FFF Day Eleven: Golden Treasure Box

“A box without hinges, key, or lid—yet golden treasure inside is hid.”

So last month I found a GameBoy Advance cartridge at an estate sale. The label said Pokemon Treasure Version, and it had a picture of a Pokemon I’d never seen before. It looked like a treasure chest with lots of gold pieces, each one sporting an eye. I found a lot of knockoff Pokemon stuff at yard sales back then, because it was a few years after the Pokemania had worn off, and everybody was getting rid of their stuff. I used my allowance to buy it ($5!) without a second thought.

That night in my room I slotted it into my GBA and powered it up. The opening cutscene felt familiar, like a mashed-up version of all the intro scenes before. Maybe it was just a ROM hack of Sapphire, injected into a cart. Only in each one of these scenes, the background was made up of a wall of eyes, peering out at me from behind the action.

Other than that, the game started like any other Pokemon game. I was a kid in a small town who wasn’t supposed to wade into the tall grass. When I did anyway, I came across a Pokemon that was a copper coin with an eye on it, just like the ones inside the treasure chest. When it tried to attack me, a character called Treasure Hunter stepped in and threw a Pokeball at it, catching it.

“You’ve got to be careful!” said Treasure Hunter when the battle ended. “You can make a lot of money with POKEMON, but it’s dangerous if you don’t know what you’re doing. Here, take this and figure it out.”

He gave me the coin Pokemon, which I guess was my starter, and left. I checked its stats. Its name was Crobber (like copper and robber I guess?). Its type was ghost, and it already came with four moves: snatch, false swipe, curse, and pay day. Talk about hitting me over the head with the premise.

From there, Crobber and I traveled the tiny game world, fighting trainers and growing stronger. There were a few differences that made the game feel kind of forced. First, Crobber wouldn’t learn any new moves. Second, anytime I earned money for winning a battle, the game would then say, “CROBBER ate it all!” My money total would remain zero, but Crobber would get stronger. I couldn’t buy potions to heal Crobber or Pokeballs to catch new Pokemon. Crobber took everything.

After my third gym badge, Crobber evolved. Instead of one copper coin, it was now a pile of silver coins. The game told me, “Congratulations! Your CROBBER evolved into a PILEFER! PILEFER is now very hungry.”

I didn’t know what that meant, and the game made no attempt to explain it. I couldn’t find anything about this game online either, and I searched every corner of the Internet. So I just kept playing.

First I checked Pilefer’s stats. It was (obviously) stronger than Crobber. It was no longer a Ghost type, but a Dark type (had the treasure brought it back to life?). And it had forgotten snatch. In its place was a move called, “Eat.” Eat had a power of 80 and an accuracy of 100. The description text read, “PILEFER is HUNGRY.”

When I next encountered a trainer, they didn’t immediately move to challenge me when we locked eyes. When I talked to her, she said, “No! Stay back!” and the battle began.

The trainer’s sprite looked scared as she sent out her Marill. When I took my turn, I realized the only damage dealing move that could actually defeat Marill was Eat. Snatch and Curse didn’t deal damage, and False Swipe can never put a Pokemon’s HP below 1. So I selected Eat, just to see what would happen.

The sprite animation was awful. Pilefer jumped over to the other side of the screen, and coins rained down on the Marill sprite. The sound was awful-a GBA rendition of slobbering and gnashing of teeth, and it went on just a little too long.

Then Marill was gone. It didn’t faint; it was just gone. The game said, “MARILL was EATen!”

The music stopped. The trainer sprite showed up on the screen. The trainer said, “What is wrong with you? Get away from me!”

I couldn’t teach Pilefer new moves. This was the only way to advance in the game. It was a little cliche, but I had gone this far. I wanted to see it through to the end. Pilefer and I tore through every last trainer, every last gym, Eating their Pokemon and getting stronger. Trainers no longer challenged me to battle, and some of them actively walked away from me. I would have to trap them in a corner to fight them (which is actually pretty cool design!).

Eventually, Pilefer evolved again, this time into the iconic Pokemon on the label of the game. It was called Goltony, and the game said that Goltony was “VERY HUNGRY.”

The Elite Four building was closed; they refused to let me challenge them. I’d eaten every trainer’s Pokemon I could, and no wild Pokemon could sate Goltony’s appetite. That’s when Treasure Hunter reappeared and said, “Have you tried battling your friends via LINK CABLE?”

My stomach dropped. Would Goltony eat Pokemon from other games? I borrowed my sister’s GameBoy and did a test with my copy of Pokemon Sapphire. I used really weak Pokemon in the battle, just in case it actually worked.

But it did. When Goltony used Eat on my Zigzagoon, my Sapphire cartridge told me, “ZIGZAGOON is gone…” And on my Pokemon Treasure Version cartridge, it said, “GOLTONY is still VERY HUNGRY.” The low-powered Pokemon I fed Goltony were not enough.

I figured this was a good time to end the game. I didn’t want to get rid of my Pokemon that I’d worked hard to catch, so I shut off Treasure Version and got ready for bed. That night I heard my GameBoy making those sounds again, the drooling and chomping of Goltony’s Eat attack. I thought maybe I’d left the game on, but the game was switched to Off. The screen was active anyway, and all it said was, “GOLTONY is still VERY HUNGRY.”

Fine, I thought. I would feed it some powerful Pokemon. I didn’t want to, but I gave it some of my mid-level Pokemon from Sapphire. It wasn’t enough. I fed it my starter, my legendaries, my whole Hall of Fame team. It wasn’t enough.

So at first I thought I was going to trick you guys into battling me so I could feed Goltony some more. But every Pokemon has a weakness, right? Goltony is a Dark/Ghost type. It only knows the one move. It’s a strong one, and it heals Goltony every time I use it. But I’m coming to you because you’re sixth graders and as much as I hate to admit it, you know this game better than me.

Please, you have to defeat it. Make it faint, I’m begging you. If you can’t, I’ll have to smash my GameBoy into pieces, and even then I’m not sure it’s going to work.