ONM Remembered – Pokémon Week II, day 6
“I’ll let you have a swell MAGIKARP”
from Pokémon Master Guide (1999)
Not even a year after its Western release, and Pokémon was crawling with rumours and hoaxes of super secret creatures accessible only by the most tedious of trials (long before Nintendo themselves caught on), and ONM’s Master Guide sought to put the record straight. Not with actual evidence or anything, just posting pictures (that I wondered how were made or where they came from for the longest time) and saying, no, it’s fake, your friend was a total fibber.
It’s a decent way of breaking up the rumours, but come on, how can we trust them? These guys don’t even work at Nintendo, for crying out loud; how do we know they’re not holding out on these sweet secret Pokémon for themselves? For that matter, how do we know all our friends’ uncles aren’t doing the same thing? I will not stand for secret Pokémon collusion.
Besides being a font of frustration for easily-swindled players, fake Pokémon is apparently a pretty huge subject both among investigative websites and fanart scenes, which I can’t help but find particularly cute. It sounds like a greater community for creativity than the Sonic hoaxing scene ever was.
