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.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
CHARIZARD Lv36
RAICHU Lv30
