This happened to me a few years ago when I was around 13 years. I’ve always enjoyed the Pokémon series, but there was one game in particular, Pokémon Emerald or any of the gen 3 games, that I wanted to play but couldn’t afford.
One day, while I was making my way to the playground, I stumbled into a garage sale. I decided to look at some of the items they had because I was interested. I walked over to a Gameboy Advance game cartridge I had seen and realized it was a Pokémon game. Pokémon Husk, I had never heard of it. Naturally, I was aware that it was a bootleg game, but I thought, “Why not?” I had nothing to do, and I thought it would be interesting to play a bootleg Pokémon game. I brought it to the elderly man operating the garage stand and paid him $1 for it. The game cartridge had “Pokémon Husk” scribbled over it in red marker, otherwise it appeared to be a standard Pokémon Emerald cartridge.
I brought it home, inserted the Gameboy Advance cartridge, and found a save file entitled “Brendan” inside. I selected the file, found myself in a forest, and wanted to see what Pokémon he had. He just had a Shedinja that knew the moves, Sunny Day, and Grudge. I traveled about for a while before I ran into a trainer named Emerald. Brendan sent out Shedinja and Emerald sent out Duskull, and we got into a Pokémon battle.
Everything was normal until I used grudge. It said “Shedinja used Decay” rather than “Shedinja used Grudge”. The trainer sprite for Emerald appeared to be deteriorating, and Duskull’s skull was missing, revealing a multitude of terrifying eyes underneath. I was terrified, but I was unable to turn the Gameboy off, so I was forced to continue playing. I noticed that Brendan and Shedinja’s sprites had horrified expressions. It was almost as though Shedinja didn’t want it to happen. It creeped me out even more.
It was my turn, I used sunny day, and the backdrop of the Pokémon battle started to burn. This creepily ended the battle. Instead of the usual fainted messages, it said “Brendan died” before Brendan’s player sprite faded away. The screen went blank, and a message said, “They are husks. They are dead,” before my Gameboy shut off. My Game Boy was broken. It was unable to turn on. I went to an electronics repair shop, where they informed me that the Gameboy was basically a husk because the internal components had been badly fried. There was nothing they could do.
I decided to head to the house where the garage sale was held for answers, but when I arrived, it had been burned down; a passersby told me that the house had been burned down for years. I’m still not sure what happened. I know I bought the game because I still have it. Please let me know if you have any ideas of what I could do!