Kit Ellis and Krysta Yang are the former hosts of the Nintendo Minute. This was an officially published web series that featured the pair doing various gaming-based challenges and activities in a more casual and down-to-earth style than usualNintendopresentations. The show had its final episode in December 2021, and soon after the pair started theKit & Krysta podcast, where they discuss Nintendo, its products, and their experience working there a bit more candidly. Aspicked up by Nintendo Life, Ellis and Yang recently explained to their followers that they once pitched doing a Nuzlocke run on a Nintendo Minute episode to ThePokémonCompany. The executives weren’t too excited.
A Nuzlocke is a fan-made game mode that’s ubiquitous in the Pokémon community. It has several small rules for flair and function, but its main component is perma-death; if a Pokémon faints in battle, they’ve essentially died, and you’re meant to release them into the wild. It’s little more than self-imposed rules to make the games a bit more tense and/or difficult, so many took umbrage with Nintendo comparing Nuzlockes to ROM hacks. Nintendo has had a well-known disdain for ROMs throughout the past few decades, often taking legal action against distributors.
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Ellis and Yang went on to elaborate on how often they, and other employees, were afraid to propose ideas because of the “unpredictability” of the reactions. According to them, if the executives didn’t like what they heard, it would result in “lost trust” and “lost access.” Moreover, they said that content creators that had direct relationships with Nintendo would get “erased” from creator programs, specifically for doing Nuzlocke challenges.
The claim did receive some pushback, however. Joe Merrick, head of the Pokémon database website Serebii,answered a viral tweetof the podcast clip stating that the Pokémon Company had confirmed to him that this was incorrect, that they hadn’t cut any creator for doing Nuzlocke challenges, and that they don’t care what you do as long as it’s within the confines of the game. This wascorroboratedby another creator called PKMNcast.
Of course, the Pokémon Company probably wouldn’t admit something like that without need, as it could cause fan backlash, but this is likely not as black-and-white as it may seem. It’s very possible that the company previously had a more strict perception of Nuzlockes, which then loosened over time, or that they didn’t mind creators doing it by themselves but didn’t want an official Nintendo show promoting the fan mode. Nintendo has previously taken issue with fans playing games in ways they didn’t like, such as with their lack of support forSmash Brostournaments with competitive rulesets.
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