I ended my previous session of Pokemon Yellow at Cinnabar Island, just about ready to tackle the gym. There’s one minor detail I forgot, though. The gym was locked and I had to get the key from the Pokemon Mansion.
I really dislike Pokemon Mansion. Its’s a huge place and I made the mistake of learning mostly Low PP moves, meaning I was running out of PP before I could get to the end of it. Because of this, I had to leave the place and re-enter several times before I finally got the key on the bottom floor.
One of my least favorite places in the game – the Pokemon Mansion
The gym itself was extremely easy, thought Squirtle definitely wasn’t the MVP in the fight (Most Valuable Pokemon – it fits!). That title belongs to Charizard, mostly for being high leveled and highly evolved, unlike Squirtle. While we’re on the topic, I’ll say it again, Ash is a dirty cheater. There’s no way he’s able to beat all of those high level opponents with unevolved Pokemon. The only two Pokemon in my team able to carry their own right now are Pikachu and Charizard and Pikachu is decent simply because his level is about 10-20 above any enemy we encounter.
Sadly, Cinnabar Island’s Gym uses the same theme.
In any case, I beat the gym and then promptly used Fly to get to Veridian City, to beat Giovanni’s gym to. Squirtle was actually way more useful in that one, though I had to rewind twice to prevent him from evolving.
Squirtle was starting to get usefl in Giovanni’s gym.
Once all of that was out of the way, I went to the Victory Road, towards the Indigo League. The place was relatively easy to clear but again, I was getting low on PP towards the end of it. Other than beating a lot of trainers and getting to the exit on the other side, I also managed to catch the third legendary bird while in there – Moltress. As usual, it went straight into Bill’s PC, since it’ll just be a collectible.
The third legendary bird Pokemon was mine!
Finally, I got to the League, healed my Pokemon at the Pokemon Center and saved my game. I wasn’t ready to tackle the League yet. First, I had to prepare my Krabby. If I remember correctly, Ash’s Krabby evolved in a league battle, so mine needed to do the same. However, there’s no chance whatsoever to beat a league Pokemon with a level 27 Krabby, so I decided to do it a bit differently.
All I need to do now is to beat the Indigo League.
I leveled Krabby to 27 at the Victory Road and kept training until he got very close to the next level. Once I got to that point, I also decided to level my Pidgeotto until it evolved into Pidgeot. I know Ash’s Pidgeotto evolved only after the League battles, but I figured I won’t be playing a lot after I win, so I might as well do it now.
I evolved Pidgeotto before the league battles, since the game wont last for long after I win.
Once the leveling was out of the way, I made my first attempt at the League. Lorelai’s ice and water Pokemon were easy to beat with Pikachu and Charizard took care of Bruno’s Ground and Fighting types. Agatha’s ghost team gave me some trouble, but Charizard took care of most of those as well. Lance was where I got stuck. Only Ice and Dragon itself have an advantage against Dragon types and I had neither. Suffice to say, I got my but handed to me.
Technically, Ash didn’t become Indigo Champion, so Krabby evolving in a failed attempt is canon!
On the positive side, Krabby evolved into Kingler (it counts, I don’t care!), but on the negative, I now had to do a lot of grinding. Even worse, I used most of my restorative items on my first attempt and I was all out of PP restoring items in general. Since you can’t buy those in the game, this meant I had to level most of my team at least for a while, so all of them can take a couple of hits and do some damage before fainting.
This is my team before my first attempt.
For now, though, it was time to end my session. Soon enough, Pokemon Yellow will be the first game of my Pokemon challenge to be beaten, one way or another.
