- Joined
- Apr 4, 2026
- Messages
- 1,863
- Level up in
- 637 posts
- Solutions
- 3
- Reaction score
- 4,928
- Points
- 3,577
- Location
- Hell, Norway 🇳🇴
I have already talked about this on a profile post, but I think it deserves its own topic.
If you have been involved with the Pokemon romhacking community for any length of time, you have probably come across a project by the name of "Pokemon Dark Rising", which is notorious for being one of the toughest, most nonsensical and unnecessarily complicated hacks ever released.
It honestly comes across as a bit of a troll project because of how much it enjoys punishing and confusing the player, demanding grinding sessions akin in length to a full-time job to complete it, all while suffering from a variety of game-breaking glitches.
It's both very easy to dismiss and obvious why it has become the "black sheep" of the entire community.
However, one peek behind the game and its development points to a very interesting fact: DarkRisingGirl (the creator) was just 12 years old when she made this thing.
It suddenly puts everything in perspective, doesn't it?
Yes, the game suffers from a variety of technical issues that a seasoned developer would never make... which is exactly what happened here. And because she wasn't at all seasoned (in fact, this was only her second-ever attempt at making something like this), the things she failed at tend to pale in comparison to everything she got right — and it's a big list.
She created a huge, expansive world with a variety of environments that aren't even all that tough to navigate (when she didn't go tall grass crazy). She made a couple of fake-mons that actually look pretty convincing. She created and inserted a huge script into the game's allotted memory and even included a ton of dialogue from your non-silent protagonist.
The list goes on.
And while the game eventually "attained" meme status, I have found many posts from the time of its release that not only begged for a sequel, but also asked the dev a ton of technical questions because she had stumbled her way towards some really cool and impressive triggers, mechanics and effects that would eventually become staples within the community.
This whole thing got me thinking about games that look disastrous on the surface, and the reasons they ended up that way... And you know what? I guarantee that, more often than not, there's a very human reason why this all happened.
Do you know of any such games?
If you have been involved with the Pokemon romhacking community for any length of time, you have probably come across a project by the name of "Pokemon Dark Rising", which is notorious for being one of the toughest, most nonsensical and unnecessarily complicated hacks ever released.
It honestly comes across as a bit of a troll project because of how much it enjoys punishing and confusing the player, demanding grinding sessions akin in length to a full-time job to complete it, all while suffering from a variety of game-breaking glitches.
It's both very easy to dismiss and obvious why it has become the "black sheep" of the entire community.
However, one peek behind the game and its development points to a very interesting fact: DarkRisingGirl (the creator) was just 12 years old when she made this thing.
It suddenly puts everything in perspective, doesn't it?
Yes, the game suffers from a variety of technical issues that a seasoned developer would never make... which is exactly what happened here. And because she wasn't at all seasoned (in fact, this was only her second-ever attempt at making something like this), the things she failed at tend to pale in comparison to everything she got right — and it's a big list.
She created a huge, expansive world with a variety of environments that aren't even all that tough to navigate (when she didn't go tall grass crazy). She made a couple of fake-mons that actually look pretty convincing. She created and inserted a huge script into the game's allotted memory and even included a ton of dialogue from your non-silent protagonist.
The list goes on.
And while the game eventually "attained" meme status, I have found many posts from the time of its release that not only begged for a sequel, but also asked the dev a ton of technical questions because she had stumbled her way towards some really cool and impressive triggers, mechanics and effects that would eventually become staples within the community.
This whole thing got me thinking about games that look disastrous on the surface, and the reasons they ended up that way... And you know what? I guarantee that, more often than not, there's a very human reason why this all happened.
Do you know of any such games?
