WARMTH LIKE HOME UNAWARES

So, I started a quest to catch every Pokemon in Pokemon Yellow and comment on all the Pokedex entries. This is the masterpost of that series! I'm working on this every now and then... who knows if I'll ever complete it... but here it is!

Part 1 - Pikachu, Pidgey, Rattata, Spearow, Nidoran, Mankey
Part 2 - Caterpie, Metapod, Butterfree, Weedle, Kakuna, Beedrill, Pidgeotto
Part 3 - Sandshrew, Zubat, Geodude, Paras, Clefairy
Part 4 - Charmander, Charmeleon, Clefable, Jigglypuff, Oddish, Venonat, Abra, Kadabra, Alakazam, Bellsprout

( By Pokemon )

So a couple changes I noticed for Pokemon Yellow:

Coffee guy now stops you and says that he has had his coffee, forces you to watch his tutorial on how to catches a Pokemon, fails to catch it, and runs off never to be seen again. Very funny lol.

There's a couple new trainers in Viridian Forest. There's a girl looking for Pikachu who says there are none there (I guess a hint that Pikachu is no longer a possible encounter for the forest, since Pikachu is meant to be unique as the starter this time). Then another guy who says he's going to be the best, and comments on how Metapod is cool after you beat him (I approve of this trainer!)

The encounters in Viridian Forest have also changed. Weedle is now completely gone, and I guess to match the anime, you can encounter not only Pidgey, but wild Pidgeotto. This is where Ash caught his Pigeotto (as well as his Caterpie) so I guess it makes sense those are the only two encounters here. Though I think he also encountered quite a few other things while he was in the forest but whatever XD The game just gives us Caterpie, Metapod, Pidgey, and Pidgeotto.

So I had to load up Pokemon Red from the Revenge playthrough and trade over a Weedle. Then I leveled up the two bugs to level 10 to evolve them into their final forms, and caught a Pidgeotto. That gives us a whopping SEVEN new Pokemon just for the forest!


#0010 - Caterpie
Worm Pokemon

One of my favorites, Caterpie! I like the Blue sprite the best this time. The RG sprite is very similar, but the Blue looks a little more touched-up. The Yellow sprite makes him more sideways and I think I don't like the "softness" of the Yellow sprites. The RG and Blue sprites have defined, solid edges while the Yellow sprites have lightened parts of their outlines that just don't look right to me.

"Its short feet are tipped with suction pads that enable it to tirelessly climb slopes and walls."
"If you touch the feeler on top of its head, it will release a horrible stink to protect itself."
"It has large, eye-like patterns on its head as protection. They are used to frighten off enemies."

Nice! We learn three things about these little guys in the three different entries! I wonder if its feet enable it to climb on ceilings as well, or if it's too heavy (it's a foot long and 6lbs) for its tiny suction feet. I guess it depends on how strong the suction is.

I actually never knew that it could release a smell -- I don't think that ever comes up in the anime, and Caterpie doesn't learn any moves that would indicate it could do that, so it must be a passive thing and not a move.

It says it has eye-like patterns on its head as protection. Does that mean those things are not its eyes...? Where are its eyes...???? At first I thought it was referring to the little yellow rings along its body segments but it specifically says eye-like and on its head so that leads me to believe it's talking about the "eyes" on its face. Does it just not have eyes...? Even the cocoons have eyes so that would be really strange if it had no eyes. Maybe we'll learn more in future games...


#0011 - Metapod
Cocoon Pokemon

It's me! I like the RG sprite as it looks like the design artwork. The Blue sprite is kinda messed up; I don't even know what direction it's technically facing... and then I hate the Yellow sprite because it's an angle from the back that makes it look like the front is the back and the eyes look "angry" because they're backward. There's an official artwork of Metapod that looks like this, too, and I hate it lol.

"This Pokémon is vulnerable to attack while its shell is soft, exposing its weak and tender body."
"Hardens its shell to protect itself. However, a large impact may cause it to pop out of its shell."
"When it hardens, only the external shell is transformed. The inside remains tender."

This is a strange one indeed. I didn't know that Metapod was initially soft. I guess it makes sense, but since its signature move is Harden I just always assumed it was various levels of hard.

But the strangest part is that a "large impact may cause it to pop out of its shell." Pop out?! What pops out...? A half-transformed Caterpie? Just a regular caterpie? A Butterfree? A mid-metamorphosis blob? Does it depend on what stage of evolution it is it? Would that correlate to level? I have so many questions... the "inside remains tender" so it sounds like it's just some sort of blob. A blob that pops out. And it's an impact that causes it to pop out, not a rupture. So it just bursts through its shell by being rammed into. Sounds kind of gruesome to be honest.

Well, I learned more about Metapod today...


#0012 - Butterfree
Butterfly Pokemon

All three sprites of Butterfree are pretty good. I like the original for looking like it's mid-fight, but the Blue sprite with the kicked up legs looks really cute, too. The one-leg-up Yellow sprite is the least appealing, but it's not bad by any means.

It's interesting to note that while Caterpie is only 1 foot long, Metapod was 2'7", and then Butterfree is 3'7"! How does that whole thing fit in little Metapod shell? And why does Metapod take up an entire foot and a half more than Caterpie?

"In battle, it flaps its wings at high speed to release highly toxic dust into the air."
"Its wings, covered with poisonous powders, repel water. This allows it to fly in the rain."
"Its wings are covered with poisonous dust. If you see one flapping its wings, be careful not to inhale any of the dust."

It's interesting that all three entries mention its poisonous wings, something that never really came up in the anime. Game Butterfree sounds pretty dangerous! You even shouldn't breathe when you're near one that is flying! It's also a cool little touch that it has hydrophobic wings. You'd think being constantly pelted by heavy rain would make it hard to fly even if your wings repelled the water, but hey, it works! Definitely an interesting tidbit about Butterfree.


#0013 - Weedle
Hairy Bug Pokemon

Classified as the "Hairy Bug" Pokemon, it seems Weedle and Caterpie may be less related to each other than Rattata and Pikachu are to one another. As for sprites, they're all pretty ugly, to be honest. The Blue sprite probably looks the best, with the Yellow sprite being absolutely horrendous.

"Often found in forests, eating leaves. It has a sharp venomous stinger on its head."
"Beware of the sharp stinger on its head. It hides in grass and bushes where it eats leaves."
"A common sight in forests and grassy areas. Has a poison stinger on its head that may be used if you step on it."

Not nearly as interesting as Caterpie, Weedle's main "point" (heehee) is its stinger, and the fact that it eats leaves, I guess. I would assume Caterpie eats leaves, too, but we didn't get any insight into its diet in its entries. One thing I noticed is a common theme throughout these entries is that most of them caution about the danger to humans. Of course, the lore is that going into grass alone is quite dangerous, and we did learn that a Zubat bit that one Hiker in Red, and he even had Pokemon with him. So it seems that the Pokemon world is actually quite dangerous, with every little monster almost posing some kind of threat to your safety or even life.


#0014 - Kakuna
Cocoon Pokemon

Another Cocoon Pokemon, Kakuna! I actually like the look of Kakuna more than Metapod sometimes (don't tell anyone, though!) because of its sharper shapes and menacing design. Metapod is good for your laid-back look, though, which suits me better as a namesake.

The eyes look a little "off" in the Yellow sprite, like a little too small. The Blue sprite is interesting because it shows that it actually has arm-like things, and those aren't just the shape of a rigid shell.

"Almost incapable of moving, this Pokémon can only harden its shell to protect itself from predators."
"Able to move only slightly. When endangered, it may stick out its stinger and poison its enemy."
"Because it is virtually motionless, it may appear dead. Inside, however, a new body is being made."

So we learn that it doesn't move much. Not too surprising since it's a cocoon... but one interesting thing mentioned is that it can "stick out its stinger" to poison the enemy. I wonder where this stinger is on its body...? Maybe those arm-like appendages from the Blue sprite are stingers? Or maybe it has a stinger out of its sharp "bottom." Metapod's entry didn't say anything about being motionless or "appearing dead" so is it possible that Metapod actually moves more than Kakuna? Caterpie appears in many modern games, and Metapod's 3D model tends to rock back and forth. So it's quite possible that Metapod actually moves a lot. Maybe we're learning more about Metapod than we are Kakuna right now... (well, the stinger thing was pretty cool).

Also, because they retain their moves when they evolve, Metapod is capable of using Tackle, while Kakuna can use Poison Sting. Tackle certainly would require more movement than a sting, which could be done, as said, near motionlessly.


#0015 - Beedrill
Poison Bee Pokemon

Beedrill has great sprites. The RG sprite has the stingers out of the way to expose its sexy hymenopteran body, while the other two look perfectly cool as well. The Blue sprite makes it look ready to strike, very cool. The Yellow sprite did a nice job on adding detail to the wings, but overall it looks so "poor-resolution" because of all the fuzzy edges.

Also interesting to note is that Beedrill is four inches shorter than Butterfree.

"Flies at high speed and attacks using its large venomous stingers on its forelegs and tail."
"It has 3 poisonous stingers on its forelegs and its tail. They are used to jab its enemy repeatedly."
"Flies at high speeds and attacks with three stingers: one on its rear and one on each of its two forelegs. May appear in swarms."

Sadly we don't learn too much from Beedrill's Pokedex entries. Basically we learn that it has three stingers -- two on its forelegs and one on its "tail." But you can tell that just by looking at it... I guess it's nice to know that all three are poisonous stingers. I actually didn't know that before. "Flies at high speed" is an interesting detail, as you wouldn't assume a bee to be particularly fast. But it looks like it could be fast from its slender body art. Also we learn it can appear in swarms. Ah, I'd love to be swarmed by a bunch of Beedrill~~

While Caterpie and Metapod are my bugs of choice for the first two evolutions of the Viridian Forest Pokemon, I vastly prefer Beedrill to Butterfree. Maybe because I have a crush on Beedrill, but it's just super cool looking, and I'm much more a fan of bees than butterflies. It's also theorized that Venomoth was originally going to be the evolution of Metapod, with Butterfree being the evolution of Venonat, but the designs were swapped to give a more "friendly" face to a bug early in the game. Personally I like Venomoth way more than Butterfree, so it's a little bit of a shame. I'd love to have a Venomoth from the beginning fo the game.


#0017 - Pidgeotto
Bird Pokemon

Bird Pokemon. Well, I guess that's the next step up from "Tiny Bird" Pokemon. Is Pidgeot going to be the "Big Bird" Pokemon? Hahaha. Anyway, Pidgeotto is a really cool-looking Pokemon. As for disturbingly crushing on animal-like monsters, the birds are probably my favorite after the bugs. Pidgeotto is one of my favorites, while it's not as majestic and elegant looking as its evolution Pidgeot, there's something about it that just looks extra cool.

It looks kinda tubby in its RG and Blue sprites, and slims down for Yellow, but it also gets a haircut. Feathercut? I like the long headfeathers on Pidgeotto, so the Yellow sprite not showcasing them as much is a bit of a let-down. All three sprites are decent, though, and I don't have a clear favorite. Maybe the RG one for the open beak looking a little more "active" than the other two who are just sitting there.

"Very protective of its sprawling territorial area, this Pokémon will fiercely peck at any intruder."
"This Pokémon is full of vitality. It constantly flies around its large territory in search of prey."
"It builds its nest in the center of its large territory. It uses its powerfully-developed talons to swiftly snatch prey."

A couple nice little tidbits here, we learn that it has a very large area of territory, being much more aggressively protective of it than the docile and shy Pidgey. We also learn that it catches prey with its talons -- interestingly, we don't learn what kind of prey it feeds on, so it's possible that it may not only eat bugs, but also the Mouse Pokemon, Pikachu and Rattata...? It sounds like it would be dangerous for a flying type to try to feed on an electric type, but it could be that Pidgeotto is quite intelligent, and can tell if a Pikachu has stored up enough electricity to attack back with that type of power. After all, Pikachu's initial reaction to attacks/danger is to bite, not electrocute, so if Pidgeotto could snatch one up in its talons, it would be pretty defenseless. Same to Rattata's big bite if it can pick it up the right way.

Pidgeotto is 3'7", as big as a Butterfree, so it's unlikely that it feeds on anything as big as that or a Beedrill. Rattata and Pikachu are about 1 foot, so it's not impossible that Pidgeotto could catch them as prey. After all, they're about the same size as a Caterpie or Weedle, and since it seems Pidgeotto is a fairly aggressive predator, it's unlikely it would be adapted like that just to feed on the less mobile Metapod and Kakuna.

In the original RGB games, and later in Yellow, Pidgeotto shares habitat with possible-prey Venonat and Oddish (and I guess, possible, Ditto and Gloom, but I can't imagine Pidgeotto eating something as vile and large as Gloom, nor can I imagine anything eating a Ditto at all lol).

Pidgeotto actually shares habitat with a wide variety of monsters in Yellow, surprisingly, as it's quite common across the region. Possible prey based on shared habitat in Yellow include Abra, Rattata, Jigglypuff (!), Bellsprout, Oddish, and Venonat. And more disturbingly, I guess, is Pidgey as possibility, but I would hope it least refrains from eating its own kin, especially when it would want them to evolve into more Pidgeottos. Or maybe it's so territorial it doesn't even want to share its turf with its own kind... It's also possible that near water it could scoop up a splashing Magikarp or something...? Who knows.

And that's it for this entry. Next time we're going to be going to Pewter City and fighting Brock, and then it will be on to Route 3 to see what new Pokemon we can encounter there!

So recently I set out to create the "ultimate team" in Pokemon Red and see how it would do through the game. My game save on my phone got corrupted but I got "revenge" on it by clearing the game on my PC emulator. Here's the playthrough:



Part 0 - The premise and planned team.
Part 1 - Beginning to Vermilion
Part 2 - Vermilion to Celadon
Part 3 - Celadon to Fuschia
Part 4 - Cycling Road to Viridian
Part 5 - Ending and Post-Game

So the journey continues...

I went back to Route 16 and found the "hidden retreat" where you get the HM02, and taught Dodrio Fly. Very covenient! Then I ran around in the grass and leveled up Tentacool one level so he'd evolve to Tentacruel. I just couldn't help it... I wanted to have the full team fully evolved...!!



And now the gang's all here! Look at how cool Tenta looks with his crossed... tentacles... XD I love it.



On Cycling Road we encounter a new trainer class, the Cue Ball. These smexy dudes sport shiny bald heads, studded leather, and a whip. Yeah, we have leather daddy Pokemon Trainers now.



Not much lore to collect down Cycling Road, though I noticed on the map it's shown as a water route. I guess the road goes over the water? But it seems to be land when you're traveling on it...? At least in some parts. IDK lol.

We get some funny things, like a sign that says "Don't throw the game, throw Poke Balls instead!" and a Bird Trainer who says he "collects sea Pokemon on weekends."



With Cycling Road out of the way, we can either surf to Cinnabar Island or head into the center of the map, Saffron City. We're gonna go to Saffron and finish up one of the most annoying parts of the game.

Team Rocket has taken over Saffron, with grunts stationed everywhere, including in front of the gym. There's a second gym of fighting-type Pokemon that doesn't award a gym badge, but rather gifts you a choice of Hitmonlee or Hitmonchan. We blazed through with Drill Peck and took Hitmonlee, dumping him into the box immediately.



And they we head on to... THE TERROR.

The Silph Co. building has been apprehended by Team Rocket, who actually have convinced some Silph Co. workers to join their side! It seems that the Rockets are after the technology of Silph Co., in particular the Master Ball, which can catch any Pokemon without fail.

This place has eleven floors, each of which has a handful of teleporter pads, which take you to other teleporter pads on other floors. There's no way to know which floor you're on as the game doesn't tell you, unless you count the stairs or use the elevator to hit a specific floor. But once you teleport, who knows where you are! On top of that, there are locked doors with a card key.

I actually managed to get through pretty easily -- it's more frustrating SOUNDING than it actually is. I always dread this place, but it's not as horrible as my fears lead me to believe.

Basically, I go up a few floors, fighting all the Rockets and Silph-betraying scientists I can find until I find the Card Key. It's on like floor 4. It's a little tricky to find as it's hidden back behind a little hallway in which you have to first teleport away from it then back to it to find it (makes more sense if you're playing, I promise).

Once I've snagged the card key, I go back to floor 2 (floor 1 is just a giant lobby with a cool fountain thing) and start opening every door and finding every item and trainer battle I can. Important to note is that I'm not going into any teleporters. Once I've "cleared" a floor, I head up the stairs to the next floor, until I arrive at floor 11, which has nothing you can do there coming from the stairs or elevator. Then I go back to floor 2 again (lol) and start stepping on one teleporter at a time. If it just takes me to a place I've already explored on another floor, I go back through the teleporter and find the next one.

Eventually, I find a teleporter that takes me to a place I haven't explored, where Blue is waiting to fight me.

On the way, I encounter a guy who mentions that Silph has a "Tiksi Branch" in Russia. I don't think this is ever referenced again in the series, and so far I don't think any games have taken place in Russia. The regions in the game all seem to correlate to real-world locations -- Kanto is a real region in Japan, and the map is very similar to the actual place IRL. But it's only in the first game that we hear them refer to actual countries, mentioning America in Surge's gym and now Russia. But usually they refer to other "regions" and not countries, so it's a little odd to hear of countries in this game. I don't know if they just retconned countries out of the series, or if they just stopped talking about them, with the implication that regions are within larger countries, but no one really refers to countries themselves with much significance.

Also along the way we find some "Pokemon Reports" which contain little bits of information, two of which are more game hints, but one says that in "Pokemon Lab" (assuming Silph's?) the Pokemon Porygon was created, the world's first virtual reality Pokemon.

This is interesting because this implies that humans can create entire Pokemon species. While it's called a VR Pokemon, it also exists in the real world, and can interact with real Pokemon and things, so that's very... amusing at the least.



Anyway, fighting Blue. One thing I want to note is that it's interesting how they give him unevolved Pokemon that you would normally find around this time. He has a Growlithe, which is found late in the game, so it makes sense that it's not evolved yet. Interesting.

Raichu's Thunderbolt wasn't able to take out the bulky Blastoise in one hit. It ALMOST did, but we got hit with a Bite in retaliation. Didn't cause too much damage, though.



After defeating Blue, the next teleporter takes you to the president's room on floor 11. So it's not actually that hard to find. There were some random items I missed by not going onto every last teleporter, but we did find TM26 (Earthquake) and that's the most important thing.

In the president's meeting room, we find Giovanni harassing the president and his secretary, trying to fully take over Silph Co. It seems we arrived just in time, because we are able to challenge him to a battle and get him to stop.

And with that, Team Rocket is disbanded. Nope, not joking! For some reason defeating Gio in a battle here makes the entire team disband. It could be because they were using Silph Co. as their base, and the only secondary base they could have had was the basement of the Game Corner, both of which we have now cleared out all the Rockets. So they have nowhere to go.

Either way, the Global Police were on this case, and a random 10-year-old managed to disband them before they could. I like to believe that Team Rocket is quite young, and may have gotten a start as a small-force group running a gambling ring. The whole taking-over-Silph-Co. thing is relatively new, as they didn't even seem to have gotten to the president yet. So it's kinda like this stuff is JUST NOW happening, and we are more managing it to stop it before it gets big, rather than completely dismembering a well-established mafia. I mean, they didn't even manage to collect a single fossil in Mt. Moon, while a random nerd had already found two. So it's kinda like we're getting there just at the same time as them, and beating them to the punches.

For saving the president, he rewards us with the Master Ball. Now we can catch any Pokemon without fail, but there's only one in the entire game.



With the Rockets banished from Saffron City, we can now get into the gym they were formerly guarding. Here is yet another teleporter maze/puzzle thing. I managed to "solve" it by just always going in the bottom left teleporter (every room has four) until eventually I reached the end.

Sabrina, the gym leader, has had psychic powers since she was small, originally learning to bend spoons with her mind and developing her powers from there. She actually doesn't like battling, but complies with our request for a gym badge, and fights us anyway. Dodrio pecks through all of her Pokemon easily.



After defeating Sabrina, there's only a few places left in the region we haven't visited: the abandoned Power Plant (sidequest to find Zapdos), the Seafoam Islands (sidequest to find Articuno), the Pokemon League HQ (need all 8 badges to get there), and Cinnabar Island, where the 7th gym awaits. So, we're gonna go there. Yeah, skipping the sidequests for now.

I actually surfed from Fuschia to the east entrance of Seafoam Islands, then flew to Pallet town and surfed down to Cinnabar, then surfed to the west entrance of the Islands lol. I just didn't go inside. Well I did go inside for a little bit but got frustrated and left.

In Cinnabar, this dude says there's nothing wrong with having lots of items, and as the limited inventory in this game has taught me, he is dead wrong!

Apparently the gym leader Blaine has been living on this island for decades, so we know there's at least some history to the island. There's also a "burned out mansion," though it's not really explained why it burned down. One of the scientists inside says his mentor used to live there, though, so it sounds like either it belonged to a scientist or it housed many different people.



Also in the mansion we find scattered pages of a diary. I don't know if there are more, but I was able to find four of them, which detailed the following events:

• A new Pokemon was discovered deep in the jungles of Guyana, South America (yes, more referencing to real-world places, now including continents!)


• The scientists named the newly-discovered Pokemon "Mew."


• Mew gave birth to a new Pokemon, which they named "Mewtwo."


• Mewtwo grew too powerful, and they were unable to stop its violent rampage.

Important to note here is that Mew apparently GAVE BIRTH to a Pokemon, and the Pokemon was not another Mew. Now, human-led breeding of Pokemon is always done through eggs, not live birth. Technically it doesn't say that Mewtwo didn't come from an egg, so it could be possible that Mew laid an egg. But either way, Pokemon are not born from other Pokemon, rather the Pokemon somehow "bring" the eggs, and humans seem to have no idea where the eggs actually come from. Pokemon even bring eggs to picnics while under watch of their trainers, so it's assumed that the eggs are created from the power of love and friendship or something, and they are NOT actually being birthed.



But this says specifically that Mew gave birth. Now, Mew is a mythical Pokemon, and mythical and legendary Pokemon are generally not capable of creating eggs in the traditional way. And it is possible for Pokemon to "create" other Pokemon, as Arceus does later in the series. So is it possible that in this one case, scientists actually witnessed a wild Pokemon giving birth? Even if it was through laying an egg? I don't think it's every actually retconned or anything, and the birth is indeed referenced again even after the concept of Pokemon breeding and eggs is introduced into the series (which, btw, "breeding" in the Pokemon world refers to the daily care of Pokemon, NOT mating of Pokemon). So this may be the one time in the history of the Pokemon world that humans actually witnessed the birth of a Pokemon.

Another theory could be that a Mew-a-like appeared near Mew some time, and while they did not witness an actual birth or egg-laying or anything (or maybe Mew did bring an egg but they didn't actually witness its creation), and they scientists assumed that Mew gave birth. It's unlikely that Mew brought an egg, though, as Pokemon eggs weren't discovered by humans and studied until 3 years after the events of this game, and the existence of a Pokemon Egg seems to be completely unheard of then.

The source of Pokemon Eggs also seems to be a mystery in the future, as scientists then don't assume that eggs are birthed from Pokemon. So either the studies here were not very thorough, or they indeed witnessed a live birth of a Pokemon, an extraordinarily rare occurance. It may even be that Mew is the only Pokemon even capable of giving birth, and this may have been a one-time occurance that happened to be witnessed by humans? Mew's body is said to contain the DNA of all Pokemon, so it may be very special in the case that it is capable of birthing a new species.

...

In lesser-interesting and lesser-theoretical lore, we also learn that a scientist within the burned-out mansion created the TM for Metronome. These don't seem to be Silph scientists, and later in this entry we'll learn of another person creating TMs, so it's safe to say that Silph is not the sole creator of TMs, but probably more just the largest supplier of them. They do seem to be able to be mass-produced, as you can buy infinite of them from the Celadon City Department Store or continuously redeem them as prizes at the Rocket Game Corner, though many of them seem to be quite rare, at least to Red.



Anyway, at the end of the mansion we find a key to the gym, and can finally go inside. The gym is pretty simple, just a gauntlet of trainer battles, each opening a new door until we finally meet Blaine. Blaine unfortunately does not have his iconic mustache here -- in the Nintendo 64 companion game Pokemon Stadium, this is "corrected," as he's retconned to have a fantastic honkin' 'stache, and his image isn't complete without it moving forward.

One of the gym members reveals the reason Blaine became a Pokemon Trainer if you talk to them after defeating them -- apparently Blaine was once lost in the mountains and a fiery bird Pokemon's light (assumedly Moltres) helped him find his way home.

Blaine's Pokemon (and the Pokemon throughout the gym) fall easily to Tentacruel's Surf, and we're able to move on.

After acquiring the other 7 gym badges, the gym leader of Viridian City returns to his gym and we're able to challenge there. While the gym's theme is meant to be ground-type Pokemon, the members of the gym use all kinds of stuff like fighting types.



Surprise, the gym leader is none other than Daddy Giovanni! Apparently he decided to return to the gym to try to resurrect Team Rocket, but we've foiled his plans again. Now, Blue defeated this gym and gained the gym badge prior to Red coming here, so why is it only until Red defeats him that he decides he can't revive Team Rocket anymore...? The world may never know.

He also reveals that he created the TM for Fissure before giving it to us, and then disappears for good. It makes me wonder if the other gym leaders didn't also create the TMs that they give out...? I think I mentioned this before but in the new games, you can actually craft your own TMs using random drops you find from Pokemon. I don't really know how that works, but it works!

And this is where I stopped for now. I'm not sure if I want to go do the subquests to catch Articuno and Zapdos or if I just want to move on to the end of the game. I don't think there's any more lore/story in the quests to get the birds, so it might be easier to just rush to the end of the game.

TBH though I don't even want to finish the game at this point, hahaha. Silph Co. is one thing, but Victory Road is HORRID. It's huge and confusing and takes forever to get through. I don't know how I even did it as a kid.

Oh and just a side note, while the point of this team was to blaze through everything without having to go back to Pokemon Centers or grind or anything, one problem I've found is running out of PP. As far as I can tell, there's nowhere in the game where you can buy Ethers???? So I eventually run out of PP and have to go back to a Center. It's a lot less frequent than normal, and sometimes I can use the other Pokemon as backups and still take everything out in one hit (all the Pokemon are pretty strong at this point, I can just use whatever and probably one-shot stuff) but even then I still sometimes find myself out of PP. I'm not fighting wild battles, only running, so it's just the trainer battles that I'm fighting. So I'm able to get through easily without any grind, it's just... the PP... lol.

VENGEANCE! I've now caught up to where my save got corrupted last time. Huzzah! In just one night of playing! Well, I did spend a lot of time AND I used the speedup feature of the emulator through a lot of battles. I also turned battle animation off so it went even faster XD

So last time we left off we were going to S.S. Anne.

The ship visits Vermilion City only once a year. Lore!

This one sailor says that "Jellyfish sometimes drift into the ship." Now, I'm assuming he means Tentacool and Tentacruel...? Or are there like... real-world jellyfish that aren't Pokemon...? Also what does he mean they "drift into the ship" ??? Like they get caught? Where? What is he talking about???

Then another sailor says "You know what they say about sailors and fighting!" But ... I don't know what they say... and he never tells me! He just asks me if I want to be a sailor after I fight him...



This is also the first time we get to see the Gentleman sprite!



This guy claims to be a "global police agent" on the trail of Team Rocket. Now, global police as a concept is explored further in later games, but I didn't remember it having its origin in the very first game! Neat! Also what exactly is "global police?" Is there a global government in the Pokemon World or is it some kind of private agency? I don't think this is ever clarified. In fact, the Pokemon world seems to be run by private agencies without any kind of government at all. Government is never mentioned in the series, and police seem to be for-hire in most cases. Weird.

The captain of the S.S. Anne is a "sword master." There are no swords in his office so I guess you'd only know this by talking to the random wandering NPC.

The biggest threat to us right now is Blue's Kadabra (we blazed through the rest of the ship without having to go back to the Pokemon Center), which was able to be taken out by Charmeleon's Dig. Phew! No damage sustained. That was the scariest part of the adventure on the S.S. Anne.

In the Captain's room you can read his open book which is apparently about curing seasickness, and you can even look in the trash can he's puking in and it says something like "Yuck! Shouldn't have looked!" LOL

Actually going back to governments...



Lt Surge is known as the "Lightning American" and served in "the Army." It doesn't say what kind of army or what they actually did, but I kinda doubt there are like... private-entity armies...? So I guess there are governments of some sort, and they even have armed forces... Which means even in the modern day there is tension between nations in the Pokemon world. Interesting.

While past war is touched on in other games, Surge also mentions that electric-type Pokemon saved him during "the war," which means there was some kind of modern war...???????? The Pokemon world seems kind of terrifying tbh.



Surge himself was not too difficult of a fight -- I started out using Charmeleon's Dig for those supereffective hits, but got a bad case of paralysis that did me in, but Alakazam's Psybeam was more than enough to finish off Raichu. Our days of one-shotting everything haven't come yet, I guess, but we're close enough.

Alakazam did meet his match though -- in the form of a wild Lv29 Dugtrio. Dugtrio is a decent counter to Alakazam. Not a hard counter, but it can get some damage in before going down. Using Dig, it was able to outspeed Alakazam and almost OHKO him! We made it out alive but wouldn't have been able to take on a second one. Thankfully another one did not appear.

This is like the only time in the game you run into really overleveled Pokemon in the wild. Most Pokemon are fairly low-level, but here we found a Pokemon higher level than us, and using only 3 Pokemon, we're quite high levels...

We went back and got the Old Amber, HM05, and talked to that one guy in Viridian City who was behind the plant. He gave us the TM for Dream Eater.

After cleaning up the stuff back through Diglett's cave, we head to Route 11 to clean up the random trainers strewn about here. We can't get further east because there is a Snorlax blocking the path (not the thirsty guard like I thought in the last post XD) but there's quite a few randos here to beat up.

One guy says "I did my best! I have no regrets!" At least he didn't use a comma!



This is also our first glimpse at the Gambler sprite! So sexy <3 Love that bald head lmao. I like to imagine they have little mustaches as well. But I'm pretty sure they don't.

One of them says "Pokemon is life! And to live is to gamble!" So is he saying to Pokemon is to gamble? What is this supposed to mean? The people in this entry are saying such strange things!! I guess it's better than boring game "hints."



This is also our first exposure to the Engineer class. I don't even know if these guys show up anywhere else...? They're "laying wires" on Route 11 and one of them calls you a "spark plug" when you beat him.



Rock Tunnel is dark, but it's possible to navigate it without using Flash. But it's annoying and I'd much rather use Flash. Part of the "point" of this team is to have access to all five Hidden Moves, so we're going to use Flash, dammit!!

I put Pikachu at "point" to be like a scout, so I could swap out as needed. Well, I learned this was a bad idea when I swapped into Alakazam to fight a Geodude and it used Self-Destruct. Alakazam is a glass canon versus physical attacks. Now, the point of this team is to outspeed everything so it doesn't matter even if they DO have powerful attacks... but it doesn't work if you switch into a powerful attack... the idea is to also not have to switch. So putting Pikachu first was a bad idea. I had to go back to the Pokemon Center :( I'm trying to avoid having to do that. Afterward, I was able to clear all of Rock Tunnel without having to go back, though, which was nice.

One of the Super Nerds inside the cave asked me if I knew what "costume players" were, and said that they dress up as Pokemon lol. I'm pretty sure the word "cosplayer" was around in 1997 so I'm not sure why they went with the term "costume player" but whatever.



Lavender Town is where we find our first brush with Pokemon death. Apparently the ghosts haunting the tower are relatively new, and seem to be there because Team Rocket is killing Pokemon. Since the tower was already erected as a memorial to dead Pokemon, it seems not all dead Pokemon become ghosts, or at least not all ghosts haunt places. It seems the Pokemon killed by Team Rocket are especially at unrest and now haunt the tower.

One person mentions that Cubone's mother was killed trying to escape from Team Rocket, and then a child claims to have witnessed Cubone's mother being killed. This is more morbid than I remembered lol. It's interesting actually talking to everyone this time through O_o

Into the tower we get to fight Blue again. I want to note that I've been paying attention to his dialogue, and while he is a snarky asshole, he's also friendly. He gives you advice, and at Nugget Bridge said that we "should go thank" Bill. He also calls Red "Pal" on multiple occasions. It seems more like he's your friend who likes to tease you rather than some guy bent on beating you. So I think Blue is a pretty cool guy.



Another thing I haven't seen since I was a kid -- the ghosts! If you go to Pokemon Tower before getting the Silph Scope and climb high enough to find random encounters, you'll run into the ghosts of the dead Pokemon, but they can't be identified as ghost-type Pokemon yet, so your Pokemon will be too terrified to move. The ghosts will just say "Get out... Get out..." and you have no choice but to run.

Since it seems likely that Cubone's mother was killed in the tower, maybe that's why all the ghosts are flocking there? To try to prevent that from happening again? Or maybe because it's a place for dead Pokemon they are just attracted there anyway. I mean, they were ALL killed by Rocket, so it's not like they'd all rally behind that one Marowak lol.

Oh, and a girl at the Pokemon Center says that Cubone skulls sell for a lot on the black market or something like that. This game is ... intense.

Anyway, not much to do in Lavender without the Silph Scope, so we head west. The road to Saffron is closed because the guard is thirsty, so we head to the underground tunnel to Celadon.



And the first thing we do there is buy a Thunderstone! Now we have a MUCH more powerful ally in Raichu, thank goodness. Pikachu was starting to show its weakness.



Celadon is full of lots of cute easter eggs and other funny things. It's interesting to note that people in the game trade Pokemon using Game Boys. It's unclear if they're actually trading real Pokemon to each other, or if they're playing a Pokemon video game in the Pokemon world. One place you find them doing this is in the video game shop in the department store. Weird.

And speaking of games in games, you can actually visit the GameFreak development room and talk to the creators of the game. They'll say things like "I drew you!" so we get some weird 4th wall breaking.



Looks like I was wrong about bike shop guy -- the sprite is used again for the Programmer in the dev room.

At the Celadon gym there's an old man peeping in the window who says the gym is "great" because it's full of women. I am not exactly sure what he's so excited about, though, because it seems like their main activity in there is flower arrangement.

I learned another hard lesson about not having to run back to the Pokemon center -- getting paralyzed and poisoned means a trip back. I was able to swap out Charmeleon and have Alakazam defeat the remaining Pokemon in the first encounter, but I had to take Charmeleon back to the center. So I stopped by the second floor of the department store and bought 20 of each status-healing item. It's a little annoying carrying all these because you have very limited inventory space in this game.

After buying those things, though, the rest of the gym as well as getting the Rainbowbadge was a piece of cake. We managed to burn through the gym with Charmeleon, though it's a little annoying as his strongest fire-type move is still Ember of all things. Even if we don't evolve to Charizard right away, I think he won't learn Flamethrower until level 42. FORTY-TWO. I think it's 46 for Charizard, so I'm probably going to leave him unevolved just to get it sooner.

Um also in here we got a Fresh Water for the guard, met a bunch of gambling addicts, and got the TM for Ice Beam! And that about wraps up the playthrough for the night. I forgot to get a screenshot of Erika :( Oh, and I forgot to mention that if you talk to her after defeating her, she admires that you're collecting Pokemon for the Pokedex, because she would "never collect Pokemon if they were unattractive." Something I'm surprised to hear the calm Erika say. I always thought she was more... uh... idk, nice? than that. But I guess she has a bit of vanity to her as well.

ETA: I also forgot to add that the guy who stands in front of every gym and calls you "champ in the making" (who I forgot to talk to the first few times) actually doesn't stand in front of this gym -- he's actually in the game corner at a slot machine. But he still gives you a spiel about the gym leader if you talk to him. Forgot to go talk to him again afterward to see if what he says changes lol.

So, I've been chronicling (is that a word...?) my progress of my Pokemon Red playthrough on my discord server's #pokemon channel, but I figure since I started it here I should continue it here. I've only done a couple of play sessions as I also have been finishing up Pokemon Scarlet (holy CRAP that ending) and then starting on Pokemon Shining Pearl (restarted from the beginning).

I did Nugget Bridge before Cerulean Gym to level up Pikachu a bit more (especially since he was only level 3 leaving Pewter) and go ahead and catch Abra. Leveling the two of them up, I finished the Misty fight with Charmeleon level 23, Pikachu level 23, and Kadabra level 16. Just enough for it to evolve.

I then traded with myself (I have a save file in Blue at the first Pokemon center for the sake of this) to get Kadabra to Alakazam. Now I already have the game's strongest powerhouse besides Mewtwo... and we're still quite early on in the game...

Alakazam got powered up throughout the S.S. Anne and the return through Diglett Cave. At this point, we're pretty much one-shotting everything, though we have to be careful with PP. In Surge's gym, I actually got the two switches on my very first can interactions. What's the chance of that...? Extremely low at least. But I was SO happy to not have to mess with that stupid "puzzle."

Alakazam took out Surge's Pokemon and we moved on to Erika. We've now access to buying Thunderstones, so we're able to get Raichu, though he's not much help at this point. Erika's gym could easily be taken out by Alakazam, but we're trying to get experience on Charmeleon at this point as well, so we use him instead. Still one-shotting mostly everything afair.

Along the way through the gym, Charmeleon hit level 36 and evolved to Charizard.

And that's where I've made it to thus far. Here's the team so far:

CHARIZARD Lv36
RAICHU Lv30
ALAKAZAM Lv37

Raichu is falling behind in levels, because Thunderbolt is more situationally useful, and we just came from the grass-type gym to level up Charizard.

I've also been carrying around a Beedrill to use Cut because I decided to keep Cut off of Charizard in favor of Leer (and then was going to put Cut on Tentacruel). But I've decided Cut is not really useful on Tentacruel at all, and can be useful on Charizard, plus it will make it so I don't have to cart around an HM Slave at this point in the game. Then I can replace Cut with Wrap in Tenta's move set -- basically a broken move that does tiny damage but doesn't let the opponent move. As long as you're faster you can basically chain this until the Pokemon gets knocked out. It does have 95% accuracy so it's possible for it to miss, but it's still stupid broken and super annoying anyway. Tenta being one of the faster Pokemon in the game can make good use of this.

Though it shouldn't have to with Ice Beam, Surf, and Mega Drain. That's why I decided to just throw Cut on him. But Leer is nearly useless whereas Wrap could maybe be funny at one point.

Aaaaaaand I just loaded up my game save on my phone (where I'm playing this) and it seems to be... corrupted...? I don't know exactly how to word it. It's back before I fought Erika and Raichu is burned (no idea how that would have happened) and I have a random ARCANINE of all things on my team. It's level 20 (?!?!?!) and paralyzed. So I guess I can't trust this emulator and will have to start this whole thing over using TGB on the PC or something :\ A shame.

Welp, back to Shining Pearl for now.

There isn't too much to say about the final three gyms. We go in and beat them pretty easily. DONNELLY takes care of all the Fire-types in Blaine's gym, so there's really nothing to note there.

Half the Pokémon in Sabrina's gym are Ghost/Poison type, despite the fact that Psychic-types are supposed to be weak to Ghost (though there are no Ghost moves in the entire game, making that weakness pointless anyway, another advantage stacked in Psychic's favor). BARON took care of those easily, and the rest of the gym was actually taken out by RICKMAN, who is one of the few members who doesn't have a weakness to Psychic, and has a powerful Body Slam which can deal decent damage to the low-defense Psychic types.

The final gym in Viridian is pretty easy. There's not even as many trainers as there are in the other two gyms, and Giovanni's Pokémon fall easily to MAILLET and DONNELLY.

The actual trouble comes after all this, with Victory Road. I used to think this place was SUPER HUGE AND CONFUSING but it's actually pretty small. This is the first time in a long time that I've actually gotten this far in the original Red or Blue game. The "puzzle" here is super easy and the only real "problem" is remembering where you are with the high encounter rate and decent amount of rival trainers to battle.

RICKMAN came in handy again, defeating a trainer's Alakazam by putting it to sleep and slamming into it for like 5 turns in a row.

Moltres was a lot less exciting than Articuno and Zapdos; fell down to two Surfs from DONNELLY and barely did any damage back to him.

Then, we finally arrive at the Pokémon League! We had a TON TON TON of money so I just bought like 30 Revives, 30 Max Potions, 30 Full Restores, and like 50 Full Heals. You know, just in case...




First up we have Lorelei, who is very cute and cool. By this time, I've turned Bakula into a Crapshoot Cannon; he now uses moves like Thunder, Blizzard, and Fire Blast, which all have huge power but not so great accuracy.

This battle was his time to shine, missing only one attack the whole time. Despite being ice-themed, most of her Pokémon are Water-type (as there's only like, one Ice-type in this game I think?) except for Jynx, who fell to two Fire Blasts. The rest all were taken care of by Thunder.



Next is Bruno. KOBAYASHI took care of the two Onixs... actually while we're here, I want to point out that the way this game "officially" pluralizes Pokémon names is +"s" to all names. Clefairys, Onixs, etc. This is later changed so that the singular and plural forms are the same, like game animals, but at least in this first game (and maybe the second), we see the use of "s" to pluralize all Pokémon names.

Anyway, aside from those two, BARON made easy work of the Fighting-types here with the overpowered Psychic.



Next up, Agatha. I thought I was going to go through this with mostly BARON again, but he got put to sleep right away, so I swapped out to MAILLET who ended up taking out her Poison-types with Earthquake. I want to note that she's Ghost-themed but has like, Arbok and stuff. I don't know. This game was weird. And Haunter and Gengar couldn't Levitate back then, so their secondary Poison type (why do they even have that?!) made them weak to Earthquake.



Lance was another time for Bakula, who ended up getting the most work in out of the team during the E4 battles. Thunder takes out Gyarados, with Ice beam working on the two Dragonairs, and saving the 5PP of Blizzard for Dragonite. Strangely enough, it fainted to a single Blizzard.



And lastly, we face our rival, the now-champion Nico. DONNELLY's gimmicky set ended up being our saving grace here. While trying several things on his Alakazam (including MAILLET's failed 4 attempts at Horn Drill, which I never used outside of this one battle), over half the party fainted. But we did get in one Toxic with DONNELLY, which badly poisons the enemy, dealing more poison damage with each passing turn.

BARON came out as our damage sponge after that -- with his high Special, he was able to tank a few hits from Alakazam while the poison worked. Of course, it takes a while for a Pokemon to die solely from poison, even with the damage getting greater. So we spent several turns using Revives and Max Potions on all the other members until everyone was fully restored. Alakazam had been randomly using Recover, so he was filling up to full HP regularly. But by this point, the Toxic was doing more than 1/3 of Alakazam's max HP in damage.

And this is where it was actually advantageous that we had BARON the Hypno instead of an Alakazam. The AI in this game cheats in the sense that the computer actually decides what action to take upon the Pokemon getting its action mid-turn (so the computer will be able to use a potion in the same turn it got damaged if your Pokemon is faster, something you CAN'T do yourself, because trainers are supposed to have both inputted commands before the turn begins). The trigger for Nico using a Full Restore on Alakazam is Alakazam hitting a certain HP threshold. With over 1/3 of its HP gone, if we had gotten to attack first, there's a good chance we could have knocked Alakazam into the right HP level for Nico to heal him. But instead, BARON's lower speed allowed for Alakazam to move first, using an attack and losing another huge chunk of HP to the Toxic. Then BARON's turn came, using Tri Attack (which does physical damage in this game) to scrape off the last bit of HP and win the battle. It was beautiful. And a cool tag-team effort by DONNELLY and BARON.

Then against Nico's Blastoise, we sent out BAKULA again, hoping to use Thunder to take it down. But unlike our previous lucky streak, Thunder missed three times in a row and Hydro Pump took down BAKULA before we could deal any damage. So here comes DONNELLY again with the Toxic. I don't know if Wrap screws with the enemy AI, but Nico never tried to use any healing items on Blastoise. And despite being Lv65, DONNELLY had the speed advantage even at Lv48! Chalk that up to Tentacruel's huge base Speed and those Carbos we've been feeding him. DONNELLY was able to continually and successfully Wrap Blastoise so he couldn't get any attacks in at all. And while setting up, our Water-typing and HUGE Special stat made Hydro Pump a joke.

So basically we took out the final Pokemon in the league with DONNELLY's signature cheese method, which I did NOT think would work on any Pokemon in the entire League since they're able to switch and use items and stuff, which break the "strat."






Took less than 20 hours, and the last spurt wasn't as challenging as I expected it was going to be. Nico gave me quite a scare, but in the end it was a blast.

I really enjoyed this run; I got to play with a lot of Pokemon I've never played with before, re-experienced the original game, and got to see things with a new perspective. Despite having not played in a while, I still felt pretty knowledgable about this game, and I didn't really come up with any surprises.

But I'm really happy to have refreshed myself fully on what the first game was really like, because now I'm moving onto the 2nd gen. And for a long time now, I've maintaned the stance that 2nd gen is by far the worst gen. But playing this game now, and missing out on all the features of newer games, I'm realizing just how much was really added to the 2nd games. And I think playing them after coming off of this one, I might be able to appreciate all the added features more. I mean, I did play it right after the first one when it was new, too, but back then I liked it and it's only over time that my opinion has soured on it.

So I'm really looking forward to playing the next game. Though I still have to do a lot of team planning and deciding what exactly the challenge will be. But maybe I can start tonight.

Though I'm thinking just to keep it at this fairly casual challenge of limited EXP, which might actually be a bit harder in that game since everything is kept at a low level to allow you to choose the order you accomplish certain things more freely. But it'll be a good chance to re-experience the game without having to worry too much about sticking to a really restrictive challenge. Then maybe I can do something harder for gen 3, or maybe just keep playing like this if it still seems fun.

So the next order of business was to get the final party member, but there's a bunch of crap in the way.



So we had to head to Celdaon's Game Corner and beat up all the Rockets there. And do the infamous slidey floor puzzle thing. It's actually pretty easy, but kid me got confused by it easily.

At the end of this whole thing, we get to fight my OG Pokémon boyfriend Giovanni. Kinda forgot he was in here. We nab the Silph Scope and head to Lavender town to use it to identify Marowak and "save" Mr Fuji to get the Poke Flute. With the flute, we wake up Snorlax and open the routes to get to Fuschia City. In Fuschia, we play the Safari Game to find the Secret House and be rewarded with the HM for the move Surf.

Finally, we have Surf! We can use this to obtain our final member! But... said final member is the one I wanted to teach Surf to...

Oh well, now MAILLET has Surf.

And we can't use it... lol you need the badge from the Fuschia Gym... It's a poison-type gym but most of the lackeys in here use Psychic-types (???) so our only real choice is to use BARON most of the time. And he's getting more and more overleveled...

But with Koga out of the way, we're finally able to go for a swim on MAILLET and find our final member:



DONNELLY the Tentacool, named after former US Senator Joe Donnelly. Since he's a politician, I wanted to choose a sinister or evil-looking Pokemon, so Tentacruel was a great choice. It also can Surf. Even though we don't really NEED that at this point...

But Tentacruel will be fun to play with. Its speed stat is super high, and its Special is ever higher! It will make a fantstic Special tank, plus that will put the power of his Surf attack off the charts. The high speed and access to Wrap also means we can make use of the previously-mentioned balance oversight. But what's more fun is that we can do it in "style" -- instead of just waiting around for Wrap to take out the enemy, we'll be able to utilize Screech to harshly lower the opponent's defenses, making Wrap do more damage, and use Toxic (which we just got from Koga's gym) to make them lose damage to poison constantly, too. Basically weaken them, poison them, and then bind them while they slowly die. Very sinister.

I skipped a BUNCH of trainers on the way here so we could fill in the final space in the party before absorbing all that EXP. You can also catch Tentacool at a variety of levels (as low as 5 and as high as 40), but a wild Tentacool at level 33 or higher will not know Wrap and will never get access to it again. So I couldn't just go straight for a Lv40 to be thrifty with my EXP since I want to abuse Wrap. So I had to go with Lv30. I don't know if they'll appear at Lv31 or Lv32, but after finding a bunch of Lv10s, I took this one happily. Also, Tenta evolves at Lv30, so we just have to level up once and we'll already be evolving! We'll also have immediate access to Wrap, Surf, and Toxic. We'll just have to wait for Lv43 to get Screech.

Now there's quite a few things we can do. I think the first thing I'm going to try to do is get through the Silph Co. building as quickly as possible, because that's where we'll get the TM for Earthquake, which will give MAILLET a much-needed powerful move. Everyone has something really great but him at this point. He does have Horn Drill, but that's a 30% chance of OHKO, not something you can just use regularly.

I also blew our entire savings on vitamins. Vitamins are kind of weird in the first two games. In the 3rd generation and onward there is a refined "Effort" system that allows you to essentially modify your base stats. In the first two generations, however, you gain hidden "Stat EXP" in every stat, just extremely slowly, and you can just keep gaining it until you have godlike stats. Basically this system was there so that a Pokémon you train over the course of the game will have slightly higher stats all-around than one just caught in the wild, which has obtained no Stat EXP.

You can also gain Stat EXP by using Vitamins, which will give you a ton of Stat EXP in a single stat all at once. Once you've reached a certain limit (the equivalent of feeding 10 of the same vitamin), you will not be able to gain more Stat EXP through that type of vitamin. You can still gain stat EXP in battle like normal, though.

I bought 10 Calciums and fed them all to BAKULA. He was able to eat 9 of them, and only the last one would he not eat, meaning he reached the cap for vitamin-enabled Special boost. This means that despite being in the party for almost the entire game so far and being a key player on the team, he didn't even acquire enough Stat EXP to equal one entire Calcium's worth.

Compare this to the way the Effort system works in 3rd generation and later -- all Pokémon on the team (except not KOBAYASHI who is new) would have well maxed out their Effort Points by this point and wouldn't be able to earn any, as in not even through battle, much less through vitamins.

So Vitamins are MUCH more useful in the main game in older generations, whereas in newer games they're pretty much useless outside of training competitive Pokémon more quickly.

Vitamins are EXPENSIVE though, so I only used it to soft-max BAKULA's Special Stat EXP, and the rest of the money went toward a few Irons to boost RICKMAN'S Defense, essentially boosting the usefulness of Mega Drain. As we find vitamins throughout the game, I'm distributing to the team based on who can use them the best. Since a Pokémon poor in a stat will pretty much always be poor in a stat, I'm not trying to boost up Pokémon that are already bad at stuff, but rather even more raising up Pokémon in the strengths they already have.

With all the money saved up over the course of the whole game (we haven't been buying Potions or Balls or anything, and selling all the TMs and stuff we aren't using) we were only able to buy 12 vitamins total lol. That's how expensive these things are. And income is essentially capped in this game -- you can only gain money through selling items and battling trainers. The only other way to get money is to use Pay Day with a Meowth which gives you almost nothing anyway. You can fight the E4 over and over, but that's not going to help us since we're not trying to do post-game stuff. We need as much as we can get before that point.


MAILLET Lv33


BAKULA Lv35


RICKMAN Lv33


BARON Lv38


KOBAYASHI Lv32


DONNELLY Lv30

So, I played a bit more of the ol' Pokey.

First up we had to go through Mt. Moon. I got super duper lucky and my very first encounter was a Clefairy! I remember as a kid running around in here for hours trying to find one of these. The appearance rate is annoyingly low. And in the meantime, you're fighting Zubat like every 3 steps.

It took quite a bit longer, but there's another rare Pokémon in here: Paras. And with these, we welcome the two newest entries into the team!



First up, we have BAKULA, the Clefairy, named after, of course, Scott Bakula. Being that he's the most adorable cutie of the namesakes, I wanted to choose a Pokémon that was overflowing with cuteness. Clefairy is a great choice because it's actually pretty powerful. It can learn a wide variety of moves from Technical Machines and you can evolve it easily with a Moon Stone, which you can find right away after capturing one. Which I did so, as soon as he learned Double Slap. We also went ahead and taught Mega Punch and Water Gun via TM, making him quickly the strongest Pokémon on the team.



Secondly, we have RICKMAN, the Paras! This one's named after (probably also obviously) Alan Rickman. It was really hard to choose how the Rickman namesake was going to be themed. I decided to do a Pokémon I just think is really cool from a design standpoint. Paras is really interesting because it starts as a bug and evolves into a mushroom. The mushrooms on its back are actually a parasite, and once evolved, the fungus has killed the bug and is using it as a vehicle. That's super creepy cool, and based on a real-life parasite fungus that "explodes" from the heads of bugs and then can control their bodies.



There's this dude in Mt Moon who has this super powerful Raticate. This has ruined other challenge runs of mine before and was quite terrifying, but I managed to basically scrape by without even having lost once to try again. BAKULA was still a little babby Clefairy and couldn't help much at this point, either. And we hadn't even caught RICKMAN yet (who would not have been helpful, either). Other than that, Mt Moon is fairly uneventful albeit long.

With that, we head to Cerulean City. I decided to see how much you could actually do without actually going to Misty's gym. There's actually... quite a bit. You can head to Vermillion City already, get access to the Day Care, head all the way east from there to where Snorlax blocks the road, and even complete the entire S.S. Anne quest and get HM01 from the captain, having the ship leave the harbor.

And because of this, we get to go to that... route with all the gamblers and electricians. I don't really understand the theme to this route, but apparently there are engineers and electricians laying down a bunch of wires here. It's mostly a grassy plains, though. With like super weird roads going in random directions that make no sense. And then... a bunch of gamblers.



The gamblers are pretty hot though. Baldies are always nice, and you won't convince me that they don't have mustaches, even though it's pretty ambiguous from the little sprites. Actually later sprites show they have full beards and are like elderly...? But I don't feel like they look like that here.

Anyway, access to this area means we already get to add another member to the team:



BARON, the Drowzee. Now. This is going to take a bit of explaining. He's named after Horst Baron, one of them pronsmen I like. And because of that namesake, I wanted to pick the hottest Pokemon I could think of from the generation.

However, that hottest Pokemon is not Drowzee. Nor Hypno. Of course, the hottest gen 1 Pokemon is by far the fabulously mustachioed Alakazam. But there's a couple problems there. Mainly, Alakazam is only available if you can trade. Playing on an emulator by myself, this isn't really an option. Actually, I could probably make it work if I tried enough things, but... the next "problem" is that this game is super unbalanced and Alakazam pretty much wrecks the entire game because it's just way too strong. That was super cool when I was a kid but not so cool now. So I chose the less overpowered and unfortunately much less sexy Hypno to fill this position on the team. It's here as a spiritual substitute for Alakazam, though, when it comes to the sexy factor.

With four members in tow, we clear out all these weird electricians, go through all of S.S. Anne, learn Cut (RICKMAN is the only one who could learn it... for some reason I thought MAILLET would be able to, but I guess not... a little sad because I already had a full four moves planned ahead for RICKMAN, but we're stuck with Cut now), and headed back to Cerulean City to get the Cascadebadge.



Surprisingly, despite all the extra work we put in skipping the gym, Misty's Pokemon still held up to mine in level. Starmie was Lv21, which was higher than anything I had. Part of this is that I'm distributing very limited EXP among four party members at this point, though.

Misty was easy to take care of due to the super unbalanced Special stat. In the original game, instead of Pokemon having a Special Attack and Special Defense stat, they just had one thing called Special, which functioned as both an attack and defense stat. Special was way too high on a lot of Pokemon, making them super effective as damage sponges for any attacks that were tagged as Special attacks. And in this game (and a few games to come), all attacks of certain types were Special (while other attacks were Physical). This includes the Water type, making Starmie's Bubblebeam fairly ineffective against Drowzee's nice Special stat. And Pokemon with high Special can not only defend well, but of course that makes their attacks quite powerful, too.

The worst of this actually came from Alakazam, mentioned before, who not only had insanely high Special, but could learn the move Recover, allowing it to restore half of its HP at any time. Alakazam also had crazy Speed, meaning it would strike first and be able to take out almost anything with its powerful Psychic attack, since another part of the horrible balance was that nothing resisted Psychic (and anything that should have had a secondary type that made it weak to Psychic anyway). Basically it can one-shot almost anything in the game and barely takes any damage, except from physical attacks. But it can easily defeat any threat to it before it can even attack anyway. The only real "counter" that could stand up to it was... another Alakazam, which if you faced a friend's Alakazam with yours, you'd spend over 30 minutes just spamming Psychic and Recover at each other, slowly waiting for one of you to run out of PP and start Struggling yourself to death.

But, uh, yeah, even with BARON we were able to tank Starmie pretty well (and if we had come here earlier, we'd be much lower level than Starmie so it would have been more of a challenge, I guess) and get through the battle just fine.



Then we head over to the most obnoxious and poorly-designed puzzles in all of ... anything. You know, it's kind of surprising how much this game was able to stand on concept alone, considering how frustrating and unbalanced it was. As kids we just dealt with all this because COOL PET MONSTERS.

Anyway, there is this like... grid of trash cans, and a button is randomly hidden in one of the cans. When you find it, it randomly creates another button in an adjacent can, and you have to press both buttons in a row or the doors re-lock and the first button is regenerated somewhere else. So you go around inspecting all these cans and going through the "Nothing but trash here!" text with every single one, until you finally find the "right" can, only to have a 75% chance of resetting the entire thing and having to start all over.

Took me like 7 resets, which is ... kinda fast considering you can get even worse unlucky streaks. Either way this probably took like 10 minutes or so which was annoying as all hell.

Once past the locked doors, Surge was pretty easy to defeat. We found the TM for Body Slam earlier, which turned RICKMAN into a force to be reckoned with, and allowed him to easily take damage from Pikachu and Raichu since he resists Electric damage, and dish out some big body slams on the low-defense weaklings.

I also went ahead and grabbed HM05 from the Aide, which was annoying, because you have to have caught 10 Pokemon, and since I'm not focusing on catching Pokemon at all, I only had 7. You're able to Cut back to the beginning areas at this point, though, so I just went and caught a Caterpie, Pidgey, and Rattata real fast.

The party so far:

RICKMAN Lv23

MAILLET Lv24

BARON Lv 23

BAKULA Lv24