The speedrunner SmallAnt has tackled the mother of all Pokemon challenge runs and lived to tell the tale. Even more impressively, he managed the feat on his first attempt.
Pokemon Nuzlocke runs are perhaps some of the most common challenges in the world of video games. The rules vary between different games and mods to a degree, but the premise is largely the same: you must play a Pokemon game to completion under the stipulation that you can only catch the first Pokemon you encounter in any area, like a route, forest, or cave, and that you must release (or otherwise shelf) a Pokemon if it faints in battle.
To someone who never tackles challenge runs, that likely already sounds pretty difficult. However, seasoned players will often employ mods that make things even harder, and that's exactly what SmallAnt, a content creator who takes on speed and challenge runs, did when he began Pokemon Run and Bun, a mod for the GBA game Pokemon Emerald.
Pokemon Run and Bun is a difficulty romhack, but it is also so much deeper than that. Rather than arbitrarily amp the difficulty up, it remixes and fine tunes every trainer battle to push the player to their absolute limit.
The AI of the mod, which knows the stats of the player's entire party, will do behind-the-scenes math and pick the highest scoring move to deploy on any given turn. It adopts eighth generation mechanics (Pokemon Emerald heralds from the series' third generation), gives every Gym leader in the game a legendary Pokemon, and even disables the use of the bag during trainer battles. In short, it's diabolical.
That didn't stop SmallAnt from making an attempt, though. Miraculously, he even pulled it off – after 426 hours and 19 Pokemon faints/deaths. The final showdown against the game's Elite Four Champion, Wallace, saw SmallAnt even sacrifice one of his final Pokemon, a Golisopod named Pea, in order to make the grade.
In the end, it was SmallAnt's Sceptile, which entered the battle with a whopping 1 HP, that delivered the final blow, taking out both Wallace's Manaphy and mega-evolved Swampert with some well-placed Leaf Storms, solidifying him as one of the few players to ever beat this specific Nuzlocke run with less than 20 deaths. "And they didn't do it on their first try," SmallAnt quips.
Despite the success, don't expect SmallAnt to take on another Nuzlocke challenge in the near future. Though he admits to warming to the challenge over the course of his own run, he added, "Don't ask me to do another one. I'm not doing another Nuzlocke. This took way too long! I did the hardest one, so now you can't tell me to do another one, because it's just going to be easier."
