Can we rescue a deleted Pokémon - 15 years after its death? 

After three long months, I have a NEW documentary premiering today - my first video since the Blastoise rescue! Here's a link: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-_BDClzHu-ho.html

This guy just bought a plane ticket and flew all the way to north carolina, just to save his lil' pokemon. this is love. this is true love.

From a software engineer to another, Gary went absolutely NUTS. His level of knowledge on such an obscure topic and his reverse engineering process was brilliant AND he had every technical skill needed for the job. You can only reach that level when you’re truly passionate about something and he was above and beyond dedicated. Shouts out to my man

The true icing on the cake here was that, in the end, Hydro Cannon on the Blastoise had 7 pp, not the base 5. So the game recognized this as the EXACT pokemon he had used the items on so many years ago. absolutely incredible

The fact that it was Gary (Blue) who is clutch in saving the Blastoise is also so perfect. Gary went on to become a Pokemon researcher so to have Oaks Grandson come back to save a long lost Squirtle (Blastoise) is just so poetic.

The fact that harry is being helped by someone named gary whilst being spectated by his friend named bill is hilarious to me.

It's just so poetically fitting that a water pokemon would be saved by initially dabbing water on the cartridge itself.

Shout out to the other corrupted Pokémon who weren't fortunate enough to be saved. Blastoise shall carry on their legacy.

It is nearly 1am. This was genuinely more gripping than anything on Netflix. Hearty well done to everyone involved.

It doesn't even feel like the Blastoise was cloned. It feels like the Blastoise had lost its physical form and only the soul of it remained. Through this process, they gave Blastoise its body back. Now the Blastoise can continue the adventure she shared with Harrison 15 years ago.

I love how Gary just happened to have written the right tools for the job years ago

Midway through, I was thinking it was going to be a little sketchy. However, the fact that there is only one EV/IV combination possible means that this is the exact clone of his Pokémon. They gathered the data from original hardware, which essentially makes it his original Pokémon. I'm so happy with the solution that I almost cried.

I ve studied engineering and met people in the level of gary, at the very first instant he told you that "maybe" it was possible, I knew what was coming, people like him are really inspiring!

Gary is the kind of person who'd work for a software company, be the only guy who knows how the company's 60-year-old mission-critical hardware works, and be impossible for them to lay off because the company would collapse.

This video was great, but the cloning discussion sequence was an absolute masterpiece

It’s me, Nintendo. I must say, everyone involved in the making of this video have demonstrated great resiliency and dedication for the preservation to our franchise. It is CLEAR our games have touched your hearts in a very deep and meaningful way. We will be sending you a cease and desist letter. Cut that shit out.

GARY YOU ARE A LIVING LEGEND! I have not be this amazed and utterly blown away by the ability by someone in so long, mad respect to Gary

As a student programmer, the concepts are one thing I understand, but to actually apply it to someone's life, even having others know that recovering data like this is incredible. Props to you, Gary, and the Gen III programmers who documented and learned GBA programming to let dreams continue. Cheers!

The fact that Gary was not only leagues beyond overqualified, but the one, lone, necessary thread to figuring this out is mind-melting. It could ONLY be Gary, and you found him.

Gary is so knowledgeable and so cool, I genuinely want to reach out and be his friend and just watch and learn about all this stuff he knows about. I feel lile I could listen and watch forever.

We all have that one Pokémon that we see as more than ones and zeros on a screen. To us, they’re friends, family, confidants, and partners. I’ll never forget you, Haxorus.

I fucking broke down crying when Gary said “I FOUND IT”. He’s a genuine sense of accomplishment from helping Harrison. He bashed his head against the wall all day to do something most would consider futile, frivolous. We need more peeps like Gary

As a guy who wants to be a Computer Scientist,Gary is now my newest role model

My friend recommended me this video, that was an hour well spent. A guy who take a day off to another states to save his childhood Pokemon. A guy who would like to support and spectate how his friend rescue his childhood Pokemon. A guy who put in so much time to prepare and make this video possible and good. A guy who is so passionate in Pokemon and software, he can troubleshoot all the unsolvable problems in Gen3.

I cried, like literal tears, this is so incredibly wholesome I can't!!! Thank you for helping us heal our save file Pokémon wounds!

can we also talk about how lucky it is that gary, potentially the only person on the entire planet who could pull this kind of feat off within the available timeframe, was extremely personable and friendly, and willing to drop everything to invest his full effort into carrying the entire process? not to mention the program he just happened to have sitting around on his desktop from six years ago that ended up being instrumental. what an absolute legend

Gary could shut down a whole nation with his skill, but hes just there and saves a pokemon shout out

I actually had a very similar experience to this. I was born in 2001, so I didn't grow up when the GBA was new, but as a kid, I LOVED retro games, especially handhelds. For Christmas one year, my mom got me Ruby, Emerald, and Sapphire for the GBA. She didn't know at the time, but they were cheap reproductions that you see everywhere. I didn’t care, I was just happy to have Pokemon on my GBA. I got REALLY attached to my Emerald save. I named all my Pokemon and got really attached to them too. My favorite was my female Torchic named Sriracha. I had played Pokemon games before, and I’ve played Pokemon games since, but I’ve NEVER gotten more attached to a Pokemon than I did with Sriracha. This was also during one summer vacation where I pretty much lived with my grandparents (the air conditioner at my parents house broke), who were very important parts of my life. My grandfather was a mechanic and very good with his hands, and he actually helped me swap the shell on my GBA and solder in a rechargeable battery. He even helped me modify the battery compartment so the rechargeable battery would fit. This is all to say, I had a lot of memories attached to that save. One day, when I turned off my GBA, the screen weirdly flickered. I had a bad feeling, and when I turned it back on, I got nothing. The Gameboy Advance logo would appear, and the Nintendo logo would appear, meaning the cartridge was able to be read, but then it would fade to a white screen, and that was it. I tried EVERYTHING. Different consoles, different batteries, wall power, etc. Nothing ever changed. I even dumped the ROM and SAV file, but the ROM acted just like the cartridge, and the SAV just wasn’t working with other ROM's from the internet. For years, that was it. I had given up. But then on June 8th 2023, while doing something completely unrelated online, I stumbled across a tool that could extract a save file from a bootleg Pokemon GBA ROM. Apparently, the way those bootlegs work is that they save directly to the ROM itself. I didn’t believe it until I dumped one of my other bootlegs, and I booted it up in an emulator to see my save data, even without having dumped the SAV file. Since my Emerald game couldn’t get past that white screen, I doubted the dump was even good. I was very worried this save extractor wouldn’t work. This final hail Mary, this seemingly silver bullet perfectly tailored to my issue, and there was a very real possibility it wouldn't work. To my surprise, it worked perfectly, and after all these years, I had my Sriracha back, as well as the rest of my team. It was a really emotional experience for me, and now all of those Pokemon are safe on my laptop.

"A successful dump on your hands" Interesting choice of words.

Gary is definitely a one in 7 billion kind of guy who was the best and probably only expert in his niche field and went well out of his way to help some guy he never met recover a long lost friend, he is the real pokemon champion.

this man seriously spent 3 whole months to recover a random kids pokemon what an absolute legend

this video is one of my go-to comfort videos, i come back to it every few months. it’s so heartwarming and im still so amazed at the effort from everybody involved in recovering blastoise :,)

Through the whole video, you can see how happy Harry is when he learns that he will be getting his blatoise back. It warms my heart. I can’t imagine how sad I would feel if my Samurott from my original copy of black 2 got corrupted.

Idk why but garry's enthusiasm for what he does brings me so much joy

Honestly Gary's skills in his craft were nothing short of astounding. What an incredible individual and he seems like such a brilliant person! Fantastic video as always, I love to watch these journeys from start to finish!

I love that they also included the time frame at the end. Took 3 months to make this. RU-vid looks easy but it's a lot of hard work.

This was a rollercoaster of emotions and what a story this is. And the fact that the blastoise itself is female which is a lot rarer than a male. Literally cried a little when you found the IV:s to match the blastoise. My first pokemon partner was Treecko in Ruby and it is also female and in firered my beloved charizard is also female. Both safe and sound still to this day and after this video took me to a nostalgic trip to the child who started two awesome journeys with those two pokemons.

In December 1998 I was 14 and had a Blastoise and Dugtrio (my favorite pokemon too) who I loved so much. I remember they could beat the Elite 4 just the 2 of them. Level 100. We had an Accelerated Reader program at school that was for fun, where you read a book and take a 20 question test. You got extra credit if you scored well on it. One day during lunch, I took a test for a book I didn't read, Gulliver's Travels, and got a 5% (1/20) on it. I left the print out saying I failed in my backpack. My mom happened to go through my backpack one terrible, fateful morning, and thought I had actually failed a reading test. She got ultra mad, pulled me out of bed by my hair, and screamed at me for playing too much Pokemon as the reason why I failed a school assignment and didn't tell her. She took my Gameboy with the Pokemon Blue cartridge still in it, and smashed it with a hammer in front of me. I will never forget that morning.

I was not prepared to be so totally invested in the story of this Blastoise. Great editing btw!

i love the tiny clip put in for "yeah, you can turn pokemon into eggs." there was no point in putting such a goofy visual, which makes me love it.

This story resonates with me on so many levels. The entire reason I got into game collecting and starting my channel about it was to emphasize how these games are not “just a game”. They are memories of a special time and place, with friends, or with family. This story was not just about bringing back an a lost virtual pet, But also about resolving a little boy’s memory of making an error which caused a sense of loss and grief for many years. This is why these games are so important. They weave together the fabric of our fondest memories, and keep them alive in our hearts and minds, even if their code has gotten corrupt or is no longer playable. It’s NOT just a game. ❤

Imagining this from Blastoise's perspective: you're going on a journey with your trainer, you've entered the hall of fame together, helped capture mewtwo and have scoured the entire region together. One day you start to feel strange, you suddenly feel a surge of strange energy, like you've eaten a rare candy but something is wrong. It's too much at once and everything goes black. For years you're stuck in stasis, possibly aware of the world around you as your trainer desperately tries to bring you back. And then one day, you wake up again to the sound of cheers and laughter

Gary is a god damn genius. Seriously, its not even just his knowledge, or his programming skills, it's his ingenuity and problem solving that is just next level.

This is a perfect encapsulation of that classic scenario where one hyper specialized nerd has the very specific information you need to solve your problem. I can't tell you how many times guys like this have saved my ass on projects and such. Killer editing, and the cloning section was incredible with perfect footage spliced in.

"She's home." Goddamn this was so much better than it should have been, from the likelihood of all of these people coming together, to the skills of Gary (Gary, you're a real one for helping him) and everyone else who helped, it fucking amazing. And of course, the editor, whoever edited this did an amazing job, really elevated this to almost movie level quality, bravo to everyone involved in the making of this video.

what a crazy journey. the lengths you went to salvage a complete stranger's FIFTEEN year old digital companion is just totally mindblowing, and makes for such a beautiful narrated video to watch. makes me wish i actually backed up & archived my old pokémon emerald saves from 2008 too aha...

gary is literally so nice and patient and charismatic, it's so cool to see someone so enthusiastic about something like this

What an emotional journey. Thank you for the journey and helping that man, you touched every pokemon fan's heart.

Gary is a GENIUS.

This was surprisingly thrilling, “Gary” is a fucking genius.

Gary is the MVP. His dedication to find a strangers Blastoise is so wholesome… Maybe Gary thought of his Blastoise and had to do something !

Man, this video had no right to be as good as it was. It had all the right feels, all the right tension, perfectly aligning coincidences in the face of the lowest of odds and an epic victory a literal decade in the making. It felt like a whole movie and I am genuinely happy for Harrison that he could bring his beloved Blastoise back. Now we just need a sequel where Harrison shows Blastoise living her best life on the Nintendo Switch.

She's back in slot 1. "Right where she needs to be" I actually started crying wow

Gary is truly is a fitting name for this dude. He is confident and prideful of what he has done and he has every right to be.

19:15 "you my friend, have a successful dump on your hands" is a wild sentence. lmao

This is amazing! As a kid we just stumble through our old games trying to figure it out. Tons of mistakes are made, but being able to see such a beloved friend come back. Incredible work and what a grace to humanity.

Funniest part of all this, is that resurrecting Pokémon from nothing but a genetic sample is canonical, so this "cheating" isn't really. It's just advanced Poke-science!

The almost 'paradoxical' thing about this though is that if he never corrupted this Blastoise to begin with he probably wouldn't have the same attachment to it. He's attached to it because of the memory of regret around it. Maybe he wouldn't even have cared about it or the game anymore... He might not even have kept the game or console if it weren't for his hope of fixing this mistake one day. Regret is a powerful emotion.

Man.. I'm not even into Pokemon but this whole story is very well documented, and you guys did a absolute great job putting it all together for a person like me to understand where one can only imagine being put in that position. Thanks to this beautiful story that I'm just about to start my very first Pokemon journey.

This is so cool. I know some people might find it stupid, but like post stamps, bottle caps etc, these little creatures have memories attached to them, they are special and they are important to some of us. I am so stoked he got his Pokemon back!

This is like diving into the river Styx, swimming all the way to the afterlife, finding a specific soul, and dragging it back to the world of the living.

"Your childhood cartridge?" "Yes." "Anything children touch becomes filthy. Clean it. Now." _Cleans the cart and it works again_ -The story of countless cartridge repairs

im crying. i feel like this kind of thing is such a relatable experience with every person. we all did something dumb in our childhood that we regret. if we could go back in undo it… we all would.

The only reason I would want to become a teacher is to tell my class we’re watching a documentary on the most important event in history and then pull up this banger

All I gotta say is that I'd kill to be Gary's apprentice, just to learn these things. He stayed hopeful through this entire interaction and got the job done. I wanna be like that.... I want to learn to be like that.

"Gary" was the absolute MVP. His passion for these kind of things seeps throughout the video, and I love it!

I was super invested in this video. Once I hit the 10 min mark i was thinking how long is this video? Once I saw it was almost an hour long I was contemplating watching the whole thing, but man am I glad I did. It was an emotional rollercoaster. I lost my data on my Pokemon Emerald game so i know the feeling. So the fact that they were anlento get it back was amazing. Shout out to everyone that worked on this video. Thank you all for this amazing heartwarming experience. Wish I saw this when it came out, but better late than never ❤❤❤

wow. this is so emotional and having a bond with a pokemon is no joke. Amazing

Can we just talk about how this baseball-capped Harry (Red wears one too!) just happens to have a friend named Bill who provided the device responsible for Blastoise's corruption? When you first meet the character Bill in any of the Kanto games, you have to help him reverse a mistake after the machine he invented to teleport Pokémon caused him to swap bodies with one instead...

What. A. Journey. 👏

Bro is a real Pokémon trainer, came back after 15 years just to save his Pokémon.

As a developer and an engineer myself, I am really amazed by Gary. I’m mostly a jack of all trades, master of none, so seeing someone being an absolute master of an extremely narrow field is very inspiring.

This is so Wholesome. We need a Netflix-style series of Pokemon being "saved" from corrupt files. Next episodes: this Blastoise jumping from LG all the way to modern consoles until Pokemon Shield.

This was such a very well pieced together video. So well pieced together that I might just rewatch it again tomorrow because Gary's knowledge on the file structure of Pokemon is INSANE.

knowing what that raw video footage probably looked like you done a great job editing! What an amazing story

I think this is my new favorite video on the internet. Pokemon was such an important part of my life growing up and seeing someone have a moment like that was absolutely heartwarming. Absolute 10/10, from start to finish.

The fact that Harrison puts his hat on backwards, like Ash before a battle, when Blastoise was recovered made me so happy :)

I want to see this dude play the new Pokémon games with his transferred blastoiest feel so happy for u man

I never cried so hard… to see a long lost friend be brought back to life exactly how it was. It touched my heart and than some. I didn’t think something like this could be possible but to watch it happen is beyound breath taking. Congrats on getting your friend back brother !!!! Take good care of her and i want to know when you hit lvl 100 !!!

So glad Gary took up his grandfathers profession, and became the most advanced pokemon professor

I started crying around 53:20. When I clicked this video, I wasn't expecting the documentary-style at all, or Harrison to come visit you in person to complete this project, or the discussion about whether a cloned Pokemon is identical to the origianal. To the person who helped datamine the games and provided his expertise during the resurrection process? you literally helped resolve Harrison's most longstanding personal regret. I was about to type that your dedication, for helping a complete stranger with such a, to most people, trivial problem, is amazing, but that feels grossly inadequate, and is selling your kindness short.

Why is this the best put together video I’ve ever watched in my life. The camera work and effects are incredible. Nice work. I will be watching in the future

*I was supposed to be doing chores but I absolutely could not leave without seeing Harriso get his Blastoise back!!👏🏼😭*

I will never forget being in second grade, riding in back seat of the car, discovering the meaning of the word "release"... I hope you lived a good life in the wild, Fearow; you are still missed.

gary must’ve been waiting his entire life for this exact moment. i can’t imagine how great it felt getting to use his skills for something like this.

This is legit one of favourite videos of YT, Its amazing how that was all possible! Absolute Masterpiece of a video!!!

This is the most wholesome thing Ive seen in a while. Also the amount of physical effort you put into your vids needs so much more love than it gets

This was so much more emotional than anticipated. Welcome home, Blastoise! I lost a LVL 100 Pikachu to a crushed PokeWalker when I was 10. I couldn't even touch Soul Silver after that, until a full year later when I was looking through the instruction booklet and found the code to retrieve a Pokemon from a PokeWalker. Felt like a pitt in my heart had been restored

I think the fact that this man found the Blastoise with some software that HE HIMSELF wrote over half a decade ago and hasn't released is probably the biggest flex of 2022.

With the Scarlet/Violet Expansion coming out in 2 weeks having Blastoise available, it would be great to see if she can be ported all the way through to the most modern games and viewed in the great low res 3D we all love 😌

Absolutely brilliant filmmaking. I was way more invested in the outcome of this than I should have been!

Man, I remember taking years to level up my Pokemon Gold Typhlosion to level 100, only to accidentally click "New Game" one day and lose my save progress. I haven't fully enjoyed a Pokemon game to the same extent since then.

"Strong Pokémon. Weak Pokémon. That is only the selfish perception of people. Truly skilled trainers should try to win with their favorites. I like your style. You understand what's important." You truly understand how important just one Pokemon can be to someone. It's incredible what you've done to help out someone who cared so deeply about a long lost friend.

To be honest this video had me on the edge of my seat, which is a weird thing to admit. Your videos are always amazing and the lengths you go to make stuff like this happen is honestly insane. Massive props to you👏👏👏

The love people have for things and just that people are willing to help even over something silly has me ugly crying

I was worried for a sec that they were giving her random IVs. In my mind - "Nope, that's not the same Pokemon. It may be a Level 89 Female Mild Blastoise, but it ain't her". Was super stoked that they found her IVs!! She's good as resurrected (more like cured, to be honest).

I remember losing my sapphire cartridge down inside a hole in a sofa chair. I vividly remember reaching my tiny arms down that hole numerous times trying to dig it out to no avail. 15 years later my parents said they were taking them to the skip for disposal, I grabbed a knife and flipped the sofa chair upside down and tore in and found my fucking cartridge! Internal battery was fine, my mons were there, I immediately got to work and transferred my mons through pal park. It took 2 and a half days to get like 15 level 100s and OGs through pal park into platinum then to black and then up to the 3DS. After I was done couple days later I thought I’ll play the cartridge again, internal battery and save file were gone I wasn’t fazed too much as I salvaged what I yearned for all these years. That’s my story of a victory of lost pokemon lol. 3 years ago I saw the ‘ribbon master’ challenge and thought I’d give it a go as had the GC games on my hacked wii. I snagged a shiny Noctowl called Pecha and worked tirelessly getting all the ribbons possible from Gen 3 to Sword and Shield. That was a huge pain but worth it so many cherished memories. I started Gen 1 but Gen 3 is most treasured as you can carry them through to current generations.

this is literally the most emotional thing ive watched in the entirety of 2023. i clicked on it thinking it would be nice in the background but didnt realise i was in for a masterpiece and happy tears

this is the most wholesome thing ive ever seen - im so glad i stumbled on this channel

I lost my childhood partner, Pidgeot when I used a GameShark. I got stuck in a house after saving because when I loaded the game a tree spawned in again. I didn't know about any kind of walk through walls stuff, as I was just eight and the internet wasn't something I even had back then. I stayed in that house for days trying to figure out something to do, but ultimately I just decided I would have to restart my game. I felt so sad because Pidgeot and the rest of my team were a big part of how I got through my parents divorce. It was a pleasant part of a very unpleasant part of my life. It still makes me sad to this day. Stuff really does stick with you extra hard emotionally speaking when you're a child.