Gotta Catch ‘Em All!

This story begins in 1998, which, you may note, is not the year that Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire released. No, that was the year Pokemon Red/Blue was released in North America, kicking off what most people assumed would be an intense but brief obsession with everything Pokemon. The games, the anime, the cards, the toys, the merch, Pokemon was literally everywhere you turned.

In many ways, I was part of the prime target audience for Pokemon. I loved video games, especially turn-based roleplaying games and colorful Nintendo games. I especially loved games where you could collect things, and games with deep strategy that demanded endless guides and spreadsheets. My friends and I all loved Japanese pop culture, especially cute mascots.

It would be reasonable to assume I loved Pokemon right off the bat, but if that were the case, this wouldn’t be a Late to the Party article.

Pokemon hit right square in the middle of the moodiest of my teenage years, at a time when I was even questioning my lifelong fandom of Disney. As such, I uncharacteristically dismissed the whole thing as irritating children’s fare. It didn’t help that the ubiquity of Pikachu really was kind of irritating for a couple of years there. The fact that the first game, on the original Gameboy hardware, was primitive in a lot of ways compared to my other JRPG favorites, didn’t help its case.

The years went by, the initial Pokemania craze faded from its height, but Pokemon itself never really went anywhere in terms of popularity. Since I was still a fan of JRPGs, I heard about Pokemon a lot, mostly by osmosis from fans of other series I was playing, like Kingdom Hearts. My initial impressions of the series gradually turned around as I saw people discussing all the strategy and hotly anticipating each new entry. I came to realize that the series was very much up my alley and I had missed out for no good reason. By the time I fully realized this, I had a job and an enormous backlog of games, mostly lengthy RPGs. There was no longer any time to play Pokemon. Unless, of course, I made the time.

The logical thing to do would be to simply buy the latest main Pokemon game and play through that. The Pokemon games tend to have very minimal continuity between main entries (Gold/Silver aside), and each one is designed so that a child playing their first Pokemon game can easily understand it.

But that would be a sane course of action. Why do that when you can instead decide you are going to play through each of the mainline Pokemon games in order in the year 2018? Wouldn’t it be fun to be the only adult human playing the original Ruby/Sapphire at a time when even the remakes have come and gone?

Well, sure!

Heading Off from Pallet Town

The journey began with Pokemon Red/Blue. Playing an original GameBoy game for hours on end is a tough sell in this day and age, but other than that, Red/Blue holds up surprisingly well. Its overall brisk pace and the charm of the original 151 Pokemon do a lot to make the game fly by quickly. It’s also packed full of moments that have become forever enmeshed in nerd culture, from the kid who likes shorts (they’re comfy and easy to wear!) to your rival constantly popping up to challenge you to a duel. It’s also a fascinating game from a programming standpoint, and some of the necessary quirks to make such an ambitious game fit on a GameBoy cartridge resulted in infamous glitches like MissingNo. Unfortunately, I had to do something almost unthinkable to me — play my own music while playing. There’s only so much tinny GameBoy sound I can take in a single sitting.

Having successfully completed Red/Blue, I moved on to Gold/Silver. It’s really not hard to see why Gold/Silver is so fondly remembered — it’s a much bigger game than Red/Blue, with more of everything. There are a lot of awesome new ideas here, including breeding, shiny Pokemon, two new types, and a day/night cycle. The game is perhaps best remembered for allowing you to revisit Kanto, the setting of Red/Blue, two years after the events of the previous game, refighting the original set of gym leaders.

Playing Gold/Silver for the first time in 2018, however, I couldn’t help but notice how much of it seemed to simply be a response to Red/Blue, or things that they likely wanted to include in the first game, but could not due to time and space considerations. For example, the two new types introduced were a direct response to overpowered strategies from Red/Blue. The new Pokemon had much more subdued designs than the original 151, and seemed more about filling holes in the initial lineup. Their distribution throughout the game also seemed a little off, with some of the new Pokemon not even appearing in their “home region,” instead only showing up in Kanto. This limited their usefulness, as they are only obtainable after the player has already defeated Johto’s Elite Four.

Another issue with G/S is that its eight gyms all feature types not used in R/B. This seems like a good idea on paper, but R/B already more or less used the types with the most plentiful Pokemon in them (like water, grass, and electric). This means that G/S has gyms featuring types with very few Pokemon, such as Ice and Steel. Additionally, the first couple of gyms — Bug and Flying — primarily feature Kanto Pokemon instead of the new Bug and Flying types that were introduced.

The plot is even more minimal than Red/Blue’s already thin story. Team Rocket, the antagonists of Red/Blue, are appearing around Johto with the goal of rebanding their group. There are really only a couple of events involving them, after which they give up on bringing their old leader back and don’t show up for the rest of a game which is less than half over. No other Pokemon game forgoes plot to focus so much on simply wandering the world, catching monsters and battling trainers.

Gold/Silver is a great game, and it’s extremely impressive that they managed to fit all of that content on a GameBoy cartridge. (This was apparently due to the efforts of beloved Nintendo developer Satoru Iwata, who helped with the compression tools used for the game.) However, its position as a response to Red/Blue makes it feel a bit like a stepping stone in some ways.

Exploring a Brand New World

One of the things that immediately struck me when playing Ruby/Sapphire is how much the developers are clearly taking delight in all the things they could not do on the Gameboy hardware. In one of the very first scenes, there’s an NPC standing by a pool of water, looking at their reflection — they want to make sure the player notices that their cute little avatar is now reflected in the ponds they run by, something they didn’t have on the Gameboy. The music has also had a serious upgrade thanks to the Gameboy Advance sound chip, even if it is a little bit too trumpet-infested at times.

While Gold/Silver feels like a direct response to Red/Blue, Ruby/Sapphire feels almost like a remake of Red/Blue in some respects. With full color, more sophisticated sprite graphics, a proper sound chip, and the ability to display larger blocks of text, R/S feels a lot like if Red/Blue had actually been an SNES game in the heyday of late SNES JRPGs.

R/S adds a number of new features, most of which have been retained in further Pokemon entries:

• Abilities. This system allows particular Pokemon to have special abilities beyond those conferred to them by their moves, stats and type nature. For example, some Pokemon can nullify certain status effects or have their moves powered up in certain weather. The new ability system allowed the developers to create some truly unique Pokemon — such as Shedinja, a Pokemon with weak stats whose ability renders it immune to nearly all attacks.
• Natures. Each individual Pokemon now has a nature, which increases or decreases particular stats by 10%.
• Double Battles. This new kind of Pokemon battle involves each trainer using two Pokemon at once, so that there are four Pokemon on the field. The presence of two opposing Pokemon can affect strategy a great deal — for example, simply bringing out a strong Pokemon with a type advantage may not be enough if it happens to be weak to the opponent’s other Pokemon.
• Pokemon Contests. This begins a grand tradition of Pokemon side-games that are way too complicated for too little reward. I read the wiki page for this multiple times and still didn’t feel like I had an adequate grasp on it. Thankfully, it’s not in any way needed to complete the main game. It does tie into…
• Pokeblocks. In addition to types, stats, moves, EVs, IVs, abilities, and natures, each Pokemon now has conditions: its rank in categories such as Beauty or Coolness. These conditions are primarily used to determine the outcome of Pokemon Contests. To improve these conditions, the player must grow Berries in spare patches around Hoenn, blend those berries perfectly in a time-consuming minigame, and worry about things like what taste of berries their Pokemon prefers and the feel of the Pokeblocks and seriously who came up with this. Even I have my limits.

Local Fire Chicken Kicks Everything to Death

One of the high points of R/S, in my opinion, are the many new and creative Pokemon featured. Here’s some of my new friends:

• Torchic / Combusken / Blaziken: This was my starter. He was chosen for two main reasons: since I had picked Squirtle for R/B and Chikorita for G/S, picking the fire type for R/S made the most sense. The other reason was that Torchic is extremely cute. And I don’t know how Blaziken fares in tournament settings, but I was not disappointed. My fire chicken quickly became a force to be reckoned with, Blaze Kicking the shit out of everything that dared stand in its way. If it weren’t for the fact that Hoenn infamously has too much water, he would’ve been the perfect companion.
• Mudkip: I didn’t have one of these, but I would be remiss to not mention Mudkip, the cute inescapable meme of… almost twenty years ago.
• Zigzagoon: This little guy is basically this game’s Rattata, but he’s so cute.
• Ludicolo: It’s a cactus duck in a sombrero. Cactus. Duck. Sombrero. And its official art makes it look like it’s always doing a happy dance.
• Swellow: Fulfills the Pidgeot Memorial Role of the bird you get early on that you would assume would be weak, until it starts destroying everything in sight because you’ve had it forever and overleveled it and it’s actually not that bad.
• Wingull / Pelipper: No. More on this below.
• Gardevoir: A cute, appealing design that the internet has now thoroughly ruined. Please do not Google image search for Gardevoir.
• Surskit: I don’t normally really like the bug types but this little water spider is so cute. He just wants to be friends!
• Breloom: This thing is goofy as heck. He looks like an armless mushroom dinosaur. He needs a hug.
• Nincada / Ninjask / Shedinja: An example of how the developers were finding creative new Pokemon mechanics in this entry. Nincada normally evolves into Ninjask, but if you have a spare slot in your party at the time it evolves, you’ll also receive Shedinja, a Pokemon made from its cast-off skin. That’s really kind of gross if you think about it, but Shedinja is pretty cute anyway.
• Nosepass: I don’t know what this is but it sure is in this game.
• Skitty: Every Pokemon game needs at least one cute thing that’s 100% useless.
• Meditite / Medicham: Fighting / Psychic is an interesting type combination and Medicham is just a cool design.
• Plusle / Minun: Every Pokemon game needs to have a Pikachu equivalent even though they inevitably put Pikachu itself in each one, so here they are.
• Roselia: Just a pretty flower lady.
• Sharpedo: You might think the perspective on Sharpedo is weird and it’s really a big, imposing shark, but it’s actually just a wee little shark nugget.
• Wailmer / Wailord: ROUND. WHALE. The cuteness of round whale would only be surpassed with Sun/Moon, when the designers came up with round owl.
• Spoink: What a weird design this little spring pig is.
• Spinda: Like Skitty, I never really found a use for this, but it’s a little panda bear with spiral eyes, so it fulfills the purpose of being cute.
• Flygon: Dragon types tend to be particularly beloved among fans, and Flygon’s cute-yet-cool design is quite appealing.
• Swablu / Altaria: A beautiful puffy cloud bird.
• Feebas / Milotic: This is another example of the developers getting creative but not really in a good way. All Pokemon games include fishing, and therefore rare Pokemon that can only be found by fishing in particular bodies of water. However, Feebas goes a step further — it can only be found in one particular lake, but more importantly, it can only be found in six particular squares of that lake. And those squares are random for each player. If you want to catch one without the aid of emulation tools, you must fish multiple times in every square the lake until you catch one. However, the “fun” doesn’t stop there. Feebas only evolves into Milotic if you improve its Beauty condition, which means you have to go through the Pokeblock mixing process outlined above. The kicker to all this? If you don’t feed Feebas the right Pokeblocks, you can actually permanently lock it out of raising its Beauty stat high enough, leaving you no other option than to go catch another. Did I attempt any of this on my playthrough? No, I do not hate myself this much.
• Castform: This is a cute little sentient cloud looking thing that changes forms based on the weather. I never found much use for it, but it’s an interesting gimmick.
• Luvdisc: Every Pokemon game needs at least one useless fish in it, so here’s Luvdisc.
• Latios/Latias: I confess I didn’t actually catch these things but they have a great color scheme.
• Rayquaza: Rayquaza is an extremely powerful and popular Pokemon. The problem is catching Rayquaza is probably the last thing you’ll do in the game unless you want to participate in the post-game Battle Tower, which I did not. That is why my playthrough ended on running up Rayquaza’s tower, beaning it with a Master Ball, and leaving.

But Is There Too Much Water?

One of the criticisms infamously leveled against R/S was that it contained too many water areas. Not only that, but it requires three separate HMs for traversing water – Surf and Waterfall return from previous games, and Dive is a new move that does exactly what you would expect. This means you’re practically required to keep a water type on hand at all times.

The short answer is yes – there probably is too much water in R/S. It’s a shame because Dive is, in theory, an interesting new form of transportation, and it is used in at least one creative way – there is a town in the middle of the ocean that you can only  reach by diving through a tunnel.

The main problem is the same problem that usually plagues both water and cave areas in Pokemon, and that is an inexplicable lack of Pokemon variety. At this point, we’re three generations of Pokemon in, and there are a couple dozen water types that could be used to populate the frequent water zones. Unfortunately, the majority of the water in the game is filled primarily with the Tentacool and Wingull lines. Both of these lines know Confuse, and Wingull’s evolution, Pelipper, knows a shielding move that negates damage, drawing out these rote battles more than is necessary. Not only that, but Tentacool was the primary Pokemon in the ocean in the previous two main games! It makes no sense why they do not populate the water with a greater variety of Pokemon. Maybe they are trying to drive home the idea that an environmental catastrophe reduced the sea to mainly containing jellyfish. Jellyfish that literally never stop confusing and poisoning you. It’s a cautionary tale.

This flaw is a real shame, because R/S is otherwise bursting with new environments that weren’t possible to properly represent on the GameBoy. One of my favorites is the volcano area, where the town and routes behind it are completely covered in ash. There’s a rainy swamp, a small treehouse city, a town formed entirely by islands with little wood bridges between them… it’s obvious the art department was having fun with their newfound freedom. R/S is overall quite a beautiful and charming game, if you can get over the whole Tentacool thing.

Team Aqua Is Incredibly Stupid

Evil teams in Pokemon aren’t exactly known for their great planning and decision making skills. In R/B, we saw Team Rocket, an organized crime syndicate that had taken over a major corporation, be defeated by a child – admittedly, a child with an enormous, water-cannon-packing turtle.

So I really wasn’t expecting all that much from Team Aqua. (Team Aqua only appears in Pokemon Sapphire — if you play Ruby, you get Team Magma.) They start out promising, with a cool pirate aesthetic. They get a cute visual gag where they’re patiently lining up to get into the museum in Slateport City in order to capture an engineer they need for their plans. As far as evil Pokemon teams go, they’re doing just fine.

Their plan, however, is to increase the amount of water in the world. For starters, it’s never really adequately explained why they think this is necessary, considering Hoenn is already completely full of water. There’s some vague handwaving about ecological balance, but it doesn’t make a lot of sense.

Considering their plan is to flood the world, you might expect them to have an awesome floating fortress, or a Bioshock-style underwater base, or a high-tech submarine where they can retreat. You would be incorrect on all counts. Archie, the leader of Team Aqua, isn’t even standing on sufficiently high ground when he releases Kyogre and begins the world flooding. Seconds after his evil plan comes to fruition, he’s begging the player to save him because he might drown. He has less of a concept of cause-and-effect than your average kindergartner. After this incident, he and Team Aqua vanish from the narrative to make way for the standard journey to the Elite Four. Considering R/S expands on the Pokemon formula in so many ways, it seems like a real waste.

Despite Everything, Hoenn is a Great Experience

I’ve spent a lot of time on criticisms in the preceding paragraphs, but I want to make it clear that I thoroughly enjoyed my time with Ruby/Sapphire. Red/Blue and Gold/Sapphire are difficult to recommend to a first-time player due to the primitive hardware on which they were created — a new Pokemon player is much better off playing the remakes of these if they want to experience them. Ruby/Sapphire, on the other hand, I have few reservations about. The graphics and music, while not strictly up to modern standards, are up to the standards of classic SNES JRPGs, and quite charming and palatable.

My journey through the world of Pokemon has gone on hiatus after finishing Diamond/Pearl – a game that is both quite long and notoriously slow. I’m looking forward to getting back into it with Pokemon Black/White. Do I recommend this to other new Pokemon players? I think if you have a good appetite for retro games and can deal with the throwback aspects of these older titles, there’s a lot to love here, and I do recommend it. I certainly don’t regret playing through these early Pokemon games, especially Ruby/Sapphire.