One thing that shows up in the Pokemon fandom is the nuzlocke challenge, an unofficial part of Pokémon game, that has become extremely popular in the Pokémon community in recent years where a nuzlocke is a playthrough of a Pokémon game with several self-imposed rules. There have been numerous streamers who have done various nuzlocke challenges in Pokémon games, in order to bring in viewers and fans.
Kit Ellis and Krysta Yang, formerly of Nintendo Minite, wanted to do a nuzlocke challenge for an episode of the show, but they were surprised to find out that the Pokémon Co. was extremely against the idea. In a recent episode of the Kit and Krysta podcast, the two revealed that their pitch for a nuzlocke challenge episode elicited quite a negative response from the Pokémon Co.
“Well, we have a great story to tell about this where we thought that this would be a fun idea for a Nintendo Minute video, so we pitched it to The Pokemon Company and said, ‘Hey, we would like to do a nuzlocke run, what do you think?’ ‘Here’s what we think’ – bam! So they said, ‘We consider this to be on the same level as using hacking’ – ROM hacks.
Excuse me? This is just the style of playing a game that everybody can buy – there’s no hacking, you’re just playing the game. That was truly one of the more like, ‘wait what?’ responses.”