Gary's Pokémon Blue
I have been a Pokémon fan for many years, pretty much since the original Red and Blue. I had a Pokémon Blue I got for Christmas and I played the hell out of it. I must have played it over a hundred times. But one time I leant out my Pokémon Blue to a friend of mine and unfortunately when I asked for it back he had told me he had lost it on me. I was a little upset but it was just a game and let it go.
Years later a came across a vintage game store that had a bunch of Game Boy games. They were all stacked up on top of each other behind a display case. My eyes lit up when I saw Pokémon Blue box among them. A price tag of two dollars sat on the box, which made me happy since I did have that money on me.
I asked the clerk behind the counter I could buy it and he very pleasantly obliged. As I walked out the store with my new prize I opened the box that looked like it creased making it an obvious pre owned game. As I pulled the cartridge out of the box, I stopped dead in my tracks staring at the game. Something struck me as odd as the usual label on that was this game was that of a picture of a Blastoise.
But the game that sat in my hands had a picture of Raticate. My initial thought was I had in my possession a rare game and I was excited to think that I paid very little for it. As I drove home, I was anxious to play my game as to recall my fond memories of the game. I got home and searched out my old Game Boy and popped in the game. I turned on the Game Boy and a familiar start up came on.
The same old Game Freak logo was shown and the short Gengar, Jigglypuff fight. But as the title screen showed up, I saw what I definitely don't ever remember seeing while playing this game in the past. Where the usual appearance of the main character and different Pokémon scrolling by, this game had the rival character and no Pokémon scrolling by, although there was a Raticate next to him.
Now I thought to myself, I definitely have a rare game. I continued on and pressed start. But nstead of the usual cry of the Raticate on the screen, it was a rather distorted cry. I had a little uneasy feeling about it, but I it might be a glitch and I continued on. Once I got to the file select screen I found it unusual that there was no save file, meaning that the previous user deleted their file before handing the game in.
I selected a new game and it started as usual with Professor Oak talking about Pokémon. I picked my name and went on to name my rival, but I could not pick a name. All the game let me do was to name him Gary. I figured this was another glitch and just continued to play the game. After that instance there was nothing unusual until I reached Lavender Town and went to the Pokemon Tower.
As I had remembered, when you get to the Pokémon Tower you come across your rival and he comments that your Pokémon don't look dead as says he has made his team stronger and proceeds to fight you. As I approached him in my game however, he said something completely different. "Can't you see I'm mourning?", the text box said and then I was thrown into battle. The battle went on normally and I defeated Gary. The text box popped up and said again something I didn't remember.
"You beat me again? Mark my words, I will get you for this" he said then walking off. I knew it was not the same as the regular game but it did seem to make the game a little more interesting. I continued on with the game as nothing different occurred and went on to compete against the Elite Four. All was normal until I went to fight the Champion aka Gary. As I walked up to Gary a text box appeared.
"Now that I am Champion, I will now dish out some payback for what you did to my Raticate." Gary said. That was when it hit me. I had heard of the theory of the original Pokémon that states that your character kills Gary's Raticate since you no longer see it after the fight with him on the S.S. Anne. I realized that the Raticate on the front label was Gary's Raticate and that the distorted cry was to represent its death.
If this was indeed true, I was very intrigued and wanted to see what was going to happen. After Gary said his threats, he asked if I still wanted to battle him and I was given a yes or no option. Being the cocky person that I was, I was confident enough that I figured I could take him. But I was still a little hesitant about selecting yes. I still decided to go on and agreed. "Okay, well it's your funeral…" Gary said then throwing me into a battle.
As I geared up to fight, I realized I had no control over the game and it was playing itself. Gary appeared in his battle stance and I could see an unusual smirk on his face and he called out his first Pokémon and as did I. My Charizard came forth and his Arcanine did as well. "I'm going to make you suffer as much as you made me." the text box said. Charizard used Flamethrower and the text box said it was completely ineffective.
Gary's Arcanine used Fire Blast and Charizard's HP slowly drained until it hit zero and fainted. What happened next took me completely off guard. An image of my Charizard was shown but it was all black and missing parts of it. A text box came up and explained to me was I was looking at. "Arcanine's Fire Blast caused Charizard to burn to death." I was honestly surprised and a little scared.
My next Pokémon showed up and Gary changed his. Sandslash came up and his Blastoise came out. Again my Pokémon used an attack that did nothing. The Blastoise used Hydro Pump and Sandslash fainted. Not too unusual since water was very strong against Ground. But still a picture of Sandslash was shown with a big hole in the middle of its body and what looked like entrails on the ground. "Blastoise's Hydro Pump blasted a hole through Sandslash's midsection."
Again my Pokémon came out and Gary switched to his Alakazam. My Fearow attacked, did nothing and received Alakazam's attack. My Fearow fainted and a picture of it was shown missing its head. "Alakazam's Psychic caused Fearow's head to explode." I began to panic a little not really wanting to see more. Three more grisly pictures showed themselves as I watched. "Pidgeot's Sky Attack caused deep wounds making Lapras to bleed to death."
"Exuggutor's Stomp crushed Kangaskhan skull." "Rhydon's Horn Drill tore open Raichu's throat." I had no idea what I was watching but was glad it was over since my Pokémon was gone. A text box showed up and said something that caused me to turn white. "Now that I have paid you back by killing off all your Pokémon. There is only one thing left to do…kill you so you can no longer kill anyone else's Pokémon…"
Gary's sprite lunged forward towards mine and my sprite turned sideways as if he had fallen to the floor and a black mass surrounded him. I freaked out and shut off the game. I was so scared I vowed to never a Pokémon game as long as I lived.