I talk about and I talk about and I talk about and I barely write about it. Ages ago (in internet time) I mentioned ‘discovering’ a Pokemon Pandora’s Box. Prepare to see the word ‘Pokemon’ a lot. Here’s the long version:

I have several different Nintendo DS units. They are all homebrew enabled, of course. I wish I could locate my presently AWOL launch DS since I have oddly fond memories of nearly setting my hand on fire doing a hardware mod for it for a Call For Help segment. It’s ok, it was only my right hand. I at least had the sense to protect my left! Anyway, I still have my imported Ice Blue DS Lite and my new DSi XL. Back in the old Blue and Red days, I also had several GameBoys. What can I say? It’s a bad habit. I totally forgot that I’ve had MultiConsoleSyndrome for so long! I also presently have two PlayStation 2s, two Wiis (neither are black, though), two PlayStation 3s (ok, one is borrowed since I’m never using the new firmware at the cost of OtherOS), and three Xbox 360s. Only two work. And I gave one of those to my brother. Anyway, with Blue and Red and many GameBoys, my brother and I could hook up the cables and trade any old time we wanted. This was mostly for version-specific Pokemon and to evolve ones like Graveler to Golem and Kadabra to Alakazam. When one of us wanted to start a new game, we’d also stash as many Pokemon as we could on the other person’s game, to be returned later. Most handy. Obviously this is not some super secret trick we discovered. It was merely a perk to having a gaming buddy and can be done for any Pokemon game. This, finally, brings us to Heart Gold and Soul Silver. Owning both carts is pretty unnecessary for obtaining other version Pokemon, thanks to the Global Trading System, but very useful for backing up your Pokemon like I just described. Before you can trade locally with other people, you need to play through the first 40-60 minutes of the game so that you can get to a PokeCenter AND get some Pokeballs for catching the useless Pokemon to trade. My SoulSilver would trade a high level Rapidash for a Rattata from the first route and, voila, I can restart on SS without losing anything I can’t get back later.

Now comes the actual ‘discovery’ that I’ve been playing with the last little while. I was backing up locally with all of my own Pokemon. Were people doing this online with ROMs? Yes, yes they were. Places like GameFAQs often have save files available to download, showing off files with 100% completion or certain time-limited bonuses for people that missed out the first time around. And, specifically for the DS, there are places online that also help you convert said save files into a format that works for your available tools. Hmmmmmmmmmm. I had to check it out.

OMG, IT’S FULL OF POKEMON

Everything. People had everything. No wonder lots of people were making ridiculous requests in online trades! Shortly after launch I wasn’t far enough in the game to be able to obtain a Ponyta for myself, so I thought I’d turn online and see what I could swing. No, you can’t have my starter or a level 100 Mew for a version-specific Pokemon! Sheesh. Who makes these trades?? Inititally I had chalked it up to kids trying to see what they could get away with. Now I think it could be more ROM-related inflation. I actually got lucky and put up a regular low-level non-red Gyrados asking for any kind of Ponyta in return. And I got one! I was so excited. It was from a Japanese trainer and retained its Japanese name. Off the top I wasn’t sure if it was a nickname or not and really didn’t care. I’m not a Fire Pokemon fan, that was always my brother’s department, but I wanted a pretty pony to play with. Even if my new Ponyta was actually nicknamed ‘GajinAssFace’, it was staying in my party. Thankfully, ポニータ is just the standard name for him and, much later on, it actually changed to the English name, Rapidash, when it evolved. <3. Would have been neat had it evolved and went with ギャロップ instead, but it’s all good.

Armed with this new save file with level 100 EVERYTHING, I was curious to see how this would impact a new game. If you’ve never played Pokemon before, you can’t just go ahead and give your brand new trainer a fully leveled Squirtle (or whichever) and one-shot everyone in your path. As you head to the different gyms and defeat them to earn badges, you also gain the ability to use certain Hidden Machines (skills that allow you to cut down trees in your path, cross water on the back of your pokemon, etc) and traded pokemon up to ever increasing levels will obey you without question. Off the top, traded pokemon over level 20 will be defiant and give you tons of attitude. Once in a while they’ll use the move you asked them to do, or a random move from their list that they feel like using, but most often they’ll just loaf around and give you dirty looks. It’s pretty funny. Heck, even the anime covered this topic when Charmander -> Charmeleon -> Charizard stopped listening to him and would flamethrower his butt all the time. Uh… not that I used to watch! Look, I was a kid when this came out. Give me a break!!

I was already close to starting a new game since, initially, I hated the way the girl sprite looked and made a male trainer instead. I was pretty sick of him by the Elite Four since he wasn’t me. However you guys choose to play Pokemon, I prefer to play as me and was willing to switch it up and toss all my previous 60 hours away. Yes, 60. It does NOT take 60 hours to get to the Elite Four. It does when you explore every square tile in the Johto region and spend forever harvesting Apricorns. And catching almost 90% of of the pokemon species passed along the way. And doing the daily events. And radio contests. And the dousing machine. I went pretty crazy.

Thus, Male Trainer got Wiped. New Jenn was born! I decided I wasn’t going to back up every single Pokemon and just kept 10 of my originals, all level 50+ or random ones like Sudowoodo and my RedGyrados. I later traded the Gyrados for a low level Totodile, my usual starter Pokemon, for my own nefarious purposes. I’m a water pokemon girl and have been since Blue. This time around, NewJenn actually picked a plant pokemon starter for the first time in history. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed my Chikorita for the first few gyms but, well, he didn’t stay in my party too long after that. This decision was devious because your Rival always picks (*cough*steals*cough*) the Pokemon type that is super effective against yours. I’m more used to fighting Chikorita/Bayleef/Maganium than raising one! Well, picking a Grass type meant that Rival picked a Fire type. MWA HA HA. What wtfpwns Fire? WATER. I knew this was going to be fun.

Coincidentally, the weekend that I decided to start testing this was also the weekend that Nintendo was giving out a new wifi gift: a level 5 Jirachi. You get the Pokemon for free and they won’t let you trade it to other trainers. In order to redeem a Nintendo gift, you need to pick it up from a Pokemart. You don’t have one in New Bark Town, the starting area, so it took about 30 minutes to pick up my new beloved Jirachi. You don’t actually get Psychic pokemon until a chunk later in the game so starting with one was, really, just pwnage. Not only is Jirachi a Psychic, he’s a Steel-type. Steel types are a pain in the ass to fight since normal/physical attacks don’t do much damage and another reason why I like having Ponyta around to melt those buggers. What do you mostly fight along the first few routes? Normal types! It really wasn’t a fair fight. Anyone who bought Pokemon that weekend and knew to go online and check for gifts probably cruised along with nary a care. I had the deck further stacked in my favour. See, I also traded my old team to HeartGold while holding items like the Shell Bell and Mystic Water and some berries and items like Rare Candies (1 RC = 1 free level). Oh, and some Technical Machines to teach Pokemon special moves that they couldn’t learn naturally. Shell Bells are definitely fun to have around. Every time you do damage, you get a percentage back as health. When you equip someone with this off the top, there’s really no need to swap out for someone else since they’ll never be low on health. Leftovers are another way to keep health up since you are refreshed a percentage of your HP whether or not you cause the other Pokemon damage. I also traded over some nuggets to sell for extra cash and the Amulet Coin to multiply the amount of money I’d get for defeating other trainers. I cannot stress enough how Jirachi just walks through most of the game by itself (it’s a genderless Pokemon but I do generally refer to ‘it’ as ‘him’). Yeah, so I had two starters and two self-healing items but, seriously, they did not matter in the slightest.

This trading scheme, on the whole, had less of an impact on the game than I thought it would. As I earned more badges, my old team started listening to me and things continued as normal. Traded Pokemon gain boosted experience compared to the ones you catch yourself, but they never outgrew my current badge level so it was never an issue. Before you fight the Elite Four all Pokemon obey you without question. Now I thought I’d have some fun. I brought over a maxed out Wartortle, Empoleon, and MewTwo. My own team was able to one-shot through most of the Elite Four thanks to matching types to be Super Effective against them, but I did plug in Wartortle and Empoleon every other fight, just for giggles.

One way I can really see level 100 Pokemon being useful to all trainers, even from the beginning, would be as a tank. Your team is hurt? Put them in and let them soak up damage and status effects while you heal up. Or just keep asking the high level to do stuff and eventually they will deign to hit something for you. It’s not like they are going to die on you in the meantime!

tl;dr version: Using downloaded Pokemon (and items) manages not to break the Johto part of the game. Jirachi, however, kinda does ;)

15:54 is a far cry from the 60+ hours I spent getting here before. Of course, this time I knew all the routes. I still went for every item and TM along the way but didn’t bother with the contests or dedicated Apricorn gathering. Oh, and I had a bunch of mid-level Pokemon from before so I didn’t have to build a whole team from scratch. I’m on the boat to Kanto now but that might get put on hold for Dragon Quest IX. DQIX could be bad for me. Giving me the ability to build a party triggers SUPER CRAZY OCD in me and I feel the need to optimize everything to be perfect for everyone. Bad, bad, bad. Amazingly, I’m slightly less psycho and game for grinding in MMOs. I’m going to try very hard to relax about this and just enjoy all the lighthearted writing instead of focusing on the ‘right’ decision. Just as an example: In Final Fantasy Tactics I would match the birthday month for my friends and give them the job they’d be best as. Amazingly, I still have friends despite this :)