Pokémon Night

The Pokémon Night event, also known as the Pokémon Invasion, occurred on December 27, 2008, shortly after midnight. Not to be confused with April Fool's jokes, this was a random joke event hosted by TJ09 as a one-off occurrence and not tied to any annual events.

The origins of Pokémon Night began in the IRC, where members were in fact jokingly comparing some of the dragons to Pokémon. Kila grabbed a few of the mentioned Pokémon sprites, passed them to TJ09, and so the event rolled out onto the site. Many of the included sprites were suggested by members in the IRC, and the list grew as the "event" continued.

The event rolled out slowly, starting with Water Dragons changing to images of Gyarados, instead of their normal sprite. People on the forums began discussing the event and making speculations; someone suggested Red Dragons should be Charizard and shortly after, this was then also changed on the site. This rollout went on for almost 3 hours until the site went down for maintenance at 3 AM EST. It came back up a little after 4 AM EST and the Pokémon hung around for a few hours more, only to disappear and have everything return to normal at about 8 AM EST.

In addition to certain breeds having their sprites changed to Pokémon sprites, it was also noted that Missingno (who is usually just a cloud of fog) had changed to the real MissingNo sprite from Pokémon's video game series. (Read more...). Later, it turned into an even stranger sprite that was apparently spliced by Pokemonfan13 herself, who commented the following:

Many players who objected to this event complained that Dragon Cave would be sued by Nintendo for the use of their copyrighted sprites on the site, leading many to think Dragon Cave would be permanently closed down as a result. Initial ideas regarding why this event was occurring were that the site was hacked, tying to the theories objectors had regarding the use of copyrighted sprites and the possibility of Nintendo suing Dragon Cave and permanently closing it. A few members suggested it may have been something to celebrate Pokemonfan13's birthday, though this was debunked after users mentioned her birthday is not around that time of the year.