The late 90s was a time when video games were constantly reaching new heights. One of the many different new genres of games to debut in this era were the catch them all style games, where the character, as a child or sometimes a young adult, goes out into the world, recruits, captures, or otherwise befriends a team of monsters, trains them in the art of combat, and proceeds to kick NPC butt, until there are no more NPCS butts to kick. Then, if they don't live in the middle of nowhere, they can connect with a real world friend and hopefully proceed to kick their butts.
Famous long running franchises like Pokémon and Digimon were firmly established largely in part due to these games, but this story isn't about either of them, this is about a more recent adventure, one that would lead to apocalyptic consequences nobody but the man who created it could possibly have seen coming. The game was known as Beast Quest, the series was late to debut in 2006 on the nintendo DS, by a previously unknown company known as Psychosoft. With over 800 different species of creatures to recruit, and beating pokemon to the punch with 3d cell-shaded graphics, on the DS no less, the game quickly became popular, and for several years things continued as normal. Nobody died, nothing scary happened, it seemed like a perfectly normal, albeit very well made game. Hackers tried and failed to figure out how it all worked, they never got further than a few basic level hacks and a useful program that can edit whatever creatures are already on your team. Not even the major video game companies could figure out how Psychosoft managed to fit that much data on a ds cart, none the less get the ds to run it flawlessly.
As you can expect, Psychosoft wasn't willing to reveal its secrets either. Just like the series that came before it, it was quick to gain a following around the world. As the years passed, the worst anyone could say about it was Psychosoft had yet to voice any intention of there being a sequel, until May 2013.
I guess now is a good time to explain the basics of the game. There were two versions, light and dark, and like every other game in this genre there were certain things that were exclusive to certain versions. The first of these was your starter, instead of having a choice between a handful of creatures, in these games your character simply starts out bringing their own pet along with them. In the dark version the character starts out with a corrup, a canine that resembles a fire breathing black lab puppy, with cute, but earie yellow eyes, that eventually grows into a Coription, a more Doberman-like hellhound, complete with horns, red eyes, armor, and additional dark abilities.
In the light version, the character starts out with a Shisug, an equally cute creature that looks like a cross between a frog and a white furless, almost seal like pug, with webbed feet, a water type that eventually becomes a Shisarova, a more liondog-like light water type that takes on a slight bluish tinge.
As is normal, fire is weak to water, but light is weak to dark, so in theory at their max level they balance out, but people have their favorites anyway. Creatures can also be ground, steel, wind, electric, plant, supernatural, or normal types. Unlike pokémon, ice moves are considered water type, rock is considered ground, fighting folds into normal, and there's really no mention or equivalent of dragon type, with every dragon like creature falling into whatever other types are most appropriate, the same goes for insects, and supernatural is basically a mish-mash of ghost and psychic types.
Furthermore there's a distinction between sapient, and non-sapient creatures, flora, fauna, natural, artificial, and even fish. Generally every non-sapient creature has the intelligence of a child, can understand human language, but is unable to speak and generally lives like a wild animal. While sapient ones have the intelligence of an adult, are usually a lot more difficult to recruit as they can't be captured normally, as it's illegal, they have established villages, societies, cities, and even kingdoms of their own, and must be convinced to join your team. They are significantly stronger than a lot of non-sentients, but they also don't normally grow, while non-sapient types are generally fair game for anyone to capture, typically start off weaker, but can eventually become quite strong. Creatures that are fish have to have special devices attached to them so they can breathe and move out of the water, merfolk are the only sapient "fish" in the game, and like most sapients are very difficult to recruit. All fish are also immune to being wet. Artificial creatures can't breed, the list goes on.
Recruitment goes as follows, depending on how a creature is obtained, its initial relationship to you differs.
There are some random encounters, mostly with normal types, which are usually melee specialists. Unlike with pokémon, the normal type in beast quest is basically normal and fighting types put together, they are weak to supernatural and steel, with no resistances, but are generally damage sponges with either healing abilities or very strong physical attacks. With most of these encounters, the creature will willingly let you capture it, if you can defeat it in combat, though the more healing oriented ones won't be a fan of you, the fighting oriented ones will respect you.
Other times you might come across a typically non-sentient creature caught in a trap, if you free it, it might join you or it might fight you, more than likely the later if you set the trap yourself.
Sometimes you might come across a hungry creature that will willingly join you in exchange for food, they start out as friends.
Artificial steel-type creatures can be purchased at hardware stores, they start out feeling relatively indifferent to you. Sometimes they can be found in abandoned industrial areas where they have run out of power, and will either join you or fight you if you bring them fuel or batteries. Natural steel types live on mountains.
Pet-like creatures of various types can also be purchased in a similar manner and result at pet stores. Each major city has one or the other and each one has a different variety. They can also occasionally be found in the wild as random encounters as well.
Occasionally you may come across a sapient creature, that will have some sort of quest for you, such as retrieving a cherished item, defeating another npc in battle, or even simply paying them, upon which they will join you as friends, other times they might just pay you or give you an item.
Some creatures can be chased down and forced to join you, they will appear on the overworld and will run off one side of the screen before you can catch them, you have to repeat this process a few times before they finally tire out and you can catch them, they won't like you for it though and often won't listen to your commands until you become more acquainted with them.
The most interesting part is that none of these encounters or quests are pre-scripted and seem to be generated at random each time you enter an area, nobody knows how many different ones there are, and even 6 years after the game's release people are still finding and reporting new ones. Due to the way the code is encrypted even the most experienced of hackers has been unable to figure out exactly how this part of the game works under the hood. Furthermore, despite the game's packaging advertising over 800 different species to collect, only 650 have been discovered and documented since the game launched, with reports of new ones being found coming out on a very irregular basis.
In the world of beast quest, the planet was hit by a meteor 2000 years before the start of the game, this caused a mass- extinction event that took out about 30% of all lifeforms on the planet and spread a peculiar form of radiation that caused almost 80% of the rest to mutate and gain anomalous powers. Because of overhunting and the inability to compete with the newly mutated creatures nearly all normal forms of life went extinct in the following century, the sole exception being humans, and various domesticated livestock animals they managed to protect. Both of which were still thriving, thanks to their intelligence. Generally, both humans and mutants lived together in harmony.
In modern times, mutant on mutant combat became one of the premier sports across the land, teams of mutants, traditionally recruited by a human, less commonly another mutant with sapience, fought against each other in one on one combat with little restriction on their powers and capabilities until none of the mutants on the loser's team were able to continue. Thanks to advances in medical technology, death was rare and almost never occurred in battles that followed the rules. Potions could heal most wounds in a matter of minutes and revival gels could bring back the recently dead. Of course there were some bad actors that for whatever reason refused to follow the rules, some of these served as antagonists in the game. The most notorious of these was the dreaded meteor club, a huge criminal organization that dealt in all things illegal. Poaching, drug dealing, kidnapping, theft, sex trafficking, unsanctioned battles to the death, you name it they probably have a division that does it.
The game mostly focuses on the kidnapping, poaching, and theft side of things however. Where throughout the course of gameplay the player shuts down three of their operations involving each. Defeating the lieutenant responsible for overseeing each one. Before facing their now enraged leader, kicking his butt, and causing the whole organization to withdraw from the region entirely. The other crimes are vaguely implied, but don't occur within the game's plot, to keep the ratings down. Sometimes thieves, burglars, and poachers will appear in the game world as a random event and can be battled and defeated, unlike regular opponents, you get a small monetary bonus for assisting the police. In addition poachers use creatures they have poached, and any member of their team may decide to join yours upon their defeat, most of the time however they just escape to the wild. Burglars tend to drop items, while the owners the thieves stole their creatures from will sometimes appear at the medical center and give you another small cash reward.
Aside from fighting crime, the main plot of the game revolves around sanctioned battles, beating a sanctioned coach, who appears randomly around the game world with a random team, though scaled according to the player's level, grants the player some points roughly based on the calculated difficulty of their team, along with some cash and occasionally some items, more difficult opponents give more points, cash, and more valuable stuff. These opponents are theorized to be generated once the save file is created, and will keep their same teams throughout the game, but can be rematched and will level up as the player progresses through the tournaments. Most will have teams consisting of random creatures that can be found around the current location, or purchased at a nearby store, but a handful, known as travelers, will have some from a different area, at a slightly higher level, and will reward more points.
Every major city has a tournament, which requires an arbitrary amount of points to enter, tournament opponents also have random teams, but are a bit stronger than the other opponents in the area, winning a tournament grants the player the right to challenge the city's champion, the strongest coach in the city, who has a preset team specializing in a specific type, beating a champion grants a medal, which is more or less an analogue for badges. Once the player gets all ten medals from all the major cities in the game and a certain amount of points, they can enter the champions tournament, where all the opponents, though randomly chosen each time, have preset teams, either focused around the strengths of a specific type, or gimmicks and combos only experienced players would know. Beating that tournament allows you to face the final boss, the grand champion. After that you can keep replaying tournaments for points and money, the payouts and levels of the opponents will be scaled to the average level of your team. You can also replay all the coaches you have come across, who will now just be slightly weaker than the opponents in the champion tournament with appropriate prizes.
It was October, 2013 I was fresh out of highschool, class of 2012, just started college, single and ready to mingle. Except I going to a local college in the middle of nowhere and there were no women around to mingle with.
I went through high school without ever having a single girlfriend. Why you ask? I guess it was because I was too afraid to talk to girls, and then later it became the fact that I didn't have a single thing in common with them, or anyone else from my school, and go figure, the only girls I could of had a fair chance with, pretty much always had boyfriends. I come from a small town with very little interest in anything other than sports and pop music, and with me being the stereotypical metal headed car fanatic and general anime nerd, knowing way more about cars and pokémon, digimon, and beast quest (a strange combination huh?) than any of them knew about sports, well let's just say I was a fish out of water in their athletics centered world. High school came and went, and no I didn't even have a date for prom, and I have been a lone wolf ever since. The sad thing is after high school, it wasn't even because of shyness anymore, it was because there weren't any girls in my classes, and I was on the verge of sealing my heart from the world forever, if that was even possible, so that I would not have to feel the pain of loneliness. I was beginning to think that there truly was no one out there for me, that I was uniquely created to be alone, and that no other soul could possibly be compatible with mine.
I grew up playing pokémon, having received a copy of pokémon blue for Christmas one year. Beast Quest was the first game in a long time that made me feel like pokémon red and blue did when I first saw it on another kid's gameboy in elementary school. After a very long hiatus, Psychosoft just announced the sequel a few months ago, and I was still playing the original dark version on a rom on my pc. Which was almost necessary, since physical, legitimate copies of the game are no longer in production, but in extremely high demand to the point where they cost a couple hundred bucks on ebay. Psychosoft, as a company has been very reclusive since it's release, aside from a few executives giving a handful of interviews shortly after Beast Quest released, they basically fell off the face of the earth for the last half-decade. Until they went and announced the new version, nobody even knew they were still around. Anyway, I was older and wiser this time, and had it preordered, but its release was a few months away, so I still had some time to play through the old version. It was my first time experiencing it, but it was similar enough to pokémon that I got the hang of it pretty quickly. I rounded up a team, got the first 4 of ten medals that I needed.
I had the starting Corup I named HellBlade, because it sounded cool at the time, the starters don't evolve until they reach level 50, which is normally reached about halfway through the game, at this moment, he was level 38 and starting to learn some dark moves such as dark aura, and paralyzing smile, both of which have a chance of inflicting fear, the dark type's signature status condition, with the later doing no damage, but having a chance of paralysis on top of that. Both those status conditions together mean that the opponent only has a 40% chance of attacking, while fear effectively halves their attack power, while only slightly boosting their defense.
Second was a magnocap, a small white flying saucer cyborg robot thing, an electric\steel type commonly used as a security guard in the BeastQuest universe. Despite appearing to be completely mechanical, like many artificially made creatures, it's actually a cyborg, with laboratory grown organs inside its hardened steel shell, genetically engineered from an unknown variety of naturally occurring electric types. This gives it intelligence on par with most non-sapient beasts. It mainly attacks by flying around with enough speed that makes it extremely hard to hit, and discharging electricity in a variety of creative methods. When it evolves, it becomes a magufo, at around level 40, it gets bigger and becomes even more ufo-like and generally more powerful all around, though it is slightly easier to hit. It was level 36 now, and I named it Captain Magnum, because again, it seemed cool at the time. Despite being a steel type, it doesn't learn a lot of steel type moves until after it evolves. I bought it from a hardware store, in the second major town, where it started out at level 20, and had enough luck that it ended up being chromed, a rare color scheme exclusive to artificial steel types, the majority are white, about 9 out of ten, .99 out of ten bought at a store will be grey instead, with about .01 of them being chrome. In the wild they have about a two out of ten chance to appear in about 8 different common colors, you can even paint them yourself, along with a few other artificial steel types, somewhat of a gimmick of the type, but chrome is the rarest and can't be painted, you just have to be lucky enough to buy one that turns out to be chrome.
Every other creature has their own variety of possible colors and chances for them to appear in, with as many as 8 to as few as only 1 possibility.
Anyway, third was a roneychick, a small natural steel type bird that looks like a cross between the pokémon natu and skarmory, that I eventually planned to evolve into an eagorion, a huge adult eagle with metal feathers, and a steel and wind type mount that could be used to fly around the map. Unlike pokémon only a handful of flying types could be used for this, and they all had to be fully evolved. There were also some land and water based mounts in the game as well, but only the air and water based ones were really needed to progress through the game, the land-based ones just increased your movement speed on land. It was level thirty two, and like the starters, it wouldn't reach its final form until level 50. It had a lot of defence, a typical trait of a steel type, but its attack power was pretty lacking at this point, it didn't get access to its more powerful moves until after it evolved. All it could do now is peck, and scratch things. I found it stranded out in the wild, which seems to be a common situation for a lot of baby wind creatures, I gave it some food and it decided it wanted to come along. It was the species normal aluminum grayish color, gold, copper, and brass plumed varieties also exist, but are somewhat rare. For some reason I couldn't think of a name for it yet.
Fourth was a Tankle I named Bubba, a natural water steel type, and one of the few water types that is not a fish and is also a water mount. To my surprise, he joined my team after I defeated a poacher that had captured him and a few other more common creatures. The rest of which fled. He's like a big turtle with a very angular olive drab metal shell with a high pressure water cannon on top that it uses for hunting down prey in the wild, which typically consists of weaker fish.
The fifth and sixth slots were still open. One of the biggest drawbacks with Beastquest was that with so many different creatures and so many factors about recruiting them being left up to random chance, it's a bit more difficult to assemble a good team than it is in a pokémon game.
One day, I was walking back and forth across two different areas in the game trying to get an event to trigger that would hopefully net me a fifth member of my team when I met Phoebe for the first time as her sprite appeared in the center of the screen, I hadn't seen anything like her in the game before, and neither had the internet. I went to her, a dialogue box came up that said "Phoebe has stolen your beasts" and then vanished without a trace.
Confused as hell I quickly looked this up on the internet and found nothing…which wasn't really uncommon with this game as new creatures and events were still being discovered on occasion. I could only think that this was one of those that hadn't been discovered yet. Also with a name like that, I knew, she was probably a sapient, as sapients tend to already have their own names that seemed to be randomly picked from a list instead of just whatever species they are. Anyway too curious to see where this was going to reset, I headed to the next area, where she was once again waiting for me in the middle of the screen. "Don't worry about your team. I will bring them to you. Just don't turn off the game." She said this time. The game completely froze aside from the normal background music that kept playing, I couldn't move, and that dialogue box stayed on the screen. She seemed to close her eyes and she started to glow a faint purple, which told me she was a supernatural type, whatever she was. This glowing effect got brighter and brighter until the whole screen was just a bright purple rectangle.
Then I realize the emulator window was nowhere to be seen, or the desktop start menu bar, or anything else that should've been there. Then, just as I started to wonder if this was some kind of elaborate anti-piracy measure, the power went out, a faint purple glow lit up the room behind me. I turned and, she was there. Her white dress, her flawless gray skin, those red eyes, her long flowing green hair, she was as otherworldly as she was adorable.
"What the fuck?" I asked, cute as she was, her suddenly getting out of the screen like that was none the less jarring.
"Hi! Your room is kind of a mess, that's ok though, I'm here!" She said cutely.
" How?" I asked.
"They finally opened the portal, oh and I brought your beasts back see." She said as she showed me their capsules.
"Ok but why did you take them?" I asked.
"I wanted to bring them to you. " She said.
"And who is they?"
"Devon co from my word, the whole game is part of Devon co's experiment in multi universal communication." She said.
"Ok well, all that aside for now how the hell am I supposed to explain you to my parents? Look, you're very pretty, but you're an alien species that isn't even supposed to exist people are going to freak the fuck out if they see you." I said.
"Well, that won't matter tomorrow, the boundary has been broken, I'm not the only one that will be coming over." She said.
"What?" I asked.
"Look I know this is a big ask, but I have no idea how to go back and I need somewhere to stay." She said.
She was too cute for me to just kick her out.
"Do you have a capsule?" I asked.
"Yeah I stole one from the store you could recruit me as she handed me an empty one." She said.
"Ok well, if you don't mind, I'm going to get some sleep and, we can talk more tomorrow?" I asked.
"Ok." She replied.
So I put her in her capsule and tried very hard to sleep and comprehend what the fuck just happened.
Things didn't get any better the next day, like she said she wasn't the only one that came out of the game, many many others did, all over the world, throwing it into a state of absolute chaos, cities fell, millions were killed, as is what happens when children get control of ridiculously powerful beings. It was thought to be one of the greatest video game glitches of all time, except it wasn't a glitch it was intentional, the destruction wasn't but the transfer of living beings from one universe to another was. People took notice of a whole new area that appeared in the game with a large portal in the center, If the player walked there character through it, all the items and beasts they had on them, but not the actual character oddly enough, would be transferred to the real world, appearing in the nearest possible location they could without clipping into anything. Attempts were made to pull the game from shelves and to round up whatever copies they could and destroy them, but it was fruitless as the damage had already been done and tens of thousands of super powered creatures now walked the earth, some remained loyal to their trainers, others, often ones acquired through more dubious means, turned on them and went rogue. Unfortunately people tended to see all the creatures as evil and a lot of them were rounded up and killed whether they were actually evil or just loving pets. Across the country the National Guard set to work exterminating as many of them as they could and setting up safe zones, free of the creatures. Other countries reacted similarly.
Psychosoft fell off the face of the earth once again, the company and anyone that worked for it seemed to go into hiding. All talk about the sequel silenced, All preorders cancelled.
While all this was going on I kept my own creatures a secret from my parents who were staunchly part of the kill them all crowd, occasionally letting Phoebe out at night so we could talk and I could hopefully get to know her a bit more.
The next night -
"So I get that Phoebe is your name, but what even are you?" I asked.
"I'm a wood elf. Supernatural type." She replied.
"So what can you do?" I asked.
"I can read your mind and see that you're very lonely." She replied.
"So what number?"
"5, 8, 4, 29, 67, 88." She interrupted me.
"Ok ok, anything else?" I asked.
"I can teleport, and I can move things with my mind." She said.
"Ok, so you're like a full blown psychic?" I asked.
"Mhm." She said.
"But you're a wood elf? No plant powers?" I said.
"We're just called that by humans because we live in big trees." She replied.
"I see." I replied.
A couple weeks later
"Hey Pheebles." I said as I let her out of her capsule.
"Good evening." She kindly replied.
"So are you just going to keep me here forever?" She asked.
"I want to let you out, but if my parents or the national guard or almost anyone else sees you you're dead. I can show you the news on my phone." I said.
"That's ok, I can see it in your head, you don't want me dead." She said.
"I don't." I agreed.
"You want to love me." She said.
"Is this some sort of mind trick?" I asked.
"No, I would never do that to you, but I know how lonely you are." She said.
"Well if my parents find out about you they'll try to kill you for sure, but I don't want to keep you in here forever."
"Well, just listen Cj, it's no accident that we met, my mom said that I would find you here and when you're ready we were supposed to run away together." She said.
"How does your mom know?" I asked.
"She can see the future." Phoebe said.
"And you can't?" I asked.
"No, I can read minds instead." She replied. "So future husband, will you run away with me?"
"Did your mom tell you where we're supposed to go?" I asked.
"No. She can't see everything, and she wasn't part of the experiment so we can't go talk to her either." She meekly replied.
"Give me another day, it doesn't make sense to just take off and leave without a destination in mind and cut it with the future husband stuff." I replied.
"Ok." She said seeming somewhat had.
"But goodnight though." I said.
"Goodnight." She said with a smile before I returned her to her capsule.
I thought about her all day the next day, about where we could go, what we could do. According to the news there was a whole city that was frozen solid by a powerful beast, believed to be a Frossvelge, if we had any chance for creatures to ever walk free we had to prove to the public there are good ones too. The city was evacuated, there was nobody around including the national guard. We could go there, defeat the creature and then find somewhere else to go and save. I brought this up to her the next night.
"Ok, it's the city of Lycomming, it's just a couple hours from here, we could go there, defeat this thing and then find somewhere else to go, if we do that enough times, assuming we're not the only ones in the country with the same ideas, eventually public opinion should be swayed, the national guard will back down, and everyone can be free." I explained.
"Are you kidding me? That's probably a Frossvelge, and it must be huge if it can do that much to a city! You really think we can take it down? " Phoebe asked.
"It's just one, it's powerful, but I think with our team, we can. Besides I can't keep you here forever, my parents will find out about you eventually. Don't you want to be able to be out during the day?" I asked.
"Yes, but we're holding out for now, what you're planning, this seems suicidal. There's gotta be a better way to start." She replied.
"There isn't, not out here, this is the closest." I said.
"Ok, if that's really all we got, let's try it." She said.
"Great, then, I'll get some stuff gathered up and we'll leave tomorrow morning." I said.
"Ok, great, now one more thing, if I can't call you my future husband can I call you my boyfriend atleast?" She asked.
"Yeah, ok." I said.
"And can I get a kiss goodnight?" She asked.
"I never kissed anyone before." I said.
"You can just kiss me on the cheek if you want, it's not hard." She said shyly.
"Ok close your eyes." I said before nervously kissing her on the cheek, pretty much as awkwardly as possible.
"Your skin, it's so smooth." I said.
"Um, thanks." She replied as she opened her eyes.
"This is going to take some getting used to." I said.
"Mhm, same." She replied. "But it will all work out in the end."
"So I'll see you again when we're on the road." I said as I got ready to put her back in the capsule.
"Wait." She replied.
"What?" I asked.
"Snuggle with me." She replied.
"Really?" I asked in disbelief.
"I wanna feel closer to you." She replied.
"No I don't want that yet keep your clothes on and just hold me." She said as my mind wandered to other things.
"Ok, I wasn't going to do anything." I said as we laid down together for the first time.
"You were thinking about it." She replied.
"That doesn't mean I was going too it's just, you're really, really beautiful."
"Well thanks, but right now, I just want you to keep your clothes on and hold me, make me feel more comfortable about what we're about to face." She said.
"I'll do my best." I replied.
I was woken up a couple hours later by my mom screaming at me not about the arsenal of guns I had gathered in my room but about Phoebe. As she had come in to tell me that they thought they saw something outside that they wanted me to deal with. Phoebe quickly woke up, teleported behind her and, placing her hand on her head, knocked her out.
"Did you just kill my mom?" I asked in disbelief.
"No, she's asleep. She'll wake up in a few hours. I had too, before she tried to kill me. They wanted you to kill something out there, I'm not sure what, but let's run." She replied.
"Yeah well you better get my dad and siblings too." I replied as I heard my dad coming.
"Right." Phoebe said.
Before they woke up we were gone, I left a note, explaining things had to be this way, to save her, if they didn't like it, I didn't care. Maybe I was crazy, but I wasn't the only one these days. And I'd rather make a stand to take action for what I believed in than run away from the best chance I had at love in my entire life. This girl liked me, I was willing to do anything for her, come hell or high-water.