Pokemon Creepypastas A.K.A scary stories

Pokemon death snap

Another one of my absolute favorites.

Ahh, the 90s. Life was so simple back then, for my generation. There was the Game Boy, the Nintendo 64, Animaniacs, Freakazoid....these things were all the highlights of my day, especially if I was doing them with a friend. I wasn't really into computers at the time; my family had dial-up and a shitty Windows 95, which made everything so frustrating. No, my farthest exploits into the digital world involved me and my Nintendo 64. Super Smash Bros., Super Mario 64, Starfox 64, Mario Kart 64, and Pokemon Snap were my favorites.

After I had thoroughly rooted out every secret in these games, the only one that kept my attention was Pokemon Snap. I constantly went through every level trying to get the best possible shot of all the Pokemon featured in that game. What intrigued me was the realism in that game. In all other Pokemon games, everything was synthetic. You couldn't walk amongst the Pokemon and see how they interacted; you could only have them in a ball or following you around. One could argue that Hey You, Pikachu! was more interactive, but in the whole, only certain words are recognized and the scripted non-realistic events gave that game a disgustingly synthetic feel. The first-person 3D view of Pokemon present in Pokemon Sap gave everyone who grew up in the 90s something they could only dream of: a chance to live in a realistic Pokemon world.

So, eventually, we moved to a new house and got a PS2, DSL, and a computer that could run Half-Life, and I moved on the bigger and better things, but would often look back fondly at the simplicity of my childhood. My N64 and all the games were put in a forgotten corner of the basement. This brings my story to more recent events. About a week ago, I was at my friend's house. He is one of those people who are well-equipped and has many things: Wi-Fi, several computers, iPods, a Mac, a drum set, a piano, a Widescreen HDTV, surround-sound, guitars, a PS3, and whatnot. He was one of the people I liked to whoop in Super Smash Bros. back in the day. Anyway, we were hanging out and he had something he wanted to show me. He powered up his Wii and one of the channels was Pokemon Snap, which he proceeded to load. He had recently downloaded it from the Virtual Console. As soon as I heard the fast theme song and camera flashes, I was overcome with an intense wave of nostalgia - something I rarely feel these days - and really wanted to play that game. My friend loaded it up and selected continue.

For everyone unfamiliar with Pokemon Snap, the premise is that Professor Oak needs someone to photograph all the Pokemon on some island with many different environments. As you get more pictures and higher scores, new tools and levels become available to you, such as the apple, which acts as bait, the pester ball, which irritates Pokemon, and the Pokeflute, which wakes sleeping Pokemon. The player controls Todd, a character from the anime, who is riding in a buggy on a set track. The buggy moves at a constant speed, and it is from this buggy that you must take pictures. There are 63 of the original 151 Pokemon in Pokemon Snap. The levels, or 'courses' as Oak calls them, range from a beach to a volcano to caves and rivers. The island is a very diverse place, but even with my extensive playing, the darkest parts had eluded me...until recently, that is.

So, Professor Oak said "welcome" in his very creeper-ish voice recording. I always found it funny how the game had about one word of pre-recorded voice per two or three sentences the text box showed. Reliving our childhoods, we took turns playing a level and seeing who could get the best score. Soon, I had to go home, but I really did not want to stop playing Pokemon Snap.

When I got home, I went down into my basement and dug out the old N64, along with a musty-smelling cardboard box full of all the old cartridges, controllers, memory cards, and rumble packs. God, I missed this system. I hooked the RF cables up to the TV in my room, popped in Pokemon Snap, and shifted the Pokeball into the on position. A little more back-story here: when I got my N64, the Hey, You Pikachu! model was massively on sale at Toys R Us, and my mom decided to get it, as it came with the game. When you turn it on with the Pokeball switch, the Pikachu's cheeks light up, also, his foot acts as the reset switch. It's pretty cool. Anyways, when I turned the console on, the screen remained static. I pulled out the cartridge and checked the chip. Sure enough, it was covered in this black gunk. I spent half an hour getting that nasty stuff off. It was at this point I first noticed something strange: after the substance was removed, the chip was red with black rectangles along the surface, which I assumed were meant to be contacts. None of my other games had this black stuff, and their chips were light brown with the gold-ish contacts.