Episode 4: Rocken Around the Christmas Tree

With Viridian Forest at our backs, we enter Pewter City and learn the answer to the number one question I'm sure all you readers at home have had this entire time: What's the name of the Starbie behind the desk at the center? Well folks, I'm happy to announce that our top researchers have put an end to our long years of wondering. It's Cheppi.

Cheppi isn't the thing I care most about in this Star Beast Center though. And I'm not even talking about healing my entire party for free. No, it's this little guy that's the real star of the show.

"Rocken", with the Monster sprite, who can sing, sounds an awful lot like something that would evolve into that jamming-out dragon Starbie we saw on the title screen back at the beginning of the game. Whether this is the case or not, time will tell, but its placement in this Center has me thinking we might be meeting one in battle sooner rather than later.

But you all want more ROM hack writing, right? Well here's an NPC that explains that the Steely Gene item can be used to evolve certain Starbies, by way of a labored, multi-line, all-caps parody of Billie Jean. That's the good shit baby. That's what I'm here for.

The Pewter Museum is still open, although they must have messed with the layout or the pathing of the NPC that tells you to go there, because when he walks off screen he walks straight through the sign. But hey, maybe he actually just hurdles it with such grace and speed that I didn't even notice.

Inside I of course went to consult the wisdom of the dead. The fossil exhibit has on display the "skull of a long extinct Star Beast."

The other case, disappointingly, doesn't have a fossil at all. Instead it's got what I assume is supposed to be a taxidermied Joltybara? Although the flavor text just calls it a "strange stuffed animal". It also says "You get the feeling its eyes are watching your every move." This does make me wonder what this is foreshadowing, if anything. If Joltybara is taking the place of Pikachu as the electric type in Viridian Forest, I wonder if it also has some sort of Mimikyu equivalent? Hopefully we learn what the deal with this thing is eventually.

Most of the rest of the museum is unchanged. The guy who bought a color TV to watch the moon landing is still here, thankfully. It is a bit odd that nothing in the space area mentions anything about the origins of Star Beasts or anything like that, I guess they're just normal animals here. (In Shi Kong Xing Shou I'm pretty sure they actually do come from space.) The stuff about Moon Stones is also still here, which strikes me as especially odd if the Stones are Genes now. Maybe Moon Stones are still in the game as the only real Stones? That tracks with this being "Asteroid Version" I suppose. Lots of unanswered questions here.

The only other point of interest here on the second floor is actually yet another in-game trade. This girl's dad says she's obsessed with Joltybara, and she asks to trade for one in exchange for something called a Sillish. I probably could go back and find a Joltybara in the forest to do this trade, but I'd wager we'll get a chance to see Sillish eventually anyways and I decided I'd rather just keep pressing onwards rather than doing more backtracking.

One last thing in Pewter before we take on our first gym challenge. The sign that mentions Team Rocket stealing fossils is still here, but rather than fossils it mentions "Beast Souls". Really makes me wonder what a Star Beast's Soul looks like, especially since this means we'll theoretically be picking one of them up in Mt. Moon. Excited to grapple with the metaphysical implications of this.

Okay okay okay. Gym time. We're not dealing with Brock this time around, no no no. As our very enthusiastic Gym Guide explains, this is the gym of "Big Dave". It's still a Rock gym though. This guy is really jazzed about getting to help us become, in his words, the "Star Beast Champerino". When you meet someone like this it's best to just humor them, you'll be able to exit the conversation much easier that way. So that's exactly what I did here.

Our match against the iconic light-years guy goes off without a hitch with all the same dialogue. His pal here is Bokongo, who actually seems to be a Rock type which is a nice step up from his RBY equivalent who just had Ground. Weirdly this does make two different creatures I've seen so far from this game that are themed around drums, also counting the dragon from the title screen. I kind of doubt it's an evolution, especially knowing about Rocken now, but who knows? Maybe it's a Mantyke situation, if RBY's engine can even handle an evolution condition like that.

Oh also, the Junior Trainer sprite here is just the Camper sprite from Gen 4, which I'm kind of not a fan of. Feels a bit anachronistic. But it's not a big deal.

Seems like Big Dave is, sadly, just a stage name, since his gimmick is being a rock star. Good gag for a rock-type gym.

The Gym Leader theme here is the Club Leader theme from the TCG game. And I kind of have the same complaint as I do with the normal battle theme. This is one of the best pieces of music ever composed for a Game Boy game for sure, but it's also more of a slow, methodically intense track that fits much better for a card game match in my opinion than a normal RPG battle. It's not lacking in intensity, but as compared to RBY's original gym battle theme it really doesn't feel as climactic or exciting. To me that style of song fits better with the more fast paced gameplay of battles here, even if they're still turn based. On the bright side, I do get to listen to this song more though. And speaking of music, Big Dave's first Starbie out is...

It was love at first sight. Beatiful baby boy I would die for him. Where can I get him when can I have him. Gotta be Mt. Moon right? Gotta be. It must be. It has to be soon. I need one. I need him so bad.

Anyways I clicked Glare against this, forgetting that Brock in RBY has 4 Full Heals. I don't know why, I'm not sure what status you'd even be able to consistently inflict on Brock this early in the vanilla game to the extent of needing 4 of them, but he's got 'em and that pretty much eliminates my Glare strategy. So Mr. Bungle Water Guns, Rowsdower Bites, and The Don Double Kicks it is. Rocken goes down fairly easily to the team, after which Big Dave sends in his ace:

He's rocking out dude holy shit!!!!!!!! This is notably a different Starbie than we saw on the title screen, although it's definitely related. Is this a middle evolution? Or maybe is it some sort of branching evolution where each final form plays a different instrument? The possibilities here excite me just thinking about them. But for now, this totally radical dude is regrettably my enemy, and must fall to The Don's mighty Double Kicks. I do have to give a major shoutout to Mildred though for switching into a Bide. Congrats Mildred, you've now contributed to the team more than Stanko did.

With Big Dave crushed beneath the unstoppable power of a pointy clam, Vito Corleone if he was a grasshopper, a nominee for The Orange Rising Star Award at the 2008 British Academy Film Awards, the guys who got into a fight with Anthony Kiedis, and a Canadian dog, we claim our spoils: The Rockn Badge (they really just removed one letter huh), the TM for Bide (lol), and two new moves on our team: Toby got Poison Sting, which isn't really newsworthy, but Rowsdower got Thundershock, which absolutely is. That's a pretty deadly STAB combo for this early in the game, and he was already one of the team's MVPs before this.

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