Pokemon Creepypastas A.K.A scary stories

My first Pikachu

Remember when the Pokémon craze first started? How everyone and their brother had Red or Blue versions? Everyone but me, anyway. My parents were very anti-videogame, and I didn't get my first console until I went away to Job Corps. Of course, I made up for it. Bought a Dreamcast off of someone, an N64 from a local game shop. A friend got me a GBA SP and the (at that time) new Final Fantasy Tactics. I got a Pokémon knockoff too, something called "Demi Kids" (I got the "Dark" version, pretty much solely because it was "dark"). It's actually pretty good, but I didn't find out how rare it was until after I'd sold it for a new game. My loss.

I kept going back to the shop for new games, and I loved everything I got. Well...mostly everything. It was nice because it was a small shop, so they'd buy and sell pretty much anything as long as it worked, and you could find neat obscure titles sometimes. I used to be pretty adventurous with my purchases, grabbing whatever looked cool at the time, and they were a goldmine for that. For some reason, though, I never got any Pokémon games, even though when I'd played a friend's copy (when the first generation was new), I'd loved it. I guess it was just the price. I had to budget pretty carefully, because I had three systems and only got so much money in my J.C. paychecks. Whatever the reason, one day I saw a deal I couldn't pass up.

The first-gen remakes had just come out a few months before, and although I didn't know much about them, what with living up on at the Centre and being obsessed with gaming to make up for all the years I hadn't had any, I had heard a bit. I knew it was a recreation of the first set of games, that they were given enhancements for the new system, had a descriptor in the name to differentiate them, and...well, that was pretty much it. I also "knew" that being recent titles, they were a little more than I could afford. Even so, I'd been wanting one. I didn't know much about the new Pokémon, but first-gen is what had originally caught my interest. So when I found one for cheap at the game store, only around eight dollars with tax, I had to have it.

Now, I say that it was one of the new set, but that's not quite true. I thought it was at the time. Maybe it was even supposed to be. It wasn't though, not really. The cartridge was this translucent amber yellow color and there was a yellow swirl on the label with the words "PikaYellow Version" under the title. To me, it looked like any other Pokémon game I'd ever seen, and as far as I knew each set contained three games, two main ones and a third one with some added things they released later. So, I didn't really think much of it, figuring they'd just remade the special Pikachu edition Yellow Version along with the other two. I do remember asking why it was so cheap...apparently some trouble reading the cartridge on start that the seller had warned about but only happened one in five times when the guy at the store had checked for it. Since I didn't mind that, I forked over the money and bought it, along with a couple other games.

It started up pretty typically, title, Pikachu, light blue background with crackling lightning. From what I know now, all matching the real games. I couldn't say how well it followed the original Yellow, since I never played it then or now, but the story followed the anime pretty well. Gary takes Evee, you find a wild Pikachu...that hates you. Then you befriend it and start your journey. For the next few weeks, I played it all the time during my breaks, and my other consoles when Trade classes let out. Only a little bit at a time, so I wasn't making fantastic progress, but enough to screw around and learn about the features. It was pretty cool, actually. The big mechanic I remember was that when you talked to your Pikachu (who followed behind you) you would get a set of options like "Play", "Scold", and "Praise"...sort of like a Tamagotchi, I guess? There would also sometimes be little events with special options. It was interesting, because Pikachu's nature (the nature in his stats) could actually change depending on what you did with him. For instance when I first tried to evolve him into Raichu and it didn't work, I thought he was refusing and scolded him a few times (I forget who it was that finally told me the Yellow-Version Pikachu didn't evolve), temporarily giving him a Quiet nature until I could get him to forgive me.