Mythinks #2

Pokemon Blue - Tinted Lense

So long as we're getting this review thing into gear, it makes sense to put any of our "beloved", long-running franchises into motion. And Pokemon feels among the most appropriate for a few reasons. Such as how it's one of our formative games that we played and would say is the reason we're so in love with the medium to begin with. And also simply because there's a lot of Pokemon games, and they're all long-ish RPGs, (that we'll be playing a minimum of twice, essentially) so. Each one is probably gonna take a while to play and write about. In fact, a post-production addendum to add here: Yes, this did indeed take a bit, even with a head-start of already having most of one game beaten.

While we do plan on writing about every mainstream Pokemon game, this series isn't gonna be as comprehensive as The Last Metroid, where we're going after every single official Metroid game, spinoffs included. Here, we're only going after the mainline RPGs, as well as any spinoff that can be considered an RPG in the same light. So, y'know. Colosseum and Mystery Dungeon, essentially.

Now, it has been quite a while since we even played the original Gen 1 games. Even longer since we last played it to completion. So long we could swear the last time we did so was back in childhood. So, a whiiiile. And the general consensus that had developed around this game was that it was pretty good, if bogged down by the game's code being held together with duct tape and crossed fingers. Some things never change, we guess. And y'know what? We think it actually holds up pretty well, still! In spite of said glitches, of course.

Metroid was already so bedrock that it felt hard to explain it without making it sound like we're talking to toddlers, but. Pokemon is a whole other beast. Sure maybe it isn't "bedrock" necessarily, but it is a pretty basic RPG. And also it's friggin' Pokemon. Everyone on the planet has at least been adjacent to Pokemon! Well, we're gonna go over the basics anyway. For comprehensiveness' sake.

Pokemon, as an RPG, is fairly barebones, even at the time. This is far, far before the series would be more about strategy beyond using some moves to boost stats or whatever. It has a very binary advantage chart. A chart that apparently scares some folks. Or we've just been too glued to this franchise since childhood that we're like. Yeah birds beat the shit out of bodybuilders, OBVIOUSLY. Feeling sick from poisoning? Just throw dirt on it, that'll make it go away!

Anyway, yeah, this thing. And this is before all the other additions they'd make to it. Moves of a certain type that hit a Pokemon with a certain type (or type combination) that the move's type is good against, it'll deal extra damage, and the opposite happens for hitting a Pokemon with a type it has a disadvantage over. For a game where the primary demographic is children, or at the very least people who don't regularly play RPGs, this is a simple enough elemental system, only really complicating in some. Strange logic in some places and that not every advantage-disadvantage goes both ways. We have our ways of remembering which types are good against what, probably enough for its own silly side-article. But to offer an insight into our intuition, the aforementioned Flying vs Fighting relationship can be rationalized as a melee fighter having difficulty trying to damage a flying opponent. Or y'know. "Have you tried punching a bird?"

Now, where things get interesting with Pokemon is the sheer breath of team-building. Pokemon is the game that popularized the monster-catcher RPG, having dozens upon dozens of creatures to catch and put among your party of six. What you do with this information is totally up to you. Do you make a team of nothing but your favorites? Go for it. Do you make a team sensibly to cover as many weaknesses as you can? Be the game's guest! Do you challenge yourself by deliberately limiting your team in some form or fashion? You're more than welcome to! The world of Pokemon is your oyster!

Us? Well, we'll get to that when we talk about our playthroughs themselves. For now though, this is clearly a pretty compelling hook for an RPG, especially when you fill it with a colorful cast of critters, all of which just scattershot enough to ensure everyone of just about any taste has something to get latched onto. And we easily feel like it's that ability to self-express in your team building that's one of the Pokemon series' biggest strengths. No two playthroughs are going to look exactly alike because there's just so many combinations of six. Our dumb child ass used Venusaur and little else because we were barely willing to read in games at the time and didn't know how to operate the PC system. We were like, six, okay?

VIXI:

I think the only thing that doesn't feel great about this system promoting ultimate customizability is how limited the overall move pool is. On top of a lot of Pokemon having pretty limited move pools. If you're a Fire type, it's Flamethrower or bust. Electric types get Thunderbolt or get out. At least a lot more than it feels like in modern games where you COULD forego the reliable damage-dealing move for something more niche. Here, those niches barely exist, and the ones that do aren't fantastic.

Other than Fire's early-game variants, there's Fire Blast. A decent trade-off for more power but lower accuracy. But there's also Fire Spin, which does a laughable amount of already small damage over a few turns. Fire PUNCH is a move only a handful of Pokemon get to use and that's it. Mind you, back then all Fire moves worked on the Special stat, so Pokemon like Hitmonchan can't use it to great effect.

Electric has a bit of the same problem. A little better off since Thunder Wave is a fairly reliable way to apply the Paralysis status. But it's still that, plus Thunderbolt, plus Thunder, plus Thunder Punch. There's not a ton of moves with nuance to them. Some have a chance to apply a status effect or a stat change, but that's it for most of them.

Moves like Dig and Fly are a bit more like it, being a two-turn move that offers situational invulnerability for one turn and then dealing damage the next. Bide is at least interesting, with how it makes your Pokemon sit there and take it for a few turns before unleashing all the damage they withstood back at the opponent. Wrap and Bind completely immobilize an opponent while dealing damage over time. Just the thing being it's a move that's more annoying than dangerous. The nuance is present, but sadly not on very many moves worth attention. Which is, in retrospect, fair for a first entry in a series, especially for a little Gameboy RPG. It's just most certainly felt, going back to it.

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But that's a slight wrench in the customizability of the game overall. There's still plenty of odd little status moves to do a little more than just hit things with as much force as possible. Even if the game's base difficulty does support just playing it as blunt as possible. For how short and simple this game is, it's fine. Serviceable, even. It's just lacking the depth we're used to.

But that brings us to the actual act of catching and collecting your team. While the equations may be weird, the dynamic is at least very easy to grasp. When you find the Wild Pokemon that you want, you can toss Pokeballs at it to capture it and use for yourself. To increase your chances, though, you can damage it as close to the fainting threshold as possible, use better Pokeballs, and afflict status conditions like paralysis and sleep to increase your chances even further. Sleep, understandably, being the best chances. It is rolling dice, but you have plenty of ways to weigh it in your favor. Even minding this was the era before context-sensitive Pokeballs. It's just the standard Pokeball, Great Ball, Ultra Ball, and once-per-save-file Master Ball in this one.

From there, the team building is only really limited by what Pokemon you can find and where. Now, for a blind first-timer little-tyke playthrough this hardly matters because if you played this at all like we played this as a kid, you're catching whatever you run into anyways. And if you're better about reading than kid us was, you probably would've switched and swapped Pokemon around depending on what you liked or needed.

The more flawed part of the type system is how it relates to stats. If you're a Pokemon fan that only arrived in recent generations and haven't played any of the older ones and just don't know, there was an era well before every individual attack being categorized by whether it's "Physical" or "Special". Instead, for whatever reason, each type was just assigned to being one or the other universally. Which was a pretty poor move, considering this really hampers with some Pokemon's viability. All Water-type moves were Special, including "Crabhammer." Every Fire, Electric, and Ice move was special, including Fire, Thunder, and Ice Punches.

This ruins Pokemon like Kingler, which have a really high Attack stat, but pitiful Special stat. Which, by the way, Special Attack and Special Defense weren't individual things, either. They were lumped into a single "Special" stat! Which makes Special users somewhat cracked because they have a high stat that makes them both high damage dealers and also capable of taking a hit. To a point where it's a godsend that Alakazam is really fragile, especially if you hit it with physical moves.

This really messes with the Type chart though, as this gives Psychic type Pokemon an edge over every other type. With heavy hitters like Alakazam wielding some of the strongest moves in the game like Psychic, there's not a lot that can directly counter them without just blunt force neutral-damage. This is because the types they're meant to be weak to, Bug and Ghost, are both underutilized and don't have powerful moves in the slightest. The two strongest Bug types in the game, Scyther and Pinsir, don't get any Bug moves to take advantage of that Same-Type Attack Bonus. Not that they would have very much to work with, with the strongest Bug move being Pin Missile.

Meanwhile, on the Ghost type end of things, it's somehow worse. There's only one line of Ghost types, being the Gengar family, which are part Poison type and thus weak to Psychic. In fact, this generation's abundance of Poison types ends up ballooning Psychic's dominance, in general. But back to Ghost's problem, its best damaging attack is the rather pitiful Lick. Not that it matters, because due to an error, Psychic types are immune to Ghost anyway. Like man they really did just bungle this on all fronts didn't they.

CELESTE:

Casually in single player, the Psychic types you're fighting are far from invincible. Hypno isn't crazy, stats-wise, and like I said, Alakazam is a glass cannon. Just, y'know. You'd get jerks bullying everybody with their Mewtwos in connective play. Just goes to show we prefer to play these as single-player RPGs, in spite of how much connecting is a big draw for the series. It makes for an odd little dynamic where I feel like having some enemies that aren't so mindlessly beaten is nice, but when every "enemy" is also a potential party member in a competitive RPG, that makes things a little muddy.

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The status ailments are, well, the status ailments. They serve their purpose in the game fine, though it's surprised me how rigid they've been throughout the series. There definitely shouldn't be too many in what's meant to be an accessible RPG, but the major status effects that are here are kinda basic.

Paralysis halves a 'Mon's speed, and also gives them a chance to be stunned for a turn. Burn deals damage over time and halves their Attack, pretty dastardly. Sleep does what you'd expect, it puts a Pokemon to sleep for anywhere from a single turn to 5. Though one quirk of this game in particular is that waking up in and of itself is an action that takes up 1 turn, so you can end up in situations where you're just stun-locked by Sleep over and over. Freeze is a bit of the same thing, though it's a fairly rare status effect, having no move where the purpose is JUST to apply the Freeze status, and the Ice moves that can Freeze have a very small chance to. And of course, there's the most dastardly status condition of all, Playstation Network.

Poison, interestingly, is divided up into two variants. Normal Poison deals damage over time, simple enough. But "Badly" Poisoned, most notably applicable through the move Toxic, deals ramping damage over time, meaning it will eventually reach a point where nothing you can do can out-heal it, making it perfect for slowly busting down a Defensive Pokemon.

What the major status conditions lack in imagination is somewhat made up for with a few of the minor status conditions. These ones don't have any on-screen indicator on the HUD, and thus CAN be stacked up with each other, unlike all the above statuses. Confusion does what it usually does for RPGs, a chance to accidentally hurt yourself. But then you have conditions like being binded, which makes it so you can't move or retreat. Disable revokes access to a single move for a few turns. Being Leech-Seeded means you'll not only take damage over time, but your opponent will heal the damage dealt. And if you want to get really granular, Substitute is a self-afflicted status that halves your HP but will leave a dummy Pokemon out to take damage in your place. And there's probably a few others I'm not thinking of here.

On top of all this, the game also has plenty of under-the-hood stuff in its operations. To my understanding, technically IVs (Or "Individual Values") aren't in this game, the invisible stats that are assigned to each individual Pokemon to determine their stat growth. But a very similar system IS in the game. And as far as I can tell, there's even less ingame ways to calculate what these values must be than future games do. So honestly, best not to even think about it.

Except I am gonna think about it, cause I do think IVs are one weird thing the series won't let go of. In part because it's become so integral to the competitive scene that it'd be rude to ever change it or whatever, but I do think it stinks a little that some Pokemon are just objectively better than others in such a strict by-the-numbers way, because one with perfect IVs is always going to be better than one with less-than-perfect IVs. And see, this system barely effects you if you're just playing casually. But it's affecting my brain by trying to think about it and I don't like it! I'd come up with my own potential solution right here, but again, that almost feels worth its own little side-article.

Heavy use of the Gameboy Link Cable(tm) is one of the series' biggest inspirations. Apparently, the idea spurred on from watching a bug crawl across one. You could connect to trade Pokemon and battle between your friends and family. Though if our experience with the Link Cable was anything to go by, it fell out very easily. So meh.

Though it is in part why there's a series tradition in having two slightly different versions of the game. The differing content between Blue and Red isn't much. Mainly that some Pokemon are only in one version, and some only in the other. This done to encourage players to trade with their friends, since if you played Blue and your friend had Red, they've probably naturally run into Pokemon you'd never encounter in the wild. A cute idea on paper, and maybe adult cynicism has gotten to us too much on this one, but it feels like the only reason the tradition's still stuck around is at best, obligation, or at worst, hoping some die-hards will buy essentially the same game twice.

But that's then, rather than now. We do think there's some missed opportunity in the dual-versions shtick. we can't claim to know much about the Zelda Oracle games; Oracle of Season and Oracle of Ages, but to our understanding those were two different games that were enhanced by connecting them with one-another. Or at least have a thematic thru-line with each other. Surely this was because Gamefreak was a tiny group of programmers at the time, and well, Nintendo is Nintendo. But it would've been nice to see some of that come through between Red and Blue versions. Even to this day, we've barely gotten anything of that sort. Though, again, getting way ahead of ourselves here.

Though that's all a nitpicks of oldass Gameboy games. The scope was down and from what we recall about development, it was a miracle it got done on the deadline anyway. There's still a ton of tiny little bugs, errors, and weird quirks about the game that would take a whole article in and of itself to mention, like crit chance being increased with a Pokemon's speed, or how Focus Energy, a move meant to increase your crit chance, actually LOWERS it. But we think in spite of all that the game is more intelligently designed than people seem to give it credit for.

Picking out a team for our playthrough of Blue was a little tricky, seeing as I wanted to avoid Pokemon that had new evolutions in future titles. Which is trouble when that's a good chunk of them. Trade evolutions are also off the table, just due to the circumstances I played this under. Which again, knocked off a couple would-be picks. PLUS ALSO we wanted to pick a few Pokemon, only to find their Gen 1 move pool really stinks. If we're gonna highlight Pinsir, it's gonna be when it's at its best, dammit! But here's what I eventually settled on. And I decided they were going to have the overall naming scheme of "things from my childhood", just since I'm already playing a big game from my childhood. Introducing:

Slippy the Venusaur:

Naturally, we wound up picking Bulbasaur as our starter. Cause like we keep saying, it's number one in the Pokedex for a reason! Despite being named after Slippy of Star Fox fame, it actually held its own extremely well in battles, especially between the use of Leech Seed and a strange Critical hit oversight that means Venusaur's Razor Leaves are guaranteed to crit. Which perhaps edged Growth off its moveset (yet another bug: critical hits are supposed to disregard Defense boosts. Makes sense. Except in this game crits disregard ALL stat boosts. Including your own. So a crit Razor Leaf on boosted Special would actually do less damage at some point.) but I could still make room for Poison Powder (eventually upgraded to Toxic) for the double-DOT threat, Body Slam for decent neutral damage where Razor Leaf wouldn't cut it.

Navi the Butterfree:

LUNA'S PICK: Another thing we thought we'd try for the Pokemon review series, at least for the mainline games, is to have each of us pick-a-Mon other than the starter. And mine was Butterfree! We generally don't mind going for a weaker Pokemon every now and then, and Butterfree wound up taking that slot this time. It definitely power spikes really early, simply because it's fully evolved in a part of the game that's still throwing first-stagers at you, really able to flex thanks to Confusion and eventually Psychic. It wound up falling off later in the game, as you'd expect for such an early-game Pokemon, but it still proved a decent status-inflicter thanks to Sleep Powder, Stun Spore, and being able to support the team with Reflect.

Miles the Ninetales:

VIXI'S PICK: Slippy and Navi wound up tearing through basically the whole first leg of the game until we finally got to catch Vulpix. Mainly for important fire coverage, but also to have a Pokemon with decent Special bulk. Flamethrower, naturally, is a gimme in this game, but also had Confuse Ray to make an enemy's attacks inconsistent, Quick Attack wound up sticking around for lack of options, but still got to use it a decent amount just to finish off foes it couldn't quite OHKO. And uh. Dig because coverage is coverage.

Norbert the Jolteon:

IONO'S PICK: My little angry beaver FUCKED it up, dude! I figured it'd perform well this Gen since Crit chance scales with Speed, but it really was critting like crazy! Especially dangerous because of that Thunderbolt it has. Thunder Wave and Agility. In case it encountered anything it couldn't outspeed anyways. And Double Team because I'm evil.

Ed Boys the Dodrio:

JINX'S PICK: we also like to pick weird pokemon we don't even care a ton for sometimes, too, and dodrio wound up being that pick this time around. that and i thought the name would be funny. too bad "EdEddnEddy" couldn't fit, but this works, too. and it carried its weight surprisingly well, too! of course we needed a fly user, since that's the hm you need most at any moment's notice, but aside from that tri attack was a fun and quirky move to mess with. agility, just in case. i'm not sure if agility increases your crit chances or not in the game, dunno if i ever noticed a difference. plus drill peck. because it's just a decent attack.

Catdog the Slowbro:

CELESTE'S PICK: They're just like me fr. But for real, but spelled out this time, it just felt right to round out the team with a more defense-oriented Pokemon that also kinda showed off the silly versatility of the Special stat. Plus Water type coverage. Plus Alakazam was out thanks to being a trade evolution. But it still was a fine addition with Psychic, Surf, Amnesia for essentially being Calm Mind in this generation, and Earthquake because silly.

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Another thing is that there is a hidden sliiight difficulty setting in the options menu. Because the default battle format is "Shift", meaning when an opponent sends out a Pokemon, you'll be prompted on whether or not you'll want to get a free switch. For this series I'm going to turn it off and have the battle mode be "Set", which just sends the opponent's Pokemon out like normal, and you have to use up your own turn to switch. Just to make the games a little more difficult and interesting.

As far as the game itself goes, we think it's all constructed very well. The starter Pokemon concept is a slight stroke of genius. Making these specialized Pokemon you only encounter this one single time at the very beginning already gives them a special, exclusive air to them. Like, this is YOUR companion. It's why, at least on an emotional standpoint, ditching a starter sucks so much, even for gens where all three starters lowkey blow. But on top of that, they also have the triangle type dynamic, slowly teaching you about type advantages. The hard way, since in this one, your rival picks the Pokemon with a type advantage over yours cause he's an asshole. But teaching nonetheless.

In equal parts, I think Viridian Forest is also a really smart first major "dungeon". For a while there was a notion that which starter you pick is essentially a difficulty setting, and that's kind of true, at least in how breezy it makes the early game before you flesh your team out. If you pick Charmander, Viridian Forest is a cakewalk, since you can Ember anything to death easily. Squirtle gets a "neutral" experience, not advantageous or disadvantageous. Bulbasaur might struggle a bit more just because its Vine Whip isn't going to do much against the Bug types in there, and Tackle is. Well. Tackle. But thankfully Bulbasaur is also part Poison type itself, making it not weak to Weedle's Poison Stings and making it outright immune to getting poisoned, which is a major obstacle of Viridian Forest invalidated.

Brock is also-also just as equally a good first boss fight. Onix is a big, imposing Pokemon that doesn't actually deal that much in damage, its main front being defense, so you just gotta find a way to break that. Again, for Bulbasaur and Squirtle, this is easy, because their attacks have quad-effectiveness against it. Charmander is a different story, with not only Ember being ill-effective, but also its base Scratch attack. This is likely where you either have to find a Pokemon that's more capable of fighting Onix, or keep leveling up your Charmander, made easy thanks to Viridian Forest being weak to you. Onix's Special stat isn't that high, so even if it isn't effective, Ember will deal a LITTLE damage to it, in a pinch.

Bide being its only offensive move other than a basic Tackle also gives you plenty to work around, like taking those bide turns to lower its harsh Defense stat or make its attacks hit for even less. Still think there should have been an easier out for Charmander fans with this one, because otherwise your only best shot is evolving a Caterpie all the way to Butterfree, doable since it happens at level 10, and then it gets Confusion for decent neutral Special damage at level 12, but it's still far from impossible to handle. Naturally, with Bulbasaur, Brock was kind of a joke. Couldn't even last one Bide! Sad! Which I guess is lightly disappointing because I wanted to confirm if Butterfree was an effective counter to it as a last resort, but oh well.

Something I definitely noticed is this game has a LOT more random NPC trainers than I'm normally used to. Viridian Forest wasn't anything outrageous, but as early as Route 3 right out of Pewter City, there's at least and/or around a couple dozen trainers through it and Mt. Moon on the way to Cerulean City. It's only really felt in how the earlygame slogs a bit, since most of the attacks getting flung around is Tackle's pitiable damage.

When battles do pick up in pace, the game actually feels pretty snappy for a turn-based RPG. Though most of that is owed to how it eventually becomes the opposite problem, where now you're one-shotting almost everything just because the Super Effective damage is so strong. The older I've gotten the more I've felt like Pokemon could tone down Super Effective damage so that being at a type disadvantage wasn't just the entire gravity of why a Pokemon loses, at least when playing casually.

The caves are a whole other beast compared to routes. Something I also noticed in routes is how often the tall grass is actually optional. In some cases even hidden. You have to go out of your way to actually get to fight wild Pokemon, sometimes. Which is a far cry from future games where you'll very often have to trudge through tall grass. (Which is probably why they toned down the number of trainer battles, now that I think on that.) Caves, however, are the opposite, where every single tile is a potential to run into something, more likely than not a Zubat.

Now, the way I usually play oldschool Pokemon games is to take every EXP opportunity I can, because it cuts down on any inevitable level-grinding that has to happen later. If I run into a wild Pokemon, I might as well take the 140 exp it yields so that I don't have to worry about that later. But the caves in this game were, at least at first, definitely a point where I had to stop doing that to preserve my PP, how many times a move can be used before you have to either use an ether or heal at a Pokemon Center, because the encounter rates in caves are abysmal. Like, I do think a few aspects of older Pokemon games had a tendency to get exaggerated by fans making parody comics or animations or whatever; your rival in this game does, in fact, NOT jump you for a Pokemon battle at the end of a difficult route at any point in the game, but he got known for that anyways. But the cartoonishly high encounter rate is definitely one thing that wasn't hyperbolic, there were some moments where I was moving a few feet a minute because I was running into something every two steps.

A slightly annoying necessity, because it's an equally long trek to get OUT of a cave unless you just keep plenty of escape ropes on you at all times, and it's best to take those moments to try and heal where you can, again, since the only other way to regain PP is with ethers.

Just at the same time, even if I was fighting every Zubat or Geodude I ran into, I would still repeatedly be stuck grinding levels for hours. Less so at first, but at this rate I feel like I can definitely chalk that up to having only two team members for the first leg of the game to split EXP between. By the time I got Miles, it was a 45-minute-long grinding session to get it caught up to everyone else. Same thing for when I got the Ed Boys and Catdog and Norbert. And that's not taking the occasional level spike into account, either, because some gym leaders have a pretty major spike in level that would prove trouble if I were to say, take on a gym leader's level 42 ace when I'm still only level 36. And this, of course, kept happening the more full my team got. I was quite literally falling asleep trying to get my levels up and it got to the point where I used cheats to get extra rare candies just so I could get on with things.

VIXI:

The one thing that would alleviate this would he the EXP All, but that both requires catching loads of Pokemon to even get it from Oak's assistant, but catching or evolving 50 individual Pokemon is a deceptively tall order. But also, the EXP All is bugged, where it distributes the exp the one battling Pokemon got, rather than all Pokemon that participated in the battle. Which means exp can often be lost entirely. And of course you'd go through all this effort just to have to grind the levels anyway.

On one hand, the encouragement to collect different kinds of Pokemon is to get you to try out different kinds of Pokemon on a whim. But with such a grind toll on everything you do, I can't imagine taking a "wing it and catch whatever strikes your fancy" stroll through this game. Not every Pokemon game is free of the grind, especially before the exp all became mandated, but I do feel like future games are better balanced in levels to keep you relatively on the move, and not have random 5-level jumps here and there. If not for MissingNo candies, I would've had to have grinded something like 13 levels for each of my Pokemon before challenging the Elite Four.

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IONO:

One dampen on the exploration, which is minor at least for now, is that some places need hms to access them. All four, other than Fly, are outright needed at some point to complete the game, and thankfully their forcedness is usually a single check before they're kept for exclusively being optional obstacles, but you'll still need to lug around either a whole special party member specifically for having these HMs on them, or put up with putting these lukewarm at best moves on your actually meant-for-use Pokemon. Except Surf. Surf is actually pretty good. Why couldn't they have all been surf?

It's mainly a cool idea with questionable execution. I love the idea that certain Pokemon open up pathways to you via their unique abilities. I just feel like HM moves were a not-so-great way to commit to that idea, but I guess I'll be thankful for now because I KNOW. KNOW how bad it gets later in the series.

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Though back to points of interest, I do think this game has a decent amount of places going for it. Not quite to what I would consider the series' heights, but you go to "Dungeons" like the S.S. Anne, a luxury cruise ship that's docked at Vermillion City so long as you need to get the HM for Cut. Lavender Town's Pokemon Tower, essentially a Pokemon graveyard, is another cool location, very iconic. It does still have a few stinkers, like the Rock Tunnel, which is simply just confusing to navigate as a way to arbitrarily force you to use the HM for Flash. It being the only area in the game that does this, by the way. And I really want to enjoy Silph Co under Team Rocket's control for being a really confusing maze, but it does feel like it goes a bit too far to a point where I was getting turned around constantly, and the only way I'd know I've been somewhere before would be if there were any trainers around to fight.

Though something I do find neat about this game is how many optional dungeons there are. Again, not the height of the concept for the series, but y'know. Enjoy those while they last. Seafoam Island is an island you can encounter on the way to Cinnabar, but you can also just surf south of Pallet Town to reach Cinnabar also, so I'll still say it counts. And it's a sort of waterway maze where you shove Strength boulders into holes to try and dam up the areas with a high current that'll push you back out of the area. Get deep enough, and you'll be rewarded with encountering Articuno, one of the legendary Pokemon. Neat!

Likewise, the abandoned powerplant is another place you can go the whole game without ever visiting, and it has less going for it in terms of puzzles, but it does at least utilize a gimmick where some of the item balls you find are Voltorbs or Electrodes in disguise, where they're essentially mimics! Again, not much, but it's neat. It's less of a puzzle to navigate compared to Seafoam Island, but you still get Zapdos for getting to the end of it.

Moltres, on the other hand, feels like it was placed as an afterthought. Just sorta stuck into the armpit of Victory Road somewhere. In a path that's easier to find than the main exit, even. So that's weird. Another one of those "oops ran out of time" things I guess.

The most notable post-game reward is access to the Cerulean Cave, another spare dungeon, at the end of which is Mewtwo, the ultimate legendary Pokemon. In part thanks to also being that coveted Psychic type. Though here there isn't much to say about the dungeon itself, other than it houses easily the highest level set of wild Pokemon in the game.

The story for getting to the league is exceedingly simple, but in a way that feels quaint and homely, especially when these days we're plenty used to having at least region-ending stakes to tussle with. You set out on your Pokemon journey, off to defeat the 8 gym leaders to collect their badges and then conquer the Elite Four to become Pokemon champion. Very minor adventures ensue from this framework in set pieces that you could imagine as whole episodes of a TV show. Well, I guess that's where the anime got it.

CELESTE:

I kinda dig this relatively hands-off approach to the story. It still has plenty of conflicts and characters, but the rest kinda just being your adventures with your animal friends is the sorta thing that got child-us to fill in the blanks with our imagination.

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The main conflict is, technically, between you and your rival, [REDACTED]. Or whatever you wanna call him, really. Character-wise, this brat's shenanigans are easily the highlight of the game's. He arrives, full of himself and saying you need to git gud, essentially, only to complain when his shit gets kicked in. He's consistently portrayed as being a step ahead of you, with him almost always interrupting you as you're heading someplace, but it's feels intentionally portrayed as him blitzing through his journey to get what he wants as quickly as possible. As opposed to the player character, who stops to see the sights and meet the people.

Or perhaps I ironically undercut that a bit when I exploit a glitch to skip the grind. Or maybe not, since I did go out of my way to try and talk to every NPC I could think to meet! So there! I'm only KIND OF impatient, as opposed to Blue's full-blown impatience!

There's not much depth to him beyond that, at least not in this game alone, but it does feel a little cathartic for his ego to take the double damage of both being defeated by you mere moments after he became champion, followed by getting scolded by his grandfather.

The antagonism that is surprisingly NOT the main conflict is the one spent with the Pokemon gangsters, Team Rocket. A group of no-good-doers that you'll regularly run into and defeat to stop them from terrorizing the region. None of them individually are all that difficult, but they are at home in more than a couple dungeons; you're introduced to them on Mt. Moon, they're the cap-off of Pokemon Tower, and more famously they find home in both the Rocket Hideout in Celadon City and the Silph Co. building in Saffron.

The Rocket Hideout isn't that difficult to navigate through, mainly featuring a sliding movement puzzle with those weird spin-panels. Silph Co. is easily the main attraction. You arrive to Saffron only to find that most normal people aren't even around and that Team Rocket is just openly wandering around the streets, the gang effectively taking over the city, on top of occupying the Silph Co. Building in its center. Since cops in Pokemon are somehow more useless than in real life, it obviously must fall on this pre-teen to stop Team Rocket's plans.

Though it is kind of funny how you wrap up the Rocket arc, more or less, by around the middle point of the game; I think by all the freedom the middle part of the game opens you up to, you CAN defeat Koga, and perhaps by extension, Blaine by the time you're forced to clear the Rockets out of Silph Co, but you can also be like me and deal with them soon after defeating Erika, my fourth Gym Leader. Which again, just feels funny in light of the big organizations very much taking center stage of the conflict in Pokemon games these days. Hell, at least in Hoenn and Sinnoh, you beat those evil orgs with only one last gym badge left.

Giovanni is a serviceable villain; he's probably more intimidating if you paid more attention to the implications of Team Rocket's actions as a kid, unlike 6-year-old me, who wasn't playing video games to READ or anything icky like that. Hell, from what I remember, the twist that he was the true identity of the 8th Gym Leader hardly registered to my youngin' brain, either. Though I can't remember if it was because it was spoiled to me at some point and I didn't care, or again, I was barely paying attention to the plot because I was just happy having my Venusaur eat everything alive.

The first Pokemon may not have a lot in terms of raw plot, that's obviously something later Pokemon games would pick up, but I do think it's a plenty enjoyable little RPG sandbox. Again, especially to a child like me that only really played one game for months on end before I got my next game, so for a while, Pokemon Blue was just my playground where I did whatever as I was encountering it. Sometimes I got obsessed with trying to catch things in the safari zone, other times I was throwing undertrained Pokemon at the next big boss fight as they got KO'd and my Venusaur eats up even more valuable EXP.

I do think it's a shame that the toy-like roleplay nature of a game is a little bit lost on me as an adult. Because there's plenty of instances of me playing a game to roleplay to myself for no reason other than it was fun. It didn't advance the game's progress at all, it was just the video game equivalent of putting a playmat down and clacking action figures together. Not to say I would get anything out of that now as an adult; these days I get much more out of playing games a lot closer to as-intended, and also I get to be a 40-hour work week haver now, but it is a sad little lost art, I suppose. Like, no wonder this was such a formative game to me, but the most major part of it that made it so formative is no longer accessible to my adult brain.

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Mythinks #2.5

Pokemon Yellow - Starring Michael Mouse

And now, a brief aside about Pokemon Yellow.

See, clearly Pokemon had some humble beginnings. It released in Japan under the names Red and Green, was a pretty big hit, but once the franchise went worldwide is when what's been dubbed "Pokemania" happened. Pokemon's popularity exploded into the mainstream like nothing else, and because it was already a hit in Japan, it also basically came pre-prepared with a TV show, merchandise, the works. I don't think anyone predicted Pokemon's explosion. Even Nintendo didn't have a ton of confidence in it. Now look at it. It's got slimy free-to-play games that beg you for a couple dollars at every turn and everything.

Japan had already seen the release of its own Blue version, but that was something of just another companion piece for the other two. It wasn't until Pokemon Yellow "Special Pikachu Edition" came into existence that we would formally see what some would call the "deluxe edition", others would call the "third version", an enhanced version of the games from the same generation that have bonus features, tweaks to game balance, among other things.

Pokemon Yellow's big hook was that it features Pikachu as the sole starter in this one. No choice between Bulbasaur, Charmander, or Squirtle. Though, they'd make up for it by gifting you all three later. Instead, you had the one Pikachu companion, with some unique twists to it. For one thing, it would follow you around, outside of its Pokeball. Instead of Pikachu's usual 8-bit cry, it let out a hellishly compressed voice clip of Pikachu's anime voice. It'll reject if you try to give it a Thunder Stone to evolve into a Raichu. You're Ash. The whole gimmick of this game is that you're role-playing as Ash.

This is also the first instance of a Pokemon that has what would eventually become the "Friendship" mechanic. Before, in RBG, the Pokemon themselves didn't have a measurable stat for how much they cared for you. And in this one, Pikachu at the very least does, so it's a start. At the start of your journey, Pikachu is indifferent to you, but the more you walk and battle with them, the closer they get to you. The more time they spend away from you in a box, or if they keep fainting, the more they'll grow to dislike you. You can check up on how Pikachu feels just by talking to it, and sometimes its reaction is context-sensitive. It'll shiver in fear while in Pokemon Tower, fall in love with the Clefairy in the Pokemon Fanclub, and other such shenanigans. Plus it does things in cutscenes sometimes, so that's cute.

Pokemon Yellow is a game where everything is simultaneously different and identical to the old game at the same time. Having a Pikachu forced on you changed a lot of the dynamic of the game, and thus a lot has to change to be balanced around that. For example, you can now find Mankey really early on to help defeat Brock, in the absence of Bulbasaur or Squirtle. Brock, in kind, has also had his Pokemon's levels lowered to make them slightly more manageable for the mascot mandate.

Team Rocket, as in Jessie and James of Pokemon Anime fame, also turn up as kind of secondary rivals in this game, flaunting their Weezing, Arbok, and Meowth. Though again, it's a bit of a shame the Rocket stuff is wrapped up barely past the midpoint of the game, and Jessie and James also vanish along with them. If nothing else because I'd like to imagine they'd be up to their shenanigans even years after Team Rocket formally disbanded.

This time around, our team was:

Bumblebee the Pikachu:

From one friendly, yellow, kid-appeal mascot to another, surprisingly enough, Pikachu in this game, from what I can tell, doesn't get any boosted stats, despite the inability to evolve. The one real draw to using it is that it has a vastly different by-level move pool than Pikachu normally does, learning cracked moves at pretty early levels like Double Team and Thunderbolt in the 20s. And we let it have Light Screen when the time came, since by then its stats would have fallen off. Not that it didn't pull its weight, but Pikachu's lucky RBY is relatively easy.

Johnny Bravo the Pidgeot:

JINX'S PICK: again with the earlygame underdogs. pidgeot did fine, though in a lot of ways it did feel like a less good dodrio. especially not helped by its lack of any decent level-up moves, so about the only thing it got to do that did any damage was fly. maybe i shoulda picked fearow instead.

King Flan the Hypno:

CELESTE'S PICK: Hypno, in a lot of ways, is a poor man's Alakazam, but it was still pretty decent! Especially early on, since it evolves relatively quickly. It had Psychic type staples like Confusion and upgrading into Psychic when the time came, but of course I let it have Hypnosis and Dream Eater since, how often do I get to use that combo? It gets cool move variety later in the series, but here, it's pretty alright.

Deku Baba the Victreebel:

VIXI'S PICK: Poor guy sadly didn't get too much of a chance to shine as much as Venusaur did, I suppose at least in part because you don't start with it. I did largely play it the same as Venusaur, mostly just differing in having Acid combo'd with Toxic to erode a particularly stubborn enemy's defense.

Tanktup the Blastoise:

IONO'S PICK: Decent tank and Water type beatstick. Held onto Withdraw to increase its defense stat even further, though I feel bad for letting it end up with Surf AND Strength... hey, at least Strength is a decent neutral move!! It was also nice to get it to throw around Ice Beams.

Grim the Marowak:

LUNA'S PICK: A pretty heavy hitter! Especially with that Bone Club (eventually upgraded to Earthquake to hurt even worse.) Headbutt was a pretty decent move too, and we actually got some use out of Rage to ramp up its Attack over time.

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I will say, it did certainly feel like they, in some way or another, fixed the grinding problem. For this one I went into it with infinite rare candies already loaded, because at this point I knew what I was getting into, but I would still only utilize it during spots where there would have been grinding. Apart from acquiring a new party member, I didn't have to stop to "grind" as many times as I did before. As far as I can tell, only major boss fights had their level ranges altered while common trainer fights remained the same, so I feel like the only alternative is they must've tweaked the amount of exp distributed to be more generous. Cause I was definitely slightly nervous eyeing up enemy's teams and seeing their levels increased since Blue.

Not that there isn't wide discrepancies here and there still; the Giovanni Gym (Gymovanni) fight is still ten levels behind the champion battle that comes not too long after it. But I did at least notice I could keep up with the game's pace a lot easier, in spite of having a fuller party sooner.

Speaking of the differences between Arby and Yellow, they obviously changed up some Gym Leaders' teams to reflect the Pokemon they used in the anime. Rather than a full team, Lt. Surge has a single, really high-level Raichu. Probably could've been an interesting challenge for a gym fight to be more about taking down one, especially powerful foe rather than working around a whole enemy team. In theory. Our Hypno kind of just put it to sleep and it was easy-peasy.

Erika unevolved her Vileplume, so it's just Gloom now. Which makes it easier, more than anything. Koga now has a squad of Venonat led by a Venomoth, which again, made it easier, actually. Something of a surprise, then, that Blaine didn't feature a Magmar at all on his team, since that's what he used in the anime.

And you've probably also more than likely noticed all the redone spritework for all the Pokemon, making them look much more on-model than before. An objective improvement for sure, as it helps make Yellow feel a little bit more timeless, but I can't help but feel like the sprites have a little less life in them than the RB versions, as janky as the latter are. Sure, Dodrio looks a bit more like Dodrio in this one, but its new sprite is also just it standing there. At least the posing feel like a downgrade compared to both before and the generations after.

Though, other than that, yeah, that's kinda all there is to say about Yellow. It's technically the more complete package, though apart from better exp balancing, is probably very, very interchangeable with the original Red and Blue. Which, I'm not sure if that's preferable to making third versions a "Definitive Edition" of the game or not. On one hand, it certainly makes buying the game a second time feel more worth it, when it has more features and spruced up presentation. On the other hand, I've been long radicalized against the idea of games being "replaced" anyways. Like yeah, there probably are people that prefer Diamond and Pearl over Platinum. Weirdos that I think they may be. But also like, I get it.

The first generation of Pokemon is just about as humble as humble beginnings get. Before Pokemon was a massive multi-media franchise, before it was ultra-hyper-mega-popular, we had this little Gameboy game that, by all accounts, is probably "objectively" very crappy, but I think it still has a lot of heart in it. Red, Blue, Yellow, and by obvious extension, Japan's Green versions are very flawed games, but I think flaws are what give a game some of its texture anyways.

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VIXI SCORE: 7/10

Perhaps it's an affection born out of nostalgia, but as much as I genuinely prefer most other Pokemon games, I do think this one is worth coming back to every now and then. It may not be as polished as future games or have as-well-thought-out mechanics, but you can still eek out plenty of fun.

LUNA SCORE: 7/10

Some particularly frustrating and status-happy AI aside, this is a pleasant romp of a game! Like Vixi, I'd generally prefer basically any other Pokemon game, but I would say there's plenty here to love, especially since it's relatively short by Pokemon game standards. If not for the grinding, at least.

JINX SCORE: 6/10

it's missing too many of the strategy aspects that tickle the brain in a way i like, especially since so many of the types are rendered basically invalidated. but it's still a decent game. not bad for a first go-around, especially for a small studio and on such little hardware.

IONO SCORE: 6.5/10

I like variety! And while it may not be the fault of this game in particular, since it doesn't have the massive backlog of Pokemon to bring back, it just feels a little cramped as far as self-expression goes. It's still a surprisingly well done game for its age, just yeah. More excited to get to future Pokemons than anything.

CELESTE SCORE: 6.5/10

While for "competitive" play a lot of its flaws and quirks aren't acceptable, I do feel like it adds more spice than usual Pokemon games. Even if other than Sabrina you can mostly just coast through on super effective damage.

OVERALL SCORE: 33/50

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Oh, and another reason that we're playing Pokemon so early for: I'm actually using this as a springboard to - more formally this time - reboot the Pokemon reviews. Like I've been saying, this blog being in catch-up mode is why I ceased working on it for so long, so if I really am starting everything from scratch, so too will I do that for Let's Talk About Pokemon. This time around, I'll have the Pokemon design reviews coincide with the most recent Pokemon game we've played and written about for this blog! So Gen 1 for now, and once it's wrapped up, we'll slot the Gen 2 games into the "coming up next" list, and so-on. So that'll be starting soon!

Anyway, coming up next on Mythinks: A newer game that's at least styled like the games we've covered here on Mythinks so far.