacks.