You probably don't think of Pokémon when asked to name notoriously challenging games. Despite having a complex competitive meta, the campaigns of Pokémon games have been accused of being too easy for years now, especially in more recent games. As a result, fan communities have come up with various voluntary, restrictive challenges to make the game more difficult, such as the many variations of the Nuzlocke challenge.

But there's one fan-created challenge mode that's so difficult it had never been beaten... until now. It's the Super Kaizo Ironmon challenge, and it's just been defeated after over a year and thousands of attempts by hundreds of community members.

The Super Kaizo IronMon challenge was created by streamer iateyourpie, who came up with it in 2024. It builds off of the IronMon challenge and its past variations, which iateyourpie created a few years before that, and which was already a difficult way to play Pokémon.

The standard IronMon challenge includes rules such as required use of a randomizer, all enemy trainer and wild Pokémon levels increased by 50%, a requirement that if a Pokémon faints, it cannot be used anymore, and a rule that you can only catch OR kill one Pokémon per route — no grinding wild encounters for EXP.

Then, there's the Ultimate IronMon rules, which add more restrictions such as only allowing six Pokémon to be obtained during the run total, not letting you leave a Gym once you enter until you've beaten it, and only allowing players to enter a dungeon one time.

And then on top of that there's Kaizo IronMon, which adds rules like only one Pokémon being allowed to be used at a time, only allowing players to catch Pokémon up to four levels higher than the highest Pokémon on their team, prevents killing any wild Pokémon at all, and bans all sorts of helpful items, abilities, moves, and Pokémon.

Super Kaizo IronMon takes literally all of those rules, and for some unhinged reason, adds even more. It require a ROM patch to give trainers smart AI and held items, and gives Gym Leaders full teams of six, making them far more difficult than normal. It forces players to "pivot" to a new Pokémon midway through the game, and has restrictions as to how that Pokémon can be chosen. It bans even more moves and items, and has various requirements for different versions of Pokémon that restrict certain areas such as the Trick House in Pokemon Emerald, the S.S. Anne in FireRed and LeafGreen, and Amity Square in Pokémon Platinum.

So, yeah, maybe no shocker that this took so long to beat, huh? But streamer Reimi has finally managed to do it after an eye-popping 8,502 attempts. The winning run, which concluded this past Friday, took place on Pokémon FireRed. Because it's a randomizer, any Pokémon can appear anywhere, so Reimi's starter Pokémon choice was between a Krabby, a Weedle, and a Blissey. Unshockingly, Reimi went with the Blissey, which became his main fighter for the whole first half of the run.

But because of the pivot rule, Reimi had to swap main Pokémon halfway through the game. He was allowed to catch three different Pokémon from one specific area to choose from, and ultimately settled on a Crobat nicknamed Heskey that evolved from... Ivysaur (it's a randomizer!). Reimi's initial reaction to the evolution on screen was, "That's at least something," but that something turned into a whole heck of a lot as the run continued.

It all culminated in a nervewracking final battle against Blue with Heskey at level 90 and equipped with Earthquake, Sludge, Aerial Ace, and Thunderbolt. In this randomized version, Heskey took out Blue's Camerupt easily with a one-shot Earthquake, and a Parasect with Aerial Ace. Parasect left a nasty partying gift in the form of Flame Body burning Heskey, only for Blue to send out a second Parasect with Acid Armor. Heskey still managed to take it out a single shot with Sludge after healing the burn, and Blue sent out his ace next: a level 95 Quagsire. But Heskey dispatched THAT in one shot too, with a critical hit Earthquake.

Next up was a level 86 Rayquaza, of all things, which proved trickier. Heskey had to slowly chop its health down with Sludge, and while he managed to poison it, Blue kept using Full Restores and Rayquaza kept using Refresh to negate Heskey's efforts. At one point, Reimi had to use the one Full Restore in his bag just to keep Heskey alive, despite wanting to save it for a potential Dynamic Punch later in the fight. Eventually, Rayquaza dropped, leaving Poliwrath. Three attacks later, Heskey finished the job, and Reimi became the first person ever to finish Super Kaizo IronMon.

So what's Reimi doing now that Super Kaizo IronMon has been conquered? He's... still playing it. At the time this piece was written, Reimi was just outside of Viridian City with a level 39 Tentacruel named Squidward.

Reimi's victory will likely pave the way for more wins down the road, but iateyourpie's disclaimer on the Super Kaizo IronMon rules page, "This is not meant for everyone," certainly rings true given how ridiculous it was just to get one person to reach the end of the challenge exactly one time.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.

Some Nintendo Switch 2 owners are reporting that their Nintendo Switch 2 Joy-Cons are disconnecting over and over again. However, they've also found an easy fix: just use the Nintendo Switch 2 official HDMI cable.

This comes from a number of Reddit posts, where users are reporting Nintendo Switch 2 Joy-Cons disconnecting randomly, sometimes every few minutes. Our own tech editor, Bo Moore, has also suffered from this issue beginning immediately after unboxing and hooking up his brand new Nintendo Switch 2, saying his console would lose connection with the Joy-Cons every few seconds.

But it turns out, the solution was a simple one: just use the HDMI cable that comes with the Nintendo Switch 2, rather than whatever other HDMI cable you happen to have lying around.

For some this might be obvious, but it sounds like a number of users have been unhooking their old Nintendo Switch 1's from their TVs, but not swapping out the cables under the assumption that the old ones would work. Plugging in the Nintendo Switch 2 to the old Nintendo Switch 1 cables seems like it should be fine, but it turns out that it's not. This is because the Nintendo Switch 1 HDMI is not an "ultra high speed" HDMI cable, while the Nintendo Switch 2 cable is. So if for some reason you don't want to use the cable that came with your Switch 2, any other ultra high speed HDMI should work instead.

Our tech editor confirmed that using the new Nintendo Switch 2 HDMI cable solved the problem for him, as it seems to have solved it for several other users online.

Nintendo is also advising people of the same via its official support website:

Confirm that you're using an "Ultra High Speed" HDMI cable to connect the dock to the TV. If it's not Ultra High Speed, your console won't perform as expected when docked.

• If you're using a different cable than the one that came with the console, it should have printed on the cable that it's "Ultra High Speed."
• The HDMI cable that came with the Nintendo Switch is not "Ultra High Speed" and should not be used with the Nintendo Switch 2 dock.

Generally it's a pretty good idea to use the included cables and accessories with any piece of technology, but it's a good reminder too that if for some reason you need to replace the Nintendo Switch 2 HDMI cable, you'll need a special one if you want to play with functioning Joy-Con controllers.

For all the accessories not included in the box with the Nintendo Switch 2, check out our guide to the best Nintendo Switch 2 accessories available now, or take a look at our in-depth guides to the best Nintendo Switch 2 controllers and headsets.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.

The Alters developer 11 Bit Studios has responded to fan accusations it used generative AI text and translation in the game, and has promised an update to both to replace the AI-generated content with handcrafted assets.

Last week, players of The Alters spotted what appeared to be text generated by AI in the game, on a screen in the Command Center. Specifically, the text includes the line, "Sure, here's a revised version focusing purely on scientific and astronomical data:" followed by a Captain's log, which suggests that someone prompted an AI for the text and forgot to delete the AI's lead-in response.

In the English-language version of the game, that was the end of it. However, players of other language versions began to point out that some of the game's translations include lines like, "Sure! Here is the translated text into Brazilian Portuguese.", suggesting that 11 Bit Studios had used generative AI to localize at least some portion of the game. The Alters does not include a disclosure on its Steam page stating that it includes generative AI, which Valve makes mandatory for all games that use the technology.

In a statement sent via email to IGN and published across social platforms, 11 Bit Studios offered an explanation for the generative AI text and translations. The studio explained that the Captain's Log text was intended as a placeholder and simply got missed during final release, and that no other such instances appear in the game. As for the localization, 11 Bit says that generative AI translations were limited to a few cutscenes added very late in development that needed last-minute translations, and that it always intended to replace them with professional translations.

Here's the studio's statement, in full:

We’ve seen a wide range of accusations regarding the use of AI-generated content in The Alters, and we feel it’s important to clarify our approach and give you more context. AI-generated assets were used strictly as temporary WIPs during the development process and in a very limited manner. Our team has always prioritized meaningful, handcrafted storytelling as one of the foundations of our game.

During production, an AI-generated text for a graphic asset, which was meant as a piece of background texture, was used by one of our graphical designers as a placeholder. This was never intended to be part of the final release. Unfortunately, due to an internal oversight, this single placeholder text was mistakenly left in the game. We have since conducted a thorough review and confirmed that this was an isolated case, and the asset in question is being updated.

For transparency, we’ve included a screenshot to show how and where it appears in the game. While we do not want to downplay the situation, we also want to clearly show its limited impact on your gaming experience.

In addition to that, a few licensed movies that the alters can watch in the social area of the base were added at the final stage of development. While those were externally produced, our team was not involved in the creative process, and these required additional last-minute translations. Due to extreme time constraints, we chose not to involve our translation partners and had these videos localized using AI to have them ready on launch. It was always our intention to involve our trusted translation agencies after release as part of our localization hotfix, to ensure those texts would be handled with the same care and quality as the rest of the game. That process is now underway, and updated translations are being implemented.

To give you a better understanding of what a small part of the overall scope of the game’s narrative layer they are, those few external movies are approximately 10k words out of 3.4 million across all languages in the game, or just 0.3% of the overall text. The alternative was to release those specific dialogues in English only, which we believed would be a worse experience for non-English speakers. In hindsight, we acknowledge this was the wrong call. Even more so, no matter what we decided, we should have simply let you know.

As AI tools evolve, they present new challenges and opportunities in game development. We’re actively adapting our internal processes to meet this reality. But above all, we remain committed to transparency in how we make our games. We appreciate your understanding and continued support as we work towards that goal.

11 Bit Studios is just the latest company to come under fire for generative AI usage. Just last week, Jurassic World Evolution 3 developer Frontier Developments had to walk back its use of generative AI characters portraits after widespread criticism. Activision has been skewered repeatedly for its generative AI use, including recent examples of an ad for a Guitar Hero game that doesn't exist, and certain Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 assets. Other games, such as Palworld, have been accused of using generative AI but have gone to great lengths to prove the accusations were unfounded and that no generative AI was used.

Regardless of generative AI usage, we gave The Alters an 8/10 in our review, calling it "a highly atmospheric sci-fi character study mixed with simple but effective resource and base management that cleverly builds existential and interpersonal pressure throughout its story."

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.