Hello, and welcome back to The Very Best, Like No One Ever Was, a new serial blog project documenting my efforts to complete a comprehensive playthrough of all three first-generation Pokémon games. For more information about this project, including details on the different approaches I'm bringing to each game, I'd recommend reading this introductory blog before scrolling down any further. For those already initiated, let's get started with a breakdown of the first phase of this project.

Phase One - Rockin' with Brock

Something I maybe didn't do a great job of explaining in the introductory post of this series is how the "phases" of this project are going to work. The project as a whole will be split into nine phases - one for each of the Kanto region's eight gym leaders, and a final phase covering the Elite Four and Champion fights. Each blog will cover a phase's worth of content for all three games. For some phases, that'll mean some big differences, since I'll be battling the gym leaders in different orders depending on the game - the fifth phase, for example, will see me battling Koga in Red Version, Erika in Yellow Version, and Sabrina in Blue Version. The first phase of my first generation playthroughs is pretty uniform across Red, Yellow and Blue Versions, though. I start out in Pallet Town, acquire a starter Pokémon from Professor Oak, do battle with my rival and receive a Pokédex, then press on north through Viridian City and the bug-filled Viridian Forest to Pewter City, the location of the first Pokémon Gym in Kanto. It's a fairly short segment of the game with not much scope to travel off the intended path, but even so, it's interesting just how different all three playthroughs end up feeling even at this very early stage...

Red Version - The Tale of Torpedo

As I stated last time, I've elected to make my Nuzlocke playthrough of Red Version the first of my three simultaneous journeys through Kanto. Playing it before Yellow and Blue will keep my prior knowledge of what's to come in each phase to a relative minimum, which I'm hoping will make managing the self-imposed ruleset a little more challenging. I boot up my 3DS, launch Red Version from the Home screen, and feel a wave of nostalgia wash over me as the introductory chiptune music starts to play. Before launching into the game proper, I open the Options menu and change the text speed to Fast and the battle style to Set. While the former is a personal preference, the latter is a crucial component of the Nuzlocke playthrough's challenge - this means I won't get a free switch any time I knock out an opposing trainer's Pokémon, bringing the battle mechanics one baby step closer to competitive play.

After hitting New Game and listening to Professor Oak's opening monologue, I have to set the names of my trainer and rival. Keeping things in line with the games' official canon, I name them Red and Blue respectively. A few seconds later, I'm plopped into my bedroom in Pallet Town and given full control for the first time. I withdraw the Potion from my PC and make my way out towards Route 1. Oak stops me as I hit the long grass, warns me it's not safe to wander around without a Pokémon of my own, and takes me back to his lab where I'm given three potential partners to choose from, but I have to save the game before picking one of them. See, the Nuzlocke rules stipulate that my starter is determined by the final number in my five-digit trainer ID (1, 2 and 3 for Bulbasaur; 4, 5 and 6 for Charmander; 7, 8 and 9 for Squirtle; and a free choice if it's 0), but there's no way to find out your trainer ID until you're already in possession of your starter, since the only place the ID appears in these games is on the Pokémon stats screen. Since I was planning on picking Squirtle if I had a free choice, I pick up the Poké Ball containing the squirting turtle and nickname it Torpedo. As luck would have it, my trainer ID ends in a 9, so there's no need to pull a soft reset this time around.

Blue picks Bulbasaur and challenges me to my first Pokémon battle. While I personally don't consider the Nuzlocke rules to take effect until I'm able to acquire Poké Balls, I'm still keen to win this fight for the experience it'll provide. Thankfully Bulbasaur gets very hung up on using Growl, and with the help of a couple of well-timed critical hit Tackles I manage to take it down without needing to use the Potion I withdrew earlier. Torpedo gains a level, Blue gives me his pocket money, and I'm free to start exploring the Kanto region. Or at least, I'm free to head north on Route 1 to Viridian City, where a drunk old man is blocking the road and preventing me from going any farther. A visit to the Poké Mart to buy some Poké Balls and actually get this run underway instead turns into a courier mission as the store clerk hands me a parcel to take back to Professor Oak in Pallet Town. It feels a little early in this adventure to start backtracking, but I do as he asks and return to my hometown where I hand Oak his parcel and receive a Pokédex in return. With this digital encyclopaedia in my possession I return to Viridian City, where the drunk guy has sobered up and the Poké Mart has started stocking Poké Balls. Finally, we can get this Nuzlocke properly underway!

I have just over ₽3000 in my wallet, so I spend a decent chunk of it picking up six Poké Balls, plus some Antidotes in preparation for the upcoming trip through Viridian Forest. First, though, we have some potential captures to encounter! Making Viridian City my temporary hub, I first head south to Route 1 and capture a Pidgey which I nickname Avion. Then I head west to Route 22 and pick up a Nidoran ♂ which gets named Grand Horn. Finally I head north to Route 2, where I encounter a Rattata - I capture it and name it Incisor. I spend some time training this quartet of beasties up to lv8 in the long grass on Route 22, then head a little bit further west to take on Blue in a second battle. While this is an optional encounter, I can't pass up the opportunity for more experience and cash. Blue leads with a lv9 Pidgey so I counter with Incisor, who does well to get around the accuracy drop of Sand Attack and takes down the bird with a defence-lowering Tail Whip and a couple of Quick Attacks. Next up is his Bulbasaur who's now lv8 and knows Leech Seed, so I switch into Avion with the intention of hitting it with a super-effective Gust. Unfortunately, I've forgotten that Gust is a Normal-type move in the first generation games, meaning Avion gets hit with a Leech Seed on the switch and then does underwhelming damage the next turn. I end up pivoting back into Incisor to shake off the seeds and then repeat the Tail Whip/Quick Attack combo to put down Bulbasaur and finish the fight.

After healing the team back up at the Pokémon Center in Viridian City, I continue my journey north along Route 2 and into Viridian Forest. This place is full of Weedle in Red Version, hence my decision to stock up on Antidotes in anticipation of its Poison Sting attack. I'm actually looking forward to the prospect of picking up a Weedle as my encounter here. It may not look like much in its base form, but it evolves early, and Beedrill is likely to be a useful member of the team for a decent amount of time before it starts getting outclassed by other fully-evolved Pokémon in the late game. Imagine my frustration, then, when my first encounter in Viridian Forest is not a Weedle, but a lv4 Kakuna. An ostensibly useless Pokémon that only knows Harden. But an encounter is still an encounter, and so I add it to the team and nickname it Howard - an in-joke that is destined to determine the name of every Weedle, Kakuna and Beedrill I catch from now until the end of days. Because Howard doesn't know any offensive moves, I have to switch-train it all the way from lv4 to lv10, at which point it evolves into Beedrill, and now I have a Beedrill that only knows Harden. I could have sworn that Beedrill learned something like Fury Attack as soon as it evolved, but I'm probably getting mixed up with one of the later generation games.

Now even more frustrated than I was before, I turn my attention to training the rest of the team up to lv10, and emerge from the north end of Viridian Forest into Pewter City. First stop is the Pokémon Center to heal up the team, followed by a trip to the Poké Mart to buy a couple more Potions in preparation for the upcoming challenge. Pewter City is home to the first Pokémon Gym in the Kanto region. Its leader Brock and his Rock-type Pokemon are all that stand between us and the end of this phase of the Nuzlocke. I spend some time thinking about potential tactics for the Gym battle, but ultimately there's only one sensible strategy - lead with Torpedo and spam its Water-type Bubble attack (learned at lv8) until victory is achieved. I briefly consider returning to Viridian Forest to gain another couple of levels before battling Brock, but I decide against it. Squirtle is the bulkiest of the three starter Pokémon, so hopefully its natural defences will see me through the fight even at its current level.

There's no gimmick to the Pewter City Gym. It's a straight line from the entrance to Brock, with a single optional trainer positioned halfway along the path. Naturally I decide to take him on for the additional experience and money. His Pokémon are Diglett and Sandshrew, both lv11 and both unusual picks for a Rock-type Gym since they're both pure Ground types. They're still weak to Water-type attacks though, and each of them goes down to two Bubbles, Diglett managing to land a fairly weak Scratch and Sandshrew wasting its only turn on an ineffective Sand Attack. I pop a Potion to heal Torpedo back to full health and approach Brock to start the Gym battle. He leads with his lv12 Geodude. Torpedo launches an opening salvo of Bubble to drop its HP to a critical level and it responds with a Tackle, knocking off around a third of the Squirtle's health. A second Bubble finishes the Geodude off, forcing Brock to recall it and send in his ace, a lv14 Onix. This thing is scary, because it is faster than Torpedo and it knows Screech, a status move that drops the opponent's Defence by two stages. It opens with a Screech, dropping Torpedo's guard as it lets off a Bubble to bring its HP down by just over half. Another Bubble will secure us victory, but I'm scared of Onix going first and landing a deadly Tackle while my defences are down. I decide to switch into Grand Horn, a play that turns out to be completely unnecessary as Onix goes for Bide, a multi-turn move that keeps track of damage taken and then dishes out twice as much hurt in return. With Onix storing energy, I'm free to switch back into Torpedo without suffering any consequences. At the start of the next turn Onix unleashes its stored energy, doing absolutely no damage, and leaving itself wide open to another Bubble from Torpedo. The rock snake falls, and Brock awards me the Boulderbadge - my first badge of the Red Version Nuzlocke playthrough. I graciously accept the badge and the accompanying TM for Bide. Then I leave the Gym, return to the Pokémon Center, and heal up the team.

Yellow Version - Birds and Bugs

With Torpedo and the rest of the team now in temporary stasis in Red Version, it's time to jump over to Yellow Version and begin my anime-inspired playthrough. Yellow has a different opening cinematic and a different piece of chiptune music from Red and Blue, so I don't get the same nostalgic impact from its first moments. As with Red Version, my first port of call is the Options menu to change the text speed to Fast and the battle style to Set. Ash doesn't get free switches in the anime, so I won't be getting any here either. I hit New Game and go through the same introduction with Professor Oak, naming my player character Ash and my rival Gary to stay consistent with the anime. When the game begins and I assume control of the protagonist, I open the menu straight away and save my game. I'm not taking a single step in Yellow Version until I've watched the first few episodes of the Kanto arc of the Pokémon anime.

I put down my 3DS and instead pick up my Switch, where I've downloaded the Pokémon TV app for this specific purpose. Between the first two seasons of the show, Pokémon TV has all seventy-eight episodes that I'll need to watch alongside this playthrough, starting in Ash's bedroom in Pallet Town and finishing up at the Pokémon League on the Indigo Plateau. My initial viewing session comprises the first three episodes of the show, during which Ash receives his starter Pikachu from Professor Oak, sets off on his Pokémon journey, encounters the evil Team Rocket for the first time, and catches his first Pokémon in Viridian Forest. And in spite of my pretty low expectations, I enjoyed it a lot more than I was expecting. Some of that is undoubtedly down to nostalgia, something that I admit not being completely impervious to - but even twenty years later, there's no denying that opening theme is still an absolute banger. There are definitely some inconsistencies with animation and character as the show goes through that teething process of working out what it wants to be, and the dub is very much a product of its era, often descending into irrelevant rambling seemingly just to try and match all the characters' lip flaps. The show also ramps up incredibly rapidly, putting Ash's and Pikachu's lives in danger in the third act of the very first damn episode and leaving the next two episodes with comparatively minor stakes since there's nowhere to go from there but down. Personally I think the Pokémon themselves are the stars of the show at this early stage, particularly Ash's Pikachu which gets to show off tons of personality with all its screen time.

With my 3DS back in hand, I set about following in Ash's footsteps. As in Red Version, I withdraw a Potion from the PC and try to leave town to trigger the encounter with Professor Oak. Instead of being given a choice of three different starters, Yellow Version forces the mascot Pikachu on me and grants my rival an Eevee. A rival battle ensues, and although it may not be easier than the one in Red Version, it at least moves faster thanks to both Pikachu and Eevee's starting moves benefiting from same-type attack bonus, or STAB. Once again, my rival is overly preoccupied with status moves, spamming Tail Whip and leaving his Eevee wide open to Pikachu's relentless Thundershocks. After securing the win, I follow the same steps as Red Version - north to Viridian City, pick up Oak's Parcel from the Poké Mart, exchange it for the Pokédex, and head back to Viridian City to buy some Poké Balls. Now that I have the means to catch more Pokémon, this playthrough can start to deviate from the critical path and become its own thing.

In the third episode of the anime, Ash's team of Pokémon grows from one to three, as he captures both a Caterpie and a Pidgeotto in Viridian Forest. Later in that same episode, Caterpie wins a battle against Team Rocket and evolves into a Metapod. Bearing this in mind, I bypass Route 22 altogether, heading north to Route 2 and straight into Viridian Forest with only Pikachu to rely on. It doesn't take long for me to find a lv4 Caterpie and add it to my roster, and some time spent switch-training means it soon reaches lv7 and evolves into Metapod. What takes far longer is tracking down that Pidgeotto. Yellow Version's encounter tables for Viridian Forest have been changed from Red and Blue, allowing the player to encounter both Pidgey and its evolved form in this location. The catch is that Pidgeotto's encounter rate is a pitiful 1%, meaning it takes a long time to get it to show up. As I search, Pikachu reaches lv13 and Metapod grows to lv9. After about forty-five minutes of hunting, I finally locate a lv9 Pidgeotto. I paralyse it with Thunder Wave and chip away at its health with Quick Attack, managing to catch it in my second thrown Poké Ball. With my team now on par with Ash's, it's time to put the 3DS down and return to Pokémon TV for another two episodes of the anime.

The fourth episode, Challenge of the Samurai, doesn't move the overall plot forward much but does feature the iconic scene of two Metapod having a "Harden-off", and depicts Ash's Metapod evolving into a Butterfree at its dénouement. It's also the episode where I notice that Team Rocket's James seems like a very different character from how I remember him. In these early episodes he's depicted as very mysterious and smooth talking, similar to Jessie, but I'd always remembered him as quite camp and bumbling, hamming up all his monologues and invariably getting his head stuck in his Victreebel. This is early days though, so perhaps they were still figuring the character out. The fifth episode, Showdown in Pewter City, is a big one. It features Ash's first Gym battles and the acquisition of his first badge, meaning I now have licence to return to Yellow Version and play to the end of this phase.

My first job is to evolve my Metapod into Butterfree. Since I was already actively holding off from doing this to keep parity with the anime, this is as simple as putting Metapod through a single battle so it hits lv10. It learns Confusion as soon as it evolves, a move that is going to prove very important in the upcoming Gym battle. I battle with Butterfree a little more to raise it to lv12, then press on to Pewter City and heal up at the Pokémon Center before heading to the gym to take on Brock. My strategy here is going to be very different to Ash's, since there's no way for me to physically power up Pikachu to the point where it can circumvent Onix's resistance to Electric-type attacks, and no way for me to activate the Gym's sprinkler system either. I also can't borrow my tactics from my Nuzlocke playthrough of Red Version, since we only have three Pokémon and none of them have any attacks that can hit Rock-type Pokémon for super-effective damage. My only viable option is to hit Brock's team with Special attacks, bypassing their high Defence and taking advantage of their pitiful Special stats. Since both Geodude and Onix are also part Ground type, Pikachu's Thundershock is completely ineffective for this purpose, and the only other Special attack I have available is Butterfree's newly-learned Confusion. I believed this strategy also came with associated risks, since Butterfree is doubly weak to Rock-type moves, but as it happens, neither of Brock's Pokémon actually know any Rock-type moves in the first generation games.

As in Red Version, the first step is to cut through the Junior Trainer's Diglett and Sandshrew, both of which are lv9 in this game. It's here that I notice that Yellow Version has been taking a lot of steps to try and mitigate the early game grind from Red and Blue Versions, first by making higher-level wild Pokémon available in Viridian Forest to speed up training, and now by reducing the levels in this first gym. Brock has also been nerfed slightly, his Geodude and Onix being dropped to lv10 and lv12 respectively. Even with the lower level cap though, this fight is a more protracted affair than it was in the Nuzlocke playthrough. Confusion may be my best attacking option, but it still takes three hits to knock out Geodude, leaving Butterfree open to two Tackles and costing it a decent chunk of its HP. After defeating the Geodude, Butterfree reaches lv13 and learns Poisonpowder, a status move that (unsurprisingly) inflicts Poison on its target. Thinking this might help to whittle down Onix's HP, I use it as Brock brings his ace into battle. It's here that I discover that Brock apparently carries Full Heals in this battle. After successfully poisoning the Onix and watching Brock toss a Full Heal at it three times, I decide to give up on this tactic and return to spamming Confusion. It's a slow process, and at one point I have to use a Potion when Butterfree drops below half health, but eventually the Onix falls and I earn my second instance of the Boulderbadge. I thank Brock, help myself to the Bide TM, and head back to the Pokémon Center to heal up before putting this adventure on ice.

Blue Version - Laying the Foundations

Last in the rotation, but by no means least, is my nostalgia playthrough of Blue Version. Before I can get this run properly underway, though, I need to do a little bit of advance preparation. One of the main aims of this playthrough is to recreate the team I used to become Champion in my very first completed playthrough of Blue Version back in 2000 - Venusaur, Charizard, Blastoise, Pidgeot, Raichu, and Nidoking. The main obstacle around building this team is that it features the final evolutions of all three starter Pokémon, but in a playthrough of Red or Blue it's only possible to obtain one of these three Pokémon at the very start of the adventure. In order to get all three starters into a single game file, I'm going to need to do some manipulation by trading my starter to a separate game on a different 3DS, then reset my game to pick a different starter and trade that away, before finally starting a third game file and trading the two starters I'd previously handed off back into my copy of Blue Version so that I can move ahead with all three starters. This is something that I remember doing with a few of my friends back when we used to get together and play Pokémon after school and at weekends, starting new games and trading away the starters until we eventually all had a Bulbasaur, a Charmander and a Squirtle. Setting this up brought back a lot of those memories, making it the perfect way to start this nostalgia playthrough.

I boot up Blue Version and bypass the intro sequence, opening the Options menu to set the text speed to Fast and turn off battle animations to ensure this process goes as quickly as possible. At the point where I have to choose a starter, I pick Charmander, and then deliberately lose the battle to ensure it doesn't earn any experience until it's traded back into the final save file. I go through the usual steps of heading to Viridian City, picking up Oak's parcel, swapping it for a Pokédex, and buying some Poké Balls. Then I head back out onto Route 1 and catch the first Pokémon I find, since the game won't let you trade if you only have one Pokémon in your possession. I nab a Rattata, then return to the Pokémon Center and speak to the staff member on the right-hand side of the building to access the Cable Club. Thankfully, the Virtual Console releases of Red, Blue and Yellow Versions all feature local wireless support for trading and battling. This means I'm able to trade Charmander over to a second 3DS, kindly loaned to me for the cause by my buddy Matt. Once Charmander has successfully been traded, I reset my own 3DS and start the whole process again, except this time picking Squirtle, and move it over to Matt's 3DS as well. Now that both the Fire and Water starters are waiting in the wings, it's time to start over for the third and final time and get this playthrough properly underway.

I change the text speed to Fast, but leave battle animations on and also leave the battle style in Shift mode. This isn't how I typically play Pokémon these days, but it was how I played twenty years ago. I name the player character Daniel (after myself), and the rival Scott (after my cousin, who contributed his name to the rival in my childhood playthroughs of Blue). While I ostensibly start this playthrough in the same way I did in Red and Yellow Versions, hitting all the same beats, the pace this time around is much more methodical. I take the time to fully explore Pallet Town and talk to all of its residents before attempting to leave. This doesn't yield any items or particularly useful advice, but it definitely adds some flavour to the world. I especially like the chap near Professor Oak's lab who waxes lyrical on the astounding powers of science, a variation of whom has been in the starting town of every main-line Pokémon game ever since. Once I've exhausted my dialogue options, it's time to move things on and step into Route 1 to trigger the start of the story.

This time around, I pick Bulbasaur, skipping the nickname option since I never used to give my Pokémon nicknames when I was a kid. I stomp on Scott's Charmander (with a little healing help from my PC Potion), then go through what are the usual motions at this point -Viridian City, Oak's parcel, Pokédex, Poké Balls, the adventure begins. Since Blue Version is where I intend to ultimately pursue a completed Pokédex, I'll be attempting to catch as many different critters as possible on this specific journey through Kanto, using the Pokémon Master Guide to help me. That process starts on Route 1, where I pick up a Pidgey and a Rattata (both Common encounters according to the guide), plus two additional Pidgey to use as trade fodder, before returning to the Pokémon Center in Viridian City. At the Cable Club, I link my game to Matt's 3DS for the last time this episode and trade my two surplus Pidgey in exchange for Charmander and Squirtle. The remaining Pidgey will become a mainstay of my team, while Rattata will be chilling in the PC box for now. With these captures and trades, I already have four of my six final team members for this playthrough.

I'm not done yet, though. From here I head to Route 22 where the guide informs me I can add three more Pokémon to my 'dex - Spearow, Nidoran ♀, and Nidoran ♂, the last of which will be sticking around as our fifth team member. I decide to stay here for a bit and train up all of my team to level 8, then take on Scott in the optional rival battle on this route. His Sand Attack-spamming lv9 Pidgey goes down to Charmander, while his own lv8 Charmander clearly wasn't banking on me having a Squirtle with Bubble on my squad. After healing up back at the Viridian City Pokémon Center, it's time to head north and cut through Viridian Forest. Once again, I have a few potential captures to pick up here, one of which is destined to become my sixth and final team member. First up is a Caterpie, which are plentiful in Blue Version, and so takes no time to add to the collection. After a bit more searching, and stumbling across more Caterpie as well as a few Metapod and Kakuna, I find a lv5 Pikachu. I wear it down with Nidoran, snag it with a Poké Ball, and then back out of the forest to Viridian City to swap it into the squad. With that, the foundations of my nostalgia team are complete.

The next story beat is to press on to Pewter City and take on Brock, but before I can do that, there's one more potential encounter in Viridian Forest that I need to find - Weedle. The Pokémon Master Guide lists Weedle as a Rare encounter in Blue Version, while Bulbapedia puts its encounter rate at 5%, the same as Pikachu. Despite this, though, it takes me longer to encounter a Weedle in Blue than it did for me to find the 1% Pidgeotto encounter in Yellow. To make matters even worse, when I do finally encounter a Weedle after almost an hour of searching, I try to catch it, only to find I've run out of Poké Balls. This means I'm forced to KO the bug I've spent an hour searching for so that I can return to Viridian City and buy more Poké Balls, then come back to the forest and start the search all over again. Thankfully the second Weedle shows up after a mere twenty minutes, and it takes next to no time to trap it and add it to the collection in the PC. While I'm in Viridian Forest I make a point of training all of my team members to lv10, as I start to make preparations for the upcoming Gym battle.

My first thought is to copy my strategy from Red Version and take my Bubble-blowing Squirtle into the Gym to wreck house. However, this plan has a downside that I initially fail to foresee, thanks to the mechanic of Pokemon obedience. See, I'd overlooked the fact that Charmander and Squirtle, while caught by me, technically aren't my Pokémon, as they were caught in different save files with different Trainer IDs. This means that as soon as they level up past lv10, getting either of them to do anything I want becomes a dice roll, so I can't rely on Squirtle to follow my orders for the duration of the battle, since there's a good chance it will slack off and get KO'd by Onix. Out of the four obedient Pokémon I have at my disposal, Pidgey, Pikachu and Nidoran are all completely ineffective against Brock's Rock types. That just leaves Bulbasaur, who doesn't currently have any super-effective damage dealing potential. So I set my Poké Balls back into my belt and trudge back into Viridian Forest one more time with the goal of pushing Bulbasaur up to lv13 so it can learn Vine Whip. This is a much more arduous process than the training in Yellow Version, since the average level of wild Pokémon here is much lower in Blue Version. It still takes less time than it took to find a Weedle though, and it's not too long before I have a Bulbasaur ready to Vine Whip Brock into submission.

What follows is an even more comprehensive sweep of the Pewter Gym than I pulled off with Torpedo in Red Version. Bulbasaur tears through the preliminary trainer's Pokémon, taking minimal damage that only requires a single Potion to heal. Brock himself is without a doubt the easiest he's been across all three games, no doubt because of Bulbasaur's three-level advantage on Torpedo and higher innate Special stat. Geodude goes down to a single Vine Whip, not even getting a chance to land an attack of its own. Onix is a little scarier, prompting me to open with a Leech Seed for the chip damage and recovery it'll cause. Onix goes for a Tackle, taking off about a quarter of Bulbasaur's health, before it succumbs to a follow up Vine Whip. With this performance, Bulbasaur earns me my third Boulderbadge of the project and brings its first phase to an incredibly satisfying end.

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And with that, phase one of The Very Best, Like No One Ever Was is complete. Three badges down, twenty-one to go. Even in this relatively short opening segment of the first generation games, I've been a little bit blindsided by just how different my teams and approaches have been from game to game, with each journey from Pallet Town to Pewter City taking on a distinct flavour and each battle with Brock requiring a different thought process and strategy to come out on top. That diversity between the three experiences is sure to get even greater as I progress further through this project. The next phase will cover everything from Pewter City through Mt Moon and into Cerulean City, where I'll be taking on the Water-type Gym leader Misty for a trio of Cascadebadges. And if you can't wait until then and are hungry for more Pokémon-related blogging, you should check out Daavpuke's recent blog chronicling their time recently spent revisiting the first generation in a Pokémon Yellow Version playthrough, on original hardware no less. Until then, thanks very much for reading, and I'll see you around.

Daniel