Pokémon Creepypasta A to Z

Drought

There are some Pokémon fans you can tell at a glance. I'm not talking about someone who has enough knowledge of metagame strategies to win every battle or can tell you the exact stats or move pool of any of the 600-odds 'mons; I'm referring to those who grew up along with the Pokémon saga.

For people like us, who played games from all generations for years, it's easy to tell an original Pokémon cartridge when you see one. And so I did.

It was a fresh Friday of Autumn. The kind of days you can still go around in T-shirt and shorts but can already feel the chills of the middle season.

My brother and I both owned a copy of Pokémon Platinum, but he had lost interest in the game after a while, and had started to play with my cartridge. Not that I minded; as a Pokémon lover, he was almost as seasoned as I am, and he had never done idiotic things like overwriting my save file, releasing my team, or break my winning streak at the Battle Frontier.

However, all of this meant we had a copy of Platinum too many. I was hoping to trade it in at some video game shop. I was just on my way there where I stumbled upon a group of kids playing with various Nintendo consoles: brand new DS's mostly, but also a couple of old GBAs that were in surprisingly good condition. Interested, I took a peek at one of them and saw he was playing Pokémon Emerald.

I quickly struck up a conversation: his name was Franco, and it was obvious that he totally was into Pokémon. He showed me his DS and Pokémon games collection, we chatted about Pokémon and other video games, had some battles, made a couple trades, and I didn't notice time was going by so fast until I notices the sun was just about to set.

It was too late to make it to downtown before the shops closed, and since it was the weekend, I'd have to wait for three days before they opened again.

Without thinking, I complained about it to myself. He must have heard me, because he said "Actually, I'm missing Platinum Version...would you like to barter?"

I didn't know what he had to offer, but I heard that sometimes you can find all kinds of rare stuff on oblivious kids, from rare trading cards to save files with promotional Pokémon in them, I considered his offer. He showed me a cartridge that made my heart skip a beat.

The sticker was stained and partially peeled off, but the cartridge's translucent red color and what little of it I could make out left no doubt: it was an original, honest-to-God Ruby cartridge.I examined it closely: the Nintendo logo, seal of quality, and everything else seemed in order.If not for that ruined sticker, you could have said it was in mint condition.

It particularly interested me because I had never played an original Pokémon Ruby game. When it came out, I was too impatient to wait until it was available in the stores, so I had played it on an emulator. By the time I could buy it, I had already finished it, and I didn't feel like playing it again.I had bought Sapphire instead, just for the gist of playing a different game from the one I had emulated.

But I digress. We quickly sealed the deal, and I came back home with my new possession. I left it in my room and went to have dinner, then went back to my room. When I found the cartridge, I found a crudely crayon-drawn Groudon on the front, and the words "Ruby Version" had been clumsily filled in with marker.My brother was just playing at his computer, playing dumb. With the crayon and marker still on the desk in front of him. Not too smart.

But my revenge for his act of defacement would have to wait. I booted it up on my DS.

Predictably enough, it had a saved game memorized. It was named (unsurprisingly) FRANCO, had seven badges and eighty or so hours of play time. I selected the game, and was treated to a completely white screen that blinded me for a second or so.Nothing else happened. I turned it off and back on, and selected a new game. The introductory screen with Professor Birch went out as smooth and normal as it could be.