Creepypasta Stories

Tarnished Gold

By: Draikinator

Early this morning, I was browsing the emails I had gotten during the night; a few facebook updates, a little spam, a newsletter, and an email from a sender with the name "NO MORE". The address was "Hope_abandoned". The subject? Tarnished Gold. I was intrigued. I opened my email to find a wall of text starting simply with "I hear you're in the market for creepy Pokemon things...here's one for you. Enjoy." And then, I began to read.

Being someone who isn't nearly as computer savvy as someone from this generation should be, I know very little about what technology is capable of. Aside from email, IM, and the occasional download of something otherwise unobtainable for me at the moment, I have about the same amount of knowledge an eighty-year-old might possess about the electronic world.

For example, and for the sake of this tale I'm about to recount, I was totally unaware that someone is capable of hacking pokemon games to make their own sub-story of the world, even less so that it was possible to make a physical copy of the game in a real cartridge.

However, I happened to learn about this in one of the most disturbing ways possible.

When I was younger, Pokemon Gold was my very first game from the ever popular franchise. I became very attached to the little creatures my character (named after myself even though the character was male) and often fantasized about the adventures we would go through had a preset storyline not been in place.

That isn't quite important, though.

Was is important is the fact that I never truly let go of my childhood fantasies, the memories had from that first game were far too cherished to set free. As such, I still have my old Gold game, complete with a total abuse of the copy glitch. I refuse to restart my game though, as I'm afraid too much of the old magic would be lost.

I wanted to play a whole new game of the version that I recall being the happiest with, but older cartridges are rather hard to find outside of the Internet nowadays, the most my local flea markets have are GBA games...hardly any being Pokemon.

Fortunately for me, my grandmother still fully supports my long-standing love for Pokemon and often buys boxes of cards, toys, video tapes and other items she comes across during her frequent visits to local auctions. Granted, very little of these thing she gives me are in good condition; long forgotten items stowed away in a musty basement after the phase in their owner's life has passed hardly ever are. But, as gifts from a dear relative, I cherish them as if they were made of gold...pun not intended.

Most recently, she gave me a box with a brand new video tape containing episodes from early on in the first season, several hundred battered and well used cards, and a game cartridge with no label.

The cartridge was the familiar metallic gold color of the game I had been looking for. Even though the label had been removed, and a large red 'X' drawn in sharpie in the place where the sticker should have been, I could easily tell what it was...what other game had that color? You can imagine my excitement for finally finding another copy! -I hate ordering things online, this was a rather big relief- I thanked her profusely and promised I would play it as soon as I got home, which I did.

Getting started was difficult, not because the game was faulty, but because I had sold my GBA to my little brother several years ago for some of his better pokemon cards...once something belongs to him, it's difficult to get him to lend it out to me. Such is sibling relations, I suppose.

After much bribery, I finally got my hands on my former GBA and quickly inserted the vandalized game. Chills ran through my body as the opening 'movie' for the game began to play, sending a wave of nostalgia crashing over me, it was good to see it again.