Let's Blindly Poke Some Mons

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Let's Play! > Let's Blindly Poke Some Mons

Commander Keene: Dec 21, 2016; Faster than the others

Saladin Rising posted:

Also good job on beating Brock, he's usually the first stumbling block to those who picked Charmander and didn't bring backup like a Mankey. In Gen 1 Mankey wasn't available until after Brock, which made for a rather miserable first Gym experience.

Not quite true; Mankey was added to the grass near Route 23 or whatever the number is in Yellow, probably to give you something to fight Brock with aside from a yellow rat nearly completely incapable of harming his Pokemon.

Also, Butterfree is a fairly good, if somewhat fragile, sweeper for Brock's gym. It's fast and has Confusion, a Psychic-type move. While not weak to Psychic attacks, Brock's Rock Pokemon have miniscule Special (Defense), so any Special attack they don't actively resist shreds them. Hell, Charmander can make a decent showing against them due to Ember and Fire attacks being Special, despite their resistance. You don't even need to worry that much about being weak to Rock, because Rock Tomb is the only Rock-type attack used in the entire Gym, and only one of Brock's Geodudes has it, IIRC.

# ¿ Aug 6, 2018 23:08

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# ¿ May 17, 2024 13:11

Commander Keene: Dec 21, 2016; Faster than the others

Lord Koth posted:

To be fair, FR/LG also added Metal Claw onto Charmander's early movepool, so even Charmander can hit them for SE damage with a tiny bit of extra grinding. It's not necessary due to the presence of Mankey, or just slowly doing tolerable damage with a Special attack due to the really low Special Defense on Brock's pokemon, but it is yet another solution.

Honestly, due to Rock-types' Defense stat, I usually found Ember dealing as much or more damage than Metal Claw, despite the former being resisted and the latter being super effective. Probably due to their paper-thin Special Defense and Ember getting STAB on Charmander while Metal Claw doesn't. Maybe if you got really lucky with the Attack boosts from Metal Claw or had the right Nature and hidden stats to boost Attack a bunch, but if you're dead-set on having your fire lizard beat a bunch of rocks, I think a Smokescreen/Ember strategy is the better way to go.

# ¿ Aug 7, 2018 02:56

Commander Keene: Dec 21, 2016; Faster than the others

It's kind of like how apparently bug-catching is a popular summer hobby amongst young boys in Japan, so all the aspiring Poke-entomologists are young boys.

# ¿ Aug 10, 2018 13:13

Commander Keene: Dec 21, 2016; Faster than the others

Pick the Dome Fossil and name the Pokemon Hatsworth.

# ¿ Aug 21, 2018 21:14

Commander Keene: Dec 21, 2016; Faster than the others

Saladin Rising posted:

Also, fun fact about your starter evolving: if you evolved your starter in the Japanese Gen 1 games before you delivered Oak's Parcel, you couldn't progress beyond Viridian City:

The only solution is to start a new game. Thankfully, this was fixed in the remakes. As such, this just one more "lol Gen 1" bug.

I mean, I can't imagine how much grinding this would take, especially without access to Viridian Forest and its highly-flammable exp-filled bug pinatas. I've managed to evolve Charmander (and either Pidgey or Spearow) in Viridian, but I've never had a Pokemon evolve before then.

# ¿ Aug 22, 2018 02:02

Commander Keene: Dec 21, 2016; Faster than the others

loving love Fiona Apple posted:

The only thing I don't like about Fire Red is that it came out just before the Physical/Special split.

So it's hard to go back to.

Yeah, that's my main problem with FR too.

# ¿ Aug 22, 2018 23:45

Commander Keene: Dec 21, 2016; Faster than the others

Well, the show refused to allow evolved Pokemon to have nice things. Ash's Pikachu refused to evolve, and most of his other evolved Pokemon either stopped listening to him, left, or both.

It's probably because the final forms (usually) aren't nearly as cute as the basic forms.

# ¿ Aug 31, 2018 07:13

Commander Keene: Dec 21, 2016; Faster than the others

Charmeleon/Charizard was the disobedient Pokemon that stuck around longest, but I'm pretty sure Primeape was even before that. And it left the episode that it gained respect for Ash. I don't know if Haunter counts, because I can't remember if it was ever officially his Pokemon or if it was just following him around for some reason. I know Ash wanted it around to fight Sabrina (silly Ash, Haunter's no good against a Psychic gym), but I can't remember if Ash caught it or if it was just playing pranks on him or something.

I stopped watching the anime soon after the Kanto league, so I don't know if there were any after that.

Commander Keene fucked around with this message at 09:44 on Sep 1, 2018

# ¿ Sep 1, 2018 09:40

Commander Keene: Dec 21, 2016; Faster than the others

Cockmaster posted:

I had always assumed it was because the writers didn't want Ash's team getting too powerful, lest he end up steamrolling everything he comes across.

Power levels are super easy to handwave. It's not like the anime has to obey the game's exact mechanics, or that the writers are afraid to take liberties with the source material (see: Ash's fight with Brock, or "Aim for the horn!"). We don't even have any way to know the Pokemon's stats (or even level) exactly, even counting stuff like "oh, Charmeleon evolved last episode and this one takes place right after, so he must be Level 16", or "X Pokemon uses Y move, so he must be at least Level Z".

I think it's much more likely that they want to keep Ash's team largely within the marketable first-form Pokemon, but they also want to give the illusion that he's progressing as a trainer, so evolved Pokemon usually either stop listening to him and/or find something more important than a perpetual journey across the world to finally find a league Ash is capable of winning. Hell, Butterfree hosed off in order to get laid.

# ¿ Sep 4, 2018 03:27

Commander Keene: Dec 21, 2016; Faster than the others

Hobgoblin2099 posted:

That's why they should've switched to someone new after the Orange Islands.

I definitely agree, especially if they'd brought closure to his arc by allowing him to actually win the Kanto Pokemon League, with the Orange Islands being a side trip or epilogue. Then they could have adapted the next protagonist's journey, which would have allowed them to do the whole "reset" without needing it to seem so forced, and the show could cover the necessary bits of exposition necessary for new viewers without making the protagonist seem like a complete dumbass. And you don't even need to completely abandon Ash; even in the games, Red shows up in GSC/HGSS and (I hear) in Gen 7 in Alola.

# ¿ Sep 4, 2018 05:13

Commander Keene: Dec 21, 2016; Faster than the others

Faylone posted:

Fixed that for you. You almost had something to deal with things that resist fire besides using MORE FIRE.

In Gen 1, Fire Spin was a pretty good way to deal with anything. Back then, it (and Wrap) were pretty much guaranteed stunlocks for several turns. Now it's kind of lackluster.

# ¿ Sep 12, 2018 09:19

Commander Keene: Dec 21, 2016; Faster than the others

Seyser Koze posted:

I just played up to Bill, accidentally skipped some of his dialogue, reset my ROM, and realized I hadn't saved.

I'm good at this!

Rather than playing the game with a finger on the screenshot button, I suggest recording video of each play session and grabbing screenshots from there. It should help prevent messes like this, and was a lifesaver on occasions where there was a text formatting error in the game and I ended up having to go frame-by-frame in order to grab a shot (although FireRed has no major errors like that, AFAIK). VBA has built-in video capture, IIRC, and as long as you record using a lossless codec you should be fine on image quality.

# ¿ Sep 19, 2018 21:21

Commander Keene: Dec 21, 2016; Faster than the others

Vandar posted:

That Butterfree trainer is a rude surprise to most people playing through their first time. It's so delightfully vicious compared to all the trainers that have come before.

I always have Charmander/meleon with me so I just set it on fire and it dies.

# ¿ Oct 11, 2018 15:26

Commander Keene: Dec 21, 2016; Faster than the others

Most likely, VBA's default encoding is what's doing that to your video. I record as avi files and either as uncompressed video or using a lossless codec (I use UTVideo, although the recommendation over in the Tech Support Fort is X264). Grab your screenshots from that, and if you want to keep the video around for whatever reason, you can convert it into something more space-efficient afterwards. Uncompressed avi files are going to be pretty huge, though, so make sure you have the space for it first. My recordings for a PSX game are frequently several gigs in size for what would cover a single update.

# ¿ Jun 18, 2019 10:01

Commander Keene: Dec 21, 2016; Faster than the others

Hey, Surge doesn't have to be older than all of his soldiers to have been their CO.

Also his gym "puzzle" is absolutely the worst in the game and it's entirely up to RNG, so you weren't doing anything stupid there. You just have to hope that eventually you hit the jackpot.

# ¿ Jun 20, 2019 13:35

Commander Keene: Dec 21, 2016; Faster than the others

Bloodly posted:

Let me understand, as the item's new to me as well. The Vs Seeker is semi-infinite money from re-fighting trainers? You're no longer restricted to Meowth and Pay Day to deal with any supply issues? You're no longer restrained by 'you only have so much money', which was very much a thing for Red and Blue?

Yes, and it's great. Best addition to FRLG, IMO.

# ¿ Jun 21, 2019 06:08

Commander Keene: Dec 21, 2016; Faster than the others

I had a Game Boy Game Genie. Didn't have a Gameshark until the PSX. I think GG was more popular in the USA and Pro Action Replay more popular in Europe? But I can't say for certain.

# ¿ Jul 5, 2019 01:03

Commander Keene: Dec 21, 2016; Faster than the others

hopeandjoy posted:

I�ve always found gen iii darkness to be easy to stumble around in without Flash.

But I think that�s from the fact that 6 year old me didn�t know how to activate Flash in Sapphire so I just got used to it.

The one-tile light radius certainly makes caves easier to navigate without Flash, but it's still not very fun.

# ¿ Nov 30, 2019 23:47

Commander Keene: Dec 21, 2016; Faster than the others

I mean, what kind of reward would you give a bonus superboss, aside from cheevos?

# ¿ Dec 17, 2019 08:30

Commander Keene: Dec 21, 2016; Faster than the others

Chamale posted:

I don't know which is sillier: getting one cup of tea to share with all four guards, or buying one bottle of water from a vending machine (as you did in the original games). They changed it to the free tea because a kid could lose all his money in the casino, become unable to afford the ₱200 water, and become trapped forever.

I always pictured it as one of those Thermoses (Thermosi?) filled with tea. Either that or the guards are a hivemind and just endlessly repeat what any one of them is feeling, meaning you just have to give one of them tea and then all of them are suddenly satiated. The girl at the top level of the department store "replaces" the guards as the main use of the vending machines (although some of the drinks are fairly potent healing items; IIRC even Fresh Water is like a Super Potion for like 1/10 the cost), and I think the TM you get is determined by what you give her, and you can hand her all three drinks in quick succession to get each TM.

Also I don't think you could get softlocked from by the guards, even in the original Gen 1? At the very least, it would be pretty difficult. You'd have to lose all your money, have no sellable items, have no trainers left to fight anywhere up to Celadon, have no Pokeballs, and not have a Meowth. You can still backtrack from Celadon through the tunnel, you just can't go onwards without a drink. Having the tea be a free key item is definitely the better way to do it, but I doubt many kids managed to render their RBY save files unsalvageable due to not having enough money to buy a bottle of water.

# ¿ Jan 31, 2020 11:45

Commander Keene: Dec 21, 2016; Faster than the others

Epicmissingno posted:

It's not as bad as you think! Haunter just evolves if you trade it; it doesn't get replaced by something completely unrelated. Unfortunately something you're training up also evolves like this:Kadabra. You'd need to trade it with another copy of the game if you wanted that particular Pokemon.

Fortunately, Kadabra's quite good enough to take you through the game on its own, it doesn't really need an evolution to know how to rock.

# ¿ Jan 31, 2020 22:02

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# ¿ May 17, 2024 13:11

Commander Keene: Dec 21, 2016; Faster than the others

CuwiKhons posted:

Trade evolutions were actually fine back when I was in elementary and middle school and all my friends also had Gameboys and Pokemon to trade. No problem at all to find somebody willing to trade Gravelers or Kadabras. As an adult, not so much.

I think that trading actually got easier on the DS and later, due to WiFi and not having to rely on link cables to connect consoles. I owned the first two gens on Game Boy and never actually traded a single Pokemon despite having brothers who owned the other version. We just never got a link cable. When I played Platinum on DS, even though I didn't trade a whole lot, I did use the GTS a few times.

# ¿ Mar 2, 2020 07:20

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