And now…

It’s go time.

The loss of the Safari Zone was one of the big disappointments of the second gen, and I’m glad it returned in later games.

 

Sara can be found inside, having thought the best place to meet up was a labyrinth where you’re on a strict time limit. As usual, you can’t resolve this. Erik and Sara will wonder where the other is forever.

Looking at the signs adds it to your pokedex if you haven’t already seen it, but apparently doesn’t give you enough knowledge to fill out an entry. This is weird if you spend any time a all thinking about it, because much of a pokedex entry is exactly what you’d expect to be on a zoo sign. These apparently don’t even mention height or weight.

Pokemon in the game didn’t say their names, so that dodges the question of how their natural cry matches up to a perfect human description.

Although this bit does suggest that names may be subject to brand considerations. See, chansey are hard to catch in the Safari Zone because of the fact balls can miss and pokemon can easily flee, so it’s a matter of chance. But if they’re encountered in any normal battle, they’re just like any other pokemon – pokemon can’t flee normally in the first gen, and they don’t have an escaping move like teleport.

I still always wanted to get in there and check myself. Also, why are pokeballs identical to itemballs? And why are itemballs apparently voltorb-sized?

The zoo contains more pokemon than just those that you can catch there.

See, with how defined kangaskhan is by its child, you can sort of see the edges of a storyline where the ghost marowak is unsettled for lack of a child, and you have to give it a surrogate with a pokedoll in order to calm it. It also makes more sense why the ghost isn’t doing anything useful to stop Team Rocket if it’s not motivated by anger at them in the first place.

…it is?

I feel there’s some part of this conversation that’s missing.

Ah, there it is.

So he’s not a particularly popular boss is what I’m getting here.

What’s going on is that he’s lost his false gold teeth (in the Safari Zone, naturally). But how does this guy not know about the false chompers being gone? It’d be pretty obvious for someone to go from gold teeth to none.

Well, anyway. To the game.

Not really. The zones have slightly different odds for the rare pokemon. I believe kangaskhan are most common in the second area, the bug exclusive is in the first area, and fucking tauros in the fourth.

It’s extremely unlikely you’ll manage to run out of balls. The only exception is if you decide to go fishing.

Actually very good advice. The game won’t warn you the box is full until you try to catch one more, and there’s few things more annoying.

Also, you have to give the pokeballs back afterward, which I always thought was unfair. You get thirty and you’re allowed to use all of them, so why can’t you take them out with you?

Forgot these were here. Actually, they don’t make any sense here, why are cave pokemon that like dampness hanging out here?

Also look at that terrible sprite. It’s missing half its legs.

Fanfic rarely considers gift pokemon, something that continually disappoints me. There’s even dratini here.

Since we know the character can talk, and I did talk to Erik earlier, I’m left with the assumption the character just enjoys this.

It’s possible to miss pokemon when you throw pokeballs here. (It also happens very rarely in regular battles in what seems like a glitch.) Anyway, it seems tied to the bait/rock options. Throwing bait makes you miss, and throwing rocks makes you stop missing.

The fact you miss when throwing at chansey is part of why they’re so hard to catch. They also run away easily and are one of the extremely rare pokemon, so you don’t get many chances.

Because you used different stones, obviously. This sort of line would have made more sense in the second gen with the umbreon/espeon options.

…wait, the fact you’re saying that’s how it works here implies that’s not how it works normally. So I should have been turning in all the items I found elsewhere?

No, actually that does make sense. The other things tend to be things that trainers must have dropped, except in Pokemon Tower, where I think they’re left on the graves and I shouldn’t take them in the first place.

He’s not kidding. You have very few steps for the size of the place, and to get to the end you need to go straight there.

Fail to do that, and you’ll run out of time right before you get to the final zone.

FUCKING TAUROS.

Tauros was the one pokemon I couldn’t get. It didn’t matter what I did. If I threw a pokeball, it broke out and ran. If I threw a rock, it ran. If I threw a bait, IT RAN. I completed the rest of my pokedex only to be stuck at 149. And no one else I knew had caught one either, so I couldn’t trade for it. Eventually I heard about the Safari Zone variant of the missingno glitch and did that only for tauros to refuse to appear. I discovered that in Japanese Blue you could trade for Tauros. I gave serious thought to somehow buying and playing the game.

At some point I watched the episode that first mentioned Ash had caught a herd of tauros. I initially thought this was a joke regarding how Ash hadn’t caught anything (Ash’s failure to catch pokemon was a long running complaint, at least with everyone I knew). Upon discovering that they were in fact talking about a herd of tauros he actually caught, I tried my best to strangle Ash through the TV using the power of my mind

Eventually, I did manage to catch it, but it took far longer than it ever should have.

Yup, that’s the sign right next to them. Maybe originally it was meant to be a hidden item?

Doesn’t this place look dramatic?

Maybe you should let people have more than 500 steps, then.

And now I have surf. Can’t actually use it yet, though, as it requires the badge here.

Like with Bill’s backyard, the question of what lies beyond here was a big one, with a number of cheats about how to move the statues out of the way. It just looks so important. The designers were trying to make it showy to go with the prize, but it looks more serious.

Wow, I forgot how weird that sprite looked.

Hm. And I forgot quite what it says here. In later games it’ll say that they function in groups of six, but here there’s nothing so clear cut. It’s unclear if they’re a communal pokemon or if this is just temporary defensive behavior. The sprite shows more than one, but then, we’re also told that diglett, magnemite and koffing evolve by joining together with others of their kind despite the fact you don’t need those for your pokemon to evolve.

See, it should be hiding in a cave.

Here’s something interesting. If you look at the sprite, you’ll see the eyes are all white.

Paras’ eyes have definite pupils, but that’s been lost. And solid white eyes can be used to indicate death. The idea I heard is that when the pokedex says taken over, it means parasect is a fungal zombie.