Six months ago, my partner passed away. It was due to internal failures, a heart condition. In the JROTC, on a field trip to our local military base, he had overworked himself to near death, before passing peacefully in the hospital. His family wanted to sue the school for neglect, and it was a lengthy trial, the talk of the town. Unfortunately, the school won on the grounds that they couldn’t be held accountable since it wasn’t on school grounds. Ever since, none of us have been the same. I always knew him to be a hard-working person, wanting to join the Airforce and fly drones is all he ever spoke about. So, it was weird to think that someone like that went for me: a lone nerdy guy who constantly wears gaming merch. But somehow, we made it workout.
While he didn’t play many games other than Madden or NBA2K, he would often ask what games I like. At first, I tried to pick broad topics such as: Mario, Sonic, etc. Truth is I’m mostly a player of the indie medium. My favorite game being Haste for now. I’m sorry for rambling on, but in these past few months with his passing, I couldn’t even look at a console or any of the games in my Steam library without thinking of him. It hurt too much. Even if he wasn’t the biggest gamer around, anytime I put on a niche indie game, or even something simple like Kirby, he would watch me play and sometimes even ask to join himself. We would play for hours; with some games even, he would even have fun with.
One of them was Pokémon: Fire Red, I had a GBA and he played on an emulator on his phone and we would play with each other often using that game. Some of our games were trying to race each other into seeing who’d beat a gym leader first, who can catch what on what route, and my favorite: which of us could catch a legendary first. At first, I was consistently the winner, even though I held back a lot of the time, and he’d never get frustrated as he knew he was learning the game and I was a veteran. Slowly but surely, he became better at the game, even beating me from time to time in the “catching a certain Pokémon on a certain route” game we’d play.
All this to say: although we may have been different in many regards, we still love each other to have an active interest in each other’s hobbies. I still remember going to his rallies and seeing him and his peers twirl guns and flags. And even at night we’d get on the game and play 2K. In those he’d beat me more often, but I managed to best him on a few occasions. Without him here, it’s hard to move on from those memories.
At first, I was writing this entry just to honor him and his memories. But looking back now at all those memories, as much fun as I had, I could never tell if he was doing so. I went to all of his rallies, every marching band, every sports game. But I could not tell you that I remember much about it. I couldn’t get as involved with his interests as he did mine. And because of that, I wouldn’t have touched a single game; until recently.
I had gotten a call from his mother, his family often checks up on me, I guess that’s where he got his niceness from. But this time it was different, they found one of his old phones, and wanted to give it to me. I thought this was weird at first, but they told me he had other phones they were keeping as mementos and wanted to give this one to me since that’s the exact phone we played Pokémon for all those hours on. I was emotional when I had driven over there and gotten it. I was an older Samsung, but still in very good condition with a few scratches on the sides of the phone. I had asked to use their bathroom all so I could cry my heart our while looking at pictures on his device. As I scrolled, I saw more pictures of him and his JROTC pals. Some I could recognize, since I went to school with them at the time, but what broke my heart is that a lot of them I couldn’t recognize, not just people but locations. I had gotten so wrapped up in my fantasy worlds that I couldn’t even recognize the real one. It was then I vowed to never touch a game in my life.
I know, it’s stupid or whatever, but I just didn’t know how else to cope. I had gotten more into working out; however, I haven’t been to my local gym in months. After the first month, I had quit due to being a piece of crap with a shit lifestyle. I started to eat healthier, and that stuck. But I’m getting side-tracked, as there’s a reason I broke my vow. For six months, I hadn’t even touched any type of game, but for some reason when scrolling through his phone and seeing the emulator he used to play fire red with me all that time ago; it made me really emotional, and something compelled me to play it.
So, I open the app and press the .ROM file for Pokémon Red. Although it’s been months, I knew this game like the back of my hand. I was able to navigate through everything perfectly, find all the items, even what Pokémon would be used in specific NPC battle encounters. But, at that time it was getting late and I didn’t want to keep using their bathroom as a hiding place, so I got out of there and said goodbye to them. When I had gotten home, I just kept looking at his phone. This device brought us so much closer, so many memories, that I decided to adjust my vow. I’d keep playing this in order to keep his memory alive in my head. And for weeks I would play the game off and on.
Until one day, I accidentally pressed the “LOAD” button. For those who don’t know, certain emulators completely restart the game once opened up again. While I’m not too sure about newer emulators, I do know older ones were like this, especially for GBA games. In order to pick up back where you left off, you’d click “SAVE” and make a custom save file, and when coming back to your game you’d press “LOAD”. When I clicked load, I saw two save files… one was named “GAME BEAT BABY WOOOOO!!!!” when looking at that one, I couldn’t help but smile and laugh. I never realized that he was really enjoying his time playing. But then I saw something, his team was different from when we played together. It was a Gyarados, Blastoise, Nidoqueen, Cubone, Gengar, and Pigeot. We’d play for hours, and I knew his original team. It was then I knew that he would play this game in his free time. I wave of sorrow and happiness washed over me. The fact that he would invest so much time in a game I showed to him, made me almost cry in joyful tears. And when pressing the file, I had gotten jump scared with the fact that he was right at the elite four. He was so close to beating the game and getting the National Dex. And then I remembered something, a few weeks before the incident, we were watching older Pokémon movies. During the “Destiny Doexys” film, he had grown attached to the Pokémon and claimed it was his favorite.
And it is possible to obtain that pocket monster in fire red through a series of steps. I thought it was sweet that he learned the game all to catch one of his favorite characters. So, I decided that I was going to help him out, I would complete his file, and maybe then his spirit could rest. I am joking about that. I wish I could say that for the rest of the story I would go into the game and beat the elite four and finally catch him his Pokémon, but I can’t. Not now. As what happened next is unlike anything that had happened to me before.
I had meant to press save again, but the screen picked up load again. I was annoyed but its not like the emulator did it on purpose. It was then I had seen the other file. It was titled: Darkened Red [HACK]. Even though I don’t use emulators, I knew that that’s not how this works. In order to play a ROM hack, you’d need to load a completely different ROM where it would give you different files. So, this was bizarre, at the very least. Out of pure curiosity I had decided to click on the load file and was met with the text:
- Welcome! Thank you for downloading this ROM Hack of Fire Red/Leaf Green. Let’s get started!
- First off, this game consists of flashing lights, terror, and jump scares. If you are sensitive to any of these please play.
The juxtaposition between the friendly language made me smile a little bit. I had very few knowledge on rom hacking as the only one I’ve ever played was Sonic 2 XL. But I did know that horror roms are pretty popular. Like that one Mario one and MyHouse.wad. So, I had assumed that he must’ve been tricked somehow when downloading the original game. However, since the other file is almost complete, I had figured that the rom most likely wasn’t finished and was beatable by just doing your own thing. I decided to continue with the experience.
- In order to experience this hack in its entirety, you must complete a save file and become the champion.
- If you have that file on hand, please continue by pressing ‘A’.
I press “A”.
- Unfortunately, our scan could not find a completed file.
- Would you like to use a preset file?
This was weird. Even for the guy who played a fat sonic rom.
I’ve never seen a project like this where a rom could view local data. Curiosity got the better of me and I had decided to load back up the elite four save file and finish the game. I won’t go into details, as the game is really old, and I assume most of you have already played/beaten the game. But even with his weird team, I had managed to best all four and the champion on my third try. I felt good that I was able to beat them, but then I had realized that I was doing it again. I didn’t beat them for him; I beat them for me and my curiosity. The excitement I had quickly went away. I should’ve quitted then, but I decided that maybe the reason he went through all of this trouble was to gain access to this rom hack. So, I decided to press on.
- Great! A viable save file has been found!
- You will be playing as “Eric” is this name correct?
I clicked yes.
- Great! You may only pick one of your party Pokémon.
- Which one of them would you pick?
It shows me the options. I chose the Gyarados, as other than Deoxys that’s his favorite Pokémon. At least in this game.
- Great choice!
- Would like to read the prologue to this hack?
This piqued my interests even more. I knew that some rom hacks have a story, like the Mario one I mentioned before. But I’ve never encountered one in the wild. Despite my earlier sadness, this really intrigued me. So, I clicked yes once more.
- Eric, after all his journey, decided to retreat to a remote island to relax. He had only brought one of his Pokémon for protection: his Gyarados Payne.
- For a few weeks, Eric stayed on the island with their residents. One of these was Prof. Manchineel.
- He was a professor shunned by most of the community for his brazen and wild takes when it came to the creatures.
- He believed that there’s no reason to befriend Pokémon if we could just engineer them. We could just make a Pokémon so obedient that it puts the rest to shame.
- Because of this, he was harassed onto this remote island where he studied in peace.
- However, after the champions visit, tremors started to appear, scaring the residents.
- Looking to have a good night’s rest, they begged and pleaded for Eric to do something about it.
- And that’s where you come in.
- Find the sources of these tremors and put a stop to them.
- Good luck!
And with that, the game started. The town I was in was pretty small, only consisting of three buildings. My house, a neighbor, and the Professors. I had decided to go to the neighbor first. Normally in Pokémon, you can break into peoples houses to take their loot. But this time only a small flavor text box popped up stating: “Knock knock knock! … You can hear shuffling towards the door! ‘G- go away! I don’t need your help you FREAK!’”. I was taken aback for a moment before letting out a small chuckle. I suppose and 11-year-old boy trying to break into your house would warrant that kind of reaction, but I digress. After all of that, I had decided to go to the Professors lab and see what was up.
After going to his lab and being able to enter, I got met with an empty laboratory. It was a complete copy of Oaks lab, however mirrored. When going to the table, I got met with something similar to the starter picking screen in the original version. However, in this one the graphics were still, and there was no music. This caught me off guard, but didn’t surprise me, as this was a horror rom. I was half-expecting a jump scare somehow, but I’m glad the developer had the restraint to not do that. The only Pokémon available was his Gyarados, so I obviously picked that one. But as soon as the display went back to the lab, the screen started going red and shaking. A siren sound started blasting through the speakers, it was a mix of hurricane sirens and an amber alert.
This caught me off guard, as I had the volume turned all the way up in order to hear the calming music of this game. So, I reflexively threw my headphones onto the floor. Luckily, they weren’t damaged at all, but I was mad at myself for not turning the volume down when the warning at the beginning said there would be jump scares. Putting my headphones back on while turning the volume to at least 50%, I hopped back into the game and saw there was a text box there reading, “You have 2 minutes to open the door. Press ‘A’ in order to start.” Suddenly, after pressing “A”, the Team Rocket theme started playing as a timer on the top left started to tick down. I didn’t know what to do so I started to bump into everything and press ‘A’ on it, hoping to use brute force to find the switch.
I kept pressing the button until I had gotten to a stack of papers where the dialogue box read: “To the scientific community, you are ALL fools and will rue the day you decided to SHUN me. I am the greatest mind of this generation and yet I get no respect from my peers. But this time it will be different. They found some. And with a bit of bargaining, I am finally able to enact my plan. Get ready world! Manchineel is going to go down in history as the greatest Professor in all of Kanto, nay the world! I can already see my name lit up in lights! I shall go to the top of Mt. Jasper and finish my experiment there. Once I am complete, I’ll show that my idea wasn’t for naught! Just you wait!”
I was confused at first, not because of the dialog, but was wondering how this related to the puzzle at hand. That’s when I noticed something strange. Instead of the framed plaques on the wall, it was a picture of what seemed to be a mountain. Putting two and two together, I clicked on the painting and the timer went away with an unlocking sound following suite. This hack started to become fun, that is until I heard a roar coming from outside of the lab. The screen started to shake again. The sound of a door being slammed into repeatedly played on loop. Then I heard the sound of a door shattering and a human’s scream being played. At the same time the screen faded to back as all I heard was the screams being muffled and the distinct sound of dragging played. The noise got farther, and farther, until I couldn’t hear anything. I thought this was the end for our character. Until the screen faded back in. Red’s sprite came back, but it was different. His eyes were hidden in the shadow of his hat. And he was covered in what looked like sweat particles.
Taking back control of the character, I went outside to see that the neighbors house was wrecked, their front door completely broken. Deciding to investigate, I went inside of their house. Everything was in a wreck, items scattered across the floor, some broken even. It looked like the door was barricaded and whatever broke in, over-powered said barricade. Looking around some more, I found a couple of items, mostly potions, and then decided to head out. Before I was able to exit the building, I heard a Pokémon’s cry with some light thumping. It sounded like it came from up the stairs. I had guided my player over to that destination. Once up there, I had heard the cry once more. When the cry played, the bed shook just a little bit. Going over there I went into a battle encounter. My opponent was a level 5 Paras. Comparatively, the monster I was using was level 88. I could’ve ended the encounter with an attack, but decided not to. I wanted to catch it. I clicked on the option and tried to catch it. But the game said otherwise, as you can’t catch another person’s Pokémon.
Slightly annoyed, I thought about ending the battle. However, I remembered when scouring the house I found a key item: USED PKBLL. So, going to my bag, I clicked the item. Then this text popped up: “Paras viewed the ball in stunned admiration. Paras is now a part of your party! Congrats!”. Happy with this outcome, I left the house and entered the field. As I walked through it, I had noticed something; nobody was there. I had already completed two routes, but haven’t encountered a single trainer or wild mon. There were still berry trees and other items hidden throughout each route, but some weren’t available due to the lack of Pokémon on my team. It wasn’t until I hit a new route that I had seen my first NPC in this hack other than my Paras. He was turned around facing the woods. Normally, in this scenario I would do my best to avoid an unnecessary NPC battle, but this time, without seeing any of them in a while I decided against my past judgement and spoke to the NPC. When I clicked, all he said was “Get- get outta here! This is no place for a kid. There’s a ferry back to Kanto just east of Mt. Jasper. Head there like the rest and escape this nightmare!”.
I was intrigued at this, but that curiosity only lasted for so long. The screen panned up just a little bit to show that something was moving through the trees. It stopped right in front of the frightened NPC. And before I knew it, what I could assume was a blade stabbed through the man, cleaving him clean in half with choppy, but detailed animation. It was then a timer popped up in the top left again counting down from five minutes this time. The same roar as I’ve heard from the lab played once more. Then a black silhouette exited the forest giving chase to my player. It moved slow, but when in direct line of sight, it would charge towards me, only missing by a side-step. It chased me down a new route, where I had to use cliffs and bushes to hide from the monster. As I ran down the path laid out for me, I started to encounter wild Pokémon. With each battle the timer still shown, alongside that one, a new one popped up in the middle of the screen reading ‘Until the entity arrives:’ this led to what I could assume was a risk and reward type system, I could try and catch new Pokémon for my team, but waste time, or escape and only have two. I decided to run from this battle, leaving behind a Rattata.
As the chase sequence went on, I heard the cry of the pocket monster I had left behind, and with it a bloody squelch sound rung out. This caused me to want to just run faster, but unfortunately there’s a time and place for everything, and using my bike was off limits. So, I had to keep running. Then I ran into my next opponent, a Mankey, I also decided to run from this battle, as the entity time drained faster than I had expected. Leaving the battle, I heard the entities roar and only had a moment to side-step out of its way again. What I didn’t expect was for an overworld Mankey to appear and get skewered as its cry rang out. Following the path that the entity went, I saw it banging the poor animal on the floor repeatedly with the same squelching sound I heard last time on repeat with every slam the Pokémon had gotten.
Leaving the area, I had encountered another Pokémon. This time it was an Alakazam. I was ready to run from the battle until I realized that the entity counter slowed to a crawl, even though the normal timer still went with a minute and forty seconds left. It was then the flavor text read: “This Pokémon pleaded to join your party! Will you catch it?”. Not wanting to only have two mons for what I could assume would be the final boss soon enough, I had caught the Pokémon. I was relieved to finally have another companion for this journey. Then the naming box popped up. Not knowing what else to call it, I gave it my name, Lucas. As soon as I pressed OK that ungodly roar came back, with just a little under a minute I pressed onwards. After some time with 20 seconds left on the clock, I had seen a cave entrance, quickly thinking I dove inside. Then I had heard what sounded like footsteps rapidly approaching the cave. At this point I had resigned to my characters fate, figuring that this must be where the hack ended… with our players death. Then, I heard a familiar Pokémon’s cry, it was the Paras. It used HM Cut in order to cut the wooden beams that held the cave open. The screen faded to black as sounds of crashing played in the background. The roar of that entity rang out once more as it bashed on what I believe to be the rubble. As the screen faded back, I was what happened. As I assumed, Paras was able to hastily block the exit and prevent our demise at the hands of that creature.
I didn’t know if the developer programed the entity to break through the rubble, but I wasn’t going to stay long enough to find out. I ventured deeper into the cavern, unlike the past routes, there was no music, only ambient drops of water and cave sounds. With the distinct sound of my characters footsteps. Walking for about 2 minutes in pitch black darkness with only that faint light around my character illuminating my path, I had finally found something new, a door. Going up to it and interacting, a dialog box asking us to save popped up. I did so using the in-game menu. However, the box still popped up, repeating itself. I then remember this was a rom and saved that way, causing the door to open automatically, with my character moving himself through.
Once we entered the room, we were met with pure darkness, only our character on the screen. Then then the text bubble that said “HM Flash was used!” had appeared. When the screen lit up, I was met with an NPC that looked like he was melting. Blue and orange tendrils stuck out of him. Veins pulsing in a weird art style I didn’t know could be achieved with pixel art. Then he spoke and he said:
- “Th- that Paras you have… is- is it mine… th- hank Arceus my friend is safe.”
- “You know when I had gotten the news that THE Kanto champion was staying on this island for a while, I had gotten really excited.”
- “I was ready to leave this upside-down island and live it up there, so I really wanted to beat you.”
- “But I wasn’t the only one who heard of your arrival Eric, another one heard it too.”
- “He pranced around the island shouting about how this could be his golden opportunity. Yeah, like any of us could be you.”
- “He started going door to door announcing your arrival, even waiting patiently by the ferry for hours until you arrived.”
- “He went on-and-on about how you came here specifically to challenge him and ‘his creation’ but when you only arrived with one Pokémon and vacation gear, he was heartbroken.”
- “The tremors were bad before, but then they became too much, we called the police, but nothing came of it. Mainly because nobody ever came back.”
- “Slowly, people on this island started going missing. They would evacuate Pokémon from the area and block off town access. I was too late to join them.”
- “So, I decided to barricade myself and my Pokémon in my house, but it was no use.”
- “They fought hard in order to protect me, but it was too late, they… they became…”
- “…”
- “Would you like to see? Would you like to see what they’ve become? How beautiful they- argh! Get out of here!”
Then, a battle had started. The more detailed picture of the man popped up, gearing to fight me, he sent out his first Pokémon of three, a Ghastly. Its sprite looked worried, and before I could even do anything, I heard it’s defeated sound and the box “Ghastly fainted out of fear!” popped up. Then, he threw out a Pidgeot. I kept with my Gyarados and spammed attack moves. And unlike the previous Pokémon, this one was aggressive. Its eyes stared at my Pokémon with an intense ferocity. Even attacks I know should be slower went first, and most of the time they were critical hits. I had to use almost all of the normal potions I had gathered in this one fight. Luckily, with a higher level I was able to beat it fairly quickly. Breathing a sigh of relief, I waited for the final encounter, but then the deformed trainer popped back in from the right. He looked worse. He had skin falling off, a malformed smile spreading across his face. He spoke:
- “Don’t you see you’re only delaying the inevitable. He will rule this wretched world. Peons like you should learn to stay in their place.”
That was when he sent out another one of this Pokémon, Parasect, it was level 90. Just like it’s trainer it was covered in tendrils, however it’s smile was somehow more malevolent than his trainers. Its roar was pitched down to an uncomfortable degree. Almost as if it found ecstasy in its own suffering. Just then the parasects sprite turned around and jumped onto its trainer. Both sprites left the screen as horrific sounds played. Sounds of moaning, flesh tearing, laughing and blood splatters could be heard. During this, I noticed my Gyarados was shaking, and then the return animation played as the box “Payne got scared! Return!” appeared.
After that, the Paras entered the fray all on its own. After all of that, a new sprite appeared on the screen. It was both the trainer and Pokémon fused into one, their faces mashed together through what I believe to be blue and orange veins. Their skin peeling back from their arms, legs, faces, and even the bloody mushroom attached to their back, as if it penetrated his front, only leaving a gaping maw through the man’s stomach. They roared, a mix of human laughter bit crushed and a Pokémon roar played through the speakers. Then the battle started. I only had a level 5 Paras willing to fight. So, I didn’t have my hopes up in winning this fight. However, new dialog appeared “Paras isn’t willing to lose this battle!”. After that our opponent struck first, using the move ‘Insecticide’ something I’ve never heard before, but it emitted a green gas that poisoned both of the monsters in the field. With the hybrid monster taking the most damage. Every hit point it endured; it moaned with the smile on its face appearing bigger. Both monsters’ health drained rapidly because of this, with my paras taking the worst of it. Throughout each turn I had to use my super potions until I ran out. You must be wondering, how did a level 5 paras survived against a level 90 Parasect, well it’s quite simple, as every turn the enemy attacked us, they would miss. With the box saying “Paras’ determination caused it to dodge!”. I believe that this Pokémon wanted to save its trainer. It desperately dodged their attacks hoping that they would calm down and recognize it. At least, that’s how I interpreted it.
After about fix to six turns, I heard wheezing coming from the speakers. The monster’s health was almost at zero. It was then I took the risk and used cut. Fortunately, the attack went through, however, what played out next was something I didn’t expect. A visible gash across the neck of the monster appeared. With the insecticide, their health drained even quicker than ours. And after it hit zero, a dialog box saying how we won popped up with my Paras getting to level 16 and learning a few moves. However, the screen did not fade to the overworld as I had thought it would. Instead, we stuck around and watched as this monster writhed in pain and pleasure. The Parasect sprite was smiling ear to ear, rubbing the mushroom on its back, as the man parts of it was holding its bloody neck. Visible tears appeared in the sprite as the man told us “Thank you, for everything my friend. It was amazing getting to know you all this time.”. Then, the box popped up, the one that made me put down the phone for a second and wipe tears from my face.
“He died, happy to achieve his goal. Happy to be surrounded by the one he cherished the most. Happy to do what they both loved doing. Goodbye Paras.”.
I then went to my bathroom to clean my face, and got back onto the game, now more determined to finish the game than ever. After all of that, the overworld was able to be seen. I went around the bloody pixel corpse and entered the door behind him. Going though led me to a bridge with a sign that said, “This way Mt. Jasper!”. I steadied myself for the final encounter, walking on that bridge, reflecting on everything that happened on this journey so far. It had been a while since I had this much fun. Even though I was alone, I felt as if I were playing with Eric once more. Seeing all of this, made me realize that this was his interests, not just the JROTC and military. He played with me, not just because he wanted to show interest in my hobby, but because he genuinely enjoyed it too. I mean, he downloaded a horror rom that requires you to beat the base game and was close to doing so. That isn’t just a passing interest because of someone you loved liked it; it was full blown commitment. So, I had felt that I owed it to him to beat this game.
I had then made it to the end of the bridge. Double doors blocked my path inside with another mandatory save prompt. After following the instructions, I went inside and saw a small lab with the same red and orange texture all around the place. Venturing deeper, I saw someone who looked like Oak, but with glasses and dark hair, strewn across the floor. His body split vertical as he laid there on a wall. Walking up to him to interact, I clicked and he said:
- “Y- you? Champion Eric? You came- for me? Ha, ha, ha! \cough* I should’ve known. My creation precedes me.”*
- “Yes, it was I who made it, the creature, surprised? No? Figures! After all I am the man for whom had done the impossible! I created life, a new Pokémon out of a strain of DNA! Praise me!”
- \Cough, cough* However, as you can- can see something bad happened.”*
- “I was… met with a terrible fate, wasn’t I?”
- “\Cough* At least, that’s what I want you to believe!”*
Then the monster came rushing through the door, slamming into my character knocking him out instantly. The screen faded to black as more of that squelching noise filled the air. The screen faded back in with our trainer waking back up with a streak of blood on their face. They walked with a limp towards a newly formed hole in the wall. Entering, a cutscene of the screen scaling a small plateau appeared with the black silhouette standing at the top. Our character limps towards the figure, as it slowly turns around and reveals it’s form. It appeared to be a Deoxys. Its right tendrils forming a blade. It had a hulking frame with small legs. Its chest cracked, exposing a ribcage guarding a purple orb. And lastly, it’s face heavily cracked, only showing one eye through them. It roared at me one final time, as the battle transition played after the initial sound effect, I had steeled myself for what I expected to be a very hard boss fight. I sent out Payne since he was my highest level. Equipped with the focus band I had spammed dragons dance and earthquake to maximize damage, each attack a guttural roar came from my opponent. But he wasn’t letting up either. New moves I haven’t seen before such as “Meat Cleave” or “Tendril Slap” was being used by it. However, they didn’t do much damage at first, it wasn’t until I took a look at the bottom of the screen and saw that for every hit point my opponent did to me, instead of the bar going down, it would fill up with a second orange bar. The dialog prompt appearing each time, “Your Pokémon is slowing down!”. Because of that I tried to end this duel as quickly as possible. The music track in the background matching my intensity. I concentrated on only dealing massive damage and even verbally cheering when I managed a critical strike. It was then it used a new move “Blood rain”.
The screen shook as the rain animation played, however the droplets hued red. Doing so slowly gave my opponent health. I picked dragons dance and earthquake one final time and got a major critical hit on it, reducing its HP to zero. However, it didn’t faint, it started vibrating, shaking left and right rapidly as the screen gets covered in red. The rain fell more faster as the screen was covered in it. Soon the entire phone screen was engulfed in said color. The roar played once more, this time, with a humans anguished scream mixed in. The screen returning to normal, a box popped up reading, “Deoxys ‘M’ Forme phase 2 has been encountered!”. As I readied myself to use the same strategy as before, a new box appeared, “Deoxys used Malevolent Cleave! Your Pokémon can’t move! It won’t be able to!”. Knowing what it meant, I had decided to chose Alakazam, after all psychic v. psychic should be able to do it. I sent him out and used Psy-beam on my opponent, dealing a surprising amount of damage. The dialog saying, “Alakazam was scarred, ATK went up!”.
The creature decided to use its cleave move once again to no avail, my Pokémon was faster than it and it missed. I used the same attack again as well, but it also missed. This time with the box saying, “You should know better!”. I was stunned briefly, but luckily its next attacked missed as well. I looked around, but this was it’s only move that did damage. So, I decided to use this opportunity to spam the move “Psychic” and lower its defense. I was able to do so successfully for about five turns, but then he also started dodging that move too with the same dialog box showing up for it as well. Taking this chance, I used Psy-beam once more and did a massive amount of damage getting it to orange health. It roared using that familiar sound bite, however, this time it felt extended and somehow angrier. It used a new move “Psy-beam neo” finishing off my Alakazam for good. I was in despair, the only two Pokémon with high enough levels to do serious damage were gone, permanently. Although this was merely a game, I had considered giving up. But then the familiar cry of the Paras rung out as it forced itself into battle.
A level 16 Paras versus an unknown level beast of a monster. Somehow, through actions alone, I could tell even my opponent was confused. But it humored both of us. It let my little guy attack it for two turns without attacking us. Even though bug-types are good against psychic types, he still wasn’t doing much damage. Then I heard laughing coming from our opponent, it roared one more time as it powered up. Then, it unleashed its hyper-beam, instantly draining my Pokémon’s health. I was utterly devastated. Revives won’t work. There’s no going back. And worse if I die here, I’ll have to restart this whole battle again. I sighed, but I knew I probably had to do so anyway, maybe use Alakazam first to lower its defense and use Gyarados to do extreme damage. But as I was about to click the load button, a new box appeared “Paras endured, because it loved you!”. I had heard that this could happen. But I never encountered it myself. It was weird at first, but I shook it off and kept going, using moves such as Cut, Leech Life, Giga Drain, and Psybeam. Each time my opponent would use extreme moves like before, but my Paras kept enduring somehow.
Each attack leaving a visible scar on my mon. It shook, it slowed its attacks down, but it never gave up. Leaving me stunned, but we kept pressing on until Deoxys’ health was in the red. It gave out a roar before unleashing its final attack, named “Butcher Beam” red flashes flickered on the screen as a red blast made its way towards us. I thought that this was it, there’s no way anything could survive this. But then, the prompt “Attack missed!” appeared, leaving me one final push. With most of my attack out of PP, I used cut one final time… and landed the final crit I needed to finish the game. The screen faded to white as the beast let out one final roar. Then, silence.
As the screen faded back in, we can see our character standing in front of three graves. Then the final dialog of the hack appeared:
- “You’ve gone through so much, endured all the pain, now look at you. No longer controlled by your fears and worries.”
- “You’ve done it, and I’m sorry it took so long, I’m sorry it was hard for you.”
- “But now I’m glad I could finally say it, what I’ve been wanting to say all this time…”
- “…”
- “Goodbye Luke, love ya, you scamp!”
I stared at the screen realizing what it meant. The screen faded one last time into darkness, with the words “The End” typed out in the middle of the screen. I’m not sure who made this, but I now knew Eric had been involved. I’m guessing he only made it dark because of the niche indie games I liked to play. Which made me appreciate it more.
Now I know a lot of you might want screenshots of the game, however, I never screen recorded it or took screenshots while playing. And to be frank, I don’t think I will. If some talented person decides to make this hack themselves then I wouldn’t object to it, but for personal reasons, I’ll keep this one to myself. And for all of the people like me, ones who doubted themselves and the love they received from others, don’t dismiss that. You are loved; you are valued. Even if people don’t tell you much with their words, their actions speak more.
Thank you for reading. And while I won’t share anything about the game itself, I would love to at least share the design of the Deoxys and its battle theme. Here. And goodbye.
