Ancient Web: A 1999 Pokémon Never Ending Story Let Everyone Write Ash

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.

Some websites ask readers what happens next. One 1999 Pokémon page let almost anyone supply the answer, even if it contradicted the previous answer completely.

Read the Pokémon Never Ending Story.

The surviving archive says it contains 45 entries, displaying the first thirty at a time. Each contribution has a name or handle, sometimes an email address, and a timestamp. The opening entry, by Eric, is dated August 15, 1999. It finds Ash injured after a terrible battle, grateful that Pikachu apparently saved him from powerful unidentified Pokémon.

Over the following days the story mutates. A new writer invents creatures from the north; another brings in Mewtwo; others insert sudden flashbacks, Team Rocket plots, teleportation, and characters from entirely different media franchises. A joke entry follows another writer's increasingly elaborate plot without attempting to reconcile the contradictions.

The readers were also the continuity problem

The page is a record of early participatory fandom before it was normal to run a dedicated wiki, discussion server or social-media writing account. Visitors could append fiction under individual names without waiting for a single editor to plan the storyline. The mechanism produced energy and inconsistency in roughly equal measure.

One participant signs as Admiral Tailz and writes about captives trapped in a villain's laboratory. Another, Mega 64, introduces comedy so abrupt that subsequent posts comment on the silliness. Someone named HERO contributes only short reactions. That variation is the point: the archive preserves the full collaborative process rather than only the polished results.

The page still has an Add To The Story label and a Next Entries navigation control, but this review establishes only that the text survives; it does not establish that new submissions are being accepted today. Old contributor emails are likewise historical artifacts, not current contact information.

The host site contains other fan writing and comics. A separately completed Ancient Web article covers its Garfield and Friends reference work, not this 1999 interactive Pokémon narrative.

The cultural value is not literary consistency. It is the unmistakable feel of fans discovering that the Web could turn an audience into a room full of competing authors.

Browse the dated contributions in the original collaborative story.

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.