04 06 2022
Crystal: Despite losing interest in doing original Red, I’m going to train up a little bit and see if I can’t just pull it off somehow. I got to Blastoise, That’s my main nemesis right now on his team. Went and got Shuckle and Tyrogue, two gift pokes I forgot. Oops. Mt. Mortar seems pretty cool inside. Now That I’ve gone inside in Crystal, I’ll go in HGSS eventually. On a whim after getting bored doing Mt. Silver grinding, I went to the Elite Four. Rival battle was easy, figured it was a fluke. I don’t know what I did, but on rematch, the game seems to have actually competent AI in places (spikes! Baton pass! Detect on two turn moves!)… I still won. Legends are powerful. Since I found the way to Red without the usual movement HMs, I threw Ho-oh on my team. I think now my priorities are a little more on the get pokebucks to trade for coins to put Thunderbolt on Raikou and Ice Beam on Suicune. I think if I get a few more levels and those higher damaging moves, Red becomes possible. I do remember beating it with large level gaps, but I don’t remember all the AI tricks. Just going to brute force it after a certain point. Also, trying to catch a set of pokemon to keep around to just help in catching wild pokemon.
Heart Gold: Finally got to Pal Park, transferred most of the stuff from GenIII, leaving stuff just in case. Just ran right there. HGSS keep the slightly open layout of Gen I kanto. At this point, I’m just going to use the leveled up pokemon to burn through Kanto, rematches, and Red. I’m losing my steam on these games. To be fair, though, a lot of the pokemon I got so far and traded from Silver/D/P are holding up. I just have some holes in my coverage. So this section will be more notes on Heart Gold and Soul Silver to keep in mind when I go back and try to collect my thoughts.
Sabrina’s Gym looks wonderful. Odd sci-fi theme is a little weird, but it’s super cool with glowing cable trails and the white on dark look that matches cool tech fantasy of the mid 90’s. Matches the teleporter maze more than the gym, which is fine to me.
Lavender has a nice new layout and actual paved space. Feels like an actual town. I always interpreted the original design like it’s something close to a camping town or outpost. Dirt n’ stuff. Power plant is cooler. Giant machinery below a platform? Cool stuff.
Cerulean’s new layout is nice. It’s got a good walk around feel. It seems like these zones got some nice upgrades in elevation. I didn’t notice this stuff playing Heart Gold the first time, but it’s much more noticeable having replayed all the Kanto up to this point. THE ROCKET STILL HAS AN ACCENT. I think it’s slightly toned down, but if anything is maybe the same.
I forgot how dang cool the magnet train is in HGSS. Actual train platform, maglev animation, and just cool. I think trains are neat. Thanks to elevation, the romantic date we interrupt actually seems like a romantic spot overlooking Cerulean.
Celadon has cute tall houses. Every city has a nice redo, but it’s fun seeing these denser populated areas having unique buildings and they’re all good hints at local architecture. Misty’s looks like an actual pool. Erika’s gym is interesting. I don’t think the puzzle maze comes off too well with the perspective, but aesthetically it’s an interesting indoor garden/greenhouse.Fuschia has an easier version of its weird layout, with Safari Zone original turned into Pal Park. Jasmine in this game has actual invisible walls that only show up if you bump into them! Pewter feels like a nice town, the elevation changes in HGSS making the layout really work. Cinnabar has more to it, slightly less hard hitting bleak. Or maybe more effective? GSC had a tiny island, the 3D scale here is still roughly like that cut down Kanto map, but there’s touch ups here and there that make it feel just as big as the rest of the game. One could assume they’re going faster through Kanto because they have a full team.
Blaine now has something resembling an actual gym after the explosion. Seafoam islands are back in full in HGSS, so the original ‘exit’ cave now has a 2nd floor for Blaine’s rudimentary gym. It looks nice and fits the theme. Seafoam Islands gets more placements for those skier trainers, and brings the legendary birds back. Went to Mt. Moon, still has nice cozy mountain stop feel. There’s a rival battle here, too. Kinda like that he has a redemption arc.
Gen IV feels well planned. With GSC remakes including Kanto, it gave them a solid chance to deliver every pokemon in a single generation. Blue is still a jerk, and arrow panel maze looks kinda cool. Not super cool, just okay cool. Though, this is quickly becoming one of those games that was not built for the original DS model. Those screens do not handle dark scenes well and are not brightly lit. The DSlite exists and got popular for a reason. I occasionally pop these games in to my original and and dark scenes perform badly. Blue’s gym is black with a blue grid and I can not see that looking good. In fact, I checked. You gotta play in the dark and it still kinda looks bad.
16 badges down, time to…do everything else. HGSS has so much stuff to do. Before Red, I cleaned up a bunch of legendaries, especially Kanto ones. Latias, Entei, Raikou, Mewtwo, Articuno, Zapdos. Moltres is in Mt. Silver so I went and grabbed it soon after getting the flight point at the lonely Mt. Silver Pokemon Center. I’m looking at this giant checklist for stuff. Also, thanks to some past-me ingenuity, I will be doing any events that require pokemon from events (Mystery Gift.) I became a busy person who could barely keep it together back then, but some stuff did get through. The old format of ‘hit mystery gift button on this specific date range to get pokemon’ could still slip. Oh, and I couldn’t drive places for a time in university, so I missed out on Gamestop/Toys R’ US events. I could be wrong, but I think the local mall gamestop just didn’t get a few of them. The outdoor mall got events, though. Just drive up and catch the signal.
A lot of this can be summed up with my favorite line from the game. ‘Technology is amazing.’ DS may not have been a powerhouse platform, but it was enough of a jump. I remember feeling GenIV feeling a bit lacking back then, but returning to it just reminded me about all the details. Little nods to the original’s graphics help. The End uses the same style as the original. They just did such a good job representing different city architecture in a way that still let your mind associate with real world layouts and buildings. Everything’s a little chunky and they embrace it and utilize it well. As a mixed Pixel art and low poly game, it’s able to keep a lot of the pixel art charm and have coherent art direction in ways that seem to have been mostly lost after the 3DS.
