The challenge (original known as Pokémon Ruby: Hard-Mode) was started in the winter of 2010 by Ruby/Nuzlocke who created a new save file on a old copy of Pokémon Ruby to pass the time. As he played the game, he realized that they had become boring and repetitive; so he created two rules that he would follow to make the game harder: 1. * He could only capture the first Pokémon he encountered in each new area. 2. * If a Pokémon fainted he would consider it dead and release it.