Settling the debate once and for all: Is Shedinja legal in a Nuzlocke ruleset for Pokémon Emerald?
Forbidden Tempura
3/9/2026 1:00 PMContext What is a Nuzlocke? To set the stage, let's first provide some context to the curious-but-unfamiliar reader as is tradition in essays that portray niche topics that are only ever read by the curious-but-definitely-familiar reader. The “Nuzlocke” ruleset refers to a particular set of rules to create a self-imposed challenge in Pokémon games. These go back to a web comic called Nuzlocke (content warning: swearing, intentional misgendering), later renamed to Pokémon: Hard Mode to differentiate them from other web comics now hosted on the site called Nuzlocke. The original Nuzlocke challenge had two rules written exactly as follows: > release a pokemon if it faints > have to catch the 1st pokemon in each area and nothing else Subsequently, internet autists did what internet autists did best and tried this kind of challenge for their own. Today, you can find a sprawling set of rulesets all derived therefrom. Out of these, I only would like to examine one more: dupes clause, which states that duplicates must be skipped. E.g. given an encounter of a Ralts as first Pokémon on a route, a subsequent first encounter of Ralts, Kirlia, Gardevoir or Gallade doesn't count as the first encounter, leaving the encounter slot for that route open until a non-duplicate is encountered on that route. The rules interact in funny ways with Pokémon not caught on routes, thereby triggering various debates. What is Shedinja? Shedinja is a Pokémon. What makes it special is not ...