Episode 5: Hands Across Kanto

Before we leave, something I didn't notice until now: The music for Pewter City, and Viridian City too, seems to be an arrangement of the RBY Surf theme? Like it's undeniably the same melody, just rearranged into something more rhymthic and that feels more like a town theme. I guess if I didn't already recognize the song it would fit well, but what a bizarre choice.

Speaking of music that wouldn't bother me if I didn't know where it was from, Route 3! The music here is the Battle Tower theme from Crystal. It does kind of sound like a route theme in a vacuum, but I hear it and I think Battle Tower, especially since that melody has been reused for the Battle Towers in so many later titles. But enough about music. What about a little clown man?

A trainer on this route had one of these little fellows, with a peculiar moveset of Mirror Move and Slam. Slam is a pretty high power move for this early in the game, so it was a bit scary to fight. Mirror Move is novel, but anything it reflects back at me is going to deal less damage than Slam, so it's not all that bad. Type is probably just Normal since I didn't find any moves that had different amounts of damage than usual.

Most of the trainers here just have various permutations of the Starbies we've already seen, which I expect to be a trend in a lot of future route areas. One especially notable trainer was the optional Youngster you have to jump down the ledge to fight. His dialogue is different for one, mentioning how Aspiro can copy any move. But the Aspiro he uses in battle is level 14, which is pretty brutal for this early in the game. Toby's Glare and Wraps were able to finish the job though, as expected.

There were two more trainers at the end of this route, who both posed a bit more of a challenge and also had new Starbies to see. The first was a Bug Catcher who bragged about having fully evolved Beasts, confirming these two as the final forms of our two caterpillars:

This thing's attacking move was Metal Claw, which is exciting. Looks like it's just Bug/Flying like you'd expect though, since it was weak to Rowsdower's Thundershock.

Despite its name just sounding like someone tried to say "Venomoth" with a mouth full of peanut butter, I am quite fond of this guy's design. Not enough to want to go back and raise a Mulcrunch, but I like seeing a fat miserable bug.

The last trainer is probably the actual most difficult fight here. This unassuming Lass has a truly terrifying beast at her command:

Even if I was told that this game featured 100% original creature designs, the name "Robby" combined with this design would make me think "this looks like it was taken from a bootleg." This is just one of the dinosaurs from Bubble Bobble wearing boxing gloves. That's kind of awesome actually. If I see one of these in the wild I'll probably try to catch it. What's not so awesome is this being Level 14 and having a pretty powerful moveset: Comet Punch, Dizzy Punch, and even Mach Punch which is news to me. I believe that's the first new move I've seen in the game, and it's a pretty exciting addition. Toby wasn't able to get off a Glare against it, and both Rowsdower and The Don were weak to Mach Punch, so I had to rely on Mr Bungle to Wrap this dude out. It wound up working out, but it was a close fight.

With the noble Robby felled, we get a chance to heal at the Starbie center outside Mount Moon, which is very handy. In this time of celebration though, we should also remember those who could not be with us. Please remove your hats for a moment of silence commemorating a fallen hero.

Okay moment of silence over, I'm gonna go talk to the Magikarp guy.

This salesman is offering to sell us a dog. (In all caps). "But this ain't your papa's pooch! This thing is made out of the real deal: Steel!" I'm obviously interested in what this guy's selling, so I cough up the cash for this supposed "DOG".

Well damn, I guess this guy just sold me back my lost dog. He did turn it into an Ice/Steel type though. Wouldn't have hated if he let me know that this wasn't just a Steel dog and has a second type that makes it way worse, but I like to assume the best of people so maybe he just forgot. This blurb (and this creature design likely as well) almost certainly comes from Shi Kong Xing Shou, since the starter in that game is the player's transformed dog. Kind of a fun way to integrate that into the game here with the Magikarp salesman. This does make 3 different dog Starbies we've had so far, and I'm a bit more attached to Rowsdower so I don't think I'll be training this fellow long-term. (And I can't even nickname it yet...) But it's neat to have.

With that handled, we haven't actually looked in the grass on Route 3 yet. I didn't know what I was expecting, but it wasn't this.

Now that's what I'm talking about, baby. Two floating hands. This is the perfect Gen 1 design. I already loved it even before it used a move. But after a couple turns of weakening it, it somehow wins my heart even more by showing off that it also learns Wrap! Now this is just pandering. Get on my team yesterday.

This dex entry makes me question why this wasn't instead found in Mt. Moon rather than in some grass in broad daylight. But maybe it's just this game's equivalent of Zubat and we'll be seeing a ton of them in lots of areas. Gotta say though, a Zubat equivalent having RBY Wrap would be really mean. Manhandla also starts with Mach Punch, which is a neat option to have, especially if a Wrap ends with a low-HP opponent and we just need something quick to clean up. It's a pure Dark type, which overlaps with The Don and Rowsdower, but The Don was never intended as a permanent party member anyways, and two of the same type is pretty managable.

As for the matter of a nickname, when I think floating hands in the context of Pokémon, especially RBY and especially with the Stardex entry mentioning "the ABYSS", my mind jumps to the White Hand from the infamous "Buried Alive" Creepypasta. And when I think about Creepypasta, my mind jumps to hazel and maedotmkv's amazing "normal creepypasta retrospective", which you all should definitely watch if you haven't seen it yet. The less I give away about the video's premise the better, but it did inspire this nickname. Welcome to the team, The Peeker.

Now to the matter of training The Peeker up to the rest of our team's levels. This grass has lots of wild Aspiros, which are theoretically nice to train against since they're weak to Mach Punch, but they've also got Mirror Move, and we're weak to Mach Punch too, so it pretty much comes out in a wash. There's also lots of Rocs, who I can confirm aren't Normal/Flying since Mach Punch wasn't very effective. Probably just pure Flying, if I had to guess. The other Starbie I saw, which I only saw once during this grinding session, was this little guy.

This polite fellow seems to be Steel, Dark, or both, since Mach Punch was super effective. I honestly would've guessed Ghost, but I'm glad it's not since not seeing any ghosts before Lavender Town is pretty important to the game. (But something I see a lot of hacks not follow through with.) I didn't catch this guy for now, but I like him. After getting The Peeker to level 11, I decided to move on and venture into Mt. Moon.

Mt. Moon was definitely always going to be home to many more new Starbies, and we find our first one right away.

Another very odd name, probably a direct translation of something from the original game. But it's a very funny image to image this mole lookin' guy operating an illegal bar. I wasn't sure if I wanted to use this on my team, but I decided to try to catch it just in case... only to realize I only had one Star Ball left. I gave it a shot, but it broke free, so I decided I'd go back for more balls before delving too much deeper, especially if Rocken actually can be found here. On my way out though, I did find someone else I hadn't seen yet:

A good sprite, sure, but an unimpeachable all-time banger of a name. It's likely Rock, since it resisted Wrap, but it took neutral damage from Water Gun, so it could be Rock/Water, or potentially Steel. Its attacking move is Psywave, which is curious, althought not especially scary. It does hit Dark types despite being a Psychic move, which I guess shouldn't be surprising since Seismic Toss hits Ghosts in RBY.

Well, I ran back to Pewter to restock on Star Balls, I had enough cash for 14 of them. While I was in the store though, one of the NPCs in the store shared a very interesting tidbit. This store sells Steely Genes, which he mentions can be used to evolve "some bugs"... as well as Rocken! This tells me Rocken has to be somewhere close by, otherwise that NPC wouldn't have mentioned it. Plus, I've already got an item I can use to evolve it, presumably into Rockowt. Just when I thought I couldn't be more excited about adding one to my team.

Back in the cave, I noticed a little change to the tileset where there's some discarded pickaxes on the ground. That's a neat detail. I can't identify the song used here, but it's fittingly dungeon-y. Who cares though, you're here to look at some new freaks, and I'm happy to oblige.

It's a caveman, that's sensible. Another Rock type, which scans, but boy we've been seeing a lot of Rock types in this game. We're already at about as many families as RBY had. It's got Low Kick, which is bad news for my squad of Dark types, and it resisted Bite so it's probably a Rock/Fighting type.

I picked up the Water Gun TM here, which will do nicely against (most of) these Rocks. Mr. Bungle of course already has it, but Toby Kebel was also able to learn it. He wasn't using Poison Sting for anything anyways, so that's easy to drop. It's technically STAB but like... come on.

The Whirlies from that first cave are here as well, and I really cannot figure out what type these things are. They resist Normal moves, so they have to be Rock or Steel, but they took neutral damage from Water Gun, Thundershock, and Bite, which doesn't check out unless this is using post-Fairy Dark matchups. Most strangely, these things know not only Gust, which is weird on its own, but also Ominous Wind of all moves. Next time I see a wild one I'll have to catch one and see, the one with Ominous Wind was from a trainer so I haven't gotten the chance.

Speaking of trainers with mons with unexpected moves, a Bug Catcher had a level 15 Mulcrunch that one shot The Peeker with Bug Bite. I think The Peeker's stats are kind of ass, to be honest, and all these Cromags with Low Kick are not helping. It's just hands so it doesn't even have an ass, very impressive.

At least it can be carried by Wrap for now, and it did learn Karate Chop as well. You'd assume that since Gust was changed to be Flying that Karate Chop would be Fighting as well: Nope, still Normal. Yeah Karate Chop was Normal in RBY as well, lol. In more exciting move news, Rowsdower learned Super Fang, which is incredibly exciting. Honestly right now he's got high enough damage output that most of his moves are dealing over 50% anyways, but I reckon the deeper we get into the game the more useful that'll be. In move news of equal excitement, The Don learned Leech Life, which I normally would not care about, but it seems like Leech Life is like, a real move in this game, it actually did decent damage when I used it. Bug doesn't beat Poison in this game any more though. (That was also a thing in RBY.) Finally, in much less exciting move news, Mr Bungle learned Acid, which I might use one time, eventually, maybe, no promises.

Comments