As a true child of the 90's, I grew up in the great video game generation. Mario on a console, Kirby's battle through Dreamland. I also had the pleasure of playing through the original series of Pokemon games. Back in my day, there were only 150 Pokemon (151 and 152 got added later, and one at a time). Over the years I've played the large majority of subsequent generations of Pokemon games, the newest generations being an exception because of money and time.
Recently, a fan made emulator was shown to me, Pokemon Omicron and Zeta. It includes the first five generations of Pokemon, 649 in total, and has a completely new storyline. From what I've played so far, the story is way more upfront about being darker than in the other games (The ghost girl in X/Y not withstanding). I like the writing that the creator has put into the game, even making your rival that much more infuriating of a person. The game is still in beta, and isn't quite finished yet, but there is already over 80 hours of gameplay fully established.
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| They even warn you at the start that your rival is this annoying... |
One of the cool features of this game is that you have the option of implementing Challenge modes into your gameplay. One such difficulty that I'm undertaking is called the Nuzlocke Challenge. It boils down to a few simply, but incredibly frustrating, modifications. One, if any of your Pokemon faint, they are considered dead and cannot be brought back by any means. Two, if you ever lose all of your Pokemon in a battle and black out, you are considered dead and the challenge mode ends. As if that wasn't difficult enough, there are personal challenges you can implement for yourself. I'm attempting to follow the additional difficulty of only being allowed to catch the first Pokemon you encounter in each area. This finitely limits the amount of Pokemon you can catch, especially since if you accidentally kill the first Pokemon you meet in the area, meaning you can't catch another one in the area.
From time to time, I shall be posting updates about how my challenge is going.
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| Somehow a Magby is one of the starters |
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| Almost killed this poor bugger... |
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| Hooray! A Flying type, good for that first gym battle against Fighting types! |
So this was how my team began taking shape. Caught the first one in each area, slowly gaining levels after many trips back to the Pokemon Centre.
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| Stupid Starley and it's stupid crits.... |
And then this happened. Crits are the bane of the Nuzlocke experience. Carefully calculating how many more hits a Pokemon can take based on previous rounds, and then having a crit suddenly throw off the numbers. It's insanely annoying.
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| My box of shame... |
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| Final Trainer card. It took me one day to fail. |
Toodles!
