Pokemon Ruby/FireRed/White
By Jack Scorey
Pokemon is owned by Game Freak and Nintendo
For some, Pokemon is just too easy. There are certain catches and legendaries in the game to make any late gym battles and the Elite-4 a cakewalk. So, bravely going where no Pokemaniac had tread before, Jack Scorey took up the arduous task of not only the Nuzlocke Challenge, but making the first ever comic for the game mode: Pokemon Hard Mode.
Before jumping into the comic itself, a Nuzlocke contains additional rules to a Pokemon adventure. After the Pokeballs are 
acquired from the region’s professor, a player can only catch the first Pokemon that they run in to on each route. If they knock it out, it is a case of tough luck: There are no second chances. If a trainer should have a Pokemon faint, it is either released or permanently boxed for the remainder of the journey and is counted as dead. This means that trainers have a limited pool of what Pokemon they can use based on catch encounters and route specific catches. When a Nidoran appears in the place of an Abra, for instance, many obscenities will be slung. Pokemon Hard Mode painfully follows these rules to a “t”, often leading to heart-wrenching pages more often than something humorously frustrating.
Pokemon Hard Mode follows the adventures of Ruby, an avatar of what people think the modern gamer is like. He over-celebrates his victories, he becomes annoyed at his losses, and he loots everything and everyone possible. The first arc, Ruby: Hard Mode is the beginning of the insane reason for his naming of the challenge into “Nuzlocke”. See, Ruby catches a Seedot, which evolves into Nuzleaf, that he names John Locke. You know, from LOST. This is only the tip of the reference iceberg, due to the creator’s self proclaimed “unhealthy” obsession with the show at the time. Pokemon Hard Mode, in its entirety, acts as an abridged version of whichever region/game Ruby is adventuring through, and often pokes fun at the NPC’s. For instance, in Ruby, the titular character’s father and gym leader Norman acts as a horrible father, replacing his son with a Vigoroth he named “Good Ruby”. Ironically, this is one of the more difficult gym fights in game, as well as the half-way point for the story.
The art style starts out looking more like a side project as a web comic. This begins, of course, as stick figures for the human characters and crude drawings of the Pokemon. Of course, the art evolves into a much more unique style come Fire Red: Hard Mode and once White: Hard Mode kicks in, the art in both the foreground and backgrounds has become incredibly smooth and polished, and seeing where the comic first started is an amazing jump.
Although it updates at incredibly irregular frequencies nowadays, Pokemon Hard Mode is an inspiration to every single Nuzlocke comic on the internet, as well as popularizing the incredible challenge. When there are tons of spin-offs, Pokemon Hard Mode is the precursor.