A Pokemon fan has designed their own type of challenge run for those that may be tired of Nuzlockes. While the Pokemon games offer a lot of great things for fans, something that has often been seen as lacking, especially for older players, is the difficulty of the titles. As the Pokemon franchise has been going for over 25 years, a lot of its original players have grown up and got a lot better at catching and battling. This has led to increased debate among the fanbase as to whether the Pokemon games should have difficulty choices.
With Black and White 2 being the only mainline titles to have difficulty settings, many Pokemon players have designed challenge runs to give themselves a fresh experience when they load into one of the classic titles. Arguably the most popular Pokemon challenge run is a Nuzlocke, which is designed around a simple set of rules that only let players catch Pokemon if it's the first creature they've encountered on a route and forces a trainer to retire their pocket monster should it faint in battle.
Even as the Nuzlocke run remains popular, not every Pokemon fan enjoys the challenge provided by them. This led Reddit user TheAssumingMage to create their own, new challenge they've labeled as the "PokeCoach" playthrough. Like a Nuzlocke run, the "PokeCoach" challenge has similar limits to a player's progression in a Pokemon game, but rather than retiring Pokemon when they faint, instead TheAssumingMage's concept has players make any team they want to take on a gym leader, but once that gym is beaten, the team then sits in the PC in the "Hall of Fame."
For the next route or playable area, again a Pokemon trainer can catch whatever Pokemon they wish, but they're not allowed repeats. For example, if a player caught a Geodude on the way to the gym and cleared said gym with the Pokemon, they couldn't then use a Geodude or any of its evolutions for the rest of the playthrough. There are some other minor rules, such as if a player gets their hands on a Shiny Pokemon, they are free to do whatever they like with it due to the rarity of shinies.
TheAssumingMage's "PokeCoach" concept does seem an interesting challenge run for those that maybe are tired of Nuzlockes or don't like the concept. Recently, fans were concerned that Nintendo didn't like Nuzlocke Pokemon runs, after a statement from former employees of the company led some to believe it equated a challenge playthrough to ROM hacking. However, this was later proven to be a misunderstanding after Nintendo stated it had no issue with Nuzlockes or other challenge runs.
