Pokemon Platinum

Beating Pokémon games might feel a little easier to accomplish these days, but fans have been coming up with ways to make each game tougher for years. The latest intriguing attempt to catch our attention is this one by Smallant1, who decided to try and complete Pokémon Platinum without taking any damage.

Now, if you've ever played a Pokémon game before, you'll instantly realise what a daunting prospect that is. Sure, you probably win most of your battles and can get through to the credits easily enough, but there are countless trips to the Pokémon Center along the way, letting you heal up your wounded warriors who slowly but surely get the stuffing knocked out of them.

Smallant1 has documented his challenge in the video below, and even the very first battle against his in-game rival proved to be a nightmare. He initially starts with Piplup as his partner, but eventually realises that the odds of getting through that battle unscathed are horrendously slim (apparently around 0.004%) and tries again with Turtwig. Choosing Turtwig causes the rival to use Chimchar, whose moveset creates much better odds of them not landing a hit.

So, after several attempts, the first battle was cleared. Now there's just the rest of the game to deal with. From here, we see Smallant1 spend nine hours simply griding to make it through the next Trainer battle and establishing ground rules for the run - essentially, he's allowed to save after each Gym battle and, should he then take damage, he must reset to the last Gym and try again.

The Daycare eventually makes things easier, allowing him to level up his party to level 100 after lots of grinding for money, but even that doesn't guarantee blasting through every battle. It's quite the journey to behold, so make sure to give the whole thing a watch.

In total, Smallant1 racked up over 138 hours of playtime, not counting all of the resets along the way. Well done, sir, on both your achievement and your patience!

[source youtube.com, via polygon.com]