♦ Livestream of the ZZT world "HGSI Monsters (v1)" by PresHGSI (1999) [https://museumofzzt.com/file/view/monsters/]. ♦
Most assuredly no Pokemon here. No sir.
The first time one of these lost games is one that _I_ remember playing. HGSI Monsters pretty much wins by default in terms of the best adaption of Pokemon to ZZT. It's not very good, but it's clearly trying.
Grab your starting monster, either Bugumspark or Shocktrist and start walking around looking for fellow monster trainers to battle. Win cash and badges, and become an HGSI Monster master.
So yeah, it's very much generation 1 Pokemon inspired, but unlike other ZZT Pokemon games that follow the anime or have a very limited number of creatures available, this one has 19 coded in, all of whom are theoretically available in every battle, making for a true replica of the team based combat that helped make Pokemon stand out from other RPGs. PresHGSI includes evolution systems, depositing/withdrawing team members, and gives them themed moved with a simple effectiveness system.
A surprising amount of the game is spent exploring the world and towns, with no wild creatures to catch. Players instead have to find, be given, trade, or evolve their monsters to gain new capabilities. Under the hood, this doesn't amount to much, attacks are all hard coded per fight to do only a few points of damage at most. The creatures themselves aren't particularly well described either, and with only ASCII characters to reference, there's not much fuel for the imagination beyond their names. Some of the battles are a tad buggy as well, making it very much possible to break them or trivialize them. Again though, compared to other ZZT Pokemon style games, this one is really trying to cram as much as it can into ZZT. It's a bit like the ZZT TCG game Card Prime, where memory limits are the biggest obstacle to making the battles interesting.
At one point, while examining a toilet in a hotel room we found a cool bird. The Green Herring (https://thegreenherring.neocities.org/) has immortalized this moment.
♦ Play this world directly in your browser ♦
• https://museumofzzt.com/file/play/monsters/
♦ Originally streamed on January 26th, 2024 ♦
