Let's Play! Gotta Play (A Handful) Of Em' All (Current Project: Pokemon Platinum)

[DrumstickGaming]

Greetings everyone! This is part of a project to replay the old games and simply have fun doing them while saying my personal thoughts on the games in question. I only have easy access to Gens 1-5, so those are the gens we might be playing, depends on how I feel when this finishes up. Let's start off with Pokemon Blue!

RBY Episode 1: Sand Attack killed my father

Oh my gosh, it's the Pokemon no one uses ever!

I actually quite like this Oak sprite, he looks more angry than welcoming.

He must be one of those Pokemon fans who primarily hang out on Twitter

I am 26 years old I swear

Oh my gosh, these graphics are awful. It's almost like this was made in 1996 or something! And oh my gosh, it's Pokemon fans favorite inanimate object, a tree, in my own room no less! Now I can turn the game off without even moving my character one step!

We get scolded by the whippersnapper Oak and get our first Pokemon, and I set my Battle Style to Set. And our starter is going to be Squirtle, because I'm unoriginal and the other two kinda suck.

Dude, this is his second crit, like turn off the Gameshark????? Anyway, we win with a Potion use.

Also, what does smell ya later even mean? Is it like, a deodorant check? It's so weird how that became the catchphrase.

One reason I prefer RBY to FRLG is the retro visuals and sound and even some of the weird unrefined mechanics. FRLG is painfully bland to me and without all the obviously-dated retro aesthetics to enjoy, it just feels like I'm playing something rather lifeless. But if you like FRLG more than RBY, that's awesome.

Anyway, we get Oak's Parcel and return it to him, get the Town Map then promptly deposit it in the PC, then buy some Potions to fight Blue on Route 22. Wait, did I say we buy Potions? Actually, I meant we lament the fact Viridian's Pokemart inexplicably lacks them because....game design, I guess, so we get the hidden Potion to compensate.

So I guess I better get into my feelings on Blue as a character. I think he's perfectly fine as a dimensional jerk, albeit admittedly shallow. It was pretty simpler times back then, so I can excuse it. I will say I'm glad the franchise moved away from jerk rivals later in life, and I'm perfectly fine with friendly rivals. Blue is as deep as a puddle, but that's okay. It's the first game, so he gets a pass. It's not like anyone else in this game is much deeper anyway.

Heck yeah, revenge. Also, Sand-Attack is cancer in Gen 1.

dat's some good grammar in my videogame (he missed Leech Seed)

oh he's getting testy again

did I mention I hate Sand-Attack because I do

let's reset because losing money in Gen 1 is wack

lol no we lost again, thanks Growl and Leech Seed

and yes I have a reason I haven't caught other Pokemon yet

let's try this again

sand-attack is actually satan

you know what also sucks in gen 1? status moves missing

and we lose again because I am impatient

there we go, got through Pidgey with no Sand-Attacks

good damage

more like you won because you're a flithy Sand Attack abusing, accuracy-debuffing commie

also I prob would have done better if I realized I had two Potions in my earlier attempts, used one in my successful run

why did I do this?

Fun fact: "If you didn't add any new caught data to the Pokédex nor bought any Poké Balls by the time you beat Blue on Route 22, you can go to Prof. Oak for free Poké Balls. Outside of Yellow, this will probably need grinding. In FireRed and LeafGreen, however, Oak gives you the Poké Balls as soon as he gives you the Pokédex."

thanks TV Tropes

A typo? In MY Pokemon game? Oh my gosh this game was rushed, literally unplayable

Old Man sprite is funny

"First, you need to weaken the target Pokemon." Oh gee thanks for explaining that...in one line...not very well...as you didn't mention status effects and the like

onto one of the few parts of Gen 1 that totally wasn't reused in X and Y for nostalgia purposes: Viridian Forest.

Bug Catcher's sprite is pretty good, nice and detailed

oh, goody

thanks atsync (wasted a Potion and healed up at the Pokemon Center before this, oh well)

What's this, a random level jump? What is this, Gen II?

(I mean yeah Blue was on par with this but still).

Thankfully we score a crit and don't get poisoned. I forgot RB's version of Viridian Forest only had like, three trainers (Yellow and FRLG make it five).

Anyway, my opinion on Viridian Forest. I quite like it as a first dungeon. It introduces you to a status effect in Poison, has great music, and is a nice salvo for what's to come.

We heal up at Pewter City's Pokemon Center, snag some Potions, then head to Pewter Gym.

dude I said no, what is this Medal Rally / Professor Rowan nonsense

also I like how he literally doesn't even tell you what Brock is weak to

huh, so the original didn't have the "ten-thousand" bit

Ah, the Jr. Trainer. Another good sprite! It's interesting how they basically got merged with Campers and Picknickers later on

I guess Ponyta won't be in this battle then lmao, such a consistently low tier mon regardless of game

ah, the classic awesome arm-fold.

huh he lived

we got Water Gun just in time for Onix

it's so weird how we get a badge in the actual battle, this is like the only time it happens in the series???? so bizarre

btw the Kanto Gym Battle theme is great, one of my favorites in the franchise

also Bide sucks

Next time we take on Route 3 and maybe even catch something else so we don't keep lugging around just Mr-not-actually-S-tier Squirtle here!

 

[DrumstickGaming]

RBY Episode 2: Iconic Buds (and Exploits)

And we're back, hope you enjoyed that first part. Let's continue onto Route 3.

We beat up the first Bug Catcher with no issue and snag ourselves Wartortle.

He said the thing!!! Honestly, I have no idea why this line got popular: it's so random. Another great Trainer sprite though.

Yeah, that's one thing that's consistently great about Gen 1: the Trainer sprites are top notch and show off tons of personality.
sazas

But enough about that, let's catch something for our team. And it's probably not what you expect...

Yeah, this is probably the only game Jigglypuff is remotely usable in, and even then, it's kinda outclassed by Clefairy. But I wanted to give one of the iconic ones I haven't tried a spin. What's important to note about Jigglypuff is that it actually gets Body Slam at level 34, which is one of the better Gen 1 moveset decisions, but we might not wait that long before we evolve it anyway.

Unfortunately, poor Rachel only has Sing until level 9, so lul.

huzzah

Round 1: fight!

We actually hit Sing in spite of Sand Attack, and beat it okay, but Jigglypuff does need some help with the second one. Thankfully, Jigglypuff actually manages to solo the nearby Bug Catcher, so we're going places.

Your move, creep.

Gen 1 sleep is laughably busted

We beat the Spearow guy and now we're at Mt. Moon, which is notable for one reason compared to FRLG: you can't buy Repel yet!

a

we beat it up with Sleep masochism and actually manage to OHKO a wild Zubat when going back to heal

Gave Jigglypuff the Water Gun TM, as it's not like anything else is gonna use it. We also pick up Disable not long after.

Super Nerd is one of the...less good Trainer sprites, though it's hilarious all the same. We get by him and the nearby Bug Catcher no problem, getting quite a bit of EXP on our way back to the PC to heal.

Team Rocket is rated G for "gosh we love being evil"

he looks like he hasn't slept in months

at any rate, Jigglypuff solos him handily, with Water Gun helping with the Sandshrew. We use the nearby HP up on Jigglypuff.

Oddish is probably my favorite Gen 1 evolution line, though sadly it was incompatible with the team I wanted as it's exclusive to Red.

Bellsprout has seen how bad Gen 1's movepools are and is afraid

we get the nearby Mega Punch TM and give it to Jigglypuff to replace Disable as I think Wartortle is doing fine atm

Mega Punch takes the nearby Grunt to school, OHKOing both his mons. not bad. We beat up the nearby trainers and snag a Moon Stone, with Jigglypuff now the respectable level 20. Not gonna evolve it yet because I want to see if it can get to Body Slam unevolved, yeah there is a TM but we're more than powerful enough with Mega Punch at our side.

yup, this bozo. he just...Tail Whips and doesn't hit me lol

I like Omantye and not for TPP meme reasons honestly

Finally out of Mt. Moon, let's catch something else

Sandshrew is actually pretty solid, and this is one of the few games it's not outclassed in, so let's give it a whirl.

(It's a reference to the guitar Slash of Guns N' Roses uses)

oops I somehow backspaced the l at the end, we can fix that later lul

let's grind some

of course that'd happen. also sandshrew's backsprite is kinda derpy. we beat it with some Sand Attack help

Unlike Jigglypuff, Sandshrew's relatively high Defense and good Scratch keep it safe pretty well while grinding, so it's not really something you have to baby, which is pretty nice. About 15 minutes of grinding and we get Slash.

My favorite Gym, the Gym Gym! Also, I like how he says "it's a tough life" right outside Misty's Gym, it's almost as if they knew how scary she was.

plant pokemon is not a type

another solid sprite, time to fight

d'aww, so cute, now time to faint it

Jigglypuff takes care of the Shellder

what is with those weird hands???

we grow to level 18 off a wild, now time for the fight of our life!

blah blah good sprite work

we roll the X Defend on Staryu turn 1, though Sandshrew sadly doesn't crit. Fortunately for us, we live Water Gun next turn and-

good stuff!

this could end badly

let's go for it!

she stings with BubbleBeam, but we can thank our lucky stars here

ugh

we actually got very good luck here, she never woke up, I hit all my Mega Punches, and a Pound finished her off. I like you, Jigglypuff.

Since I didn't get to talk about it much in the fight itself, yeah, Misty is pretty tough. A lot of things are physical at this point so X Defend is annoying, and that's not even getting into BubbleBeam off 100 Special capped off by 115 Speed, meaning if she crits you probably die. That said, you can go north to Nugget Bridge and get a Grass or nearby to Vermillion first, but I wanted to give myself a challenge and do it early.

I've thought about this a lot, and I think I'm actually going to give the BubbleBeam TM to Wigglytuff, which may seem weird with the more deserving Wartortle in the party, but I'd ask you to hear me out on this. Firstly, Wigglytuff does not get Surf, so BubbleBeam is its best Water move. Secondly,
Rock Tunnel will have a crapton of Hikers that Wartortle's Water Gun can easily take to school, and we won't really need Wartortle for Erika anyway. Basically, we'll have a tiny struggle for a little while so we can have decent coverage in the long run, and I don't want to just spam the top-tier Wartortle anyway as I find that kinda boring.

Next, we head north.

Pidgeotto is strong (?)

Sandshrew tanks Pidgeotto easily as we crit twice to kill it. Abra and the rat die easily with an opportune crit on the latter, and we actually get to Bulbasaur and 2HKO it easily, sololing.

I'll take it easy when you're buried in the Pewter Museum

Onto Nugget Bridge!

Nidoran Female's face just screams "oh no she DIDN'T" to me

while Mankey's just screams "what did I just walk into???!!"

I like how in a series notorious for "but thou must" we don't get a choice here

still haven't been hit by Ekans's Wrap yet, thankfully

I forgot to mention the Hiker sprite earlier. He must be Brock in disguise, with his eyes closed and all.

cat smile Machop is awful, let us never mention this again

no thoughts, head Slowpoke

groovy

spoke too soon

OH MY GOSH HE'S SANDSHREW'S MENU SPRITE! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!

wait, Bill made the level up noise in that machine. that means...HE'S HOARDING RARE CANDIES IN SECRET!!!

DUN DUN DUN

I'm sorry, but do your job better, he's on the same screen dude

grunt has that freakishly abomination of a Machop sprite. he must be punished.

we teach Dig to Sandslash with our newfound TM

something to note is that I almost used Meowth before I decided I didn't want to bear lol level 51 Slash, so I went with Jigglypuff instead

we head through the Underground Path and-

I can't believe it's not

Sandslash takes care of it easily with Slash, despite I believe a crit Confusion that also confused me

And with all of our Pokemon level 23 now, I think we're gonna stop here now that we've made it to Vermillion City. Feel free to comment below on what you think of my (probably dull) commentary. Either way, I've been having a great time playing this!

 

[DrumstickGaming]

RBY Episode 3: The famous Truck, except not really

Alright, last we left off we were in Vermillion City. Let's continue.

Decided to go ahead and evolve Jigglypuff into Wigglytuff as I'm probably not going to use the Body Slam TM on anyone else. Still, I think it was fun holding back the Moon Stone some because you don't really see many players using Jigglypuff or Clefairy for an extended period of time.

Gonna hold off on the nearby route Trainers for a reason you'll see a little later, so let's head onto the S.S. Anne.

What a nifty little location. Some less...video-gamey music with some neat ambience (this is a compliment), it stands out from a lot of Gen 1 area songs which kinda serve to make you uneasy. It's a nice breather before Rock Tunnel and the infamous Lavender Town.

Classy dude.

I don't want to see any of that crap...

Yeah Water Gun isn't doing so hot, but I stand by my decision.

Got rid of Pound for Body Slam on Wigglytuff.

Squadron thankfully got Bite, which is a welcome upgrade from Tackle.

resident tough guy here

no Magikarps?

Slash is strong, but not quite strong enough to OHKO Shellder unfortunately.

I quite like how you can see the outside of the boat. It really gives the S.S. Anne a sense of scope.

Imagine being less unlikable than Mabel Pines! Somehow, Toast doesn't quite hit that terrible benchmark.

I've always liked Blue's sprites and how they change, it's a nice touch. What's weird is that he mentions the Pokedex before he fights you which strikes me as a bit of an odd battle transition, but whatever.

Even without BubbleBeam, we still managed to sweep through his team primarily thanks to Wartortle's Bite and the Ai derping by choosing Leech Seed instead of killing me. Why is this guy our rival again?

Apparently masseuses don't exist in this world, so we get a kid to do it.

Got the Bike Voucher after leaving the ship. I caught a Cut Bellsprout earlier so we don't have to waste a main moveslot.

Better bust out that Gameshark that gave the Ai two crits earlier...

Oh yeah, the Rocker sprite is pretty nice. Shame you don't see it often in Gen 1.

It's the second coming of Brock! Seriously, why do like all the male overworld sprites earlygame have closed eyes?

I have nothing to really say about the puzzle: anyone who has played this game knows why it sucks due to randomization.

Another fantastic sprite. Shame the difficulty isn't nearly as bad as Misty. You have to really try to not have some form of counter to Lt. Surge. The Dig TM, a Grass from fighting Misty can work okay with busted Sleep, Diglett's Cave is nearby...yeah, plenty of options.

Pikachu rolled a crit Thundershock paralysis into full paralysis on Wigglytuff, wow.

I didn't even know Lt. Surge had X Speed.

After two turns of full paralysis, Wigglytuff OHKOS it with Body Slam just like it did Electrode.

Raichu might be easy to wall, but don't underestimate it - crits from Thunderbolt hurt if you are not immune to it.

And we roll another full para...

dude derps with an X Speed and Thundershock, but I think I rolled another full paralysis

I can crit too buddy

we head back on over to the next route and cut that tree down: note this lets you skip Lt. Surge if you want, but I don't see the point to doing so.

just lmao, Gen 1 TM's are so weird

how about never

alright time to catch something

Voltorb isn't great. It pretty much has three tricks to its name: Electrode's highest-in-the-game 27.34% crit rate, a fast STAB Thunderbolt, and exploding. That being said, Gen 1 is probably the easiest game to use Voltorb in outside maybe Pokemon XD: Gale of Darkness, and I want to try some atypical things, so let's give it a whirl.

Named it Smirk because that's what I think when I see Electrode. Gave it Thunderbolt because of course I did. Ironically caught it in a Great Ball.

Even resisted, Thunderbolt does good damage, but SonicBoom helps slightly more here. We just barely squeak out a win. Also I love Voltorb's backsprite: it's great.

Sadly the Trainers are too high leveled for Smirk, so we go back to the route near Vermillion to grind up, also on the way

this guy doesn't know how Gen 1 works lmao

Even against Grounds, Voltorb isn't quite helpless because SonicBoom bypasses their often high Defense and almost all of them lack Ground moves.

it's just so weird man

I swear the more obscure in Gen 1 sprites you get the weirder they are

aw yeah

pain

Now that we're Level 27, Voltorb is basically caught up to the rest of the party. Let's head inside Rock Tunnel. Did I bring Flash?

But I did bring Repel

The Pokemaniac sprite is quite suave and awesome. Sadly he wises up and Bone Clubs Voltorb to death.

I quite like the aesthetic of this place unlit.

this should be a Graveller, wut are you doing

he stole my thunder

Gave Voltorb Light Screen over Screech

out of the cave, we heal up nearby to finish off the Trainers outside and

Anyway, we take on the other Trainers and-

HE BLEW UP WHILE I WAS UNDERGROUND

never gets old in Gen 1

Now that we've reached Lavender Town, I think that's as good a place to stop as any. Next time, we head to the original big city over in Celadon!

 

[Suspicious Derivative]

Cool idea! Playing through most of the older games seems like it could be a lot of fun. I would like to do it myself, but I don't really have the time for it, not to mention the fact that I am seriously burnt out on Pokémon right now, so following your playthroughs will be a good substitute.

Some random comments:

And our starter is going to be Squirtle, because I'm unoriginal and the other two kinda suck.

Squirtle was also my starter of choice for most of my playthroughs of R/B (at least the ones I can remember). I always found it incredibly useful and it auto-wins against the first Gym which is great.

So I guess I better get into my feelings on Blue as a character. I think he's perfectly fine as a dimensional jerk, albeit admittedly shallow. It was pretty simpler times back then, so I can excuse it. I will say I'm glad the franchise moved away from jerk rivals later in life, and I'm perfectly fine with friendly rivals. Blue is as deep as a puddle, but that's okay. It's the first game, so he gets a pass. It's not like anyone else in this game is much deeper anyway.

This was a great way of summarizing your thoughts on Blue. Short and concice, you don't need more than that.

Though I still disagree, I think he's the worst rival in the series.

He said the thing!!! Honestly, I have no idea why this line got popular: it's so random. Another great Trainer sprite though.

Not sure why it is popular, but it is at least true. Shorts ARE comfy and easy to wear. I can confirm.

Yeah, that's one thing that's consistently great about Gen 1: the Trainer sprites are top notch and show off tons of personality.

Never really thought of this before, but you have a point here. Many are pretty good, though some are still a bit weird.

Sandshrew is actually pretty solid, and this is one of the few games it's not outclassed in, so let's give it a whirl.

Yay! Sandslash was one of my childhood faves and I used it on one of my first teams on Blue, maybe even my very first, can barely remember anymore.

Ah, the Jr. Trainer. Another good sprite! It's interesting how they basically got merged with Campers and Picknickers later on

I'm pretty sure they just changed the name in later generations.

Since I didn't get to talk about it much in the fight itself, yeah, Misty is pretty tough. A lot of things are physical at this point so X Defend is annoying, and that's not even getting into BubbleBeam off 100 Special capped off by 115 Speed, meaning if she crits you probably die. That said, you can go north to Nugget Bridge and get a Grass or nearby to Vermillion first, but I wanted to give myself a challenge and do it early.

I have seen several people say Misty is scary, but I don't remember ever having any major trouble against her when I played R/B/Y. Not sure why.

What a nifty little location. Some less...video-gamey music with some neat ambience (this is a compliment), it stands out from a lot of Gen 1 area songs which kinda serve to make you uneasy. It's a nice breather before Rock Tunnel and the infamous Lavender Town.

I quite like how you can see the outside of the boat. It really gives the S.S. Anne a sense of scope.

I am also a big fan of the music and the atmosphere of SS. Anne. It really feels like an actual ship, and that's good.

Not sure what else to say for now. I'll keep following your playthroughs, might make a comment once in a while. Good luck, and have fun!

 

[DrumstickGaming]

RBY Episode 4: A Close Call in the Big City

Let's resume our journey!

We start by heading west to Celadon City.

PEGI: sweats nervously

Even NPCs have trouble with NPC roadblocks!

Muk has a nice sprite. Also-

We're at Celadon City now!

Let's head to the gym.

Poison + Wrap is awful

I've always found the Beauty Trainer class delightfully obscure.

While not the rarest Trainer class, I've always thought of them as fairly elusive (in Black and White 2, the only ones you see are in Nimbasa and that's it).

Cooltrainers are interesting, because they become Ace Trainers universally in any Gen IV game onward not counting games like ORAS. Ace Trainer is my personal favorite Trainer class, but I think Cooltrainer is a slicker name.

It's worth noting Celadon Dept. Store is the first place in the game you can buy X Accuracy, specifically the Gen 1 version that gives every move perfect accuracy, including sleep moves and OHKO moves. Yeah, we're gonna abuse them somewhat, at least in the upcoming fight.

I gave Wartortle the Ice Beam TM from the little girl on the top floor.

Back at the Gym!

Erika has perhaps my favorite Gen 1 Gym Leader sprite. Love the peaceful vibe it gives off.

Victrebell is faster and does a third with instacrit Razor Leaf, but thankfully misses with Sleep Powder as we put it to sleep with our no-miss Sing. And THEN it wakes up the next turn and Wraps us before killing us, so lol. Unfortunately, Victrebell takes out Smirk too so we are in some MAJOR trouble. Thankfully, Sandslash is able to outspeed and pick up the KO. I sack Belllsprout so Wartortle gets a free switch and crit Ice Beam it to death.

It all comes down to this!

Thankfully, we outspeed and Dig it to death. I honestly think Erika is one of the harder Gym Leaders if you don't know about some nearby TMs like Psychic or Ice Beam (and yes, I have a potential reason for not giving Wigglytuff Psychic).

Time to catch something.

I held off catching this earlier because I wanted to make Erika more interesting.

Immediately taught it Fly and TMed Tri Attack on.

also I found this text box funny

now let's test it out at the Game Corner

Pretty good damage, but doesn't OHKO the Grunt's Zubat.

who is saying this? is it my inner monologue?

The Rocket Hideout has great music.

I really like Fly's sound effect in Gen 1. Do do do doo...

Unfortunately, the local Raticate really hurt with Hyper Fang.

let's beat him up

used HP Up and Iron on Wigglytuff and Wartortle respectively.

It's generic evil apersonality #1! Giovanni!

As weak as Giovanni is, you gotta love the sprite. This man has class.

Unfortunately, Wartortle steamrolls him easily, with Ice Beam dealing with his weak Kangaskhan.

Suprise last minute Grunt fight!

By the way, we grab a Fresh Water and open the way to Saffron City, picking up the TM for Psychic there. We also grab a Bicycle from Cerulean as I forgot to do that last time.

Lavender Tower. Great music, and a punchable face to go with it.

apparently, Toast can use a regular Potion on his mons in the Lavender Tower fight. he used one on Pidgeotto. Believe it or not, Doduo swept him easily, probably because you are intended to do this fight when you first get to Lavender Town. One wild fight later we get Drill Peck which is pretty rad.

Decent sprite, but not one of the better ones in Gen 1.

The only real eventful thing that happens on the way up is Doduo evolving into Dodrio.

Haunter has honestly one of the best Gen 1 Pokemon sprites, better than Gengar. Great spooky face.

Again, who is saying this? Would it be the Marowak itself?

The sprite of the Ghost is great though. I'm glad it made a comeback for Ghost Tera in SV.

And more Grunts...

THERE IT IS. THAT'S THE SPRITE

It's worth noting Green's Golbat sprite wasn't nearly as silly.

Also check out this cool 3D Golbat GIF:

https://64.media.tumblr.com/6849b54.../a0afbf78cb6e6a18147f45ad02fc273297ed97bb.gif

And we save Mr. Fuji.

As for my whole opinion on the Lavender Town stuff, I like it! I think it's a nice dose of creepy before getting back to your family-friendly monster collecting game. A good shake-up done right, but I can see why future games toned down creepy places and made them more vague, though making Lavender Tower a radio tower in GSC was uncalled for.

And with the Poke Flute in our possession, that's it for now! Next time we depart for Fuschia City!

 

[DrumstickGaming]

RBY Episode 5: More like a Nonja

Two for the price of one today because wow I am bored XD

Gonna try and condense this episode somewhat with less screenshots because this is that part of the game where grinding becomes more apparent and that's not as fun to read about.

We take on Snorlax real quick.

Snorlax is in my humble opinion arguably one of the most iconic Generation 1 monsters. Super dominant in competitive for 3 generations, simple but cool design, and bulky as all get out.

We head onto Cycling Road and-

Nothing more will be said.

(above is not my picture)

The Biker sprite is slick though.

Primeape has a cool sprite too.

SMOG!

heck yeah man

also I think I rolled a 1/256 on Bite, so lul

not a big fan of the Bicycle in this game, it moves rather slowly btw

cool confident Bird Keeper sprite.

And we have Blastoise finally.

Caught my final team member here in Exeggcute!

I have a soft spot for this thing. Cool type, cool design, great stats. Also helps it was genuinely good in competitive in the franchise's early years. I named it Scrambled, because, as I've said, I'm unoriginal.

Used a Carbos on Dodrio.

Gave Blastoise Surf, gave Exeggcute Psychic via TM and evolved it after a trip to the Celadon Dept. Store.

And then I realized that only Exeggcute gets Leech Seed at level 28, so oops: I reset. Also, Exeggcute has a great back sprite.

We head onto the routes south of Lavender to grind up our new team member.

Also a Fearow Mirror Moved Body Slam and hit Wigglytuff for like half, LOL

then I 1/256'd Psychic, lawl

THEN I think I 1/256'd Drill Peck, ugh, think that happened a second time later too though I only saw the screen out of the corner of my eye

below: eye damage

Juggler sprite is quirky with a weird mouth.

And now for Koga himself.

Another slick sprite.

Eggs nuked him, though Weezing almost beat me if I didn't outspeed him the second turn. Also, Eggs's backsprite is endearingly goofy.

Gave Eggs Toxic to replace Hypnosis, since we have Wigglytuff as our dedicated Sleeper (it's interesting how Normals start to decline in niche the less TMs you give them, haha, but Wigglytuff is still good with STAB).

Now to do the water routes. Also Seaking's sprite is hideous.

Seadra has a neat sprite though.

This Trainer near Seafoam Islands is really odd.

Somehow Electrode didn't OHKO Seaking with Thunderbolt...

Went to the water route south of Pallet: had to switch out of Magikarp because I wanted to conserve Thunderbolt PP (switched in Dodrio because Drill Peck has a lot of PP). Taught Electrode Swift over SonicBoom.

Made it to Cinnabar Island, I flew back to Saffron City, and we're gonna end the episode here. Next time we're gonna tackle all of Saffron City!

 

[Scorpio]

We head onto Cycling Road and-

View attachment 519642

Nothing more will be said.

(above is not my picture)

I believe that’s supposed to be a big-ass, show-off belt buckle. If you really wanna freak out, look up that Trainer Class’s Japanese name.

View attachment 519646

The Biker sprite is slick though.

So much so that they kept the general design in LGPE even after they ditched Bikes.

 

[QuentinQuonce]

We head onto Cycling Road and-

View attachment 519642

Nothing more will be said.

(above is not my picture)

I believe that’s supposed to be a big-ass, show-off belt buckle. If you really wanna freak out, look up that Trainer Class’s Japanese name.

Always was freaked out by that weird thing too. To me it looks like one of those cup things baseball players wear.

One of the Cue Ball says something like “I look like what? A studded inner-tube?” which confused me even more. Like a bike inner tube? Studded with what? I'm so lost. Someone clue me in.

View attachment 519646

The Biker sprite is slick though.

One of the few that was basically reproduced as-is in GSC. Love this run, you're making me remember how iconic so many of the RBY sprites are.

I had Red and Yellow as a youngster, and my cousin had Blue - IIRC it's the only main series game I never played. Edit: Oh, actually I don't believe I've played the Japanese third version - the one that's actually Blue, but that I think of as Green. I actually did download it on the VC ages back and still haven't played it, but I love the blue tint to all the sprites, it's awesome. Now I'm tempted to.

 

[DrumstickGaming]

RBY Episode 6: Saffron Riff Raff

Just wanna say thank you to all the fun feedback the LP has gotten! I love reading your comments.

Today we head to the Fighting Dojo first.

Black Belts have a great sprite aside from the odd mismatched pupils.

The Karate Master (still a regular Black Belt lol) also got mowed down by Dodrio.

We pick Hitmonchan mostly for the schadenfreude factor of "wow even in Gen 1 this thing blows." Also, have some remote text from trying to pick the other Hitmon after you get one.

We also buy some Hyper Potions and outfit Dodrio with TM15 Hyper Beam from the Game Corner because why not.

We also get Strength from the Warden, as I forgot to do that last episode. Gave the move to Blastoise, also gave Rock Slide to Sandslash.

Silph Co. time, complete with some good music. I quite like the music in Silph Co. (one of the best area themes imo) but let's choose a song that's probably more obscure:

Yeah Boomerang bumper music is pretty random, but this song slaps.

We head to 5F immediately to grab the Card Key. I love the inverted color effect for attacks like Hyper Beam and Night Shade by the way.

Then we start at the second floor and drain the place of all the mooks. By the way, I forgot to comment my thoughts on the Safari Zone last time. Not much to say about it honestly, it is luck-based and is probably a good thing the franchise basically retired it post-Gen IV (it did come back in ORAS but with regular capture mechanics IIRC). We give a Protein to Dodrio.

Also, Mr. Mime sees you sleep at night. In all seriousness, I actually quite like Mr. Mime precisely because of how weird it is.

We also use the warp on the third floor to get to an easy healing spot and give an HP Up to Wigglytuff.

Remember when the real world got inexplicably mentioned several times in Gen 1 before the franchise dropped that faster than an Indian elephant? It was a weird time.

Seriously, why were the 4 Rocket Brothers even a thing? It's so bizarre.

On 10F, we give a Carbos to Eggs and teach TM26 Earthquake to Sandslash over Swift.

Now to deal with Toast.

Electrode deals with Pidgeot, Gyarados, and Growlithe handily, also weakening Alakazam so Dodrio can pick it and Venusaur off.

Something tells me this following line wasn't changed from early in development to Giovanni.

\
Also, this implies Blue fought Giovanni and potentially lost, but whatever.

Marowak has a great sprite: TOO BAD it sucks in Gen 1, lol.

My headcanon is that someone keeps calling out numbers like B5 and G7 in Silph Co. right when Butter unlocks Card Key doors. Otherwise, who else is saying this dialogue?

Giovanni is out here trying to act threatening when he makes Koga look competent

Naturally Blastoise eats him alive

Nah, I'm just kidding. I know the perfect thing to use this on.

Useful!

(I'm not using that trash).

Let's finish this session by taking on Sabrina.

Psychic are arguably one of the rarest Trainer classes in Gen 1, being exclusive to Saffron Gym, but I love their sprite and they became more widespread starting in the next generation.

Also we rolled a 1/256 on Body Slam, yay! And then later in the SAME GYM we rolled a 1/256 on Earthquake!

By the way, Gen 1 Psychic is a broken AF move with that 30% Special drop chance. Absolute insanity. Also, this is the last place you can find Channelers (the other being Pokemon Tower).

Sabrina time! Get it she dislikes Fighting

Fantastic sprite, but not quite as awesome as what Gen IV used for HGSS. Also, she must be good friends with Team Rocket (or the obscure Tamer class) with that whip.

Yeah, Sabrina is pretty rough thanks to Psychic types being busted, but people often forget she can derp pretty hard because of Gen 1 Ai being silly. Thankfully Dodrio mows down her first three pretty easily. But I have a plan...

WOW THAT IMAGE IS MENACING

not what I wanted to see though, but I have an idea:

and he derps and uses the same move twice. thankfully, we get a classic Gen 1 situation:

WE GOT 1 1/256 ON PSYBEAM, HECK YEAH

And for the grand finale...

Seeing a field post-Gym Battle with no Pokemon is hilarious. Also, her comment is fitting:

So we fly back to Cinnabar Island and heal up (remember, I grinded around here last episode).

Our team is looking pretty solid in terms of levels now, haphazard capitalization and all.

Next time, we explore Pokemon Mansion and likely finish up our quest for Gym Badges!

Also, go read ceal's LP of BW1!

 

[DrumstickGaming]

RBY Episode 7: Keys to the League

So I take on the Trainers east of Cinnabar offscreen for a couple extra levels on Eggs. Then we head inside Cinnabar Mansion, which-

Wow this place looks generic compared to the remakes. I get it, old technology and all, but like...still

FRLG

Let's Go Pikachu / Eevee

Love the music here in the original though. FRLG had an okay remix, but Let's Go decided "you know what sounds menacing? x y l o p h o n e !"

Anyway, the floor here is kind of an eyesore oddly reminiscent of Earthbound's File Select screen, at least in Blue. Granted, Creatures Inc. did work on Earthbound and some Pokemon games, most of them spinoffs.

We got another new Trainer class here, the Burglar, which is pretty much exclusive to Gens 1 and 2 discounting remakes. Love the shades.

Also, this guy's LGPE model looks like a crap-post:

Also, Charmeleon has a great sprite too.

Man that Ninetales sprite is majestic:

I would talk about the Mew / Mewtwo stuff here, but honestly we have plenty of screenshots so let's keep moving instead. We give an Iron to Eggs.

It's the void, just casually in a mansion like this.

We fall down and give a Carbos to Dodrio. We find the Secret Key and the Blizzard TM, so we Dig out and teach Blizzard to Wigglytuff over Mega Punch, also healing up. Time for the Gym.

The gimmick of Cinnabar Gym is quiz machines but none of that really matters because I'd imagine most fight the Trainers for EXP anyway. This question of Caterpie evolving into Butterfree is kinda BS; Caterpie technically evolves into Metapod first, but whatever. We give Skull Bash to Blastoise over Bite. I don't have much to really say about this puzzle other than-

Man Rapidash has a marvelous sprite.

Now for Blaine. Again, dunno why this line got popular, much like the shorts one:

Yeah, Blaine's sprite is a little lame compared to the others.

I setup Light Screen with Electrode and zap him. He's so pathetic he doesn't really do much beyond spamming Leer and wasting a Super Potion, which he can allegedly use on full HP Pokemon, lol.

We Fly back to Viridian City for our final Gym.

Does the game think that's supposed to scare me? Because it really doesn't. But at least we have the slick male Cooltrainer sprite here.

We also have Brock's brother, I mean the Tamer.

Unlike the Burglar, the Tamer is pretty much exclusive to Kanto and Pokemon Stadium. But I believe that is the last standard Trainer sprite in the game, so at least we go out on something unique. Think of them as palette swapped Cooltrainers - they tend to use mostly Grounds, Poisons with Normal types (with one later having Golduck inexplicably).

Tauros has a neat sprite: too bad you'll never see one in normal gameplay (heh)

Anyway, the Trainers use a solid variety here and are probably more interesting than Giovanni himself lol

get real

no it wasn't, I literally finished with full HP

I guess now I better say my thoughts on Team Rocket. I think their generic evil is made up for with a constant presence in the game, not dissimilar to what Team Plasma is like in Black and White 1 (just without all the depth). I like all of the places Team Rocket is attached to, and Giovanni, while painfully easy, has enough gravitas to be mildly memorable. Like with the rival Blue, they are thin, but have enough charisma to be given a pass.

As for my thoughts on the Gym Leaders, Brock is a decent first boss, Misty should have probably been nerfed some, Lt. Surge is laughable for the most part, Erika is honestly pretty good, Koga is...Koga, Sabrina is pretty iconic and fun, and Blaine and Giovanni are fairly forgettable as far as battles go. Even the lacking battles are fun to look back on in their own way. So pretty decent on the whole.

Couple more things to finish this episode though. Let's go beat up some birds.

but wait, there's-

Power Plant has the Rocket Hideout theme for some odd reason. Whatever. We use a Carbos on Dodrio.

This dungeon's gimmick is fake balls which are actually Voltorb / Electrode. Also you can snag the Thunder TM here. Not much to say as that's pretty much the only two distinct factors about this place.

Also they totally reuse Cinnabar aesthetics here.

I just made a beeline for Zapdos really.

Easy peasy. Onto Seafoam Islands. Also, the Surf sprite is totally Chansey, change my mind.

Seafoam Islands is basically Victory Road lite with all the Strength pushing boulders into holes.

A couple boulders into holes later and we get to Articuno. It's honestly pretty short, which keeps it from being annoying.

Another great sprite, though maybe it's a little too white / shiny. Oh well, it was on the Game Boy.

Also screw HGSS for putting TM13 Ice Beam here instead of in Johto where it could have helped with a cheap final boss. We Dig out and Fly back to Viridian City.

Continuing on from my thoughts above, I quite like the Kanto region. I'd honestly say it's a contender for my favorite in the series. Pretty much all the locations are consistently memorable and they don't really reuse setpieces too much (Mt. Moon has early game troubles making it distinct and Rock Tunnel is long enough to be memorable). Compare this to Sinnoh, where caves are everywhere.

The actual gameplay may be dated, but I think everything else is great, more or less.

Next time, we set out for and hopefully conquer the Pokemon League!

Quick question: do you viewers want me to mess around with glitches as a bonus feature after I beat the game? Never bothered with them in previous playthroughs. I will likely do it in the episode we tackle Cerulean Cave if you all want it.

 

[ceal]

Quick question: do you viewers want me to mess around with glitches as a bonus feature after I beat the game?

catching Missingno would be a legendary ending to this playthrough, especially if it doesn't destroy your save file in the process

 

[QuentinQuonce]

Quick question: do you viewers want me to mess around with glitches as a bonus feature after I beat the game? Never bothered with them in previous playthroughs. I will likely do it in the episode we tackle Cerulean Cave if you all want it.

Very much so

 

[DrumstickGaming]

Okay, I'll definitely try to do some glitches then.

RBY Episode 8: Something, something, this game is Outdated

Time to head onto Route 22 and who do we see?

Weirdly, Toast's encounter theme plays at double speed in this instance and I have no clue why. Anyway, his levels are high, but he should really be nothing to worry about, especially since his Venusaur has...Vine Whip. His Alakazam beat Dodrio due to an unlucky Hyper Beam miss before he used Reflect, but we handily won otherwise.

This episode is just full of musical oddities because this room and only this room of the Badge Check Gates plays the Viridian Forest music, but when we walk outside the music changes.

Oh well. I love "The Final Road." Very climatic song.

It is kinda weird how later gens for the most part (BW2 being one exception) do an all-badge check, but it's not like this takes much longer.

Victory Road time. It's a little slow while pushing boulders onto switches, but hey, it's the last proper dungeon of the main game, so it makes sense it's a little tedious.

Naturally, it's packed with Trainers with varied lineups. They have quite a few interesting mons.

What's with Persian almost not having a left eye?

Also, some of these Trainers can apparently use X Attacks on their Pokemon. Tremble in fear at Exeggutor's +2 Barrage.

"far out, man"hu

Kingler has a fantastic sprite though.

Also, Tentacruel is not impressed.

Anyway, we make it to the exit pretty easily.

Our last tip in the game. We buy some items and head on inside, with my team being level 46-47 after using 8 Rare Candies. Also, this guy was in the Celadon Game Corner instead of that gym, thought I'd mention that since I didn't visually acknowledge it earlier.

And since this episode has been rather short, let's go ahead and finish the main game!

fsr it makes me think of THAT laugh

For some odd reason, only Lance has Gym Battle music: the other three have Trainer battle music and I don't know why. Anyway, Smirk obliterates her for the most part, with Wigglytuff finishing off Lapras.

Gen 1 Bruno might have a cool sprite, but he's also insanely pathetic. Literally anything with decent Special can sweep him, in this case, Blastoise.

also behold the power of 35 base Special Thunderpunch

'

Apparently Bruno took offense to my harsh criticism, so I rolled a 1/256 on Strength then this happened on an HJK. Ow. I revenge with Dodrio.

I tried humiliating Machamp with Wigglytuff but he was faster so lol

What's interesting is that Bruno's room has the Rocket Hideout theme and Agatha's has the Pokemon Tower theme.

Agatha is a pain for one major reason: fast Pokemon with Confuse Ray and sometimes Hypnosis (which can be worked around with infinite Poke Flute). Gengar's sprite is stellar though. Sadly, her Gengar's Special is so high you'll likely 2HKO them even with a Psychic.

I eventually switch to Sandslash who cleans up nicely.

This is a great hallway for a final boss.

Magnificent sprite for Lance, and we get the actual Gym Leader music for his battle.

Electrode takes care of Gyarados and Dragonair comes in, prompting me to switch to Blastoise.

Dragonair also has a neat sprite.

lol Gen 1 Aerodactlyl sucks despite having a cool sprite.

Lance might be easy on the whole, but don't underestimate Dragonite. Since he's likely to have quite a few levels on you, Hyper Beam will definitely hurt, all of his Pokemon have it too. Yellow only makes Dragonite more dangerous by also giving it Fire Blast, Blizzard, and Thunder.

!!!

Wigglytuff hasn't been doing a whole lot in major battles lately, so it's nice she got to play a pivoital role here.

It's interesting to note that this was actually a plot twist at the time. With any game from Gen 2 onward, everyone knows there is a Champion, but to my knowledge Gen 1 doesn't make that clear until now. Let's heal up.

I actually like Toast's speech here. Most Champions are painfully reserved, but Toast is the best and he knows it. BW2 pulls a similar approach with the "I'm the Pokemon League Champion, and I'm going to defeat you!" thing. Let's do this!

Such an iconic battle theme too, regardless of which version you're playing (this is like one of the few times I feel like FRLG sounds like anything above the auditory equivalent of dullsville outside maybe the Gym Battle theme).

I quite like how the rival's sprite changes three times over the course of the game, with this being the final one.

Electrode comes in clutch against Pidgeot.

oh dat's bad

He has the Special to easily tank our hits and heal off the damage, but we are faster. So what do we do?

actually, not kill him

oh man

Thankfully Dodrio picks up the slack and kills it. Toast switches in Rhydon.

Gyarados slowly kills us, but...

Drill Peck + Hyper Beam takes care of Arcanine.

Drill Peck does just enough damage to get Venusaur near half as it charges up SolarBeam, so...

Stylish finish time.

And we win!

Also it goes without saying, but Blue's team has pretty terrible movesets in Gen 1.

Meanwhile it's clear Professor Oak prefers bacon as the optimal complete breakfast choice. Jokes aside, I like the slowed Pallet Town theme here.

LOL this Hall of Fame room is lame, it is odd that it has some music when some incarnations don't (Gen 3 also has music tho).

Clearly, I just became Champion (Oak is referring to Pokedex completion though)

And that is Pokemon Blue ladies and gentlemen, at least the main game. Great credits theme, particularly in FRLG with the medley of various songs and updated visuals.

Next time we show off Cerulean Cave and mess around with some glitches.

Any glitches in particular you guys want me to show off besides MissingNo?

 

[DrumstickGaming]

RBY Episode 9: Somewhat Impressive [Finale!]

Intro and Miscellaneous Stuff

Before we get back to actual gameplay, let's talk about a couple miscellaneous things for a bit.

Both versions of this opening (be it RBY or FRLG) are great. They communicate the core concept of Pokemon well. Let's Go has a cute opening, but tells you basically nothing about actual Pokemon battles. Sure, Oak does that later, but...still.

One weird thing is that the title theme continues onto the file select screen, and Gen 2 even has its own unique music for said screen. In subsequent generations, this would be replaced with s i l e n c e, a move I don't understand at all. It makes reloading a game bizarrely creepy, when it should be a period of fond excitement, especially if you're a kid playing these games.

Cerulean Cave

Anyway, it feels like only a few weeks ago we started this adventure, probably because I desperately need a night life. We start back in Pallet Town.

Another bizarre thing is-

THE GAME DOESN'T FULLY HEAL YOU AFTER THE FINAL BATTLE.

After we heal up with Mom and Fly back to Cerulean City and head to Cerulean Cave, where I unironically want to do a little grinding for the one thing left in the game.

This will be useful for our upcoming fight.

As will this.

We give Thunder Wave to Electrode. This is something I could have done ever since we first got it (we got the TM north of Nugget Bridge: I got this mixed up with FRLG and thought it was at Silph Co. for a bit). In any case, with its blazingly fast 162 Speed, Electrode should be are run bot because the wild Pokemon are quite high leveled.

One last thing before we actually explore the cave though.

I've got bad news for you, lady.

This Lass has two level 31 Paras and one level 31 Parasect. Given how most people Surf over here postgame, she's basically asking to be clobbered. You're probably surprised this part had a traditional Trainer battle, huh?

"Cute?"

Anyway let's stop messing around and head inside Cerulean Cave for real. It's quite the labyrinth, and for some reason it also plays the Rocket Hideout theme, though to be fair that place was also a maze. It's just a theme they continue to slap anywhere they want to sound randomly menacing, haha.

Cerulean Cave has a massive variety in the wild Pokemon, even holding Chansey on the other floors for massive EXP. I really like this idea! Having this dungeon be some super scary bonus after you complete the game with a lot of really randomly tough Pokemon hiding the ultimate Pokemon at the bottom. Even in its original form, this Area Zero concept has tons of appeal, even if the franchise didn't have the storytelling chops to pull off the greater narrative implications yet. Also, if it's sometimes called the Unknown Dungeon, then why was somebody blocking it if they presumably knew Mewtwo was in there? It makes no semse.

Lots of dead ends on the lower floor too.

I actually got quite confused for a bit until I realized if you take the top left ladder in that lower room, you're going the right way.

Anyway, after some more traversal, we make it to Mewtwo with the Gym Battle encounter theme no less.

Mewtwo is without hesitation the strongest Pokemon in the game, with Recover, Psychic, Barrier, and Swift in its arsenal at level 70. You could easily wipe to this thing, though we're going to try and defeat it.

We paralyze it and set up Light Screen.

Then it crit swift so LMAO. I think those extra couple levels helped us survive that.

It's time.

OH.

We send out Sandslash and Earthquake, but unfortunately it uses Barrier.

and it heals

I was legit scared, but we got lucky.

We pulled through, and get a level up for our efforts!

Mewtwo retreats to go terrorize Gen 1 Ubers.

Trying to defeat Mewtwo is easily the hardest challenge in Gen 1, and catching it is even worse without the Master Ball. We Dig out of the cave and heal up (fun fact: Dig takes you back to the last used Pokemon center in this game, not the actual cave entrance).

Team Combat Evaluation

Now, it's time to evaluate my team.

Blastoise had a solid run as usual. Everyone knows its the best Gen 1 starter, and it was always reliable whenever I needed it.

Wigglytuff gradually became more irrelevant as the game went on, as Normals tend to do, but it helped us a lot with the early parts of the game and had that clutch Lance moment. In my heart Clefable is definitely better, but I wanted this playthrough to be interesting, so I used Wigglytuff instead.

Sandslash I feel is pretty great in the first generation, though its low Speed does hinder it later on and Gen 1 has plenty of offensive powerhouses that are faster. Still a solid team member, and without it we wouldn't have triumphed over Mewtwo. Good mon, try it out sometime.

Electrode is definitely a fringe Gen 1 pick, but if you need a Lorelei counter and a Mewtwo check, those are great reasons to pick it up, though you HAVE to TM Thunderbolt on for it to be useful. I loved exploding with it though.

Dodrio is easily one of the top Gen 1 powerhouses. It doesn't take long to get going, has amazing STABs, and if you have enough spare change Hyper Beam is amazing for it. It's not especially great in later gens either, so if you want to use it, it's easily the best Normal / Flying type in Gen 1. I really relied on this thing a lot lategame for cleanup on enemies, and it served me well - I'd say it was arguably my best team member!

Exeggutor was useful, but I feel was slightly overshadowed by Dodrio and unfortunately struggled to find a niche: I actually had to look back at previous posts to even remember what it did. I never used the ToxicLeech combo, and like I showed off against Agatha, it's fairly slow compared to other Psychics. Still though, I've used it before and can vouch for its effectiveness. Just be warned it's fairly unorthodox and a little tricky to sweep with: this is still its best performance in any game though.

GlitchahcneuicscnjdskbcdhkcsdhdsSVisamazinghsjhbscjhdcdcd

We head to Fuschia City. I make a save state just in case anything goes wrong.

i
We enter the Safari Zone, try to leave, say no, save, and reset. And then we leave, say no to a Safari Game, and start walking onto the nearby route...

what the-

Are you Arceus? What is this Captain N: The Game Master warping nonsense?

We leave through the south entrance and-

insert some tired joke about the modern games here, which totally isn't overused and ignoring every single good quality they have.

Unfortunately, we're basically trapped here. The only way out is to Fly or Teleport.

Also the game glitches further when we open menus.

The game seems to place us on that route we walked on, so let's Fly to Cinnabar Island, where I purchased some Ultra Balls offscreen earlier.

Bye recurring nightmares

We then Fly back to Viridian City, where we talk to that old man again.

Then we Fly back to Cinnabar, Surf along the coastline, and...

that's not a Water type (also hooray for setting bars!)

We also find a Bellsprout level 26, and soon...

It takes quite a few Ultra Balls, but...

plot twist: that doesn't stop the battle!

Naturally, we KO it with extreme prejudice, gaining no EXP for our troubles.

We Surf a little more, and...

Missingno is much higher leveled, so we can afford to Thunderbolt it.

Thankfully, we catch it before we run out of Ultra Balls.

I'm not going to catch every form because that'd be pretty needless, but I will at least show the other forms off.

But when we try to withdraw M', the game promptly crashes.

I think that's a good a sign as any our glitching is over. If I ever get in the mood to glitch more, I'll make it a bonus episode when I feel like it, but I don't want to bloat the post. When people say Gen 1 has no postgame, I think that's a slight misnomer: Cerulean Cave and messing around with glitches are pretty fun, if limited.

Quick Generation 1 Review

Overall, I think Pokemon Red, Blue, and Yellow are still solid RPGs years later. It doesn't tell you anything about what moves do, but I think you'll be fine if you've played a post-Gen II game beforehand and know a couple quirks. You just have to understand the context of when it came out, and the difficulty isn't too bad to where I think it'd scare off someone even if it was their first Pokemon game. I take a couple points off Yellow for saddling you with the worst starter of all time in Yellow Pikachu, and yes I am serious, but it does fix up the sprites and make some encounters less rare, plus you can get all three starters, so there's that.

Has the game aged well? I'd say relatively so, and I'd call it somewhat impressive, even. This game had 151 different monsters to use. That's a crazy amount of potential party members and obviously not everything is going to be fine-tuned on their first attempt. Plenty of things that start out good are the exception and not the rule. Even shows that start good like Avatar: TLA or Batman TAS have those episodes that creators say “it got really good here.”

Even disregarding that, things almost always need to have slow starts by definition, to, in the case of a game, get you invested in mechanics, or in the story, get used to characters that grow and change. Future installments have the good groundwork of the first installment putting in the effort, so naturally they tend to be better unless it’s a rare case where the original was so good it cast a massive shadow like the Yoshi’s Island series
And to bring the point home, I also didn’t grow up with Gen 1. I sort of grew up with FRLG.

In any case, thank you for potentially enjoying the game with me, and I'll see you next time, potentially for a collaboration (though I might do another game before that, I'm not sure, as I don't want to burn myself out).

Catch ya later!

 

[QuentinQuonce]

Congrats on finishing! This has been fun to read.

Also, if it's sometimes called the Unknown Dungeon, then why was somebody blocking it if they presumably knew Mewtwo was in there? It makes no semse.

Do they? It's always seemed to me that it's just for the reason they give: there's strong Pokemon in here, your average joe has no business entering. They do precisely the same thing with Mt Silver, and there's no legendaries there.

Though I've always thought there's some gloriously dark fan-fiction to be written about the research team who say that they plan to explore Cerulean Cave in a bid to find the legendary birds. Did they make it in there before Red (presumably) caught Mewtwo? Or was he too late and did they meet a grisly end?

Actually, you've got a neat and tidy explanation for the cave being collapsed in Gen II, there...

Overall, I think Pokemon Red, Blue, and Yellow are still solid RPGs years later. It doesn't tell you anything about what moves do, but I think you'll be fine if you've played a post-Gen II game beforehand and know a couple quirks. You just have to understand the context of when it came out, and the difficulty isn't too bad to where I think it'd scare off someone even if it was their first Pokemon game. I take a couple points off Yellow for saddling you with the worst starter of all time in Yellow Pikachu, and yes I am serious, but it does fix up the sprites and make some encounters less rare, plus you can get all three starters, so there's that.

Has the game aged well? I'd say relatively so, and I'd call it somewhat impressive, even. This game had 151 different monsters to use. That's a crazy amount of potential party members and obviously not everything is going to be fine-tuned on their first attempt. Plenty of things that start out good are the exception and not the rule. Even shows that start good like Avatar: TLA or Batman TAS have those episodes that creators say “it got really good here.”

Even disregarding that, things almost always need to have slow starts by definition, to, in the case of a game, get you invested in mechanics, or in the story, get used to characters that grow and change. Future installments have the good groundwork of the first installment putting in the effort, so naturally they tend to be better unless it’s a rare case where the original was so good it cast a massive shadow like the Yoshi’s Island series
And to bring the point home, I also didn’t grow up with Gen 1. I sort of grew up with FRLG.

In any case, thank you for potentially enjoying the game with me, and I'll see you next time, potentially for a collaboration (though I might do another game before that, I'm not sure, as I don't want to burn myself out).

Catch ya later!

Honestly, I agree. People go on about Gen I aging horribly, and yeah they're buggy messes if you know how to exploit them, but let's not forget the vast majority of casual fans probably don't. Pokemon is a formula that's effective, and Gen I does it (mostly) incredibly well. It's simple and classic and even though by comparison it's a horrendous slog compared to even Gen II (god, the amount of QoL changes between the two gens is actually breathtaking when you stop and think about it) it's a great game on its own merits.

Aaaand now I want to play Gen I again too.

 

[DrumstickGaming]

Oh right, Mt. Silver lacks legendaries save Moltres in HGSS. Now that I think about it, Challenger's Cave lacks them too...

Honestly, I agree. People go on about Gen I aging horribly, and yeah they're buggy messes if you know how to exploit them, but let's not forget the vast majority of casual fans probably don't. Pokemon is a formula that's effective, and Gen I does it (mostly) incredibly well. It's simple and classic and even though by comparison it's a horrendous slog compared to even Gen II (god, the amount of QoL changes between the two gens is actually breathtaking when you stop and think about it) it's a great game on its own merits.

Aaaand now I want to play Gen I again too.

As you saw above, I had to go out of my way to exploit the Glitch City, um, glitch. And MissingNo, while simple, is still easy to not execute (it HAS to be the water tiles directly east beside Cinnabar's land, I messed that up on my first try). This basically sums up our point that yeah they are held together by toothpicks, but the Pokemon formula is still fun and endearing.

Hot take: I think Gen I actually aged better than II (I can buy evolution stones maingame in the former, but not the latter). Admittedly, I grew up with Emerald, and I think Johto is kinda the low point of the series (I wouldn't outright call it a terrible game, but it's awfully limiting, which I think is the worst thing a Pokemon game can be, while simultaneously being dull and easy (GSC) or needlessly difficult for the wrong reasons (HGSS)). Don't worry though! When we get there, I'll try to explain my thoughts in a rational way: if you love Johto, that's awesome. I just see a region with limited options, absurdly rare Pokemon, and (in HGSS's case) a priority of looking slick and flashy over actively improving those problems.

Thanks for the compliment about this being fun to read: I had fun writing it. Getting someone to play Gen 1 again because of this playthrough was kinda the point.

 

[DrumstickGaming]

Welcome to my Let's Play of Pokemon SoulSilver!

HGSS Episode 1: John 2:10

I hate to be such a negative nancy after my positive views of Gen 1, but I feel like I have to Let's Play HeartGold / SoulSilver to really drive home all the problems I have with them. I feel like regardless of which version you play - Gen 2, Gen 4, this is a game that shot for the stars conceptually, but only succeeded in being less fun to play overall than the preceding generation. I personally prefer GSC and I'd love to continue the awesome 8-bit sprite gushing I did last time, but I think I found a way to remedy that, and HGSS just has so many fundamental issues unique to it I want to cover it instead. I think this playthrough is going to be a lot more text-oriented than Blue was, since, while Gen 1 was fairly basic and I feel like everyone knows how outdated it is, I want to show why Johto just doesn't wok for me. To everyone who loves this region, I'd advise you to probably stop reading now unless you can handle something you love being nitpicked to death. I'll try to throw in some humor to lighten the mood. We might go to Red, but don't count on it. If you like Johto, original or otherwise, that's amazing and I wish I could share that viewpoint, and you're not wrong for having that opinion!

I'm going to be placing my text BELOW the related pictures this time, to contrast Blue where I did text first.

y tho? also this has the file select music for some reason

Let's start with a positive: HGSS looks and sounds great for a DS game. Gone are the Sinnoh days of everything looking slightly off, in are the days of things looking pretty clean with a pretty good soundtrack. We play as a boy and get into the game.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, you used the name Luke instead of a joke name? Why is that? It's because that with Gen 1, it was fun to riff on in a loving way. Gen 2 I feel like is going to be a lot more unfiltered opinions, thus, I want to use my natural name.

(ok I kinda lied, just forgot to come up with something clever this time)

Frame is an underrated gameplay thing no one talks about. I might change them occasionally for flavor.

hello darkness my old friend (dw, it's not that bad in this game!)

In fact, that's another thing I'll praise HGSS on: it runs better compared to Platinum. It's rare you'll have to save a lot of data. It's not super fast like BW1 is, but it's better and I appreciate that.

Lyra gets her Marill and runs off. She's bland and there's really not much to talk about. When Blue looks more interesting compared to you in 2010, you done messed up guys. Granted, Silver was already the rival character, so whatever.

We get our unusually wordy intro from Professor Elm. You know what, that's another compliment: Elm feels distinct from Oak. Elm is a lot more...dorky and casual compared to the largely straight-laced Oak. It's a small thing, but one I appreciate.

Cyndaquil is my choice this time! Believe it or not, when planning my team, this was one of the last Pokemon I picked out! Also, again, love the graphics here.

We rolled Sassy. Let's pretend that didn't happen.

This is weird, because this is like, the ONLY game where you can heal at the local lab. I don't think you heal at home at all, only save money if I recall too? Not sure.

We named our Cyndaquil Egon and rolled Hasty this time. I won't Nature reset for everything unless it's particularly bad.

We get 5 Potions from the nearby Aide. Actually, that's another great design decision. Pokemon games early on are often the scariest part, so it's good the game gives you these. Off the top of my head, no other game showers you in healing items like this game does.

How did you get that? It's a 1% in Mt. Mortar!

In all seriousness, this is where I feel like HGSS's first problem presents itself, in the following Pokemon mechanic. These sprites look great for the DS, no doubt. But, besides the Shiny Leaves, something I'm betting a good chunk of you didn't know existed, it serves no real gameplay purpose, and even then, the Shiny Leaves' locations are actually based on Nature, so good luck figuring that out without a guide.

But back to my actual point. Yes, it's cool to see your Pokemon following behind you. But it's a mechanic I'm largely indifferent on, because it prioritizes aesthetics over gameplay. Like I said earlier, this game looks and sounds great! But when you have something that just looks nice so it can serve as a bullet point on the back of the box rather than touching up the numerous other playability issues the original had, that's where I take issue. This probably took a lot of work to implement and is purely a background detail, so I won't rag too much on it. It's cool to see your Pokemon change field sprites when they evolve at least!

Also, you get blocked if you head out of town without the Pokegear. We get Elm's number then head onto the next route, missing our first Tackle in the first battle. Amazing. Also, we turn battle animations off and get the items on the route before heading to Cherrygrove.

I didn't know this text box existed, actually.

Running Shoes toggle! My favorite feature in the game! No, really. This is fantastic. Not having to hold the B button is an amazing quality of life upgrade and one of the few design decisions I think isn't implemented haphazardly. Also, this implies this old man had two pairs of Running Shoes since these are new...it's played for laughs, but it's still weird.

Honestly, I like Cherrygrove City! It's one of the better second town locations in my opinion. Looks beautiful and you get some tutorial features here. The Guide Gent gives us the Map Card as we make our way out of town. We also get the Apricorn Box, which in my opinion is a pretty forgettable mechanic outside of crafting Friend Balls. I just don't see the use when Quick Balls and Ultra Balls are more easily available.

We get our Mystery Egg and get Professor Oak's marvelous music remix, as well as the Pokedex. That's another thing I like actually, the journey to Mr. Pokemon. I feel like it invokes a great call to adventure other than wandering a store and randomly getting a Parcel the game doesn't tell you about in Gen 1.

The Pokemon fandom is posting angry takes about the modern state of the series on Twitter again? I won't stand for it!

We head back toward the lab, and...

I like how the game immediately doesn't tell you what happened at the lab and instead has Silver show up with a Pokemon shortly before that is revealed later.

Silver's character analysis compared to Blue

As for my opinion on Silver as a character, he's a tiny bit more interesting than Blue, but not by much. I like Blue's development in this game more than I like Silver's personally. I feel like with Silver, they went so all in on making an outright mean character, and it went horribly right.

Sure, Silver is intended to be disliked, but that doesn't really make him that better of a character to me even when his development rolls around, especially since the battles in the postgame with Silver are 100% optional and the Team Rocket Celebi stuff that COULD HAVE made an impact was event only, instead of being in the main game proper like it should have been. I think Gladion from Alola is Silver done right, because Gladion has more depth and onscreen reasons to be a jerk than Silver does.

If anything, I think Silver's best moment is actually...right here, when you first meet him. Silver's introduction establishes this is a person you want to beat not because he'll "smell you later," but because he's a legitimately horrible person with an out of control ego. Blue was a jerk in Gen 1, but he never did anything outright criminal like stealing a Pokemon that Silver does.

Remember this line right before Blue's Champion battle in the last game?

"Hey! I was looking forward to seeing you, <player>! My rival should be strong to keep me sharp!

This implies Blue has a begrudging respect for the player at the end of Gen 1. He knows that even though he's the best, you're no pushover, and I like that.

Let's compare this to some of Silver's postgame stuff. He does change in the postgame and gets a Crobat by training in the Dragon's Den to show he's bonding with his Pokemon more. He also tries to return his starter later with Elm letting him keep it. But let's still look at the rematch quotes:

"Hold it. You're going to take the Pokémon League challenge now? That's not going to happen. My super-well trained Pokémon are going to pound you. <player>! I challenge you!"

He does cheer you on afterward, but I think the games actually lost a bit of nuance from the originals.

Here's the Mt. Moon stuff from GSC:

And here's the Mt. Moon stuff from HGSS:

Notice how in GSC, he talks about what HE lacks as a Trainer. In GSC, he says you won fair and square and says he is going to become the greatest, keeping his personality consistent while slightly respecting you, also saying his Pokemon are behind him. But in HGSS, he says his Pokemon are "weak."

Now let's look at his quote in Azalea Town:

"I hate the weak. Pokémon, Trainers. It doesn't matter who or what. I hate to see them hanging around. That goes for Team Rocket, too. They think they are big and tough as long as they are in a group. But get them alone, and they're weak. I hate them all. You stay out of my way. You won't be an exception if you get in my way."

Notice something? That's right, the original had a subtle focus on what Silver lacked in his dialogue, not his Pokemon. While HGSS makes this more apparent by him visiting the Dragon's Den, he's still plenty arrogant even post-development.

He does apologize at the Pokemon League, but only after he loses. If Silver had said something like "I know I can't beat you, but I might as well believe in my Pokemon anyway!" before challenging you, that would have made all the difference in the world. He's still an arrogant blowhard by the end, so he's ultimately Blue 2.0 with a couple small background details.

WHERE WAS THIS IN THE MAIN GAME???

Anyway, back to the actual game! That was longer than I thought, so I guess Silver is fairly interesting now that I stopped and thought about it.

Yeah, this is what I meant when I said I was still gonna show off the old sprites! For nostalgia purposes, we're going to be focusing on the GSC ones. At least we have actual rival music this time, so that's an improvement!

Also, fun fact: "In Pokémon Gold, Silver, Crystal, HeartGold, and SoulSilver, if the player blacks out after taking the Mystery Egg from Mr. Pokémon but before visiting any Pokémon Center, they will be returned to Cherrygrove City's Pokémon Center (even if the player has never visited this Pokémon Center). This prevents the player from skipping the first battle with their rival by blacking out and returning directly to the player's house."

We grow to level 8 and see Silver's name, which will in fact be his name for this playthrough. We head back to New Bark Town.

I like how Elm jokes with you about how the Gym Challenge won't be easy. Again, it adds to his dorky jokey personality and I like it.

We're going to be saving money this playthrough.

She actually buys some useful stuff for you in HGSS (best thing in GSC is a Moon Stone which is meh), so I recommend it. Another pretty good mechanic, honestly. In GSC, this was nice, as you still lost half your money upon losing back then as opposed to it being dependent on Pokemon levels + badge count prior to FRLG / the Gen IV games and onward. You know what, even in GSC, this is a nice quality of life improvement.

We leave town and get the catching tutorial from Lyra, which I think was given by Guide Gent in the original and on top of that, you could skip it. Why not make it skippable in HGSS?

We catch a Sentret for HM Slave purposes, with it strangely taking three Poke Balls to do so, so I buy some more. Back on the next route...

We get into some battles with both trainers critting me because of course they do! Great sprite work from GSC for Youngsters and Bug Catchers respectively.

Let's head inside Dark Cave for a little bit. Cyndaquil gets to level 10, so we get Ember and snag a Potion.

We get the Vs. Recorder from Lyra and make our way to Violet City, but I'm going to head onto Route 33 and catch some new things before ending the part.

I catch a Mareep because I'm unoriginal. This will probably be the only typical catch this playthrough: I promise the rest of my team will be very interesting.

Time for the Pokemon I'm pretty sure none of you expected at all.

Yep, it's Hoppip, oddly with the opposite nature Mareep had. Considering this thing is stuck with Splash and Synthesis until level 10 and takes forever to get good moves, I chose this for its synergy with another party member down the line and because we're going to be using a very quirky team that would appreciate its support. You'll see.

I'm going to train both Mareep and Hoppip up to level 10 to get Thundershock and Tackle respectively. We head to the nearby Ruins of Alph to potentially do so.

Ruins of Alph is a neat area with nice puzzles and good music, I just feel it's wasted on a Pokemon no one ever seriously uses. The wild Unown give good EXP and hit bizarrely hard for this point.

We also get the Rock Smash HM on the nearby route, so that's nice. Hoppip gets Tail Whip which helps Mareep deal more damage with Tackle.

We get to level 10 on both. Now our team is looking pretty good.

Next time, we explore Violet City and take on our first Gym Battle!

 

[Suspicious Derivative]

Congrats on finishing your playthrough of Blue! It was fun to follow, and I'll follow this one as well.

I feel like regardless of which version you play - Gen 2, Gen 4, this is a game that shot for the stars conceptually, but only succeeded in being less fun to play overall than the preceding generation. I personally prefer GSC and I'd love to continue the awesome 8-bit sprite gushing I did last time, but I think I found a way to remedy that, and HGSS just has so many fundamental issues unique to it I want to cover it instead.

Mostly agree. I also like G/S/C better, HG/SS just failed to improve upon them in any meaningful way. Smoke and mirrors doesn't mean much if the gameplay is terrible, new content means nothing if it isn't fun to play through.

In fact, that's another thing I'll praise HGSS on: it runs better compared to Platinum. It's rare you'll have to save a lot of data.

My experience is different. Outside of the slow saving times, I generally find Platinum to run better. HG/SS have a lot of glitches which are minor but pretty annoying once you notice them, I also find the touch screen controls and the following Pokémon to slow down the games way too much.

Lyra gets her Marill and runs off. She's bland and there's really not much to talk about.

Lyra/Ethan as an NPC always annoyed me a lot when I played HG/SS. I feel like they have no real purpose in the game. There are way better supporting characters out there, like Lillie or Dawn/Lucas.

This is weird, because this is like, the ONLY game where you can heal at the local lab. I don't think you heal at home at all, only save money if I recall too? Not sure.

Never thought of this before, but yeah, this is weird. I guess they have a healing machine at the lab simply because you can't heal by talking to your mom in the Johto games.

Also good choice with Cyndaquil. Not sure if it is the best Johto starter for HG/SS, but it is definitely my favorite.

How did you get that? It's a 1% in Mt. Mortar!

Annoying as she is, at least she has patience... or maybe she got it through a Swarm or from the Safari Zone. Or maybe I should stop overthinking things and continue reading!

In all seriousness, this is where I feel like HGSS's first problem presents itself, in the following Pokemon mechanic.

I mostly agree about your thoughts here. I strongly dislike the following Pokémon. Whenever I play HG/SS, I always wish it could be turned off.

Mostly agree with your thoughts on Silver. I think he's an overrated rival, I have always found his character arc and development to be too little, too late, and too poorly executed for what it is trying to accomplish.

I promise the rest of my team will be very interesting.

Time to guess some Pokémon you are going to use! Yanmega, Ledian, Azumarill, Granbull, Shuckle, Mamoswine, Magcargo, Smeargle, Corsola or Delibird? I guess the future will tell if I got anything right!

 

[QuentinQuonce]

Silver's dialogue got absolutely ruined by HGSS. All the character and edge was sanded right off, I need to write a longer post on how badly he was mangled at some point. Definitely one of the things those games did worst.

Welcome to my Let's Play of Pokemon SoulSilver!


We leave town and get the catching tutorial from Lyra, which I think was given by Guide Gent in the original and on top of that, you could skip it. Why not make it skippable in HGSS?

It was the Dude who gives you the (blessedly optional - why has no game since then made this optional?!) tutorial in GSC - a man of absolute mystery who even got his own backsprite! We learn precisely nothing about him, and he vanishes without a word in the remakes. Perhaps the single greatest enigma in the series to date.

(it's not, he was just cut so that Lyra/Ethan could do the tutorial instead)

 

[DrumstickGaming]

HGSS Episode 2: Bout with Sprout

What the hey, let's do another episode. Last time we left off in Violet City with some new team members.

Now we enter Sprout Tower.

Sage sprite is cool; notably he got censored for international releases. Virtually all of them have Bellsprout with Vine Whip, meaning easy EXP for Hoppip since they all do 1 damage. We get a level off the first guy alone, and Synthesis helps us save on healing items!

I didn't mention it last part, but I'm going to be playing on Shift this time, primarily because this game is hard enough to where I feel it's warranted. Hoppip picks up PoisonPowder at level 12. We also miss two Tackles in a row because lol 90 accuracy. We also take on the guy with Hoothoot easily.

And he is still boring. We get Stun Spore at level 14 and replace Tail Whip. Hoothoot has Peck but can't defeat us due to Synthesis and Poisonpowder. His remaining Bellsprout falls like the rest, with just 2 Tackle PP to spare.

Also the Elder got a unique sprite for HGSS...where this is the only place it is used. Elder Li is a good pun though. We get the Flash HM and head out.

As you can see, Hoppip got an insane 4.5 levels from Sprout Tower. It's a great training spot for it! We heal up and head to the Gym.

AKA "screw you Chikorita players"

This Gym looks great, love how it is high up as opposed to the flavorless barf path it was in the original GSC.

Yeah, this old sprite idea doesn't seem feasible. I'm having trouble finding images of GSC that aren't ant-sized, so we'll just stick with HGSS.

Bird Keepers are cool, I think they are less common in Gen 2 than in Gen 1 though. Anyway, we take on Faulkner.

Great sprite, we get fancy animations for Gym Leaders too Pidgey is OHKOed by Mareep's Thundershock and we grow to level 12.

Unfortunately, it's not a surefire win, as Pidgeotto has both bulk and Roost. We switch out to Hoppip and paralyze it after a Stun Spore miss, actually tanking a Gust. Probably could have done that earlier but whatever. Actually, Mareep faints and Pidgeotto is in red, so...is this really what's going to happen with Hoppip?

No. I miss Tackle because of course I do and it heals. Even worse, it manages to faint Cyndaquil.

This is bad.

Yep. We actually lost. I know I didn't make the smartest decisions switching out, but that should show you just how brutal the Gym Leaders can be in this game.

Oddly we fail to OHKO the Pidgey on a rematch.

This time I don't mess around, paralyzing Pidgeotto with Hoppip then going for the kill with Mareep. I'm not ashamed of my loss, Roost is an OP move this early. You do have the Rock / Grounds, but they have inaccurate moves so lol.

We get the Mystery Egg from Elm and get noticed by some vague woman, because videogames. Then we heal up. It's worth noting you can Rock Smash in Dark Cave for a higher % chance of encountering the 1% Dunsparce now, and BAM, time for another rant.

Huge availability rant

Several Pokemon in Johto regardless of version are insanely rare, often 1-5% encounters, for little to no reason. Marill, Yanma, Dunsparce, Snubbull, Qwilfish, Remoraid are essentially doomed to never be seen in a casual playthrough. They are meant to promote the mass outbreak / swarm mechanic. In GSC, with specific Pokegear numbers registered, you could have these pre-Hall of Fame. In HGSS, for no reason, they changed it so you have to have the National Dex, because nothing in this game can ever be intuitive or easily accessible. Granted, GSC specific numbers with limited space is also BS, but at least you could get swarms before beating the game there.

Even discounting this, Pokemon are riddled with availability issues in this game. Why is Sneasel a 10% only at night around the final dungeon? Why is Misdreavus a 5% encounter rate in Cliff Cave? Why is Murkrow either in the Safari Zone or postgame? And if it's not some postgame or swarm nonsense, it's trade evos which are locked off from a good chunk of players. This basically means that so much of HGSS's Pokedex is either so rare you'll never know it exists, needs a trade to fully evolve, or is postgame. What this means for you is that pretty much every playthrough of Johto uses the same 10 Pokemon because simply obtaining and evolving stuff is that big a pain. And we haven't even gotten to most evolution stones or all of the Safari Zone nonsense yet...

This limits the appeal of this game for me so hard, and why I think it's among the lowest points in the series. Pokemon's main draw to me comes from a huge vast amount of creatures you can use, and inherently limiting that pool to unviable or borderline impossible to find options just KILLS replayability stone dead. Say what you want about Sinnoh having standard player teams, but at least it's not a game of Where's Waldo outside of Honey Trees.

a

Also in the Violet City Pokemon Center is Primo, who can give you an Slugma Egg when you read an online guide and tell him some phrases. Slugma is borderline worthless due to evolving at level 38, but if they really wanted to give you it in an intuitive way, couldn't they just have...made it a normal encounter in Union Cave?

What is with this game? Even when it makes things objectively more available than GSC, it's so half-baked. Slugma was postgame in GSC? No problem! We'll make it so obscure no player will ever find out on their own in HGSS. Even if you do, he doesn't tell you what phrases you need to know for the eggs. And WHY can you get Mareep and Wooper Eggs? They are literally on the next route outside town!

You know what would have been a cool Mythology Gag? Have Primo give you a Jigglypuff Egg, as he catches one in FRLG's Teachy TV stuff! It's a Safari Zone only or postgame otherwise, so giving it to you early would mean you could at least have a decently powerful early Normal type, as Moon Stones are easily accessible in this game after Morty. Or how about an Elekid or Smoochum Egg, kinda like the Odd Egg in Crystal? That might actually be pretty fun. But no, let's give them the borderline worthless Slugma.

You know what, let's talk about that too. This game's borderline obsession with introducing baby Pokemon and then doing jack all with the concept. The idea of baby Pokemon was clearly meant to give you first forms of usually powerful Pokemon early, so they wouldn't be overpowered.

Pichu - Pikachu is postgame in Viridian Forest, must breed for Pichu
Cleffa - Clefairy is available in the Safari Zone...at night...in the tall grass in the Meadow specifically - default and with 3 Peak points; otherwise postgame. These areas are randomized by the way, and you might have to wait 3 in-game hours if you don't roll them first try.
Igglybuff - Jigglypuff is in the Meadow area of the Safari Zone, must breed for Cleffa.
Togepi - Freebie from the Mystery Egg
Tyrogue - Out of the way in Mt. Mortar after 8 badges with Waterfall, no hints for you to keep your party open for it, level 10, just...why?
Elekid - Electabuzz is a Forest block-based encounter in the Forest, and blocks are only done with National Dex postgame...lol
Magby - You get Magmar in Burned Tower maingame, so why would you ever want Magby?

So, in reality, this mechanic only functions for Togepi...the default one unless you're insane and psychic and raise a Tyrogue.

WHY DOES THIS MECHANIC EVEN EXIST? It adds nothing but a bunch of wasted Dex slots! The Alola games do a good job with this, giving you many baby Pokemon early, but in its debut generation, it feels like again, a half-baked afterthought.

We head onto Route 32 again and give a newly acquired Miracle Seed to Hoppip. We teach Quick Attack to Cyndaquil as it is both stronger and more accurate than Tackle. I'm not going to bother with too many Trainer sprites for the rest of this episode because I kinda just want to condense this post some after that rant.

After some wild fights, we get Quilava which is pretty nice. We also give the Bullet Seed TM to Hoppip over PoisonPowder, even though it learns it in four levels. Mareep beats up some Fishermen and gets Thunder Wave, while Hoppip beats up a Wooper.

We also get a Poison Barb from Frieda of Friday.

Also 1,000,000 SlowpokeTail is a funny gag

Mareep beats up the nearby Bird Keeper and we get Flaaffy, also known as the most misspelled Pokemon out there in Trainer's Choice by the Hoenn anime. We heal up and head into Union Cave after we get an Old Rod in the Pokemon Center.

I quite like the area intro art of the locations, which started in FRLG. But again, style over substance.

Wanted to highlight the Firebreather sprite because it's one of the new ones in this game. Pretty rad.

Hoppip gets Sleep Powder, which we learn by replacing Synthesis. I don't think the latter is going to be all that useful.

Pokemaniacs have a great sprite too.

We get to Azalea Town and meet the boring Team Rocket, which I think is mostly repeated Gen 1 leftovers with none of the interesting locations and dull Executives.

Neat change I think HGSS first added is that you can't die from poison anymore, before removing the damage on the overworld entirely come Blac and White. It's nice.

We wild grind a bit because why not and-

We get Skiploom! Figured I might as well make it a trio of evolutions in this episode.

Next time we explore Azalea Town!

Thanks for the responses Suspicious Derivative and QuentinQuonce!

Silver's dialogue got absolutely ruined by HGSS. All the character and edge was sanded right off, I need to write a longer post on how badly he was mangled at some point. Definitely one of the things those games did worst.



It was the Dude who gives you the (blessedly optional - why has no game since then made this optional?!) tutorial in GSC - a man of absolute mystery who even got his own backsprite! We learn precisely nothing about him, and he vanishes without a word in the remakes. Perhaps the single greatest enigma in the series to date.

(it's not, he was just cut so that Lyra/Ethan could do the tutorial instead)

I'd love to read that Silver rant post! Also I forgot about the Dude sprite!

 

[QuentinQuonce]

View attachment 524288
Sage sprite is cool; notably he got censored for international releases.

Strikes me as dumb, but actually: is praying a universal gesture? Like, in western Europe at least it's not necessarily a religious gesture - it can just signify that you mean "please". But idk if that's the case everywhere else.

Virtually all of them have Bellsprout with Vine Whip, meaning easy EXP for

View attachment 524292

This Gym looks great, love how it is high up as opposed to the flavorless barf path it was in the original GSC.

Agreed! The gyms they changed the least and simply gave a slight makeover to are the ones I like best: Goldenrod and Olivine are fine (though there wasn't much to work with re the latter). Having said that, I did like Cianwood's new gym. But I hated the redesigns of Azalea, Mahogany, and Blackthorn - kind of indifferent on Ecruteak; it looks nice but it's not really a puzzle. The original takes a little time to figure out (at least for me)

Huge availability rant

Ugh, yeah. The arguments for keeping the GSC species elusive in GSC has been made multiple times (by me and others) and it's one I broadly agree with... but here's the nuanced bit... it shouldn't have been retained in HGSS. Why? Because the Johto species were no longer mysterious new mons at that point.


In fact (to tangent a bit) the Johto species, more than any others, have played the role of "mysterious elusive new species" multiple times: in FRLG, in Emerald, and even in Colosseum to a degree. Which is nice, but by the time Gen IV rolled around, the jig was kind of up.

It's so frustrating, because the Johto species never really get a chance to be the centre focus. Well, sort of in Colosseum. But they should have had greater prominence in HGSS. Crystal made some token gestures, but so many were so mild you'd never notice them (I didn't know until much later that Phanpy and Teddiursa were made available earlier, for instance). HGSS should have kept these changes, and added some others:

-Keep the grassy patch Crystal added on Route 36, to make Vulpix or Growlithe accessible early
-The Primo eggs were a great idea! But why did they have to be a mechanic you needed a website to unlock? Granted it's trivial to do so, but still
-Make Teddiursa/Phanpy a little more common in their respective areas - even 10% would have been better. Although given that they can't flee from battle anymore even keeping the 5% rate would be acceptable
-Keep the Odd Egg to make Pikachu, Electabuzz, and Clefairy accessible pre-Kanto
-Put Misdreavus in Ilex Forest at night
-Put Murkrow there too, or perhaps on Route 32/33 at night
-Put Houndour in the Burned Tower at a low rate, with Slugma in Rock Smash boulders
-I can never remember offhand if Sneasel is in Ice Path in GS or Crystal, but it should be
-Keep swarms pre-National Dex. Like, what the fuck?
-Put Larvitar in the north section of Dark Cave with a low encounter rate

I'd love to read that Silver rant post! Also I forgot about the Dude sprite!

Will make a mental note to get around to it at some point.

 

[DrumstickGaming]

HGSS Episode 3: All Is Not Well

Last episode we left off in Azalea Town. We go speak to Kurt so we can gain access to the travesty of capitalization, the SLOWPOKE Well.

One thing I actually enjoy about Gen II somewhat is it acknowledging Gen 1 was a thing while Gen II is, for the most part, still fairly standalone. It's a great way of the continuity feeling natural without it overtaking the current situation. That being said, Team Rocket in this game is pretty boring, which was easier to excuse back in Gen 1 and 2, but by the time HGSS rolled around in technically Gen IV, they could have definitely done some more "adaptation expansion" on the original GSC beyond simply giving the Executives names.

That being said, like with Silver, I think their best moment is here at the SLOWPOKE Well. Cutting off the tails of animals is pretty gruesome and sells them as a serious threat, but they basically just devolve into generic card-carrying villainy afterward, with most of their locations feeling like Gen 1 leftovers. At one point the Radio Tower Director wonders if they can control Pokemon with a special signal, but the Executives themselves never really bring this up again so it's wasted potential. At least their battle theme is pretty good though!

This Proton battle is pretty pathetic. Zubat dies to anything, and while Koffing can live a couple hits, it's not strong enough to beat you. A clear breather boss from the last Gym is welcome at least. Get used to this folks, Team Rocket in this game is little more than free EXP, though to be fair, they were also pretty easy in the last game.

Another thing that's weird of this is that Proton confirms the team broke up three years ago, which we more or less already knew. Why would you tell that to your enemy? How is that supposed to invoke fear? Kurt tells us Red disbanded Team Rocket three years ago. So we've had an introductory scene that, while short, told us more or less repetitive information three times in about fifteen minutes. This is the efficient expositional equivalent of torture.

And they suck much quicker, at least until Gen V.

Anyway, Azalea Gym has a pretty neat Big Brain Academy-esque puzzle with the Spinarak. It's pretty nice actually.

Bugsy is weird because he can either be really scary or really easy, depending on your team choices. His Scyther outsped my Skiploom before I could Sleep Powder, doing over half my HP as I sleep Kakuna and switch Quilava in (I wouldn't have minded sleeping Scyther to stop Focus Energy Quick Attack crits).

Scyther, much like Pidgeotto, is also deceptively bulky, eating a super effective Ember easily. Naturally, he crits Quick Attack and sends me near red HP, then kills before I can pick him off. I send out Skiploom to bait him into U-Turn, but he Quick Attacks to kill instead. Thankfully, he Quick Attacks Flaaffy like a moron and he dies. I was legitimately scared U-Turn would crit and we would lose.

We head for the nearby gate and Mr. Edge shows up because of course he does.

This battle can be another rough "early bird boss" if you lack a counter to his evolved starter, but Flaaffy mows him down without even taking damage due to some luck. We head beyond the gate into Ilex Forest. Didn't mention this earlier, but I like the cave music that does double duty as the forest theme here. Very mysterious. Also love the wild battle theme.

We catch some Farfetch'd in another good puzzle.

We head back and get the Charcoal, which I give to Quilava slightly later when I remembered it. Small thing, but I love the door sound effect for Azalea Town. It feels nice. Also, Togepi hatches; we box it immediately. Elm calls us and tells us to show him, but that's pointless because he gives us an lol Everstone for doing so. I do like the detail that he calls us though.

We teach Headbutt to all of our Pokemon because it's a great filler move. I could rant about how Heracross in the original GSC required specific trees and a few mons like Cherubi in HGSS require specific trees, but if I nitpick everything, we'll be here all day and I don't want every single episode to be completely negative and we'll be having some pretty big rant moments in the next episode anyway, so I'll cut em some slack this time, especially since Headbutt is a viable attacking option.

We also help a girl out of the forest. Being up front with you, I feel like the Kimono Girls have the exact same issue as the Seven Sages in Black and White, albeit to a lesser extent. Why are there five of these characters and not just one? You do battle them later which is cool but aside from the whole group dance thing, they feel mostly extraneous as a group: the Eeveelution stuff could be just combined into one battle. Also, their battles being ripped off in SV was unoriginal and lame. If you play the game, you'll probably know what I'm talking about.

We also get slightly embarrassed by Lyra's grandmother who runs the Pokemon Day Care with her husband, being mistaken for her boyfriend. Being completely honest here, I like this little moment! It makes the world feel more alive, establishes the Pokemon Day Care as ran by actual characters, albeit bit ones ran by minor NPCs. It fits the low-key, cutesy vibe Johto tends to give off with its Pokemon.

Too bad Lyra essentially becomes irrelevant after! We don't even get to battle her in the postgame, so I ask: why does she exist outside of this? I like that she gave her grandfather a Pokegear though.

We made it to Goldenrod City, which is gonna be pretty big to cover, so I think we should cover it in the next episode. I know this one was comparatively shorter, but I hope you enjoyed it nonetheless.

 

[Roldski32]

Scyther, much like Pidgeotto, is also deceptively bulky, eating a super effective Ember easily. Naturally, he crits Quick Attack and sends me near red HP, then kills before I can pick him off.

My experience with HGSS Bugsy during my personal in-game test run. Quilava keeps losing to this 1v1, mostly due to those crit Quick Attacks. I even had one attempt where my own Quilava just got straight up one-shotted from full by a crit Quick Attack after a Leer. Does Quilava even have good matchup against this fight?

 

[Suspicious Derivative]

Several Pokemon in Johto regardless of version are insanely rare, often 1-5% encounters, for little to no reason.

I agree with your rant here. Another annoying thing is that HG/SS didn't keep the changes Crystal made to the encounter tables. Crystal made some Pokémon like Marill, Sneasel and Snubbull easier to find, or available earlier in some cases. Plus some other changes. Can't talk about this without linking to my post about Johto Syndrome! While HG/SS did some other improvements and changes for the better, it was way too little.

Another annoyance with HG/SS is how you can't use a majority of the new Gen 4 evolutions before beating the main game. It would have been so nice if you had been able to use a Togekiss or Mismagius during the main game. Even worse, Platinum had just allowed you to do that and fixed the issue with it from D/P, it is a shame HG/SS couldn't do the same.

Ugh, yeah. The arguments for keeping the GSC species elusive in GSC has been made multiple times (by me and others) and it's one I broadly agree with... but here's the nuanced bit... it shouldn't have been retained in HGSS. Why? Because the Johto species were no longer mysterious new mons at that point.

This is an excellent point that I fully agree with. It was sort of acceptable in G/S/C, but keeping it this way in HG/SS was a massive mistake.

That being said, Team Rocket in this game is pretty boring, which was easier to excuse back in Gen 1 and 2, but by the time HGSS rolled around in technically Gen IV, they could have definitely done some more "adaptation expansion" on the original GSC beyond simply giving the Executives names.

I think that giving them names and making them individual characters only made them worse. Doing so removed the mystery from the originals where they were just unnamed Executives. It is funny, HG/SS changed one thing about Team Rocket and that just made them worse.

Also, their battles being ripped off in SV was unoriginal and lame. If you play the game, you'll probably know what I'm talking about.

I have played Violet so I should get this, but I have seriously no idea about what you are referring to here so you need to fill me in!

 

[DrumstickGaming]

HGSS Episode 4: Whitney is Overhated

Gonna be a quick one today, but we'll at least explore Goldenrod City.

We take on advertising because why not. One of the lesser known glowups Johto good is making the Bicycle actually...fast. It wasn't all that fast in the original games, so yeah, this is good. I don't know why Hoenn had to make the Bicycle oddly complicated.

Yeah, this Game Corner sucks. In the Japanese version, you can inexplicably buy coins as usual, but in the US, you can't. And with prices like these...

It takes forever. So, instead of being able to get powerful moves early if you have the cash, this is instead grinding simulator. And this game has a final boss where most Pokemon desperately want Ice Beam. This one small design decision - being able to buy coins - would make the Champion like 50,000x more manageable. But no. In theory, you have powerful moves easily as you can't lose coins you've already earned in previous rounds. In practice, it's a chore and a needless change. I get it, PEGI or whatever can't have kids gambling, but who in the HECK thought it was anything more than a fun little arcade as a kid? This change was the first problem I noticed back when I went back and replayed it, and for good reason.

Radio is one of the neater features that Johto introduced and we get ours at the Radio Tower. I don't use it much in an age where the Internet exists, but I like it for flavor purposes. Learning Pokemon locations and the like from an actual game character for example is a really seamless, natural mechanic.

I get the Fire Blast TM for Quilava at the Dept. Store, as well as the Reflect and Light Screen TMs for something coming up later. We are now desperately low on money, like 2,200, but oh well.

The obscure Beauty Trainer class returns in the Goldenrod Gym! I find it hilarious I happened to get it as just "Beau" lol.

Also a Sentret beat up Skiploom pretty bad, haha. In fact, it died later in this battle thanks to two Sleep Powder misses.

Even crit Pay Day from Meowth hits like a truck, and of course Sleep Powder misses again. Skiploom naturally faints AGAIN. We beat the next Trainer with a Snubull at least...then Sleep Powder misses 2x more in the next battle.

If you need to grind for the upcoming Gym battle, the Drowzee outside give pretty good EXP. Everyone is level 20 now, so time for Whitney. Quilava and Flaaffy now have Flame Wheel and Cotton Spore respectively.

At least they warn you?

In all honesty, Whitney's difficulty asks you A) Do you have Fire Blast Quilava? B) Do you have Geodude / Onix? C) Do you have Muscle the traded Machop? or D) Do you have Heracross? Heck, even a Selfdestruct Pineco can do some damage to Miltank.

We actually get pretty lucky on Clefairy as it Metronomes Seed Bomb. We get a crit paralysis Thundershock on it and waste Whitney's Super Potion, rolling some lucky paralysis.

Miltank comes out, and we Cotton Spore it to slow it down as a safety net. We Thunder Wave to waste its Lum Berry, then Static rolls on the same turn, paralyzing it for good (Cotton Spore was in case we didn't get the chance to paralyze it twice).

Because I'm silly, let's try it.

Headbutt flinchax let's GO

Naturally we roll no flinches and die in three hits because RNG is a pipe dream.

That's okay because I have a plan and the chip damage was necessary.

Die.

It's a roll for Miltank to die to Fire Blast at like levels, hence the chip damage. It's a tough fight if you go in unprepared, but you have plenty of outs.

Yup.

Next time we take on the areas beyond Goldenrod City!