Unwanted Nostalgia

Ever since I got to college, I'd been pretty bored, there was nothing to do for entertainment there. I was pretty broke, so I would occasionally go to garage sales and pick up a few used games for the only game system I had with me- A GBA. I had already found a few great games, although most of them were Pokemon games, since I've always loved that series. On a Sunday morning, my best friend and I drove around different places, looking for garage sales. We had finally found one that was selling games, and the person selling things was a little boy. As I dug through the incredibly large sack of games, I found one of my old favorites; Pokemon Yellow! Naturally, I picked it up, as it only cost .75 cents.

I had been craving to play one of the older Pokemon games for a while now, as all I had were Ruby and FireRed. As soon as I started up Yellow, though, I never wanted to see another Pokemon game in my life. When I buy something used, I usually check out the save file that's on the cartridge, just to see how far the person before me got. The save file here was called “????SIN”, and there was a 97 hour playtime. A rather strange name, but that just made me even more curious. When I was finally in-game, my character was inside of a Poke-Center, but there was a few things wrong; Nobody was in it. Not even Nurse Joy. Pikachu's sprite was completely black. Upstairs, the rival character was in a corner. When I spoke to him, he just said “O..U..T..S..I..D..E..”, and disappeared from the Poke-Center.

I wanted to turn the game off at this point; But again, curiosity got the best of me. I mean, at the most, it was just a hacked game, right? I proceeded to go out of the Pokemon Center, and found myself Lavender Tower. The music started screeching, and would continue to play even if I put the volume all the way down. Well, it was a used game, and a used Gameboy, so I assumed it was a normal problem. Then, Pikachu's sprite was on the ground, with a pool of black pixels under it, which I could only think was blood.. That's kind of a sick joke, hacked game or not, but I just brushed it off and went to the top floor of the tower. There, the rival character appeared out of nowhere, walked up to me, and said “..........................” as I was thrown into a battle. What really disturbed me was the fact that the Pokemon that was sent out was the Pikachu that was with me. It had streaks of blood coming down it's sprite, and it's cry was the sound it makes when it faints in battle. The rival sent didn't send anything out. He just stood there. My only battle options were “ATTACK, ???, ???, ???” so I chose attack. But then, all it said was.. “KILL, KILL, KILL, KILL” so I just chose one of them. The rival's sprite had tears on it's face, the Pikachu fainted, and the game just froze.

Rather disturbed, I just turned the game off and threw it under my bed. I haven't seen it since, and the kid who sold it to me doesn't ever remember even having a garage sale. Oh, well, it's just a game.