Episode 19: The Value of Persistence

Just outside Fuschia we see a couple of cops slacking off, who are not particularly enthused by a kid showing up and "busting" them for standing around in a patch of grass on the job.

Evidently these guys are pissed that the "new boss" is "forcing us to actually do our jobs!" I wasn't really expecting this plot to be followed up too much after that route, but we've seen reference to it both here and in Fuschia proper, so I guess it's supposed to be a pretty big part of this middle-end part of the game. Not really a complaint, but it would've been cooler if there were a lot of these smaller subplots rather than just one that spans multiple areas, imo. It does make the world feel more connected, but too much of it risks making it feel a bit one-note.

There's actually two new Beasts among these cops' teams, which is pretty surprising since there were almost no new Beasts in the all of Fuschia that I could tell.

To the west of these guys is the gate to Cycling Road. Attentive viewers may remember that, although we did get the Bike Voucher, we never actually went back to Cerulean to get a Bicycle. There was certainly a chance I'd have to backtrack back there to get it, but there's a glitch in RBY here that I really wanted to see if it had been patched or not: If you just keep trying to walk through the Cycling Road gate, eventually you'll successfully be able to just scoot yourself one extra tile and walk past the guard.

Folks, not only is this glitch not patched, it's actually even easier in this game due to the Run button. In fact, I found that as long as you're line up with the topmost row of tiles, if you're running directly to the right it's actually completely conistent, meaning it's also a lot easier to do by accident. Funny stuff.

While I'm talking about things attentive viewers may have noticed: We're at the bottom of Cycling Road, not the top. It's a lot more annoying to climb the hill than it is to go down it, but I wanted to make sure I saw all of the NPCs and dialogue here, so I was determined to bike through. And I'm glad I did too, because this is (presumably) the final punchline of the Sabrina plot.

Seems like everyone from Sabrina's gym has taken up residence in Cycling Road, since the Bikers have taken over the gym. There's not really much of an explanation provided for this: This channeler says that "A wizard did it! A.... spooky bicycle wizard! Yeah." We have no other option than to take this at face value.

Here we also see Psychics, a class of trainer who we'd never actually get to see in-game if not in Sabrina's gym, so good on them for squeezing in here.

There's only a couple of Psychics on the route, and none of them actually have bikes. There's a couple other NPCs further up the road who don't have bikes either. I'd ask how they were allowed onto Cycling Road without them, but I guess I was allowed in without any trouble so fair play to them.

Couple other NPCs of note: There's two non Psychic gym members here, one Cue Ball who's really freaked out by the Channelers and initially thinks you're one of them, and one unrelated Gambler who mentions getting lucky at the Game Corner and has a team of 6 Beasts you can get as Game Corner prizes. (Rumpel, Xiaolong, Dragleam, Flewnicorn, Cheppi, and Robby.) That's a fun gimmick I like that. There's also a Psychic with the post-match dialogue "I was astral projecting into the ocean, and having a damn good time, until YOU came along!" Which is just a bit amusing.

At the top of the hill is a group of Channelers that mention the stuff about getting kicked out of Sabrina's gym much more explicitly, which is sensible since most players are going to encounter them first. I didn't though, because I'm not very smart. One of them did have the evolution of Malevolos though: It's still so odd to me that so many trainers have these on their teams if they're supposed to be the fossil equivalents. Not a choice I would've made.

Only other thing worth mentioning on Cycling Road is that The Peeker learned Super Fang. Would've been nice to have on this guy over Rowsdower for the early game, considering Rowsdower's damage output did not need the help while The Peeker's definitely did, but it's better late than never. (And I suppose it would've have made much sense back when The Peeker was Hands instead of a dog.) After the embarassing performance acgainst Shayton I've also really been meaning to get rid of Mach Punch. While the mental image of a my evil dog knowing martial arts was very funny, it was just never a move that accomplished anything when I used it.

At the other gate you'll be happy to know that the old man NPC can still walk through the wall. I was considering just waiting around and checking to see if this could happen manually, but it just happened by chance the first time I walked through. Great day for Cycling Road entrance gate glitches.

Going by this game's track record with this stuff, I half expected this guy's dialogue to lampshade being able to walk through that wall. Instead it's just another hint: "Use a DARK SOUL on TOMAROC. Thank me later." I continue to appreciate these hints, but if I was using a Tomaroc on my team until I was this level and only just now saw this NPC I would've been pretty annoyed, lol. You can go here a lot sooner than I did though, so that's not a complaint.

Speaking of birds, we might as well grab the Fly HM while we're in the area. Same dialogue here, but she seems to have a better reason for hiding away from all of society if her partner Beast looks like this. Because it's ugly. The joke is that I think it's ugly.

Oh yeah, and on the way out I saw this thing.

I suppose now it's time to head for Cinnabar Island. The most direct path would probably be surfing off the coast of Fuschia, but now that we have Surf and Strength I really want to see what's up with that cave part of Cracture Chasm. So we can walk back to Vermillion, go through the Chasm to get to Viridian, go south back to Pallet, tell our mom we love her like Varik asked us to, and then surf south from there to reach Cinnabar. Man, Kanto is such a fun region to wander around for being from the first game.

There's two different ladders downwards in the chasm. However, one of them is blocked off by a Strength boulder that's directly in front of a body of water. It doesn't seem like we're able to push this into the water or anything, so I think this is some kind of shortcut out of here that you have to push from the other side.

The other ladder is completely open though, and it's home to some manner of strange creature.

"Before you is some sort of FIEND from an era long forgotten. It spots you and growls, taking up a fighting stance." It's a Malevolos! Maybe all those trainers that had them just got them from this cave? And maybe that Strength boulder is blocking the entrance to the other fossil Beast, and the boulder just gets placed there based on what fossil you choose, and it's a Strength boulder because that's an object and not a map tile so it can be dynamically moved around like this? That's what I'm going with. In any case, I caught the Malevolos without much trouble.

Are HELL and THE ABYSS different places? Are either of them home to the DARK LORD? Is it the place we went in that house in Celadon? I dunno, but this game's use of all caps on certain words is actively hilarious and I'm a big fan of it.

Comments