Pokemon Week! Nuzlocke Challenge: A New Way to Play
Go my army of Bidoofs! No one will see it coming…oh, sorry, got a little carried away there. Now unless you are playing a Pokémon game for the first time, a lot of the time the basic game-play is rather straightforward and can get boring sometimes. Well in 2010 a new challenge was invented to make your Pokémon games a little more challenging and thus more rewarding. The name of the challenge is The “Nuzlocke” Challenge. The name refers to a web comic where the Pokémon Nuzleaf was portrayed as John Locke from the show Lost. The most basic rules of any Nuzlocke Challenge are as follows:
- You may only catch the first Pokémon in each new area you explore.
- If your Pokémon faints, it is considered dead and must be released.
Many people who do this challenge, also follow a third rule: You must nickname every Pokémon you catch. They do this in order to create a sense of attachment. Also people tend play with additional rules in place to make the challenges harder or to diversify their teams. But as long as the core rules are followed, it’s considered a Nuzlocke Challenge. You can find a nice comic explaining the rules here and the comic that started it all here.
“Everything happens for a reason”
Before when I played normally, if a Pokémon fainted it meant nothing to me. Like Team Plasma in the latest games said, I was just using my Pokémon and they meant nothing to me. So I decided to Nuzlocke my HeartGold game. After going through the Nuzlocke challenge, I don’t think I can play the main game of Pokémon the same ever again. The bond you create with your Pokémon is genuine. You learn to value them and when they faint, it hurts because you’ve lost not just a Pokémon but a friend. I remember my first loss; it was a Raticate that I had caught in the very beginning of the game as a Rattata. I felt something that I had never felt in my time playing Pokémon…..remorse. I knew after that moment, I would value my team and my Pokémon. I just finished a Nuzlocke on Pokémon White and am going to be doing one for the Pokémon Black 2 I am picking up tomorrow. So if you want to experience Pokémon in a different light and are going to be picking up Pokémon White 2 and/or Pokémon Black 2, I suggest trying doing a Nuzlocke. Stay tuned tomorrow for a first impressions of Pokémon White 2 and Pokémon Black 2 with a full review by Managing Editor Lucy Niess later on. I hope you have enjoyed this look back on Pokémon and “see you in another life brotha.”
Seriously, this is how you will feel after every loss.
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