8 Gaming Features That Started Life As Fan Hacks

To some, Pokemon is little more than a simplistic game for children.

However, while the recent dumb-downed entries in the series may have done little to dispel the myth, if you scratch beneath the surface the battle system has been developed over the years to attract a genuinely captivating competitive scene with players across the world vying for supremacy.

If you're the kind of person who immediately replaced non-damaging moves out of your pocket monsters arsenal this may have just gone completely over your head, but there are some pretty complex elements at play in Pokemon battles, many of which being ripe of exploitation with enough time and a cheating device.

For example, wonder guard, introduced in Generation III as the special ability of Shedinja renders all moves that are not super effective completely ineffective. Enterprising fans of the franchise quickly realised that they could hack this ability onto the weakness-less Spiritomb and Sableye giving them a Pokemon that was pretty invincible.

Game Freak was clearly aware of what was going on, and would go on to reference the exploit in the Generation VI titles. When the player faced off against Majin in Pokestar Studios, they were confronted with an opponent possessing the wonder guard ability that could only be defeated by repeated dealing indirect damage.