The Videogame

Ninth story in the Fantastic Dreams collection.

"No, not that way, JD!" yelled Vin as JD made the character on the TV screen turn left and head towards a green hill.

Suddenly JD's character found himself against a high mesh fence unable to go any farther as there were no big holes in it and it wasn't climbable.

"Told you so," said Vin.

"It's not fair!" complained JD and dropped the game controller onto the carpet in anger.

"Don't give up so soon, you'll get better at it with practice, Son," said Buck as he walked into the room with tumblers of orange juice on a tray. Buck set the tray down on the coffee table and sat down on the couch to watch the boys play the video game.

Vin picked up the controller and started to show JD how to play the level, talking him through each step.

Vin looked around him at the strange place in which he now found himself standing. It looked just like the place where Mario started in the video game. He saw the bridge that led to the castle a small distance away, so headed in that direction.

He finally reached the castle that looked very tall; the door was a lot taller than a normal one and Vin wondered if he was shorter. Things looked a lot bigger than at home. The boy pushed the castle door and it opened, so Vin walked inside. The castle in the game didn't have a drawbridge like most castles, but Vin just decided it was a different type of castle.

The boy looked around inside the castle. It was exactly like Princess Toadstool's one with doors and stairs leading from the main room to other areas. "I wonder if I can go to the lands from the game?" Vin asked himself aloud.

"Not without me, you ain't," answered a voice and JD jumped down from the ceiling and rolled just before he hit the ground.

"JD? How did you get here?"

"I don't know, Vin; I just got here," answered the boy who didn't seem surprised to suddenly be there.

"Come on; I want to explore," said Vin as he walked toward the stairs that were opposite the front door.

"It's dang'rous though, Vin. There's bad guys everywhere since Bowser taked Princess Toadstool." Bowser was a large evil turtle, while Princess Toadstool was the human-looking girl who ruled Mushroom Kingdom outside the castle.

Vin walked back to JD, grabbed the younger boy's hand, and pulled him up the stairs. Vin then pushed open one of the big double doors at the top of the stairs and led JD into the large hallway there. This hallway had large paintings hanging on the walls that led into other lands, all unique.

"Which land shall we go to first?" asked Vin who wanted to explore all the lands at once.

"I like Wet-Dry Land," replied JD. Wet-Dry Land had platforms, structures, buildings and lots of water. Special rainbow-colored diamonds dotted around that land could be touched to raise the water to different levels. The land was quite hard to complete levels in because you needed to raise the water to different levels to access different parts of it. JD had found that level quite easy though.

"Okay, I'll go first. Wait until I'm all the way through the picture then jump in."

Vin jumped into the picture and found himself at the star selection screen. You had to collect a large gold star to complete a level and each star could be obtained by carrying out different tasks; sometimes selecting a different star, changed the level slightly. You could only select most stars once you had won the one before it, though.

JD jumped into the picture and appeared beside Vin, suspended in mid-air the same as his brother. "We can only choose Star One 'cause we ain't won any stars yet," said the younger boy.

Vin wondered how they could choose the star but then saw it highlighted - someone else must control the selection screen.

Vin and JD dropped out of the sky into Wet-Dry Land, straight into the water. A large spider-like creature of several colors swam toward them, so the two boys swam toward the ramp that curled upward toward a brick-covered area.

"Where's the nearest star, JD?" asked Vin, thinking it would be cool to actually win one of the large stars.

"We-ell, none of them are easy to get from here. There's one on the spinning platform at the top of the level, but we'd need to walk 'cross the plank and avoid two 'lectric ball creatures. I've only won that star once."

"Hey, we could be invincible for a while if we broke the blue block!" remembered Vin.

"The blue block's in the mini-town through that high hole over there - there's not 'nough time to get 'vincible and come back here, I tried it b'fore," answered JD sadly.

"How do we get through the hole from here?"

"We'd need to get the pink man up there to open the canon-hole," said JD, pointing high up and across to where the pink man was. To get up that high they'd need to raise the water level and it wasn't easy to get to the diamond switch for that height.

"This is hopeless, let's get out of this land," said Vin in despair.

"I'm not sure we can, someone would have to press start then exit the level," said JD.

"If they control the selections, how come they don't control where we move as well?"

"That is kinda weird, but I'm glad we can move ourselfs," said JD; he wouldn't want to be unable to avoid getting hurt by enemies in this game.

"We'll have to win a star to exit," realized Vin.

"Okay, we gots to get the one at the top then," said JD. "Come on!"

Vin and JD began to push a large block until it was below and to the side of a higher platform, then they climbed on top. The two boys jumped up, one at a time. Then they carefully ran past the large round purple creature that grabbed people and threw them.

"Now we gots to carefully walk along this plank but run past the 'lectric guys," instructed JD when they had climbed onto the end of the thin plank. The two boys started along the plank and managed to successfully pass both of the circling electric balls.

Then they jumped from one rotating round platform to another until they were on the large round one with the large yellow star in the middle.

JD ran forward, straight into the star and the short tune played signaling successful completion of the level.

"Now what?" asked Vin as he and JD waited and nothing seemed to happen. They were still stuck in the land.

"We should appear back in the castle soon," said JD.

"JD?" asked Vin as he tapped his brother on the shoulder and the boy turned toward him. "What if the game freezes like it does for us sometimes and we have to wait fer someone to reset it?"

"Don't be silly."

Suddenly, a tall, beautiful blonde woman with a mid-blue full-length dress appeared on the platform beside them. "Would you boys like to go home?" she asked in a kind-sounding voice.

"Who are you?" asked Vin suspiciously.

"I am the Nintendo fairy. I appear when Nintendo games become stuck."

"I told you it was stuck, JD." Vin smiled, glad that it seemed that his idea had been right.

"I will wave my wand and you will both wake up in your own beds, you must, however, close your eyes for the magic to work."

Vin and JD both closed their eyes simultaneously and waited.

Vin opened his eyes and found that he was back lying in his own bed. He breathed a sigh of relief. That was the weirdest dream he'd ever had as far as he could remember.

The End
Next story: The Duck and the Rabbit