The History of Nuzlockes

if you played every single Pokemon game but somehow had never been on the internet you would have no idea what a Nuzlocke is despite being one of the most popular ways of playing Pokemon nuzlocks aren't mentioned anywhere in the games themselves despite this nuzlocks are so popular that they've even been adapted to other non-pokemon games even though they were specifically designed for Pokemon if you're watching this video you probably already know what a Nuzlocke is in fact you've probably watched one or two of them if you don't already know don't sweat it I'll be explaining in a second what's funny about nuzlocks is most people don't know where they come from or even why they're called nuzlocks in the first place even some of us content creators who stream them don't know so I took it upon myself to take a deep dive into the furthest grimiest corners of the internet to find out where nuzlocks came from and how we got to where we are now this is the complete history of the Nuzlocke before we continue with the video I'd like to take a moment to thank today's sponsor Bay Living in America you might think you can buy whatever you want whenever you want unfortunately that's just not the case there are tons of Japanese businesses that don't ship internationally and who can blame them shipping fees are normally outrageous well fret no longer thanks to Bai you can buy anything from Japan this includes products found on websites like Rakuten Amazon Japan and Yahoo Japan auction IE will purchase or bid on the item on your behalf I've been sent to a warehouse in Japan and then ship it to you themselves bayi has over a hundred shipping methods dozens of payment methods and four insurance plans to meet your needs they also offer support in several languages including English so you know exactly what you're buying sign up today using the link in the description and you'll get 2 000 Yen off your first purchase on Bayou as of the recording of this video this converts to around 15 US dollars so you don't want to miss out thanks again now back to the video throughout history there have been many in instances of players bypassing A Game's intended gameplay in favor of something more challenging beating the original Doom was already a challenge in itself but it only took five hours with the ability to post recordings of your gameplay online Gamers started competing to see who could beat games the fastest which in turn led to speedrunning there's only so many times you can play one game before getting sick of it Pokemon faced this exact same problem going into the early 2000s each new installment was pretty much just red and blue with a Fresh coat of paint and this has pretty much been the case ever since for the players who started with Gen 1 they've pretty much mastered the Gameplay at this point they've seen everything there is to be seen the series became too repetitive easy and dull there was no more challenge there were no more stakes and that's exactly how Nick Franco felt in 2010 before he created the Nuzlocke Board of his college classes Nick decided to start a new save file on his old Ruby cartridge but after realizing that beating Ruby would be just as boring as studying for finals Nick decided to set two rules for himself one he could only catch the first new Pokemon he encountered in each differently named area and two if a Pokemon fainted he would have to release it and thus the first Nuzlocke ever began Nick quickly realized that this style of gameplay resulted in a closer bond between him and his Pokemon a bond like he'd never experienced Pokemon he used to ignore were now key members of his team giving him a newfound appreciation of them whenever they came in clutch if you've ever played a Nuzlocke you know this feeling all too well I could do Swampert this turn oh my God of my heart you'll also know how heartbreaking it is seeing one of them faint throughout his run Nick thought that it would be fun to share his experience with others so he did what any sane person would create a 14-page webcomic detailing his playthrough this was a problematic era for internet humor so I don't recommend reading the original webcomic instead I'll sum it up for you while showing the panels that aren't going to make YouTube or Pikachu mad at me Nick picked Trico as a starter and caught a CDOT and Zigzagoon shortly after now he didn't feel great about these encounters but with due time he grew to appreciate them TDOT would evolve into the Nuzleaf which gives the Nuzlocke challenge half of its name and then die on the same page the name Nuzlocke is derived from these two panels in which nuzley's face is replaced by the character John Locke from the TV show Lost That Probably sounds very strange now but lost is one of the biggest shows in the early 2000s also this was right around the time where memes were even becoming a thing so the bar for being considered hilarious was a lot lower though of course fans of the web comic decided to name the entire challenge after it catching a silicon that quickly evolved into beautify Nick was about to be faced with his first obstacle a tale as old as time oh no Overworld poison rushing to the Pokemon Center he held onto hope that his Pokemon would be able to survive but Nick's suffering was only just beginning beautifly Zigzagoon Loudred pelipper medicham camera hariyama wall rain and Sceptile were all met with similar face they were gone forever nevertheless Nick did demonstrate some great strategies that are still used in nuzlocke's today for example playing around slay King's true on to build going hyper offensive against Tate and Liza using parishthong against Steven's metagroasts these techniques allowed him to complete his run become the champion and change Pokemon Forever it wasn't long before readers started posting their own Nuzlocke Comics online the earliest one that I could find was posted to the Nuzlocke Forums on December 20th of 2010. Shiro's trial a Nuzlocke Adventure in Kanto spends a whopping 43 chapters and frankly the art is quite impressive especially when compared to Franco's Shiro's story is interesting because instead of just retelling the event and adding personality to each character she goes full head Canon she even goes so far as to skip over or change major events such as how she beat Blues final Pokemon in the champion battle instead of Simply ocoing Charizard with Graveler Shiro opts for a more interesting story beat having blue forfeit after realizing his Pokemon were controlled by Mewtwo Mewtwo goes on to become the final challenge instead hence leading to the name Shiro's trial the Nuzlocke forums also had a section for written blogs the first one of these I found was a heart gold Nuzlocke posted on January 5th 2011. and it sure is something from what I can tell the nuzlocker did manage to beat red on Mount Silver I'm not sure exactly how they did it but hey I trust them what does ERA perfectly encapsulated was the emotional connection that nuzlockers form with their Pokemon a feeling that wouldn't be the same for years to come before the days of speed up where candy and super optimization noslocks would take days if not month to beat dozens of hours spent leveling up a Pokemon only to lose them to a dumb mistake meant so much more back then than it does nowadays that's why from this era losing a Pokemon was often met with depictions of heavy thorough real quick if you're enjoying the video I hope you'll consider subscribing we are so close to a million subscribers and we just need a little bit more help to get this final push even if you think you're subscribed already I'd appreciate you taking a second to double check because a lot of people who watch the videos think that they're subscribed but they actually aren't anyway back to the video now let's jump forward a few months to June 2011. twitch has just launched and gaming channels on YouTube are rising in popularity in fact the earliest Nuzlocke video I could find on YouTube is from this year it's a 30 second animated clip from the user's webcomic today it's nearly impossible to find Nuzlocke content from this era by using YouTube search engine but by using Google and filtering by date you'll find dozens of people linking to their own series the earliest Nuzlocke series I found was Hayden's Diamond run from December of 2011 and it is 52 episodes long incredibly Hayden is still making great Pokemon content today nuzlocke's series like this one laid the groundwork for how we watch nuzlocks today viewers were able to see what happened in real time as opposed to being told what happened after the fact this way of showcasing nuzlocks brought the audience and the player closer than ever before encountering the area's best Pokemon witnessing the death of a valuable team member nearly wiping to the hardest battle in the game we made it viewers were now able to experience a similar feeling of emotion as the player as those locks Rose in popularity people wanted to find ways of making their Nuzlocke stand out the first domino in the chain that would eventually lead to the Myriad of Nuzlocke variants we today was the universal Pokemon game randomizer this tool swaps every Pokemon in the game with a random one leading to hilarious and very chaotic playthroughs Groudon but I mean your starter Pokemon could be Groudon or it could be we don't the same is true of opposing trainers in the game wait does that mean my rival gets [Music] oh did I do that no you would never know what you're going up against making planning totally irrelevant a few other creators you might know also started posting their own Nuzlocke series around this time but patters would be the first to attempt one with the randomizer tool Pokemon Fire Red randomizer Nuzlocke part one bad start and a bad start it was types like uh the Bulbasaur one will still be grass type and stuff like that at least that's what I've experienced so far let's have a look what we got here oh making it to the starter selection screen patters realizes that he hasn't even turned the randomizer on after restarting and choosing metatype as a starter Hatters not only loses the first Rival Battle he also fails to catch the first Pokemon wasting all of his pokeballs in the process 34 episodes later Hatters finally makes it to the champion battle and revives one of his Pokemon so it's gonna be three against six which I still think is he's there are dogs that run here I see it I think this is funny because it just encapsulates how different this era was nowadays doing something like this would be kind of Unthinkable but back in the day it was kind of the Wild West with less plays and nuzlocks now on the rise so too was the never-ending list of fan games a lot of them were garbage which of course you'd expect but some of them went on to be Mainstays in the nuzlocking community even some of the garbage ones namely Pokemon Dark Rising a fan made rom hack made by a modder named Dark Rising girl in 2000 12. this game might have the cringy dialogue countless typos edgy story and poorly designed Fakemon that plague these early ROMs but what matters is that it was incredibly hard to Nuzlocke random trainers jumping out at you completely revamped base stats and abilities and poorly coded well everything these are the ingredients that make Dark Rising so formidable people would raise their Pokemon 20 to 30 levels higher than their opponents and still end up losing in 2013 Shady Penguins run would only last seven episodes before he got swept by a random trainer in a cave we know that nuzlocks were created to increase the difficulty for veteran players but what happens when even those become too easy the answer is probably obvious make harder nuzlocks introducing the Nuzlocke variants egglock wedlock randomizer Wonder lock cage lock Soul link gift lock sleep block zombie lock okay I'm obviously not gonna name every single one there's like 100 of these and the reason why there's so many of these is that all you need is one new rule to distinguish it from a regular Nuzlocke seriously you could come up with your very own Nuzlocke right now creators do it all the time like the ludlock or the Shady lock Shady penguin was one of the first Pokemon YouTubers to do a Nuzlocke variant in the style and to name it after himself JD began uploading the very first Shady lock back in February of 2014. aside from the basic Nuzlocke rules Shady added an extra one that he would only be able to heal via potions that he would hack into the game what's so bad about that you might be wondering well potions don't restore your PowerPoints once a move ran out of pp he would never be able to use it again which basically took away his ability to grind or levels oh also this challenge was a randomizer as you can imagine it didn't go very well JD's first run though started off pretty strong he got a grand bowl with intimidate as his starter he then caught a vigoroth and and a Wartortle and most surprisingly figured out that tail whip was actually one of the most valuable moves any of his Pokemon could learn if you lowered your opponent's defense stat enough you could basically One-Shot it which is really useful when you're trying to conserve PP things were looking good until he remembered what lay ahead nugget Bridge The Gauntlet of trainers guaranteed to drain every last move that he had this is an early example of something that still happens today when a Nuzlocke is too difficult JD updated his rule after defeating a gym Shady would be granted one token that he could use to heal his Pokemon at a Pokemon Center in a poll Shady's viewers accepted this new rule and the Run continued JD took his grandmol all the way to the Elite Four where he was met with a new challenge he was out of tokens his Alakazam was basically useless and his entire team was under leveled he made it through a single battle but then wiped to Bruno JD didn't give up there though A year later he'd try again with leaf green and succeed he moving on to Heart Gold after that and wiped and then a year after that he beat platinum as more and more Nuzlocke variants came out a streamer called excessively AIDS came up with the brilliant idea of completing a gauntlet of every single Mainline Pokemon game with a different set of rules applied to each aslaw he called it the Nuzlocke Gauntlet in 2016 Pokemon saw a huge spike in popularity in part thanks to Pokemon go to capitalize on all the traffic coming through their channels mnj TV TruGreen 7 poke aim MD and Shofu all posted their own Nuzlocke if we went into detail on all these we'd be here all day so instead let's talk about the other most important thing that happened in 2016. the birth of the hardcore Nuzlocke enter yon who you might know as Pokemon challenges the self-titled greatest nuzlocker in the world yawn began streaming on Twitch this year with the goal of combining Pokemon challenges with the hardcore gaming culture often found around games like Dota 2 or League of Legends to do this he'd add in additional rules to make his nuzlocks more challenging such as not allowing items to be used in battle and capping the level of his Pokemon to match the strongest Pokemon of the next gym leader he first implemented these rules in a rom hack called Pokemon storm silver made by driano who would go on to create some of the most popular ROM hacks to date driono's ROM hacks were known for their variety of encounters and Buffs to Pokemon that are otherwise very weak this made for a more interesting and replayable run through compare that with an overall harder game and a streamer willing to punish himself whenever he lost and you've got a gaming channel ready to blow up okay it took a couple of years but in the meantime yawn and his small tight-knit community were becoming extremely passionate about hardcore Nuzlocke understanding that his personality and skill were enough yon dropped the punishment gimmick and instead focused on becoming the best nuzlocker after beating the dry Auto games a 2018 sawyeon take on the hardest ROM hacks to date the Kaizo Trilogy created by programmer Sinister hooded figure right off the bat blue Kaizo was proving to be a nightmare there were exploding Pokemon everywhere oh can we live that easily Overworld puzzles took forever to solve Rock's Ace was an Aerodactyl for crying out loud and he's the first gym leader Jan determined that an itemless Nuzlocke would be impossible something that he still stands by to this day even after allowing himself to spam potions I can't win otherwise I need to spam potions here that's the only way I win foreign God damn it it would still take three months and over 49 attempts to finally beat this game half a year of this both 49 attempts Crystal Kaizo was the same story except Jan knew what to expect this time with immense planning and a boatload of potions he completed it in just 10 attempts oh my God this run is finally over yes oh my God I never want to play this game again Emerald Kaizo on the other hand this is it boys [Music] just explode you piece of please it's over with us uh nothing could prepare him for that that sucks man but before we get into yawn's 2019 attempt at Emerald Kaizo we first have to talk about something else that happened in 2019. something that would change everything not just Freon but the nuzlocking and Pokemon communities at large this is the year we got the Jaden video clocking in at just under 18 minutes Jaiden animations broke the internet with an incredibly animated story time detailing her very first Nuzlocke from admitting that she always thought this kid was a monkey to going into two of the hardest matches under leveled 42. oh I was even more under leveled for maxi it doesn't go down Jaden perfectly Blended humor and tension to keep every viewer engaged she even threw in clips from her actual playthrough to prove that it all really happened oh my gosh that does a lot of damage it stopped but what really showcased Jaden's storytelling prowess were the handful of setups and payoffs throughout the story for instance a bit about her Torchic accidentally knocking out two zig's lagoons on early routes dude Teriyaki kills another Zigzagoon I was about to catch what's your problem with zigzagoons only for one to then KO her Nuzleaf later on and the worst happened wait no no no no no no no stop Jaden confesses that this death actually due to a misclick which I'm sure is something we can all relate to fighting fighting but also becoming confused right so Chris Elliot taking weak damage against a fighting type attack there's even a setup that didn't get paid off until yon reacted to Jaden's video shortly after apparently tailing a bunch of Merrell to level up her Magneton gave magnaton just enough HP EVS to survive an earthquake from Winona's Altaria on 2 Hp a moment Jaden thought was simply a blessing from the RNG Gods after a few more lucky breaks Jaden went on to finish her Nuzlocke with only two Pokemon left and the rest is history what a way to come full circle too from a poorly drawn web comic to a masterfully executed animation Jaden tapped into what started the Nuzlocke sensation in the first place sharing the experience through quick and digestible anecdotes it also helped that Jaden's video is really funny nuzlocks usually puts you in a humorous situations okay horse I pray that I don't get crit and I don't got a poison come on no crit Chris me it creepy please survive [Music] but Jaden's writing animation and storytelling really enhanced these moments further say that watching a Nuzlocke performed in real time is somehow worse though in fact there's a whole lot of people who prefer to watch them live compared to after the fact the authenticity the stakes the I was there moment it's a whole different experience the way that Nick Franco and Jaden shared their nuzlocks might be what caused those locking to take off but the real lifeblood of the scene are the people streaming their nuzlocks on Twitch or YouTube right now people like watching high-level players strategizing and executing extremely high level plays to be clear I'm not saying that it's worse to do a post-com highly narrated High effort video in fact a lot of people really like that which is part of the reason why as of the time I'm recording this Jaden's video says that 84 million views those views do not include the countless pogi tuber reaction videos so yeah it's entirely possible that this one video has been watched over a hundred million times with Jaden's video blowing up everybody won the piece of the nuzlocking cake but not everybody had the incredible anime Asian skills and narration abilities that Jaden had of course you don't need to be an incredible animator to be able to play a Nuzlocke or to make it entertaining especially considering there are tons of games that you can Nuzlocke and new challenge rules being added regularly because there was suddenly such a high demand for Nuzlocke content new cookie tubers began popping up immediately one Creator in particular purplecliff actually did something really interesting by pulling off a viral Nuzlocke series on Tick Tock what's more YouTubers from across the platform who didn't do Pokemon as their main Niche also had a lot of success doing Nuzlocke challenges alpharad Ludwig and small and all made really great Pokemon Nuzlocke videos despite the fact that they do a bunch of different game content and last but not least this era saw the rise of the pro nuzlocker leading the pack is none other than yon who saw a humongous spike in viewership following a reaction to Jaden's viral video this is probably a good time to say that I did not do a lot of the research for this video myself and I'd like to thank yon and Dr XX AKA Drew for their help putting together this video and making sure that everything was accurate for creators who play exclusively hardcore nuzlocks a lot of times the base game of Pokemon is just way too easy because of that in order to really have any meaningful challenge they have to play ROM hacks the most famous of which is Emerald Kaizo we talked about blue and Crystal Kaizo earlier but Emerald Kaizo is special first it was a lot more accessible thanks to the quality of life updates that just came along with Gen 3 in general it was also the hardest of the trilogy also it doesn't hurt that Emerald is a fan favorite Pokemon game the first person to attempt hardcore nuzlocking Emerald Kaizo would be a streamer named luop male who at the time was one of yawn's mods blue op mail had been a part of yawn's community for about two years pushing him to optimize his gameplay and think more strategically the two even met up in real life during gamescon in 2018 and Theory crafted blue Kaizo Elite 4 team John claims he never would have beaten the first two Kaizo games without male's encouragement so you know the real deal despite yawn's reputation for being the biggest hardcore nuzlocking streamer he couldn't start Emerald Kaiser right away because he needed to finish his college thesis while John worked on his thesis luwap mail would stream himself playing Emerald Kaizo to the small community at the time the problem was he couldn't finish it after more than a hundred attempts he was starting to believe that it was unimpeatable others joined in and before long many of yawn's viewers were becoming streamers themselves trying to beat this extremely difficult game with all the attention on his reaction video and the growing demand for Nuzlocke content Jan put his degree on hold and started to pursue streaming full-time his return brought even more attention to Emerald Kaizo and kick-started a race to see who would be the first player to beat it in a hardcore Nuzlocke the thing is luap Mel was right just like the previous Kaizo games the only way Emerald Kaizo was going to be beatable was if they established a new rule because Roxanne and Brawley are so difficult in the game and they're both early on that you have really limited encounters you're basically always forced to pick Trico and if you don't hit certain encounters you basically have to reset this is considered to be way too difficult and made the early game pretty much just dumb luck so the level caps for each of these gym leaders were raised by one this might not sound like a huge deal but it allows you to bring your starter's Evolution to the first battle and Gyarados which is a guaranteed encounter with the second so it didn't make them easy but it made them at least possible after that Jan spent several months developing a metagame with his community that would allow him to get further than anyone had before new records were being set all the time first yawn then run on bun and finally decapod but none of these nuzlockers would be the first to beat the hardcore Emerald Kaizo Nuzlocke that title goes to a streamer called John underscore 97 on February 7th 2021. others would shortly follow suit including me that's right I am one of a very small group that is actually hardcore Nuzlocke Emerald Kaizo I actually beat most of this game twice I made it all the way to Steven on an earlier run but I lost After experiencing some of the worst RNG I ever have in my entire life on the fight prior which cost me most of my team not to be deterred I returned to the game and successfully beat it as a hardcore Nuzlocke which is funnily enough only the second Nuzlocke I've ever completed After Base Emerald so I'm pretty qualified to explain why this game is so fun and what makes it so difficult at the same time part of what makes Emerald Kaizo fun is how balanced the Pokemon are Pokemon traditionally considered weak were both buffed and on the whole given to you earlier on in the game which makes them actually really valuable trimekko for example is one of the best early encounters you can get but it's not as good as Sun Kern who although normally considered to be extremely weak is one of the best early game encounters you can get in Emerald Kaizo if you're wondering why it's because suncurn is one of the only Pokemon of the game to get access to a move that can raise its stats during battle being growth and that's especially valuable in this game as the first three gyms are all more or less weak to some Flora if you do a proper setup it's not just that the bad Pokemon are better though there's so many encounters in each area making replayability really high which is great because if you're nuzlocking this game you're probably going to be playing it a lot now the game removes EVS for both your Pokemon and your opponent which is great because grinding is just not fun especially in a game like Pokemon but it does still give the opponent's team perfect IVs and a beneficial nature most of the time whereas your Pokemon are stuck with whatever they get randomly meaning that your Pokemon are still going to be at a disadvantage inherently against the opponents every trainer in the game has been re-hauled and fights are significantly more difficult I myself wiped once or twice on the very first trainer in the game a bug catcher the first gym leader has a full team of six Pokemon each of them holding an item and it only gets harder from there the general rule of emerald Kaizo is that the opponent's tools are going to be better than yours at pretty much much every step of the game when you're using unevolved Pokemon they're using evolved Pokemon and when you're using evolved Pokemon they're using legendaries on top of that the held items they use are just across the board better than anything you get until maybe the end game but even still it's not really a fair comparison also the creators set up several areas of the game to be especially difficult and then removed the counter play that you would normally have the most difficult of these areas are Flannery's gym and the magma Hideout where the weather is set to permanently be harsh sunlight you might think you can just overwrite this with rain dance or hail or Sandstorm but the Creator removed all of these moves and sunny day from the game so there's no way to turn off the sun switching in against powerful Sun boosted fire type attacks is already really difficult even if you resist them but to make matters worse the Creator gave almost all fire types in these areas the attack Fuller beam that means that the water and rock types that you'd normally use to resist fire also are not safe in this scenario the final nail in the coffin as to what makes this area so difficult is that while most of the time the AI will choose the move that is strongest or that it thinks is the strongest in a given scenario solarbeam has a chance of being called randomly though even if you happen to have a faster water or rock type Pokemon that you can switch in otherwise safely against a fire type attack the game could still randomly choose solar beam a lot of the time resulting in an unnecessary KO in magma Hideout the harder of these two areas many Pokemon have variance inducing items like quick claw and bright powder which makes it even more difficult to get through safely in my first run I lost my salomons who normally comes to the Elite 4 against a critical hit he wave followed by a bright powder Miss it's 11 out of 16 I survive close to run I lost the Run you can also run into situations like this one where ancient power boosts back to back almost resulting in a reset please don't boost on me it's one of the most brutal sections of the entire game and you're almost always going to have to sacrifice some Pokemon to make it through boost again oh God I guess the double it's over don't boost the difficulty only keeps ramping up by the end of the game the fights are just absurd the first maxi fight before the fourth gym so not even halfway through the game has Registeel Winona has all three legendary birds Maxi 2 has Entei Archie has Ryu and suicune in a section with permanent Reign Tate and Liza one of the most difficult gym leaders from the base game uses Latios Latios and Jirachi in case you're wondering no you cannot get any legendary Pokemon in this game not even Rayquaza unless you get Super Lucky with the Regis but that's not before the Elite Four anyway so it's kind of irrelevant speaking of the Elite Four it is brutal you need to plan your entire path through every single member turned for turn if you even want to have a chance of winning the game if one thing goes wrong at any point your entire run can be over then and there yeah so yeah that's it yeah three Pokemon away from the end feels really bad what I finally did beat Emerald Kaizo I needed to develop an incredibly deep understanding of the AI so that I could plan out all five fights before I even stepped foot in for every single turn for every single battle with backup strats in case things went awry I knew exactly which turns I was vulnerable to a crit freeze or any other Randomness and I had to limit those turns as much as possible to maximize my odds of winning I mean the freeze is bad but the no crit is good even with such a detailed plan I knew that it was not guaranteed that I would make it through my first attempt is proof of that where I also had a detailed plan but Salamence had its own plan cash should live this don't creep me it crit me [Music] Emerald Kaiser was so popular that nuzlockers developed a number of written resources in order to help players get through it you can find dozens of spreadsheets documents and calculators like these online this includes hundreds of pages detailing every encounter every trainer battle and the best strategies for the more difficult fights in the game just to make the game seem more doable the most famous streamer to beat Emerald Kaizo is of course yon who finished his run a week before I finished mine I remember watching this run live on a train and it was so exciting young like myself had made it all the way to the Elite Four in a prior run and had lost didn't even get to the champion oh man so the stakes felt so high in this successful attempt the coolest things I've watched on Twitch and if you haven't seen it yawn made an Incredible video detailing his entire Emerald Kaizo run which I recommend watching around the same time John 97 was trying to make his way through Emerald Kaizo the rxx was attempting a hardcore Nuzlocke of a game called Renegade platinum as is the trend with nuzlocks though he had made it a little bit harder on himself and this playthrough if any Pokemon fainted at any point drxx would have to reset this is called a deathless Nuzlocke and paired with something he called hardcore plus history was about to be made really quick hardcore plus is just another variant in this case it's basic hardcore mode plus no EVS no staff boosting moves and additional level caps for non-boss fights later people would also remove pseudo legendaries weather and more nuzlockers really like challenging themselves the deathless hardcore Nuzlocke wasn't the only thing that Drew would popularize though the strategies he used in his original hardcore plus Ren Platt run would go on to Define The nuzlocking Meta this includes using repels to manipulate Encounters in certain areas and going into battle with a Pokemon who's already asleep the repel strategy works because some Pokemon in the wild can only be found at specific levels when you use a Repel you prevent yourself from encountering Pokemon that are a lower level than the lead Pokemon in your party so this basically can be used to raise the odds on specific Encounters in certain areas going into battle with a Pokemon who's already asleep allows you to not only avoid getting status but it also lets you hold a different item than you would otherwise to prevent yourself from being affected by status the only catch is you have to use the move sleep talk to make sure that your Pokemon can actually still attack more importantly though Drew was one of the first people to level up his Pokemon using rare candies that were hacked into the game this allowed him to avoid hours of grinding but was considered controversial at the time that he was doing it the basic argument as far as I understand is that rare candies are just grinding but with a Time save so it actually makes the game both more fun for the player and more fun for the viewer whereas people who argue against rare candies argue basically against the fact that you can make mistakes and I don't know it's considered cheating by some nowadays hacking in rare candies is pretty much the norm and almost everybody who attempts these difficult nuzlocks with a lot of resets does it long story short grinding his cringe and cheating is based oh my God yes thank you Alpha including Ludwig in his famous Mogul Platinum ludlock Ludwig showcased one of the most famous examples of a Nuzlocke gone wrong in a ludlock basic hardcore Nuzlocke rules apply except every Pokemon has to be named after a viewer and if that Pokemon dies the viewer gets banned from chat Ludwig would unban these poor viewers after he beat the game but sometimes this could take quite a while now Ludwig had already completed this Challenge in a number of other Pokemon games but only in their base versions this would be his first rom hack better yet it would be a rom hack made specifically for him Mogul Platinum is an edited version of renegade platinum made to be just slightly easier because Ludwig had never attempted a game of this difficulty before just for fun he also had himself inserted into the game as the main character and some of his friends along the way as trainers that he would fight including me and so began his first attempt at the Mogul Platinum he lost to his second rival fight while using a level 1 Ellicott and so began his second attempt at a mogul Platinum oh realizing this was going to take a while Ludwig had to learn how to tackle the parts he'd already been through quicker and more efficiently by his 10th attempt he quashed his Reckless playstyle and made it all the way to the final rival fight before the Elite Four whoops alright so he lost four of his best Pokemon not too great but he can still oh we're still in it little did he know Ludwig was about to find himself among the list of Gaming's most tragic misplays besides the opponent's Metagross Ludwig didn't really have anything that could guarantee a deathless victory with no clear win condition in front of them he decided to phone in a friend who better than the deathless Renegade Platinum nuzlocker himself Dr XX the mods gave Drew all the documentation he needed to devise a strategy and save the ludlock coming up to the hour mark between battles Drew found the solution a seven turn play that needed to be executed in orderly fashion with no incoming crits the plan was simple lead with focused electivire used Captivate to lower Espeon special attack switch to Metagross and use light screen then go to Sceptile use substitute Swords Dance and sweep did it play out that way and not not so much no just for fun let's watch how it went down from Drew's perspective keep in mind the this is a play he was asked to make alright step one use Captivate Captivate when the Pokemon you are fighting is the opposite gender sharply lower special attack let's go yes so this psychic although super I popularized the fantina Captivate Strat it's prepared me for this moment boys then I can switch out dude you can even go for another one who's it self yeah then you light screen Metagross doesn't have gender he's fine I use light screen heck yeah yeah like that's fine [Music] that's fine defense against oh I can't can't type anyways then that's fine and then you go back and you sub and you set up baby Espeon minus two special attack and a light screen yes I should be able to take almost anything yes now bear in mind that's fine let's use last turn yeah so Catherine's like turns count them up count them up let's use one Swords Dance here no no no no no no no you stop first you sub first you sub first sub first don't risk crit substitute first dude you sub first don't risk crit oh no sub first no no no no ouch hundreds of subscribers banned thousands of dollars lost this challenge was starting to poke its head into the real world it needed to end but it would go on and on and on until finally on his 16th run Ludwig would make it to the Elite Four once again at the cost of almost his entire team out of encounters he only had the Pokemon left in his box to build a suitable team the final product was unconventional to say the least pendergrule with cash spiritomb Starmie Burmy and love disc the first three elite four members went down relatively easily but would he be able to beat the final Elite or member the one who had crushed his dreams Those runs ago and would he still have enough Pokemon left to then beat Cynthia the champion of champion the answer to those questions lies in one Pokemon in particular with cash a wish cash that needed to get off six Dragon dances face to face with the Espeon that ended his 10th run Ludwig knew what he had to do Captivate switch subverse substitute Dragon Dance sweet and that's all there was to it blood had made it to the champion but could he do it again yep wizkash did its dance raise its speed to plus six and swept through Cynthia's entire team before they got a chance to move finally after 16 attempts in three and a half months Ludwig finally did it and he unbanned over 230 people that had gotten banned along the way as you can tell sometimes all it takes is one good strategy the hard part is finding that strategy even though Mogul Platinum is an edited version of renegade Platinum they didn't share the same solution of course there's not just one way to beat every game what you're seeing here is the guide for Pokemon Dark Rising 2. by guide I mean it's just a list of the game's boss fights and their Pokemon it's up to you to figure out how to beat them and yes this is the sequel to the game that didn't have a completed hardcore Nuzlocke for over nine years speaking of which it's about time that somebody finally beat it the year is 2022 a streamer named burrito is on their eighth attempt of the hardcore Dark Rising Nuzlocke having played this for quite some time burrito is starting to notice hey this game might actually be broken aside from the Derpy Sprites swapped cries and abilities that switch when you change your Pokemon's nickname it seems like the Creator didn't know about the physical special split not only that but some moves were just missing their secondary effects Roost for example didn't get rid of your flying type burrito also had a rough time Discerning when the AI was smart and when it was random both of which you need to play around in different ways but over the course of three months burrito would do what no one else could but what if I told you this wasn't burritos only first just a year earlier he was the first person to successfully complete a hardcore Nuzlocke of a very popular Pokemon ROM hack called Pokemon radical red what makes this game so special is that it's always evolving rather them make sequels that add new Pokemon moves and features radical red gets updated on a consistent basis making it more like a live service game without the micro transactions some of the added features include character customization level scaling and even a hardcore mode made specifically for nuzlockers because of this every time a new update comes out the community flocks to see who can beat it first burrito was the first to beat version 2.3 version 3.1 the latest version as of the time I'm making this video has yet to be beaten let's talk about version 3.0 released on July 9th of 2022 only two and a half weeks after its release a streamer named three plates would be the first to beat it deathless a little over two weeks later another streamer named dexa would beat it as well the reason they were able to beat it so quickly and in a hardcore deathless mode to boot is because they'd spent so much time playing previous versions yes there were new Pokemon and mechanics but these players knew the game so well that they were easily able to play around the new changes using their strats others were also able to beat version 3.0 soon after today you can find dozens of creators streaming their nuzlocks no matter what time of day or night you try to watch and because new Pokemon games and fan games are always coming out the Nuzlocke Community is always evolving what I think is really cool about nuzlocking is the fact that it brings people together so much nuzlocking started as a web comic but it was a webcomic that people really related to they really understood they really felt like they were a part of the journey nuzlocking has changed a lot since its Inception there's obviously major differences between one guy creating a webcomic to share a challenge run of his favorite video game compared to you know a massively created animation with over 80 million views compared to the best nuzlocker in the world taking on the hardest Nuzlocke live in front of 10 000 people but what I think is neat about all three of these is that there's this shared sense of community Pokemon is notoriously a single player game but nuzlocks bring people together whether to celebrate the highs and commiserate the lows or whether to work together to beat one of the hardest games ever created nuzlocking brings people together and that's what I think is really special about it so no matter the game no matter if it's the first casual run or a hardcore deathless Nuzlocke I'm confident that nuzlocks will be here to stay for a while

Channel: WolfeyVGC

Views: 1,197,525

Keywords: Wolfey, Pokemon, VGC, Wolfe Glick, Competitive Pokemon, Pokemon VGC, twitch, pokemon nuzlocke, nuzlocke, hardcore nuzlocke, smallant, ludwig, pokemon challenge, pokemon challenges, alpharad, wolfeyvgc, purplecliffe, pm7, pokemen7, mandjtv, shiny pokemon, pokemon scarlet, pokemon violet, scarlet, violet, scarlet and violet, fuecoco, quaxly, sprigatito, nuzlocke history, jaiden animations, jaiden, jaiden nuzlocke, emerald kaizo, emerald kaizo nuzlocke, hardest nuzlocke

Id: iKTAzBgsmmQ

Length: 43min 50sec (2630 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 25 2023