Last time,

The first easily usable psychic type! Drowzee will not flee from battle and possesses an attacking move, and they’re not as fragile as the abra line. I’ve never really used one myself, unfortunately. I tended to ignore psychics as inferior mewtwos.

As you can see, it’s pretty easy to win one on one against comparably leveled pokemon. The game’s main difficulty is found in the levels of your opponents and the numbers of them.

Another person who’s talking about pokemon strength as being a characteristic they possess, rather than something the trainer does.

I really don’t know why they removed the mention of gambling in later English releases. If anything, gambling became more mainstream in the intervening years. I also always thought the gamblers were a good cautionary tale. They tend to not be particularly good trainers and their references to luck indicate they’re not skilled and lose regularly.

Or always lose. I always felt bad about beating this guy.

And they also pay out well, so when they lose, they lose big.

They’re sort of pathetic, in sum. Not really someone you want to emulate.

While most trainers have a relatively clear theme, the gamblers confuse me. They have various types, although any given gambler will only have a single one. I guess that’s a type of gambling, in the elemental rock-paper-scissors way.

Further confusing me about what’s up with the metal borders that seem to indicate roads are these guys, showing up the second time such things appear in the game.

Are they actually containing underground wires? Is something else going on that’s unrelated? No idea.

Naturally, they have electric types. These also know sonic boom, which seems really impressive at this stage of the game. Turns out it actually just does a set 20 damage, which will quickly become insignificant.

More of the environmentalist message. Well, it’s never too young to start with the propaganda.

Another person staring fixedly at something apparently normal.

One of the more underwhelming hidden items.

I don’t think anyone’s ever actually explained how an escape rope works. You’re in the middle of a cave, then you pull out a rope and that gets you out? As we’ll see later, regular teleportation exists, so why not just use that?

Why is there an empty useless space here? Because.

The designers obviously thought nicknaming would be a bigger thing than it was. Unless the Japanese players really got into that in a way everyone else didn’t, I guess. If they did they apparently outgrew it by the time I was getting pokemon in international trades.

I just find all this really charming.

It’s really a shame they didn’t adjust the nidoran trades to reflect the differences between Red and Blue. It’d have been nice to trade my nidorina just to see how the stats differ.

I’ll try to remember to come back with a Safari Zone nidorino later, to see what the nickname is.

The aide that’s still standing around Oak’s lab should you return there as you can shortly.

I never really noticed how weird the game is timewise. People are regularly indicating they’ve left past areas despite no one in that area leaving. It’s as if, narratively, you never actually return to those places and the game representation is just your memory of it.

The article-dropping is so regular that I wonder if the translators were afflicted with the same issue as so many people writing fanfics, where they’re getting confused by the capitals to mean it should be treated as a proper noun. If so, it’s sort of – dunno, not exactly ironic, but something for the people who those making this error point to as the ultimate authority to have run afoul of the same issue that’s why I so rabidly hate the error.

Anyway, I actually have caught that many, but I appreciate the game lets you say no anyway.

Yay!

He explains the concept of hidden items and that itemfinder will sense them.

Then he explains that it completely sucks.

Itemfinder will react if an item is within your very general vicinity. Then you have to just mash A on every tile to see if you find it. It’s extremely annoying.

If you enjoy horribly designed items, you’ll like one of the later “rewards” as well, the exp share.

It can be useful, though. If you fire it up when you see something weird and it doesn’t react, you know not to waste your time.

This is one of the dumber roadblocks if you think about it. By now, if you haven’t put another pokemon to sleep you’ve at least had it done to your pokemon. You know full well that a pokemon being asleep just makes it easier to attack or capture it.

But for all it doesn’t make sense, I love anything that involves pokemon impacting things, so the idea that sometimes giant pokemon make a nuisance of themselves is fine with me.

Anyway, back the way I came. The only place left to explore is the boat.

The perspective is weird.

It’s interesting how much effort the game puts into explaining things. It’s a ship full of trainers. So far in the game, trainers have attacked constantly for no real reason. But this time it’s because they’re going stir-crazy.

One of the rare people who reacts sanely to the character’s behavior. I feel kind of bad.

And he’s some old guy, too! I’m beating up an old guy’s pokemon after I went into his private room.

Other people are more chill about things. I hope she mentions this to someone else, because you never get her it. You don’t even pass the message on to the waiter outside – unlike most of the game where it’s implied you do talk, he says you’re the strong and silent type after asking you a question.

The game is really fond of these sort of trainer layouts. In retrospect it’s a surprise it took them so long to get to having multiple people attack you at once.

She had nidoran. This is one of the hints that there aren’t actually amazing lands of new pokemon if only you could find a way to stay on the SS Anne when it leaves.

Not that she should have been using a togepi or anything. But at least have rarer pokemon.

So you’re incompetent, then?

Naturally, there will be no Team Rocket members here despite them featuring heavily in the last two locations. But why be there when he could be on a cruise? Your tax dollars at work.

You can’t really consider them friends if the first thing you say is you’re traveling alone.

Growlithe mostly use bite against my beedrill, to the point that I only just here realized they even knew a fire attack. I’m not sure what the AI thinks it’s doing.

Growlithe look pretty cuddly, don’t they? But also pretty boring.

Looking back, it’s weird he wouldn’t recognize what it is.

…

The bag’s limitations are a terrible thing.

Not letting you empty your bag at all in the later games sucks as well, though. I like being a packrat about items.

The game has been hinting heavily.

1) Regular animals clearly exist.
2) Why does this guy’s dialogue change when he’s talking about a single thing? Maybe he’s supposed to sound less certain and instead of announcing the menu, the original was more like “What should the main course be? Eels? No, the guests would mutiny. Beef? But do I have enough beef?”

More hints of what’s to come! This time, one of the more long-term hints. It’ll take a while to get there.

I really hope this was all one person who just unfortunately happened to be the one who did the final proofreading, but it’s unlikely.

Ponyta doesn’t look particularly fierce, but otherwise that’s a surprisingly good sprite. I like how the flames around its legs look sort of like cowboy boots.

Yay, a totally worthless move!

Although the captain doesn’t actually teach you the move, this, I suppose, is paving the way for the later move tutors.

So, you were told there’s an unknown sleeping pokemon on the road. You see a pokemon blocking the road that you can’t interact with. You’re told that there’s a pokemon called snorlax that just eats and sleeps. And now you’re shown a picture of a snorlax.

I’m sure there’s someone out there who didn’t connect the dots, but even I didn’t have trouble with this one. Good job of communication, game.

The bug catchers at least had relatively harmless nets. Fishermen are where the pokemon/animal comparisons start to get worrisome.

Good god is that a terrible sprite. It doesn’t look like a jellyfish. It looks like an alien, specifically a War of the Worlds one.

Not exactly the best move, but pretty decent. This and leech seed together can be a good drain on an opponent’s health.

I actually triggered this by accident. I’d forgotten what the layout of the boat was and was just looking around.

Sadly, I’d just healed my pokemon. A lot of Gary’s awesome comes from the fact you typically run into him when your team is half dead.

No, as it happened. Lucked into a ticket by helping this guy turn back into a human. You?

What Gary has going for him narratively is he’s just always better than you. He gets places first, he gets badges first, he presumably was actually invited on his own merit (and if he wasn’t he’s one hell of a bluffer)

And he’s doing better at his pokedex, too.

This number is actually achievable if you deliberately put off this battle to grind madly. And if you, like I used to, deliberately avoid this whole area and get cut some other way, you can come back later with far more pokemon in your dex. He won’t acknowledge any of that.

Pretty sure this is condescending dickery and not sincere helpfulness.

Anyway, time to battle!

As you can see, his pidgeotto is little changed. Perhaps he’s starting to realize it’s boring. My pidgeotto was usually my last pokemon to evolve.

The closest thing to a decent bug move in the game.

Twinneedle has an effective power of 50, since it always hits twice. It also can poison opponents. In the second gen, this meant you could poison steel types, something that apparently they’ve since ruined fixed.

In the event you’ve managed to survive all your opponent’s mewtwo’s psychic attacks, you could then send out a beedrill and try to twinneedle it to death. It still won’t be that great since it’s such a weak move to start with.

My theory rattata originally evolved at L16 continues to gather evidence.

Kadabra is far from the pushover of abra and now knows attacking moves.

AI being what it is, of course, it blows a turn trying to teleport anyway.

Charmeleon looks kind of dorky.

As you can see, Gary’s sprite has changed. I’m not sure why they made the decision to provide multiple sprites for the rival as time went on, but it’s a good one. If only later games had kept it up. It’d have been particularly nice for Bianca.

Indeed.

I’m going to try to tone that down, because the game is more fun if you don’t get overleveled.

This sort of thing is why I’d assume Gary would just not bother helping Bill if it was at all possible. Maybe he’s even lying about exactly what happened and actually he just flipped through Bill’s pokemon records while ignoring the poor guy.

Stat comparison time!