Pokémon Lost Silver is a creepypasta based off of Pokémon. In it, the unnamed protagonist plays a haunted cartridge of Pokémon Silver. The story was so popular that it had a fan game made based off of it.
The story takes place around the release of Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver. While waiting for SoulSilver, a fan decides to buy a used copy of Pokémon Silver at GameStop. When they start up the game, it initially seems like the cartridge is faulty. It keeps freezing on the Game Freak logo, however eventually it starts up. Instead of starting up as normal, the game defaults to an active file in the Bellsprout Tower.
Gold's name is only given as "...". There are 999 hours of play time on the file, Gold has the max amount of money, and the Pokédex is entirely filled out. When the protagonist looks at the team, it consists of five Unown and one Cyndaquil nicknamed "HURRY". The five Unown spell out "LEAVE". The cartridge seems glitched as it contains oddities like no music, no Pokémon cries, and no trainers in the Bellsprout Tower. The room seems inescapable due to a lack of ladders, however eventually the player finds a way to exit it.
Things only get worse from there. As the fan continues to play through the modified game, it becomes clear that the game is set years after the original adventure, and Gold has already met his fate years ago.
A game developer known as Reidd Maxwell created a fan-game based off of the creepypasta, made in GameMaker Studio. In addition to sticking closely to the source material, the game adds a new path known as "Lost Silver: Hidden", which answers the question: "What if the player said no to the 'TURN BACK NOW' prompt?". It can be downloaded here
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Two years after the original publication of Pokémon Lost Silver, the author posted a sequel known as Pokémon Lost Silver: Ashes, which reveals some backstory behind one of the Pokémon that Gold uses in the original story.
In 2020, on the 10th anniversary of the game's release, Maxwell announced that an updated version known as Re: Lost Silver was in the works, with the game being rebuilt from scratch to work better on modern Windows systems. The game features three new paths for the player to take as well as updated spritework. A demo for this new version came out on Halloween 2022, with a patched version of the demo releasing on 13 November of the same year. The soundtrack can be found here. In 2023, it made an unexpected appearance in Pokémon Gold (Fanmade), as part of Morty's Gengar's Mind Rape of Gold.
Pokémon Lost Silver provides examples of:
- Adaptation Expansion:
- The fan game includes a second storyline, generally known as “Lost Silver: Hidden”, which is unlocked if the player declines to turn back. The creator of the fan game says that this plot was written by the creepypasta’s original author and given to him for the game.
- Taken even further with Re: Lost Silver, which adds two new paths: Ashes, which centers on Gold and Celebi's past, and Ruins, which focuses on Forever the Houndoom, the Ruins of Alph, and Silver.
- Adaptation Name Change: Ethan is referred to as "Gold", likely because his Canon Name wasn't known until HeartGold and SoulSilver's release.
- A Death in the Limelight:
- Silver gains a bit more focus in the Ruins route, revealing his status as The Atoner and implying he may have something to do with Gold's current state... only for him to be brutally mutilated by the end of the battle.
- Similarly, the Ashes route centers around Away the Celebi's past, which reveals that it was burned in half by Ho-Oh's Sacred Fire.
- Ambiguously Evil: Forever the Houndoom is a Dark-Type Pokémon, which are always this, and obtained via trade, Pokémon obtained via trade being disobedient. It also doesn't help that the Unown in the Ruins route spell "DIE". However, Gold managed to obtain all badges required to obtain the loyalty of outsider Pokémon by the time he died, but that leaves the question: if the word "DIE" doesn't have anything to do with Forever, then with who...?
- An Aesop: Death comes for us all, and with it, our lives and achievements slowly fade away into obscurity.
- Art Evolution: The sprites in the original Lost Silver game were fairly rudimentary edits of the ones in the original Silver. Re: Lost Silver updates them to be more detailed and original, as well as a lot more gruesome.
- The Atoner: Silver in the Ruins route is implied to be this, as he sends out five level 5 Unown who spell out "SORRY", before sending out his young Totodile. Whether he's atoning for his mistreatment of his Pokémon or something he did to Gold is left ambiguous, but either way it results in his sprite becoming horribly mutilated after the battle.
- Birth-Death Juxtaposition: Shortly after Please! the Typhlosion passes on, a nameless Cyndaquil hatches from the egg Gold was carrying. Please! is a female Typhlosion, so it's implied the egg came from her. It's also implied Forever the Houndoom is the egg's father. The Cyndaquil that hatches from it inherits Thrash and Nightmare- moves he knows.
- Bittersweet Ending: In the Hidden Route’s ending, the last text box reads R.I.P. PKMN Trainer Gold, implying that Gold will at least be remembered past his death, as opposed to the original ending which reveals that everyone alive has long since forgotten him.
- Black Comedy: Meta example: The soundtrack for the game is framed similar to the infamous "LoFi girl" radio stream, and is titled "lost silver lofi: chill beats to declare yourself dead to".
- Bloodier and Gorier: Re: Lost Silver's updated sprites feature significantly more detailednote gore, which seems to be inspired by fan-art interpretations of the originals.
- Dark Fic: It's a story about a creepy cartridge of Pokémon Silver where the player is dead.
- Dead All Along: At the end of the story, the player realizes that Gold has been dead since the very beginning.
- Deadly Distant Finale: The story’s entire premise hinges on Gold, the protagonist of the original game, being dead, and seems to take place in some form of purgatory where he comes to terms with his demise. Going by the Ruins route, Silver didn’t outlive Gold by too much either.
- Death of a Child: Gold isn't even thirteen when he died. Silver likely isn’t that much older when he loses his life either.
- Distant Finale: The game is set during the future, when Gold is already long-dead, though exactly how long the game takes place after the events of the original Generation II trilogy is never elaborated on.
- Easter Egg: Two are placed in the "Re" version of the game.
- If one opens the Unown Dex, and presses select while highlighting the Unown S, N, O, and W in that order, they will be taken to a recreation of Easter Egg - Snow on Mt. Silver.
- Near the end of the original route, after Gold leaves his house and enters the black void, if you go to the right, you'll pass some screenshots of a trade screen, then a battle screen, and finally a close up of Gold's blood covered face, before being warped back to the house.
- Eye Scream: Feraligatr's sprite gets an update in "Re" where its eyes are still hidden, but the space where they would be are replaced with bloodied, empty sockets, complete with flesh holding them partially closed. Given its bloodied claws, it's implied that it tore its eye sockets open, possibly to try to regain the use of its eyes.
- Fan Game: The creepypasta was de-fictionalized into a game.
- Half the Man He Used to Be:
- Gold suffers from this as his body decays in the main route.
- Similarly, Away the shiny Celebi is split in half vertically, complete with detailed guts in Re: Lost Silver. In Ashes, it is revealed that it had been burnt in half.
- On the "Hidden" route, Please! the Typhlosion has her sprite cut in half horizontally before passing on (albeit without the gore, even in Re:).
- Haunted Technology: The cartridge is presumed to be this, though it might be a hack that someone made.
- Heroic Dog: Forever the Houndoom, who seems to be guiding Gold through the afterlife in the Ruins route.
- Hope Spot: In Ashes, when the narrator ends up at Ilex Forest with a normal looking Gold and regular music, they initially think they broke out of the hacked portions and managed to reach the normal game. Shortly into the forest however, the map turns out to be scrambled, confirming this is another hacked portion.
- How the Mighty Have Fallen: The narrative at its core ultimately laments that no matter what any of the Pokémon protagonists accomplish, their feats will rarely if ever form a solid legacy, with understandable psychological consequences.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: It's unclear if the cartridge is haunted or whether it's a hacked game.
- Multiple Endings: A minor example, but taking the Hidden path in the fangame will change the original path’s ending message from R.I.P … to R.I.P. PKMN Trainer Gold.
- Nothing Is Scarier: Heavily utilized on the "Hidden" route, as many of the characters lack eyes and names, dialogue is sparse and often cut-off, and the music is comprised of slowed-down Dark Reprises of Pokémon Silver's music with some of the notes missing.
- The Power of Hate: Red's Pikachu uses the move Frustration, which is more powerful the more the user hates its trainer. Considering that it reduced Away the Celebi's HP to 1, that Pikachu must despise Red. This is further supported by its updated Re: Lost Silver sprite, where its expression is more clearly resentful. Re: Lost Silver also has the Easter Egg - Snow on Mt. Silver creepypasta included in itself as an, well, Easter Egg, with the implication Snow On Mt. Silver is a prequel to Lost Silver, which may explain why Pikachu hates Red so much: Pikachu hates Red for causing him to become Freakachu.
- Redemption Equals Death: At the end of his battle on the Ruins route, where he apologizes for something he did in the past, Silver's body is shown to be horrendously mutilated.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: On the "Hidden" route, the Unown have blood-red eyes, though they don't pose any direct threat and only serve to spell out messages.
- Riddle for the Ages: Whether the game is of supernatural origin, or a modified version made by a person. And if the latter, then their reasoning for doing so would also come under this.
- Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: The story appears to largely be an allegory for a rather cynical take on the protagonists of Pokémon, asserting that their deeds will be forgotten eventually regardless of what they accomplish. Gold and his party's gradual decay, in this sense, is a visual metaphor for him fading away, as is Red's literal disappearance after fighting him. Likewise, how the two kicked the bucket doesn't really matter, only that now they're gone, they're starting to disappear from memory.
