Pokémon Creepypasta A to Z

Pokémon Plague

You're probably reading this because you like Creepypasta stories – I know I, in particular, love Pokémon-related ones. My favourite so far has to be the one about Silver's point of view in the games: Tarnished Gold, I think it was called. I've read many of them, but most (if not all) all seem to have something in common: they are about a previously owned game that they found or bought through some method, whether or not these stories are true.

I haven't had the luck to stumble upon any of these supposedly hacked games (even though I collect the old Game Boy cartridges, and many of them were used), the closest I've come to playing one for real is the fan-created Lost Silver.

While browsing through /x/ I noticed someone made the comment about how all the Pokémon Creepypasta are about the old games, and none of them are third or fourth gen. So I had an idea.

I have a college friend who is studying game programming in hopes to make his own games someday, but he's also an excellent hacker. He's been able to come up with many Action Replay codes that do unusual and generally useless things, but I find it all to be very interesting. What with walking through walls to get to Full Moon / New Moon island, and cheating to get to places. It's all just really fun to experience.

He's even created a few for Pokémon, although mostly for his own benefit. After I got the idea, I called him and wondered if he'd be able to make a hack for my HeartGold game (I had a copy of both HG and SS, but SoulSilver was my "main" game and so I had no useful Pokémon or items on the HG cartridge). I also mentioned it would be a sickly humorous way to pass the time until the English release of Black and White. He wasn't sure how long it would take, but he told me he would love to try such a challenge.

Since I had no other means of reaching him (he lives on campus several hours away), I mailed him my HeartGold cartridge.

About three months later, I received it back in the mail, along with a letter which basically stated that he was sorry it took so long because he was busy with college work, and creating a hack for the game was time-consuming. He also advised me to stop playing the game if I was too freaked out to continue, and also left a little note of all the events which were supposed to take place in the game if curiosity bested me.

I was both eager and nervous to start the game.

After loading it into my Nintendo DS and starting up the power, I noticed something odd. Rather than the usual "Pokémon HeartGold, Nintendo" on the select menu, it said "Pokémon Plague" with "..." as the publisher rather than Nintendo. I didn't know why it was called "Plague" at the time, but it was definitely something eerie.

The game started up as normal, with no changes to the opening animated sequence, except when the three legendary beasts were supposed to appear, there was simply blackness. Even the very end where Suicune was supposed to be looking up at the sky, Suicune was missing. I checked the trainer's profile. The character's name was Gold (no suspicion there, as I had actually named my character that) but the number of hours played was 000:00 and the number of Pokémon in the Pokédex were 0. It said I had 16 badges.

When I loaded the game, Gold was standing in his room, with a Raikou standing beside him as all Pokémon in the first slot of the party do in this game.

There was no music. The room looked normal save for the various spots of black on the wall. The whole room, in fact, seemed darker as if it was nighttime. The Raikou had some black patches on him that weren't his stripes. I checked my party. The unnamed Raikou was poisoned with 4 HP and was accompanied by a genderless Murkrow and a fainted Haunter named GHOST. When I checked their summaries, there didn't seem to be anything wrong with them, appearance-wise. This didn't explain Raikou's strange overworld sprite.