My Pokepastas - 2019-2020

To Meet Again (1/6/19)

People always have their own ways of playing Pokemon. Some of them just focus on the fun and the bonds they form with fictional animals, some seek to master complicated strategies, and some cheat for what they want. I was a bit lazy and firmly in the last category, but I had a friend who was always seeking a greater challenge. He had been playing Pokemon games for a long time and had to add on self-imposed rules to get any fun out of them any more.

So, for the few who've never heard of a Nuzlocke challenge, the rules are like this: You can only catch the first Pokemon on each route, you cannot use healing items in battle, you must battle on "Set" instead of "Shift" mode, and if your Pokemon faints, it "dies", so you must release it. Black out, and it's game over. People mix and match the rules to suit their tastes, but my friend usually just played the "vanilla" Nuzlocke experience.

He'd tell me about his Nuzlocke escapades and the stories he gave to each Pokemon. But eventually, he lost interest in Pokemon altogether. He gave me a couple of his old cartridges, passed others to other friends, and a year or two later his family moved away because his parents hated the cold and loved the idea of Florida.

I rarely touched his Pokemon cartridges. They were finished games, and it felt disrespectful for me to delete his save files, especially after he had made stories and personalities for each of his Pokemon. So I just sort of stored them away. Until I lost the case where I kept all of MY Pokemon games one winter. I think it might still be along the road somewhere, but god knows I'll never find it.

And so I had nothing but my old friend's already-completed Nuzlocke games. I figured I would mess around a little bit on his Heartgold, though I wouldn't delete the save.

I still don't know what to think of what happened afterwards.

The game booted up normally, and the save was normal - though my friend had named the file "Acer" instead of his own name since he had always liked giving his trainers their own names - though I found it odd that the last save was in the House of Memories, in Lavender Town. As far as I knew, there wasn't really any reason to go there.

The save loaded with Acer in front of a grave, with his Furret named Silk behind him. Silk was the first non-starter Pokemon my friend had caught, and he had been a staple of the team the whole way into the Hall of Fame, even outliving his Meganium, Fleur, despite all odds. I still remember the night he spent over at my house playing and his shocked cry when one of Lance's Pokemon landed a critical fire attack at the wrong time and brought Fleur down. I wouldn't say he was a complete wreck, but he was definitely very attached, and while he hid his face from me then I swore he cried a little when he released Fleur. So, while it still seemed odd to do, I guessed maybe in some way he had went here to pay respects to his starter.

The first thing I did was talk to Silk, since I had a habit of regularly checking talking Pokemon. "Silk is nuzzling your arm sadly... It looks like it's reminiscing." I had never seen that dialogue before, and it was kind of weird as is, but I never really spent a lot of time in here so I figured it was location-specific dialogue I just hadn't gotten while playing my own game.

Aside from that, everything was mostly normal. I would run around to different places in the game to figure out what things my friend hadn't done on this save. I tried to keep Action Replay shenanigans to a minimum out of respect, though I admit I still ended up using the occasional instant capture code or EXP multiplier. Even if strictly speaking the game was mine now, "Acer's" team never really felt like my Pokemon.

There were odd things here and there, though - every so often I'd load my save to find myself somewhere else. Usually the House of Memories, sometimes Route 29 or New Bark Town, occasionally some different place entirely with no real pattern. Acer's party would sometimes change while I wasn't playing, as well - usually nothing more than Silk moving from a different slot to the front of the party, but sometimes the team lineup would entirely change to the exact team registered in the Hall of Fame - except with a completely blank slot where Fleur used to be. Part of me tried to rationalize this as something wrong with the internal battery or maybe a strange side effect of my cheating, but... I knew that would be too much of a coincidence.