All the Pokemens

[Aura]

53 minutes ago, NyxAvatar69 said:

Let me rephrase what I said before.  I only finished Stadium 2 last year using only rentals (because I don't have any of the stuff to use my own mons nor do I want to spend the money on all that junk).  Gym Leader Castle is fairly easy because gym trainer amounts vary outside Jasmine (who you fight straight away with no extra trainers beforehand) but then the difficulty picks up hard after Jasmine with Clair being a massive wall.  The Elite Four also has two members with really annoying strategies and Lance is still the same "spam Hyper Beam and hope he obliterates everything fast".  Luckily, the Kanto Gym Leaders are just the gym leaders themselves.

As for the Stadiums, Little Cup only allows Level 5s, making it similar to Stadium 1's Petit Cup...except with lower levels, no chance of Level 30s blindsiding you, and items.  The last battle sucks with rentals because you need to pray he doesn't bring Abra because you auto lose unless you crit if he brought Abra because Psychic and high Speed (or just use Houndour, but you need to consider the fact you're doing 8 battles so you need good mons that can handle a variety of situations).  Poke and Prime are standard fare and Challenge Cup gives you random teams, but seeing as you played Stadium 1 and that game already makes you consider strategy on team preview, you should have no issues.  Although...the bot does tend to get a bit bullshitty because during my Challenge Cup Master Ball run, my Tentacruel with +4 evasion got hit by all of my opponent's Snorlax's Hyper Beams and I lost a battle solely because of that.

Also have fun with the final battle.

The rentals are honestly worse in Stadium 2 than they are in Stadium 1, though.  Kadabra and Wobbuffet tend to be mains for most cups, but I'll stop there before I say anything else.

I've definitely noticed rentals in Stadium 2 are far weaker. It may not be the dev's fault though because, as I noted in the Gold playthrough, Gen II really doesn't do very well in the TM department. Pretty much the only good thing to come out of it is the fact that the elemental punches are easily accessible to a lot of pokemon, but I'm still not sure if its' worth the cost of Thunderbolt, Ice Beam and Flamethrower. Those are some of my favorite elemental attacks because of their consistency and still impressive power.

And yeah, I never rely too heavily on evasion strats because there's always room for failure even with max evasion. Then again, with Rentals I suppose your options are limited.

I have tried playing through Stadium 2 with nothing but rentals before and you're absolutely right, it gets disgusting around Claire. I also tried again around the same time I did my playthrough of Red a while back, before I started this series, but naturally being limited to only gen 1 learnsets, you're not gonna get very far. I don't think I was able to get past Whitney during that attempt. This time I'll no doubt get through Gym Leader Castle and (hopefully) Poke and Prime cups. We'll see how the other ones go. I honestly find the level limits really annoying to work around.

[Aura]

Before moving onto the higher difficulties, I decided to take a brief brake and check out the remaining modes. There isn't much else to look at in this game and due to my prior emulation bug clause, it turns out I'm not really going to be worrying about much in this game at all outside of the main mode. (Thank god because I honestly just wanna put these puzzle games behind me as soon as possible).

The first mode I took a look at was Time Zone. This is exactly the same as in Puzzle Challenge. The time counts down and you have to get as high of a score as possible.

There's a 3D variant as well, but needless to say, due to the graphical corruption, this is just as unplayable as it looked in Oak's lab. It's kind of a shame though because this does look like a surprisingly interesting, fresh take on the familiar puzzle mechanics. As you move the cursor right and left, the cylinder rotates a full 360 degrees. It doesn't seem like it would change much at first, but the fact that the blocks on the other side of the cylinder are obscured by the blocks closer to you makes planning combos while keeping the collumns on all sides from reaching the top a very difficult task indeed. I'd love to give this a try, but at the same time I also feel that I would dread having to actually do difficult challenges in this mode. I'm not gonna look a gift horse in the mouth with this one and I'll just take this as a blessing.

I also took a peek into Marathon mode. Again, nothing much to say here. There's a 3D option for this one as well.

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The next mode I decided to check out was the spa. Here, we're met with some friendly strangers I certainly don't recognize who will gladly take our pokemon off our hands for a relaxing spa trip even though they're totally booked! How convenient!

Oh no! They caught me off guard! Those aren't friendly strangers! It's Team Rocket in one of their many incredibly clever disguises!

It turns out, this is actually a miniature side story focused on Team Rocket and their various disguises throughout the anime. It's actually really cool to see these! Team Rocket's cheesy disguises are an element of the anime that I fondly remember from my childhood. It's not really something they do much of anymore. Perhaps for good reason because it often lead to pretty formulaic and predictable Team Rocket subplots, but I distinctly recall their silly disguises being a very distinct aspect of their characters.

Anyway, this mode is actually this game's version of Puzzle Challenge's Line Clear mode. But instead of playing with the guidance of the gym leaders, you're instead clearing these puzzles as you chase after Team Rocket to rescue your stolen pokemon! I actually really appreciate the added story to this mode. It actually has a lot more personality here.

Just like in Puzzle Challenge, each round has five stages. Once you clear a round, you move on to the next one where Team Rocket takes on a new disguise.

There wasn't anything particularly noteworthy with these first few rounds.

Just like in Puzzle Challenge, there was a surprise Special stage between rounds 3 and 4! This time it's against Butch and Cassidy who call themselves "Team Rocket 2!" They never really caught on to the same extent as Team Rocket, but I do distinctly remember it being really cool that Team Rocket got their own rivals to deal with! Due to my improved skills, I was able to survive a bit longer in this stage, but just like that one, I didn't come close to winning. Thankfully, you don't have to worry about winning this stage either, it's just a bonus.

And unfortunately, the next stage is where our quest comes to an abrupt end. Starting with Stage 4, 3D Puzzles start to get involved. While I could probably brute force my way through these modes, I really don't want to. I know how tough these modes can get and I really don't want to push myself any harder than I need to. We're just gonna let this slide and assume Ash was able to get his pokemon back offscreen.

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The last mode I wanted to try out before going back into the 1p Stadium was the Puzzle University. I wasn't going to spend too much time in this mode because, just like in Puzzle Challenge, you don't actually unlock anything for clearing it. There doesn't seem to be any sort of story tied to this mode, either, plus there are over 100 puzzles. I'd be here for along time if I tried to clear them all.

This puzzle mode is the same as before. The object is to clear all of the blocks on screen in the allotted number of moves.

I cleared the first row of puzzles and didn't bother with the rest. However, there was still more to this mode that actually interested me.

Alongside the standard puzzle mode, this game features a custom puzzle mode! Here you can create up to 15 different puzzles.

You can choose from three different backgrounds. Once you've chosen, you can place blocks of any color in any position you like. the puzzle doesn't even have to be solvable. After creating your puzzle, you can save it to one of the 15 slots for further play!

Of course, if you go for pixel-art, don't expect your puzzle to be functional.

Edited April 11, 2020 by Aura

[Aura]

And now it's time to finish up this game with the rest of 1p Stadium.

Starting out on Normal, I was able to battle the next opponents after Giovanni, of course after battling all of the opponents that came before. Here you battle the Puzzle Elites!

These battles were of course pretty tough, but there wasn't much more to say. It's just more of the same.

After defeating Bruno, the game abruptly ends once again with a congratulations screen that tells you to try the next difficulty.

Playing through the game once again on Hard, much more difficult than the last but I wouldn't say it was quite as difficult as Puzzle Challenge's Challenge mode; you get to battle Gary once again immediately following Bruno for the championship.

After defeating Gary, Ash wins the champion trophy and we get a short FMV of him celebrating his victory followed by the game's credits!

...Unfortunately, Gary doesn't actually hold the title of Puzzle Master. For that, we're going to have to sit through the credits to find a lovely little message.

Yup, after clearing the game on Hard mode, you unlock an even harder "Very Hard" mode! I did give this a brief attempt, but I was honestly so burnt out that I just couldn't bring myself to continue after getting walled as early as Erika. If I'm being honest, most of my wins in Hard Mode weren't so much wins on my part as they were my opponent losing. If that makes sense. Very rarely when I won did it feel like it was because of my own input. The AI often just lost arbitrarily lost every once in a while allowing me to advance. Since this game doesn't have an HP system like Puzzle Challenge, You actually can win in this way. However, in Very Hard mode the AI is exceedingly tough. It took over 30 continues to beat the entire mode last time and here it took me over 15 just to get past Erika. Needless to say, I really didn't want to brute force my way through another really difficult mode. 

If you're still interested in this final stage, here's a video of the true final battle. Granted, this one is on Super Hard which is one tier above very Hard, but as you can see, this is absolutely absurd and seems like it would likely require a LOT of luck. 

The fact is, I'm a very visual and hands-on learner, so things like planning ahead to make pieces fall into place is extremely difficult for me. Even after playing through two whole games, I still don't really feel like I've improved all that much. It always just comes down to luck for me and I really don't have too much interest in trying to improve anymore. 

If you really enjoy Panel De Pon as well as Pokemon, I can see this game being something you would really like. But neither of them really did much for me. The most fun I had in these modes was Line Clear because of the low stakes. However, due to the emulation issues, I wasn't able to fully enjoy Line Clear in this game. I'm not going to hold my own distaste against this game, it's a great game for what it's trying to be! It's just not my thing and I'm more than happy to put it behind me.

With that in the past, a certain game has finally arrived and after catching up on that, I can finally move on past these frustrating puzzle games!

Edited April 11, 2020 by Aura

[Aura]

Aye, the whole database fiasco couldn't have happened at a more annoying time for this thread, I don't think. But nothing to be done about it. May as well just move on and be glad things are finally back online!

As I said before, the next game is one we'd be visiting retroactively due to technical difficulties. I told you I had a doozy of a story with this one and, long story short, I now own three different copies of this game and technically we've had four.

Before I ever came around, my two older brothers already owned a copy of Pokemon Gold and Silver. However, they kept them in a gameboy carrying case. My older brother let said carrying case out of his sight and the case, and all the games inside it, ended up getting stolen. Thankfully, we still had our copies of Red and Blue, but our copy of Yellow had also been stolen. This is why I purchased a copy of Gold and Yellow at the con I visited. For this reason, as a kid, Gold, Silver and Crystal were the most mysterious pokemon games to me. I only knew about gen II through Pokemon Stadium 2 and there were lots of mysterious oddities such as how Jasmine's gym in Gym Leader Castle didn't have any trainers and my brother explained to me that it was because, in the games, you have to do a quest at the lighthouse before you can go to her gym. I also knew that Sudowoodo was disguised as a cut tree at some point in the game and that, of course, they were the first games to feature gen II pokemon. 

I also knew the games had a day and night feature, and this was before Diamond and Pearl. It was perhaps the thing I was most interested in because, while Ruby and Sapphire had a day/night cycle, it didn't actually cause any aesthetic changes for some reason. The world simply always appeared as if it were daytime. The idea of the entire world turning night absolutely fascinated me, plus I used to be absolutely in love with Lugia's design and always wanted to use it in Stadium 2, but Lugia along with Ho-oh, Mew, Celebi, and Mewtwo were all unavailable as rentals.

Fast forward to a little later in my childhood and I actually met another friend who was also into Pokemon. This was rare because this was an era of my life where a lot of kids were trying to get into more "grown up" games and bullied each other for liking those baby games like Pokemon and Mario. I found out this friend had a copy of Silver version and I was really excited by that! I asked to borrow it and, to my surprise, he told me I could just have it! I wasn't sure why he didn't seem to care about the game until I got home. I got decently far into the game for a first session and saved it... only to find out that the game didn't save. It wasn't until later that I understood the internal battery issues these old pokemon games had and now it made sense why he didn't care about keeping it. I tried all sorts of solutions to the issue but couldn't figure anything out. Eventually, I just gave up on the game.

Fast forward to 2020 and I went to Pensacon! Here, I was able to find a rather affordable copy of Pokemon Gold with a new battery, as well as a reproduction cartridge of Yellow! I didn't hesitate to buy these games because I was finally able to relive those childhood dreams and explore Johto the way it was meant to be explored! Needless to say, this was part of what inspired me to do this series. Originally, however, I decided I was only going to play one game out of every pair of pokemon games. So I wasn't worried about Silver version. But as I played through Blue and got the idea to complete the pokedex in yellow in conjuction with my already completed red save file, I decided I really wanted to complete the pokedex in every generation! This would be the first time I've done it in any game prior to ORAS, so I was hyped up by the idea! But I quickly noticed a problem being that I'd have to skip gen 2. At first, I didn't realize that would be an issue, but as I got closer and closer to playing through Gold, I realized that it just wouldn't feel right not at least trying to complete the pokedex.

My original plan was actually pretty simple. I found out that you actually can link two GameBoy games using the Gameboy Advance SP (The system I've been using to play all the physical GBC games I've been playing). I always assumed this was impossible because it doesn't work with one GBA link cable. Instead, you need two. It relies on this overly convoluted system...

I only read this on the internet but it's a bizarre enough explanation that it just might work. Just take it with a grain of salt. From what I heard, you are able to link to GB games with not one, but two GBA link cables, by plugging the gray plug into your system and the purple plug into the purple box on the other cable. For that cable, plug the purple plug into the purple box on the first cable, and plug the gray plug into the second system. I suppose something about this setup allows the game to recognize the gray plug as a GB link cable and transmits data through to the other one and you can finally connect your GB games on this system that is normally incompatible with GB Link cables.

For a brief period of time, I was considering just buying one of these and playing Silver version in one sitting while keeping it plugged into a charger to prevent it from dying. That way, I wouldn't have to worry about saving. Don't do this, by the way. That is a major fire hazard. If too many things are plugged into the same part of the house and on at the same time, the wires inside the walls could spontaneously combust.

By connecting the games through this convoluted GBA system, I wouldn't need to use Stadium for Gen 2 trade evolutions so I wouldn't have to worry about keeping my save file at all. 

However, the more I thought about it, the more absurd this idea was. I was relying on a concept that I read from some rando on gamefaqs which may or may not even be true in the first place. Not only that, I would have to play the entire game in one sitting which, while doable, would end up being incredibly boring and repetitive. I'd also be terrified of bumping my system or the charger coming loose overnight or something, the system turning off, and due to one simple accident, I lose all of my progress. Needless to say, this idea did not sound appealing in the slightest. 

My next alternative solution was to complete the pokedex on the 3DS Virtual Console version. The downside to this being that I wouldn't be able to use these pokemon in Stadium 2, and trade evolutions would be barred in Stadium 2 as a consequence. Beyond that, completing the pokedex in Silver or Crystal on the eShop would require an additional playthrough of a Gen 1 game on the eShop on another console. Needless to say, this wasn't a very attractive option either.

I could also emulate Silver and simply hack the game to include all of the pokemon that were inaccessible but that just didn't feel in the spirit of the game. Plus, again, I'd be barring myself from those trade evolutions in Gold and Stadium 2. I try to avoid emulation as much as I can, especially for games I own and especially for N64 games. You all saw how much of a disaster Pokemon Puzzle League and Hey You, Pikachu! were. Stadium really isn't much better and loves to randomly crash at times. I wasn't about to emulate Stadium 2 solely to use pokemon from that game.

I almost settled on the asinine idea of using the GBA Link cables , but as I went online to look for a second link cable, I decided to check out the price of Silver and found one that was actually cheaper and promised that it saved! So, I ordered this copy of Silver and thought all of my problems were lost.

Well, fast forward to when the game arrives in the mail and it turns out that it was the exact same story as the copy I already had from my childhood. Yes, the game could technically "Save," but the moment it was removed from the cartridge or turned off for too long, the save data would be lost. I tried to return it, but I made the mistake of ordering off of ebay without registering an account. I couldn't figure out how the return process worked in this regard and the seller only agreed to give me half the price back (even though the product was faulty).

Anyway, once I neared the end of Gold, I wasn't sure what I would do about this issue. I looked into how to replace the battery itself but I lacked the supplies necessary and given that this was smack dab in the middle of Social Isolation, I couldn't exactly go out to my local hardware store. I figured it would be less of a headache to just look for a game that specifically says it has a new battery and I finally got one that works from Amazon!

Now, I have a physical copy of Silver version along with two other Silvers that are still missing internal batteries. Maybe one day I'll replace the batteries in these and sell them off or give them away, but for now...

I suppose it could make a good coaster for my drink!

Anyway, this story went on for a while so I'll start recounting my experiences with the actual gameplay in the next post. All in all, I do think this will be worth it in the end. It was already exciting enough to be able to have access to new features of Stadium 2 that were always barred from me and now I'll be able to play here, too!

I should probably note that this version of Silver does still have its problems. The battery was supposedly "professionally replaced," but the cartridge feels very loosely held together and not at all like Gold. I tested it in Stadium 2 and while I was able to get it to read, it took quite a few tries and I worry about the game simply being jostled out of place in the middle of a transfer. For this reason, I intend to only trade in one session as soon as I get to Kanto in Silver. By that point, I should have all of the version exclusives in Silver and the items necessary to evolve any Pokemon I need in Gold.

Anyway, that's why it took me so long to get to Silver. But now that I'm here, let's get the party started!

[Aura]

First of all, since I'm playing a physical copy of the game rather than emulating it, I unfortunately won't be able to provide screenshots of my actual gameplay. Instead, I'll be ripping them from sites such as Bulbapedia and Serebii or from Google. I want to say this now to get any inconsistencies out of the way.

As for my playthrough of Silver, I decided to focus solely on completing the game as casually as possible. Since I've already beaten Gold, I'm not going to spend much time stopping to smell the roses, though I will be calling mom a lot more frequently due to fact that in Gold, I didn't realize she had unique dialogue for every location in the game until near the end of the game. It's actually kind of nice calling your mother every time you reach a new town and to hear her cheer you on the entire time. Gold and Silver just might have the best mom in the series! I mean, she doesn't give you running shoes, but she orders you a PokeGear and even saves money for you! Anyway, even though I'll be spending a lot less time in this game than I did on Gold, it will definitely seem a lot longer for you guys because I'm actually going to be updating you on my progress this time rather than summing up my entire experience at the end. Although this first post may be a bit more vague because it's all from memory again since I couldn't update you on my thougths along the way while the servers were down.

Before getting starting my actual playthrough, I did play the game up until I was able to catch a wild pokemon. Then I quickly stored my Chikorita into Pokemon Stadium 2. This is going to be important as, without a physical copy of Crystal, I'll otherwise be unable to get the third starter pokemon. 

 

Right off the bat, I did want to call attention to one of my favorite things about gen 2. While the backsprites are identical between Gold and Silver, both games actually have different front sprites for every single pokemon. I think this is a really cool touch and it brings back memories of playing Blue after Green. It really makes the game feel unique and different.

It's really hard to find a convenient list comparing the sprites like in RGB, but here is a spritesheet compiling all the sprites from Gold and Silver. Gold is on top while Silver is on bottom. 

So far, I really like a lot of these Silver sprites more. The pokemon are all in really cool poses and Meowth is simply adorable here.

Anyway, after depositing Chikorita into Stadium, I restarted the game and went into a new game to play through once again. This time, I started with the last remaining pokemon: Totodile.

 Totalleon (Totodile M); Lv 5

 

Item: Berry 

Moves: Scratch, Leer

This will be the first member of my team as I go through my second quest in the Johto region.

I didn't waste any time making my way to Mr. Pokemon to retrieve the mysterious egg and effortlessly defeated Silver on my way back. After delivering the egg and obtaining the pokeballs, the adventure truly begins!

The first stop I made was route  46 where I searched the grass for another ally to help Totalleon hold the ground. The pokemon I was after was none other than Spearow! This won't be a permanent member of my team, but he will be right at home here for a while until I get the Flying type I'm really interested in using.

 Seer (Spearow M); Lv. 2

 

Item: None

Moves: Peck, Growl

This playthrough, I decided to take better advantage of the various berries that grow throughout Johto. I didn't use them for much in Gold, but since you get so many of them, there's no real reason not to put them on your pokemon, at least until you get a held item to give them instead. At all times, I try to keep at least some sort of berry on each of my pokemon as they can actually prove pretty useful for dealing with some of the more annoying opponents throughout the game.

As I went through Cherrygrove and route 30, there were a couple of pokemon that caught my eye. 

  

Although Weedle isn't technically a version exclusive, in Gold version he is only available during a bug catching contest. In Silver, Caterpie is only available in a bug-catching contest. So, I decided to treat Weedle as a version exclusive since he was easier to catch here.

  

The next pokemon of interest was Ledyba. This actually is a version exclusive to Silver. Ledyba is only available during the day while its version exclusive counterpart, Spinarak, is only available at night. It's actually an interesting counterpart between the two games. But, I picked him up here and moved onward. 

It's worth noting here that I'm not going to be worrying as much about pokegear numbers and rematches as my previous playthrough of Gold because, again, this is just going to be a quick playthrough mainly for the purposes of pokedex completion in Silver. I suppose you could call this the "non-canon" run. 

North of Route 30, connected directly, is Route 31. 

Here, we have access to a mysterious Dark Cave.

Thankfully, I don't really have to worry too much about actually exploring Dark Cave in this playthrough. All I came here for is one specific pokemon of interest:

 Gunther (Geodude M); Lv. 4

 

Item: None

Moves: Tackle

When planning my party for this playthrough, I wanted to use pokemon that I didn't typically use in Johto. But a lot of those pokemon unfortunately turned out to have some common weaknesses, so I needed a good pokemon to counteract some of those. Preferably one I haven't used yet in this series. Technically, I did use a Geodude briefly in Yellow version, but he wasn't part of my final party. In celebration of being able to do trade evolutions, I wanted part of my team to also include some trade evolutions that I opted not to include in my gen 1 playthroughs. 

And it turns out Geodude was the right choice because, going forward, this guy would prove to be my secret weapon in every gym for quite a while. Truly an MVP. Johto is a region MADE for Geodude.

After catching Gunther, I left Dark Cave and continued marching onward to Violet City.

Normally, I would head straight to the gym here to keep myself from getting too overleveled, but I decided to go through Sprout Tower first because there was one more permanent team member I wanted to pick up.

I entered Sprout Tower in search of my next teammate:

 Somnium (Gastly M); Lv. 3

 

Item: None

Moves: Hypnosis, Lick

After climbing Sprout Tower and claiming my HM for Flash, the next target was the gym.

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

 

My Team:

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

 Totalleon (Totodile M); Lv. 11

 

Item: None

Moves: Scratch, Leer, Rage

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 Seer (Spearow M); Lv. 11

 

Item: None

Moves: Peck, Growl, Leer, Fury Attack

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 Gunther (Geodude M); Lv. 11

 

Item: None

Moves: Tackle, Harden, Rock Throw

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Somnium (Gastly M); Lv. 10

 

Item: None

Moves: Hypnosis, Lick, Spite

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

Vs. Violet Gym Leader: Falkner

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Pidgey; Lv. 7

Knowing Flakner's entire team knew Mud Slap, I decided not to open up with Geodude and instead try to take out his Pidgey with my fiercer Spearow.

               

               

Although I had pretty garbage luck with Fury Attack missing and frequently only hitting twice. Still, I was able to get through with Spearow on top.

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

Pidgeotto; Lv. 9

Falkner's signature pokemon has always been bizarre to me. It's a severely underleveled Pidgeotto. Comparing this to Brock who was earlier in his own game than Falkner is here, it's bizarre that his stronget pokemon is only level 9 yet is in an evolved state. A lot of people like to joke about how this is impossible, but, believe it or not, you can legitimately obtain a Pidgeotto at level 9 in Viridian Forest in Pokemon Yellow. However, if that were done then this Pidgeotto wouldn't know Tackle... Unless you clear Pokemon Stadium 2's gym leader castle. In that case, there actually is a move relearner service where you would be able to teach your Pidgeotto from yellow the Tackle it missed out on. From there, a little bit of TM's and move deleters and you actually can recreate Falkner's "illegal" Pidgeotto entirely legitimately! Why would you go through all of this effort? I dunno, but it's doable!

               

               

Anyway, needless to say, this Pidgeotto took out Seer like nothing.

               

               

I figured that, since Somnium wouldn't be of much help in this fight given that his only attacking move was lick which doesn't affect normal types, I'd send him out to put Pidgeotto to sleep. Unfortunately, I underestimated this pokemon's strength and was taken out in one hit by Gust.

               

               

Gunther was able to do some decent damage with Rock Throw, but Mud Slap did a lot more damage to me than I expected. After a couple of Mud Slaps, there wasn't much more Gunther was able to do unfortunately. He did some pretty significant damage to this Pidgeotto, though, so his contributions were great!

               

               

Lastly came the final showdown between Totalleon and Pidgeotto. This battle was actually surprisingly close because Gust was dealing a lot of damage. I didn't have room to deal build up Rage, so I just went out with a flurry of scratches. Thanks to Gunther's Rock Throw, Totalleon was able to deal the final hit!

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

With my entire team's help, I was able to defeat Falkner and earn the Zephyrbadge!

[Aura]

After clearing the Violet gym, there's not really too much between there and the next gym. Azalea Town is just a hop, skip and a jump away but before we head there, I would need to head back over to route 31 to pick up a handy little toolkit.

  

Bellsprout is a great HM user for this generation, being able to learn both Cut and Flash which is a surprisingly rare trait only shared by a select few pokemon. I also could have used Paras for this purpose and, if I'm not mistaken, Oddish can fulfill this purpose as well. But, Bellsprout was always the one I gravitated toward, mostly because I liked to make a quick trip through what little of Dark Cave you can explore at the moment. I don't believe I'm missing much by passing on exploring the cave at the moment, however. Again, this playthrough is more of a cleanup operation than anything else.

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Route 32

Moving onward, route 32 didn't house anything too noteworthy aside from being, oddly enough, probably the longest single route in the game? 

I did pick up the PokeGear number for Fisher Ralph, though, as I couldn't recall whether or not I'd caught Qwilfish in the previous playthrough. If I can knock any of these swarm encounters out of the way during this Silver playthrough, you can bet your ass I'm gonna do it!

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Union Cave

Next up was Union Cave. Again, there really wasn't much to do talk about here. 

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Route 33

On the other side of Union cave is Route 33. While 32 may be the largest route in the game, I'm pretty sure this is the smallest. Consisting of a single NPC, a single berry tree, and a tiny patch of grass that isn't even required to walk through, there's no real reason to spend any time here. It's tiny, but it's certainly not the shortest route in the series. We'll know that when we see it.

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Azalea Town

And we've now arrived in Azalea Town! When you first get here, the gym is blocked off by a Team Rocket grunt just like Saffron City in gen 1, and you're going to have to deal with a Rocket subplot to kick them out of the area. To do that, you're gonna have to check in with the town's main attraction: Kurt.

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Slowpoke Well

Slowpoke Well is where you have to deal with Team Rocket. There's just a couple of grunts hanging out here cutting tails off of slowpoke to sell at high prices. 

The boss of this area is just a grunt with a single Koffing. Granted, said Koffing is level 14 which was pretty high compared to the rest of the grunts in the area, but he's easily dealt with, finally freeing up Kurt and, more importantly, the gym.

I should mention that, sometime during this, the egg I retrieved from Elm's aide in Violet City hatched and I brought it back to get an Everstone from Elm. This will be important because I actually intend to use this item for once as I've found it's actually quite nice to get a particularly strong move a bit earlier than normal on one of my pokemon. In case you're unaware, the Everstone prevents a pokemon from evolving. While you can simply press B every time a pokemon tries to evolve, this item skips the middle man and just makes the process a lot easier to deal with.

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

Azalea Gym

Just like Falkner's gym, this one is pretty straight-foward. Nothing is too dangerous here, though Bug Catcher Benny's Beedrill can actually pack a punch this early on if you underestimate it.

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

 

My team:

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

 Totalleon (Totodile M); Lv. 15

 

Item: None

Moves: Scratch, Leer, Rage, Water Gun

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

 Seer (Spearow M); Lv. 15

 

Item: None

Moves: Peck, Growl, Leer, Fury Attack

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

 Gunthur (Geodude M); Lv. 15

 

Item: None

Moves: Tackle, Harden, Rock Throw, Mud Slap

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

 Somnium (Gastly M); Lv. 15

 

Item: None

Moves: Hypnosis, Lick, Spite, Mean Look

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

Vs. Azalea Gym Leader Bugsy

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

Metapod; Lv. 14

It's easy to forget that Bugsy's Metapod and Kakuna can actually fight back. I usually associate them with free exp since they typically only know Harden.

               

               

I decided to open up the battle with Somnium. This is a good choice against Bugsy's first pokemon because Metapod's only harming move is tackle, which doesn't affect the ghost-type. All it can really do is harden and string shot, taking advantage of my low-power lick to stall me out and cripple my speed. This part certainly wasn't planned out very well, but there wasn't much to worry about here. My team was pretty well-equipped.

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

Kakuna; Lv. 14

               

               

Once again, there was practically nothing this Kakuna could do to my Gastly. As long as gastly stayed in, he could only do minimal damage against me and didn't even have the option of poison to fall back on since poison-type pokemon are immune to poison.

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

Scyther; Lv. 16

Of course, the star of Bugsy's show is his Scyther. This thing is actually really powerful for this early on and it definitely offsets her otherwise really weak team. You also really don't want to underestimate its Fury Cutter. It starts out weak, but quickly builds up damage each consecutive turn it hits.

               

               

My plan here was to hopefully paralyze this scyther before it would be able to build up too much power for its Fury Cutter. By paralyzing it, I'd be able to prevent this thing from sweeping my entire team. Unfortunately, my efforts were in vain as I wasn't able to get a paralyze off of my barrage of licks before Scyther took Somnium down with a few Fury Cutters.

               

               

Since I didn't get to paralyze it, my next best bet was to send Gunthur out to hoepfully get a quick kill with Rock Throw. After a couple of misses on my end, Scyther was able to build up a scary amount of damage on my Geodude, but with one more hit to go, I was finally able to take this beast out in a single hit thanks to its quad-weakness to rock.

Once again, I'd have to say that Gunthur proved to be the MVP of this gym battle! 

Bugsy wasn't too tough, but with a little bad luck, things with his Scyther can get real ugly real fast. Basically, you either take him out quickly or live to watch your entire team be mercilessly swept by a sword-slinging madman. With the Hive Badge now under my name, it was time to head head on through Ilex Forest.

[Aura]

As you try to leave Azaelia Town, you're met with a familiar face.

Vs. Rival Silver

Silver's battle is actually pretty tough here. And if you're not careful, he can really catch you off guard.

Gastly; Lv. 12

Part of what makes Silver's early battles difficult is his annoying choice of pokemon. His Gastly loves to put you to sleep with hypnosis and drain the PP for your moves with Spite. It can't actually do much to you since its only harming move is Lick, but it's still annoying to deal with.

                    

                    

The pokemon at the front of my party just happened to be Somnium, so this was a fun little mirror match. Even though Somnium was higher level, this mirror match was more so determined by who could get the first hypnosis to land. Being faster, I did have the advantage, but my hypnosis missed while his hit, forcing me to switch out.

                    

                    

There didn't seem to be any better switch than Seer since, unlike Somnium, Seer literally can't be touched by Gastly. All it took was a couple of pecks to take him down.

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

Zubat; Lv. 14

                    

                    

Out of the pot and into the oven. This Zubat is just as annoying if not worse than Gastly. It loves to confuse you with Supersonic then flinch hax you with Bite. And between confusion and flinching, Seer just couldn't take the pressure.

                    

                    

Thankfully, I still had good ol' Gunthur to rely on. I hit myself in confusion again, but was able to land a solid Rock Throw and take him out.

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

Bayleef, Lv. 16

                    

                    

There wasn't much Gunthur could hope to accomplish with this interaction, so I immediately switched out. (Keep in mind, as I said before, I play on Set mode which means I don't get a free switch in preparation for the next pokemon. I find that this makes the defensive aspect of pokemon types all the more useful. This is why you don't see me automatically switching to a pokemon that's at an advantage)

                    

                    

I switched back into Somnium who, while still asleep, was still capable of tanking whatever grass attacks Bayleef could dish out thanks, again, to his poison typing. I used an awakening  and then proceeded to land a hypnosis. It was a close call, too, as Razor Leaf has a high crit chance. If any of those moves had been a crit, it would have been over for Gunthur.

With bayleef asleep, I took advantage of every turn to lick its health away. Before long, though, Bayleef had woken up and finally taken out my Gastly.

                    

                    

Thankfully for this matchup, Totalleon was at a bit of an advantage given that Bayleef had been beaten up a bit in its sleep. All it took was a little scratching to take care of the wall. With that, the second rival battle has been officially completed.

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

Goldenrod City

 

The path to Goldenrod was relatively uneventful, although Totalleon did evolve! My first order of business once I reached Goldenrod was to get to the National Park as soon as possible. After all, I didn't want to miss the Bug Catching Contest! Unforuntately, I mistakenly thought the contest was held on Sundays when it was actually held on Saturday, which meant I had just missed it. That's fine, because it's also available on Tues and Thurs. It's very important to do these Bug Catching contests, though, because there is actually no other way to get Sun Stones which are needed to evolve certain pokemon. I'll come back for it come Tuesday to be sure! Unlike Azalea Town, the National Park is in an easily accessible location in Johto so getting to it is never too difficult. 

After being disappointed by the National Park, I returned to Goldenrod to explore the many important places. First thing's first, I grabbed a bike from the bike shop and then made my way down to the Department Store to buy an Ice Punch TM for Totalleon! This is going to be his strongest move for a while and it's also great for coverage as well as a more-than-viable option for taking out some of the more difficult late-game pokemon. While it's no Ice Beam, it's still a really good move to be getting unlimited access to so early in the game and these elemental punches really help avoid that awkward middle area of Pokemon games where your moves aren't really strong enough to compensate for the higher stats you have to overcome. This is definitely something I will always praise gen 2 for!

After that, I disappeared into the Radio tower to verify that I lost the lottery (does anybody ever actually win this thing? I swear I've never even gotten so much as one number to match!) and get my Radio Card!

There's not much else to say, so... off to the gym!

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

Goldenrod Gym

What a cute little gym, huh?

The Goldenrod Gym is perhaps among the most infamous in terms of difficulty. I think the difficulty is a little blown out of proportion by people with bad memories of when they were stupid kids, but this gym still shouldn't be taken lightly. There is still a valid reason a certain pokemon from this gym still haunts the nightmares of every child who grew up with this game.

Beauty Samantha, the one on the right, actually proved to be much more of a challenge than I expected. Her Meowth are both decently leveled at 16 and their bite is a forced to be reckoned with. I actually had to leave to heal after this fight because she'd managed to take down both Gunthur and Seer due to their sheer speed and flinching. 

That said, I do want to take a moment to appreciate just how cute Meowth's sprite is in this game! Just look at the little guy!

None of the other trainers were particularly notable, so on to leader herself.

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

 

My Team:

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

 Totalleon (Croconaw M); Lv. 19

 

Item: None

Moves: Scratch, Ice Punch, Rage, Water Gun

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

 Seer (Spearow M); Lv. 18

 

Item: None

Moves: Peck, Growl, Leer, Fury Attack

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

 Gunthur (Geodude M); Lv. 19

 

Item: None

Moves: Tackle, Defense Curl, Rock Throw, Magnitude

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

 Somnium (Gastly M); Lv. 19

 

Item: None

Moves: Hypnosis, Lick, Curse, Mean Look

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

Vs. Goldenrod Gym Leader Whitney

Whitney actually only has two pokemon, so her team doesn't seem too rough at first, but then you realize exactly what that entails.

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

Clefairy; Lv. 18

Whitney's Clefairy could either be the easiest or worst thing ever depending on your luck. Her Double Slap could never connect or only hit for two times, and her metronome could always turn into useless moves. On the contrary, it can also be unstoppable. A 5-hit Double Slap can do a ton of damage no matter what. Additionally, although Clefairy is more of a special wall, its physical stats aren't totally abandoned like in Chansey's case. 

                    

                    

Knowing what was coming up ahead of time, I decided to lead with Seer as he was porbably not going to be of much use against the next pokemon.  I just used a few Fury Attacks and again was met with a lot of bad luck. Clefairy just kept hanging onto a little bit more health before being healed by Whitney. It felt like I was in a constant state of needing just one more hit!

Eventually, though, Seer was defeated and I had to switch things up.

                    

                    

Totalleon was my next bet. With a simple scratch, I was able to take the rest of Clefairy's health away and I had a plan to counteract her ace.

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

Miltank; Lv. 20

This is the infamous monster of the Goldenrod gym. Miltank is a beast at this point in the game. And if you're not prepared, you can expect to get bowled over quite litierally. When Miltank isn't tearing through your defenses with Rollout, it's healing itself with Milk Drink.

                    

                    

My answer to this issue at first seemed the only logical next step. When she used rollout, she was guaranteed to use it again the next turn. So, once I got her locked into rollout, I began using rage. This strategy ultimately proved absolutely useless here because the rollout just built up too quickly. Rage wasn't able to build up enough damage in time before Croconaw went down. This proved especially fruitless when, after K.O.ing my pokemon, the Miltank simply used Milk Drink to heal off the damage I'd just dle. 

                    

                    

My next strategy was also pretty simple. I'd use Somnium's hypnosis to interrupt Rollout, then afflict Miltank with curse to widdle away its HP, then switch to Gunthur and finish the job. I was actually able to pull this off surprisingly effortlessly.

                    

                    

At this point, it was just a battle of endurance. Thankfully, Miltank remained asleep for quite a while while it repeatedly got afflicted by curse. All I had to do was outlast its rollout, using my own Magnitude to take it out. In hindsight, I probably would have had a better experience with this battle had I taught Mud Slap to either Seer or Totalleon instead of Guthur whom I didn't realize would learn Magnitude right around the corner, but them's the brakes!

I'm gonna say that, though Gunthur was a key player, that the MVP for this battle was actually Somnium, who was able to get the hypnosis that kept Miltank down long enough to take out, along with the curse to help Gunthur widdle away his HP.

After making Whitney cry and waiting for her to calm down, I retrieved the Plain Badge and it was time to move on and leave this infamous gym behind! And with that, we're also caught up to the present once again! Hopefully the systems don't go down again and we can continue going forward one gym at a time without having to rely on my memory to fill in the gaps and none of this multiple posts a day stuff.

[Aura]

From Goldenrod to Ecruteak is another pretty quick trip. Though first we'll have to visit a house near the gym in order to pick up a Squirtbottle to make the trip possible.

Along the way, I revisted the National Park. Since it's Tuesday, I was able to try a Bug Catching Contest!

National Park -- Bug Catching Contest

The rules of the game are pretty simple. Each pokemon you catch is given a point value based on its rarity, current HP, current status, and huge bonus points for a shiny. You only get 30 real-world minutes and 20 park balls, which have the catch rate of a Pokeball, to catch pokemon. The main attraction to this minigame are that you can catch pokemon otherwise unobtainable. These are Butterfree and Beedrill, along with caterpie/weedle and metapod/kakuna depending on your version, and the infamous Scyther and Pinsir. This minigame seems to be this game's answer to the Safari Zone from Red and Blue. However, instead of not having a pokemon, you're allowed to bring one pokemon with you to do your catching. The game is up if the time limit runs out, you run out of pokeballs, or your partner pokemon faints. You can only hold onto one caught pokemon at a time and if you catch a better one, you can swap it out. The second place prize is an Everstone while the first place prize is a Sun Stone! The consolation prize is just a berry, so aim to win! The best strategy is to go for a Scyther or Pinsir and just chuck Pokeballs at it at full health.

Here, I caught a Scyther at full health by putting it to sleep with Hypnosis from Somnium. Unfortunately, since it was asleep, that's a deduction on points and I was beaten out by a Butterfree. I feel like an Everstone is kind of a lame prize because it's arguably more useless than a berry given that Prof. Elm already gives you one and I can't imagine needing two of these things at once. But, I suppose if you want to raise two different pokemon it's nice to have a renewable option. 

Anyway, I had good reason to put this Scyther to sleep, though, because I wanted to make sure I caught it! It may be pretty clear by now, but... 

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

 Cross (Scyther F); Lv. 14

 

Item: None

Moves: Quick Attack, Leer, Focus Energy, Pursuit

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

This Scyther is going to be a permanent member of my team! Ever since I was a kid, Scizor has been my favorite pokemon to come out of Gen 2 and that still holds true today. Due to it being a trade evolution, I rarely find the opportunity to make it happen, though, and now I have that chance! I'm gonna let him stay a Scyther for a little while, though, because I want to do all my trade evolutions at one time and I also don't want him fully evolved way before the rest of my team. By making this decision, I will likely be missing out on Metal Claw, but by the point I decide to evolve him, I should have the TM for Steel Wing which is stronger anyway.

After the Bug Catching Contest, I went back inside the park to look around. You can get some nice items here including the TM for Dig which I promptly taught to Totalleon. Until he gets Earthquake, this will help him deal with Electric types sent out to counter him.

Route 36

Back on track, here on Route 36 to the east side of National Park, I battled a few trainers and Seer evolved!

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

 Seer (Fearow M); Lv. 20

 

Item: None

Moves: Peck, Growl, Leer, Fury Attack

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

In addition, this is the first place where we can catch another version exclusive!

  

Vulpix is a really cute pokemon and I definitely love its Silver sprite. Vulpix will always be one of my favorite pokemon designs in series history!

 Now that we have arrived at the mysterious tree with the Squirtbottle, we can finally deal with Sudowoodo! 

I've always found Sudowoodo to have a very memorable design. Something about his design is just really silly and I always remember it being really interesting that he's designed to look like a grass-type despite actually being a rock. 

I did catch this thing in a Great Ball, as I always do with these boss pokemon, but it's not going to be doing much.

Ecruteak City

With Sudowoodo out of the way, I made my way to Ecruteak. Once again, I decided to make a quick pit stop before taking on the gym. This time, I headed to the west because there are a couple more pokemon of interest...

On route 38, there are two pokemon I have my sight set on.

  

The first of these is the Silver exclusive Meowth. This will be needed for the pokedex in Gold.

As for the second, remember my little rant about the lack of electric options in Gold? If you don't want to use Mareep, then you pretty much have one other option for your electric-type.

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

 Magnanimus (Magnemite); Lv. 16

 

Item: None

Moves: Tackle, Thundershock, Supersonic, SonicBoom

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

I'm not taking this option with gritted teeth, though. Magnemite is not a bad electric type by any means. His steel type, while giving him an extra weakness and further vulnerability to ground, it offers many, many resistances including a quad-resistance to steel AND flying. Steel is never a bad second type for a pokemon. I had an interest in using Magnemite because, even though it is a Gen 1 pokemon, it was drastically affected by Gen 2's mechanics more than any other Gen 1 pokemon  given that its own typing changed with the addition of the steel type. Where it was originally much better at tanking special attacks due to its high special stat, now it specializes in special attack and decent physical defense and highly defensive typing making it a great switch-in option--Just make sure your opponent doesn't have Earthquake or you're done for.

The downside to Magnemite in this gen is that it really suffers in moveset options without a TM for Thunderbolt. Just like Voltorb, it can't learn Thunderpunch. Thankfully, unlike Voltorb, it does come with Thundershock but we're gonna have to rely on this move for quite a while. 

It's also worth noting that every Magnemite has a 2% chance of holding a Metal Coat which just so happens to be the item needed to evolve Scyther. Otherwise, you don't get access to Metal Coat until Kanto. So it might not be a bad idea to catch any of these guys you see if you really want to evolve your Scyther or Onix ASAP. 

Finally, with our team at 6 pokemon, it was time to take on the gym.

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

Ecruteak Gym

Ecruteak Gym isn't much of a challenge at all. The teams here are all predictable as everyone uses Gastly or Haunter. Their curse can get pretty annoying, especially if they hit you with Mean Look first. If they haven't trapped you, switch out as soon as they use Curse or you'll lose a lot of health every turn. Meal Look will trap your pokemon so that it cannot flee however, which means you won't be free from the curse before you, so switch while you can! This is the first gym with an actual puzzle involved, though. There is an invisible path through the dark pit. The trick to remember is to use the trainers as markers. They're each standing at the edge of their section of the bridge. So if you stand in front of one, then walk left or right so that you're lined up with the tile in front of the next one, you should be able to walk north until you're in their sights. Then, you rinse and repeat until you're there. (Keep in mind, for the sake of this puzzle, the gym leader also counts as a trainer). 

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

 

My Team:

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

 Totalleon (Croconaw); Lv. 20

 

Item: None

Moves: Dig, Ice Punch, Rage, Water Gun

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

 Seer (Fearow M); Lv. 20

 

Item: None

Moves: Peck, Growl, Leer, Fury Attack

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

 Gunthur (Geodude M); Lv. 22

 

Item: None

Moves: Selfdestruct, Defense Curl, Rock Throw, Magnitude

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

 Somnium (Gastly M); Lv. 20

 

Moves: Hypnosis, Lick, Curse, Mean Look

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

 Cross (Scyther F); Lv. 18

 

Moves: Quick Attack, Leer, Focus Energy, Pursuit

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

 Magnanimus (Magnemite); Lv. 18

 

Moves: Tackle, Thundershock, Supersonic, SonicBoom

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

Vs. Ecruteak Gym Leader: Morty

Morty is a really annoying gym leader. His entire team his designed around stalling you out by putting you to sleep and using spite to drain the PP of any offensive moves you have.

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

Gastly; Lv. 21

                    

                    

I opened up with Cross, mainly because I wanted her to gain some Exp so he could catch up with the rest of the team. Although Pursuit is not a bad way to deal with these early pokemon. Unfortunately, Scyther lacks the special attack to really do much with Pursuit even with the super effective damage. Again, I swear they forgot they made Dark a special type when designing these moves and movesets. Regardless, Cross was able to take out Gastly no problem, but got Cursed along the way.

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

Haunter; Lv. 21

                    

                    

Since Cross was cursed, I had no choice but to switch out. I didn't wanna get trapped in that curse, so I took the opportunity to switch.

                    

                    

If he wouldn't go for Mean Look, then I anticipated a Shadow Ball. So, I switched to Seer whose normal type makes it immune to Ghost attacks. It used Hypnosis and put Fearow to sleep. I decided to use my only awakening to wake it up, but it got a curse up. I didn't want to switch out again because he'd likely just put the next pokemon to sleep, so I used Peck to weaken this guy a bit. Predictably enough, he put Fearow to sleep once again and now I had no choice but to switch back to Cross.

                    

                    

Cross' Pursuit wasn't doing much to Haunter, but thanks to Seer's peck and its own curse, I was able to take it out. 

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

Gengar; Lv. 25

                    

                    

Mortly really caught me off guard by sending his Gengar out early. Of course, being Lv. 25, this thing outsped me and used Hypnosis. With Cross being unable to do anything, I switched her out of there.

                    

                    

I switched to Magnanimus mistakenly thinking it knew Thunder Wave. However, all I had to lean on here was Supersonic. During my switch, Gengar had been baited into using Dream Eater, which is a psychic attack that damages the opponent and heals the user, but only works when the foe is asleep. His strategy is clear from here. Gengar used hypnosis again but missed, giving me the chance to confuse it. I tried to deal some damage with Thundershock but it barely did anything. Thankfully, it hurt itself in confusion. There was no sense in me keeping Magnanimus out given its lack of ability to damage the opponent, so I switched again.

                    

                    

I sent out Gunthur for an easy kill, but this was a bit of a risky move as Gengar could easily take me out with hypnosis and dream eater. I crossed my fingers and he hurt himself in confusion. I used Magnitude and got Magnitude 6 which didn't quite take him out. It attacked through confusion this time and used hypnosis but missed! This was perhaps the luckiest gym battle I've had so far and it could've ended very badly if that wasn't the case. Now all I needed was another Magnitude to take it out.

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

Haunter; Lv. 23

                    

                    

It was too early to celebrate as Morty still had another trick up his sleeve! His final pokemon wasn't actually that big of a threat, though. It's lower level than his Gengar and I could easily take it out with another Magnitude.

I wasn't aware at the time of gameplay, but looking at his team now, his second Haunter doesn't know Curse or Hypnosis. As a matter of fact, nothing on Morty's team even knows Shadow Ball! It kinda makes me wonder if he was originally supposed to give you a TM for Mean Look instead, as that move is far more prevalent in his battle and much more useful for his strategies. 

Regardless, after defeating Morty I was now in ownership of the Fog Badge and the TM for Shadow Ball which I didn't hesitate to teach to Somnium. While it wouldn't be there permanently, it's nice to know an offensive Ghost-type move that isn't Lick.

For this gym, I'd definitely have to say the MVP this time around was Magnanimus. Sure, Gunthur did all the heavy hitting, but he couldn't have possibly gotten past Gengar without Magnanimus' Supersonic and Gengar is by far the biggest threat on Morty's team.

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

[Aura]

Before we jump the gun and start heading for Cianwood, there's a few things we're gonna have to do here in Ecruteak first.

Burned Tower

Our first stop is the burned tower. As soon as we enter this place, we're ambushed by yet another rival battle!

Vs. Rival #3

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

Haunter; Lv. 20

                    

                    

Cross happened to be in the front this time. While Cross wouldn't be my first choice to deal with Haunter, she certainly wouldn't be the last. Combining her pursuit along with Haunter's self-harming Curse, I was able to take this haunter out just as easily as all its predecessors in the gym. 

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

Magnemite; Lv. 18

                    

                    

In response to my flying type, he chose to send out his Electric-type Magnemite as a counter. This probably wasn't the best move though since I'd obviously be switching due to Curse anyway.

                    

                    

Of course, Gunthur was the obvious choice as its ground type makes it immune to Thundershock. One quick Magnitude and it's down.

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

Bayleef; Lv. 22

                    

                    

Once again, he went for targeting my weakness and once again, this was pretty predictable.

                    

                    

I actually expected this to turn out better than it did, though. Turns out I underestimated Bayleef's strength. Despite being resisted, its Razor Leaf still took out over half my health! The only way to get any milage out of Somnium was to let it go down by its own hands with Curse. This would at least ensure more damage than Shadow Ball likely would have caused.

                    

                    

I decided to take a bit of a risk here and send out Totalleon. I hoped that Ice Punch in conjunction with the damage from Curse would be enough to take Bayleef out. Unfortunately, it hung on, but thankfully the razor leaf wasn't as devastating as I'd anticipated. I was able to get in another Ice Punch to take it down.

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

Zubat; Lv. 20

Lastly was his Zubat. Honestly, for someone as repulsed by weak pokemon, I'm shocked this guy has the patience to raise a pokemon like Zubat in the first place. I'm not too worried, though, because Zubat is just as much of a joke as it looks.

                    

                    

It did get a supersonic off, causing me to hit myself in confusion, but a couple Ice Punches was enough to take it out.

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

And with that, Rival #3 was clear.

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

Exploring further into the Burned Tower made me realize that you actually do need Rock Smash to get further. I do have one preferred Rock Smash user, but in order to get him in Silver version we're going to need to jump through a few extra hoops and a little bit of luck--that's right, we're off to the Game Corner.

I haven't really talked much about the Game Corner. I'm really not much of a fan of the one in Gen 1 because the slots are your only option. But this one in gen 2 offers the slots, if that's your preference, along with a new game: Card Flip! And it's here that we're gonna be testing our luck, and maybe cheating a bit with our time travel skills. You can actually buy 500 coins for 10,000P. That's great but our target is 700. In gen 1, I'd probably just shell out the cash to buy all the coins we need, but I actually wanted to cover an interesting strategy I picked up on while poking around on Bulbapedia.

So, this game is very basic. There is a full deck of cards labelled with four different pokemon with a number 1-6. Your job is to guess the species, the number, or the species and the number. The more specific your guess, the higher the payout. This payout does not increase if the odds are less in the group you're selecting. So make sure every option in your choice guess is available. It takes 3 coins to play each round. Because of this, the maximum payout is 72 coins. That's not quite as much compared to the jackpot at the slots, but thanks to a very basic strategy we're going to apply, this payout is a lot more consistent and a lot more likely to net you a profit. That strategy is so simple you may not even believe me at first: Just aim for the highest payout every time. Always guess a specific pokemon and number and mash A until it get selected. It doesn't matter which and don't fall for gambler's fallacy. The cards aren't stacked at all and there's no predicting which card will be pulled. It's all luck, but that doesn't mean we can't manipulate the numbers in our favor.

You see, the deck doesn't get shuffled. Once a card is pulled, that card will never be pulled from the list and it will be erased from the board. Be careful, because you can accidentally bet on a card that has already been pulled if you select a blank tile. Don't just mindlessly mash A after you've won!  The game until all 24 cards are dealt. Every time a round is played, one of the 12 lights on the left side of the board will light up. Once all 12 are lit, you can play one more game before the cards are shuffled and the numbers return to the board.

At the start of a round, two cards are dealt and you choose one to play and the other gets discarded. The card chosen, top or bottom, obviously doesn't matter since you don't know which one is which anyway. Next, you place your bet. And the best bet is any specific card. Even though you're more likely to win with the other choices, by running the numbers you'll find that this is statistically the most consistent option as anything else won't deal out nearly enough coins. Even if you aim for a x6 multiplier each time, it'll still take you 4 wins to even match the payout of a single x24; and x6 is the least likely option. You may be tempted to fall for the trap of betting on a pair of Pokemon; Pikachu and Jigglypuff or Poliwag and Oddish. Don't make this mistake. You would have to win every round in order to even match a single win. Keep in mind that it's 3 coins to even play a round. If you win, you've gained 6. Great! That's a net gain of 3 coins! Now, if you wanna play again... guess where those three coins are going?

Don't overcomplicate things. Just go for the highest numbers. It may be discouraging because you will be losing more frequently, but your odds improve every round. Staying at it, the numbers play out that among all 12 rounds, you have around a little over a 30% chance of winning at least once. If that number doesn't seem encouraging, those are the same odds of missing with a Thunder or Blizzard! You're not going to win every game, and your newfound gambling addiction just might cause you to go into a deficit, but them's the brakes. Thankfully, we have a bit of an ethereal gift to help us out. Maybe it's cheating, but there's always the option to quit between games or even rounds and, I dunno... save the game? It's healthy to take breaks every now and then, right?

The strategy I like to play is very simple and to the point. Save the game before you start. Just keep on betting on single cards. Don't get discouraged if you go several rounds without winning, remember that the further in you get, the higher your odds of winning until the game is over and the cards are shuffled. Uh-oh, didn't win? You could keep playing, you can actually go through 2 whole sets of 12 rounds before you can no longer make a profit off of a single victory. Like I said, don't underestimate the payout of these wins. It more than offsets the cost of your losses. But, if you didn't make a profit at all in the set, why bother continue playing when you can just reset? With a 30% chance of winning somewhere in the game, this shouldn't take long at all. Just keep going. Did you finally win? Say hello to your minimum 36 coin profit. But don't stop there! Unless you just finished the final round, keep playing! The odds only get better until the cards shuffle. You're much more likely to win again in the next couple rounds than you are in the early rounds in the next game, spend your coins wisely! Once the final round is played, then exit the game, save, rinse and repeat. Now you've got a much more consistent coin-printing machine!

This isn't totally useful for my goal here, but when it comes to the prizes in the Celadon Game Corner, I'm gonna need all the help I can get!

  

Anyway, all this roundabout discussion was for a simple 700-coin prize, Sandshrew. This is unfortunately the only way to get this little guy in Silver version, but he's very useful for getting around early on. 

Route 32

This also reminds me that, knowing how tedious grinding for some of the more expensive prizes is gonna get, it may not be a bad idea to hop back over to route 32 to pick up a certain other friend to help us out in our time of need. 

  

Ekans is Silver's counterpart to Sandshrew. We're gonna wanna pick him up here just like we did with Weedle to minimize our grinding.

Also... remember how I said Ice Punch and Thundershock going to carry us until we could get a better move in Kanto? ...Yeah... turns out I was wrong in that. The Blizzard and Thunder TMs are actually available right here in the Goldenrod Game Corner. This actually makes Electrode look like a much more viable option, but also reminds me exactly why I've never used Magnemite before... sigh... Looks like we're gonna gamble ourselves into another hole!

Needless to say, I'm not going to be grinding out until 110000 coins to get both Blizzard and Thunder right now. But I did grind up to 1600 in this one session. I think it'll be reasonable to return here after every gym badge, buy another 500 coins and start gambling away again.

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

I realized very quickly that I did a lot of this in a very roundabout and unnecessarily convoluted way. I was trying to do several things at once and got everything all mixed up. Like I said, there was a lot that needed to get done before we could even head off toward the next gym. I returned to Ecruteak and picked up the Surf HM by defeating the kimono girls in the dancing hall and speaking to the genteman in the audience. I taught it to Totalleon. This is important for progression, but it's also important for the final pokemon we're going to be catching for HM usage. I don't know why I didn't pick this up sooner as Surf is a great move for any water-type to have.

Route 35

Just north of Goldenrod City on Route 35, there's this little pond where we can find our next little friend while surfing!

  

Psyduck is a is a fantastic asset for exploration. He can use five different HM's that are all very necessary in tandem for exploring certain caves throughout Johto. Strength, Flash, Waterfall, and Whirlpool. These are especially important to have on one pokemon if you intend to explore the Whirl Islands with as little headache as possible. Not using Psyduck to do this in Gold was a huge mistake I'm never making again. Coupled with Sandshrew, I don't think I have any more need for Bellsprout as an HM-user going forward. Still, on the off-chance I need a cut user who can also use Flash, it'll be nice to keep it around.

Burned Tower B1F

Returning to Ecruteak, I taught my Sandshrew Rock Smash, Cut, and Headbutt and with this I was able to get into the basement of the burned tower where I was finally unable to release the Legendary Beasts. By the end of the game, I'd like to use the Master Ball to catch at least one of these three pokemon so that I wouldn't have to deal with the headache of catching it in Gold. Worst case scenario, I can just trade a Master Ball over which may turn out to be the preferrable option. 

While I'm not going to go out of my way to catch the three of these pokemon, if I happen to see one roaming around, I'll definitely toss an ultra ball at it to see if lady luck is on my side. The odds are stacked against you, but there's technically a possibility of catching them at full health with any pokeball. Trying to attack them while you're underlevel, though, will pretty much guarantee their fleeing as the beasts have a 100% flee rate and are significantly faster than you. 

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

Routes 38 & 39

With all that out of the way, we can finally move on to the next city. Even though this isn't the longest route of the game, I would argue Route 38 starts the stretch of this game that is comparable to the treck to Fuscia City in gen 1. It's broken up a bit more making it somewhat more tolerable, but as a downside it also includes a water route.

Olivine City

At the south end of Route 29, there is Olivine City! Though there is a gym here, walking into town you're ambushed by your rival. He complains that the gym leader is tending to a sick pokemon at the lighthouse and suggests you go there before leaving, thankfully without a battle. Looks like we're gonna be making a quick stop here as well.

Olivine Lighthouse

The lighthouse is a very simple dungeon, it's just floor after floor of trainers with no wild pokemon to deal with, which is actually a welcome change. I suppose you could say that, in a way, this is the GS counterpart to Silph Co. 

At the top, we find a surprisingly serene scene where we meet the Olivine Gym Leader, Jasmine. Jasmine is my favorite Gen 2 gym leader and possibly my favorite in the series! I know she's a bit of a trope and there isn't much to say about her, but I've always had a thing for the really soft-spoken, kind-hearted characters that still hold a strong will to make things right. Jasmine is a big part of why I praise the characters in this gen. The fact that she's willing to suspend her role as a gym leader just to watch after a sick pokemon is really sweet.

That said, Jasmine requests you to bring medicine from a pharmacy in Cianwood City to help the Ampharos she's tending to heal. She can't leave it due to its condition, so she's relying on you!

Interestingly, unused data in the game suggests that this pharmacy was originally supposed to be located in Ecruteak. Considering the placement of this story event, the location of Olivine City, and the fact that Jasmine was treated as the 5th gym leader in Pokemon Puzzle Challenge, it seems likely that the Olivine Gym was originally intended to be the 5th gym immediately following Morty. Perhaps they decided the story would flow better if you had to travel to Cianwood and get Fly instead of having you backtrack across the same route you just came from? When I think of it from that perspective, this sequence of events does kind of make more sense, so I can see why they relocated the pharmacy. Still, they could have had Jasmine give you the HM to fly to Ecruteak and adjusted things so that the Plainbadge allowed you to use fly and Jasmine's badge allowed you to use Strength. Maybe they didn't want you to be able to get Fly until after defeating the Cianwood gym? But then that leads to so many pacing issues... yeah, the more you think about it, this whole story event just gets weirder and weirder. 

Of course, before you leave Olivine City, make sure to pick up the Strength HM as we're going to need it if we want a quick way back!

Route 40

Whatever the case, with our mission in toe, our trek continues onto route 40. Here, we set sail for Cianwood City! 

Route 41

And if you thought Kanto's water routes were disorienting, you've got another thing coming when surfing through the Whirl Islands. If you're just passing through, it's not too much of an issue, you can just avoid the whole thing by sticking to the sides. But when searching for all the trainers, I find myself getting turned around a lot. It doesn't look so bad in this zoomed out view, but when the camera is much more zoomed in and you're approaching the islands from various positions, it is very easy to get disoriented since every single island looks exactly the same. And when actually exploring the caves? Good grief!

Thankfully, we can't do much with these islands just yet. We have a sick pokemon to save! Along the way, though, Somnium did evolve and so tried Gunthur, but as I've foreshadowed before, we're not going to be letting Gunthur evolve just yet.

Cianwood City

Here in Cianwood City, there isn't much to be said. Just a gym and the pharmacy in question along with a few NPC houses. After picking up the Secret Potion from the pharmacy, we're gonna need a faster way to get back! To get Fly, we're gonna need the Storm Badge from the gym leader Chuck!

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

Cianwood Gym

Compared to Ecruteak, the Cianwood gym was a total joke. My team was much better prepared than I honestly expected. Sure, I had a lot of pokemon that could theoretically counter fighting types, but none of them could deal any serious damage with their current moves. None of the trainers proved to be a challenge.

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

 

My Team:

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

 Totalleon (Croconaw M); Lv. 25

 

Item: None

Moves: Dig, Ice Punch, Bite, Surf

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

 Seer (Fearow M); Lv. 26

 

Item: None

Moves: Peck, Pursuit, Leer, Fury Attack

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

 Gunthur (Geodude M); Lv. 25*

 

Item: None

Moves: Selfdestruct, Defense Curl, Rock Throw, Magnitude

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

 Somnium (Haunter M); Lv. 26

 

Item: None

Moves: Hypnosis, Shadow Ball, Night Shade, Mean Look

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

 Cross (Scyther F); Lv. 26

 

Item: None

Moves: Quick Attack, False Swipe, Focus Energy, Pursuit

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

 Magnanimus (Magnemite); Lv. 25

 

Item: Quick Claw 

Moves: Thunder Wave, Thundershock, Supersonic, Sonicboom

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

*Gunthur was left in the PC during the gym battle because Strength is needed to navigate the gym.

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

Cianwood Gym Leader Chuck

Chuck is a total joke of a gym leader. He only has 2 pokemon against your full team. They're kind of high level, but nothing to be worried about.

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

Primeape; Lv. 27

Chuck's Primeape actually only consists of Normal and Fighting offensive moves. We have a ghost type on our team. You know what that means~

                    

                    

Sure enough, opening up with a Mean Look from Somnium, this pokemon could do nothing against my onslaught of Night Shade, turning this 5 v 2 to a 5 v 1.

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

Poliwrath; Lv. 30

Certainly a bizarre choice for a fighting-type gym leader's ace pokemon, but this one can be a bit of a threat. If Chuck had more than one other pokemon, this thing would actually be threatening, but since all you have to do is inflict it with a status ailment and dogpile on it, it is completely defenseless. The most threatening thing it can do is use hypnosis to put your pokemon to sleep, but most of the time it'll just go for using Dynamicpunch to confuse you.

                    

                    

I opened up trying to put him to sleep with Somnium's own hypnosis, which I was able to do successfully.

                    

                    

I decided that Magnanimus wasn't going to get much use if I didn't take this opportunity, so I switched him in to hopefully get a few thundershocks before it woke up, but Chuck caught me off guard with a Full Heal on my switch. I tried to use Thunder Wave to paralyze it, but it outsped me and got a lucky hit with Dynamic Punch. There was no way Magnaniums was surviving that blow.

                    

                    

After that, I just sent out Seer and pecked him to death. There wasn't much else I really needed to do. It went down in just a few turns. 

And with that, the Storm Badge was mine for the taking! And now we can get Fly and return to Olivine to help out Jasmine!

[Aura]

Since we've already gone through Glitter Lighthouse, all that's left is climbing the Lighthouse once again to deliver the Secretpotion, then it's off to the Olivine gym! it was a lot to get to Cianwood gym, but this one comes immediately after!

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

Olivine Gym

Olivine gym has absolutely no trainers since unlocking it is a quest in and of itself. You could perhaps consider the trainers inside Glitter Lighthouse as the gym trainers here. This gym always stood out to me for this reason. Additionally, it's interesting to note that Janine confirms that the Steel-type is recently discovered and hasn't simply always existed. This implies that Magnemite as a species somehow evolved to obtain their steel type within the 3-year game between gens 1 and 2. It is also stated by an NPC in Olivine that Jasmine was once a gym leader who specialized in the rock type. This is supported by the fact that her ace pokemon, Steelix, evolves from Onix, a Rock-type instead of a Steel-type.

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

 

My Team:

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

 Totalleon (Croconaw M); Lv. 25

 

Item: None

Moves: Dig, Ice Punch, Bite, Surf

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

 Seer (Fearow M); Lv. 26

 

Item: None

Moves: Fly, Pursuit, Leer, Fury Attack

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

 Gunthur (Geodude M); Lv. 25

 

Item: None

Moves: Selfdestruct, Defense Curl, Rock Throw, Magnitude

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

 Somnium (Haunter M); Lv. 26

 

Item: None

Moves: Hypnosis, Shadow Ball, Night Shade, Mean Look

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

 Cross (Scyther F); Lv. 26

 

Item: None

Moves: Quick Attack, False Swipe, Focus Energy, Pursuit

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

 Magnanimus (Magnemite); Lv. 25

 

Item: Quick Claw 

Moves: Thunder Wave, Thundershock, Supersonic, Sonicboom

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

Vs. Olivine Gym Leader Jasmine

Jasmine looks weak on the surface, but don't be fooled. Her pokemon are much tougher than Chuck's! Don't let up or you'll regret it!

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

Magnemite; Lv. 30

                    

                         

Right off the bat, she leads with a magnemite. This meant it was the perfect time to take advantage of one of the new Magnemite's biggest weaknesses. Gunthur's magnitude of any strength would likely be enough to take this down with ease.

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

To counter my Geodude, Jasmine went with the only logical choice on her team, to send out her ace pokemon to deal with the threat.

Steelix; Lv. 35

                    

                         

This thing is actually pretty tough. Granted, I was playing a bit sloppy and with some adjustments to my strategy, I probably would have had an easier time. Perhaps I hadn't noticed the level and assumed I'd be able to take a hit, but I left my Level 25 Geodude stay in against this titan. Needless to say, the decision didn't end well for me. With a single iron tail to the face, Gunthur was knocked to the bench.

                    

                    

The next obvious choice was to take advantage of Steelix's ground type using Totalleon. However, Steelix had a surprising trick up its sleeve. It used Sunny Day! This is a bizarre move for Steelix to know given that it increases the power of fire-type attacks, which it's weak to. However, it seems clear its true intention is to weaken water attacks. I was still able to deal significant enough damage to warrant keeping Totalleon in until Jasmine used a hyper potion to heal her Steelix up. There wasn't much else I could do but try and hold out for the sunlight to fade, but she took me out with multiple not-very-effective Iron Tails. These Iron Tails had me convinced that Steelix must not know any ground-type moves.

                    

                    

After connecting these dots, I decided to exploit her lack of ground attacks and sent out Somnium. Night Shade was able to deal most of the damage needed, but again, Somnium was taken down pretty easily and Steelix still wasn't down. I was actually starting to get nervous because I wasn't certain my remaining pokemon would be capable of handling this fight, but I had to keep going!

                    

                    

I sent out Seer next. While Pursuit was not-very-effective, I'd hoped that perhaps the special aspect of the attack would work around Steelix's high defense, but I was dead wrong. Pursuit barely did a thing and my HP was done for.

                    

                    

I was getting really desperate at this point and sent out Magnanimus. Steelix's HP seemed low enough that even a Sonic Boom would be enough to blow it over and, wouldn't you know it? That's exactly what it took.

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

Magnemite; Lv. 30

Had I not opened with Geodude, this likely would have been the second opponent in this battle. 

                    

                    

She tried to go for more of a strategic approach, opting to use Thunder Wave and Supersonic instead of just going for Sonic Boom a lot like I did, but I managed to take it down myself. With a  couple of Sonic Booms away, I was able to defeat her magnemite!

I think it's only fair to give the MVP slot this time to Magnanimus, the one who was able to deal the finishing blow when the rest of the team struggled to and perservered through her final pokemon as well!

And now, after that short post, the Mineral Badge is ours! Next Stop: Mahogany Town!

[Aura]

Between gyms and story events, I've been gambling my life away at the game corner. Each time I revisted, I'd by another 500 coins for 100,000P. This is a big investment and covers only a fraction of the cost. I cannot stress enough how absurdly expensive the prizes get in the game corner and how locking certain pokemon's only access to elemental attacks behind it is a terrible idea! 

After buying my 500 coins, I'd go to Card Flip and save scum my way up. I'd keep playing until I lose three times in a row, very unlikely but it does happen surprisingly regularly. By the time I've made a 500-coin profit, I'd switch to playing until I lose three more times period. I'd usually be watching YouTube videos while doing this absent-mindedly, but it took literal hours of grinding. As I said before, I definitely remember why I never use Magnemite or Voltorb in these games.

I'm mentioning this now because I was finally able to save up enough coins to purchase TM 25 -- Thunderbolt! My original plan was to continue playing until I got Blizzard for Totalleon, but I have gotten so sick of Card Flip that I never want to see that stupid board again. While I could go to the slots for a change of pace, you actually have to pay attention while playing the slots and it's still rigged against you. Even if you time everything perfectly to get two sevens lined up in the middle every time, the last slot will not even subtly just choose its own result. Sometimes you'll get the seven and then a bunch of Golem will arbitrarily fall from the top of the screen and knock the slot further along. All that for a payout of only 100 coins as opposed to the 72 from Card Flip. So no, Card Flip is the only viable option here. (to be fair, that's 100 coins for a minimum payment of 3, so arguably it's a 97-coin profit while in card-flip you're reasonably only hoping for a single win each round which, factoring in the losses across the entire game, means a net profit of only 36 coins. Still, with how much more time and attention the slots require, I find them to be far more frustrating.)

Needless to say, Ice Punch is just going to have to do on Totalleon. I don't really plan to use him much in Stadium anyway.

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

Moving on, I didn't even bother poking my head into Mt. Mortar. I have no interest in exploring such a tedious dungeon on a second playthrough. Besides, I wouldn't even be able to explore this dungeon thoroughly until I can use Waterfall.

Mahogany Town

When you first arrive in Mahogany Town, the gym is once again blocked off. This time, you need to do yet another story event in order to advance the plot. A mysterious signal is being broadcast over the radio that seems to be causing an uproar at the Lake of Rage!

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

Lake of Rage

Heading North to the Lake of Rage, you'll find a rampaging Gyarados of a strange coloration--that's right, a shiny pokemon!

Despite being a huge "fuck you" to anyone who legitimately encountered and raised a shiny Magikarp--seriously, if you find a shiny Magikarp, it's more valuable as a Magikarp. Don't evolve it!--I absolutely love the idea of throwing a scripted shiny encounter into the game's story. This is a great way to teach the player about the Shiny pokemon mechanic so that, when they encounter one randomly in the wild, they'll recognize immediately that they've encountered something really special. Perhaps something like this would have been better placed earlier in the game, but at the same time, if you'd encountered something like this early on, you likely would assume it wasn't anything too special and that you'd find others like it going forward. This approach makes the Gyarados feel like something legendary and one-of-a-kind, so encountering another shiny after the fact would only be that much more exciting! I can imagine so much doubt on the playground when some kid says they found another Shiny pokemon back in the day. I can also imagine all sorts of rumors surrounding what actually made shinies special when it's really just a fancy coat of paint.

Had I not chosen Totodile as my starter, I likely would have used this pokemon on my team. Who doesn't start their save file wanting to use this thing? While I could still make room for it on my team as a physical attacker, I have a greater interest in using the rest of my chosen team. Sorry, Gyarados! There's always Crystal version! That said, I did catch this thing, of course. It never feels right to do these one-of-a-kind encounters without catching the pokemon.

After defeating or capturing the Gyarados, you're rewarded with one of its Red Scales which can be traded in with Mr. Pokemon for an Exp Share! When you reach the shores, you're met by none other than the Dragon Champion himself--Lance!

He informs you of the suspicious broadcast if you weren't aware of it yet and requests your aid in his investigation. Once again, I absolutely love this part of the game as it really shows so much more of Lance's personality far better than he ever got the chance in Gen 1.

When you catch up to him in a shady souvenier shop in Mahogany Town, you catch him using his Dragonite's Hyper Beam to hit a Rocket Grunt during a rather harsh interrogation! He then proceeds to lead you to a hidden staircase in the building that leads to the Rocket HQ!

Rocket Hideout B1F

Together with Lance, you raid the hideout, a cool touch to this hideout is that it was originally a ninja hideout and consequently is filled with traps that were never disarmed. Avoiding the traps along with Rocket's own security system, you shut down their security and raid your way further in.

You come across a generator that must be the source of the broadcast, but it's blocked off by a gate requiring a password! You must move on if you want to get through.

You battle your way through the next floor, interrogating grunts on the password until you make your way to the deepest part of the hideout. Here, you're met by your rival who evidently tried to battle Lance only to be floored in the process. Since he'd already been defeated, he can't challenge you, but he asks you about him before confessing that he was defeated easily. I really like this moment as I like to think it shows your rival opening up a bit more. I've always considered this one of the turning points of his character where he starts to realize the value of the things he's been told this whole time about treating pokemon with love and care. Though his knee-jerk reaction, as demonstrated here, is still to shrug it off, calling Lance a bleeding heart before running off in a salty mood--he still has some development to do...

Anyway, behind a different gate using a different password, you're met with your first Rocket Executive!

This guy... is a total joke. I took him out without a second thought just mashing A. He was just a glorified grunt.

Upon defeating him, you learn the password to the generator room and immediately go back to unlock it only to be ambushed once again. This time by a female executive and what I've always assumed to be the very same Executive you battled earlier, but HGSS seems to disappointingly confirm is just another grunt. Teaming up with Lance, of course leaving the harder battle to you, you battle the two trainers.

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

Vs. Rocket Executive F

This executive is a bit of a bigger threat than the previous one, but not by much. It's a surprise encounter so they have to have some leniency with her considering you don't get the chance to visit the Pokemon Center if you head straight to the Generator reasonably assuming that executive to have been the boss of the area. 

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

Arbok; Lv. 23

I actually wanted to take a brief moment to talk about Arbok's design as this is the first time he shows up in the game unless you've raised an Ekans yourself. The design on Arbok's hood is very different here than in Gen 1. The idea behind this was that Arbok from different regions had different designs on their hoods. Arbok from Johto would have this one:

 

While Arbok from kanto look like this:

  

This will be the source of a minor complaint I have for future games, but for now I think this is a really cool idea! The only oddity is that, if an Arbok is traded from RBY to GSC, its markings will spontaneously change due to the technical limitations. But the implications of this make a lot of sense and I really wish this was a concept they'd bring back with future appearances of Arbok.

Anyway, aside from that little tangent, this arbok wasn't too tough.

                    

                    

I had Cross leading the party at this point, which wasn't the most favorable matchup. But it would work out for the best! I'd set up a Focus Energy and it used Wrap to trap me into battle. With Focus energy set up, I just pounded it into submission with Quick Attack.

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

Murkrow; Lv. 25

Her obvious next choice was to send out her ace, Murkrow, to counter Cross. 

                    

                    

Cross was able to get off a little bit of damage, but of course wouldn't be able to outlast Murkrow's peck, so I tried to switch him out with Magnanimus for a safe switch. Unfortunately, I didn't account for the possibility that this Murkrow would know Pursuit which, of course it did. Predicting my switch, the Murkrow took Cross out.

                    

                    

It was finally time to put Magnanimus' new move to the test and Thunder came through, taking Murkrow out without much of a problem.

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

Gloom; Lv. 23

Her last pokemon was Gloom. Nothing too special to say here.

                    

                    

Of course, Magnanimus wouldn't be able to do much here, so I used Thunder Wave to paralyze it before switching to Seer.

                    

                    

This Gloom's best hope was to try and put me to sleep with Sleep powder and maybe throw some acid at me, but thanks to paralysis, it wasn't able to get Sleep Powder off and I was able to take it out with Fly.

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

After defeating the Executive, the rockets blast off again! Now it's time to shut down the generator by fainting the pokemon powering it. This moment actually has a bit of a bittersweet feeling tied to it after Lance expresses feeling guilty for having to hurt the pokemon because they did nothing wrong and were just being used by evil people. This feeling always hung with me and this is probably one of the strongest moments to capture the game's theme of the importance of treating pokemon with kindness. One by one, you battle the electrode and they all have a tendency to just explode on contact. It's definitely one of the most memorable parts of the series to me on an emotional level. In Gold, I did manage to rescue one of these by catching it for the Pokedex, but the first two still exploded on me which almost made the one I caught a little more special in that regard.

Once the generator is shut down, the broadcast is stopped and Lance departs. It's now time to take on the next gym!

Along the way to the gym leader, Magnanimus evolved into a Magneton! This is just Magnanimus' time for character development!

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

 Magnanimus (Magneton); Lv. 30

 

Item: Quick Claw 

Moves: Thunder Wave, Thunder, Supersonic, Sonicboom

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

Mahogany Gym

Mahogany Gym is a pretty basic ice puzzle, though this is actually their debut! Despite gen 1 having an entire ice-themed cave, there were no ice tiles like this! When you step on an ice tile, you will continue sliding forward until you hit a wall or standard tile. Knowing this, you have to strategically navigate your way through the gym. It's actually a pretty fun mechanic! As usual, the trainers here are nothing to sneeze at. They mostly have Dewgong and Swinub, so a good electric or water type is all you'll really be wanting. Totalleon and Magnanimus were at the front for the majority of this gym.

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

 

My Team:

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

 Totalleon (Croconaw M); Lv. 29

 

Item: Mystic Water 

Moves: Dig, Ice Punch, Bite, Surf

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

 Seer (Fearow M); Lv. 28

 

Item: None

Moves: Fly, Pursuit, Leer, Fury Attack

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

 Gunthur (Geodude M); Lv. 28

 

Item: Soft Sand 

Moves: Moves: Selfdestruct, Defense Curl*, Rock Throw, Magnitude

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

 Somnium (Haunter M); Lv. 29

 

Item: None

Moves: Hypnosis, Shadow Ball, Night Shade, Mean Look

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

 Cross (Scyther F); Lv. 28

 

Item: None

Moves: Quick Attack, False Swipe, Focus Energy, Pursuit

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

 Magnanimus (Magneton); Lv. 30

 

Item: Quick Claw 

Moves: Thunder Wave, Thunder, Supersonic, Sonicboom

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

*Between last time and this time, Gunthur tried to learn Harden, but this is a really bizarre choice. While Harden and Defense Curl have the exact same effect, increasing the user's defense by one stage and increasing the power of Rollout by the same amount as each other, Harden has less PP than Defense Curl making it an inferior move. I'm not sure why they would have Geodude learn Defense Curl first and Harden later when nobody would teach it Harden if they knew that fact. The only reason someone would teach their Geodude Harden over Defense Curl is if they just (very reasonably) assumed that Harden was a straight upgrade given that it was learned later in its learnset. It really is bizarre but, needless to say, I didn't teach him Harden. I just wanted to put a little warning here in case anyone happens to be playing along.

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

If I had easier access to trading, I would probably have gone out of my way to evolve Cross before this gym so that she could be more useful. Without the Flying type, she'd have no weakness to Ice and if I could get her to level 30, she'd be able to use a STAB Metal Claw which would be more than welcome in this gym! Although you only get a guaranteed Metal Coat around the time of Kanto, you can actually get Metal Coat as early as Ecruteak City by catching a lucky Magnemite--careful though, Magnemite has only a 5% chance of holding a metal coat, and a 10% chance of fleeing every turn! In the Rocket HQ, you can get a TM for Thief. With this, you can steal the held items of any opposing pokemon as long as the user isn't holding an item already. This means that Metal Coat will be much easier to obtain at this point in the game! However, under my circumstances with a game that's very loose and that I don't want to risk damaging too much, I'm only going to be doing all my trading in one session after the rest of my team is fully evolved and I've caught all the Silver version exclusives.

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

Vs. Mahogany Gym Leader Pryce

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

Seel; Lv. 27

                    

                    

I opened up against Pryce's Seel with Magnanimus. Even though Thunder missed initially, there wasn't much this Seel could do to a Steel Type like Magneton, so it went down pretty easily.

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

Piloswine; Lv. 31

Once again, the only answer to my lead was Pryce's ace, Piloswine.

                    

                    

Needless to say, Thunder wasn't going to do a whole lot to this thing. Anticipating some sort of ground-type move, I switched to Seer.

                    

                    

Instead, Piloswine decided to use Mist, shielding it from stat modifiers. I figured Seer would be able to take at least one hit from this thing, so I went for a Fury Attack which missed and was punished with a powerful blizzard that took Seer out in one shot.

                    

                    

From here, the rest of the battle would be smooth sailing. I had an easy way to get Totalleon out and drowned it out with Surf.

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

Dewgong; Lv. 29

                    

                    

While Totalleon probably could have taken this thing out on his own, or at least done some decent damage, I figured there probably wasn't much it could do to me and decided it would be best to just finish the battle quickly.

                    

                    

Once again, with Magnanimus out, there wasn't much at all Dewgong could do and all I had to do was hit with a single Thunder to take it down and win myself the Glacier Badge! I don't think anyone would be more fitting of the title MVP than Magnanimus for this chapter. It really pulled through!

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

Pryce has always just kinda... been there. I don't really have any opinions of him other than that he never really left an impression on me. I do recall his story in the anime being really heart-touching, but in the games they don't do much with him at all. He doesn't even get involved with the Broadcast incident! Whatever the case, we now had 7 badges and it was time to head toward our "final" one!

[Aura]

Immediately after leaving the Mahogany Gym, you're contacted by Prof. Elm about yet another mysterious radio signal. This time, it's a broadcast directly from Team Rocket themselves seeking out their leader Giovanni! There's only one logical conclusion to where this broadcast is coming from, so we hop on Seer and fly our way to the Goldenrod Radio tower.

Radio Tower

I compared Glitter Lighthouse to Silph Co. before, but this is clearly the more obvious parallel as Team Rocket has seized the Radio Tower and taken complete control. Dialogue among the NPC's even implies that this has been going on for quite some, at least before the player first sets foot inside the tower. But now the Rockets have made their presence known!

 

Fighting your way up the tower, you're met with yet another Executive at the top, disguised as the Director! His 6-pokemon team consists of almost exclusively Lv. 30 Koffing with a single Lv. 32 Weezing. All but one of his Koffing know Selfdestruct and his Weezing knows explosion. While the selfdestructing can be a little overwhelming, if you can take them out before their health gets low, they don't seem too trigger-happy with it. I was able to take most of them out with Totalleon's Dig, but toward the end I had to switch to Somnium who took a little bit longer to take them out but is immune or resistant to everything these things seemed able to do.

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

 Totalleon (Feraligatr); Lv. 30

  

Item: Mystic Water 

Moves: Dig, Ice Punch, Bite, Surf

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

This battle proved to be the workout Totalleon needed because it pushed him up to Level 30 which is enough for it to evolve, and I gotta say, this Silver sprite looks way cooler than his sprite in Gold!

I actually forgot just how early this thing evolves. Level 30 feels a little too soon to have a fully evolved pokemon, but with this, all the pokemon on my team are fully evolved except for the trade evolutions which I will do as soon as Gunthur learns Earthquake at level 36. It's still gonna be a while before we get there, but, if my previous playthrough was anything to go by, we should reach that milestone on our way to Victory Road. Quite fitting timing, I would say.

After defeating the executive, he gives us the basement key, allowing access to a storage room in the Goldenrod underground, and tells us that's where they're keeping the Director. This is actually a pretty dark story moment as an NPC in the radio tower blocks your passage and tells you you can't go any higher by the director's orders before claiming he's been acting strangely recently. Considering it would reasonably take the player multiple days to get to this point in the story from the first point you can talk to that NPC, it implies that the Director at the Radio Tower was an imposter and that the actual Director has been locked up in this storage area this whole time. (This is further backed up by the fact that, once the Director is rescued, the upper floors of the tower are open to the public and the NPC who once blocked your path tells you he's returned to normal.)

Goldenrod Underground [Backroom]

Back on topic, before we can do anything in this basement, we're met with, you guessed it, our rival once again. This time he's ready to take us on at full force!

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

Rival #4

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

Golbat; Lv. 30

                    

                    

Starting out, I happened to have Cross in the front of the party because I was trying to get her to Level 30 ASAP so that she could finally get a decent STAB move to hold her over until she evolves. Right now, she's just relying on Focus Energy and Quick Attack which isn't getting her far. Case and point, this battle, where all she could really do was hope for crits. Thanks to Mean Look, I didn't even have the luxury of switching out so that he could at least gain exp from this battle.

                    

                    

After that embarrassing showcase, I sent out the obvious counter, Magnanimus. A simple Thunder was all it took to zap Golbat out of the air.

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

Magnemite; Lv. 28

                    

                    

His answer was to send out his own Magnemite and hope for confusion to save him. Which of course I had my own counter to.

                    

                    

As with each of these battles, a simple Magnitude is all it took to clear this guy out.

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

Meganium; Lv. 32

                    

                    

Obviously, I couldn't keep Gunthur out against a Meganium.

                    

                    

I switched to Seer, though in hindsight Somnium may have been a better switch here. I really underestimated Meganium's physical bulk. I knew I was in for some problems when it took my first turn of fly to set up Reflect. Thankfully, Fly is a good move for stalling for time and Reflect only lasts for five turns. The first two Fly only hit for about a quarter of its health. Meganium's Body Slam was doing a number on Seer's fragile defenses. Still, Seer was able to hang in there and by the time the third Fly hit, Reflect had faded and with it, the rest of Meganium's HP.

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

Haunter; Lv. 30

                    

                    

I'm not sure what he was trying to accomplish by sending Haunter out here as there was next to nothing this pokemon could do against a Fearow aside from Curse. Fearow's HP was already low so surely his other pokemon would have been a better choice. But, I opened with pursuit, he opened with mean look. By the time he got Curse out, his HP was low enough to where he knocked himself out. GG.

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

Sneasel; Lv. 32

Lastly, we have Sneasel. His big new pokemon which he seems to have a lot of confidence in considering it's equal in level to his starter. This is a pokemon the rival impliedly stole from an NPC on Cianwood City who explains that he came and bullied him into giving away his strongest pokemon. This NPC actually gives you his second strongest, Shuckle, to take care of in case the rival returned for another. Again, just more unnecessary but really cool world-building details that make Johto something really memorable to me.

Sneasel is one of those bizarre pokemon that has the potential to be good but suffers from an awkward typing that doesn't really fit its stats. Special attack is its single lowest stat and, as we all know at this point, dark and ice type attacks are special. I say Sneasel's design is further evidence that Dark was a physical type as some point in development.

                    

                    

I seemed to recall Sneasel not really knowing any Ice-type moves, so I thought I had a safe switch here.

                    

                    

Unfortunately, I made a bit of an err in judgement. Perhaps insultingly so. Sneasel's special attack may be low, but it's nowhere near low enough that it can't deal with a Geodude's low special defense no problem. It may not have had a super-effective move, but Faint Attack was enough to deal heavy damage to Gunthur. 

                    

                    

Needless to say, I wasn't leaving Gunthur to die, so I swapped him out with Magnanimus. At this point, there really wasn't anything for poor Sneasel to do but sit back and watch his attacks damage me a few points at a time until one of my Thunders hit. Surprisingly, it was able to survive a hit, but that was nothing a quick SonicBoom couldn't handle!

And with that, Rival #4 was defeated. The Rival finally begins to question his moral compass and begins to open his heart to the idea that maybe stealing pokemon by brute force isn't the best approach. I do want to say that I actually really appreciate the touch that, as opposed to Blue where he's always one step ahead of you, in this game it feels like you're always one step ahead of your rival. While he's focusing so much on getting stronger pokemon to defeat you, you're training with your favorites and the power gap between the two of you only grows. That's not to say that he's a total push over, his team can actually be pretty threatening, especially going forward from this point, but I love that he's constantly just struggling to keep up with youdue to battling for the wrong reasons.

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

Goldenrod Underground [Backroom]

After defeating the rival, you're treated to a wonderful little puzzle... there are three switches that you press. Each switch opens and closes different shudders depending on the order you flip the switches in. As far as I can tell, there is absolutely no rhyme or reason to which switches operate which shudders. This puzzle always comes down to trial and error for me. At the end of the room, there's an emergency switch which you would assume opens all the shudders, but it really just opens most of them and leaves the item in the south-western corner locked away. This item is just a Smoke Ball which allows free escape from any wild pokemon encounter. It can be nice if you have a slow pokemon that often can't run from wild encounters, but I rarely run from any wild pokemon that's strong enough to keep me from running anyway, so I don't really think it's worth the headache trying to get. If you want the item, though, you should be able to find the answer somewhere on the internet. I seem to recall finding it in my Gold playthrough, but I can't seem to find the solution again.

As you continue through the basement, you'll finally rescue the director from the grunts guarding him. He'll thank you with a card key for the shudders in the radio tower. Now you can finally go back to the radio tower and unlock those pesky shudders that blocked your way before!

Radio Tower [3F]

Back in the radio tower, we can continue fighting our way to the top! 

 

Along the way, we encounter yet another Executive Male. This one is the self-proclaimed "Rocket Fortress," though his golbat really isn't anything to scoff at. It's level 36 which, at this point in the game, is pretty damn high. Still, I'm no stranger to clearing the entire Elite four with a pokemon that's 20 levels below. This Golbad is vulnerable to all the same typical Golbat weaknessses. A quick Thunder did the trick!

 

The next floor up, we're met with the Rocket Executive F from Rocket HQ in Mahogany Town. Her team really isn't super significantly different from what we've already fought, though her Gloom is now evolved into a Vileplume and her team is entirely level 32. My team has grown a little bit since our last battle as well, and Cross was now much better equipped to deal with battle now that she'd learned Wing Attack!

Overall, this battle went pretty much the same it did the previous time. I like the idea that, in preparation for this battle, she gave her Gloom a Leaf Stone to evolve it. It just goes to show just how much of a threat Team Rocket recognizes you as.

 

The final opponent here in the Radio Tower is an executive who seems to have taken charge. I actually kind of like the fact that Team Rocket doesn't really have a named leader this time around. In Giovanni's absence, nobody feels like they deserve the honor of taking that role. Instead, it seems like the team shares leadership among its executives. Although this particular executive does seem to be the strongest of them all, which makes sense since he's the last one you face.

His team isn't anything too special, though he taunts you by using a Houndour and Houndoom of his own. These pokemon are only available to the player once they reach Kanto. It's a sad truth as I would have loved to use Houndour on my team. Maybe we'll get another chance later on...

After defeating all of Team Rocket, the team is disbanded once again. Team Rocket is no more.

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

With Rocket out of the way, we can start moving on toward Blackthorn City!

Route 44

On Route 44 East of Mahogany, there is a fisher at the northern part of the route by the name of Wilton. I got this guy's pokegear number because he, too, has a Swarm that I didn't pick up in Gold. Any of these rare pokemon I can catch before transferring to Stadium is welcome! Although Remoraid is perhaps the least important swarm to worry about since it actually is obtainable at 10% with a Super Rod, even if no swarm is going on. It's more common during a swarm, but it's not actually all that necessary considering we're going to be looking for pokemon at 5%.

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

Ice Path

Ice Path is at the other end of the route and, believe it or not, this is actually a cave that I quite enjoy! I've already expressed that I find the ice mechanics a lot of fun to work with and, to make it even more satisfying, you don't get interrupted with wild encounters on these tiles! The most annoying thing about this dungeon are the abundance of Golbat which love to confuse you and are much more likely to than their younger siblings now that they know Confuse Ray. 

  

Here, I had to make sure to pick up a Delibird before moving on. This is one of the last few Silver version exclusives we'll need to pick up before the transfer to Gold. This encounter isn't too bad to get since it's a 20% rarity on all floors. You're pretty likely to encounter this thing before you even reach the end of the dungeon.

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

Blackthorn City

After slip-sliding our way through Ice path, we've made it to Blackthorn City! All I really did here for now was stop by the Mart and pick up a handful of Ultra Balls--They'll be important for what we're gonna be doing next. Normally, I would go straight to the gym as it's open and available to us. However, there are a couple more pokemon I have my eyes set on.

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

South of Blackthorn City is the easily overlooked Route 45. This route connects directly to Route 46, where we caught our Spearow in the very beginning of the game. Back then, I said it would be a temporary party member. Well, fittingly enough, right here on Route 45, we're going to be catching its replacement.

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

 Katana (Skarmory F); Lv. 27

 

Item: None

Moves: Peck, Sand Attack, Swift, Agility

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

Skarmory is a version exclusive to Silver version. It's actually not going to learn a steel-type move for quite a while, so it's arguably not as useful as Fearow at the moment, but as a personal favorite of mine, I felt it would be a crime to do a playthrough of Silver and not try to use this thing. I realize my team is a little heavy on the Steel-types with my Magneton and plans to evolve Scyther. However, among these Steel types, I think there's enough variation and coverage between them to justify each of their presence on the team. This abundance of Steel-types is also why I chose Totalleon and Gunthur for this team, as they would be able to deal with Fire-types which are the only consistent weakness across all of these Steel-type pokemon. 

On the surface, Skarmory looks like a very offensive fast attacker, but actually, it's not quite as good at that job as Fearow. It's actually much more focused on soaking up physical hits and setting up status moves. Its physical attack isn't anything to scoff at, though! This thing sacrifices a bit of Fearow's attack power in exchange for a massive boost to its bulk, which I think more than makes up for it. 

I would like to point out that, during my search for Katana, it took me hours to find a single one. But after catching one and actually exploring the route, I found three by the time I reached the end. Fml.

  

There's also one more version exclusive I'd need to pick up here: Phanpy! It's much more common than Skarmory, but has a 50% chance of fleeing. With Somnium's Mean Look and Night Shade, it was a pretty easy catch.

I decided that, in the process of training Katana up, I'd go ahead and clear out the trainers on this route. After all, I tend to just ignore this route entirely after clearing the gym and just fly straight to Newbark Town. And let me just say, that even though I'm pretty sure the route south of Violet City is the longest in the game, this route definitely feels like it. Mainly because of the forking paths and many points of no return. You constantly have to climb down the entire route, then fly back and take another path, only to find out that conjoins with a path you already took, then fly back again. I might suggest just using a map to clear out this route. There are some pretty nice berry trees here, though, including another MysteryBerry and PrzCureBerry, though technically the latter is on route 46, it's only accessible from here.)

One more thing to note here is that Hiker Parry is another trainer willing to give you his number and inform you of a swarm. This time, it's... Marill. In Mt. Mortar... which is all the way past Mahogany Town. I'm not sure why they put this trainer here of all places, but if you're looking for a Marill, make sure to get his number!

  

While exploring this route, I got a call back from Wilton informing me of a Remoraid Swarm! With Katana on hand, I flew back and picked one up! Along the way, I also did a quick clean-up operation of the few trainers that appear at the Lake of Rage after the Gyarados event is dealt with and now, I'm finally, truly ready for the next gym!

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

 

My Team:

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

 Totalleon (Feraligatr M); Lv. 34

  

Item: Mystic Water 

Moves: Dig, Ice Punch, Bite, Surf

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

 Gunthur (Geodude M); Lv. 34

 

Item: Soft Sand 

Moves: Moves: Selfdestruct, Defense Curl, Rollout, Magnitude

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

 Somnium (Haunter M); Lv. 34

 

Item: None

Moves: Confuse Ray, Shadow Ball, Night Shade, Mean Look

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

 Cross (Scyther F); Lv. 33

 

Item: None

Moves: Quick Attack, False Swipe, Focus Energy, Wing Attack

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

 Magnanimus (Magneton); Lv. 34

 

Item: Magnet 

Moves: Thunder Wave, Thunder, Supersonic, Sonicboom

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

 Katana (Skarmory F); Lv. 31

 

Item: None

Moves: Fly, Sand Attack, Swift, Agility

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

 

Blackthorn Gym

Blackthorn Gym is actually the most unique among the gyms in Johto--and the most dangerous-looking! It has two floors. The first is filled with many platforms over a pool of molten lava. Very intense for a Pokemon gym! The second floor is a maze full of Strength Boulders and holes you can fall down through--thankfully you won't fall into the lava below, but still, very dangerous! In order to progress through the lower floor, you have to push the boulders down the holes so that they roll into the lava and create bridges you can cross. 

The gym itself is filled with multiple really tough trainers, so you really have to be prepared to fight some bulky Dragonair with the occasional water-type Horsea and Seadra mixed in. Watch your HP, because all of your opponents are going to be using Dragon Rage which will take your pokemon out instantly if it has less than 40!

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

Vs. Blackthorn Gym Leader Clair

I don't think there's really any feeling prepared for Clair. Even if you have a pokemon with strong Ice-type attacks to take out her dragons, it's not likely it'll last through her whole team unless you've done a LOT of grinding. Perhaps the toughest part about this gym is that Dragon types are resistant to Grass, Fire, Water, and Electricity, and its weaknesses, Dragon and Ice, are fairly rare types. What's more, her ace pokemon has an especially great defensive typing that leaves itself with no weakness other than Dragon itself, while thankfully removing its resistances to electric and grass. Clair is certainly no pushover and you can easily get walled by her if you don't know what you're getting into.

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

Dragonair; Lv. 37

                    

                     

My main strategy for this battle was to get Clair down to her infamous Kingdra as soon as possible. In order to do this, leading with Totalleon was the obvious choice. While his Ice Punch wasn't enough to one-shot Dragonair, it dealt a pretty big chunk to its HP and I actually got pretty lucky and the first one froze, making the first KO pretty simple! It's worth noting that I gave Totalleon a NeverMeltIce I obtained in Ice Path to increase the power of his Ice Punch further. I don't think the power boost was enough to make a difference and perhaps a better strategy would have been to give him a PrzCureBerry, 

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

Dragonair; Lv. 37

                    

                     

For the second Dragonair, it was just a matter of rinse and repeat.  This one managed to get a Thunder Wave off and paralyze Totalleon. This was followed up with a Thunderbolt that naturally took a huge chunk of HP and--hey! Wait a minute! Her Dragonair knows Thunderbolt! While technically not an illegal move, that move is only accessible in Red and Blue! Given how frequently I've complained about not having access to these moves, I would certainly know! It would have actually been pretty cool if there was a move tutor here in Blackthorn City that could teach these moves. Maybe these TM's existed in this game earlier in development before being replaced by the elemental punches?

Whatever the case, the Dragonair didn't quite take Totalleon out with Thunderbolt and I was able to attack through confusion!

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

Dragonair; Lv. 37

                    

                     

Claire had one more Dragonair at the ready and it didn't look like I was going to be getting off anymore Ice Punches. It didn't seem like I had any particularly safe switches, so I decided it was for the best to let Totalleon take one for the team. 

                    

                     

I next sent out Somnium to tame this beast. I opened up with a Mean Look to prevent it from curing its confusion by switching into Kingdra, then followed up with Confuse Ray. It managed to paralyze me with Thunder Wave in the process, but if my strategy worked as intended, that paralysis shouldn't matter. All I could really do now was spam Night Shade to rack up as much damage. Thankfully, I got the Dragonair to hurt itself a few times, allowing for Somnium to pick it off.

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

Kingdra; Lv. 40

And now for the one everybody dreads. Kingdra is certainly no joke. With its only weakness being Dragon and not a whole lot of access to Dragon-type attacks with variable damage, you're more than likely going to be unable to get a supereffective hit on this thing. And that's rough because Clair's Kingdra is really tough to boot.

                    

                     

With Somnium paralyzed, there was no way it'd be able to do anything productive if he stayed in, so I switched him out.

                    

                     

Perhaps Clair anticipated this switch because she took the opportunity to use Smokescreen, thus hindering Magnanimus right out the gate. The Smokescreen shouldn't have hurt Thunder Wave's accuracy too bad, though, and sure enough, I was able to paralyze Kingdra. Following this, I had a few turns to try and hit this thing with Thunder but due to my reduced accuracy, I couldn't land a hit before Magnanimus was wiped out.

                    

                     

Now that Kingdra was paralyzed, outspeeding it with Somnium was much more doable. So, I sent him out to use confuse it with Confuse Ray. It hit itself once, but was easily able to get rid of Somnium as well. I was down to two pokemon and things were starting to get desperate.

                    

                     

I sent out Gunthur because he definitely wouldn't be able to hold his ground against Kingdra's Surf. My best bet here was to use Selfdestruct now to get as much damage out of Gunthur as possible without risking her chance to attack through both confusion and paralysis. 

To my surprise, the attack actually did more damage than I expected and Gunthur was able to take Kingdra down with it! I was expecting to have to rely on Katana for the finishing blow, but Gunthur came through in the end! While I would love to give Totalleon the MVP this time around, I think Gunthur deserves it for this major blow! Unfortuantely, this also means I didn't get any Exp from a pretty valuable encounter. But, that's nothing to worry about!

With that, I have earned the Rising Badge! 

...or I would have. Except Clair has one last challenge for us. To go to the depths of Dragon's Den and retrieve the Dragon Fang!

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

Dragon's Den

This is it! The final showdown in Johto! The penultimate dungeon we must conquer before we're worthy to set off toward the Pokemon League of Kanto! What powerful opponents will we face? What dastardly enemies might me encounter? This intense, foreboding music must be leading up to an incredible boss fight! Will this be a rematch against Clair? Lance himself? Maybe a Legendary Pokemon?

...Oh, there's the Dragon Fang.

Seriously, there had to be much grander plans for this dungeon originally. The music here is extremely kickass. There's even a shrine in the center of the den with no entrance, ripe for all the playground rumors of the decade, I'm sure. Maybe you can come here to evolve your level 100 Dragonite! In all seriousness, there is absolutely nothing here. Even the ability to catch Dratini and Dragonair isn't unique to this place! What does it prove that I can get to the end and find the Dragon Fang when there's literally nothing in the way save for a single Whirlpool? Surely they didn't design this entire chamber just as a progress check to make sure you have the HM for Whirlpool. I'm genuinely very curious to know what the original plan for this dungeon was. 

After reaching the end of this disappointing dungeon, Clair meets us and is somehow impressed by how easily we were able to do it and finally gives us the badge and a TM for Dragonbreath. This is such a bizarre sequence of events. It's clear something bigger was supposed to happen here. Maybe a final showdown with Team Rocket or something? Perhaps this was where you were originally supposed to meet the Legendary Beasts? No matter what way I look at it, there just had to be something else here...

My theory on the matter is that this is where the Red Gyarados encounter was originally supposed to be. There is evidence that the Lake of Rage was originally supposed to be a town that featured a gym. Even in the final game, it's the only location you can fly to that isn't a town. Perhaps the original plan was that Clair would have you prove yourself by defeating the rampaging Gyarados in Dragon's Den and retrieve the Red Scale as proof. Maybe the Gyarados would have been level 40 just like her Kingdra. Maybe later on, they decided to move the encounter to earlier in the game as a Team Rocket encounter before the Radio takeover so that they could more clearly demonstrate what Team Rocket was trying to accomplish and explain why the Gyarados was rampaging. But since they'd already created the Dragon's Den, they had to use it for something! 

Well, anticlimactic or not, we have all 8 badges of Johto which means it's time to start making our way toward the Elite Four!

[Aura]

       

       

With 8 gym leaders of Johto defeated and their badges in hand, it's time to make our way to the Elite Four!

Normally, at this point I would retrieve the Master Ball from Prof. Elm and go seek out Lugia, but since I've already caught Lugia in Gold, I don't think that's totally necessary and I really don't want to deal with the headache that is the Whirl Islands again for a pokemon I may or may not even use. I usually don't leave legendaries behind, but keep in mind that this is my second playthrough. If there happens to be high demand for me to get the genuine level 40 Lugia from Silver then I might go back for it, but I can't imagine too many people would be upset if I skip out on it. Don't worry, this isn't going to be an option for me when we revisit Johto in Gen IV. 

Route 27

The journey just to get to Victory Road is quite a long one. In fact, I would argue that the path to Victory Road in this game is comparable to Victory Road itself in Red and Blue. To get there, we first have to fly back to Newbark Town and surf to the east. Of course, while we're here, we're gonna pick up our Master Ball just in case we happen to have a fateful encounter with a Legendary Beast! 

Tohjo Falls

There is a tiny cave in the middle of this route, Tohjo Falls, but this is nothing more than a progress checker to ensure that you're capable of using Waterfall in order to gain access to the rest of Route 27. On the other side of Tohjo Falls is a house where you can get a TM for Sandstorm! I normally don't care too much for such a move as it damages your own pokemon as well unless they're Steel, Ground, or Rock-type. However, that actually applies to the majority of my final team here, so I decided it was worth a shot! I taught Sandstorm to Katana.

Route 27 feeds directly into Route 26 which is the final route before the Pokemon League! There are lots of tough trainers across these routes so don't be ashamed if you feel the need to fly back to heal.

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

 Gunthur (Geodude M); Lv. 36

 

Moves: Selfdestruct, Defense Curl, Rollout, Earthquake

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

Along the way, Gunthur did finally learn Earthquake and at that point, I let it evolve into Graveller. I originally said that this would be the point where I would evolve my trade evolution pokemon, but I figured it might be for the best to hold out on that a bit longer so that I can also get a certain move for Cross. I mistakenly thought the TM for Steel Wing was on one of these two routes which is bizarre because while playing through Gold I distinctly recall wishing I could get the TM before the Elite Four... oops. If I evolve Cross now, all it'll really succeed in doing is weakening the strength of Wing Attack by removing its STAB boost. This unfortunately means that Somnium and Gunthur are going to be held back a bit here but, given that these are some of the hardest evolutions to get for many people, I don't think it's too big of a deal. 

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

 

Victory Road

After getting your badges checked by a receptionist, you're permitted entry into Victory Road. After such a long trek to get here, you might be dismayed to know you still have the entirety of Victory Road to traverse. Thankfully, though, this version of Victory Road is entirely barren compared to the one in Red and Blue. You can tell by the layout that it is indeed the same cave, but it's much more compressed and dummed down. There isn't a single regular trainer here and you don't even need HM's! For comparison, here's what Victory Road looked like in Gen 1:

 

As you can see, the dungeon is far larger in Gen 1 and far more complicated with intricate Strength puzzles and lots of tough trainers. I'm honestly surprised they didn't bump any of the trainers from the previous routes into this cave to make it some sort of a threat. But hey, at least it's a bigger threat than Dragon's Den!

Here, you can pick up the TM for Earthquake which I immediately taught to Totalleon to replace Dig. Now he can once again really take advantage of that big attack stat of his! I also taught Swagger to Magnanimus by TM here. It's much more accurate than Supersonic and comes with the added bonus of increasing the opponent's attack! Why is this a bonus? Because a pokemon hitting itself in confusion causes it to deal physical damage to itself, meaning it uses their current attack. By increasing their attack, Swagger causes them to deal more damage to themselves upon hitting themselves in confusion. This is espcailly useful against Specially-oriented pokemon with low defenses and no physical attacks to take advantage of the boosted attack themselves. Even if they can, Magnanimus' physical defenses will allow it to shrug off almost any big hit from its opponents, so there really isn't much of a downside at all.

There is a single trainer to encounter here though, and he's at the very end. I think you can guess who it is.

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

Rival #5

Once again, your Rival ambushes you, calling you a joke for challenging the pokemon league and once again asserting that he's much stronger than you because now, he's put together a team of "the strongest Pokemon"! Well, let's just see what he's got. He does have 6 pokemon, so I wonder what this mysterious new pokemon he has could possibly be!

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

Sneasel; Lv. 34

                    

                    

At the start of this battle, I happened to have Magnanimus at the front. This was the perfect chance to test out his new move, so I paralyzed Sneasel with Thunder Wave and proceeded to use Swagger. It hurt itself a few times, dealing about a third of its own health each hit. This was nice considering Thunder wasn't hitting at all. It took itself out after a few turns and all it could really do was a Quick Attack here and there.

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

Haunter; Lv. 35

                    

                    

Haunter was his next choice. I tried the same strat here, but between its own Confuse Ray and Curse, Magnanimus didn't last long.

                    

                    

I decided to switch into Totalleon here. He managed to confuse me, but I was able to attack through it and Earthquake was able to tear right through his defenses.

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

Magneton; Lv. 35

                    

                    

I decided to take a chance and stay in against Magneton. In hindsight, this was a really stupid decision because switching to Gunthur would have basically been a guaranteed free switch. (While I did have to give up a pokemon slot for an HM user to get to Victory Road, it was Somnium I chose to leave behind, not Gunthur.)

Unfortunately, or perhaps deservedly, Totalleon hit himself in confusion twice, allowing Magneton to take it down easily with Thundershocks.

                    

                    

Of course, there was no point in holding back now and I let loose with an Earthquake from Gunthur. Magneton had no chance of surviving such a hit.

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

Meganium; Lv. 38

                    

                    

Meganium was the obvious choice for him to send out next, and my response was equally obvious.

                    

                    

Razor Leaf made the switch to Katana basically free. From there, I set up Sandstorm because I was not going to underestimate this thing's bulk again. From there, Katana did get paralyzed with Body Slam, but thankfully none of her Fly attacks got interrupted. I also had Katana hold a Quick Claw, so even in her paralyzed state, she still had a chance to go first occasionally. Quick Claw on a pokemon that relies on Fly can be hit or miss. It can occasionally allow you to avoid two attacks in a row with a single fly by allowing you to go first the turn you use Fly but second the next turn because you're outsped. On the flipside, it can also cause you to miss your chance to dodge an attack by making you go second the turn you use Fly, and first the turn it lands. This basically gives the opponent a free hit. However, the unpredictability Quick Claw brings to the table also restricts the opponent's ability to predict the free setup turns Fly provides for them. While certainly not a competitively viable strategy, it's still fun to play around with.

After a back and forth, my aerial assault combined with the Sandstorm eventually overwhlemed the Meganium and knocked it out.

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

Golbat; Lv. 36

                    

                    

Golbat didn't hesitate to use Confuse Ray to basically hard-stop Katana. In case you're unaware, Paralysis combined with Confusion is one of the most disabling combination of status ailments you can be inflicted with. You have a 50% chance of hitting yourself in confusion and even after that check, you still have a 25% chance of being fully paralyzed. Beyond even that, you still have the cut speed from paralysis to worry about. And in Katana's case, in order to land Fly, she needs to pass those two checks twice or Fly will be interrupted.

Keeping Katana out was off the table, so I decided to switch.

                    

                    

With Cross, I had a very clear weakness to Golbat's Wing Attack. Thankfully, Cross has surprised me a lot throughout this playthrough with just how many hits she can take and, sure enough, she was able to take a Wing Attack, but she was also confused by a Confuse Ray. I followed up with a couple Wing Attacks of my own, then a quick attack was all it took to finish it off.

And now it's time for his last, ultimate pokemon. Who is this mysterious new team member of his that truly ties it together and forms the package of the "strongest pokemon?"

...Kadabra; Lv. 35

                    

                    

All this thing did to me was spam Future Sight, even after it was already set up. Cross only went down because she hit herself in confusion.

                    

                   

Katana was easily able to seal the deal here. Especially considering Future Sight could easily be avoided with Fly.

Needless to say, this is an embarrassing team to call a team of "the strongest pokemon." Half of his team isn't even fully evolved, though I do admit that I love the reasoning behind that. The pokemon that aren't fully evolve are ones that typically require friendship. Golbat only evolves when you've maxed out your friendship with it and Kadabra and Haunter need to be traded with a friend in order to evolve. It's a really cool touch that he struggles to evolve these pokemon because he doesn't understand the value of friendship and wants to do everything himself and hog all the glory. 

What I like about this particular battle is the rival's response to losing. He no longer just shrugs it off. In fact, the way he speaks seems to imply that he knew he'd lose before the battle even started. He finally starts to understand the value of love and compassion when training pokemon. Instead of pressing on toward the Pokemon League, he decides to go back and change his approach. Once again, this is some really cool character development for him! This won't be the last we see of him, and neither will the next time, but this is still a very memorable battle for the ages.

With this rival battle out of the way, we have finally arrived at the Pokemon League!

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

 

My Team:

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

 Totalleon (Feraligatr M); Lv. 34

 

Item: NeverMeltIce 

Moves: Earthquake, Ice Punch, Bite, Surf

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

 Gunthur (Geodude M); Lv. 36

 

Item: Soft Sand 

Moves: Selfdestruct, Defense Curl, Rollout, Earthquake

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

 Somnium (Haunter M); Lv. 36

 

Item: Spell Tag 

Moves: Confuse Ray, Shadow Ball, Night Shade, Mean Look

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

 Cross (Scyther F); Lv. 35

 

Item: None

Moves: Quick Attack, False Swipe, Focus Energy, Wing Attack

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

 Magnanimus (Magneton); Lv. 36

 

Item: Magnet 

Moves: Thunder Wave, Thunder, Swagger, Sonicboom

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

 Katana (Skarmory F); Lv. 36

 

Item: None

Moves: Fly, Sandstorm, Swift, Agility

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

Many people would take the time to grind a bit before going into challenge the Elite Four to even out the level difference a bit, but I've always headed straight in. I feel like there's something missing in the Elite Four if your pokemon aren't drastically matched in level. It takes much more strategy to win when you have to deal with opponents that are 20 levels higher than you. Especially given the lack of variety on your opponent's teams, you really have to let them have some advantages over you. This is the mindset I've had in every Pokemon game and I don't see that changing any time soon.

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

Elite Four #1: Will

Will is here solely to intimidate you. Despite being the weakest level-wise among the Elite Four, I'd definitely say he's the most difficult. His team is all about out-speeding you and overwhelming you with extremely powerful psychic attacks. If you have a Dark-type pokemon, it will be immune, but at this point in the game, Umbreon is the only Dark-type you could possibly have. This battle is rough, but if you can get past it, you should be able to get through the rest of the Elite Four with relative ease.

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

Xatu; Lv. 40

This thing was a huge pain. I had to start over several times because it just kept getting lucky crits or reducing my special defense with Psychic and consequently getting cheap kills on my pokemon. If it's not confident it can KO you quickly, it will use Confuse Ray which adds an extra layer of luck onto an already difficult battle.

                    

                    

I led with Totalleon here with the intention of saving Magnanimus for some of his later pokemon. Assuming he doesn't crit or reduce my special defense, Totalleon is able to survive two Psychics from this thing which is very significant because it's unlikely you're going to outspeed this thing with something that will also be able to take it out in a single hit. Thanks to Ice Punch, I was able to knock Xatu out in two hits. I even got a lucky freeze, so Totalleon got out of this first round with more HP than expected!

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

Exeggcutor; Lv. 41

                    

                    

When he brought out his Exeggcutor against Totalleon, I obviously assumed his intention was to hit me with a Grass-type attack for an easy KO, so I switched to Katana for what I assumed to be a free switch.

                    

                    

Unfortunately, it seemed that this thing simply didn't know any grass-type attacks because it instead went for Psychic. Thankfully, Skarmory resists Psychic due to its Steel-type, but it certainly hurt a lot worse than a SolarBeam or Giga Drain would have. Unfortunately, Katana was unable to take the assault of Psychics because of its lacking special defense.

                    

                    

I decided to go for a bit of a risk here and figured that, if I didn't want to switch into Magnanimus and have it get hit by Psychic, this would be the best opportunity to bring it out. Magnanimus would be very important for this battle because a lot of Will's team is really fast and paralyzing the opponent to cut their speed is invaluable. Unfortunately, I missed with SonicBoom, giving this Exeggcutor the chance for a solid hit on Magnanimus anyway.

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

Jynx; Lv. 41

                    

                    

Although Jynx isn't his highest-level, I'd say it's Will's most dangerous pokemon. Despite its appearance, this thing is really fast and can some really heavy hits in for free. Needless to say, paralyzing this was a top priority. Thankfully, it went for a Lovely Kiss rather than a Psychic, which gave me the opportunity to go for the paralysis. I decided to also confuse it with Swagger as well, in hopes of setting up for a free switch, but it attacked through the parafusion and hit me with a Lovely Kiss. At that point, there was no use in switching out. Even if I was able to keep Magnanimus alive, with it asleep, it wasn't going to be doing much of anything. Jynx was able to take Magnanimus out and snapped out of confusion in the process. Magnanimus did manage to wake up on the last turn and nail a Thunder, though.

                    

                    

It was now or never for Somnium. Despite being a ghost-type and supposedly having an advantage over Psychic-types, Haunter is also a poison type, making it very weak against them. Haunter really relies on out-speeding a Psychic-type in order to take it out. Since most of Will's team is extremely fast, Somnium wouldn't see much use in this battle, especially with Magnanimus knocked out earlier than expected. A quick Shadow Ball was all it took to KO what remained of Jynx after Magnanimus' Thunder.

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

Slowbro; Lv. 41

                    

                    

I was surprised to see him go for Slowbro next as there was no way this thing was going to outspeed Haunter. I took a bit of a gamble and used Confuse Ray instead of Shadow Ball. I figured Slowbro's bulk would make taking it out without a little assistance difficult, but this move was very risky as Somnium was likely the pokemon that could hit Slowbro the hardest and if this Slowbro got off a single Psychic, Somnium would go down in an instant. Thankfully, this turned out to be a good choice in the end because Slowbro hit itself in confusion three turns in a row, allowing Somnium a free kill where he otherwise would have only done about a quarter of Slowbro's health.

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

Xatu; Lv. 42

                    

                    

There was absolutely no way Somnium was outspeeding this Xatu and I had no easy switches, either. My best bet was simply to let Somnium do his best. I went for Confuse Ray but of course never had a chance to get it off.

                    

                    

My best matchup here was Totalleon. Since he'd avoided a psychic earlier, he'd be able take one hit here! The Ice Punch really helped weaken Xatu, but Totalleon could only do so much before Psychic tore through what remained of its HP. 

                    

                    

Thankfully, I still had one more pokemon that stood a chance at outspeeding this beast and Cross certainly came through! A Wing Attack from Cross proved to be enough to finish this fight once and for all!

This battle left me with some heavy casualties. Thankfully, I took the time to stock up on Revives and Full Restores before advancing.

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

Elite Four #2: Koga

As a surprise twist, Koga, the Gym Leader from Red and Blue, has moved up to the Elite Four in the three years since! This is a really cool way to show the passage of time between the games, but it's certainly not the only one!

As an Elite Four member, Koga's strategy is... to bore you into turning your game off. He really doesn't go for anything particularly productive, all he does is stall you out and waste your time while Toxic and Spikes eat away at your HP. But, if you have a single Poison or Steel-type on your team, there's pretty much nothing he can do to you but annoy you to death by spamming evasive moves like Double Team and Minimize.

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

Ariados; Lv. 40

                    

                    

You want to take Ariados out as quickly as possible. It's going to start out setting up lots of Double Teams and if you get unlucky, it will make matters worse by maxing its evasion and then Baton Passing that evasion to any pokemon of his choosing. You do not want to let this happen or it will be a nightmare to take out his next pokemon. Thankfully, Cross was able to take him out really quick with a Wing Attack and a Quick Attack.

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

Crobat; Lv. 44

Koga's response to this was to send out his biggest monster. Yes, despite his ace being a Weezing in Gen 1, he's switched over to a Crobat here!

                    

                    

Cross wasn't going to stand much of a chance here, so I switched to Magnanimus.

                    

                    

And so it began. This was likely the only time I'd ever wish I'd gone for the Lock-On Zap Cannon combo for Magnanimus because that would have made this take much less time. It turns out, Koga's Crobat doesn't even know Confuse Ray! All it could do to Magnanimus was whittle away at its health with Wing Attack. Unfortunately, there wasn't much I could do either but sit back and wait for a Thunder to hit after he'd piled on all the Double Team he could. 

Eventually, Thunder did strike it down, but it took several turns to do--I actually had to use an Ether in the middle of this battle just to keep using Thunder. Thankfully, it only took one hit with Thunder. If I'd need to hit a second time, I would have lost my mind. And if he healed with a full restore or something? Hoo boy.

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

Forretress; Lv. 43

                    

                    

What should have been an easy matchup turned into quite a pain in the ass. Forretress here is all about setting up Spikes and stalling you out with Protect while waiting for Toxic to kill you, though it turns out it actually doesn't even know Toxic itself! How odd... To make things even more amusing, this Forretress also has a near-illegal move. The only way to get a Forretress with Spikes at Lv. 43 is to evolve it exactly at Lv. 43 where Pineco learns it. Otherwise, Forretress doesn't learn Spikes until Lv. 49. 

Thankfully, while Forretress is a defensive tank, its special defense is practically nonexistent, so another Thunder is all it took to take care of it no problem.

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

Muk; Lv. 42

                    

                    

The infamous Muk from his Gen 1 team is back at full force here! But this time I've come a bit more prepared...

                    

                    

While it was in the process of setting up with Minimize, I switched to Katana and used Sandstorm! Once again, there was nothing Muk could do except cower in fear as its health slowly drained from the onslaught of sand and Katana's never-missing Swift. As a major hater of Evasion strats, I must say that this felt pretty damn good.

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

Venomoth; Lv. 41

                    

                    

The most terrifying thing this Venomoth could do to Katana was confuse it with SuperSonic and use Gust to hit it damage it slightly while it was flying. Just connecting a single Fly was enough to take Venomoth down and defeat Koga!

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

Elite Four #3: Bruno

With two new members of the Elite Four coming in to take the place of the absent ones, Bruno was bumped up to the #3 spot. His team isn't anything too special for a fighting-type specialist, but the bulk of some of his pokemon can be a little tough to get around.

Hitmontop; Lv. 42

                    

                    

I decided to open up with Somnium knowing that he would lead with a Fighting-type. I figured there'd be nothing this Hitmontop could do to me and I was kind of right, but he opened up by digging underground, so while I did make the wrong choice to start, it was an easy fix to simply switch into a good one with no downside on my end.

                    

                    

A couple of Wing Attacks was all it took to take care of Hitmontop. It did get a lucky crit on one of its Quick Attacks, but that was inconsequential in the end.

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

Onix; Lv. 43

                    

                    

It didn't take a second glance to know this was a bad matchup. Anticipating a Rock-type attack, I switched out.

                    

                    

In hindsight, switching to a Rock-type myself wasn't the brightest idea because this thing probably knew Earthquake and was more than likely to outspeed Gunthur. I was really just thinking about what would be able to take a rock-type attack and be able to hit back the next turn. Still, I against my better judgment, I stood my ground and used Earthquake only to be met with a switch?

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

Hitmonlee; Lv. 42

                    

                    

Bruno's Hitmonlee switched into my Earthquake and took some pretty heavy damage. His next move was very predictable. 

                    

                    

I switched back into Somnium to avoid his Hi Jump Kick and proceeded to Shadow Ball his Hitmonlee to death.

                    

                    

Out came Onix again. I didn't want to make the same mistake as him and switch into an Earthquake, so I went for Confuse Ray to hopefully stall out a bit. He attacked through, though, and knocked out Somnium.

                    

                    

From here, my next move was obvious. I sent out Totalleon and washed it out.

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

Hitmonchan; Lv. 42

                    

                    

While Hitmonchan did know Thunderpunch, I wasn't worried. It's Special Attack is garbage and it was barely doing a thing to me even with the double damage. I just kept using Ice Punch to take it out. I didn't want to chance using Earthquake for fear that it may use counter. In hindsight, though, apparently this thing doesn't actually know Counter, so Earthquake may have been the better option.

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

Machamp; Lv. 46

                    

                    

This thing actually gave me a lot more trouble than I anticipated. I Surfed it before getting knocked out with Cross Chop.

                    

                    

I then sent out Katana to pelt it with Fly. This dealt a significant amount of damage but just when I thought it was finished, Bruno took advantage of my speed and used his free turn to pull out a Max Potion.

                    

                    

I sent out Cross and managed to get his health low with a Wing Attack, but he surprised me yet again. This time, a Rock Slide took out Cross in an instant--maybe going out of my way to evolve Cross wouldn't have been such a bad idea after all.

                    

                    

At this point, things were starting to look worrisome. Thankfully, Magnanimus was able to outspeed it and finish it off with a SonicBoom.

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

Elite Four #4: Karen

Where one might expect to see Agatha, you're instead met with the Dark-type specialist Karen. Karen actually proved to be much more of a challenge this time around than I recalled her being in Gold.

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

Umbreon; Lv. 42

For her first pokemon, Karen took a page out of Koga's book. Umbreon is all about spamming Sand Attack and Confuse Ray. I'm much more comfortable with its use of Sand Attack as opposed to Double Team, though, as you can switch out at any time to get rid of it and confusion. Still, although it never used it against me, it does have Mean Look, so be wary.

                    

                    

I just opened up with Katana and a mixture of Sandstorm, and Fly, switching it up with Swift once I was confused or my Accuracy took too much of a hit, the Umbreon goes down eventually.

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

Houndoom; Lv. 47

This Houndoom was the bane of my existence. This thing swept my entire team three times! I think the main reason is because it just happens to be the perfect typing and stat distribution to counter my entire team in this particular playthrough. At its high level, it outspeeds everything. As a fire-type, it's strong against Katana, Magnanimus, and Cross. Beyond that, its STAB Dark attacks were able to tear through the defenses of Gunthur who I added solely to counter my team's weakness to fire and Somnium wouldn't be able to stand a chance. There was only one pokemon of mine that could so much as take a hit from this beast.

                    

                    

Katana obviously wouldn't last long at all here. My only hope was that Quick Claw would kick in, allowing me to stall out a couple turns with Fly and get a little bit of extra Sandstorm damage on this thing. That didn't happen, of course, and it took Katana out with a Flamethrower.

                    

                    

I sent out Totalleon and used Earthquake. This in conjunction with Sandstorm damage from the previous turn just barely didn't finish Katana off. It would have gone down had the Sandstorm not subsided on this turn. 

I went for an earthquake again the next turn because it was inevitable that Karen would use a Max Potion to heal it. At this point, there was no chances of taking this thing out and here was where I was met with a dilemma. Since the rest of my team would be swept by Houndoom, there was only one way I was going to get through this fight. Because this Houndoom was such a perfect counter to my team, I felt I was justified in using a Max Revive in-battle.

                    

                    

So, I sent out Somnium to take the fall while I used a Max Revive to bring back my only out to this monstrosity. Needless to say, Somnium went down to a single Faint Attack.

                    

                    

With Totalleon back out, I was able to get off another Earthquake and finish Houndoom off--thank God she didn't use another Max potion or I would have been done.

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

Vileplume; Lv. 42

The rest of Karen's team was as easy as I remembered it being in Gold.

                    

                    

The outcome of this matchup was predictable, so I switched to Cross to take the inevitable Petal Dance.

                    

                    

Now that Vileplume was locked into Petal Dance until it missed or ended on its own, I got the chance to set up with a free Focus Energy before assaulting it with Wing Attack.

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

Gengar; Lv. 45

                    

                    

I was surprised when the next pokemon she sent out was Gengar of all things. I would have thought that her Murkrow would have been the obvious choice, but maybe it simply didn't have any flying-type moves? (in hindsight, sure enough, it didn't). Since I'd already set up Focus Energy, I saw no point in switching out, so I just kept using Wing Attack until it went down. All Gengar tried to do was Lick me, presumably with the intention of paralyzing me but it thankfully never succeeded. 

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

Murkrow; Lv. 44

                    

                    

At the time, I was under the impression this thing would have Wing Attack, so I switched into Magnanimus in anticipation of that. I was also anticipating a Pursuit. In which case it wouldn't hurt Magnanimus anyway.

                    

                    

Instead, Murkrow went for a Faint Attack which, while it was a surprise, didn't do much for it and it went down rather effortlessly with a Thunder.

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

Pokemon League Champion: Lance

We've finally arrived! It's the moment of truth, the final battle against the very same Dragon Master we worked alongside to destroy Team Rocket with, Lance!

Surprisingly enough, Lance is the only trainer in the entire game to have an actually illegal team. His Dragonite are infamously underleveled--not a single one is level 55. Don't underestimate his team because it's full of a lot of powerhouses. If you're unprepared, you're in for a world of pain. His boss music is kickass, though! I still think I prefer RBY's champion theme, but this one still always manages to get me singing along.

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

Gyarados; Lv. 44

                    

                    

I led off with Magnanimus. A quick Thunder would be enough to take care of this thing easily, especially when Lance made the critical mistake of taking his first turn to use Rain Dance! In case you're unaware, Rain Dance actually gives Thunder 100% accuracy, meaning as long as it continues to rain, Thunder doesn't have a chance of missing. This Gyarados ended up hurting his team more than helping it!

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

Dragonite; Lv. 50

                    

                    

Lance sent out the most powerful of his three Dragonite next. This was his best option to get rid of Magnanimus because it knows Fire Blast and, unlike his Charizard, has no weakness to Electricity. The downside for him, though, is that Fire Blast has its strength weakened thanks the Rain Dance Gyarados had set up. My plan was to simply allow Magnanimus to go down, but not without a fight! It used Fire Blast, but, thanks to Rain Dance, the damage wasn't too bad. I was able to follow up with a Thunder Wave of my own, which also allowed me to outspeed it the next turn and smack it with a Swagger. It couldn't attack through the Parafusion and I was able to take it down with just Magnanimus!

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

Dragonite; Lv. 47

                    

                    

The next Dragonite he switched to was a mystery. Lance actually has two Level 47 Dragonite. After taking out the first Dragonite so easily, I knew I couldn't let Magnanimus go down so quickly, so I switched him out with Katana to take a hit.

                    

                    

Here, it turns out Lance sent out the Dragonite that knew Thunder which I call BS on! Lance has two level 47 Dragonite that are identical until they use their elemental move. One knows Thunder and the other knows Blizzard. Against a Magneton, he had absolutely no reason to go for his Thunder Dragonite! The only reason I can think of was that Rain Dance was still active, but even then, Thunder is the most easily countered of the two. What would he have done if I'd (reasonably so) used a Full Restore on my Magneton right there? Whether it was his Blizzard or Thunder Dragonite ultimately didn't matter for Skarmory, but knowing his last Dragonite would have Thunder would mean I could have an easy free switch into Gunthur if necessary later on. I was anticipating a Blizzard if anything, which I would have responded to by sending out Totalleon, then when his Thunder Dragonite came out, I'd switch to Gunthur and heal Magnanimus. This bizarre choice really threw my plan off, but I had to adapt.

                    

                    

I sent out Gunthur and used his turn to use a Full Restore on Magnanimus, restoring him to full health. He would be useful in dealing with Lance's team of strong, fast pokemon. Unfortunately, Gunthur had no chance of surviving even a Twister from this thing and went down like a twig.

                    

                    

With Magnanimus back up and raring to go, I was able to paralyze and confuse this one once again. By this point, the rain had ended so my Thunders could miss again. They missed a couple of times, but I was able to hang in there and take it out!

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

Dragonite; Lv 47

                    

                    

And here is the other of the Dragonite twins! Just like its brother, I was also able to take it out thanks to parafusion! You could argue that this was an incredibly lucky battle, but I wouldn't say so. Parafusion has a 75% chance of stopping the opponent from attacking. Even if he countered it by switching out, that switch out would be vulnerable to the next hit, giving me an advantage anyway. Is it scummy? I wouldn't say so. A well-balanced team would likely have a ground type to counter Magnanimus with. Although I will say, I certainly wasn't expecting Thunder Wave and Swaggar to carry Magnanimus as far as it did!

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

Charizard; Lv. 46

                    

                    

I'm not entirely sure why he didn't send his Charizard out earlier in the battle as it would have been a great way to scare off my Magneton. There was no way Magnanimus was going to outspeed this thing and his STAB Flamethrower would most certainly take it out. 

                    

                    

Needless to say, I had to switch to Totalleon to take the Flamethrower. Charizard also used Hyper Beam, but its physical attack isn't as high as it needed and it didn't quite finish off Totalleon. The two turns that Hyper Beam bought me, I was able to dowse Charizard with Surf.

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

Aerodactyl; Lv. 46

Lance's final pokemon, Aerodactyl, was doomed before it arrived. Also worth noting is that this Aerodactyl is also illegal. It knows Rock Slide which Aerodactyl can't actually learn at all in gen 2. 

                    

                    

Aerodactyl was able to take out Totalleon with a Hyper Beam, but that left it with a need to recharge...

                    

                    

With Magnanimus, I didn't even need a Thunder Wave to slow it down. I went for a Thunder and... I was fully paralyzed. Yeah, I forgot to mention that one of his Dragonite had managed to get a Thunder Wave on Magnanimus. The next turn, Aerodactyl revealed just how helpless it was, though. It used Wing Attack. I'm genuinely not sure why he went for this instead of Rock Slide or Hyper Beam, both options would have done more damage, but regardless of what he did, it was pretty clear all I had to do was hit him with a Thunder to take him out and defeat the Champion once and for all!

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

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

HALL OF FAME

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

 

Champion Gold

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

 Totalleon (Feraligatr M); Lv. 39

 

Item: NeverMeltIce 

Moves: Earthquake, Ice Punch, Bite, Surf

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

 Gunthur (Geodude M); Lv. 36

 

Item: Soft Sand 

Moves: Selfdestruct, Defense Curl, Rollout, Earthquake

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

 Somnium (Haunter M); Lv. 37

 

Item: Spell Tag 

Moves: Confuse Ray, Shadow Ball, Night Shade, Mean Look

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

 Cross (Scyther F); Lv. 37

 

Item: None

Moves: Quick Attack, False Swipe, Focus Energy, Wing Attack

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

 Magnanimus (Magneton); Lv. 39

 

Item: Magnet 

Moves: Thunder Wave, Thunder, Swagger, Sonicboom

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

 Katana (Skarmory F); Lv. 37

 

Item: None

Moves: Fly, Sandstorm, Swift, Agility

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

     

      

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

I must say that a lot of this team really impressed me! I didn't expect to be relying on some of these pokemon nearly as much as I did in the end. Gunthur and Somnium didn't prove particularly useful, it really showed that they weren't in their fully-evolved states. That was no fault of their own, though, just the limited access to technology I have. The one that surprised me most, however, was Cross! Despite not having very many powerful moves of her own, she was surprisingly able to make quick work of many of his opponents and she could also take a lot more hits than I ever would have expected! I can't wait to see what she's capable of as a Scizor!

Of course, out of all my teammates, I'd have to say Magnanimus was definitely the MVP of the elite four! Not only did he nearly single-handedly take out all of Lance's Dragonites, he and Katana were the only pokemon to appear in every battle, granted both of their appearances against Bruno were brief. I'll certainly give an honorable mention to Totalleon as he proved to be a major crutch for a lot of the more difficult opponents. He was very successful at both soaking up damage and dishing it out. Without him, I don't think I'd ever have gotten Past Karen's houndoom without going back to grind. 

Of course, I think we all know that "the end" isn't really the end here in Gen 2. We still have some pokemon to evolve and a whole other region to explore and finalize our team! The postgame begins now! Although, a brief note, I likely won't actually be battling Red in this playthrough. I've already done so in Gold and it was already a struggle there. Just like in Gold, I want to be able to use my pokemon in Stadium 2's Poke Cup and in order to do that, I need to keep them all around level 51. In order to defeat Red without breaking that limit, my pokemon have to be below that level while his strongest pokemon is his level 81 Pikachu. Needless to say, this battle required a lot of items to finish in Gold and if I did it again, I'd want to do it without that level restriction looming over me. I may come back and do that battle in preparation for the Prime Cup, but other than that, I don't have any intentions of making it to the end there. Still though, I'd like to at least go through all the Kanto gym leaders so that my pokemon are around the appropriate level for Stadium 2!

[Aura]

So, starting up our finished file, we find ourselves back home in typical Pokemon fashion. As soon as we start to move, we're called by Prof. Elm who says he has something for us! Going to his lab, we retrieve an S.S. Ticket! With this, we can take the S.S. Aqua from the harbor in Olivine City to Vermillion City in Kanto!

The S.S. Aqua is very reminiscent of the S.S. Anne from RGBY. Just like the S.S. Anne, there are many trainers hiding away in cabins. But, here we're given a task to search for an old man's granddaughter who's gone missing somewhere on the boat! The battles here are just standard trainer battles, nothing to write home about. This is the first in a series of fetch quests you're put on as your introduction to Kanto, but this one actually has a reward we are very interested in! After finding the lost girl pestering the captain, we bring her back to her grandfather who rewards us with a Metal Coat! With this, we can finally evolve our team!

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

Well, as always, there has been a big wrench thrown into my plan that made completing the pokedex in gen II twelve times more tedious. Unfortunately, even though my plan was to do all the trades in a single session, that just doesn't seem like it's going to happen. The reason? Apparently Stadium 2 placed an extra restriction for the PC storage with respect to Gold and Silver. You can store and withdraw pokemon from your game just fine using the N64 boxes. However, this only applies to pokemon stored from the same save file. If it's been deposited by another save file, you can only withdraw it if you have 150 pokemon registered in the pokedex. 

Granted, with 252 pokemon in the generation, there a large amount of leeway there, but I find this incredibly frustrating. I had no reason to expect this limitation because the original Pokemon Stadium had nothing like this! I'm guessing they didn't want to make things too easy by allowing you to just transfer your already complete Kanto-Dex to the new games but that doesn't stop you from trading each pokemon individually! I genuinely don't understand the point of this limitation other than to be a huge inconvenience bogging down an otherwise extremely convenient feature. sigh. Whatever the case, it looks like I'm just going to have to do things the old fashioned way for a while. 

But, I was able to at least do whatever trades I could in this session. 

For Pokemon Gold, I now obtained some new pokemon:

   

Machamp, Steelix, Slowking, and Kingdra!

There are still a couple more pokemon I forgot about. For example, I forgot to put my King's Rock on a Poliwhirl and I also probably could have traded over Porygon from Yellow manually, but I really didn't want to juggle around all these cartridges. I'd much rather get the 150 in the game so I can simply withdraw it instead. But, we did get what we were mainly after:

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

 Gunther (Golem M); Lv. 36

 

Moves: SelfDestruct, Defense Curl, Rollout, Earthquake

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

 Somnium (Gengar M); Lv. 37

 

Moves: Confuse Ray, Shadow Ball, Night Shade, Mean Look

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

 Cross (Scizor F); Lv. 37

 

Moves: Quick Attack, False Swipe, Focus Energy, Wing Attack

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

That's right, our team is finally fully evolved and ready for a new adventure in Kanto!

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

Vermillion City

Now, normally I would head straight to the Vermillion Gym since it's right here, but we actually have yet another tedious fetch quest we need to do before we're able to go back to Johto. I like to get this done ASAP just in case something unexpected pops up or you happen to forget something, like, I dunno, a King's Rock? 

We'll be returning here not far from now, but first we probably should prioritize establishing our route back home. You would think we'd just be able to take the same boat we used to get here but nope, they simply won't allow you back on board.

Route 6

Of course, as we head north toward Route 6, you very quickly fall in love with the charm that is Kanto in GS. I can complain all I want about how small it is or how annoying this fetch quest is, but hearing the familiar songs from Gen 1 remastered for Gen 2 is really pleasant!

One of the next things you'll notice is just how much smaller and more compact these routes have become. Route 6, for example, doesn't have any trainers on it! It's completely vacant! This will become increasingly apparent the more you explore. I'm not going to cover every detail, but there are some significant footnotes here and there.

Saffron City

In Saffron City, it turns out there's been a blackout and that's why the Magnet Train hasn't been operational! In order to get it back online, we need to investigate the power plant. With our knowledge of Gen 1, we know exactly where that is!

Cerulean City

We head up north through Route 5 to get to Cerulean City! This town was made a little bit easier to navigate this time around as many cut bushes were removed and you no longer have to awkwardly pass through a stranger's house to get on the other side of the ledge. You can simply walk around! Unfortunately, we do still need cut to get access to Route 9. 

Route 10

And of course at the end of Route 9 is Route 10 which is home to what was once an abandoned Power Plant. Now, we see that it has been repurposed to power the Magnet Rail! Unfortunately, there is a machine part that has been stolen. You Receive word that a suspicious figure has been seen in Cerulean City and go to investigate.

Cerulean Gym

Upon entering the Cerulean Gym, you're met by none other than a member of Team Rocket! Who seems to be a foreigner that struggles a bit with the language. He runs off and you give chase, stopping him at the Nugget Bridge. After a battle, he confesses that he hid the machine part in the gym for... reasons? I dunno, anything to extend playtime I guess. So, you return to the gym and search the pool for the missing machine part which you return to the power plant. You're rewarded with the TM for Zap Cannon... horray... but more importantly, the Magnet Train is now operational and you can travel freely between Goldenrod and Saffron!  Except... when you actually go to do this, you're stopped by yet another quest. You don't have a Rail Pass! The game doesn't point you in the appropriate direction at all to my knowlege, but if you look around the city you'll find the Copycat Girl who tells you she lost her doll in Vermillion City. Going back to Vermillion, you get the Clefairy Doll from some guy in the Pokemon Fan Club and bring it back to her. She gives you your well-deserved Rail Pass and finally you can go back to Goldenrod!

Yeesh, that was a lot of busywork that really amounted to nothing at all. But, with our escape route established, we can now get to work on collecting those badges!

...but first! There's a quick detour I wanted to do. Cross may be evolved but it no longer has a STAB move and that's something I want to fix ASAP! I headed back to Route 10 and entered Rock Tunnel.

Rock Tunnel

It should be noted that, like Victory Road, all of Kanto's caves in gen 2 are drastically shrunk down. This is really nice because it makes getting through these caves take much less time!

If you enter the cave from the north, then at the very end of the dungeon, you can find the TM for Steel Wing! This is a much better alternative to Wing Attack for Scizor, so I didn't hesitate to use it! Katana may be lacking a Steel-type STAB move, but it can learn Steel Wing naturally, albeit at a pretty high level. However, there is actually a second copy of this TM later on, though it's just outside Mt. Silver so it's also quite a ways away. Still, I felt that Cross needed a Steel attack much more than Katana did.

Rock Tunnel spills out into the south end of Route 10 and, by proxy, Lavender Town!

Lavender Town

Lavender Town is bizarre in gen 2. It really lacks the somber tone the town had in Gen 1 and even Pokemon Tower was, bizarrely enough, torn down in favor of a... radio tower? Apparently the graves of the dead pokemon in Lavender Tower were moved into the Spirit House just south of the radio tower, but the implications of this seems far more messed up than anything Lavender Town stood for before this. Is it really a good idea to build your radio tower on top of a literal gravesite? One that is scientifically confirmed to be haunted with ghosts? And moving the dead bodies to a new location no less? This is perhaps the most bizarre decision they've ever made... Anyway, it is somewhat important that we give the Radio Tower a visit because it's here that we can get an expansion card for our PokeGear Radio. Now we have access to the PokeFlute Channel which does nothing but broadcast the Pokeflute 24/7... riveting...

With this, we can wake up the Snorlax blocking the way to Vermillion City. I know I can just fly to and from there and completely ignore the route between altogether, but that just doesn't sit as well with me as skipping out on the Whirl Islands. Seeing Snorlax sitting there, it's like an itch I just have to scratch!

  

Snorlax is a bit of a pain. This Snorlax is higher leveled than its Gen 1 counterpart and it comes equipped with Leftovers. If you have a pokemon with Thief, it's a good idea to use it here. Otherwise, this thing's just gonna heal off a lot of what little damage you can deal to it. I was actually able to get pretty lucky, though! All it took was a couple of Earthquakes from Gunthur and I was able to catch it in a single Ultra Ball!

[Aura]

Vermilion Gym

Now that we've come full circle, it's time to finally take on the Vermilion Gym! This gym is made much less annoying compared to its Red/Blue counterpart. But be careful where you walk, as the trainers here are positioned in such a way where you can battle two of them back-to-back! Their teams are pretty easy, though, so it's not that big of a deal. Gunthur was able to sweep through pretty much everything in this team with very little opposition. The gym puzzle itself is gone this time. While the trash cans remain, the doors blocking the way to Lt. Surge are now gone, meaning you can just walk right up to him and battle!

Vermilion Gym Leader: Lt. Surge

    

Raichu Lv. 44, Electrode Lv. 40, Electrode Lv. 40, Magneton Lv. 40, Electabuzz Lv. 46

Lt. Surge is pretty sad. You would think that with these post-game gym leaders, their teams would be a bit tougher, but Lt. Surge has absolutely no coverage on his team for Electric's one weakness: Ground. The best he can do against any Ground-type pokemon is use Double Team to occasionally avoid your Earthquakes. His Electrode can explode if given the chance but his Magneton can only hit you with Swift. Swift is an especially useless move on his Magneton because it also knows Lock-On! Needless to say, Gunthur was able to tear through this battle no problem.

One sort of interesting detail to note, though, is that Lt. Surge's strongest pokemon here isn't actually his Raichu. It's his Electabuzz! It doesn't change how easy he is, but at least he's a bigger threat here than he was in Yellow where he only had his Raichu.

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

Saffron Gym

From Vermilion, the only natural progression is to head north to Saffron. This gym has much fewer trainers but is still just as annoying to navigate as it was in gen 1. Finding your way to Sabrina's chamber is just trial and error. 

Saffron Gym Leader: Sabrina

  

Espeon Lv. 46, Mr. Mime Lv. 46, Alakazam Lv. 48

Sabrina only has three pokemon, but they're all fairly high level. Still, battling your way through them isn't too bad. Mr. Mime is a bit of a pain when he gets off his reflect and barrier, but I was able to deal with him no problem using Katana. As long as you can paralyze Alakazam, he won't be much of a threat either.

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

Celadon Gym

From Saffron to Celadon. This gym is a bit more simplistic compared to the Celadon Gym from gen 1. Although you don't need cut inside the gym, you still unfortunately need cut in order to get access to the gym, so you're not coming in here with a full team.

Celadon Gym Leader: Erika

   

Tangela Lv. 42, Victreebel Lv. 46, Jumpluff Lv. 41, Bellossom Lv. 46

...Not that you'll have any need for one. Erika's team is another joke. Everything on her team is very delicate and doesn't have the speed to do anything about it. Her most difficult pokemon to deal with was Victreebel, but all it likes to do is spam synthesis while the sun is out. Nothing here poses a challenge.

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

Fuchsia Gym

Fuchsia Gym is next and this is arguably the most interesting gyms in Kanto. Where Koga left his role as a gym leader to join the Elite 4, he had to entrust his gym to a worthy successor. The successor he chose was none other than his own daughter, Janine. And Janine certainly is a master of illusion. All of the gym trainers are disguised as her and the gym is structured in such a way where the real Janine is likely to be the last trainer you talk to. The only problem with this idea is that, once you defeat the gym leader, you can no longer battle the remaining trainers in the gym. I always like to battle the gym trainers, so I would constantly save before every single battle just in case it was the real Janine, which I imagine is the opposite of the intended effect of this gimmick.

Fuchsia Gym Leader: Janine

    

Crobat Lv. 36, Weezing Lv. 36, Weezing Lv. 36, Ariados Lv. 33, Venomoth Lv. 39

thanks to the Psychic TM I'd picked up from Mr. Psychic, Gengar was able to easily deal with most of these opponents and Katana helped deal with the bugs.

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

If we try to head south of Fuschia to go to cinnabar, we'll find that the volcano had erupted and there is a mountain of volcanic rock blocking the way. We're clearly not going to be able to get to Cinnabar through the Seafoam Islands like in Red and Blue so our only option to get to Cinnabar, we're gonna need to first make our way to Pallet Town. But of course, before we head through Diglet's cave to make our way to the western side of the region,  there was one more opponent to face.

Cerulean Gym

Returning to Cerulean, if you enter the gym, you may be surprised to find out that the gym is actually still empty!

If you wish to battle Misty, you'll first have to find her on Route 25! This route is notable for the onslaught of trainers who call themselves the 6-pack trainers! This is similar to the trainers you battle on Nugget Bridge in gen 1. Fighting your way past them, you end up at Cerulean Cape which is a popular dating spot in Kanto. You find Misty here with a boy who then leaves upon seeing you. Angry that you interrupted her date, and noticing that you have gym badges from Johto, she personally challenges you to a battle at her gym before leaving. Now the gym is open for business!

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

Cerulean gym is just as straightfward as it was in gen 1. There isn't anything particularly worrisome, so just fight your way through!

Cerulean Gym Leader: Misty

   

Golduck Lv. 42, Quagsire Lv. 42, Lapras Lv. 44, Starmie Lv. 47

Misty can actually be a bit tough. If you don't have a grass-type attack, there's no quick out to her Quagsire and her Lapras and Starmie also cover for most Grass-type pokemon. She likes to set up Rain Dance to power up her water attacks which is especially bad when it comes to her Starmie. My team actually almost got swept by its powered-up Surf after it one-shotted Magnanimus preventing me from paralyzing it. Thankfully, Totalleon was able to stall out until the rain cleared up. By the time it could set up Rain Dance again, I was able to take it out with Earthquakes.

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

Diglett Cave

With Snorlax out of the way back in Vermilion, we can now take DIglett's Cave to Pewter City!

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

Pewter Gym

The pewter gym is pretty much unchanged from RBY except that the trainer was repositioned so that he is no longer an optional battle.

Pewter Gym Leader: Brock

    

Graveler Lv. 41, Rhyhorn Lv. 41, Omastar Lv. 42, Onix Lv. 44, Kabutops Lv. 42

Same as pretty much all the others. I was able to sweep this entire team with just Totalleon. No skin off my nose!

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

Route 2

South of Pewter City is where I think you can really start to tell the devs started to run into serious memory issues. "Viridian Forest" has now been downgraded to a simple hedge maze on route 2 with not a single trainer inside it. There are some useful items hidden around in each of the dead ends, though, so it is worth your time to thoroughly explore this area. I do appreciate the touch, though, that while they clearly couldn't create an entire map for Viridian Forest, they did make sure to align the bushes in such a way that do accurately represent a downsized version of the original Viridian Forest:

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

Viridian City

Arriving in Viridian City, there is a bit we can do here, but I decided to hold off on that for a bit and just pass through on our way to Cinnabar Island. If we were to go to the Viridan Gym, we'd only find that, once again, the gym leader is absent.

Pallet Town

Once you reach Pallet Town, there isn't much you can do functionally, but for a wave of nostalgia, you can speak with the familiar characters here. Blue's older sister, Daisy, reveals that her little brother is the Viridian gym leader, but he's gone off to CInnabar Island. We can visit Prof. Oak, but he doesn't have much to offer us aside from rating our pokedex. Lastly, there's Red's house which is perhaps the most interesting to me. This building has a very somber tone to it. Speaking to Red's mother, she makes it very clear that she is proud of her son, but at the same time she hasn't heard from him in a long time and she misses him dearly. I really like this touch of reality here. 

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

Cinnabar Island

When you first arrive at Cinnabar Island, the most shocking discovery is that the entire island is buried in volcanic rock! Only a pokemon center remains. It's here that you'll find Blue grieving over the tragedy that happened here with a rather profound statement that you can battle over winning and losing all you want, but when nature so much as twitches, everyone loses. Sure enough, it seems that an unexpected volcanic eruption occured here on Cinnabar, destroying the town and possibly even killing some of its inhabitants! Once again I stress, Pokemon really isn't afraid to get dark when it wants to!

Blue tells us that he isn't really in the mood to battle but he still recognizes his duties as a gym leader and flies back to his gym to prepare himself for your eventual challenge. But now we're left with a new challenge. If the Cinnabar gym was burned to the ground, then where do we find Blaine? Well, a sign on the island points us to his direction: The Seafoam Islands!

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

Cinnabar Gym

I really love the idea of repurposing a dungeon from the previous game as a gym. Especially something as unique as converting an ice-themed dungeon into a fire gym! I can't help but wonder if they had grander plans for this but, due to the same memory constraints, had to reduce it to the pitiful little den we see here?

Blaine's gym has no trainers, he's all alone, so you can just step right up and challenge him!

Cinnabar Gym Leader: Blaine

  

Magcargo Lv. 45, Magmar Lv. 45, Rapidash Lv. 50

Unfortunately, his team doesn't even come close to making up for him being alone. In fact, it's arguably the most pathetic team in all of Kanto! He has absolutely no out to any weakness of Fire aside from his Magmar knowing Thunderpunch. But it will never get that off because it's only level 45! he doesn't even have his signature Arcanine! Needless to say, all I needed was Totalleon's Earthquake to deal with all of these guys no sweat.

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

Back in Viridian City, there is a new attraction here started by Blue: The Trainer House where strong trainers gather to battle and prepare for the Elite 4. Once a day you can come here and battle a mysterious trainer named Cal with a team of the three fully-evolved Johto starters. What's interesting about this room is that Cal's team will change to match the party of the last player you performed Mystery Gift with. This also includes using the Mystery Gift feature in Pokemon Stadium 2! I'll go over that when we get there, but I thought it was interesting to note.

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

 

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

 Totalleon (Feraligatr M); Lv. 46

 

Item: Nevermeltice 

Moves: Earthquake, Ice Punch, Slash, Surf

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

 Gunthur (Golem M); Lv. 45

 

Item: Amulet Coin 

Moves: Selfdestruct, Defense Curl, Rollout, Earthquake

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

 Somnium (Gengar M); Lv. 45

 

Item: Spell Tag 

[I actually forgot he was holding this, I could have given him a king's rock or something instead. The Spell Tag is useless now that he no longer knows Shadow Ball]

Moves: Confuse Ray, Psychic, Night Shade, Mean Look

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

 Cross (Scizor F); Lv. 45

 

Item: PrzCureBerry 

Moves: Quick Attack, Slash, Swords Dance, Steel Wing

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

 Magnanimus (Magneton); Lv. 45

 

Item: Quick Claw 

Moves: Thunder Wave, Thunder, Swagger, Sonicboom

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

 Katana (Skarmory F); Lv. 45

 

Item: Leftovers 

Moves: Fly, Sandstorm, Swift, Toxic

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

Viridian Gym

The Viridian Gym is pretty much the only real challenge you'll face in Kanto. Unlike the other gym leaders, Blue doesn't hold back! He doesn't specialize in just one type. Instead, he uses the same team he did to defeat Lance before and even here his pokemon are higher level than even the champion himself!

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

Viridian Gym Leader: Blue

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

Pidgeot; Lv. 56

                    

                    

I mistakenly thought Blue would lead with Rhydon, so I started with Totalleon. Thankfully, I still had Ice Punch to fall back on, but Gunthur would have given me a much more solid start. Thanks to Pidgeot's surprising bulk, it was able to take quite a few Ice Punches before finally going down, but it was able to cripple Totalleon considerably. I wouldn't be able to switch into Totalleon as anything more than a meat shield, but it was important to keep him alive!

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

Exeggutor; Lv. 58

                    

                    

Blue's counter to Totalleon was his Exeggutor. While scary at first, it turns out his only plan was to use Solar Beam repeatedly... Still, I obviously couldn't leave Totalleon here and even with a super-effective Ice Punch, I had my doubts Totalleon would be able to take down an Exeggutor in one hit.

                    

                    

There was only one obvious switch-in here and his charging for Solar Beam meant an obvious solution for me. As long as he kept spamming Solar Beam, I'd be able to keep spamming Fly and dodge all of his attacks entirely. Eventually, he used a full restore on his pokemon, giving me a free turn to nail him with Toxic. I whittled his health down again and he used another Full Restore! While it was annoying it healed his poison, I had no qualms with him wasting all of his Full Restores on keeping this stalemate going, so I continued with my very basic strategy. Eventually, he smartened up and set up Leech Seed, but by that point it was already too late and it succumbed to its poison and the raging sandstorm.

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

Arcanine; Lv. 58

                    

                    

Once again, there was no way I could justify leaving Katana out, so I switched!

                    

                    

Since Totalleon was low on HP, Gunthur seemed to be my best option. His Flamethrower did a decent chunk of my HP. I went for Earthquake but, due to his high level, that didn't do nearly as much as I would have liked. I was surprised though, to find out that Gunthur had actually moved before Arcanine! Only to realize that he had simply opted to use Roar...

                    

                    

Of all pokemon on my team, of course Roar would bring out Cross. With no safe switch-ins, I had no choice but to hope Cross' quick attack would be enough to finish Arcanine off. It did about half of his remaining HP before Cross was roasted with a Flamethrower.

                    

                    

I wasn't confident that any of my fastest pokemon would be able to outspeed Arcanine, so I had to stick to the only one I was confident could take another hit. With Gunthur now in the red zone, Arcanine was finally taken down.

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

Alakazam; Lv. 54

                    

                    

Gunthur wasn't going to be of much use for the rest of this battle, so I had him try to selfdestruct in the hopes of taking out Alakazam easily. Unfortunately, Blue saw right through that and went for the quick kill himself with Psychic.

                    

                    

I sent out Magnanimus to try the good ol' parafusion strat. Thankfully, Alakazam just took the opportunity to set up Reflect. In the mean time, I was able to paralyze and swagger it, leaving Alakazam much more vulnerable than before. With a thunder followed by it hitting itself a few times, Alakazam went down!

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

Gyarados; Lv. 58

                    

                     

I made the same mistake here that I did against Lance. Gyarados effortlessly outsped Magnanimus and took it out with a solid Hydro Pump. 

                    

                     

Weighing my options, I decided to go with Katana. I took the opportunity to set up Toxic, but he went for Rain Dance! I was able to cut the rain short with a sandstorm of my own the next turn. A series of flies, lucky misses, and HP drainage later, Gyarados had finally been defeated!

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

Rhydon; Lv. 56

                    

                     

This should have been the perfect matchup for me, but Katana still lacked Steel Wing. Instead, all I could really do was use Toxic and spam fly a lot. Eventually though, Rhydon nailed Katana with Rock Slide and took her out.

                    

                     

Somnium was all it took to seal the deal. With a Confuse Ray jamming his attacks, I'd finally completed the 16 gyms of Pokemon Silver version!

MVP: Katana

I think the MVP for this battle could be none other than Katana! She dealt with a lot of the really tough opponents I didn't really have an out to! 

[Aura]

With the 16 gym badges collected, there was a bit more cleaning up I wanted to do before finishing up with the game and finally moving on.

Flying back to Pewter City and heading East, you can reach Mt. Moon. Once again, this dungeon is a shadow of its former self. It doesn't seem like they even made an effort to make it look remotely like the original! On Mondays here, you can pick up a Moonstone by taking the ladder in the northern part of the cave and watching the Clefairy dance around a meteorite. But that's not why we're here. As soon as you enter from the western side, you're met by none other than your rival once again. 

Rival #6

     

His team isn't much different than it was at Victory Road, but by his dialogue, it's clear he's making an honest effort to change his ways. The battle wasn't actually too interesting. Perhaps I should have battled him when I first arrived at Pewter to make things a bit more interesting, but after battling Blue, this fight was very simple. With a single Swords Dance, Cross was able to take out most of his team in one hit and would have been able to sweep him entirely if it wasn't for Gengar's confuse ray causing it to hit itself three times in a row. After Cross, Somnium was able to take out Gengar with Psychic. Alakazam forced a switch into Katana who took care of the rest with ease.

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

With 16 badges in hand, you can also go speak with Prof. Oak and he'll make arrangements so that you can get access to Route 28, the road to Mt. Silver, west of the Indigo Plateau. This is where the game's final challenge lays. While I did say I wouldn't stress too much about defeating Red, it bothered me too much to not at least make an honest effort. Along the way here, you'll want to battle some of the Wild Pokemon as they're actually surprisingly high level! You can get some decent Exp just battling whatever you happen to encounter along the way. And trust me, we're gonna get very aquainted with this place in due time.

It's here that I also got the second TM for Steel Wing from a celebrity in that house to the north. It's a little out of the way and requires Cut to get to, but it was well worth the effort to get Skarmory to finally learn Steel Wing! Replacing Swift may have been a bit of a questionable decision, but I figured with Toxic and Sandstorm I'd never really need Swift. I only ever really used it to guarantee a kill if the opponent happened to hang on with a sliver of health.

 

The inside of Mt. Silver, unfortunately, is dark. Meaning unless we simply memorize the correct path, or follow a map online, we have to have an HM-user with us. I feel that following a map is against the spirit of the game, though, so I always try to have an HM user at the ready. Besides, in the second part of the cave, there are lots of waterfalls to climb in search of items that would very quickly come in handy. Along the way up the mountain, Totalleon learned Screech! I figured Slash had a pretty niche use for his moveset. If he needed a strong physical attack, he had Earthquake. And the only pokemon that would get around Earthquake were weak to Ice Attacks. Screech would be much more useful for taking out highly defensive pokemon than blindly using Slash in hopes of a crit.

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

 

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

 Totalleon (Feraligatr M; Lv. 48

 

Item: NeverMeltIce 

Moves: Earthquake, Ice Punch, Screech, Surf

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

 Gunthur (Golem M); Lv. 47

 

Item: Focus Band 

Moves: Selfdestruct, Defense Curl, Rollout, Earthquake

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

 Somnium (Gengar M); Lv. 46*

 

Item: PRZCureBerry 

Moves: Confuse Ray, Psychic, Night Shade, Mean Look

*Left behind for an HM user

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

 Cross (Scizor F); Lv. 48

 

Item: King's Rock 

Moves: Quick Attack, Slash, Swords Dance, Metal Claw

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

 Magnanimus (Magneton); Lv. 47

 

Item: Quick Claw 

Moves: Thunder Wave, Thunder, Swagger, SonicBoom

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

 Katana (Skarmory F); Lv. 47

 

Item: Leftovers 

Moves: Fly, Sandstorm, Steel Wing, Toxic

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

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

Pokemon Trainer Red

************************

Pikachu; Lv. 81

                    

                    

Though Pikachu looks very intimidating with its extremely high level, if you come at it with a Ground-type, the worst it can do is use Charm to weaken your attack. Charm or not, it'll go down to an earthquake easily, and two if your attack got reduced.

*************************

Espeon; Lv. 73

Regardless of whether or not Pikachu got a charm on you, your ground-type probably isn't going to be able to do anything against Red's Espeon anyway. Although this thing happens to be his lowest-level pokemon, I'd argue it's his toughest one unless you have a Dark-type at the ready to block its Psychic. This thing will tear you down without a second thought no matter what your typing is an it will outspeed anything you send out, too. (As a matter of fact, with as high of level as Red is, just about everything he has will outspeed you, so come prepared with lots of bulk and make sure you have something to paralyze with!

                    

                    

Needless to say, Golem was taken out in one hit. He had a Focus Band in hopes of survivng, but it was sadly no use.

                    

                    

To answer the call of course came Maganimus with his signature Thunder Wave, Swagger combo. This is definitely a situation that would have made Zap Cannon feel very suffocating. Magnanimus could only take two hits from this Espeon so I wouldn't have the time to set up Lock-On and Zap Cannon. So, I'd have to rely on the 50% accuracy of base Zap Cannon just to paralyze it. Thankfully, Thunder Wave was all I needed here. I actually got really lucky and it hit itself twice in confusion, allowing me to get it down to a sliver of health. Unforutnately, I underestimated just how much health it still had and went for SonicBoom. It just barely survived, snapped out of confusin and took Magnanimus out.

                    

                    

Thankfully, with Katana here I was able to finish Espeon off no problem. But there was still a whole gauntlet ahead of me.

*********************

Venusaur; Lv. 77

                    

                    

In a bizarre twist of fate, Red sent out Venusaur to counter my Skarmory! I figured his goal was just to set up Sunny Day so he could have a superpowered Charizard up next, but all he ended up doing with Venusaur was spam Solar Beam. That worked out for me since I could just keep flying and making his Solar Beams miss! Thanks to his bizarre throwing of this round, I was able to get a free KO on Venusaaur!

********************

Charizard; Lv. 77

                    

                    

If not his Espeon, then Red's Charizard is the most terrifying monster on his team. This thing can lay waste to your entire team with its powerful Flamethrower. It's not quite as fast, though, and Fire is much more easily resisted than Psychic is. But don't underestimate this thing! Despite Charizard not being a particularly fast pokemon, it was easily able to outspeed Katana thanks to its level and picked it off with Flamethrower.

                    

                    

With Totalleon on board, it took a couple of Surfs to take Charizard out. I had to use a Max Potion to keep Totalleon alive, but thanks to a bit of damage range-related risk taking, Totalleon was able to survive two hits from Flamethrower! This risk allowed me to get an extra Surf in and finish the battle without too many resources invested into healing. Trust me, I'd need all the help I could get going forward.

********************

Snorlax; Lv. 75

Snorlax actually isn't too big of a deal. It's able to dish out some heavy damage, mind you, but I'd say this is surprisingly the weakest pokemon on his team. While his Venusaur can be pretty easy to deal with, it also has the chance to set up Sunny Day for the Charizard to follow.

                    

                    

I took the first opportunity I had to use Screech. You want to be able to take out Snorlax in one hit if possible, otherwise you run the risk of hit healing off all the damage you dealt using Rest. And this Snorlax does know Snore which, while it's not a particularly powerful move, does allow it to continue dealing damage even while it's asleep with Rest! I figured Screech was my best bet before Totalleon was taken down.

                    

                    

Here's where my strategy got a little silly. I decided to send out the Psyduck I was using for HM's. While Psyduck obviously wouldn't be able to do much in terms of battle, it did buy me an extra turn do some reviving. I used a Max Revive on Totalleon. This would prove arguably unnecessary, but I wanted to make sure this Snorlax went down with minimum issues. I wanted to be prepared for Red's final pokemon.

                    

                    

With Totalleon back out, I once again went for Screech before getting taken out again.

                    

                    

And this is the point of great worry. I knew from previous failures that Magnanimus would be unable to survive a Surf from Blastoise. My only hope was to put all my fruit in one basket in hopes that Cross would be able to win this battle for me. I needed as much help as I could get, so I immediately started setting up Swords Dance. Snorlax's Body Slam was a 3-hit KO, so we went through a period of soaking up damage and healing up with Full Restores until Cross was fully decked out. At this point, it took one more Slash. Lucky me, Snorlax decided for just one turn to use Amnesia! This meant I didn't have to worry about any damage or unlucky paralysis ruining my day!

**********************

Blastoise; Lv. 77

                    

                    

Red's final pokemon. This thing is on par with his Charizard, but it's much more defensively oriented, not that its special attack is anything to scoff at! Had Snorlax used Body Slam, his Surf would have taken me out! But, I was able to take a Surf from full health, reducing me to only 3 HP! My Slash hit and brought him down to low HP as well. I crossed my fingers and hoped a Quick Attack would seal the deal and it did! With only 3 HP to spare, Cross won the battle!

After a clutch move like that, I think it's safe to say Cross was the MVP of this final battle!

With Red defeated, the credits roll once again, leaving me wondering just what I was going to do next...

I must say that replaying Gen 2 certainly did feel like much more of a drag than it did with Gen 1. While it was a lot of fun trying out new pokemon, I just think the level boundaries of Gen 2 is simply too low to get the chance to really try out the better moves in the game. I still love a lot about Gold and Silver, don't get me wrong! But playing two of them back to back was certainly exhausting. It's not going to be long before I have to do yet another playthrough, but there will be a little bit in between including something special that's actually surfaced very recently that I felt would be a really good time to crack open now! I have to say the next game I'll be playing is something new I'm really excited to delve into and it'll shed an all-new light on Gen 2 as a whole!

[Aura]

***NOTE***

Due to details that have since been released about the leak that will be detailed in this post, the criminal and insensitive means by which the following information has been made publicly available, and the uncertainty of the relation between this leak and a certain other famous one in fairly recent history, I feel I should make a statement regarding the information presented here. I will not remove this section of the thread mainly because the post itself doesn't contain any of the sensitive information that was leaked. That said, going forward, I will not cover other prototype builds related to this particular hack of Nintendo's databases. This includes the '99 build as well as the leaked prototype of Pokemon Pearl. I am unsure if there is any correlation, but I am also not likely to cover the supposed leak of a Sword and Shield prototype as well. If you have any questions, feel free to ask me in this thread or send me an EcchiText. Just know that, now that I am aware of the major breach of privacy that came from carelessly dumping a bunch of files onto the internet, and understand that all of this information came with a price that was paid by force and not consensually, I would like to distance myself from this event as much as possible.

**********

 

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

So for my game, I wanted to go back in time a little bit more once again. Any major Pokemon fans can take one look at these images and tell you exactly what this is. Way back in November of 1997 at Nintendo Spaceworld '97, a very early prototype of Pokemon Gold and Silver, the sequel to Pokemon Red and Blue, was revealed as a playable demo! This was a very exciting time for all and it's a demo unlike anything we'd see today. This demo showcased a very, very early version of the game with many pokemon that would later be redesigned or scrapped entirely! Some more drastically than others. For the longest time, this was one of the most sought-after piece of lost media when it comes to Pokemon history as footage existed of this demo showing off some of these early designs, but footage was so elusive that little was known about what the demo was actually like.

Fast forward to May 26, 2018 and out of the blue, this rom of this demo was anonymously dumped onto the internet! I'm not sure exactly what has been used to verify that this is indeed a legitimate leak of the original demos from Spaceworld '97, but it seems to be distributed as genuine by a lot of sources who take credibility very seriously. (Most notably The Cutting Room Floor and Dr. Lava on Twitter). As such, I'm going to be running on the assumption that this indeed is a genuine dumped rom of the original demo and not an elaborate hack of Red and Blue. 

From what I understand, the circumstances surrounding this demo's leak is a bit controversial, as it's the product of a confirmed hack of Nintendo's internal network. This is most certainly illegal, but it has shed light on a lot of new information surrounding more than just Gen 2 content, including lots of back sprites of beta Gen 1 pokemon as well as early sprites from a variety of gens. But I think of everything leaked, these roms are probably the most significant to me.  While I understand Nintendo and Game Freak may like to stay hush hush about content like this so that they may reuse ideas for future games, but I honestly think having the demo revealed like this could only increase the excitement for the potential of some of these pokemon designs to see the light of day in one form or another! I think prototype builds like this are a huge part of video game history that deserves to be preserved rather than forgotten. 

Under the circumstances of this demo's availability, I wasn't sure whether to classify this particular item as a 1997 release, a 2018 release, or as a release at all! However, I came up with the argument that this was an officially licensed product that was playable for the public in 1997. If I had access to the actual demo carts used at this event, there's no doubt in my mind I'd play them as a 1997 release. Therefore, it was only natural to not only count them, but to play them here. I would like to stress though, just how much of a time leap this is. To put it into perspective, if I were to have played this in the proper placement on the timeline, I would have played it immediately after Pokemon Blue. That's before the japanese Pokemon Stadium or even Yellow version! This only goes to show just how long this game has been in the making!

This demo came in the form of four roms. A non-debug demo rom for Gold and Silver, and a debug demo rom for Gold and Silver. For the first session, I played the non-debug Gold version first. I don't believe I'll play through the debug rom for this thread, but I'll certainly poke around in my freetime and perhaps retroactively edit these posts with my findings there.

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

Now then, to preface this playthrough, I should mention some of the issues I found. When I first downloaded the rom, it was an .sgb file which doesn't seem compatible with mGBA. As a simple fix, I simply changed the file extension to .gbc. I'm sure there was a better fix to this issue, but I just wanted to see if this would work, and it did! However, I think as a consequence of jsut changing the file extension, the game was entirely rendered in Black and White rather than in color. I can only assume this is because by I just changed the file extension to .gbc and didn't actually modify the file to display the proper colors when read as a gameboy color game. To clarify, this demo is supposed to have color! Granted, this color is much more limited than the final game, but there are supposed to be multiple color palettes to differentiate morning, day, and night just like the final product. For information like this and any other information I miss in my playthrough, you can look at the demo's page on The Cutting Room Floor!

The intro is mostly unchanged aside from a few minor details. The most notable change that I could see was that the demo originally featured Omanyte on the seafloor rather than the Shellder from the final. This was probably changed because Omanyte is an extinct pokemon, so it didn't make much sense for there to be three of them here.

 

The demo begins as one would expect, Prof. Oak welcomes us to the demo and the game opens up in his bedroom. Interestingly, there are two beds here! This seems to imply that the protagonist at one point had a sibling! Or perhaps that's his mother's bed. All of the text is japanese so there's not really much of a use in poking around. While I do know a little Japanese, it's pretty really only basic sentence structure and the ability to read Hiragana, Katakana, and to understand a very limited selection of Kanji. Basically, I'll be able to read the names of certain pokemon, items, etc., but I won't be able to actually translate much of anything. The music here and throughout the entire first area is that of Pallet Town from Red and Blue.

  

  

Note: these sprites aren't inverted between releases, it's just that pokemon sprites are always inverted on their stats page.

When you start the demo, you are randomly given one of the three starters, and here's where the really exciting part starts! As you can see, only one of these pokemon remained mostly unchanged between here and the final release. That is the Grass-type ハッパ -- Happa (Hopper). (Note that Happa's final Japanese name: チコリータ -- Chikori-ta (Chikorita) is the same as its english name. The Fire-type ホノオグマ -- Honooguma and the water-type クルス -- Kurusu (Cruise) are both pokemon that were completely scrapped for the Cyndaquil and Totodile we all know and love today. While I do like the final starters, I can't help but wonder why these designs were scrapped! I'm especially surprised we never saw Cruise be repurposed as a baby Lapras. The idea just seems like it would work so well. I think if these three starters were my choices, I'd have to go with Cruise! Also worth noting is that it seems all Johto pokemon in this demo share Nidorino's cry as a placeholder.

Anyway, all three of these pokemon either already know their elemental move or are only one level away from learning it. Unfortunately, the demo removes their ability to evolve so we can't see their evolutions -- yet! 

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

   

Outside is where we really start to see the effects of the lack of color. There's supposed to be an overlay here to differentiate time of day, but since there's no color, everything just has this ominous gray hue like the world is covered in a light fog or something--quite fitting given this first location seems to be called  サイレント　ヒル -- Sairento Hiru (Silent Hill)!

Silent Hill is home to a few houses. Much like Pallet Town, it features the protagonist's home, his rival's home, and a pokemon lab. The lab appears to be locked, so we can't enter. 

The pokemon center doesn't feature much tow rite home about. The PC and Healing Machines are both out of order. Thankfully, you do start with 10 potions and 5 pokeballs in your bag, so you're not totally SoL. This pokemon right here is ヘルガー -- Hellgar; Houndoom's Japanese name. Apparently the NPC here says that Houndoom doesn't have a type. Strange...

Trying to leave to the north will have you smack head-first into a wall. Not much fun to be had there, but it's strange that there's this gap in the fence.

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

West of Silent Hill is the first route where we can start to find some wild pokemon to catch! The music here through the rest of the demo is that of Route 1 from Red and Blue!

There's actually a pretty cool battle transition that's unseen int he final game. This is followed by an admittedly overdramatic wild battle theme. The Gym Leader battle theme from Red and Blue is played for all battles in this demo. 

 

For the record, we are VERY QUICKLY going to miss the Pokemon Center. This demo doesn't pull any punches. They want you off of that gameboy so that they can get the line moving as quickly as possible. ハネコ -- Haneko here, whose name is only slightly changed in the final game to ハネッコ -- Hanekko (Hoppip) was not only given a redesign, but was also softened up a bit in the final game. Here, this thing already knows absorb and will rapidly build up loads of damage on Cruise. 

  

After catching Hoppip and taking a peek at the nicknaming screen, I looked through the various screens in the pause menu. Here's the trainer card and the Pokedex! 

 

Unfortunately, while trying to train up my newly caught Hoppip, I very quickly recognized the grim reality that I couldn't heal at the Pokemon Center. Weakening pokemon to catch them really wouldn't do me a whole lot of good. I'd be able to use potions, sure, but I only had 10 to last me the rest of the way. After carelessly losing my pokemon, I was kicked back out to the title screen and had to start over! This is very different to how I typically play Pokemon, so it took a bit of adjustment.

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

Honoguma was the starter I was assigned for my next attempt. With this guy, Hoppip was much easier to deal with. But this time around, my strategy was a bit different. I was going to get to the end of the demo first before going back and taking a peek at all the wild pokemon I could find. 

 

The first trainer actually caught me off guard. He didn't approach me when I crossed in front of his path, so i didn't realize he would be a trainer. This was either an intentional design choice for the demo to allow players to skip the trainers, or it shows that this game actually started development from scratch rather than being built off of the framework of Gen 1 and the function for trainers challenging the player hadn't been implemented yet at this stage. I'm actually leaning toward the latter explanation as many aspects of this game feel buggy even compared to gen 1. For example, when you enter the PC, stepping sideways to the other tile in front of the exit acts as if you walked out the door. Additionally, sometimes your inputs will be eaten when trying to turn while moving. Presumably, they would have wanted to rebuild the game's framework for its higher-budget sequel in order to iron out a lot of the more serious game-breaking bugs that were in the original. 

   

Anyway, this trainer used a Paras. I forgot to take a screenshot of this battle in the moment, but I have one of it from my next session! Paras' sprite in this demo actually more strongly reflects its sprite from Blue than the final Gold one. Chikorita's back sprite was also adjusted so that its entire body is visible while its final back sprite has its legs slightly cut off.

  

The beauty actually has a radically different design from either Red and Blue or Gold and Silver! She seems to have much bigger hair and I actually quite dig this look! 

 

The Beauty's Meowth actually gave me a lot of trouble. Honoguma's ember just wasn't doing enough damage and I was taken out again...

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

As previously shown, my next starter was Chikorita. This time around I decided to try and catch more pokemon just to keep myself alive in case Chikorita got knocked out.

  

  

While searching for my new teammates, I managed to find the infamous beta キリンリキ -- kirinriki (Girafarig)! This is perhaps the most interesting beta design of the bunch. I don't think it needs an explanation as to why exactly that is. I reallly like Girafarig's beta design, but I can see why they would want to change it to something a bit less scary. Beyond the obvious, though, Girafarig's stats screen lists it as a dark and normal type! As a kid, I always thought this was a more fitting typing for it and never understood its Psychic-typing, although Normal/Psychic is a very good defensive typing, so that likely has something to do with it. Still, if Girafarig was a dark-type in the final game, it would have meant an actual dark-type in the early game besides Umbreon which would have been fantastic!

I continued through the forest area until I came out on the other side of the route. Marching forward, I was met by my rival! But... I was surprised to find that he didn't actually battle me as I expected. Instead, once I spoke with him, the demo ended. ...oops.

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

 

The next playthrough, my priority was obviously to see the remaining trainers. I unfortunately didn't get a screenshot of this firebreather, but he used a bubii (Magby). I'm not the biggest fan of this beta design. 

 

  

I was able to find a Ledyba this time. There isn't much to note about him aside from the number of dots on its back, but it does have one bizarre oddity. Its moves are Quick Attack and... scratch? Earlier concept designs of Ledyba have been revealed in magazines and other pre-release media but...

Never has Ledyba been depicted as having claws of any sort. It's always had gloves or ball-shaped nubs. So why this thing has Scratch here in this demo is surprisingly one of the most bizarre mysteries I was able to come across. Perhaps at some point Ledyba also had a design that featured claws?

 

 

The last trainer in the forest was a Schoolboy who had a... Slowking!? And this is no pushover of a Slowking, either. It was able to tear through most of my party. This was, sure enough, a full-fledged level-9 Slowking!

 

 

 

As I continued on past the forest, I decided to poke around the grass some more to see what I could find. There wasn't anything too interesting or surprising here until I came across a Skarmory! Skarmory's name here is ヨロイドリ -- Yoroidori (armor bird), which is different from its final japanese name エアームド -- eaamudo (mabye airmed? Air + Armed/Armored?)

 

The final trainer of the demo is this Kimono girl on the bridge to the gate that the rival is blocking. The Kimono girl's sprite actually does seem to have been inverted, and she looks to be a bit more determined rather than the more graceful appearance from the final.

  

This Kimono girl uses a Clefairy. Compared to the Slowking, this wasn't much of a concern at all, especially with a steel-type by our side.

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

 

With the trainers behind me, there was nothing else to do but poke around in the grass to find whatever I had yet to see. All I really found was a metapod which, like Caterpie, also features a different sprite here. After I was unable to find any more wild pokemon, I decided that was enough for the Gold version as I still had another version to go through!

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

Somewhat predictably, the Silver version of this demo is almost identical to the Gold version, but with a few variations of pokemon available. It also features different trainers which means even more beta pokemon!

 

 

One of the pokemon I found here was ホーホー -- Ho ho; Hoothoot! It looks just about identical to its final form, but with a black stripe on its back and a more speckled design around its eyes. It also has a different tail. I actually really like this design. I'm not sure why they'd remove the extra detail on the back as I feel like it adds more texture to the pokemon!

Perhaps one of the coolest things about Hoothoot in this demo is that he actually comes with a special effect whenever he's sent out of his pokeball. Instead of just popping in like any other pokemon, Hoothoot actually fades into battle as if he's appearing from a cloud of fog. I honestly can't imagine why they would have removed this. This was a really cool feature to see and we've never really seen anything quite like it since this demo! 

 

 

The next pokemon I found is one that is almost synonymous with Gen 2: マリル -- Mariru (Marill). This pokemon went through quite a significant design change. Many of its features were much more "ballooney" and it had big floppy feet. I'm not sure which design I like more, but I do have to say this early design is quite endearing! 

 

The first trainer was still a bug catcher, but this time he used Venonat instead of Paras!

 

 

The beauty with a Meowth in Gold was replaced with a Lass using Oddish. The Lass sprite was altered a bit for the final release to sport long pigtails. This beta sprite more accurately portrays the official art of the trainer class:

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

 

 

The fisher sprite is mostly unchanged. If you're only familiar with the english version of Silver, then you might immediately notice the Cigar in the fisher's mouth, but that was only removed in the international release. Fishers all smoked cigars in the final Japanese release.

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

 

Perhaps the most interesting trainer across both of these demos is this guy who replaces the schoolboy at the end of the forest! Referred to as a スポーツマン -- Supo-tsuman (Sportsman), this seems to be a trainer class that never made it into the final game at all! Presumably, these Sportsmen would specialize in pokemon based on athletics. Particularly racing. The Donphan he uses makes sense with this theme since Donphan curls up into a tire. Other pokemon I can imagine would be associated with this class may include Ponyta and Rapidash or Doduo and Dodrio? 

Seeing an entirely cut trainer class I must say was completely unexpected! I have to wonder why they would have cut this trainer class? It seems like a pretty nice idea. They could fit nicely around Goldenrod or perhaps around Fuscia. Gen III would later introduce the Triathlete class which includes a variation focused on running, and gen IV would introduce the Jogger class. It seems this branch of track-themed trainers was also supposed to have a leg here!

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

   

The Kimono girl at the end of the demo has a Jigglypuff. Interestingly, the Jigglypuff sprite here seems to be the inspiration for its sprite that would later show up in Crystal! (The final gold and silver sprites are in the middle and right respectively). Most of the pokemon with no or relatively few design changes had their prototype sprites used as the basis for their final Gold sprites. We haven't gotten to Crystal yet, but most of the Crystal Sprites are based on either the Gold or Silver Sprite. Very few Pokemon have sprites that don't match either Gold or Crystal and Jigglypuff happens to be one of those few. One would normally assume that they simply drew up a new sprite for Jigglypuff because of the character's popularity in the anime, similar to why Pikachu also got a unique Crystal sprite. But knowing now that this one clearly seems based on the prototype sprite, it makes you wonder why they didn't just use this sprite for Gold? Not that I'm complaining! I'm all for having as many different sprite poses as I can get! After gen 2, sprite differences between version start to get downplayed significantly, sadly.

  

For the record, I dug around on TCRF a bit to see if this same point could be applied to Pikachu, but nope. Pikachu's Crystal sprite is in a different pose than its prototype sprite. For what it's worth, the Silver sprite does seem to share a similar pose to the prototype.

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

Anyway, with that, I think we've covered just about everything there is to see in both versions of the demo. I suppose it's possible there are some especially rare pokemon that I might have missed, but I think I was pretty thorough on my coverage of these games. I could play around in the debug rom as well, but that one was never officially meant to be playable and I haven't dug around in debug menus for any of these other games, so I don't think it would be appropriate to do so here. 

This was a really fascinating experience to me! I'm an absolute nut when it comes to game development and beta information. It's this sort of thing that inspired me to pursue a career in game development in the first place. It's just so cool for me to see the building blocks that the final product was initially based on. What I've covered here is only scratching the surface of what these roms have to offer. I highly recommend checking out the cutting room floor article on the roms for more information as there are lots more really cool beta designs and you'll be able to see the sprites and pokemon in the color they were meant to be displayed. (A surprising note is that Marill is actually Pink instead of Blue here, Ledyba is green and Donphan is brown like his shiny sprite in the final.)

In addition to this demo, another demo was also leaked much more recently. This build is from 1999, much closer to the final release, and much more closely resembles the final product but still features some rather surprising design differences as well. Unlike the 1997 prototype, though, I can't seem to find a download link for this one anywhere. It may or may not pop up soon though, so keep an eye out if you're interested! If this demo does become available I probably will download it and give it a playthrough, but for now, there's no use crying over spilt milk. 

[Aura]

And finally, we've arrived at the truest challenge of generation 2! Released on December 14th, 2000 as Pocket Monsters Stadium Gold and Silver, Pokemon Stadium 2 is obviously the sequel to its namesake from gen 1. It features all the same gameplay with all the new pokemon from the generation II games! Despite only Gold and Silver being the only gen 2 games listed on the boxart, this game also has compatibility with Pokemon Crystal with some exclusive content for that game as well! Unfortunately, this is the last we'll be seeing of the Stadium series which means this playthrough will also have a bit of a bittersweet tone. There are a few games in Gen 3 and 4 that try to replicate the same experience as Stadium in different ways, but they never quite hit the same spot and Pokemon Stadium 3 ultimately faded into the realm of dreams.

Starting off, this game already has much more character than its predecessor. Rather than just being met with a standard menu, we're given this screen with a guide and some animatronic-themed gates leading to the various modes. Battle Now! and Event Battle are the same as they were in Stadium 1. Just quick fixes for those who want to battle but don't want to spend the time selecting a team. Both of these modes give you a random team of six pre-determined pokemon. Battle Now! Is a battle against the AI while Event Battle is a battle against a human player.

*Note, most of these screenshots will be ripped from Serebii and are not from my own playthrough.

Mystery Gift is an option that becomes available for any game cartridge that's unlocked the option. To unlock Mystery Gift, you just have to talk to the little girl in the Goldenrod Dept. Store which isn't far at all in the game. During my playthrough of Gold, I did ping this once a day to get the rewards. It's something I've previously never had access to so it was a simple joy of playing through the hard copies of these games! Most of the rewards you get here are pretty insignificant. Things like X-Attack or Berries. But occasionally you will get some really nice items such as HP and PP Up! My favorites, though, are decorations for your bedroom! During normal gameplay, the only room decorations you can get in-game are a tiny collection of dolls purchased by your mother. Most of the customization options: beds, posters, plants, game consoles, giant dolls and rugs are normally completely barred off outside of Mystery Gift. Lots of these items are extremely rare, though, so you'll want to do Mystery Gift as much as possible! It was exciting to see all sorts of new decorations in the bedroom!

If you recall, the trainer Cal in Viridian City's Trainer House is replaced to reflect the party of the last player you used Mystery Gift with. If that happens to be this little girl, Carrie, then you'll be able to battle her team! She has a different team built around each starter! The one that shows up is selected at random. All of her pokemon are Level 50. I'll use the sprites from Gold since it's what I consider to be the "standard" version.

      

Carrie Team 1: Meganium, Stantler, Xatu, Scyther, Politoed, Marowak

      

Carrie Team 2: Typhlosion, Kingler, Electrode, Scizor, Porygon 2, Ledian

      

Carrie Team 3: Feraligatr, Crobat, Heracross, Tangela, Nidoqueen, Gligar

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

White City is the setting of this game! This game has all the same optionsn as Stadium 1 plus lots more! In addition to the Kid's Club, Gym Leader Castle, Stadium, Oak's Lab, GB Tower (now allowing you to play Gen 2 games!), and Free Battle, there's also the Trainer's School and My Room!

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

 

Decorations received in Mystery Gift are transported straight to the player's PC where they can then be accessed through My Room, which allows you to view and customize the bedroom from your game. This was really cool for me because this is a mode that's always been locked behind the requirement of having a gen 2 game cartridge. Even though there isn't much to this room, I'm really happy to have access to it!

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

Just like Stadium 1, I've been using Stadium 2's Lab pretty regularly during my playthroughs of GS. This was how I performed my trades. Using this mode, I was able to do a few more trade evolutions and I transferred my team from Silver over to Gold. As far as I'm aware, I no longer need to use my copy of Silver and due to how loose the cartridge is, that's probably for the best.

All of the options here are mostly identical to Stadium 1, but the item storage now has two cases, the Color and Metal cases, to differentiate between gen 1 and gen 2. Unfortunately, items cannot be transferred from gen 2 to gen 1, but you can use this to transfer items between gen 1 games which was previously impossible!

Another bizarre change is the limitation on withdrawing pokemon stored in the PC. Obviously, gen 1 games can't withdraw any pokemon from gen 2 or pokemon who know gen 2 moves. These are actually highlighted by the game which is really nice!  But Gen 2 games have the previously mentioned requirement that you must have at least 150 pokemon caught in your Pokedex before you can withdraw pokemon deposited from another save file. This includes other gen 2 games which is especially strange given that there's no restrictions on freely trading between the games. I can only assume this was a blanket fix to stop people from simply transferring the original 150 pokemon over and completing the majority of the pokedex right out the gate, but this is frustrating to be sure.

The trade machine works exactly as you'd expect. It can trade freely between gen 1 games or gen 2 games and has the same restrictions as the time machine for trading between gen 1 and 2.

[Aura]

There are other small modes we can take a look at, but I wanted to go ahead and get started on the Johto Gym Leader Catle! This mode is pretty much exactly what it was in the original but was streamlined and expanded here!

Where the original gym leader castle had three gym trainers in each gym, the number of trainers here is variable. For example, Violet Gym only has one trainer before Falkner. Since both my teams are stored on one cartridge, I'll have a lot more freedom this time to mix and match between the two. For the most part, though, I'll try to keep these teams consistent with what I used in the playthroughs. I figured that, since Ho-oh and Lugia are banned in Poke Cup, I'd go ahead and use my Gold team for Gym Leader Tower. Ultimately, contrary to my expectations, I do feel that my Silver team just might be more competitively viable than Gold, but only experience will tell for sure. After a bit of grinding at Mt. Silver, I leveled all of my pokemon up to 51. By the time I reach Poke Cup, I figured I'd have a better understanding of which pokemon I'd want to be level 52.

Gold

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

Quilliam (Typhlosion M)

Item: Charcoal

Moves: Thunderpunch, Iron Tail, Fire Punch, Sunny Day

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

Ra (Ho-oh)

Item: Sharp Beak

Moves: Sacred Fire, Fly, Steel Wing, Earthquake

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

Maria (Ampharos F)

Item: Magnet

Moves: Thunderpunch, Light Screen, Thunder Wave, Fire Punch

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

Axel (Quagsire M)

Item: Quick Claw

Moves: Surf, Earthquake, Amnesia, Strength

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

Dairy (Miltank F)

Item: Pink Bow

Moves: Shadow Ball, Curse, Milk Drink, Return

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

Katana (Skarmory F)

Item: Leftovers

Moves: Fly, Sandstorm, Steel Wing, Toxic

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

Violet Stadium

What a blast from the past! The first thing you might notice about Gym Leader Castle is that the individual gym stadiums are far more detailed than the ones from Stadium 1! This was one of the biggest reasons I preferred Stadium 2 as a kid. I just loved the designs of the many different stadiums throughout the game and I'll be sure to share screenshots of each stadium whenever I can! Falkner's gym is set in an open-air stadium high in the sky.

Another change in this game is that individual trainers actually have their own text-based dialogue that shows up throughout the match. They all have different lines to react to various things that happen, such as getting hit by a critical, their pokemon being knocked out, sending out a new pokemon, etc. It's not much, but it's a huge step toward making the game's world feel that much more alive!

Round 1:

 

Bird Keeper Matt

Matt is as generic as generic can get. His team is full of generic base-stage bird pokemon. They're all weak to electric so I was able to deal with his team easily using just Maria.

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

Final Round:

Leader Falkner

     

Falkner's team wasn't actually too different. His team is also extremely vulnerable to electric-type attacks, but one key difference that makes him take a bit more strategy is his use of Mud Slap. Very quickly, Thunderpunch would stop hitting and I'd be forced to switch to something else. I had Ra along for the fight, so I sent him out. Ra was a bit slower than Falkner's pokemon, but all they really did to me was spam fly so it was pretty easy to just use Fly myself and dodge all of his attacks. With that, I was able to get through the violet gym with ease.

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

MVP: Ra

Edited May 3, 2020 by Aura

[Aura]

Azalea Stadium

Much like Cerulean Gym before it, this is where the trainers start to be a bit less orthodox when it comes to their choice of pokemon. Make sure you don't just mindlessly come in with a bunch of rock, fire, and flying-types or you might hit some unexpected hiccups along the way. Still, even if you're not prepared for the surprises, none of those pokemon will do a particularly good job of walling you. You should be able to get through just fine. These minor hiccups are moreso just warnings of things to come.

Round 1:

 

Bug Catcher Chaz

Chaz's team is mostly comprised of base-stage bug-types with a Geodude sprinkled in for coverage. A lot of his bug-types know Dig, but they won't be able to get it off most of the time. Ra was able to burn through his team pretty easily. His Shuckle can also be a bit of a pain. Shuckle is about absolutely nothing but its insane defenses. But, with a little help from Katana, that was no problem.

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

Round 2:

 

Twins Min and Lyn

These adorable sisters don't really use many bug-types at all. In fact, they only have one and it's just a Lediba. They love to reduce your stats with Charm and Sweet Scent but didn't really do much of anything else.

Edit:

I only noticed this just now when coming back to touch up this post, but Min and Lyn's Jigglypuff knows the move Nightmare. This isn't totally strange for a Jigglypuff given its correlation to the move Sing, but... this Jigglypuff doesn't know Sing. For that matter, nothing in her entire team knows any move that can put your pokemon to sleep. That means that the only way she can even use Nightmare is if you put your own pokemon to sleep using Rest. Words cannot express just how incredibly silly that move choice is.

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

Final Round:

  

Leader Bugsy

     

Bugsy was always a relatively forgettable gym leader to me, but I must say playing this gym again in Stadiu made me realize his portraits were actually pretty adorable! As for his team, it's a bit more well-rounded than the others' but he still suffers from the majority of his team sharing the weaknesses of the bug type. His Pupitar is perhaps his most note-worthy pokemon as it might give your fire and flying types some problems under normal circumstances. His pokemon also know some surprisingly powerful moves like Giga Drain, Earthquake, and his Scyther even knows Hyper Beam! Yikes!

Still, most of his team went down to Ra pretty easily. I got kinda lucky that he didn't use Pupitar in the battle, but Ra still knew Earthquake and I had Katana to fall back on, so it wouldn't have been that big of a deal.

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

MVP: Ra

[Aura]

Goldenrod Stadium

This stadium seems to be designed after some sort of sanctuary with a really pretty stained glass window. The floor has a diamond shape reminiscent of the gym's Plain Badge!

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

Round 1:

 

Lass Lois

Lois' team seems designed to punish you for going in with a team of pokemon that are good against normal-types, but all of her pokemon are delicate base-stage pokemon yet again, so they're likely to go down pretty easily.

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

Round 2:

 

Beauty Rita

All of Rita's pokemon know attract, which is a little annoying, but infatuation isn't nearly as annoying or consistent as confusion. Only pokemon of the opposite gender are vulnerable and if you faint the pokemon yours is infatuated with, the effect ends unlike confusion which has a lasting effect even after the pokemon goes down. Confusion also obviously has the addition of causing the pokemon to hurt itself. Both infatuation and confusion can be cured by switching out! The only advantage infatuation has over confusion is that it's a lot more accessible, with many pokemon being able to learn attract over moves that confuse, much less Confuse Ray. I do think, though, that infatuation could be made more viable if it slightly decreased the infatuated pokemon's stats... Anyway, aside from attract, there's not much else Rita has to dish out.

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

Final Round:

Leader Whitney

     

I can't blame Whitney for crying the way I kinda went overkill here. I sent out Dairy first and wanted to make sure I'd be able to take out her Miltank in  one or two shots. I opened up by setting up Curse. My intention was that I'd start attacking once she went for Rollout, because obviously letting that damage build up would be bad. But... for some reason, she never did go for Rollout. Instead, she kept using Stomp and Earthquake, presumably simultaneously hoping for flinches and crits. But against Dairy, her Miltank was doing absolutely nothing and I was able to set up all 6 curses before healing all of the damage off with Milk Drink. Form there, I was just three returns away from destroying her entire team. Her Clefable and Wigglytuff both had special builds, but they simply couldn't do anything to Dairy's maxed-out attack. 

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

MVP: Dairy

[Aura]

Ecruteak Stadium

The Ecruteak Stadium seems to be designed after some sort of tomb. The ground seems to be a purified circle similar to the one in Lavender Tower from Red and Blue and the central pokeball has writing on it that I imagine is related to keeping evil spirits away. Honestly, this is probably my favorite stadium design in the game! I just love the ominous glow the purification circle gives the arena.

This gym is also where you start to realize how little the devs care about the acutal type of each gym. Very few trainers here have more than one ghost-type. Granted, in gen 2 there are only the Ghastly line and Misdreavus, so that may not necessarily be their fault. For this reason,, many of the pokemon here are instead poison-types and pokemon associated with the supernatural.

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

Round 1:

 

Medium Holly

I'm not totally sure what Holly's team was going for. None of her pokemon had any notable moves, so I just burned through her pokemon with Maria aloe.

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

Round 2:

 

Sage Ty

Ty actually caught me off guard after Holly's lack of strategy. He opened up with his Misdreavus which used Perish Song. This is a very unique move that sets a "perish counter" on each pokemon to 3. This perish counter counts down each turn the pokemon remains out and when it reaches zero, the pokemon faints. This can easily be fixed by switching out once the counter falls to one. Of course, this move is typically paired with a move like Mean Look. I figured Misdreavus would go down pretty quickly to my Ho-oh's Earthquake, so I didn't bother worrying about Perish Song until I realized how little damage Earthquake actually did. It's easy to underestimate just how bulky Misdreavous can be! Thankfully, Ho-oh was able to take it out before Perish Song dropped to 0 and, since Mean Look is lifted after the user faints, I was able to save Ho-oh from fainting!

The rest of the battle with Ty went pretty smoothly. His Haunter killed itself with Curse and he went with a Zubat which was easily taken care of with Maria.

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

Final Round:

Leader Morty

     

I actually really like the build of Morty's team here. Despite the lack of ghost-types, they still managed to build a team very fitting to Morty's character. He has a Marowak in reference to the Marowak ghost from Red and Blue, he has a Sudowoodo which references the one that blocks the way to Ecruteak City, Noctowl and Girafarig are both there for type coverage, being immune to ghost-type attacks (though Girafarig would have done this job better if it was still a dark-type!). and his Ariados is simply one of the scariest designs in gen 2. 

As for how it plays, while it's definitely a better team than the others before it, it still doesn't do much. I was able to get through it with relative ease, although he did manage to get the first KO against me! Granted, this was mostly due to my own negligence as I stupidly left my Ho-oh out to use Earthquake against his Sudowoodo. That went about a well as you'd expect. After that though, it was just a matter of washing the rest of his team away with Axel.

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

MVP: Axel

Edited May 3, 2020 by Aura

[Aura]

Cianwood Stadium

This stadium seems to be based on some sort of martial arts arena/ The giant hands and feet in the background are certainly unique, but it's also a little strange.

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

Round 1:

 

Blackbelt Nick

This gym only has one trainer and that's for a damn good reason. Nick's team is pretty dumb. His whole strategy is to just spam Horn Drill and Fissure to one-hit KO your pokemon. All of his pokemon have these moves except for his Hitmontop and Hitmonlee. Hitmontop will pretty consistently go for counter while Hitmonlee will focus on damage with some fighting attacks. None of his pokemon are too terribly tough and his strategy isn't nearly consistent enough to be competitively viable, it's just there to be an occasional annoyance. Unless you're using a flying-type against his Dugtrio or a ghost-type against his other pokemon, every turn is simply a coin toss whether or not your pokemon goes down regardless of bulk or type matchups. 

Any strategy you use here is risky because if lady luck against you, any of your pokemon can go down in an instant. The best idea is to just take out each of his pokemon as soon as possible. I opened up with Maria, but his Seaking opened up with a lucky Horn Drill and took me down after I was only able to get off a single thunderpunch. After that, though, I simply sen tout Dairy to take it out. He sent out Hitmontop with the hopes of countering Dairy away, but I saw right through this and just set up a bunch of curses. From there, it was simply a one-hit KO. Although his last pokemon, Rhydon, did catch me off guard. Even with 6 curses, Shadow Ball still wasn't enough to take it out! Thankfully, its horn drill missed twice so I was able to take it out. Again, his strategy isn't nearly consistent enough to be viable. Just enough to occasionally get a cheap win if you're unlucky enough.

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

Final Round:

Leader Chuck

     

Chuck's team is all about overwhelming you with brute force. However, regardless of type matchups, it seems his strategy is a bit flawed. All of his pokemon know Dynamicpunch and they'll all use it until your pokemon is confused. This is actually really nice as it makes them super predictable and even overrides obviously better move choices like Earthquake against an Electric-type. While it's a bit annoying whenever Dynamicpunch actually lands, this team overall is pretty simple and not likely to get much headway on you.

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

MVP: Axel

[Aura]

Olivine Stadium

This stadium seems to be designed after a mine, especially given Jasmine's canonical history as a Rock gym leader before the Steel type existed. 

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

Final Round:

Leader Jasmine

     

Yup, just like in the games, Jasmine doesn't have any gym trainers at all in her gym! Unfortunately, this kind of means that her gym is just over pretty quickly. Despite having a lot of steel-types, her team actually does cover her weaknesses pretty well. You can't just rely on a Ground, Fire, Fighting, or Electric type to carry you through her entire team because she has an out to them all. This game's gym leader Castle takes a while to get to this point, but it's here that you really have to start making sure you have variety in your team!

Her Skarmory likes to spam Fly, so getting Maria out to deal with it was pretty easy. I got careless though and went for Thunderpunch instead of Fire Punch when I knew she probably had Steelix on her team. Needless to say, I unintentionally gave her a free switch. Still, her Steelix's Earthquake wasn't quite enough to get past Ampharos' bulk and Maria proved faster. I was able to get a couple of Fire Punches in to take it out. She sent Skarmory out in answer Maria which told me her last pokemon was probably either Forretress or one of her Water-types. This made it clear the rest of her team would be going down pretty easily. Thunderpunch wasn't quite enough to take out her Corsola, though, so when Maria went down, I had to send Quilliam in to get one last Thunderpunch in there to finish the job.

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

MVP: Maria

[Aura]

Rocket Takeover

Immediately after clearing Olivine gym, on the way to the Mahogany Stadium, you're met with a surprise ambush from Team Rocket! This has always been one of the most memorable parts of the game to me. Having a brief story bit thrown into the Gym Leader castle is a cool touch and this is a great way to incorporate the new members of Team Rocket without Giovanni as a gym leader. 

The "stadium" this time around is a bridge between two stadiums. This unconventional battlefield makes for an especially memorable set piece. 

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

Round 1:

 

Rocket Grunt M

This guy's team is all about Explosion. Each of his pokemon know it and they'll all use it at the first opportunity. All in all, it's a pretty crappy strategy, though his last pokemon, Koffing, caught me off guard by hitting Katana with a Zap Canon. Still, as long as you can endure a lot of hits, the explosions won't do much at all to your pokemon and he'll go down pretty quickly.

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

Round 2:

 

Rocket Grunt F

Your ability to handle this team basically depends on whether or not you have a poison- or steel-type. If not, then this battle becomes much more luck-based. Her entire strategy is as simple as using Toxic to poison your pokemon and then protect or detect to avoid damage herself. The problem with this strategy is that, when used in succession, protect and detect both have a chance of failing. Additionally, poison- and steel-types are immune to Toxic, so she'll have to rely on other methods to damage your pokemon at that point, which her team is rather ill-equipped to do. If you don't have a pokemon immune to Toxic, though, then be prepared to just hope Protect/Detect fails each turn as toxic damage piles on. It should help to know that she'll always use Toxic on a pokemon that's not poisoned but can be, and she'll always use Protect against a pokemon that's poisoned. The first protect will always be successful so you may as well use that first turn for a free switch or setting up with a status move.

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

Round 3:

 

Rocket Executive F

Again, this team is pretty simple. Each of her pokemon know Thief to get rid of your held items and use them against you, but she doesn't do much to take advantage of that. Other than that, her pokemon also all know Frustration which can get as strong as Return, so it can be pretty dangerous. But it's only a standard normal attack meaning it's easy to resist. 

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

Final Round:

Rocket Executive M

     

Before we get into this one, I just have to let the eighth grader in me out for a bit and mention that this guy's nicknaming convention tacks "AP" onto the end of each of his pokemon's names. That means that his Wobbuffet's nickname is "WABBUFFAP" and that's hilarious. 

This executive actually proves to be quite difficult. I'm not sure if I got unlucky or if he has a preference to choose pokemon that have good synergy together, but the pokemon he chose formed a pretty stolid Sunny Day combo with both Houndoom and Victreebel. He opened up with Wobbuffap allowing me to get a Toxic on it using Katana before it could set up Safeguard. It's important that you don't directly damage Wobbuffet because it will hammer you hard with Counter or Mirror Coat. Taking it out with Toxic and Sandstorm was the best bet. Unfortunately, the Houndoom that followed took the opportunity to set up Sunny Day, which overwrote Katana's Sandstorm. From there, it was actually a pretty close battle! Fortunately, in the end, Maria was able to come in clutch by anticipating a Sunny Day once the sunlight faded and setting up Sunny Day, then turning his own sunlight against him to power up Maria's Fire Punch!

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MVP: Maria