Episode 6: Can't Buy a Thrill

Take a look at this thing.

Really what this thing most reminds me of are those similar looking bandit enemies from Super Mario RPG. According to the only good reference resource on the internet, Super Mario Wiki, those fellows are called "Crooks". The more powerful blue recolors are called "Sackit"s, and their Psychopath/Thought Peek flavor text reads "This is just how I am." This has been your daily piece of Super Mario RPG information. Please subscribe to my newsletter for more.

Oh right, Team Rocket is here.

It took me a second to figure out where I recognized this sprite from: It's based on Tabitha's sprite from RSE. (Or just RE, I guess). This is a good sprite, the hood looks great, although out of all the things I could encounter in this dungeon that starts with "ROCKE", "ROCKET" is the one I wanted to see less. His team was Bokongo, Manhandla, and Whirlie, which gives some support to the "Manhandla is the Zubat equivalent" theory, although it's worth noting that there don't seem to be any in Mt. Moon.

After awhile I did finally find another Speakeasy, with some Star Balls in the tank I decided to catch one like I intended to do before.

Pibb Xtra (that's the nickname) is just gonna live in the box, but I did want to check what its type was: It's pure Fighting. I would've guessed Ground, since it looked a bit like a mole or something, but I dunno. Is it a tiger? The Stardex entry says people call it a tiger, but that's probably just a figure of speech.

Looks like there's some new encoutners on the lower levels of Mt. Moon, so even though Rocken didn't seem to be on the first floor it might be a Paras situation. Such as,

Okay, I didn't actually introduce this thing with much fanfare, but I'm a massive fan of it. It looks like a Mega Man enemy, and I mean that in the nicest way possible. Under normal cirumstances, I might be more mixed on actually adding this to my team. However, those doubts were expelled when I saw its moveset included Glare. The more paralysis support we can give our team the better, and it's also got both Thundershock and Confusion, so it seems like it'll be able to come in on weakened foes and clean up pretty well.

I might be overthinking my team composition a little bit. But if I'm gonna commit to being The Wrap Team I'm gonna commit hard.

This is probably the first ever actual Star Beast we've seen in Star Beasts, if it actually is from space. Which means I have to use it on my team, otherwise the name of the game won't be true. Unless it actually just means that all the beasts are stars. Which, well, I think they are.

Electric/Psychic is the type on this thing, which is pretty sweet. Psychic types definitely aren't quite as busted as they are in vanilla RBY since Dark and Steel types are around, but it's still good to have, especially since it can deal with Fighting types for our Dark Starbies. Epilepsia, you will hereby be known as X-Men Versus Street Fighter (XMVSF for short). Welcome to the team!

With another Electric type on our team though, what will be the fate of Rowsdower, the Canadian Hero? He's still doing really incredible damage, so he's going to certainly stay on the team for now. However, he's definitely the next on the chopping block after I find a replacement for The Don. Which I think might be soon, if I can find who I'm looking for......

My intuition was correct, as it always is (don't fact check that).

Even if I somehow hated this guy's design and didn't want to use it on my team (not possible) it still would've been worth it to catch just to see the greatest Dex entry ever written. Now as for the matter of nicknames. I kind of thought of a billion things, but my mind kept going back to that stupid Steely Dan joke I made earlier in the LP, since we're going to be evolving this guy with the Steely Gene. So in that case, welcome to the team Rocky Dan. And so long to The Don, who's getting boxed to make room for him. You served us well.

It is at this point that I should come clean. The truth has come out, and I gain nothing by hiding it. I looked at the documentation for this next part. I know, I know! Not a blind playthrough any more! Or something. Look, in vanilla RBY when you evolve something using a stone it stops learning Level Up moves. I just wanted to make sure I wouldn't be screwing myself over by using the Steely Gene now, since Rocky Dan's moveset is currently just Tackle and Growl. It turns out, Rockowt (who is the Steely Gene evolution (Editing Note: I wrote this as "metamorph" the first time Beastieball has fucked up my brain LOL)) does in fact learn level up moves, but they are different. I didn't look too far ahead in detail, but there's one particular move that Rocken learns at Level 15 that I want to make sure I get before I evolve. So I was gonna need to grind a bit. And grind I did. I have included a video dramatization of this grinding below.

This takes awhile since all I have to use is Tackle and I have to choose between Mt. Moon with a bunch of rocks and Route 3 with a bunch of Mach Punching Manhandlas. But I was determined to see it through for my boy. And see it through I did, to be rewarded with the worst best move in all of RBY.

Beyond the fact that Sleep is even more busted than usual in RBY, it did feel wrong to have the Starbie that Sings without the move Sing. This is theoretically a nonbo with all the paralysis we have but like. Who cares.

And with that, we're ready to use the Steely Gene and have Rocky Dan ascend to his final form.

They said it! They said the line! Seriously though, look at these stats.

Just for reference, The Peeker's attack stat is currently 15. Rocky Dan is kind of a monster. Granted, he probably won't be as much help against the upcoming Water gym (assuming that's unchanged), but who knows, with this high of stats he might still be able to contribute.

I also took some time to train up XMVSF for a bit, which was a lot easier since its Confusions hit pretty hard. Through levels it eventually learned Flash, which is kind of funny. It means I won't need to go out of my way to grab the Flash HM from the Aide before Rock Tunnel, but it also means I'll have 3 move slots until I reach the Move Deleter. (Editing note: I just remembered there's no Move Deleter in Gen 1, oops). Honestly the biggest impact this has on the game for me is that "STATS" is no longer the first option when selecting XMVSF in the menu, which is definitely gonna fuck me up every single time.

Thinking about it now, it's kind of amusing that Rocky Dan becoming a Rockowt was actually the first evolution we saw in the whole game, even before our starter. I figured that was probably going to happen sooner or later though, and after a couple more uneventful trainer fights, that's exactly what happened.

Not all that revolutionary of a design change, but it does the job. Mr. Bungle is now Water/Poison, which makes me noticably more likely to use Acid. Its Special and Speed are also now both much higher, with Speed obviously being especially nice for the Wrap strats.

What's a Tussel? Who knows, but if it's impressive that multiple Jellyellys can take one down, it must be pretty big and scary.

The hiker that stands in front of the ladder was actually a pretty notable fight here. He had a couple Starbies at the start of his lineup that weren't too scary but his last one was pretty annoying to take down.

Mosston here seems to be Grass/Rock, which is not a type our team is very well set up to beat. Not only does its moveset have Screech to push lots of damage on any Beast I plan on leaving in for a long time, but it's also got Rest, which does a pretty good job at shutting down any Wrap based strategies since one miss is enough to let it heal back to full health (and they do so little damage that it's very likely that one will miss eventually with so many being needed). Luckily, I just acquired a hammer, and this problem looks a lot like a nail, so Rocky Dan was able to take it down with some Screeches of his own (he learned Screech when he evolved btw). After two Screeches, even a not very effective Tackle did half of Mosston's health. Pretty brutal. The only downside to this strategy is both Starbies using Screech at each other was quite hard on the ears, since Screech in RBY has a pretty horrible sound effect.

Just north of the hiker is a Moon Stone, which is in fact still a Moon Stone. I should never have doubted the museum dialogue, this game is nothing if not thorough in its dialogue changes. I wonder what this could be used for? (I did check my own party, nothing in there yet).

The first Rocket in the basement got to show off that Nidorino expy we saw in the intro, Needolf. Unfortunately for its big debut, it doesn't seem like it has any moves that can damage a Steel type: It tried Poison Sting and Poison Fang on Rocky Dan but it didn't get very far. Or maybe it did have another move, and Team Rocket just isn't sending their brightest.

After this fight, Rocky Dan learned Rock Throw, which I taught over Screech. If you had to guess how much accuracy Rock Throw has in RBY, what would be your guess? For reference, it was still 50 base power, and it was changed to 90 accuracy in GSC. If you guessed 65, you're right, and probably also only know that because it's pretty ridiculous. I don't know if that number has been changed here, but even if it hasn't the potential to have STAB on this attack stat probably still makes it worth it.

The Rockets don't put up much of a fight, beyond one of them having a Speakeasy with Slam which did actually hit pretty hard. Our last challenge is the Fossil Guy. Or should I say, the Soul Lady, since recall that these are "Souls" now, and this trainer has been changed to a Nerdette. Perhaps alluding to this change, her first Starbie is an Egg.

All Eggerot got to accomplish was missing a Poison Gas before it just got Wrapped out of the game. This is still better than the fate suffered by her other two Starbies, who were both also new, and who both never got to take a single action since they were slower than The Peeker and I never missed a Wrap (I did use every single one of The Peeker's Wrap PP except for 1 in this fight though). This is the downside of the Wrap strategy, I suppose: I never actually get a chance to learn what any of these Starbies can actually do.

After the fight, we of course get our choice between two souls; The Angel Soul or the Fiend Soul. This is another classic ROM hack move, they love doing Angel and Devil based creatures. (Remember those worms on strings from episode 0?) Since I don't want to go to hell, and since I was moderately more curious what it would look like, I picked the Angel Soul, and left the Nerdette with the Fiend Soul.

With Mt. Moon done and dusted, we're just a quick walk away from Cerulean City. On the way there, I noticed a new house that wasn't there in the original.

Inside, some reuptable fellows tell me that I need to do them a favor and "catch these hands".

Indeed, another guy in the back of the house is looking for a Manhandla, and wants to trade it for his Agahnoblin. Now, I do really want to see what this thing is. But even if The Peeker hasn't been the strongest member of our team so far, I'm also not sure I want to lose one of my Wrap users.

So here's the plan: I'm gonna take a save state, we're gonna make the trade, and then if I decide I don't want to do it afterwards I'll just reload the save. Don't take it personally, The Peeker, I just want to see as many creatures as I can and I don't feel like walking all the way back through Mt. Moon to catch another Manhandla.

Between Manhandla's dex entry all-capsing "THE ABYSS" and this one doing it to "LORD OF DARKNESS", it's really making me wonder just how far deep into ROM hack bullshit we're going to get by the end of this game. Maybe I'm setting myself up for disappointment, but if I can make one request for Star Beasts 3.0, it would be the ability to go to hell.

The guy seems to be glad to be rid of this Agahnoblin, since he describes it with some very ROM hack language and says it's “Meaner than my mum after her fourth gin and tonic.” A servant of the lord of darkness? Sound like my mother-in-law, too! (raucous laughter and applause)

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