Our story begins simply enough. Angela invited her boyfriend, Steven and her two best friends, Zelda and Antonio, to her house one afternoon to hang out for a while. As Usual, Zelda, Antonio, Steve and Angela raced to the game room in the basement of Angela’s house. Everyone grabbed a controller and a seat, while Angela hooked up her Nintendo 64, and put in the game Super Mario 64. As she pushed the ‘on’ switch, the four friends were suddenly gone!!
The next thing they knew, they were all in the grand entrance of Princess Toadstool’s Castle!!!! Though it was the first time they themselfs had actually stood within its' walls, the four friends had seen the castle many times before during their many travels guiding Mario through it’s many passages. The brightly colored walls were the same as they were in Super Mario 64. The big wooden stood strong ahead of them. The walls were painted with a background from the classic 8-bit Mario games on the NES, and it continued to the ceiling, which was painted like a normal sky with the sun directly over head. Plush red carpet that had a simple yet elegant gold trim, also coved all the stairs in the castle, lead from the front door of the castle along the walls, up a short flight of steps to adjacent doors on the left and right sides of the somewhat triangular room. The four confused friends stood on the on the small octagonal sun rug that sat between the grand staircase and the red carpet that lead from the front door. Anywhere that wasn’t carpet was the black and white tile flooring. Up the main staircase was a big door with a huge lock on it. To the left was another big door, only with a star on it (this door used to be Bowser’s first outpost in Super Mario 64, and you could enter after collecting your first eight stars). Across the room, on the other side of the door at the top at the grand staircase, was a regular wooden door what lead to the Princess’ Secret Slide. However, it wasn’t much of a secret, now that Mario found it. As Antonio, Zelda, Steven, and Angela tried to sort out the situation, Mario, Toad, and Princess walked down the main staircase. "Well, hello everyone", a familiar voice said behind the group of teens.
"Whoa!!" The group spun around to face Mario and friends, "This doesn’t even make sense to ME!! What’s going on here!?" Zelda responded to the Princess’ cheerful greeting, as she looked around at the groups' computer-generated environment.
"I’d believe THAT any day!! You’re the unconventional and illogical one in the group!" Antonio pondered, examining his digitally animated hands and feet.
"Just chill", Angela said with a calm sigh, "You people don’t have to have a cow or anything, just listen to what Peach has to say."
"Thank you Angela," Princess said with a slight curtsy, "We have brought you here with the ‘Powers of the Stars’ because our world is in grave danger! Bowser, Gannon, Gruntilda the witch, and other villains from N64 games have teamed up to take over the Nintendo Universe."
"Even my brother Wario is in it!" Mario said with a sigh.
"So the Princess, Mario and I have decided to give each of you something to help out!" Toad smiled.
"Well," Princess said with a giggle, "Mario will give you your super powers. Toad will give you the items and information that you need, and I will give you any white magic help I can when you stop by one of the special option stations in the games."
"Yeah." Angela stated calmly.
"Alright!" Steven cheered.
"Cool!" Antonio said joyously.
"Alphanumeric!!" exclaimed Zelda.
Almost instantaneously, her three friends complained. Zelda was notorious for such language. She saw nothing wrong with it, so she just looked on in a dazed state of confusion.
"Well, let’s get going, we’ve got a lot of work to do," Toad said, pointing upstairs to the door at the top.
"Let’s go!" exclaimed Mario, running back upstairs.
"Peachy!" Princess said happily, skipping behind Mario.
"Yahoo!!" Toad cheered, in close pursuit of Princess and Mario.
Steven, Zelda, Antonio, and Angela followed them up several flights of stairs to a special storage room in the castle. It was a fairly good-sized room, and all the walls were mirrored. It was filled with different types of armor, weapons, items, plus a special contraption in the back of the room, which covered the entire wall! It was, or what looked to be, was an old super computer, with a control consol on the right side of it. To the left, four huge glass-like capsules, big enough to hold a person, were connected to the machine. A little to the right of the capsules on the side of the super computer, was a sliding door, probably a compartment used to put different things into. The group walked up to the weird machine. "This is how we will be communicating with you and sending items and other things to you". Mario said gleefully; putting on the headset that was lying on the control panel, "But before we can get into all that, you’ve got to get geared up and get your powers, too! They’ll help you defend yourself in the games."
Steven quickly began his usual onslaught of questions, "So what exactly are these ‘powers?’"
"Please, before I explain anymore, each of you step into one of those capsules," Mario never stopped typing codes, formulas and equations.
The many lights on the contraption began to flash and flicker. The many parts of the machine’s interior buzz, beeped, bopped, and purred the more he typed. Not even brainy Antonio could keep up with Mario’s combinations! As Mario’s hands continued to zip over the keyboard, Antonio, Zelda, Steven, and Angela, confused and afraid, got into the capsules. After a short while, or at least long enough for Princess to get her hair and nails done, they were finally done. They exited the capsules, as the machine slowly powered down; looking and feeling no different than when they entered.
"Well," Steven said, as if repeating himself, "you were saying?"
"Each of you just received the powers and skill similar to that of a heroic character from a Nintendo 64 game. "Toad answered.
Zelda asked, "You’re kidding right? Aren’t we supposed to feel the power raging uncontrollably through us?"
Peach answered, "No, after you train you will feel and control your newly found strengths".
"Awesome!" Steven yelled jumping for joy.
"I’m glad you think so, because when you’re outside the games, you can still use your power. However, you’re not to use them unless you are absolutely forced to!" Toad continued, "Plus, outside the games you’ll, of course, look like yourself but you will have the same abilities."
"I think we’re all okay with those!" Steven shrugged; the room erupting with laughter.
After the room returned to silence, Mario continued where Toad left off, "Zelda you have the power of electricity. Basically, in the game you’re the Pokémon Pikachu, with super speed," Mario picked up a clipboard and started reading the list of powers to the teens, "Steven, your powers are the essence of all the athlete-type characters from Wave Race, NFL Blitz, plus other sports and racing games. You can also control water. Antonio, you have super intelligence, because you’ll need it when you play strategy games. Along with that, you have received physic powers and ‘push power’ (Also known as the ‘Jedi’s Force’ like in the Star Wars adventures). I almost forgot, you have the ability to throw and manipulate fire, like me. Angela you are a ‘Jack of all trades’ so to speak. Plus, you’re a master martial artist and swordsman, or swordswoman in your case. You’re a lot like Link from the Legend of Zelda series, with a pinch of Fighting Arts and Super Smash Brothers," there was a short pause, "Any questions?"
The room went dead silent. You probably could have heard a pin drop in that room! To them, it almost sounded like a cross between Power Rangers, Pokémon, and Sailor Moon!! Between the joy and excitement, reality was beginning to set in, these teenage comrades had gotten the abilities of their favorite Nintendo 64 characters. Was this a dream, or was this really happening? Sometime later, Steven spoke up, "Did our parents lead you to set this up to scare so we’d quit playing video games? They’re always complaining about that."
"No silly," Princess said giggling, "We researched what each of you like, and based you powers on that!!" A long sigh of relief echoed through the room, but they were still a little edgy. (Wouldn’t you be, if you were zapped into the middle of a video game?!) Angela was next to speak, "Well, in that case, what’s up for grabs next? So far, this is very enjoyable!" her friends nodded in agreement.
As the band of friends followed Toad across the room, he finished up his part of the lecture. Not only did he answer many of the questions, but also discussed mode of transportation they would be receiving. They had arrived at a few large racks of surfboards; just a stone’s throw from the super computer.
Toad walked up to the rack in front of them and asked Zelda to pick one, as he pointed to a section full of different types of Pokémon boards. After a few minutes of searching, Zelda finally found the perfect surfboard. As she yelled over and over again indicating her desired board, Toad pulled it down. The surfboard was metallic yellow with a Pikachu doing electric shock on the front and Ash, Misty, and Brock, the three main characters from the show, with ‘Pokémon’ written under them.
Mario took the board from the little mushroom, as Toad motioned for the others to follow him onward. As they walked down another corridor, Steven asked, "When did all this get here? I don’t remember this in the game."
"Well," Mario said, "After we defeated Bower, we remodeled the castle. Notice that this storage room used to be the room with mirrored walls."
"It did look like it, but I wasn’t exactly sure". Zelda commented as they strolled.
They continued until they reached the main entrance. Then turned to a door that was on the side of the titanic staircase they first took when they came in. Next, they continued to follow Toad down the hallway were Big Boo used to hang out and to the back of the castle. After walking past the star shaped fountain in the small enclosed garden, they came to a small wooden stable. The back wall was carved out of the mountain behind the castle. The stable was painted bright red with pure white siding, and had a rich mahogany roof, similar to a regular barn. They walked in, and to the four teenagers’ astonishment, the stable held fifty to one hundred horses! There was every type of horse imaginable: gray, pink, brown, silver and everything in between! "Knowing that you love horses," Princess said smiling,
"And that you’re a big Zelda fan, we thought you would enjoy having a horse, Angela."
"Wow," she shrugged, overwhelmed. "There are so many, how can I choose just one?"
"We figured that you would say that," Princess frowned, just then Toad walked up leading Epona, the lovable, energetic, rusty brown horse from Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, "so we thought we’d reserve her for you".
"Oh, my gosh!" Angela was ecstatic, "Ever since I played The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, I’ve
