Hello. I’m Tinweasel, the troper who YKTTWed tropes like We Have Reserves and Power Fist and then got distracted by other stuff, leaving more industrious tropers to actually post the goshdarned things. But enough about how annoyingly half-baked I am, it’s time to talk romhacks!
Touhoumon – officially Touhou Puppet Play in its Japanese releases, but nobody calls it that – is a heavily, heavily modified version of Pokemon Fire Red. The usual suspects have been replaced by tiny, hyperviolent puppet replicas of the (almost-)all-girl cast of the Touhou series of doujin [1]s, most of whom have fairly similar base stat totals, and the latest major release – version 1.8 – has replaced the old type chart with a modified one better suited for capturing the feel of miniature magical girls shooting magical bullets at each other. 1.8 also features an altered evolution scheme in which almost every puppet has at least two alternate evolutions besides the normal (most of which are easily reached by use of purchasable Heart Stones), but none of them evolve a second time.
Fun technical note that nobody cares about - the makers of the English version of this romhack chose, instead of applying a translation patch to the Japanese edition of the hack, to apply the hack's gameplay and spriting changes to an English-language Fire Red ROM.
But even with all these changes, running around catching tons of puppets is boring for readers on its own. This is where the Nuzlocke ruleset comes in. For those not in the know, the Nuzlocke Challenge has two core rules:
- You can only capture the first ‘mon you see on a given route. If you knock it out or it flees, tough beans.
- Once one of your little minions is knocked out, it’s dead.
- If I already caught one, it isn’t the “first on that route”.
- No TMs. No Move Tutors. No using HMs on normal team members. HM slaves can be caught freely (in case bad fortune stops me from getting anyone who can learn Surf), but cannot be used in battle.
- No breeding. Loophole Abuse is against the spirit of the challenge.
- Destiny Bond is nonfatal. Destiny Bond is nonfatal because the computer can spam it freely for as long as it wants due to not obeying PP limits, and while I can’t speak for the AI in the 1.8 version, the 1.5 version of this romhack would pretty much spam Destiny Bond ad infinitum if it got low on health (read: took any damage whatsoever). With limited recruiting and permadeath, this turns the game into a war of attrition against a bunch of Destiny Bond-spamming Com Mons, which in turn makes the game close to Unwinnable without lucking into a party member who can reliably one-shot the little goons. Which is harder than you think, with the balancing of base stats.
- Freebies (anyone attempting a Nuzlocke, pick one: are/ are not) allowed.
- Enemies who appear on the map instead of as random encounters (anyone attempting a Nuzlocke, pick one: are/ are not) allowed. But only if they’re the first thing I fight on that route/dungeon, somehow.
And with that rule list, the stage is set. Troper does his best and is preparing. Please wait warmly until update is ready.
