Products You May Like
Soapbox features enable our individual writers and contributors to voice their opinions on hot topics and random stuff they’ve been chewing over. Today, Ethan remembers a time when he flew too close to the sun…
This is the power fantasy eight-year-old me dreamed of when I slotted an Action Replay into my Nintendo DS for the very first time. As a young kid with hundreds of hours dumped into my copy of Pokémon Diamond, the idea of having a device to let me input cheat codes and do whatever my heart desired was quite the compelling prospect. Unfortunately, hacking my way to Pokémon mastery would end up leaving me with nothing but regret — and a few glitchy Bad Eggs burning a hole in my PC boxes.
In those early years of playing games, there was no series I loved more than Pokémon. As with many fans, much of that appreciation stemmed from the games’ core loop of battling, training, and collecting colorful monsters. Still, there was more to it than that. Each game presented an entire world that felt genuinely lived in. Pokémon Diamond exemplified this quality more than most other titles in the franchise, boasting a region filled with stories of ancient, world-creating deities, mysterious areas like the haunted Old Chateau, and other fascinating tidbits of historical lore hidden away in library bookshelves and optional NPC dialogue.
It was a rush, but a fleeting one.
I treasured that sense of intrigue. Coupled with the myriad schoolyard rumors and internet hoaxes that swirled around the Gen 4 titles, it felt like the game had an endless abundance of secrets to discover, even beyond what might be accessible to the average player. What would happen if I talked to the Pachirisu NPC sitting within the fenced-in area of the Pokémon Day Care? What if I could Surf my way into the open waters past the boulder barriers on Route 223?
I wanted answers to these burning questions. And I wanted super-cool, super-strong Pokémon. I got both.
The first cheat I entered with my Action Replay maxed out every member of my party’s stats. After turning Torterra and friends into beasts that could reasonably dethrone Arceus itself, I then set about filling my bag with 999 Master Balls, 999 Rare Candies, 999 Exp Shares, and so on, no doubt obliterating Sinnoh’s economy in the process. I also needed something to use all those super-strong items on, so I spawned in shiny variants of Deoxys, Celebi, and every other rare ‘Mon I could think of, catching them all without breaking a sweat.
I set about filling my bag with 999 Master Balls, 999 Rare Candies, 999 Exp Shares, and so on, no doubt obliterating Sinnoh’s economy in the process
It was a rush, but a fleeting one. Like a kid finally allowed to eat candy for every meal of the day, I grew sick of the instant gratification pretty quickly. I turned my thoughts to exploration.
After selecting a cheat to allow my character to walk through walls, barrelling through the treeline barrier of Route 214 was an easy feat. In hindsight, I’m not sure what exactly I was expecting to find out there. A hidden area, perhaps, or a yet undiscovered Legendary Pokémon waiting for someone to find it. A single secret item, even. Anything.
Instead, what I discovered was a greater revelation than my childish mind could have ever anticipated. There, lying just beyond the normally-viewable foliage was…nothing. A black, empty out-of-bounds void. I took a step past the trees and out into the inky ether, and the game promptly froze. Rebooting my DS and trying the same thing in a few other locales yielded similar results. That was that.
To many video game enthusiasts, cracking open their favorite video game and seeing the seams holding it all together can be just as entertaining as playing the game itself. It’s a major reason why online creators like Boundary Break, who devote their content to demystifying the things normally just out-of-sight in games, have captivated such a wide audience. But for a child who treasured immersion and escapism more than anything else in these experiences, pulling back that veil was nothing short of deflating. It became the linchpin for my inevitable — yet no less unsavory — realization that, at the end of the day, a game is just a game.
Only a few masterpieces have managed to recapture my imagination with that facade of limitless potential.
What could I do now? As a Pokémon Trainer, I had everything I could ever want. Why bother battling if I knew my ‘Mons were the strongest they could ever possibly be? Why try to complete the Pokédex when it was as simple as pressing a few buttons to get the creatures I didn’t have yet? Exploration was a no-go, too. I knew what was out there — or what wasn’t. No sense in trekking around when I’ve seen everything there is to see. I wouldn’t know it until later, but those last couple hours spent listlessly idling around the game’s world would be the last that I ever spend on that once-cherished save file.
It took a long time to fully rebuild my passion for Pokémon following my hacking experience, but it did come back eventually. Today, I regularly replay the old games with nostalgic reverence. I love to grumble about the controversial new titles on Switch as well, being too prideful to admit that, yes, I’m still having fun despite the flaws. However, I’ve rarely been able to replicate that unique feeling I had with Pokémon — or any game, for that matter — before I hacked my way into seeing its skeleton. Only a few masterpieces, like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, have managed to recapture my imagination with that facade of limitless potential.
In a sense, I have the Action Replay to thank for showing me what I truly love most about games, and for teaching me that there’s no fun in cheating my way to the top. If I could go back, though, I wouldn’t hesitate to chuck that little hunk of third-party plastic out my bedroom window and enjoy the excitement of an endlessly vast Pokémon world for just a little longer.