All the Pokemens

[Aura]

Route 5

Since we already have the S.S. Ticket from Bill, we can now head south of Cerulean City toward Vermillion. In order to get here, we'll need to pass through the burglarized house and then head south around the outskirts of Cerulean.

The grass here is entirely optional, but if you drop down the ledges, you can get to it and potentially find a new pokemon: Meowth! I didn't bother doing that here as it'll be a bit more common later on, but it's here at 35% so it should be pretty easy to catch one for your team if you like. If you find yourself low on money, it's not a bad idea to catch one of these little guys because their Pay Day can help you pick up money after every battle they participate in, the amount you pick up depending on how much the move is used.

At the very end of this series of ledges is a house which happens to be home to the Day Care of Kanto. Unfortunately, this Day Care functions identically to the one in Red and Blue which means no breeding. This is a peculiar point that I'll definitely go into more detail about later on, but you'll notice that they seem to go out of their way to ensure that you only use Generation 1 pokemon during the main story of this game. This is just one of those measures. By making sure you can't breed pokemon by leaving two in the Day Care, you're locked out of Gen 2's baby pokemon like Pichu and Igglybuff. This functionality will open up later, but not for a while.

Of course, as we try to head through the gate further south, we'll find that the guard won't let us through just like in the original games. We're not going to be able to pass through Saffron City for quite a while. Thankfully, there's a detour nearby through the Underground Pass.

===================

 

 

In the entrance to the Underground Pass, we can find a staircase that leads, well, underground. But more importantly, there's an NPC here with a fairly significant trade. In LeafGreen, this NPC will trade you a Nidoran M for your Nidoran F. In FireRed, this trade is swapped. Thanks to this NPC, you can get the opposite gendered Nidoran much more easily which is fantastic considering its scarcity.

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The actual Underground Path isn't too terribly interesting. There are a few hidden items to be found here, but they're mostly inconsequential and you'll have a difficult time finding any of them in this massive space. It's really not worth the effort. Just individual status healing items like Antidotes and Parlyz Heals.

===================

Route 6

At the other end of the Underground Path is Route 6. The pokemon here aren't anything too terribly interesting and the grass is all optional if you don't mind battling some trainers. But before heading south, you might want to backtrack up north a little bit to check the two alcoves on either side of the gate.

 

On the west side, you can find a Sitrus Berry hidden in the grass. If you check the opposite side in roughly the same position, you'll find a Rare Candy.

=======================

Vermillion City

We aren't going to spend too much time exploring here today, I'd rather leave that for tomorrow. However, we will briefly touch on the new pokemon we can obtain around this area.

Before we do anything, though, it's only natural to stop by the Pokemon Center. Inside this Pokemon Center is an Ace Trainer standing near the counter. If you talk to her, she'll speak briefly about how much she loves to battle people over and over again before giving you a special item: The Vs Seeker! If you're unfamiliar with FireRed and LeafGreen then you've probably noticed this item clipped to Pokemon Trainer's bag in Smash Bros. This is yet another key item that adds functionality from the PokeNav to your bag. As you can probably guess, this is FRLG's answer to the Trainer's Eye feature from Ruby and Sapphire, though it functions a little bit differently. I'll explain how it works a little bit later on. All you need to know for now is that you can use this to rematch trainers you've previously defeated who will now have stronger teams.

---------------------------------

If you enter the house next door to the Pokemon Center, you'll find the Fishing Guru of Vermillion who will gift you an Old Rod. This is a fairly useless rod, but in this game we don't have to worry about inventory space for key items, so we may as well pick it up.

 

This thing is pretty much only capable of reeling in Magikarp. But hey, a pokemon is a pokemon and this way you don't have to support any shady business practices buying from the salesman outside Mt. Moon! You can find Magikarp in just about any body of water at 100% rarity so there should be no issue at all finding one in a matter of seconds. I named mine Hook!

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Lastly, in the house immediately west of the Mart, you'll find a lady willing to trade you a FarFetch'd for your Spearow. I'll come back for this trade a bit later on, but just like Jynx, this is a pokemon that is only available through an in-game trade, so you'll definitely want to come back to it.

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Route 11

I'm not going to explore Route 11 very thoroughly just yet, we'll save this for next time, but I did want to take a quick dip into the grass here to show off what kind of pokemon are going to be available.

 

If you've yet to catch them, this route is where Sandshrew and Ekans are available in LeafGreen and FireRed respectively most commonly at 40%. You should have no problem at all finding them.

 

In addition, this is where you can catch the new pokemon Drowzee at its most common. Drowzee is a Psychic type that's significantly easier to catch and raise than Abra. It's also a much more tanky pokemon who can stand up to more physical hits and make better use of some physical offensive options as well. I named mine Dream and ducked out of the route.

------------------------------------

This route is also home to Diglett's Tunnel which I didn't enter just yet myself, but if enter and head down the ladder, you can find a new pokemon and you'll never guess what it is.

You're wrong. It's Dugtrio!

Just kidding, Diglett is here far more commonly, but so is Dugtrio!

Diglett is available at 95% while Dugtrio is a mere 5%. Dugtrio's presence here is a blessing and a curse. If you're careful enough, you can snag a Dugtrio as high as level 31. However, this also means you'll have to battle a pokemon as high as level 31. This is compounded even further here in FireRed and LeafGreen by the fact that Diglett and Dugtrio can potentially now have Arena Trap, preventing pokemon that aren't immune to Ground-type moves from fleeing. That means no running or switching out. These Dugtrio can actually be pretty scary if you encounter them at this point in the game, and odds are they're much higher level than your team, so even repels won't protect you.

Still, if you're lucky enough to be able to catch one of these beasts, the next gym will be a total joke for you. I was actually originally planning to use a Dugtrio on my team before making the decision to use Sandshrew instead.

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Back in Vermillion City, we can now use our SS Ticket to board the SS Anne!

SS Anne 1F

There is a whole slew of trainers to battle here, so I strongly recommend making your first destination the room straight across from the entrance, that's one door down from the east side. In here is a nice lady who will offer to let you rest in order to heal your pokemon, just like a Pokemon Center. You can return here as much as you like so you never have to leave the ship! Next, you'll want to head into the lower deck by going down the stairs, then work your way up the ship.

SS Anne B1F

Down here, there are some valuable, and entirely missable, items that can be retrieved.

There's a hyper potion in the garbage can right next to the staircase.

 

In most of the rooms on this ship, you'll find at least one trainer. These are mostly Gentlemen who tend to use pokemon based on pets, mostly Growlithe, as well as Sailors who tend to use a mixture of Water-types and Fighting-types. 

Down here in the basement, you'll also find a Fisherman, these trainers naturally specialize in pokemon that can be caught using Fishing Rods. Consequently, they're almost always mono-water teams.

In the fourth door, you'll come across TM44: Rest but it's guarded so make sure you're prepared to fight. The other cabins have items as well, but they're just things like Potions and Ethers. Nothing's hidden down here and all of these trainers are missable, so I recommend challenging them now while you can.

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Working your way from West to East, the second-to-last cabin you find is home to a TM that caught me by surprise: TM31: Brick Break taking the place of TM08: Body Slam from the original game. It's technically got lower power than Body Slam, but it's a really versatile attack that, unlike Body Slam, has the capability of being super-effective! It's also one of the most consistent generic Fighting moves in the game! This is usually a move I have on an endgame moveset, so to see it just laying right here is very exciting! 

Before we head up the stairs, we'll want to head down into the Kitchen where we can find a Great Ball just laying around. In the original, this Great Ball was hidden in one of the trash cans, but if we go to check the cans, now, we'll find berries in each of them!

  

These are Chesto, Cheri, and Pecha Berries. I don't know how I feel about grabbing these berries out of the garbage, but berries are berries I suppose.

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2F

On the second floor, before we go exploring any of the cabins, we're going to go up the stairs on the west side.

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3F

This will bring us to a small hallway that leads onto the main deck of the ship where some passengers are already getting seasick before the ship even takes off! There isn't much to actually find up here, but there are a few trainers to battle.

==========================

Back to business on 2F, let's continue exploring the cabins!

In the first room is a man who will show us a picture of Snorlax to be added to our pokedex. I'm not really sure why they felt the need to put this guy in here since you're going to have to deal with Snorlax eventually anyway unless you use some sort of glitch to get around it. But, this was in the original game, too, so it's really just a leftover. Perhaps Snorlax was originally planned to be an optional fight?

 

The rest of the cabins here don't hold much of anything interesting, just Stardust and X-Attack.

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While battling the trainers on this ship, Burrow reached level 22 and evolved into a Sandslash!

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But as we go around the bend, we hear that familiar theme music which can only mean one thing...

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My Team:

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Venus (Ivysaur M); Lv. 26

 

Item: None

Ability: Overgrow | Moves: Tackle, Sleep Powder, Leech Seed, Razor Leaf

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Scope (Golbat F); Lv. 24

 

Item: None

Ability: Inner Focus | Moves: Wing Attack, Astonish, SuperSonic, Bite

---------------------------------

Burrow (Sandslash F); Lv. 23

 

Item: None

Ability: Sand Veil | Moves: Slash, Poison Sting, Dig, Rock Tomb

===================

Vs. Rival #4

This is the point in the game where Green starts to show his cocky side and that's because his team is starting to come together! If you're unprepared, this battle just might catch you by surprise with its difficulty!

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Pidgeotto Lv. 19

 

I led off with Burrow who took Pidgeotto out with a super-effective Rock Tomb. Unfortunately, she suffered a Sand-Attack but just one isn't going to be an issue.

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Raticate Lv. 16

 

Raticate is the weakest pokemon on his team. It went down to a simple Slash.

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Kadabra Lv. 18

 

His Abra's finally evolved and is ready to blast you with some pretty strong psychic attacks! I didn't have anything good to retreat into, so I just went for Slash and was able to take him out just fine.

---------------------------------

Charmeleon Lv. 20

 

His Charmeleon went down to a Dig attack as well. This was a fantastic battle for leveling up Burrow!

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Upon defeat, Green doesn't give us any more gifts and instead just mentions that the captain is a Cut Master and tells us how useful the HM move Cut is and that you should try it out before walking off.

==========================

We go up the stairs and find that the captain has actually started to get seasick himself. We walk up to him and rub his back to help him feel better.

As thanks, the Cut Master returns the favor not just by teaching Cut to one of our pokemon, but by actually giving us an HM for the move! With this HM, a whole slew of areas open up to us! But let's not get ahead of ourselves here. Next time, we're going to try and stay local and focus on the next gym right here in Vermillion!

[Aura]

A rather small update today. We're focusing exclusively on the gym here in Vermilion City today. After getting off of the SS Anne, the ship sets sail on its cruise, leaving us behind to continue our own adventure. With the HM for Cut in our bag, we now need someone to use the move!

 

I went back to the PC to pull out Parasite and taught him Cut using HM01.

I haven't actually mentioned this yet, mostly because I'm so used to just skipping the cutscene, but this is not only the first game that shows what a TM looks like, but also the first game that shows TMs being used... Sort of. Before this point, I don't think anybody ever thought of a TM as some sort of storage disc. I always understood it to be some sort of box-shaped machine. But with the TM's being discs, now the big question is how exactly is it used to teach a pokemon how to use a move? Is it some sort of instructional video?

Anytime you use an item on a pokemon in the overworld, you get a screen that looks something like this. The pokemon comes closer to you, you give them the item and it plays a quick animation depending on the type of item. In the case of TM's, it shows the disc being... attached to the pokemon's head? Then the pokemon begins to absorb information from the disc through osmosis and gains the knowledge to be able to use the attack...?

======================

Vermilion Gym

Vermilion Gym is designed around the Electric type and is home to the Lightning American, Lt. Surge.

This gym introduces us to a new trainer class: The Engineer. Engineers are generic Electric-type specialists, usually using pokemon like Magnemite and Voltorb.

 

The other two trainers here are a Sailor and Gentleman who both use Pikachu as opposed to the typical types of pokemon they're used to. If you carefully navigate the gym, only the battle with the gentleman is required. 

As for the gym itself, this is the first one with a puzzle which is pretty much identical to the one from the original and it's even more garbage than the trash you have to dig through. Each of these 15 garbage cans has a random chance of having a switch in them. You'll have to search each can for the switch inside and, if it's there, the first lock will open. You'll then need to look for the second switch. Battling the trainers will lead to the uncovering of a few hints, namely that the second switch will always be next to to the first switch. I'm unclear on whether that switch can be in a garbage can you've already checked or if "next to" can also refer to garbage cans diagonal from the first one. I'd assume not, but you never know. What makes this puzzle terrible is that, if you check a garbage can that doesn't have the second switch, the first switch gets reset and its location will be reshuffled. You're going to be wasting a lot of time digging through garbage before you can battle the lieutenant.

==========================

My Team:

---------------------------------

Venus (Ivysaur M); Lv. 26

 

Item: None

Ability: Overgrow | Moves: Tackle, Sleep Powder, Leech Seed, Razor Leaf

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Scope (Golbat F); Lv. 25

 

Item: None

Ability: Inner Focus | Moves: Wing Attack, Astonish, SuperSonic, Bite

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Burrow (Sandslash F); Lv. 26

 

Item: None

Ability: Sand Veil | Moves: Slash, Poison Sting, Dig, Rock Tomb

=====================

Vermilion Gym Leader Lt. Surge

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Voltorb, Lv. 21

 

I led off with Burrow against his Lt. Surge. With a ground-type, I can easily tear through Lt. Surge's team just by using Dig a lot. Voltorb didn't stand a chance.

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Pikachu, Lv. 18

 

This PIkachu looks delicate, but thanks to its Double Team, it was able to evade my Dig Attack and the Slash that followed.

 

Since Pikachu had gotten some double teams up by now, it was really difficult to hit, so I'd need to change tactics. I brought out Venus to get the most out of my next hit using Leech Seed. From there, it was just a matter of spamming Razor Leaf until it connected. 

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Raichu, Lv. 24

 

Up next is Lt. Surge's most powerful pokemon: Raichu. Right off the bat, it, too, goes for Double Team, but I'm one step ahead and immediately hit it with a Leech Seed. He continues to build up his evasion, but it's just a matter of survival for me at this point. Eventually, I manage to hit it with a couple of Razor Leaf attacks and take him out. 

---------------------------------

 

For defeating Lt. Surge, we're awarded the Thunder Badge and TM34: Shock Wave which is significantly less exciting than ThunderBolt, but it's something!

With Vermilion Gym out of the way, we're going to explore the immediately surrounding areas next time. This was a small update, I know, but like I said before, I like to take my time on my first playthroughs of a new set of games, although as a remake, this is new territory, so I'm still trying to get a good feel for the best way to pace myself. Since I haven't actually thoroughly covered my playthroughs of Gen 1, I am covering these games as though they're my first playthrough of Kanto, but I'm still comparing things between versions as though I had covered them. I'm hoping when we get around to other remakes, things will be covered a bit less awkwardly since I actually have already played GSC.

[Aura]

Well, since finals are coming up for me, I'm going to be very busy tomorrow, today's update is going to come much earlier than normal. So early, in fact,that you can argue that it's still the same day, but it's technically past Midnight so my computer says its the next day and as far as I'm concerned, that still counts!

Anyway, this is just going to be a small update where we do a bit of cleanup before moving on to our next destination. We now have Cut and the ThunderBadge, so I think it's finally time we finish up around Vermillion and get a move on!

There's really only one place of interest left here in Vermillion for us to check out and that's the Pokemon Fan Club where we can talk to the chairman and receive a Bike Voucher after listening to him gush about his favorite Pokemon Rapidash. This Bike Voucher can be used at the Bicycle shop in Cerulean City for a free Bike! We don't have to save up for 1,000,000p after all! 

A few other much less significant details are an old man using his Machop to stomp some land flat so that they can build a building there and in the southernmost house, there's a new NPC who alludes to the Mail feature which, naturally, didn't exist back in Gen 1. She mentions sending mail to her friends by sending her pokemon to the Union Room. The other man in this house is writing to a friend of his in Saffron City, mentioning that he's heard Saffron's been having problems with Team Rocket and that he hopes everything is going okay. It definitely sounds troubling! 

If we try to head back toward Cerulean City, we'll find one of Prof. Oak's Aides standing at the edge of town. If we talk to him, he'll ask if we've made sure to visit the other aide on the other side of Diglett's Cave. I think it's pretty clear what our goal for today is, now!

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Route 11

Before we make our way through Diglett's Cave, though, we'll want to quickly explore the rest of what this route has to offer. There isn't too much to talk about, it's really just a field of trainers to help you train up some pokemon if necessary for Lt. Surge.

Among these trainers are a few Gamble-, I mean, "Gamers." These "Gamers" are huge risk takers. Their teams are always monotype and I think they often like to use rather inaccurate moves. I usually KO their pokemon too quickly to find out, so I'm not really sure about that. It's very thinly veiled, but these guys were called Gamblers in the original version but have since been renamed to avoid controversy with references to gambling. I really can't imagine more people being worried about Gamblers over some of the other trainer classes like Channelers, but whatever floats your boat, I suppose. Anyway, the gambling habits of this trainer class are better realized in future titles. I suppose the use of monotype teams is supposed to be like they're going all in on the value of a single type. I'm really not sure.

  

There are a couple of items lying around on this route. An Awakening, X-Defend, and a Great Ball. The Great ball is nice since we still can't buy them yet, but there's not much else of particular interest among these.

There's also an Escape Rope hidden on the rock north of the gate.

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If you continue inside of the gate and head up the stairs before moving forward, you can find an NPC who is willing to trade you a Nidorino for your Nidorina, or vice versa if you're playing FireRed. I always thought this was a really redundant trade and still do since there's still that girl from before who trades you a Nidoran M for a Nidoran F. I really never understood why they felt the need to have both of these trades in the game. 

You can also find another of Prof. Oak's Aides who says he'll give us an Itemfinder once we obtain 30 different types of pokemon. I always skip this guy in Gen 1 since every Key Item is a wasted inventory slot, but again, there's no reason not to take it. Unfortunately, I only have 22 registered in my pokedex so far so we've got a little bit to go before we're ready for this one.

If we try to continue onward toward Lavender Town or Fuschia City, we'll find a giant Snorlax blocking our way! We don't have any means to get past him, so we'll just have to find another way around for now. That's fine, though, because we needed to go back to Diglett's Cave anyway!

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Diglett's Cave

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1F

There isn't much at all to talk about with Diglett's Cave, this isn't exactly much of a dungeon, but it's a cave nonetheless! There is nothing to find on this first floor, not even any wild pokemon! Just an old man who tells us that the cave links Vermillion City to Viridian City. Finally, we can make our way back to the west side of Kanto!

Before we make our way there, though, I'm gonna go ahead and  warn you that you're going to want to bring a pokemon that knows Cut along with you or you'll find yourself having to turn around at the very end. It's kind of a rude trick they pull so you'll want to come prepared.

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B1F

The actual cave itself is just a straight shot to the other side, but it's a really, really long tunnel. Along the way, you're bound to battle several Diglett.

 

Remember how I mentioned that Dugtrio was available here as well? Well, it just so happened that was my very first encounter! And at level 31! After a couple of failed Great Balls, I caught it in a pokeball and named it Cavern.

 

Naturally, I also caught myself a Diglett and named him Tunnel.

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1F

There isn't much to talk about on the other end save for a hiker who mentions how the tunnel is believed to have been dug by Diglett themselves long ago.

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Route 2

As we leave this side of Diglett's Cave, we find ourselves back on Route 2, but on the other side of the cut trees we couldn't get through before! As it turns out, it seems Diglett's Cave more directly leads to Pewter rather than Viridian City, but it's still a straight shot to Viridian from here as well. With Cut, we can detour around Viridian Forest if we want and make our way down there. We aren't interested in Viridian City just yet, though, so much as what we can find here.

 

As we head south, we'll come across a house. In it, you'll find a man who looks like the aide we're after but isn't actually him. It seems coincidental, or perhaps it's some sort of practical joke from the devs, but I always found it a little annoying that in they put an NPC with the same sprite as an aide in the only house you don't need Cut to access, but the actual aide is hidden behind a cut tree. This house isn't useless though. There's a boy in here who will trade us his rare Mr. Mime for an Abra. Abra is really difficult to catch, but Mr. Mime is impossible to find in the wild. If you want your pokedex completed, you're going to have to do this trade! Mr. Mime's design has grown on me over the years. He's a pretty cute guy!

If we head down into the gate between Pewter and Viridian, we can find an aide of Prof. Oak who will give us HM05: Flash if we have 10 pokemon registered in our pokedex. This shouldn't be too difficult to accomplish even if you're not going for pokedex completion since evolved forms count, too.

 

Further south, you can find an Ether and Parlyz Heal but not much else. As we return back up north, we'll stop by the house we walked past before.

====================

Making our way back to Viridian City with access to Cut, we can now make our way behind the trees to get to the area across from the small pond here. There's a man who mentions having a weird dream where he learned how to eat dreams. In the original game, this guy gave us the TM for DreamEater. here, he is a Move Tutor who will teach it to one of our pokemon. He's in a rather unfortunate location making this a really inconvenient Move Tutor to gain access to. I suppose it's not as bad as some of the others, though. There isn't much else to talk about here, the Viridian Gym is still closed.

=========================

With Cut, getting to Pewter City from Viridian is much easier. No more trudging through Viridian Forest when we can just take a shortcut around! If you recall, here in Pewter, there was a cut tree blocking our way to the second entrance to the Museum. Well, now we can get inside this back door with Cut!

In this area behind the counter, there's a couple points of interest.

The most significant of these is, of course, the Old Amber, which is given to us by a scientist who insists he has reason to believe there is Pokemon DNA within the block of amber and that it would be a huge scientific breakthrough if a pokemon could be resurrected from it. He recognizes that we must be a traveler, so he gives us the Old Amber to take to the lab on Cinnabar Island. It's gonna be a while before we can get to Cinnabar, but we'll do the best we can!

You might be temmpted to turn around and leave, now, but actually, in FireRed and LeafGreen, there's one more point of interest here and that is none other than the move tutor with perhaps the greatest segway of all. This man opens up by talking about the space and the earth and how many mysteries the universe has. He mentions that the massive task of trying to understand everything can be exhausting, but that the intrigue should invigorate a scientist rather than making him want to throw in the towel! But what should be thrown? Well, how about Seismic Toss! And then he offers to teach Seismic Toss to one of your pokemon with a segway powerful enough to give you whiplash.

=========================

One more detour I wanted to mention of my session today is that I made a quick trip through Mt. Moon again so that i could get back to the other side of Route 4 and finally get that Great Ball I'd managed to miss before.

Was it worth the detour? Probably not, we're not far away from being able to just buy these things, but just having it is nice. Normally, I think you'd be better off using an Abra's Teleport or just making your way back through Diglett's Cave rather than going all the way out to Mt. Moon, but it isn't much of a problem at our level, so I guess it's really up to preference.

====================

I made my way back to Cerulean City where our last objective for the day has arrived.

I finally traded my Bike Voucher in for a Bicycle at the Bicycle shop! With this, we can now move faster than on foot! ...Unfortunately, it's really not all that impressive. It feels about as fast as the bike from Gen 1. There's no Mach Bike and it can't even do the fun tricks that the Acro Bike could do. Honestly, for 1,000,000p, you can forget that Magikarp, this would have been the biggest scam in the entire region. The Bicycle was a huge blessing in Red and Blue even if it did take up inventory space, but the Running Shoes honestly make it a bit redundant here in Gen 3.

===========================

Ah, I suppose I should also mention that if you messed up on getting the TM for Secret Power here on Route 25, this is a good time to go and get it with Cut! Anyway, next time, I think we'll take a moment to track down some pokemon for some in-game trades and then finally return to some progress toward our next destination!

[Aura]

Route 9

With Cut, we can now head east of Cerulean City to Route 9! Since you only need the Cerulean Gym Badge to use Cut outside of battle, you can actually completely skip the Vermillion Gym and head straight here if you'd prefer. This is probably one of my favorite things about Kanto which you'll see more of going forward. By the time you reach your third gym, the game doesn't force you to do the gyms in any particular order. You can leave some gyms behind and come back to them later if you'd rather have a certain pokemon on your team first or any other reason you could possibly have. Once you defeat Misty, you can go just about anywhere else you like in the entire region. The only major limitation is that you'll need to clear Fuschia gym in order to use Surf, but that's certainly not a big deal. 

Anyway, I'm getting a little ahead of myself once again. There aren't any new trainer classes on this route, nor are there any particular pokemon to note in this grass, but there are some nice items to find!

If you drop down a couple ledges where the TM for Teleport was originally, you can now find TM40: Aerial Ace! A decent coverage option for a lot of pokemon. I'm a little bit tempted to teach it to Burrow to cover for his weakness to Grass, but I think it'll be better suited for a certain other pokemon that'll be coming up later on. 

If you circle back around to the top of the ledge that leads back to Cerulean, before jumping back down, check the rock for a hidden Ether! I think I've kind of understated the usefulness of these items. You can't actually buy them in stores and they're also rarely renewable in any game. Even when they are, it can take a long time to build them up, so it's great to grab them wherever you can!

In the grassy part of the northeasternmost ledge, you'll find a berry spot with a Chesto Berry!

Hidden in the dirt on the other side is a rare candy! Another very useful tool if you plan to level your team to 100 for any particular reason.

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Route 10

I normally don't show off the map for an area if I can't explore it in entirety, but I figured the northern part of this route is the most significant part that we'll be able to reach for a long time, so I may as well show the map here. This is where our advancing is going to stop yet again for the day. But that doesn't quite mean we're going to wrap this post up just yet, because there's a few things I wanted to take care of first.

Right off the bat, a new patch of grass means potential for new pokemon! 

---------------------------------

 

While hunting for our target pokemon, I caught another Spearow. If you recall, there was an NPC back in Vermillion who wanted to trade for one. We just happened to find this one while we were out, so we may as well make her day!

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Generator (Voltorb); Lv. 16

 

Item: None

Ability: Static | Moves: Charge, Tackle, Screech, SonicBoom

Yes, yes, say hello to our new friend, Generator! Believe it or not, this guy has grown to be probably my favorite Gen 1 Electric-type after giving him a fair chance back in Red and Blue. Normally, I'd teach him the TM we got from Lt. Surge since he's lacking an Electric attack, but Shock Wave isn't nearly as powerful as ThunderBolt was in gen 1 and he's actually not too far off from learning his own move that's slightly more powerful. Voltorb's biggest downside is that, much like Sandslash, it really suffers from a poor learnset, especially in Gen 1 where it didn't learn a single electric attack by levelup. As a result, it relies pretty heavily on consumable TM's to be worthwhile, but I guarantee this guy is going to prove to be a really useful asset if we just have a little patience with him.

Voltorb is available here at 40% which also happens to be the most common you'll ever find it! So even if you're just looking to catch one for your pokedex, this is the best place to go!

==================

Route 24

After catching Generator, I returned to Route 24. I think it's obvious why we're here.

 

I went out of my way to go ahead and catch a second Abra and named it Psyche. This one actually had Synchronize whereas my last one only had Inner Focus. I figured Synchronize would probably be the more useful of the two abilities, so Psyche will be taking the place of Warp.

=======================

Just when you thought we'd seen the last of this place, we're back again! Don't worry, this time it won't be for long, I promise!

I just came here to trade my Spearow for a Farfetch'd!

 

This was another pokemon I was actually considering using for this playthrough but decided against. It's a very interesting pokemon, though and I just might try to use it in a playthrough soon...

=================

Lastly, I brought both of my Abra with me across Diglett's Cave. This way, even when I trade Warp away, I'll still be able to use Psyche's Teleport to return back to Vermillion.

 

So, I did just that and grabbed myself a Mr. Mime by the name of Mimien!

With this done, our pokedex is now sitting pretty at 27 registered and we're about to raise that up some more as we return to Route 10 and make our way through Rock Tunnel! Next time, we'll do just that!

[Aura]

Route 10

Today we'll be exploring the remainder of Route 10 which includes the cave we've been teased with!

Before we dive into the cave, though, you may want to check with the NPC's inside the Pokemon Center here where you can find an aide who will give you an Everstone! This held item will prevent your pokemon from trying to evolve which, with our current setup, just might be a bit more appreciated than you might think for reasons you're about to find out soon enough.

-------------------------------

 

Outside of the Pokemon Center, there are not one, but two berry spots in this small area, one has a Cherry Berry and the other a Persim Berry

Enough stalling, though, let's head on in the cave!

=====================

Rock Tunnel

1F

The first thing you'll notice when you enter Rock Tunnel is that it is extremely dark. Although the darkness uses mechanics from Ruby and Sapphire rather than Gen 1 meaning it isn't quite as dark as it used to be since you have a small spotlight around you at all times. Still, you're probably going to want to use Flash and doing so, you'll find that Flash clears out all of the darkness rather than just making that spotlight larger! Honestly, as nice as it is to be able to see everything, I do feel like there's something a bit lost with this change. It's easy to forget the cave was dark after you use Flash the one time. I kind of like just making the circle larger as it still feels like you're exploring a dark cave. I suppose I might be in the minority with that opinion, though, as this becomes the norm for Flash in future titles.

-----------------------------

 

Right here on 1F is the first place you can catch the Fighting-type Machop! He's available at 10% on this floor and that's the most common he'll get in this cave. However, if you're not planning to use one on your team and you don't happen to find one on your way through this dungeon, it will be more common in a future dungeon! Still, with how large this cave is, you'll be pretty hard pressed not to encounter every wild pokemon at least once. Needless to say, I caught one and named her Lift.

--------------------------------

You can also find Onix here at 5% but if you're looking for one for your team, then you'll probably want to look for it on the next floor which isn't too far in.

--------------------------------

As alluded to by the Picnicker outside the cave, Rock Tunnel is home to a new trainer class: The PokeManiac! These trainers often use Kaiju-like pokemon. The ones in this cave like to use Slowpoke and Cubone.

-------------------------------

 

Right here in this first section, you can find a Repel and Escape Rope just lying around. There aren't any hidden items in this cave, so you shouldn't have any problem locating any of them as long as you have Flash.

=====================

B1F

-------------------------

 

Down here is where Onix is most common at 10%. Although, just like Machop, Onix will also be available more commonly in a future cave, so don't worry too much if you don't encounter it and you don't need it for your team. Again, you're gonna be pretty hard-pressed to not run into at least one throughout this whole cave, even at such a rare percentage.

-------------------------

This second floor is where the maze-like structure of this cave becomes apparent. The cave itself is mostly linear but does have its fair share of dead ends. Some of these dead ends have items, though, so it's still a good idea to thoroughly explore the place before moving on!

At the first dead-end here on this floor, you'll find a Revive!

The next ladder you come across will take you to the northeastern section of 1F. But an even better find is laying around the southern corner. It's an NPC who talks about how scary the idea of falling rocks can be in a cave like this. After being impressed by the fact that you don't seem concerned, he reveals himself to be a Move Tutor! He'll teach Rock Slide to one of your pokemon!

I taught Rock Slide to Burrow over Rock Tomb. It's much more accurate and more powerful as well! And it has the ability to flinch to boot! I'd definitely say it's an overall upgrade from Rock Tomb. Though, since this is a one-time use, you may find yourself wanting to leave this guy here for now. You never know when you'll want to teach Rock Slide to another pokemon.

A little further and you'll find yourself back on 2F in the Northwestern section.

Here, you can find a Max Ether! Another very nice find!

---------------------------

While exploring this section of the cave, Scope leveled up and suddenly began evolving! If you recall, Golbat gained an evolution in Gold and Silver which was previously unavailable in Red and Blue! How exciting! Does that mean we'll have a pokemon we didn't have access to previously? Well... not quite. 

Just as quickly as Scope started glowing, the evolution halted abruptly with nothing more than a "...huh?"

Yes, that's right, pokemon with Johto Evolutions are artificially locked until we can get the National Dex which means we're gonna be stuck with a Golbat until the postgame. Still, this does mean that Scope will have some extra time to shine in his middle stage. I feel like middle evolutions are often overlooked. That said, I absolutely hate this decision to lock evolutions. It makes absolutely no sense and the only reason I can possibly think of is that they didn't want to add in the extra Johto Evolutions because they wanted to maintain that magic number 150 for the regional pokedex. Even still, the game doesn't bring up pokedex entries on evolution, so I don't understand why they couldn't just make it a point that you've just discovered a pokemon that isn't a part of the regional pokedex thanks to your incredible bond with your pokemon. I think that would be a pretty cool feeling! But no, instead we just have an arbitrary restriction which, by the way, is going to pester you every time your Golbat levels up from now on unless you throw an Everstone onto it.

====================

 

Lastly, as you make your way to the final ladder, you'll find yourself in the southern section of 1F.

You can find a Pearl lying on the ground, a small treasure which you can sell for some money. By this point in the cave, your pokemon are probably getting real low on PP if you're battling all the wild pokemon and trainers like me, so you'll probably want to make a mad dash for the exit!

=======================

Exiting Rock Tunnel will bring you to the southern side of Route 10! If your team is weak from the cave expedition, you might want to carefully navigate your way around all of the trainers here and sneak ahead to the next town. Don't worry, there aren't any points of no return. You can come right back up to battle the trainers you snuck past.

In the northeastern corner of this section, you'll find a berry spot with a Nanab Berry in the grass!

========================

Lavender Town

And finally, we've made our way to the ever-so-popular Lavender Town which needs no introduction. Next time, we'll look around here and see what we can find!

[Aura]

Lavender Town

As I said before, this town really needs no introduction. It's always been a bizarre part of Kanto that really stands out from the rest of the world, even compared to spooky areas in the other games. Something about Lavender Town brings with it a whole range of disturbing feelings. It has that spooky feel, but it also has an air of lamentation which is quite fitting as you explore the town, speak to the locales and find out what this town is all about. As we talk around, we'll find that many of the residents are furious at Team Rocket and, in one of the houses, we find a Cooltrainer watching over a lonely cubone. She tells you that the Cubone's mother was killed by Team Rocket. Apparently, Cubone skulls are incredibly valuable so Team Rocket wanted it for money, but the mother must have wanted to protect Cubone and ended up dying in the process while Cubone got away.

This particular iteration of Lavender Town is pretty special to me, personally, because this was actually my very first exposure to Lavender Town. This was back when I was just coming to understand things like 4Kids' censorship, so to see death so openly talked about in a recent released kids' game in conjunction with the somber music unlike anything else in the game really caught my attention. I don't think I was ever creeped out by this so much as caught off guard and a bit emotional. It's moments like these that make me really love video games and the things they can pull to get an emotional response. 

Anyway, there isn't much that will actually aid you in your adventure here just yet. But there are still some points of interest we'll want to check out. First of all, in the house closest to the southern exit is the Name Rater! If you aren't satisfied with the nickname you gave your pokemon, or perhaps it evolved and is no longer fitting, you can change it here! Of course, as always, you can only change the nickname of a pokemon if you are its original trainer, so make sure you like its nickname before trading it!

In the mart, we can now buy Great Balls here as well, so be sure to stock up on those!

The last thing to note out here is Mr. Fuji's house which has been turned into a refuge for abandoned or orphaned pokemon who are taken care of by a kind old man. Mr. Fuji, however, is nowhere to be seen and the trainers inside are wondering where he's gone.

=======================

Pokemon Tower

 

1F - 2F

There isn't much we can do here in Pokemon Tower, but there is one thing we might want to take care of. On the second floor, we can find Green who will ask us what we're doing here. In a rather rude remark, he comments that your pokemon aren't dead, but at least he can make them faint! And then he challenges us to a battle!

=========================

My Team:

----------------------------------

Venus (Ivysaur M); Lv. 31

 

Item: None

Ability: Overgrow | Moves: Tackle, Sleep Power, Leech Seed, Razor Leaf

--------------------------------

Scope (Golbat F); Lv. 29

 

Item: Everstone

Ability: Inner Focus | Moves: Wing Attack, Astonish, Confuse Ray, Bite

----------------------------

Burrow (Sandslash F); Lv. 29

 

Item: None

Ability: Sand Veil | Moves: Slash, Poison Sting, Dig, Rock Slide

-----------------------------

Generator (Voltorb); Lv. 26

 

Item: None

Ability: Static | Moves: Charge, Spark, SelfDestruct, SuperSonic

===================

Vs. Rival #5

---------------------------

Pidgeotto Lv. 25

 

We are definitely over-prepared once again for this battle. I naturally led with Generator against his Pidgeotto. It survived a Spark and hit me with a Sand Attack. I was able to take it out the next turn but not before it got a Quick Attack off.

------------------------------

Gyarados Lv. 22

 

This was a matchup made in heaven, or so it seemed. I used Spark expecting to take it out easily and it managed to survive with a sliver of health remaining. The next turn was pretty much a guaranteed kill, but I missed with Spark because of Pidgeotto's Sand Attack! Gyarados' thrash was able to take me out from there. How annoying!

 

I brought out Burrow next to finish the job against Gyarados.

-------------------------------

Exeggcute Lv. 23

 

In the moment, I was worried that his Exeggcute would use a Grass-type attack. In hindsight, I'd completely forgotten Exeggcute doesn't really learn much in the grass-type attack department until later on. Worst it could do is probably Bullet Seed.

 

Due to my err in judgment, I switched Scope into a super-effective Confusion. Thankfully, I didn't get confused so I was able to follow up with a quick Wing Attack to finish off Exeggcute.

----------------------------

Kadabra Lv. 20

 

What a joke of an opponent! Only level 20? This is weaker than the Vermilion Gym! A single Bite was all it took to take care of Kadabra.

---------------------------

Charmeleon Lv. 25

 

Though Charmeleon is his strongest pokemon, I was still significantly higher level and was able to take it out easily with a Wing Attack.

-------------------------------

I'm not really sure why his team is so low level here. Across his entire team, only two pokemon are a level higher than the previous gym battle and we just went a decently long way to get to here form Cerulean. I suppose he does have a nearly complete team by this point but even still, I wish his team was a bit closer to level 30 here. He's kind of a joke all things considered. 

======================

If we continue onto the next floor, we'll find the floor overlayed with a thick fog which, again, completely changes the atmosphere from what you can see in this map. We could continue climbing, but I think it'll make more sense to wait out a bit. Why? Well, if we wander around on this floor, or any floor above it, for too long...

We'll be ambushed by a mysterious ghost! We can't battle with this ghost because all of our pokemon are too afraid to move in its presence. It won't attack, but it will warn us to turn away. Even if you manage to get to the very top of the tower, you'll still find yourself in an unskippable battle against a ghost, so you'll just be turned around at the very top anyway. I don't see any reason to climb the tower just yet with that in mind.

Since I didn't get to describe my experience here in Gen 1, this is what the ghost sprite looks like in all versions of the Gen 1 games.

=====================

I think it would be kind of lame to leave things off there, so why don't we make our way toward our next destination? It isn't very far and there are some new pokemon available to us!

Route 8

This route is immediately west of Lavender Town. As we make our way to the grass, I wanted to make note of a line that always gets a laugh out of me. There's a "gamer" on this route who says "I'm a rambling gaming dude" which is a hilariously bad localization from the original "rambling gambling dude" line in the original. 

Poor localization censorships aside, we've got some new pokemon to be found here. In order to get to the grass on this route, you'll need cut to get past the fence.

--------------------------

 

While Meowth isn't at its most common here, it is available at 30% so I pretty quickly encountered it while searching for my real target. Of course, I caught it and named it Alley.

 

Our main target here was Vulpix. Vulpix is at its most common here at 20%, but don't let that encounter rate fool you. It can be quite a pain to catch because of one move: Roar. It's not a very useful move for battle but good lord is it useful for a wild pokemon to evade getting captured. I've searched for hours in the past trying to catch pokemon with moves like Roar. Thankfully, this one was relatively painless. It led with Quick Attack, giving me the chance to hit it with Spark and even paralyze it! From there, a Great Ball was all it took to catch! I named him Charcoal.

----------------------------

  

While searching for these wild pokemon, you'll also want to make your way to the three berry spots in this grassy area to find some really useful berries: Leppa, and Lum, as well as a Rawst Berry. These are all fantastic finds!

----------------------------

As for new trainer classes, we do have a couple!

First of all, an addition that might come off as a surprise, is a trainer class that wasn't in the original Gen 1 titles at all: Twins! As you might expect, the introduction of Twins into the world of Kanto also means the introduction of double battles! They aren't nearly as prominent here as they were in Ruby and Sapphire, and that's not saying much, but double battle trainers can now initiate the battle when you make your into their line of sight rather than just being optional battles the player has to manually initiate. Still, to my knowledge, all the double battles in this game are optional battles that can be avoided if you're just not a fan.

A little further on, you'll also find Bikers who mostly specialize in poison types.

------------------------------

 

While battling the trainers on this route, Generator finally reached level 30 and evolved into Electrode!

====================

As we continue further, we'll find a bunch of trainers lining up trying to get into Saffron City, which of course is still closed.

Thankfully, there's another Underground path to take us underneath Saffron City to the other side.

====================

Route 7

As we come out on the other side, we'll find ourselves on route 7!

Right off the bat, we can find a Wepear Berry right outside the Saffron Gate.

If you've yet to find a Meowth, you can't find it any more commonly than here at 40%!

====================

Celadon City

And now, we've reached our next city: Celadon! We'll stop by the Pokemon Center and heal up. Next time, we'll see the sights in this big new city!

[Aura]

Celadon City

The bells in the background music of this town actually makes it quite fitting considering we're in Christmas season! Anyway, Celadon City is the first of two major cities here in Kanto for us to explore and as a result, there is a lot to look at!

Perhaps the first thing you'll notice upon entering is that there are Rocket Grunts casually wandering around the town which means something must be up! If you talk to the grunts, they'll all pretty much tell you to mind your own business. One of them even threatens to punch you! Physical violence in my pokemon game!?

The first large building you'll come across here is the Celadon Mansion. It doesn't seem much like a mansion so much as an office or apartment building, but still, it's a place of interest you'll want to stop by. In fact, it's even required in this game!

You might not think it, but the old lady on the first floor has a key item that is very important for clearing the game.

She'll give you a cup of tea! If it isn't clear why this is so important, you'll probably find out soon if you try to ignore it and enter Saffron City the same method as the original game. The guards who stop you at the gates complain about being thirsty.

  

In Gen 1, the solution to their problem is to bring them a Fresh Water, Soda Pop, or Lemonade from the vending machine on the rooftop of the department store. However, even back in Gen 1, this proved a bit problematic. Since these items weren't key items, you could potentially soft lock your game by leaving yourself in a state where you couldn't afford the items nor had access to any sources of money. Though this wasn't the only example of this possibility, there was also another issue with these not being key items: They were transferrable. Well, not when the game first came out or even with Pokemon Stadium, but through Pokemon Stadium 2, items could be transferred between save files using the Color Case in Prof. Oak's Lab. By withdrawing one of these items stored from another game, you could get into Saffron City before even defeating Misty. And since Saffron City is the central hub city of Kanto, the world becomes even more open-ended than ever intended. You can do any gym after Brock in any order you wanted! (The only exception being that you have to beat Koga before Blaine and Viridian Gym is only available after all seven other gym badges are obtained). You can also do some fun sequence breaking, like doing the rival battles in the wrong order and watching his Charizard go to a Charmeleon on the SS Anne.

I don't think this was too much of an issue for them, otherwise they probably wouldn't have allowed it in Stadium 2. However, it becomes much easier to do in Gen 3 now that pokemon can hold items like these. At this point, all it takes is simply trading over a pokemon that is holding one of these. That's where the Tea comes in! While this Key Item doesn't have any purpose for you, it can be used to gain access to Saffron City! We won't be going there just yet, but there's definitely lots of fun things to see there! 

  

Aside from the tea on the first floor, there isn't much else of interest here right now. But you will want to take note of the GameFreak offices, especially the third floor where you can find various members of the development team who have inserted themselves into their own game which leads to some funny dialogue like the writer who expresses his love for all the female gym leaders and the graphic designer who comments about how he drew you. Most significantly though, is the Game Director. He isn't going to do anything for us just yet, but he asks that we come back to see him once we've completed the pokedex. This sounds interesting! Back in Pokemon yellow, we got a certificate for obtaining 150 pokemon from this guy, so it's only natural to assume we'll get the same thing here, too!

Aside from the Game Freak offices, you'll probably notice the staircases hidden behind the wall that seem inaccessible. Well, it doesn't take a very big brain to find the back entrance behind the building!

Before you go inside, you can follow this back path further down to find an Ether laying on the ground! 

If we climb all the way up these stairs too the roof, we can enter the secret cabin on the roof which is home to a guy who seems proud to know everything!

In here, we can get some information about TMs and the Wireless Link Cable. In the original game, I believe this room was dedicated to teaching about trading. But the star player in this room that will immediately catch your attention is the pokeball that's free for us to take:

 

This pokeball contains the rare pokemon Eevee we saw on Bill's PC! This is a one-of-a-kind pokemon, so it's definitely nice to have! But the existence of breeding here in Gen 3 makes this pokemon a bit less valuable than it originally was back when it really was only one per save file. Eevee is a really cute pokemon that is a huge fan favorite. It's really hard to pass up this little fluffball! Though it may come as a surprise that we're not actually going to be using this guy on our team. We already used Umbreon and Espeon in Colosseum and we'll have another situation in a future playthrough where we're basically going to have to use an Eevee as well, so I don't really think it makes sense to use this little guy. If you're interested in raising one, though, you don't have to worry about it taking too long to evolve like in Gold and Silver. In fact, you can evolve it right away! We're about to show you how pretty soon.

====================

Our next building of interest is the Celadon Dept. Store just north of the city's park!

The Dept. Store is always a really fun location to find! This particular store has some ups and downs compared to the one in Hoenn.

     

On the second floor, one of the cashiers is selling fairly standard mart items the more interesting one is selling TM's! The actual usefulness of these TMs is a little sad. This could've been a good time to add a Dark or Steel attack into Kanto to make these offensive types a bit more accessible, but that doesn't seem to be their priority. The TM's available are TM05: Roar, TM28: Dig, TM43: Secret Power, TM15: Hyper Beam, TM31: Brick Break, and TM45: Attract

Dig is pretty alright for single player and Hyper Beam and Brick Break are also pretty great, but I'm not really too big of a fan of the others. Still, it's nice to have Dig and Brick Break in a renewable location for once. Dig may not be very useful competitively, but it is a decent option for single-player until you can get your hands on Earthquake. But, compared to Lilycove's Fire Blast, Thunder, Blizzard as well as Light Screen, Reflect, etc.? Yeah, I'd definitely prefer Lilycove's selection of TM's. Still, at least there are some exclusives available here!

The third floor is an electronics store. There isn't much to buy here, but there are SNES on display with various games on the screen: An RPG, a Sports game, a Fighting game, and a Puzzle gaame! Unfortuantely, it's not like these are minigames or anything, but still fun to imagine whatever games are being displayed here. There are some NPCs hinting at trade evolutions and the man at the counter is actually a move tutor who will teach your pokemon, fittingly enough, Counter! In the original game, he gave you the TM for Counter instead.

     

The fourth floor is where Celadon Dept. Store shines over its Hoenn counterpart. They sell mail and a pokedoll here which aren't very interesting, but there's also four evolutionary stones available for purchase! The Fire Stone, Thunderstone, Water Stone, and Leaf Stone can all be purchased here making them an entirely renewable source! Back in Hoenn, these items were exceptionally rare and in relatively limited supply. They were technically renewable thanks to the Shard Hunter, but you'd have to hunt very specific pokemon over and over for them. And I'm talking pokemon as rare as Chimecho for Yellow Shards and Relicanth! Not only are these pokemon incredibly rare, but they only have a 5% chance of holding a shard as you encounter them. No thank you! I'll take the Celadon Dept. Store's offer any day! I suppose I was spoiled growing up with this convenience, because I've always resented the fact that these stones weren't so readily available in Johto and Hoenn.

I said the mail wasn't very interesting, but I suppose it's worth noting that this is the first and only place you can buy mail for a while. It's odd that they changed the dialogue in an entire house in Vermillion to advertise Mail, but this is the only way you can get it. It's never been a particularly useful feature, but it's still a really cute detail that I enjoyed having in Ruby and Sapphire and I wish was a bit more prominent.

     

      

The fifth floor is a staple for department stores the world over: The Drugstore! This is where you get your expensive EV-boosting vitamins or the cheaper more temporary alternative X-items. 

  

And last but not least, you of course have your Rooftop Square where you can buy the previously mentioned drinks at the vending machine. These drinks still retail one of their purposes from the original game, however.

  

You can exchange one of each of these drinks with the little girl up here for a TM! I'm not sure where she gets these and I don't think it's right to take advantage of someone like this, but she seems insistent. Unfortunately, there's no Ice Beam here. Instead, you get Light Screen. Instead of Rock Slide, you get Safeguard, and instead of Tri-Attack, you get Reflect. Clearly, they were more defensive-minded with the TMs you get here which is fair, and these are pretty good moves on their own, but it comes at the cost that none of them are renewable. We've also yet to see the real cost of this change. I think we'll talk more about that next time.

=======================

We're still not done with our tour of Celadon. As we circle around the southern end, we'll pass a lake with an old man on the other side. We can't reach him without Surf, so we'll have to pass him by for now and head to the houses down south.

In one of these buildings, we can find a man who gambled all of his money away at the Game Corner. He throws his Coin Case at us so that you can help him put away his addiction. What a great idea to get rid of your addiction, just pawn it off onto a 10 year-old! I'm fine with this, though, because the Celadon Game Corner happens to be the sight of some rather painful realizations for a Gen 3 completionist. Again, we'll talk about that later. As for the other houses down here, there are some Rockets in a room with some sort of squadron leader talking about how they've just shipped pokemon to be given away as prizes at the Game Corner, and another telling us not to go snooping around the poster.

The last house is a hotel which is a bit more infamous for its invisible PC in the original games, likely related to the fact that it uses the same floorplan as a Pokemon Center. This one looks a lot more distinct, however. Many people theorize that this hotel is a remnant of an idea early in development where the player would stay at hotels to heal their pokemon before the idea of a Pokemon Center was formed. The only thing noteworthy about this hotel is one of the more memorable group of NPC's in this game. There's a little boy who is excited to be on vacation, and a young lady who loves how beautiful the city is. Then there's her boyfriend who is just standing still off to the side, wondering why in the world his girlfriend brought her kid brother along on their vacation.

-----------------------------

Honestly, I don't think I realized how much I was going to cover today. I think this would be a reasonable place to stop for now, but I actually continued going!

If you piece together all the information everyone has given you while talking around town, then it's made very clear that there's one suspicious building you absolutely must investigate: The Rocket Game Corner.

======================

We aren't going to cover the actual Game Corner in a whole lot of detail today, we're just going to head straight to that poster we were warned about. We find a Rocket Grunt standing guard in front of it and when we talk to him, we'll get into a battle! He mentions that the hideout might be discovered and immediately retreats into what looks like a dead end. As you can probably guess, checking behind the poster reveals a hidden button that opens up a secret staircase which leads into the basement of the Game Corner!

====================

Rocket Hideout

B1F

This is our first major encounter with Team Rocket! So come prepared to fight lots of Raticate and poison types! 

If you check the plant in the right corner here, you'll find a hidden PP Up! There are lots of valuable items scattered about so keep your eyes peeled! If you want an easy return later, I recommend battling the Grunt on the East Wing first and foremost. There are all sorts of complicated blueprints and algorithms on their Rockets' computers as you explore. There isn't much we can do up here, so we'll need to go deeper!

----------------------------------------

B2F

Here we have the Rocket Hideout's infamous arrow puzzles! These function very similarly to the floatation platforms in Liza and Tate's gym back in Ruby and Sapphire. In Gen 1, these arrows caused the player to move extremely slowly while rotating, making the puzzle really tedious to navigate. However, it's sped up significantly here making the puzzle a lot more satisfying to solve!

   

As you explore the arrow maze, you'll find some items. Most notably, a Moon Stone (which is notably absent from the Dept. Store so you'll definitely want to pick this one up!), and TM12: Taunt!

As you reach the end of the maze, you'll find an elevator which doesn't work without a Lift Key! Looks like we'll have to stick to the stairs for now.

=====================

Going up the stairs naturally leads us back to B1F, this time the southwestern section.

Other than a Hyper Potion, all that's up here are a couple of Grunts who will tell you that you need to use the Elevator if you want to reach their boss, but that the Elevator requries a Lift Key to operate. It looks like we'll need to go searching for that one!

======================

B3F

Taking the stairs down from B2F will lead us to yet another basement floor with more grunts lying in wait!

Going down to the strange machine just south of the staircase, we can find TM21: Frustration. 

As for the arrow puzzle, there's only one item to be found here, but a Rare Candy is always welcome!

It feels like a cruel joke that just around the corner here, you'll find a pair of BlackGlasses: An Item that I would most certainly give to Scope since he's the only pokemon on my team that knows a Dark-type attack, but it's also the only pokemon with a held item: The Everstone! I might trade the held item out, but I really don't think I'm missing out on a whole lot.

=========================

B4F

Taking the staircase here leads us to the Northwest corner of B4F.

 

Again, the good items keep piling up with a Max Ether and TM49 Snatch!

 

But, most importantly, we can find the Grunt holding the Lift Key here! After we defeat him, he'll drop the Lift Key for us to pick up! This is automatic in this game, but in the original, you actually had to talk to him again after defeating him which is something that not a whole lot of people might think to do. I can imagine a lot of kids got stuck at this part of the game trying to figure out where to go next.

===================

Well, wift the Lift Key, we can return to B2F and access the elevator! You might want ot head down toward B4F, but if you're interested in securing a quick escape route, head up to B1F first.

Emerging from the elevator here, you'll find another Rocket Grunt waiting to ambush you on your way out to heal. If you defeat him, the door blocking the way to the elevator will open up. This is why I said battling the grunt on the east wing will be helpful. Otherwise, you'd have to battle him as well here! Now that we have our escape route, let's head back down!

There's a Calcium that you can get on the desk across from the elevator here. If you head north, you'll have to battle two more grunts before the gate to the boss' room is opened. 

 

While battling these grunts, Venus reached level 32 and evolved into Venusaur!

And as we make our way into the room with our newly evolved Venusaur, there he stands: The boss of Team Rocket himself. The one and only Giovanni!

===================

My Team:

--------------------------

Venus (Venusaur M); Lv. 32

 

Item: None

Ability: Overgrow | Moves: Tackle, Sleep Powder, Leech Seed, Razor Leaf

--------------------------

Scope (Golbat F); Lv. 32

 

Item: Everstone

Ability: Inner Focus | Moves: Wing Attack, Astonish, Confuse Ray, Bite

--------------------------

Burrow (Sandslash F); Lv. 32

 

Item: None

Ability: Sand Veil | Moves: Slash, Poison Sting, Dig, Rock Slide

---------------------------

Generator (Electrode); Lv. 32

 

Item: None

Ability: Static | Moves: Charge, Spark, SelfDestruct, SonicBoom

==================

Boss Giovanni #1

Again, really, really hurting for a unique battle theme here. It's disappointing that this battle just has a standard trainer battle theme, but considering how it goes... maybe that's not too unfitting.

--------------------------

Onix Lv. 25

 

Y'know, this matchup is almost nostalgic. Just like Brock's Onix, this thing went down like a twig thanks to Venus' Razor Leaf.

---------------------------

Rhyhorn Lv. 24

 

Rhyhorn, too, just couldn't stand up to the 4x weakness to a higher level pokemon.

-----------------------------

Kangaskhan Lv. 29

 

This is certainly Giovanni's most dangerous pokemon on his team. In fact, Venus' Razor Leaf doesn't actually do a whole lot to it. Kagnaskhan even has Early Bird, so putting it to sleep with Sleep Powder also isn't going to do much good. My best bet is to just hit it with a Leech Life and switch out.

 

I figured my best switch-in would probably be Burrow. Sure enough, Kangaskhan could barely hurt her and I was able to take it out from here. I tried to flex a bit by poisoning it with Poison Sting first, but I wasn't able to do it before Kangaskhan went down. Huh, I guess that in and of itself is a bit of a flex.

-------------------------------

Yeah, Giovanni really isn't that difficult at all here. Again, I know I'm over level but I really didn't try to be, I just don't like skipping trainers! And really, even if you're underleveled, he's kind of a joke. His Kangaskhan is his only major threat thanks to Onix and Rhyhorn being 4x weak to fairly common types. If you choose to beat the 4th gym first before this, then you'll even have the TM for Giga Drain which will make this fight even easier! So yeah, it's a rather anticlimactic battle, but I suppose he wasn't taking us seriously.

Giovanni steps aside for now and leaves us with the Silph Scope, a tool useful for seeing invisible pokemon. Interesting...

 

Also, apparently I don't know these games as well as I thought. Apparently, between the trees on either side of Giovanni's room are a hidden Net Ball and Nest Ball! I always thought these items were inaccessible in this game without trading, but apparently they're just here! 

Well, with Team Rocket driven out, we can now rest easy here in Celadon City. Next time, I think we'll have a little talk about the Game Corner and then take on the Celadon Gym!

[Aura]

With the Rocket Hideout cleared, we can now focus our attention on what remains here in Celadon! There isn't much we haven't covered yet, so we're going to be focusing on the Game Corner before we head off to the gym.

==================

Rocket Game Corner

In order to do much of anything here, you'll first need to get the Coin Case from the man in the diner on the south part of town. With it, we can now purchase coins at the counter here! But, believe it or not, you don't actually have to buy any coins to play. If you just check around on the floor, you can find some coins dropped on the ground. Some of the NPC's will also give you small handouts if you talk to them. The total amount of coins you can get for free are 310. The rest you're gonna have to pay for or earn through gambling!

And this is where you find out that the Celadon Game Corner is not my preferred choice by a longshot.

The only game available here are the slots an I've already expressed that I've never understood the appeal of slot machines. Their expected returns aren't nearly high enough to warrant pulling the lever. There's no strategy to them, it seems like any sense of timing is just an illusion. As far as I can tell, there's no way to game the system here, it's just gambling. You should probably know the drill about these machines by this point in the series. You can wager 1, 2, or 3 coins and the more coins you wager, the more rows become available. If you only wager one, only the center row will count. 2 means only lines straight across will count, and 3 means that both lines straight across as well as the diagonals will count!

So, okay, there's no way to game the system, but that's fine as long as there aren't any important items locked away here, right? Welll... why don't we just head on over to the prize exchange in the nextdoor building, shall we?

===========================

There are three ladies here who will exchange your coins for prizes.

    

The lady on the left has some held items to give away. These are the Smoke Ball, Miracle Seed, Charcoal, and Mystic Water. They're all cheap, but considering it's 10,000P for just 500 coins, these things are going for outrageous prices. Just the smoke ball costs 800 points. The Miracle Seed, Charcoal, and Mystic Water all cost 1000 coins which is 20,000P in coins. The Yellow Flute is thee most attractive item here, but even that's gonna run you for 1600 coins, or over 30,000P!

   

The lady in the middle is perhaps the most unique of them all and varies quite significantly between versions. All but one of these pokemon are available to catch in the wild, but they're all rather difficult to capture for a variety of reasons. Abra is just hard to capture period, Clefairy is exceptionaly rare only appearing in Mt. Moon with at most a 5% encounter rate, Pinsir and Dratini are both very rare pokemon available only in the Safari Zone, making them incredibly hard to capture.

And then there's Porygon. This is the only place you can get Porygon! However, its cost is pretty absurd at 6500 coins which is equivalent to 130,000P! And that's if you're lucky enough to be playing LeafGreen! In FireRed, his price is a whopping 9999 coins! That's 200,000P! 

If you're interested in buying any of the other pokemon, though, unless it's Abra or Pinsir, I recommend doing it in FireRed because those pokemon will actually be cheaper there.

FireRed also replaces Pinsir with Scyther, though for whatever reason, Scyther is much more expensive as well at 5500 coins instead of Pinsir's 2500. But Dratini is only 2800 as opposed to the 4600 one in LeafGreen.

The differences in price are "justified" by differences in level. More expensive pokemon are higher level than the cheaper ones in the opposite version, but if you're desperate enough to come here looking for your pokemon, you're probably doing it for the Pokedex I imagine. That, or you love the slots. In which case, I guess you can have your fill while you work toward winning all these prizes.

Ah! But I'm getting ahead of myself again! There's one more lady on the right.

    

And this is the point where I throw my hands in the air and exclaim "What the fuck!"

This lady hands out TMs! TM13: Ice Beam, TM23: Iron Tail, TM24: ThunderBolt, TM30 Shadow Ball, and TM35: Flamethrower! All of which are now exclusive to the Game Corner in this game! You can't even get them in a nonrenewable way outside of here like you can in Hoenn. These are all extremely useful coverage options for a lot of pokemon and they're all locked behind the stupid game corner! You wanna know what TMs were available here in Red and Blue? Dragon Rage, Hyper Beam, and Substitute. Decent moves, sure, but they're all replaceable! Not here! As always, your only other option are moves like Thunder and FireBlast, but even those are non-renewable! Hoenn beats out Kanto on basically every front when it comes to available TMs. The only leg up Kanto has in this gen are its Move Tutors. This is just such a massive shame. Still, I suppose it's better than Gold and Silver, at least...

Honestly, a lot of people complain about how they miss the Game Corner in more recent pokemon games but I don't think those people realize how much of a massive chore this place was if you wanted to get anything out of it. They're nice for a small bit of nostalgia, but even as a kid, I never liked the slots. Unfortunately, going forward the game corner becomes exclusively slots before fading out of existence. Needless to say, there's gonna be a lot of complaining going forward.

Oh, and I haven't actually mentioned the pricing on these TMs. Each of the standard elemental attacks are 4000 coins or 80,000P. Iron Tail is a bit cheaper at 3500 coins or 70,000P, and Shadow Ball is 500 more coins for 90,000P.

Thankfully, things aren't entirely hopeless. As you recall, Pokemon Colosseum had some of these TMs available in a much easier to access way! With just some grinding at Mt. Battle, you can easily afford them. Oh, but if you've tried to trade with Colosseum yet, you've probably hit yet another wall of inconvenience.

You can't actually trade with any games other than FireRed and LeafGreen until a certain point in the postgame. I am unsure if you can use your FRLG team in Battle Mode if you can't trade yet, but I suppose it's worth a shot. Unfortunately, we're probably not getting ThunderBolt for Generator anytime soon.

----------------------------

There is one cool detail about the Rocket Game Corner in this game, though. The printer station in the southeastern corner of the main building will allow you to print your current party onto the back of your Trainer Card! I always adored this feature! It can add an extra layer of personalization to your card. You can even print them with various filters: Black, Pink, or Sepia.

====================

Leaving the massive scam that is the Rocket Game Corner behind us, let's march on ahead to the next gym. You'll actually need Cut to gain access to this gym which means no full team for you if you have a separate HM user. 

Outside the gym, you'll find a perverted old man staring into the gym and marveling at the young girls... it's just as creepy as it sounds.

======================

Celadon Gym

      

The trainers in here are all girls! And they all specialize in Grass-type pokemon. The number of trainers we're seeing in these gyms are starting to see a massive hike! You'll also notice the introduction of some new trainer classes here!

The first of these are the Beauty! Beauties are basically upgraded Lasses they have similar taste in pokemon.

There's also a female Cooltrainer! These trainers generally use exceptionally strong, evolved pokemon and are often considered to be the toughest NPC trainers to beat.

======================

My Team:

-------------------------------

Venus (Venusaur M); Lv. 33

 

Item: None

Ability: Overgrow | Moves: Tackle, Sleep Powder, Leech Seed, Razor Leaf

--------------------------------

Scope (Golbat F); Lv. 33

 

Item: Everstone

Ability: Inner Focus | Moves: Wing Attack, Astonish, Confuse Ray, Bite

------------------------------

Burrow (Sandslash F); Lv. 33

 

Item: None

Ability: Sand Veil | Moves: Slash, Swift, Dig, Rock Slide

------------------------------

Generator (Electrode); Lv. 33

 

Item: None

Ability: Static | Moves: Charge, Spark, SelfDestruct, SonicBoom

=====================

Celadon Gym Leader Erika

---------------------------

Victreebel Lv. 29

 

I don't think there was any better pokemon I could have led with than Scope who was able to take out Erika's Victreebel with a single Wing Attack.

-------------------------------

Tangela Lv. 24

 

Tangela went down as well...

--------------------------------

Vileplume Lv. 29

 

And... so did Vileplume.

--------------------------

 

Yeah, let's be real, Erika had no chance of getting past Scope. That battle was very short lived, but we were rewarded with the Rainbow Badge and TM19: Giga Drain!

=========================

I went ahead and taught Giga Drain to Scope. It'll be a great coverage option for Rock-types even though he lacks the Special Attack to bring out the peak of its potential. I could also have taught it to Venus, but I think I have better ideas.

Writing this little adendum here, I've also realized I forgot to list my MVP's for each of the gym leaders in this playthrough! I intentionally wasn't doing it in Colosseum since all of the battles were double battles so my "MVP" was usually more like a pairing of pokemon, but I'll try to get back to doing that going forward. I think the MVP here is pretty obvious, though.

MVP: Scope

[Aura]

Route 16

Immediately west of Celadon City is Route 16. Our progress in this direction won't last very long because almost right away, we'll run into another Snorlax blocking our path! Still, there's a little bit of this route that we can explore, we just won't be able to progress past this Snorlax onto Cycling Road. Using Cut, you can cut the tree next to the fence and reach a patch of tall grass!

 

It's here that we can find another target pokemon: Doduo! This pokemon is available most commonly here and a few other locations at 35%. I figured I may as well go ahead and catch it while I'm here. I named mine Prairie!

This is also the first location where we can catch Raticate out of the wild, though this pokemon will be more common much later on so there's no point in hunting it down just yet. If you also wanted a Raticate on your team, you'd probably already have evolved a Rattata by now anyway, so there's really not much of a point to this pokemon even being here. But if, for whatever reason, you decide to want a Raticate for your team but don't want to raise a Rattata, this is your first change to catch one!

----------------------------------

Aside from the grass up here, there's also yet another new trainer class introduced into Kanto: The Young Couple! Like twins, these trainers challenge you to double battles and tend to use pokemon that thematically pair together. One will be Male and the other Female. I've always thought it was a rather cute concept for a trainer class! 

-------------------------------------

Just past the young couple, you'll find a back entrance to the gate that leads into Cycling Road.

On the other side, you'll find a secret hideout belonging to a little girl and her Fearow. She asks you not to tell anyone about this and in exchange gives you HM02: Fly! With this, after obtaining the Thunder Badge from Lt. Surge, you can fly directly to any town you've previously visited which can be a huge time saver if you happened to forget something somewhere and find yourself needing to go back. That said, I don't actually find myself using this too often in Kanto. Most of the region is really well designed to where it rarely feels particularly necessary. Especially now that we have access to Saffron City...

==========================

Saffron City

After obtaining the tea from the old lady in Celadon Mansion, we can bring the piping hot tea to the guard at any gate and he'll return the favor by allowing our passage. He'll even share the tea with the other guards and they'll each allow you to pass from now on as well! Considering the town is shut down because it's being overrun by organized crime, I'm not sure I understand the logic of letting a 10 year-old girl in just because she was nice enough to bring you tea, but... Well, it gives us special access to Saffron which means some pretty helpful things.

As we first enter the city, just like Celadon, we'll find Team Rocket members littering the streets. However, they're much more abundant here and are blocking off the way into several buildings. The grunts in the street mostly just tell you to buzz off like the ones in Celadon, but some mention that the town is being taken over in the name of Team Rocket. 

Due to Team Rocket's presence, most important buildings are blocked off, but there are still some areas of interest that may be important to you.

---------------------------

 

Namely, there is the Fighting Dojo where you can earn a choice between the offensive fighting type Hitmonlee, or the more defensive Hitmonchan. I'll go more into detail about this location later, but if you're interested in either of these pokemon, know that you can take on this pseudo-gym and get these pokemon right now! In fact, you could even get here as early as your very first visit to Celadon. Just grab the Tea and turn right around. Just be mindful that the opponents' levels are surprisingly high compared to other trainers you'll be facing around this point of the game.

------------------------

Another key point to zero in on is TM29: Psychic which can be obtained from Mr. Psychic's house on the south part of town. This is an especially powerful attack that really comes as a surprise too see just handed out like this this early in the game. Keep in mind that in Ruby and Sapphire, you got this TM as late as Victory Road!

------------------------

The last useful detail about Saffron City from here is that it serves as a central hub city for Kanto. You can enter the city from any gate and exit onto any other gate. You no longer have to detour around half the region, you can just make a quick run through Saffron to get from Celadon to Vermilion or from Cerulean to Lavender.

====================

Lavender Town

Speaking of Lavender Town, now that we have the Silph Scope, I think it's time we revisit Pokemon Tower!

====================

Pokemon Tower

-----------------------------

F3

If you recall, it used to be that, starting on the 3rd floor of Lavender Tower, we would begin to encounter hostile spirits that try to scare us away. Well, now that we have the Silph Scope, these ghosts can now be identified and we can encounter normal wild pokemon here in their place!

 

(ew, that's an ugly sprite transparency issue... his iris is supposed to be white! If you're using the dark theme, sorry about that!)

Most likey, the first pokemon you'll find here is Gastly! This is more common here on the 3rd floor than anywhere else in the game at 90%, so if you somehow manage to climb the entire tower without encountering a single one, this is the floor to catch them on. These pokemon can be pretty tough to catch because they are really low level and most of my weakest attacks are normal attacks which they're immune to as Ghost-types. I ultimately managed to weaken them with Scope's Giga Drain thanks to her low Special. I named mine Grave.

You can also catch Haunter down here at an depressingly low 1%. Don't worry, it'll be much more common much later in the game. Though if you want one for your party in this playthrough and don't want to raise a Gastly, your best bet is to search for them at the top floor where they'll be at a much more reasonable 15%.

The last pokemon you might run into here is Cubone who is available at 9%. On the top floor, this is boosted ever-so-slightly to 10%, so I recommend making your way up there if you're actively searching for one.

--------------------------------

While climbing the tower, you'll battle your way through many Channelers who specialize in Ghost-type pokemon, which, for Kanto, just means Gastly and Haunter. They are essentially the Kanto counterpart to Hoenn's Hex Maniac or Johto's Medium. Many of these channelers have been possessed by hostile spirits who wish to halt your progress up to the tower. When you think too much about what's going on here, the idea is surprisingly creepy and unlike anything you see in the rest of the game.

=================

 

F4-F5

Most of this tower feels pretty identical. Each floor is home to a different arrangements of gravestones that form a maze for you to explore. There are some items strewn about, but mostly nothing particularly noteworthy. In the center of F5, you'll find a glowing purified space. Stepping into this pure space will heal your entire team fully just like healing at a Pokemon Center so you can get right back to battling when you're getting weak!

--------------------------

 

On my way through F5, I ran into a Cubone! I caught it and decided to name it Hope.

=================

F6

As you approach the staircase on this floor, you'll be challenged suddenly by yet another ghost!

The Silph Scope is used to identify the ghost as a female Marrowak! This Marrowak seems extremely hostile and definitely doesn't appreciate our presence here. It looks like we'll have to battle her! Unfortunately, being a ghost, this Marrowak can't actually be caught in a pokeball. So you're just going to have to KO it!

Upon defeating the Marrowak's ghost, it's revealed to be Cubone's mother who was killed by Team Rocket. It only makes sense that she would be so vengeful after such a horrible end! After this interaction, Marrowak comes to understand that we will help avenge her by eliminating Team Rocket. Marrowak's spirit calms down and finally returns to the afterlife. Now, we can continue!

I always felt that this was a really touching moment that I wish the game had focused on more. Even what I wrote is a huge romanization of how it's handled in the game. Really, the Marrowak attacks, you defeat it, the game says it was the ghost of Cubone's mother and it calmed down and moved on. Still, this is by far the most memorable part of the game to me. Kanto kind of lacks in the story department compared to the other generations that follow it, so it's fascinating that they were still able to tell such memorable tales as Cubone's Mother that are still frequently talked about today.

==================

F7

This is the final floor of the tower. If you've yet to find a Cubone, this is where I recommend looking for one! I actually never noticed that the pattern in the graves make a pokeball design until looking at this overhead map just now. That's actually pretty cool!

  

Anyway, up here, you'll find three Rocket Grunts! They're all easy pickings. Once you defeat them, you'll find Mr. Fuji behind them! There's no telling what the Rockets intended to do to him, but it's good that we managed to stop them! However, Mr. Fuji seems to be a gentle soul who never seemed to fear for his safety. He explains that he wasn't brought here by Team Rocket but rather came by his own will in order to ease the spirit of Cubone's mother. He is thankful for your defeating the ruffians trying to threaten him and recognizes that it Marrowak's ghost has finall departed from this world. Relieved by this, he asks you to meet him back in his home.

---------------------------------

After bringing you back to his home outside the tower, Mr. Fuji will give you a proper thank-you by giving you the PokeFlute, a key item that will allow us to awaken sleeping pokemon! This is not only useful in battle, but can be used on sleeping pokemon in the overworld. Y'know, like a certain pokemon that was blocking our path before? I think our next heading is spelled out for us! However, we actually have a lot of different options as to where to go from here. Right now, though, I think I'm most excited to see new areas, catch new pokemon, and finally complete our team! So, next time we'll be heading down Cycling Road toward our next city!

[Aura]

Route 16

With the PokeFlute, we can now wake up the Snorlax in our way on Route 16!

=================

Snorlax, lv. 30

Snorlax is actually a rather powerful pokemon at this point in the game, but it is manageable!

 

I led with Generator and hit Snorlax with a couple of Sparks which didn't do much damage at all considering Snorlax's immense defensive stats. Eventallly, it went for Rest to put itself to sleep and woke itself up with a Chesto Berry! I used Charge this time to powerup my Sparks and returned to chipping away at Snorlax's HP. Eventually, he used Rest again. From here, I used SelfDestruct to reduce its HP to the red while he was still asleep.

 

I sent Venus out next and started throwing Great Balls. The first ball shook three times but unfortunately failed to catch it. I threw another on the next turn, but this didn't shake at all before Snorlax woke up only to use Rest again. I hit Snorlax with a Leech Seed followed by several turns of trying to hit it with Sleep Powder with the hopes that it would stay asleep for longer this time. Since Snorlax has so much HP, this heled heal off pretty much all the damage he was dealing to me through Body Slam and Snore. When I was finally able to hit him with Sleep Powder, his HP was getting low and I was a bit nervous Leech Seed might take him out before I could catch him. I continued throwing Great Balls and, thankfully, on my very last chance, the Great Ball clicked and I'd successfully caught Snorlax!

---------------------------

 

I named this Snorlax "Hibernate" and now, Snorlax is out of the way and we can move onward.

Snorlax is heavily associated with the held item Leftovers. In this game, Snorlax is always holding a Chesto Berry and, without Thief, you're gonna have a hard time catching it without giving it a chance to use it. But what of the Leftovers? Well, with the ItemFinder from the gate east of Vermillion, using it on the spot this Snorlax was resting will allow you to find a hidden Leftovers! Strangely, this isn't like any other hidden item. You actually have to use the ItemFinder to pick it up. But, with held items being so rare in this game so far, it's definitely nice to get your hands on this thing! It's well worth going out of your way to get the ItemFinder if you don't have it already, but I'm personally going to hold off just a little bit longer before goign into that.

===================

Inside the gate on this route, you can go up the stairs and find yet another Aide of Prof. Oak's who will offer you an Amulet Coin! If you try to leave this gate and have yet to receive the Bicycle from Cerulean City, the guard will stop you. You're about to enter Cycling Road and you'll have to have a bike in order to ride on it! So, if you've yet to get that Bike Voucher from Vermillion, you may as well go and do that now, as well. That said, you never actually have to go to Cycling Road, even if you're intending to complete the pokedex.

On the other side of the guardhouse, even if you aren't on your bike, you'll automatically get on it and you can't get off of it while you're still on this side of the gate. Over here, you'll find several thugs on motorcycles lined up ready to beat your pokemon down.

Mixed in among the Bikers here are a new trainerclass: The Cue Ball. These guys usually use exclusively fighting-types in an effort to intimidate you with physical force.

===================

Route 17 -- Cycling Road

The grass here isn't much different than the grass on Route 16, but you can find wild Fearow here at 5%! You can also evolve a Spearow there will be a better opportunity later on if you're just interested in catching this one for the pokedex. If, for whatever reason, you want to catch one right now, I still recommend at least getting to the next route before you do.

Raticate is also more common here than before, but again, you'll get a better opportunity for him later on.

------------------------

This route is a large south-bound slope. Once you're on this slope, you will automatically move downward whenever you stop moving unless you hold the B-button to brake. I never cared much for Kanto's Cycling Road, especially compared to the one in Hoenn. Still, there are lots of Bikers and Cue Balls to battle here. In addition, there's also some really valuable hidden items to be found! In the center of the route are some signs which actually mark the location of hidden items nearby.

    

The first three signs on the dirt path and the one on its own in the grass between ponds, as well as the southernmost one, all have hidden items near them, though they may be across the pond requiring you to go up and down a few times looking for them. These items are a Full Restore, a PP-Up, a Rare Candy, a Max Revive, and a Max Elixer.

====================

Route 18

 

The bottom of Cycling Road empties out onto Route 18. Going up the stairs in the gate here, you'll find an NPC willing to trade you his Lickitung for your Slowbro.

 

If you're playing FireRed, he'll offer you Lickitung instead in exchange for a Golduck. Golduck and Slowbro are version exclusive counterparts to each other, so this so significant of a difference in terms of availability. We don't have either of these two pokemon just yet, so we're gonna have to put a pin in this one. But, Lickitung is not available to catch anywhere in the wild, so this is definitely an important trade for pokedex completion!

--------------------------------

On the other side of the gate, you'll see a small fenced in area with some trainers standing around.

 

These trainers are Birdkeepers who were given a pretty drastic redesign here compared to their original sprites. Anyway, their preference in pokemon should be pretty obvious, but they specialize in Flying-types. More specifically, Flying-types that are based on birds.

The grass here is mostly identical to the pokemon available on Cycling Road, though Raticate is less common in favor of Fearow being slightly more common at 15%. As I said earlier, though, if you're just looking for a quick catch, I recommend hunting for Fearow in a later area.

=================

And we have no arrived at Fuchsia City! Next time, we'll be exploring this town and the many, many new services it has to offer!

[Aura]

Fuchsia City

Depending on her choice of direction, you might get here a little later than me. You might also have come here from the eastern side instead of the west. Like I said before, you have many options of progression open to you once you get the PokeFlute. You can head immediately south of Lavender Town and that road will immediately link back to the Snorlax blocking the way out of Vermillion City and the road will continue south for quite a long way until you finally reach this place from the east. On the other hand, you don't even necessarily need to come here just yet and could focus on some of the story objectives opened up in Saffron, then head east of Vermillion and make your way here as well, or go back through Celadon and continue forward that way.

But, even though it feels natural to deal with Team Rocket in Saffron City as soon as possible, and the level scaling for that seems to imply that's the intended order, it doesn't feel right to just walk away from the gym that opens up immediately after that, which clearly seems implied to come after the gym here! To this day, the "canonical" order of this really confuses me. I suppose it's intnended to be open ended, but it just seems weird to me that Saffron Gym is listed as the 6th gym while Fuchsia is listed as the 5th.

But today, we're not worried about the local gym just yet. We're focused instead on filling up our pokedex and finding ourselves a new team member as well as poking around and speaking with the locals!

----------------------------

Most people here talk about the Safari Zone which is where most of our attention today is going to be. Neighboring the Pokemon Center is the home of the Move Deleter! A very much welcome addition to Kanto. This NPC wasn't here in Red and Blue meaning HM's were 100% permanent until you could trade the pokemon over to Gold and Silver. Now, you can feel free to teach moves like Cut and Fly without having to worry about them being permanent additions to your pokemon's movesets. East of the Pokemon Center, down the ledge, is a couple of homes. The western one is the home of the Safari Zone Warden. Going inside, the warden seems to be struggling with speaking. We can't understand what he's saying but we'll keep him in mind if we can find a way to help him out!

----------------------------

East of that house is the home of the Fishing Guru's brother. He'll give you a Good Rod which is essentially an upgrade to your Old Rod. Previously, the Old Rod could almost exclusively catch Magikarp. The Pokemon you can catch with this rod are really low level, though, so be prepared for some cautious battles. If we continue out to his backyard, there's a small pond where we can test this new tool out and catch some new pokemon.

 

The first pokemon I found was Goldeen which is available at 20% by fishing in this small pond. I named her pond to reflect her habitat. You can find Goldeen much more commonly with another item we're about to get, but since I encountered this one first I may as well catch it.

 

My main target here was Poliwag, who with a Good Rod has a 60% chance of appearing, making this its most common appearance! Poliwag is available in a large variety of areas, so you shouldn't have any problem finding it. I named mine Waddle!

Aside from the small pond, there's also a Max Revive hidden nearby which you can find by feeling around a little bit.

----------------------------

In the center of Fuchsia, you can find some workers who help to maintain the Safari Zone. Aside from the Mart, which now sells Ultra Balls, the rest of the town past this point is a zoo where you can see some special pokemon that can be added to your pokedex!

     

You can find Slowpoke, Chansey, Voltorb, Lapras, and Kangaskhan as well as the pokemon that can be resurrected from the fossil you didn't collect at Mt. Moon. In my case, Kabuto. Obviously, you can't catch any of these pokemon since they're attractions of a zoo, but, with the exception of Lapras and the fossil pokemon, you can use this to find the locations of the others in the wild. I think Voltorb's just there, though, as a chance to reuse graphics in the original game, where his overworld sprite was identical to an item. Strangely, Slowpoke isn't replaced with Psyduck in FireRed, despite these two being version exclusives to each other, so in one version this will help you find Slowpoke while the other it won't help at all.

====================

At the very back of the city, there is a special gate that leads into the Safari Zone! This is the only place you can find two of these pokemon in the zoo! Here, you can pay 500P to play the Safari Game. Here, you'll be given 30 Safari Balls and a timer (measured by steps). Your goal is to catch as many pokemon as you can within the time alotted. Any items you obtain or pokemon you catch are yours to keep! There are lots of exclusive pokemon to find here, so for pokedex completion, you'll be spending lots of time here!

But there is actually a story reason you're going to want to participate in this game and that's the prize you get for reaching the very end of the Safari Zone within the 600 alotted steps!

===================

Safari Zone

Before we get into exploring the Safari Zone, we should briefly touch on the mechanics in here. Just like the one in Hoenn, you're not allowed to use your pokemon to battle the wild pokemon available in here. Instead, you're going to have to be a bit more risky. When you encounter a pokemon, you'll instead have a choice to throw a rock, bait, or a safari ball for an attempt to catch it. No matter what action you take, you have a chance to cause the pokemon flee.

Now, when deciding which action you want to take, it's a bit more complicated here than in the original. In the original, your statistical best chance is to ignore the other options and just throw safari balls. Here, though, I'm not going to delve into the technical details, but there are adjustments made to make the other options more viable. For more detailed instructions, you can check the bulbapedia page. But the basic gist is that Bait makes a pokemon significantly less likely to flee, but also reduces its catch rate. Rocks do the opposite, it makes a pokemon significantly more likely to flee, but also greatly increases your chances of catching it. 

In general, for more common pokemon I still like to use the safrai ball to catch them on sight. As for the rarer pokemon that you're particularly interested in catching, I recommend throwing Bait at them. As long as they're still eating, they're far less likely to flee so throw safari balls. Your main concern with this strategy is the number of safari balls remaining rather than the flee rate of the pokemon. Their catch rate will be significantly lower, but with some patience, you should be able to catch them fairly consistently. Especially rare pokemon are more likely to flee really easily, so you'll find that Bait gives you much more consistent odds. I don't really like to use rocks because it's a much higher risk approach. It increases the catch rate, but I feel like that's not enough to justify the increase in flee rate. However, I suppose if you're running low on Safari Balls it might be a good way to save on them. You'll need a lot of extra patience to use them, though.

Lastly, since your timer is tied to your step count, you can turn in place while standing in grass to encounter wild pokemon for as long as you want. This is much easier here in than in Gen 1. Plus, you have 600 steps as opposed to the 500 you get in the original, so the timer is significantly less of an issue this time around. Still, between the 30 safari balls and 600 steps, odds are you're goint to have to play at least 2 or 3 games to catch all the unqiue pokemon available here and get the required prize at the end.

The Safari Zone itself is split into four different areas: The central area as well as Areas 1, 2, and 3. Some pokemon appear more commonly in certain areas over others so I'll only list these pokemon in the areas they're most common. Any pokemon that are available but unlisted by me are pokemon we've already encountered that are more commonly available outside of the Safari Zone. You can check the bulbapedia page linked above for more details about the encounter rates and pokemon availability.

------------------------------

Central Area

       

 

There are all sorts of new pokemon to encounter here, even exclusively in the central area! In here, you'll find Nidorina and Nidorino at 5% or 10% depending on the version, Nidorina is more common in Leaf Green while Nidorino is more common in Fire Red. Both of these encounter rates are pretty consistent across the entire Safari Zone. You can't catch these two anywhere else, but you can evolve a Nidoran into either of them depending on its gender and you can trade the more common one for the opposite one through an in-game trade as well!

Parasect is available here at 5% rarity, but he'll be more easily catchable in a future location. You also have the option of evolving a Paras.

Venonat will also be readily available in the future outside of the Safari Zone.

 

Exeggcute is available in each area of the Safari Zone at a consistent rate of 20%. This is exclusive to the Safari Zone, so you'll definitely want to try and catch one before you're done!

Rhyhorn is available here at 20% as well as one other area. It's another pokemon you can only find in the Safari Zone so try to find one while you're here!

The last pokemon available here is Pinsir who is available at 4% but only in LeafGreen version. This is yet another Safari Zone exclusive.

If you're playing FireRed, you'll find Scyther in place of Pinsir.

======================

Area 1

This linear area is the only direction you're capable of going your first trip through the Safari Zone. Of course, the pokemon I've already said are consistent across the areas are available at the same percentages here. In addition, you can also find...

Parasect can be found here, again at 5%.

Kangaskhan is available here most commonly at 4%! 

  

Aside from pokemon, you can also find TM11: Sunny Day on the little peninsula of tall grass in the center of the area as well as a Max Potion and Full Restore just lying around.

=====================

Area 2

Venomoth is available here at 5% rarity, though it's also not necessary to track down just yet as you'll be able to catch it in a future area as well.

Chancey is at its most common here at 4%! This is by far the most sought-after pokemon in the entire Safari Game. In Red and Blue, Chansey was also available in a future dungeon, but that is no longer the case here. Instead, Chansey is exclusively available here in the Safari Zone as the single hardest pokemon to catch. Even if you already have one, I strongly recommend trying to catch another if you ever see it. This is because every Chansey has a 5% chance of holding a Lucky Egg, an extremely valuable held item that increases the amount of Exp its holder gains. An extremely useful tool for grinding purposes! The odds of actually getting one are extremely slim, though, since you can't encounter Chansey outside of the Safari Zone, meaning you can't simply grab a Lucky Egg using Thief. Your only hope of getting this item is successfully catching a Chansey.

An extra tip for capturing Chansey is that, where the bait normally reduces a pokemon's catch rate, it's actually scripted not to reduce the catch factor (an internal mechanism to decide the success rate of a pokemon catch) less than 3. Chansey's default catch factor is actually 2, so if you use bait on it, the game will reset it to 3. In other words, it actually makes the pokemon slightly easier to catch while it's eating! So if there's any pokemon I recommend using bait to capture, it's definitely Chansey. On the flipside, I definitely do not recommend using a rock to catch it, because it is not only excessively rare, but a rock gives it a 90% chance to flee and the multiplier on its catch rate just isn't worth it compared to the 10% chance to flee while it's eating.

----------------------------

  

Aside from the pokemon, again, there are some nice items to find here! In this case, a Quick Claw which I gave to Burrow, TM27: Steel Wing, and a Protein.

====================

Area 3

The final area can be approached from two different directions. I recommend taking the western side first. There isn't any tall grass here, but this is the end of the Safari Zone where you'll get your ultimate prize.

Before we approach the building at the end, we can find some dropped Gold Teeth! Ah! Perhaps this is why the warden couldn't speak earlier? Sure enough, there's a sign nearby posted by the warden asking people to search for his missing teeth. I suppose you can consider it a treasure, but it's a bit gross to find. Regardless, this is an important item to recover.

Outside the building here, you can find TM32: Double Team.

And finally, if you go inside and talk to the man in there, he'll be ecstatic that someone finally won their promotion and he'll give you HM03: Surf! If you have the Fuchsia Gym badge, you can now teach this to a pokemon on your party and explore the other side. However...  We don't have that badge yet. Now, you might be questioning why we bothered coming here first. But the answer is actually pretty simple. My next party member can be found in here! Can you guess who it is? Well for now, we're probably going to run out of time pretty soon.

----------------------

If you approach from the other side, you can access the grass on the southern portion without the need for Surf.

You can find Venomoth at the same rate of 5% here, but more importantly...

Tauros is the last exclusive pokemon (for now) in the Safari Zone. We can find him most commonly here at 4%.

-------------------------

 

As for items, you can find a Max Revive and Max Potion here.

==================

As for my little adventure, my first priority was to get to that secret building and get my hands on Surf and the Gold Teeth. However, I did stray to pick up the items along the way. Also along the way, I naturally tried to catch whatever new pokemon I encountered:

 

I caught a Nidorina which I named Sister.

 

I encountered a Nidoran M in Area 1 which I named Son.

 

I also caught a Nidorino and named it Brother.

 

There was also a Venonat which I named Lamp for... no particular reason.

 

I caught an Exeggcute which I named Sewn.

 

Lastly, I found a Tauros which I named Stampede.

But, more important than anything else in my haul, was my next party member:

================

Mama (Kangaskhan F); Lv. 25

 

Item: None

Ability: Early Bird | Moves: Bite, Tail Whip, Fake Out, Mega Punch

=================

With all my pokemon collected, I also tried to search for a Chansey and encountered a few but unfortunately had no luck catching any of them before I ran out of Safari Balls.

Once your timer or your safariballs run out, your Safari Game ends and you're booted out of the Safari Zone and back into Fuchsia City. Now, I would normally go out of my way to seek out the remaining pokemon I've missed, but there's actually some that are still inaccessible with the tools we currently have so, for now, we're just going to move on with the game. Next time, we'll be challenging the Fuchsia gym!

[Aura]

With our first trip through the Safari Zone finished, there isn't much left to explore here in Fuchsia.

Still, we're going to stop by the Warden's house to return his Golden Teeth which we found during our Safari game.

In return for his teeth, which he disgustingly seems to just pop right into his mouth with no questions asked, the warden rewards us with HM04: Strength! As long as you have the Rainbow Badge, teaching Strength to one of your pokemon will allow you to push certain rounded boulders forward, just like the one right here in this building!

If you push this boulder to the side, you can reach the item it's been blocking: A Rare Candy!

With that out of the way, there's really not much left for us to do here just yet, so it's off to the gym!

====================

Fuchsia Gym

The gym here looks very open-ended, but if you look closely, you'll find that this gym is designed with ninja techniques to conceal barriers in plain sight. You're going to have to look very carefully at the tiles on the ground to discern the ones with walls and the ones you can walk on.

     

This gym introduces us to a couple of new trainer classes!

The Juggler usually uses dangerous, round pokemon that are prone to explosions, like Voltorb, but in this game they tend to also use Drowzee. Perhaps they're more like circus performers and the Psychic types are supposed to be representative of magic performances? Or perhaps the idea is the psychic types help them cheat at juggling by levitating the balls. I'm really not sure what the logic is here, but I'm sure there's something there.

There's also the Tamers, who like to use pokemon based on dangerous animals. They actually still use whips which is a design element that was dropped for many trainer classes including Rockets and even Gym Leader Sabrina herself. I suppose it's fitting given the trainer class, though. I seem to recall hearing that their design was originally based on a German(?) saying that roughly translates to "holding sweetbread in one hand and a whip in the other," I'm not sure what it means but I assume the idea here is that the Tamer is holding a sweet in one hand to reward pokemon that behave well and a whip to punish pokemon that behave badly. An unpleasant image, to be sure.

=================

My Team:

-----------------------

Venus (Venusaur M); Lv. 37

 

Item: None

Ability: Overgrow | Moves: Tackle, Sleep Powder, Leech Seed, Razor Leaf

-----------------------

Scope (Golbat F); Lv. 37

 

Item: Everstone

Ability: Inner Focus | Moves: Air Cutter, Giga Drain, Confuse Ray, Bite

----------------------

Burrow (Sandslash F); Lv. 37

 

Item: Quick Claw

Ability: Sand Veil | Moves: Slash, Swift, Dig, Rock Slide

------------------------

Generator (Electrode); Lv. 37

 

Item: None

Ability: Static | Moves: Charge, Spark, SelfDestruct, SonicBoom

--------------------------

Mama (Kangaskhan F); Lv. 28

 

Item: BlackGlasses

Ability: Early Bird | Moves: Bite, Aerial Ace, Fake Out, Mega Punch

====================

Fuchsia Gym Leader Koga

---------------------------

Koffing, Lv. 37

Finally! It seems the gym leader's levels are finally starting to rise above ours! Koga's weakest pokemon is on par with our team! This will hopefully lead to a more interesting battle!

 

Mama obviously wasn't going to be doing a whole lot in this battle at her low level, so I chose to lead with Burrow, forgetting that Koga's lead was Koffing which naturally would be immune to my Ground attacks. My Slash didn't do nearly as much as I'd hoped and Koffing quickly got Toxic off on Burrow. I retreated Burrow to prevent the damage from building up too much.

 

I switched into Scope who was able to take out Koffing pretty cleanly with some Air Cutters.

---------------------

Muk, Lv 39

 

Knowing Muk's strategy in advance made this a rather scary matchup, but I'd come prepared! I quickly went to confuse Muk with Confuse Ray before retreating into someone more suitable for the fight. As expected, he started setting up his Acid Armor to build up defense.

 

I knew he'd start using Minimize soon, so I retreated into Venus to hit him with a Leech Seed. I hadn't considered that Muk might have Liquid Ooze, but thankfully that isn't possible. Muk can only have Sticky Hold or Stench. Neither of which are particularly useful for it in this situation. With Muk seeded, I then put it to sleep with Sleep Powder before retreating again.

 

With Burrow, I could hit Muk in spite of his now several layers of evasion with Minimize. Unfortunately, thanks to his Hyper Potion, he was able to last longer than he had any right to, causing the toxic damage to build up to a dangerous extent.

 

I brought Generator in and Charged before hammering him with some Sparks to get around his high physical defense, but he hit me with a Toxic which once again started to hinder my ability to stay in battle for very long.

 

I retreated back into Scope where I just began spamming Air Cutter in hopes of hits and especially crits. Eventually, Muk succumbed to the damage from Leech Seed.

---------------------

Koffing, Lv. 37

 

For this next Koffing, for some reason Koga used a Full Heal to restore its confusion after I used Confuse Ray on it, but I just used another Confuse Ray. Just seemed like a massive waste of a turn to me. Anyway, it went down pretty easily to a couple of Air Cutters.

-------------------

Weezing, Lv. 43

 

Now this one was a pretty sizeable threat! I went for Confuse Ray before retreating.

 

Once again, I expected Venusaur's Leech Seed to be a big help here. Unfortunately, Weezing snapped out of confusion on turn one! I used Sleep Powder to try and put it to sleep before retreating back into Scope to confuse it again.

 

This time, Weezing woke up on turn one! I thought that was impossible! Regardless, I went for Confuse Ray and he continued trying to hit me with a mixture of Sludge and SmokeScreen.

 

I brought Venus back out yet again and again he snapped out of confusion on the first turn! What kind of monster was this thing?? I put it to sleep and retreated yet again.

 

You'll never guess what he did here. That's right, he woke up turn one. At this point, I just had to cut my losses. Its HP was getting low thanks to Leech Seed, so I just hit it with one more Confuse Ray and started ramming it with Air Cutter. Koga dropped his last Hyper Potion to heal his Weezing up and Air Cutter wasn't doing nearly enough, but all of my other team players were getting pretty weak. I decided to keep Scope in play and continued going for Air Cutter. Eventually, Weezing went down to a critical hit, ending the battle!

------------------------

 

Our prize for defeating Koga is the Soul Badge and TM06: Toxic! I immediately taught Toxic to Venus to add an extra layer of damage to defensive pokemon outside of just Leech Life.

As for MVP, I think I have to go with Venus! While Scope did a lot of active work, Venus' Leech Life was a massive help in dealing consistent damage to some of Koga's most dangerous pokemon. And his Razor Leaf also contributed pretty nicely to chipping away at some pokemon's HP as well. This battle would have been far more awkward without him!

MVP: Venus

[Aura]

Route 15

Putting Fuchsia behind us for now, we'll head into the east gate where, on the second floor, we'll find another of Prof. Oak's aides who will offer you an Exp Share if you have at least 50 pokemon registered in the pokedex. We only have 49, so we'll have to come back a little bit later.

If we look through the binoculars up here, we'll be able to see a glistening pokemon flying out over the sea...

===============

Next up, it's onto Route 15! It's time to get prepared for the longest stretch in the game. There isn't anything difficult about these upcoming routes, they're just really long and filled with lots of trainers.

  

This is the first location where we can catch Pidgeotto, Weepinbell, and Ditto in the wild all at 5%, but none of these pokemon are at their most common here and if you're interested in a Ditto for your team, I recommend going to another upcoming route.

And, of course, if you're playing FireRed version, you'll find Gloom here in the place of Weepinbell.

The biggest pokemon of interest here is Venonat which is available most commonly here at 30% along with the other upcoming routes. If you didn't get one in your Safari game, I recommend trying to find one here. 

------------------------

At the entrance of Route 14, you can use cut to circle back around and explore the top of the ledge.

Up here, you can find a new double-battle trainer class: Crush Kin, a brother and sister tag-team who specialize in Fighting Types.

Making your way to the end here will net you TM18: Rain Dance in the place of Rage from the original.

================

Route 14

There isn't anything interesting here by way of trainers, but if you have Cut, you can get into a "special" patch of grass.

This grass is only significant, though, if you're looking for a Ditto for your team ASAP as it can be found here at 15%. It's still not the most common Ditto is available in the game, though, so it's really not necessary for you to go after. Other than that, the pokemon of interest available here are identical with the same rarities to Route 15.

There's also a berry spot in the southeastern corner of this route where you can get a Pinap Berry.

==================

Route 13

This route is characterized by a maze of fences that stretches from the north end of Route 14 across most of this one. The grass here also requires cut to access but it's even less important here as there is strangely absolutely nothing of interest obtainable here. The pokemon here are identical to the ones on Route 15. 

Again, there are no new trainer classes to be found here, but there is a hidden PP-Up pointed to by a trainers tips sign. 

I should mention that there is water on this route which is pretty significant given that we just got the HM for Surf and the Soul Badge which allows us to use it outside of battle, but I'm going to hold off on exploring the options that opens up for us just yet. I think I'd rather do that in the next post.

=======================

Route 12

This route should look familiar to you if you're playing along as this is where we first encountered Snorlax east of Vermilion! We're only going to be exploring the southern half of this route today because I think that'll make a convenient stopping point for what I want to do tomorrow. This is the part of the route that has the most interesting stuff anyway.

The grass here includes even less interesting pokemon than the previous routes.

In the little box of hedges guarded by a camper is an Iron which you'll need Cut to reach.

Just outside the house here is a Rocker which doesn't look so much like a "rocker" and more like an electrician. Anyway, this is a trainer class that specializes in electric types much like Engineers. It's actually a rather unnecessary trainer class. In fact, this is actually the only one of his kind here in FireRed and LeafGreen. It's kind of a waste because I actually like this design a bit more than the much more common Engineer. I suppose you can consider the Rocker a higher tier of Engineer, much like Beauties to Lasses or Bug Maniacs to Bug Catchers in Ruby and Sapphire.

The nearby house here is the most significant landmark you'll find on this route. The Fishing Guru's younger brother lives here and he'll give you a Super Rod! This is another factor that completely baffles me as to what the intended order was for you to move in. If you go to Fuchsia City from this side, either going south of Lavender or East of Vermilion, you'll end up passing by this house where you'll get the Super Rod before you get to the Fishing Guru's older brother in Fuchsia who gives you the good rod. Making the Good Rod. There are some pokemon you'll have an easier time catching with the Good Rod than the Super Rod, but, obviously, the Super Rod is generally the better option. 

Anyway, with this Super Rod, we now have access to a whole slew of new pokemon to catch which is why I'm going to be putting off all the water exploration for the next post. 

If you show this man any Magikarp that you catch, he'll measure its size and give you a Net Ball each time you break your personal record!

==============

It won't be too much further before we're met with the same Snorlax blocking our path as before. This time, however, we're armed with a PokeFlute, so it's time to battle!

 

Thanks to the addition of Ultra Balls to our repertoire, and the fact that we're significantly higher level than before, the second Snorlax should be much easier to catch if you failed to catch the first. Though I recommend saving if this is your second one as you won't get another chance after this one is defeated.

==============

With Snorlax cleared out of the way, we can now make our way back across Route 11 toward Vermilion City where we're going to stop for now. I know it's a bit of an abrupt end to this post but, like I said before, I think it's a convenient starting point for what I want to do in the next post! So next time, we're going to start exploring the waters of Kanto that we've mostly just passed by up until now!

[Aura]

It seems like we just keep starting posts from here, don't we? Well, there's good reason to do so here because we're going to start exploring the waters we now have access to thanks to Surf as well as catching the pretty wide variety of pokemon we can access between both Surf and our newly obtained Super Rod!

Thankfully, this isn't going to take nearly as long to do as there's not really much in the way of water. Why is it important that we started here? Well, because there's one pokemon we can catch here with our Super Rod that's gonna make it onto our team!

================

Regen (Staryu); Lv. 20

 

Item: None

Ability: Natural Cure | Moves: Water Gun, Rapid Spin, Recover, Camouflage

===============

Staryu is available here at 40% with the Super Rod! I should go ahead and mention that pokemon available through fishing are available in a large abundance of locations and it isn't quite as catch-all as it is in Ruby and Sapphire. As a result, I may be ill informed on where exactly the most common location are for certain pokemon, but I'll try my best to keep it straight as we go forward!

------------------------------

 

In addition to fishing, we can also Surf here to find Tentacool with a 100% encounter rate! This is an especially common pokemon. It's essentially the Zubat of the sea so you're bound to encounter lots of them as you explore the upcoming areas of Kanto. I named mine Wave.

===============

Heading up north to Route 6, we find a small pond.

-----------------------

 

Here, with our Super Rod, we can catch ourselves a Poliwhirl at 40%! If you recall, there was an NPC in Cerulean who wanted to trade a Jynx for a Poliwhirl. We can now catch these guys straight out of the wild. In addition, Gold and Silver introduced a branched evolution for Poliwhirl, so I'm actually going to go ahead and catch three of these little guys. I named the ones I would keep Lilypad and Spiral.

 

While searching for my three Poliwhirl, I also found a Gyarados which seems to be available at a 15% encounter rate just about anywhere you can fish with a Super Rod. I named him after the Sea.

----------------------

 

Surfing in this small pond gives you an 100% encounter rate for Slowpoke in LeafGreen version, which I named Fisher. Just like Poliwhirl, I'll be picking up a second and naming it King. There was an NPC who wanted to trade for a Slowbro, but we'll be able to get a Slowbro straight out of the wild a bit further on, so no pressure for that just yet.

In FireRed version, you'll find Psyduck in place of Slowpoke.

================

 

Returning to Cerulean City, my first stop was to the house neighboring the Pokemon Center where I would trade one of my Poliwhirls for a Jynx nicknamed Zynx.

================

Heading further North to Route 24, we can find a passage of water where we can fish some more!

 

With the Super Rod here, we can find Krabby at a whopping 84% in LeafGreen! I believe this to be the most common Krabby can be found. I named mine Bubbles!

In FireRed, Horsea will be available here at 84% instead! However, these two aren't hard version exclusives. If you actually use the Good Rod, you'll have a 20% chance of encountering the pokemon from the other game. I'm going to hold off on trying to catch a Horsea for now.

===================

If we follow this water passage south, we'll pass through Cerulean City and wind up back on Route 4. We'll pass by a cave which is blocked by an NPC who says we'll need to defeat the champion if we want to be able to enter. Anyone whose beaten Red and Blue knows what's lying in wait for us behind him.

If we continue onto Route 4, though, we'll find that we can now drop down these ledges and return to the eastern side of Mt. Moon without having to travel through the cave all over again! If you needed more convenient access to the move tutors for Mega Punch and Mega Kick, here you are!

==================

Now then, there is a bit more water if we continue heading back toward the beginning of the game, but I there isn't much of interest there just yet, and if you recall, we're going to have to return there later anyway since there was that gym in Viridian that's still closed.

In addition, there's also some more water if we head East of Cerulean toward Rock Tunnel. But what we'll find there is something that's a bit too much to chew for right now. Instead, we're going to head through Saffron City to make our way to Lavender Town and head South from there.

This roundabout path will bring us to the North end of Route 12 where we have some more battles and items to collect.

As we pass through the Gate up here, we'll find a girl with a really sad story that honestly caught me off guard. This gate is right outside Lavender Town, so it's fitting, but she's all alone up here and mentions that she just left her pokemon's ashes at Lavender Town and that she doesn't need this TM she was going to use on it anymore. She gives you TM27: Return and a heavy heart.

Going further down south, there's an island we can Surf to where we can find TM48: Skill Swap!

===============

Eventually, we'll reach the area where we battled Snorlax and this time we can step inside the Gate here.

Now that we have 30 pokemon registered in our pokedex, we can get an ItemFinder from Prof. Oak's aide. With this, we can track down hidden items more easily whenever we find a suspicious area.

If we take it out to where Snorlax was laying, we can use it on the very tile it was resting to find Leftovers buried in the ground! On... wood. I gave this to Venus since he's the tankiest pokemon on our team!

==================

Back in Celadon City, we can now do something with this small pond. Crossing it, we'll find the old man waiting for us on the other side is a move tutor who will teach our pokemon the move SoftBoiled.

 

As a small nod to Team Rocket's Influence and a reference to the future state of Celadon during Gold and Silver, you can actually find Koffing and Gimer in this pond by Surfing or Fishing with the Super Rod respectively. The city is still mostly clean, though, so these products of pollution are very rare at a mere 1% each. Needless to say, I strongly advise against hunting them down here, even if you intend to use one for your team. But if you're really hell-bent on getting one ASAP, good luck searching for them! Make sure that you're looking for them in the right way, too. To reiterate, Koffing is found by Surfing while Grimer is found by Fishing.

=====================

Back on Route 16, we can find another Leftovers under where the other Snorlax was. Since there's no dupilcate items clause in single player, there's nothing stopping me from putting this item to use as well! I moved the Quick Claw onto Mama who I've noticed has a Sassy Nature reducing her speed, and gave the Leftovers to Burrow who can get extra benefit from the healing thanks to Dig and potentially Sand Veil as well.

On the second floor of the gate, with 40 pokemon registered in our pokedex, we can get an Amulet Coin from Prof. Oak's Aide which we'll give to Generator since it's not holding anything at the moment.

==================

The water on Cycling Road is inaccessible since you can't get off your bike, so it all brings us right back here to Fuchsia where we have the main focus of today's session. But first, that small pond we caught Poliwag in now holds a new pokemon for us:

 

Seaking is available here at 40%, I named mine River.

==================

Before going any further, we're going to also dip into Route 15's gate so that we can access the second floor and receive an Exp. Share now that we have over 50 pokemon registered in our pokedex! I gave this Exp. Share to Regen in order to help it grow in level a little bit faster.

==================

Yes, that's right, the Safari Zone! There are some unique pokemon that can be found by Fishing here that aren't accessible anywhere else in the wild.

 

With the Super Rod, you'll have a 15% chance of encountering Dratini in any water in the Safari Zone! This is an incredibly rare pokemon and isn't easy to catch, so be prepared to spend a lot of time fishing here if you want to catch one. Again, I recommend throwing Bait at it if you want to throw as many Safari Balls as you can. It'll reduce the catch rate but reduce its odds of fleeing after each failed catch very significantly. I named my Dratini Lake.

You can also find Dragonair here at a mere 1%. I absolutely do not recommend trying to catch this. Even though I normally try to catch every evolved form straight out of the wild wherever possible, this is absolutely absurd. A 1% encounter rate in the Safari Zone that is extremely likely to flee from you the moment you blink in its direction? No thank you. Considering Dratini can be caught as high as level 25 and it evolves at level 30... You'll probably save a lot more time just catching a Dratini and evolving it than you would trying to catch a Dragonair.

 

With Surf, we can now claim the Nugget resting on the center island and, with our new ItemFinder, we can even find a hidden Leaf Stone nearby! I feel like I've heard those words strung together before...

=================

While we're here, let's go ahead and try to catch the remaining pokemon we were missing!

 

In the Center Area, I caught a Rhyhorn which I named Charge.

 

I found a Parasect which I named Zombie

 

And after a long time of searching, I finally caught Log the Pinsir.

================

The last target I needed from the Safari Zone was the elusive Chansey. The best place to find Chansey is Area 2 which you can reach easily enough just by Surfing across the pond in the Central Area and taking the North exit.

 

While hunting for Chansey, I manged to catch a Venomoth which I found to be shockingly resilient. I named it Glitter.

 

Eventually, I did manage to catch a Chansey after several failed attempts. I named her Lucky! Unfortunately, I wasn't lucky enough to get my hands on one with a Lucky Egg. Maybe one day...

And with that, we've finally caught every pokemon available in the Safari Zone! Well, that is except for Dragonair, but I've already explained that I honestly do not have the patience for that right now and I see no need to torture myself into hunting it down when I don't get anything else out of the hunt.

==================

Well, even though we didn't make any story progress today, we got a lot done in terms of pokedex completion! We found some of the hardest pokemon to catch in all of Kanto so completing the pokedex should be a simple feat going forward! Next time, we're finally going to be addressing the elephant in the room and take on Team Rocket at Silph Co.!

[Aura]

I CAN EXPLAIN!!

Obviously, this isn't Saffron City that we're starting from. don't worry, we're not gonna be here in Celadon for long, I just wanted to mention that I came here to purchase a Water Stone.

 

I used this Water Stone to evolve Regen into a Starmie! My original intention was to actually allow it to shine a little bit as a Staryu until I could find a free Water Stone over the course of my adventure. I don't usually like my pokemon evolving as soon as I catch them because it kinda feels like you're missing out on that feeling of building a relationship with them. However, it turns out that I'm going to want my Staryu evolved before it reaches level 33 so that it can learn a particularly useful move without needing outside resources to relearn it.

I also went ahead and taught Regen Surf and Psychic using the HM and TMs. These are moves that will be immensely powerful for it but it can't learn naturally.

=================

Okay! Now we're back in Saffron City, but we're going to make just one more pit stop before we rid the neighborhood of Team Rocket. While there is a grunt blocking the way to the gym here in Saffron, it may have caught your attention that there seem to be two gyms right next to each other. This pseudo gym is called the Fighting Dojo and it isn't blocked off by any Rocket members meaning we can get inside!

I wanted to do this now since the levels here are slightly lower than the boss fights we'll be taking on in Silph Co., and I think this will be a good place to train up Regen a bit.

================

Fighting Dojo

This dojo was once a Fighting Type pokemon gym before the neighboring Psychic gym was built and completely decimated this gym's Fighting-type pokemon. Now, it's become a dojo where Fighting-type specialists train under their karate master, Koichi. From what I understand, this Koichi is supposed to be the same character as Kiyo from Gold and Silver, but they gave him a new name here due to an oversight.

This dojo is home to a new trainer class: The Black Belt. This class specializes in Fighting-type Pokemon and makes up half of the Crush Kin trainer class.

You'll actually want to be a little careful going through here because these trainers actually have some pretty high-level pokemon to deal with. In addition, you'll probably want to avoid walking straight down the middle because otherwise you'll be challenged by multiple trainers in back to back fights. Try to move off to the sides and pick your opponents off one by one.

=============

Black Belt Koichi

--------------------

Hitmonlee Lv. 37

 

Regen was still lacking in strength, so I decided to retreat here in spite of the type advantage. You don't want to underestimate the hurt a Hitmonlee can put on you. Especially one that has several levels on you.

 

I retreated into Scope and proceeded to use Air Cutter to take Hitmonlee out with ease.

--------------------

Hitmonchan, Lv. 37

 

Hitmonchan was much the same. A simple Air Cutter and he went down before he could get his pathetic Ice or ThunderPunch off.

------------------------

After defeating Koichi, you aren't awarded with a gym badge or even a TM.

 

Instead, you'll get your choice of one of two rare pokemon that are unavailable in the wild: Hitmonlee or Hitmonchan. Hitmonlee is more of an offensive pokemon that deals massive damage with powerful fighting-type attacks while Hitmonchan is more of a defensive pokemon, focusing on targeting weaknesses with its elemental punches and countering damage dealt to him. Design wise, I've always preferred Hitmonchan. Either way, we'll need to make sure to get the opposite pokemon in our playthrough of FireRed if we want to complete the pokedex. That said, it's not nearly as important here since this is Gen 3 meaning Tyrogue will be obtainable eventually.

 

I grabbed the piston-punching Hitmonchan and nicknamed him Ring before making my way around the block to visit Silph Co.

================

As we arrive at the base of Silph Co., we'll find that the grunt standing guard at the entrance has fallen asleep, allowing us to finally enter!

===============

Silph Co.

That music immediately alerts you to the fact that something clearly isn't right here.

This is the largest building in all of Kanto, and fitting to the theme of the music, you can even run even though you're indoors! 

  

  

  

 

Floors 1-11

I wasn't joking when I said this was the largest building in all of Kanto. And it can be extremely overwhelming if you're new to teh game. This is 11 floors of pure labyrinthian archetecture and there are Rockets and other hostile trainers littering the halls. Many passages are blocked off by shutters that require a card key to pass through and if things weren't bad enough to navigate, you also have warp tiles everywhere. If you hop onto these warp tiles, you're going to get very disoriented very fast.

Now, I'm going to share some advice for navigating this area that I picked up after playing through the Gen 1 games so many times. This advice will make Silph Co. a much easier pill to swallow.

The first and most important piece of advice is that there is only one series of warp tiles you actually have to step on. The others just allow you to get behind shutters into areas which you can access much more easily just by getting the Card Key. With that in mind, your first order of business is to get that Card Key.

The Card Key is located on F5 which you can reach easily just by taking the elevator on the empty first floor. The key is located in the southern part of the main area in the hallway with all the plants. You may need to step on the warp tile nearby to get around the grunt, but you can just step off and back on again. Don't worry about whatever else you see in that room, you'll have less disorienting means of getting there later on.

Once you've gotten your Card Key, all of the warp tiles except for one in the entire building are now functionally useless. You can feel free to play around with them to see if you can figure out any shortcuts, but you don't have to use them for anything. Now, you may be tempted to use this Card Key to start opening up all the shudders and looking around, but I would strongly recommend you make pitstop your priority over all others.

Take the elevator to F9 and use the card key on the shutters in the southwest. You'll find a woman standing next to some beds who will offer to heal your pokemon. As an added bonus, if you continue further along this path, the warp tile up here will lead you to F3 where you'll just need to use the Card Key on a single shutter to have access to the only warp tile you actually have to use.

If you just want to make a beeline for the boss and make quick work of this entire place, get the card key and take the elevator instead to 3F. Use the key on the first shutter to your left and take the warp tile here.

This will lead you into the isolated corner on F7. You'll know you're in the right place because your rival will be here! Now that you've secured your route, I recommend turning back, going back down to 2F and working your way up, unlocking all the shutters in your way and ignoring all other warp tiles. There are lots of valuable items to be collected and though the trainers have really low-level pokemon, mostly hanging around the high 20's, there are a lot of them, so the exp builds up fast!

As you explore Silph, you'll find yourself face to face with Scientists, some of whom are even Silph Co. employees who turned on their employers to work for Team Rocket! These Scientists are a new trainer class that are essentially upgraded Super Nerds, specializing in Electric and Poison types.

There are a lot of items you can find here. With a methodical search, you should be able to easily find them all. Most interestingly, vitamins and some TM's.

 

You can TM41: Torment and TM01: Focus Punch.

In addition, on F2, there is a move tutor who will teach your pokemon Thunder Wave, which I taught to Generator.

Aside from items, you can also find on F5 a document that explains that Silph Co. were the ones who created Porygon, "the first virtual-reality Pokemon."

================

My Team:

----------------------

Venus (Venusaur M); Lv. 38

 

Item: Leftovers

Ability: Overgrow | Moves: Toxic, Sleep Powder, Leech Seed, Razor Leaf

----------------------

Scope (Golbat F); Lv. 39

 

Item: Everstone

Ability: Inner Focus | Moves: Air Cutter, Giga Drain, Confuse Ray, Bite

---------------------

Burrow (Sandslash F); Lv. 40

 

Item: Leftovers

Ability: Sand Veil | Moves: Slash, Swift, Dig, Rock Slide

----------------------

Generator (Electrode); Lv. 38

 

Item: Amulet Coin

Ability: Static | Moves: Charge, Spark, Thunder Wave, SonicBoom

----------------------

Mama (Kangaskhan F); Lv. 38

 

Item: Quick Claw

Ability: Early Bird | Moves: Brick Break, Aerial Ace, Fake Out, Mega Punch

-----------------------

Regen (Starmie); Lv. 37

 

Item: Exp. Share

Ability: Natural Cure | Moves: Surf, Confuse Ray, Recover, Psychic

================

Rival #6

--------------------

Pidgeot Lv. 37

 

Leading up against Pidgeot was Generator who opened up with Charge before taking Pidgeot out with some sparks.

----------------------

Gyarados Lv. 35

 

For whatever reason, he decided to use Gyarados next which managed to survive a Spark, but naturally went down to the very next one. But, not before getting off a rather devastating Dragon Rage that took out the majority of Generator's HP.

----------------------

Alakazam Lv. 35

 

This matchup had an obvious end if I allowed things to continue, so I retreated Generator to prevent it from getting KO'd.

 

Mama came out next and used Mega Punch to take out Alakazam.

---------------------

Exeggcute Lv. 38

 

This Exeggcute was caught completely off guard when I hit it with an Aerial Ace, taking it out in one shot!

-----------------------

Charizard Lv. 40

 

His final pokemon here was Charizard which was actually stronger than my team!

 

I decided this would be the best chance to see what Regen could do. I switched into a SmokeScreen and started attacking with Surf! I wasn't able to do as much as I would have liked, and Charizard's Flamethrower dealt an uncomfortable amount of damage. But I held in there! I went for another Surf but missed! Thankfully, Charizard's second Flamethrower left me with a mere 8 HP meaning it was likely a damage range that saved me there. I went for another Surf and this time, the attack connected and took Charizard out.

===============

After being defeated, your rival leaves the rest of Team Rocket to you. A Silph Co. Employee tries to offer some help by gifting you a rare pokemon.

 

This rare pokemon is none other than Lapras which is another pokemon I was really tempted to use since this is likely to be the last chance I'll realistically be able to use this pokemon on my team for a while. However, there are just too many interesting water-types and Starmie is a pokemon I've never used before either, so I chose Starmie over Lapras. Besides, I'm really not a fan of simply being gifted pokemon. I'd always prefer to catch pokemon in the wild wherever possible and that simply isn't an option for Lapras. I suppose they put this here as a way to ensure that you have easy access to a pokemon that can use Surf before you need to make your way to Cinnabar Island.

Taking the warp tile here leads you to the isolated part of F11, the company president's office. It's here that the head of Team Rocket, Giovanni, is having "negotiations" with the president of Silph Co. with intent to get his hands on their new invention: The ultimate pokeball that is capable of capturing any pokemon without fail--The Master Ball. Naturally, he isn't happy when we barge in to rain on his parade.

================

My Team:

----------------------

Venus (Venusaur M); Lv. 38

 

Item: Leftovers

Ability: Overgrow | Moves: Toxic, Sleep Powder, Leech Seed, Razor Leaf

----------------------

Scope (Golbat F); Lv. 39

 

Item: Everstone

Ability: Inner Focus | Moves: Air Cutter, Giga Drain, Confuse Ray, Bite

---------------------

Burrow (Sandslash F); Lv. 40

 

Item: Leftovers

Ability: Sand Veil | Moves: Slash, Swift, Dig, Rock Slide

----------------------

Generator (Electrode); Lv. 39

 

Item: Amulet Coin

Ability: Static | Moves: Charge, Spark, Thunder Wave, SonicBoom

----------------------

Mama (Kangaskhan F); Lv. 39

 

Item: Quick Claw

Ability: Early Bird | Moves: Brick Break, Aerial Ace, Fake Out, Mega Punch

-----------------------

Regen (Starmie); Lv. 38

 

Item: None

Ability: Natural Cure | Moves: Surf, Confuse Ray, Recover, Psychic

================

Boss Giovanni

Nidorino Lv. 37

 

I led off with Regen against Giovanni's Nidorino. This matchup was simple enough thanks to Psychic.

I'd like to mention that, according to Bulbapedia, this Nidorino knows HELPING HAND. A totally useless move for a single battle. I have absolutely no clue what reason this could possibly have to be here other than them just lazily throwing together the last four moves in Nidorino's learnset.

-------------------------

Kangaskhan Lv. 35

 

Kangaskhan came next and took a couple of Surfs to deal with, but only used Tail Whip on its chances to attack, so it went down without much opposition.

-------------------------

Nidoqueen Lv. 41

 

Giovanni's strongest pokemon this time is Nidoqueen, who also was able to survive a Psychic from Starmie but again only used Tail Whip to further reduce my defense. Sure.

-------------------------

Rhyhorn Lv. 37

 

His last pokemon was one he desperately tried to hide from my water-type. Even if he'd managed to KO Regen, though, his Rhyhorn would still have to answer to Venus' Razor Leaf. Needless to say, it went down pretty easily to a Surf.

----------------------

I really wish I could have had a more dramatic battle with Giovanni here but it just seems as though that's not a possibility. His AI here was abysmal, he practically just let me win.

Anyway, after defeating Giovanni, he and the rest of Team Rocket retreat from Silph Co. and the president and his secretary thank you deeply for saving the company and reward you graciously with the very Master Ball saught after by Giovanni. With this, we can easily catch any pokemon we want on our first try and I already have my sights set on just what pokemon that might be.

[Aura]

With Silph Co. cleared of Team Rocket, we can make one last victory lap throughout the building to receive thanks from all the employees before we head back into the clean streets of Saffron. The grunts are no longer littering the streets and in their place are the normal citizens of Saffron City who are celebrating that Rocket has fled!

The buildings that were previously blocked off by Rocket Grunts are now accessible. In one of them, we can find the girl the letter was being written to back in Vermilion who is currently writing back to her friend. She scolds us for trying to read what she's writing, but I can only assume it's something about Team Rocket being gone. But, with her reaction, maybe there's something a bit more romantic going on here?

The other two buildings that are available are more interesting. In the northwest is the home of the Copycat. She would give you the TM for Mimic in Gen 1, but here she's a move tutor. In order to get her to teach you the move, though, you'll need to bring her a PokeDoll from Celadon City's Dept. Store, a bit of a reference to Gold and Silver where you had to retrieve her lost doll from a man at the Pokemon Fan Club in Vermilion. Perhaps this is the very same doll? 

The last and by far most important building to note is the Saffron Gym.

=================

Saffron Gym

This gym specializes in Psychic-type pokemon and is rather infamous among new players for being notoriously difficult. However, I think this is mostly due to everything encouraging you to use Dark attacks against the Psychic types you see here while the only Dark attacks you'll probably have access to are Bite and Thief, neither of which are strong enough to do nearly enough damage to use consistently, especially against pokemon with high special defense. Instead of going for Super-Effective attacks like the rest of the game encourages you to do, it's generally best to approach Psychic-types with strong, neutral physical attacks like Normal- and Flying-type attacks. Still, you don't want to underestimate your opponents because Psychic Types can be pretty tough.

As for the gym's puzzle, if you can't tell from the map, it's a warp tile maze. Each warp tile will take you to another and it can be very disorienting. It shouldn't take too long to get a feel for where you are. Try to pay attention to the surroundings of the room in order to tell if you're in a room you've been before and try to remember where each panel goes. After a bit of playing around, you should be able to make it to the gym leader.

      

The trainers here are mostly Psychics with some Channelers thrown in the mix as well. So expect to see some Ghost-types as well. However, none of these trainers are actually required for you to battle, but even if you're not interested in the exp they yield, you may wan to get them out of the way anyway for ease of navigation while solving the gym's maze of warp panels.

Psychics are a new trainer class who, as their name implies, specialize in Psychic-type pokemon.

===============

My Team:

--------------------

Venus (Venusaur M); Lv. 39

 

Item: Leftovers

Ability: Overgrow | Moves: Toxic, Sleep Powder, Leech Seed, Razor Leaf

----------------------

Scope (Golbat F); Lv. 39

 

Item: Everstone

Ability: Inner Focus | Moves: Air Cutter, Giga Drain, Confuse Ray, Bite

---------------------

Burrow (Sandslash F); Lv. 40

 

Item: Leftovers

Ability: Sand Veil | Moves: Slash, Swift, Dig, Rock Slide

----------------------

Generator (Electrode); Lv. 39

 

Item: Amulet Coin

Ability: Static | Moves: Charge, Spark, Thunder Wave, SonicBoom

----------------------

Mama (Kangaskhan F); Lv. 40

 

Item: Quick Claw

Ability: Early Bird | Moves: Brick Break, Aerial Ace, Fake Out, Mega Punch

-----------------------

Regen (Starmie); Lv. 39

 

Item: None

Ability: Natural Cure | Moves: Surf, Confuse Ray, Recover, Psychic

================

Saffron Gym Leader Sabrina

----------------------

Kadabra Lv. 38

 

It was a bit of a risky choice considering I was going to be going up against Psychic type that may have been able to outspeed me, but I decided to lead with Scope who happens to be a poison-type making him weak against Psychic attacks. My reasoning was that she's my fastest pokemon that uses physical attacks, so she'd likely be my best hope of dealing with Sabrina's weaker pokemon. She also knows Bite to use in case Sabrina gets up a Reflect to wall my physical attacks, and Air Cutter has a high crit chance if Bite doesn't do as much as I would have liked.

Scope did indeed outspeed Sabrina's Kadabra so the only risk I had going forward was the possibility of Air Cutter missing. It landed and I was able to take out Kadabra in one shot.

---------------------

Mr. Mime Lv. 37

 

Mr. Mime was next and my Air Cutter failed to KO it in one hit, allowing him... or, her, I guess (Sabrina's Mr. Mime is actually female), to use Psybeam and deal a significant chunk of damage to me. My Air Cutter landed and took Mr. Mime out this time.

-----------------------

Venomoth Lv. 38

 

Still an incredibly bizarre choice for her team. Venomoth couldn't be more obviously not a psychic type, but it does know Psybeam, so I suppose we can let it pass. Anyway, this was another major reason I decided to lead with Scope. I remembered that Sabrina had a Venomoth but I couldn't recall how deep in her team it was. I do believe the AI for the gym leaders in this game are scripted to always send their strongest pokemon out last, though, so I was pretty confident I'd see Venomoth before her final pokemon. Unfortunately, my Air Cutter did miss here, allowing Venomoth to get a Psybeam out. Thankfully, Scope was able to hold on with just 8 HP and got another chance at Air Cutter! Unfortunately, Air Cutter somehow managed to leave Venomoth with a sliver of HP! From here, it was able to hit me with Gust and take me out. How ironic that the pokemon that gave me the most trouble was the one I specifically chose Scope to counter. 

 

I brought out Mama and went for Fake Out. Sabrina healed her Venomoth with a Hyper Potion, so it survived the Fake Out, but there was no surviving the following Aerial Ace.

-------------------------

Alakazam Lv. 43

Now this is the biggie. Alakazam is deceptively fast and has some of the most powerful psychic-type attacks in the whole game thanks to its high special attack. If you're not expecting it, this thing can be really devastating. What's more, here in Gen 3, it has Synchronize, so if you try to slow it down with Paralysis, you're in for a nasty surprise when your own pokemon gets paralyzed, too!

 

Mama has been my main out for psychic types up until now mainly because she can take some hits and dish out some powerful physcial damage. I missed with my first Mega Punch, though, giving Alakazam a free chance to set up with Calm Mind. I went for another Mega Punch and wasn't quite able to take him out. I don't know if I was getting lucky with my Quick Claw or not, but it strangely seemed as though I was actually outspeeding this Alakazam! I had no objections to this pleasant surprise and continued to attack. Alakazam went for a Future Sight which was a very strange move to go for at this point in the battle. I hit him with another Mega Punch to finish the job.

----------------------

 

And with that, Gym Leader #6: Sabrina was defeated! I was rewarded with the Marsh Badge, which lets you use the HM Rock Smash outside of battle, and TM04: Calm Mind!

What's that? Rock Smash? That certainly wasn't in Gen 1! But if you recall, in Rock Tunnel there were indeed some breakable rocks... It seems some of the major differences between this game and Red and Blue are finally about to start showing their colors soon...

Well, for now, I think it's time we make our way back to Fuchsia City and set sail toward Cinnabar!

[Aura]

Route 19

I don't believe there's anything left for us on the mainland of Kanto for right now save for one area which I'm intentionally going to put off for reasons you might come to understand soon enough. So, we're going to be headed south of Fuchsia City to the first water route of Kanto!

Since this game is based on the original Red and Green and not Pokemon Yellow, it shouldn't come as a surprise that the surf house where you could once play the Surfing Pikachu minigame is absent just like in all the games before Yellow. 

 

Before we start surfing away here, I'm going to want to whip out our Super Rod one more time because this is the first place we can catch Kingler in the wild at a measly 4% rarity which is equal to every other place you can find it. I figured I may as well go ahead and get this little hunt out of the way. I named mine Crush.

----------------------------

The trainers on this route are mostly swimmers, though this is our first time seeing their female variant which differs slightly from the original game where female swimmers were actually just Beauties that happened to use water-type pokemon. Anyway, the difference between the Male and Female variants are pretty typical. Girls have a tendency to use pretty or cute pokemon while boys use cooler and tough-looking pokemon.

In addition to the female swimmer, there's also the Sis and Bro tag team which is, you guessed it, a trainer class that likes to double battle. This is a pairing of a female swimmer, the older sister, and her little brother, a male tuber. What's especially interesting about this class is that there actually aren't any standalone Male Tubers in the entire game, and the standalone sprite doesn't even exist within the data of the game, meaning this sprite is the only place you can see the Fire Red and Leaf Green sprite for this potentially cut trainer class.

Anyway, the class is just like its Hoenn counterpart, though the themeing is a bit inconsistent. Sometimes the big sis uses an evolved pokemon and the little brother uses its unevolved form, other times it's just the typical cute/cool combo.

===================

Route 20

Route 19 empties directly into Route 20 which brings us to the Seafoam Islands. If you recall, those binoculars in a nearby gate showed us the legendary pokemon Articuno flying toward an island in the sea. This seems like a pretty solid candidate for where that just might be, so perhaps we should be prepared for something larger than a mere expedition of a cave. I personally recommend doubling back to Fuchsia City if you aren't yet prepared and purchasing a buffer of around 30 Ultra Balls. It's a bit of a cash dump, but I think it's a reasonable investment. Legendary Pokemon aren't always easy to capture.

==================

Seafoam Islands

 

F1

This cave got a total makeover from the generic cave it was in Gen 1. It stands out far more here! It still seems liek they tried a bit too hard to stay true to the original with the dungeon's overall structure, but at the very least it actually looks like an ice-themed dungeon now!

There are a surplus of new pokemon we can catch here, but they're all at their most common on the bottom floor, so there's really no need to hunt them down up here.

The first thing you're going to want to do is avoid the urge to go up the stairs. Instead, you're going to want to go around into the wide open space immediately to the east of the entrance where you'll find a Strength boulder. You'll want to push the boulder into the hole in the northeast. As always, you'll need to be careful about how you push it because if you get it stuck against a wall, you'll have to leave the floor and come back to get it to respawn in its original location. Once you have the boulder pushed into the hole, simply jump in after it!

Normally I try not to spoil the solution to puzzles, but this dungeon can become a pretty big pain if you don't do things in the right order, so this is just my recommendation.

B1F

This will bring you to B1F where you'll want to push the ball into the hole and drop down after it once again.

B2F

Finally, on B2F, you're going to want to push the boulder down the hole one more time, but don't get trigger happy about dropping down! You'll see why soon enough. Instead, turn around and climb up the ladder back up to B1F.

Before we climb up this ladder, I recommend going in a bit deeper and going down the ladder on the plateau.

This will bring you back to B2F where you'll want to go down to the southeast corner and take the ladder back up to B2F.

This will lead you to a small isolated chamber on B2F where you can find a free Water Stone! Now, you're going to want to make your way back up the ladders all the way to B1F.

Next, you're going to want to make your way to the northeast corner of the area and repeat the process with the boulder you see here. Once this one is in place on B2F, you'll now want to drop down after it.

B3F

When you fall down here, you'll find that the boulders you'd been pushing down have been carried by the harsh current in this water and blocked off the exit that would otherwise take your ight out of this floor. By blocking this current, you can now surf freely across the water, which makes this dungeon traversable from both sides. Now, you can go ahead and climb your way out by taking the ladder in the southeast part of the floor if you just wanna get out, but we're interested in exploring just a bit deeper.

If you make your way instead toward the Southwest, you'll find a more complex Strength puzzle. Carefully maneuver the boulders so that they all go down the stairs, taking extra care not to let any more than two boulders get stuck against the walls. A small hint is that two of them are already stuck against the walls, so try to pay attention to which ones can be moved freely and find a solution that allows you to maintain that.

B4F

If you drop down the holes you pushed the boulders into here, you'll wind up on B4F. If both boulders have been successfully pushed into the holes, they'll both be blocking off the current in the western part of this floor allowing you to surf freely here.

 

It's convenient that you drop straight into the water, because if you've yet to encounter one, Seel is most common to encounter here while Surfing at 60%! It shouldn't take long at all to find one and odds are you probably already have one just from exploring the cave. I named mine Snow. It's not terribly imporant to hunt this one down while Surfing though because it's not much less common on land on this floor where you'll also find the other important pokemon.

-------------------------

 

This cave is the first place where you can encounter wild Golbat in case you just didn't want to go through the hassle of raising a Zubat. But by this point in the game, you probably could have evolved a Zubat exclusively using the Exp Share. If you're just looking for Golbat for pokedex completion, it'll be available elsewhere more commonly. Here, it's 15%.

 

Slowbro can be found here at 15% in Leaf Green. I named mine Catch. I'll also be grabbing another one for that in-game trade from before.

In Fire Red, you'll be running into Golduck instead of Slowbro, who can also be used in that same trade.

 

Lastly, you'll have Dewgong here who is another water-type I've honestly been dying to use but never got a chance to try due to the overabundance of water-types. Dewgong is available most commonly here at 10% on land, so you'll want to track it down before you go. I named this one Aurora!

-------------------------

Finally, there is one more target pokemon we're after. But it's not one you can find from just any random encounter, no. If you make your way to the north part of this floor, you'll find an isolated plateau with a familiar bird perched atop. Once the strength puzzles are complete, you can feel free to go back and swap your Strength user out for a party member if you don't have Strength on your main team. The boulders will stay in place as long as they're blocking the currents.

===============

My Team:

--------------------

Venus (Venusaur M); Lv. 42

 

Item: Leftovers

Ability: Overgrow | Moves: Toxic, Sleep Powder, Leech Seed, Razor Leaf

----------------------

Scope (Golbat F); Lv. 41

 

Item: Everstone

Ability: Inner Focus | Moves: Air Cutter, Giga Drain, Confuse Ray, Bite

---------------------

Burrow (Sandslash F); Lv. 41

 

Item: Leftovers

Ability: Sand Veil | Moves: Slash, Swift, Dig, Rock Slide

----------------------

Generator (Electrode); Lv. 42

 

Item: Amulet Coin

Ability: Static | Moves: Charge, Spark, Thunder Wave, Light Screen

----------------------

Mama (Kangaskhan F); Lv. 41

 

Item: Quick Claw

Ability: Early Bird | Moves: Brick Break, Aerial Ace, Fake Out, Mega Punch

-----------------------

Regen (Starmie); Lv. 41

 

Item: None

Ability: Natural Cure | Moves: Surf, Confuse Ray, Recover, Psychic

================

Articuno Lv. 50

Finally, we get a new theme that wasn't in the original! Well, sort of. In the original, Legendary Pokemon just shared the generic wild battle theme. In this game, they decided to make a second, more intense variation of the Wild Battle theme to play for legendary pokemon encounters like Articuno here. It's definitely something I appreciate and really makes me wish they'd added this little detail for other songs, like giving Giovanni and your rival a more intense version of the Trainer battle theme. But, I digress. Right now, we're focused on the fight at hand!

 

I led off with Mama and opened up with a Fake Out. It did a decent amount of damage, and I followed up with a couple of Mega Punches reducing Articuno's HP to about 1/3. I would be able to take one more Ice Beam at this point, so I decided to do a bit more chip damage with Aerial Ace, but that's when Articuno managed to get a crit and take Mama out.

 

Even though I hadn't chipped it further, I'd done a respectable amount of damage against this thing so I decided it was time to go for the capture. I sent Venus out and went for Sleep Powder to make Articuno that much easier to catch. All Articuno went for was Mind Reader which, in hindsight, is completely useless at the moment since all of its attacks are 100% accurate anyway. After putting it to sleep, I started chucking Ultra Balls at it. It managed to wake up but just used Agility to speed itself up, giving me another chance to put it to sleep. I failed to hit it with Sleep Powder, and on the next turn, it went for Mist.

 

I used Sleep Powder once more to put it to sleep and a couple more Ultra Balls later, Hail the Articuno was captured! With our first legendary pokemon captured, we're going to make a brief detour next time to clean up some loose ends we've left untouched. It might seem like an awkward time to do this when we're halfway to the next location, but this is just my personal preference in terms of order for this game. That is, if I remember the flow of events correctly...

[Aura]

On our way out of the Seafoam Islands, I used the ItemFinder on the rocks near the first ladder we pass by and found another Water Stone!

==============

After that, we make our way back to Fuchsia City just like I said we'd do last time. There are a few more things I'd like to do. First thing's first, we have a Slowbro now, so why don't we go ahead and do that trade at the gate on Route 18 just west of here?

 

After doing this trade, we'll get Marc the Lickitung!

================

Now then, if you recall, there's one significant body of water we've skipped before and we haven't explored until now. This is on Route 10 just North of Lavender Town, but it'll be easier to get there from Cerulean unless you want to go through Rock Tunnel. However, there's an even quicker way here in this game! If you use Fly, it turns out that you can actually fly straight to Route 10's Pokemon Center! This wasn't the option in Gen 1. You'd just have to Fly to Cerulean and use Cut to get to Route 9 and make your way over here.

Anyway, the water here doesn't contain anything of interest on its own, but Surfing along it will bring us to the an abandoned power plant!

===================

Power Plant

This is a pretty straight-forward optional dungeon which, as you can probably guess, is home to lots of different electric pokemon.

------------------------

 

The first pokemon we'll be targeting here is Pikachu who is most commonly found here at the Power Plant. If you weren't interested in catching one for your team back in the Viridian Forest, you can catch one for your pokedex here at 25%! Keep in mind they're around level 25 here and are already pretty delicate, so you'll have to be careful catching one. I caught one here and named it Lightning!

 

Magnemite can also only be caught here. It's available at 30% rarity. I named mine Watt!

 

Its evolution, Magneton, is also available here at 15%. In Fire Red, it's only available at 10%. Either way, Magneton will be more common in a future location if you wanna catch it straight out of the wild. Still, that didn't stop me from encountering three of them somehow before encountering my first Pikachu. I did manage to catch one and named it Kilo.

As you might have guessed by the drop in rarity for Magneton in Fire Red, there is a pokemon available here only in Fire Red version and that is Electabuzz who is only available at 5%. Electabuzz has no counterpart here in the Power Plant in LeafGreen version, so this doesn't affect our playthrough just yet.

----------------------

While that's it for wild pokemon available through random encounters, as you run around the plant collecting items, you're bound to mistake an Electrode for an item! While it's much easier to simply evolve a Voltorb into Electrode, you may be able to catch one of these Electrode! There are two of them hidden among the items in the plant, and they know SelfDestruct, meaning they have a tendency to literally blow up in your face when you're trying to catch them. Try to be extra careful in doing so!

I don't recommend trying to catch Electrode in the wild as you'll have a much easier time evolving Voltorb, but if you're bent on it, I recommend saving before picking up any items as you'll only get two chances to catch one here. They will be made available in the wild in a future location as well, but you don't get more common than 100%! They're also exceptionally rare in that future dungeon, so if you really want to catch one of these, you'll probably want to try and catch them here.

-------------------------

    

Item-wise, there are quite a few useful ones in here! Most of which will be just laying around. These include TM25: Thunder, a ThunderStone, a Max Potion, TM17: Protect, and an Elixir.

I went ahead and taught Thunder as well as Rain Dance to Generator in place of Charge and Spark. It's not my preferred method of attack with a pokemon like Generator, but I suppose it's a necessary evil.

There's also a hidden Max Elixir you can find if you use the Itemfinder around the long room filled with barrels.

------------------------

But of course we didn't just come all this way just for a few good items. At the very end of the path, we'll find the legendary pokemon Zapdos!

==================

My Team:

--------------------

Venus (Venusaur M); Lv. 42

 

Item: Leftovers

Ability: Overgrow | Moves: Toxic, Sleep Powder, Leech Seed, Razor Leaf

----------------------

Scope (Golbat F); Lv. 41

 

Item: Everstone

Ability: Inner Focus | Moves: Air Cutter, Giga Drain, Confuse Ray, Bite

---------------------

Burrow (Sandslash F); Lv. 42

 

Item: Leftovers

Ability: Sand Veil | Moves: Slash, Swift, Dig, Rock Slide

----------------------

Generator (Electrode); Lv. 42

 

Item: Amulet Coin

Ability: Static | Moves: Rain Dance, Thunder, Thunder Wave, Light Screen

----------------------

Mama (Kangaskhan F); Lv. 42

 

Item: Quick Claw

Ability: Early Bird | Moves: Brick Break, Aerial Ace, Fake Out, Mega Punch

-----------------------

Regen (Starmie); Lv. 42

 

Item: None

Ability: Natural Cure | Moves: Surf, Confuse Ray, Recover, Psychic

================

Zapdos 40

---------------------

 

I led off with Burrow who I considered to be my best lead for this matchup. Her ground type covered Zapdos' electric attacks and it should be defensive enough to protect against Zapdos' flying attacks as well. All it ended up going for was Detect and Agility. All it took was a couple of Rock Slides to get its HP in the red.

 

I retreated into Scope for now mainly because I didn't want to end up switching Venus into a Flying attack. With Scope out, I should now be able to bait Zapdos into using an Electric move.

  

Venus swapped in on a Detect, instead. I went for Sleep Powder to put Zapdos to sleep. Even without the agilities, there was no way Venus would be able to outspeed Zapdos who indeed managed to hit me with a Drill Peck for about 3/4 of my HP. Thankfully, Sleep Powder did connect, buying me some turns to throw Ultra Balls which actually allowed me to catch it pretty quickly!

-------------------------

 

And with that, the second of the legendary birds, Zapdos, was captured! I named it Thunder!

You might be wondering why I waited until now to catch Zapdos if I could have done it earlier and the honest answer is simply that I prefer to catch the three legendary birds in Pokedex order. Aritcuno, Zapdos, then Moltres and, while I remember where Moltres is in this game, I don't actually remember when exactly we gain access to it. There's a certain event coming up which I'm unsure will give us access to Moltres or not, I won't go into much more detail than that, but I wanted to be able to catch Moltres while I'm around if at all possible.

------------------------

Before we leave the Power Plant, we'll want to check the generator next to Zapdos. If we use the Itemfinder, we can find another ThunderStone hidden here!

====================

Now, with two of the three legendary birds in our Pokedex, we can get back on track and continue our adventure toward Cinnabar Island!

[Aura]

Route 20

Perhaps it would have been smarter to go ahead and make it the rest of the way to Cinnabar Island and then fly back. Oh well, I just had to go back through Seafoam Islands. Since the puzzles are all already solved, this isn't particularly painful or anything, but it's still a minor annoyance.

Anyway, on the other side of the Seafoam Islands, there isn't anything particular to note. Just a small archipelago of islands with stardust hidden on one of them. There aren't any new trainers to be found here.

I haven't mentioned it yet, but one thing you've probably noticed about these water routes if you've played the original red and blue and then this game, is that they are much much narrower. Just like caves and Celadon City, this area is greatly condensed while being redesigned with a more natural-looking appearance. This is a consistent change I've noted in several areas so far, but I feel it's especially noticeable on Route 20 which, in the original, was almost nothing but water tiles the entire way to and from the Seafoam Islands. It was really easy to miss a lot of trainers here since they were randomly strewn about in the water.

Here in Fire Red and Leaf Green, the path has been greatly condensed so that you can see the entire height of the route on screen by surfing down the middle. If you're looking for all the trainers, it'll be hard to miss them and there's no need to double back. Also, the route is just much more pleasing to look at. It feels far less manmade. The single wooden platform in the original has now been replaced with the aforementioned smaller islands which make this route resemble something more like some of the water routes in Hoenn, but I'd say the route here is far more streamlined. I'm still not a fan of water routes, but this one is far more tolerable in terms of exploration.

==================

Cinnabar Island

Cinnabar Island is perhaps the smallest, most condensed town in the entire region. Again, the new generation brings a lot more detail to this area, but there is one strange detail I don't fully understand. See that weird peninsula to the north? 

In the original, this was a bridge just like the ones south of Lavender Town. This game has the same tiles, but for some reason they chose to turn this into an extension of dirt. Maybe it's related to the choice to replace the wooden platforms with islands of sand? It's still bizarre that this populated island has no dock and just an extension of dirt in this version. They didn't even fix the oddity that Cinnabar lacked a volcano on the island! Even using the assets that are from the game, they easily could have made the volcano an extension of the island just out of bounds.

But that's enough scrutiny. Let's get to exploring! Of course, we have our typical Pokemon Center and Mart, but there's also the research lab we've heard oh-so-much about! There's a bit to cover in here so let's go over it!

================

As you talk to the NPCs in here, there are some of interest. We'll start with the less interesting ones: The in-game trades.

 

 

 

No, these aren't backwards. The ones on the left are the pokemon you receive and the ones on the right are the ones you're trading away. Interestingly, you can't even catch Ponyta just yet like you could in gen 1, but Seel is right around the corner at Seafoam Islands. This trade definitely feels like it should be the other way around.

The second trade, Electrode for your Raichu I'd argue has a bit more merit to it. Electrode can be rather hard to catch in the wild while Pikachu is much more common and can easily be evolved with a Thunderstone. If you just have an aversion to level-evolving a pokemon just for the pokedex, this might be a valid solution to the difficulty you'll have catching one out of the wild due to Explosion.

The third one, I can't justify at all. Sure, Venonat can be caught pretty easily through the Safari Zone, maybe you've even accidentally caught one while mashing A, so this might be a good way to get rid of it to save yourself a pokeball, but Tangela is available at a 100% encounter rate in a patch of grass just south of Pallet Town which you just need Surf to get to. Unless you just want to save yourself the pokeballs, there is no reason to bother with this trade. Venonat is simply a rarer pokemon, plus it still has an evolution! The only benefit this trade has is that the Tangela you receive will be holding a Stardust, but overall, it's a totally pointless trade, I'd say.

--------------------------

 

 

Of course, the real focus here is the scientist who will restore pokemon from the fossil you chose back at Mt. Moon.

 

Since I chose the Helix Fossil, mine was revived into an Omanyte which I named after the Seafloor. If you chose the Dome fossil, you would obtain Kabuto instead.

In addition, we also made a promise to the scientist at the Pewter Museum to bring his Old Amber to this lab so that the DNA from the Amber could be extracted! Indeed, the DNA is identified as belonging to an Aerodactyl!

 

The cloning process is completed and we're given a brand new look at the legendary Aerodactyl which I named Evolution.

In the original games, these pokemon would come at level 30. Here, though, they come at a mere level 5 which means they're essentially newborns. It's quite fitting, actually, but it also means you're going to have to do a bit of grinding if you want to put any of these guys on your team.

===============

With that behind us, we could go ahead and challenge the gym ahead of us, but unfortunately, Cinnabar Gym is mysteriously locked! Asking around town, it seems we're going to need a secret key to get inside and that key is likely located in the mysterious burned down mansion next door...

================

Pokemon Mansion

1F

This burned down mansion has a very ominous and foreboding aura to it and the music certainly doesn't help with that either. Something really bad must have caused this place to burn down...

---------------------

The encounters on each of all but one floor in this dungeon are the same, though admittedly much less interesting than in Red and Blue.

 

First of all, this is where Raticate is most common in the wild at 30%. I named this one Shadows.

 

The next pokemon is the soft exclusive Grimer for Leaf Green which is most commonly found here at 30%! I named it Sewage.

 

Its Fire Red soft-exclusive counterpart, Koffing, is available here at 5% in Leaf Green. Of course, in Fire Red these rarities are swapped. I did manage to encounter one, though I definitely wouldn't be hunting these guys down here when I can get one much more easily in Fire Red. I named the one I caught Air.

 

Lastly, in Leaf Green, we have Muk available here at 5%! He isn't available anywhere else and though he's technically a soft version exclusive, you can't catch it in the wild in Fire Red, you'll have to evolve a Grimer.

Naturally, in Fire Red you'll find Weezing in Muk's place. Likewise, to get a Weezing in Leaf Green without trading, you'll have to evolve it from a Koffing.

 

When trying to catch Koffing or Weezing, be aware that they do know SelfDestruct! So try to be careful in your approach!

================

 

2F - 3F

As you explore the rest of the mansion yourself, you'll find another set of vitamins and other items that have become rather generic at this point. 

You'll also be introduced to another trainer class: The Burglar likes to use Fire-type pokemon, but their teams are also often themed around pokemon with SmokeScreen as a quick getaway in case they get caught by the cops!

------------------------

You'll quickly find the main gimmick of this dungeon are these statues which hold hidden switches inside of them. Pressing one will cause some shutters to open and others to close, making exploring the mansion thoroughly a bit of a pain since you can't see the shutters while they're open. You could make your way to the end of the dungeon asap, but there is some interesting lore to be found as well. As you explore the mansion, you'll find notebooks laying around featuring entries all centering around a particular subject: The then-newly discovered pokemon Mew. 

The notebooks explain that a new pokemon was discovered deep in the jungle of Guyana, South America. They named the newly discovered pokemon Mew. While monitoring the pokemon, "Mew" was discovered to be pregnant and gave birth to a new pokemon which they named "Mewtwo". Yeah, with the much more famous story of Pokemon: The First Movie, it's easy to forget that Mewtwo was originally the biological offspring of Mew rather than a clone. Still, it feels like there must be more to the story here...

Eventually, you should be able to find your way to the broken floor on the third floor, overlooking what appears to be a bottomless pit.

Dropping through the West side will bring you to the south-western section of the first floor. Avoid the temptation to poke your head through the exit because that'll boot you out of the mansion and the only way back in is through the front entrance. You'll have to climb your way all the way back through.

=================

B1F

Taking the stairs here will lead you to an especially ominous basement area that seems to be completely hidden away from the rest of the mansion. Even the scientists nearby tell us we're not supposed to be here.

 

The encounters here are mostly the same as the other three floors, with the small exception of the addition of a new pokemon: Ditto. Normally, I wouldn't mention this since it was already catchable earlier and this is far from the most common location, but I actually did coincidentally find one while exploring this floor, so I caught it and named it Mutation. There's also some significance to Ditto being located here which is part of a fan theory that I personally am a huge fan of.

Anyway, aside from Ditto, we can also find one last journal entry which mentions that Mewtwo has grown far too powerful for them to contain. It also mentions that Mewtwo's "vicious tendencies" could not be curbed. Definitely a terrifying thought of a pokemon, to be sure... 

From this, I suppose we can deduce that the source of what burned down this mansion was likely Mewtwo. Who knows where this powerful pokemon might have fled? Perhaps that's exactly what these scientists are here for... If you recall, there were plenty of scientists working for Team Rocket as well. It's quite possible they might be linked in some way. Perhaps they're trying to find some sort of clue as to where Mewtwo might have gone?

 

I strongly recommend thoroughly exploring this floor because you'll be able to find two really nice TM's! TM14: Blizzard and TM22: SolarBeam! 

Lastly, at the end of the dungeon, you'll find the Secret Key you'll need to gain access to the Cinnabar Gym. Next time, I think it's clear what we'll be doing!

[Aura]

Today is December 24th, 2020 which means it's Christmas Eve! Merry Christmas!! For this reason, I'm going to be updating much earlier in the morning than I normally would. It's a short post this time, thankfully, so it's not an interruption! Today, we're going to be celebrating Christmas in the pokemon world in the most fitting way I can imagine:

Cinnabar Gym

Taking on the... Fire... gym... Uh... candles are kinda Christmas-y, I guess?

Anyway, yes indeed, using the Secret Key we got from the Pokemon Mansion, we can now unlock the door to the Cinnabar Gym only to find that, somehow, our rival has already been here and conquered this gym according to the certified trainers listed on the statues in the entrance despite us only just now unlocking it! Well, he had to accomplish it somehow I suppose.

Anyway, this has always been one of the more memorable Kanto gyms for me thanks to its rather strange gimmick. As you can see, the gym is divided into multiple rooms with a single optional trainer. Every trainer in this gym is optional, however, in each room you'll have to answer a question at the Quiz Machine to open the door. If you get the question wrong, you'll be forced into a battle with the nearby trainer. If you defeat the trainer or get the question right, the door will open allowing you to progress. Alternatively, you could just completely ignore the quiz gimmick altogether and brute force your way through by just battling all the trainers one after another.

You might expect these to be really easy questions and, if you're paying attention, they are. However, there are also some pretty sneaky ones. That said, the quizes here seem a bit easier than the ones in Red and Blue. I distinctly remember a question in Gen 1 asking if Caterpie evolved into Butterfree to which the correct answer is "No," because Caterpie evolves into Metapod, not Butterfree. It's possible they just changed this one question, though, because of semantics.

      

The trainers here are all Super Nerds to fit with the quiz theme, and Burglars to fit the Fire-type theme. Their teams are virtually indistinguishable from each others' though, because they all use Fire-type pokemon and there's only so many of those.

==============

My Team:

--------------------

Venus (Venusaur M); Lv. 43

 

Item: Leftovers

Ability: Overgrow | Moves: Toxic, Sleep Powder, Leech Seed, Razor Leaf

----------------------

Scope (Golbat F); Lv. 44

 

Item: Everstone

Ability: Inner Focus | Moves: Air Cutter, Giga Drain, Confuse Ray, Bite

---------------------

Burrow (Sandslash F); Lv. 44

 

Item: Leftovers

Ability: Sand Veil | Moves: Slash, Swift, Dig, Rock Slide

----------------------

Generator (Electrode); Lv. 44

 

Item: Amulet Coin

Ability: Static | Moves: Rain Dance, Thunder, Thunder Wave, Light Screen

----------------------

Mama (Kangaskhan F); Lv. 44

 

Item: Quick Claw

Ability: Early Bird | Moves: Brick Break, Aerial Ace, Fake Out, Dizzy Punch

-----------------------

Regen (Starmie); Lv. 45

 

Item: None

Ability: Natural Cure | Moves: Surf, Confuse Ray, Recover, Psychic

================

Cinnabar Gym Leader Blaine

----------------------

Growlithe, Lv. 42

 

I led off with Burrow which was a bit of a mistake because of Blaine's lead with a Growlithe and, consequently, Intimidate reducing Burrow's attack. Still, I went for a Rock Slide for a quick KO.

------------------------

Ponyta, Lv. 40

 

Again, I went for another Rock Slide here expecting another quick KO assuming I wouldn't miss. The last thing I wanted was for Ponyta to trap me in with Fire Spin. Sure enough, the attack connected and Ponyta went down as well.

-----------------------

Rapidash, Lv. 42

 

I was pretty confident Burrow wouldn't be winning this fight, but I still wanted to give him a fair shot. I went for Dig this time in an effort to avoid a potentially dangerous attack and for the extra accuracy. Of course, Rapidash outsped me and hit me with a Fire Blast which nearly KO'd Burrow! Burrow held on, though and on the following turn, I was able to hit Rapidash for a significant chunk of its HP.

With Rapidash's HP low, I figured I could expect a Hyper Potion from Blaine, so I took a bit of a risk and left Burrow in to use Rock Slide to keep Rapidash's strength low. Sure enough, Blaine dropped a Hyper Potion, so my Rock Slide brought Rapidash right back down to where it was before.

 

I retreated Burrow into Regen in anticipation of another Fire Blast this time since the Hyper Potion didn't work out so well for him last time. Indeed, Regen took a Fire Blast, but since it's specially-oriented and a Water-type, it didn't take much damage at all from the Fire attack. Next came Surf to dowse Rapidash's flames!

------------------------

Arcanine, Lv. 47

 

And now we have Blaine's strongest pokemon: Arcanine! Immediately, I went for Surf which brought its HP down to the red. He dropped another Hyper Potion, but I just hit him with another Surf to bring his HP right back down. After that, one more Surf was all it took to finish the job and take out Arcanine and finishing the battle!

--------------------------

 

For defeating Blaine, we're rewarded with the Volcano Badge and TM38: Fire Blast! With 7 badges earned, only one more gym remains! Just what mysterious gym leader awaits us at Viridian Gym? We'll just have to go and see!

[Aura]

It's Christmas! And today perhaps we're going to be doing something a bit more fitting for the occasion. We're going on a vacation!

As soon as you exit Cinnabar Gym, you might be surprised to run into Bill! He approaches us and asks if we'd like to come with him to visit his friend in the Sevii Islands. As you can probably guess, the Sevii Islands are a new area introduced right here in FireRed and LeafGreen as a means of expanding the world of Kanto. Though perhaps that's not quite accurate to say, because the Sevii Islands are actually very distant from the Kanto Region. In order to get there, we'll need to travel by boat. It just so happens that Bill's friend from the Sevii Islands arranged to pick him up by boat right here at Cinnabar. Again, this only makes it all the more confusing why they removed the dock, though the boat does arrive from the east rather than the north.

Anyway, if we agree to go with Bill, the boat will arrive and take us right there. Otherwise, he'll wait around outside if you decide to change your mind.

====================

One Island

When we first arrive by Ferry, Bill will lead us directly into the fancy pokemon center located here.

Pokemon Network Center

This unique pokemon center is larger than most others to accomodate for a large new machine that is being worked on by Bill's friend, Ceilo. This machine handles networking for these remote islands and Ceilo's currently working on establishing a connection between the Sevii Islands and the Kanto region. This is what he requested Bill's help for. If we try to access the PC from anywhere on the Sevii Islands at the moment, we'll find that they're all offline and we can't access our PC storage. We are still capable of transferring pokemon we catch to the PC, don't worry, but we won't be able to withdraw, deposit, or organize them until we can get these PCs online!

Unfortunately, this issue seems to be more complicated than Ceilo expected, an issue I, myself, am all to familiar with as a programmer, so it seems our Christmas Vacation comes with a bit of a hiccup.

 

Bill asks for us to deliver a meteorite to another of his associates who works at a Game Corner on a place called Two Island. In order to get us there, he also gives us a Tri-Pass which allows us unlimited access to the Sevii Island's Ferry service while traveling between One, Two, and Three Island.

Ceilo apologizes for being such a bad host and replaces your Town Map with an upgraded one that now includes a map of the Sevii Islands as well! If you didn't get the Town Map from Daisy in the beginning of the game, you'll get it here, too.

===============

Back out at the town of One Island, there isn't much to find here. There is some more to the east, but we don't want to stray too far until we have access to our PC so that we can grab our HM users! That said, there is still a small area for us to explore.

Treasure Beach

Surfing south of One Island will lead us to a place called Treasure Beach. Although it's visually interesting, there actually isn't a whole lot interesting to be found here. The wild pokemon here are pretty generic across the tri-pass islands. Still, now is as good of a time as any to go over the types of pokemon you can expect to see.

 

While surfing, on top of the typical Tentacool, you'll have a 5% chance of finding a Tentacruel mixed in. I named it Ocean.

-----------------------

One pokemon that is unique to Treasure Beach among the Sevii Islands is Tangela. But, as I said before, he is significantly more common south of Pallet Town so it's not worth hunting him down here at 30%.

 

Aside from Tangela, the only other pokemon of interest available here, a rather generic one among the tri-pass islands, is Persian who is consistently available at 5%.

------------------------

    

The main draw of treasure beach, as its name implies, are the treasures that frequently wash up on the beach. Using the Itemfinder, you can feel around and find Ultra Balls as well as some various treasures to be sold for money. The interesting thing about this place is something that may come as a surprise to you. Even after you collect these items, you may come back here later and find them again!

Normally a mechanic like this would function based on the system clock, replenishing the items every day, but in the case of Fire Red and Leaf Green, there is no internal battery to support a system clock. Instead, it operates on similar logic to the Safari Zone. The amount of time that passes is derivative of how many steps you've taken. This comes with the drawback that you can't just turn your game off, and come back the next day. You'll have to actively be playing and running around in order to get the items to respawn. Still, it's something worth keeping note of as there will definitely be some other more valuable examples of replenishing items like these.

Once we're done exploring Treasure Beach, we return to One Island and use our Tri-Pass to travel to Two Island.

=================

Two Island

This island has a little bit more to do than One Island. First, there's the nearby shop which was just recently set up and currently only sells Great Balls and Fresh Water.

Most significantly in the building neighboring the Joyful Game Corner, is a man called the "Move Maniac," who serves a similar role to the Move Tutor of Ruby and Sapphire. However, instead of Heart Scales, he'll ask for mushrooms! In exchange for two TinyMushrooms or one Big Mushroom, he'll teach one of your pokemon a move they would have learned by levelup at a previous level. In some cases, this can include moves your pokemon never had the chance to know. You might want to check out what your options are even if you haven't overwritten any moves you're worried about.

The more eccentric building next door is the Joyful Game Corner which looks significantly different from the Game Corner in Celadon. Of course, we came here mainly to deliver the Meteorite from Bill, but it seems the man who owns the place is preoccupied with worry over his missing daughter... Lostelle... I'm not sure what he expected with a name like that. He tells us Lostelle likes to gather berries in the Berry Forest on Three Island and he worries something bad might have happened to her.

Before we get to leave, we have a bizarre encounter where a Biker barges into the entrance on his motorcycle before realizing he's in the wrong place and that this is Two Island instead of Three Island. The father strangely doesn't seem to notice at all that this man was headed toward Three Island where his daughter is and instead seems more annoyed that the biker had scuffed up his floor.

Regardless, we're going to need to go look for that lost girl, so off to the Ferry once again!

=================

Three Island Port

When we first arrive at Three Island, we'll find Bikers calling themselves the Kanto Rider Federation terrorizing the residents and demanding money.

------------------------

Three Island Path

If we take a peek into the cave here, we'll find that it's an extremely small room with no wild pokemon and a single NPC who says he's prospecting for gold and planning to buy a house in Kanto once he's successful. For now, though, this path is just a dead end.

==================

Three Island

Once again, there isn't a whole lot to do here in this town. But, as you try to pass by the pokemon center, you'll run into a wall of Bikers surrounding citizens who are trying to stand up to them. As we approach, we'll have to go through an endurance round of four battles in a row, but it's nothing too tough compared to what we've been through. Just make sure to have a pokemon good against Poison types in the lead. 

After driving the gang out of the town, we're thanked with a Full Restore.

=================

Bond Bridge

Just east of the main town of Three Island is a small route called Bond Bridge. There aren't any encounters of interest here, though we can find a new trainer class.

While I mentioned the Male Tuber is completely absent from this game outside of the Sis & Bro trainer class, you can find some female tubers! These trainers like to use pokemon found in or around shallow waters.

================

Berry Forest

This forest actually has a really pretty palette applied to the trees here that I'm quite fond of. As the name implies, scattered around the forest are many berry spots where berries can be found. Much like the items on Treasure Beach, the berries here will respawn over time providing a source of renewable berries. Ironically, this area makes berries more renewable here in FireRed and LeafGreen than in Ruby and Sapphire which introduce berry farming in my case since my internal batteries for those games are dead.

As for wild pokemon, on top of a few unique encounters, there are also lots of pokemon that are more common here than anywhere else. Even some pokemon that were only available in the Safari Zone previously.

-------------------------

 

The first pokemon most commonly found here is Pidgeotto at 20%! Be wary, though, as Pidgeotto likes to use Whirlwind. A good Fake-Out from Mama can deal some decent damage. I named mine Swoop.

If you didn't get one in the Safari Zone, Venomoth can be found here at 5% as well where you might have a much easier time catching it.

 

Weepinbell is finally at its most common here at 20% as well! I named this one Gape.

In Fire Red version, you'll find Gloom here instead, of course.

Exeggcute isn't as common here as it is in the Safari Zone, but you'll find it here at 5% if you really have an aversion to the Safari Zone and failed to catch one there.

 

Lastly, Hypno can be found here at 5%! However, I don't believe this guy is particularly worth tracking down since, not only can you evolve a Drowzee to get it much more easily, but... well, you'll see later. That decision didn't stop me from randomly encountering one by chance along the way through the forest. I named it Hypnosis.

===============

As you reach the end of the forest, you'll find Lostelle all alone who says she's too scared to move because she keeps seeing a really scary pokemon approach her. Soon, this scary pokemon reveals itself and suddenly attacks!

Hypno, lv. 30

 

Since I already caught a Hypno on the way here, this battle was a joke. I hit it with an Air Cutter from Scope and followed up with a Bite to finish it off.

Upon rescuing Lostelle, she thanks us with an Iapapa berry before asking us to take her home.

================

We're soon warped back to the Joyful Game Corner where Lostelle's father is overjoyed to see her!

We deliver the meteorite to him and, as thanks for all the hard work, he gives us a Moon Stone! He also promises to have the Game Corner up and running again soon and asks for you to return.

The store outside on Two Island has now expanded its inventory once Lostelle has returned. It now sells Soda Pop and Ultra balls!

=================

With the meteorite delivered, we return to the Pokemon Network Center to check on Bill and Ceilo who seem to have completed their work on getting the Network Machine to connect to Kanto. The two again apologize for having to send us off on our own, but the PCs on the Sevii Islands are now connected to Kanto's servers! With his job done, Bill returns with us to Kanto but tells us we can use the Tri-Pass to depart from vermillion Harbor anytime we like, and I think I'll take him up on that offer because I definitely don't think we're quite done exploring these three islands...

[Aura]

Just as Bill said, we can bring our Tri Pass to the harbor in Vermilion to head right back to the Sevii Islands! We'll be headed right back to One Island to more thoroughly explore!

===================

Kindle Road

This is the longest route in the Sevii Islands included in the Tri Pass. It's located immediately East of the town on One Island.

The water here is home to the same generic pokemon available at Treasure Beach and pretty much anywhere else on these islands. In the grass, there are some pokemon of interest, though if you don't run into them naturally along the way, I recommend to search for them a little later, especially if you're playing LeafGreen.

 

The first of these two is Ponyta! In Gen 1, Ponyta could be found in the Pokemon Mansion, so it definitely feels much more to find it out here in the wild. It's available here at 30% but its most common catch rate is a bit further down. I did encounter one and named it Plains

 

I also managed to encounter its evolution, Rapidash, which is available here at a mere 5%. I named him Blaze.

 

Though not really a pokemon of interest, this is surprisingly my first time encountering a Fearow! I caught it and named it Dive.

---------------------------

We also have a brand new trainer class here, the Crush Girl! This is a trainer class actually introduced here in FireRed and LeafGreen, though it's essentially just the Battle Girl from Ruby and Sapphire. She's a female counterpart to the Blackbelt class who specializes in Fighting-type pokemon.

----------------------------

As you make your way through Kindle Road, you'll start to find several Rock Smash boulders blocking your way. What can we do about these? Well, as you make your way to the end of the first stretch, you'll come across a cave!

=================

Ember Spa

Despite looking like a cave, there are no wild pokemon in here. There is a community of NPCs gathered here. If you go into the center of the Hot Spring, all of your pokemon will be healed so you can use this as a sort of checkpoint.

If you talk to the old man in the very back, he'll give you HM06: Rock Smash! Now, we can go outside and smash some of these rocks in the way!

=================

I have been using Snorlax to use Strength up until now, but unfortunately, Snorlax can't actually learn Rock Smash. And so, I decided to replace him with Poliwhirl who was my original plan for an HM user since it is capable of learning Surf, Waterfall, Rock Smash, Strength, and Flash. That said, at this point in the game, I do believe Flash is completely useless so there actually is no need to bother teaching him that.

------------------------

Occasionally, when using Rock Smash on a boulder, you'll encounter a wild pokemon. Most of the time, this will be a Geodude. But occasionally, you'll find a Graveler! The rates vary depending on the area but Kindle Road has a pretty generic encounter table for Rock Smash in which Graveler is only 5%. We'll have better odds of finding him later, but I thought I'd go ahead and mention it here. Again, I should stress that they know SelfDestruct at this level, so be careful if trying to catch them!

Other than wild pokemon, you can use Rock Smash to gather some items here before moving on.

==================

Mt. Ember

Mt. Ember Outside

Right at the entrance of this mountain, there's a hiker who talks about how scary the idea of the mountain erupting suddenly is. He then offers to teach you explosion. I'm really not sure why they made the Move Tutors in this gen so morbid!

Over to the immediate east, you'll find two Rocket Grunts murmuring to themselves about digging into the wall in search of some treasure their admins had told them about. Suspicious, but it doesn't seem like there's anything we can do.

We'll need Strength and Rock Smash to make our way up this mountainside. Most of the pokemon available in the grass here are identical to the ones on Kindle Road. Ponyta is available at the slightly more common 35%, Rapidsash is still available at 5%, but, in Leaf Green...

 

This is where you can find Magmar! It's only available at 5% to match Rapidash. In case it isn't clear, many of the Fire Types that were once available exclusively in Pokemon Mansion were relocated here, and Pokemon Mansion has become more of a haven for Poison Types. This feels a lot more natural, so it's actually a change I really like, though I still think they could have just added a volcano to Cinnabar Island.

I named mine Volcano!

-------------------------

 

As we climb the mountain, we'll find more new trainer classes: The Pokemon Ranger introduced in Ruby and Sapphire. These two are essentially upgraded Campers and Picnickers. They often carry medicine to use on their pokemon, so be prepared to see them heal if you don't one-shot their pokemon!

=============

Entrance

If you haven't caught a Machop yet, this is where it's most common in the entire game at 50%!

=================

Main Chamber

 

In this room, you can find Machoke at its most common at 20%! I named it Bench.

===============

Exit

At the top of the main chamber is an exit back to the outdoors. The pokemon here are identical to the pokemon in the entrance.

===============

Outside

Now that we're at the upper part of the mountain, the summit's just an easy walk away.

 x 2

If we have both Strength and Rock Smash, we can solve the puzzle up the stairs and to the east for a Fire Stone. In addition you can find another one hidden on a rock toward the west. If you've recognized the patterns we've had so far, this might be a tell as to what we're about to find...

==============

Summit

Right up here, we're met with another Strength Puzzle. Again, be careful and try to think a few moves ahead to make sure you can push the other boulders after moving one of them. And at the very back, it might come as a surprise to those more used to Gen 1, but...

The legendary bird Moltres is lying in wait. Back in Gen 1, Moltres wasn't avilable until Victory Road! This time, it's around at a much more reasonable part of the game. It's accessible only a little bit later than the other two. Again, I think I would have preferred them to create a volcano area on Cinnabar Island where you could catch this thing instead, but I think I've hammered in my feelings on that matter a bit too much already.

==============

My Team:

--------------------

Venus (Venusaur M); Lv. 46

 

Item: Leftovers

Ability: Overgrow | Moves: Toxic, Sleep Powder, Leech Seed, Razor Leaf

----------------------

Scope (Golbat F); Lv. 47

 

Item: Everstone

Ability: Inner Focus | Moves: Air Cutter, Giga Drain, Confuse Ray, Bite

---------------------

Burrow (Sandslash F); Lv. 47

 

Item: Leftovers

Ability: Sand Veil | Moves: Slash, Swift, Dig, Rock Slide

----------------------

Generator (Electrode); Lv. 46

 

Item: Amulet Coin

Ability: Static | Moves: Rain Dance, Thunder, Thunder Wave, Light Screen

----------------------

Mama (Kangaskhan F); Lv. 46

 

Item: Quick Claw

Ability: Early Bird | Moves: Brick Break, Aerial Ace, Fake Out, Dizzy Punch

-----------------------

Regen (Starmie); Lv. 47

 

Item: None

Ability: Natural Cure | Moves: Surf, Confuse Ray, Recover, Psychic

================

Moltres, Lv. 50

 

I led off with Mama and a Fake Out followed by a couple of Dizzy Punches to reduce Moltres' health, though this came with a bit of a risk as I did end up confusing it thanks to Dizzy Punch. This can help for protection against his attacks, but it comes at the risk of Moltres KOing itself in confusion. It went for Endure a few times when it didn't hit itself, so once it was low on HP, I retreated.

 

Out came Venus who suddenly decided it was going on the offensive and used Drill Peck, having Venus switch in on a super-effective hit. I hit it with a Sleep Powder and started chucking some Ultra Balls at it. It woke up and nearly took me out with another Drill Peck, but I persisted and used Sleep Powder once again. It hit itself but just barely avoided the KO before it fell back asleep. I continued throwing Ultra Balls and just a few more later, Moltres was caught!

-------------------------

 

I named our third and final Legendary Bird Wildfire. We already have almost all of the game's legendary pokemon captured! We're still not quite done with the Sevii Islands just yet, so next time I think we're going to finish up exploring around before finally returning to Cinnabar and continuing our journey across the Kanto region!

[Aura]

With Moltres captured, there isn't really much all that productive we can do today. Still, there are some sights that we haven't covered. Namely, the Joyful Game Corner.

Joyful Game Corner

Despite the name implying a relation to the Celadon Game Corner, this Game Corner is actually a bit more true to the literal interpretation of the name. You can come here to play a couple of minigames with your pokemon! Only... just like Berry Crush, these, too, require the wireless link cable for seemingly no particular reason...

The first of the two games is Pokemon Jump. A large list of pokemon are available to participate in this one, but not every pokemon. In general, small pokemon that are capable of jumping are allowed, but not pokemon who float or fly with a few odd exceptions such as Castform and Beldum.

Anyway, the game seems to be pretty much exactly what it looks like. It's just a game of Jump Rope between two or more players. The player who earns the most points within the time limit wins!

The other game is Dodrio Berry Picking which requires you to have a Dodrio in your party. This game is a bit more complex and requires a minimum of three players. You'll use the D-pad to collect berries that fall from the sky. You'll want to collect the purple berries but avoid the green ones. If you do well enough, you can even earn rare berries for your adventure!

-----------------------

There really isn't much else to talk about here. While these minigames do seem like a fun distraction, I can't really play them and, even if I could, I'd probably wait until the Fire Red playthrough to do so, so I can't really give my opinions on them. They do give off the vibe of a certain feature in a much later pokemon game, though, so I feel like the desire to implement various types of minigames into the main series pokemon titles is something they consistently try to do.

There is something worthwhile here, though, if you can earn a high enough score, you can level up your trainer card! I believe I mentioned this back in Sapphire, but by accomplishing certain tasks, you can level up your trainer card causing it to be displayed with a different color and another star. It doesn't do much and is kind of just a bragging rights thing it seems, but it feels good! It's a shame one of these levelups is locked behind the wireless adapter accessory.

=================

Cape Brink

Just north of the town on Two Island is Cape Brink. Although there is a waterfall here, you don't actually need the move Waterfall to fully navigate this area since you can just take the stairs nearby. The grass and water don't hold any pokemon of interest, though.

 

By using the itemfinder on the one tile in the corner of the small pond here, you can find a PP Max. If you go behind the house to the north, you can also find a hidden Rare Candy.

Inside this home is a move tutor who will be ecstatic about teaching your fully evolved starter the ultimate attack of its type: Frenzy Plant, Blast Burn, or Hydro Cannon for Venusaur, Charizard, and Blastoise respectively. Each of these three moves is essentially a Grass-, Fire-, or Water-type Hyper Beam. A powerful attack that leaves you recharging on the next turn. I actually think it's a great option for Venusaur since he has so much bulk. This is a big reason I didn't come up here earlier, actually. I wanted to catch Moltres before getting rid of Sleep Powder in favor of Frenzy Plant. I definitely don't want to replace Razor Leaf because not only does Frenzy Plant have a cooldown, but it also has really low PP. I'll want another offensive attack to go along with it. Later on, I should be able to replace Razor Leaf with a certain move of another type that will hopefully bring some more versatility to Venus, but until then, this is what we have to work with and I'm personally fine with that!

================

Lastly, back on Three Island, there's not really much new. We can find Lostelle in the house with the red roof who says she wants to make us lunch one day, too. Otherwise, most of the NPC's just talk about how thankful they are for the Kanto Riders to be gone. That doesn't mean there's literally nothing to do. Now that we have access to our PC, we can bring a Cut user out to cut down the trees all the way down to Berry Forest to collect some worthwhile items.

==================

Well, with all this behind us, we can now return to Vermillion, Fly to Cinnabar, and continue our journey to the endgame next time!

[Aura]

 

Route 21

With the Tri Pass access to the Sevii Islands behind us, let's move on with our adventure, shall we? Up north of Cinnabar Island is Route 21. There's even less to see here than Route 20, though this is another example of just how significantly redesigned these water routes are with the manmade wooden platforms being replaced with sandy islands and multiplied across the sea. Again, you can avoid having an entire screen full of nothing but water thanks to the new additions which makes it much easier to orient yourself. The trainers and pokemon here in the water are nothing new, but on the northern end...

 

There is a patch of tall grass where you can find Tangela at its unarguably most common: 100%! That's right, there are absolutely no other pokemon you can find in this grass other than Tangela so if you haven't coincidentally found one yet, this is the place!

================

And now, we have come full circle. Heading north of Route 21 brings us right back to Pallet Town. This is convenient since the last badge we need lies in Viridian City which is just a hop, skip, and a jump through Route 1.

We've revisited here before, so there's not much to talk about with this particular revisit. Except, if we talk to the old man in front of the gym, he tells us that the gym leader has returned! Sure enough, we aren't SoL with our 8th gym badge! Let's go inside and challenge this mysterious gym!

===============

Viridian Gym

[Unfortunately, it seems YouTube has taken down the source I've been using up until this point for the music tracks sometime in the last two days. (Merry Christmas!) I've used too many of them to go back and painstakingly fix all the broken links, but if you've been following along, this is why I'm linking to a different, shorter video here. If you're retroactively reading through this thread, then this is why so many music links up until now have lead to dead YouTube videos. This is a huge shame because I really liked those extended 30-minute loops but I suppose this will have to do for now. Can't say this was unexpected, it's just something that comes with the platform. I'll try to adjust where I can going forward, but I can't realistically keep going back and fixing all the broken links for the rest of my life, so I'm sure that eventually all of these links will expire and you'll have to find the music on YouTube yourself if you want to listen to it while reading.]

This is it: The final gym with a mysterious gym leader! Even the guide doesn't know his identity! Let's just... pretend you can't see him in this map.

       

There are lots of trainers to be battled here and they mostly specialize in really strong Fighting and Ground-type pokemon.

I do believe this is also the first case of encountering a male Cooltrainer which, obviously, is just the male counterpart to the female Cooltrainer, specializing in rare and powerful pokemon, usually fully evolved.

----------------------

The gimmick of this gym are the spin tiles from the Rocket Hideout. You're expected to take some leaps of faith in order to feel your way around the gym's maze. But as it turns out, the gimmick is entirely ignorable. You only have to battle two trainers an don't have to interact with the spin tiles at all. Just head up north around the spin tiles and battle the Ace Trainer in the horizontal hallway. Then battle the Blackbelt standing against the northern wall. As you walk into his view, he'll block your way forward, but this can easily be fixed by just leaving the gym and coming back in. Alternatively, you can take the spin tile in the northeast corner to speak to him from the side so that he doesn't move from that spot when you try to approach from the front. Everything else in this gym is entirely optional, so there's no point in interacting with any of it.

==============

My Team:

--------------------

Venus (Venusaur M); Lv. 48

 

Item: Leftovers

Ability: Overgrow | Moves: Toxic, Frenzy Vine, Leech Seed, Razor Leaf

----------------------

Scope (Golbat F); Lv. 48

 

Item: Everstone

Ability: Inner Focus | Moves: Air Cutter, Giga Drain, Confuse Ray, Bite

---------------------

Burrow (Sandslash F); Lv. 48

 

Item: Leftovers

Ability: Sand Veil | Moves: Slash, Swift, Dig, Rock Slide

----------------------

Generator (Electrode); Lv. 48

 

Item: Amulet Coin

Ability: Static | Moves: Rain Dance, Thunder, Thunder Wave, Light Screen

----------------------

Mama (Kangaskhan F); Lv. 47

 

Item: Quick Claw

Ability: Early Bird | Moves: Brick Break, Aerial Ace, Fake Out, Dizzy Punch

-----------------------

Regen (Starmie); Lv. 48

 

Item: None

Ability: Natural Cure | Moves: Surf, Confuse Ray, Recover, Psychic

================

Viridian Gym Leader Giovanni

---------------------

Rhyhorn Lv. 45

 

I led off with Venus making Rhyhorn an easy KO right off the bat.

------------------------

Dugrtio Lv. 42

 

Dugtrio came up next and it was able to get an Earthquake off, but wasn't able to accomplish much with it. I went ahead and went for Frenzy Vine since Razor Leaf might not take it out in one shot and took it out no problem as well.

-------------------------

Nidoqueen Lv. 44

 

Nidoqueen came next and I had nothing strong against it, I'd need to switch out. Thanks to my cooldown, Nidoqueen was able to get a solid Earthquake off before my switch.

 

I brought Mama in next to take a solid hit, but perhaps I'd underestimated Nidoqueen's strength as it did a bit more than I was comfortable with. It took a good couple of Dizzy Punches in order to finish the job against Nidoqueen.

----------------------

Nidoking Lv. 45

 

Nidoking came next and it was clear that Mama wasn't going to be lasting much longer against a more offensive variant of Nidoqueen, so I retreated.

 

The best option I had to retreat into was Scope. Nidoking was obviously going for Earthquake, so this was a great way to get out of damage. Plus, I could get a confuse ray off while I take away his health with Air Cutter.

--------------------

Rhyhorn Lv. 50

 

To my surprise, Giovanni actually retreated into his Rhyhorn. And no, that isn't a mistake, this is indeed a Rhyhorn for some reason. Even though it's level 50 which is well enough for it to be evolved, and it was evolved in Red and Blue, I guess they wanted to make it easier? Not that Rhydon was ever a difficult pokemon to get rid of...  Giovanni has three fully evolved pokemon on his team and his highest level is a Rhyhorn. That's... definitely a team.

Anyway, I was caught off guard by the switch but it really was ultimately inconsequential. It was clear he was probably going for some Rock attack to target my weakness, but I simply took it out in one shot with Giga Drain instead of Air Cutter.

 

This brought his Nidoking back out which was now helpless against Scope. Once again, I hit it with a Confuse Ray and started pelting it with Air Cutter until it fell.

----------------------

 

With that, Giovanni finally admits defeat and confers to us the Earth Badge and TM26: Earthquake which is the most powerful move with no drawback and is widely accessible to boot. This is arguably the most valuable TM in the entire game. It actually took a bit to decide who I wanted to teach this move to. I briefly entertained the possiblity of teaching it to Venus to help give it more coverage options, but there's one other move I think I'd rather Venus know instead and I don't want this TM to go to waste once I have access to that. Because of this, I ultimately decided to teach this move to Burrow who would be able to make the best use of the attack. It'll be replacing Dig which will unfortunately remove its ability to double up on Leftovers with a good matchup, but Dig isn't a very good move in the first place. It's much better to have a move with cooldown than a move with a charging turn.

After speaking with Giovanni again, he announces that he cannot face his followers after losing to you even at his full strength. He claims that, from this day forth, Team Rocket is no more.

=================

We now have all 8 Gym badges which means it's now time to make our way toward the Elite Four at the Indigo Plateau! So next time, we'll be doing just that!

[Aura]

       

With the eight gym badges of Kanto gathered, we can now pass all the checkpoints across Route 23 and make our way toward Victory Road.

In order to get there, though, we'll need to pass through Route 22 and along the way, we're going to meet up with an all-too-familiar face yet again.

===============

My Team:

--------------------

Venus (Venusaur M); Lv. 48

 

Item: Leftovers

Ability: Overgrow | Moves: Toxic, Frenzy Vine, Leech Seed, Razor Leaf

----------------------

Scope (Golbat F); Lv. 49

 

Item: Everstone

Ability: Inner Focus | Moves: Air Cutter, Giga Drain, Confuse Ray, Poison Fang

---------------------

Burrow (Sandslash F); Lv. 48

 

Item: Leftovers

Ability: Sand Veil | Moves: Slash, Swift, Dig, Rock Slide

----------------------

Generator (Electrode); Lv. 48

 

Item: Amulet Coin

Ability: Static | Moves: Rain Dance, Thunder, Thunder Wave, Light Screen

----------------------

Mama (Kangaskhan F); Lv. 48

 

Item: Quick Claw

Ability: Early Bird | Moves: Brick Break, Aerial Ace, Fake Out, Dizzy Punch

-----------------------

Regen (Starmie); Lv. 48

 

Item: None

Ability: Natural Cure | Moves: Surf, Confuse Ray, Blizzard, Psychic

================

Vs. Rival #7

-----------------------

Pidgeot Lv. 47

 

I led off with Generator against pidgeot. I set up Rain Dance figuring I might be able to get a decent few hits in. Pidgeot slowed me down a bit with Featherdance, but I immediately followed up with a Thunder for the KO.

----------------------

Rhyhorn Lv. 45

 

Rhyhorn came next in an attempt to stop my Thunder assault. Of course, since Generator lacks a non-electric attack, I couldn't do much but retreat.

 

Expecting a ground attack, I switched into Scope only to be hit by a Take Down instead, to my surprise. Well, it still didn't do much damage and a simple Giga Drain was enough to take care of Rhyhorn.

-------------------------

Alakazam, Lv. 47

 

Alakazam followed up and, naturally, I wasn't going to be leaving Scope in for this matchup.

 

I retreated into Mama to take Alakazam out. It went for Calm Mind during the switch. On the next turn, I went for Fake Out and followed up with Dizzy Punch. He decided to use... Disable. To Disable... my Fake Out. You do you, my friend.

-----------------------

Exeggcute Lv. 45

 

Exeggcute came next which was a simple matter thanks to Aerial Ace. It just went for Solar Beam with no sunlight to back it up, so it went down pretty quick.

----------------------

Gyarados Lv. 45

 

Since Gyarados had reduced my attack with Intimidate, I decided my best approach to take it out would likely be to retreat. This would also give me a great opportunity to set up for Green's Charizard as well.

 

I retreated into Generator and, wouldn't you know it? Gyarados made things even easier for me by setting up Rain Dance himself! A Thunder was all it took to take out Gyarados from here.

-------------------------

Charizard Lv. 53

 

Charizard is all that was left and I couldn't have asked for better circumstances. Surprisingly, it was able to survive a Thunder, though, and managed to actually take Generator out with Slash!

 

It seemed this finish wasn't going to be quite as clean as I expected, but that was fine because all I needed to do now was blow Charizard over with a rain-powered Surf. 

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And with that, our rival is defeated yet again. He warns us again that the trainers up ahead are seriously tough and that we should really make sure we're prepared. But considering we just won this battle, I think we're more than ready to see what's ahead!

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Route 23

It's time to march onward toward the Indigo Plateau once again! Let's not get tunnel vision, though, the path to victory road has some pretty significant items you may want to collect.

  

Along with some other more generic items scattered about, there are a grand total of three berry spots dotting Route 23 along the way to Victory Road.

If you've yet to catch one, this is the location where Fearow is at its most common at 25% so you might want to look for one here.

In addition, Sandslash is available to catch here at 5% in Leaf Green if you don't want to evolve a Sandshrew for your pokedex. It's no more common anywhere else, so you may as well try to find it here if you're gonna catch it out of the wild. Since I'm already raising a Sandshrew, there's no need to seek this one out!

And as you'd expect, Fire Red replaces Sandslash with Arbok.

 

I don't think I've noted it just yet, but if you compare Arbok's sprite from Ruby and Sapphire to its Fire Red and Leaf Green sprite, you can tell that, indeed, the intention to keep Arbok's torso patterns as a regional variant still holds true! I think this is the last time they make an effort to keep this recurring, unfortunately. Going forward from here, Arbok is going to exclusively be depicted with its Kanto markings, though it lacks the black stripes from its original RGBY back sprite.

 

This aspect of the redesign might simply be explained by both a desire to be more true to how the pokemon is portrayed in other media, most prominently the anime, but also due to the fact that the back sprite is shared with the Hoenn games and is a touched up version of its Gen 2 back sprite.

Lastly, the pokemon Primeape can be found here at 5% as well, though it's significantly more common inside Victory Road on 2F and yet slightly more common somewhere we have yet to explore, so I don't recommend tracking him down just yet.

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As we reach the end of Route 23, we'll arrive at the entrance to a cave. You're going to need a Strength user going forward, so I hope you brought one!

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Victory Road

Here we are, the final test of our worth to see if we have what it takes to challenge the Elite Four! Victory Road is designed to be the most challenging dungeon up until this point. It's filled with lots of tough trainers and strong wild pokemon. You'll need to be careful as you make your way through the cave!

1F

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If you have somehow yet to catch an Onix even after going through Rock Tunnel, this is the best place to look for it. It's most common on this floor of Victory Road at 30%.

You can also find Marrowak here at 5% though, as seems to be a running theme here, it too will be available more commonly in a future location.

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Right off the bat you'll be introduced to the gimmick of this dungeon which isn't too different from that of the Seafoam Islands. Instead of pushing Strength Boulders down holes, you'll be pushing them onto buttons to remove obstacles blocking your path. As always, you'll need to be careful not to push boulders against walls they can't be pulled away from or you'll have to go all the way back out and refresh the floor.

As you make your way to the northern part of this room, you'll find yourself at a bit of a dilemma. There are two items here you'll have to choose from. In order to get one, you'll block the path to the other. If you want both items, you'll need to leave the floor and come back to push the boulder in the other direction.

 

If you only choose one of the two, the one to the north is TM02: Dragon Claw while the western one is a Rare Candy. I'd say the TM is much more valuable, but I can see why you might care more for the Rare Candy if you don't intend to use the Dragon Claw TM. You can always come back for it, it's not particularly deep in the cave.

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2F

The ladder will lead you to the western section of 2F.

 

On this floor, you can find Primeape at a more common 10%. While it is slightly more common later on, I did manage to encounter one, so I went ahead and caught it, naming it Rampage.

Eventually, I got around to the item in the corner of the southern section and obtained TM37: Sandstorm which I immediately taught to Burrow so that she could finally get some sort of benefit from her Sand Veil ability. I'm honestly not sure if this was the best decision since I overwrote Dig and don't really have any other stall tactics, but I'm hoping it'll work out well enough for me.

In the northeast part of this area, past the two trainers, is TM07: Hail. A move I really don't have any interest in using, myself.

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3F

Taking the ladder here will bring you to the main part of 3F. Here's where you have a bit of a fork in the path. For now, I'll be ignoring the boulder here and gathering the useful items available here.

 

There is a revive guarded by a Cooltrainer in the northeastern corner of the room, and on the opposite side, you'll find TM50: Overheat! While over here in this corner, we'll go down this ladder to see what's around here.

This will bring us to the Northeastern segment of 2F. This area was much more significant in the original version. Why? Well, if you recall, I mentioned the location of Moltres may have been a surprise to people who played the original. That's because this is where Moltres was originally located! In this game, all you're gonna find here is a Guard Spec. in the place Moltres once stood which isn't nearly as exciting. This part of the cave seems to serve more as just a quick way out of the cave more than anything else.

Back on 3F, we'll need to now finish the puzzle here, pushing the boulder onto the button, pushign the next boulder down into the pit, and finally falling down after it onto 2F where we can now push it onto the nearby button and make our way back up to the southeastern corner of 3F.

It's here where we're met with another new double-battle trainer class: The Cool Couple! Just like all the others, it's really just a tag team of a Male and Female Cooltrainer. Likely to be the toughest double battle duo you'll face, but that's not really saying much. 

Continuing past them, we've finally reached the end of the cave! It may look like we have one more trainer left here on 2F, but if we talk to him, he actually reveals himself to be a move tutor! He'll teach our pokemon Double-Edge. I briefly considered teaching this to Mama, but I think Return should be a much better option for her.

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As we exit Victory Road, we emerge on the other side, the northern end of Route 23.

Before we get ahead of ourselves, there's some more items to find! A Lum Berry can be obtained right outside the maze of stone columns. 

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And finally, at the end of Route 23 lays the Indigo Plateau. The final frontier for all trainers' journeys in the Kanto region.

      

And with that, our only remaining step in the main story of Leaf Green is to challenge the Elite Four. Is our team prepared for the job? I'm feeling pretty confident overall, I don't think I've ever lost more than a single pokemon in a boss fight over the course of the game. Not that that's particularly impressive or anything. This game is really lacking in the difficulty department. Still, the Elite Four are certainly going to be more difficult than anything we've faced before, so we'd better make sure we're prepared! Next time, we'll be taking on the Elite Four with this very team!