Pokemon Red And Blue Hack Discovered 25 Years After It Was Released
The year is 1996, "Macarena" is at the top of the charts, your Tamaogtichi just died, and mum is serving up a plate of Turkey Twizzlers before you sit down to watch The Simpsons on BBC Two at 6pm. They were simpler times where simpler games were all the rage. Back in 1996, the Game Boy was about to be overtaken by the release of the Nintendo 64, but no one knew it yet. We also didn't know the word "Pokemon" was about to take the world by storm.
Although we wouldn't get to play Pokemon Red and Blue until 1999 in the United Kingdom, 1996 saw Japan get to grips with Pokemon Red and Green as our Poket Monster obsession first started. By now, we're sure you think you know all there is to know about the first generation of handheld Pokemon games. Well, what if we told you one Red and Blue player has discovered a handy hack that's been in from of our eyes this entire time? Red and Blue is a direct remake of Red and Green, which means the latest discovery has been hidden in the handheld game for the past 25 years.
What is the Pokemon Red and Blue hack?
The shocking discovery was made by one plucky player, who shared their finding on Reddit. Posting on the official Pokemon subreddit, u/ArkthePieKing explained how there's a way to get five free Pokeballs from Professor Oak after you've defeated your Rival for the second time. Wait, hold up a minute, that's not true...is it? The thread has blown up on Reddit, and at the time of writing, is sitting pretty with over 5.5k upvotes. In the thread, u/ArkthePiekIng explained there's a very specific set of conditions that have to be met if you want the Prof to toss you his balls for free.
Firstly, you need to have completed your second Rival fight by Viridian City, without nabbing the Boulder Badge from Brock in Pewter City. Added to this, you can't have picked up any Pokeballs. Not just buying them, but finding them too. You have to best your Rival twice, using just your starter Pokemon. Considering your Rival always picks the strongest opponent Pokemon (e.g. Bulbasaur against your Squirtle), this will take some serious grind. By the time you meet them by Viridian, they have their starter and a shiny new Pidgey.
Finally, you have to go back to Pallet Town after coming all this way. There is literally no reason to do this, and for what, five Pokeballs. Wow Oak, you're really tempting us here. If it was a Master Ball or unlimited Rare Candy (remember Missingno?) then maybe. It's still interesting that the hack has been found some two and a half decades later.
Are there more Pokemon Red and Blue hacks?
The Redditverse was suitably shooketh by the discovery. It's seemingly random and has no logical explanation behind it. Doing some theorising, Redditors guessed it was put in place as some kind of failsafe for players who don't know how to capture Pokemon. One wrote, "It’s like a final failsafe for a player who has made it through the initial challenge of the second Rival battle wherein they have multiple Pokémon but in this case, the player themselves hasn’t realized that they can capture additional Pokémon themselves. So they see the Rival having new Pokémon and think wtf how, go back to Oak (since he gave them their first so he must be how they get more), and then he gives them pokeballs to get them started".
Mainly, people were just pretty impressed. One fan said, "Played since release and have only now learned this", while another added, "I got the pokeballs from Oak in my first playthrough when blue was released, but never knew how as I never replicated it in subsequent playthroughs. I honestly thought maybe I imagined it eventually". It's not exactly the biggest Pokemon Red and Blue reveal out there, but it's still pretty cool.
Circling back to other Pokemon Red and Blue hacks, who could forget the fabled Missingno? Back in the day, the ability to get unlimited versions of any item you placed in your sixth item slot was the stuff of legends. In reality, Missingno was a pixelated monster that was actually supposed to be cut type of Pokemon known as "bird". It isn't the only glitch Pokemon running rife out there in Kanto, with Shigeki Morimoto confirming there were once plans for 190 Pokemon in Gen I. There are actually 39 Glitch Pokemon found in Red and Blue - causing a variety of weird results.
In the run-up to a presumed anniversary announcement of some big games, there's been a resurgence in love for playing the classics. Only recently, a fan project of epic proportions saw people play Pokemon Red and Blue through Twitter. Unfortunately, they didn't manage to pull off the Professor Oak Pokeball hack. Finding Professor Oak gives you five Pokeballs is all well and good, but it's hardly groundbreaking. Still, we'll add this one to the Pokemon history books.
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