I play 3DS Virtual Console GB games with the 3D slider on. It's fun.

17 04 2022

Emerald: Cleaned up some of the end game and toured some of the stuff I skipped. Not much to say about some of those places. I stopped right after I did Elite 4 so my save booted up into being in the house, walking down to select which roaming pokemon, and getting national dex. I decided to go for Latias. Trying to figure out where my EON ticket is or a backup way to get it. I know for NA Emerald, The ticket has to be claimed on Ruby/Sapphire and then record mixed to Emerald. I don’t think I’m far enough in Sapphire to do that, but maybe a friend has their R/S save later in the game. I have an e-reader, a link cable, and two GBAs to make it work.

    I’m glad Emerald has Groudon and Kyogre available in game, but the Gen III/IV catch rate was super annoying. Finding them is also a little annoying with weather event stuff, but it’s got some flavor to it I guess. It’s not annoying enough to make me dislike it but it is enough weird travel that makes me go “why?” Steven wasn’t too hard. Atleast, after I got some levels on him. I probably could’ve gone in underleveled but I remember RSE late game not playing nice. Maybe it’s just Battle stuff coloring my experience. Will look back on this game more after I finish Leaf Green and Platinum. 

Crystal: Still making progress. I messed up an input and erased the most important move in GSC: Mean Look. Especially since I just stepped into Ecruteak. So I reset and put the game down and… didn’t pick it up for a while. Will Mean Look the roaming trio. Gonna catch them and… use them? I actually don’t know what I’m doing team wise yet. I have the basis for an interesting team, but haven’t looked into the whole thing. Maybe I do swap to the legendaries and use them in the back half. Slowly getting back to it, if I finish off Yellow and Crystal I can put down the 3DS until I look at Ultra Moon again. Though, I haven’t figured out how I feel about the Game Boy (Color) games. Maybe I want to get all the older games done before getting back to my DS/GBA era games. Finishing Yellow and Crystal then going to Leaf Green and Heart Gold would be fun.

Yellow: Fuchsia was a weirder gym than expected. I ended up fighting a lot of Psychic types, Charizard had an easy time with Koga. I’m still underleveled. Getting wins at 10 to 15 levels under leveled. In the leadup I cleaned up some routes and leveled pokemon. Lots of trainers on the routes but I’m running back to heal less. I did Safari zone to get story items, the gold dentures for the warden for Strength HM and the secret house for Surf. Luckily these can be gotten on the same errand. I wasn’t going to blind run this, so I looked up the path. I only remembered part of it. This is a part that reminded me that the game is trying to be a little comedic.

Seafoam islands weren’t so hard battle wise, but Articuno was a pain to catch. Catch rate was high enough that I finally got the “you missed!” type of message. I got bad luck and it almost wiped me, so on reset I got better luck and caught it in two ultra ball tries. Played riskier and realized that Pikachu was not getting the damage in. The layout I forgot outside of the basic premise that I was trying to push the boulders. It wasn’t the most complex puzzle in the game but I was getting tired when I was playing so I just looked up maps. 

All the water types on these routes let me catch up with Pikachu and Venusaur in levels. Venusaur was the first to hit 40 I think, but Blastoise shot past in the Gym. I had completely forgotten that Pokemon Mansion was not optional. I forgot the weird idea that the Gym was locked. Was Blaine and crew going to die of starvation if I didn’t find the key? After Blastoise wiped the floor, only getting in trouble once. Snorlax had to sub in for pokemon. A few wrestling Body Slams and tagged Blastoise back in. Surf might’ve gotten better in later games but it’s super viable as a move here. Makes me wonder what would’ve happened if they upgraded the other HMs to be on par with Surf if they’d still be around in some form. Nah, I actually like Sun/Moon’s implementation best. I looked up Let’s Go’s stuff and that seems cute or funny depending on which one. I think I’m going to have to find a way to pick LG Eevee up. 

Walked into my rival and gave him a friendly butt kicking. Still don’t have a super clean way to deal with Jolteon, hoping Snorlax can just Body Slam later on. I do have the Earthquake TM available in my bag. It seems like lots of people throw that onto Charizard and use Ice Beam TM on Snorlax or Blastoise. A few minutes into Victory Road I flew off to restock items. Who the heck decided to put wild pokes with Explosion and Self Destruct here? So rude. Just need to keep potions in stock so pokes have HP. Did this game need it as an underlevel filter? Moltres took one reset, somehow ended up being pickier than the other two birds on how the HP needed to go.

Victory Road’s most annoying part was the encounter rate ontop of having strength push block puzzles. The trainer battles certainly were a step up, but only had trouble when bad RNG hit. Easy. Got through it, healed, and walked back in. Going to be here for a while just trying to get as many pokemon to 50 and above. A part of me wants to try right now but I think I need to atleast get Venusaur to 55 for Sleep Powder. Razor Leaf crits a lot and is 25pp so it’ll last longer in Elite four. With both of those, Venusaur becomes more reliable despite annoying typing. I have two PPups to use and need to choose carefully. (Maybe three, they’re in the box and going to use them at the last minute.) Depending on which opponent I have multiple general purpose sweepers, but I need to save those for when I can’t exploit type weaknesses. I had a high spec sweeper in GenV at one point and was able to fall back on it when necessary and here on (virtual) Game Boy I just need to use them as part of my primary strategy. It’s really really tempting to just waltz in, but I also know Pikachu is going to need levels, it is a pure gamble using Thunder and Thundershock really needs to hit for more. The trainer pokemon are going to hit more like trucks when I get in there so mine are going to need a little more bulk. 


Potential Elite 4 Yellow Team:


   

   

 

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.