Platinum Nuzlocke 1 - The Journey Begins

Introduction to Nuzlockes

This is new project documenting my blind Pokemon Platinum Nuzlocke run. It would have been cool to track my progress but I know I wouldn’t record enough clips to make a cohesive video. I decided that blogging it and taking pictures as I go would be a fun way to record the story… except I thought of blogging it after I started the save so the pictures will begin starting from the next one! I will be summarizing the story as I play and I may mess up some of the details as I recount them but thats okay!

For those who don’t know, a nuzlocke is a self-administered set of rules for any Pokemon game. There are only 3 official rules:

• You must only catch the first pokemon on each route and give them a nickname
• If the pokemon faints, then it is now considered “dead”, and cannot be used for the rest of the run.
• If all your pokemon faint, then the run is over and you must restart

The rest of the rules are up to the individual. There’s a typical set of hardcore rules that some runners follow:

• Must play in set mode
• Cannot use items in battle
• Level caps based on the next gym leader

I will be playing with all of the rules above! In addition to those, I will also trying the following:

• No HM only pokemon, the HM’s must be distributed amongst the Pokemon I’ve caught, however, I am allowed to use the move deleter/tutor later if needed.

I’ve played through generations third and fourth generation of the mainline Pokemon games but I was the kind of kid to only use damaging moves and overlevel my Pokemon to defeat tough opponents instead of employing any kind of strategy. The challege of a nuzlocke to utilize my Pokemon to the best of my ability is always interesting. I did do a nuzlocke of FireRed a few years ago so I do have a little bit of experience with the ruleset. I last touched Sinnoh many years ago with Pokemon Pearl, so this will be a blind run. I only know what the level caps for the next gyms are but know nothing else about the opponents Pokémon!

Enough of the preamble, lets get going!

The Journey Begins!

The story starts with our main character (named Raveen of course) in his room, when Barry, our rival and best friend, barges in saying that we should go looking for Pokemon. Saying bye to my mom and leaving in search of Barry. We find him at his house noting he forgot somethings in his room.

After catching up with him in Route 201, he has the bright idea of running through the tall grass without any Pokemon, explaining that if we run fast enough we wouldn’t encounter any wild ones (a big no no without any Pokemon of our own). Right before Barry breaks into a sprint, Professor Rowan and his assistant Dawn interrupts us. Inspired by our love of Pokemon he offers to give us our first ones!

Posed with the question every pokemon trainer is plagued with, which starter do I go with? I’ve played Pokemon Pearl a lot when I was 10, but Sinnoh’s wild spawns is not one I remember super well. In any case, I just asked my girlfriend which one she liked the most and she picked Turtwig!

After beating my rival in our first of many battles, we went home to rest and then he had the bright idea to impress Professor Rowan by catching the legendary lake spirit Pokémon protecting Lake Verity. Entering the lake, we bumped into a strange man talking about controlling time and space. He passes by and we realized we didn’t have any pokeballs! How silly of us. Barry challenges me to race him to Professor Rowan in Sandgem Town to see if he has any for us.

Travelling through Route 201, we had a few encounters with wild pokemon but they don’t count to the nuzlocke yet since we don’t have any pokeballs. Once in Sandgem town, Professor Rowan was surprised to see how close my Turtwig and I were. He asked if I wanted to give it a nickname and I went Timothy (by suggestion of the girlfriend). Professor Rowan also handed me a Pokedex asking me to help him by logging all the Pokemon I see on my adventure. He tells me that I should see my mom before I go on my adventure, so I stopped back in Twinleaf Town, getting the journal from my mom and parcel to give to Barry. My mom and Barry’s mom said Jubilife City would be the next stop for my adventure and then wished me well!

With that the rest of the adventure begins now!