Episode 8: A Little Guy That Lives In a Blue World

Alright, time to get ourselves a Surfin Badge. After a brief pep talk from the Gym Guide who tells us it's "totally radical", we've got a Swimmer and a Jr. Trainer to take down before the boss.

This Swimmer had an Infestin, who I'm pretty sure actually isn't a water type since Thundershock wasn't super effective. It's definitely Bug, since Rock Throw was super effective, so I'm not sure. When I fight some more of them I might try and check.

The Jr. Trainer put up much more of a fight, with a Level 19 Jellyelly. Rowsdower's Super Fang is starting to really get some use now, against Starbies this bulky. Sure, it was still a three hit KO either way, but Super Fang and 2 Thundershocks is so much cooler than just using Thundershock 3 times. So consider that.

Mizu's gimmick is that she's a surfer. Gym leaders in these games only get like 4 lines of dialogue total so that's the best you're gonna get. You're not here for rich characterization, you're here to see some little monsters. Case in point:

This sprite actually looks so good, the shading and stuff is so dynamic. It immediately landed a Sing on Rowsdower and got a 6-turn sleep, but I wasn't even that upset because I really liked looking at it. (I also got to listen to the Club Leader battle theme the whole time and I think I get less mad when I'm listening to that song. So maybe it was actually a genius decision.)

Rowsdower was able to power through and wake up with the help of Splashee using a bunch of useless Mist, but he still had quite low HP so fell easily to a Bubblebeam from the next Starbie up.

Another great sprite, I assume from context this is Splashee's evolved form. It's got Powder Snow, which is kind of novel and would be real bad news if I was planning on countering this gym with a Grass type. If I can't use my Electric type though (and since XMVSF is warming the bench right now) we're going with the Wrap brigade on this one. The Peeker's Wrap, as ever, does quite low damage, so I needed some paralysis support from Toby Kebel to take this thing down. What I didn't expect was, after the Glare and getting a full paralysis afterwards, Toby Kebel just soloed the whole fight with Wrap and Inoyu never got to take another action. I need to stop doubting my GOAT.

Despite functionally carrying the team, Toby Kebel was not the biggest benefactor of this gym victory. The Peeker, who barely contributed in the fight but did get swapped in at one point, score a Level Up off that experience. Which led to...

Gun to my head, I would start crying, as previously mentioned. But if you asked me what The Peeker was going to evolve into, even having seen Deathseer I never would've guessed they were related. My hands turned into a dog! This game's got so many dogs and now my hands are one of them! I'm not even upset it's just a bit odd. On evolution it also learned Shadow Claw, which I taught over Scratch.

Alongside our badge we're also given the TM for Bubblebeam, which is another one that I'm a bit stumped on who I'll want to give it to. Mr. Bungle is an obvious choice, since it would be replacing Water Gun as a much more powerful STAB move, but I've also got a feeling he's going to learn a better water move by leveling up in not too long, and long-term he'll get access to Surf for sure. Toby Kebel, on the other hand, has been getting some good use out of Water Gun and might never get a chance to upgrade his Water coverage if I don't use this TM here. I think I'll wait a bit until we get some more levels to see if Mr. Bungle gets some better Water STAB, then I'll make the decision maybe after the 3rd gym.

In other TM news, with that spectacular performance by Toby Kebel I decided I really did want to give Thunder Wave to one of my Wrap users, since that combination is just so deadly. I was planning on teaching it to Mr Bungle here, but on inspection, while it couldn't learn it as a Manhandla, The Peeker as a Deathseer actually can learn Thunder Wave. I waffled a bit on who should get it, but I think Mr. Bungle is probably going to wind up with better defensive stats by the late game than The Peeker, especially since Deathseer is the final evolution going by Stardex order, so Mr. Bungle needs the safety net a bit less. Plus, there's some novelty in The Peeker having it, even if it meant getting rid of Karate Chop which is a very funny visual to imagine this dog doing. Sorry Bungle, I know I just denied two good TMs from you, but I promise there's a good reason for both.

The last order of business here in the city is to run the Dig bandit out of town. He did show us one new Starbie for our troubles, which looks to be the evolved form of Rumpel. It isn't named Stiltzkin though, so I guess I'm out 20 dollars. All it had to attack was Confusion, so it put up no fight against a Dark type.

In one of the more understatedly funny things to happen in RBY, the guy who was robbed and was upset about how much money he lost on having the Dig TM stolen doesn't even want it back when we recover it for him, since he just teached a Starbie named Cracture to use Dig without the TM. He couldn't done that the whole time, I guess. Just goes to show you, sometimes a tragedy is an opportunity. The next time you get robbed, just pull yourself up by your bootstraps.

With the day saved, I had to go check whether the Secret Garden was open now. The werewolf guy was still in there, but I guess he wasn't the weirdo in question, because the cop was gone and I was free to head on in.

It was at this point, dear reader, that I realized what the music playing in this area was. It's, I kid you not, a chiptune arrangement of Blue (Da Ba Dee) by Eiffel 65. I mean, I guess it's just north of Cerulean City. So if you lived in Cerulean when this song was big you probably wouldn't hear the end of it. But it still really caught me off guard. You know what though? It's a lot more interesting than another TCG GBC tune, so I'll take it. Bring on the weird shit, that's what I'm here for.

After poking around in the grass for a bit, I didn't find anything too exciting, mostly a lot of Manhandlas. There's an NPC in here standing in front of a house, who says they come here to meditate. Did Bill let them in to do that? It doesn't seem like there's usually any security for this place beyond the cop who left after the robbery was solved. Unless the werewolf guy is supposed to be the security, but he thought I was a morally evil person and he still let me through, so who knows. The real main attraction of this secret garden is an overworld encounter, and as the dialogue before its fight says, it's "supposed to be pretty rare..."

It's an Eevee horse! I'll bet you anything that's what this actually is, it's gonna have a bunch of item-evolving forms and everything. If that is what this is, then it should actually fit onto our team very well: We've got kind of an awkward selection of types right now, and I imagine we're going to continue swapping out team members at least a couple more times. If I just raise this horse alongside the rest of my team, once I have a final composition I can just evolve it into whatever form helps fill the gaps we have the best.

I'm getting ahead of myself though, I don't even know for sure that's what this Beast's whole deal is. All I know is it's doing pretty huge damage with Horn Attack, so I might want it on my team over XMVSF just for that. Let's just catch it and we'll figure it out from there.

Oh yeah baby, called it. Everyone please type "Wow Chill, you're so cool and talented and attractive" in the comments to shower me with praise for my superior deductive reasoning skills. We caught this little fellow in the secret garden of Eiffel 65, so there's only one nickname that makes sense to me. Welcome to the team Zorotl!

Anyways, time to leave- AHHHHHH!!!!!!

I had to run away as fast as I could, that thing was so scary. It jumped me in the tall grass as I was trying to leave and it was the most harrowing experience of my life. I'm sure all you chumps are gonna laugh it up but just think if you were in my shoes. If you saw an evil fire tiger coming out of a little hole thing you would be scared too.

After taking a moment to collect myself, I return to Cerulean to grab Zorotl out of the PC. It's a Normal/Flying type, and its moveset currently consists of just Horn Attack and Wing Attack. I imagine the only other moves it learns will be Hoof Attack, Tail Attack, Large Intestine Attack and etc. In any case, having a Flying type on the team is really fortunate for us: Currently we have two Poison types, an Electric type (previously two), a Rock/Steel type, and even The Peeker is using Thunder Wave to enable its main cheese tactic. We are comically weak to Ground, so having something that can come in on an Earthquake or something if need be is going to be very helpful. I imagine this means we'll be going with the Water type form, assuming its evolutions are the same types as Eevee's. This has the added benefit of probably making Zorotl actually Blue, which is like his one character trait. Oh, and I did try the Moon Stone to see if it worked and it didn't, so we'll have to wait.

In the meantime, southwards to Route 5! In which we encounter this little fella

Beyond just looking very helpful and polite, Plugenploy also starts with Thunder Wave! I don't think it's going to be making the team, but it is an Electric/Grass type which could help the Ground problem, and the more potential paralysis support I can have in reserve the better, so I'll throw it in the box for now.

Also on this route is one other new Starbie, which I had no reason to want to capture but still wanted to share with everybody out of the goodness of my heart.

The gate to Saffron City is blocked for a slightly more sensible reason here: We can't be let through because of "criminal activity", although he does remark that "it would be nice if we got something to drink..." I appreciate that the solution to the "puzzle" is the same as before, but it's a little bit less arbitrary. It's the kind of thing that feels like it would fit in the vanilla game too, since obviuosly Team Rocket has a big presence there thanks to Silph Co.

Inside the gate for the Underground Path is an in-game trade, just like in the vanilla game, but this one continues the Starter trades from Cerulean City. She's asking for a fully evolved Velociflea though, so not something it would be easy for me to grab unfortunately. So I grab my hidden Full Restore and head on my way.

This game is really starting to pick up in ROM hack bullshit now, and I am amped for it. The couple who are having the "private conversation" are still here, but when we eavesdrop on them we can see they're talking indecipherable gibberish.

The NPC at the end of the route provides additional commentary on these two, asking "You're not one of those cult members, are you?" and adding after the battle that "Those NEPUTAIL fan club guys freak me out..." In context, with it being called a "fan club" here it's pretty easy to interpret the "cult member" bit as this guy just mocking them for behaving weirdly. But considering the gibberish text (and some paranthetical narration saying explicitly that the player can't understand what they're saying), I'm pretty inclined to take this at face value. We'll definitely learn more about this later, with this name drop of "Neputail" and ("NepuBadge" being one of the badge names we saw earlier).

So, cult! This is like, the Platonic ideal of ROM hack nonsense. Some real Snakewood shit. I mean no offense when I say that the person who made this game either is a teenager or is spiritually one. And that's the ideal mindset to have when you're making a ROM hack, to me. This shit rocks. I am loving every second of this game.

Fighting through the trainers on this route has really proven to me just how incredibly powerful Zorotl is. STAB Horn Attack is a pretty great move for this point in the game, and he's got incredibly solid stats to back it up: Even a super-effective Thundershock from an enemy would've only been a 3-hit-KO. Other than things that resist it, it's been able to consistently two-hit or even one-hit KO the enemies here with Horn Attack, and I'm even below them in level. Here's one of the things that did resist Horn Attack though: It looks like the evolution of Scorpsy, who I'm fairly certain was Bug/Poison, so I'm not sure what this is beyond "probably Steel, I guess".

Oh, also this thing, which I will provide no commentary on.

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