Pokémon Crystal: Nuzlocke Challenge #00 - Look what I found!

Published: 2021-12-26 // Related blog posts

Pokémon Crystal


Oh hey, look what I found!

All this started when I was sorting through some boxes to rearrange the storage in both my home office and bedroom. During this shuffle, I found my Nintendo 64 transfer pack with a copy of Pokémon Crystal in it. Now owning a copy of Pokémon Stadium 2 I decided to throw it into my Nintendo 64, attached the transfer pack only to discover the inevitable horror of all old Game Boy game collectors… the battery in Pokémon Crystal was dead. Never fear! Dug out my gamebit screwdriver and I carefully changed the game battery without soldering (aka: a bodge job). Try again on the transfer pack and Voila! It’s alive!

All this gave me a hankering for a good nostalgia hit. I no longer own a Game Boy Color and looking online at CEX revealed that they are selling for £65 at time of posting… but I still wanted to play so I settled with Pokémon Stadium 2, transfer pack and my office CRT TV. I played the first and second generation of Pokémon games to death as a kid (Owning Yellow and Gold back in the day) so I wanted to play again but with some spice, some added challenge. Let’s make this nostalgia trip a Nuzlocke Challenge.


The Nuzlocke Challenge

The Nuzlocke Challenge (commonly shortened to just “Nuzlocke”) is a set of rules intended to create a higher level of difficulty while playing the Pokémon games. Many players feel that the rules also serve the purpose of encouraging the use of Pokémon the player would not normally choose. The rules are not an in-game function, but are self-imposed on the part of the player, and thus subject to variation.

Basic rules

The Nuzlocke Challenge has only two rules that must be followed:

Optional rules I will be following:

I will be using a Nuzlocke Tracker to help keep track of what I have caught and where. It acts as a check list and with Crystal’s little pop up when you enter a new zone, makes it so much easier to follow.

This should be some fun and I thought, why not blog it to tell the story… spoilers I’ve already played a bit and made some progress. Enough progress for a first post so look forward to that soon™!


Next Post:~ Pokémon Crystal: Nuzlocke Challenge #01 - And so it begins…"