20 04 2022

Yellow: I got Venusaur to lv55, a few more to and past 50… and slapped on EXP.all and went into the Elite Four. I even forgot to fully restock on items. Oops. Lorelei was a huge gamble. I was dice rolling the entire time with Pikachu. Dewgong ended up at a pace that forced me to just win. First time I tried underleveled, I needed Dewgong to Rest so I can setup Double Team for high evasion. Having slightly reduced the level gap, it was easier to deal with. Cloyster is when I became a full gambler. I wasn’t even planning on it, I just decided to gamble and Thunder Wave and hope that it stays stunned while I do other things. Pikachu had taken a hit last round so was at half health, I expected any hit from here on out to be lethal. I did three Double Teams. (Forgive me if this doesn’t make sense, may have been two. I just did this and wasn’t exactly counting.) Nothing hit. Moves failed. That’s some luck, huh? For a Gen 1 game, anyway. I usually play expecting to fail horribly. Play as if confusion will make my pokemon punch themselves. So I decided to use Thunder. I have terrible luck with the less-than-100% hit moves. Every one hit. Pikachu took out Cloyster, Slowbro went down easier than expected. Jynx. Jynx is not weak to anything I slapped on the Pika. Thrash got a weirdly light hit on Pikachu, so I added another double team. Still dodging. A few more Thunderbolts and Jynx is down. Lapras. Oh boy. Went down in two with extreme luck. The only battle I was worried about because I didn’t really make any true backup. If I got on the evasion roll, I would have to keep it. Pikachu does not have great stats at this point. Pikachu went in at level 51. This was my only solution for Lorelei. It somehow worked. And then this wasn't dipping my toe in. Suddenly, I’m in the Pool and I gotta swim.

    Bruno I could’ve tried to clean sweep with one pokemon, but I had an idea. I wanted to save Kadabra for Agatha, I already knew I didn’t get mine to the level that it could one shot her team. There’ll be a lot of tiny red or yellow health bars. I put Venusaur and Blastoise on each Onix. Charizard will take the Fighting types on. Hitmonchan having two super effective moves on the Flying Fire lizard didn’t matter. One Fly took care of things. Took a kick to the face on Hitmonlee to Swords Dance Fly. Could’ve been more efficient? Maybe. Swap back in for Machamp after Onix #2, Took two Flys and a Swords Dance, but Charizard made it. Agatha took a few more turns than I would have liked, but made it through. Pokeflute to escape sleep from Hypnosis got two Dream Eaters that did nothing.

    Suddenly I’m at Lance. Was not planning on getting here, but now I have a chance. Pikachu can deal 4x damage to Gyarados, easy lead. Lightning came down and Gyarados was gone. Tested Snorlax on the first Dragonair, switched to Blastoise for the second one and Aerodactyl. That first one has Electric moves so I was hoping it’d be a good benchmark. All surprisingly smooth so far. Dragonite was sketchy, but two Amnesia and an Ice Beam did it. Was not expecting that. I’ve been taking advantage of the shared special stat and boosting it with Amnesia as a defensive maneuver. I didn’t put Ice Beam on it until the grind. Should’ve just stuck to it and did it earlier, not that it would’ve gotten use much. After Lance, I remembered to save. Next room basically auto-starts the battle so here’s where I save and use items. It’s been at least 15 years since I got to the elite four in RBY. Especially in Yellow. Glad I remembered that. I would need to use those hoarded items. I didn’t collect a lot of them. I forgot to restock potions. But I have some. Starting to regret not restocking, I’m down to only Max Potions and I may need to spam them. Dragonite had 14 or 15 levels on my lowest. Jolteon has 18. I have nothing above 55. Snorlax is Level 48 and my primary matchup for Jolteon. 

    Get to Blue and type match Sandslash with Venusaur. It is not touching actual damage moves, or missing, so I sleep it. Razor Leaf performs better than expected, given the level difference. Alakazam adds to my luck and misses twice, Snorlax winning. Exeggutor I throw Charizard at. I’m starting to get excited to see the end. Starting to feel the relief at finishing a game. Finishing this particular game. Starting to hope that I’m done with Gen I. Charizard takes some hits, but gets in a few Flamethrowers. Exeggutor puts mine to sleep and I have to Pokeflute it. Eventually Exeggutor is down and Charizard thankfully is only backup on Ninetales If I really need to. Well, it’s also backup’s backup on Jolteon since I did end up giving it Earthquake. Cloyster went a little messy, but Pikachu still hasn’t missed with Thunder and cleaned up with Thundershock. I can’t believe Thunder didn’t miss this whole try. Rarely that lucky back when. Ninetales gets surfed twice, Blastoise powered through confusion to get that second one in. And now I’m at the last boss Jolteon and hope nothing goes so horribly wrong I have to reset. My luck has been good in this battle so far. Snorlax is so low level, I just try an Amnesia or two immediately. Snorlax will be going second. Second Thunder just crits. The level gap is catching up to me, giving Jolteon easy crits. Snorlax faints. Go to Venusaur. Venusaur has a sleep move, is relatively bulky, and as I quickly found out is weak to one of Jolteon’s moves. Like they wanted you to directly type counter here. The AI just goes to Pin Missile, Bug type advantage against Venusaur, while I burn a Max revive on Snorlax. Yellow doesn’t have a post game outside of that cave, I don’t want to go back through the elite four. I will burn these items I can’t buy. I don’t have access to Stadium to do item management, either. (Or was that a Gen II thing?) I’m so happy I burned my last Rare Candies to get Sleep powder. I had to spam it but it eventually held for multiple turns. Got a little bit of damage in. Got Toxic off before Venusaur died. Snorlax tagged back in. I can just fumble whatever moves now. One Amnesia as safety. Jolteon did a few Pin Missiles before going back to big damage Thunder. Toxic’s poison does better than expected. It’s over. I won. 

I’m so glad I didn’t switch to set battle style to try it in Gen I. It’s over. I can go catch my Mewtwo and move on from Gen I’s weirdness. Pikachu has a special voice clip for getting into the hall of fame. Now I  don't regret keeping the Pikachu. Not going to say this wasn’t a slog or a giant gamble, but maybe it’s easier to not evolve the Pikachu here. Easier than I’ve seen people say it is. Not really much else for version specific bonuses here and there, so might as well go for it. Sprites are better but not *that* much better. Especially if you’ve seen how much a jump the Gold/Silver sprites are. My feeling right now is that going back to Gen I needs a special purpose to go back to. Of any long franchise game I can think of, especially not in action games, this is one of the rougher ones. Less elegant but maybe if I ran into someone who liked fiddly weird stuff in JRPGs like early Final Fantasy fans or something it’d be easier for them. It’s hard to go backwards from the DS era. I didn’t like engaging with Emerald directly. It only worked out because I had some stuff on Sapphire to help out. I also didn’t want to because the “I want to be done with this” feeling was stronger than with Yellow initially. I remember R/S better than RBY in some ways. Gold and Silver were way more my favorites. I remember RBY diehards even back then. The starter lines and a lot of the new pokemon looked weird to people! I think I remember running into people who got back on GBA or DS. Leaving RBY was hard for them because the new games didn’t carry over the weird stuff they learned. Some of these people would not play another RPG. Some of these people were late to FFVII/FFVIII hype. I didn’t play FFVII in the hype cycle nor did I really have people to talk about it with, but it was my second big JRPG after Pokemon. And it all started in Red. And Yellow. Gold and Silver. Yellow reminded me how smooth newer games are. And maybe some people don’t like that. I get it. Perhaps not in Pokemon, but I get that. I hope I don’t need to pick up a Gen I game again for a decade. 

ABBA: I was too tired to be clever so I named Abra after ABBA.

Bike Lane: I remember naming one Roadblock before, but this is the one that blocked the Cycling Road near Celedon.

SplashZONE: Sounded like the name of a waterpark. Quick googling shows I'm right.

FIRESAFETY: Going back to Pokemon is long ago enough to remember the Be Cool About Fire Safety PSA that was on TV. Pretty sure same era as 4Kids anime dub on KidsWB.

Perfume: Low effort name on my part, don't remember if it was for the J-Pop group or just cuz it has a flower.

PIKACHU: I am not going to rename the Pikachu in Yellow. Going to laugh if it turns out past me actually punched in all caps PIKACHU, I don't think the game flags that as a nickname though. It will probably get corrected to 'Pikachu' when I PokeBank it.