****- Perhaps my choice in these are poor, but I liked this one. It was really detailed.
------------------------------------------------
When I was a kid, I loved Pokémon. Still do! But I never got into cheating or hacking until very recently, dabbling in it occasionally through YouTube videos and my Nintendo DS Action Replay; and I rarely downloaded ROMs unless the game was impossible to find or I couldn’t afford it. That is, but for one exception. I once downloaded a copy of Pokémon Blue from a public-access ROM site so I could try out glitches and use cheats (I didn’t own a Gameshark at the time, and I wasn’t sure how to get a hold of one, anyway). I downloaded one of questionable origin and opened it.
This was sometime in 2005, so about ten years after the release of the original Red, Blue, Green and Yellow games. As the game started up a wave of nostalgia washed over me and I forced myself to swallow a fangirly squeal of delight. Almost immediately I could tell this was either a hacked ROM, or a fan-made translated copy of the Japanese version. The dialogue was in Engrish; so nonsensical was Professor Oak’s speech that I could barely recognise it. I frowned, wondering if this would affect later gameplay, but the thoughts vanished from my brain upon finding myself in my room. The colours were slightly off, but there seemed to be no other issues. Naturally I checked my PC before leaving, withdrawing my lone potion (translated as “medicine” by the ROM’s creator). I then headed out and triggered Professor Oak’s “Don’t Go In The Grass!” cut scene.
As I was escorted to the Lab, the graphics glitched somewhat, cutting objects in half or causing entire lines of pixels to move over several spaces, making the overall display incongruent. It looked somewhat like Glitch City. When we arrived, the game appeared to freeze me at the door after Oak walked away, but resumed after only a brief pause. The dialogue continued as normal (well, as normal as possible for a fanslation) with strange, quirky dialogue added in. I can’t remember now what it was, I just remember chuckling at it, seeing how obviously the hacker had had his fun with it.
I then proceeded to choose Squirtle as my starter, simply called “turtle” by the game, but the option to name it seemed to glitch. Again, I can’t remember the details, I just know that whatever I named it didn’t quite stick… I don’t really know. All I know is that when I battled with Gary it was still called “turtle”. The game would always be at its glitchiest during battles. The dialogue was a series of Japanese symbols, glitch blocks and number and letters in alternating lowercase and uppercase. Sprites were cut in half, inverted, mirrored, miscoloured or glitch blocks. Attacks didn’t always show the animations normally, and the sound effects were distorted, delayed, or non-existent. I managed to play the game just fine, though, still noticing the same issues – Rattata was “rat”, Pidgey was “bird”, etc. Also, due to what I assumed to be yet another translation error, Pokémon “died” instead of fainting. I wasn’t bothered by this – it was long before I discovered Pokémon -related creepypasta, so I thought nothing of it. Pokémon wouldn’t ~mysteriously disappear~ from my party, the gameplay wasn’t affected – the only “off” things about my party were a) the sprites were glitched as well as the health bars, b) my Pokémon’s names kept changing (I’d stopped nicknaming them), and c) their levels would fluctuate seemingly at random, making raising them both unpredictable and difficult.
Also, although my Squirtle’s name appeared as a bunch of glitchy symbols and pixels in my party and Pokédex, whenever I sent it out in battle, it was always named “Bluebell”. It was also the only Pokémon in my party that, for some reason, would randomly learn and subsequently forget the move Struggle, despite it not being a learnable move AND despite my other moves having full PP. Also inexplicably, whenever I used it, the fainting animation would play, Squirtle’s health would pulsate as if it had infinite HP, and then it would cry out – and reappear as if it had never fainted. In fact, it never did faint – it was as if the Squirtle was unable to die, as if it were… Invincible? Upon reaching zero HP, the Pokémon would “faint” repeatedly (about five or six time), then return, as if called out, practically unharmed but usually with the wrong cry (often a Rhydon’s or a Graveller’s, who knows why). At first I thought it was kinda cool, then somewhat annoying, and finally downright creepy. I also couldn’t deposit it, and sometimes when I was travelling, its cry would randomly play, but slowed down somewhat, so for the first few times I didn’t even recognise it (and it didn’t even start doing that until around Pewter City). Whenever I checked my party after that sound, Bluebell’s status would have changed unpredictably to asleep, paralysed or poisoned (although it never took walking damage) – never frozen or burned, though. More often than not it cured itself. It was as though this particular part of the game was out of my control. It had a mind of its own, so to speak, and I rarely ever had proper control over it.
But all this paled in comparison to what happened when I was training in the fields between Lavender and Fuchsia.
I was wandering aimlessly, trying to seek out new Pokémon to battle and/or capture, when all of a sudden, Bluebell attempted to evolve (I tend to hold off evolution until a Pokémon has learned a decent amount of moves). It didn’t do this in battle, nor after a recent level-up, but while I was in mid-step. A dialogue box appeared saying, “Bluebell is [glitch]. Bluebell is about to evolve! [More glitches]” My Squirtle then tried to evolve into… A freaking Butterfree. “What the hell?! Uh, no!” I thought, and mashed the cancel button belligerently. Instead of cancelling evolution, however, Squirtle then attempted to evolve into two other Pokémon – first, an Articuno with half its right wing and its entire left leg missing with glitchy pixels adorning its head, and then an entire mass of glitch blocks that vaguely resembled a trainer sprite. Whether or not I tried to interfere seemed to not matter in the least at this point. Finally, Bluebell at last evolved… back into a Squirtle. What?
“Bluebell’s EVOLUTION hAs FAiLed!! [glitch block]” the screen read. It then returned me to the overworld. But before I could move, Squirtle’s cry played again – this time so slow it took about ten whole seconds for the sound to play out. The game then announced, “Bluebell has died!” Confused, I checked my party, only to find that my little turtle buddy had indeed fainted. Properly.
When I exited to the overworld, I found myself in a mysteriously silent Lavender Town, void of NPCs save for “Ghost Hand Girl”, who when spoken to would only say, “You’re not LOST, are you?” – it read almost as if I had made my name LOST (it wasn’t – it was Jack, my favourite boys’ name). Confused and disturbed, I entered the Pokémon Center, a.k.a. the “hospice”, also devoid of life but for Nurse Joy. When I tried to get her to heal my Pokémon, all she would say was, “It won’t wake up…” She also didn’t move at all.
I tried to leave Lavender Town, but every exit I tried triggered a text box reading, “Bluebell turned away…”, as if we were in battle and it was disobeying me. But Bluebell was unconscious… wasn’t it?
I tried the Pokémart, or the “store” as the game preferred, but it too was empty, an item ball lying on the ground. It contained an Escape Rope, strangely enough, which was one of the only items in the game to retain its correct name. When used, Professor Oak’s “Not now!” speech was given, and every subsequent attempt after that to use it would cause the warning to become glitchier and glitchier, until it was unreadable.
Finally, I entered the Pokémon Tower (simply called “the graveyard” – all in lowercase as I’ve written here) and, unsurprisingly, it too was empty. I headed on up the tower, seeing hide nor hair of trainer or Pokémon. When I reached the top, Mr. Fuji was there. When I spoke to him, he said, “Let me take care of your Bluebell…” as though he was the Daycare Man. The healing music played. Then he said, “I’m sorry.” When I tried talking to him again, he just kept saying the same damn thing over and over. When I checked my party, I realised Bluebell had never been returned, and when I exited the menu, Mr. Fuji had disappeared. I used the Escape Rope and finally, it worked. On exiting the building, Ghost Girl was nowhere to be seen, but when I attempted to leave Lavender Town, Professor Oak’s “Don’t Go Into The Grass!” scene played out, but with Ghost Hand Girl as my guide, who tried to lead me… Somewhere. When the door animation and sound played, I found myself outside my house in Pallet Town. When I tried going into the houses, the doors were all locked, so I tried the Lab, which was open, but once again, there were no people around. When I got to the opposite end of the Lab I found the sprite of a Pokédex in place of where Charmander’s Pokéball should’ve been, and when I hit the action button in front of it, it revealed itself to be a note reading, “You are not LOST. It is waiting for you in [glitch].” I left the Lab, pondering the meanings of the all-capitals “LOST” and my destination, but on my way to the grass leading to Viridian, the Fly animation played (despite not yet owning the HM for Fly) and I was transported to the door of the daycare. I entered and was greeted by the Daycare Man, who gifted me with… a Squirtle named Bluebell. It was level five and knew the moves Tackle, Tail Whip, and Struggle. Glitched information. Same distorted cry.
Upon leaving the daycare, a text box popped up saying, “[glitch]er Jack has fainted!” The screen then went black, beeped a few randomly pitched tones, then proclaimed, “Player Jack has died!”. It then scrolled through several boxes worth of glitch symbols, before going blank for several pages, finally ending with, “…Kekekekeke…” Then the credits rolled, but the music was changed to a slowed version of the Pokémon Tower music. Once they ended, the game froze, and I couldn’t do anything. The entire program seemed to freeze, but worked perfectly when I loaded a different game. I was never able to open that file again; in fact, I could no longer use the game at all.
According to my computer, the file was corrupted.
