The NES Series:

Stack Up

"Thanks for agreeing to come with me today, Jazz," Villager said.

"Sure thing, Vil," the Wii Fit Trainer replied. "What was Olimar doing today anyway?"

"He had to do community service for damages to a construction site." Jazz raised an eyebrow. "Long story."

The two newcomers walked up to the door of a rickety old, seemingly abandoned, laboratory. Villager rapped softly on the crooked steel door. They waited patiently for someone to answer.

"So what game are you reviewing today," Jazz asked.

"Those two R.O.B. games Gyromite and Stack Up," Villager said.

"Oh," Jazz said. She opened her mouth to say more, but the door swung open just then. A man with thick red hair and wearing a lab coat greeted them.

"Hello," the man said. "Are you two here with Mario?"

Villager and Jazz looked at each other. "Mario?" Villager asked. "No, we were here to talk to Professor Hector about Smash Five."

The red-haired man squinted, as if a little confused. "Oh," he said. "Well, come on in then. Professor Hector's in a meeting right now. I'm his assistant, Professor Vector. This way please."

Villager and Jazz followed the man down a dank hallway that smelled slightly of mold. "We don't get many visitors around here very often," the man said. "Our games weren't very popular."

"Weren't they really buggy," Villager asked, "and the R.O.B. accessory didn't work very well."

"Yeah," Professor Vector said. "That's sometimes the price you pay for working with new and experimental technology. But at least R.O.B. got to go on to be in Smash, am I right?"

They stopped at a door with a plaque that read "PROFESSOR HECTOR." Voices could be heard through the wall. Professor Vector opened the door slightly and poked his head in.

"Excuse me, Hector," he said. "But we've got a couple more visitors."

Vector pushed the door open so that Villager and Jazz could see into the room. It was an office about the size of two broom closets pushed together with a tiny window on the far wall. Seated around a table in the middle of the room were an old man with white hair and a lab coat, R.O.B. 01, and Mario himself.

"Villager? Jazz?" Mario asked, sitting up. "What are you two doing here?"

Villager held up the notepad Olimar usually carried. "We were doing the NES Series," he said.

Mario looked confused for a second. "Oh, right. This was on your list, wasn't it? Sorry about that. I had to meet with R.O.B. and Hector here about something important. Where's Olimar?"

"He had a run-in with your old friend Spike," Villager said.

"Spike?" Mario squinted. "I remember that name. Do you mean the idiot from the movie?"

The other five in the room collectively groaned at the mention. "No, not that one," Villager said. "The foreman from Wrecking Crew."

"Oh, yeah," Mario said. "I forgot about him."

"So, what's this important thing you guys are discussing?" Jazz asked.

Mario considered for a moment. "Well, I guess there's no point keeping it from you. Come in, sit down."

Villager and Jazz stepped into the room and sat on a couch crammed near the wall. "I'm just going to get back to work, alright, Hec?" Vector said.

"Sure thing, Vec," Hector said. "Thank you."

Vector stepped back into the hall and shut the door.

After he was gone, Mario turned to the newcomers. "Have you two ever heard of the Video Game Crash of '83?"

Villager and Jazz shook their heads. "No, I thought not," Mario said. "That would have been a bit before your time. I was there though, as was Donkey Kong, Pac-Man, Mr. Game & Watch, and even Hector here as a designer and developer. Basically, before the multiverses were formed as you know it, we all lived in a smaller, more simple video game multiverse. Atari ran most of it, but there were a few others here and there on the outskirts. Everything was just fine until the glitches came."

"Glitches?" Jazz asked, looking at Villager.

Mario nodded. "Strange creatures, living embodiments of pure chaos that destroy everything they touch, scattering it into its basic elements. The glitches overran the multiverse before we even knew what was happening. Everything was destroyed. A few of us survived, and together we were able to rise from the ashes and reboot the multiverse. Most of these games you've been reviewing so far were part of that reconstruction process. Professor Hector and Professor Vector built the R.O.B.s in order to safeguard the new multiverses from the same thing happening again, and Master Hand and Crazy Hand were created in order to seal away their leader Tabuu and most of his minions. A few leaked through the cracks here and there, but they were never serious."

"But now, both the Hands and my people are dead," R.O.B. 01 said. "Our world and all worlds are now vulnerable to invasion once more."

"But, isn't Tabuu dead too?" Jazz asked. "Will they still attack without their leader?"

"Some evidence suggests that they have a new leader," Professor Hector said, pulling at his white beard. "Over the past few months, glitches have started to appear more and more frequently. Before they seemed to be mostly random, but now they are starting to feel like calculated assaults."

"I spoke to Sonic a few days ago," Mario said. "He told me an army of glitches ravaged his most recent game, Sonic Boom, rendering it nearly unplayable and altering his and his friends' appearances. The Pokemon universe has seen a recent wave of Missingno sightings, some players have gone missing in the forests of Hyrule, and even our most recent Smash tournament suffered from a pretty serious glitch early on that we managed to patch up."

"All of these things on their own aren't particularly serious," Hector said, "But it has been enough to make those of us who remember concerned. R.O.B. here has been working with me to develop a new system to protect the multiverse, and Vector has been working on a project to save the data of those in the multiverse should the worst happen."

"In the meantime," Mario said. "We've been studying those two glitches Hector keeps contained within his lab to learn everything we can about their kind."

"You have two glitches?" Villager asked.

Professor Hector nodded. "Tried to invade our game Stack Up," he said. "Vector, R.O.B., and I had to work together to catch them. Would you like to see them?"

He started to stand up from his chair. For the briefest second, a ripple seemed to pass through the world. Everything became fuzzy and distorted before immediately snapping back to normal.

"What was that?" Jazz started to ask.

Alarms started to sound throughout the building as red lights flashed. Professor Hector and Mario shared a horrified glance. The two spoke at the same time. "They've escaped."

TO BE CONTINUED . . .