konpaku: Random Poison Abridged

With PokémonGo being the topic all around I decided to add a little bonus chapter to the usual webcomic chapters here about an old phenomenon regarding the normal Pokémon games:

The Nuzlocke Challenge

The Challenge itself doesn’t have anything to do with webcomics, but I’ll get to that soon. First let me explain:

What is the Nuzlocke Challenge?

The Nuzlocke Challenge was created in 2010 by a bored student that by now refers to himself as “Nuzlocke”, when he wanted to change the experience he had with the Pokémon games.
Originally he set up these rules:

1. Capture only the first Pokémon you encounter in a new area.
2. If a Pokémon faints you consider it dead and release it.

To accompany his run for the Ruby-edition he started a webcomic called Pokémon: Hard-Mode. He shared this comic in different communities and they created the name “Nuzlocke” as a wordplay on the fan favourite Seedot/Nuzleaf of the run that he occasionally drew like John Locke from Lost.

Inspired by this, many others took up the challenge and modified the original rules and added a few more rules:

1. If a Pokémon faints you consider it dead and either release it or put it in a “Dead” Box on the PC.
2. Capture only the first Pokémon encountered in a new area, unless it’s a duplicate, then you have 1-3 more tries. You may re-catch a Pokémon that previously died.
3. All caught Pokémon must be nicknamed.
4. Healing items can/can not be used. Pokémon Centers are a must.
5. You can/can not catch any Legendaries.
6. If you encounter a shiny all rules are nullified.

This of course is not a complete set of rules as Challengers individualize them, so every run has slightly different rules, but you get the gist of it.

The Challengers

I put this into the webcomics category so I’ll introduce you to a couple of Nuzlocke runs that turned their experiences into comics. This is only a collection of the ones I enjoyed reading there are plenty more – even some that turned it into diaries.
There are some things – besides the challenge – they all have in common:

• None of them are finished and they update irregularly.
• The protagonist is either able to talk to their Pokémon or at least the reader is able to see their thoughts.
• Each update has about 10-20+ panels.
• Nearly all of them can be found on DeviantArt

Pokémon: Hard-Mode – Nuzlocke

The Original run I mentioned before was for Ruby. By now he added a run for Fire-Red and is currently running one for White, but you should read the others before that. The art improved greatly over the years and also the story telling. At first it’s just headwords/phrases that are drawn, later there is actual plot behind it. Still, some of the jokes are quite lame, but that’s also part of the charm of these runs.
As a start into the whole Nuzlocke business I’d recommend it, it is the original after all.

Tales of Sinnoh/Myths of Unova – ky-nim

Diamond/White runs [...]

Tala’s Nuzlocke Adventure – TalaSeba

Silver or Gold run [...]

Fire Red Nuzlocke – french-teapot

Fire Red run ;) [...]

The Pokédex Project – Effsnares

Leaf Green run [...]

Gijinka Nuzlockes

These are special Nuzlocke comics that turn the involved Pokémon into Gijinka’s – anthropomorphic Pokémon – some of them have an interesting background as to why/how this is possible, others simply use it as fact. In these runs there is either a Trainer capable of recruiting Gijinka’s or Gijinka’s getting together to build a team without any humans.

Until I came across these, I’m not sure I even heard about the concept – at least not by this name.
So if you want to try something different, you may want to give these a try:

Doubt and Trust – Nyapapa

Heart Gold/Soul Silver run [...]

That comic about that one kid – dejasquietplace

(sort of) Leaf Green run [...]

Last words

The very first Nuzlocke comic I read was Mira’s Leaf Green Nuzlocke by xXDeath-N-HellXx. It is/was a great run, but it hasn’t been updated in three years, so I left it out of the list above.

I hope you enjoyed this little look into different Nuzlocke Challenge comics.

Have you ever tried the challenge or read any of the comics?
Do you know any other comics of the kind?

Continue Reading: Webcomics: Bonus Chapter – Nuzlocke