Probably the first time like,
every summer I come back. It's like hitting you pretty hard,
it's like, "This is where I did it,
this is where I killed her". It's bad because you know you can't undo
it. It's like, "Man, I really screwed
this up". (ominous intro music plays, title card
reads "Death of a Blastoise") This guy is named
"Harrison Koeppel" A few months back, I got a fascinating
and somewhat bitter-sweet email from Harrison. With the subject "Inquiry:
Saving a Blastoise's life". He wrote, "When I was a kid, I was a
major Pokémon nerd. I played my copy of "Leaf Green" until the buttons were worn
on my Game Boy, and my most precious Pokémon was my Blastoise. In 2007, I made a grave mistake. I abused
an Action Replay on my important save file. I didn't know what I was doing as I
was only 7. But somehow, with some combination of cheats, I raised my
Blastoise's level well beyond what it was supposed to be. (At most, level 100). Upon rebooting my game, she was gone.
Replaced by a "BAD EGG". I tried everything: I hatched the egg,
I tried more cheats, but nothing worked. I wrote her off as good as dead for over
a decade. But recently, I've begun to wonder if resurrecting my beloved partner
could be possible. I don't know if you can help, but after
watching hours of your work in preserving McDonald's games and Domino's apps --
I figured you might be the right guy for the job. Let me know if you can help! Best,
Harrison." This idea really intrigued me especially because as it so happens
I had a childhood experience very similar to Harrison's. (melancholical music starts playing) So, one day when I was
about eight or nine years old I found myself standing around outside,
really bored, waiting for my brother's soccer game to wrap up.
And as a kid I was a huge, huge Pokémon fan, I had just gotten a copy
of Pokémon Blue Version for Christmas and I was playing it every single day. But on this particular day
I had borrowed a Game Shark from a friend and I was messing around with a bunch
of cheat codes I'd found on the internet. And I keep adding more and more
of these codes until eventually something
really bizarre happens. (Pokémon Blue intro theme starts playing) At one point I'm walking through
some tall grass (Wild battle theme starts playing) (Sound of Pikachu's in-game cry) And a wild Lieutenant Surge appears. Like,
the gym leader appears in the tall grass as though
he was a Pokémon. And clearly something
is going horribly wrong here but the idea of fighting
and maybe even capturing this feral adult man was hilarious
to me, so, of course I battled him. (Sound of Dugtrio's in-game cry) And the battle had barely even started
when he uses an attack called "TM05". (Wild battle theme freezes) And instantly the game freezes and
won't respond to any of my inputs. And I think "Oh well, I guess
the game's just crashed", so I turn it off and turn it on again. And for the first time since I got
the game on Christmas morning (Pokémon Blue intro music starts playing,
fades out abruptly) the title screen says "New Game".
The "Continue" option is gone. (melancholical music starts playing) I start panicking and I start trying
everything, I try taking out the Game Shark and putting the cartridge
in directly, I try blowing into the cartridge, I turn
the Game Boy off and on again hundreds of times, over and over
and every single time it just says "New Game". And quickly it dawns on me that
all of my work, my save file all my badges, my team of Pokémon,
including my favorite Pokémon Dugtrio, all at once in the blink of an eye every
Pokémon I had ever captured was dead. I was devastated. So, it probably goes without saying
that because of that traumatic childhood Pokémon memory, I
really, really wanted to help Harrison bring his long lost Blastoise back
from the dead. But I didn't want to get Harrison's
hopes up before I knew whether or not this
was even theoretically possible. So, I put out some feelers
and after a little bit of searching I eventually found somebody
with a deep understanding of the GBA Pokémon games. An anonymous Pokémon expert
we'll call Gary. According to Gary, not only was he
uniquely qualified to answer this but there is basically no one on earth
who knows Gen 3 Pokémon data structures better than him. So, I explained Harrison's situation to
him and asked: "Could we possibly help bring Harrison's
Blastoise back from the other side?" Gary's answer: A resounding "Maybe". Gary explained that, in layman's terms,
the "BAD EGG" appears when a Pokémon's data is corrupted. The good news was that the Pokémon could
just be very lightly corrupted and the data could still be in there
but it shows as a "BAD EGG" regardless. The bad news is that because Harrison said
he tried playing the game with the "BAD EGG" in his party and
even tried hatching it that could have messed with things
further. In short: Gary's answer was inconclusive. He told me that this Blastoise
could be salvageable but it also could be damaged beyond repair and the
only way to know for sure would be to check the data on the cartridge
ourselves and that would mean getting our hands on it
in person. So I passed all of this information
along to Harrison and explained that there was no guarantee
that this would work but if he was willing to try
I was willing to join him on that journey. And Harrison agreed. So, with this plan now fully in motion
I asked Gary what sort of hardware we would need
to pull this off and he pointed me towards this: An obscure little device known as
the Joey Junior, a handmade card dumper and flasher created by
an Australian hobbyist named "Benn Venn". I ordered this thing, site unseen,
with no understanding of how it would even work and
eventually it arrived. And meanwhile Harrison booked a ticket
and got on a flight to North Carolina in search of closure. Cool. Alrighty, so we're meeting up with this
kid, Harrison, he flew all the way down to North Carolina to meet up and
work on this. I've got this device here, from Australia,
it is apparently the machine that will help us do this. I haven't even
opened it yet, it feels very light. I'm a little worried, but I think it's in here.
But I think we have all the ingredients. Except for Harrison, so let's go. (Robert) And you know everything you
need to know in order to be able to pull it off?
(Nick) I mean... I don't know. Hi, nice to meet you.
- Hi, great to meet you, Robert. (Nick) By the way, do you prefer
Harrison or Harry? Either works. Just getting this out.
(Nick) No problem, alright. This is the Game Boy game
in question. (Nick) Do you mind, may I?
-Take it away. (Nick) Could we look at the EGG now?
-Yeah, sure. (Nick) Yeah, let's take a little look
at the state of affairs here. (Harry) You always-
It still never goes away. (Nick) Was this your first Pokémon game?
-This was my first Pokémon game, I was like, really young when it got made, maybe
like 5 years old or something. Yeah, before parents would just give you the
iPad, and make kids quiet that way. You know, the Game Boy was the
way to do it. That was literally the first cartridge that I had.
I played the thing to death. I was so hooked on this stuff, it was like a drug
to me. I was on Pokémon like no one else. And I did something really stupid.
When I was at my friend's house, I used one of the cheat codes,
and I did it wrong. And at like 7 years old, this was like the summer of 2007,
summer of 2008, I tried to make my Blastoise really strong.
(Nick) Uh huh. I gave it too many levels, and I've come
to learn that creates a lot of problems. (Nick) Hm hm. Serious, serious data saving issues.
That causes the Pokémon basically to disappear and turn into this "BAD EGG". (Nick) Do you remember, like,
what were you feeling when you realized what had happened?
- That was like, a bad moment. I remember that vividly.
(Nick) How old were you? - I was like, 7 or 8. Man, it was like one of those summer-time
days when you're over at a friend's house. And it was like a pit in your heart,
like gosh, I really screwed up. And it's, yeah, it's bad because
you know you can't undo it either. (Nick) Right. - It's like, I think you said
Icarus flying too close to the sun. (Nick) (laughs) Yeah. - It's just a little bit too high. And
it's like, man, I really screwed this up. (phone vibrates)
Oh, here we go, here's Bill. (Nick) Whaddup, dawg?
(Harry) Hey, Bill! (Nick) Bill, have you known Harrison
a long time? (Nick) Who was the person whose Action
Replay was involved in this? (Harry) Yup. (Nick) Interesting.
(Harry) You were the man with the codes. (Nick) Wow. So you probably have some
personal guilt, hopefully, that we're able to assuage by fixing this. (Nick) This rift in your friendship can
finally be healed. (All laugh) (Nick) After all these years... (Harry) Yeah, looks like an egg... and
it's just kinda screwed up the whole way through. There's nothing you can do with
it. (Nick) You said you tried everything, you
tried hatching it, right? (Harry) I tried hatching it but
it gives you that big question mark -Right.
-you know and sometimes it's like inverted and it's like really weird and
feels like you've done something wrong. And I've felt miserable about having
killed my starter Pokémon from when I was five years old. (Robert) I think it's especially intense
if you have this catastrophic thing happen when you're a child.
(Harry & Nick) Hm. Yeah. (Robert) Right? Because when you're
playing it it feels like the whole world kind of, I think, when you're a kid.
- Very true. (Robert) And then you also don't have the
skills like as a child to cope with like loss and things being disappointing.
- Yeah, yeah. (Robert) So, I think whenever that kind of
stuff happens it just feels so like a life-changing experience.
(Nick) Totally. I was bummed for weeks when I lost my Blue version save.
Losing all my most precious Pokémon... It was never really the same for me. I
played the later ones, I enjoyed like FireRed and LeafGreen and Diamond and
Pearl but it was never the same, so... And it's probably especially heartbreaking
because like, this generation of Pokémon you could have, theoretically, brought
this Blastoise with you all the way through the modern Pokémon games.
Instead it's been trapped in this cartridge the whole time. So, hopefully, at the end of this
process, you can move it into Pokémon Bank or whatever.
- I would definitely make the effort to get this thing into the cloud. I want
it safe, I wanna fix the issue. And somewhere in some server Nintendo is
gonna keep this thing safe for me. (Nick, laughing) That's right. I hope we can save- I should probably have
talked to a veterinarian first to see like how you help brace somebody for "What
if we can't save it?" but... you know... (Harry) To have tried is sorta like
[inaudible] if it can't be done here it is never going to be. (Nick) I'll do my best. This is all
uncharted territory for me also, but we'll see... (Nick's Voiceover) Step 1 was dumping the
cartridge. In other words we would be taking the contents of Harrison's years
old Pokémon game and copying it onto my computer hard drive, so we could take a
closer look and diagnose the problem. Luckily, I had brought exactly
the right tool for the job. (Nick) So, do you know what's in this box?
- I'm excited to find out, I'll tell you that.
(Nick) Truthfully, so am I. I don't really know. This came from Australia and
apparently it is the sole device that exists that can help us with this. The guy
I talked to when I hit up he was like "You reached out to one of the only people
who is very experienced in this and could help you". And he's gonna be on-call for
this, so we have backup. He lives in, like, Sweden. (Harry) Wow, this is an international
project here. (Nick) They always end up being
international for some reason and I don't know why. (Nick) I know! I wonder how many of us
there are. How many people that had like a tragedy
that befell them because they flew a little to close
to the sun, Pokémon-wise. (Harry) Far too many. (Nick) This thing just looks like a...
Like a damn circuit board. (Harry) Wow.
(Nick) And it's got a USB-C port on it. Wild. (Harry) So, this definitely goes in there. (Nick) I'd suspect so, yeah. (Dramatic music) I feel like a surgeon, y'know? Like, I'm- It feels like we're doing
open-heart surgery to save this Blastoise, here.
This- these are all my tools. So here's this thing, it's called
PKHeX. (Nick) Um, it is a Pokémon
core series save editor, and I have it on good authority
that this is exactly what we need. So, we're gonna try... Cool. (Harry) It's like an operating table.
(Nick) Dude, it really does feel like- I was-
thought about renting out Like, a hospital set, or something,
(Laughter) Just to really...make it feel like
we were doing surgery. (Nick) Can I tell you something?
(Harry) Yeah. (Nick) Um, it just mounted.
Here's all the contents of the cartridge. Like, I feel like once
we've got the cart backed up, we can breathe a little bit of
a sigh of relief, y'know? (Harry) Yeah. It's nerve-wracking, too,
because this is sort of outside the realm of things you're supposed to do,
(Nick) Oh, yeah. For sure. (Robert) And that kind of stuff is
exactly what caused it to get broken in the first place.
(Laughter) (Nick) It's true, it's true. We could end
up with like a real Fullmetal Alchemist chimera situation where Blastoise is back
(Harry) Oh yeah. (Nick) but it's just like begging
for us to kill it. (Harry) Going from "BAD EGG"
to "WORSE EGG." (Laughter) (Music)
(Nick) Step two was to open up Harrison's copy of the game
in this software called PKHeX. What PKHeX should do is let us manipulate
the contents of this cartridge, and hopefully save his Blastoise. Or, at least, that was the plan. (Nick) So, there's an "Open" option.
Let's go LeafGreen. (Harry) Okay, there we go.
(Nick) That looks- Lookin', looking right. (Windows error sound)
(Music) (Nick) Maybe I'm opening the wrong file.
(Windows error sound) (Nick) Hmm.
(reading) This could be caused by loading a different generation Pokemon file
on an unsupported generation, or your file is corrupt.
It's a bit of a scary error, but... (Harry) That's fine. (Nick) Let me- Let me see if
I can bring in this guy. (Discord outgoing call sound)
(Discord call joined sound) (Gary) Ayy, whaddup?
(Nick) You can hear us, right? (Gary) I can, indeed!
(Nick) Okay, cool. Which of these files are-
ought we to be opening? (Gary) Ah, FLASH.SAV.
(Nick) Okay. (Windows alert sound)
(Nick) Binary is not compatible with save file.
(Gary) Binary is not compatible with save file, what?
So, you- What I believe might have happened is that the BAD EGGs are so bad
that this, um, that this program is like, "Augh, I don't know what to do with
this data, oUghe I don't know-" (Harry) Whoa.
(Gary) So, it- What you should do is- start by doing, is, is-
First of all, boot this up in- in an emulator, on here.
(Nick) What do you recommend? (Gary) Um, mGBA.
(Nick) mGBA, cool. (Gary) So, change the name of, uh,
FLASH.SAV to uh, ROM (Nick) So that they have
the same name, okay. Cool.
(Gary) Yep. And then, you can do that. (Windows error sound) Whoa! Hmm.
Now, that's interesting. (Nick) Hmm.
(Gary) Is it a bad dump? (Nick) It could be a bad dump.
[Voiceover] This is when we started to get nervous, but according to Gary,
there was no need to panic just yet. It was still possible that we had just
mounted the cartridge incorrectly, and that remounting it and dumping
the game over again could solve our woes. So, we tried it:
(Windows error sound) And once again, it didn't work.
That's when Gary asked us to send him the data, so he could take a closer
look and figure out what the problem was. (Gary) I'm going to
compare these real quick, to see how big a difference
we're talking about. (Nick) So the goal here is to see
just how, corrupted this rom is. (Gary) Yeah, exactly.
Like maybe its just a couple of bits, or maybe this is just nonsense. So yeah, we just got a bunch of zeros.
The dump is bad. (Nick) Wow. So the red entries here are the
ones that don't match with your totally clean basic normal
ROM of Leaf Green? (Gary, affirmative) Mmhmm. (Nick's Voiceover) This was frustrating. This whole part of the process, dumping
Harrison's game onto the PC and looking at the contents,
this was supposed to be the easy part, and it was going disastrously. (Nick) Wow. So, what does that
tell us exactly? (Gary) This tells you that something
went wrong in the dumping process. (Nick's voiceover) No matter how many
times we mounted and re-mounted this game the dumps kept coming out bad.
It was beginning to feel like this rescue operation was over before it had even
gotten a chance to begin. But it turns out our remote
Pokémon expert had one more suggestion. And it was something so
bizarre and counterintuitive to me and Harrison
that we could hardly believe our ears. (Gary) Do you have any isopropanol
or whatever it's called... Isopropyl alcohol on hand?
(Nick) No... there's maybe a bar in this hotel we could go to.
Get a shot of vodka or something. (Laughter) (Nick) Hmm.
(Gary) Take the cartridge out, take some toilet paper, put some just
regular old water on it and like, stick it in and try to
wipe off the contacts as best as you can. And then stick in a dry piece
of toilet paper and wipe up all the water and then try again. (Nick) Alright. Sure. Sure thing. Alright, I got some water,
some napkins. We'll yank it out and then just
a teeny dab of... Phew. This feels wrong. I know
this is not as dangerous as it feels but, like, water in a GBA
card feels... really... (Nick laughs) (Gary) The thing is what I've learnt doing
electronics is water is dangerous because it contains minerals that are conductive which means that if you pour it
on a device that is running you'll cause a short and that'll
break things. But if you pour water on something
that is off - no electricity is running through that, so it's actually fine. (Nick) Alright, so we have wetted it
and now we're drying it. (Harry) We're now drying. I'm trying to make this nice and, like
frilly, so it's, y'know, better absorbing. (Nick) Nice.
(Gary) Did you get any gunk off there? (Harry) Not really.
(Nick) Yeah, not really? Nothing visible? (Gary) Alright. (Harry) Hmm... It wouldn't take much.
It's kinda hard to see. (Nick) Alright, cool.
We're safe to plug it in now? (Gary, affirmative) Hmmh.
(Nick, laughing) Alright. (Dramatic music) (Nick) Let's see... Alright. It's
actually not showing up right now. I'll just unplug- I think 'cause
I ejected it maybe. So, I'll just- Oh yeah, there we go.
Yeah, wait, hold on. So it's mounted... Yeah, it's now showing these. [inaudible] (Gary cheers) (Nick) This is good news?
(Gary) Yes, this is amazing news! It means that it's actually recognised the
game as what it is, which means you, my friend, have a
successful dump on your hands! (Nick) What the hell, okay, good. Dude...
(Harry) That was... Wow... (Nick) This is exciting. I'm trying not to
get my hopes up, but... But this seems very... promising. (Gary) No, like this is... This means
that you've got it. (Relieved laughter) (Emotional music) (Voiceover) With Harrison's childhood
Pokémon game finally backed up safely on my laptop we were feeling good.
Sure, we still had quite a ways to go, but this was a crucial part of the process
and for a brief moment we allowed ourselves to revel
in this small victory. (Nick) Dude, that's... huge. That's huge news. (Harry) I was like, calm before this and
now I'm- now the heart rate's going. (Nick) Dude... This feels like a victory. Wow, the water trick worked.
(Gary) Yeah. (laughs) (Nick) What would we do without you, dog?
So glad, I was just like "Let me see if he's available to chat."
Oh woah! There she goes. (Robert) Woah! (emotional music) (Voiceover) Now with Harrison's save file
safely in hand it was time to load it up in an emulator and see if
we could jog any of his memories. (Nick) Alright, so should we pull it in an
emulator? (Gary) Yeah. (Gary) Ay!
(Harrison) Holy moly.. (Shooting star) (Jingle) (Pokemon Leaf Green Intro Plays) (Nick) Wow! Alright, this is good news. (Harrison) Oh, that's great news!
(Nick) You have 303 hours? (Harrison) Also, if you guys can't tell (Laughter) (Nick) That's why you're "Harriso."
(Harrison) Yeah. (Nick) You hadn't discovered being
called Harry yet. (Harrison) This is taking me on a
roller coaster here. (Nick) This is indeed an emotional
roller coaster. (Beeping noises) (Nick) "HEKEe!?♂♀/"
(Harrison) Yes, this is like pre-spelling abilities.
(Laughter) (Harrison) Pre-literacy.
(Nick) You even have a Nidoran named "ABCDEFGHI4." (Gary) I love how these names look like
they've also been corrupted. (Nick) I know.
(Harrison) I remember the "keke" one. (Nick) I really like "MR. SLUGMA" here.
(Harrison) Yeah. (Robert) This is like,
(Nick) CH'DING? (Robert) an invasion of privacy. (Harrison) No, this is like an in-game-
No, this is what we're trying to archive. (Robert) This needs to remain private
information. (Nick) This is very personal. (Voiceover) After we were done making fun
of the names of Harrison's childhood Pokémon, we decided to continue our
search, So I asked Harrison where he thought where we could find the bad egg
that used to contain his Blastoise. (Nick) Alright so, would it be in your
party? (Robert) It would be in the PC.
(Nick) I see, so you kept playing after this happened as a kid, you were just like
"I'll just put my favorite, dead Pokémon in the PC." Is this where it is?
(Harrison) That's a Mewtwo that was in a gray ball. That was like, the biggest deal
in the world when that happened. (Nick) You caught a Mewtwo in a gray ball?
(Harrison) Yeah, that was like a big deal for, at seven years old. It was like, "Holy moly."
Oh there they are. (Nick) Do you know which one is which?
(Harrison) I have no idea. (Nick) Interesting. (Gary) Alright, yep. That's what you'd
expect to find. Cool. They're in Box 4, now we know. (Nick) Oh, yeah? (Laughter) (Nick) Half-dozen bad eggs here..
(Harrison) Some of those are good. (Gary) Your game is so messed up, man.
(Harrison) I know, it's kinda sad.
