Memento Fame

Written by: Nova the Killer Kaiju
Let’s just get this over with already, while my head is still intact. It was about…a few years ago I believe, I don’t know for sure, and quite frankly I’d rather not go into intricate details. I enjoyed playing video games… Well, “enjoyed” is a strong word in my case. I was very critical about the games I’ve played, especially Nintendo games. Overall I was never impressed, yet part of me wished that they’d step it up a notch. This was especially the case for Pokemon. No matter how hard they tried, nothing impressed me. I don’t know what was missing from these games, but I never paid it any thought. It was just something else to complain about and in reality, I was just extremely ignorant. It’s just a game, ergo I didn’t care.

It was around the time Pokemon: Let’s Go Pikachu and Let’s Go Eevee was released.

“Great, another Kanto remake”, I thought to myself.

I decided to get the Pikachu version cause quite frankly I’m not a big fan of how plain Eevee looks. I know, real original. But whatever the case, I took the game and the little Pokeball controller as well. From what I heard, it contained Mew, but I decided not to use it cause I figured it’d be too easy for me. The game started up and off the bat, everything was very saturated and bright. I mean I saw the partner Pikachu do its thing as expected so there were no surprises. I went through the starting screen and customized myself and my rival. I didn’t bother using anything other than the default name. After some mundane, familiar cutscenes, I finally see the little rodent come out of the bushes and staring at me like I had three eyes. This is where it all began, and oh boy I did not like this gameplay already. My controller was quite unresponsive and was throwing the balls too soft or hard, even though I kept physically throwing them with the same amount of strength! It took me 5 balls, but I got the little yellow rat. Professor Oak then claimed that I needed to give this thing a nickname.

“Wonderful…” I said to myself, as I already grew annoyed with the Pikachu.

Though when I got to the lab and finally caught up to it, the cutscene of it appearing was actually somewhat cute, but I digress. Then I was given a choice to name it and decided to have a laugh with this one. I went with the first dumb-sounding name that came to my head, “Morty.” After some other needless text and getting my Pokemon, I was finally able to set off and leave Pallet Town. Now it was time to kick some ass...or at least so I thought until I discovered a disappointing truth about facing wild Pokemon in this game. You couldn’t believe how upset I was when I found out that you don’t battle wild Pokemon anymore, but rather you have to catch them with your Pokeballs. That’s it. It took me a couple of throws, but I managed to catch an Oddish…hooray. It was then that I discovered that this game was about to become extremely easy if this is how leveling up is going to be done.

After assembling a makeshift team of whatever I bumped into on the way, I made it past Pewter City and beat Brock, no thanks to Morty due to it being an Electric Type. It was only in the middle of exploring Mt. Moon where things started to get a little confusing. Morty started making some weird noises and the partner notification appeared. Morty looked like it was staring off into space with a text box that read,

“Morty feels that something strange is happening.”

I thought nothing of it and moved on. After heading out of Mt. Moon and checking out Bill’s place, I had to admit that the scene of Bill becoming a Nidorino made me laugh a good bit. I then went straight to Misty’s Gym and annihilated her with my already powerful team. Morty was useful for once, but I suppose it made sense. But after I went out the door, I got interrupted by Morty once again. This time, it was looking a little worried for a second.

“Morty is feeling hungry.”

Since when did these things get hungry? I thought that was weird and admittedly dumb, but I gave it one of those reddish berries and that seemed to keep it quiet. By the time I got the S.S. Anne, my team was overpowered and I was left quite bored. This game was just Gen 1 with a fancy coat of paint. Nothing about its “new” features impressed me. It made me wonder why I kept playing, but whatever. I had nothing better to do, so I just kept playing. It was after getting to the captain and getting what I thought was going to be Cut that I ended up getting a Secret Technique called Chop Down. Well, at least they changed HMs to make things more convenient, thank God. After some struggles with Lt. Surge and chopping down that goddamn tree again, Morty once again interrupted me. It looked scared and gave me a similar message as before.

“Morty is very hungry.”

I was getting irritated, but I gave it another berry and hoped it would keep it quiet. After getting lost and then going out of my way to find out that I needed another Secret Technique, I managed to find Light Up and I was feeling exhausted at this point. But it was around me walking into the Rock Tunnel that was reaching my limit. The place was crawling with Pokemon and to top it all off, Morty interrupted me once again. It was still hungry. By this time, I had enough and decided to not feed it any more berries. Because screw it. It’s just a bunch of code and pixels, who cares if it’s hungry? It’s not real! It wasn’t even 5 minutes before it interrupted me again.

“Morty seems to be famished.”

“Good for you. I don’t care," I spitefully replied,

I kept walking through the tunnel, hoping it would end. Encounter after encounter was all that I was greeted with. And then, Morty had the gall to interrupt me for the third time in this Godforsaken tunnel.

“Morty is starving…”

I was heated, and out of patience. After getting rid of that message, I walked over to my Switch to turn it off before it once again gave another text box; despite me not even moving my character! That was when my blood went to a boil as I threw my Pokeball controller at my Switch out of rage. I immediately regretted it as it caused my game to glitch up real bad. My rage turned to panic as I was worried I damaged the console, and that would have been two hundred bucks down the drain. I tried fidgeting around, pressing buttons on the Joycons, to no avail. The game froze before another sudden, glitchy text box appeared,

“M̴̝̠͍̿͘͜ǫ̷̝̻͎̈̏͑́̍̕͜͠r̷̯̝̹̤̩̈d̴͓̔e̶̛͙̬̜̺͚̭̞̓̄͐̇͂z̴̟͚͍̭͇̓̈ ̵̺̦͕̼̻̔̄̏̀̈̕i̸͚̓͒̕s̸͇̃͝-̴͎̏̏͗̿͝”

Uh oh...

The screen shut off. Now I was worried. I tried turning it on, but to no avail, despite my several attempts. I felt like I screwed up big time, but after a couple of minutes of silence, the screen lit up again, and it started playing the intro as if nothing happened. But I knew something was wrong. For starters, there was no music; just the sound of nature softly breaking the silence. More notably, my Pikachu was nowhere to be seen on the title screen. I was confused. I decided to press a button and I found that I was still in the Rock Tunnel, but everything was pitch black and foggy like how it was at the start. I looked into the menu and clicked the button for Morty, but it wasn’t there. Morty was gone, nowhere to be seen! This was bad. I has been left in the dark in more than one way. Where did it go and why was it gone? This shouldn’t have happened. I checked my party, hoping that I wouldn’t have to face any trainers on the way out. Much to my shock, my whole party was gone too!

“What the hell is going on?” is what I asked myself, but I knew I would have no answers.

I had no inventory either so my only choice was to walk through the darkness. It surprisingly didn’t take too long, but that was because I didn’t bump into anything on the way out. No trainers, not even Pokemon. But when I got out of the cave, off the bat I could tell something was wrong. That thick, pale fog that filled the cave seemed to engulf everything. Even my way back from Route 10 and through Cerulean City was under this seemingly endless fog. What was even eerier was that there were no NPCs to be found, not a trace of life to be seen. I approached the Pokemon Center to see if there was anyone around. To my absolute confusion, I was greeted with this message.

“The door is locked tight...”

What the hell? Who locks doors in these games? And more importantly, why would the Pokemon Center of all things be locked away? It didn’t make any sense. I was so confused as to where to go and after some pacing, I took time to notice the music. Instead of the vibrant, adventurous music that I was familiar with, something much more mysterious and ambient has taken its place. Had it not been for the creepy atmosphere, I would've found this music almost serene. I had nowhere to go. The only thing that made sense to me was that I needed to keep moving forward, but I couldn't do that without Morty. I had to find it and soon, wherever it may have been. After moving through some routes and still not finding a single trace of life no matter where I went, I could only think of one last place as to where that Pikachu could have gone: Pallet Town.

As I carefully trekked through the routes, there was a moment where I started to feel somewhat light-headed. I figured it was the ambiance getting to me, so I felt compelled to rush to Pallet Town as quickly as possible. As I drew nearer to the small town, I could feel this sensation of dread looming over me. I took a deep breath and went past the grass border into my supposed hometown. The fog was incredibly dense; far more than any other place. I checked out the lab first but the place was locked as well, which meant all that was left was my home.

It had to be here, where else could it possibly be? I interacted with the door and to my surprise, it was unlocked…but I could not have prepared myself for what I saw.

My home was absolutely ravaged. The furniture toppled, the windows shattered, not even the lights would work. And to top it all off, I remember there being bloodstains and what looked like deep scratch marks on the floors and walls. What the hell happened here? I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I…I was terrified. I didn’t even want to move and I felt a pain in my stomach that almost made me retch. I was stunned by the bloodstains, reluctantly wondering whos was it and if they were still ok. Part of me believed it could have belonged to Morty, but I couldn’t ponder much longer as I heard something suddenly shatter off-screen, making me jump right out of my seat. There was only one place it could have come from, upstairs. I didn’t want to, but I had no choice but to head to my room and see what was up there. The room was pitch black, but I could hear something shuffling inside it. I only took a few steps forward when a message popped up,

“Your surroundings come into focus.”

The screen faded to white and everything was much more visible.

That’s when I saw… it.

My Pikachu…my Pikachu had become something that could be described as an eldritch nightmare. Half of its head was just...gone, replaced with sharp, rotten-looking teeth coming from a gaping maw. Its hands became large, unproportionate claws and part of its tail was seemingly ripped off, with a boney spike protruding from the wound. I'd never felt so sick in my life, especially with what it was doing as I faced it. I saw what looked like a human arm sticking out from Morty’s maw, before it then swallowed the arm whole. It faced me and slowly reached out and began to hobble towards me. I was suddenly thrust into a battle against it.

“Mordez is hungry”.

Mordez as the game called it slowly shambled towards me, all while twitching violently and unnaturally. I somehow gained 10 Pokeballs and understood what had to do. I had to capture Mordez before it could reach me. I took my controller and threw one Pokeball near Mordez, but it suddenly struck it with its boney tail, destroying it. I was in big trouble and had to act fast, but I soon felt myself panicking as it destroyed 6 more Pokeballs. Its arms then reached out towards me as the twitching became more violent. I felt fatigued, my stomach was in knots and I felt like I was going to faint from the tension. I had 3 left. I failed so miserably the first time that it didn’t even respond. I then overshot the second one, which left me with just one ball left…

I lined it up. I had to time that circle just right. I pulled back and threw it. It was a perfect throw and at that moment, I felt relief…only for said relief to be thrown into a grinder as Mordez caught the Pokeball with its mouth, swallowing it whole. I was doomed. It was only inches away from me. I braced for impact, only for the screen to turn black. I thought it was finally over, but the stress then took its toll as I dropped to the floor in pain and proceeded to cry. The stress turned to dizziness and as my stomach began to twist in knots, I could feel myself slipping into unconsciousness...

I don’t know what happened to me when I passed out, but I remember awakening in a hospital bed as a doctor and some nurses were attending to me. As soon as I came to, I groggily asked them what happened to me. They said that one of my neighbors in my apartment complex heard me screaming and was concerned. When they came to check on me, I was writhing on the floor, passed out. They called an ambulance and paramedics brought me here. They figured I had a panic attack, but were surprised when they also found out that I was somehow undernourished at that moment. They're not sure how this happened and quite frankly, I’d rather not know. All they could do was let me rest and provide me food whenever it was needed. Honestly, I just wanted to go back to sleep and hopefully forget this nightmare…but I will never forget. It won’t let me. I can still see it standing there, watching me. Mordez is still following me…

And it's still hungry.