Pokemon Blue!
Pokemon Blue wasn’t just my first pokemon game, but my first real videogame. (Pokemon was the gateway for most forms of media to me, excepting fanfiction, which I discovered through an interest in digimon during the second season.)
Consequently, every little thing the game did left me stupefied in amazement, starting with the opening.
To properly appreciate its glory, we’ll be getting screenshots approximating the GBC version rather than the single-color thing most emulators do instead. This is not exactly what the game looks like. I managed to get my original cartridge running, and then I just fiddled with the settings until it resembled the screen. If anyone knows what the proper colors are, share. Those of you who want a relatively authentic experience without excessive fiddling should use Gambatte, which was the only emulator I found that doesn’t force its own idea of what the colors should be on the game, although I found it doesn’t look exactly the same. I’m using BGB because it’s otherwise easiest for this. If you can get your hands on the original cartridge, that’s definitely the best option in every way.
For some reason, they changed the battle from a gengar and nidorino to a gengar and jigglypuff for Blue, when you’d think any such change would go the other way around. As a result, this is the iconic battle for me and not the standard one.
And no, I have no idea how the jigglypuff can be headbutting the gengar either. In every way this makes no sense as an opening.
The pokemon title screen is a pretty simple thing you see the player character standing with that version’s pokemon. But it quickly starts swapping for other sprites, so you can see a trainer standing dramatically with various other pokemon. I’m not sure what the algorithm for this is – it seems to only cycle through a limited number of pokemon.
Look at those lovely sprites.
I could never make sense of this sprite. It looks like it’s armless with long tentacle ears to me. It’s the combination of the hands overlapping with the ears and then the tail looking like it’s the same as the arm.
Fun fact! These are the improved, redrawn sprites. The first Japanese games of Red and Green had even worse ones.
I was always really disappointed that later games removed this, because I feel this screen gets across the core of what’s so appealing about the franchise. You’re a trainer and here are pokemon and you can have any (or all) of them. It’s clearly meant to be one trainer cycling through his pokemon, but it’s also cool to think of it as various options instead – what would it be like to start with an aerodactyl?
Then it’s time for the game.
Prof. Oak appears to lecture us.
I think this gives a hint as to the origin some of the fandom disagreement about friendship. This is the world I was presented with back then, pokemon as pets or battlers. It’s pretty obvious when it comes up in the game that friendship is not a universal rule and it’s being talked to in the sense one might be fond of a horse.
(It’s also much harder with this as your introduction to how things are written to hold any stock in the idea you’re supposed to look to Nintendo as your guide on capitalization.)
Those of you who came to the franchise later should note there’s no “Are you a girl or a boy?” question. You are a boy. He does ask who you are, though.
(This is also part of why you’d sometimes see OTs named John in very early fandom days, though it’s a common enough name it’s hard to say when it was just chance. It gets more noticeable with the alternate names for GSC era.)
In my very first game, I was really confused to see that the protagonist’s names included Gary, and then that Ash was given to the rival. This is because Red is the official version for the story. As a result, I played for a bit but was increasingly disconcerted by the fact my asshole Gary rival was Ash. Between this and my bad starter choice, I restarted, and after that manually named the rival Gary. I used my actual name for the character then, but it’s been a long time since I did that. FARLA it is.
This isn’t quite what you get from the booklet, which, as I recall, was instead that you had once been friends but he became consumed with pokemon and turned rival on you. I think I like it better this way. Spiky here is why rival character is the standard term. He’s a rival. His whole purpose in life is to be a dick to you, and his whole purpose in the game is to give you something to beat down joyously.
There’s nothing else he could be called, really.
Yes!
This is what a satisfying game is about. It’s not the scale of what you’re doing, it’s getting to do it and having it be your story rather than someone else’s.
Pokemon Black is more epic in theory, but no one but N gives a damn about your personal accomplishments. It’s not your legend. It’s Douchy McFlamehair and Cheren’s, with Bianca getting a B-plot of a personal journey to accept her role as second-stringer.
And our adventure begins!
Tomorrow, we actually explore Pallet.
“He’s been your rival since you were a baby” is such a wonderful classic Ridiculous Old Game Line I am just kind of regarding it fondly and thinking about how right you are that Gary is the best ever.
I’ve been looking at B2/W2 stuff and it looks like it has some really cool new features that should make post-game play considerably more rewarding, and also it doesn’t canonize the male protagonist of the last games like I’d feared it would. Also we get another female Champion! Also also since we have Bianca to be the fumbling professor’s assistant, hopefully Juniper and not her father will get to do the important Professor plot stuff this time. Though sadly the main rival and the big bad are once again both male.
You can just picture baby Gary getting into crawl racing or competing to be the best at shaking his rattle.
I’ll have to see with BW2. Certainly the spoilers for BW didn’t have much to do with most of what I ended up hating about it. Really hoping Douchy gets on a bus for BW2.
“…what would it be like to start with an aerodactyl?”
My brother’s Blue cartridge never worked very well for some reason (it would keep losing saves, somehow), so it was our guinea pig for all our Gameshark experimentation. One of my favorite codes was one that turned our starter into a pinsir, after which we happily wrecked everything until the save vanished again.
There’s something so awesome about other starters! It’s why I ended up playing Silver and eventually Crystal a billion times over, because you could trade over replacement starters.
Also tried trading over my mewtwo one time, as one did.
CRYSTAL WAS GOD!!!!
sorry, 1AM sleep deprived line. Seriously though, in my mind Crystal was the pinnacle of the gameboy pokemon. The hoenn games were on the slightly lower level of the Kanto games(including the remakes?, the sinnoh games were mediocre and Black/White? Burn them.
The best pokemon game was Coliseum though, anyone agree?
The best pokemon game was Coliseum though, anyone agree?
Oh, definitely.
Eh, it’s hard to say. Coliseum was the best for one playthrough, I think. Stadium was best for battles. The gameboy set is best for exploring every nook and cranny.
Colosseum was a fairly fun game, but it kind of failed at being a *Pokémon* game in how limited your options for team-building were. The story was cool, but not really well-developed enough for that to carry it. I remember being excited because the previews were selling it as darker-and-edgier Pokémon, but then when it came out it was actually just… grittier, I guess, but with no real substance behind the atmosphere.
My favorite side game is far and away Mystery Dungeon Explorers.
I thought everything was blue in Blue and everything was red in Red? I could have sworn everything was blue when I got my friend’s brother to lend me his Blue on a Game Boy Color so I could try out the Missingno. trick.
I started with Yellow, and I actually suspect if my cousins had happened to show me Red or Blue instead, I’d have been too put off by the ugly sprites to come around to like it the way I did. Half of what drew me in initially was the battle system, but half was that the monsters were really appealing, and the monstrous, clumsy ugliness of almost all the R/B sprites makes even Pokémon designs I really like look bland at best and repulsive at worst.
Gary is still my favorite rival by far, too. I don’t mind the friendly rivals of the later games in themselves, but Gary was someone you could love to hate and when he showed up as champion it was like the ultimate motivation to beat the game. (And “What are you doing here? Your Pokémon don’t look dead!” is still my favorite douchey rival line.)
No, the single color stuff was only for Yellow and was one of my pet peeves about that game, because it’s harder to see your blue pikachu in blue Cerulean. GBC would give two colors for any gameboy game, and you could switch around if you didn’t like the default. Blue was set for one of the options so it ended up being blue world, red trainer. In battle, it’s also almost all blue. (I think Red was red and green – have to check my cartridge.)
The friendly rivals are just so boring! They’re a challenge to fight, but there isn’t the emotional sense you want to beat them up. Silver rival was good for a bit, but then he gets nice and spends the endgame wondering sadly why he can’t win.
I also started off with Yellow. My Dad actually found an old Gameboy advanced with a charger and one game (Yellow) in it in a parking lot. It was a little scratched up but otherwise it worked.
Gary is definitely one of my favorite rivals.
Lucky! Yellow is cool because it gives a cute follower pokemon and more variety for a team, although they did clean up the Missingno glitch, which was sad.