When you think of brutal video game challenges, Pokémon probably isn’t the first thing that comes to mind
Maybe Dark Souls, maybe Getting Over It. But Pokémon? That’s the cozy little RPG where you befriend a sentient onion fairy and beat up ten-year-olds with fire lizards. Not exactly sweat-mode gaming.
But deep in the community’s feverish underbelly, one challenge has been quietly melting brains for over a year.
It’s called Super Kaizo IronMon, and last Friday, a streamer named Reimi became the first person on Earth to actually beat it—on their 8,502nd try.
Let’s back up.
Super Kaizo IronMon is the final boss of fan-created Pokémon challenges. It was invented by streamer iateyourpie, a chaos architect best known for building increasingly cursed ways to play a game meant for literal children. It builds on the already-insane IronMon rules: randomized Pokémon, permadeath, no grinding, and a strict one-Pokémon-per-route limit. Then it adds more. And more. And more.
By the time you reach Super Kaizo, you’re basically playing chess against a brick wall while it’s on fire and also sometimes the brick wall is a Rayquaza.
Here’s just a taste of what this thing includes:
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Smarter enemy AI, gym leaders with full parties, and mandatory “pivoting” to a new main Pokémon halfway through the game.
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No grinding, no do-overs, no comfort.
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Bans on healing items, abilities, key areas, and entire movesets.
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One wrong step and it’s back to the title screen.
So yeah, it’s stupidly hard. And no one had ever done it—until Reimi finally did.
The winning run happened on Pokémon FireRed, randomized to hell. Reimi started with a Blissey, which he used to stomp his way through the first half of the game. But thanks to the pivot rule, he was forced to ditch her and pick a new lead. His choices? Three randomized Pokémon from a single route. One of them was a Crobat that evolved from an Ivysaur. He named it Heskey.
And Heskey delivered.
By the time Reimi reached the final boss—rival Blue—Heskey was level 90, stacked with a moveset of Earthquake, Sludge, Aerial Ace, and Thunderbolt. The fight was tense. Parasects burned him. A Quagsire almost ended the dream. Rayquaza—yes, Rayquaza—stalled the match with Refresh spam and endless healing. Reimi burned through his one Full Restore.
But somehow, Heskey made it through.
After nearly a year of attempts, Reimi had done it. The Super Kaizo IronMon challenge had been cleared. Once. Ever.
So what did he do next?
He started over.
At the time of writing, Reimi is just outside Viridian City with a level 39 Tentacruel named Squidward. Because of course he is.
Whether more wins will follow is up for debate. The guy who created the challenge literally warns on the rules page: “This is not meant for everyone.” Which feels like an understatement for something that took over 8,000 tries and a god-tier Crobat evolution to beat. But Reimi’s win proves it’s possible. Barely.
And maybe that’s enough—for now.
