Flash Caves

In every pokemon game, there are dark caves that require the move “flash”, for you to be able to see inside them. However, have you ever tried getting through them without it? I discovered this trick on Pokemon Gold, and have since tried it on every pokemon game I own. It works on them ALL, even previous generation red, blue, green and yellow games.

You must be in a dark cave, or anywhere that you should use flash. Walk around, fight pokemon in the dark, bump into trainers, and just keep wandering in the dark because eventually you will find a ladder that isn’t on the map. Go down it.

The screen will go black as you hear the ‘going down stairs’ noise, but it will play four times, as if you’ve just gone down four floors.

A text box will appear on the black screen saying simply, “where do you think you are?” The music is distorted for a few seconds, and the screen goes glitchy. Sometimes you might hear a ‘thud’ noise as if you’ve walked into a wall, or a distorted pokemon cry that sounds like a scream.

Then you’ll be able to see. In the older versions of the game, it simply looked like you’d found a new area that wasn’t on the map. In newer versions you can tell something is wrong because everything is in black and white.

You’ll be in a big, empty room. The four walls all have something written on them, usually your player name and the time, or the names of your pokemon. You can walk through one of the walls, which one depends on the game, if I remember rightly it’s the north wall in Diamond, and the left one in Yellow.. and so on.

When you go through the wall, you’ll be back in the overworld outside the cave. But everything will still be in black and white. The music will be slower, and lower too and occasionally it jumps. Trying to talk to people now is useless, you can’t interact with them anymore.

In pokemon Yellow, the pikachu that follows you around is now the sprite of a ghost from lavender town. If you check your pokemon, they will all be there, same stats and nicknames and moves, but all their icons are replaced by the ghost sprite. If you go into the grass and find wild pokemon, they will almost immediately run away or flee from you.

Go back into the dark cave you came out of. This is now the only place you can fight wild pokemon and other trainers, so long as you don’t use Flash.

I discovered recently, that if you play the game like this for long enough, in that one dark cave eventually you will see a trainer that looke like you (main character icon), they stand out, because they are in colour when everything else is black and white.

However, if you try to talk to them, all that happens is that a box pops up saying “Where do you think you are?”

The screen goes black, and you hear the distored music, thud, or scream from before…