The Kanto Diaries: Teatime in Kanto

Pokémon games are meant to be easily accessible for all ages but every now and again there crops up a puzzle that is suck obtuse bullshit you have to consult the internet.

There is a hut on the Route between Celadon City and Saffron City with a guard who tells you the road is closed and that he's thirsty. After returning to Celadon and turning the Team Rocket Hideout upside down in search of drinkables I broke and brought up a the Bulbapedia walkthrough.

Turns out there's a random NPC sitting at a table in the Celadon Mansion (which is actually a hotel) who just gives you some tea. For some reason Drake, my trainer, decides to simply pocket a cup of tea for later like she's Doctor Who and uses it to bribe the guard who shares this tea with the other guards and leets you through.

The road that is closed, by the way, is six steps long. It isn't even a Route you step out onto, you just exit the building and you're in Saffron City.

The current team:

Shelby the Wartortle, my bashful starter. (Lv32)

Lucretia the Nidorino, who has a female name because I don't remember those symbols right. (Lv33)

Karai the Arbok, whose Bite is worse than her bite.(Lv28)

Digby the Dugtrio, whose probably getting dropped in the near future. (Lv27)

Faraday the Pikachu, bane of all Flying types. (Lv26)

Floof the Growlithe, a serious fellow and my newest acquisition. (Lv20)

The Kanto Diaries: Vermillion City (dickishness in game design)

Most of the times I find the Pokemon games to be pretty fair. After all, there's no in-game fail state and the only strategy guide you really need is the type chart. However, FireRed just pulled a spectacular dick move on me when I reached Vermillion City.

Now, Electric-type gyms are difficult at the best of times but never more so than when you haven't even had the chance to get a Ground-type on your team. Like, for instance, if you play FireRed because seemingly the only Ground-type before Vermillion City is Sandshrew which is LeafGreen exclusive.

My team when I went into the gym to fight Lt. Surge “The Fighting American” (no seriiously) was a Wartortle. A Rattata, a Nidorino, a Pikachu, an Oddish and a Butterfree. Of that list two are weak to Electric attacks, my Oddish was absolutely useless, a Pikachu is basically useless against other Electric-types and that left me with two passingly effective fighters who nevertheless kept getting paralyzed.

I got beat. Twice.

So, in a funk I decided to pursue the route of the screwed over: power levelling. I stomped my way back the way I came and leveled for a bit then returned to the gym.

Where I was beaten a third time.

Fuming, kicking my Pokeballs down the street in front of me as I went, I decided to try and get some decent EXP by skipping ahead to the next route and picking on some trainers. This was when I passed Diglett's Cave.

Yers, “Diglett's Cave”. Literally a cave named after and infested with a Ground-type Pokemon, five or six steps outside the city of the Electric gym.

Dick move, Game Freak. Dick move. 

The Sensual Experience of the Game Boy Advance

So, FireRed is the only game I'll be playing in this marathon on the Game Boy Advance. I'll be using the DS and 3DS remakes for Gen II and III. This, as it turns out, will be a bit of a shame. This is because the GBA has a feature the DS and 3DS lack: rounded sides for holding comfortably in your hands.

How is it that Nintendo, the market leader in handheld gaming for almost thiry years and not learnt to design the things to be held in human hands? Why has every other generation of the Nintendo handheld been a rectangle? A particularly hard-edged one in the case of the DS, on which I have four of these games to look forward to.

Okay, admittedly the screen is terrible and the slightest direct sunlight makes the image indeciperable but it is really comfortable to hold. I think the reversion with the DC to the brick design has more to with physical Game Boy branding than any practicality, which is a pity. 

The Kanto Diaries #0: Pre-Game

A little housekeeping before I launch into the first phase of my “Pokémon Grand Tour”. Just some decisions I want to write down before I get into the game proper.

My Trainer

When Professor Oak asks, I will identify myself as a girl called Drake. She wants to travel and study Pokémon, though unlike Red and Ash before her she dreams not of being a Pokémon Master or Champion but a Pokémon Professor someday, albeit a more successful one who has actually done some field work and research (which few, if any, of the series' Pokémon Professors ever seem to achieve before handing off a Pokédex to the first random child who turns up).

More background for this character will develop as I play.

My Starter

Back in the day, Bulbasaur was my boy, my dude. Fantastic design in all his evolutions, best of the starters in my humble. I used him in the original Gen I game (I am old) and chose him again in Kalos when I was given my choice of the original starters by Professor Sycamore.

Still, I want to shake things up this time around. That leaves me with Charmander and Squirtle and I hate Charmander. He looks bland, Charmleon looks worse and Charizard looks nice but he's a dragon who isn't a Dragon-type. So, as much as Wartortle looks like pants, I choose Squirtle.

Rules

I am not doing Nuzlocke, I have neither the discipline nor the patience and the objective is to play through these games from start to finish.

But I am going to institute one rule on myself: one capture per area. For one thing, not combing through the long grass trying to capture one example of everything in Kanto will cut down the time this will take. For another, it feels in keeping with the theme of following in Ash Ketchum's footsteps that I'd only capture one Pokémon per “episode”, as it were.

I'm not going to go into it blind, though, if nothing jumps out at me immediately (metaphorically, obviously things will be literally jumping out at me constantly) then I will consult Bulbapedia to see what's available in the area.

I want an Ekans, so that's Route 4 sorted for a start.

Also, I will be naming every Pokémon I capture. I like coming up with the nicknames and I do feel it helps to personalise the team and make it feel like its something that belongs to you rather than just a jumble of sprites and statistics.