Last time, a parcel.
How is my old POKéMON? Well, it seems to like you a lot. You must be talented as a POKéMON trainer! What? You have something for me?
Also, there’s some cashier who won’t let me buy pokeballs because he’s too interested in telling me to say he said hi.
Ah! This is the custom POKé BALL I ordered!
This is actually an odd tidbit – in later games, the special pokeball the professors get is a masterball, which is currently still in development now. And in the RBY era, there are no custom pokeballs, only levels of strength. Even GSC-era, arguably, has apricorn balls but nothing you can actually purchase that would be a custom pokeball. (Although one can also argue that if the variant pokeballs are produced, someone must be buying them somehow.)
Presumably, it’s a pokeball that has some feature only relevant to researchers, which is why we never get details. The bigger issue, in retrospect, is why Oak wanted a pokeball at all when he’s never going to get another pokemon of his own. This is one of the various places anime canon has filled in over game can – there, he’s actually studying them and such, so you just assume he’s going to use it on an actual pokemon.
Also, just look at that last pokeball sitting there. Already it mocks us.
It’s time for the second giveaway.
OAK: Oh right! I have a request of you two. On the desk there is my invention, POKéDEX!
I’m actually a bit surprised by the exact test here. All those times I played I mentally inserted a “the” in there.
I mean, this is not exactly the mess of, say, FFVII or anything, but still, by the time they localized this they knew it was insanely popular in Japan and hoping for the same thing to happen here, right? They could pay a proofreader to glance things over once the translator was done.
It automatically records data on POKéMON you’ve seen or caught! It’s a high-tech encyclopedia!
And what exactly that means is something fandom has never been quite able to figure out. I stand by the idea you’re the one entering stuff and the automatically just means it’ll take diction and pictures. If you mentally insert a lag time between capture and the pokedex updating, the entries are within reason for an eleven year old. You just have to assume that he’s not as unfamiliar with pokemon as the empty initial pokedex suggests, explaining why a good chunk of the entries talk about myths attached to the pokemon.
Also, viewed in that light it’s funny because screw you Oak, you get what you pay for when you use random eleven year olds on the basis they’re too dumb to ask for money. I notice you’re not even going to give us what data you do have but want both of us to start from scratch. And no suggestion we can share data either! God, you’re really all kinds of an asshole here, aren’t you?
OAK: FARLA and GARY! Take these with you!
And so begins the real plot of pokemon.
To make a complete guide on all the POKéMON in the world… That was my dream! But, I’m too old! I can’t do it! So, I want you two to fulfill my dream for me!
Aw. Well, oka-
Get moving, you two! This is a great undertaking in POKéMON history!
…I see where Gary gets it from.
Speaking of the best rival:
FARLA, I hate to say it, but I don’t need you!
I know! I’ll borrow a TOWN MAP from my sis! I’ll tell her not to lend you one, FARLA! Hahaha!
I’m not making that up, he laughs evilly right in front of you two.
Anyway. Look at how skillfully Gary combines antagonism and clues about what to do next.
Does she secretly have a crush on you, causing her to ignore her brother’s request? Is she doing this to passive-agressively stick it to Gary? Does she just feel bad that yet again her grandfather’s duped helpful little kids into doing his work?
Personally I always figured she hadn’t even noticed Gary telling her not to give you one. Gary probably comes in cackling about his villainous rival plots every ten minutes and she’s learned to just ignore it. “AND THEN WHILE WE’RE WALKING I’LL SUDDENLY SHOUT THAT WE’RE RACING, GETTING A HEAD START WHILE HE’S SURPRISED THAT WILL ENSURE I AM THE VICTOR! HAHAHAHAHAHA, HAHAHAHAHAHA!” That’s nice, Gary.
Anyway, pokeballs are available now! Back to Viridian.
You know how in later games you could easily see how much you could afford because it’d never let you go over? Not here.
I buy 3000 yen worth of pokeballs, or 15 balls, as I always do. You can concern yourself with antidotes and potions, or you can keep your money zeroed for a bit and walk around smug in the knowledge that all fainting does is halve your nonexistent money. Smugness feels great.
I haven’t mentioned my battling style, but you can probably guess. It’s fight until you drop. I very, very grudgingly adjusted my tactics a little in Yellow, where Pikachu would get mad if you did that, and in later games when dealing with happiness evolutions, but it’s my default and I’ll use it whenever I have the chance.
Time to catch some pokemon!
That latter bit about sand? Actually a pretty good move. If you get unlucky facing a pidgey, it’ll sand-attack you until you can’t hit the damn thing, then whittle you down.
Pidgey is the pokemon everyone had on their team and no one has any strong feelings about. I usually had it on my team, got fly and kept it around from that, then somehow found myself at the elite four with a pidgeot I could barely remember using.
Fly is a good move, though.
Ah yes, the sexually dimorphic pokemon. Combined with the male’s pokedex data about how horn size determines its poison’s strength…
…well, you can sort of see why they didn’t get around to adding a female trainer until the final game of the second gen (and decided she wasn’t necessary for the gamecube games), and have yet to give her real clothes.
At the time, I just willfully ignored the fact that the female’s entry is clearly talking about both the male and female so by extension so is this, and thought it was more reasonable that the males had the bigger horn and females the better venom which was why they didn’t need a giant horn as well. I understood that wasn’t the correct reading, but the correct reason was stupid and could go screw itself.
I would say I was a temperamental child, but frankly the correct reading should still feel free to go screw itself.
As you can see, the pokedex lists charmander despite the fact it wasn’t technically in my possession until well after I fought Gary. I can easily catch all the other pokemon I’ll see early on, so without that, I’d have “completed” the pokedex already.
Speaking of fighting Gary…
Gary won’t appear if you go this way before delivering the parcel. He knows interfering with mail delivery ends badly.
He’s carrying two pokemon and they’re both, for this part of the game, high level, so the designers wanted you to have the chance to catch pokemon of your own first.
Thing is, if you explore this area originally because you’re excited about the game’s world and more interested in seeing that than progressing the plot with Oak, you’ll see that there’s nothing to do yet past that grassy spot just below me in the picture. So once you get pokeballs, you might return to catch the nidoran, but there’s no point in going further – the guy doesn’t laugh you out for not even having a second pokemon, he just says no way as long as you don’t have a badge, which, still nope. Probably would have been better to have Gary jump you when you approached the grassy patch rather than beyond that.
The first time I encountered this battle, therefore, was in Yellow, where I had bought a strategy guide that told me about what battles you won determined what Gary’s eevee would evolve into, and left me under the impression the battle had been added into Yellow specifically to help decide the eevee’s final form. I ran across it in one of my Red playthroughs by accident much, much later.
But back to poor Gary, who’s trying to give a speech on how much I suck here.
You’re going to POKéMON LEAGUE? Forget it! You probably don’t have any BADGEs! The guard won’t let you through! By the way, did your POKéMON get any stronger?
Gary has a L9 pidgey and L8 starter. Bear in mind the game’s assuming you’ll encounter him right after getting some pokeballs and exploring, so while you probably have more pokemon than this, there’s a good chance none have been raised much if at all from their initial low levels and they may be half-dead because you didn’t heal them after catching them yet.
Above, the best move ever in action.
So in answer to your question Gary, yes, yes my bulbasaur has gotten stronger.
::::D That’s my rival!
I heard POKéMON LEAGUE has many tough trainers! I have to figure out how to get past them! You should quit dawdling and get a move on!
And he swaggers off again.
…huh. I don’t think I ever actually triggered that battle. It’s hard to remember, though, seeing as how it was… Jesus, it was more than ten years ago!
“I usually had it on my team, got fly and kept it around from that, then
somehow found myself at the elite four with a pidgeot I could barely
remember using.”
I do remember, though, that THIS certainly never happened to me, because pidgeot was off my team the moment I caught zapdos or articuno. Little!me was certain you would have to be a complete chump to ever not have at least two of the three legendary birds on your end game team, and all three was preferable. Rock type Pokémon? Whatever, they’re all part ground type in this game, which means double weakness to my (usually overtrained) venusaur.
I love your reading of the whole Oak family
Pidgeot was the man. Since I refused to use legendaries for some matter of pride I kicked ass from Viridian to The Elite Four with him.
It took me ages to stumble on it in Red, and I only found out originally because it was in the guide. On the first playthrough you probably explore everywhere first, and then every playthrough after you know there’s nothing beyond there so you don’t bother. There needed to be some reason to go over there after you get pokeballs.
I didn’t use the legendary birds much. My first playthrough I didn’t even know about them, and after that I didn’t want to raise new ones instead of leveling my old ones.
The early rivals are way better than the later ones. Gary was an actual challenge because he’d suprise me while half my team was fainted. Whenever his leitmotif sounded, I’d freak the hell out. I’m hoping the new rival character for B/W 2 is more like him and Silver.
I’d like it, but it seems really unlikely. The games have moved away from that type of rival with each generation. The BW rivals don’t even try to pounce on you.
Gary: Genuinely challenging rival who actually wants to destroy you
GSC rival: A criminal douchebag who’s more challenging thant gary, and because he stole his pokemon, much more satisfying to crush.
All other games: pussy non-rivals that give you excuses like “lets check on how our pokemon are doing!” Seriously, I actually like my rivals being determined to do my team in instead of having to work/study with them. (or the ADHD nut we got for 4th Gen)
Well, the seeds were sown with GSC, though – he’s the first rival that improves to become nicer.
The most frustrating part of the game: everything between getting your starter and finally, finally getting pokeballs. Even if you can blow through it in ten minutes, if so inclined.
Huh, that rival battle was extremely common knowledge when I was a kid. It’s very easy to miss, certainly, but it was one of the things new players got told about by older ones.
There wasn’t much continuity where I was. A lot of us had this as our first game and people didn’t restart much.
Don’t you battle him there on your way to the 4 for real? Or no and my memory has placed that battle at the wrong time?
You fight him here twice.
Oh my God. I know a lot of players think the Pidgey line sucked, but man did that line save my butt many times over.
And yay! Gary battle! I’m pretty sure he kicked my butt the first time I triggered this battle. Fun times. I also always assumed that you’re the one entering the data. Otherwise, what’s the point of sending two kids out trying to “get data” that’s already been collected? Unless Oak’s really an asshole.
As for the sister, I figured: A: She knows what a douche Gary is and doesn’t condone it, or B: You somehow got to the house before Gary. Somehow. As for the sexist Nidoran data, I always assumed the game was trying to add a bit of realism, because in real life females of most species where males have horns either have noticeably smaller horns or no horns at all.
I’s not so much sucking as bland. Pidgey was reliable but not flashy.
Maybe Gary rushes home to get his stuff in his invisible upstairs bedroom and plans to ask for the map and tell her not to give you it on his way back out.
See, I don’t mind the horn thing, I object to the horn and poison thing at once. Between the two, they’re saying the female has the smaller horn and the ones with the smaller horn have weaker venom, so the female is weaker in both ways. There’s nothing in either entry about what the female does have, just that she’s an inferior male.
Actually, the NidoranM entry is exclusively talking about males-so males with smaller horns have less poison, it has nothing to do with the female (although the female does in general apparently have smaller horns, but nothing is mentioned about poison levels).
Don’t look for sexism where none exists plz.
1) No, it isn’t. The female’s entry is talking about the species as a whole – it would have no reason to specify females in the second half if it wasn’t, and there’s nothing suggesting the male entry follows different rules. Remember, this is before regular genders for pokemon, they’re considered the same species. Even if it was, the most you can take from that is we don’t know if females follow the same rule or not, which brings us back to point two:
2) There’s nothing in either entry about what the female does right. She’s just an inferior male. She’s defined by how she isn’t like the male.
3) I wasn’t looking. When I first played the game as a kid, I read it and what I heard was sexism. It’s hardly the only point I felt like that playing the game. I became a fan of the games in spite of the fact there’s a lot of stuff about them assuming only boys are playing and how much this bothered me at the time.
My favorite is how, once genders were introduced, the way a wild encounter’s gender was determined meant that a female pokemon was always going to be weaker. I still prefer catching males out of habit and weird things that were true back then.
That said, the nidoran thing doesn’t bother me (it IS a thing that happens in nature…), and I wasn’t bothered by the assumptions that the player was a boy– most players *were* boys. I was the only girl I knew who traded the cards or brought my GameBoy to recess (or carries it around in my pocketbook). I never perceived it as a bad thing, it was just a *thing.* Which isn’t to say that I wasn’t overjoyed when Crystal came out, but it didn’t scar me or prevent me from enjoying it or anything.
This was also a time when gaming still wasn’t something everyone did. I think a game being released in 2012 that doesn’t acknowledge the idea of female players is a bigger issue than it was in 1993, which is a good thing– progress!
But I guess my point is that I can’t slight them for pandering to their main demographic. They didn’t realize at the time girls were a market they could tap into with this. As soon as it became really apparent that girls were into it too, they started to fix it. I don’t really think it was anything more complex. They had their heads up their asses when they decided that all Pokemon with low attack IVs were female, but overall I don’t think it was anything particularly calculated. *shrug*
EDIT: *That* said, I realize part of the issue is that this stuff is ingrained and people *should* think about it. I just get why they made, say, only a male character, from a practical perspective.
Then again, I’m kind of slow to anger about these things.
The stat thing is the only one of these that actually pissed me off. I was absolutely furious when I found out.
But – talking about this reminds me of how weird I found just the name gameboy back then. And it was THE handheld console, so, videogames were a boy thing. (And it was boys in the ads, in case I’d missed the first clue.) It’s not that I wanted a gamegirl, because anything identified as for girls I’d learned was the inferior version of the boy one. I just wanted it not to be a thing.
This might be an area issue? When I was little, boy/girl stuff was a big deal. At preschool it was one of the weapons to make a kid stop playing with something you wanted, and also a good way of making fun of someone even if you didn’t want anything. By the time I got a gameboy, no one had done that in ages, but it still colored my thinking.
Anyway.
I don’t think the male sprite was much of a problem. They did have a very limited budget and I can’t fault them for making a game aimed at who the current players were. The problem there is a broader one that’s not something they needed to deal with. But I do fault them for the nidoran thing, because I don’t think any of them were thinking that this was a tradeoff to please the boys at the expense of girls who’d never play the game and see it to be bothered. I think they just didn’t see anything wrong with having the one and only male/female division have the female be weaker, because unconscious sexism. And I feel they haven’t really changed much in that way even though they have responded to the fact girls play the games by (usually) giving us a chance to pick a girl sprite.
I remember trying to figure out the tradeoff between the nidorans in RB as well. I just assumed that that game wouldn’t have made two related pokemon where one was clearly better than the other, as that would be unfair. I figured that the males were stronger but the females were bigger and tougher. For evidence I cited nidoking’s hunched over pose in his strategy guide artwork vs. nidoqueen’s upright defiant posture, combined with some information from dinosaur books about how female tyrannosaurus rex was supposedly much larger than her male counterparts, as she would need to be able to scare off her mate once the nest was laid so he didn’t eat the eggs/babies.
That, to 8-year old me, made total sense, so I decided that nidoranF was the better choice. Plus she was blue, which obviously meant she’d be better at using water or ice TMs and a nidoqueen would look cooler next to my charizard. Mostly I was just mad at how boring nidorina is compared to nidorino.
That’s actually what the stat layout ends up being! The problem is becomes that offense > defense in the games, so in the end, the only time there’s any point to using nidoqueen is if you’re using a no-repeats rule and already have nidoking on your team.
Yeah, it’s a shame how that happens. Nidoqueen gets a bit of a niche in later games, once the special split happens, EVs become a thing, and the move lists get updated. Mostly that’s just being one of those special snowflakes that can use both spikes and toxic spikes. Sadly, entry hazards are fairly useless against in-game opponents, as they don’t tend to switch their pokemon.
I’ve tended to use nidoqueens in the early game anyway, out of loyalty to the ideals of my younger self.