Christmaspasta

Pokémon Red and Green

By anxiousZapdos

Story Description: Be careful what you make a special christmas wish for... you just might get it! Christmaspasta written for GalladeKnight's flash-fiction contest on the pokemon-refinery forums. rating this one 15+ for explicit scenes of merriment and seasonal togetherness

One day I was rifling through my local pawn shop when I happened upon a rare treat: a game boy color in near-mint condition, with a game already inside! I bought both on the spot, despite not knowing what the game was - the label had peeled almost entirely off. The weird thing was, the cartridge was green, an odd colour for game boy cartridges.

When I got home I loaded the game boy color up with batteries, and turned it on. I was overjoyed to see the familiar "Nintendo" logo pop up - such nostalgia feels. Then the title screen for the game came on - it was Pokémon! I realized with a jolt that that's why the cartridge was green ... this must be a copy of Pokémon Green, the japanese-only progenitor to Pokémon Red and Blue! Getting excited, I nearly started a new game then and there, but just before I did I saw the word "Continue" below "New Game." I was curious to see what the previous owner of this game had accomplished, so I selected that.

I was immediately dropped into what I recognized as Celadon City, the commercial center of the original Pokémon games. Something seemed "off" to me, though. Suddenly, I realized what it was; there were way more NPCs than usual, and they were all moving at twice the speed, rushing in and out of the Celadon City Dept. Store. Puzzled, but paying it no mind (after all, at this point I still thought it was a copy of Pokémon Green, so there were bound to be some differences) I opened the player profile menu. The previous player's name was apparently S.C. and they had put 25:12 hours into the game. I quit out of that menu and checked the POKéMON menu, to see what pokémon they had with them. What I saw surprised me: five pokémon with single-character names, that spelled out the word "MERRY". The weird thing was, there was no music at all, even though the volume was turned all the way up. The only sound coming from the game boy color's speaker was a faint jingling.

When I closed the menu, it looked like I was in an entirely different area. It was pitch black, so I had one of my pokémon use "flash," lighting the area. It looked like a cave but it was nothing like any of the caves I had seen in my time. It was featureless, with a grey, textured appearance. When I went back into the menu, all my pokémon were gone. I was getting really freaked out at this point, so I began to look for an exit. I walked through the cave for a good 30 minutes. Suddenly, there was a loud noise. My pokémon walked out from behind a rock, carrying a large wrapped present! They had only vanished to surprise me. A message came up saying "THANK YOU FOR BUYING US! WE WILL DO OUR BEST TO MAKE YOU A PROUD PKMN TRAINER." I laughed happily at all the care that the pokémon had put into my present. The End

Captain N's Last Adventure

By memimomo

First of all, let me say that this story is FICTION: ALL events have NOTHING TO DO WITH REAL LIFE. Captain N: The Game Master is property of DiC entertainment and all nintendo characters are © Nintendo. <_< ok ... ? Well let's begin...

Back in the early '90s, I was finishing up my BA in animation. As part of the degree, we all had to take on an internship, and most of my friends got stuck with pretty crappy jobs - advertising studios and the like. As you can imagine, I was putting off my choice until the last minute, since none of the available jobs took my fancy, but ONE DAY before the deadline, something opened up. It was an internship at DiC, and I jumped at the chance. Even though I was pushing 21, I still loved getting up on Saturday morning to watch the Super Mario Bros. Super Show and the Legend of Zelda cartoon - if you couldn't tell, I'm sort of a gamer!

At DiC, I mainly worked with the team responsible for working on Captain N: The Game Master. You probably remember it too: it was an animated show about a kid called Kevin who got sucked into his NES to a magical land called Video Land, and each week he'd have to help a princess and fight a different video game bad guy with his magic NES controller. Overall it was pretty cheesy, but fun, so it was cool to be able to hang out with the editors and animators as they worked on the show.

Another cool thing about working on the show was that I'd get to see the new episodes before they aired. This is about one of those times. We interns would usually watch these in the editing room, alongside the lead animators and sound editors, so like always, we filed in and switched off the lights. The first thing I noticed was that there was what looked like a faint static superimposed over the opening sequence, but there were other animation errors at this point so it wasn't too strange. Still, it irked me. It almost looked like ... snow. Then when the title card came up, it read "Captain N's Last Adventure." Was ... was this the last episode? I looked around the room and saw everyone else was looking as confused as I felt. That settled it - some prankster must've messed with this cut.

The story started pretty normally, with Kevin and the princess baking a cake for Mega Man's birthday. Simon Belmont came in and made some joke about the frosting when suddenly the screen shook, and there was a loud explosion sound from offscreen. The frames skipped a few times, too - almost as if the explosion had damaged the animation. Iris out, and cut to black.

When the next scene came on, Kevin was alone. The picture seemed a lot grainier, and the sound seemed oddly distorted, as if it had been re-recorded onto an old VHS tape over and over again. When Kevin said something, the audio was all chopped-up, and I couldn't understand what he was saying, but it seemed like he was really happy about something. Simon Belmont and Mega Man came in next, each carrying one end of an enormous douglas fir. Was it ... Christmas? I frowned slightly. This was the middle of June, and the episode wouldn't air until August. Everyone began decorating the tree with baubles and tinsel. The weird thing about the decorations were that it seemed oddly realistic - not like a photo, but somehow more real than the rest of the animation. I felt an odd feeling in my chest looking at it, like a hand reached directly into my heart and filled it with brandy butter. The way the tinsel sparkled and reflected light gave me an unearthly sense of merriness.

The next shot was of all the main characters - Kevin, his dog, Princess Lana, Simon Belmont, Mega Man, Game Boy, and Kid Icarus - all sitting around a table festooned with a hyper-realistic roast ham, goose, and turkey with all the trimmings; stuffing, roast parsnips, brussels sprouts, and pigs in a blanket. It all looked so delicious. The scene continued, with everyone enjoying their meal and exchanging jokes and laughter, for about 15 seconds, after which it abruptly cut to black. The editor went up and fiddled with the controls for a bit, but that was it - the rest of the episode was just a static black screen. It was at that point we heard a weird thumping noise from above us. Most of them were still confused from the video they'd just seen, but me and one other intern ran outside to see what it was. By the time we got outside, no-one was there, but in the distance we saw a fat man in a flying sleigh being pulled along by eight reindeer. Even though he was far away, we both heard what he yelled - "MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL - AND TO ALL, A GOOD NIGHT!"

There was an investigation into these incidents, but no evidence of tampering was found with the episode, and there was no evidence that there the fat man had ever existed. Still, even now, all these years later, when I think about what happened, I still feel rosy-cheeked, merry, and overflowing with love and compassion for my fellow man. And oh yeah, remember when I said this story was fictional? I lied. This all actually happened. Merry Christmas...

– David "g0m" Dolan (@g0m)