The N Team are called to save a suburban video world where people are being turned into mindless zombies through magical ink in their newspapers.
Based on Paperboy.
Tropes:
- Cupid's Arrow: King Hippo and Eggplant Wizard get shot with them, causing them to befriend Captain N and tell him all about their evil plan.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: The generic newspaper headlines before they change into the evil version that mind-controls the reader. The front page story is how there's literally no news to report. One is "Nothing New About Elvis", although how anybody in Videoland might even know he exists...
- Kid Sidekick: Julio, the paperboy, becomes one to Kevin for the episode.
- Mythology Gag: One of the early concepts for a Saturday morning cartoon based on Nintendo games that eventually gave rise to Captain N was a premise called Buddy Boy. It would've been based on Paperboy, but have the Nintendo characters come to life in the real world he inhabited, and the paperboy having to deal with their antics. The setting and characters of this episode reuse those early designs.
- Never Learned to Read: Julio can't read since he's been skipping school to help his family with money, ever since his dad lost his job. This has an unexpected benefit in that he can't read the newspapers so he can't be turned into a zombie, but the N Team convinces him it's an important skill he learn once everything blows over.
- Phlebotinum-Proof Robot: Given how he's basically a giant handheld game system, Game Boy isn't affected with the zombifying ink, thus allowing him to play a key role in not only retrieving the antidote to undo the zombification, but to also save Kevin from becoming a zombie himself after the rest of the N Team fall victim to the ink.
- "Reading Is Cool" Aesop: As expected. Initially inverted, since because he can't read, Julio's the only person who isn't at risk of being zombified.
- Rolling Pin of Doom: An angry housewife who had a window broken by a thrown newspaper (a common occurrence, going by what she says) chases them down with one, and ends up hitting Simon in the head with it.
- Shown Their Work: There's no attention called to it, but if you bother to notice the name of the town newspaper, it's the "Daily Sun", as it was in the actual game.
