Colour Blind (Pokemon)

Colour Blind
============

Endless stories seem to present themselves of hacked games and such. Some more believable than others, some leave you questioning who would go out of their way to edit their own version of a game, just to spook a few unfortunate victims who happen to come to possess one. I've never made an attempt to acquire one myself, however what I am about to tell you all is the story of how one game, managed to find it's way into my hands.

I had decided to purchase one of the original Blue/Red/Yellow cartridges to play purely for the Nostalgic side of pleasure, so I made my way to the city, and found myself at the closest game shop I could find, Toy World.

Toy World outlets aren't dedicated to selling gaming merchandise, but I did recall seeing them sell games in the past. After a good browse of the shop, I found nothing, leaving with nothing in hand but some minor information which I acquired from one of the Shop clerks, who informed me that I would have better luck finding older games at GameTraders.

So I made my way there, obvious patience in my stride, I was feeling confident that I would find what I so desired with every step. I arrived at GameTraders, a very small shop in comparison to Toy World, for that I found myself feeling grateful. I felt excitement kick in when I spotted a Pokémon cartridge case, only to find out it was a copy of Silver, with no other Pokémon related GameBoy Colour cartridges in sight. My search spanned over most of the day, being informed one way, only to be sent another.

Patience wore thin, til I decided to head home with no spoils of hard searching. I arrived home, disappointed after all the effort, so I gave in to online purchasing. I lucked out with finding a copy of Yellow being sold 3 blocks away from my home. I got hold of the owner, who was a girl who sounded no older than myself, 17-18. I practically ran out the door, hopped on my pushbike and made haste to the address.

When I arrived, I knocked on the door, to be answered by a relatively attractive girl,her only flaws seemed to be her unkept appearance. Bed hair, with clothes that crossed the borderline of being considered home-comfort to homeless rags, but it did not matter. I gave her the money, she gave me the game. Something felt eerie from how silent she was, vocally and physically. As I walked away after giving thanks, she mumbled out "You won't save him". I paused, confused at her implication, then left with another praise of thanks.

I arrived home, still curious as to what she meant by "You won't save him", it made me feel uneasy. But, nonetheless, I immediately started up Yellow on my trusty GameBoy Advance SP. That's when things got interesting. Normal titles appeared in their very nostalgic order, but the intro did not play. It went straight to the menu, which simply had the Games title, with no Pikachu in sight, only a boy with black hair, crouched with his arms extended, face hidden in shadow, facial features unable to be made out.

I instantly found disappointment. A hacked game, presumably one made to creep the victim out. But, I had gained no other copy of the game, I paid for this, and I was curious as to how this version was laid out. Hitting start, the basic title came up, except continue was the only available option of gameplay. Naturally, I hit continue. The game faded in to the lead characters bedroom, where the trainer was seated, staring amongst paintings and a map on the wall.

I decided to check out this playthrough's spoils of gameplay, so I brought up the start menu, and noticed the name. "Dain". A nice name, I admit, not a cliched name such as Red, or Yellow in this case. Moving on, I checked my trainer card, starting trainer cash, zero badges, everything seemed at norm, except for the portrait of the trainer.

As mentioned earlier on, a black hair boy, a very defined Japanese hairstyle, swept over to a side, all spiky and awesome, I found it to be in my favor. He was expressionless. No smile, a bare featured face, with dark eyes, and a stare that left you curious to his story. I found myself wanting to play through this hack, wanting to explore the unexplored, based in a childhood game.

I proceeded to check my Pokémon team, naturally finding a level 5 Pikachu, nicknamed "Ladie". I found that interesting, but she was a standard, level 5 Pikachu. After I was downstairs, I spotted my mother, who had a different hairstyle to the preset version, but seemed all the same, with dialogue etc. etc. I left the house, which was the house on the left, and Pallet town seemed to be normal. So I explored, my rivals house first, which was set-up as a normal NPC house, no rival sign out the front, but after speaking with the mother, it seemed Dain was a friend to the girl who lived here, named "Delia". I went upstairs, walked over and started a conversation with Delia. She seemed glad to see Dain, ranting on about how cute Ladie was.

She then prompted me a question, "Do you think I should get a Pokemon too? Become traveling partners, wouldn't it be fun?"

I chose yes, then shortly after her immediate ecstatic reaction, SNAP! The power turns off on the GameBoy. Frustration and confusion hit me at the same time, but I stubbornly turned the game back on. It jumped directly to the menu screen, with the title, and Dain standing with Delia, showing a small smile upon his face, which in turn made me smile. It seemed I lucked out on a hacked game with a luring progressive character storyline! I knew this game had me, I was hooked, I spent hours over the next few days traveling and collecting badges, all the while with Delia as company!

The storyline was laid out exactly the same as the default storyline, however fame of Dains battling efforts seemed to grow. Every NPC seemed to recognize him! I loved that Dain would occasionally speak, a rare feat in Pokémon games, almost a childhood dream in fact. He progressively got happier as I pushed him through the game, the occasional change of face on his trainer card, and his relationship with Delia seemed to grow more in depth after every gym. I made Ladie strong. She was by all rights my main,and was ahead the rest of my party, which only featured the obtainable free Charmander/Bulbasaur/Squirtle through the game.

I continued on, pushing through, until I arrived at Victory Road, where Delia asked to meet up later, as she wished to visit a friend in Viridian. I decided to see what would happen if I said no, so no I said. She seemed down at the reply, and asked if I wished to go with her. So I did, I wanted to get more in depth with Delia's storyline as well as Dain's. So we arrived at the house with basic NPC's, which made no special dialogue with me, so I left, and decided to give Viridian gym a look around, seeing as it was the final gym I had yet to conquer, and noticeably the one I had to forgot to challenge in my haste to the Elite Four.

That's when I was prompted by a caretaker of the Gym. "Do you wish to hold a strong position in Viridian? Possibly as Viridians Gym Leader? Viridian City lost it's previous Gym leader several years ago, he passed on, may he rest in peace. But nonetheless we require a new Gym Leader. You have grown renown Dain, word of your strength has reached nearly all of Kanto. It is only natural that the title of Viridian Gym Leader be given to someone of your attire?"

I said yes. Good God I said yes, I had never felt excited as I did at that moment. I had always wondered what being a Gym Leader would be like in one of these games. Ignoring all remarks I've heard over the years that all you would do is stand aimlessly waiting for the odd trainer to challenge you. Then, without warning, SNAP! Off went the power once more. Seeming less surprised than the first time it had happened, I turned on the console, and was directed to the menu.

There stood Dain, in a completely new attire, a dark grey outfit, suited to the Gym of Ground of course, I liked the look of it. Dain was also surrounded by a new party. Rhydon, Graveller, Kangaskhan, a very fitting party. However Ladie remained there, by Dains leg. But she looked...sullen. Sad, perhaps sad to the change? By then it dawned on me that Delia was missing from the image. In fact Dain's expression showed a weak smile. Something must have happened between the two when I accepted the role as a Gym Leader, so I hastily clicked continue. It faded in to the Gym, Dain standing there in all his glory, however I had no control over him. Then I realized this was a cinematic. It faded in, and out of countless battles, seemingly depressing 8-bit music playing in the meanwhile. Eventually, it faded to a black screen altogether, and a "One year later" appeared on the screen.

Then, vision of the game faded in, to nothing more than Lavender Towns Pokémon Tower, where Dain stood in front of a tombstone, Delia standing behind him, a step to the right. "I am so sorry Dain... she must've been everything to you.."

It was then it hit me. "Her". I think I knew exactly who had died in the passing year. Subsequent to the change of life, it would only make sense. I was give control once more, and I hesitantly clicked on the tombstone. "Here lies Ladie. Kanto's little flash of yellow, loved by all, fathered by Dain. Rest in peace". I was so in depth in the game at that moment that it was the soaked screen that snapped me out of it. I was crying, crying so hard over the loss over the Pokémon I had trained from the start. It was my fault it had died, I made those stupid decisions to completely change Ladie's life by becoming a Gym Leader, knowing that Ladie wouldn't be fit for the Gym. Guilt-written, I turned off the game, hoping to find a possible way to alter the storyline.

I arrived at the menu once more. No Pokémon stood with me. No Delia to comfort the loneliness. Just Dain, standing there. In all his.. "Glory". Tears had begun to run dry by this point, looking upon Dain's face, only to find an even more ominous shadowed face than when I first began. I clicked Continue, to instantly be shown a cinematic between Dain and Delia. Delia was crying, Dain arguing. It seemed Delia decided to comfort Dain with her presence after Ladie died, as he had given up on everything.

Then she left. With nothing but "I thought I could save you". I couldn't believe it. The previous owner of this game's warning entered my head. She warned me. Even now I brushed it off. I had just ruined Dain's last chance of friendship, all of it, my fault. I gained control once more, and I decided to check my menu. No Pokémon. Then, the trainer card. There it was. The original crouched position Dain was in when I first started. I wanted to strangle the person who made this by now, searching for an excuse that all this wasn't my fault.

Dialogue broke me out of the menu, surprising to say the least.

Dain: Ladie... gone. Delia... I'm sorry..

SNAP!

Ominous silence crept into the fray of my room. I felt continued disappointment. I sullenly paused at restarting the game. Asking myself if it was worth it. I might as well, I don't think I could get any more depressed at my vain efforts of getting Dain back on track, so I turned it back on. Usual lack of intro, but this time it went straight to the save file. Dain was standing out the front of his house, speaking to Delia. I almost yelped in delight there and then. Things possibly might have gone back on track. But the dialogue that followed, proved that hope wrong.

Dain: Keep the house, Mum would've liked you to have it anyway.

Delia: .. and where will you go? Don't do this Dain, you'll be a father soon..

Dain: I'd make a bad father anyway, I've already lost one child. She was all I had.

A father? That I was not expecting. This story was so intriguing. The implied child was obviously Ladie. But I was moreso interested that Delia would be staying in Dain's house, and where would he be going? The cinematic came to a fade, leaving Dain departing from Pallet. Dain appeared in Viridian City, standing outside the Gym. He silently trodded off, at half pace. Dialogue kicked in.

Dain: ... I know Ladie can't come back. Nor will any Pokémon fill the gap she left. But that won't stop me from acquiring one..

This world is cruel, undeserving of such Pokemon.

A villainous plot. How predictable and cliched. I didn't complain though, I moved on, and continued on. I gained control over Dain, and did the usual check of his status. A ground type party. The original party I was given when I accepted the role as a Gym Leader. Interesting. I check the trainer card. Dain is wearing a striped suit. His facial features much more defined and mature, Dain looked an adult now. I exited the menu, and instantly lost control, as Dain started a long journey through Kanto.

He walked, through Pewter, to Celadon, through Saffron, until he arrives in Lavender. Of course, a final farewell to Ladie before he sets off to a new life. He entered the Pokémon Tower, made his way to Ladie's tombstone, and gave me control to interact with it.

Dain: Here lies Ladie. My little flash of Yellow. You were my love to Delia, my Ladie.

I will never find another you, but a Pikachu I will find. I have lost strength to travel Kanto again, so I will form an organization to purge Kanto for me. I came in here as Dain, but I will leave as another, to start anew. As in depth as I was at this point, it was obviously noticeable of the layout of "Delia" and "Ladie". Same letters, spelt out differently. It seemed Ladie was Dain's way of showing his compassion to Delia in physical form. His love and strength, dedicated to a single person through his beloved Pokémon. Dain began walking amongst the other tombstones. Curiously, I attempted to press A, which started a minor dialogue.

Dain: I must find a name appropriate to depart with...Then he stopped at one. A tombstone singled out from the rest. I clicked on it, nerves settling in from what was about to appear.

"Here lies Giovanni."

---

Poliwhirl (Pokemon)

Poliwhirl
=========

[The following document was recovered from the author's room shortly after his famed escape, and has been published in the hopes of helping to lead to his eventual capture. This publication is the property of the Kanto Department of Investigation and may not be republished in any unauthorized texts. Plagiarism of this text is subject to trial at the full extent of the law.]


People often ask me what my favorite Pokémon is. I always tell them, "Pikachu!"


But Pikachu isn't my favorite Pokémon. My favorite Pokémon is Poliwhirl.


I haven't lied about it for a long time, but I guess there's a good reason for that. I used to lie a lot, but I'm better now. Besides, everyone always thinks Pikachu is my favorite, and I'm tired of the questions and surprise I got all the time when I was honest. Now, I just don't tell people. But I'm telling you.


I first encountered Poliwhirl when Dad took me fishing. See, Dad really likes sports, and fishing was one of his old pastimes. Right away, I knew I had to have one. I loved the spiral on its belly and how it could make slime to keep itself alive outside of water.


Dad kept the Poliwhirl he caught, and we played together a lot. I'd fall asleep after a while, but we had fun when I was awake.


It was the spiral on its belly. I loved that spiral, and how deep and mysterious it was. I liked watching it. It went on and on and on, like it was going into Poliwhirl's body. I wanted to stick things in there to see if they'd go in the spiral, but never did, in case it really did go inside Poliwhirl's body and I'd hurt it. It was a silly thing to think, but I was really little back then.


No, no... I must lose this childish demeanor. While I am a child, during my journey, I've given up all rights to childhood. One who has seen the horrors produced by men cannot rightly be called a child, and cannot claim innocence under the guise of childish ignorance. I'm sure you think me ignorant, even now, or perhaps you think me some sort of genius? I can't tell you what goes on in your own mind, but while gifted with the genius of childhood, I'm burdened by the weight of adult issues. In the end, I suppose you can call me average, a person in my own right, neither child nor adult.


I suppose I should introduce myself! Forgive me, I'm a bit scatterbrained. My name is Satoshi Tajiri. I have been told I share a name with the man who created this world, but I know nothing of that. I'm twelve years of age, and I grew up in Pallet Town, a quiet, fairly new town in Kanto. I've loved Pokémon my whole life. I got my first Pokémon, Charmander, a year ago. While my birth name is, as I've said, Satoshi Tajiri, I'm far more well-known under the name my followers have given me – "Red".


Ah, I understand you're a little frightened, now that you're sure of my identity, as you've no doubt heard the tall tales spun by those who've misjudged my actions. "Spun" is an appropriate choice of verb, as these tales have been spun just like the whirling mass that led up to my current predicament. You must understand, I was once a curious boy. While once-famous for my curious venture into the dangerous tall grass outside my hometown, I'm sure my more recent curiosities that have come to light are of far greater importance to you.


Ah, but I forget myself! You must think me to be terribly off-track, if not insane, hm? I apologize for my tangent, but I figured it was best to introduce myself before telling you what you want to know.


That Poliwhirl is my favorite Pokémon is perhaps the most important piece of information I can tell you. Forgive me, my writing skills are sub-par, and I cannot write this piece to give emphasis to the important without up and saying what is important. Poliwhirl is crucial to what I am about to tell you.


As I grew up with this Poliwhirl, I found myself more and more attracted to the symbol on its belly. My childish thinking, that the spiral was physical swirling into Poliwhirl's body, was not far-off at all. You see, the blue-black spiral markings on Poliwhirl are actually its innards. Its intestines. I've had to dissect many species in order to better my understanding of them, and I can only conclude that Poliwhirl's digestive tract is the most unique I've encountered. The intestines themselves are tucked neatly behind a smooth, skin-like membrane. This membrane is, like your own skin, semi-permeable and sensitive to changes in environment. It is almost translucent in the areas where its entrails show, and even closer inspection reveals that the organs have their own distinctive, uneven shapes where food is digested.


Curiosity led me to wonder... Could the shape of its entrails bear any deeper meaning?


Had I not wondered that very thing, perhaps I wouldn't be where I am today, but I can't bring myself to regret it. My very own senses seem to reject the things I have discovered, and it wouldn't be dismissive of you not to believe me on the basis of the sheer audacity of my claims. A mad genius of a child, some have called me. Whether or not I am mad, I can't say for myself. They say those who are the maddest are those who struggle to defend their own sanity, but, in my case, it makes no difference.


To tell you this is to lift just some of the burden from me, and while this is a selfish whim, I'm sure you could benefit from this tale. ...If it could be called that.


Again, I apologize, as it may have been more fitting to begin this tale with on that note, but as I pen this in, I have no means of erasing my words, and it's unfitting for me to start from the beginning. You know who I am, and, I assure you, that Poliwhirl is my favorite Pokémon is a significant fact.


As some of you may already know, I did not encounter a wild Poliwhirl personally until far into my journey. Until then, I'd been raising my father's, a specimen I'd grown especially close to. It was this Poliwhirl, the one nicknamed "Poli" by my younger self, that initially led me to wonder about the deeper significance of the spiral.


I invite you to consider that your own body also has many spiral patterns. Your ears, your prints, perhaps even your entrails. The shape of the spiral is a fascinating one, one that resonates sound, leads the eye into its centre. It's a tricky shape, capable of vexation and illusion. The presence of the spiral influences the sense of touch, and coils of metal expand and contract to provide heat on stovetops and display temperature in thermometers.


Spirals are one of nature's best-repeated patterns. A weed, as it sprouts, slowly coils outward from itself as it comes to fruition, rejecting its spiral shape as it reaches for the Sun. Even in human biology, a fetus is curled in the womb, taking up little space until it, like the weed, grows and unfurls. This is a common, well-researched phenomenon.


Perhaps you find my terminology crude, but what better way to explain it? The spiral is the shape of inception – the very first shape born into our existence. Galaxies, solar systems, even the very foundation for life, are formed in that same shape. Do you believe me? No? Are you aware of the double helix figure? It's the common structure of nucleic acid, which, I'm sure you know, is the very basis for your own genetic makeup. Your very DNA is a spiral, wrapped up nice and tight, containing everything about you.


Yes, the spiral is a mystical shape! Cracking the mysteries of it could lead us to unimaginably powerful discoveries! It was Poli who initially led me to question the significance of a seemingly parodiable idea, and Poli who led me to discover the things I have.


Regretably, I haven't discovered great things, and for my impulsive actions, I have suffered.


I have many theories regarding the shape of Poliwhirl's entrails. While I don't think any species can consciously control its own evolutionary biology, I find that the spiral makes for, among other things, a terrific defense mechanism. Ah, but doesn't leading the eye to the perfect target (Poliwhirl's own soft belly) defeat the purpose?


No, I earnestly believe that the shape of its spiral is, like the eye-patterns on Scizor's claws, a natural defense mechanism, even a wonderful means of attack.


[The following few pages are a series of illegible scribbles in various colors of ink]


Forgive me, I've once again lost my place.


The spiral is rarely seen as a biological marking of a creature, often hidden inside. I highly doubt any simple human could use such things to their advantage, but Pokémon are powerful, incredible beings, capable of many things that seem impossible for them. My most famous defeat of Team Rocket's Boss lead me to encounter a very rare, oddly colored Persian who attacked with Thunderbolt.


While Poliwhirl is a Water-type, and any sort of hypnotic manipulation is more famously associated with Psychic-types, I once again invite you to consider that the powers Pokémon possess extend far, far beyond human understanding. Once again, I am only a child, but it doesn't take much more than a child's logic to ascertain that one can not be entirely convinced of somethings potential on the mere basis of what is.


I began my investigation into Poliwhirl's powers shortly after beginning my journey. Poli was young, and despite being relatively low-level, had little interest in obeying my commands outside of our shared home. Our first few Gym victories weren't rightly ours, as Poli chose to sit on the sidelines, refusing to stand by my side in battle.


Of course, being a Trainer, I've also traded with many people. I can say almost certainly that I never let any of these Pokémon disobey me so easily, and we quickly became friends despite their previous Trainers.


I can't be sure when I suspected that Poli was manipulating me, but I know I joked about the idea several times before earning my fifth badge. Poli and I were still friends (or so I had thought), the proof of which was that every night, Poli would use the hypnotic powers its spiral had gifted it with to lull me to sleep.


I wonder, even now, if Poli was only toying with me, putting me to sleep out of loathing and not as a favor to me. Unlikely, as the two of us were great friends, but still, I often wonder...


I remember very clearly the night I began my research. I remember the way the shadows on the wall began to twist into helix shapes, the way my eyes refused to focus. It was disorienting and dizzying to study Poli the way I did. Several times, Poli tried to escape, and I was forced to return him to his Pokéball to prevent this.


I remember the tantalizing shapes made out to me, the spirals and helixes, conic, circular, geometric, spanning different dimensions and yet, it was the simple, flat shape on Poli's belly that continued to fascinate me. It drew me in, lulling me into a state of stupor that was simultaneously both glorious and terrifying. It was a high unlike any thrill of victory, or any rush of adrenaline from battle. The spiral, unending and beautiful, stabbed me right in the heart, spiraling into the center of me, threatening to unwind me at my very core, as though it spinned in a way directly reverse to the direction I did. While such things might make little sense to one who has yet to behold them, I consider you fortunate you haven't had to experience what I did.


As I'm sure you heard, people call my crimes an act of insanity, but I disagree, as I broke the spell in a rare, screaming moment of coherency. I had no choice.


While I mourn Poli's loss, I am glad that his death, avoidable as it may have been, allowed me to look deeper into the mysteries of the spiral. I preserved the carcass for later research, but the following morning, I was surprised to find that the marking on its belly had faded away, leaving only white skin. Given my poor methods of preservation and lack of thought to the decomposition process, this isn't surprising, yet unsettling as it may seem, brought me to peace with my beloved companion's passing.


I eventually obtained another Poliwhirl, one I'd been fortunate to capture myself. As you can understand, I initially avoided this one, but, as I've always been one to befriend all of my companions, we came to know each other.


By that point, I was very nearly done with earning Kanto's eight Gym Badges, and my legacy, as it was, led no one to suspect my crime. Had I not sought just one more taste of the forbidden fruit – secret knowledge of the spiral – perhaps I would have gone on to live normally and retain my rights to childhood as I should have.


To this day, I don't believe I acted on my own accord. I had no desire to do the things I have done, and those who've known me know that such things are unlike me. While I find it hard to recall my previous demeanor, I was a curious, sweet boy, and though I had the dark gift of being rather intelligent for my age, there had never been anything sinister about me to suggest I'd behave this way. I suppose I was most like the childish demeanor I tried to display when beginning this text, however, I find that mindset impossible to replicate.


I've since rejected the spiral, though my efforts, I come to admit, are in vain. As I write, my ten fingertips ache under their dressings where I've removed my own external spirals. To deny the shape within myself is to deny all that ever was.


As you are no doubt aware, a similar Pokémon, Spinda, also has a similar spiral motif. I've researched the effects of Spinda, and never have I felt more than dizzy. At the same time, nor has any other person felt such deep hypnosis from the effects of Poliwhirl.


That spiral has driven me mad. Of this, I am finally certain. Do you want to know what I've seen?


Perhaps I was wrong in discarding the significance of my name. While I was largely known to the world as Red, the Champion from Pallet and Hero of Kanto, that identity is dead to me now. I've reverted to my birth name – Satoshi. It was this man whose image and persona I take on, and, I'm sure, he who originally chose Poliwhirl as his favorite Pokémon. And, in turn, I suppose those who venture into my world are also a bit of me. I am, as you would say, your "avatar" on your own Pokémon journey, am I not? My name is "Red" to you, but you are free to call me whatever you want, aren't you?


It is my theory that I was created to feel this affect, as well as all those who take on this "avatar". It would explain the lack of effect felt by others in my world who've experimented with Poliwhirl's hypnotic powers. I wonder, then, if my namesake did this deliberately, using the spiral to lure people into the world he'd created?


Can you clearly remember your first Poliwhirl encounter?


Can you be sure you've never felt a change since the first time you encountered a Poliwhirl on the screen of your device?


Are you sure?


Are you sure?



It's best not to wonder what I've done.


[The following half page is filled with gimicky, childlike scrawls. doodles of spiral-shapes and geometric figures, along with various, crudely-drawn Pokémon]


I resign myself to silence now, for I've said all I need to, and I'm sure this facility, one way or another, will come to silence me through their own means.


[The following three pages are blank]


Poliwhirl wasn't always my favorite Pokémon.


<i>Credited to Pyroluminescence on deviantart.com</i>

Ketsuban (Pokemon)

Ketsuban
========

“Rhydon, use fissure!”

The Gym floor shook beneath Rhydon’s feet as it let out a tremendous bellow. If this move hits… SpriteGiovanni

All at once, an enormous crack opened in the earth. A gaping maw stretched across the gym floor, speeding rapidly towards the move’s target. Closer, closer…and the fissure opened up beneath the opposing Blastoise, sending it tumbling down untold feet into the darkness below. Then, as quickly as it had appeared, the tear was gone. The gym floor shone flawlessly under the cold, synthetic light, and Blastoise was nowhere to be seen.

The opposing trainer’s tears fell swiftly now, splashing silently onto the pristine tiling into which his Pokémon had vanished.

“Where…where’s Blastoise? Where…did he go?” The trainer was staring listlessly at the ground, refusing to move an inch. He was obviously in shock over the sheer magnitude of his defeat; Giovanni would have to remedy this.

“Pay up, kid”, ordered Giovanni in a low voice. The trainer acquiesced resignedly, forfeiting half of his life savings into Giovanni’s waiting palm. But he still refused to leave. “Go home”, commanded the leader, now slightly irritated. “You’re holding up the line.”

The trainer looked about himself in a dazed state, and noticed the challenger standing behind him, a small, black-haired boy of perhaps ten years of age. “Oh…sorry, I…I didn’t notice”, mumbled the defeated trainer with a small nod, and he at last began to pace resolutely back towards the Gym’s front door.

Giovanni turned his attention to the black-haired boy, who had stepped forward. He was wearing a red jacket over a black t-shirt and had a red-and-white cap pulled low over his eyes. Giovanni was intrigued by this challenger; something about him was unsettling, something about his slow, measured pace and expressionless visage seemed somehow…alien. But that was of no consequence; nobody had ever defeated Giovanni’s main team, and he was not about to let this child become the first.

“Welcome”, spoke Giovanni in a cool, intimidating tone. “I am the Viridian City Gym Leader. Do you dare to challenge me?” Giovanni rose to his full height. “I am the greatest trainer the world has ever known! I have defeated countless thousands in this very spot! Thousands upon thousands of championship dreams, terminated right where you’re standing! And yet you still dare to forever risk your only aspiration by blithely challenging my undefeated team?” The speech had been delivered flawlessly, and Giovanni felt quite proud of himself; surely, the child had by now realized his insignificance, surely he was at this moment quaking in his boots.

And yet, the challenger showed few outward signs of his distress. Giovanni’s oratory had reduced countless grown men to sniveling, crying imbeciles by means of that very speech, and yet here was a child, a whelp no more than ten years old, standing his ground. Rather than break down, the challenger nodded and stepped noiselessly forward. The effect was disconcerting, and Giovanni’s voice displayed an imperceptible faltering. “Very well…then let us begin.” Giovanni threw his first Poké Ball.

A stream of crimson light issued forth from the Poké Ball, quickly coalescing into Giovanni’s Rhyhorn. Rhyhorn was Giovanni’s usual lead, and had served him admirably in the past by gauging the strengths and identifying possible weaknesses of his opponents. The terrifying spectacle of the three-foot tall Rhyhorn’s single-minded charge attack had caused many to resign their challenge in terror by itself. But the child stared unflinchingly at Giovanni’s Pokémon, and threw down a Poké Ball of his own.

But there was a problem; the device was malfunctioning. This was unheard of; Poké Balls were made on assembly line now, and, as Kanto’s only major export, each Poké Ball had to be flawless. Those with faulty machinery were without exception weeded out somewhere in the manufacturing process; as a former head of Silph Corporation, Giovanni knew that. So what was wrong with the child’s Poké Ball?

Instead of releasing the customary beam of light, the Poké Ball was shaking eccentrically, without any discernable rhythm, and emitting periodic bursts of red light from its central seam. As bloody sparks jumped across its surface, the Poké Ball seemed ready to explode from the pressure of whatever was inside of it. Suddenly, the Poké Ball released its laser, but, instead of the customary red, it was a pale and sickly orange.

When the light faded, Giovanni caught his first glimpse of the thing that the Poké Ball had vomited. It was a pile of trash, just sitting there on the floor of the gym. Without warning, and before Giovanni could get a closer look, the pile of trash expelled a stream of pale brown-colored liquid, hissing and spurting as it did so.

“Water Gun”, commanded the challenger.

The fluid squirted through the air and impacted Rhyhorn squarely in the face. Giovanni’s face betrayed his worry; Rhyhorn did not usually survive any decently-powered Water- or Grass-type moves. Yet Rhyhorn did not falter; the pile of trash’s Special must have been completely pathetic for Rhyhorn to take such a small amount of damage.

But something was wrong. Something was…off about Rhyhorn after the brown liquid contacted him. Giovanni could sense it, though he couldn’t quite discern what it was; something seemed different about the shape of Rhyhorn’s back or the pattern of his armor plates. Giovanni only became truly alarmed when Rhyhorn did not turn his head, as usual, to receive orders; he stood unmoving, frozen to the spot from which he had received the attack. Giovanni walked around Rhyhorn to examine his face, and found it scrambled, with no discernable features. Various pieces of eyes, mouth, and nose were scattered haphazardly around its ruined face, which resembled a disassembled jigsaw puzzle on a featureless grey background. Giovanni was aghast. “Rhyhorn? Rhyhorn…use…Fury Attack! Rhyhorn?” Rhyhorn was not fainted, and showed no signs of collapse or fatigue. But he was clearly dead.

Giovanni could not look at the horror that his Pokémon had become, so he returned it to its Poké Ball. He could not lose; his team was undefeated, and this…thing would surely not prove a challenge to his stronger Pokémon. He decided to immediately move up a tier in strength, and so summoned Nidoking from its Poké Ball. Nidoking emerged with a savage scream, but Giovanni’s attention was focused on the pile of trash. As he searched for a weakness, he came to a sudden realization; most of what he had previously assumed to be trash consisted of discernable pieces of various Pokémon. Here was a Bulbasaur tail, there a Fearow beak and a Blastoise arm, all haphazardly stitched together into some kind of abominable mass and mixed in with…other things, things that he could not recognize. There were letters and numbers, pieces of signs and buildings, and chilling geometric patterns that he could not even begin to identify.

And it was distinctly larger than it had been thirty seconds ago. With each passing second, the thing…grew, Giovanni thought he noticed. It was a slow process, but the pile of trash appeared to be steadily expanding without any external source. But maybe that was just a trick of the light…

Giovanni didn’t even know where to look for a weakness, or what such a weakness would even be; but he did know that this monstrosity had to somehow be stopped. So he ordered Nidoking to attack.

“Nidoking, use Thrash!”

Nidoking looked around for a moment, wondering where the attack was even directed. Nidoking was considerably smarter than Rhyhorn, smart enough to notice that there weren’t actually any other Pokémon in the arena. Nidoking turned to look at Giovanni, who, presented with what might very well have turned out to be the last time he ever saw Nidoking whole, felt a sudden surge of regret. He pointed ruefully at the pile of trash, which had taken on an unmistakably crimson hue. Giovanni had seen it before, he thought, but he could not remember when…

Nidoking never got his close look at his foe. He was not one to disobey orders, for Giovanni was a hard master…and so Nidoking charged. He rammed fist after massive, armor-plated fist into the thing, but it showed no signs of any external damage or fatigue. It just sat there, glowing. As the word popped into his head, Giovanni knew what was about to happen. He tried to shout, tried a second too late to warn Nidoking of his fate. But Nidoking was so absorbed in its Thrash attack that it failed to notice, and so the end came quickly.

“Sky Attack”, said the challenger. His lips, Giovanni saw, did not move when he talked, but remained frozen open. In fact, he had not moved at all since the battle had begun. Giovanni suddenly began to wonder if he even could. The boy’s clothes were becoming distorted, becoming numbers and letters and Pokémon fragments one piece at a time. There were endless, mesmerizing geometric patterns in his eyes…

Nidoking flew through the air and smashed against the ceiling of the Gym with a reverberating crash. The collimated light from Giovanni’s Poké Ball intercepted the hapless Pokémon before the floor could; Giovanni did not want to have any opportunities to get a good look at the remains of his Nidoking. If only he had chosen a different move, Nidoking might have been saved…

The trash was not just larger now, but…spreading. The walls were spattered with it, oozing with Pokémon, and Giovanni’s pristine floor was covered in refuse. As Giovanni reached uncertainly for another Poké Ball, he discovered that his hand no longer fit securely around it in the position to which he had long been accustomed. For even he had not escaped the trash’s corrupting influence; his hand, though retaining its general shape, was gruesomely disfigured; a Weezing’s face, a Wigglytuff’s ear, and an Arcanine’s eye, along with other body parts too damaged to identify, protruded from his skin in tortured, hideous combination.

Giovanni tried to scream, but no sound came out. He fumbled with his Poké Ball, and tossed it onto the floor haphazardly, a novice trainer once again. Rhydon emerged, but even he was not free of the trash’s scarring. His skin had a reddish tint, and his spikes were misaligned with the ridge of his back… Giovanni could not order an attack, but he did not need to; Rhydon was as incapable of movement as Giovanni himself. Across the arena, the opposing trainer no longer bore any resemblance to a black-haired human being; he was already consumed, a pile of trash in a hominid shape. Only the cap remained, pulled low over where the trainer’s eyes had used to be. Giovanni could just make out the black, embroidered capital letters printed on the front. “Future Pokémon Master”, the cap read.

The boy’s lips could not move, but the trash’s attack came anyways. It let out a hideous scream, torn from the larynxes of nearly every Pokémon in Kanto, savagely twisted and ground together to form a single, unending screech. As the monster grew still larger, its cacophony grew louder, and Giovanni’s consciousness was fading fast. The walls of his gym turned to sludge, and Giovanni felt his body beginning to crumble around him. Rhydon was melting beside him, and the trainer and his Pokémon slowly merged into a single puddle of liquid death. The trash filling his vision at last invaded Giovanni’s final thoughts as he saw the world disintegrate, and the abomination consumed all.

Battery Ditto (Pokemon)

Battery Ditto
=============

I can tell you why, but I warn you. You may not like what you hear, especially if you feel particularly attuned to the suffering of animals in our own world. With that out of the way I shall begin.

A lot of emphasis was put on Team Rocket's little science experiment at the Lake Of Rage and soon after that their takeover of the Radio tower. When all the while they had already set up a much larger, but more secretive operation. You see, the day care man and his wife were not the first to discover that Pokémon laid eggs. This was first the discovery of a lowly Rocket Grunt who was in charge of looking after the captured Ditto.
Free range breeding

The Rocket Grunt, Hiroshi, thought he had the easiest job in the whole organization. Not once had he run into that 11 year old child who had single handedly defeated Team Rocket not even a year ago, and he was not respected enough to have his plans follow through, so he's never messed up so badly that he'd have to come face to face with Giovanni to explain himself. Hiroshi really did have it easy, all he had to do was make sure the Pokémon weren't too loud, that they were generally fed and on the rare occasion that they soiled themselves, he had to wipe it up with a rag.

The Ditto were kept in squalor. Hiroshi was regularly required to electrocute them if they were not silent. However most nights they remained silent, with only a sad humming song that resonated down the filthy hallway. Each cage, no more than 20 cm x 20 cm, and electrified mesh wire held two Ditto; the transformation pits also held two Ditto, but where 10 ft x 10 ft wide to accommodate for the shape shifting to larger Pokémon, all controlled by electrical frequencies as to what Pokémon they became. They all sang, one after another and as the song spread outwards Hiroshi felt his eyes begin to flutter.

He felt compassion for the beasts, cramped in their cages, or in the transformation pits. Besides, the song wasn't unpleasant to listen to, but falling asleep on guard duty was a sure-fire way for things to go wrong. To help keep him awake he reached for a Pokeball. When the energy was released from the ball, an Arcanine padded forwards toward it's master.

"If you smell anything out of place, or if they try to escape, use whatever force you think necessary." The Arcanine nodded it's large head and padded down to sit next to its master. With that, Hiroshi nodded his head and almost instantly fell asleep, the song continued to resonate in his dream. He felt he had not slept all of ten minutes before he was woken by a terrible squealing and panting. His eyes bolted open and in a panic. He scanned the battery cages and the transformation pits. The song had died and in its place was a horrible screeching noise, as if all of the ditto began to panic at once. Hiroshi had only a split second to run to the lever and flip it down before several sparking volts seared through the wires, causing a high squeal from the confined Ditto before they knew to be silent once more. But still the whimpering and hushed language continued between them as they shuddered in their cages.

The panting continued. Hiroshi stepped slowly along the isle, looking inside each single cage. The Ditto stared back at him with an expression of pure fear as they shook from cold and hunger. It was in the first transformation pit that he found his Arcanine, panting. Under him was one of the transformed Ditto, in a shape that Hiroshi did not recognise. It was dog shaped, but was black with white horns from its head and a long whipping tail, the Ditto-dog panted helplessly while under the Arcanine, the searing pain of a forced transformation to an unfamiliar shape confused and distressed it. Arcanine gave a long, loud yelp before demounting the Ditto-dog and padding back towards Hiroshi, jumping the fence with ease.

Hiroshi himself was still in shock as he watched the Pokémon shape in front of him, he had never seen anything like it before. The Ditto-shape looked sickly, many of the bones that would have been internal showed on the outside of the dog-like body, it panted again before collapsing. Hiroshi shook his head and ushered his Pokémon away, such strange things were not uncommon to see with the Transformation pit Dittos. Sometimes with the different currents, the Ditto changed shape into structures they had never seen before. Excited by the concept of new Pokémon, Team Rocket had tried desperately to get the Ditto to stabilize into their new forms to no avail. What disturbed Hiroshi however, was the way in which his Arcanine had simply mounted the poor creature.

In the weeks that followed, Hiroshi had took care not to release any of his Pokémon from their balls while he was on Ditto duty. He paid extra attention to the dark dog ditto, who lay sprawled on the floor of the pit, tongue lolling from its mouth and its breathing extremely laboured. A lack of food, water and cleanliness making it look even worse than it had already. Hiroshi smirked a little. "You got the look of a doomed Hound" The dog-Ditto looked up to him and shakily stood on its four legs. What happened next astounded and scared Hiroshi for the rest of his days. The Ditto-dog scrunched up its face and howled in pain, causing the caged Ditto to again scream with terror. Hiroshi ran to get one of the pokédoctors, thinking that the Ditto was dying. Now that would be an offense to face Giovanni with.

When they both had returned, the Ditto-dog was still standing, and howling inhumanly, a high pitched squeal as it's innards burst from its backside and fell into a bloody heap behind it, a large, solid mass among the offal debris. The doctor jumped into the pen immediately, but the Ditto-dog had already began to dissolve, first into a pinkish gelatinous goop and then it began to shrink until it was nothing but liquid. The Ditto had expired, but still left on the dirt of the pit was the offal and the large mass.

The doctor sifted through the offal and picked up the mass, to his surprise it was steady in his hands, and held it up to Hiroshi. It was an egg.

The egg was monitored for days on end by the scientists and Hiroshi, who took a personal interest in his big discovery, until all at once, the news spread in the department that the egg was hatching. There was a big commotion at the department, as people crowded round the small table. The egg began to shake and crack, little splinters coming off in pieces before a dark head emerged.

It was disgusting, it was gruesome, it looked evil, it was new: A puppy, black as night with its skull seeming to be visible on the outside and it's ribs protruding from its back. It was perfect. Hiroshi stepped forward, parting the crowd. His mind swimming with opportunities. If this Pokémon lived, thrived and reproduced then he had successfully achieved by accident what the scientists had been trying to do since the Dittos were captured. He had created a new Pokémon.

"Its mother, Ditto, was a doomed hound. Houndoom. This is our hound. Houndour" The scientists nodded silently in agreement, all astounded by the events which happened before them.

From that moment onwards Hiroshi was presented before Giovanni with the Houndour, and was promptly put in charge of the Ditto evolution project. For the next two years, Hiroshi studied the Ditto in the pits, forcing them into strange and grotesque shapes with the aid of the electrical current, and then forcing them to breed with the male gender of a similar looking Pokémon. He managed to do this successfully with at least 100 different variations of the Ditto. All of them managed to give birth to eggs. Some eggs never hatched, some eggs hatched and the Pokémon died within a few days, some eggs hatched but the offspring were infertile or never evolved, but there were many, where the eggs hatched and just like Houndour, managed to successfully evolve and re-breed.

After this was successful, they even tried it with Pokémon that they already knew. Pikachu-Dittos had strange mini-chu babies, Magmar-Dittos had even stranger mini-mar babies. The discovery was outstanding, but tragic as none of these offspring lived very long after the mother Ditto had expired. Which lead to the development of better medical care, and gradually the Ditto could sustain more than one offspring in their lifespan, but still the babies did not thrive.

This continued for many years until word of mouth began to travel, with wealthy Pokémon collectors sporting brand new types of Pokémon. The Ditto, their eggs, and their babies were all mysteriously released one night and Hiroshi was found dead in the labs, his body charred beyond recognition through visual means alone. Whether this was a revolt from the tortured ditto who just so happened to escape, or whether Pokémon activists managed to infiltrate and release the Pokémon themselves is unknown.

It was several years afterwards, when many of these new species had began to thrive in the regions of Johto and Kanto that an old couple living just outside Goldrenrod came home to a rather shocking discovery. A large, soft egg, nestled between two Pokémon they were looking after.

Rocket continued the project however, with whatever Ditto they could find. Still to this day are they trying to manipulate them. And with a bigger gene pool than ever before, there is no end to the mutations they can force on those poor Battery Dittos.

Link: Breaking Blue (Pokemon)

Here's more Pokemon glitch stuff

http://lparchive.org/Pokemon-Blue/

Here's a reenactment of LHBPkmnB:
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9A919EB79E23B318

And a bonus: MissingnoXpert breaking Yellow:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9qSvvS3YrQ&list=PL60DCBEA2D1F73683

Web Rescue: GatorAIDS. 7 Freakiest Pokemon RBY Glitches

[This website really wasn't up for long, and it had a really interesting page about Pokemon glitches. Fortunately, I saved it. - Owner]

The 7 Freakiest Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow Glitches

December 2011

When “Pocket Monsters” was created by Japanese game designer Satoshi Tajiri in 1996 it was nothing more than a way for the designer to relive his childhood pastime of insect collecting and share it with the residents of his homeland. For all the options available in the original games it was still quite a linear adventure, and a simplistic one at that. Neophyte game developer Game Freak (directed by Tajiri) set out to produce the original two installments Red and Green, which became such a hit that Blue was also released. Never before had Game Freak produced a game so intricate and detailed, and mistakes were made to say the least. Programming oversights, data omissions, and lack of a proper error handling system eventually led to trainers getting lost in places that looked like this:

WHERE WE'RE GOING WE DON'T NEED EYES TO SEE.

Due to a lack of attention to finite details in their programming work, which is forgivable considering the sheer magnitude of their creation and this being their first time taking on such a venture, both the Japanese and North American releases of the original Pokemon games were riddled with glitches ranging from mildly amusing to downright terrifying. Here’s seven demons Game Freak unintentionally brought upon the world with their magnum opus.

The Original Missingno. 

MissingNo (literally “Missing Number”, #000 in the Pokedex) needs no introduction. MissingNo is the gold standard in Pokemon glitches and is quite possibly one of the most well known and celebrated glitches in the history of video games; MissingNo’s legendary status is on par with that of the Minus World from Super Mario Bros. Glitches in future generation Pokemon games are called “MissingNo” even though they are completely different entities, it’s a glitch that became the name for every other Pokemon glitch because that’s what happens when you’re #1.

MissingNo’s familiar “L” shaped appearance, non-threatening battle cry, duplicate moveset, and item duplication properties are quite vanilla today, but how would you have like to have been the first person to stumble across this beast? Can you imagine minding your own business when suddenly a random encounter begins and the screen freezes black for just a few seconds and…

"Ohfuckohfuckohfuckohfuck." - You

Your butthole would have tensed up at this sight, and don’t you deny that.

Any self-respecting Pokemaniac in the 1990′s knew the entire Pokedex (and the PokeRap) like the back of their hand. You knew #’s 1 through 151 better than your own family, so what in God’s name is this abortion?! It has a terrifyingly alarming name (“MISSING” appears in it), its graphic looks like the bowels of technological hell, and while it cries and fights like a regular Pokemon you have never seen anything like this before in your life. Confronted with the unknown you then do what any starry-eyed trainer would do in this situation: you catch the damn thing.

Sometime later you decide to show your friend your awesome trophy of a glitch and accidentally skip to the Pokemon League’s computer and bring up your Hall of Fame. The music crashes and turns to a single sound channel while the screams of tortured souls come through as pure static in another. Your screen flashes with the garbled mess of a computer virus and attached is a note from MissingNo reading “thank you for liberating me from my prison, this is only my first step to world domination.”

"PS: Check your 6th item."

"Old Man" Trainer ID Theft

Remember that old man in Viridian City who won’t let you pass because he’s a grumpy old fart who hasn’t yet had his fill of coffee? He’s just an arbitrary barrier in the game so that you won’t proceed further without delivering Oak’s Parcel from the PokeMart and once you obtain your Pokedex he changes his attitude and shows you how to catch Pokemon. Unknown to him, the old man also holds the keys to unlocking MissingNo… which come to think of it might be the reason he seems so disturbed and angry at the world. Could you imagine having to harbor that thing? I mean, sure, all the free coffee you could ever want but still I don’t think MissingNo would be suitable company at all, ever.

You can fool with the poor old man all you want if you have a GameShark and play with the cheat codes to alter wild Pokemon encounters. You can have the old man show you how to catch one of the Pokemon not present in your version of the game, you can have him catch a Mewtwo, you can enjoy a spot of meta humor and have him catch a MissingNo, or… you can force him to fight a trainer, and the game just doesn’t know what the fuck to do.

"YOU DAMN KIDS AND YOUR POKEYMAN!!!"

The old man is programmed to do one thing and one thing only: throw a Poke Ball. He still does this after the trainer sends out their glitch Pokemon and as you might expect the trainer blocks it. The old man never sends out any Pokemon (even though he appears to have 1 fainted and 5 normal Pokemon) so right now you’re on the edge of your seat because the trainer’s glitch box of the apocalypse is about to rock this grandpa’s world…

…and out of nowhere the PA system from the Safari Zone chimes in and says “TIME’S UP!!”

The battle ends immediately and the old man acts like nothing happened. He reminds you that you must first weaken the target Pokemon and on the surface it appears no lasting effects have happened… until you check your stats.
Your name has changed to “OLD MAN”. Due to the way the game handles the old man encounter it stores your actual name in the place where wild Pokemon data is stored (because this data is empty in Viridian City) and temporarily changes your player name to OLD MAN. When the battle terminates improperly the game doesn’t have the chance to reset the data and your name becomes OLD MAN. Any Pokemon you have cannot be nicknamed because you are no longer their original trainer, they do not recognize you anymore.

Every single instance where your name would be displayed now says “OLD MAN”. If you access your PC from a Pokemon Center it’s called “OLD MAN’s PC”. If you speak to a character who addresses you by your name, like Professor Oak for example, he will (hilariously) call you “OLD MAN”. If you check the sign outside of your home it will read “OLD MAN’s house”. You have become OLD MAN. He has stolen your identity and pulled off the greatest psychic cleansing ever documented. Everybody you have ever known starts calling you by the incorrect name like nothing happened. Even your own mother doesn’t know you anymore.

MAMA NOOOOOOOO!!!

The ZZAZZ Glitch

This can’t possibly be scary, can it? I mean the name almost looks like the word “pizzazz” which is kind of gay but at the worst would end up being a Shiny Pokemon, right? Shiny things have pizzazz?

Wrong. The “ZZAZZ” glitch is called as such because of a very specific string of data it injects directly into your save file. Unless you’re tempted enough to fool with the game by using sequence breaks or a GameShark you won’t come across this glitch, but God help you if you choose to peek into oblivion and play with things you shouldn’t. Like the saying goes, “when you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back” except in this case the “abyss” is a glitched up zombie trainer who rapes you in the mindgina. Glitches are like drugs, and after a while freebasing MissingNo just isn’t enough to get you high; that’s when you OD and this happens:

Oh shit a vuvuzela!! BZZZZZZZZ

Let’s take a look at what the christ is going on here. First thing’s first, your opponent. It’s you as if you were staring into a mirror and there was an interdimensional time rift that sucked you into the cursed mirror world and unleashed the fury of Hell itself into the unsuspecting Kanto. Impostor Red has a full stock of Pokemon, though the first one appears to be poisoned. When he sends this Pokemon out it’s at level 153 and its health bar wraps around the fucking screen. This is what it looks like when you attempt to use a digital Ouija board to channel spirits (reference to the “Channeler” trainers unintended but pointed out).

By this point it’s already too late; you are completely and utterly screwed. The game is operating by itself and is pulling code and instructions from the 7th dimension and the only thing you can do is get your ass kicked by Pokemon of the netherworld while the mirror image of yourself laughs in a mocking tone. There is one escape, though: throw a Poke Ball. No, seriously. Bizarro Red will block it, the game will buzz for a second, and the battle will suddenly end.
But that’s not the end of it. Merely looking at the source of the ZZAZZ infection is enough to let its memetic properties propagate throughout your entire game. Earlier I mentioned the game injects a certain string of data into your game save. Check your trainer name. It’s a bunch of Z’s. The hex value for the letter “Z” is “99″. In base-10 “99″ is “153“, you know, the level of the Pokemon that the Mirror World Red sent out. Check your Pokemon roster. They are all now level 153. Not only that, they are all Bulbasuars. Bulbasaur occupies hex value “99″, which of course translates to 153. Check Bulbasaur’s moveset. Every attack will be Explosion. Can you guess the hex value of this move? I’m sure you can by now; it’s like a bad Jim Carrey movie.

Any trainer you fight, no matter who they are, will now be ZZAZZ. And now you are, too.

Try to watch this video without shitting your pants:

 
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3iVFfKjklk


 "Dokokashira Door" Glitch

Do you have an inexplicable fear of the unknown? Do you worry that one day you’ll open the door to your house and on the other side instead of seeing your living room it’ll be some unknown place in space and time? Are you afraid of being in an elevator because you don’t know what will be on the other side of those cold steel doors when they open? Holy shit, you are going to love this next glitch!

“Dokokashira” is Japanese for “Where is it”, as in “where is the door”. This isn’t “where” as in “it’s right around the corner”, it’s “where” as in “where does the other side of that door lead to?” Yes, that’s right, this whole glitch is about the phenomena of walking into what you think is the Pokemon Center and ending up in the middle of the burned out Cinnabar Island laboratory, with or without a sore B-hole. The “Dokokashira Door” glitch is the roofie of the Pokemon world.

This has "good idea" written ALL OVER IT.

This glitch is only accessible in Pokemon Red and Green, the original two Japanese titles from 1996. It was patched up by the time the Japanese Blue was released, and is not present in the North American release of the game. The reason given is that this glitch was “extremely hazardous” unlike, you know, the ZZAZZ glitch or anything like that.

Starting the glitch requires a fresh game because you need to have Oak’s Parcel in your inventory. You then must press Select and act like you want to change its place in your item list except rather than swap an item you attempt to exchange it with the first Pokemon in your party (which also requires use of the Select button). From this point the glitch is active and every “cycle” of the game (every 4 steps taken) will cause the warp point of every door to change to another location. By forcing the game to swap one set of data with another it turns your only Pokemon into the anomaly stored at hex value “FF” and also shuffles around other data in the game, namely the door location data.

Oh, and that bastard Oak won’t ever get his package because you just decided to open it and found out he ordered the key from The Lost Room.

Of course, with such a rigid set of operations with the glitch (every 4 steps) there’s no doubt a table that has been created by someone with way too much time on their hands. With careful planning you can use the Dokokashira door glitch to walk straight into the Hall of Fame room, access the computer, and beat the game with zero Pokemon in your party.

Must be post-tsunami.

 Hex Value "EC"

In basic terms the Pokemon game stores its Pokemon data in a single location occupying 256 slots of data (256 converted to hex is “FF”, the maximum). 151 of these slots are legitimate Pokemon, about 40 of them are MissingNo, and a few dozen are trainer data. Attempting to use a GameShark to “force” a specific encounter with a trainer ID will cause you to fight a glitchy trainer, not a Pokemon. Through creative circumnavigation, however, you can force the game to read these slots of data as “Pokemon”. If it sounds like a bad idea you’re absolutely correct but people do it anyways, and that’s how “EC” was discovered.

“EC” is the hex location where this glitch is stored. Most glitches have a name that people can use to describe it even if it’s a garbled mess of letters and symbols (e.g. “LM4″). EC has no discernible name. The safety net, then, would be to name it based upon what its sprite looks like. EC also has no sprite, not even a garbled “L” shaped mess like MissingNo. At the very least people could use its type, species, or other identifying data to name it, but it simply does not exist. EC is literally an invisible specter whose data normally corresponds to Lt. Surge.

He looks like an angry grandmother.

Entering “01ECD8CF” into a GameShark and playing the game results in battling Lt. Surge in the middle of nowhere. Most of these glitchy trainer fights possess the same roster of garbage data, but Surge is different. The Lieutenant will actually attempt to send out EC, which is frankly unheard of. EC almost always freezes the game but if the ROM remains stable enough the Pokemon you send out to battle it emerges from its ball with a “frozen” status effect, its HP bar wraps the screen, the location where its name belongs fills up with 9′s, and the screen eventually crashes and turns into a mess of HP bars and numbers.

“EC” is the only hex location in the game where data actually does not exist. There is nothing there, which cannot be correct because Lt. Surge is there. EC is the equivalent of Schrodinger’s cat. It exists and does not exist simultaneously.

Sweet dreams.

The Phantom Ditto

Most people who are familiar with MissingNo are familiar with its close cousin M. The two glitches are almost identical at first: they share the same attacks, they both look the same, they both duplicate items, they both crash the Hall of Fame, and their names both start with (or consist of) the letter “M”. M is entirely different, however, and that should be realized the moment you first encounter it and hear it scream like a Zapdos hyped up on crack.

M occupies hex slot “00″ in the ROM, it is not known why M is the odd-man out when it comes to the other 40-something MissingNo but M is “the one”. M is also the only MissingNo to feature evolutions, and has three of them. At level 138 M will evolve into Clefairy, M can spontaneously turn into a Rhydon unprovoked if you already have an M captured in your party, and at any level other than 138 M will evolve into Kangaskhan. To Pokemon theorists everywhere M is the “missing link” in the whole Kangaskhan, Cubone, and Marowak trifecta of mommy-issues bullshit even though it’s a block of pixels that also has two other unrelated evolutions.

Pokemon creepypasta is the worst kind.

But none of this is the reason why M has made this list. If you initiate battle with M and decide to capture it, after the game tells you M’s been caught…

ENEMY M USED WATER GUN!

What the fuck? It’s still there?! When fighting M if you capture it, the battle doesn’t terminate properly even though M’s sprite has vanished. Either that, or M can replicate itself endlessly and you can never win. If his surprise post-capture attack doesn’t scare the living hell out of you and you throw another Poke Ball at it… you’ll catch a Ditto. A perfectly harmless, completely 100% legitimate, Ditto staring at you with his goofy expression of being completely stoned and complacent.

And nobody knows why this happens.

Dozens of basement dwellers have disassembled and reassembled the Pokemon ROM and studied it in and out, bit by bit, and there is no explanation for the “phantom” Ditto. It’s just “there”… and nobody has a reason why. None. Not even a theory.

"I WILL EAT YOUR SOUL *cough* i mean... oh hai there!!~~"

 Charizard M'

For something as benign and goofy as MissingNo the creature can evolve into some pretty scary shit rather fast, and this isn’t “evolve” in a Pokemon sense. First there was the original MissingNo that started this list off. Then there was M, a distant cousin with a bunch of branch evolutions to rival that of Eevee’s. Finally, we’ve come to Charizard M, the embodiment of Hell itself in a Game Boy game.

Charizard M is not a Pokemon. It certainly looks like one (guess who) but it’s  not. It should not exist, it is not from this world and is comprised of a programming language forged in the very core of the Earth. Charizard M is beyond what can be described as a “programming anomaly” and mythology states that Game Freak didn’t even put it in the game; the master copy of Pokemon was blasted by a bolt of lightning and this happened. Do not treat Charizard M as a Pokemon, for you will be sorely indebted to the Beast in the worst way possible for a Pokemon trainer: without warning or provocation it will eat and transform your Pokemon. Permanently.

If you see this on a Game Boy screen, it is too late.

Charizard M occupies slot “FF” on the cartridge. “FF” is as far as you can go in hex data; Charizard M is the end of the road. The couple dozen or so glitches before it are all boxy glitchy messes that don’t do much until you reach “FF” and discover the final boss of Pokemon. “FF” doesn’t even correspond to a Pokemon, it’s where the game stores the data for the “cancel” menu option. If you dare try to force an encounter with the Cancel button then you’re a goddamn retard and deserve the full fury that this demon can unleash upon you. It’s cry is a mess of static that ruins the audio of the game and by the time you hear it you cannot run. You are in his domain now.

If you’re stupid enough to capture Charizard M and add it to your party you won’t even see it in your roster; it will appear as a blank space. If you move it to the top of your list guess what happens? You will lose your other 5 Pokemon; they will be masked in nothingness by Charizard M because the game reads this creature as a “stop” order. You will no longer be able to heal these Pokemon at a Pokemon Center nor can you interact with them in any way. You just shoved them into a portal to oblivion where they are being raped (by furries) as we speak.

Think it’s a good idea to store Charizard M in a Pokemon Box? Are you stupid? If you put this thing into a box the same will happen to everything in that box; it will vanish. Poof. If you’re not careful with how you handle Charizard M you will end up with more Charizard M’s. No, you didn’t misread that; these things multiply if left to their own devices. Not only that Charizard M has the ability to turn your other Pokemon into copies of itself. If you play with Charizard M everything you have ever caught in your game will become Charizard M.

Don't look now BUT HE'S RIGHT BEHIND YOU.

-
DracophileCharizard M

(Spent the better part of your childhood playing Pokemon and sperging out about MissingNo? Join us on the GatorAIDS Forums today!)

Categories: Game Graveyard, The Tags: game boy, glitch, missingno, nintendo, pokemon, spooky

Glitchy Red (RED:)(Pokemon)

GLITCHY RED
===========

About a month ago, I bought a second Pokémon Red cartridge off eBay so I could start a new game

and screw around without messing up my save file. As soon as I compared it to my old one, I knew it was either a bootleg or produced somewhere else. You can see in the picture how the sticker doesn't fit the front of the cartridge, and the red plastic is cheap and almost see-through (if you look close, you can see the internal battery on the second, while the first can't be seen through at all). When I started it up, it only had one option - New Game, and unlike the well-loved cartridge I'd been using, it didn't have any wear marks from being inserted into the GBC or anything indicating it'd been used.

Well, what the hell, I figured. I'd poured plenty of money into the franchise and one bootlegged game wasn't going to kill me. I popped it into my GBC and started playing.

A couple of weeks ago, I lost my GBC for a while, so I had to play it on my SP. No huge deal, I thought.

When I started the game up, oddly enough, the backlit screen of my SP went out, like I was playing on an old Game Boy Advance or a Color. I thought that was pretty weird, considering the lower setting of my SP's screen was brighter than the "high" setting on all my friends' SPs, as I took good care of it, and it was unlikely that the backlight would be going anytime soon. But as soon as I switched to playing Sapphire, the screen lit back up. I'd played my other Red on this SP plenty, and it'd never dimmed for an old Game Boy game, so I just attributed it to the game itself being poorly made (which makes no fucking sense, I know).

About now, you're probably wondering when I'm going to start telling you about how there were Unown in my party and the Buried Alive guy in Lavendar Town started eating my player character, because any preowned bootleg game story is bound to be some creepy hacked ****. Well, it wasn't that simple. I played through Lavender Town, the Pokémon Tower, all of that, and nothing unusual happened. I didn't go mad from the music and feel suicidal, my Pokémon never turned white and started crying tears of blood, or anything like that.

However, as I continued playing, it became apparent to me that this game had some glitches. Just like the cheap plastic casing and sticker that barely stuck, the game itself was flaky. I've never played Pokémon on an emulator before, but if I had to guess, I would say that when it was copied, a lot of the data was corrupted, and I had to be careful when playing or it would freeze.

For example, sometimes the graphics around the player (I'm going to call him "Red", as that's what I named him. I'm a bit of a Red fanboy) would turn into big colored bars and the game would stop, and the background music would stop on whatever note it had hit and play this high-pitched, staticky whine until I restart. This happened whenever I tried to get on my bike inside a cave or building.

I was almost sure this was just a normal bootlegged game until I examined the SNES in the Celadon department store. Don't judge me, but, being a Red fanboy, I've always liked when the game said things from Red's point of view, like how he says "Dad would like this!" when you examine the SNES, or "I should get going..." when you examine the TV, since you never get to see the player say anything, to the point where, as a joke, the developers made Red say nothing more than ellipses when you encountered him in G/S/C.

Anyways, when I examined the SNES where Red would normally say, "Dad would like this!", instead, I saw the text, "Where is DAD?"

I examined it again, and, same thing. I kind of laughed it off, thinking, for some reason, it was poor translation (don't ask how I thought that made any sense). In the back of my mind, I was kind of hoping for a hack game, because hey, if I got some screencaps and posted them on 4chan, I'd be able to at least kill an afternoon laughing about it.

I went to the next floor, then went back down and checked the NES again. To my surprise, the message had changed. Now, Red said, "Who created me?"

At this point, I was pretty sure this had been added in by some hacker, and I thought that was kind of AWESOME. Hell, Red finding out he was really just a video game character. That's pretty funny.

After that, and after failing to find any other added-in dialogue, I continued on in the game's story. At that point, I was about near the part where you surf to Cinnabar and the Seafoam Islands.

But the glitching was getting worse. Sometimes, the map would get distorted, like Glitch City, and Red would be surfing on a tree or a house or some **** and I couldn't move. I had to Fly out and try again. As a kid, I'd always liked doing MissingNo. and Glitch City, and I had a Gameshark back in the day, so the glitches were kind of cool. Eventually, I made it to Cinnabar.

Now, being an avid glitcher way back when, of course the first thing I did was fly back to Viridian and do the Old Man trick. But no matter how many times I tried, I could never get MissingNo to appear. I thought maybe the ROM had been edited to prevent glitching, but that clearly wasn't the case, as the thing had more bugs than the fucking Viridian Forest.

Instead, when I entered the Pokémon Mansion, I was greeted by the following text window:

RED: Nice try, Red.

It was obvious that where "Red" was would be the name of whatever you named your player. What freaked me was "RED", in all caps, as the speaker.

At this point, I know I had to have an edited game. The ****ing player character was telling me "nice try" after I'd failed to do a MissingNo.

The game froze then, and I restarted. I hadn't saved since before I tried the MissingNo glitch, but when I turned the game on again, I was back in the Mansion, exactly where the window had popped up. I could move again, so I went ahead and played through the Mansion. Call me a pussy, but despite my excitement, I was scared, so I played slowly and with all the lights on. I was still playing on my SP, and the internal light still didn't work, so I used that as justification for my being a massive pussy.

Things only got weirder. After I left the mansion, I got a message:

PA: DING-DONG! Time's up! Your safari game is over!

Having done Glitch City in the past, I knew this happened whenever you flew out of the safari zone. As expected, I was outside the Safari Zone gate the next time I hit "A", with the attendants asking me if I got a good haul.

I had an immense feeling of forboding when I went to leave the gate, scared I'd be in Glitch City or even worse. I had a flier, but you have to understand, this is all a little unnerving.

Instead, I was in Pallet Town, but there was no music, nothing. Another text window appeared:

RED: This isn't where I'm from. I've been lied to.

I couldn't move my player after that, so I went to reset, but something stopped me. Instead, I opened the Start menu and went to Fly the **** out of there, but to my horror, the Pidgeot I used for Fly wasn't there. Just my Blastoise, Exeggutor, Kadabra, Mew (from the Nugget Bridge glitch), and Kangaskhan. In Pidgeot's place was a level 16 Raticate with 1 HP. It was poisoned. I checked its stats, and it had the OT "BLUE" and knew Hyper Beam, Quick Attack, Glare, and Skull Bash. I don't even know if Raticate can learn all of these moves. I've since heard that Gary's Raticate died (seriously) in the game, but I had named Gary "DOUCHE" in this game for a few laughs. I guess the OT name "BLUE" came from the fact that Blue is the opposite to Red version, like maybe it was supposed to have come from a Blue cartridge. I know Rattata doesn't evolve until level 20, so this was a pretty obvious hack.

I had some Antidotes and Potions in my bag, so I figured, what the hell, I'd heal it. But when I left the POKéMON menu, the entire Start menu closed, and I couldn't open it again. I tried walking, and this time I was able to move. I took a few steps, forgetting about the poison until a box popped up again:

RED: We killed it.

At this point, I was getting a little freaked out (no ****ing ****). I went to my party and Raticate wasn't there at all. Neither was my Pidgeot. The slot was empty. I closed the menu and tried to move again, but nothing. I didn't want to turn the game off in case it had somehow saved again, so I just kept trying to move before remembering that my Kadabra still knew Teleport. When I hit Start, ntohing happened. I kept trying to move, but I couldn't move. No... Red wasn't letting me move.

RED: This happened to me. Why?

At that point I just shut the game off. I took the hacked Red version out and put in FireRed. Like with my old game, I'd named the player "Red", and for some reason it still kind of scared me. I started it up, and, to my horror, the screen was still dimmed. I hit "CONTINUE" on the main menu, but when I tried to open my game, I got the message saying that my save data had been lost or corrupted, and when I started, the game froze, with the music just being a staticky whine.

At this point, I was really desperate to play some ****ing Pokémon where no weird **** was going on, and I was pissed that my FireRed version was broken, so I threw in Sapphire and started it up. The screen lit up normally. I thought for a moment that maybe something was wrong with my SP that broke my FireRed, and ****, I didn't want that happening to my Sapphire with the Jirachi from Colloseum and the Feebas it'd taken me an hour to find, so I shut it off and pulled it out.

I started playing what I call "Glitchy Red" version again about a week ago. When I started it back up, I was still in Pallet Town, and there was music and things seemed normal, except for the empty slot in my party and my SP screen no longer lighting up. I biked to Viridian and found Pidgeot safely in my PC, so I figured, what the hell, and took it out and flew to Cinnabar to fight Blaine.

When I went to unlock the gym, surprise, another text box.

RED: No.

No matter how many times I tried, the game refused to believe I had the ****ing Secret Key despite it being right there in my bag. Red wasn't letting me in.

RED: Everything that happened to me, happened because the world let it happen to me. I didn't become a hero on my own! I was manipulated. I never unlocked that door. The door was unlocked because the game let me in. Everything you do, you do because the GAME lets you.

Because of how the text boxes were, it took a really long time to scroll through, and the whole time I was writing down what he was saying so I had it on reference. Things were getting a little too Silent Hill for me, and, once again, I tried to move, but Red wouldn't let me.

RED: I'm going to show you how it feels to be unable to chose your own fate.

I gave up and opened the Start menu again, glad that I could, and used Pidgeot to fly out of there. I knew now that this was only because Red was letting me fly out. He was toying with me.

I flew to Lavender, because, shockingly enough, nothing weird had ever happened there. From Lavender, I walked down to try and go to Fucshia, but as soon as I left Lavender, Red was at it again.

RED: No.

Well, fuck, I thought. I opened the menu and flew to Fucshia. When the I got there, I nearly shat my pants and dropped my SP.

It was the Glitch City you get when you surf along Cinnabar's coast. Immediately, the menu popped up, the way it does when you do the Mew glitch, and it was asking me to save the game. There was no option for "No", and pressing B did nothing. I shut my game off.

When I started it back up, I was still in Glitch City. I checked my party, the way Red wanted me to - Pidgeot and Kadabra were there, but instead of "TELEPORT" and "FLY" appearing when I selected them, there was only "CURSED". Not "CURSE", like in that ****ing retarded Creepy Black Pasta, but "CURSED". I was smart enough not to select it. I hit B until I was out of the menu, and Red was telling me shit again.

RED: You're staying here with me, Red. They replaced me because I was GLITCHED and not good enouigh (sic). I thought this was my story, but I'm just a character in a video game. They took everything from me. My VOICE. My FREEDOM. My LEGACY. They replaced me with the brown-eyed kid.

I understood now that he meant FireRed version, and the Gold, Silver, and Crystal versions where he'd been demoted to final boss.

He let me move, and, to my surprise, the game never froze, even as I was walking on water and stepping onto houses.

Eventually, I suppose I went too far, because the screen turned black around my player.

RED: Am I a joke to you?

A YES/NO option popped up. I can't tell you how fast I hit "NO".

RED: Then why do you do these things to me? Why do you corrupt my world and show me GLITCHES that aren't meant to be? Why do you want to hurt me with MISSNGNO.?

I never wanted to hurt Red. It was just for fun. The game had bugs, and we've all just exploited them for fun, right?

RED: Why did I have to die? Just because I'm a hero?

I shut my game off. That night, I had a dream where I was a Pokémon Trainer - the player from FireRed, who I will never again think of as "Red". I was being chased by a white-pale body. While I can't feel pain in my dreams (I know some people can), the pale figure eventually caught me and ripped at my chest and sides with his nails. The last thing I saw before I woke up was the face of my attacker - a little boy with bright red eyes, black hair, and a red and white hat.

For the next few days, when I played, it was because I had to. I was trapped in the blackness because Red refused to let me go. Because he was forsaken and forgotten, left to just be abused by players who come back out of nostalgia and to exploit the bugs. Because I played so much, I almost always had a headache from the high-pitched noises the game makes. I had to call out of work sick. I could never move, but I found comfort in staring at the screen with the black background and my player. Red didn't say anything to me.

I couldn't play FireRed again, even though it worked on my DS. Yesterday, I finally got to Mt. Silver on HeartGold, and I couldn't bring myself to battle Red. I don't know what he'd do to me if I beat his replacement. Would he be angry? Happy? Would his defeat put his spirit at peace? I don't know. No matter how many times I play through the games, Red will suffer the same fate, because he is a hero, and because the games let him only go so far. Red will never again be able to experience the glory of being the hero, and neither will we. No matter how many times you start a new game, it will never be the same as the first time you played. You know what's going to happen, and you play for nostalgia, because it's just a game to you now.

I killed Red, and so did you. Unlike Ash Ketchum, he's never going to be the hero of another new game in a brand new region. In HeartGold, Gold's successor, Ethan, had even taken his accomplishments from him, being the one to catch the Pokemon Red had fought so hard for - Mewtwo, Zapdos, Articuno, and Moltres. His life is over for him. He became such a legend that there was nothing left of him to even be proud of himself.

I finished "Glitchy Red" yesterday, when I finally checked my Trainer card. There was a sprite of Red as he appeared in G/S/C, but in the game's same monochrome color scheme, just red and green. When I looked closer, the red pixels making up his shirt looked darker and arranged oddly, almost like he was bleeding from the chest. None of my Badges or time played or Trainer ID, just that sprite. When I returned to the menu, instead of my name appearing as "Red", there was the word "GONE" for my Trainer card. I selected it, and this time, the card was blank.

RED: Go ahead and forget me now. Goodbye.

The game reset, the way it does after you beat the Champion, and this time, there was only one option - NEW GAME.

I found my GBC earlier today and started playing it on there. When I played on my SP, the screen lit up and everything was normal. I had to start a new game on my FireRed, but it's working again. Even the bootlegged Red version plays normally, no glitches. But I can never see Red's silence the same ever again, or even the hilarious MissingNo. and Glitch City bugs. I have a much deeper respect for the "silent protagonists" in the game, for all we put them through. Lavender Town used to creep me out, but now I find it very peaceful, as even Red, who wanted revenge on a world that had treated him horribly, could never mess with the resting place of fallen Pokémon.

Someday, I hope I stop waking up with scratches on my torso.

* * *
[What does this author have against Creepy Black? That was a good pasta all over, and there are so many horrible, atrocious abominations categorized as Pokemon Creepypasta that are far better to bash on. Anyway. - Owner]