The History of Nuzlockes 

It’s an honor to be considered part of history in a game and community I love so much :’) Incredible video Wolfey!!!!

I still remember coming home from school and checking every day if there was a new chapter of the Nuzlocke comic. Turns out I was onto something lol Also massive shoutout to ExcoessivelyAve who was the only other person doing Nuzlockes regularly on Twitch when I started. A huge part of my initial small community were people that had come over from collaborating with him and he's still a fantastic friend today. This video was a great walk down memory lane :)

Really humbled to be included here. Shadylocke holds a special place in my heart, even more so now. ❤ I watched the whole video twice now, another banger, Wolfe!

seeing all of these old thumbnails, especially of my own nuzlockes really took me back, it’s so cool to be a part of the nuzlocke history alongside so many of my friends and peers. sick video wolfe, keep it up 🙏

Wolfey has become the unofficial Professor Oak of the game in real life. Extremely knowledgeable, fills a compendium of Poke-info, insanely skilled at the game. Beyond champion.

Appreciate the shout out my friend 🙏 honored to part of history. This video was amazing, the editing and work put into this is next level

Major props to Jan for ditching college to be a Pokémon master

I can't believe I just got exposed like that LMFAO 10:00 i'll never live this down

This was incredible. So glad to see how far nuzlocking has come. It truly is something special. Thanks for making this project possible

I love how even this video has jaiden in the thumbnail because any nuzlocke content has to have it

slight correction: first hardcore nuzlocke was actually done by marriland back in 2013 in his platinum nuzlocke with the exact same rules as those used in modern hardcore nuzlockes. It definitely wasn't called that at the time though

The Nuzlocke community has come so far since the early days of live Pokemon content, i'm honored that I could be a small part of history. People like Jan, Haydunn, Shady, Drew, and many others continue to inspire me. Can't wait to see where Nuzlockes go next!

I do feel amiss not bringing up Mariland in the history of the nuzloke he is not making much content today, but he made some of the most fun nuzlokes I've ever watched. It was what got me and many others into nuzloking. He was the inventor of the wedlocke which is a staple nuzloke variant today and was very popular during the 2010's. Anyway, I just want to bring him up as apart of the history, since, at least for me, he was very important.

It should be noted how important Marilland was in that first wave of Nuzlocke playthroughs on RU-vid

It sucks to see how little was actually represented for the pre-Jaiden era of nuzlocking. No Marriland, MunchingOrange, Hardyt3kyoyo. A lot of the early nuzlocking examples are mainly limited to Poketubers who are still relevant today while some of the other big names back then are left to be forgotten. Love all the detail for post-Jaiden era though. I assume xProuty being the first to beat EK deathless happened too late to appear.

im a little disappointed no mention of marriland?? he made the wedlockes and his nuzlockes were unique, kinda like jaidens video but it wasn't animated it was done while playing, he added a memorial montage after each death and it was nuzlocking done with respect and friendships with his pokemon. definetly up there with patterrz and jaiden

Correction: The first Nuzlocke comic, the Ruby Hard Mode, actually ended with a wipe to Steven. This lead directly into the more story driven Fire Red Nuzlocke, where things REALLY ramped up.

Wolfey’s script writing and comedy are so good. “The plan was simple” at 36:30 is such a sly little reference and gave me a good chuckle, and that’s just one of many such moments

Amazing video! Only thing that makes me a bit sad is the lack of mention of Mariland because he was the only person I remember doing nuzlock type content for a chunk of time there. He may not have been the best or the biggest, but he was really consistent for a huge chunk of time when there weren't as many others

This video is some serious Marriland erasure - they not only made the Wedlocke but created some of the first, most popular Nuzlocke series on RU-vid! Great video though as always.

Love the whole bit about Shady; he's one of the all time greats. He (and someone who must not be named) really established what Nuzlockes were for a while. They also put the soul link on the map. I think an interesting tidbit a lot of people don't know is that the Soul Link was conceived as a two player version of Marriland's Wedlocke.

nuzlocke at first: makes the pokemon die to make the bond with them more appreciated nuzlocke nowadays: *proceeds to make an explosion team because is the best strategy*

TyranitarTube is the goat, his extreme playthroughs are what introduced me to nuzlockes

As somebody who read the original Pokemon hard mode on release, it's amazing to see how far it's come.

This was an incredible retrospective! The only thing I felt wasn't represented well enough was the impact of Nuzlocke comics, specifically those done by Kylee-nim. Myths of Unova got me hooked on the concept of a Nuzlocke, and her rich world-building and incredible art really raised the bar for what a narrative Nuzlocke comic could be. And she was working on it while in Med School! She even created one of the more well-known Fakemon in that comic, Vahirom, a possible idea for what the Tao Trio may have looked like as one Pokemon. Her hard work and dedication to her Nuzlocke and her comic shouldn't be forgotten or overlooked. She's even to this day publishing pages of a sequel comic based on a run she did in B2W2!

For being a "History of Nuzlockes" I'm absolutely amazed at how much was just left out of video. Everything before Jaiden's video seems like an afterthought. Pretty much none of the first wave of nuzlockes are talked about, with Marriland, MunchingOrange, Nappy (just becomes someone is a detestable person at best doesn't mean they should be left out of the history of something if they had a major impact on it), and BlackLightAttack being left out.

For people who can see this, I would personally recommend reading the original nuzlocke comic alongside the fire red comic made after it. As long as you go into it knowing there will be dated humor and are okay with that, it's a fun read to see where nuzlockes all started!

Should’ve mentioned Projared and his amazing firered series in I think 2012/2013. For me, that started the nuzlocke hype, earlier than almost every example given in this video.

I really miss the era where deaths still meant something to most people on emotional levels, and not just feeling sad because of losing a number in an army.

The Nuzlocke forums were an integral part of my childhood. Those edited screenshot runs were peak Pokémon storytelling. Though the FlygonHGs and PokemonChallenges of our day are the best in the sense of gaming challenges, there's just something so nostalgic about those screenshot runs. Where everything happened for a reason.

It’s wild how detailed this was and there’s still so much that could be covered. I was around the deviantart nuzlocking comic community in the early 2010s and that was a whole thing, and what originally got me inspired to Nuzlocke. Marriland’s Wedlockes also probably could have had their own section in Nuzlocking history, that felt like one of the big variants to first get popularized and actually played? And while covered in the rom hacks section to an extent, it’s fascinating what optimizations have been made for each game. Like even simple ones like how powerful Guts Raticate/Swellow can be or how Linoone can be made into a consistent E4 sweeper in Emerald. We all probably started by playing mostly normally and not planning too far ahead and now the community’s play has been really pushed to a high level as we all got better and communities continued to grow.

As someone who's been part of the nuzlocking community since it's inception, I can't help but feel as though wolfey completely glossed over so much of the history in favour of youtuber clout.

I was there when Nuzlocke draw his first comic and I loved the message board he builded up. Found some cool people from all around the world there to talk with. I really miss that time.

"Incredibly Haydunn is still making great Pokémon content today" you damn right he is wolf, you damn right.

Amazing video! I was really hoping you’d talk about TyranitarTube’s Extreme Randomizer Nuzlocke series. They’re modded version of main series games that have a completely brand new stories, characters and sometimes even Pokémon. They’re some of my favorites, but just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to different types of Nuzlockes.

I got into nuzlockes by watching Marilland play through Emerald, Platinum, and Heart Gold as a kid!! Awesome history video man - its extremely nostalgic looking back at all of these historical events :)

29:21 Made me laugh so hard, the random sans reference and Wolfe wheezing like a tire pump is such an hilarious combination

As many others have said. Marriland was actually a huge bump in the Nuzlocke play style gaining variety .

This video is such a nostalgia blast. It got me so emotional. Great job, and amazing editing as always !

Shout out to my boy Marriland - he created the Wedlocke and implemented a lot of those self imposed challenges before most

Fun fact. I was first introduced to Nuzlockes from a webcomic called “Myths of Unova”. And I absolutely loved it.

wow, what a flashback after seeing marriland popping up then doing a wedlocke since he was doing one, damn time fly so fast

I remember watching Jan at work during the finale. It was one of those moments you’ll just remember forever.

BlackLightAttack's Leafgreen Nuzlocke on TGN was huuuge back then, well edited for the time and came before Haydunn's. He's definitely the first person who did the border to show your team/badges through the whole thing

Great video as they have been recently. Really well researched and detailed. I would dispute the hardcore nuzlockes origins with Pokemon Challenges. Marriland was using those rules for his 2013 Platinum Nuzlocke run. But Jan was the first to popularize these rules.

There used to be some flowcharts back in the day when nuzlocke webcomics were popular that explained a lot of the rules before they became popular (Like No pkmn centers, no healing, no shopping and some others) and I remember them seeing them a lot myself. When Hardcore Nuzlockes became a thing, it always reminds me that flowchart was there and i found it kinda funny that it existed even so early on. This was such a cool video and so well edited too, good job!

Minor correction that I'm sure someone else has made: The original Nuzlocke ended in a party wipe at Champion Steven. It was only with the sequel, FireRed: Hard Mode, that the OG trainer won the Pokemon League.

I just love how the original era of Nuzlockes emphasizes so much on bonding with unfamiliar pokemons and their deaths becoming so emotionally draining for the players to the GODLIKE-level of gameplay of hardcore nuzlockes where every pokemon is just a tool for the player to clear the challenge. you can catch a pokemon, name it something, feed it steroids, and have it explode on the gym leader's ace just so you can clear it easier, or sack a pokemon that you've spent so much time with away in order to save another pokemon that's going to be more useful in the next gym.

Lmao the first example of a hardcore nuzlocke rule set being used was from Marriland’s Pokemon Platinum run. That’s 3 whole years before Jan’s run. Also, the OG Nuzlocke comic ended in a failure. Metagross kills Absol before Perish Song can finish, and the rest of the team soon followed. So good job on making a history on Nuzlocking only to mess it up and hyper focus on 2020 to the present.

Duuude, I remember Haydunn! His content was great, love to see he's still doing stuff. And Jaiden's Ruby Nuzlocke is so iconic. Crazy to think so many people didn't know how Nuzlocke was derived from the Ruby Hard Mode comic, this was such a fantastic video Wolfey, definitely a must watch for anyone even remotely interested in the Nuzlocke side of Pokemon.

Great video wolfey! I think you may have got the origin of the hardcore nuzlocke a tad wrong, though. It wasn’t classified as such, but I believe marriland implemented level caps and no items in his platinum nuzlocke a few years before pchal!

I personally remember reading IN REAL TIME the original Nuzleaf Locke from Lost comic with my brother. We were in different parts of the country at the time and spoke on the phone for hours a day, and this was one of our favorite things to bond over, but any time I tried I would give up bc I am a Pokémon hoarder and never reset my files or release anything, perfect Pokémon Box, Bank and Home customer right here, whereas my brother would do them all the time. We've had lifelong nicknames for Pokémon like Explodio for drifblims and DLUX for Luxrays born from those early attempts we did

You'd need to have paper mache skin to think Ruby: Hard-Mode is "problematic" enough to completely butcher the story.

Nuzlockes are the very essence of nostalgia for me. Back in 2012 I loved Nate and Dookie’s Pokémon Soul Silver nuzlocke. My best friend and I did all sorts of competitive “1 v 1 nuzlockes” inspired by them, where we’d battle after every gym and whoever wins more battles wins the nuzlocke competition (or, if you lose the run the other guy wins). We did this for every Pokémon game we owned, and it’s just such a fun time to look back on

“This was a problematic era of humor” damn I didn’t realize Wolfey was such a snowflake 🥲

Damn. I made a couple comments. As many others have said Marriland was vital to the growth of lockes even though this video tries to leave him out.

I remember starting to watch nuzlockes way back in 2013-2014 and it's so cool to see how they stuck around and grew so much until now! It was so much cool internet content that came and went so fast that it's easy to lose track of the big picture, thank you so much Wolfe for doing this documentation, all this cool history deserves to be remembered

14:30 Jan’s reaction to this is going to be 11/10

4:41 Wolfey: “the bar for being considered hilarious was a lot lower” also wolfey: **FART JOKE**

I’ve been so invested in Nuzlockes from a long long time ago, I remember watching Haydunn doing his first Nuzlocke and being gripped by it. It’s a shame the story telling has been lost over time but it makes sense. What a great video 👍🏻

Love the Haydunn shoutout. This channel aside, he’s always had my favorite Pokémon content on this site, and it’s so great to see him still making content to this day.

This video from all the shoutouts and all the well articulated information was incredible and I’ve learned a lot about nuzlocks, and being able to say I was around for some of the big moments like Jan beating emerald Kaizo is super awesome to look back on.

Haven't finished the video yet, but everyone seems to forget the popularity of the one and only BlackLightAttack, and his run of LeafGreen. It was the first Nuzlocke I ever watched way back in the day

4:00 "this was a problematic era." Stay out of my swamp you child.

Ave's nuzlocke gauntlet was a blast to watch and was my real first exposure to nuzlockes along with the early Hardcore Nuzlockes

This is more of a: "History of nuzlockes in content creation" video

Great video! I think the exclusion of nappy and the primetime group aside from luke, shady and a brief clip from jay is a necessary exclusion but it feels like a massive part of this video is missing. Additionally the first nuzlocke on youtube was actually done by BlackLightAttack with his fire red nuzlocke done on the TGN youtube channel. Beats haydunn out by about a month, so not a super important distinction but it felt right to mention. Again great video i hope you do more stuff like this.

I created a Nuzlocke Variant myself and played it to some extent: Lololocke. My nickname is Lolo, so that's why. It's basically a Hardcore Nuzlocke with two extra rules: I can get an extra "static" encounter per area where it applies (gift, interactable, etc), and I can change my team only ONCE PER CHECKPOINT. The checkpoints are the level caps set for the challenge, like gyms and such. If a pokémon dies in between checkpoints, I can box/release it and use that empty slot to capture a new pokémon (following all the previous rules) and add it immediately to the party. It's hard to play this way, but the challenge is so nice.

Wolfe~ you’ve been leveling up so much. It’s so great to see. The quality and marketing tactics are A+. I see you adding a popular video at the final seconds of the sponsor cut away. As people are reengaging. Love to see it

I was in Jan's chat for both of his E4 runs, 77 and 151. Absolutely brutal loss at 77, and damn both the Ludicolos, but the elation in 151 was intense and relief was palpable. Truly something that I won't forget in a long time.

What an amazing video! Huge props for the research, the skript and the editing, this is just on another level. For the video - that's exactly what I love about Pokemon. It brings people together. Such a treat, being able to witness this YT/Nuzlocke journey.

I was thinking “ No way I’m watching a 40min video on the History of Nuzlockes. And here I am 40 mins later. An absolute banger of a video. Much love Wolfey ❤

This made me so proud to be a part of the community. This video was INCREDIBLE, and I learned so much new lore about something that's become so special to me.

It's always a treat to see Pokemon RU-vidrs and Streamers taking on Nuzlockes and can't wait to see what other new challenge come in the future that becomes even harder than a Hardcore Nuzlocke!

I'm a bit sad Tyranitartube's Alpha sapphire extreme wasn't mentioned but all well great video on the history

Some of the comics that have come out of the Nuzlocke community are so good, I particularly remember enjoying Myths of Unova! Great video Wolfey :)

This is a great video but it's a bit sad that a lot of the nuzlocke forums contributions to this were never mentioned

It's soooooo crazy how I, as someone who has watched Pokemon SINCE 2012 on YT, I experienced this all. Especially as a fan of Shady, I didn't even know that he started the ball rolling like that. But I remember SO many people had Nuzlocke variants (especially Egg lockes were massive then). Feels wild being IN that all that history but not noticing it. I can only imagine how this is gonna feel when I see a history book later and talks about 2020 etc lmao.

Idk why u didn't read the comic. Just read it now and there does not seem to be anything problematic about it

This video is a masterpiece! As a huge Pokémon fan and an avid player of nuzlockes, this made me so emotional and hyped all the way through, like wow...Well done, Wolfe :D

How you described the first one is exactly why i don't like watching "professional" nuzlockers anymore. They all lost what was once the heart of a nuzlocke and treat the pokemon like a bunch of numbers.

It amazing how far you have come. From making competive pokemon gameplay videos to making tutorials for competive pokemon. And now making a legit documentary about pokemon nuzlock. You have legitimately become the professor oak of youtube pokemon

Incredible video! As someone who first started to exist on the internet in general because of Nuzlockes, really like how the Nuzlocke Forums were brought up as it was the very first online community that I joined. Kind of wished that they were covered a bit more with Written Stories and Screenshot Runs, though a lot of screenshot runs from the early days are missing their screenshots due to image hosting sites going down. But then again, it's nice to see that the forums were brought up at all! Fun fact: 0:21 I did the video in the top left! Never expected myself to technically be in a Wolfey wideo

Great video, but I do want to add to the small echo that I noticed on the comments: the lack of mentions to Marriland's content and the fact that he did use the 'hardcore nuzlocke' rules before the term was coined for wide audience use. Just something that I feel that could have been deep-dived further. The +15 minutes wouldn't have killed the pacing. I used to love watching a whole lot of Nuzlocke videos, read on the forums and check for webcomics but none of those really get the 'feel' that I've had while bingewatching all those Marriland playlists over and over again when the real world has been a dark place for me. (it still is, not getting over it) Now, I can maybe survive watching three minutes into a hardcore nuzlocke video until they bring up "I'm gonna EV train him-" Nope. I click out and move on. Not interested in statistics and maths that I do on the clock daily. I agree that with the open-world pokemon it's really hard to determine the "1 pokemon per route and *has to be* 1st pokemon" rule that most older stories had, but even that comes down to planning ahead, which most of the content creators seem to do anyway. So, idk... am I being old and picky? Yes. But I remember playing side-by-side several Nuzlocke playlists with my own game and enjoying it a whole lot more than just playing it on my own.

Jaden animations is the single most important person to the nuzlocke community outside the creator God I have waited YEARS for a video like this

Note: Nick actually wiped his very first run to Steven, at least, that's what the comic depicts.

what a banger. cool to see how your content evolved and improved over the time. Really great work, thanks for that one!

Absolutely loved this. Finally completed my first nuzlocke in December after watching so much content and using Jans strats.

I used to read a lot of nuzlocke stuff from this ancient forum. Telling a nuzlocke run through screenshots and a comment per screenshot was extremely common. However after a few years those screenshots from 10+ old runs were lost, which makes it look like they were only a few vague comments and probably made wolfie confused at around 6:40

I love this video, because it is about a community that I have been a part of for the longest time. I'm so happy to see a deep-dive history lesson of this beautiful community. It not only allowed me to see how Pchal had grown to become one of the pioneers of Nuzlocking, not only allowed me to see some pf the forst Nuzlocking videos from creators that I had never seen (and might watch later for my own free time), but I think most importantly, this video truly opened my eyes to how important the smaller pro Nuzlockers were (with some even helping bigger streamers). I appreciate the many Nuzlockers that had come to create this fantastic video :)

I feel like this is your best video by a mile, Wolfe. Hopefully it gets the recognition it absolutely deserves!

Nice video, the only part that maybe missed was TyranitarTube, with his Custom Nuzlocke called: Pokemon Alpha Sapphire Extreme Randomizer (2015), it really showed how crazy nuzlockes can get when people manually mod the game and even add new Pokemon (Peeko and Lord Helix)

Wow this takes me back. I remember closely following kynim’s gen 4 and 5 nuzlockes on deviantart.

nick is an absolutely great guy, got an interview with him in highschool. glad to see people remember him still.

"I don't recommend reading the original web comic" Solid PR statement. Well, the rest of us recommend it lol.

An even earlier nuzlocke on RU-vid than you one you mentioned is Blacklightattacks from September 2011.

This is a solid video, but I do feel like you skimmed over the truly massive and surprisingly influential pile of content on the Nuzlocke Forums. Some of my personal favorites include the legendary Worst Luck Possible runs by Zowayix (of which only a couple are still readable, sadly), Whose Locke Is It Anyway? (Probably the peak of narrative-based screenshot runs), and any number of webcomics I could shout out. These nuzlockes often get overlooked these days, which is sad, because they usually focused a lot more on having a narrative and making the Pokémon themselves feel valuable, which is something that’s not as common these days.

What a great history! I came to streaming during the pandemic and love watching these. It's cool to see the beginnings.

I can't believe I never saw mention in this video of the old hardcore nuzzlockes on forums back in the day. Stuff like "No mart, no pokemon centre, no items, no tms, release all but one pokemon after every gym." And then them claiming to bea it in two attempts.

Nick actually failed his Ruby Nuzlocke. Absol was taken out and sceptile fainted before perish song could take out the metagross.