Out of all the Pokémon games, I grew up with the second-generation Pokémon games on a Game Boy Advance SP. Those include Pokémon FireRed, LeafGreen, Sapphire, and Ruby.
This gen ended with Pokémon Emerald, and all the games mentioned were part of the Advanced Generation, all playable on the Game Boy Advance. Those could later be played on the Nintendo DS and DS Lite. With ROM hacks becoming popular on mobile or PC, playing older games without the official handheld consoles is possible through emulator apps. A ROM hack is an altered version of the original game, but it could have little to no changes to count as the original game.
These ROMs have been around since the late 1990s with modified versions of Pokémon Red and Blue, the first generation of Pokémon games released in 1996. The trendsetter was in 2010 when the “Nuzlocke Challenge” emerged and still influences gamers today.
Nuzlocke Challenge and its Rules, History
Nick Franco came up with the two primary rules of the Nuzlocke Challenge in 2010. The author and artist Franco posted his playthrough runs of Pokémon Ruby on 4chan forums and created webcomics with this challenge in mind. These rules must be followed to do the challenge genuinely are the following:
- The player must only catch the first wild Pokémon encountered in each new route. If it flees or faints, there is no second chance, and no other Pokémon from that area can be caught.
- If a Pokémon in your party faints, it is considered dead and must be released or put in a death box on the PC. If you run out of Pokémon to use that are living, the player must restart the game, and they have failed the challenge.
At Nuzlocke University, many other rules—some near-universal and some optional—are found. But just those two rules form the core part of the challenge. These rules make the original game harder by self-implementation, making the completion of the game way more satisfying and memorable. It went from Let’s Play type videos to essentially open competitions to beat a specific game that made Pokémon ROM hacks famous in the past few years.
The altered versions of the games are so tough to beat blind that damage calculators and research of opponent’s Pokémon are necessary to complete these games.
If you want to learn more about Nuzlockes and rules for beginners or more experienced players, pChal, a “pro nuzlocker,” explains it in this YouTube video.
The Past and Present with Pokémon Emerald
I recently got into Inclement Emerald, a challenging but fair ROM hack that gives the player a few new features. The base game is great to run through once, but some altered versions make them more replayable.
Pokémon Emerald might be the most replayable game, despite coming out almost two decades ago (2004). This is two years after Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire came out in 2002, the same year as Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen. The whole third gen of Pokémon became the best-selling GBA game series back then. They still are the core of ROM hacks that are popular today.
Along with multiple Quality of life (QoL) improvements, ROMs like Pokémon Glazed and Pokémon Emerald Kaizo bring something unique. Glazed completely rewrites the standard Emerald storyline with new characters. Emerald Kaizo is notorious for being one of, if not the most challenging games for Nuzlocke.
If regular Pokémon games are becoming stale, add a few Nuzlocke rules to your run to spice things up.
If you liked this, check out our video game articles here.
For More Great Content
Follow us at @TotalApexSports for the updated news in ALL sports. Check out all the great content Total Apex Sports has to offer. Check us out on X @TotalApexEandG and our other sites: Total Apex Sports Bets and Total Apex Fantasy Sports.
