Pokemon TPP Red: The Cutesy Girl Part I

Time for new variants in a new series. The Pokemon series is full of variant potential, and I’m not just talking about those horribly retarded Nuzlocke challenges. With the ability to use any of the countless Pokemon and a few romhacks, the possibilities are many.

I’ll be doing something of the latter today: actually, the same romhack used by TwitchPlaysPokemon for their Red anniversary run. It in itself is actually a hack of a hack, specifically of something called Red 151. In addition to that, it’s also a HardType hack. However, TPP edition it brings several new features to the table, including a reward beyond the Diploma for catching all the Pokemon. This is a useful resource for it, by the way. A locations guide.

To add to the fun, let’s use a theme: we’ll be using obviously CUTE Pokemon! Why? Because a good friend of mine was playing through too, using the theme of obviously strong Pokemon (based on a tabletop character of his, with this being a hypothetical parallel).


An interesting feature about this hack, not seen in the TPP version due to the streamer vetoing the idea, is the ability to choose your gender. I therefore went with the girl for variety, naming her Mandel. Why? Because this almond is running parallel to the French Cerise. Call her Mandy for short.

The starter is obvious. Bulbasaur is the only starter that remains at least somewhat cute in its final evolutionary form, so we’re going with that. You immediately go to the nickname screen in this hack. You can avoid nicknames by pressing end, but I figure cute nicknames for cute Pokemon, so Saury it is.


I didn’t take a lot of pictures in the very early going. But Mandel spent all of her money on Poke Balls, and made a bunch of catches, managing to get everything on Route 1 except for the rare Exeggcute. Her second official team member was on Route 2: Polly, a Poliwag! It only sported Bubble as a move for a while (up to Level 16, in fact), but it’s no big deal when that’s about all it’ll be using.


I trained until Saura learned Vine Whip as shown above, then went off to Route 22. The rival is a bit different in this. He instead uses Pokemon that saw a buff in this hack, as well as Eevee (evolving it into whatever is advantageous against your starter). Here, he has a Spearow and an Eevee. Polly was able to whittle down Spearow before getting KO’d, after which Saura easily finished the job.


Viridian Forest’s Bug Catchers did not use bugs at all! In fact, many of their Pokemon were grass, making my plan to train up Polly here a bit of a bust. Saura had to handle these with Tackle. It did manage to fight a Venonat at the end, however. Similarly, the forest itself had a bigger selection of wilds, but it wasn’t worth it. The key to not needing to grind in Pokemon is keeping your team small, at least early on. Two was good enough for now.


Getting Polly some experience in Pewter Gym was also a bit of a problem. The first trainer uses a Kabuto and an Omanyte. It fought valiantly against the first, but just lost out. Saura could easily pick the slack up, however.


Brock wasn’t too bad, despite his changed team of Onix and Aerodactyl. Beating the fossil Pokemon from light years guy had gotten Saura to Level 16, enough to evolve to Ivysaur. Polly’s Bubble was enough for Onix, and it chipped in a bit before being brutally murdered by Aerodactyl’s Rock Slide. Wait, what?! It can’t learn that in Gen 1!

The good news is hack does seem to change the enemy AI a bit, so it high-level AI doesn’t exclusively use super-effective moves if it can. The good news is, it meant Aerodactyl did not use Wing Attack all the time on Saura, so after a bunch of useless Agilities and a Rock Slide, I won out. The bad news is, this behavior doesn’t take whether the move does into consideration. So against Lance’s Dragonite, for example, it would repeatedly use the Psychic-type Barrier and Agility against a Poison-type, despite the fact that neither does damage.


Route 3 had some nasty fights, including this guy who had a Butterfree and Beedrill. Had to get Polly up to Level 16 to deal with the first one, which wasn’t too tough after a Metapod/Kakuna gave some free experience, and a few other fights. It learned Hypnosis at this level, and with its good speed, could often go first and use it. The only problem was its low accuracy. The Beedrill I dealt with by using Leech Seed, then using Growl to send its attack to the toilet. It couldn’t outdamage Saura’s regeneration, so it could never win!

By the way, another thing about Gen 1 (and 2) mechanics: stat-lowering moves, when used from the AI’s side, have a chance to fail for no good reason. When you use them though, they have the full advertised accuracy.


After reaching Mt. Moon, a new offensive option became available. The Water Gun TM is...actually, not too helpful in vanilla, at least as far as Squirtle is concerned. And not too helpful for Polly, either, who would learn it at level 19 (being at level 17)


Hey, look at that. A cute, round (?), and fluffy Pokemon, just for me! Clefable is a very nice Pokemon, able to learn just about any TM you could ask for. A short while into the cave, I found a Moon Stone, but chose to hold off on evolution (after which it would learn no more moves) for a while. With the leveling curve in this game, it’d be a short while, anyway.


More money meant more opportunities to catch Pokemon and fill out that Pokedex. Abra was in Viridian Forest, but instantly teleports away. Polly’s new Hypnosis prevented that. After catching on Route 3, I proceeded. The cave offered up several other options, all close in-level to my own in the high 10s/early 20s. Again, for not expanding my team too much for reducing the grind’s sake, I only caught them most of them for the sake of the Pokedex.

A lot of them could inflict status on me, such as sleep (Jigglypuff/Clefairy), paralyze (Pikachu/Oddish/Bellsprout/Paras), and poison (Oddish/Bellsprout/Ekans). The last group could at least be stopped by switching in Saura. Zubat were also something to be aware of, not just for their confusion, but for how Grass and Poison are both weak to Bug in the original games and here. I generally stayed away from the status-inflicting Pokemon, while fighting the Ground and Rock types. Cleff’s Water Gun came in handy, naturally.


The HP Up is a Vitamin item which increases Stat EXP, but more often than not at this point in the game is better off being sold for a bunch of money. I went ahead and did that, buying even more balls, and returned. Besides the aforementioned status-inflicters who made me fall back, most of the fights here were easy. Polly hit level 25 here, evolving into Poliwhirl in the process.


Yeah, this speaks for itself. I did catch it on the next ball before Leech Seed finished it, though. Catching’em all can be a pain, at times.


The Super Nerd at the end had an interesting party: Magmar, Electabuzz, and...Exeggcute? The first two were obviously the trickiest. Polly Water Gunned down the first, and the second got Leech Seeded and Growled down. Exeggcute was more obnoxious than it had any right to be though. Cleff Minimized, and Doubleslapped away on it to take it out.


Misty was a joke. The only conceivable way she could’ve damaged Saura was through Lapras’ Body Slam - it didn’t have an Ice move besides Mist. The battle flew by so fast that it wasn’t an issue the one time she used it, especially since Sing missed, and Starmie (Tackle, Water Gun, Harden, Bubblebeam) was helpless against Saura.


To the west were more Pokemon to be caught. My own were actually so strong, weakening them for the catch was a bit problematic. They for whatever reason are way lower level than in Mt. Moon. Only one that needed help from outside my group of three was a Ditto. I sent in a Weedle for it to transform into and got the job done.


And then Saura hit level 30 and learned Razor Leaf. This move is fantastic in the first generation games. Namely, because it almost always criticals! The only thing reigning back Saura from total dominance is the Grass type itself being ineffective on many types. Still, this would seriously dent anything that didn’t resist it, and outright slaughter anything weak to it.


The rival this time started with a Pidgeotto. Urgh. Polly put it to sleep and slapped it silly, same for the Fearow that followed. Then out came Parasect. Now, for whatever reason, its base stats in this hack are absurd. 100/115/115/100/100. This was a bit of a problem. It resisted Razor Leaf. The solution?


Minimize with Cleff a lot in the early goings until it can’t be hit, then have it deal with the fight by itself! It worked perfectly, putting Pidgeotto to sleep, Minimizing the maximum of six times, then Doubleslapping/Water Gunning my way to victory.


I continued to use Cleff through most of Nugget Bridge. Pretty much everyone here but the fourth one (who had a Clefable and Wigglytuff) used evolved versions of their original teams. The worst was a third guy’s Raticate. Hyper Fang is simply disgustingly good early on, and it’s learned at Level 14! They may be a meme, but they’re fairly tough. The easiest was oddly the Rocket at the end, who also didn’t use his originals. Aside from a Shellder that Clamped for a bit, he was nonthreatening.


Ponyta was a useable Pokemon, it and Rapidash I’d say are cute enough. But that’s one of the problems with the wide variety of Pokemon early on in this hack. Since you can’t get many of these Pokemon at this low a level so early, the programmers didn’t allocate moves to them at a level so early. There’s a few exceptions, but the short of it is, this can be a bit problematic. In other words, until the 30s or so, it would literally be a one-trick pony short of TMs. I did consider Vulpix, but it was too low level to help.

Anyway, as you may have guessed from the level, the Pokemon up north are stronger, but still way behind the curve. I used none of them.


After Cleff hit level 31 for Metronome, I evolved it. A short time after, Saura hit Level 32 to evolve into Venusaur. Metronome uses a random move aside from itself and Struggle, which can lead to fun results. The first use was a smashing success, using Guillotine to OHKO a Hypno. The second...not so much. Cleff rolled Hyper Beam against a Fearow, missed, then it used Mirror Move for the KO.

I used some of the TMs I had picked up along the way on my trio at this point. Polly got Bubblebeam, Cleff got Mega Punch, and Saura got Take Down. Instead of Bide, Brock gives that up. Some heavy hitting moves should be just what I need to keep up!

There was a Beedrill that gave me a bit of grief on the way to Vermillion, ugh. Need to start expanding soon. But that aside, we were able to move on.


The S.S. Anne had some tricky fights, including this jerk. Thankfully, Polly outsped it - OHKO moves working or not based on Speed in the original games. The Rival was more of the same as before: Minimize up with Cleff, and wail away.


Saura dominated for the third gym in a row. After it got taken out by a rogue Electrode Explosion when facing the underlings, I swapped in Polly against Surge’s. Sure enough, it blew up on the less-valuable Pokemon, and didn’t even have the gall to defeat the Poliwhirl.


There was a real ugly fight on Route 9. Mandel had to use the Weepinbell she was using for Cut, what with HM moves sucking and all, to take down this Vileplume.

This feels a good place to break up the report, as the next section of the game awaits beyond Rock Tunnel, and it’s a bit faster than getting started.

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Pokemon TPP Red: The Cutesy Girl Part II

So meet our newest cute party member, the spiky Jolteon, Spike! It got the Thunderbolt TM, and immediately turned into a powerhouse as a result. Still not good at taking down Grass, at least not yet. Anyway, with Spike in-hand, Rock Tunnel was a great place for my team, which could easily handle the wild Pokemon (which were again of comparable level). The only threat was a trainer with an Alakazam, which got lucky on some critical hits.


Similarly, the Rival in Pokemon Tower was flattened. Spike zapped down the two birds, and I sent in Clefable to combat Parasect for lack of anything else. It did the job, and humorously rolled Metronome Explosion against his new Kingler (another Pokemon that saw a huge buff). With Polly to take down Flareon (with Hydro Pump, even!), I now had these fights well in-hand. A few more Pokemon couldn’t hurt, of course!


One of the big changes this hack makes: every TM in the game is purchasable in Celadon City’s mall! I was able to snap up a lot of new tools for my team: Polly, in addition to evolving to Poliwrath via Water Stone, got a Submission TM. Saura got Double-Edge and Toxic over Growl and Take Down, the latter new move enabling the devastating Toxic+Leech Seed combo. And Cleff picked up Blizzard and Psychic, the latter for lack of anything else.

Anyway, we needed a fifth party member. Mandel experimented with Rapidash and Dragonair as two candidates, though the former got up there, it suffers from a narrow movepool that doesn’t give much of what this team desires. The latter had problems actually gaining levels. In the end, I decided that everything I could get now sucked, so moved on.


Celadon Gym was easy. Cleff rolled everything in here with Blizzard and Psychic, getting a bit of help from Spike’s new Pin Missile once - with it doing 4x damage to every Grass type in this game except for Tangela (Poison is weak to it for some reason). Unfortunately, not everything in here was grass - including one girl who had a Venomoth (despite saying not to bring bugs in). This highlighted some funny results of the text being virtually unchanged, including that, a girl saying to look at her Grass Pokemon (a Porygon, which is not), and of course, acting as though you’re male.

Spike and Saura split the duties in the Game Corner basement, which I took no pictures of. Ran into no issues. Giovanni was similarly easy. He had his original team - Onix, Rhyhorn, Kangaskhan - at higher levels, which Saura tore apart.


Polly learned Earthquake over Body Slam before heading into Pokemon Tower, and it took care of business easily enough - with just about all the wilds being weak to it. Took a bit to find a Gengar, but gained a few more levels in the process thanks to the white magic healing zone. Also, man, is this a creepy dungeon for even most standards, with possessed spirit channelers spouting freaky dialogue.

There was also a funny glitch here: there are wild Marowak on the same floor as the fixed one, and they went through the same revealing cutscene, except they’re already revealed! The Rockets at the end were easy.


A quick trip into Fighting Dojo later, picking up Hitmonchan, then getting a Hitmonlee (a rare Pokemon), then it was Cycling Road time. I would’ve liked to train Saura here, but most of the opposition was Poison, so it was cumbersome. After this, Mandel went into the Safari Zone. There, in addition to a few catches (namely, Charmeleon and Wartortle) she found the Surf HM for Polly to learn; a more reliable option over its Hydro Pump. Speaking of which, this hack gives you 3000 steps in it. There’s no real way for an ordinary person to run out, but it was useful for the stream.

Using this few Pokemon kept me ahead of the leveling curve, without needing to rely on stat EXP as much (which is how it wouldn’t be that big a deal anyway). Still, there were a few annoyances/flaws in my Pokemon layout: namely, not resisting Psychic moves as well as I could. This was highlighted in Fuschia Gym. Polly was the general Pokemon of choice against Koga`s Poison Pokemon, thanks to Earthquake, but there were several Jugglers with Hypnos and the such here.


So before proceeding, I took a small detour to Cinnabar Island’s mansion catch the cutest Psychic Pokemon available to me at the time: umm, Mr. Mime. A bit of a stretch in the cute department, but hey! The original games didn’t have a wide array of options available, and this is the best we got (Starmie is another option). Otherwise, she’d be all over Renuclius.

Of course, there is one especially cute Gen 1 Psychic, but that will have to wait a while. Well, I could get it right now with glitches, but let’s not. Speaking of glitches, this game does fix the MISSINGNO. bug by removing the encounters on the coastlines, but Trainer-Fly still works. Although, MISSINGNO. now freezes the game, unless it’s a Kabutops/Aerodactyl/Ghost one.


Silph Co. sucked. To the exploding Electrodes and Weezing were annoying. All of Mandel’s Pokemon got some time. But the Lapras gift is still only Level 15, and it’s for some reason not catchable in the wild. Otherwise, I’d use it in place of Polly...aside from the fact that Polly is one of the few dedicated physical attackers.

Saffron Gym was notable for being the first gym that I didn’t roll with just one Pokemon. I usually used Cleff, as its Body Slam was damaging on the physically frail Psychics, and Blizzard worked wonders on Exeggutors. But sometimes, I swapped in Saura or Spike when grass or electricity was wanted.


The Power Plant seemed like a good side-trip next, to fill out the Pokedex a bit as well as getting Zapdos. It was mostly Saura who got to train in here, though Polly got some action too with its Earthquake.


I thought Saura was really going to be able to gain levels in the Water routes up ahead. But unfortunately, all the wild Pokemon are level 20! Of course, it did destroy every trainer’s Pokemon, which got it some, but not as much as I was hoping. Seafoam, was unfortunately, also a bit stingy on the wild’s levels. I did catch a lot of Pokemon in here that I needed, including Articuno.

By the end of it though, my team was a mess, thanks to that ice bird. Only Saura and Polly were up. Had to go to Cinnabar to heal before beating the rest of the trainers


On the subject of catching Pokemon, there remained only 14 to obtain. Mandel crossed off Hypno and Ninetales in Cinnabar Mansion. Nicest thing to see, by the way: Roar failing to affect your Pokemon. Worst thing to see: that message. At least Ninetales isn’t rare.


Blaine was laughably easy. Polly may not have the best Special stat, but what it did have going was Amnesia. A few uses of that and a bunch of Surfs, and that was all she wrote. His AI will humorously sometimes try to use Super Potions at max health, making this fight even easier.

Spike got to handle the next water route. A few more Pokemon were crossed off the list here, including Dewgong, Kingler, and Vaporeon. After going back to previous locales catch Flareon and Beedrill, only a few remains: Charizard, Blastoise, and Moltres were coming up on Victory Road. Mewtwo and Mew are postgame Pokemon, and it’s much easier to get Alakazam and Dragonite in the postgame too, instead of looking in the Safari Zone/for another 1% Pokemon or leveling up and evolving a Dragonair all the way.


Giovanni was similarly easy. Amnesiaed Surf wiped the floor with his entire team. His gym had a variety of Pokemon, though most of them could be handled by Polly itself, if I recall correctly.


No one specific Pokemon saw use in Victory Road. I lucked into two Chansey encounters here, the first giving an option for later use, and the second paying out a decent amount of experience. After reaching the Indigo Plateau and returning to catch Moltres, the fiery bird proved quite annoying to capture. Mandel stocked up on items, gave Molty some moves, and went into the final gauntlet.



None of the Elite Four managed to pose a threat. All of Lorelei’s Pokemon were zapped down by Spike, except for Jynx who got Pin Missiled. Mimester’s Psychics one-shot all of Bruno’s Pokemon except for Machamp, and he wasted the one turn he got using X Defend. Mimester also rolled through Agatha’s Poison Pokemon, though Polly had to pick up the slack at the end. Finally, Spike ran through all of Lance’s Pokemon in one hit except for Dragonite, who Cleff hit with Blizzard, failed to one-shot, but froze.

As an aside, in the original Red 151, he has the legendary birds, but the TPP hack replaced them with Charizard, Seadra, and Aerodactyl due to the infamous incident where their original playthrough rolled him with their Venomoth due to the “smart” AI using the Psychic-type Agility repeatedly on the Poison Venomoth. They had a Muk on their team this run for the first part.


Finally, Gary. He was even easier than before, since Parasect came second-to-last, allowing Spike to run through Pidgeot, Fearow, Kingler, and Tauros before having to switch out. Molty got its only action of the playthrough here, splattering it with Fly. Polly came in to clean up Flareon, and that was that!


Mandel finished the first part of the game with 147 Pokemon in her Pokedex. Her roster lineup at this point:

Spike the Jolteon: Level 84
Mimester the Mr. Mime: Level 81
Polly the Poliwrath: Level 83
Saura the Venusaur: Level 82
Cleff the Clefable: Level 83
Molty the Moltres: Level 75

Now, TPP Red version adds in a postgame beyond the Unknown Dungeon. Turn the page to read on about it, because you gotta catch’em all~

Next | Index

Pokemon TPP Red: The Cutesy Girl Part III

First, we’ll start by filling those holes in Mandel’s Pokedex. One of the biggest differences between TPP Red and Red 151 is how you obtain Mew. In the latter, you get it from a rare encounter in the Unknown Dungeon. In this...


You push the truck. Mew is underneath, but it flies and swims off to a place called the Unknown Island.


This dungeon was designed to troll TPP. It’s a bit of an open-ended maze otherwise, but not too bad to traverse.


In addition to Mew itself, Mandel also caught an Alakazam here. Only Mewtwo and Dragonite left, and both are in the Unknown Dungeon, the former at the end as usual (at Level 100 no less! And worse, in this version, it does have moves to fight back with), and the latter one of those 1% Pokemon.


Took an obnoxious amount of time to get the Dragonite, ugh. Mewtwo was a preposterously easy catch, even without using the Master Ball, though. Cleff froze it, and uh, that was it. You never unfreeze in the originals. To add insult to injury, after a few Seismic Tosses from Mimester, a single Great Ball caught it. 151/151!


More notably, Mandel caught her actual final party member in there as well: Slashie the Sandslash! And it’s just around the right level, too! It learned some TM moves, ate some Protein, and we moved out!


Next up were the gym leader rematches. For fun, I did these in roughly the order you would do them in Gold/Silver/Crystal. Vermillion and Surge is the first place you come to there, and he led with a Pikachu.


I employed X-Speed to make sure he was faster than the Electrode, the only conceivable way Surge could’ve stopped its rampage. Three later, and Slashie was faster, and ran through the team with overpowered Earthquakes


Almost the same fate befelled Sabrina’s team. Slashie fell the first time. Even though Spike and Cleff cleaned up from there, I decided to reset so it could get the sweep and stat EXP, though it needed two more X Speed. Took a bit of luck to get by the Hypno, but everything else - but Exeggutor - died to one Earthquake


Cleff, as before, ran through Erika. Also, Exeggutors, haha. They’re pretty scary Pokemon, but the AI ones simply have Barrage, Hypnosis, and Stomp as moves. So not scary. Cleff didn’t get the full sweep, but Mimester easily finished the job.


Mimester got the nod over Slashie for Koga due to the hard-hitting Special-based Venomoth. It eventually fell to Beedrill, but Polly finished things up from there.


Once Lapras was down, beating Misty was easy. Saura got to step out this time. It never used Ice Beam, just tried to annoy Saura with Body Slam and Confuse Ray. A Full Restore got it back in the game after that.


Brock and Blaine played out as repeats of before - Saura ran through the former (better than Polly due to the fossils), and Polly Amnesiaed up and crushed the latter’s team.


Since Giovanni has left the game, instead of him, you fight the infamous PC in his place in his rematch, destroyer of many of TPP’s Pokemon, getting released. Anyway, Slashie handled this one. Pump it up and Earthquake them all down.

We’ll make one final break here, even though this was a short page, just so there aren’t so many images on one page.

Next | Index

Pokemon TPP Red: The Cutesy Girl Part IV

There were two things left to do from here before the Elite 4 rematches could be triggered. The first was to get the Diploma. The second was to go to bed


Here, you see the original TPP protagonist, RED.


Complete with a custom intro.


Dream Red is probably the hack’s toughest individual opponent, since his team doesn’t have default moves. Still, he’s just one trainer, and his AI isn’t good. That made him bait for the Slashie treatment. A combination of Earthquake and Rock Slide took out his entire team: Zapdos, Nidoking, Venomoth, Lapras, Omastar, and Pidgeot.


Indeed.


So this is it!


The Elite Four rematches were very similar to before, just with an extra Pokemon and all at Level 100. Jolteon still fried all of Lorelei’s Pokemon. I accidentally put Cleff out in front for Bruno, but since Fighting is an underrepresented type in terms of moves in the original games, it had no problem running through the team on its own. Slashie got Agatha this time, being more reliable than Mimester. Lance added an Onix, but it had no Ground moves, so Jolteon simply Double Kicked it apart. This time, Cleff did get the one-shot on the Dragonite.


Final save!


Now Gary is quite a bit different in the rematch. Instead, he uses an adapted team from Yellow, which I forgot about. This team is probably easier, due to not having the Parasect of Doom, and especially due to having an Exeggutor. As discussed, that thing has no moves.

The fight was probably a bit harder for my party, though. Though one Pokemon could’ve run through his team, I chose to vary it up for once. Polly took down Sandslash without incident, and I swapped in Cleff to Body Slam down his Alakazam. Exeggutor is free and got Blizzarded. Slashie came in to Earthquake Magneton (getting Screeched on the switch), Spike electrocuted Cloyster, and Polly Surfed out Flareon - though it did eat a critical Fire Blast on the switch.


But wait, THERE’S MORE!! Oak challenges you after this, saying he has watched you since the beginning, and now that you have become a Pokemon Master, you must prove you are worthy of the title.


Final final boss!


Oak uses a variant of his original beta team: Tauros, Exeggutor, Arcanine, the remaining starter fully evolved, Gyarados, and new: a Pikachu. Polly was at low HP, and ended up KOing itself with Submission from 1HP. Saura came in to finish off Tauros, and for spite reasons, used Toxic on Exeggutor and waited. Mimester apparently came in to take down Arcanine, and since Spike was at low HP and burned, was also the pick for Charizard.


Couldn’t quite get the job done with one Thunderbolt, but then it used Rage. Seeing the opportunity, Slashie came back in. It Swords Danced thrice, then Rock Slided it and Gyarados, then murdered Pikachu with Earthquake.


Pokemon Masters!!


Here’s our final gametime.

__________

Now let’s go over all of Mandel’s Pokemon.


Saura was a strong Pokemon early on, though it started to struggle a bit when the army of Poison Pokemon showed up. It can’t learn Earthquake in Gen 1. Still, Razor Leaf hurt anything that didn’t resist like hell, and that was frequently enough - with ToxicSeed and Double-Edge as backup attacks.


Polly’s base stats are a bit average, but they were balanced out by its Amnesia. I considered switching it over to a setup that takes advantage of it at times, but it turned out not to be necessary. Being my only Earthquaker for most of the game helped cement keeping it around, though Submission’s recoil was irritating. Wish I had a better option for wrecking physically frail Psychics than something weak to them, though!!


Cleff was also average, but its versality and the holes it filled more than made up for it. I ended up not using Minimize as much in the late game, with other options available making stalling using it simply not being necessary. However, it was equally unnecessary to change it from that. If I had, it probably would’ve been switched with Fire Blast. Its lower experience requirement also helped a bit


Team MVP award goes to Spike. If there was something in the way that I couldn’t beat, electric death more often than not did the job. Insane speed, insane special, and a great selection of moves - even though those last two couldn’t be exploited much except when electricity was unavailable, due to its lowish attack. Ground types weren’t a problem for it, just swap to Polly or Saura, or just Double Kick if it’s part-Rock and doesn’t have a Ground move.


Never thought I’d ever use a Mr. Mime in the playthrough, heh. But like I said, going through Gen 1 without a Psychic is silly, and it was either it or Mew - which wasn’t available in the main game. Mimester did its job okay, though: it Psychiced stuff, it Thunderbolted other stuff, and Seismic Toss helped for wearing down wilds. It certainly ended up with way less Stat EXP than anything above, but it got enough between Vitamins and what it did do.


Our last-minute entry, Slashie didn’t disappoint for the short time it was on our team. It did what it needed to do, and it did it effectively - in spite of a lack of Stat EXP. That was the reason for the Proteins after first getting it. Certainly, it could stand to improve if Mandel follows Cerise into Stadium!

All in all, this was a fun experience and excuse to play through the original, buggy, imbalanced Pokemon games again. It was fun coming up with a team theme, forcing me to use Pokemon I don’t normally use.

What’s next on the Pokemon agenda? Well, there’s a Crystal version of Red 151. Might check into that next, and after that? I do like monotype challenges and have done them in the past, so maybe some of those. But no Nuzlockes, because those suck. There's also a variant in-progress in Gen VI ORAS that I'll be porting over, and really should finish.

Index