Soft Lock Picking: Level 100 Gengar Takes Days to Escape Battle

Using some lesser known oversights, Gengar can be stuck in a battle, that could last longer than an entire playthrough!
Soft Lock Picking Playlist: • Soft Lock Picking
Twitch: / pikasprey
Gameplay Channel: / @pikaspreyblue
Twitter: / pikasprey
Outro music by: / kyaniteheart

[@beebajazz]

I love how the pokemon in this epic battle are gengar and nidoran, almost the same as the first battle in the series

[@velvetbutterfly]

That's probably why he did it instead of like a Tentacool or something

[@TealZero]

@fine and nobody will miss you

[@mursuhillo242]

@fine the fuck is that, someone torturing a cat? I mean it sounds like that

[@no-nukez]

@fine I like it, it’s giving me a real “don’t come to school tomorrow” vibe. Or I guess in this case, it’s a “don’t board the plane tomorrow” vibe.

[@SomeBlokeOrWhatever]

@fine why

[@Jumf1]

“There is an incredible oversight in gen 1 battle mechanics that is actively working against us” is a sentence that is applicable in any situation in those games

[@keiyakins]

Not situations where you're not in battle!

[@ResistancePasta]

​@@keiyakinsThat's not even always true. Battle mechanics prevent you from pausing in the overworld during the Mew Glitch

[@wolflives4316]

​@@ResistancePastathat is absolutely astounding. How does that even work?

[@AniviaS]

​@@wolflives4316because during the mew glitch you are technically in a fight whilst walking on the overworld

[@tomalator]

Badge boost glitch is pretty useful

[@emilytheimp]

The trainer saying "There aren't many bugs here" right as you perform an exploit in front of their eyes at 1:21 is comedy gold

[@bestberryj]

I was just about to comment this 😂

[@growingoaks]

I cant tell if this was put in on purpose to show they know they left it in. Would make sense, considering its the only way to most legit get a Mew 😂

[@chompythebeast]

Hah, that didn't even occur to me. Nice spot, Midna

[@InfoManiac742]

@@growingoaks It's definitely not on purpose. The trainer escape glitch is incredibly broken, and it lets you encounter literally any Pokémon in the game, not just Mew. The developers themselves have confirmed that "[d]ue to an unforeseen bug, Mew ended up appearing in some players’ games. It looked like we planned all of this, but that wasn’t the case." Additionally, Mew was added very late in the game's development, after the debugging process had completed, so all of the dialogue would have already been finalized by then.

[@dashingclasher]

r/beatmetoit

[@worstspytf2824]

You've got to give it to that Youngster Trainer, he's got the determination and patience to sit there for days whittling down a gang of gengars for probably just bragging rights.

[@isuckatnames6033]

Average 6 year old

[@ScarletDeclan]

Well he's guaranteed a Nidorino after winning this. Hell he'll probably get his Nidoran to higher levels than he ever imagined

[@BlazingShadowSword]

@@ScarletDeclan A moonstone and he'll have the one true Nidoking.

[@ScarletDeclan]

@@BlazingShadowSword definitely. The king of nidoking

[@shedinjask]

it's not like opposing trainers can run either. they're just as trapped here as we are

[@organizerbmo]

The way you said "the nidoran knows 4 moves" came with the same cadence of a warden giving a rundown of how inescapable the prison is to new transfers in

[@MahDryBread]

7:25 So THAT'S why my Beedrill's poison sting kept missing Brock's Pokemon!

[@jacobross7270]

Sounds right. Rather say you missed than admit it was too weak to do damage.... "Yeah man I missed"

[@Nobody1707]

@Edge Valmond Funny thing, is that they stole the 0 damage = a miss mechanic from Dragon Quest, but in that game crits completely ignore defense so a fight could never be this slow even if you somehow replicated every other aspect of this softlock.

[@jbz4788]

Funnily enough Your beedrill video is how come I figured out that the poison sting would need to crit just before he said it.

[@abl9643]

@@Nobody1707 that’s not a mechanic, the game just checks if the attack did 0 hp and if it does, it will say it missed. They did it that way because it’s the easiest way to program it and they didn’t expect you to be able to take less than 1 damage

[@swswangel]

You really used bug type against Rock/Ground type

[@holmd90]

Also set text speed to slow, name all of the gengars with the maximum number of characters, and turn on battle animations before the fight. Just for the extra frames

[@alexcoleman7297]

Do you not feel sympathy for the person trying to get out of this soft lock

[@holmd90]

@@xX1infinityedge1Xx maybe, but most people won't anticipate the need to change them before loading a save file, and there's a solid chance they will be too frustrated to think about shutting it off to change after they've spent some time trying to get gengar hurt

[@holmd90]

@@alexcoleman7297 if I'm setting someone up for this much frustration, my empathy is long gone already

[@analoghabits9217]

Imagine if they notice they could start over & change the setyings but they already knocked out half of the gengars

[@holmd90]

@@analoghabits9217 that's exactly what I'm banking on homie

[@evillecaston]

This is literally the opening scene of R/B/Y and FR/LG, but remade to be as sadistic as possible. I'm starting to think Pikasprey is the real monster here...

[@nikothelittlelamb]

Really? Only now? I realized that all the way back in the Poliwhirl Video...

[@johnmartinez7440]

Blue has a Jigglypuff. Yellow has no battle in the opening scene The rest have Nidorino, not Nidoran. So not really at all.

[@IoIxD]

@@johnmartinez7440 But fairly close. Also the first episode of the anime starts with a battle with a Nidorino too I believe.

[@jerrdnn3373]

Yeah that was A Nidorino In the opening scene, friend

[@butteredsalmonella]

@@johnmartinez7440 If you REALLY want to fight a Nidorino, you can choose to do the set-up against Giovanni in Silph Co. he leads off with a Nidorino that also cannot hurt Gengar.

[@Apotheosister]

When you added five more Gengars I gasped, this is so brutal I love it.

[@shironasama0445]

I was like "Calm down Satan"

[@Tarudaku]

"Calm Downnn~" "Calm Downnn~"

[@ParodyAccount_]

the black holes will evaporate before the gengars die

[@MABfan11]

if you think that's bad, imagine a 6 Mankey team that only knows rage against Lorelei in Red/Blue

[@MDLuffy1234YT]

​@@MABfan11 and all of them are at level 2 with their Rage PPs maxed out.

[@BigBrotherMateyka]

Pikasprey: "Hey kid, you want a level 100 Gengar?" Kid: "Boy, would I! Thanks, mister!" Pikasprey: "Heh. Sucker..."

[@richardsphd]

You know, if the opponent's PP did decrease this would really be inescapable. In Gen 1, Struggle doesn't affect Ghost Types.

[@Xieryo]

Struggle does recoil damage, though...

[@richardsphd]

@@Xieryo There's no recoil if it doesn't land

[@Xieryo]

@@richardsphd I did not know that. I suppose you're right then!

[@hanahomemadepizza1424]

I mean you could also let the gengar hold leftovers (unless those didn't exist in gen 1?)

[@richardsphd]

@@hanahomemadepizza1424 Held Items in general didn't exist in Gen 1. I guess Pokemon only learned to hold things in the 3 years between RBY and GSC

[@lostskull7467]

Could you imagine this battle happen in the lore? A couple of kids locked in battle for not hours but DAYS would attract people for sure xD The spectators would be like "Whoa! That frozen Gengar finally fainted for what seemed like years... YOU WHAT?? YOU HAVE ANOTHER SLAB OF ICE WITH A GENGAR IN IT??!"

[@randommeogamer]

Oh not just one, five! :)

[@plant7371]

Eventually Arceus finds out, sighs in pure disappointment, and makes it so battling pokemon melt after enough turns have passed

[@yaminarthem1977]

@@plant7371 so that's why it melted in other Gen's!

[@robertlupa8273]

@@plant7371 You know you messed up when god himself comes down to stop you.

[@jbdbibbaerman8071]

@@plant7371 I hope you mean thaw out, because I sure hope melting Gengars aren't where black sludge comes from

[@Scottage_Man]

If you get a Gengar with an HP DV of 15 and max out it's HP Stat Exp, it will have 323 HP. This will make the battle approximately 33% longer than with your set up.

[@ajfalo-fi3721]

What if you had 6 LV 100 frozen Gengar? A full team

[@fifaworldcup1994]

Do we really need to answer that?

[@Celastrous]

@@meta04 Jeez, do you know how much rarer that would make each damage occur? I don't know anything about damage rolls

[@zowayix]

@@Celastrous I recall max damage rolls are a 1/40 chance in Gen I at least. So you'd turn the ~2 days into ~80 days (of _actively_ mashing the A button 24 hours a day).

[@NE0KRATOS]

@@zowayix also, imagine turning all the settings to the slowest configuration possible (active animations and the slowest text speed)

[@thorgidogofthunder]

"let me show you all how to set up one of the most evil save files i've ever come up with" you say that in every soft lock picking video and it's always terrifyingly accurate.

[@brianfederkins]

Don't forget, even if you WANTED to sit through this battle, you couldn't on the original Gameboy and Gameboy Color systems. Their battery lives were ~15 and ~10 hours, respectively. You can't swap out for new batteries without the system turning off, which would reset your progress in the battle, since you can't save the game. On the original consoles, this would effectively soft-lock your game (unless you had some fancy extra-life batteries or something).

[@flareblitz198]

Holy shit, one would actually have to sit through all the A-mashing in one sitting lest they lose their progress on the entire battle. And that's assuming they're not unlicky and the console dies MID-FIGHT

[@user-S853]

Wait! Could you not just leave it plugged in back then?

[@distorted7920]

@@user-S853GB, GBC, and GBA didn’t have chargers,used AA batteries

[@fdkugb]

Gameboy color had an AC adapter. I'm sure it worked with other models, but possibly not the original brick.

[@LagrimaArdiente]

You have no idea the joy I feel in my heart whenever I get a notification for one of these videos.

[@amanwithdope]

💯

[@ChanceMa]

Huh, ironic

[@poggerchamp3022]

I don't think I can match that level of passion for creating infinite hellscapes inside of children's games

[@cartoonistanonymous]

i love!!!

[@apjustpro2671]

Same

[@flatmanv2]

This technically could have been done before newer systems with rechargeable batteries, so you could have had a situation where, even with brand new batteries, the batteries wouldn't last long enough to escape this battle, PERMANENTLY ruining the save file until like 2003 or whenever the SP came out.

[@flatmanv2]

I guess Super Game Boy and Pokemon Stadium + Transfer Pak would work. Also the original Game Boy line had wall adapters so that's an option. But without those options, you're pretty much screwed.

[@vbprogrammer95]

Even then, you'd be pretty likely to just break the A button before making it through the whole party of 6 Gengars...

[@mrJLJ66]

The Gameboy Color had an accessory similar to a phone charger that let you play it while plugged into the wall.

[@overlordalfredo]

@@mrJLJ66 the regular OG Gameboy had this as well. And the Gen1 games are from before GBC

[@Salvypapi87]

Pokémon stadium would take care of that problem

[@androidboyd]

And that isn't even a max HP Gengar or anything either. With perfect stats and stat experience, the Gengar(s) in question would have 323 HP, requiring 33% more crits.

[@revolver2750]

So what if it was a max defense gengar? Would it be possible to get the defense so high the difference between their stats so big that even a crit won't do damage?

[@chuggaa100]

@@revolver2750 it's not possible to do 0 damage because of the way damage calc works

[@pikksen7905]

@@chuggaa100 did you... did you not watch the video? gen i, being gen i, does not have such a check, and instead rounds the damage value as normal *even if the result is 0.* if a move deals 0 damage, the game says it misses, but this statement is erroneous, because again, it's gen i pokémon. the game doesn't check properly for what message to display for attack effectiveness against dual types (though the damage _is_ calculated correctly), so should this other oversight really be so unexpected?

[@SupLuiKir]

With the correct choice of name, you could use the missingno glitch to get a Gengar with a level above 100 in order to dodge the level cap. What happens when we throw in a perfect IV and DV Gengar that's at level 255?

[@monnamonsta]

@@SupLuiKirwow satan calm down

[@shadokwastaken]

there's also no way a gameboy's battery could run the game for that long. the save would be unsavagable on real hardware

[@jacobdunn412]

Virtual console

[@isonzo686]

@@jacobdunn412 "No way to salvage on a real gameboy" "Use a virtual console" What did he mean by this?

[@DrMedMueller]

I believe there is an AC adapter for the Gameboy

[@NoShotTwoKill]

@@DrMedMueller there is

[@Kagresth]

There is also the Super Gameboy, Pokemon Stadium w/ the transfer pak, and the Gameboy Player, which all run on wall power. You’d also be able to use a turbo controller, on which you could clamp down the button, which would let you just run the game by itself without you needing to be there.

[@Trillyana]

Now I want to see tool-assisted speedruns picking all of Pikasprey's scenarios

[@shiruotakuno28]

9:54 "Imagine the most horrible, terrifying, evil thing you could possibly think of, and multiply it... by six!" - Megamind

[@loganrenfrow2544]

Dude, that was perfect.

[@shiruotakuno28]

Thank you very much, I'll be here all week.

[@Mecceldorf]

And they act like that movie wasn’t ahead of its time...

[@Brownyan]

oh my god thats perfect

[@gengarzilla1685]

Underrated comment. It's criminal that this don't have over 100 likes yet.

[@Dudeman23rd]

This setup was already sadistic enough, but as soon as you said "We've only been using one Gengar, but what if..." I physically recoiled and yelled "Oh GOD NO"

[@InfernosReaper]

It was the inevitable outcome

[@showingthelinks8441]

Is there a trainer with a pokemon that can't hit gengar at all or would that be a hard lock

[@TippleCreations]

@@showingthelinks8441 that's still a softlock. Hardlocks are the game freezing up and being unresponsive to inputs. This really isn't a softlock, as there is a way out, but it's so horrible, it might as well be.

[@xdeathcon]

@@showingthelinks8441 The thing is, the point of these videos is that they're technically escapable. It's really easy to make a truly inescapable save file with no interactions available, but that's just boring.

[@dazzag371]

That’s why only fools get 6 shiny gengars, cause you never know when some lunatic comes along to put them in a soft lock

[@tristantinethegreat]

I know that eventually we'll run out of ideas for SoftLock Picking, but until then, I love these videos!

[@DavidTheBrain_]

No

[@crisptain6356]

@@DavidTheBrain_ Everything ends eventually

[@litigioussociety4249]

Maybe for the older games, but because of new games constantly being made, there will probably be new ways to do it in each game. The thing is no one's looking for them in newer games, because it's far easier to accomplish in the classic games.

[@AnimationJ]

Running out of ideas for a softlock, is a softlock within itself

[@joaoleste4682]

@@crisptain6356 no

[@jimmygarza8896]

My favorite part about this video series is that the situations aren't inescapable. Gives you just enough hope to see it through.

[@StarlitWitchy]

That's why it's so eeeevil!!! Hehehehe >:3

[@twitchthepocket]

this video brought me pure joy. it's hard to explain, but laughing along at each condition increasing the diabolical-ness of the save file was incredibly engaging, and made me extremely happy. i love this series that you do. i've been watching it for years now. thank you

[@DragonslayerProd]

1:21 "There aren't many bugs out here" Asprey, admit it. You chose that line specifically because you know there are indeed very many bugs in Gen 1.

[@_connorsseur]

Well yeah what other Pokémon would go in a forest?

[@DragonslayerProd]

@@_connorsseur Grass types: "Am I a joke to you?"

[@anactualfingbottleofranch747]

@@DragonslayerProd poison, water and ghost types: am I a joke to you??

[@coolbrotherf127]

I haven't played theses games in over 20 years, but I always love to see him break them.

[@coolbrotherf127]

@You have to know Get your spam BS out of here

[@animatepokemonadventures7889]

@@coolbrotherf127 Dude you deleted him

[@darthpi1337]

Gen 1 freeze mechanics were already horrendous, but this really takes it to another level. Well done, Asprey, well done.

[@ShinyTillDawn]

I was the 69th person to like.

[@ChangedMyNameFinally69]

Wait you got frozen in Gen 1?

[@DisplayThisOkay]

Gen1 Freeze is the equivalent of being petrified in other RPGS. It's just instant death with a less fancy item used to heal it. Oh and most games (Pokemon included) let the statues get exp for some reason.

[@alexstewart9592]

@@DisplayThisOkay Not really. The number of games where a petrify will eventually wear off or also increases the durability of the afflicted is non-zero.

[@tealblackwhiteteal]

I just now noticed that the trainer says "feat" instead of "feet." What a compliment? (2:36)

[@luqdude]

As soon as I saw the opponent was a Nidoran, I figured out how messed up this battle was. Great use of the 0 damage "miss" mechanic and the trainer fly glitch! Never thought to save right before a battle

[@nick-playercharacter8583]

One of these days, Pikasprey is going to perform a softlock sequence in a Pokémon game that accidentally conjures a demon, only for it to retreat back to hell in terror upon seeing what he is willing to inflict on his fellow man.

[@Bumfris]

I was literally just wondering if you had posted a new one of these recently and here it is!

[@nightcordat25enjoyer]

Hey checkmark

[@Onmur]

Do it again.

[@swampy725]

Same

[@Hyrulistic]

"Takes days to escape!" I mean, it's not as long as some of the... "48 hours of *actively* mashing the A button, _and that's being generous_ " 😱

[@NieOrginalny]

I'm amazed how you can still find more of these sadistic scenarios. I absolutely love these.

[@PerfectDoof]

If the level 100 Gengar all had perfect IV’s and DV’s, that might make it even less likely for the Poison Sting to hit and would take drastically longer

[@peterhoffmann2231]

didnt exist in gen 1

[@Buglin_Burger7878]

@@peterhoffmann2231 They actually did.

[@Palkia8-Bit]

@@peterhoffmann2231 did exist

[@Kevin-lv8wv]

🤓

[@tsyumamatsuthehavenofguard32]

...Dvs?

[@arthurhill8185]

imagine being the npc in this. some guy challenges you to a battle, and forces you to spend over a day fruitlessly chipping away at his frozen pokemon.

[@DragonslayerProd]

"Sir, please. I'm hungry and I need to get home to my mom. She's starting to get worried." "YoU cAn'T rUn FrOm A tRaInEr BaTtLe."

[@Super_Top_Secret_Area]

The NPC would stand there all day anyway, this would be making his life more interesting.

[@gengarzilla1685]

"Should you ever feel yourself attacked by a sudden chill, it is evidence of an approaching Gengar. There is no escaping it. Give up." Clearly the Rotom Pokédex watches this series.

[@briansilva3765]

@@DragonslayerProd I imagine the Pikasprey as the trainer sitting on a beach chair, chilling and appreciating the slow process of the exhausted Nidoran chipping away at the slab of ice.

[@korsaiyajinkami3766]

@@DragonslayerProd OMG I had a really good laugh reading your comment. Thank you for that my dude. 👍

[@roniusadethel9768]

"Gengar is frozen solid!" Still can't be touched by physical moves.

[@Gorrebell]

Ghost ice

[@korsaiyajinkami3766]

It makes sense. The ice can be touched by the physical moves, but if you were to get past the ice the Normal and Fighting moves should still pass through Gengar itself.

[@TheNintenBits]

This series is so fun because it's like a puzzle. One of my favorite spins on a game

[@DeltaJim]

10:58-11:11 Gengar is my favorite Pokemon and was my first level 100 Pokemon back in Gen 1. So it's nice to see that my old friend helped you achieve this milestone.

[@richardmunroe2812]

Pikasprey: “Hello KZbin and welcome back to another video!” Also Pikasprey: *Cries inside after soft locking his save file after 70 hours of play*

[@RussellSubedi]

I love how the dude at 1:20 says "There aren't many bugs out here." in between the demonstration of a bug.

[@nickvitantonio5174]

This softlock would be actually inescapable if the enemy pokemon had PP because in gen 1 struggle is treated as a normal move, so it can't hit ghosts and poison sting only has like 35 PP so it would be impossile to deal enough damage to KO Gengar.

[@watcher314159]

I was going to object by saying the recoil damage from Struggle would solve the problem, but I'm glad I looked it up before commenting because Struggle didn't start dealing recoil damage regardless of how much damage was dealt until Gen IV. Commenting anyway in the hopes of reducing the number of people actually making that objection. And also for the algorithm.

[@Zabe_B]

it's already pretty much inescapable if you're playing on real hardware since the batteries won't last. unless you happen to have a gameboy SP, which i believe has a charger

[@watcher314159]

@@Zabe_B There were also very common aftermarket rechargable battery packs; I've owned them for both GBC and original GBA. The SP's li-ion battery with charger was much nicer though, as was the original DS with the GB slot. Point is, there are options for non-emulator players.

[@piratebear3126]

@@Zabe_B you can actually plug old Gameboys into a wall socket, I believe the original brick, Pocket, and Gameboy Color had AC adapter ports, plus the Super Gameboy. Honestly I think having it be technically escapable is more sadistic than simply bricking a save

[@nickvitantonio5174]

@@piratebear3126 Ya I agree that the fact that there is technically an out gives it more of a sick pleasure, but the thought that if one small battle mechanic out of the myriad broken ones were fixed there would be absolutely no way out. Like the fact that it's glitched in all these ways leads to the perfect storm of weird, tedious, and almost inescapable situation.

[@dazai-san47]

Hey Pikasprey, have you ever considered going into Torture and Interrogation?

[@TippleCreations]

CIA here, this is just his call sign. Trust me, you don't wanna end up in Guantanamo.

[@wolfetteplays8894]

@@TippleCreations bruh, Guantanamo Bay is closed now

[@TippleCreations]

@@wolfetteplays8894 man that sure went clear over your head.

[@yoissy]

@@wolfetteplays8894 that's what you think

[@SuperVGBoy]

This reminded me of getting in a similar scenario playing Pokemon Blue where I was stuck using Rage as a Haunter against either a Pidgeotto or Pidgeot that lowered its accuracy multiple times, and I was stuck waiting for the move to actually hit. (I was a dumb kid back then that didn't know how broken Gen 1 was compared to Gen 2)

[@avalpsychicguy]

Here's a way to make it even more evil: Make it a shiny Gengar that was traded from Gen 2 (it wouldn't show up as shiny here, obviously, but it would stay shiny when traded back). That way, they have to get through the battle to be able to retrieve it.

[@SemiHypercube]

In terms of the probability of progressing: There's a 25% chance for the opponent to use a move that can deal damage (poison sting) x ~9.77% chance to land a critical hit (because in gen 1 the crit rate is BaseSpeed/512, and Nidoran-M has a base Speed of 50) = 2.44% chance of the opponent dealing *1* damage each turn. And this Gengar has 242 HP.

[@renakunisaki]

If I'm doing this right (probably not) that would give you a hit about 1 in 40.8 turns, for a total of 9918 turns per Gengar, making the entire battle last on average 59508 turns. I don't have the resources right now to time how long each turn would be, but, yeah.

[@ScorpioneOrzion]

@@renakunisaki I would say 9-10 seconds? So about 6.5 days total.

[@gengarzilla1685]

Bearing in mind, this isn't even Gengar's maximum possible HP. They can reach 323 here with a perfect DV and maxed Stat EXP.

[@kutsen39]

@@gengarzilla1685 maxing HP stat requires about 13,179 turns to defeat one Gengar then. A team of six would be 79,074 turns. At 10 seconds per turn, one Gengar _alone_ would take 36 hours, 36 minutes, and 30 seconds. A full team would take 219 hours and 39 minutes.

[@e8ios]

I"d keep in mind that with 6 Gengar, on a standard Gameboy/Gameboy color, your batteries would not likely last the 48 hours, and would die before the battle completes.

[@falcolom]

As someone who owns a gameboy color, this is not true. Good batteries should last long enough.

[@neodemonhawk]

Even if batteries didn't, there were AC adapters for the Gameboy/Gameboy color.

[@Enrix]

@@falcolom As somebody with access to Google (as well as having gone on many 10+ hour roadtrips as a kid), the average lifespan is 10-15 hours. There's no chance you would even come close to finishing this battle.

[@bian7744]

@@Enrix gbc can last max ~30 hours still far from 50

[@weberman173]

@@bian7744 thats the normal old gameboy.. the GBC had reduced battery life, not quite cut in half, but maybe 20 hours

[@bigcraudio3066]

I always think it's funny how almost all of the softlocks in the pokemon games could just be solved by making two basic game making decisions. Giving the player a option for forfeiting battle which would count as a loss and give the trainer the same penalties as one. Give the player a way to fast travel around the region without the stupid fly hm.

[@AshenDust_]

Well modern Pokémon games have already solved the second one, and online battles have solved the first one, so it would be pretty easy to implement

[@petelee2477]

The reason these scenarios are possible is because in gen 1 AI trainers don't consume pp. In modern pokemon games this scenario is impossible since eventually the opponent will run out of pp and struggle.

[@aidankocherhans9861]

Now that you mention it, a forfeit button would be a really good thing to have. There's plenty of ways you can get stuck in a long and grueling battle that isn't worth beating.

[@aformofmatter8913]

@@aidankocherhans9861 Hel, the Run button basically already was a ready-made forfeit option & they made the deliberate choice to *not* let players use it

[@bigcraudio3066]

@@petelee2477 there's still plenty of ways to soft lock your game or have absurdly long battles on later gens, specially gen 3 (this channel has even show a bunch of methods) where your opponent actually loses PP in a battle. And honestly, if gen 1 actually made your opponent lose PP in a battle, the battle would become a infinite loop since in gen 1 struggle doesn't affect ghost types, so the nidoran would waste all of it's moves and be unable to use anything on gastly, meaning he wouldn't even take recoil damage.

[@SomeGuy712x]

Yeah, I've seen the 0-damage thing before, I think while using a Venusaur against an Oddish that was at a low level, who "missed" with its Absorb. Very interesting how you can create a situation that can take literally several days to escape with this oddity. Hope your Game Boy's batteries can last long enough!

[@christinefarrell6438]

I think I've seen it before too, but had assumed it was the 1/256 glitch.

[@wendyz1309]

I have an idea. So far, every softlock had you trapped in a small area of the game, with no way of getting out. Is there any way to make the player trapped (unable to progress in the story) but with the whole map at their disposal?

[@iwannaseehowlongyoucanmakethis]

the 240 days one has a large map, but not the whole map

[@Eli_Weston]

one of the first softlocks he showed does about as close to this as I think you can get. in Red and Blue you can lock yourself out of the Safari Zone without getting surf or strength from it by removing all ways to get money on that file. You have access to every part of the map but cinnabar Island and the Pokémon League, but without trading something with the move Pay day from a separate game it is impossible to progress further.

[@magicsammich]

Beat the main story. Can’t progress in the story if the story is completed

[@GoldSayaProductions]

@@magicsammich gottem

[@linhero797]

​​@@Eli_Weston That wont actually softlock you. You can just keep trying to get in and the keeper will just let you in with a single pokeball. Game Freak did think at least that one through.

[@Mswordx23]

I'm always amazed at the sheer number of ways you can trap yourself (infinitely, or for a VERY long time, or in one instance, trapped infinitely unless you want to give up your shiny) in these games. I can't get enough of these videos, keep up the good work.

[@jamesdinius7769]

The zero damage glitch is especially obscure because even if you saw it, you'd most likely think it was the much more infamous 1/256 glitch.

[@spencerdurette2859]

I was half expecting him to cut to a point in the video where he showed off ONE gengar being defeated and then showing off the party of gengar

[@Tomix4k]

This is just so masterfully crafted. From the Pokémon choice, to the lock method, to that small detail that makes this actually a situation you can get out of. Turn animations on, make text speed the slowest and enjoy the grind.

[@hopeburnett8313]

This particular softlock feels almost evil, lol! And I'm just imagining the situation where the person finally gets out of the battle and ends up running into another trainer right after or something! Thanks for the really neat explanation of unique pokemon mechanics, love your videos!

[@fatcatfroggie]

Never stop making these videos, this series is genuinely so fascinating

[@jekyllgaming99]

Time to do some maths to calculate how long (on average) the battle would last, in turns. Now, we know that the probability Nidoran will use Poison Sting is 1/4. We also know that the only way for Poison Sting to deal damage to Gengar is for it to be a critical hit. But how likely is a critical hit in this case? In Gen I, critical hit chances are based on the user's base speed - in this case, the Nidoran's base speed is 50. In most cases, with this being no exception, for an attack to deal a critical hit, a generated random number for the attack (between 0 and 255) must be less than half the base speed of the user. In other words, there is a 25 in 256 chance that the Poison Sting attack will deal damage to the Gengar. All-in-all, the chances of Gengar being damaged in each turn is 25/1024, or approximately 2.44%. Another fact to note is that the max HP of your Gengar will vary from run to run (due to EVs and IVs), with a minimum of 230 HP and a maximum of 324 HP. For this I will calculate the battle lengths for two instances - that of a single 242 HP Gengar (as shown in the video), and that of six 324 HP Gengars, for anyone willing to put in the time to make an absolutely dastardly save file. To calculate the battle length, we need to use logarithms (scary, I know). For any event with a probability P to succeed, the average number of tries taken for the event to succeed is log(1/2) / log(1 - P). So, the average number of turns for Gengar to take 1 HP of damage is log(1/2) / log(1 - 25/1024), or about 28 turns, more specifically 28.043... turns. Taking into account the 1/256 miss glitch, this rises slightly to 28.155... turns. Remember though that this is saying that it takes on average 28 turns to deal *a single point of damage* to Gengar. For the full battle length, we need the attack to succeed many, many times. To calculate this, we just take the value we just calculated and multiply it by the max HP and number of Gengars. For a single 242 HP Gengar, the battle would last on average 6,813 turns. For six 324 HP Gengars, the battle would last a gruelling 54,732 turns. But that's if you had average luck. What if you had worse than average luck with six 324 HP Gengars? In that case there would be: - A 25% chance your battle would last at least 109,465 turns - A 10% chance your battle would last at least 181,817 turns, and - A 1% chance your battle would last at least 363,635 turns. Using an average turn length of about 2.33 seconds (going from the in-game footage), the average battle length with a single 242 HP Gengar is around 4 hours and 24 minutes. For six 324 HP Gengars, the average battle will last 35 hours and 25 minutes. If you had worse luck, there is a 1% chance that battle would still be going after almost 10 days.

[@DrPonk]

Just gonna throw a like and comment on this in the hopes it gains more traction

[@greggchambers9716]

Only one small correction here. The max HP of Gengar before gen 3 is 323, not 324.

[@TheTashCat]

Big Brain Math

[@jekyllgaming99]

@@TheTashCat One of my favourite things to do 😁

[@milsharkie]

There's an added wrinkle to this, because it's Gen 1 and of course there is, that is extremely easy to miss; Gengar's defense stat and damage rolls. In Gen 1 and 2, damage rolls don't work the same way as they do in later generations. Instead of pulling from a random floating point variable between .85 and 1 and multiplying the damage by that amount, it pulls from a table of 39 potential values for the damage variable and applies that multiplier to the damage. With the 3 DV defense that Asprey's Gengar has, there's only a 4/39 chance for even a critical Poison Sting to land. If the Gengar had a defense stat that was too high, the lock would be totally inescapable because even a critical Poison Sting would be incapable of surpassing the 0 damage threshold no matter the roll. That's not nearly as much fun. It's better if there's a possibility of escape. So, if we were to carefully manipulate the DVs and stat experience so that every Gengar had 324 HP and could only be damaged by precisely a 1/39 roll on the 1/4 chance to use Poison Sting, with slightly less than 1/10 chances of a critical hit... We get nearly 1 in 400 odds of the Gengar being hit *once.* Your 1% example would return 14,181,765 turns in this case, which would take *roughly 13 months* of constantly mashing the A button to escape. Insert M Bison here: This is delicious!

[@myladygrim]

If this is done on official Gameboy hardware, this setup actually is impossible to escape from if six gengars are involved. the reason for this is that a Gameboy's battery life on four AA batteries is at most 30 hours, so even in the generous scenario presented, the Gameboy would _literally run out of power from a full charge_ before one could become within ten hours of escaping. Nasty stuff! Edit: I think people are skipping the whole “gameboy” part of the “official gameboy hardware” part. Yes, of course on a gba or on stadium or anything with different battery life, or no sense of battery at all, this is possible to do. I’m merely saying that on a real original gameboy, *unless you have a charging cable,* this isn’t possible. A charging cable indeed allows for you to suffer your practically two full days uninterrupted :D

[@nmuniz2]

You forgot about the Game Boy Color has a DC input. If you used that, theoretically you could break out of it in time.

[@Noromdiputs]

Gameboy SP plays Gameboy classic games and has a charge cable if I recall correctly.

[@neodemonhawk]

Even if batteries didn't, there were AC adapters for the Gameboy/Gameboy color. So no, it's not impossible on official hardware.

[@Grimrapings]

The OG Gameboy not only had an official adapter accessory - but actually has a DC input slot (holds no charge) for power by mains.

[@weberman173]

you are missing some vital pieces of intel here offical, and third party accessorys. there was an offical AC adapter for the gameboy so you could power the Gameboy from mains. there was an OFFICAL rechargable battery pack, which you could charge while using. which had iirc the same capacity as 8 double AAs(so roghly 60 hours). there where third party external battery packs which simply housed like 6 AA batterys and which could be used in tandem with batterys already installed in the gameboy(not recommended tho) etc SO you are indeed correct with the Assumption that you would only use an offical gameboy and nohting else BUT do to the way you worderd it as "offical gameboy hardware" offical Accessorys like the AC adapater and the rechargable battery pack are fair game as they are offical gameboy hardware products.

[@SMRForSure]

I remember when I was 10 I'd watch u it's so awesome to comeback a couple yrs later and see ur just as enjoyable as when I was young :)

[@ryansengan1652]

hey man i just wanna say that i loved your soft locking series, its very well thought, planned and also very well executed in the most fun way, hoping to see more in the future

[@nichalasfink7952]

At this point I'm just waiting for you to figure out a way to not only soft lock the game but also find a way to not even allow a new game to be started.

[@dizzydial8081]

Maybe gen 2? The battery life thing, if I recall, didn't allow you to save.

[@renakunisaki]

@@dizzydial8081 you could save but I think it would disappear as soon as you turned it off. Maybe even while it was still on?

[@velvetbutterfly]

@@renakunisaki it technically saved but if power was interrupted for even a second it'd get wiped

[@chrisfaulkner9355]

You technically can via bit manipulation. You could reprogram the game to not have a save option.

[@velvetbutterfly]

@@chrisfaulkner9355 not being able to save isn't the same as not allowing a new game

[@MezephelesArt]

Welcome back! Edit: I physically reacted when you mentioned cloning the Gengar

[@Miss-Alexis]

What if the Gengar had perfect DVs and maxed out stat exp? Would Nidoran's critical hit even damage it at that point?

[@caritahearts2405]

Yes, because the damage multiplier is the important thing at 1 hp. A double resist does 1/4th damage, which rounds down to zero, but a double resisted crit does 1/2 damage, which rounds up to 1. Damage is calculated before this multiplier, and will never go below one by itself.

[@MK-yg2np]

I thought 1/2 is still rounded down in Pokémon mechanics. The crit is just another part of damage calculation that makes the move do 1 damage

[@MK-yg2np]

Gengar would at least have more hp so thats a point where it would take longer

[@meta04]

The damage calculation involves adding 2 to the number calculated from power/attack/defense before applying modifiers like type-effectiveness, so it's impossible for a 1/2 resistance to trigger this, only a 1/4 resistance. If Gengar has 163 defense or higher, the Nidoran♂'s attack won't be high enough to reach 4 damage even with a perfect damage roll, and if Gengar has the minimum 125 for its level, there's still only a ~46% chance that the damage roll with a crit will be high enough.

[@trashpanda2825]

You're all nerds. I'm here for suffering, not math

[@Juli_is_Online]

Every time I think Gen 1 can't possibly be any more broken than I think it is...you prove me wrong lol

[@gengarisnotinsmash...]

I'm still frozen. Plz help.

[@Straven93]

Just checking in still frozen?

[@Bruhxxhi]

Legend says he is still frozen

[@Forbiddensirenz]

He can’t keep getting away with this! *HE CAN’T KEEP GETTING AWAY WITH THIS!*

[@JadeiteMcSwag]

hahahaha Jessie

[@Mannu-ou6vz]

It would be interesting if you could get a reaction of others opening up the softlock with no context.

[@VonTachyon]

Wait, remember the old Lorelei softlock? Would it be possible to make it a TRUE softlock if you used a FROZEN fighting type instead of one that has to rely on Rage?

[@akaxjenkins]

you could just lock this gengar against a full normal/fightning attacks trainer pokemon. I think the point of these is to be technically escapable but make it as difficult as possible

[@VonTachyon]

@@akaxjenkins oh, I see.

[@COlimar788]

Absolutely monstrous and revolting. Thanks for making!

[@DantinozMC]

Great video, unfortunately I can't watch the full thing because the Eterna Forest theme always makes me cry. Incredibly beautiful track with many nostalgic memories attached :/

[@Godseyyy]

Imagine if someone took the time to go through each of the softlocks and pick them The absolute madlad

[@isabelbimberg1342]

2:16 "there aren't many bugs out here" oh, i beg to differ

[@말차라떼너무좋아]

I would actually like to watch a video with that softlock in action. Maybe with 6 Gengars, an emulator sped up and with a keyboard macro.

[@kidtruck9157]

Thats what i was thinking. Or just like a constant stream if it. It could be the new furret on the stairs.

[@spartacusthememelord6890]

Dialga's at Spear Pillar having a stroke right now due to all the time loss.

[@leecrawford6560]

This is brutal Asprey has upped his game Nice

[@Dragonrealms245]

Great way to start off my ‘friday’, cheers man. Wish I had the time to show up for your streams live

[@lazykyuubi4300]

He should do a stream where he escapes one of these in their entirety

[@FixdalOK]

After the Smeargle only challenges he did, I believe he has the stamina.

[@Ecter]

Yearly charity softlock stream. Like "Desert Bus For Hope", but with pokemon.

[@lazykyuubi4300]

@@Ecter I'd donate organs for that.

[@mrnoneofurbusiness7942]

@@lazykyuubi4300 it frightens me a bit that you didn't say "my organs" 🤔

[@IsabruhMoment]

This is absolute pure evil and I am disgusted. I’m doing this to one of my friends immediately

[@Tyxaar]

Pikasprey's softlocks give me the same vibe as the Minecraft prison community.

[@CrimsonPhantom555]

From what I am able to calculate, the nedoran has a ~2.43%, chance to do damage. There is a 1/4 that the correct move is chosen, then a 25/256 that Nidoran gets a crit (Because crits are based on a Pokemon's base speed in gen 1), and lastly 255/256 chance that the 1 in 256 glitch doesn't happen. All of this comes out to getting hit about once every 41 turns. Doing 1 damage per hit and assuming about 5 seconds per turn, this would be getting hit once every 205 seconds or just shy of 3 and half minutes. So for 1 Gengar you are looking at about 13 hours and 46 minutes or for all six about 82 hours and 41 minutes. I always enjoy when you upload these kind of videos. Thank you so much.

[@kaizouwar]

Don't worry, we just gotta wait until that Nidoran evolves into Nidorino so it can throw hands with Gengar properly, like in the Kanto openings

[@munchingbanana4566]

Babe wake up, it's a Pikasprey upload!

[@adenrubenstein783]

Quick oversight Since starting the game puts you in the fight and stops you from going into options, you can't set battle effects to off or speed to fast. You can be stuck on slow textboxes and with battle effects on :)

[@optionalbitsii2049]

I know this is comment is a bit old, but this isn't actually true. You can go into the options and change the settings before pressing "Continue", right after the Title Screen. There's no way to stop the player from choosing the fastest settings.

[@mrnoneofurbusiness7942]

4:15 even shows it

[@heart_locket2]

​@@mrnoneofurbusiness7942bruh 💀💀💀 never thought id wake up to someone trying to kill a level 5 nidoran with 6 level 100 frozen gengar

[@thatoneginger]

Chef’s kiss. You’ve outdone yourself, pilasprey. You’re a sick demented person and I love you.

[@thegaymingavenger]

Yes more of this series! I always seem to forget how much of an evil genius you are. I'm so here for it

[@farielgaming5339]

Hear me out... what if... you did all of this but also put the characters poke center on cinnabar, got rid of fly, surf, etc and then it wouldn't be removable at all? The player would spend all this time to die and then be stuck on an island for the rest of their life of save file lol

[@Ki113r210]

the idea isnt to make it completely impossible, you have to have a chance to clear the softlock otherwise theres no reason to go through it and you just rest the save. its very easy to permanently softlock a save, its much harder to make it as annoying as possible to get out but still *possible*

[@danimale5895]

Thats brilliant. You evil genius.

[@monnamonsta]

satan, calm down

[@Cheatscape]

This would be straight up impossible on anything besides a GBA SP, since there’s no way that a set of AA batteries would last long enough to see the end of this battle.

[@LiroRaeriyo]

super gameboys for the SNES would make it doable as well.

[@CNash85]

Imagine booting this hell save up, deciding to try to unpick it, getting several hours in and then, only then, remembering that your batteries will not last…

[@Milenko777]

AC adaptor

[@FixdalOK]

@@Milenko777 Yeah, I remember having a power adapter for my Game Boy Colour. You couldn't charge batteries with it, even if you had rechargeable AA batteries in there, but you could run the Game Boy from the adapter.

[@scooterthefrog]

All gameboy models had the option to run on a dc converter. I wore three of them out on my grey brick between '93 and '97.

[@pepekong]

Imagine being on the sixth Gengar and the GameBoy's batteries run out. The Dodrio tower would come in handy.

[@JUSTINBURPER666]

My coworker mentioned you worked with him at a chain grocer in NS, super cool to hear you're from NS, considering I've been watching you for so long. Keep it up and great video as always!

[@Thomas-J-Foolery]

The crit chance for a Nidoran in Gen 1 is 50/512, the chances of using poison sting is 1/4, and the chances of hitting is 255/256. Because those probabilities are independent, it means the odds of the Nidoran doing 1 point of damage in a turn is 12,750/524,288, which averages to 1 hit roughly every 41 turns. According to some other comments here, the max HP for a Gengar is 323, and with 6 Gengar that means you’d need to do a total of 1,938 damage, which would take, on average, 79,691.776 turns.

[@hrr2b239]

Fun fact: in gen 2, it is also possible to be thawed by Tri Attack at a 1/3 chance

[@PhobiaSoft]

Wow, I had no idea you couldn't thaw out in Gen 1! I'm realizing now that my only exposure to being frozen in Gen 1 was Pokemon Stadium, never Red/Blue/Yellow. Just goes to show how unused the ice type is in those games, Lorelei is the only trainer that even comes to mind with access to Ice Beam.

[@TheRaphael0000]

Remember that the gbc have batteries that last ~10 hours so 2 gengar are enough to be unpickable.

[@mjf2891]

There’s wall adapter chargers though

[@TheRaphael0000]

@@mjf2891 yeah but it was not shipped with the gameboy

[@chuggaa100]

@@TheRaphael0000 But it's not unpickable then

[@NoobsailerRBH]

Because I'm a nerd, I went and did the maths on this: Assuming the following: ~ One turn, on average, takes 3 seconds, ~ The CPU uses Poison Sting 25% of the time, ~ The move crits 24/256 of the time (Gen 1 crit calculation) and ~ A Gen 1 miss happens 1/256 of the time, On average, one Gengar would be hit about once every 42 turns, and one Gengar would faint approximately every 8hrs and 30mins.

[@maxim9461]

this KZbinr has way too much time on his hand and I’m here for it

[@BlackIce4047]

I think the only way to break the soft lock with legitimate hardware would be to use the cartridge with the N64 Transfer Pak and Pokemon Stadium 1 or 2. The GameBoy's batteries would die and you'd have to start all over again.

[@azzarox6661]

IIRC stadium doesn't let you transfer pokemon to/from the game unless you saved in a pokemon center. Dunno about stadium 2 - I never had it - but I assume the same restriction applies.

[@DarkbeakK]

I think you made a battle that lasts longer than the life of the batteries you would use to play the game

[@FixdalOK]

I used to have an AC adaptor for my Game Boy as a kid.

[@gengarvenom1180]

It's sad that even if it could eventually struggle, it wouldn't even affect gengar

[@Iceberge101]

"Boy i sure do love my 6 Gengar, I sure hope nothing bad happens to them."

[@StarlightSocialist]

Speedrunners find creative ways to shave minutes, or even seconds off a run. You've found creative ways to add HOURS or even DAYS to a run, and I'm always impressed with the new and interesting ways to twist minor game mechanics into nightmare scenarios.