A song of hugs and licks [Nuzlocke]

[NickCrash]

Hello there!  It's General Nick.

 

I decided to run a Nuzlocke in the most lighthearted pokemon game there is; SPORK

For the 1-2 of you who don't know the nature of the Spork universe, death is nonexistent. What better a place to make a run in which a fainted pokemon supposedly dies?

 

 

There are going to be a lot of screen-snips, and hopefully it's going to be as fun for you as it was for me.

I have to say, it was a blind run. And now that I have completed it, I am going back and forth adding pictures so you guys get a better... picture of what's happening.

Oh, and btw, if you see me make a pun here, know it's intended. The game is so full of puns. In fact, it's the Kingdom of Puns You'll never get sick of them, and the pop culture references.

Before I start, I just wanted to say that Spork is an incredibly detailed game, and I still haven't finished the post-game content. It's a full 18 gym + E4 game, with a lot of pokemon to capture, a fun story, and villains you might sympathise with. Of course it doesn't go into too much depth and has its flaws (like endless exposition), but the whole package is great.

Icy did a good job in it, and she deserves all the praise she can get. 

 

A few words about the place

Spork takes place in Ceolis. That's a place of wonders, where humans and ??? reside. 

It took it's name from [Redacted] who [c0R.38p] and that remains a mystery because he 9[28dis29$].

There's also a threat to the locals, Team [p0RRRyg01n] who wish to change things in the area, as well as [00HBm].

Your job is to do as every adult 10-yo would do in a pokemon game. No it's not becoming champion. No it's not beating the bad guys. It's having fun.

Because you're 10 and concepts like global economy, prosperity and safety are above you. It's also that you want to use your pet slaves to battle each other.

Anyways. Here's Ceolis and Pokemon Spork for ya.

And here's an early map because I don't want to reveal all locations yet, like Party City. // How the hell did this miss my ultra redacting powers]

 

 

This is not the best Nuzlocke there is. It's just a tribute

Nuzlocke Rules + Personal Rules

A fainted pokemon is a dead pokemon. It can no longer be used, except for HM02 usage.

I am allowed to capture the first encounter in each area only.

If the first encounter is a pokemon I already own, I can capture the next one.

I have to battle every skippable battle.

Nicknames for all pokemon caught.

Items can be used.

No UBs or Legendary pokemon.

Start with a pikaclone for extra difficulty

 

I'll let this gain some interest before beginning the episodes. Consider this... Episode 0

 

[Candy]

which pikaclone? owo

[Violet]

looks cool

 

good luck!:)

[NickCrash]

Spork Episode 1 - The Hotel

 

Alright, ladies and gentlemen, and pokemon!

This is the real beginning of a Nuzlocke in the world of eternal hugs.

 

 

FREEZE FRAME

 

Now you must all be wondering, how I got myself into this situation.

This is a trained Starmie, in a level most fangames don't dare come close. Am I getting murdered or do I win this? 

If you want to know, you'll have to read my story. It's a big one, so pick your snack.

We go back a long time, around July, when I was still preparing for my final year in University, and decided to check out Icy's wonderful creation.

// Note that my game had long pauses due to real-life obligations not allowing me to complete it when I should have.

Also, I apologise for the screenshots not being completely consistent, because I got caught up in the game and forgot to take them.

 

This is how it all began. 

First, we got to meet this little fellow, who I'm sure we'll never see again, just like every other professor who greets us in normal pokemon games.

It's sayin it's a Litwick, and it's going to assist me. I doubt it. I never trust candles. 

 

So, I have to choose a name for myself. Phoenix was a bit too pompous and they'd refer to me as Nick for short.

Thing is, Nick is already my name and I wanted to play as someone else for a change.

Therefore, I choose this, as it also has a scent of rebirth to it

 

In contrast to other pokemon games, Spork doesn't play with your emotions. It doesn't leave you stranded in a new house with your mom to run around aimlessly until you find out that tall grass is scary. No, it scares you in a new way. It gives you... options. 

Now, hear me out, I am a responsible adult. I am already 10 years old and should be able to take care of myself.

I don't need no mama or papa (nor do I have one), and even if I do have a sibling, she's more like a distant friend who wants to see you fail while she excels.

So yeah. I'm alone and should be able to choose.

 

Heck. Spork doesn't love me at all. It gives me THIS.

 

I am certain that choosing Litwick has special dialogue, but I won't fall for that trap.

I can't choose. There's Caterpie, and Ledyba, and Bidoof, and so many other creatures I can pick.

Some standalones too, like SPINDA.

 

I've been here for a while.

Note to you guys. Some pokemon don't have proper sprites, at least for the overworld.

Some are default turned into Lycanroc when seen in the box.

Some abilities don't function properly, so you won't see them used in the game either.

It's all written somewhere, but I don't bother looking at hints during a blind run.

 

For a moment there I was tempted into choosing that flat disk.

I have no idea what kind of pokemon that might be. Looks like a Mola Mola fish.

Meh, looks like it's going to be a frail sweeper, and I sure don't want to lose my pokemon this early.

Better go for a pikaclone.

 

Meet Kurapika

Kurapika is a hero from Hunter-X-Hunter, who wields chains as his main weapon.

The cuteness, yellow theme, and metal seem to fit well for a name.

This is going to be our protagonist in this game, at least until I catch something better.

 

It appears that after I pick, I wake up in a hotel room. 

I have a king's size bed, which means I'm either sleeping with my sister, or I am constantly moving and people are afraid I might fall off of it at any given moment.

I also sleep with a suit, like a red-haired Barney Stinson. Or Barney the Purple Dinosaur, since that's also a suit. a furrsuit

 

The other rooms are full of enemies, and we're beating them all

Turns out the pokemon is far from bad. Maybe it's still early game, and me having a Steel type is being early OP.

I don't know. I picked it mainly because it was awesome in my latest attempts in competitive, and it's extra difficulty to start with a pikaclone.

Oh, you'll notice how it's nickname changes a bit till we end up with Kurapika. That's because, me being silly, I forgot to initially nickname it.

Then I gave it a terrible name. Then we ended up with the final one. Oh well, just keep that one as the canon.

 

So... we go to the other areas.

Like here, where we catch an...

It's an Espurr, alright? 

It's a cutesy Espurr.

 

Let's check the lobby

I know right?

Personally I enjoy such subtle criticism on gen 3 RSE "interviews" where you could only respond with 1 word and it doesn't make sense.

Yet they think it does.

I couldn't type an answer back then, so all I could do, was be quirky or weird.

Then I stopped answering their interviews. Even a narcissist like myself stops enjoying hearing about insignificant things on the news.

Tell me about the evil team's plans. Show me what the police are doing.

What is Steven Strange Stone doing to cleanse Hoenn from all those attrocities? Are we all going to die? Should I cancel my trip to Sootopolis?

 

Yeah. That kind of stuff.

 

While I was caught up ranting about the socioeconomic turmoil that is Hoenn, my character fled the hotel in pursuit of his dreams.

Oh btw, I remind people this is a Nuzlocke. So Espurr kind of counts as the Hotel capture.

Believe me, had I known beforehand that there as a training centre, I would have rolled a dice, entered a room, and caught something else from in there.

But I didn't. and now it's history. So off we go with a team of 2 domestic animals, into Virima City.

Which is actually beautiful.

Look at how harmonically the buildings are set next to each other.

Back when I started playing Se7en, and supported the endeavor a lot, the first city was a junk of metal, with no plan, and a weird structure.

Spork nails it from the first moment. So congrats to Icy for being awesome there.

 

Notice how I already have a bike.

Icy doesn't want us to walk 500 miles, and 500 miles more to get enough mud for a salesman to pity us.

No, they pity us just the way we are.

 

Rookie mistake.

The grass you see here?

It's full of pokemon.

What kind of pokemon would you expect it to have?
Grass? Bug? Or maybe Normal?

Give it a thought, while I prepare the next installment of the series.

 

See you all next time. This is going to be a lot of short episodes.

[NickCrash]

Spork Episode 2 - Mysteries of Virima

 

Of course not! It's infested with Nightmare Fuel

See? It's not only me who's saying that! Icy agrees. 

 

Shelder are vastly underrated pokemon, ever since their creation in RBY. They were version exclusive, and the lore behind them and Slowpoke actually made primary school Nick believe we needed some kind of fusion to create Slowbro. I also saw no connection to Cloyster.

Yeah. Children have their own interpretation of the world.

 

Anyway, we have the 3rd member of our crew, namely Blue Waffle.

It's going to be a long journey and we're just gathering members.

 

Now that we've captured sth inside Virima City, we have no right to get Pheromosa, which is so easily given to us.

Plus, I have already added a rule about UBs so...

 

Now, time to explore a bit.

Here's the Virima Library

We meet our first enemies here, Felicia and... Delicia.

Yeah.

 

They look too cute to be in a pokemon game.

Choose your waifu. Or vote for me to have a waifu so that I can change my dialogue when I meet her.

I don't know. I'm out of ideas.

 

Delicia is the incredibly naive glutton who never actually speaks properly.

She's interested in sweets only. Hence the name.

Felicia is a bit more straightforward. She's a known bad guy. Girl. Person.

She's evil, in the way anyone can be evil in Spork. She's working for the "other team".

 

Moving on, this house is a Gym

And the Gym Leader's name is Jim

 

Yeah. Icy starting off with the puns. I mean, it took so long to start them.

We almost went 2 episodes without a decent pun. And now we can't go on.

Jim is normal type specialist. He's an expert in having his house destroyed by pokemon battles.

Maybe he believes people will pity him. Maybe he thinks I don't care enough and he just wants an excuse.

 

When I was back in Reborn, Lana used to scold me for beating her daughter inside their new house.

In my defense, that one is inside a wasteland with trubbish everywhere (well, now that I think of it, all that trash and no trubbish)

And she also has a room full of poisonous sludge with mud and spikes, next to their bedroom.

So yeah, I still am not to blame.

 

But for Jim, I'm beating his ass so hard, he's going to need some vacations.

 

He wasn't much of a threat.

Sure, Kurapika rolled all over the living room, destroyed Jim's scooter, and also helped his waifu bake a cake.

Then took the cake.

Shelder proved to be quite strong, given the icicle shards were a new move against his poodle.

We won and that's all that matters here.

 

Then, as we leave, my sister Emily wants to fight me in real life.

She got beaten up there, and also in pokemon.

 

We go onto the next area only to be challenged by the local Youngster Joey, who only owns Trubbish.

And he almost kills my clam.

Git gud mate.

 

Back to the hospital

The clinic offers some cosplay as well. It's... Japanese.

 

Look at me. I am the Cradily now.

Off to a new area.

And you know what that means...

A new capture!!!

Nevermind.

It was a Yungoos. I didn't want it anyway (no really I did. I had a nickname ready and all. sobs in trump)

 

To be fair

Yungoos is supposedly a detective pokemon.

The evolution, Gumshoos, refers to a common nickname for detectives (gum shoes), which may not be the most complimentary, yet it's sometimes appropriate.

It's supposedly similar to the USA's president because of the hair, the grumpy face, and the fact it hates China.

However, let's all keep politics outside pokemon.

Here we can all use our digital slaves to battle each other without feeling bad about anything.

 

At a side-trail, we see this statue

It's obvious there will never be any dispute upon this land, and it's just decoratory.

No need to fret about future sidequests and captures of legend-dairy pokemon.

 

The other end of the path is Cianosa City

And it's f*ckin pretty.

And the music rocks.

Well not technically, but it's awesome nonetheless.

Good job Icy. Good job.

 

Cianosa is much broader than Virima, yet with about the same number of people.

It looks like a more rural type of place, with fields around it that can be harvested, and people enjoying the trips in the forest, the river, the caves.

Or it could be that nobody wants to enter this place, since it's in the middle of nowhere.

 

Current Squad

               

Kurapika               Purrfect           Blue Waffle

 

I'll end this episode here, because a lot of things happen in the next one.

Smell ya'll later.

 

 

[NickCrash]

Spork Episode 3 - Going Deep 

 

Alright, back in Cianosa City.

These episodes all are abruptly ended and begin just as suddenly because of their continuum. One would say that I break them as such because I upload all at once.

Well, they would be... correct.

It's a bit clustered if I put everything together, so I'll just break them like that.

 

Before we go on with the main story, there's one thing I desperately need to do

Yep. Now all the pokemon are properly named (well, not exactly, you'll see what I mean later).

 

Back to school 

Supposedly it's applied math

Or, as John Oliver puts it
"It's math disguised as dinosaurs and outer space, to seem interesting"

 

Shocking. The students want to fight me.

Ah, high school students. The purest of the pure. They think they know everything about the world.

Then you enter university. You find out you have no idea what's going on.

And then, when you finish, you realize nobody knows how the world works.

But we're steadily going towards a great direction. One Direction. Truth is hard to master.

 

As I said, the purest of the pure.

Such bravado is to be expected.

However, that is not an empty threat.

I talked to her and the very next moment, someone somewhere died.

I am a smart man, so I instantly assumed corelation equaled causation.

I better keep my distance.

 

A great opportunity to tease people about the absurdity that's Wonky Woods.

However, that's not really what a Rare Candy does.

This particular student had a 'Rare Candy'. And those quotation marks make a difference.

It does have rare candy as a substance, but it's also mixed with powder from shards.

Nasty stuff.

And you may throw me a DM if you want to know more.

 

Changing the subject.... I was given this cat

Can't really remember who gave it to me. I was a bit... trippy.

And I also evolved it, as per Darwin's instructions

Oh yes. His name is Felinoir.

You know... Feli from feline, since it's a fucking cat.

Noir because of the Dark subtype it's going to later gain, and also as an excuse to make silly puns about Hitchcock when we visit the aviary. Oops.

Ok busted. I didn't know about the aviary, but it ended up being way too cool an area.

 

After school's over, I decided to goof around a bit.

And just like in every RPG that wants to be respected, there were things to find out in every single house I visited.

Of course I made a point to interact with the TV and trashcan.

As I was expected to.

And fortunately Icy has a similar mindset as she has included dialogue for all possible TV and trashcan locations in the game. 

Are you still not content?

 

That was not something I expected. Usually pokemon reply by reciting their names. Not licking me, or doing anything else to me.

I don't know. It's just not my thing.

Scratch that. Apparently it IS my thing.

Yes, of course i clicked a few times more to check if the dialogue changes.

A lot of licks. Back and forth.

 

Then we entered the restaurant

Those two girls look spooky. They also seem to be main characters, aka gym leaders.

Fortunately they'll have more of a personality than Gym.

I don't remember much of our dialogue, because it was 4 months ago. But yeah. Cool girls. I think one is this city's leader.

Anyhow, I bought some stuff.

You can't imagine my later disappointment when I found out those are worthless. Only the Casteliacones work.

 

On another note, the north-eastern part of the city has some harvesting grounds.

Needless to say, I plucked all berries.

Also, reminiscent of Alice in chains in Wonderland, I ended up falling into a rabbit-hole. 

I had no idea how deep it went.

To be frank, I don't know, because I can't know.

Sure, for such a labyrinth to be sustainable, adequate depth is needed.

It's also named "burrows" meaning it's made by hand. Or by... paw.

Bunnelbies are lovely creatures. And they are also available, since I count this as a new area.

Hurray!! A new bunny for moi

I love how it's also "naughty" nature.

I wouldn't have my bunny any other way.

 

Let's find a way out now shall we?

Looks like someone dropped some stones down here

Correction: Someone dropped ALL the stones down here.

I'm starting to believe Steven Stone has read my previous episode's criticism, and is trying to make amends.  Nice try Steven, but I won't be swayed this easily.

Try gifting me a Metagross next time

 

Oh, and in case nobody paid attention to the nickname, here's my evolution screen drawing your eyes to it.

Terra lives! And is back with a vengeance. Together we will rule the world.

 

Time to enter this big building. I am certain we cannot be missing the gym here.

The mansion was occupied by Cocaine Zombie Pokemon Trainers (in short CZPT, which is much harder to remember)

I got rid of them and they disappeared. That's how I know they were zombies. Because I have seen some in my days playing Snakewood.

 

This lass is the leader. So I was right with my prediction.

The fires on each side tell me two things.

1. It's definitely not a fire gym

2. It's dangerous to go alone, and I have to be receiving some sort of helpful item.

 

I don't remember having seen this background anywhere. If someone from Reborn can correct me, that will be much appreciated.

Here are some matchups from the battle. It's been quite a while and I don't remember my commentary.

I think here I'm using LICK against Pyrromanis.

Well, this episode could be called "A lot of Licking" for all I know.

Thing is, that's not a safe title.

I dare use my Steel type against a physical Fire type because of the recoil damage and the awesome defenses Toged has.

The snowball effect plus a X4 weakness allows me to continue

Increased snowball leads to sweep by unlikely circumstances

Yet, we all need to switch out sometimes. 

 

She claims the other spooky girl, her sister, is incredibly stronger.

However, I suppose all leaders raise pokemon naturally, and keep some low level for the challengers, as people will challenge the gyms in a specific order.

So, if they both have teams of 100lvl pokemon (as demostrated in the end), why can't she defeat her sister?

Is she simply admitting incompetence, or is her sister cheating?

I mean cheating in pokemon, regardless of what she's doing in her bedroom when her boyfriend is on vacation in Kalos.

Aaand I now realise that was not supposed to be revealed to the viewers.

 

Skip to the next event !

This is a game corner. And as is customary, it's a bad guy lair

I thought dealing with all Team Portal (Yes that's their name, wow) would be boring. So I'm just showing you their outfits.

 

This guy however proved to be quite the catch.

He's helping me even though I'm his adversary.

What a nice fellow.

Also,

wakandan accent 

I Nevah Freze

 

Let's go meet le big boss

Yo Dawg! What's the dealio!!!

 

His name is Barker. 

And omg he also has dogs for poke-pets.

Well it's Icy. She's do anything to reinforce a good pun

In fact, all she's showcasing here is how GF is actually reusing the same concepts for pokemon, albeit with a different execution.

It's almost like a challenge to them: "Let's see how many different foxes, cats, rats, and dogs we can make. Screw Dolphins and things we've never given to people"

Ok, technically Lucario is a jackal, meaning... good, because its not another dog.

Bad, because it's regarded to be a dog.

Terribad, because all my pokemon are somewhat weak to it.

 

I have to admit that, even though we don't see eye-to-eye with Barker, he's a gentleman, and takes defeat with grace.

See ya next time. I will keep an eye on your group of fashionable thugs.

 

I think I'll end the episode here.

Barker's defeated and I'm happy.

 

Current team.

                      

Kurapika               Purrfect           Blue Waffle             TERRAWR

 

See you all in the next one!!