All the Pokemens

[Aura]

 

And now that we've done everything of interest here on Card Island, it's time to move on back to GR Island!

 

Back at the Colorless Altar, we now have the cards we need to meet the requirements of the colorless clerics, starting with Seth who required four Pidgey to be in my deck!

  

I have to say this is probably the most difficult duel I've done in this series so far. I'm not sure if it was just bad luck or the fact that I was forced to build my deck around the requirement of fitting four Pidgey into the deck, but I lost several times in a row here. At first, I went for an electric-focused deck assuming he, too, would be using Pidgey. Instead, his deck is entirely a stall deck with absolutely nothing but bulky pokemon that take several hits to take down. And thanks to Full Heal and Potion Energies, they're constantly being healed as well. To make matters worse, I swear this guy is running half his deck as energy removal. You just can't catch a break when dueling him and you will be energy starved. In the end, I focused pretty much exclusively on the Machop line with the knowledge that he'd be using exclusively Normal-type pokemon like Snorlax, Chansey and Lickitung. I ran as much draw and search power as I could in order to get access to as many energies as possible. Thankfully, Dark Machamp's Mega Punch is surprisingly low cost, so he wouldn't have to worry too much about energy removal. I tried to keep my deck as low on energy cost as possible for this one. The Pidgey were really just there by obligation, and I ran some PIdgeotto to maybe get some use out of them. My original deck tried to work their Whirlwind in with pokemon like Jungle Pikachu and the Legendary Zapdos to take them out on the bench, but his pokemon just had too much health for such a strategy to ever get off the ground. 

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Energy (16)

 

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Fighting Pokemon (11)

   

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Colorless Pokemon (10)

   

 

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Trainer Cards (23)

   

  

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I don't think I could have asked for a better start than a Hitmonchan lead! With Mach Punch, I was able to not only deal some quick hits on Kangaskhan, but also get a head start on his benched pokemon as well!

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His Chansey came out shortly after and didn't hesitate to get rid of Hitmonchan as quickly as possible.

  

Dark Machoke was going to be the key to my victory here. Being able to seize control of which pokemon my opponent has out works wonders in disrupting his strategies. I used Drag Off to pull out one of his undamaged Snorlax and give it a rude awakening.

  

Chansey wasn't safe the next turn when I used Drag Off again to bring it back out. There goes all those energy!

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He tried to paralyze me with his Lickitung's Tongue Wrap, but his plan failed.

  

I used Drag Off again to bring out another Lickitung that didn't have any energy. These guys can get really annoying if you're not careful.

  

Another Drag Off brought his Snorlax back out for another harsh hit.

  

And another for the other one!

  

Finally, I KO'd one of them. Leaving several pokemon with low HP on his bench was going to be a key part of my plan.

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Lickitung finally successfully paralyzed Dark Machoke!

  

After a fling from Machamp, that nuisance was out of the picture and right back into the deck!

  

With a couple of Mega Punches, the Kangaskhan that followed up went down.

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Another one came and went as well, he was starting to get desperate... And now, I had one last trick up my sleeve to win me the game.

  

I played Switch to bring the Dark Machoke off of the bench, then used Drag Off to force the opponent to switch into one of those Snorlax I'd weakened earlier to guarantee a quick KO!

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Thanks to this, I was able to get my last KO and claim my last prize card using the very last card in my deck! I cannot emphasize enough just how frustrating this duel was. Seth does nothing but waste your time with all sorts of obnoxious stall tactics. I'm so glad it was over.

 

For winning here, I was awarded two legends packs!

Legends 1:

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Legends 2:

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The next Cleric, Alan, requires us to use four Dratini!

  

If I was going to use Dratini, then I may as well build a deck around Dark Dragonite's Summon Minions power to fill up the bench quickly. I also built my deck around countering colorless pokemon. I figured since the last opponent focused more on Normal-types, this one would be more about Flying types. but I still held onto some cheap Fighting-types to get some good hits in on any normal-types. 

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Energy (19)

  

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Electric Pokemon (7)

  

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Fighting Pokemon (4)

 

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Colorless Pokemon (13)

   

 

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Trainer Cards (17)

   

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This was an unfortunately matchup to open up with, but at least Onix doesn't resist Electricity. Still, it wasn't worth wasting any energy on this Magnemite when it was obviously going down very quickly.

  

Dark Dragonair wasn't supposed to have any problems with this matchup, but of course parahax prevented it form attacking and even when I did get a single hit off, I missed the coin toss on Tail Strike so I was only able to deal 20 HP. Fantastic. At the very least, Evolutionary Light allowed me to search out some nice evolution cards for future reference.

  

Finally, Wigglytuff was ready to start making rounds with Do the Wave! I was able to finish off Onix, but I wasted a lot of time getting past this thing thanks to that wall of paralysis. Between that and all my draw power, this was going to bite me in the butt soon.

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Dark Clefable's obnoxious Darkness Veil protected it for a lot longer than I would have liked by reducing the damage I was able to deal with Do the Wave. I was doing enough damage to where it wasn't too much of an issue, but the Dark Song attack kept me on edge with the chance to put me to sleep and damage my whole bench. It did get that coin flip chance once but I thankfully managed to wake up right away. By this point, though, my deck was getting dangerously thin for me still having 4 more prize cards to get through.

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A Jigglypuff came out next and I was thankfully able to take it out quickly.

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Dratini managed to parahax me a little longer until I was just about out of it. By this point, my deck was already in the single digits. Things weren't looking good.

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Another Jigglypuff came and didn't have the energy to attack with, so it went for Friendship Song instead, giving me another kill.

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Dratini was able to take out Wigglytuff with Wrap. After my next draw, I had two cards left in my deck... I needed just one more KO!

  

I needed to get a KO quick. If I could get the coin flip on Thunderpunch, I would be able to win the duel right here! But I failed! That was okay, though, because all I needed was one more hit!

...but then he retreated to a Jigglypuff with full HP.

For a moment, I thought all hope was lost. I drew my second to last card. No matter what Electabuzz could do, it wasn't going to be able to deal 50 HP in a single turn and I didn't have anything like Gust of Wind to bring Dratini back out. I had a Machop on my bench I could retreat to, but it only had two energies and I had no other energy in my hand. At most, it would get a super-effective Punch and deal 40 HP, leaving Jigglypuff at just 10! From there, it could just retreat and stall me out. No matter how I looked at it, it seemed like I was done...

...but there was one hope. With my next draw, I picked up the very card that would bring me hope.

I thought Energy Search would be useless at first. I'd burned through so many cards, I thought for sure I didn't have any more energy in my deck. But, I really had no other options, so I played it and, to my surprise, the last card in my deck was a fighting energy!

  

With the very last card in my deck, I was able to push past my limitations and take Jigglypuff out in one turn with Kick!

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With that last KO, I somehow managed to turn such a close game into a victory!!

 

For heart of the cards-ing my way to victory, I was rewarded with two Assault packs!

Assault 1:

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Assault 2:

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Finally, with the other colorless clerics defeated, we can speak with their leader, Avery, who reveals himself to be GR No.2!

Of course, it wouldn't be a GR Island duel without a special rule. We're forced to use 4 Dark Pokemon cards. This shouldn't be too difficult though because I've been using a decent selection of Dark pokemon cards this whole time!

  

...I didn't realize until just now that I accidentally forgot to take Dark Dragonite out of my deck. Considering it literally can't be used in this deck, I certainly could have traded that out for some extra Electric Energy or something. Oh well, it ultimately didn't become a problem.

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Energy (20)

  

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Electric Pokemon (7)

  

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Fighting Pokemon (9)

  

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Colorless Pokemon (5*)

  

*Dark Dragonite is actually unusable and was left in by mistake

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Trainer Cards (19)

   

 

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I was able to evolve my Magnemite pretty early on, allowing me to take an early lead by defeating Avery's Tauros before it was ready to attack.

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He brought out a Flying Pikachu next. It wasn't able to hold up much against Magneton though and went down shortly after.

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He brought his Fearow out next and, in a bit of a dick move, used Gust of Wind to drag my Magnemite out and kill it with Drill Peck.

  

Of course, I was able to follow up by bringing Dark Magneton right back out and giving Fearow a piece of my mind.

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since he had no other pokemon on his bench... that was it. With how difficult the other two duels were, I was expecting to have a much harder time with this one. None of the pokemon in his deck look particularly scary. Fearow is probably his biggest threat and even that is kind of a pushover thanks to its weakness that isn't even covered by anything else in his deck. I'm genuinely surprised at how simple of a duel this one turned out to be. Huh.

 

Well, as usual I was awarded with two packs: This time, Lost Isle!

Lost Isle 1:

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Golduck from Vending Series 3. Its first attack, Psychic deals 10 extra damage per energy attached to the defending pokemon. Its other attack is Wave Splash.

Lost Isle 2:

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And of course we've earned the GR Colorless Coin as well.

 

With this in our possession, we can now gain entry into GR Castle! We're finally prepared to make our way to challenge the GR King himself!

[Aura]

Our final destination is GR Castle!

  

I figured I might be challenged to a surprise duel on the way out, so I went ahead and put together the best deck I could for the endgame. What could be more fitting than an upgraded Rain Dance deck? This was the deck I used in the previous game and now I could take advantage of some new cards I didn't have access to before!

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Energy (19)

 

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Water Pokemon (14)

   

   

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Fighting Pokemon (7)

   

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Trainer Cards (20)

   

  

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Entering GR Castle, sure enough, we're blocked off by a massive gate and two receptionists. We'll need the GR Psychic and GR Colorless coins to get through.

 

Giving the coins to the two receptionists, they'll place the coins into the gate and the door will open.

 

Somehow, Ronald was behind the gate! This... isn't explained in the slightest. I suppose it's been implied that he's been ahead of us the entire time, so maybe he won the coins and entered the gate and it was simply closed behind him, but this was the last place I expected to bump into him! Ronald tells us that the opponents behind the gate are incredibly powerful and that I'll need to be really good in order to defeat them. He challenged me to a duel in order to test my strength.

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He led off with Mewtwo against my Squirtle. This was a bit worrisome thanks to Complete Recovery and the threat of Pyscho Blast removing my energies before I can get Blastoise out to easily recover them.

Once he got a Psychic energy onto Mewtwo, I dropped Articuno in hopes of paralyzing it and preventing it from healing the damage off on the next turn. I got the coin flip and successfully prevented that annoyance.

  

After paralyzing him with Articuno, I evolved into Wartortle to pile up some damage.

  

Blastoise came next and with that, I finished Mewtwo off no problem.

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Mew was probably the biggest threat here. I originally gave Blastoise four energy mistakenly thinking Hydro Pump took a minimum of four to be used. Since Psywave deals extra damage based on the number of energy attached to the defending pokemon, I was worried about Mew using my energy against me. That's why I didn't play all that energy on Blastoise at once like I normally do. My other concern was Devolution Beam which had a chance of easily KO-ing Wartortle. Thankfully, all it did was Psywave before going down to a Hydro Pump.

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His Haunter came next and, since I didn't have any trainer cards in my hand, it couldn't damage me until it had the energy for Bad Dreams. The confusion added an extra layer of frustration there. But, I was able to power through the confusion and take him out with Hydro Pump, too.

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With no benched pokemon left, Ronald was defeated!

As a prize, he gave me another copy of Super Energy Retrieval which I didn't hesitate to put in my deck in place of a water energy!

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Inside the gate, it was time to see these powerful opponents for ourselves.

 

It's King Villicci! He warns us that, if we're going to challenge him, we're going to need to gather the Legendary Cards. It turns out that might not have been as optional as I thought. In hindsight, it certainly makes sense, though.

In order to challenge King Villicci, surprise surprise, we're going to have to duel the Top Executives of Team GR.

First up is Executive Clay!

 

In order to duel him, we're going to have to construct a deck using... sigh... all four Legendary Cards. You know, those cards that I just said didn't have a whole lot of synergy together?

  

I tried to make as consistent of a deck as I possibly could around the legendary cards. I suppose there's a bit more synergy here among these cards than I initially thought. The biggest problem this deck faces is the fact that each of the legendary birds require three energy of their type, so I had to build my deck around three different colors of energy. Granted, I could completely ignore these attacks and just focus on using these cards for their Pokemon Power, but that would leave those legendary birds completely useless after that single effect. I wanted to incorporate them in a more meaningful way. I think if I were to redesign this deck, I'd probably put less emphasis on Fire Energy and focus more on Water and Electric. Moltres' power lets it search out Fire Energy on its own. I would have liked to run more copies of Scoop Up to reuse the Pokemon Powers of the legendary birds, but I only have one copy of it. I figured I was best off focusing on basic pokemon as much as I could, with Moon Stone to help me search out Dragonite and Dragonair to evolve Dratini quickly. Moltres is by far the most useless pokemon in this deck. It's only really good in a Fire Deck built around it specifically. Having Fire Energy added directly to your hand doesn't accomplish much other than thinning your deck here.

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Energy (28)

   

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Fire Pokemon (1)

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Water Pokemon (1)

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Electric Pokemon (1)

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Colorless Pokemon (9)

   

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Trainer Cards (20)

    

   

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This dude looks like he just hopped straight out of a Gundam.

  

Clay led off with Oddish against my Tauros. It was able to poison me with Poison Powder before I was able to take it out, but that didn't prove too much of an issue.

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The damage counters from the poison put me in the position to take Psyduck out in one shot with Rampage, but I unfortunately failed the coin flip resulting in confusion.

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Realizing Tauros was going down no matter what this turn, I had no choice but to play the Zapdos from my hand.

Wouldn't you know it? Peal of Thunder decided to hit Tauros and knock it out early. Great.

  

With Zapdos on the front lines, I was going to be making a pretty big gamble. Remember that Big Thunder has a chance of attacking any pokemon on your own bench, so it's not something you want to get careless with. But I had a plan. His Slowpoke wasn't capable of dealing very much damage to Zapdos, so I was able to stall out long enough until I got the electric energy I needed to start attacking and that's exactly what I did.

   

During Zapdos' rein of terror, I knocked out three of his pokemon with Big Thunder at the cost of critically damaging one of my own pokemon.

  

If I recall, the pokemon of his that I knocked out were Dark Gloom, Charmander, and Oddish. (It only shows their names for a few frames so I didn't get screenshots of this, this is just going off of memory).

 

On my bench was a Dratini which I'd evolved into Dragonair just before using Big Thunder. This would ensure that it wouldn't die in one shot and would still be around.

  

Eventually, he retreated his Slowpoke so that Dark Charmeleon could finally take out Zapdos. With a Tail Slap, he was able to finally stop the relentless storm. But the fires had already spread more than enough.

When Dragonair finally came into play, I didn't hesitate to evolve it, allowing Healing Wind to heal off some of the damage it took.

 

 

With no more fear of bringing harm to my own bench, I could now drop the rest of the pokemon I'd gathered in my hand. First was Moltres who brought a measly 1 Fire Energy to my hand, and Articuno's Quick Freeze failed its coin flip. Big help these two were.

  

I got a single heads on Slam my first hit, so I only dealt 30 damage to Dark Charmeleon. Thankfully, it failed its coin flip on Fireball so it was unable to damage Dragonite. On my next turn, I was able to finish it off with a powerful Tail Slam.

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Honestly, I don't think I could have asked for a more anime duel here. Surprisingly enough, all four legendary cards were able to contribute something to this duel! Granted, the effects of Moltres and Articuno still could have played a bigger part. Maybe if I needed the Fire energy from Moltres to give Dragonite the energy it needed to attack, and Articuno's Quick Freeze successfully paralyzed Dark Charmeleon, the ending would have felt more like an anime, but still, it was exciting to play all these cards back to back like this! ....I'm also never going to use such an unwieldy and inconsistent deck ever again.

 

For winning the duel, I was awarded with a Rocket and Assault pack.

Rocket:

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Assault:

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Clay may be down but I still had one more opponent to face before King Villicci.

Allison explains to us that she will use one of three special rules during her duels. Because of this, it's hard to build a deck that exploits the special rule of the duel. Instead, it's best to just go for a universally good deck.

 

The first rule, Tough Escape, increases the energy cost of retreat of all pokemon by 1. So you may want to run some Switch or Scoop Up to work around this limitation.

 

Black Hole makes it so that the discard pile is completely inaccessible. You may want to avoid running decks that rely too heavily on cards like Energy Retrieval or Nightly Garbage Run. (This is advice I completely ignore due to my own laziness by the way)

 

Low Resistance reduces the effectiveness of resistance, making offensive Psychic, Fighting, and Electric pokemon much more powerful and reducing the defensive capabilities of Fighting and Colorless pokemon. 

All three of these rules certainly sound familiar... Anyway, I decided against my better judgment to go for my Rain Dance Deck and simply hope we didn't have to worry about the Black Hole rule.

 

Thankfully, our duel only utilized the Low Resistance rule. It seems that, while the rule is chosen randomly, she still uses a different deck depending on the rule, so that's always fun.

  

She stared out with a Sandshrew against my Lapras. Lapras is arguably the single best pokemon to start with in my deck as it's a nice, low-cost pokemon that can take advantage of the massive flood of water energy. It's not nearly as good late game, but early on it's great. A few turns in and I was able to take out Allison's Sandshrew.

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Her Sandslash was able to win out against me with some lucky coin flips from Fury Swipes.

  

Squirtle was able to handle the rest of Sandslash from here!

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Mewtwo was potentially a bit scarier, but I wasn't going to back down. At the moment, though, Psychic was capable of taking out Squirtle so I was going to have to evolve it if I wanted it to stand a chance.

  

Luckily, I had a Squirtle Deck Wartortle in my hand which was just great for a low-energy cost attack with high power. So, it was time to surf my worries away.

  

Finally, I evolved Blastoise and took full advantage of Rain Dance to lay waste to my enemies!

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Hitmonchan put up a good fight but went down in a couple of turns.

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The real threat was the second Hitmonchan she'd been building up on the bench. One Special Punch was enough to push Blastoise past its limit...

  

It's just a good thing I had a second Blastoise ready to fight!!

But it was at this point where she gave me a scare by dropping this monster onto her bench. At this point, my deck was starting to run thin and I wasn't confident I had any pokemon capable of damaging this thing directly. If she got Mr. Mime out on the field, it would be very bad for me... But, my hope wasn't completely dashed!

  

I paid the hefty retreat cost for Blastoise in order to bring out Dugtrio. With this, even if she brought out Mr. Mime, I was still capable of damaging her benched pokemon 10 HP at a time. In addition, I also had Fossil Articuno on the bench which had a coin-flip chance of paralyzing Mr. Mime to shut down its pokemon power though in the moment, I didn't actually think of that plan. It's not very common that using a status condition to shut down a pokemon power becomes relevant. Anyway, with Dugtrio, I was able to take out Hitmonchan as well as damage two of her benched pokemon. (Unfortunately, it seems as though you cannot select the same pokemon twice like I was initially hoping). 

  

Perhaps my Dugtrio plan scared her off because instead of sending out Mr. Mime, she sent out Mewtwo. This made it an easy victory for me. All I had to do was pay the retreat cost for Dugtrio, play a Super Energy Retrieval, and dump some more water energies right back onto Blastoise to knock Mewtwo out quickly and claim my final prize card!

 

For winning against Allison, I was awarded with an Ambition and Flight pack.

Ambition:

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Flight:

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Now that we've defeated both Clay and Allison, it was time to meet with Villicci and settle this once and for all.

 

The two executives report their losses to the king.

 

Villicci finally acknowledges our strength and decides it's time for our final battle. He dismisses the two elites so that he can have audience with you alone.

 

 

He explains his motivations here. King Villicci is frustrated with those who merely collect rare cards and hoard them all selfishly. He sees it as a massive waste. He believes pokemon cards should all be used in battle and looks down on the people of Card Island for keeping entire collections of cards and only using a handful of them in their actual decks. This is also why he invented the special rules used by Team GR: In order to bring use to otherwise less useful cards. It's actually not a terrible mindset to have. Having new rulesets that benefit lesser played cards is a really fun idea! This seems to be a message the game wants to convey to its players as well. I imagine a lot of kids, after playing this game, would have been inspired to come up with their own special rules to play with their friends. But of course, his methods of getting this message clear are certainly unwarranted. There's no way we can accept stealing the cards of those he deems not to deserve them as good and just.

 

Our final duel with Villicci will be a match. Best 2 out of 3. Villicci has four completely different decks which he will run against you. Each duel, he'll use a random deck. You have the opportunity to change your deck between duels as well, but you won't know what deck he'll be using until you duel him. There doesn't seem to be any logic in his decision making, it just seems to be chosen at random. Although it does seem fair to assume that he won't use the same deck twice, so maybe you can take that into consideration when trying to predict what you'll be going up against. I decided to just stick to my Rain Dance deck in order to keep things simple.

The first deck he came at me with was his Beat and Destroy! Deck!

  

This seems to be a water deck built around Dark Blastoise, which led me to believe at least two of his other decks were likely built around Dark Charizard and Dark Venusaur. Furthermore, I would guess his last deck to be built around a Mewtwo as I found it strange that Mewtwo wasn't the fourth Legendary Card in the original game. I would have guessed Dark Raichu, but Dark Raichu didn't actually exist in Japan! It was only printed in the english version of the Team Rocket expansion until it was first printed in Japan in Ruin Discovery (The japanese counterpart to Neo Discovery). Anyway, Squirtle lasted only a couple of turns before being confused by Confuse Ray. That wasn't an issue, though, because I was going to evolve it anyway!

  

I went for Bubble instead of Surf here in hopes of preventing Lapras from attacking and damaging me. After all, that was all it took to put him into Blastoise's KO range. This plan was successful and I was able to paralyze it!

  

From here, I was able to make it rain and wash Lapras out with Hydro Pump!

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Scyther took a couple of hits but wasn't able to get the energy it needed to fight back, so it was nothing to take care of.

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Another Lapras came along and managed to confuse Blastoise. I could have kept Blastoise in and just powered through the confusion, but I wanted to keep Blastoise around until I was better established.

And so, I played the Legendary Articuno to my bench and let Quick Freeze paralyze Lapras. From here, I paid the cost and retreated Blastoise to bring Articuno to the front lines and, with Rain Dance, dropped the energy it needed to attack.

   

 

The first Ice Breath hit a Clefairy on his bench. The second hit his active Lapras.

 

The third knocked out his benched Squirtle and the fourth hit... I wanna say another Scyther though I can't quite recall.

  

Eventually, between Confusion and Water Gun, Lapras was able to take Articuno down and stop the frozen assault.

  

By this point, though, I was ready to drop a Super Energy Retrieval and get Blastoise right back in the game to finish Lapras off.

  

Clefairy didn't stand a chance.

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The second Lapras used a Super Potion to heal off some of the damage from my first Hydro Pump, but it wasn't enough to get it out of the kill range of a second!

And with that, the duel was won!

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Of course, it's not time to celebrate yet because now it's time to face one of Villicci's other decks!

For his next duel, he went for his Throw Out! Deck! This name seems to imply that this deck isn't, in fact, built around Mewtwo like I had initially assumed. Judging by the name, it's pretty clear this one is going to be built around Dark Machamp which is a scary thought indeed. If Blastoise gets hit by Fling, I could very well lose my edge. Thankfully, Articuno does come as a soft counter, but if he can fling Blastoise then he'll be able to Fling Articuno as well. I'll need to be careful with how I approach this deck.

  

Kangaskhan went down without much resistance. He just used it to draw cards.

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I was able to eliminate Machop with Lapras, but this left me in a bit of a pickle...

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He got another Machop on his bench to evolve all the way to Dark Machamp. And it already had four fighting energies making Fling totally accessible! This was bad! Thankfully, I was lucky enough to confuse it with Confuse Ray. Thanks to that, I was able to build up some extra damage on it before Lapras was inevitably taken down with Mega Punch.

  

I wasn't gonna be taking any chances here and took Dark Machamp out as soon as I possibly could with Blastoise.

  

My next opponent was a Chansey whose sole purpose was simply to stall with Scrunch. I tried to play Articuno to Quick Freeze it, and prevent it from using Scrunch, but it was a no-go. I just had to wait for a few bad coin flips before I could take it out but I was eventually able to after a long and rigorous process.

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Next came another Chansey. I was originally planning on waiting for it to fail a Scrunch before retreating into my Dugtrio to take it out with an Earthquake, but it seemed interested in making my job easier by using Double-Edge instead. That was fine by me! All it took was a Hydro Pump now to finish the job!

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I still wanted to use my Earthquake strat, so when Kangaskhan came along, I didn't hesitate to retreat Blastoise and take Kangaskhan out with a powerful super-effective Earthquake!

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And with that, I'd claimed my last prize card and won the final duel!

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It seems as though this is the first time Villicci has ever lost a duel. Much less a whole match! And yet, King Villicci seemed to have enjoyed himself.

 

 

It seems, through our duel, we were able to give King Villicci a change of heart. He now understands that there's more to Pokemon Cards than merely winning duels. And, I guess somewhere from that he also concluded that collecting new cards was fun, too. I'm not sure where those dots were connected, but it good to see the change regardless!

 

With a solemn thank you, Villicci vows to never steal cards from other duelists again!

 

And as a token of this promise, he gives us the GR King Coin which depicts Togepi! Aside from the Phantom Card Lugia, this seems to be the only reference to Johto pokemon in this game which is a bit sad. But still, with this, we now have two full pages of coins to choose from! From what I understand, the third page of coins is just a collection of coins that are available as prizes from the Game Center... I have no interest in grinding out to get all of those.

As an additional gift, King Villicci also gives us another rare promotional card: GR's Mewtwo!

GR's Mewtwo's Pokemon Power is Dark Wave which works like an offensive counterpart to Dark Clefable's Darkness Veil. It will randomly increase the power of any attack from a Dark pokemon by 0, 10, or 20. Its attack, Dark Amplification, deals an additional 20 damage per Dark Pokemon on your bench. This is a card I'd heard about before, it was a promotional card released in Japan with a special edition Gameboy Advance bundle. I honestly expected King Villicci to use this card but it's not actually in any of his decks at all!

 

And with that, we've finally resolved the disputes between Card and GR Islands and the people of Card Island can now duel with King GR Peacefully without their cards being at risk! There's still some... very objectionable things Team GR has done that I guess is just going to be ignored, but, I guess as long as they're not stealing pokemon cards, no more justice is necessary.

 

And with that, the credits roll!

Even though I wasn't able to find a video of the title screen for this game, I was certainly able to find the end credits! Odd... As you can see in the video, though, these credits do depict card art of several pokemon including... Togepi...? 

The togepi art in question seems to be in reference to this Promo Togepi card available through Coro Coro in Japan and as a prize at January Pokemon League tournaments in the US in 2001. If this card's art is in the credits, perhaps that means this card is obtainable? In addition...

...the game ends on an anime-style ">To be continued" screen. Considering there was never a sequel to this game released and I've heard no word of a planned sequel, and the fact that there are still quite a few unsolved mysteries left on GR Island like the Sealed Temple and Ishihara's House... I think we're looking at a pretty notable postgame here. I don't think we're quite done just yet!

[Aura]

So, it turns out that "sizeable postgame" I was speculating about isn't as large as it originally seemed, but at the same time seems like a far bigger bite than I ever expected... you'll understand that latter part more on the next post, but today we're going to focus on the extra hoops we need to unlock the remainder of the content.

 

Surprisingly, not much seems to have really changed in the postgame. For the most part, the differences just seem to be that various NPC's will comment about how impressed they are that you were able to defeat King Villicci. Dr. Mason explains that he won't hold a grudge against Team GR. In fact...

  

An email from King Villicci himself tells us that Dr Mason has already started collaborating with Team GR and built a "GR Challenge Machine" in the Challenge Hall on GR Island! Apparently getting 50 wins in a row will earn you a rare Gengar Coin... I'm... not doing that. This just seems like a long-term goal you're expected to work toward in your offtime if you just want to play the game, much like the Battle Tower in Crystal or Battle Frontier in upcoming games. I'm definitely going to check it out in the end, but 50 wins in a row sounds a bit daunting. This coupled with the Game Center prizes, it's very clear that completing this game 100% takes a LOT more grinding than the original game and for that reason, I think I can honestly say that a completionist would probably end up preferring the original. Thankfully, I'm mostly interested in the variety of content here which is far more impressive than the original game.

The first mystery I wanted to solve was the one of the second house of Ishihara. After doing some quick research, it turns out I've been overthinking this. Ishihara simply has a house on Card Island and a Villa on GR Island. 

 

If you recall, you can find Ishihara in his house on Card Island where he'll offer you a trade.

 

He'll trade you a Flying Pikachu in exchange for a Vending Clefairy. It turns out this is the start of a sequence of trades with Ishihara where he'll offer you various promotional cards.

After you make this trade and leave to do some duels, you can come back and Ishihara will be ready for a new trade!

 

In this case, he'll offer you a Togepi for a Clefable! Togepi looks like a very interesting card to run as it can be a solid counter to lots of powerful pokemon with high-energy cost attacks they can't quite use yet. Drop a single double colorless onto Togepi and it can theoretically use any move in the game! ...Unfortunately, I don't actually have this Clefable card to complete this trade.

I can't find any resources online listing the trades Ishihara will offer and I have no idea how many there are. But from what I understand, after you complete all of these trades, he'll appear in his Villa on GR Island where you can then duel him for card packs. Some of those details may be incorrect, but that's what I understand it to be at the moment. If I don't end up with this Clefable in my collection by the end of this postgame then I can't guarantee I'll ever finish this quest. That said, the reason I overthought this issue so much before was that I seem to recall hearing in a YouTube video about a plot revolving around an imposter character who used a deck built around Imposter Oak. Perhaps I was thinking about the Imposter Imakuni? There does seem to be more to these guys, but from what I can tell they're just opponents you duel over and over and there doesn't seem to be a conclusion to their story. With the limited information on this game, I'm just going to assume that's the case. If there turns out to be more to it, I might revisit later.

 

 

If you do visit Ishihara's House on GR Island right now, you'll find Allison studying up on Ishihara's strategies in order to improve her dueling as a top executive. She'll then offer a rematch and leave to wait for you at GR Castle.

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

With the mystery of Ishihara's Second House solved, it's time to check out the big mystery that's been on my mind since I first got to GR Island: The Sealed Fortress.

 

If you recall, this is where "the dreaded Catastrophe decks" were sealed away. My first time visiting this place, I had assumed these catastrophe decks would be plot relevant. I had a sneaking suspicion that, after the defeat of King Villicci, he would explain something about these Catastrophe decks before it being discovered that the doors were forced open by a Ronald seeking power enough to defeat Villicci. I would have expected some sort of supernatural take on the story, maybe where these dangerous Catastrophe Decks possessed him and you'd have to duel him for the fate of the world or some anime nonsense. However, it seems like the truth behind the sealed fortress is a bit more simplistic than I previously thought.

However, as you can see, the door is still sealed. I suppose we're going to have to pay King Villicci himself a visit and ask him personally about this fortress.

So, off we go to GR Castle to seek audience with the King once again!

If we want, we can rematch the Executives Clay and Alissa here, but we're not worried about that at the moment.

 

King Villicci is waiting here to duel us again whenever we wish. And this is an offer we're going to have to take him up on! That's right, we're going to have to defeat King Villicci in yet another match! Ideally, he would use the other two decks he used against us before.

 

Unfortunately, the first deck he used was the Beat and Destroy deck. This was the deck built around Dark Blastoise he used against us before. Since this is the same deck we dueled before, I'm not going to focus too much on it, though as you can tell be the cards remaining in my deck, I had a lot of bad luck with sleep and paralysis throughout this duel to the point where his base set Squirtle was able to nearly take out my Lapras and almost my Blastoise all on its own because of lucky coin flips with Bubble. And Clefairy came along to add insult to injury by putting me to sleep multiple turns in a row. 

His next deck was his Rest in Pieces deck, this is a new one! There wasn't much to this duel, but since it's a new deck, I'll go ahead and showcase it.

  

He led off with his a Bulbasaur against my Squirtle.

  

After a simple bite, he was in the kill range of Wartortle's Surf, so I evolved my Squirtle to take Bulbasaur out quickly.

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

  

Next was a Dratini. I tried to paralyze it with Bubble but failed the coin flip. That was fine though because all it could do was Pound before going down.

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

  

His last defense was a Mr. Mime which is just here to protect his pokemon from weaknesses. A simple Hydro Pump was all it took to wash it out and end the duel prematurely.

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

 

For defeating Villicci yet again, we earned yet another copy of GR's Mewtwo!

 

In addition, now that we've defeated him twice, Villicci grants us permission to enter the sealed fortress, but this comes with a warning about the Catastrophe decks. They're certainly being hyped up as a big deal!

The credits roll once again but now we know for sure that there's more to explore.

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

 

And, sure enough, stepping into the Sealed Fortress shows that the seal on the fortress has been released and it is now time to see what these dreaded catastrophe decks are all about!

[Aura]

Alright, this is going to be the finale of Pokemon Card GB2 but I'm going to just go ahead and give you a heads up that this is going to be the longest post in this entire series hands down. To keep the post from getting absurdly long, I'm going to split this section into several different spoiler tags. And, out of fear of something going wrong and the post getting lost, I'll be uploading this post as a WIP after each spoiler tag is finished. That said, in this one post we will be marathoning the rest of the content that I'll be covering from this game. Without further ado: Let's delve deeper into the Sealed Fortress!

Upon entering the back room of the fortress, we're met with a ghostly apparition of a boy who welcomes us with a simple request.

 

He asks that we have duels with him and his friends. What friends?

Well, these friends, of course! Right here we have nine, count 'em, nine different opponents to duel against. We can challenge their ghosts by approaching their statue. Each one has their own unique deck and, from what I can gather, these are intended to be the most difficult decks in the game. This is truly a great place to test the limits of your deck building prowess. I think over the course of my adventure that I've managed to put together a deck with pretty solid consistency.

The only adjustment I made to my Rainfall deck here was I replaced all of my diglett with Base Set Diglett. In hindsight, I'm not really sure why I ever ran the promo Diglett over Base Set when this one is pretty much all-around better. Team Rocket Diglett does come with the nice benefit of being able to attack the bench, but I've found that that's rarely useful and if I ever need that option, Articuno and Promo Dugtrio will do a much better job. I'll be using this same deck across all of these duels, so we can see this challenge as the ultimate test of my best deck.

Before we advance any further, I do want to talk a bit about what's going on here. I am a little unsettled by this place. All of the dialogue up to this point seemed to imply that it was only the decks I would find here. Upon entering, though, I was met with the ghosts of the duelists who'd built them! But the ghosts' dialogue seem to imply that they were sealed here. King Villicci told me that these were decks even he was afraid to face, and it was his name on the door that warned that entry is prohibited. So... does this mean King Villicci just locked these people up in this temple and left them to starve just because he didn't want to risk losing to them? Normally theories like this I wouldn't delve into, but... this stuff is pretty on the nose here. I'm not really sure how else I'm supposed to interpret this. These are some pretty heavy implications surrounding the guy who's supposed to be getting a redemption arc...

Well, the past is the past I suppose. It's time to face off against some powerful opponents from history! Time to challenge the dreaded Calamity decks!

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

 

Our first opponent here is Axel, the youngest of the Ghost Masters who just seems happy to be dueling with the best.

 

Spoiler

  

Leading off with the Legendary Articuno didn't seem like too great of a start, but considering I was up against a Base Set Hitmonchan, the matchup definitely could have been worse. After a short while, I was able to build up the energy to start attacking Hitmonchan and his bench. Although Axel did a pretty good job of keeping his pokemon alive between potions and scoop ups. It was pretty clear this was going to be a bit of a headache of a duel. 

  

He did play a Gust of Wind to draw out my Diglett, but he overlooked the key detail that Diglett has a free retreat cost, sooo...

  

Eventually, he was able to build up the energy for Special Punch so that he could actually damage Articuno. Meanwhile, Cold Breath had managed to defeat one of his pokemon on the bench, giving me a prize card!

  

With another gust of wind, Hitmonchan was able to take out Diglett.

  

But of course, Articuno came right back out and claimed another prize card by picking off one of his benched pokemon.

  

Eventually, he did manage to get his Jigglypuff so now it was capable of dealing, god forbid, 20 damage instead of 10! It did manage to take Articuno out in the end, though, so it had that going for it!

  

But by this point, I was more than prepared with the time I'd bought using Articuno. A single slash from Dugtrio cut clean through Jigglypuff's HP.

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

  

Hitmonchan tried its best to counterattack, but it was hopeless.

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

  

A Jigglypuff that was hit by Articuno before was obviously not going to stand a chance here.

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

  

And with a solid Earthquake, his last Hitmonchan was gone as well.

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

 

For defeating Axel, I was awarded a Present pack:

Spoiler

   

 

Japanese Only:

   

 

 

Next is Mary, an enthusiastic young girl! With a deck called "torrential downpour," I think I'm more than aware of what I'm getting myself into, here.

 

Spoiler

  

We opened up with a pretty big bang! My Legendary Articuno versus her Fossil Articuno. I was able to kick off some damage with Cold Breath, but ultimately her Articuno was able to shut mine down before it was able to claim any prize cards.

  

Thankfully, by that point, I'd already gotten Blastoise prepared and was ready to lock and load. Articuno never stood a chance!

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

  

Next was Lapras which went down easy as well.

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

  

Deja vu...

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

  

And that poor Squirtle!

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

  

Turns out she had her own legendary Articuno! But it went down just like that!

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

  

Another fossil Articuno came out just to soak up a hit before retreating.

  

And unfortunately, her Blastoise was just lacking the energy it needed to attack mine! It went down!

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

 

And of course, I was awarded with another Present pack!

Spoiler

   

 

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GB Only:

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Japanese Only:

  

 

 

Next was quite a fan of theatrics: Magician. His "Invincible Pokemon Deck" had me concerned going in. I was afraid I was going to be dealing with some sort of strategy involving Mr. Mime and potions and defenders or something obnoxious like that. I did have outs to such a strategy, but that wouldn't make it any less annoying.

 

Spoiler

  

Apparently this game has a fetish for forcing me to start with Articuno. (I only have two Articuno cards in this entire deck, I swear). This time, I was leading with Fossil Articuno which isn't the best start to this deck. I only run one copy of this card for a reason. Thankfully, my opponent was Scyther who is a better start, but also takes at least a couple turns to get set up.  I think he realized this because he didn't bother trying to build up Scyther's Slash and instead focused on his bench. Meanwhile, after a Freeze Dry and Blizzard, Scyther was frostbitten.

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

  

This Kadabra proved to be a major nuisance. It's pretty clear now where this "invincible pokemon" title comes from because even though this Kadabra was in kill range of Blizzard and he didn't have any benched pokemon, I just couldn't land a hit because of his stupid Blink attack!

  

Before long, he evolved his Kadabra and Alakazam took Articuno out with a Confuse Ray.

  

surely this shouldn't be that much of an issue. All I have to do is throw out my back row and take out his Alakazam right? Wrong. After all this time, I still somehow had failed to get my hands on a Blastoise and Wartortle on its own had to wait a bit in order to use its Bite attack. Of course, I fail the coin flip on Withdraw and he follows up with a Confuse Ray plus the coin flip for confusion. And, of course, I never get the chance to attack through it, so Wartortle is inevitably doomed to the same fate as Articuno. I do not understand this luck.

  

Thankfully, I still had another Wartortle on the bench and, even though I still never got my hands on that Blastoise, I was able to turn my luck around. Somehow, through all of this, he was never able to get a single pokemon on his bench and so Alakazam had nothing to dump its damage counters onto and, once it went down, that was game!

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

 

Of course, another Present was in store!

Spoiler

   

   

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

Japanese Only:

 

 

 

Next we have Anna who seems to be some sort of shopkeeper? She keeps talking about customers but as far as I can tell, her outfit doesn't actually give any clues to what she was. Maybe it's a Japanese thing. Maybe she's a waitress? I have no clue what to expect out of a deck called "Chaos Inflictor" so I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

 

Spoiler

  

She led off with a Jynx against my Squirtle. (Finally, a lead other than Articuno!)

  

Wanting to preserve my pokemon's HP and keep it out of the kill range, I went ahead and evolved it into Wartortle to go for Withdraw (which of course failed).

  

After that, I simply evolved Wartortle, dropped my energy, and rained on Anna's parade.

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

  

Clefairy tried to put me to sleep with Shining Fingers, but Blastoise simply woke up between turns.

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

  

The next Jynx took a couple of hits.

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

  

Gastly failed to confuse me.

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

  

This Fossil Gastly actually was able to paralyse Blastoise, but that was soon resolved when I used Articuno's Quick Freeze to paralyze it as well.

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

  

Finally, one more Jynx was able to finish Blastoise off...

  

....Just in time to get blasted by Articuno!

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

 

And that's the game! Look, another Present pack!

Spoiler

   

   

 

 

 

Next was Warren, a young man who seems to have a lot of confidence in himself. With the deck name "Sealed Trainer" I can only assume I'll be dealing with a lot of Vending Gastly. I can't imagine a deck built around that gimmick being all too dangerous.

 

Spoiler

  

First up is Psyduck against Squirtle!

  

I didn't hesitate at all to evolve Squirtle and go for a bubble to bring Psyduck into kill range and hopefully prevent it from attacking with paralysis.

  

It didn't end up mattering, though, because I was able to evolve Wartortle shortly after and make quick work of Psyduck.

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

  

And another Psyduck shared the same fate.

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

  

This is a Haunter card I'm genuinely shocked we haven't seen until now. It's been available in every Flight pack we've gotten up to this point and I kept bumping into it on Bulbapedia, but this is the first time it's ever surfaced here. Its first attack, Eerie Light, is a coin-flip chance to confuse the target. Its second attack is its main attraction though. Grudge deals 20 damage plus 10 more for each prize card your opponent has claimed. Certainly an interesting move that could lead to some impressive turn arounds! 

...but not here. It went down to a single Hydro Pump after an admittedly decently powerful Grudge attack.

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

  

Gastly tried to stop me from using my trainer cards, but I had no need. It went down with a snap.

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

  

Oddish went down...

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

  

Deja vu... um... again.

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

 

And now Warren was defeated and we earned, you guessed it, another Present pack.

Spoiler

   

Japanese Only:

   

 

 

Masquerade is a mysterious soft-spoken man behind a mask. Certainly the spookiest of the opponents here. The Power of Darkness deck is certainly scary as well. I know my cards enough to know that's implying we'll be dealing with some Promo Gengar shenanigans. This could be potentially awkward if my Blastoise gets popped at the wrong time and I end up losing a whole bunch of energy at once. I'll definitely need to build up my Blastoise really quick so I can start setting up backups in anticipation of this tragedy.

 

Spoiler

  

Starting out, I had a very simple Lapras lead. A good way to get an early advantage. I was of course able to overcome the opposing Dratini that was unable to attack.

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

  

Another Dratini followed up. This one was able to attack but failed to paralyze me before going down to a Water Gun.

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

  

Dark Golduck went down as well. It turned out, I didn't even have to worry about the namesake of his deck! What a relief!

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

 

You know the drill by now, I was rewarded with a Present pack.

Spoiler

   

   

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Japanese Only:

 

 

 

Pierro here certainly seems like an eccentric individual. He's dressed like a creepy harlequin, but his deck doesn't sound so scary. "Kindled Flame" implies fire types, so I should have more than an easy time here.

 

Spoiler

  

Starting off here was Squirtle vs. Magmar. An obviously advantageous matchup for me, his only solace was Smokescreen's chance of making me miss, but that can be alleviated with a simple evolution!

  

With a Surf from Wartortle, Magmar went down easily.

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

  

Thanks to a series of Defenders, Vulipx was able to avoid damage for quite a while. Between Bubble and Articuno's Quick Freeze, though, I was able to prevent it from getting any attacks off.

  

Eventually, I was able to evolve Wartortle and finally take Vulpix out!

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

  

At this point, his fate was pretty much sealed. His next Vulpix was torn through like paper.

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

  

And in spite of Growlithe's best efforts to fight back, it couldn't hold the front lines for more than a second against the hurricane.

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

 

With no benched pokemon left on his end, I'd earned his Present pack.

Spoiler

    

   

Japanese Only:

 

 

 

Frank seems like a pretty cool guy, but his deck name, "Big Thunder" was scary enough to be discouraging to me. A deck built around electric pokemon was certainly going to be a struggle, to be sure. And, sure enough, he certainly did prove to be the most difficult opponent for me to face, but not for the reasons I expected.

 

Spoiler

  

When he led off with the Legendary Zapdos, I couldn't believe I'd overlooked the namesake of his deck. It all made sense now and this was going to be a huge problem. While I didn't have to worry at all about my pokemon's weaknesses, Zapdos' Big Thunder was more than enough to overpower many of my pokemon in a single hit and it's unaffected by Diglett and Dugtrio's resistance. Not only that, but it resists Diglett and Dugtrio's attacks to boot. Those are normally my out against electric pokemon but they're rendered basically useless here. My best bet is just to rely on Blastoise to overpower them...

  

I evolved Squirtle as soon as I possibly could, but even at this stage it was still vulnerable to being one-shotted by Zapdos. I was also going to need to keep my bench as wide as possible to spread out the targets and make my active pokemon less likely to get struck.

When he finally had the energy to attack, he picked off the Diglett I'd placed on my bench.

  

He placed a Defender on his Zapdos to help it take a hit from whatever I had in store. At first, this seemed like a waste because, obviously, it wasn't in kill range of Hydro Pump. But then when his turn rolled around...

He played another Zapdos to the bench and, just as he seemed to fear, Peal of Thunder hit his active Zapdos, nearly taking it out. For a moment, I thought this meant a free KO for me, but then he revealed the next ace up his sleeve.

With Scoop Up, he was able to pick his Zapdos right back to his hand and clean off all those pesky damage counters. This duel was going to be a pain.

  

Eventually, I was able to overcome the Zapdos after taking a Peal of Thunder on one of my pokemon.

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

  

Another Zapdos went down after a while.

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

  

And if you thought I only had four Zapdos to worry about... how cute. Because he also has some Ditto to copy those Zapdos. Thankfully, these Ditto are pretty easy to KO with Hydro Pump before they're capable of transforming.

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

  

Chansey is another pokemon he likes to run. This makes sense since Chansey can take a hit from both Peal of Thunder and Big Thunder back to back. But it really doesn't serve much of a purpose other than stalling.

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

  

Another Ditto which went down easily.

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

  

And another one. Thankfully, after that initial frustration with the Zapdos in the beginning, once I was able to get past his Zapdos, he didn't seem capable of recovering. There's no telling what he could have done though with some better luck with those Big Thunders. I shudder to even think of the consequences...

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

 

And of course, another Present pack.

Spoiler

   

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Japanese Only:

   

 

 

 

Last but not least is Toby, a naive young boy who doesn't seem to think too highly of himself.

 

Spoiler

  

I led off with Lapras against Scyther which I was obviously able to overcome thanks to its lack of energy.

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

  

Lapras could have handled the weedle that followed, but it hastily retreated after I'd successfully confused it.

  

The poison damage coupled with Kangaskhan's Comet Punch was enough to do me in before I could get a hit on it.

  

Blastoise came next and with a couple of Hydro Pumps, I was able to seal the deal with Kangaskhan.

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

  

In perhaps the most bizarre move of the game, he sent out his weedle, presumably to poison my Blastoise. But then he played Gust of Wind to bring out my Dugtrio instead... okay...? Well, thanks to Earthquake, Weedle went down in a single hit, but not before poisoning Dugtrio successfully.

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

  

A Charmander came out next and likewise was met with the fate of Earthquake.

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

  

Unfortunately, Dugtrio was unable to endure the poison for much longer and quickly succumbed against the next Charmander in line.

  

That was fine, though, because Blastoise was still alive and kicking!

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

  

In an amusing twist of irony, his Weedle was able to take Blastoise out in one shot thanks to a PlusPower.

  

Lucky for me, I had a second Blastoise at the ready!

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

 

And what could we possibly get but another Present pack?

Spoiler

   

  

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Japanese Only:

  

 

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

That... was obnoxious to get through... But surely we must get a fantastic reward for defeating the most challenging decks in the game! Some sort of really cool promotional card or a rare coin or... something... right...?

...Yeah, we get absolutely nothing for all our troubles here. I thought for sure for defeating all 9 I'd earn that really cool golden Lugia Coin they were all using in their duels,b but that sadly doesn't seem to be the case. Dueling these opponents are only worthwhile for getting Present packs which isn't even worth while. I don't believe the Presents packs have any chance of giving you cards that can't be obtained in other packs so you'd really just be better off dueling the randos throughout the islands that give you two packs when you're searching for specific cards. Other than that, this is just a good place to test the might of your deck before throwing yourself at the GR Challenge Machine. Again, information on this game is pretty minimal, so it's entirely possible I could have overlooked something important. But as far as I can tell, there's nothing really special about this place. Maybe it's just a collection to the devs' favorite deck builds or something.

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

Anyway, the last thing I wanted to check out was the Challenge Machine in the GR Challenge Hall. This is basically where you're going to be living your life once you've done everything else in the game. I'm not going to be spending much time here, but I figured I should at least touch on it.

 

Every time you play the Challenge Machine, you'll face off against an endurance round of 5 different opponents. The first three will be Club or Fort Members, the fourth will be a Club Master or Fort Leader, and the final opponent will always be King Villicci himself. You'll have to win each set of five duels without switching decks and your main goal is to get a win streak of 50 in order to earn the coveted Gengar Coin. Simply speaking, this is an absurd investment of time and I will not be going for this for something as meaningless as a coin. Especially considering a single loss, even if it's solely due to bad RNG, will result in ending your streak and forcing you to start all over. There's no new opponents here or anything, they're all opponents we've dueled in the past with decks we've already seen.

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

With all that said, I think it's finally time to move on to the next game. This one didn't take quite as long as Pokemon Stadium 2, but I honestly wasn't expecting it to end up spanning an entire page on its own. There was a LOT more content here than I ever would have expected. I definitely must say that, over all, this game was a huge improvement on the first. almost nothing from the original game is missing here. All of the opponents from the first game still remain, they just all have new decks. I really didn't know what to expect going into this game, all I knew was that it was just like the first one but with a much more involved story. I don't think the story was anything super involved and it definitely had a lot of issues, but I suppose you can't expect too much out of a video game about pokemon cards. I have to give credit where credit is due, though. I really appreciate the fact that there was a story here at all. I also appreciate that they gave Ronald a lot of character development form the previous game. He wasn't just some jerk who was trying to get ahead of you and leave you in the dust anymore. He knows you're a stronger duelist than him and supports you in every way he can. 

I also found a lot of the characters in this game to be far more charming than anything the previous game had offered. Many of the GR Members were just brimming with personality I found almost all of them more interesting than any characters from the original game who all just seemed to fill the role of NPC and nothing else. I do think they're stance on Team GR in the end was a little weird. They don't even address the horrible crimes Team GR committed and instead just acted like they were all friends who shared your interest in pokemon cards... like... no, you guys locked my friends in cages and left some of them to drown and beyond that, you kidnapped the most respected people on our island. I think those are a little bit more important to deal with than stealing Pokemon cards. Not to mention the ghosts in the Sealed Temple implying that King Villicci literally trapepd a bunch of people with decks he didn't like in there so that he'd never have to deal with them. 

Yeah... Team GR has some problems and I don't think they did a good job of redeeming them. Regardless, this game was still an overall improvement on the original. More cards, more characters, more things to do and places to explore. Like I addressed before, this game requires a lot more grinding than the previous one if you're going for 100% completion, but considering this game was clearly designed to last you a long time, I think that's passable. I could see myself coming back to this game again and again trying to collect all the cards, even though I can guarantee little kid me would just throw a bunch of legendary pokemon into a deck and wonder why I'm having such garbage luck never drawing the cards I need. Who knows, maybe I'd learn and eventually power my way through the game. 

Leaving this game is bittersweet to me. I've gotten a bit burned out on it by this point, but I also know that there is never going to be another game like this, likely ever. The "To be continued" ending and lack of postgame story leads me to believe there may have been plans for a third game. Maybe on the Gameboy Advance? I know that Gen 2 was originally intended to be the end of the Pokemon series, so perhaps they planned for one more game to utilize Johto pokemon more thoroughly? But maybe realizing that Gen 3 was right around the corner, they didn't want to make a new game that only featured Johto pokemon, but waiting for the EX Ruby and Sapphire would have taken too long. I don't know much about the development history of these TCG video games but it really is sad to see them go like this. I would have loved to see a newly improved UI, higher quality graphics, and remixed tracks from these games on the Gameboy Advance and maybe I would have even owned the game! On the contrary, maybe Card GB2 simply didn't sell well enough and that bought the end of the series. Either way, it's really sad to leave such a fun and interesting branch of the franchise behind. This isn't the last we'll be seeing of the TCG in video games, but I do believe it's the last to feature a full-fledged RPG story and characters. Going forward, the best I think we'll be seeing are just simulations of the physical card game. Maybe one day we'll get a new Pokemon TCG video game, but the odds of that sadly seem pretty unlikely. 

[Aura]

On November 21, 2001, Super Smash Bros. Melee was released! While debatable whether or not I should consider this a "Pokemon" game, as I said before, I'm including the Smash series because I consider this to be a monumental moment in Nintendo history. That said, I'm not going to be covering this game extensively. After all, it isn't associated directly with Pokemon. Instead, I'm going to be focusing primarily on the Pokemon-specific content. Of which there's quite an abundance this time around.

The pokemon franchise is represented in Melee by 4 characters: Pikachu and Jigglypuff returning from 64 as well as the newly introduced Pichu and Mewtwo now representing baby and legendary pokemon respectively. Pichu also doubles as a Gen 2 rep. There's also two new stages: Pokemon Stadium and Poke Floats. Sadly, Saffron City was dropped and won't return again for a long time. In addition, there's an abundance of pokemon available using the returning pokeball item. I'll link a list of these pokemon here. LIkewise, Melee comes with a new mechanic: Collectible trophies! Here is a list of all trophies from the Pokemon series in the game.

Just like before, I'm going to need to define what exactly it means to "finish" Super Smash Bros. Melee in regards to this series. Since I'm only focusing on Pokemon content, I'm not going to be doing anything like clearing all the event matches or anything like that, though I will be interested in touching on those modes. Mostly, I'll be focusing on the three main single-player modes: Classic, Melee's variation of the 1P Game from the original; Adventure, a brief "story mode that spans several universes; and All Star, a mode that pits you up against every fighter in the game in an endurance round where damage from the previous fights retains and you only get three free full heals throughout the fight. I'll be doing these three modes on Normal difficulty with each of the four Pokemon characters and then I'll be delving into the remaining modes in the game as well. Those being Event Matches, Multi-Man Melee, Home Run Contest, Target Test, and Home Run Contest. 

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

Note: Most if not all of the images I use in this section will be pulled from SmashWiki since I have no way of pulling screenshots from the GameCube. (I'd rather play the vanilla copy on official hardware whenever plausible, I'm trying to keep the use of emulators minimal). Most of the information also comes from there. In researching some of these points I've actually found I was completely wrong in my idea of how much of this content works.

Who else to could we start with other than Pikachu? Pikachu is the only character form the pokemon series unlocked from the start of the game. The most prominent change from Smash 64 to Melee is the addition of the Side-special (referred to in-game as a "Smash Special"). Every returning character from Smash 64 now has an additional Special move they did not have in the previous game. For most characters, their standard special remains their standard in this game. But in some cases, such as Link, Ness, and most prominently in this case, Jigglypuff; their standard specials have now become their side specials and they're given new standard specials. This actually means that some of Kirby's copy abilities have also changed. Kirby will no longer copy Jigglypuff's Pound, but instead Jigglypuff's Rollout. Similarly, he'll use Ness' PK Flash instead of PK Fire, and Link's Bow and Arrow instead of his Boomerang. 

In Pikachu's case, his Up, Standard, and Down specials are all roughly identical to their counterparts in 64 with some minor technical changes (you can find a list of technical changes if you follow the link I put on his name earlier). His brand new Side Special, Skull Bash, allows him to charge up and launch at a variable speed and distance based on how long you charged. You have to be pretty careful about using this move because it can send you flying right off the stage.

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Classic Mode

Jumping right into Classic Mode, I was really caught off guard by just how different this game felt. I know I said this before about 64, but I've grown so used to Smash Ultimate's leniency that I forgot just how precise Melee was. I found myself struggling with even the most basic maneuvers like rolling or grabbing. This led to a lot of frustration where I'd just be trying to perform a Smash attack only to accidentally do a Tilt or Jab. I suddenly understand why, as a kid, I had no idea that Smash attacks existed. It really feels like you have to smash the control stick on the same frame as pressing A. You might question why I don't just use the C-stick to do Smash Attacks, well, apparently in Single-player, that doesn't work. Instead, pushing the C-stick up or down zooms the camera onto your character and serves absolutely no other purpose. Maybe this could make for an interesting challenge run. "Can you beat Melee's Classic Mode with the camera zoomed in?" For this reason, I mostly found myself relying on Pikachu's Up-tilt and Up-air to get killing blows.  Of course, his down special is also really useful for hitting enemies above him. Throughout Classic Mode, I found myself dying in a lot of frustrating ways, mostly the fact that, I swear, every single time I accidentally hit a container, it just happened to be explosive. But anytime I would throw a container at an enemy, it would not only not be explosive, but it would contain valuable items that help them. The abundance of items in classic mode is honestly really annoying. I kept on accidentally picking up items I didn't want and failing to use them. Hopefully I'll be acclimated to this game by the end. I am by no means a competitive player, that's for sure.

Despite my complaints about not being used to the more precise gameplay here, I still have to say that this is by far my favorite rendition of Classic Mode in the entire Smash series. The only exception may come from Ultimate which we'll cover when we get there. What this one has over Ultimate's though, is that it has a certain air of randomness. There's consistency in the types of games you'll play at each stage, but the actual opponents and stages will be completely different every time for most of them, making it infinitely replayable with any character! It doesn't overstay its welcome and it offers a variety of gameplay options. Like Smash 64, there are three bonus games you get to participate in during Classic Mode.

Of course, the first of these bonus stages, at Stage 3, is Target Test! Pikachu's Target stage is shown above. I'll cover these in more detail when we actually get to Target Test's actual mode. But a quick run-down is that, in classic mode, you'll have a 2-minute time limit in order to break all 10 targets. Each character has their own respective Target Test.

Board the Platforms unfortunately no longer exists. Instead, at Stage 6, we have this new bonus game: Snag the Trophies! The premise is very simple. Three trophies will fall from the sky and it's your job to knock the trophies into the rings in the center of the stage. There's nothing too impressive here, but it's nice to claim some new trophies this way and once you're at that point where new trophies are rare, it's exciting to see a trophy you don't have show up!

Stage 9 sees the return of Race to the Finish and this is a huge expansion on what it was in Smash 64. Instead of having just one goal at the end of a simple obstacle course, we now have a much longer obstacle course that really tests your ability to maneuver as each character. There are several exits throughout the obstacle course, but the deeper in you go, the greater your reward. There is a fork in the middle of the race with three branches. Depending on your character's specific traits, one path may prove faster than the others. This stage is so interesting to play that I'm disappointed there isn't a practice mode for it like with Target Test. I would love to challenge myself and compete for a new record with every character! And it would give you a better way to test which character route is faster for which character! I don't hear this mode being talked about much at all and it really saddens me that we've never seen it return. I think I'd honestly be much more excited to see Race to the Finish return than Board the Platforms or even Break the Targets, myself. Maybe one day...

Other than the bonus stages, Stage 1 is a 1v1 against a random opponent, Stage 2 is a 2 v 2 where you'll be teamed up with an ally against two random opponents, teammates usually seem to be themed. For example, I was paired with Pichu here while my opponents were Link and Zelda. Stage 4 is a 1 v 1 that's slightly harder than Stage 1, Stage 5 is a 3 v 1 against a random Giant opponent, Stage 7 is a 1 v 1 that's yet harder than the previous one, Stage 8 is a battle against a team of 10 copies of a random character, Stage 10 is a 1v1 against a random metal opponent (as opposed to just Metal Mario) on Battlefield, and the final stage is a boss fight against Master Hand on Final Destination. If you got to this final stage in 5 minutes and 50 seconds, halfway through defeating Master Hand, you'll get a surprise visit from Crazy Hand! Crazy Hand will attack from the opposite side of the stage as Master Hand  leaving nowhere safe and making both of their attacks far more difficult to avoid. 

I was able to get to the end quick enough to challenge Crazy Hand, but I unfortunately lost my final stock in the process and Crazy Hand was no longer available to fight on my repeat attempt.

 

For clearing Classic mode with Pikachu, this is the congratulations screen and trophy we get! In addition...

Clearing Classic Mode or Adventure Mode for the first time with any character will present you with a chance to unlock Jigglypuff! It should be noted that I didn't actually delete my save data and I do already have every character unlocked. (If I didn't already have every character, All Star Mode wouldn't be unlocked!) But that won't stop me from redoing these fights in regular Smash mode! I'll also make sure to go over the unlock criteria for each of the Pokemon characters before we start playing as them.

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Adventure Mode

Adventure Mode takes up quite a bit more time than Classic Mode did. This mode is arguably a bit more in line with the more scripted nature of Classic Mode in N64. You'll go through a series of 12 pre-determined stages, each of which will present you a series of challenges. Sometimes you'll be faced with an obstacle course-esque stage with structures and enemies inspired by a specific franchise. 

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Stage 1: Mushroom Kingdom

Part 1 of this stage is based on a the Super Mario Bros. series. You'll race through a Super Mario Bros. themed level to reach the flagpole at the end. In the background, there's actually some deeper references to the Mario franchise. You can see a golf course in reference to the Mario Golf series and, of course, Peach's Castle from Mario 64 (as well as the stage itself) in this game. Throughout the level, there will be Goombas and Koopas which can be killed by jumping on them or hitting them with various attacks. Items will drop randomly and there are bricks that can be broken by jumping into them from below or attacking them. At the top of the stone tower near the end of the stage, you'll have to face off against a squad of 10 Yoshies. 

 

In the second part of the first stage, you'll have arrived at Peach's Castle where you'll be challenged by Mario and Peach in a 1v2.

 

Alternatively, you may end up battling Luigi and Peach. If you end the previous level with the number of seconds remaining ending in a 2, you'll see an amusing cutscene of Mario trying to jump onto the stage before Luigi jumps on his head to take his place. In my Pikachu run, I went up against Luigi. I had quite a bit of difficulty with this stage, mainly because Luigi and Peach kept tossing me back and forth, but eventually I was able to knock then both off the top of the screen thanks to Pikachu's Thunder attack.

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Stage 2: Kongo Jungle

 

The next stage starts out on Kongo Jungle  where you'll face off against two tiny Donkey Kong. There's not really much to say about that.

Part 2 will take place on Jungle Japes. Here, you'll face off against a Giant Donkey Kong. Again, not much to say here other than that this stage is absolutely nothing but jank and I have no idea how it's managed to return in every single Smash Bros. game to follow over the other, much better stages.

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Stage 3: Underground Maze

This is probably my favorite stage in all of Adventure Mode. Based on the vague concept of a dungeon from the Legend of Zelda, you'll need to explore the labyrinth here in search of the hidden triforce. The triforce will be randomly hidden in one of 6 chambers. The other 5 chambers will have a fake Master Sword (a reference to the fake Master Swords scattered throughout the Lost Woods in A Link to the Past). If you enter one of these chambers, you'll have to defeat an apparition of Link before you can leave. Throughout the dungeon's many corridors are various enemies from Ocarina of Time: Redeads, LIke Likes, even Octorocks (though the behavior of the Octorocks is more in line with their appearance in the 2D Zelda games). Many different parts of this maza are references to various dungeons from the Zelda series, mainly Ocarina of Time. If you take your time and explore the dungeon in its entirety rather than going straight for the Triforce, you can find some trophies along the way! And it's all around just a really cool level to explore. But, if you want to end the level quickly, I recommend exiting the starting hallway and dropping straight down and entering the hallway to your left. With good luck, the first chamber you'll find here will have the triforce in it. Otherwise, depending on your character, it may be faster to either climb the shaft to the left in the lava chamber, or dash back to the right and visit the chamber over there. There's a pretty solid chance that the triforce will appear on one of the first two chambers you check, but if not, the rest will be in a pretty straight line from there. In my run as Pikachu, the triforce was in the very first chamber, so this stage was done in mere seconds!

In part 2, you'll exit the dungeon finding yourself at the stage Temple. Here, you'll be challenged by Zelda in a 1v1. There doesn't seem to be much special to this encounter, other than taking place on a huge stage.

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Stage 4: Brinstar

This stage opens up with a 1v1 against Samus. Nothing too difficult here. The restricted groundspace when the acid rises is perfect for Pikachu to exploit with Thunder! Just watch out for explosives and items.

The battle with Samus is immediately followed by a Metroid-style escape sequence. The timer is counting down and you have to escape from Planet Zebes as fast as you can before the planet explodes! If you fail to escape, you lose a stock as the planet explodes with you on it. So no lollygagging! (That said, you do get a special point bonus if you end the level with 7 seconds remaining~)

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

Stage 5: Green Greens

Green Greens is pretty straightforward, but it comes with a bit of a secret. The first part is a simple 1v1 against Kirby. After defeating Kirby, you're met with a team of 15 Kirby all with different copy abilities. This has always been one of the more iconic stages from the game for me and is, of course, a callback to the Kirby Team from Smash 64's 1P Game. If you manage to clear both of these parts in 31 seconds each, you'll gain access to a secret Part 3 where you'll face off against a giant Kirby.

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Stage 6: Corneria

Stage 1 of this fight, you'll have to fight Fox who seems to be on the defensive, as if stalling for time. You'll have to chase him down as he attempts to avoid fighting.

In part 2, Star Fox will arrive on the scene and you'll rematch Fox this time with a red alt. Not only is his playstyle much more aggressive this time, but the rest of the Star Fox team will barraging the stage from their arwings, far more aggressively than in normal play. There will be lazers flying everywhere and it can actually get pretty chaotic. But focus on Fox and it shouldn't be too much to handle.

Alternatively, there's also a random chance you'll fight Falco here instead. I always thought this was based entirely on your performance in the previous round, but apparently that's just not the case. You'll only have a chance of fighting Falco if you've unlocked him as a fighter (He can be unlocked by clearing 100 Man Melee), and even then, it just seems to be a chance with no way to actually guarantee it.

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Stage 7: Pokemon Stadium

  

Pokemon Stadium features a battle against twelve pokemon, with pokeball items dropping in abundance. This stage can be really fun but, with the precision required for this game, picking up items can be a lot more difficult than you'd expect, especially if you're used to Ultimate. As a result, I found this stage to be pretty stressful. Thankfully, the AI doesn't seem to go after the pokeballs much itself. Once you start to gain control of the stage with the pokeballs, though, there's pretty much no losing. If Pichu and Jigglypuff are unlocked, they'll be sprinkled in here alongside Pikachu. It seems like the final pokemon is always Jigglypuff once she's unlocked, and that seems to be the way I remember it, but it's entirely possible I'm wrong in that observation.

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Stage 8: F-Zero Grand Prix

This is another of the more memorable stages. Here, you're running along the Big Blue track and seeking cover on the floating platforms along the way as the F-Zero machines race by. You can sometimes get a little greedy here carefully jumping from platform to platform while the vehicles are whizzing by. It's really satisfying to see just how much you can get away with.

In part 2, you'll face off against Captain Falcon in yet another 1v1.

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Stage 9: Onett

  

On this stage, you'll face off against three different Nesses who are all drawn to the Mr. Saturn items that spawn frequently. Mr. Saturn may seem weak, but don't make the mistake of blocking one with your shield! Ultimately, this stage is pretty easy. In my playthrough, two of them died just from a car driving by.

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Stage 10: Icicle Mountain

This is a pretty interesting one. You'll have to platform your way up the mountain, avoiding Topis and Polar Bears along the way. An interesting touch is that, just like the original Ice Climber, the Topis have a distinct Seal appearance in the Japanese version of the game while in the international release, they have a more yeti-like design. As you climb higher, the stage will speed up faster and faster.

 

After climbing the mountain for a while, the enemies will disappear, the screen will slow down, and you'll have to fight two Ice Climbers in a 1v2... or is it 1v4?

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Stage 11: Battlefield

Much like how Smash 64 had a battle against the Fighting Polygon Team, this one features a fight against a team of 15 Fighting Wire Frames (significantly fewer than the 30 opponents the original had). 

Part 2 of this stage immediately follows up the Wire Frames with a fight against Metal Mario and, if Luigi is unlocked, Metal Luigi as well.

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Stage 12: Final Destination

This is the final boss of Classic Mode. Here, you'll be facing off against a giant Bowser. On Normal difficulty or higher, Bowser will be in his black alt. 

On Normal difficulty, if you've managed to complete all of these stages in less than 18 minutes...

...you'll be treated to a special cutscene where Bowser's trophy returns to the stage and is struck by lightning, reviving him and transforming him into the monstrous Giga Bowser. I ended up losing my last stock against Giga Bowser and having to use a continue, but thankfully I still had enough time to get a rematch in. You can rematch Giga Bowser as much as you want as long as you haven't taken more than 18 minutes across all of Adventure Mode. Once that 18 minutes is up, Adventure Mode will simply end after defeating Giant Bowser.

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For clearing Adventure Mode with Pikachu, I was of course awarded with this Congratulations screen showcasing Pikachu's various alts and, of course, a trophy, too!

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

All-Star Mode

Last but not least is the ultimate challenge for any character. Here, you'll face off against every opponent in the game in an endurance round. Damage will carry over from battle to battle. As you defeat opponents, their trophies will appear in the background of this park. The opponents will appear in a random order and they'll all be wearing alt colors. Since your health doesn't recover between battles, you have three Heart Containers that will heal you all the way before you touch the light to advance toward the next fight. After a while, you'll start to fight in 1v2 matches and even further in, it'll transition into 1v3. The final round against Mr. Game & Watch, you'll fight a team of easily KO'd Game & Watches. Each opponent will be fought on their own homestage with the exception of certain characters who will be fought on stages from other franchises that are more fitting to their character. Usually, this will be a stage that uses music from their own game.

 

And of course, here is PIkachu's Congratulations screen and trophy for All-Star!

Overall, Pikachu certainly felt like a pretty solid character here. I believe PIkachu is a relatively high-tier character and it really shows. He's got all sorts of combo potential even from what little I was able to actually pull off due to fumbling around with the game's very different mechanics. Most of my mistakes were either due to my own lack of precision with the controls or just bad luck with the positioning of items, or a combination of both. It was all just a mess, but hopefully I'll get better at dealing with it as I play as the other characters. Next up, it's only natural I'll be using Jigglypuff, the character who's unlock requirements we met here. Don't worry, the next few posts won't be spending as much time on Adventure Mode. I just felt like I should cover it in its entirety since it's so heavily scripted here.

[Aura]

Now that we've finished our summaries of each mode, the next few posts will be much shorter, I promise. Jigglypuff is our next character! We fulfilled her unlock requirements yesterday, so no need to cover that here. I definitely think I've gotten a better handle on the game's controls as well. I've been able to perform Smash attacks more consistently, though I still struggle with picking up items. 

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In Classic Mode, I was able to clear the entire mode without a single continue, but unfortunately it took me a while to defeat the Captain Falcon team near the end. For some reason, they were just far too resilient for me to defeat easily. None of my attacks that felt like they should have KO'd easily would get them very far off the ground. I basically had to combo each one independently off the stage in order to take them out. Because this one stage took me so long, I was unable to challenge Crazy Hand in this run.

 

Here are the Congratulations screen and trophy I got from Classic Mode! Once again, just a cute showcase of Jigglypuff's various alts.

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In Stage 1, I had some serious problems against Mario and Peach. It had nothing to do with them, though, but everything to do with shenanigans. I died once because I was unaware that you can Self-Destruct with the Warp Star in this game. Beyond that, I lost yet another stock later on in the same fight because a Bob-Omb spawned behind a crate where I couldn't see it, Mario knocked me behind the crate, and the Bob-Omb started walking right when I landed!! The worst part is, I ended up getting the triforce in the first chamber again in The Underground Maze which gave me easy access to the Giga Bowser fight! I ended up having to use a continue and on my rematch, I only lost a single stock! Had I not gotten those two unfair deaths way back in Mushroom Kingdom, I would have defeated Giga Bowser without a continue!!

 

Well, salt aside, this congratulations screen was simply adorable!

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Something about All-Star, though, got me extremely irritated. No matter what I did, I just kept losing to really stupid stuff early on. Like charging up a Smash attack only to have a Green Shell spawn right on top of me and KO me when I inevitably release my smash and it somehow goes backwards. Or one point where I jumped over a mine on Corneria but it blew up anyway and killed me. Or the time a walking Bob-Omb stopped moving and exploded right at the edge of the platform as I was trying to recover. There was one point where I was shielding at the top of a ledge and tried to roll toward the ledge. Jigglypuff suddenly decides she's in the air and air dodges diagonally downward into the pit.  So. Many. Shenanigans. I genuinely try to minimize the amount of continues I use, but I still ended up needing to use two continues in order to get through after cheap deaths in some of the later matches. Even then, the second-to-last match was incredibly stressful. I'd used a Heart Container to heal myself to 0% and still came out of the fight at 200+%. Why? 

THIS. GARBAGE. STAGE.

With items dropping as abundantly as they do in Melee's All Star and three opponents running around the stage collecting them, there were red shells and bob ombs on every fucking platform and I couldn't get KO's on anybody because they'd just bounce up and down between the bricks and the floor. With all these items flying around, getting the characters into the upper portion of the level is a lot easier said than done and Jigglypuff doesn't seem too great at knocking people off stage horizontally. 

 

But, for completing All Star with Jigglypuff, here's my reward.

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Ultimately, Jigglypuff was pretty fun! Just like Pikachu, his Aerial attacks felt pretty powerful. Maybe this is just part of how Melee works. I never really got into the competitive Smash scene so I wouldn't really know. But Jigglypuff's strong Air game plus her multiple jumps made her a much more powerful character to play. Jigglypuff's Rest attack is also far more powerful in this game than it is in any future games and because of that, Jigglypuff all-around felt like a much easier character to master. However, these two are unfortunately the only high-tier Pokemon characters from what I understand. Going forward, we just might be struggling a lot more, especially with our next character...

[Aura]

Our next character is one you'll normally have to unlock first. To do this, we're going to dip into the Event Match Mode a bit.

This is a series of challenges of varying difficulties. We're going to focus on this a lot more later on, but for now, what we're interested in is Event Match Lv. 37: Legendary Pokemon. Right off the bat, you may notice that this event is not accessible. In fact, our next character is locked behind quite a lot of requirements in order to get to. In order to unlock Event Match Levels 31-39, you're going to have to complete 27 of the events that come before it (all but three of them), and you'll also have to unlock the following characters: Jigglypuff, Luigi, Dr. Mario, Falco, and Young Link.
We've already covered the unlock requirement for Jigglypuff. As for the others:

 

To unlock Luigi, you'll have to play Adventure Mode and go through the steps to fight Luigi in the Mushroom Kingdom stage. You'll then need to defeat the duo of Luigi and Peach within one minute. If done correctly, you'll get the chance to fight Luigi after Adventure Mode is over. While this may sound stressful on the surface, keep in mind that difficulty doesn't matter. I recommend doing this on Very Easy to guarantee quick kills and avoid Luigi and Peach's more annoying combos.

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Unlocking Dr. Mario is as simple as playing through Classic or Adventure with Mario without using any continues.

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

 

Falco, I've always considered to be one of the more difficult characters to unlock.

In order to get Falco to challenge you, you'll have to clear 100-Man Melee. This is a lot more difficult than it sounds. Keep in mind that throughout this entire gauntlet, items are spawning. So you know those shenanigans I've been running into a lot with bombs and explosive barrels? Yeah, expect a lot of unfair deaths while trying for this one. Thought he opponents are easily KO'd, they'll wrack up a lot of damage on you before you know it. Don't lose stage control. As a kid, I always cleared this using DK and just spamming his Down Special through the entire match, though it shouldn't be too bad using other characters, too. Especially ones with good aerial attacks. Characters that don't get launched very easily may also be a big help.

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In order to unlock Young Link, you'll simply have to clear Classic or Adventure mode with 10 different characters. If you just want to save time, I strongly recommend doing this on Very Easy once again as each opponent will be KO'd much faster.

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

Finally, with all those requirements met, we have access to Event Match #37: Legendary Pokemon.

 

This is a match against a Jigglypuff and four giant Fighting Wire Frames. During the match, Pokeballs will be the only item that spawns, but these Pokeballs are special in that they will only contain legendary pokemon! ...and Wobbuffet and Goldeen for some reason. You'll have to fight your way through the Wire Frames in order to get to the Pokeballs before Jigglypuff can. This can be easier said than done since the Wire Frames are giants. But, once you get your hands on your first pokeball, regaining stage control should be pretty simple. From there, just keep getting the pokeballs that spawn in and you should be good to go!

With all of this out of the way, we'll finally get a challenge from our next character: Pichu!

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After all that hard work, we must have unlocked a really useful character, right? Hahaha, how naive you would have to be to make such an assumption. This isn't Ultimate. Pichu is undoubtedly intentionally designed to be the worst character in the entire game. He's lightweight allowing for easy KO's against him, he damages himself with any of his electric attacks, and all of his attacks are much weaker than Pikachu's. For all intents and purposes, Pichu plays the role of a handicap character rather than an actual, serious competitive option. His existence as a G-tier character was very harshly felt by me. Especially coming right off of playing such relatively high-tier characters as Pikachu and Jigglypuff.

KO's were very difficult with Pikachu compared to his predecessors. Even when I'd hit the opponents at what felt like right on the death barrier, his Up-Air just couldn't get kills as consistently as Pikachu. His Down Special also feels very different. It seems more focused on dealing damage with consecutive hits rather than dealing knockback with one solid hit. This combined with the fact that you take damage every time you use it, I'm not sure this can even be considered a good option to weaken the opponent with. Most of the time, I found myself just trying to juggle my opponents with a series of Up-airs until they got to really high percents. Other than that, the back throw seemed like a pretty consistent option as well. That is, if the game decides I'm going for a grab instead of a shield. (Side note: I want to kill whoever thought it was a good idea to make the Grab button double as some weird secondary shield if you hold the button for more than a few frames in this game.)

In the Metal stage of classic mode, I fought Metal Mewtwo and let me just tell you that this was extremely stressful. Mewtwo outranges Pichu in almost every way, so it was near impossible to get in close to him without getting hit. Since he was metal, KO-ing him off the top of the screen would take forever, so my only real kill option was to back-throw him until he was far enough away to where he couldn't recover due to his weight. The problem with that is that Mewtwo has a really good recovery even in his Metal form. Eventually, though, I did find that the AI seemed incapable of escaping a very basic Jab combo. So, I was able to get through this stage just by mashing A until he got to around 300 percent before getting into position to Back-throw him right off into the Blast Zone. (I should stress that high-percent KO's are pretty common with Pichu due to his apparent extreme lack of launch power).

To my surprise, I actually was able to challenge Crazy Hand! And... immediately got a game over. Did you really think I was gonna be able to win that matchup here? After using a continue, Crazy Hand was gone but even then I lost a few stocks to just Master Hand alone.

 

For clearing Classic Mode as Pichu, this is your reward!

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

Adventure Mode was a whole other beast. I was able to get through Mushroom Kingdom without too much of an issue, but starting with The Underground Maze... I have mixed feelings. I didn't get the Triforce right away here. And, for that matter, the triforce was in the very last chamber I checked. On one hand, this meant I was able to thoroughly explore the entire dungeon. On the other, this meant I had to fight five different Links in 1v1 fights as Pichu. Needless to say, I lost multiple stocks here. 

I was able to get through most of the remainder of Adventure Mode without a hitch, though I did have to use a continue along the way and I found that Giant Bowser was capable of KO-ing me at ridiculously low percents with just his Up-Tilt.... At this point, thank God I didn't have to worry about fighting Giga Bowser because that would have just eaten up another continue.

 

And of course, my prize for clearing Adventure with Pichu!

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

Lastly, All-Star went by surprisingly easily. I only had to use two continues and the second was just because I got caught in an absurd combo that brought me all the way to 200% from around 80%. (1v3 is a real fair matchup). Of course, along the way there was a lot of the typical frustrations surrounding using lilts, jabs, and shields instead of smashes and grabs but at this point, that's just par for the course. Due to shenanigans with blast zones, I was able to get a lot of early KO's which really helped my survivability.

 

My reward for clearing All-Star with Pichu!

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

All in all, Pichu was very frustrating to play as. I was happy to see him return in Ultimate, but I forgot just how miserable he was to play in Melee. Still, you just can't beat his adorable stature! You can't not love this little guy. I've always honestly liked Pichu's design more than Pikachu's. And those goggles make for a simply perfect alt! While he's not a whole lot of fun to play, he's certainly a whole lot of fun to have and I love his inclusion all the same! Next time, we have one more character left and at this point it's pretty clear just who that is.

 

[Aura]

Our final character, along with Mr. G&W, is usually one of the final two characters I unlock. In order to unlock Mewtwo, you'll have to have 20 hours of play-time in Versus mode before he'll challenge you at the end of the match. It's not actually all that difficult of a task to complete, it just takes a while.

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

Mewtwo has always been one of my favorite additions to the roster. He's always been such a cool character and I always loved the way he carries items using his psychokinetic abilities. That said, I was quickly reminded just how unwieldy this character is to play in Melee and this proved to actually be even more challenging to clear than Pichu. That's not to say Mewtwo is an inferior character to Pichu, but he has a huge learning curve and I do believe he's a relatively low-tier character to boot. The main problem I had with him was he is a very slippery character. It feels like you're constantly on ice skates with him. I guess it's because he hovers over the ground a little, but his movement just does not feel smooth. I never felt like I was in totall control with him. With most characters, I already had an issue where I'd shield and roll at the top of a ledge and somehow end up air-dodging and falling right off the stage. In hindsight, I think this is because I'd accidentally press the control stick a frame or two before shielding. With Mewtwo, this happened far more frequently than anyone else. In addition, any time he fires his Shadow Ball, even on the ground, he gets blasted backward himself. This can send him flying right off the stage if you're not careful. If you're skilled enough, this fact can be used to improve his recovery by firing the Shadow Ball away from the stage, but it just feels bad. In addition, the hitboxes on many of his attacks are very strange and the attacks themselves come out really slowly. It's easy to completely miss characters that are right on top of you. He's also very floaty and his jumps send him really high, so spiking opponents with his down-air feels nearly impossible. Most of his attacks send the opponent upwards for some reason as well, even his side tilts and smashes, so getting KO's off the top of the screen feels like the only option. His actual Up-air, the one  move you would expect to be good for KO-ing off the top of the screen, has almost no knockback. The only reliable kill option I could use was his forward air. Other than that, his Up and Back throw were decent but only at high enough percentages to send them right off. If I'm lucky, a Up throw can be followed up with a Forward Air, but the AI bascially has to walk into that one. Again, I'm no competitive Smash player so I'm sure there are certain combos I'm missing out on, but it just felt like nothing I tried would connect. Couple that with the general awkward time I've been having with Melee's physics and everything about this was just a disaster fest... Well, almost everything.

 

Mewtwo was the only character I was capable of defeating Crazy Hand with! His Neutral Air can build up fantastic amounts of damage on their massive hitboxes. And if they're hovering in the right spot, an Up Smash can do even better! And when Crazy Hand and Master Hand are hovering right on top of each other, it's the perfect time to get a solid Nair on both at the same time! Of course, due to Mewtwo's floatiness, he was KO'd quite a few times, but thankfully I was able to get through most of Classic Mode without any issues.

 

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

Adventure mode was a bit problematic in places. I ended up dying twice throughout the adventure just from falling off the edge of the platform and teleporting up and I lost two stocks against Mario and Peach just because Stars would spawn right on top of either of them while they were stuck in one of my attacks, allowing them to break free and get me locked into their absurd wall combos. The Metal Bros. were about as obnoxious to deal with as you would expect for a character who pretty much exclusively has vertical KO's. Thankfully, I didn't have to use a continue at all. I was honestly thankful I didn't have to worry about Giga Bowser because I most certainly would have had to use a continue if that were the case.

 

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

When All-Star came along was where the shit hit the fan. I ended up using so many continues here that I actually ran out of coins (about four continues) and had to restart from the beginning on Easy. Between random explosions, picking up the wrong items, slipping right off the stage, and getting stuck underneath the stage, I died in so many ways that made me feel so stressed out during this All-Star run. And that was all on top of the frustrations of my combos simply not working because of my inputs being eaten by being put in on the wrong frames along with the wrong moves being used or shielding instead of grabbing. (I'm not saying that wasn't my fault, but it's just a general frustration I've been having across all of these characters.) When you accidentally enter a jab combo with Mewtwo, it takes so goddamn long for the animation to finish. By which point, you're already getting hard punished by your opponent. I was eventually able to complete All-Star, albeit on Easy difficulty, using a single continue.

 

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

I still absolutely love Mewtwo as a character, and in Ultimate he is a much better character all-around, but in Melee, he was just a mess to play as for me. I suppose the issue is that he's a character with a high skill ceiling on top of my own lack of practice with Melee's gameplay. I definitely was blindsided by just how difficult Mewtwo was to pick up compared to Pichu of all characters. But, sure enough, I found myself panicking every time I heard a Bob-omb start walking just knowing it would end up under my feet from just offscreen. Even though I love his character and inclusion, I really did not have a whole lot of fun actually playing as him here. But I'm definitely glad he returned in Smash 4!

We've covered all of the Pokemon characters, but we're not quite done with the game just yet! Next time we'll be taking a look at some of the side content in the game tied specifically to the Pokemon characters!

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

Side note: Before each character's congratulations screen for each mode, a brief montage of the character in various situations is shown. This video is the same between Classic, Adventure, and All-Star and always transitions into the respective congratulations screen. I wanted to find these in isolation but I couldn't, so here's a list of all of them at once! For the timestamps of each specific character, look below. You can either find them yourself in the full video or click the links to be taken directly to the YouTube page!

Pikachu: 0:11

Pichu: 3:27

Jigglypuff: 3:38

Mewtwo: 3:49

[Aura]

For the last part of Melee, I'll be focusing on the miscellaneous Pokemon-related content of Melee! And we'll start with Target Test!

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

Pikachu's Target Test is pretty standard. A lot of his targets can be broken just by letting his thunder jolt hop along the platforms to hit the target, but not all of them work that way. Most of his targets also have ceilings above them, so using his down special isn't very helpful for most, but you can use it at the very start to hit the trophy just above you (the one in the "u"-shaped box). It's a pretty easy Target Test all things considered.

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

Despite likely being the very first unlockable character, Jigglypuff's Target Test is arguably the hardest in the game. The stage itself is laid out in a very linear path, but right off the bat you're going to have to squeeze through a pretty narrow gap between hot iron surfaces. Too high or too low and you'll get blasted backwards. A well-timed Pound attack can get you through, though. The real challenge comes at the very end. Those last few targets may seem pretty easy for a character with multiple jumps, but those last two targets are far enough out to where they really test the horiziontal limits of Jigglypuff's movements. You're just barely able to reach that last target before falling to your death even with using Pound to stay afloat for longer than usual.

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

Pichu's stage is a little bit easy to die on for a variety of reasons, mostly just due to all the moving parts. The only platforms that aren't moving here are the ones in the top left area of the stage. The platforms to the right are moving downward at a rather uncomfortable rate. The mallet-shaped platform you start on swings back and forth, allowing for easy hits on the two targets on either side of it with Thunder Jolt. The target sandwiched between two platforms directly to the bottom left will periodically slide offscreen so be careful not to get dragged into the death barrier. The two platforms are spaced tight enough to where hitting it with Thunder Jolt is pretty difficult. You might be better off dropping onto the platform as it's moving up from offscreen to hit that target with a physical attack. The target between the three oddly-shaped slanted platforms at the top will clip back and forth between the platforms. Your best bet is to drop down and hit it between the two leftmost platforms and land on the sandwich platforms as they're rising from offscreen. The remaining trophies are all pretty self explanatory. Just be careful not to fall off!

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

Mewtwo's target smash is just all-around uncomfortable. Not especially difficult, but not very fun either. Just looking at it, you can already tell there's not much ground to move around on. The platforms with red and blue arrows will fly around the stage and the arrows will burn you if you touch them, so you'll have to be careful around them. The targets will move out of the boxes, so you shouldn't have any issues hitting them. The targets inside the vertical pillars will clip in and out of the floor so you'll have to keep an eye on them. I always felt that the targets on this stage should be more spread out. The two walls on either side and the slanted platforms along the top go completely unused. There's also lots of targest that are doubled up for no apparent reason and almost none of them actually utilize Mewtwo's unique movement options. It's just always been a strange one to me. Every time I complete it, it just feels like there's something missing.

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

Target Test was my favorite part of the game to revisit. It's really sad that it no longer returns in future games. This is probably the mode I have the most memories with as a kid. I loved doing every character's Target Test stage over and over and trying to get the fastest times I could. I definitely remember a lot of them being far more difficult than they are for me, now, but still, I just love that every character has their own obstacle course specifically catered to their specific movements. Break the Targets never returns in the same light again in the future of the series, sadly.

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

The last place we can find Pokemon-centric content is right here in Event Match! This is another one of the more memorable aspects of this game, but this is a part of the game that I distinctly remember being frustrating and for very valid reasons. Each of these event matches is a match with special rules, most of these rules being entirely exclusive to this mode. Some of them are just simple fights for you to come out on top, other times you have to focus on killing a specific character, sometimes you might have to kill a character at a specific time, etc. Some of these actually do get pretty interesting, but the ones that are frustrating are frustrating. I'm not going to be going through every single event match here, just the ones that are themed around the Pokemon franchise.

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

Event Match #7: Pokemon Battle

In this match, you'll be playing against a Pikachu in a 2-stock 1v1 match. The catch here is that no ordinary attacks will deal damage. Instead, you'll have to get your KO's using pokemon from Pokeballs, as the title of the match suggests. This has always been one of my favorite event matches as a kid. It's not particularly difficult, though there is a bit of luck involved. Just don't lose control of the stage and you'll be good.

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

Event Match #37: Legendary Pokemon

 

I've touched on this one previously as this is the event match that needs to be completed to unlock Pichu. It's not much different than the Pokemon Battle event match, just don't lose stage control and you should be fine. The pokeballs mostly contain legendary pokemon but there's still a chance you'll get a Wobbuffet or Goldeen so don't think you have a guaranteed advantage just because you got the first pokeball!

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

Event #39: Jigglypuff Live!

  

For this event, you have to play as Jigglypuff in a 3-stock 4-player free for all. One fact I actually did not know about this match is that, if you use Jigglypuff's Sing while he's projected onto the screen in teh background, all three opponents will fall asleep, regardless of how close they are to you, and they'll remain asleep for much longer. This knowledge would certainly make this fight a lot easier! The Jigglypuff are all really easy to KO, though, so I wouldn't say this is an especially difficult challenge to overcome.

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

Event #44: Mewtwo Strikes!

 

This one is an interesting reference to Pokemon: The First Movie, but it's also certainly one of the more infuriating events in the game. The description warns you not to waste your time fighting Zelda, but what it doesn't tell you is that, if Zelda gets KO'd, you automatically lose. Instead, you'll have to wait until 15 seconds in before your real opponent: Mewtwo appears. One helpful tip is that mewtwo will always appear exactly on the 15 second mark and will always appear on the left platform. With this in mind, you can get yourself into position to hit him with a powerful attack right as he appears once you get the timing right.

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

Event #48: Pikachu and Pichu

  

Another frustratingly vague mission. This fight is a 1v3. You're given 2 stocks against a PIkachu and two Pichu. The Pichu will start out fleeing from you and peppering you with projectiles while Pikachu will chase you down and fight very aggressively. The game, of course, doesn't warn you at all that Pikachu has unlimited stocks. In order to clear this stage, you'll have to take out the two Pichu. What's more, if you KO one of the Pichu, the other Pichu will join Pikachu in the fight. This arguably makes the second Pichu easier to KO, but it also means you're now stuck in a 2v1. 

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

And with that, I think I'll leave you with the credits of Melee, specifically a TAS hitting all the names. I recall trying to compete with my brothers to see who could get the higest score. During this playthrough, my highest score was 138, by the way! 

Like I said, I'm not really taking "beating" Smash Bros. games super seriously. Rather, I just want to take a peek into them from the perspective of the Pokemon franchise rather than actually exploring the games as a whole. My main defense for this is the idea that, if I were to do any other series like this one after I finish this, I certainly wouldn't want to be stuck playing every single Smash Bros. game in its entirety again and again, but at the same time I also wouldn't want to just completely overlook it. Besides, this was a nice peek into how the world outside of the pokemon fandom saw the pokemon franchise during the time and it's a lot of fun to see callbacks to this specific era of pokemon as it was a very nostalgic time for myself. That said, we're rapidly approaching the point in the franchise were I'm going to be getting the most nostalgic and I'm more than excited to get there! But we're not going to be there quiet yet as I still have a few more small projects to work with in the meantime that I'm interested in taking a look at! 

[Aura]

 

Pokemon mini Series 1

On December 14, 2001, a pokemon dedicated console was released: The Pokemon mini! This was basically a tamagotchi-esque pocket-sized console. It came in three different colors: Wooper Blue, Chikorita Green, and Smoochum Purple. It has an A and B button, a D-pad, and a C-button like a stopwatch. This console used interchangeable cartridges to play various bite-size games. The system launched along with a lineup of four different games. Unfortuntely, I was only able to get my hands on one of these four. That's kind of a shame because some of these games actually look pretty fun! Since I won't be playing most of these games, I'll be linking to their bulbapedia page for more specific information.

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

 

Pokemon Party mini

The first of these launch titles, and the one I was able to get access to, was Pokemon Party mini. This is a collection of various minigames to play and try for a high score. Each of these games are themed around a different sport. Supposedly, this game was released in America and there's an english version out there, but the only information I could find online about it focuses on the Japanese version and that's the version we'll be playing today.

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

  

The first game is Pikachu's Rocket Dash. This game is somewhat similar to Samurai Kirby or Wild Gunman. You play as Pikachu and go through three rounds of races. In order to win the race, you'll have to press any button as soon as Elekid gives the signal. The timing on this is surprisingly tight, even for round 1. The opponents you'll be facing are Rattata, then Eevee, and your final opponent is another Pikachu. At the end of each round, your time will be recorded.

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

 

Slowking's Judge. Here, you'll assume the role of a Slowking who is judging a Tennis match. Pressing A rules "out" and pressing B rules "in". The game records the number of correct calls you make. The moment you make an incorrect call or fail to make a call in time, the game will end and your score will be recorded.

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

 

In Chansey's Dribble, you'll be playing as a Chansey and dribble a soccer ball down a field. There's no way to really lose here, no matter what, the game will go on until you cross the finish line. If you miss the ball, Chansey will simply turn around and get behind it again. This was probably my favorite of the games in this collection!

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

 

In Bellossom's Dance, you'll have to match the movements of your partner Bellossom. They'll either move in a certain direction or jump and you'll have to match their movements. You can use the D-pad to move or shake the system to jump. The game will go on until a mistake is made.

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

 

Hitmonchan's Boxing features a Hitmonchan boxing with a Machop. This is perhaps the most involved of the games. You shake the game to attack. Every time you land an attack, your score will increment. But if Machop is attacking, you'll have to stop shaking the system because while the system is being shaken, your score will decrement. The game will end after a while with whatever score you have at the moment.

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

 

Sneasel's Fake Out is a game I was unable to play. It seems to only be a multiplayer game with no singleplayer option. According to Bulbapedia, it features two Sneasel playing basketball. One player takes the role of offense and one takes the roll of defense. Each player chooses one of three directions to go. Obviously, the defense's job is to choose the same direction as the opponent while the offense is trying to choose any direction the defense isn't in.

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

 

The next mode is Battlefield. Another multiplayer mode in which you will compete with 2-6 friends in the various single-player games to see who can get the highest score.

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

Last is a fully functioning clock app complete with a standard alarm and stopwatch function.

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

Pokemon Zany Cards

Pokemon Zany Cards is one of the games I'm really sad I won't be able to play. This game features four different card games, two of which can be played against various characters from the anime!

From what I understand, the first game, Wild Match, plays out similarly to a game of Hanafuda with several cards being placed on the table and each player has to take turns making matches with the cards on the table for points. Playing certain sets of cards will cause special animations to play.

Special Seven plays similarly to a game of Uno with a variety of cards that each have special effects such as forcing your opponents to draw cards, skipping turns, etc. with the objective to get rid of all the cards in your hand onto cards of the same suit or number.

The third game, Card Duel, is a 2-player game in which you compete by placing down cards of higher value than your opponent.

And lastly, Four Kings is a variation of Solitare where you have to build four stacks of cards all topped with Kings.

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

Pokemon Pinball mini

Surprisingly, this game appears to be much larger than any of the mini games so far. It features three modes. The first, Quest, is a sort of story mode that features 70 levels which have to be cleared one at a time. These can include three variations: Fill Holes levels require you to launch the ball into several holes within a time limit. High Score levels require the player to get a minimum score within a time limit in order to clear. Lastly, there are capture levels where a pokemon will walk back and forth and you'll need to hit it enough times in order to knock it down and hit it one more time to catch it before shooting the ball into a hole to advance.

Time Attack mode features ten Fill Holes levels where you try to clear the levels as fast as possible.

Score Attack is the same as Time Attack but features High Score levels instead. Capture levels are only available in Quest mode.

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

Pokemon Puzzle Collection

Like the others, this game is another compilation of various puzzle games for you to enjoy. This is another game I was unable to get my hands on, so I'll summarize my understanding of the game. Each mode features 20 puzzles.

The first puzzle type is game mode is Motion Puzzle where you'll be doing a Jigsaw puzzle of a moving picture.

Shadow Puzzle seems to be a Tangram type game where you're given a shadow of a pokemon and have to recreate that shape using an assortment of blocks.

Rescue Mission features a pokemon trapped by surrounding blocks which you'll have to slide in order to make a path for the pokemon to escape with.

Once you complete 30 different puzzles across the other three modes, you'll unlock a forth game mode: Power On which presents you with a mess of tiles containing wires which you'll need to line up in order to connect a Pikachu to a light bulb and complete the circuit.

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

Since I can't play most of these games, that's sadly going to be it for my coverage on this topic. If I find a way to get access to these games, I might come back to it later on, but for now, I'm going to move on.

[Aura]

It seems I've had some dates regarding this area messed up pretty badly. I'm not sure how that happened but while playing through these mini titles, I very quickly noticed something was off. I've double-checked the release dates around this era and hopefully there are no more mistakes in this list. Unfortunately, this means we might not make it to Gen 3 quite as soon as I thought, but we'll get there slowly but surely!

Pokemon Tetris

Kicking off the year 2002 is Pokemon Tetris! This seems to be the last Pokemon mini title to be released outside of Japan and it was only released in Europe. Us filthy Americans were not worthy of Tetris. The game was, surprise surprise, Tetris! It did come with three difficulty settings to make itself stand out a bit. There was Rookie which was classic Tetris, Normal which featured petriminos (five-block pieces) after a while into the game, and then Hyper which featured petriminos from the start! During the standard puzzle mode, pokemon will occasionally appear which you can catch by completing a tetris in time!

There were also a handful of modes besides the standard puzzle. 20 Lines, as the name implies, challenges you to clear 20 lines as fast as possible. In Pyramid, you'll be timed in how long it takes to clear one single, double, triple, and tetris. There's a pokedex where you can view your caught pokemon, and a VS mode where you can play against other players.

Unfortunately, this is yet another title I don't currently have access to so I'll have to pass up on.

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

Pokemon Puzzle Collection Vol. 2

Released on April 26th, 2002, the sequel to Pokemon Puzzle Collection serves as an expansion for its predecessor. Its games feature modifications over the original and it features a larger number of puzzles! I don't want to get into the habit of half-assing my playthroughs of spinoff titles, so even though this is a small and relatively uninteresting title, I'll be taking my time and playing through all of these puzzles.

I'll be playing a fan translation of this game I was able to find online. There are some instances of poor translations here, such as the pokemon Cleffa being listed as "Py" (Its Japanese name is Pi), but other pokemon like Marill are localized properly, so it seems to just be a small oversight. The game features four different puzzle games. I should be able to cover one game per post in which we'll play through every puzzle in each one.

The first of these games, the one we'll be playing today, is Motion Puzzle.

This game features 20 puzzles spread across 5 levels of increasing difficulty.

Each puzzle features a scrambled image. This doesn't look too bad in a screenshot like this, and this particular puzzle isn't so rough as it's only the first one. But you'll quickly realize just how much of a pain these moving images will be to line up. It's a basic jigsaw puzzle all things considered, though. And like a Jigsaw puzzle, as you line the panels up the image becomes clearer and the puzzle becomes progressively easier to solve. Some of these puzzles get complex enough to make you go cross-eyed as you try to make sense of the garbled trash in front of you.

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

   

As expected, level 1 features very basic puzzles. These pokemon take up most of the frame and only move a little bit. As a result, there's usually some part of their body in every panel during each frame of animation. Shellder bounces in place and Xatu will flap its wings. Politoed is a bit more complicated because he'll turn on his side, but it's nothing too difficult to work around. Mr. Mime is only slightly difficult due to his more complex detail.

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

   

Level 2 features some more difficult puzzles. Again, these pokemon still take up most of the frame so it's generally pretty easy to piece their puzzles together, but their movement can be a bit tricky to follow, especially as you're trying to orient yourself in the beginning. Gengar walks off the right side of the puzzle and reappears on the left. Mankey will spin in place making his noodly limbs difficult to line up properly. Weezing is perhaps the hardest of these puzzles because of the high detail of his sprite. He's constantly spinning around to boot an dmany parts of his body looks similar. This was the puzzle that made me realize that things could certainly start getting worse. Thankfully, Krabby is comparatively really easy with him remaining mostly still. Only his claws move and while there's a bit of confusion as to where to place them at first, it's not too hard at all to figure out.

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

   

And level 3 is where things start getting more difficult and confusing on the surface level. Kabuto is the first pokemon that's small enough to fit in only a portion of the puzzle. It comes in from the background, growing in size as it gets closer to the camera before curving back. Since it's not in every panel for every frame, it can be difficult to line up. Omanyte is in a similar boat. It will bounce back and forth. It's arguably a bit harder due to its increased level of detail and the similar-looking panels around its tentacles and eyes. The Pupitar introduced a whole extra level of confusion. This puzzle features two Pupitar that are both rapidly spinning in opposite directions. This makes it extremely difficult to figure out what panels go to which Pupitar. Once again, the last one, Misdreavus, is probably the easiest as it takes up a decent amount of the puzzle and doesn't move much. Its wispy hair can be a little samey but this one didn't take long at all.

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

   

At level 4, things started to get a bit more obnoxious. Bellsprout moves all over the place with his head not just moving from side to side but up and down as well. His leaves and body wiggle around a lot as well. It's really difficult to get everything lined up properly. Swinub isn't too bad. He drops from above and crawls off the left side of the puzzle. You can mostly just take your time and follow his movement to figure out where each piece goes. Steelix, though, took, was a bit more difficult. He's constantly swirling around in a circle. I found it easiest to just watch for the location of his head as it was his most identifiable trait across the individual pieces. It was difficult to figure out what I was even looking at. Graveler actually was probably the most difficult of these puzzles due to his jagged, samey boy. He'll roll back and forth which can make it even more difficult to line up the pieces properly.

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

   

The final level, 5, wasn't actually all too bad. Igglybuff and Crobat were a bit of a handful. Igglybuff features three different Igglybuff skipping side by side off the left side of the screen and reappearing on the left. It's pretty difficult to figure out which panels belong to which Igglybuff but it's manageable with a bit of trial and error. It's also pretty easy to identify the relative position of each panel. Chinchou floats around in a sporratic pattern, but like Swinub it's pretty easy to track its movements once you group together the right panels. Crobat was by far the most obnoxious in the entire mode so far. Its wings are constantly rapidly flapping up and down and look very similar to each other. What's more, there are two of them and both of them are constantly flying in circles around each other. The pieces look so similar to each other that I genuinely had no idea there even was a second Crobat in the picture until I was nearly finished. Scizor was a nice sendoff, though. He's highly detailed but most of his body is pretty distinctive. Not much looks alike so it was pretty easy to piece together where he was. He starts facing the camera before turning around and flying off the top-right of the puzzle and leaving it completely. That last fact is actually really helpful in orienting your panels. 

[Aura]

The second game on this list is PIck Up Puzzle!

 

This actually seems like a pretty fun puzzle mode. The object of the game is to pick up all the pokeballs passing over the same space twice. 

Once you complete each puzzle, you'll be awarded with a picture of a pokemon! I though this was going to be smooth sailing, but I very quicikly ran into a problem with the very next puzzle.

...I honestly don't have the foggiest clue how to do this one. I'm assuming there's something missing with the controls because there are no adjacent pokeballs to these three in the middle. I've tried pressing all the buttons to see if maybe there's a way to move diagonally or jump or something but from what I can tell, all you can do is jump. There's not a whole lot of footage of this game on the internet, nor is there a walkthrough (why would there be?) so I can't really look up the solution anywhere.

While messing around with the buttons, I was able to find this help screen but it didn't tell me anything more than what you see here. However, looking back now that I'm done with the game, I'm a total idiot. I was too distracted by the fact that the pokeballs were lined up diagonally and immediately concluded that diagonal movement must be possible. I didn't even notice that this help screen clearly shows pokeballs being connected that aren't directly adjacent to each other. In hindsight, the solution to this puzzle is extremely obvious and I'm kicking myself for not noticing. Oh well, since I didn't notice in the moment, I'll be coming back later on to continue this mode.

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

Since apparently pressing the left button was too difficult for me at 7 in the morning, I went ahead and moved on to Stretch Puzzle.

  

This is a fairly unique game. The object of the game is to stretch paths from the numbered boxes in order to fill out all the blank tiles. The paths can't cross over each other and the number on each black box tells you how many tiles its path can be stretched across. They can be stretched from the box in any direction and divvied up however you see fit. For example, a box with a number 4 can be stretched 4 tiles in any direction, three tiles in one direction and one in another, two tiles in two directions, one tile in each direction, etc. Keep in mind, these paths can only extend in straight lines, so you can't snake them around corners or anything like that. This can be both a blessing and a curse for reasons we'll explore later. For filling every tile on the board, you'll be awarded with a picture of a pokemon! This is honestly a pretty neat, unique concept for a logic-based puzzle game that gave me somewhat of a Picross vibe without actually being Picross. I did find myself having to come up with a method of reasoning to figure out which boxes have to be stretched in which directions. However, I this game quickly proved to be a bit problematic. Perhaps there were some techniques I was overlooking, but I found this game to be extremely difficult by the end. We'll go over why as we get further down.

  

  

Level 1 consisted of some pretty standard puzzles. These were all very straightforward. It might take a little bit of trial and error but in general they can all be solved easily with just a bit of playing around.

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

   

   

I apologize for some of the frame bleeding in some of these screenshots. As I get more used to taking screenshots with this emulator, I do become more cautious of this. This game does use a bit of motion blur to provide a better illusion of motion which can make taking screenshots of specific frames a bit annoying.

Level 2 was a bit more difficult than the first, but was still mostly straight forward.

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

   

   

Level 3 was where blindly playing around stopped working so well. The first couple were fine, but starting with Mantine, I had to start developing some logic techniques to help make decisions. These puzzles were simply too large with too many numbers to win with random guesses. I was ultimately able to stumble through the Mantine level with some hypothetical ideas but nothing concrete just yet.

It was also during this puzzle that I'd unlocked the final game! You unlock this game by clearing 30 different puzzles across the first three games. We'll cover this in a future post!

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

   

   

Starting with Level 4, I began to realize just how difficult this was going to be. Kangaskhan wasn't so bad because by this point I was able to develop some simple techniques. Basically, before doing anything, I'd take a look at each free space and which spaces could be reached by multiple paths, I'd call these "common" spaces, and which spaces could only be reached by a single path, a "rare" space. If I find a rare space, that tells me that obviously that particular path will have to be extended at least to the point of the rare space and no less. Thanks to the paths only being extendible in straight lines, you don't have to worry about the possibility of zig-zagging a path to make it fit a certain shape, you just have to pull it straight out. This in turn can potentially create more rare spaces as the number on the box is now reduced. I quickly realized, though, that this is only a partial solution to my problem. You'll quickly face situations where there are no more rare spaces. At this point, I had to include rules for "uncommon" spaces, spaces with only two possible paths. Once identifying an uncommon space, I'd just pick one of the two paths and treat it as a rare space, keeping in mind that this was an assumption and the move I made may make the puzzle impossible. This was the source of a lot of my frustration with these more difficult puzzles. It's entirely possible I'm missing some technique that might make these puzzles easier, but for the life of me I couldn't think of anything else. As the puzzles went on and more and more numbers were thrown into more awkward formations in larger puzzles, I started having to deal with several uncommon spaces at once, all branching off of each other and none creating any new rare spaces. By the time I got to the end, it started to feel like there was no real logic to solving these puzzles and that it was just blind guesswork until you got something that worked. 

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

   

   

By the time I got through level 5, I was completely worn out. Each puzzle was taking me half an hour if I was lucky. The more complicated ones took me closer to an entire hour each to figure out. These massive puzzles might have like one or two rare spaces at the start and several layers of uncommon spaces to weed through. I was able to develop another logic rule similar to one from picross that involved large numbers or numbers in tight spaces. The idea was to count the surrounding spaces in order to know which spaces will always be taken up no matter what. For example, if there's a 5 in the corner, it can only extend in two directions. If there are only three open spaces on each path, then you know that, even if it reaches as far as it can in one direction, it will always have to have two spaces in the other direction. So, you can use logic to reason that, no matter how the spaces will be distributed, two spaces above and to the side can be filled. Still, this technique was only a gentle nudge. For the most part, I still had to work my way through a lot of trial and error. Dragonite's checkerboard pattern was deceptively difficult. At first, there seemed to be an abundance of far-reaching rare spaces. For example, there was a rare space that was five spaces away from a number five which means I was able to fully extend that path and ensure that number wouldn't be an issue anymore. However, once all the rare spaces were filled in and all my logic rules were applied, I just hit a wall and had to start a process of trial and error with common spaces with as many as three possible paths just to make any sort of progress. Lugia was pretty much the same story but even worse because the diagonal line down the center of the puzzle full of large numbers made rare spaces near impossible to exist. This was by far the most obnoxious puzzle I had to go through in this game so far. I had to take a break after a while and come back for about another hour before I was finally finished with it. Thankfully, Flaaffy proved to be shockingly easy. I was able to clear this one no problem and finally put this stupid mode behind me.

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

With that, all the Stretch Puzzles were complete! Next time, I'll be returning to Pick-up puzzle now that I'm less of a numbskull about it.

[Aura]

After retroactively finding the answer to the roadblock I hit last time I visited this mode, it's time to return to the Pick Up Puzzle mode and finish what we started! I'll be showing the puzzles in each level followed by their solution and respective pokemon hidden in spoiler tags. This is something I didn't think of until partway through the previous mode, but at the time I didn't expect the puzzles to get so difficult. This time, I figured since information on this game is so lacking, I may want to include the solutions here on the offchance that somebody out there is interested. The screenshot of each solution is taken one move before the end of the puzzle. This move should be pretty obvious since there's only one possible direction Pikachu can go. I didn't take screenshots of the puzzles entirely completed because there's not much of a window between completing the puzzle and the pokemon showing up and taking screenshots with this mini emulator is a bit unwieldy.

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

Level 1:

  

Spoiler

  

  

Level 1 was of course very straightforward after I figured out that you can jump over gaps as long as there's a pokeball on the other side. The only thing you can't do is walk backwards, really. You can even cross over your own path! This is important and this first level I think does a good job of teaching this, though I might argue that the second and third puzzles could have been swapped to convey the idea of jumping over gaps better. One thing I started to notice as early as level 1, though, is that the solution to the puzzle may seem obvious at first, but often simply following the apparent path will leave you with a stray pokeball off in a corner somewhere. The solution is often a bit more convoluted than your initial impression will lead you to believe. This obviously becomes much more apparent as we get into the later puzzles.

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

Level 2:

   

Spoiler

   

   

Level 2 complicates things a bit more with larger puzzles featuring more pokeballs. There's nothing too difficult here, though. Just break it down one part at a time. It's worth noting that it's usually pretty easy to figure out which pokeball should be left for last because there will usually be one ball that can only be approached from a single direction with no other pokeballs adjacent to it in any other direction. This means you can jump to the ball but once you do, you can't move off of it. Obviously in such a case, this pokeball will always have to be the last one you land on.

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

Level 3:

   

Spoiler

   

   

This is where you start to get into some pretty confusing shapes to navigate. You're going to have to jump across large gaps in ways that aren't immediately apparent or that may seem really unnatural. You'll also want to start paying attention to certain geometric patterns and how they can be used to help you move around as this can be a huge help in the more difficult puzzles later on.

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

Level 4:

   

Spoiler

   

   

As expected, this is where the puzzles started to get pretty tough. It took a lot of playing around to get past some of these stages. However, I never found myself getting nearly as frustrated with these as I did with the Stretch Puzzles, namely because at no point did I ever feel like I was left without a clue. For the most part, these puzzles did feel totally solvable through logic and reasoning, mostly relating to identifying which space I need to land on last which spaces I need to get to those, etc. It's just that said logic and reasoning could get quite a bit tedious and I often found it easier just to brute force them with trial and error.

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

Level 5:

   

Spoiler

   

   

Of the final few puzzles, most of these look me quite a bit of time to figure out and they weren't nearly as susceptible to brute forcing. I actually did have to use logic to figure most of them out. Usually, whenever I would get stuck, all it would take was trying to approach things in a different order or from a different direction and I'd be able to get through. I definitely found that this mode wasn't nearly as frustrating as Stretch Puzzle, but I did still find myself quite board. That may be due to my decision to marathon all 20 puzzles in a single sitting when these games are clearly designed to be played casually over time, but there are also a few other contributing factors, I think. For one, I've noticed that none of these puzzles actually have music. There's music on the game's menus and sound effects as you collect pokeballs, but there is no music. This is true for all of these puzzles. It actually makes a lot of the game feel really dreary and tiring...

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

And with that, Pick Up Puzzle mode is complete! All that's left is the secret fourth game mode we've unlocked: Shadow Puzzle!

[Aura]

Finally, it's time for our last game mode: Shadow Puzzle!

Just like in the previous game, this is a tangram puzzle. You're given the silhouette of a pokemon and you have to fill it out with the tangram shapes you're given. The pieces can be rotated and pieced together in any way, but they have to fill out the silhouette perfectly with no overlap or empty space within.

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

   

As per usual, level 1 is all pretty standard with most of the shapes fitting into the first most convenient spot you'll notice.

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

   

In level 2, you'll have to deal with a greater frequency of awkwardly shaped polygons, but they usually fit together pretty conveniently. Golbat is by far the easiest in this level and probably should have been swapped with Geodude from level 1 if I'm being honest.

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

   

Level 3 requires presents you with sillhouettes with much larger spaces that need to be filled in, requiring you to pay closer attention to what pieces you have and how they fit together, but stil it didn't take long to figure out where each piece fit best.

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

   

Of course level 5 is where things started to get actually difficult. Once again, though, and I've noticed this is a bit of a recurring trend across most of this game, the final puzzle in this level strangely felt like the easiest. 

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

   

The level 5 challenges were much more difficult and really required you to play around with the positions and orientations of the blocks, but after thinking critically and starting with the problem pieces or areas first, it's not too hard to find the solutions.

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

Overall, Shadow Puzzle was a nice change of pace. It wasn't nearly as aggravating as I expected it to be. The whole thing went by pretty smoothly. Normally it takes me hours to complete all the puzzles in one of these game modes, so I'm glad this one went by so smoothly!

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

After clearing all 80 puzzles, we're awarded with this cute little screen and...

....oh. Oh no. I've been lied to!!

The bulbapedia article for this game claimed there were only 80 puzzles in this game! It seems nobody on Bulbapedia has taken the time to actually complete all 80 puzzles because for clearing them, you unlock an additional level for each game mode! Welp, guess I know what we're doing next time... If you're going to look at the bulbapedia page now, I've already edited it to document the newly found information. This is my mark on history!

[Aura]

Sure enough, upon completing the 80 puzzles initially available, you unlock "Level 6" in each mode. And this was most certainly a rude awakening. I'll be honest, these I didn't even bother finishing these puzzles. They just came off as that absurdly difficult. Maybe I'm exaggerating after wasting literally four hours of my life trying to solve a single Pick-Up puzzle to absolutely no avail, but these are undoubtedly even more difficult than Level 5 and none of them would I describe as "fun". 

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

Motion Puzzle

   

Starting off was what I considered to be the easiest, but even these were full of some pretty solid bullshit. The Tentacool and Slugma puzzles weren't too bad. The Tentacool one features two Tentacool swimming back and forth . It was pretty easy to figure out which pieces belonged to which one thanks to their orientation. Slugma was a bit more tedious because he slides diagonally across the screen and then back across again with his back to the screen. It can take a while for the animation to play out and, due to his amorphous shape, it's pretty difficult to line up the pieces in the few frames he's in place. But the real bullshit with these starts with Diglett and Staryu. As you can see, these images depict several of the pokemon in question and each one is only slightly larger than an individual piece. Keep in mind, these pokemon are moving. The Diglett aren't quite as bad as the Staryu as they're just popping in and out of the ground. You can use stray pixels around the border of the piece to work out which Diglett is where in the picture, but moving them around is a huge pain. The Staryu, though, are all floating down the screen the entire time and you just have to figure out where the right pieces go by trial and error I guess. They move way too much in order to reliably line up the pieces with any sort of logic. You just have to try one piece and watch the animation until a Staryu passes by and see if it gets cut off or not. Keep in mind that some of the pieces are inherently cut off because the Staryu can go out of frame, too. 

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

Pickup Puzzle

   

The Pickup Puzzle, particularly the third one, is what really destroyed my enthusiasm about finishing all of these puzzles. I did finish the first two puzzles, but I didn't even bother with the last one. These puzzles are beyond frustrating and I felt like my brain was fried by the time I called it quits on puzzle 3. Just like before, I'll put the solutions to the solved puzzles in a spoiler tag.

Spoiler

 

 

That's... definitely not a Slowking... and Typhlos?? Yeah, I'm not really sure if this is the fault of the fan translation or if there's just something wrong with the fan translation or if these screens are just bugged. I suppose it's quite possible the translators didn't even know these were used!

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

Stretch Puzzle

   

I didn't even bother with these, I'm so burned out on this game at this point that I honestly just do not care at the moment. Here's the puzzles, maybe you can figure them out?

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

Shadow Puzzle

   

Likewise, here are the Shadow Puzzles! Judging from the silhouettes, I'd say the first looks like Entei, the second Quagsire, the third looks like Paras and the last one... Cyndaquil?

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

I apologize if this is a bit of an anticlimactic end to this game. It was already lasting far longer than I honestly expected it to. Besides, I think making a discovery like this was more than enough to consider beating the game. I suppose you can look at this like postgame content? Either way, I might come back to this one day later and when I do, I just might have a program prepared to help me deal with those dreaded Pick Up puzzles. As for my thouoghts on this game? For what it is, it's actually really fun! I know I've been coming off as really annoyed and bored by it, but I've also been marathoning 20 puzzles at a time and forcing myself to stay at the puzzles until I solved them, leading to play sessions of hours on end. These are clearly meant to be bite-sized games that you pull out of your pocket and play a little bit of while standing around waiting for your mom at the store. It's certainly not meant to be taken as seriously as I've been. And I must say, 96 puzzles is a lot of content for such a tiny package! I can genuinely see myself as a little kid playing this game for hours on end and just having a blast! I must say, though, that this experience has certainly made me glad that the original puzzle collection was unavailable. 

Unfortunately, we're still not quite done with the mini! There are two more games we'll be playing before moving on to the next major title! These games I'm actually pretty interested in, though, as they seem to be much larger than what we've seen so far...

[Aura]

Released only in Japan on August 9th, 2002 for the Pokemon mini was Pichu Bros. mini! Once again, I'll be playing a fan-made translation of this game.

This game is another minigame collection not unlike Pokemon Party mini, it even seems to reuse much of the same code. Each game is focused around pichu and one of his friends from the clubhouse in the Pichu Bros. special from the anime! Strangely, despite being present on the packaging, Wooper seems to be the only club member absent from this game. It's been a while since I've seen the short myself, so there may be others I'm simply forgetting about, but Wooper stands out the most considering he's right there on the boxart and he's always been the most memorable to me.

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

 

The first minigame here is Skate Pichu! This is a very simple minigame. Pichu will automatically skate toward the right of the screen, slowly picking up speed as he moves. Along the way, ramps will appear! You'll need to shake the system in order to make Pichu lift his board in order to hit the ramps properly. If you lift your board too early or too late, Pichu will fall! It actually features some rather cute little animations.

I played a few times and this was the score I ended up with.

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

 

Magby Hot Air Balloon is the next game. I apologize for the motion blur, but there is simply too much movement in this game to get a clear picture. This minigame goes through three rounds. The game will start counting down from 10 but the countdown will disappear from the screen after 5. From then on, you'll have to keep track in your head and press A as close to 10 seconds in as possible. Getting it exactly right will land you in the center of the bull's eye. Missing too much will cause you to fall into the water where you'll not only get zero points, but the game will end even if you would otherwise go into round 2 or 3. In each round, the timer will be cut off earlier. Round 2 will disappear at 7 and Round 3 will disappear at 9.

My highest score was 138 points! It's not super impressive but it's not terrible.

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

 

Hoppip Jump is a strange one. The object of the game is to hold C to charge up your jump and release when the system is vibrating at its hardest. The obvious problem with this is that I can't actually feel any vibrations due to playing on an emulator. The screen does shake whenever the system is vibrating, but it's unclear if the frequency of camera shaking correlates to how hard the system is supposed to be vibrating or just the duration. If you charge for too long, you'll start to get diminishing returns on your score.

Naturally, I wasn't able to get a very impressive score given these limitations, but I'm sure with a bit of practice I could do better.

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

 

Teddiursa's Shaking Fruits is a pretty fun one. Fruit will fall from the sky and you'll have to shake the system to eat the fruit. Shake too much and Teddiursa will trip trying to grab food that isn't there. The goal of the game is to eat 10 fruit as quickly as possible.

My record was a bit under 20 seconds. Not particularly impressive, but that's not a big deal.

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

 

Smoochum's Angel Kiss was a fairly frustrating one. The concept is simple. Diglett will appear and you have to kiss it by pressing a different button correlating to its position. Seems simple enough. The unweildy part, at least to me, is that, instead of pressing up, down, or C to kiss the diglett in the middle, you have to shake the system. This combination of button presses and shaking the system for similar action is a little confusing. Mixing in the fact that, the way my controls are set up, the button to shake the system is on the left side of the keyboard while the left and right keys are on the right side... I basically have to press the left-most button to kiss the middle. I could change the control mapping, but I figured for just one minigame that was unnecessary. Beyond the issue of the controls, after a while you'll start to see two diglett at a time! Possibly three if you last long enough, but I never got to that point so I wouldn't know. You'll have to be careful not to press the same button twice when this happens. It's very easy to do as there's a bit of a delay between pressing the second button and actually kissing the second Diglett. It's easy to assume the game just didn't read your input.

Fighting against the awkward controls, my best score was 16!

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

Cubone's Bone Club is a multiplayer minigame! It seems they've recognized the value of single-player options compared to Party mini because this time, all the game's multiplayer options have a single-player variation! In Cubone's Bone Club, this is the form of a training mode.

 

 

In this mode, you'll play against a computer opponent who presumably never makes a mistake so that you can rally infinitely until you make a mistake yourself. This game is very simple but pretty fun. You'll take turns throwing Cubone's bone back and forth. the indicator on the meter will rapidly bounce back and forth and you'll have to time the button press as close to the center as possible to throw the bone as fast as possible. The other player will then have to catch the bone by pressing the button as the indicator on their meter passes over the white space. If you fail to catch the bone, you lose. After catching the bone, you simply rinse and repeat!

Once you fail in training mode, the game will give you a rank based on how long you lasted! In this case, I gained the rank of Junior Clubber!

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

The final game on the list is Challenge mode! Just like Party mini's battlefield, in this mode, players will compete across the five single-player games to see who can score the highest in each game. I wasn't able to play Battlefield in Party mini, so I can't really compare and contrast there, but in this iteration, you're given a timer and can play each of the games as many times as you like until the timer hits and it will interrupt whatever game you're playing, so try to make sure to play every game at least once before repeating the ones with the worst scores and try to prioritize the scores on the faster games as some of these games have animations that take awhile to play out and waste a lot of time.

 

In Solo mode, the game will show you your "Degree Rank" followed by a series of scores to aim for in each minigame that scrolled through far too fast for me to record them all. In order to rank up, you'll have to reach these target scores in each of the games before time runs out! This can be pretty tricky but I'm pretty confident I was able to meet all of these target scores except for Hoppip Jump. Here are my Challenge scores:

  

  

Unfortunately, my scores weren't high enough to rank up, and my Hoppip Jump score wasn't anywhere close to 2000, so I'm not sure I'll be able to meet these demands.

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

Overall, this game was actually a lot of fun! I found myself replaying these games again and again just because I wanted to beat my high score. If I had a physical copy of this game, I could genuinely see myself pulling this out every now and then when I'm bored for a few minutes of fun. The games are all just simple enough to be easy to understand but have enough complexity to actually be engaging. I'm actually pretty sad this title never released outside of Japan because it was leagues more interesting than Party mini! Some of the games do unfortunantely take a bit too long to be satisfying, though. Hoppip Jump is especially bad about that. Smoochum's Angel Kiss (which is likely a translation oversight. I imagine it should have been called Smoochum's Lovely kiss as Angel Kiss is the Japanese name of that move) also had some pretty unwieldy controls, but that might just be due to my not playing a physical copy of the game. Overall, I genuinely enjoyed this minigame collection!

[Aura]

Released on October 18, 2002, is one more Pokemon mini before we're sprung into a whole new era of pokemon!  But let's not underestimate this little guy because Togepi's Great Adventure is shaping up to be a pretty big game! This game was another mini title released only in Japan and, once again, I'll be playing a fan translation. Although, from what I'm seeing, there isn't actually a whole lot of dialogue in this game so the translation probably isn't all that necessary.

 

The game begins with a brief cutscene made up of individually animated screens. Our story begins with Togepi taking a stroll in the woods when he sees something!

A Fearow appears out of the sky and is headed right for him!

 

Mistaking Togepi for one of its own eggs, Fearow grabs Togepi and carries it off to its nest atop the Tower of Origin!

Now stranded on top of the tower, Togepi approaches the nearby stairs.

 

But he suddenly trips over a small pebble!

Togepi tumbles down the stairs into the next floor!

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

And this is where the gameplay begins! This game has a very basic premise. As you can tell, the goal is to get Togepi to the staircase at the end of each level within the time limit. This can be easier said than done because Togepi doesn't walk, but rather rolls around like a ball. This can make navigation a little bit tricky as more and more obstacles are introduced.

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

As we make our way down the stairs, we're met with a diagram where we can select our area. Area 2 begins at Floor 60 so we've got quite a ways to go. Each area can consist of anywhere from 1 to 5 floors with each one containing an obstacle course for Togepi to navigate through. The time limit is shared across each floor, but it's seeming pretty lenient so I wouldn't worry too much about going as fast as you can. That can get you in more trouble than its worth. Since Togepi is rolling like a ball, it can be hard to regain control once you start moving too fast.

Floor 60 contains our first hazard: Pitfalls! If you fall into a pit, you'll be caught by a Fearow and placed back at the start of the level, but the timer won't be reset!

floor 59 has some barricades that help to prevent you from falling off and make you more comfortable picking up speed. Just don't get too careless as they're not always going to be there!

And the final floor of Area 1, Floor 58, is just a slightly more complicated maze of walls but is really just here to get you used to moving around in this game.

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

Area 3 consists of 3 floors as well. I'm not going to be taking screenshots of every single floor, but I will take screenshots of any new obstacles that come our way, or particularly notable levels of interest. For more specific details, Serebii may be able to offer a little more information. The Tower of Origin seems to be a sort of tutorial section of the game, with each area introducing a new hazard and providing various challenges for you to explore surrounding said hazard.

The new hazard Area 3 is built around seems to be rough terrain that slows Togepi down was he rolls over it. There are also these narrow pits that Togepi can still fall through, so be careful!

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

 

Area 4 contains 3 floors and introduces bouncy walls! As you can probably assume, these walls will bounce Togepi backwards based on however fast you hit them. In order to avoid losing control, you'll want to go extra slow around them, but they may also help you change direction quickly!

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

 

Area 5 comes with 3 more floors and introduces slippery ice! Naturally, you'll have even less control over togepi while he's on ice so you'll want to take it extra slow,e xpecially around pits!

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

 

This screenshot is ripped from Serebii because I didn't actually notice that the walls in the center of this stage were a new hazard.

Area 6 features three more floors with two new hazards: First are boost tiles that make Togepi go faster, making controlling him much harder, and second are sticky walls which stop Togepi's movement when he touches them.

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

 

Area 7 is 3 floors and features these arrow tiles that move Togepi in the direction the arrow is pointing. With enough speed, you can get over the arrows pointing against you, just be careful to slow down lest you fall into a pit on the opposite side!

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

 

Area 8 is another 3 floors built around cracked floors. These will break as Togepi rolls over them. They'll break faster the slower you're moving so be careful not to spend too much time or you'll fall through!

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

 

Area 9 features 3 more floors built around smaller cracked tiles. 

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

 

Area 10 features 3 floors built around bumpers that send Togepi speeding off! You'll quickly lose control but with enough care, you can also use them to gain speed and finish a level quickly. Of course, moving this fast makes controlling yourself near impossible so it's not recommended.

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

 

Area 11 features pitfalls which you'll have to shake the system in order to help Togepi escape. These can get a bit scary when surrounded by pits, so watch your speed!

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

 

Starting on Floor 12, we'll start to see other pokemon! Here, we're introduced to a Pichu charging up a lamp! After a little bit, Pichu will fall asleep, briefly causing the lamp to turn off and shrouding the floor in darkness. A few more seconds will cause Pichu to wake up, turning the lamp back on. Take your time and be careful when navigating in the darkness!

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

 

Area 13 is another 3-floor area featuring numbered tiles. You'll have to press each of these switches on a floor the number of times printed on the switch before the staircase will open.

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

 

LIkewise, Area 14 features smaller number switches. I'm... not really sure what the purpose of having both the small and large number switches is, but here they are.

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

 

Area 15 features 4 floors! These are designed around these breakable blocks. If Togepi bumps into one, it'll shatter revealing a pit below. There are some tight corridors you'll have to squeeze Togepi through in this area so be extra careful!

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

 

Area 16 features 3 floors of smaller variations of the breakable blocks that come in varying sizes. 

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

 

Area 17 features three floors of moving platforms. You'll have to be careful as Togepi doesn't move with the platform! The platform itself is two tiles wide (this screenshot seems to be taken during motion blur between two frames of movement) and the platform will move one tile at a time. Try to anticipate its movement as you're crossing and move quickly to avoid the platform moving out from under you.

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

 

Area 18 features 3 floors that show variations of pits. These sinkholes will grow and shrink repeatedly. The third floor in this area features pits that move around. Just like moving platforms, be extra careful around these and try not to spend too much time in dangerous areas. Seek shelter where you can!

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

Area 19 features 5 floors and several new pokemon as part of the obstacle courses.

Omanyte has to be carefully pushed into the hole here in order to open the staircase. It seems like he only moves in straight lines but that's possibly because I approached it directly from the right.

The next floor features a Marill that bounces away from Togepi. Due to its circular shape, you'll have to be careful of the angle you hit it. 

Another floor introduced Jigglypuff. These are lighter than Marill when pushed, so you'll want to be even more careful about them!

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

Area 20 features 4 floors and a different take on pokemon as obstacles.

The first floor features water and Poliwag. The water seems functionally identical to a pit. You'll need to push the Poliwag into the water in order to popen the stairs.

When disturbed, these Voltorb will try to push back. You'll need to bumper balls them off the platform into the pit in order to advance.

I didn't really notice much of a difference between  the Voltorb and the Koffing, but according to Serebii, the Koffing have a chance of giving off a gas that pushes Togepi back. These ones didn't do that to me.

On the final floor, I was met by Charizard! 

Charizard seems quite scary to Togepi, to be sure, but maybe he's friendly!

 

On approaching Togepi, though, Charizard stubs his toe and I guess this sends him into an uproar! It seems we have a boss fight on our hands!

This floor is tiny and you're going to have to push Charizard off in order to advance. He's strong and he'll push back, so you'll have to be careful with your movement! Don't panic, just be persistent and he'll fall down before long.

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

And with that, we've finally gotten Togepi out of the Tower of Origin!

 

Togepi once again returns to his stroll in the woods only to be caught off guard yet again!

This time, he sees a Donphan rolling his way!

 

The Donphan knocks into Togepi, sending him flying off!

Poor Togepi just can't catch a break as he flies off onto the top of yet another, taller tower...

 

But with that, the Tower of Origin is completed!

From what I understand of the game, there are yet two more towers to complete, both much longer than this one. Now that we've finished what seems to be the tutorial section, the next tower is likely to start mixing hazards together with the final tower truly testing your skill. I suppose it makes sense to do one tower a day. Looking ahead, these other towers look like they'll be a bit long, but I can't imagine it'll be all that overwhelming. Plus, the more action-oriented design of this game will make it much more endearing to me. If it comes to it, I don't think it'll be nearly as agonizing playing this game for multiple hours as it was for Puzzle Collection. 

[Aura]

Moving on to the Tower of Adventure! I don't think it really hit just how much time this is going to take. The first tower was 20 areas and this one is 80. Granted, the time limits here are much shorter which likely means that, despite there being 4 times as many areas, the total amount of play time won't necessarily be 4 times as much. Still, 80 areas is a lot to cover so I'll be breaking this section up when I see reasonable cutoff points.

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

 

 

After landing on the roof of the Tower of Adventure, Togepi once again stumbles his way down the stairs to the floors below!

The first area is a pair of very simple number tile floors.

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

 

Area 2 is themed around navigational skills. The first floor asks you to roll along a narrow spiraling path toward the staircase in the center.

The second floor actually seemed to have bugged on my first attempt. It's just a standard mini number tiles floor, but when I hit the bottom right tile and borught it down to "1", it remained pressed as if I'd reduced it to "0," but because of this, the door wouldn't open and I also couldn't press the switch to reduce the number. It was a bizarre moment to be sure. I ultimately had to reset and had no issues on my second attempt. The final floor was another number tile puzzle, this time with water on either side so you had to be careful when approaching the tiles so that you don't roll off.

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

 

Area 3 combined pitfalls and number tiles on its second floor.

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

 

Area 4 included three floors designed around movement tiles. This one was actually a little bit challenging. It asks you to make some pretty precise movements in a short amount of time. Just don't panic, though. Slow and steady wins the race!

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

 

Area 5 featured 3 floors but hardly any hazards at all. Even the time limit was very lenient for what little the stage asked you to do. Huh...

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

 

Area 6 was kind of a fun one! It was just a single floor in which you had to pop from one pitfall to the next while carefully turning the corners to avoid hitting the bouncy walls and falling right back into the same pitfall.

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Area 7 featured 3 floors of navigational challenges. Once again, just take it slow and you should be fine. You have plenty of time.

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

 

Area 8 has a really short time limit that may be a bit intimidating on the surface, but there's almost no hazards in the way other than cracked tiles, so you really don't have to worry about moving too quickly. Just make a beeline for the number tiles and quickly get to the stairs. There's only 2 floors and they're both the same strategy, only the second floor features mini number tiles and cracked floor tiles.

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

 

Area 9 was a single floor with a navigational maze designed around bouncy blocks. Just be careful not to be bounced backwards and you should be good.

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

 

Area 10 featured 3 more navigational puzzles with various hazards, nothing of particular note. 

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

 

Area 11 was pretty fun albeit a tad frustrating. The 20 second time limit is a bit tight so you'll have to go a little fast, but not too fast or you'll hit the bouncy walls and be knocked right into the pits. After a few tries, you should be able to get a feel for when to start slowing yourself down in order to make the turns as efficiently as possible. This will buy you more time to navigate the more precise areas near the end.

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

 

Area 12 once again featured surprisingly very little challenge. Just 4 simple point a to point b floors. The final floor featured some Poliwag which you'll have to push against some movement tiles in order to get them into the water.

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

 

Area 13 is a brief number tile puzzles where you'll want to make sure to hit the number tiles as you pass them or you'll likely have to move backwards over the movement tiles pushing you away.

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

 

Area 14 came with three more floors of standard puzzles ending with pushing a precariously-placed Omanyte into a nearby switch. Careful navigation is all that's necesary for tha tone.

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

 

Area 15 caught me off guard with a surprise visit from Charizard!

 

Once again, he stubs his toe and we're sent into yet another boss fight!

Since the platform is much larger this time, this fight is actually easier. You can build up a lot more speed, allowing you to knock Charizard much further than before. 

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

Since we've finished a boss fight, I think this is a convenient place to take a break. I might come back to update this post soon or I might simply continue in the next post. It really depends on how much the remaining floors prove to be asking versus how much time I can put into it.

[Aura]

Tower of Adventure Part 2

 

Immediately following the Charizard, Area 16, is a single floor with a small circuit which you'll roll around to press number switches. 

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

 

Area 17 features two floors with navigational puzzles across narrow pathways, a theme you're going to see recurring a lot throughout this section and quite possibly the rest of the game.

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

 

Area 18 is a single floor with a mere 3-second time limit. Very intimidating on the surface, but all you have to do pretty much is just hold right and tap up or down to stay centered.

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

 

Area 19 was a 2-floor area that actually puzzled me for a bit. You have to build up enough speed in order to pass over five movement tiles in a row. This first set is simple enough as you can easily build up speed from the arrows, hit the bouncy wall, and use that momentum to carry you to the other side taking care not to fall off. The second set, though, is a bit more problematic as there's no safety net to catch you if you get pushed back too far. It is possible, however, to build up enough speed just by holding left from as far right as you can get. The second floor is pretty much the same idea as the first set of arrows. You're in a room with a bouncy wall and a collection of arrows pushing you away from the staircase. Push too hard and you'll end up in the water behind it.

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

 

Area 20 is a single floor with a simple circuit of number tiles. Just take your time around the turns to avoid falling off the other end and you're good.

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

 

Area 21 was kind of a funny one, actually. It's just one floor and all you have to do is tap this Marill. It'll be sent into the bouncy blocks behind it, bouncing it back at you with great enough speed to knock you off the platform. At the same time, it'll land right in its switch and open the staircase just in time for you to fall into it instead of the pit. It's just a silly interaction I didn't expect and got a chuckle out of me.

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

 

Area 22 is another narrow path floor to navigate. It doesn't ask too much. Once again, just don't go too fast and be careful not to fall off around the corners. You have plenty of time.

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

 

Area 23 is a simple 1-floor maze with Number tiles strewn about.

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

 

Area 24 is a large field of pitfalls for you to skim over as you search for the staircase.

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Area 25 was somewhat reminiscent of the first floor of area 19. Just keep in mind that these cracked floors collapse faster based on how fast you're moving. Don't let the cracked floors make you panic into speeding up.

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

 

Area 26 is another simple floor where you have to make multiple laps around a circuit and hit the staircase. 

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

 

Area 27 tasks you with searching for number switches yet again.

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

 

Area 28 is a wall of pitfalls you'll have to make your way through as you move from one number switch to the next.

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

 

Area 59 features 2 Omanyte that have to be put in holes nearby.

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

 

Area 30 features a bunch of destructible terrain. Certainly makes you feel like a maniac if you handle it carelessly. Pretty fun!

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

 

Area 31 is another maze where you're searching for the staircase while avoiding the holes.

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

 

In Area 32, we finally have another collection of multiple floors: This time 3. They all feature pretty standard obstacle course-esque levels that challenge you to reach the end within the time limit. Nothing too dangerous though there are cracked floors that falling through too much might cost you some progress, especially on the lower floors. So be careful!

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

 

Area 33 features a flattened X-shaped floor which you'll have to carefully reach the end of each path to hit a number switch, being careful not to fall off, of course.

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Area 34 comes with a couple of Omanyte (I think there's a joke here about tentacles and the number 34 but I can't quite put my finger on it) that have to be navigated around some water to be pushed into switches. This one actually took me quite a few tries to get past as it's very easy to get these Omanyte in such a position where you can't get around to their other side to get them away from the water.

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

 

Area 35 is a pretty ugly floor with what appears to be completely random tiles strewn about with a low time score to present a challenge. Maybe there's a method to the madness that I simply didn't figure out, but as far as I can tell, all you can do is press forward as hard as you can to make it to the staircase within 6 seconds.

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

 

Area 36 is a spiral of cracked floors and bouncy walls. Again, take your time!

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Area 37 is a circuit with narrow paths. I found it easiest to quickly move to the right at the start and go ahead and hit that switch first before turning around and moving clockwise from there. That way, as you pass the last switch, you'll be right at the staircase and won't have to worry about taking the harder turns from the starting position.

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

 

38 was another fun one. Hit the number switches strewn across the cracked floors. Be careful not to cut off your path to the stairs in the top-right!

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Area 39 is a hodgepodge of arrows pointing all over the place. You can just brute force your way over to the stairs, though. You only have 2 seconds but it's not so tough.

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

 

Another simple navigation across movement arrows!

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Area 41 is home to a couple of Marill. Just like the omnalyte from 34, you'll need to navigate these two through some obstacle courses into switches, careful not to knock them into pits. It's difficult, but I found the Omanyte more frustrating due to the fact that their holes were in relatively the same place whereas the Marill here have holes along two separate paths.

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

 

Area 42 was another circuit. This time surrounding destructable blocks. It's a sort of interesting challenge where the more reckless you are early on, the more careful you have to be on the later laps. And the more careful you are early on, the more reckless you can afford to be later. This one was pretty fun as well!

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

 

Area 43 had some offensively narrow pathways. I honestly had no idea you could even navigate over such a narrow space. You'll want to use the rough terrain to line yourself up with the pathways so that you can just hold a single direction and not have to worry. Still, you'll also have to watch your speed because there's not a whole lot of room on the opposite side to catch yourself.

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

 

Area 44 featured a narrow winding pathway that you'll have to navigate through. You have plenty of time so just carefully make your way through without falling.

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

 

Area 45 features two floors, but the second is pretty much jsut a straight-shot to the staircase, so you'll want to take your time on the first floor to avoid falling into the gaps you create out of the cracked floors.

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

 

At Floor 46, I came across a 1-minute long miniboss stage against two Voltorb on moving platforms on either side of the bridge in the center. If you can take them out quickly enough, there's not much of an issue, but fail to do so and this floor can become quite a pain as you wait for the platforms to connect to the openings on the bridge again.

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Area 47 tasks you with crossing a bridge across the water to an island with a few number switches. It's some pretty standard stuff.

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Area 48 is a pretty ugly-looking maze of narrow paths between sporadic pits. You've got plenty of time, so just move slowly.

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Area 49 is a bit funny. You cross the bridge, hit a number switch, and immediately get bounced off by a bouncy block before you even notice it's there. This floor asks you to do a tight circuit on a small island around said bouncy blocks that are very likely to knock you into the water if you're not careful. I found it easiest to double back and hit one of the switches a second time so that your final switch leaves you in a convenient spot to make a beeline for the staircase. 

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Area 50 tasks you with hitting mini number switches that are dangerously close to arrows that push you against destructible walls. It's better to hit the walls full force and bounce back rather than try to avoid the arrows altogether by going slow. If you're too slow when you touch the movement arrow, you won't be able to build up any momentum to escape the push and you'll fall right into the pit. But you're not going to have as much of a choice with the 3 and 2 switches along the bottom wall since you have to hit them twice.

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

 

No, there are no aliens here in Area 51. Instead, it's much like area 43 but with a much stricter time limit. The first narrow path is a bit wider than the second though so you don't have to be quite as careful.

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

 

At Area 52 we're met with Charizard yet again! The same cutscene plays out of Charizard stubbing his toe. It seems obvious at this point that this scene is going to play every time Charizard appears, so I'm not going to be showing the screenshots every time.

This fight is a bit more involved than the previous ones. On the side you start, there are some cracked floor tiles. On the left side where Charizard starts, there are movement tiles pointing toward the right. With those movement tiles, it'll be difficult to push Charizard off by hitting him head on. For the easiest knockout, your best bet is to maneuver around behind him, gain some speed using the movement tiles, and bounce him all the way to the cracked tiles on the right where he'll fall.

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

Since we've completed another boss fight, I think this is a solid place to end the session.

Note: I've edited this post because I originally put the game down after the Voltorb fight in Area 46. I didn't think there would be another Charizard fight so soon. I even looked ahead on Serebii to see which floors Charizard appeared on and I overlooked this one because "pokemon switch" wasn't listed as a hazard which Charizard is normally listed as. (I used Ctrl F to see all the stages with "Pokemon Switch" as a hazard to quickly find all the Charizard levels without spoiling the other types of hazards I'd run into). From now on, I'll try to only end these posts with a Charizard fight, but I still may make an exception if I've been playing for a long time.

[Aura]

Tower of Adventure Part 3

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

 

Continuing onto Area 53 is a brief water maze with number switches. Just be careful as you approach the ones that are near dead ends so that you don't fall into the water behind them!

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

 

Area 54 is somewhat akin to Area 43. This time, instead of the paths being narrow, they're wider wbut with movement tiles that push you toward the pit along the edges leaving a narrow safe path to move across in the center of the bridge. This path is technically wider, but because of that, you don't have any rough terrain to help you position yourself. It takes a bit more finagling to line yourself up properly to move straight across the path and you only have 20 seconds, so the time pressure actually is a bit relevant this time.

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

 

Area 55 only gives you 3 seconds to explore a massive field of movement arrows . But, if you pay close attention, all the arrows are ultimately pointing toward the bottom-right corner and that's exactly where you'll find the staircase! Once you find it, just make a beeline on your next try and you should be fine.

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

 

Area 56 was actually a pretty difficult stage. It's a spiral corridor with bouncy blocks at the end of many of the straightaways. The catch is that the floor is entirely covered in cracks, so if you get bounced backwards you'll fall into a crumbled pit. You can't take too much time either because the spiral takes a bit of time to get through. This one took quite a few tries to get past but it was pretty fun regardless!

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

 

Area 57 is a maze of destructable blocks with narrow gaps between them. You'll have to be careful to avoid destroying them and falling in but it's ultimately pretty simple if you take care.

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

 

Area 58 is a simple forest maze. Just maneuver through the trees and find your way to the stairs!

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Area 59 was probably my favorite in the game so far! This Marill starts out on Movement arrows that lead directly into a boost panel followed by a massive row of ice that it'll begin to slide across. At the end of this trail of ice is a pit the Marill will fall into. Your goal is to race to the other end of the hallway in time to cut the Marill off. Then, you have to make sure to hit it back hard enough to reach the hole before the time limit runs out. There's a lot of layers to it and it's really exciting to race alongside the Marill an an attempt to save it.

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

 

Area 60 wasn't nearly as exciting. It's just a long spiral of narrow paths with rough terrain at the corners to help you align for each turn. You have a whole minute so there's plenty of time. The time limit is clearly just to intimidate you with the expectation of a much longer level than it actually is.

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Area 61 is the first floor where I encountered Diglett! These guys will pop out of what looks like rough terrain. They'll knock you back when they hit you so watch your movement! This is just a straight-forward obstacle course. The time limit is pretty restrictive once again so you'll still have to move quickly.

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

 

Area 62 is an obstacle course with number tiles scattered about. Just make sure to hit each switch as you pass it. You have some wiggle room with the time limit this time, so don't stress too hard.

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

 

Area 63 features more narrow bridges that you'll have to quicky move across. As always, just watch your speed to avoid going over the edge. Once again, there's some leniency with the time limit here, so you can spend some time carefully positioning yourself.

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

 

Area 64 features a racetrack style obstacle course. There's some movement tiles to help you get a head start and you might need it because the time limit is pretty strict for this obstacle course. Some of the turns are pretty tight and there are lots of pitfalls to stop your momentum along the way. Try to save time however you can!

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Area 65 is a quick lap to hit some number tiles. You'll have to be careful as you approach the end, though, because moving too fast will make you hit the movement arrows and pass the staircase! The time limit is pretty strict so that's basically a death sentence. The top of the track also has a pretty narrow path over a lake of water so you'll have to take some extra time up there.

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Area 66 is a miniboss fight against a couple of Koffing. There are only gaps in the corners and they're just out of range of a solid hit so these Koffing can be a little annoying to knock out, but with a little bit of aggresion, they'll go down sooner or later.

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Area 67 is another really interesting one. It's full of fake number switches and among them, the ones labelled "2" are the only real ones. The problem is that the same switch can't be hit twice in a row. Once you hit a two it'll drop to a one and blend in with the fake switches surrounding it. All the real switches are also spaced out just enough to where they're offscreen from one another so you'll have to keep track of where they are relative to their own surroundings. You have a whole minute to hunt all the switches down though, so there's nothing too difficult here.

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Floor 68 is yet another obstacle course with a bunch of narrow paths around pits. You know the drill about these.

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Area 69 is a 2-lap circuit with number switches along the way. You'll have to make sure to hit them as they're not all right in your way. The minute timer may seem lenient, but you actually do have to be mindful of it because there's lots of tricky turns and rough terrain to slow you down. Doing two laps around the entire circuit could very easily run the clock dry.

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

 

For area 70, you just have to hit the number switches in the four corners of the platform. Time is generous so take advantage of it. Just be mindful of the cracked floors. The paths are more narrow than they look on the surface.

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

 

Area 71 is another multi-lap circuit. Just go around and hit all the number tiles once again while remaining mindful of the timer. This one is a bit easier on the timer, but the number switches are also easier to miss due to the speed you'll be going with all the movement tiles, so make sure to pay close attention! This level may take some memorization too.

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

 

Area 72 is set up somewhat like a billiards table with six pcokets in the corners and the centers of the long sides as well as ice on the floor and bouncy walls to send you flying all over the place. It's actually kind of fun, but it's difficult to hit the Voltorb precisely enough to knock them into the pockets. You have a minute though, so just be persistent!

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For this one, it just felt like they gave up. You only have 5 seconds, but all you have to do is line up with the bridge and go straight. There's not even a turn at the end, you'll fall right into the staircase.

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

 

A standard maze here. I strongly recommend you start by going up. You'll find the four number switches pretty easily one after another and once you hit the fourth one, you can make your way back to the bottom-left to return to the stairs. If you start by going right, you'll find yourself wandering aimlessly for a bit before you find any switches. There's a lot of dead space here.

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

 

This was another pretty fun one. The time limit is once again 5 seconds. You'll need to use the movement tiles in order to hit all the number switches and reach the stairs, but it's all a straight shot with some slight moving up and down to hit the other switches. You don't want to move too far from the center or you won't be able to reach the other switch. You'll just have to get a feel for Togepi's hitbox if you haven't already.

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

 

With area 76, what you see is what you get. You're not given a lot of room, but just get as close to the pit as you can without falling in and then charge relentlessly toward the staircase.

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Area 77 is a wide bridge with a narrow timer. Try to be as careful as you can without compromising speed too much. This one might take a few tries but it's certainly doable.

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

 

Area 78 is a bit scary on the surface. There's not a whole lot of ground to work with and the two ice tiles on either side of the staircase are move around in circles. In addition, the two voltorb are covering number switches. You'll need to knock them off without falling off yourself. This all sounds scary, but due to the + shape of the level, all you have to do is move in straight lines while you first bump the Voltorb off on either side, return to the center, hit the number swiches on the top and bottom, then return to the center and wait for the platforms to align again before going for the number switches the Voltorb were guarding. The minute-30 is extremely lenient as this level only takes a few seconds.

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

 

Area 79 is arguably the most difficult narrow path to navigate so far. But once again, you have an abundance of time so don't be afraid to take baby steps. The turns can be a bit ridiculous but there's also rough terrain to help you at some of the more difficult pivot points. Just don't let the timer intimidate you because the path really isn't all that long.

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

 

Finally, in Area 50 we're met with a familiar foe who stubs his toe.

This fight is actually a lot more involved than any of the previous Charizard fights. Charizard isn't holding anything back, he actually starts this stage chasing after you with great speed! That's actually why this screenshot is so blurry because he is not playing around. He's going to chase you in a circle around the destructible blocks that makeup the center wall. Your main goal on this floor is to survive. You'll need to slow down enough to make the turns but not too much or Charizard will hit you right off the edge. You'll just have to get a feel for the most efficient arc to move in to preserve your speed. Once you make the first turn, you can afford to slow down a bit because Charizard will have to take a moment to regain the speed he lost around the turn. You can take this time to carefully make the next turn and as Charizard tries to turn the next corner, he'll be met with a collection of cracked floors that he'll inevitably fall through as he tries to regain his speed again. At this point, you should have plenty of time to carefully hit the four number switches and open the staircase. I'm unclear as to whether or not you have to hit the number switches and defeat Charizard, but defeating Charizard first makes hitting the switches much easier.

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

 

And with that, we are finally done with the Tower of Adventure! This took up far more time than I expected it to. Just like the Tower of Origin, Togepi wanders out of the cave and we're met with a congratulations screen! 

Togepi begins frolicking through the woods once again when he notices something yet again... that can't be good.

 

In this case, a Hypno crosses Togepi's path and uses Hypnosis to put it to sleep!

 

With that, Hypno kidnaps Togepi and hauls him off to the top of the Tower of Ordeal... That's right, we have yet another, even longer and presumably even more difficult tower to get through.

And this was our final time for the Tower of Adventure! Just one more tower to go...

[Aura]

Tower of Ordeal Part 1

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

 

Togepi wakes up on the top of the tower, trips down the stairs, you know the deal...

...and so begins the Tower of Ordeal! This massive tower has 99 areas with over 100 of presumably the most difficult floors in the game! Many floors share similar advice to floors we've already seen. In the interest of time and not sounding like a broken record, I'm not going to be covering every floor in this post. If you want that information, you can find it easily on Serebii. Most of the floors I'll be skipping are generic circuit levels, obstacle courses with nothing substantial, boring mazes that just have lots of dead ends, or narrow, winding paths over pits or water. My advice is always going to be the same on these levels so there's no real point covering them now.

The first floor in this tower does actually introduce a new mechanic: Checkpoints! HIt one of these and you'll be warped back to the checkpoint when you fall off! Your time won't reset but you also won't lose as much progress! The checkpoint will stay active until you hit another checkpoint, too.This is a very welcome mechanic that I'm honestly surprised hasn't been introduced until now. It could have justified a lot of the much longer time limits we've seen earlier...

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Areas 2-10 weren't anything too interesting, but Area 11 here was pretty fun. You have a short amount of time and several movement arrows trying to push you off. You'll need to charge straight to the right and keep yourself centered by nudging up and down carefully and switching with precise timing to avoid pressing in the wrong direction and accidentally sending Togepi flying off. There's some leniency but it's still pretty fun.

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

 

Area 12 featured a couple of Koffing on a mostly symmetrical floor. I recommend rushing over to the right and knocking off that Koffing first before returning to the start with more momentum to easily take care of the one near the start.

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Area 16 brought back Pichu! I'd honestly nearly forgotten about this guy but he's finally returned! This floor is littered with holes which you'll need to carefully navigate while you can see. I recommend lining yourself up with stretches of land so that you can safely roll to a stop while it's dark. Other than that, it's just a typical maze. You'll have to find your way to the staircase in (I believe) the top-right.

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Floor 18 was kind of funny. Your first instinct when you see this Poliwag might be roll right into it and see what happens. Well it just so happens that you hit him right into a bumper and now he bounces right back into you and knocks you straight into the water! You'll have to be a bit more careful than that, but that's basically the right idea. Strangely, there seems to be a second half to this floor that seems to go completely unused. Perhaps this floor was inteded to feature a second Poliwag that ended up getting cut for difficulty purposes? I can't really say, but it's strange that they didn't just put a wall or something here.

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Area 24 also featured a pretty interesting gimmick. There is an Omanyte and a Poliwag. The Omanyte has to be placed in the hole and the Poliwag has to be pushed into the water. Don't mix them up!

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Area 30 comes with it another fun puzzle. There are two poliwag making laps around the center wall thanks to the movement arrows they spawn on top of. All you really have to do is give them a moderate push to give them a bit of extra speed, causing them to fall out of their loop and into the water.The tricky part is getting yourself back into position to be able to hti the next poliwag without blocking its path. With a quick lap around the track, you should be able to build enough momentum to make it past the movement arrows. Be careful, though, because if you build up too much speed, you'll end up right in the water yourself.

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Area 31 features a new pokemon: Ghastly! Every once in a while, Ghastly's eyes will pop up. I'm not really sure what it does, it seems to behave similarly to wind. Perhaps if you remain still on the eyes long enough something will happen. Other than that, this is a pretty standard scavenger hunt for numbered tiles.

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Area 32 could be chalked up as just a maze, but I don't think that's necessarily agreeable. Rather, it's more like four different level tropes in one and that makes for a level with a rather interesting design. The first number tile is pretty much just given to you. Each of the four corners of the map features a different level theme and each one has a number tile. The bottom right is a standard maze, the top right has a number tile in the center of several movement tiles pushing away from it, so you'll have to charge at it with high speed but be careful not to go too fast or you'll fall off the other side! The top-left features several narrow paths over a pit. Most of these ideas wouldn't make for very remarkable floors on their own, but as one level they actually do offer something to talk about!

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Area 34 was a headache. There are movement arrows pointing in every direction with no rhyme or reason. The staircase is in the top-center of the stage so just make your way there to the best of your abilities. This stage is a mess.

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Area 43 featured some number tiles surrounded by movement arrows in a similar manner to the one in area 32. Once again, just be careful not to build up too much speed!

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Area 44 was similar in concept to 43, but its execution was more in the form of an obstacle course. There's some wiggle room, but don't flounder around too much as the timer isn't super lenient.

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

 

Area 45 was rather annoying. You have to escort this Marill through a few corridors filled with bouncy walls and bumpers. Then, Togepi has to navigate all the way back to the start in order to reach the exit.

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Area 48 featured two Voltorb that are close to bumpers. Your first instinct might be to hit them from below to knock them into the bumper, but that will usually just result in them bumping right into togepi and knocking him off instead. Your main goal should instead be to hit them from the side so that they lose all control and start to bounce around until they fall off.

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Area 49 did prove strangely memorable to me. It was a long bridge with four small number switches grouped together where one large one would be at the very end of the bridge. You'll have to carefully maneuver around the edge for an uncomfortable amount of time as you try and hit each switch three times.

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

 

Area 50 is really stupidly designed. At first glance, you would immediately hit the three number tiles immediately surrounding you and move on down the staircase. But then once you hit the three switches, you realize the stairs haven't opened yet. Then you might notice the moving platform approaching. It's easy to think, okay, there must be another number switch. Then you cross the moving platform only to find out that the third switch is a number 3 switch! Keep in mind that, once a number switch is pressed, it remains pressed until a different switch is pressed. This means you have to cross the moving platforms a total of 3 times in order to hit all the switches and that, to be, is completely absurd. So much of your time on this stage is wasted just waiting for the stupid platform.

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

 

Area 51 features two voltorb on either side. It seems pretty standard until you realize that the edges of the pit are absolutely covered with bumpers. The Voltorb are pretty capable of stopping their momentum when hit by a bumper, but Togepi is pretty much guaranteed to fall off if he hits one. You'll have to approach this encounter very carefully!

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

 

Area 52 is a bizarre one. The bumpers and staircases are constantly moving. You'll just have to time yourself so that you can get through the gaps of both fences of bumpers and have the staircase in the right position for you to hit it. Otherwise, you're just going to be bounced back or the movement arrows will carry you right across to the pit below.

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

 

Area 55 looks is a small, simple stage if you're paying attention. Simply go straight right and the rest of the stage becomes a linear path from there!

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

 

Area 57 is finally another encounter with the one and only Charizard!

This fight actually is pretty tough. There's several tiny pits along the walls that Charizard is too large to fit through but Togepi can easily fall through. Charizard will have to be knocked into the larger pit at the center of the stage. That's easier said than done though because there really isn't a lot of free space to move around in order to build up enough speed to hit Charizard hard enough to knock him in. This might take a few tries to get done.

With 57 areas done, we're a little over halfway through the final tower! That doesn't necessarily mean one more post, though, things are likely to only get more difficult from here. Next time, we'll be seeing what the other floors have to offer!

[Aura]

Tower of Ordeal Part 2:

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

 

Area 58 was a long corridor with a bunch of arrows pushing you along. You have 10 seconds to get to the stairs at the end and there are a multitude of obstacles along the way to stall for time. First are a series of bumpers that will bounce you back. If you hit any of these you may as well restart right there because they'll waste a lot of time. After those, there will be a pit in the center followed by the movement arrows in the center row pushing back. Shortly after that, they'll push outward toward and then the outer rows will push inward toward the center as the path then narrows to a single row where you'll have to straighten out before you reach a dead end with the stairs. It's possible to skim across the top or bottom of the stairs and fall right off so even if you make it to the end with enough time, you'll still have to be careful and hit the stairs as close to the center as possible.

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

 

This was an interesting one. It's a bit similar to the previous area, but it tests your reaction time in a slightly different way. This time Togepi will be pushed into a series of pitfalls just before forks in the path. You'll need to pay attention to which side leads into a pit and which side leads on. It's another really simple idea that goes a long way with self-imposed challenge. This is the type of thing that's really fun to just try over and over again for a high score.

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Another really fun concept. Area 60 is much like that one where you had to race the Marill to save it from a pit. This time, though, it's a Voltorb you have to knock into a pit. He'll speed along a path while you race against him through an obstacle course. At the end, he'll pass through an open area before ending up in the alcove where the stairs are. At that point, you won't be able to get him out. You'll have to knock him into the pit just before he reaches that alcove and the only way to do that is to get there first!

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Area 61 is a narrow path level that features number tiles along a single-lap circuit. I normally wouldn't cover such a floor, but this is a bit of a special case because it's another level that features Pichu. There are some small nodes along the path that mark where turns are, but it's still generally for the best to take it slow and only move while you can see.

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

 

Area 64 features miniature number tiles surrounded by movement arrows that push outward. It plays a bit different than the typical ones, though. This is mostly due to the really tight platform. You'll have to be extra careful not to fall off and you'll even have to strategically use the arrows from other switches to move through the arrows of other ones. It was actually a surprisingly unique concept for a level.

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Area 65 is a pretty standard narrow path floor but I did want to call attention to it because it's by far the strangest shaped floor in the game so far with paths of varying widths and some extremely narrow hairpin bridges with offshoots to the main path for no apparent reason. 

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

 

Area 68 is another stage where you'll have to push one pokemon into a hole and another off the cliff. The bumpers make this a bit more complicated than normal, but carefully knocking the Jigglypuff into the hole right at the beginning can help simplify things. From there, knocking Koffing off should be as simple as knocking it into one of the bumpers and maybe following up with a solid hit near the edge.

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Area 69 was a series of diagonal pathways that get progressively narrower as you advance. With another lenient timer, you can take the time to carefully line yourself up. Moving diagonally is pretty easy. Especially with the ability to use the walls to help straighten yourself out.

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Area 70 features another maze-like obstacle course. It's not nearly as interesting as the one from Area 32, but it tries for the same general idea. You're a bit more funneled in a specific direction though and the overall design of the level kind of lacks flow.

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

 

As a bit of a surprise, we're once again met with Charizard!

Honestly, this Charizard encounter felt a lot easier than the previous one. The arena is very similar with pockets along the wall, but this time these pockets are wide enough for Charizard to fall through. There's no Togepi-only holes here so Charizard isn't in as much of an advantage.

[Aura]

Tower of Ordeal Part 3:

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

 

Area 72 featured a large *-shaped room with four mini numbered switches at the intersection of the lines surrounded by movement tiles that push you away. The paths are wide, so this level is ultimately pretty easy.

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Area 74 was a bit of a frustrating one. There are two Marill on the other side of a pit and a two-tile-wide moving platform bridging the gap. This bridge is filled with movement tiles that push to the left. There are several parts to the puzzle of this floor, but the main objective should be pretty obvious at this point. First, you have to build up enough speed to cross the bridge before it moves out from under you. This means sticking to its lower half because, if you recall, moving platforms snap into position every few frames rather than smoothly moving from one point to the next. This is going to be very relevant for a specific level later down the line. You'll have to be careful in moving like this, though. There's not a whole lot of wiggle room. You'll need to make sure not to bump into the Marill because they might slow you down enough to stop you from crossing the bridge and even if you do manage to cross, getting them back into position is very difficult with the limited space you have to work with.

Once you get to the other side, you'll need to position yourself behind the Marill, wait for the bridge to get into position, and push the Marill with enough force that it will make it across the bridge in time without falling into the pit. Again, you'll have to be extra careful not to accidentally bump the Marill while maneuvering around it.

Once both Marill are in their holes, you'll then have to cross the bridge again to get to the other side, but take care to slow down lest the movement tiles send you flying right off! This was another pretty clever use of the game's mechanics. These are the types of levels I like to see! Nothing too frustrating or janky, just familiar mechanics being used in interesting ways.

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

 

Area 76 is another interesting one. These bridges of movement arrows slowly extend over time before quickly detracting to nothing. The movement arrows will force you to cross the entire bridge rather quickly so you'll have to try and keep track of how fast the bridge is moving and how far it needs to go to reach the other side in order to estimate when you'll need to go. There's plenty of checkpoints along the way and you have plenty of time, so the trial and error aspect of this puzzle is a lot more bearable than it could have been!

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Area 77 is deceptively small room with a zig-zag path that pretty quickly moves up the screen. You'll have to quickly dart left and right to avoid falling off as the path choppily marches upward potentially dropping Togepi into a pit if you're not careful. I'm not normally a fan of the moving platforms, but again, this was a creative use that I couldn't help but be interested in!

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In Area 78, there are two Marill next to a field of movement arrows that alternate between pointing up, right, and down. At the top- and bottom-right corners of this field of arrows are the switches you'll need to hit the Marill onto. Obviously, if Togepi himself walks onto these arrows, there will be no going back. You're going to have to just give Marill a good shove at the right time and have faith in the arrows to put the Marill in the right spot. It can be a bit frustrating since there's not much feedback when you fail, but once you learn the timing, it's not so bad.

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Area 79 features a moving bridge of boost panels. On the other side of the level, you'll find three number tiles separated by walls. Due to the boosty nature of the bridge, you'll have to constantly dart back and forth the bridge in order to reach each of the tiles to reach each of the switches. It wasn't a hard level at all and was quite fun seeing Togepi dart back and forth so quickly.

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

 

Level 80 I considered not covering, it's just a standard field full of cracked floor in which you'll have to go around and hit the number tiles. However, I felt that the strategy here was a bit unique so I thought it best to talk about it. Obviously, you're going to have to hit all three of these switches twice without cutting off your route to the staircase. There's several ways to accomplish this, but the way I did it was that I went around the outside of the ring to hit the switches once from their outer sides. Then, I did another, inner lap to hit them all again, being very careful around the last switch not to break all the cracked floor tiles surrounding it. Form there, it's just a beeline to the staircase.

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

 

Area 81 features a long conveyor belt-esque design with two Voltorb on safe spots at either side of the stage. You'll need to maneuver Togepi around the pits in order to hit the Voltorb off,b ut the tricky part from there is getting back onto the staircase with all these movement arrows around. Be careful not to fall into the pits if you miss!!

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Area 82 I would have chalked up to being just another maze, but this one features a Pichu lamp. This lamp doesn't really affect much other than being a bit of a nuisance, but I figured I'd mention it anyway. There are four number tiles scattered around the stage, so your best bet is to focus on moving back and forth between two at a time in order to clear the way.

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Area 83 is another Zig-Zag. This one uses movement arrows. You'll have to quickly hop from one conveyor belt to the next using the rough terrain to help slow your momentum!

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Area 84 was another fun one. This is a pachinko-esque stage in which your goal is to get into the three pockets in the stage. Two of them hold number tiles and the third holds the staircase. As you hit the boost panels, you'll start speeding out of control. There's no holes, so this isn't too much of an issue, but you do have a 3-minute timer! It's pretty lenient on the surface, but it can be a bit harder than it seems to get into these pockets.

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Area 86 almost feels more like a strange platforming game. The movement tiles are constantly pushing you downwards into bumpers which push you back up almost like a jump. Your goal here is to "jump" on several "platforms" of barriers to gain "height". Several of these "Platforms" hold number tiles which you'll need to hit to open the staircase at the top. This is a very unique concept for a level that completely changes the way you look at the game world. I really liked it!

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Area 87 is another "platforming" challenge. This one features lots of narrow paths that you'll have to "jump" between.

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Area 88 is a long straight-shot with movement arrows but with the complication that there will be the occasional point where the arrows point outward instead of forward. You'll have to stay as close to the center as possible and tap up or down to keep Togepi aligned or else you'll be pushed off the narrow edges.

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Area 89 is similar to Area 83 except with bumpers forcing you along and no dirt to help slow you down.

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As we reach Area 90, we're rapidly approaching the final floor of the tower! This area is another "platforming" level. This time there's a Jigglypuff switch! You'll have to find a Jigglypuff in the top-left corner and knock it off of its platform down to the bottom-right. It won't gain quite enough height from the bumpers on its own, so you'll have to slide under it to bounce it upward to gain enough height to make it up to its hole. From there, you'll have to climb your way back up to the staircase in the top right.

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Area 91 is kind of like a game of chicken. You'll have to charge head-first into these movement arrows fast enough to get across them, but you'll have to slow down at the right time to avoid falling into the pit. This goes on for several layers so it can get pretty stressful, especially considering there sadly aren't any checkpoints for this one. If you make any mistakes you have to start from the beginning. Yeah, these last few floors aren't playing around anymore. Some of them can get incredibly difficult.

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Area 92 was a cute calm-before-the-storm type level. It's just a simple maze across platforms that spell out "pokemon mini". 

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Area 93 is just a massive time water. By nature of being a standard obstacle course, I normally wouldn't cover it, but I just wanted to address how genuinely stupid this level is. It is just a massive spiral with absolutely no challenge. It just takes forever to get to the center of the spiral. There's no hazards or anything, you're just hugging the wall the entire time. A total waste of time. Not a stage I'm fond of at all.

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Area 94 features a central area full of sinkholes that open and close. On either side is a pocket with a koffing that's in a relatively comfortable position. You're going to have to wrestle those Koffing out of their little pockets, but once you do, getting them KO'd is as simple as knocking them over a sinkhole and waiting for them to get swallowed up. 

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Area 95 is another chicken game. This one features a checkpoint, so it's not quite as obnoxious as the previous one, but it's still quite difficult. It might take a few tries!

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Area 96 has a pretty interesting design. It's a large web of narrow paths which you'll need to carefully navigate in search of four number tiles. Hint: There's one on each row below the staircase!

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Remember how I said the movement of platforms was going to become very relevant soon? Well this is the area I was talking about. This stage is a nightmare because of how the platforms move in this game. These bridges of ice are actually a center platform with two other platforms rotating around it on either side. In a typical game, this would be fine. But the ball physics coupled with ice physics coupled with the snappy movement of these platforms makes this level terrifying just to survive on. On top of all of that, there are number switches to touch and Voltorb to kill. There are checkpoints to help you with this task, and the floor won't reset if you die after touching one of them, plus these checkpoints dot the level all over, but the catch 22 here is that they're all pretty out of the way, require dangerous maneuvering to reach, and when you die and come back to one, you'll still have to wait upwards of 8 whole seconds for the platforms to even reach a position where you can move onto them again. This is not a fun level for anxiety.

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At first, I assumed the 10-minute timer here in Area 98 was just another intimidation factor, but for once, I think the absurdly high time limit is actually justified because of just how long this marathon across narrow paths is. You're going to want to tip-toe carefully across the entire thing because it take so long to get through it that every time you fall off you'll want to tear your hair out. There are several checkpoints along the way but they're all evenly spaced out, so don't ever assume you're close to the end just because you reached another one. The path itself isn't anything terribly exceptional, it's just that it's so goddamn long that you're likely to start getting impatient and making stupid mistakes, then kicking yourself for doing so. The checkpoints arguably even stress you out more since the timer doesn't reset. Still, the same advice for all other narrow path levels does still apply hear. The 10-minute timer is more than lenient for a perfect run, so don't be afraid to make some mistakes and be take your time. Be very, very meticulous with your movement the whole way.

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

 

And finally, after all this time, we finally arrive at the final area! Area 99 where we meet Charizard for a final showdown!

And a final showdown it is! This is arguably the toughest floor in the game. It's asking a lot of you and throws a lot of time pressure in your face. Charizard is charging relentlessly at you and you'll have to escape his wrath or he'll bump you into the many Togepi-only holes that litter the stage. It took a lot of trial and error for me to figure out a strategy that actually worked. Ultimately, I found it easiest to start not by running away form Charizard, but by immediately butting heads with it a couple of times. You'll have to be careful not to do this too much because he'll quickly start to overpower you and knock you into a pit, but if you do it periodically in safe spots, it will slow both you and Charizard down considerably, making the turns easier to make and giving you a headstart on some of the more precise parts of the track. There are lots of turns here that are very difficult to make with Charizard breathing down your neck so it's important to get some distance wherever you can. Intentionally bumping into him can slow him down while also giving you a slight boost forward, so it can be done strategically to further this goal.

As you approach the fourth corner, you'll notice a small stretch of land between holes in the very corner of the stage. If you're careful, you can actually squeeze right between the holes and hide in this tiny pocket. Here, Charizard can't get to you and one of two things will happen. Either he'll bounce off the wall and slow down dramatically, or he'll just continue moving forward along the track. If he just slows down, you can take the opportunity to bump him and push him backwards to slow him down more. Either way, this is your chance to make a beeline for the inner part of the level. If Charizard is behind you, it won't take long at all for him to catch up so don't waste too much time. At the very end of this inner spiral, there's a chamber full of lava. This is the only hole in the level large enough for Charizard to fall through. At this point, Charizard has built up too much speed to stop himself and he'll fall right into the lava, opening the nearby staircase!

I may have described the level in a really simplistic way, but let me stress that this was incredibly difficult. The movements you're expected to make are extremely precise. Even just the initial turns will take several attempts to get right. And just how much Charizard gets knocked away I'm sure is dependent on the angle you hit him at, but I swear it feels like I do the same thing every time and he gets bounced away an inconsistent distance. There's a tiny patch of dirt in the top part of the stage as well. I'm unclear in whether or not this can slow Charizard down, but it's not a bad idea to try and get him stopped on that regardless. I can't imagine why it wouldn't affect him as terrain has affected every other pokemon up to this point. Then, there's also the tiny corner pocket you can squeeze into. This is a narrow path you'll have to hastily align yourself with in a matter of milliseconds. Charizard is often right on your toes at this point, making this maneuver incredibly stressful. If you're moving too fast, you won't be able to turn sharp enough and you'll fall into the pit. If you're moving too slow, Charizard will bump you into the pit instead. Lastly, the turns on the inside are incredibly tight. If Charizard didn't pass you, you're pretty much as good as dead here. You lose so much speed as you successfully make these turns that he's bound to catch up and push you off.

It took me several tries, but I finally did manage to succeed and get Charizard to fall into the pit of lava!

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

And finally, after all this time, we've reached the end of the Tower of ordeals!

Togepi once again returns to happily frolicking through the woods!

When... oh no... he notices something...

But this time it's just a friendly wall of the various pokemon throughout the game who'd all come to congratulate Togepi on making it through! ...even though some of these guys I intentionally pushed off cliffs... let's just forget about that. We're all friends now!

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

And here is my clear time for the Tower of Ordeal!

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

  

And with that, all three towers are finally completed. This game was surprisingly a lot of fun! I expected it to get really tedious toward the end just like Puzzle Challenge, but this game was constantly throwing new imaginative ideas at me left and right. There were some stinkers here and there, namely the boring mazes, obstacle courses, narrow paths, etc. that I just stopped covering toward the end here, but there was still enough here to keep me thoroughly entertained! I did find myself getting antsy to finish as we got closer and closer to the end, but I don't think that's the game's fault in overstaying its welcome. I think it's more so just my excitement to finally move onto the next game. Overall, this game was jam-packed full of content in such a tiny package. I would have loved having access to all of these pokemon mini games as a kid! I could totally see myself playing this game a lot in my downtime. And when I'm not up for the high-energy gameplay, I'd probably lean more toward a game like Puzzle Collection every once in a while. The minigames in the minigame collections are also a lot of fun! Pichu Bros. was by far my favorite minigame collection that I was able to play.

Anyway, this isn't the last we'll be seeing of the Pokemon mini, but for now, it's time to move on to the next big title in the pokemon series. One I've been excited about for a long time now. Kickstarting a new generation with a new game and a new console: I'm of course talking about Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire!! I can't wait to get started on this game tomorrow!

[Aura]

On November 21, 2002, Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire versions hit the shelves in Japan. This is an exciting time for me for a whole slew of reasons! First of all, this is our first time in this thread starting a generation from the very beginning. It's also the first gen since gen 1 that I actually own all of the main series games in working order, so no need to scavenge Amazon and ebay for working copies of any of the games. This means not only will I finally have the chance to walk you guys through my process in approaching a new generation, but I'll also be able to get a much greater variety of teams here! Generation 3 advanced (no pun intended) the franchise in a lot of unexpected ways. It took a few strange steps backward, which I'll talk about in more detail later, but overall it made a lot of changes that truly reshaped the way we look at and think about new pokemon to this day! This is also the first Pokemon game on the Gameboy Advance. This allows for much higher quality graphics and audio which allows for much more complex and varied environments to explore and music to listen to. The most personal reason I'm excited about entering this gen is that Pokemon Sapphire was the very first Pokemon game I was able to call my own! Before this, I'd played Blue version, but it was just a hand-me-down from my older brother. Pokemon Sapphire was the first game bought specifically for me as a kid, so even though I'll be starting with Ruby version, there's a huge wave of nostalgia tied to this game's world that I can't wait to delve into. I can definitely forsee some issues I'll be facing as we move forward, but ultimately I expect to have a really good time going forward through this generation!

One thing I should address before we get started is how I'm going to be approaching the pokedex going forward. This is the first generation to differentiate between the "regional" and "national" pokedex. Sadly, completing the National Dex is a massive undertaking that, at least in this generation, requires a lot, and I mean a LOT, of tedious trading between different versions of the game. Ultimately, it is possible to complete the national dex through the combined power of all the Pokemon games in the generation, and I'll probably try to at least get all of the pokemon I can, but I likely won't be completing the National Dex in any one copy of the game in order to obtain the certificate. That said, I definitely will still aim to complete each regional pokedex across the generation, with some minor exceptions. While event-only pokemon existed as far back as Gen 1 with Mew, Gen 3 introduces multiple event-only mythical pokemon including not only Mew and Celebi, but also Jirachi and Deoxys. None of these pokemon are available in normal gameplay but they also do not count toward Pokedex completion for this reason. Because of this, I'm not going to be worrying about these pokemon when aiming for pokedex completion, just like before. Another thing I should mention is that, just like Gold and Silver, RSE does rely on an internal clock for a handful of time-based features. This once again causes the internal battery to run dry but thankfully, save data is no longer tied to the battery, so a copy of the game with a dead battery is still playable. A consequence of this is that time-based events no longer play out as they normally would. This is okay because these are significantly downplayed compared to Gold and Silver which went so far as to have events tied to specific days of the week. Here, the most we'll be missing out on is the opportunity to cultivate berries. Other than that, as long as we're careful about the time we set the clock to in the beginning, we should have no issues seeing just about everything these games have to offer.

As for my team structure, since I know I have access to all games in the generation this time, I'm going to be doing things the way I did with Gen 1. This means my first playthrough I'm going to be using a much more variable team featuring whatever pokemon that have level evolutions that are unavailable in the wild. The purpose of this is to minimize grinding at the end of the generation when I go back to do my pokedex cleanup. It also allows me to use a wider variety of pokemon than I normally would and is overall just a really fun direction to take the series. Without further ado, it's time to begin exploring what the third generation has to offer!

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

 

Starting out with the game's intro, we have a returning feature from Pokemon Crystal, confirming its role as a mainstay feature for most games to come with some minor exceptions. This is the first case, however, where the opposite gender character is assigned a canonical name and given a role in the game's main story. In this case, the opposite gender character will serve the role of your rival starting with the starter that's strong against yours and using a variable team. You are unfortunately unable to name your rival whatever you want, sadly. These characters' names are Brendon and May and depending on which one is your rival, their battle strategy actually does change up a little bit! This is also the first time where you're actually unable to name your rival whatever you want.

I chose the male character for this playthrough and I named him "Ruby" to match the version, but I must say this is actually not a very easy choice. I absolutely love both of these protagonist designs, but Brendon has the design I'm more nostalgic with, and he's more strongly associated with the games. Don't worry, though, I'll make sure to give May her time in the spotlight when we get to Sapphire.

Littleroot Town

Our adventure starts here in Littleroot Town. Depending on your gender, you'll move in to either the northeast or northwest houses. This small town is nearly identical to Pallet Town with just three buildings. Your home, your rival's home, and a pokemon lab. Right off the bat, you'll hop right out of a moving truck and as a team of Machoke are helping to move your belongings into the house, your mother asks you to set the clock in your room. We go upstairs to do just that, but not before withdrawing a potion from our PC!

This is where we're going to have to break the fourth wall a bit and plan ahead. Since time isn't going to flow normally, whatever time we set the clock to here, we're permanently stuck with. I won't spoil the details until we get to the point where it becomes relevant, but long story short, all that really matters is whether or not the game is between the intervals of 3:00 and 8:59. AM or PM doesn't matter in regards to this feature. Long story short, if you're going for pokedex completion, you're going to want to make sure your time is between 3 and 8:59 in at least one playthrough. In addition, the day/night cycle is simplified in this game from what it was in gen 2. Now, there is only a matter of day or not which is determined simply by AM or PM rather than specific times of days and an unnecessary differentiation between "morning" and "day". To be fair, this does make things a bit problematic as this means any time past noon is considered "night time" by the game, and any time past midnight is considered "day", but for our purposes, this makes things nice and simple. I'll just need to be sure to keep one playthrough at Nighttime and one playthrough at Daytime. In this case, I'll need to make sure to keep one playthrough at Day and one playthrough at Night. For this playthrough, I set the clock to around 6:30 PM, though thematically it perhaps would have made more sense to go for AM, but it ultimately doesn't really matter.

The fact is, regardless of time of day, the world always appears as if it's daylight. There are no darker color pallets during night hours nor are there any differences in encounter rates based on time of day. All the time of day really affects is the passage of time itself for features that rely on it, and pokemon evolutions that require certain times of day.

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After setting your clock and walking downstairs, your mom will tell you your father is on TV! This is the first time the protagonist has ever had a canonical father so much as mentioned. Unfortunately, you just miss the show. Oh well, it won't be long before we see him in person! Instead, it's time to go meet our new neighbor! We exit back into the outside and make our way to Professor Birch's home where we meet his wife and, most significantly, his daughter, May. After meeting, Birch's family, it seems that Birch himself is out doing some field research, so we'll head up north to see if we can meet with him. On our way, we're met instead by a cry for help! It seems Prof. Birch dropped his bag of pokemon and is being chased by a wild Pokemon! We immediately rush to his aid and quickly have to grab a pokemon from his back! This is certainly an exciting way to start our adventure!

  

It's time to make an important decision: Treecko, Torchic, or Mudkip? This is always a very difficult choice to make because these are always some of the rarest pokemon in the game and in this case, I honestly do love all three Gen 3 starters to death. Taking into account some of the things we're going to have to consider in the near future, I've decided that the best choice of starter for this particular playthrough is none other than Mudkip. There are a lot of water types in this generation that I'm interested in using but some that I'm going to feel tied down to. I figured it's best to get the Water starter out of the way in the playthrough where I'll be using the most variable team.

Marco (Mudkip M); Lv. 5

 

Ability: Torrent

Moves: Tackle, Growl

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After choosing our starter, we do a quick battle against a Wild Poochyena in order to rescue Prof. Birch from the situation he'd found himself in. Afterwards, he take sus back to the lab where he can properly introduce himself and offers us the pokemon we battled with as thanks! He then suggests that we go spend some time with his daughter who we find out has gone out to Route 103 to help with his research. So, it's time to move on!

Heading back up north, we have Route 101. I'm not going to be covering the wild pokemon here just yet because we actually haven't been given pokeballs yet. This brief quest is comparable to the trip to Mr. Pokemon in the beginning of GSC.

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Further north is Odale Town which is comparable to Cherrygrove City in Johto. Just a small early-game town with a couple of modest homes, but large enough to warrant a Pokemon Center and Mart. We can't buy any pokeballs here, but there is a Mart employee who will give us a free potion as a sample. We can't go west from here because there's a man sketching footprints of a rare pokemon, so north is our only option.

Up north here on Route 103, most of the route is inaccessible to us at the moment. We only have access to the western part. Along the way here, my Mudkip did gather enough experience to level up and learn Mud-Slap! That's a pretty big deal considering Mud-Slap was a TM move in Gen 2. Just learning it for free this early on is a pretty good omen! At the end of the route, we'll find May who's searching for wild pokemon! After meeting with her, she challenges us to a pokemon battle!

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PKMN Trainer May #1

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Treecko; Lv. 5

Since we started with Mudkip, her one and only pokemon at this point is, of course, the grass-type Treecko.

 

This battle has a similar flaw to the first battle with Silver. Since we have to cross some routes to get to this point in the game, we already have a distinct level advantage over her. Not to mention the fact that Mud-Slap allows us to reduce her accuracy, it's pretty clear that we're going to win without a problem. I used four Mud-Slaps to reduce her accuracy to the point where she would rarely hit me then proceeded to Tackle Treecko into submission. A very simple battle that's just meant to introduce you into the mechanics of battling.

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

After defeating May, she suggests we head back home. Of course, we follow her back to Littleroot where we speak with Prof. Birch once again and finally get our Pokedex and pokeballs to help with his research again! On our way back out of Littleroot, we're stopped by our mom who has a new gift to give us. The greatest blessing this game has for us so far over its predecessors: The running shoes! Now we no longer have to just painstakingly walk everywhere. Running allows us to move much faster without the need of a bike! 

Now that we have the pokeballs, the real game begins!

On route 101, I went ahead and caught my initial batch of pokemon.

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Parker (Poochyena M); Lv. 2

 

Ability: Run Away

Moves: Tackle

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Rump (Wurmple M); Lv. 2

 

Ability: Shield Dust

Moves: Tackle, String Shot

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Silica (Wurmple F); Lv. 2

 

Ability: Shield Dust

Moves: Tackle, String Shot

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Zip (Zigzagoon F); Lv. 3

 

Ability: Pickup

Moves: Tackle, Growl

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Some may question why I went ahead and caught two Wurmple, my reasoning is that Wurmple is a very strange pokemon. Its evolution is entirely random and it can evolve into one of two different pokemon. While both of its evolutions are available in the wild later on, none of its final evolutions are and it's much easier to raise a Silcoon or Cascoon that was evolved from a Wurmple rather than one that was caught in the wild as they'll only know Harden naturally. With any luck, Rump and Silica will both evolve into Silcoon and Cascoon and this won't be an issue at all. But it's entirely possible that the both of these pokemon will evolve into the same pokemon and I'll have to catch a third. Right here on Route 101 is where Wurmple just happens to be most common, though, and they're quite common. It's just a minor annoyance having to track them down. Thankfully, it evolves at level 7 just like Caterpie and Weedle before it, so there won't be an issue!

Poochyena is a pokemon I very much appreciate. Remember my complaint about how Dark and Steel-type pokemon were only really available in the endgame of GSC? Well, Poochyena here in Hoenn is a generic Dark-type pokemon available right from the beginning of the game! In addition, there are many more Dark and Steel-type pokemon available here in Gen 3. This is just one of the many aspects of the generation that I wholly appreciate.

I should also take a moment to discuss abilities as these are a huge part of Gen 3's identity. Starting with Ruby and Sapphire, every single pokemon has a passive ability that is always in effect and doesn't intrude at all on their moveset. These abilities have a wide range of effects that can help for a variety of tasks. Mudkip's ability, Torrent, for example, increases the power of its Water-type moves when its HP is below 1/3. Poochyena's Run Away allows it to flee from battle as though it were holding a Smoke Ball. Wurmple's Shield Dust protects it from secondary effects of attacks and Zigzagoon's Pickup allows it to randomly collect items after battle! If you have a pokemon with Pickup, you'll definitely want to make a habit of checking your pokemon list to see if it has a new present for you. You can get some really valuable items! I got a Revive and Super Potion by the end of this first session!

I should reinstate once again that my approach to team building is going to be much different than in Silver or Crystal. I don't have a party plan this time and I'm going to be trading out pokemon in my party much more frequently. A consequence of this approach is that I'm going to be much lower level than normal. On the contrary, I'll be spending more time in the grass searching for wild pokemon, so it's likely to balance itself out. There isn't anything of particular note on Route 103, so now it's time to move on to the next new area. Returning to Odale Town, we find that the man who was sketching footprints came to realize that the footprints were actually his own which he failed to notice in his excitement. A sad day to be sure, but now we can advance to route 102!

Here, we're going to have to hunt down a particular rare pokemon before we move on. This pokemon is only available in this one place so, by default, it's most common here. There is another exceedingly rare pokemon we can find here, but we can find this pokemon in several different places throughout Hoenn, so we don't have to worry too much about this for now.

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Seedling (Seedot M); Lv. 3

 

Ability: Chlorophyll

Moves: Bide, Harden

While not the pokemon I was searching for, Seedot is definitely a welcome discovery here. This is a version exclusive pokemon to Ruby version. He's going to be a pain to raise but he's not a bad option considering one of the pokemon I'd like to use later on... chlorophyll is a very useful ability as it will double your speed in harsh sunlight.

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While searching for wild pokemon, Rump reached level 7 and evolved into a Silcoon! If Silica can evolve into a Cascoon, that would be very convenient for me!

 

...and sure enough, not long after, Silica evolved into a Cascoon! Now I know I don't have to worry about Wurmple anymore.

Some people falsely believe that Wurmple evolves into Silcoon or Cascoon depending on time of day, but the fact that I was able to evolve Wurmple into both of these pokemon at night on a cartridge with a dead battery just goes to show just how wrong this claim really is. Wurmple's evolution is random based on the individual Wurmple's personality values. These are hidden values that you can't really see, but all you need to know is that the same wurmple will always evolve into the same pokemon no matter how you raise it. To this day, this honestly makes Wurmple one of the most annoying pokemon to deal with for pokedex completion to the point where it's arguably better just to evolve one Wurmple and catch the other evolution in the wild.

One thing that's interesting about this evolution is that it also goes to show just how much pokemon abilities can vary. Wurmple has Shield Dust which prevents secondary effects of attacks. Silcoon and Cascoon both have the Shed Skin ability instead. This ability has a chance every turn of curing a status condition for free, even conditions that you normally have to go out of your way to heal like Paralysis or Poisoning. 

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Rarity (Ralts M); Lv. 4

 

Ability: Trace

Moves: Growl

After a few hours of searching, I finally managed to find a Ralts! This pokemon is only available here on Route 102 with a mere 4% rarity. It seems weak and useless at the moment, but it doesn't take long at all to pay off. This is essentially the Abra of Gen 3 and if I can't use it much here, you can bet I'll be using it in Sapphire! Its Trace ability copies the ability of the opponent as well, allowing it to take advantage of a lot of unique situations if you're lucky. Having only Growl seems like raising it will be a pain, but thankfully it learns Confusion as early as level 6 so it's really not that big of a deal.

I continued to grind out here a bit until Ralts was on par with the rest of my team, in hopes that I'd find that last pokemon that can be found here, but in all this time I didn't find a single one so I figured it wasn't worth the hunt. At least not for now. My efforts would be better spent moving on.

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Pressing on through the route, we find some berry trees holding two oran berries and two pecha berries respectively. This is the source of probably the biggest mechanic I'll be missing out on thanks to the dead battery. The berry mechanic was greatly overhauled in Gen 3. All of the berries from Gen 2 were renamed in Gen 3. Oran Berries are Gen 2's berries. They heal 10 HP. Pecha berries are PSNCureBerries, they heal poison! If it's not clear, these berries are mostly named after real-world fruit with Oran Berries named after Oranges and Pecha berries named after Peaches.

Now, when I said I'm missing out on an interesting new mechanic here, I'm talking about the fact that these berry trees function differently than they did in Gen 2. In Gen 2, there were berry trees scattered across the world which would always drop a predetermined berry or apricorn. In gen 3, however, what's more exciting about finding a berry tree is the soft soil underneath it. Once you pluck the berries from a tree, the tree disappears and you can now plant a new berry in its place. Each tree offers multiple berries and if you take good care of it, you'll earn even more! Unfortunately, since time is frozen, any berries I plant will sadly never grow. So, there's obviously no point in me trying to grow any berries at the moment.This is going to hurt pretty badly when it comes to some aspects of late game. I'll try to work around these limitations to the best of my ability.

One feature I can take advantage of in this case, though, is that the bag now has a separate pocket for berries! No longer do I have to worry about taking stupid berry trees into account when dealing with inventory management! You'll always have room in your bag for new berries leaving you much more room to work with for your standard items!

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Petalburg City

Odale Town is to Cherrygrove City as Petalburg City is to Viridian City. Normally I like to end these sessions off with a gym battle, and when I get to a gym town, I make a beeline for the gym and challenge it ASAP. However, this gym is just like Viridian Gym in that we can't actually access it when we first arrive here. Petalburg gym is home to the Normal type gym leader Norman, the protagonist's father! Norman recommends that we don't challenge his gym just yet and instead go to Rustboro City to earn our first gym badge. We'll need to come back here when we're stronger. 

While talking to Norman, though, a sickly young kid steps into the gym and asks Norman for a pokemon because he wants to become a gym trainer. This is Wally and he's here to serve the role of a second rival-esque character to us! Wally is a pretty interesting concept of a character which we'll explore more thoroughly later. For now, Norman tasks us with overseeing Wally as he goes to catch his first pokemon with a rental Zigzagoon. We go out together with him and this serves as our typical catching tutorial. I appreciate that they approached the catching tutorial in a unique way, but it's strange that this is how they handled it. Keep in mind that in Gens 1 and 2, the catching tutorial was optional so I'm not sure why it's suddenly a requirement here.

Wally encounters a Ralts, weakens it a bit with Zigzagoon's Tackle, throws a pokeball and successfully captures it! It's gonna be a pain raising that thing up on its own, but I've seen enough mono runs to understand not to underestimate the power of Struggle. Once Wally successfully captures his first pokemon, he grows adorably excited and we return to the Petalburg gym before being sent off toward Rustboro.

There's a few sights to see before we leave this area. For one, this is the first big example of the devs just flexing their new hardware capabilities. Not only are there now animated flowers dancing with the wind, but the crystal-clear pond here actually reflects the image of any NPCs standing over it and even has a little ripple texture. This one has been relevant from the beginning, but unlike in previous games, you can actually go behind the rooftops of buildings which will be layered over the player character. It's little touches like these that really help a video game feel more alive!

Aside from admiring the little details, here in Petalburg you can also find Wally's home where his father explains that he's been frail and sickly for as long as they can remember and that they've sent him to Verdanturf town for a while because of the cleaner air in the area. Wally's condition certainly sounds worrying to say the least...

There's not much in terms of practicality here, unless you feel the need to stock up on items, so without further ado, we can leave by the west exit!

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Route 104

West of Petalburg City is Route 104. There are a few new wild pokemon we can find here, but none that are too terribly important to seek out at the moment. There's a ledge that we can't quite reach the top of from here and the grass is totally avoidable. This is the typical early game area that asks you to choose between tall grass or potential trainer battles. The beach has a single trainer on it. It's not a required battle and is easily avoidable, but he's there so we'll battle him. There's a mysterious boat house here that seems completely vacant. There is another Oran and Pecha tree here near a Rich Boy just outside the entrance to our first mini-dungeon.

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Petalburg Woods

This is Ruby and Sapphire's answer to Viridian Forest, though it's a lot easier without the constant threat of Weedle. You do have to watch out for the pokemon Shroomish and its Effect Spore ability which has a chance of paralyzing, poisoning, or putting your pokemon to sleep when you make physical contact with it, and that's another mechanic that's new, or at least much more relevant in Gen 3 thanks to abilities. Every single move either makes contact or not. This is separate from whether a move is physical or special. For example, Ghost is a physical type that uses physical attack and defense, but Lick makes contact while Shadow Ball does not. For the most part, whether or not a move makes contact is pretty self explanatory but if you're ever questioning about it, you always have the option to look the move up.

As for wild pokemon, there a handful of pokemon available here including some more pokemon we'll need to evolve!

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Solitude (Slakoth M); Lv. 5

 

Ability: Truant

Moves: Scratch, Yawn

Slakoth is only available here in Petalburg Woods at a 5% rarity. He comes with the ability Truant which is another creative application of abilities in this game. This time, it's an ability no pokemon would ever want. Truant causes the pokemon to loaf around every other turn, preventing it from attacking at all. Why would you ever want a pokemon with an ability like this? Because the Slakoth line has some absurdly powerful stats, of course! It's got a slow start but once this thing fully evolves, it'll start destroying its opponents like it's nothing!

For now, I replaced Seedling with Solitude, but it shouldn't be long before Silica and Rump evolve freeing up two more slots on the inventory.

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While looking for the remaining pokemon, Rump evolved into Beautifly! 

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Shurm (Shroomish F); Lv. 6

 

Ability: Effect Spore

Moves: Absorb, Tackle

The other pokemon I'd been tracking down was Shroomish. This is a pretty solid option for a Grass-type pokemon. Effect Spore is a very useful move and it's a pokemon I'll be using temporarily since he has an uncatchable level evolution. I let Shurm take the place of Rump.

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Shortly after catching these two target pokemon, I started to march on ahead. If immediately turn right from the entrance to the woods, you'll find an exit that leads to the top of that ledge outside the woods. There's not much here other than a pokeball, but there's no better price than free! There's also a few decent hidden items scattered around the woods in pretty obvious spots. Basically, just check any bald spots surrounded by tall grass and you're pretty likely to find a hidden item.

 

Silica evolved after battling one of the trainers in Petalburg Woods, so I went back to the PC to bring back Seedling. I haven't really mentioned it until now, but the PC was greatly overhauled in Gen 3 to a system pretty much identical to the one we all know and love today. Instead of just being a boring old list, you actually get a full-color graphical interface that shows an icon for every pokemon stored in each of the boxes! 

You can rename each box just like before and there is now a "Move Pokemon" option that makes withdrawals and deposits much easier to manage. It's also much easier to organize pokemon and you can even easily switch pokemon between boxes. You no longer have to save when switching boxes and if the current box is filled, pokemon caught will simply be stored in the first available space in the next box! The game will only stop you from throwing a pokeball if every single space in the PC is filled! These are all extremely welcome quality of life changes that make collecting large amounts of pokemon far more painless than ever before. PC Management was the biggest chore about completing the pokedex in Gens 1 and 2 but here, it's actually really satisfying seeing the boxes fill up over time!

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This section is actually being added retroactively, but I wanted to take special note of the wallpapers available for the PC! That's right, wallpapers! Just like in Gold and Silver, you can customize the name of each box, but here, you can also customize the wallpaper! These wallpapers are split into four groups: "Scenery 1-3" and "Etcetera." I'll list the wallpapers here!

Scenery 1

   

Forest, City, Desert, Savanna

Scenery 2

   

Crag, Volcano, Snow, Cave

Scenery 3

   

Beach, Seafloor, River, Sky

Etcetera

   

Polka-dot, PokeCenter, Machine, Plain

This is actually one of my favorite additions to the PC storage that really turns PC management from a chore to something I genuinely look forward to during each playthrough! It's a lot of fun playing around with the wallpapers and seeing what looks best or just sticking to your favorite ones!

When collecting pokemon for the pokedex, I like to label the boxes "001-030" and so on so that I can fill up the boxes in pokedex order. Other ideas are organizing them by type, habitat, or you can group together your favorite pokemon with your favorite wallpaper! I love playing around with different ways to organize my pokemon! In hindsight, I'm genuinely amazed by how fun they were able to make a feature that really just needed to be a simple menu and nobody would have complained. I really have to applaud the dev team for this as so much more work was put into this idea than was ever necessary! And as we go forward in the series, I'm going to take special note of the wallpapers because there are some beautiful works of art that you can use in some of these games! ...unfortunately, for some more recent games, it seems this feature isn't really given its due respect, but we'll cross that bridge when we get there. For now, let's enjoy what we have while it's here and still growing!

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Deeper into the woods, we're met by a stranger who asks if we've seen a Shroomish. We certainly have! In fact, I have one right here! But...

 

Before our conversation could continue, a man in mysterious clothes approaches from the North and announces that he was waiting to ambush this "Devon researcher" in attempts to steal documents from him! When we step in to stop the attack, he announces that he's a part of "Team Magma." Sounds awfully similar to Team Rocket, doesn't it? Well, we don't let him get away with this!

His team consists of only a Poochyena so he was easily defeated and forced into retreat. The Devon researcher rewards us with a Great Ball for helping him before returning to his workplace to make sure everything is okay. Something tells me this won't be the last we'll see of Team Magma...

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Once we get through Petalburg Woods, we emerge on the northern end of Route 104. There's a few points of interest here. Immediately to our left is an Oran Berry tree and a Cheri Berry tree. Cheri Berries are obviously designed after Cherries and serve the same role as PRZCureBerries. There's an NPC here who will give you a TM for Bullet Seed. This isn't a terribly useful move, so you may as well get use out of it while you still can. I taught it to Seedling since he's not going to learn any grass type moves naturally and it'll also give him a standard offensive option which he currently lacks. There's a small area of tall grass just north behind this building here with a few hidden items to be found. This building is the "Pretty Petal Flower Shop". This is a building dedicated to tutorials surrounding the Berry mechanic. This is where you get the Wailmer Pail which I believe either increases the growth rate of the berry tree or increases the yield. I'm not too familiar with the berry mechanics and I'm not going to be looking into it much since it isn't going to be affecting this playthrough at all. There's also a girl in this store that will give you a Persim Berry which functions like a Bitter Berry, it cures Confusion. 

Along the other side of the path are a couple of standard trainers and on the far right is an item blocked off by a thick bush which we'll need Cut to get past. Along the bridge, though, we're met with one of the biggest new mechanics introduced in this gen. There's a pair of twins standing on the bridge. They won't stop you like normal trainers because, for the most part, these types of battles are entirely optional. But that's not true in this case. Here, we have a double battle on our hands! In a double battle, two pokemon will be sent out at the same time and fight side by side. There's a whole world of new strategies and plans to go into these games. Typically, when choosing an attack, you'll also have to choose a target. However, some attacks will attack both of the opponents, or all other pokemon on the field, so try to factor in what moves target what opponents and choose partners that compliment each other's strengths and weaknesses. You can also target your own partner which is a niche strategy but it can be taken advantage of with certain words. This isn't the last of these battles we're going to see, but they are admittedly few and far between, so it's not really worth building a team around them even though there are lots of strategies designed specifically around double battles.

This particular double battle isn't anything special. It's just a Seedot and a Lotad they don't do anything too terribly dangerous and they can go down pretty easily. A double battle even makes Seedot a bit easier to deal with since you can just focus on the other pokemon while it's using Bide, or gang up on it to take it out before it can counterattack with Bide. Double battles add a whole several layers of strategy to the standard single battles we've grown used to up to this point. It makes certain moves more dangerous to use and other moves much more useful. It's certainly a very welcome addition! I just wish there was more of it.

On the other side of the bridge is another patch of soil with another Cheri Berry tree and a Leppa Berry Tree, Leppa Berries working like MysteryBerries from Gen 2 and restoring the PP of a move by 10. 

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Rustboro City

We've finally arrived at Rustboro, home to the first gym! Before we actually enter the city, though, we can sneak around the fence at the far east and get ourselves an X Defend. Not terribly useful but, again, there's no better price than free.

Within the actual city, we're not going to spend much time exploring today and instead we'll be heading straight for that gym!

Rustboro City Gym

The Rustboro Gym is a gym built around the Rock type. The gym has two Youngsters that just use Geodude, there's nothing dangerous to worrya bout here. That's not stopping us from approaching our main threat, though.

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My team:

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Marco (Mudkip M); Lv. 12

 

Ability: Torrent

Moves: Tackle, Growl, Mud-Slap, Water Gun

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Parker (Poochyena M); Lv. 10

 

Ability: Run Away

Moves: Tackle, Howl, Sand Attack

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Seedling (Seedot M); Lv. 11

 

Ability: Chlorophyll

Moves: Bide, Harden, Growth, Bullet Seed

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Rarity (Ralts M); Lv. 10

 

Ability: Trace

Moves: Growl, Confusion

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Solitude (Slakoth M); Lv. 10

 

Ability: Truant

Moves: Scratch, Yawn, Encore

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Shurm (Shroomish F); Lv. 10

 

Ability: Effect Spore

Moves: Absorb, Tackle, Stun Spore, Leech Seed

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Vs. Rustboro Gym Leader Roxanne

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Geodude Lv. 14

Roxanne's first pokemon was a Geodude. Her pokemon are much higher level than my own, but I've got quite a significant type advantage!

 

I led off with Seedling assuming he wouldn't be super useful having only Bullet Seed. His main purpose here was to knock out Geodude and get some chip damage on her next pokemon. I was actually able to make quick work of Geodude. She led with Defense Curl which naturally doesn't affect Grass-type moves like Bullet Seed. I was able to take out Geodude in a single turn with four hits from Bullet Seed!

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Nosepass Lv. 15

Up next was her ace pokemon: A Nosepass. This one's a bit more of a hassle than Brock's Onix mainly due to the fact that we're dealing with a pure Rock-type here rather than a Rock/Ground so it only has a 2x weakness to water and grass, you'll pretty quickly notice your super effective attacks aren't doing nearly as much as you'd expect. This is an interesting play on your expectations from Gen 1.

 

My intention here was to leave Seedling in to go down guns blazing. With a solid 5 hits from Bullet Seed, I was able to tear down most of her HP, forcing her to use a Potion. Another Bullet Seed brought her down to near death once again, forcing her to heal again. The next time, I only got a couple of hits but by this point the damage had already been done. She went for a Rock Throw to try and stunt my attacks with a flinch, but the flinch didn't work and I was able to overpower her Nosepass with just Seedling. I actually had a much more elaborate plan involving setting up Leech Seed with Shurm and reducing her accuracy with Poochyena's Sand-Attack, but I'm perfectly okayw ith things being easier than I expected!

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I don't think there's any doubt who the MVP for this battle was. Perhaps it was the only pokemon that even had the spotlight during the battle?

MVP: Seedling

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After clearing the battle, I earned the Rustboro Gym's Stone Badge! Now it's time to press onward and see where my adventure takes me next!

[Aura]

Now that we've cleared the Rustboro Gym, it's time to do a quick cleanup of Rustboro before moving on.

As we leave the gym, we're met by a familiar man in strange clothes fleeing from Devon Corp with a man chasing after demanding his "Goods." We'll definitely have to intervene, but it's a good idea to stock up on some items before we go. In the building in the southwest, we can find a kid who'll give us a free Premier Ball. The the house just west of the Pokemon Center, we can get HM01 Cut which is obviously going to be important, and in the trainer's school we can get a Quick Claw!

 

In the house east of the gym, there's a kid who will offer you an in-game trade: Makuhita for a Slakoth. This is a pretty terrible deal. I suppose the idea is that if you started with Torchic this is supposed to help you gain an advantage in the gym, but there's an abundance of Grass-type pokemon that will help you much more than a Fighting-type and you even get the TM for Bullet Seed, so there's really no need for such a trade. I really wouldn't recommend it.

If we check in at Devon Corp, we can't get very far but all the employees are complaining about how an important parcel was stolen. Some quite rudely commenting that the person who got robbed was stupid for allowing this to happen. Whatever the case, it's clear we need to get that parcel back, so let's waste no further time and head on forward!

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Route 116

This is the direction the grunt fled. For story purposes, we're not going to be spending any time hunting wild pokemon for now, we can come back for that.

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Along the way, though, we did find a Taillow! I do really like this pokemon, but since my team is full at the moment, I have no reason to put it in my party.

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Ryu (Nincada M); Lv. 7

 

Ability: Compoundeyes

Moves: Scratch, Harden, Leech Life

I also caught a Nincada which is only available here the only reason we'd stop to hunt for any wild pokemon anway, so it looks like we weren't going to have to wait after all! I will say, though, that you'll want to be careful about evolving Nincada. This pokemon is a very special case that we'll have to cover in more detail later on. Before evolving one at level 20, you're going to want to make sure you have an open slot in your party. Since Nincada's evolution isn't available in the wild, I'm temporarily replacing Seedling with Ryu.

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On a side note, I've been returning to Route 102 to train up every new party member so that they're up to par with the rest of my team. Why have I been doing this in such a low-leveled area?

Skillet (Surskit M); Lv. 3

 

Ability: Swift Swim

Moves: Bubble

Say hello to one of the most absurdly rare pokemon in the entire game: Surskit. This thing is available in several areas throughout the game but at this point in the game, this is the only place I can find it. In spite of that, Surskit never appears any more frequently than 1% so he's probably one of the most obnoxious pokemon to track down. The reason he's so rare is similarly rare pokemon in Gold and Silver. Surskit is supposed to be a swarmable pokemon. However, due to my dead internal battery, pokemon swarms are not going to work period as they require a day to pass after completing the pokemon league. Thankfully, pokemon swarms are downgraded significantly from what they were in Gen 2 and there are only two pokemon that are affected by then in Ruby and Sapphire and among them, only one actually has to be caught in the wild. Since I have 6 pokemon on my team waiting for evolution, I don't have room to put this guy on here at the moment, but he is a level evolution we're going to have to deal with soon.

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As we reach the end of the road back on route 116, we find a man standing outside of his house complaining that he was kicked out of the tunnel he was digging. He explains that they stopped using heavy equipment because the pokemon that live in the tunnel were sensitive to noise and expressed concern that the person who went in there would cause an uproar. Outside the cave is an old man mourning that his darling Peeko was stolen from him.

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Rustruf Tunnel

Rusturf Tunnel is a very visually interesting cave. It looks very green in this map, but in-game there's a thick fog over it giving the cave a much whiter appearance.

 

Whismur is the only wild pokemon to be encountered here so we went ahead and caught one! Technically, this pokemon's final form isn't available in the wild, but its evolution is catchable in the wild later on. I might raise this one up if I have more space on my team but for now, I'll leave her be.

 

As we walk through the tunnel, we can find that thief from Team Magma with a Wingull. He reveals he stole this Wingull to hold hostage over the Devon Researcher since he'd made his getaway toward a dead end. This is our opportunity to stop him! After defeating him, we get the Devon Goods and the old man outside the caves approaches and reveals that this Wingull is indeed his darling Peeko.

If we continue deeper into the tunnel, we can't get very far before we're walled off by Rock Smash boulders. We have no choice but to go back, but now that the story pressure is over, we can take our time and explore these areas more thoroughly. On our way back, though, we'll of course return the goods to the devon researcher and he'll reward us with another Great Ball. He'll also bring us to the top floor of Devon Corp to speak with the president of the company. The researcher also asks you to deliver the parcel to the shipyard in Slateport which is sounding like our next destination. 

The president of Devon Corp asks you to stop by Dewford Town on the way to Slateport and deliver a letter to a man named Steven. He also gives us a Pokenav! This is Hoenn's answer to the PokeGear from Johto! Just like the PokeGear, it lets you check the town map from anywhere in the world, it lets you check the "condition" of your pokemon, more on this later on, and the "Trainer's Eyes" which is a comprehensive list of every trainer you've ever battled. Much of the functionality of the PokeGear is unfortunately gutted, though the features that were cut didn't really have much of a use. There's no more phone calls and there's no radio in Hoenn. I'd say the Trainer's Eyes is a much more convenient function than phone calls though. They don't interrupt gameplay but you can still check this list if you ever want to rematch a trainer and there will be a pokeball by their name if they want to rematch you!

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First and foremost, I had to return to the PC to withdraw Zip. This little guy was going to be our HM-user for a little while.

I'm not going to post an image of Route 115 to the north of Rustboro because we can't actually explore much of it, but we can access a small beach area where we can find a Super Potion here.

As for Route 116, we've caught all the important wild pokemon here but there's a few trainers to battle and a whole area hidden behind a cut tree with a few more trainers as well as two Chesto Berry trees and two Pinap Berry trees. Pinap Berries, based on Pineapples, are our first berry intended exclusively for Pokeblocks. We'll go into more detail about what exactly that means later on, but certain kinds of these berries are going to be especially important for a specific pokemon down the line. Chesto berries are similar to Mint Berries from Gen 2. They awaken a pokemon from sleep.

If we make our way back down Rusturf Tunnel, the man who was digging the tunnel says he's hit bedrock and can't progress anymore and laments the fact that he won't be able to see his girlfriend, who lives in Verdanturf, every day like he'd hoped. A really sad moment, for sure. It's touching that he works so hard to stay mindful of the pokemon in the cave while still trying to make his way through. Hopefully we'll be able to help him out soon.

At the south end of Rustboro, we have a familiar face waiting for us.

However, much to my surprise, May doesn't actually battle you here! She's just here to ask you about your progress on your pokedex and tells you she saw Mr. Briney, the old man whose Wingull we rescued, passing by. We have nowhere else to go from here, so we may as well start heading back!

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Back on Route 104, now that we have Cut, we can see what's behind that bush we saw earlier. All we get for it is an X Accuracy.

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Back in Petalburg woods, we can now explore the eastern side of the woods with Cut, as well! There's a girl here who will give you a Miracle Seed which we'll give to Shrump for now to power up her Absorb. There's a Great Ball on top of the northernmost ledge as well. There's also a couple of Tinymushrooms hidden around, but these aren't super note-worthy. They're only use is to be sold and it's really not worth much.

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Back on the other end of Petalburg Woods, we can now speak with Mr. Briney in his boathouse and he'll offer us a ride to Dewford Town to help us with our errands as a reward for helping him get Peeko back. With him, we'll set sail across Route 105 and Route 106 offering a small preview of routes we'll later need Surf to explore on our own and we soon arrive at our first stop!

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Dewford Town

Our main purpose for being here is to deliver a letter to Steven, but I spy a Gym and we know what that means!

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

Dewford Gym

This is where we start to get into one of the more prominent things that sets Gen 3 apart from its predecessors. The gyms in Hoenn all have their own separate gimmicks. While Roxanne's was very straight-forward like pokemon gyms have traditionally been, from here on out they'll all have a unique puzzle or gimmick to them that you'll have to figure out if you want to make your way through to the end and face off against the gym leader waiting for you. In this case, the Dewford Gym is pitch dark and you'll need to carefully navigate a maze.

  

Each time you defeat a gym trainer, two Battle Girls and a Blackbelt, your field of view will grow larger. Battle Girls are a new trainer class introduced here, they basically jsut serve as a female counterpart to the Blackbelt class.

The Battle Girls mostly use Meditite. These meditite don't seem to actually know any offensive Fighting-type moves. Instead, the focus on Confusion and Bide. For this reason, Poochyena actually proves to be surprisingly useful for this gym! Just make sure to set up some Howls so you can take it out easily if it catches you off guard with Bide, and you should be able to take them out with just a little bit of patience.

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My Team:

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Marco (Mudkip M); Lv. 12

 

Ability: Torrent

Moves: Tackle, Growl, Mud-Slap, Water Gun

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Parker (Poochyena M); Lv. 12

 

Ability: Run Away

Moves: Tackle, Howl, Sand-Attack

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Rarity (Ralts F); Lv. 12

 

Ability: Trace

Moves: Growl, Confusion, Double-Team

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Solitude (Slakoth M); Lv. 11

 

Ability: Truant

Item: Quick Claw

Moves: Scratch, Yawn, Encore

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Shurm (Shroomish F); Lv. 12

 

Ability: Effect Spore

Item: Miracle Seed

Moves: Absorb, Tackle, Stun Spore, Leech Seed

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Ryu (Nincada M); Lv. 12

 

Ability: Compoundeyes

Moves: Scratch, Harden, Leech Life, Sand-Attack

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

Vs. Dewford Gym Leader Brawly

This battle is actually pretty tough and I lost it a couple of times trying out various strategies that I thought would make for a surefire victory.

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Machop Lv. 17

Right off the bat, it's pretty clear that I'm severely outmatched when it comes to level. This Machop is 5 levels stronger than my strongest pokemon and he's not even Brawly's strongest. I'd say we're still roughly on par though, because he does have only two pokemon while I have my levels spread across six.

 

I thought Rarity would be capable of making quick work of Machop without an issue. Instead, Confusion only did roughly a third of his HP! What's more, Machop's Karate Chop proved to be much more powerful than I expected and could deal a little less than half of my HP in a single hit, even without a crit, which it has an increased chance of. The rest of my team isn't well equipped to deal with physical tanks, so I knew if I wanted any hope of winning this battle, I'd need to rely on my setup strats for his next pokemon. Because of this, on my winning run, I decided, perhaps against my better judgment, to set up a few Double Teams. I don't like relying on moves like this because they're a bit cheesy, unreliable, and it really just never feels good to win just because your opponent missed all their attacks. But this really seemed to be the best way I'd be able to work around Machop. I actually got pretty lucky and managed to set up four Double Teams without getting hit by a single attack. From there, I was able to use a few Confusions to finish Machop without a scratch on Rarity.

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Makuhita Lv. 18

Makuhita is the big baddie of Brawly's gym and it deserves that role. This thing is a huge wall of bulk and it can dish out the physical damage to boot. Its Arm Thrust is incredibly powerful and is capable of just tearing through your HP.

 

Thankfully, his AI seems fixated on its super-effective Knock Off which probably doesn't actually do nearly as much damage against Rarity thanks to Makuhita's lack of special attack. The move also has a mere 20 power in gen 3. Its main purpose is to prevent the opponent from using their Held Item. Makuhita actually didn't miss a single hit, but due to the weakness of its Dark Attacks, it was unable to actually deal enough damage to Rarity. Even after using a Super Potion to heal off all the damage I'd built up after a few turns, he still wasn't able to pile up enough damage on me. Perhaps the biggest factor that sealed his fate was, on the same turn he healed, I got a lucky confusion on him which did stop him from attacking for a turn. In addition to that, I got a blind crit to boot. I... wasn't expecting this strategy to be nearly that effective and I thought at the very least I'd have to send out Marco to finish Makuhita off, but it seems that just won't be necessary. 

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For defeating Brawly, we gain the Knuckle Badge and TM 08: Bulk Up!

Once again, I really only have one choice for MVP here so the decision couldn't be more clear!

MVP: Rarity