The 90's Kid [Nostalgic-Cozy Time Travel Adventures]
by digiGekko
Now with snack-sized chapters!
If you were given the chance, would you go back and revisit your childhood? Maybe you can't embody your younger self, but what about seeing the city where you grew up with fresh perspective? Would you poke around, find the secrets you missed, see what others were up to long ago while you weren't looking?
One morning, Wes walked through a mysterious time portal in his pantry door that brought him back to his halcyon days. He was ten years old in 1995. The hours were long and childhood stretched to the horizon. All he needed were his buddies, video games, and TV. Even school felt like a part of an endless summer, the playground a place where friendships and legends were born. He once ruled in a kingdom of kids. How could all of that ever end?
But they did, and Wes learned little from observing it all happen again. After a year in the past, he returns to 2020. Only to then go back a second time, with his young nephew Jace. His plan: convince the jaded kid that the decade was something special, and insert him into his old friend group, where he can tinker with a few things that will surely give his uncle Wes a better future than the one he found himself in.
Is it a little self-centered? You bet. Is there a chance for some actual self-improvement and reflection on the past through his adult eyes? That, too. But there's also time for some fun on the side, games to be played and cartoons to be watched. It's not infinite, though, so better make the best of it. All that pizza isn't going to eat itself. And if they're not careful, those who enforce the laws around time travel will eat it for them.
When you need a break from all the LitRPG stories, you can pull up a couch and chill with Wes and the gang. It's a cozy ride, but there are going to be some big bumps in this old familiar road.
And what the heck is under the King Arcade amusement park?
Created as a Valice.net project, The 90's Kid is a free, mostly light-hearted and nostalgic story designed to transport the reader through time to the 1990s, whether or not they lived through the decade, but anyone with a childhood can enjoy the adventure. The movies and side stories increase the scope even further.
Contains mild, occasional profanity and a few scary moments.
Note that The 90's Kid uses a slightly bigger text size than usual. This is to more closely preserve the original formatting.
It is also imagined and written as an animated series. Try visualizing it like you would a cartoon!
Want to jump in and read something faster-paced? The movie-novellas are fairly accessible without knowing the main series first.
Website: 90skidstory.com
Art talk: royalroad.com/forums/thread/155692
Cast: https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/122973/chapter/3567558
Map of Royal Valley for Tourists and Locals Alike: https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/chapter/3563071
Get sneak peeks at upcoming side stories and artwork for Another 90's Kid on my Patreon page!
Season One is undergoing revisions! If you don't want to wait to read, no problem—the story isn't changing at all, I'm just giving the first sixteen chapters another coat of polish after all these years. This will be a gradual project as I'll be alternating it with editing on other stories.
Current progress: 9/16 - Halfway done!
Now slowly writing the third movie, aiming for a November release. Also currently working on a large project set in the same universe, but I will write some side stories along the way.
More details and features:
🌐 On the website, you can read the chapters in a flippable format if you prefer. Also included are curated playlists, a cast page, and a lot more.
🖥 No AI usage. Wes would hate that.🧓👦 Lots of jaded nephew and tired uncle buddy-comedy style bonding.🍕 A huge cast of fun characters and plenty of banter and hanging out like the kind you had with childhood friends.👾 A magical realistic take on childhood written and imagined like 1990s cartoons. Think Hey Arnold!, Recess, or Rugrats. But then we go way beyond the playground and explore a wider world.🤜🤛 A focus on self-improvement and relationships. If you find someone hard to tolerate, they'll probably end up redeeming themselves in time.⏳ Time travel shenanigans begin to pick up as the series goes on. A moderate bit of timeline manipulation and fixing mistakes.👮 All this time travel isn't going unwatched or unpunished. The TMB, a regulatory department in the 29th century, has taken note of local anomalies and is undertaking an investigation in the background.🎨 Every chapter has original, non-AI artwork!📺 Chapters in the main series (not the follow-up movie-sized novellas) have retro commercial breaks!🏞 Detailed locations like the school, houses, arcades, a mall, summer camp, and more. Explore with our gang as they grow up in the city of Royal Valley, and the peaceful sprawling neighborhood of Desert Tree, where they have water and laser gun battles. The coolest place of all, revisited often, is King Arcade, the video game amusement park!9️⃣0️⃣ Didn't grow up in the 80s or 90s? No problem. Don't feel intimidated. There's plenty of descriptions for things you may know nothing about.🕰 We meet the adult versions of most of the main kids, if you're into time skip stuff to see how people turn out.
🛰 Read the story long enough, and you'll get to visit a cool sci-fi futuristic city, and even space!📏 Every chapter is the same size, so you know what to expect. But something new happens in every new chapter, so you also don't know what to expect, or where we're going today. Lots of fun surprises!