Alleged Cheating at the 2014 Pokemon National Championships

The 2014 Pokemon Nation Championships took place at the Indiana Convention Center in Indianapolis this past weekend, but not all has been rosy. There's been accusations of cheating at the event, directed at three-time world Pokemon champ Ray Rizzo. Kotaku broke down all the details on the story thus far.

The game at the tournament, of course, was the recently released Pokemon X and Y. During a battle with another player by the name of Adib Alam, Rizzo sent out the sword Pokemon Aegislash, who appeared on the battlefield in a puff of pink smoke. That smoke indicated that Aegislash was being stored in a Dream Ball, a special type of Poke Ball that was used in Pokemon Black and White to capture creatures in a region called the Dream World. However, since Aegislash was only introduced in X and Y, there shouldn't be any way for it to have been caught in Black and White. The only explanation for this situation, fans speculated, was that Rizzo was using a hacked version of Aegislash.

Now, Rizzo didn't win the tournament, but fans are nonetheless upset by the thought that he would try to stack the deck in his favor. In a Facebook response, Rizzo defended himself, explaining that his Aegislash was raised properly and passed all the hack checks that regularly take place at these kinds of events. He surmises that the whole situation was simply a fluke — Aegislash was bred by another person and later traded to Rizzo. The breeder most likely didn't know that one of Aegislash's parents was hacked and had a Dream Ball associated with it. This trait was then passed down to the baby, which possessed no other enhancements or advantages over other Aegislashes.

Neither The Pokemon Company nor Nintendo have offered any statements regarding this incident.