We’re in an age of video gaming right now where it seems like there are three main groups of players: Those who play games casually, those who try to beat them as fast as possible (also known as speedrunners), and those who try and complete seemingly ridiculous objectives in games based on self-imposed rules. We recently just got an amazing example of the latter: One Japanese gamer, who livestreams as Leomon, just beat Pokémon Ruby… using only a shiny Magikarp… and it took him six years to do it (via Kotaku).
For those who don’t know, Magikarp is infamously one of the weakest, and therefore hardest to battle with, Pokémon in existence, so of course beating an entire Pokémon game with just that flopping fish in your party would be an achievement. In the video below, you can see Leomon defeating Pokémon League champion Steven thanks to liberal use of Hyper Potions and Lemonades.
The strategy here is tedious but simple: Keep healing Magikarp, which is at level 74, until the opponent either misses an attack or attacks and doesn’t deal enough damage to the point where another attack is likely to cause Magikarp to faint.
Leomon’s method of attack is interesting as well: We’re not sure if it’s because he ran out of PP-restoring items or if it was a deliberate choice, but the only move Magikarp uses is Struggle, which is the default go-to move when all of your Pokémon’s attacks are out of PP and therefore cannot be used. It may not seem like it, but there’s an advantage to using Struggle over Tackle or Flail (the only moves Magikarp can know aside from Splash, which does no damage); While the move does recoil damage, it’s also more powerful than Tackle (50 power vs. 40), and type advantages do not apply to it. For example, Tackle, a Normal-type move, wouldn’t damage a Ghost-type Pokémon, but Struggle will. Struggle would have also been necessary in the early stages of the game, since Magikarp only learns Tackle, its first damage-dealing move, at level 15.
This type of endurance battle strategy also wears down the PP of opponents’ moves, so eventually, they’re not able to use their strongest attacks and taking them down becomes that much easier. This was definitely a wild journey with a lot of thought and effort put into it, so revisit the culmination of it all above, and let us know in the comments if this is the craziest Pokémon playthrough you’ve ever seen.
Featured image: The Pokémon Company
