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Pokémon Blue: settling to a team

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I have a feeling I am now at the point where I lost interest in Pokémon Yellow, and I recall feeling a little uncertain when I reached this point in Pokémon LeafGreen. When I last wrote, Pikachu was several levels higher than my other pokémon due to him fighting and defeating every enemy in the caves; I now have a similar problem with Dugtrio whose Dig (and now Earthquake) moves proved invaluable when scaling Pokémon Tower, and fighting the electrical enemies. I have progressed through the underground passages, obtained a silph scope (which allowed me to identify the ghosts in Lavender Town), fought Giovanni – the boss of Team Rocket, routed the inept baddies from Silph Co, woken Snorlax1 with a poké flute and then captured him, and found a mansion containing the programmers of the game.

My team is all around the high 30s, other than Dugtrio who is at 47, and I am having to resist the urge to just use him over and over again. I am fairly settled with a team of Dugtrio, Charizard, Weepingbell, Vaporeon, Haunter and Pikachu – waiting for a couple of them to evolve – but I’m aware that others may come along to replace them at some point.

I am varying the colour scheme I play with to suit my location, the time of day, and the strain on my eyes.

Indeed, I’m not sure where I’m off to now. I have just obtained the SURF and FLY moves, but currently there’s no pokémon in my party who can learn FLY so I’m taking the opportunity to journey by foot and level up my companions some more. There are large areas to the south with oceans which were previously unreachable, so I’m heading home to see my mother and then onwards to the southern islands.

  1. My previous style guide continues. Since I don’t rename my pokémon, one that I have caught and am holding is capitalised as a proper noun. The generic name for that type of pokémon is not capitalised. I caught Snorlax when I woke him up, but then when I woke the second snorlax I was unable to catch it despite the fact I threw multiple balls at him when he was at virtually zero health and also asleep. ↩︎

Pokémon Blue: wild ZUBAT appeared!

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The start of Pokémon Blue1 is pretty slow. After the first couple of set-pieces, where you choose a starter and fetch the pokédex, you are left to go forth into the world, with only the route numbers to guide you. The paths are winding and specifically designed to make you walk through long grass, meaning that you will encounter many wild pokémon along the way. Unfortunately for the first hour or so they are all of one of three or four types, and it gets a little dull when the fifteenth caterpie is dispatched with a single hit from Charmander. Trainers along the way offer some variety but they all have similar pokémon, again, and give very little reward. By the time you get to Pewter City, you’re desperate for just a bit of challenge.

Having chosen Charmander at the start, I got it. Brock’s gym is of ground and rock types, and Charmander’s attacks did little. Luckily I had already caught Spearow and Nidoran♀ so I had some variety, but my first attempt at Brock’s underling saw all my team of six (which also included Pidgey, Metapod and another Caterpie) being defeated. Before trying again, I went to the South of the city and wandered around in a patch of grass for around 150 hours, battling hundreds of level 3 and 4 pidgeys, caterpies, and rattatas. The time was not spent in vain, however, as Metapod evolved into Butterfree, with the confusion move, and Spearow and Charmander all jumped up several levels. Of course, this being a Generation 1 pokémon game, there was no EXP Share, so all this levelling had to be done by having Metapod in the first slot of my team and manually changing away from it as the first move.

I also caught a Pikachu, who quickly replaced Caterpie in the party, and I spent some time with him levelling up as well. Pikachu is nowhere near as cute in this first game as he later came to be; he is a little chubby.

I’m playing using the black and white option rather than grey and green, because sometimes authenticity can go too far.

With a team of level 15 pokémon, I went to Brock and beat him with health to spare; Butterfree performed admirably. And then I departed Pewter City to travel along Route 3, and on to Mt Moon. In the caves on the way to Cerulean City, I encountered approximately 32,649 zubats, with them appearing every few steps along the way. Each and every one was defeated with Pikachu’s thundershock move, as demonstrated in the header image of this post; occasionally they would get an attack in first which drained a point or two of Pikachu’s health. By the time I made it through the mountain, picking up a fossil and defeating Team Rocket on the way, Pikachu was at level 18 and other members of the party were trailing behind.

I may need to do some more grinding before I go to meet Misty.

  1. Before the 3DS store closed I bought a number of games, which I am only just getting around to playing. I have both Blue and Silver lined up, to hopefully complete for the first time. I played Yellow back when that was first released (or close to then) and I believe I got as far as the Elite Four before giving up. ↩︎

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fall of the Foot Clan (Switch): COMPLETED!

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Originally a Game Boy game, this TMNT game is now one of the games on the “Cowabunga” collection, and it… isn’t great. Pretty sure it wasn’t great at the time, either, what with the flickery graphics and barely-there animation and repetitive gameplay and the tiny viewport and, well, it goes on. It’s not that far from Kung Fu Master for most of the game, having to attack enemies as they approach from left and right, but there’s also some basic platforming and jumping over tumbling rocks and stuff.

In the Game Boy’s heyday, there were probably a trillion (conservative estimate) games near identical to this with various different licences, but being Turtles, Fall of the Foot Clan was probably more visible. Plus, you get to choose which turtle you want to be for each level even though they make no difference whatsoever, bar the two animation frames of swapped out weapons.

Still, it isn’t terrible. The Game Boy was incredibly underpowered and by rights shouldn’t have even been able to manage half the games it did, but FotFC is not the best fit for the device.

Super Mario Land (Switch): COMPLETED!

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Ah, who doesn’t remember the chart-topping MC Mario “Folks round here think I’m crazy, but I gotta rescue Daisy” song that was based on the music from this, slightly odd in hindsight, Game Boy Mario game? Kids, that’s who. Tch.

And it is a bit odd. Super Mario Land starts out as a seemingly normal, low resolution and black and white approximation of the NES classic, but adds different enemies and the fire flower is a bouncy ball and there are scrolling shooter levels. It isn’t a bad game, but put it next to Super Mario Land 2 and it’s like they’re not even the same console generation, let alone in the same game series.

I completed it, of course, and it was ridiculously easy. But not actually bad.

Castlevania Legends (Switch): COMPLETED!

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I always thought that Castlevania Legends was actually the same game as either of the Game Boy Castlevania Adventure games, just named differently in a other regions. So imagine my surprise when I discovered it wasn’t, and not only that, it’s better than either of them. How have I not played this before?

OK, I should clarify that it still isn’t great. It’s pretty short, has a really restrictive time limit on each level which pretty much guarantees at least one death, and is still a bit clunky. But! It is more fun, slicker, and more playable than the others.

Apparently, until the terrible Lament of Innocence on the PS2, this was chronologically the first game in the series, although when the PS2 game was released Legends became, well, a legend. Shame, as this is a better game than that. Hell, most games are a better game than Lament of Innocence.

There’s not much else to say here. It’s a reasonable Castlevania with nothing really new for anyone who has played any of the original non-Metroidvania style ones before. And it’s free to play if you have the Nintendo Online subscription.