Last time,

This is my fourth badge, so halfway done!

Now, let’s check out Saffron…

I really, really wonder where their orders are coming from. It obviously isn’t Team Rocket or they wouldn’t be willing to blow them off over just a drink, but at the same time, they seem to believe it’s important enough to block anyone, no questions asked, up to that point.

I guess the easy answer is just that the guards have a terrible work ethic. Giovanni should have replaced them with his own guys, but then, his own guys are incompetent and loudly announce they’re dropping a key item, so maybe he did.

I always found that last bit particularly forced. It isn’t as if the drinks are particularly pricey, so you could easily give them to each guard, and anyway, once the player gets fly it’s unlikely they’ll ever walk into the place again, so having some entrances blocked isn’t a big deal.

But indeed, if you try going out a different entrance…

Drinks, plural. Which does sort of make more sense – it always did seem odd that a single bottle from a vending machine would be passed around four people who were all insanely thirsty and they’d be satisfied.

See, bag space was a real issue back then, so this actually was a consideration.

As you can see, I didn’t walk into him, I just talked. It’s always weird when dialogue is about bumping into them.

If you go here earlier, he’ll be standing vigilantly in front of the building, and apparently he’s a graduate of Giovanni’s more recent instructional video, Not Challenging Kids To Pokemon Battles And You. By just telling you to go screw yourself, you never get a chance to beat him in a battle, so he never loses, so he never gets out of the way. All of the Team Rocket guys in the city, blocking various entrances, do the same.

I love Team Rocket the institution. Some of the dialogue really is idiotic, though.

Actually, you know what this reminds me of? Satanists and other things teenagers think is cool because everyone says not to. Think about kids going on about how they’re so evil and badass to be edgy. Now imagine that sort of deliberate cruelty in the pokemon world where teens are actually a force to be reckoned with. That might make for an interesting team for a fanfic.

I wonder what it’s like to actually be in Saffron while this is happening. And more evidence they either don’t have landlines or those have been taken out – Team Rocket can apparently keep news from getting out just by keeping the people from getting out.

He already has.

As you can see, there are two gyms here.

Team Rocket, being cleverer than the average team, was able to tell which gym actually mattered and only block that one. We’ll come back later to actually check them out.

Of course, there’s still the question of how blocking the door to Sabrina’s gym would do anything to keep her in. Let’s assume that the idea is to keep anyone from telling Sabrina, and then try not to wonder why that’d work on someone who’s meant to be psychic.

It’s never clear exactly what Silph is beyond that they’re a big company. A lot of people have made the assumption that Silph is the only company producing pokemon products, which does have a lot of evidence in its favor. In that case, Team Rocket attacking them is really only one of Kanto’s problems. They also have to contend with a monopoly on the stuff used to control the insanely powerful elemental monsters that live in their backyards. Indeed, it’s possible that Silph and Team Rocket could be seen as something more like two rival companies struggling for control over the same area.

Well, is it the fame or the fact they have useful products? The Silph scope suggests the latter, but from what you say, it’s more that they’re going after them because they’re big and rich and they’ll just plunder the coffers for money for the next thing they’ll attack.

As you can see, the pokemon center isn’t blocked (because you need to heal, right?) but that just raises questions about how this works. If the people inside can’t leave to warn anyone, then why bother blocking other houses? It’d have been better to block this as well and make the player walk to the next town over.

…Well, I know what image I’ll spend next January linking to everyone who starts saying that how Nintendo does it has some sort of bearing on actual grammar.

It’s unclear if this is meant to be a complete fantasy or an actual hope. Certainly there’s no sign in this game that the elite four do anything much but challenge trainers, but next game Lance will be running around after them. Maybe he felt guilty.

Well, that’s all that’s here for now. The next badge is supposed to be in Fuchsia, so let’s go there first.

I find the fainting option to actually be the more interesting outcome.

I always wanted to know about these mountains. Where were they? How could you get there? Were there lots of snorlax there? As I said, I never did believe in Bill’s backyard in particular, but I wanted to find a way to go north of the map even still.

So, now I can head over to Cycling Road, which, as it happens, has an observation platform before it.

The platforms on either side of Kanto show the other possible route. Those are some weird binoculars.

If you look closely, you can see that this sprite lacks the usual tiny line meant to be  pigtails.

No, this end of it is downhill. A road itself can’t be downhill. I mean, it can in a videogame, I guess, but it shouldn’t be, and isn’t in this case.

As you can see, this area’s swarming with trainers.

New sprite. It does look suitably intimidating.

These guys just look like fake rock stars, though. Also kind of like the bird keepers, which is really not helping me take them seriously.

Weezing are surprisingly powerful. In general, trainers are starting to have evolved pokemon now, which makes for a sudden jump in power.

I could never figure out what it was doing with its hands. Also, just generally awful as a sprite.

All the items are hidden, which explains why I never actually found any here. I was too distracted by the slope to think about searching.

A good time to drop the reference, as I’ll soon have access to surf and be able to reach there.

He has a machoke.

The game didn’t always spoonfeed you. By this point in the game, you should have checked out the element stones and know machoke doesn’t use them for evolution, and be able to work out that it’s actually trading that’s the missing factor here. Then you feel smug.

The slope means that you automatically go downhill unless you hold a button in another direction, and also that you only go uphill at walking speed.

As you can see, the bottom area is surprisingly lacking in trainers.

It’s nicknamed Licky or something, isn’t it? I don’t have a slowbro at the moment.

Which we knew, but I guess this is good for confirming that the map we have uses the standard compass.

Look! A pokemon! Just sitting there unattended, too! If only I could reach it somehow…

Sometimes you can see the part where someone involved with the game had just had their twentieth cup of coffee.