G LE OF D RK SS

My name is Leo.

I am an avid Pokemon fan, mainly those such as the Spin-offs such as Pokemon Mystery Dungeon and Pokepark, etc etc..One of these things I really liked however, was the Pokemon Orre games. I played so much of them back in the day, catching every shadow pokemon, beating up Cipher many times over, sometimes stopping to jam out to the music, it was great.

Shadow Lugia, of course, was my favorite. Maybe it was because of the color scheme or the whole concept of a legendary being corrupted by a villain group like Cipher. The design always stuck out to me when I was a kid, and I used it a lot whenever I battled an NPC, so I played Gale of darkness more than Colosseum.

..However, I started to lose interest in the games as a whole, placing them away in a box and letting my parents put it (among other things) away in the basement to collect dust. I always wanted to replay the game again, due to the charm it always had all these years later.

After shifting through the boxes for a bit, I finally found that old game, the cover was a bit torn at parts and some of the letters seemed to be scratched up. Nonetheless, I took it back downstairs, plugging in my old gamecube and putting in the disc. It seemed to take a little longer to start up the game, but I brushed it off due to how old the disc was.

I was so happy to see the old title screen again (even with the slight texture glitches here and there), and I started up a new save file.

The part where you choose your character's name was..a bit odd, the protag was facing away from me, head slumped over and the clear energy and happiness he had almost looked to be..gone, I went over to choose Adam and a text box popped up.

No.

...No?

I tried to choose the other default name, and even tried to make my own, but the same text would appear.

No.

….Defeated, I chose MICHAEL, and right before the screen faded, I could’ve sworn I saw the character almost turn a bit to face me. The battle sim part started as usual, but with a small difference, Michael’s model seemed..off, he had a shadow over his face to where I couldn’t see the eyes, and he seemed a lot stiffer. He wasn’t smiling, but just had a..blank expression on his face.

As I always did in all of my old playthroughs of the game, I lost the battle, but then the screen went crazy, glitching out before a single message in bold letters appeared.

'''ERROR - SOMETHING HAS GONE WRONG! REBOOTING…'''

The screen faded to black as usual, and the usual character that would talk to you after the battle sim was over started speaking as per game code. “Uh oh! Something went wrong there, Michael? No matter, we’ll just have to check out the ERROR REPORT later!” This was starting to get odd, but I was also starting to get curious, what else awaited me in this altered version of my beloved game?

As soon as I got control of Michael, I pushed onward to the next plot beat (although with some input delay, with Michael almost looking like he didn’t even want to move at all.), before I went to see Krane, I checked my party.

It seemed..to be normal. I still had an Eevee, but then something caught my eye.

What looked to be a glitchy mess was sitting right below it, I went to open it, and a textbox opened up, with red text to boot.

…

Let's just hurry up.

Once again like the naming screen, it wouldn’t let me open it and it repeated those same words over and over again. Giving up, I closed the menu. That's when I noticed Michaels new..idle stuff, he seemed more tired, head somewhat hanging low with his hands almost looking to be shaking. I went through the other stuff, getting Jovi, etc, etc..when it reached the part where Krane got kidnapped (in broad daylight no less!), was when things started to get freaky again.

The convo with the first Cipher Peon was different. I could tell they had a feeling of uneasiness coming from Michael. Once I had snagged the Teddiursa and Cipher flew off with Krane in tow, I went back into the lab and as the cutscene played out, I could tell Michael wasn’t..all there. I couldn’t see his eyes but I could see a neutral face on him and he didn’t even look like he was paying attention.

Once the cutscene was over, another textbox popped up.

YOU CAN NOW ACCESS [?^614

Access WHAT?!

I hurriedly popped open the pokemon menu, and felt a chill going down my spine once I saw what was actually below Eevee. It was a Lugia, Shadow Lugia, infact. The level was simply listed as ? and it was clear something was bad about it. Swallowing my pride I opened up its stats.

There were black boxes like those graphical glitches covering its face, its mouth was going up its face unlike, you know, the design we all know, and it had two very..crudely drawn red and white eyes seemly floating above the messly black box hell on its face, crudely draw blue and purple tears leaking from them.

Its cry sounded slower and distorted, and it wasn’t flying either, it was..on the ground, wings propping it up as the music came to a halt. I checked the moves, there weren’t any shadow moves either, just ones with no typing at all and gibberish for their names.

Then I saw what it was named. ɟɐʇɥəɹ.

...I don’t think you could give a pokemon an upside down name like that, at all.

I closed the..things menu and went on my way, when I got the choice to choose which stone or shard to evolve Eevee with, I picked the one that lets you get Umbreon (I loved Umbreon so much, mostly due to my days of Colosseum.), and I let Eevee get it as I got its friendship up. When the first double battle rolled around, I sent out Umbreon and..Lugia, Lugia seemed to be in some state of looking tired like his trainer, head leaning down and those crudely drawn tears phasing through the ground.

Michael did his small thing of reaching out for his pokemon when they got hurt. Although he himself looked much more hurt when he did so. When I snagged more shadow pokemon, I noticed some NPC’s were starting to comment on Michael’s appearance.

'''Are you quite alright? You look tired..'''

You look like you’ve seen better days..

Hey, kid, might want to get some rest soon, I heard it's good for ya’.

…

Now that I noticed those, it did seem like something had tuckered the poor kid out.

But anyways! I pushed on through, up until that infamous scene where Team Snagem knocks you out and steals the snag machine from you. This time around, something else happened, which was..becoming common in this save file.

Michael looked visibly annoyed as they went on and on, and right before they ordered the gloom to knock him out, the screen went black.

'''Go! ɟɐʇɥəɹ!'''

That distorted Lugia cry played again, and I didn’t even need to guess what happened to those Snagem members.

I still pushed through, no matter what, I needed to see what was at the end of this. After a while of story stuff, I reached Citadark. The final area, and the place where you..would snag Shadow Lugia. The boss battles were nonetheless difficult, and soon I made my way up to Greevil.

When XD001 was supposed to appear, it didn’t, which was no shocker to me, as the damn thing had already busted into my party and didn’t have any intention of leaving. Greevil looked confused himself, and turned to me. The camera panned over, shaking a tad bit, and that's when I saw Michaels eyes.

They weren’t the ones that he usually had, they were purple, pinpricks of red in them, and he slowly pulled out the pokeball that held that thing.

…

…

…

The screen cut to black, and after a few moments, faded to a cutscene that would normally happen once Michael had beaten Cipher, everyone was clapping, and Lily was..hugging Michael, and he seemed to be looking right back at the camera over her shoulder.

Looking right at me, with a faint hint of are you happy now?

The game let out a loud noise as it crashed, textures going all over the place before I was forced to eject it. Upon reloading it back into my console (a bit shaky, as I was already shaken up.) the save file where everything happened was..gone, like it never existed at all. Everything seemed to become normal again, no messed up missingno lugia’s, no..screwy anything.

I haven’t touched the cartridge since putting it away once more, I hadn’t let that mess tamper with my love for Pokemon and Orre, but..

That image of Michael glaring back at me is still burned into my memory to this very day.