Untitled bootleg game [a pokepasta]
Has anyone else ever played one of those bootleg Pokémon games? Well, I had a weird experience with one. My friend, Anu, and I bonded over our love for Pokémon and would take pleasure in finding knock off games, and laughing at how ridiculous they were.
On the last day of school, something happened that stopped me from wanting to play any bootleg games. When I was walking out of school I was stopped by Anu, they shouted my name while running up to me, waving their arm in the air.
“Sarah! Hey, Sarah!!” They grabbed my shoulder when they finally caught up to me. “OW-! Watch it, dude!” they awkwardly apologized to me after I yelled at them. “Before you leave, I wanted to give you this.” They handed me a disk and a sheet of paper, they had a devious grin on their face as they handed it to me.
Before I could thank them, they ran away. I sighed and shook my head, then I walked out of the school. I was staring at the disk the entire walk home, I was really confused as to what it was, but I was somewhat excited at the same time.
Once I finally got home, I called for my parents but they didn’t answer, I was home alone. I went up to my room and put the disk in my computer then read the note Anu gave me along with the disk. The note had some sort of directions, it said; “Yet another bootleg Pokémon game!!! Safe route: Name your character “Storm” DeadStorm route: Name your character “Trait” HAVE FUN LMAO” So I figured out that Anu gave me a bootleg Pokémon game.
Apparently it had two different routes? I just went with it and booted up the game. Weird, there was no title on the start screen, I shrugged it off. There was a character on the screen, it was a girl with fluffy black hair, there were pieces of hair at the top of her head that formed a triangle form, they kinda looked like cat ears.
I clicked start and entered the name “Storm”, I’m gonna assume the character’s canon name is Storm. The game started with this “Storm” character in her room, as any Pokémon game would, the only difference was that there was no intro, no professor giving an introduction explaining how Pokémon inhabit the world and all that shit. Much like the title screen, I shrugged this off, I thought maybe the game was unfinished, if that’s true, I wonder how Anu got their hands on an unfinished game.
Something cool that I noticed almost immediately was that Storm’s idle sprite was animated instead of it just being a static standing pose. There was breathing and blinking animations, Storm’s room had this whole gothic style going on, which was also pretty cool too. I walked Storm over to her bedroom door only for me to be interrupted by a dialogue box
“Well, I better get going!”
My eyes widened “Oh cool, The protagonist actual speaks! Maybe she’ll have an actual personality?” I started talking to myself about how I think I might genuinely love this game, another line of dialogue snapped my attention back to my computer screen.
“…”
“My neck itches.”
I squinted at the screen, “What…? Does that have some hidden meaning or something?” I said out loud to myself, I rolled my eyes and walked out of the room, it seemed like Storm didn’t have any parents as there was nobody downstairs to talk to her before she left. I just walked out of the door, nothing outside seemed strange or different, I decided to look at the menu hoping I’d find a little more information about the character I’m playing as.
I’ve gathered a bit of information about Storm: She has a Pokémon already, a female Mimikyu, so no choosing from a set of three starters, and Storm is 15 years old. That’s all I could find, as I’ve just started the game so everything else is just empty. I played the game like how you would with a normal Pokémon game and nothing interesting happened, I was about to close the game and shoot Anu a passive aggressive text until something interesting actually did happen.
As soon as I took the first step into a new route, the screen froze and turned completely white except for Storm’s sprite outlines, along with this, a loud buzzing noise played. I jumped at the sudden loud noise before leaning closer to the screen, I tried clicking the keys on my keyboard, nothing, until I hit enter, it brought up the menu for two seconds before the screen went completely black, white text slowly typed out on the screen.
“What are you doing?”
“What are you doing here?”
“You’re not supposed to be here.”
Then the game crashed. I ejected the disk then put it back in, and opened the game again. There wasn’t a continue option like I expected, I could only start a new game. I entered the new name “Trait” and loaded the new game. “What the hell is a DeadStorm route?” I said to myself while looking over Anu’s note. A few things were already different visually, Storm, or I guess “Trait” in this context, had a different hair style, the “cat ears” were gone and instead she had a weird antenna thing at the top of her head, along with hair tufts on the sides of her hair, one on the top right side, the other on the bottom left side.
Trait was pale, and her hoodie was a bit darker than the Storm sprites, the breathing and blinking animation was slower, and she had eye bags, she just appeared empty. I decided to look through her bag to see if anything changed, she had a few normal items, except for one, “Knife” I shrugged this off and walked Trait downstairs, she still had no parents
“I wonder where my family is”
I squinted at the screen, she didn’t say anything in the other route, the game definitely is unfinished, at least the first route is. I walked Trait outside and walked around her hometown, it was somewhat familiar, but that could just be me. Unlike I did in the first route, I went into other buildings in the town. I talked to the NPCs, who had nothing interesting to say, that was until I talked to the Pokémart worker.
She was a redheaded girl and she was referred to as “Ms. Rivers”. She had a long string of dialogue that I skimmed through, only catching a few words Rivers said, I stopped spamming enter when Trait had their own line of dialogue
“(She’s really starting to annoy me…)”
Then the string of dialogue ended. I jokingly said to myself “Well Trait…” I opened up the items menu “Why don’t you just kill her?” and I clicked the knife option, thinking nothing would happen, but I couldn’t be more wrong. The screen went black and then…
STAB STAB STAB STAB
A series of rapid stabbing sounds played before the black screen faded out and showed a detailed picture of Rivers dead. She was sitting with her back against the wall, her eyes wide open in shock and completely grey. She had stab wounds on her neck, shoulders and multiple wounds on her abdomen area, weirdly enough, the blood was pink rather than red and the image wasn’t pixelated.
The screen transitioned back to the overworld sprites, my jaw was dropped, I didn’t think this game would show gore. Another dialogue box appeared.
“…”
“I didn’t want to do that.”
Trait walked out of the pokémart without my control, like the game was playing a cutscene. When she was outside I could finally move her around again, she walked slower this time and people would actually try to talk to her, but her only response was “Not now please…”
“What the hell is going on?!” I said, my eyes were glued to the screen, I had nowhere to go but I continued to wander around the town. After I little over a minute of this, Trait stopped in front of a person, I couldn’t quite make out their appearance but I’m pretty sure they were a girl. An explanation mark appeared above Trait’s head and she ran away.
I was so confused, I texted Anu thinking they would’ve known something about this. They left me on read… of course. I looked back at the screen and Trait was standing in what looked to be an alleyway
“Please don’t make me go back there.”
“Please.”
“I don’t wanna go out there.”
At this point I just felt bad for Trait, I desperately tried to help them find a way out. Sure, I can be weird and feel bad for a fictional character. There wasn’t any other way out, the only way out was to go the same way Trait came in from. The same girl was waiting for Trait, she was carrying a machete and she walked closer to them and I pieced together what was about to happen. I didn’t want Trait to die, I spammed the “eject” button but my computer wouldn’t let me eject the disk.
Click click click click click
As the girl got closer
Click click click click click
But nothing happened. I wanted to cry, I felt so bad for this character. The girl stepped in front of Trait and one final dialogue box appeared.
“Look what you did. What have you done. Why did you do this to me.”
The screen faded to black and a cutting sound followed by a deep feminine voice grunting in pain played. Then a similar screen as the Rivers screen faded in. It was Trait’s headless body on the ground, front side down, and a pool of pink blood coming from her neck, her head was next to her body, a small amount of blood pooled from that too.
I felt sick. I covered my mouth with my hand. I wanted to cry. Then, the game crashed. I could finally eject the disk, I ejected it and put it back in hoping I could find a way to save Trait, but instead of the title screen it was just a black screen, white text appeared saying
“You don’t need to play this game anymore. You can stop now.”
And it crashed again. I immediately went to research the game to see if anyone could’ve known what this meant since Anu was no help. Not many people were talking about this game, but from the little information I’ve gathered, I’ve come to a conclusion; the creator of this game is most likely going through something awful and probably made it out of stress, but that could just be a stretch.
All I know for sure is… this experience scared me out of ever playing another bootleg game.
A/N: omfg what did I write. Thiz iz prob rlly lackluzter since I’ve never written a pasta before. If you read thiz far, firzt of all tysm, second of all I’m so sorry you had to suffer thru readin all of that </3 Your support iz highly appreciated!