Episode 16: Hit the Slay Button

With the Rocket scourge vanquished (roughly) once and for all, the citizens of Saffron City have returned to the streets. Apparently nobody told the gate guards, since they still tell you to "be careful out there", but maybe that's just general advice. The Copycat's here, the guy in the Center who thinks the singular form of "species" is "specie" is still here, everyone's accounted for. Unfortunately, Copycat isn't playing "a game with Mario wearing a bucket on his head" any more, instead it says it's "a game about raising and training dragons!" That's pretty benign in this game's world, but people do love sports and simulation games I suppose.

My next step should probably be heading to Fuschia City, doing the Safari Zone quests to get the necessary HMs, and then fighting that Gym. But Sabrina's gym is right here and I'm in the area anyways, I might as well give it a shot, right? We've got two Dark types on our team, even if we're a bit underleveled, I felt pretty confident we could power through.

Or that's what I thought, anyways. Apparently, in the chaos and lawlessness of the Rocket's rule over the city, the Gym was ransacked and taken over by a Biker gang. Sabrina and her Psychic-type gym trainers are nowhere in sight... And it now makes sense why she was the only Kanto leader to not be changed in this game.

Now that order has returned to the city, the bikers had every intention of leaving the gym. Unfortunately, they're not smart enough to figure out the teleporter puzzle, so they're just stuck in here.

I feel like a lot of my praise of this game has felt kind of back-handed. When it comes to stuff like the Glitch City creepypasta section or random weird references, I appreciate what they bring to the ROM hack experience, but I don't think they necessarily "land" in the traditional, critical sense. I can say with confidence though that this doesn't apply to this gag, I think this is genuinely very entertaining and creative. It fits into the established story of Saffron in Gen 1 while also just being really funny on its own. It does have some of its own ROM-hack-ism to it, they drop a couple "damn"s and one calls himself a "dyed-in-the-wool badass!" But still, this is great and I'm a big fan of it.

If it's more references you want though, (and that Akira slide wasn't good enough for you), then it's references you'll get.

This does make the pig goblin being a "servant of the dark lord" make some more sense. I think it would be the funniest thing in the world of this thing originally came from Shi Kong Xing Shou, because they could certainly get away with it, but that's probably not the case.

Seems like this gym has mostly Dark types, but not to a fault. Most of the Gyms in this game seem to have other types at least mixed in among the regular trainers. Case in point:

All signs point towards this being the Dark Soul evolution of Weedimp, especially given it seems to be Grass/Steel. That's a really annoying combination of types for us (and just in general, hello Ferrothorn). This team could really use a Fire or Fighting type move. Maybe I'll teach Tubi Fire Blast once we get to Cinnabar, although I reckon that might be too late at that point.

The only other trainer of particular note before we get to the big boss is a Gambler who says he caught some rare Beasts in the Safari Zone. His team was a Jellyelly, a Kremate, and a Lawncrete, so it sounds like you'll be able to catch the starter Beasts there. That's another fun way to allow you to obtain all three starters, I support this.

Our "gym leader" so to speak is a mean lookin' fella named Shayton, the boss of the biker gang. He seemingly wants to fight us just because I looked at him funny, but I suppose I would've challenged him to a fight either way anyways. He intends to send us packing just like "that broad with the long hair", so I guess it was him who was responsible for kicking out Sabrina. For the curious, he's still go the gym leader battle music.

Shayton led with a Slaymore of his own, and I led with Toby Kebel. Unfortunately, Toby couldn't do much against it other than paralyzing it, since it pretty well walled all of Wrap, Bubblebeam, and Dragonbreath. So I Glared it an then tagged out to Zorotl to attempt to Ice Beam it, forgetting about the type effectiveness glitch and also blanking on the fact that this is a Grass type so it's going to have super effective STAB against me here. Luckily, even catching a (guaranteed) critical hit Razor Leaf on the switch, it only seemed to be a three or four hit KO on Zorotl, while even a "not very effective" Ice Beam did over half. Maybe it is just a visual bug after all? Or maybe Slaymore's just got really low Special, which would explain both of these things. Either way, Zorotl's Special is sky high, which has been incredibly good for us.

After contributing very little to this fight, Toby Kebel was trying to learn Sludge Bomb. Dragonbreath being mostly unresisted it pretty cool, but it does have pretty low base power, and the only time I'd really want to use non-Wrap moves is either to clean up weakened opponents or on things that resist Wrap for safety. Sludge Bomb and Dragonbreath are both bad against Steel types, and I'm keeping Bubblebeam to cover Rocks, so I decided I might as well swap out Dragonbreath for a Poison move that just has higher base power.

It would've maybe been funnier if I had gotten rid of Bubblebeam though, because Zorotl also scored a level up off the same Beast, and he learned Bubblebeam himself. I'm so glad to have some real Water STAB on him now.

Next in is a Beast that looks to be the evolution of Speakeasy. That critter was pure Fighting, and I was willing to take the bet that it wasn't a Dark type, so I stayed in and hit it with a Psychic. It was not very effective, likely meaning this thing is Steel as well. This type bug really does make this Steel type problem even worse.

Zorotl was able to clean up with a couple of Bubblebeams, in some part thanks to a missed Jump Kick. It still only deals 1 crash damage, which is amusing. Coming in to take revenge our horse with an incredibly overkill Thunder is the last evolution of Whirlie.

Knowing this line is, despite all appearances, pure Steel type, I threw Rocky Dan in. It was hard for me to imagine it having much to hit a Rock/Steel type from what I'd seen, and Earthquake seems like our best bet to take this thing down. Unfortunately, Rocky Dan not only hit the 1/256 miss on Earthquake, but then also immediately died to a 4x effective Drill Run. Embarassing performance.

Knowing this thing has Drill Run really narrows my options to deal with it. Rowsdower's Thunderbolt would hit it hard, but I don't want to mess with that. I decided The Peeker was my best bet, and I decided to just go for Crunch right away rather than messing with any Wrap shenanigans to avoid any backfiring misses, especially considering the resistance. Surprisingly though, Crunch was actually able to take down Eradicane (when combined with the damage of one Zorotl Bubblebeam). Guess I shouldn't doubt The Peeker, he puts in the work.

Roudning out Shayton's trio of evolved forms of early game Cave Beasts is the evolution of Slashopper.

While it outsped The Peeker and got off a Bug Bite for a huge chunk of damage, we got the Thunder Wave off as well. I knew that one Wrap miss would be sending The Peeker to an early grave... So it's a good thing he never missed a single Wrap! That's my guy! That's my GOAT! Never doubt The Peeker baby! Now we've gotten it down to very low health and we've got Mach Punch to clean up, the exact reason I kept that move around. It's even Fighting, so it'll be super effective.

Nevermind this guy sucks.

A Vuhlandron was Shayton's ace, which would've been a lot cooler if a trainer in the dojo next door didn't also have one. Tubi cleaned up Sabrantis with a Flash Cannon, by the way, and stayed in here to Thunder Wave Vuhlandron. It went for a Drill Run as well, which would've worked out great if I wasn't a Flying type. It did have one other trick up its sleeve though, which I didn't see coming (although I maybe should've).

Whatever type PK Starstorm is (I'd guess Psychic all things considered), Tubi handily resists it, and it's got a recharge turn just like Falcon Punch. Maybe there's a bunch of these typed Hyper Beams that are moves from other games? I hope we see at least one more. Other than that, this thing wasn't too scary at all, and we're able to defeat Shayton and claim the Marsh Badge (which were just sitting in a box in the corner of the room, so he lets us take one.)

Afterwards, he pulls out a little piece of paper and reads us a spiel about how Beasts up to Level 70 will obey us. Sounds like he's warmed up to us a bit after losing to us, so at least he's a good sport. He also gives us the Psywave TM, although he says he doesn't know what it does. That's fair though, because I've never been entirely clear on what Psywave does either.

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