Abandoned Red



Man, I can’t even belive what just happened. I was looking for a ROM for my GameBoy emulator and came across a Pokemon Red ROM. I smiled, remembering all the times I spent on my own copy of Red and how I raged at the game every time I was defeated. I realized I didn’t want to play an emulator game; I wanted to play the real thing. I hunted for my old GameBoy and, eventualy found it under my sister’s old stuffed rabbit. The GameBoy had a layer of dust on it and I thought for a second it wonldn’t work. I blew the dust off and hunted for the AA battery charger, because I thought the batterys would be dead after such a long time. While I was hunting I heard the GameBoy sound effect when you first start the game. Confused I gripped the GameBoy in the dim light of the attic. I stared at the screen, suprised at what I saw. Instead of the Gamefreak logo, all I saw was white text on a black screen. It read: “You abandoned us. We suffered in silence. Now, you shall feel what we felt.”

The screen cut to the title screen. There was no pokemon, and it appeared that the trainer on the title was... crying? No, I told myself, he wasn’t. But my mind went back to the message at the start. Never the less, I pressed start and was greeted with three options: Continue New Game, Options, and a mess of pixles. Selecting the mess froze the game, and options had the same result. I finaly chose Continue New Game, and the screen faded to black. It stayed that way as I walked out of the attic. Soon after, a close up of Prof.Oak’s face came up on the screen, but his eyes were a bit off. They were black and huge. A text-box appeared and instead of saying all of the usual junk that Oak says, all it said was: “Welcome. This story is different than what you remembered. Ash has beaten every trainer in the world, but he left his mother alone at home.” Oak’s mouth slowly curled into grim smile. “She has died, and the rumor is that my son killed her.” The screen faded back to black and came back into frame in Pallet Town. There was the regular music and I was sitting in my house.

           I walked down stairs and found that my spites’s mother was not downstairs. I was suprised. She is always in the house at the start of the game. I stepped outside and lightning flashed on the screen. It was raining and it was very gloomy. I walked to the grass, like normal, but Oak didn’t come out. I walked into his lab, and he was standing there and a text-box appeared. It said: ‘Are you ready?” The screen faded to black. The music began to change. It was the Lavender Town theme (God, I thought. How much had Mutahar ragged on this song in Haunted Gaming?) I was standing in Pokemon tower I was surrounded by all of the NPCs in the game. Nurse Joy was in front of a desk and she bowed down like in the SoulSilver version, but longer. Suddenly my sprite stood up from the row of NPCs. My charachter didn’t have his hat on and he wore black. He moved slower than usual, too.

           I had no control over him and he walked up to the desk. He stood, facing the crowd. A text-box containing “...” appeared. The screen faded to black and a new text-box appeared. It said “...avenge me, son....” The screen came back to Pokemon tower. Again a text-box appeared “...” and again the screen faded to black once more, and now the inside the text-box it said: “AVENGE ME!!!” The game came back to Pokemon tower. It appeared that the cerimony was over. The screen did the regular door transition as I walked out of the tower. The game started back at Pallet Town and continued normally. I checked the badges on the save screen and it said I had all 16 badges and 251 pokemon. I sighed. Nuts, this was already beaten, and there was no new game option. Just ‘Continue’ new game. I checked the Pc and I realized I had every Pokemon. I checked the items, and I had every item, but there was a weird item. It was named “[/\][/\]” I frowned. I selected ‘Use’ and a text-box appeared. It read: “I can’t use this yet. My revenge must be complete.” I frowned again, but continued the game as normal. I had to beat all the leaders again, because apparently my badges were “too old” to be valid. I breezed through the game, but the music was changed. It was The Pallet Town music, getting slowere and slower. When I destroyed the Elite Four, Gary, my rival, came and challenged me. The regular encounter theme played, but my trainer sent no Pokemon out. I selected fight, but the item screen came up. The only item I could use was “[/\][/\]” I selected it and the screen cut to black. “BANG!” A pokemon cry sounded and the Gameboy froze on this screen, with white text spelling ‘BANG!’ on a black screen. I shut off the GameBoy and sighed.

           I tried to start the game again, but it only did the error thing when there wasn’t a cartridge in the GameBoy. I still have the cartridge, although it’s still not working to this day.

