Last time,

By this point in the game I was pretty confused. Misty hadn’t joined my party yet! (Also Brock but I wasn’t too interested in him.) And yet I was done with the area and able to leave?

I really like cats. No one who works on these games agrees with me, though.

I raised a meowth in one of my second-gen playthroughs. It was disasterous. I understand it’s better in the first gen because what it mostly has going for it is speed and that’s tied to critical hit ratios, so I’m going to be doing that this time.

My jigglypuff isn’t going to learn anything much that’s useful, so I’ll grab defense curl, evolve it, and kick it off my team.

For some reason, there’s a house at the bottom of a series of ledges. For some even more perplexing reason, this is the daycare. (There also isn’t an easy way to exchange pokemon here, you have to trek back to a pokecenter to change your team.)

You aren’t told how it actually works, but someone else explained to me the whole exp=steps thing. I always tried to keep a pokemon in there because I felt like I was wasting potential step exp otherwise, and on replays of Red it would bug me immensely that I couldn’t stick a pokemon in immediately but had to walk all the way through Cerulean first.

I guess you can read that as expressing tone rather than a grammar error.

Well anyway.

Let’s see if it learns harden.

Speaking of raising pokemon…

You only need to raise magikarp up to L18, not L20. After that, rare candies can do the rest.

In one playthrough, I wasn’t paying atttention and gave it my two rare candies when it was at L17. Don’t be like me.

And now I have a gyarados!

Huh. So apparently the game is perfectly able to code pokemon to learn moves after evolving.

As you can see, the speed is almost identical, increasing by only one point.

Gyarados is one of the pokemon screwed over by the special split. It keeps its current rating for special defense while its special attack is almost halved. This was probably done for balance reasons, but no one wants to raise a magikarp to get a balanced and reasonable pokemon. Also having it be a weaker special attacker goes against gyarados’ whole thing as a raging attacker (just compare its attack and defense), and furthermore, special defense is pretty useless to a gyarados. If it’s an electric move, gyarados dies messily regardless. Water and fire are resisted, and while technically water/flying is neutral to ice, most people will just see the water part and forget about it. Meanwhile gyarados is weak to rock moves. It’s also normal to grass. Being able to use ice moves is pretty important for it, but with its gutted special attack, not as effective as physical moves. It also won’t be that good with water attacks, its own type.

(For those you who’ve only played the more recent games, type used to determine whether a move was physical or special. Water, ice, fire, electric, all special types.)

Sadly, it’s no longer a cute fishy minisprite, but the snake is pretty cool.

Continuing down, there’s a big building.

I’m pretty sure someone had to tell me the solution to this puzzle. In my defense, the other people so far block your way until an unrelated event happens, and additionally I figured a route being closed meant they couldn’t just decide to let you through.

Come to think of it, what’s the point of the underground paths? They’re not shortcuts, they must be exactly the same length as walking the same route above ground, and since the area they bypass is a city, it’s not like you’re avoiding wild pokemon either. Is there some reason people like to avoid Saffron? Maybe it’s mugging central, but you wouldn’t think an underground path so dark people lose things would be safer in that respect, particularly when it also doesn’t seem to see much traffic.

The first trade where you can actually trade the pokemon.

This trade should really be the other way around, but whatever. It doesn’t matter much either way.

In the first generation, you could only hold twenty items at a time. This gets annoying often. Full heals only even exist because bag space was at such a premium.

A clue to check for items. At the time I wondered if this meant that new items would occasionally appear when new trainers dropped them. (For the record, while keeping track of days wouldn’t be introduced until the next generation, the game does keep track of both time and steps, so it’d be easy to have that determine things.)

I can see but not reach! What mysterious wonders must lie beyond? CURSE YOU, BLOCKED GATE!

As you see, a lot of people don’t have evolved pokemon. In most cases, it’s unclear if this is because their pokemon aren’t evolving or because the trainer doesn’t want them to evolve. We know Gary’s pidgey evolved at the minimum level but his charmeleon’s two levels past it, so there seems to be some evidence for the former option. Most people in fandom seem to take it as gospel that pokemon all evolve at the same level, but there’s a lot suggesting otherwise – though it’s just as likely to be accidental, as the game tries pretty hard to sell the fiction that sometimes it’s a good idea not to let your pokemon evolve.

You know what would have been cool? Having the trainers change over time. So this guy ends up back in the forest, someone else decides to hang out here, etc.

Also, look! Another squirtle exists. Sadly, you can’t ask to trade for it or even just ask where the other trainer got one

Wigglytuff looks freaky.

It’s about three times the size of jigglypuff while not being three times the weight. The weights here are generally nonsense, but sometimes they work.

These guys are actually trainers, but set up so that it’s impossible to walk in front of them so they’ll only fight if you talk to them – they take umbrage at you butting into a private conversation.

This butterfree knows confusion (and only that), making it relatively tough. It’s especially bad for me since half my team is weak to psychic.

I swear this battle is just to trick new people into thinking butterfree is a respectable battler.

You can avoid most of the fights but not the last two.

I wonder if raticate’s evolution level was changed late in the game? Not only is this another one that’s too low level, but it’s the same level. Rattata are actually very dangerous in the early game, having decent attack and great speed coupled with learning hyper fang, an 80 power move. Maybe they thought adding in evolution made it too overpowered.

And here we are now in Vermilion!

Someone sure is a pokeracist! Or something. Typist?

I’m generally approving of environmentalism, and you can also read this as just being about vermin (ie, don’t leave food lying around or cockroaches show up, don’t leave toxic waste lying around or grimer show up) but – the reason “toxic” sludge is bad is because of the absence of life in it, because it’s toxic. In the pokemon world, apparently life is better at adapting. Of course, diversity is a factor – lots of pokemon evidently live in forests and grassland, while grimer may be the only thing with a natural habitat of poison sludge, but then again, how many pokemon are living in cities in the first place?

Which brings up another point. There’s later some indication that new pokemon are evolving in response to humans. Do grimer even exist in the wild? If you stop polluting, are you going to wipe them out? If you think about it, it’s sort of a pro-pollution-in-moderation message.

(Also, “heard” leaves it ambiguous if it’s true and also ambiguous if people in this world get their information from actual studies or just random word of mouth.)

The game really wants you to know the SS Anne is here. Which is fair, since you need to go there to continue the game.

You can guess where this is going.

If you bought that magikarp on the assumption it’d be your only chance for some time or at all, you’ll be pretty angry when you try this out.

I’m fine because it means I already have a gyarados by now.

Mewtwo begs to differ.

I remember speculating if there’s any connection between that and the fact wild pokemon evolve earlier, and if by extension the strongest pokemon were those who delayed evolution longest. But whenever I tried not evolving my pokemon, they ended up really weak until I evolved them at which point they seemed normal, which was obviously some truly rigorous investigative skill.

The first trade you can do that actually matters!

Most of the ingame trades are for pokemon you can’t get any other way. While this makes a degree of game sense, they tend to want to trade for extremely common pokemon, which doesn’t.

It also doubles as an attempt to explain the actual gameboy trading mechanics.

Various characters will reference having gameboys, which is extremely confusing when you’re trying to interpret canon. Are they other players like you, sharing a connection to this world? Is this actually a giant MMO with very high roleplaying standards, and if so, why can some people access more options for interacting with the world, like letting pokemon run around their house?

Come to think of it, this is kind of sketchy, isn’t it? What sort of person conducts a trade under an anonymous generic handle? Are spearow super-valuable somewhere? Is something else going on?

You have absolutely no warning that the perfectly decent farfetch’d you just traded for is ruined.

That’s right. In the original games, you couldn’t raise a farfetch’d unless you were willing to raise DUX, who, being a traded pokemon, could never be renamed.

It’s a shame because farfetch’d actually had the perfect early game moveset – a typed move and sand attack.

Also notice the level. With ingame trades, the pokemon will be the same level as the one you trade for. The first time I traded for farfetch’d, I thought I was being so incredibly clever by making sure it was the lowest level spearow possible.

On to the next building, the pokemon fan club. Really, isn’t that the entire world?

That’s how I interact with animals too!

I was convinced to get a seel by this. Look at how cute it looks!

You can tell the members of the club aren’t that great with social stuff.

…there is no other pikachu, weird guy.

I’m not sure why he doesn’t just say his pikachu’s cuter than all my pokemon.

Well I would, but I can’t find the dialogue option.

That’s my biggest problem with dialogue in this game. You can have a team made up of the legendary birds, a pair of mewtwo and a mew, but no one actually cares.

And you’re, what, his secretary? Does he actually need one? If you’re a club member why are you telling me about him and not your adorable pok-

Huh. Everyone so far has only bragged about their pokemon’s cuteness, not prowess.

Really? Hey, you know, I bet Oak would appreciate you giving a list of those to-

Or you could just keep talking like I didn’t say anything, that works too.

Yes, see, I’m trying to create a pokemon encyclopedia because a weird old guy told me I had to live out his dream for him.

It’s about this point you should start to really wonder if those dots represent the character zoning out or if he’s actually talking like that.

I’m left with the impression these guy are using “fan” as a softer euphemism.

But whatever his real interest in pokemon, he just unlocked the bike for me.

Yes, I get it.

I really wasn’t worried. But your talk of “flying” intrigues me. Tell me more.

…Or you could just keep rubbing in that you only gave it to me because you don’t want it.

From a game standpoint, it makes a lot of sense for the characters to give you things you want but they don’t, of course. And it is still pretty generous given that these things could presumably have been sold.

Soon, bush. Soon.

The pokemon world apparently has no postal service.

…or phones. Apparently those are invented and they develop cellphones within three years, though.

Or perhaps it’s that for some reason there’s a blackout on communication within Saffron. That raises new questions, though – what’s the official story for why it’s happening? We know that the guards are apparently actual guards and they claim the way is closed for some reason. Maybe it was some attempt to keep Team Rocket out originally, though how they justified blocking communications as well is unclear.

This kind of behavior is generally an isolationist thing, which is the opposite of what you’d expect from a major city. But then again, they’re not exactly a tourist draw like Celadon. Maybe they’re a city because of all the workers Silph needs but not especially metropolitan in the normal sense. That’d also explain why the underground paths are designed to bypass them – they don’t like outsiders. So the people inside have few connections to the rest of Kanto, and they tend to respond to anything going wrong by blaming everyone else and cutting contact, so that no one realizes how odd this is.

This is a really weird statement. So pokemon have no real will of their own and will just follow their trainer’s lead, but they’re still considered responsible for their own actions?

While the anime’s bit about pokemon aren’t evil, just trainers was not really my favorite option, at least it makes sense.

Connecting everything to pokemon leads to this sort of thing, which naturally begs the question of if that means good people commit the criminal acts without pokemon.

Team Rocket continues to not really be all that evil. Like with the fossils, they’re doing something that doesn’t seem to be illegal, but it’s wrong because they’re doing it for bad reasons. The anime would later make the problem even worse by having Team Rocket constantly trying to “poach” pokemon, which was different than beating them up and catching them because…?

If this is an MMO, Team Rocket are the gold farmers.

The store offers the upgraded potion but not the upgraded pokeball.

You might think this is a plot point, but it’s not! It never goes anywhere. In some ways, it’s an annoying reminder of how static the gameworld is. In others, though, it’s nice that not every tidbit leads somewhere, and that there’s still stuff potentially to come even after you’ve finished everything.

In either way it’s infuriating the second gen still has this same scene.

And thus was born the idea that after a year the ship would reappear, or that you could hit some event that meant a year passed.

But why go the way everyone wants me to?

The police force here is apparently even more incompetent than Cerulean’s.

Before I played myself, I saw someone else’s game when they were here. I was really confused by how you could catch diglett since they’d just duck into their tunnels and hide like they did in that anime episode.

Diglett’s Cave is actually a weird area.

That’s a lot higher a level for a wild pokemon than you see in the grass on the way in…

Pay day was magic. It made money appear. It didn’t matter that you got barely any, the point was money.

See, this sort of holy shit what is the thing the later games are so shamefully lacking in. That isn’t even the highest level you can find.

It’s hard to actually catch one, though. I cheated here and used a save state, although I could probably have done it properly if only I hadn’t forgotten how much tougher it is to catch pokemon in this generation. Instead, I made the mistake of using leech seed, which meant I had only one try when it was at low health for a successful capture.

And thus we’re introduced to one of the various points the game just doesn’t interact well. I assumed this meant you needed three diglett in order for them to evolve, but of course it just spontaneously generates the other two instead.

The diglett can also reach some pretty high levels…

And you’ll run into the dugtrio at this level as well.

This is especially bad when you consider these pokemon are all speedy, so escaping a battle is a chancy thing and if you fight, they’ll probably get the first move and whittle you down over time.

This is the first time in the game you have easy access to a pokemon that’s suitable for the upcoming gym, and it’s likely because by now you’ve already caught a number of just as suitable pokemon.

Pretty decent.

It’s pretty impressive to consider apparently a lot of people make the trip without flash.

Accursed bushes!

So, you can’t get back to the western edge of the map yet, or those tantalizing itemballs seen way back then. At least there’s a house to check out.

Certainly.

I’ve never used one of these, so I have no idea if they’re any good.

As you can see, the nicknames continue.

The only one that isn’t awful is the one for the traded nidoranF, which is Spot, and that’s a pointless trade.