12 04 2022

Yellow: So, remembering where I was and getting some idea where to go helped make this game easier to get back into. Ended up just bunkering down to get through this part of the game because it was burned into my childhood brain that thar be annoying parts ahead. What I do remember is that a few gyms and events are a little flexible in terms of order after Erika. Or was it after Silph Scope?

    Thanks to the backlit n3DS screen, checking a map and doing Rock Tunnel without flash was easy. I was pretty close to having my near-final team so I didn’t want to put flash on anything and didn’t have pokemon to swap in. Dunno what I’m going to do when I need to throw Strength HM on something. I can throw Surf on Blastoise. It’s an actual move. I forgot about HM restrictions so Venusaur has Cut, which has drastically reduced its damage output. Rock Tunnel, now that I’ve played more games it’s not frustrating (hard game), it’s frustrating (this is just annoying/ a chore). This is the first part where item management becomes something to focus on, RBY has a limited number of item slots, shared by all items. “Key Items” don’t get their own storage. Right before Rock Tunnel is a Pokemon Center, but the last Mart with up to date items is way back in Vermilion. Game doesn’t update Marts with items based on badges/progress yet. And while Lt. Surge’s badge lets you Fly, the HM is after Celedon. Thankfully there’s no items to go hunt in the Tunnel, just a crap ton of trainers between you and the next event. A ton of trainers and a high-ish encounter rate of annoying pokemon. I’m glad I got into a mood to just do this because if I didn’t I would’ve dropped it and this would be the last game I return to.

    Get to Lavender town, didn’t even bother with checking out the Tower. I was so bummed the first time I got here. Cool tower! Spooky stuff! Mysterious stuff! Pokemon was my first game like this and I had zero expectations.I was disappointed that after that long, arduous trainer gauntlet that there was very little “progress” to be had. I forget if the game let you fight the rival immediately in Red, but in Yellow the game lets you get owned. Quitting games wasn’t in my vocabulary then, but had I come into playing Pokemon after some other games I played I might have actually not stuck with the series like I did. The quest to find something to see the ghosts and save Mr. Fuji was juuuust interesting enough to keep me going back then. Replaying this is making me wonder less what Leaf Green is like, but what Let’s Go is like. 

    Next area has a few trainers that poison, but I still go through it. I at this point really decided to get Charmander into Charizard. Even if I can’t Fly the moment I get the HM, I’ll be close enough that I won’t need to deposit something to add a birb to the team to Fly. Though, between the Battles heading to Celadon. One more Underground pathway that I wish more cities here had, Got to Celadon. A lot of things happen here, and way more between beating Erika and beating Sabrina. Got HM for Fly, leveled up some pokes, filled out team more so I could earn exp while farming out some holes. Got items and TMs from the Department Store, decided to walk over and unlock Saffron early so I could visit the Mart there and have the Fly point already. I was also reminded that Oak has aides that give you items for unique species caught. At this point I wanted the EXP.All to balance out my team. Got an Eevee and stuffed it into a box. Went to Game Corner and started the event, but I’ll do it after Erika. 

Erika was surprisingly easy despite all the status effects to dispel. I fought all the trainers in her gym and got charizard thanks to grinding before hand. Balanced teams? Bah! I won’t need to bring out this giant lizard for a while. Besides, stats are so funny in this game. If I can’t play the type game I can play the weird special/not-special stuff. Rocket Hideout was so weird to go back to with the move pad puzzles. It scrolls funny. More weird performance things to remind the player that this game is held together with glue and tape. None of the battles are hard yet, but something tells me the levels are going to become a problem soon. I do remember trainer battles being lower than major fights coming up. 

Back in Lavender Town and Pokemon Tower is now easier to explore. There’s a rival battle but the few levels and few moves I got between first at Lavender and now gave me the boost to just wreck his shit. Type wise my teams have been balanced, but also the weird weak stats on some pokemon are showing through. Hypno wrecks through the ghosts, the poison types on Jessie and James’s team and another event down. The safety heal here is nice, feels like they understood pacing their game already but it feels like they were never consistent in implementing that. I went and took the poke flute and got the two snorlax, ran around doing things and slowly made my way up Silph Co. and also getting levels from the cycling road.

When checking order of things, I saw the levels of the next few badges and got the idea that my pokemon would actually be more underleveled for some of the fights coming up, but not most of them. Level was weilded as difficulty here. My pokemon were just hovering around 28 to 30, except for charizard. Saw high 30s, up to 40, and Sabrina at lv 50. Oh. And most of the trainers around were between level 25 and 30. Maybe 32 trainers with one pokemon closer to Fuchia. I somewhere here swapped my Hypno with a good move pool for pure glass canon Kadabra. If I was grinding, I want something to use later. Hypno is good, but I decided to glass canon the E4. If I need to go back, I’ll only need to grind Hypno from 33 or something. I originally intended to use Hypno, but I was already hitting things that were being left with pixels of health and forcing me to use potions. I wanted to see if Kadabra could do bigger numbers.

Silph Co wasn’t too hard, and this time I tackled it differently and rarely interacted with the teleporting puzzles. Like the tower, they understood that running back to the pokemon center would wear on people and put a safety heal in the form of a nurse on the 9th floor. It still came after I’d done a couple of run backs, but I still had to run back because there are so many items here that I had to store them in the PC. See, without dedicated slots it was hard to stock up on status healers and potions. Silph co has a ton of TMs and items that I didn’t want to use immediately. Threw the Master Ball into the PC and made my way to Sabrina. Sabrina was easier the minute I got Snorlax to 35. Body Slam. Body Slam everything. Tanky Snorlax is also a beast. It’s become more useful because there’s so much crit. So many Critical moves. Apparently speed improves crit chance in these games. Explains why I get wrecked by random rats, birds, and other fast pokemon. Let’s see how Fuschia goes. 

    I forgot how EXP.All, the Exp Share of Gen I, worked. I really wish I didn’t. It’s such a mess. There’s no held items yet, so if it sits in the bag, it works. It works by halving the exp the in-battle pokemon gets. Then spreads the remaining half among the entire team, in battle also gets a piece of that. If pokemon are switched, exp is lost. I think I may stuff it into storage even though it’s been a little useful. It actually forces having either really good luck on front row pokemon, or knowing what every trainer has. The most annoying part is every time exp is distributed it produces a message for every instance. It adds 12 (?) more inputs to every exp distribution dialogue after defeating an opponent’s mon. 

    Between knowing more, having more context, and just not being a little kid; it’s become clear that Gen I has a completely different tone than the rest of the series. Pervy old men, some of the dialogue, the Hiker high on shrooms, etc. This thing had humor closer to Dragon Ball and other comedy adventure manga that could show up in a shounen mag. The game is sillier. The game, probably more so in the original script, understands this evil boss got his butt kicked by a kid and kinda acknowledges it. The tone of the Dengeki Pikachu and Pokemon Pocket Monsters (the one with the rude Clefairy) manga make so so much more sense on this replay. It makes so much more sense the early anime is the way it is. The part of Gen II feels less serious than when I first played it, I’m understanding the weird anime tropes that feed into the rival’s character. It makes me wonder if Gen V’s and Gen VII’s freshness just felt like improved versions of the story they got forever to some Japanese players.