Childhood misconceptions and beliefs have this funny little quality to them. Something that you can look back on years later, and it brings a smile to your face. A shake of the head as you wonder how you ever believed in such a thing, and perhaps you bring it up for laughs with friends and family. Retrospection at its fondest.
You wouldn’t expect something like that to devolve into a battle for butterfly supremacy.
During a chat with my ROM hacking partner, they brought up their experience with Pokémon Yellow as a child. Through means unknown to us adults (read: larger children), they came to the conclusion that Butterfree was strong. Not only that the poor insect was powerful, in fact, but one of the best Pokémon in the game. Thus, they pushed through and crushed the opposition with their roided up butterfly. Not even the mighty Lance of the Elite Four could withstand its wrath.
The story remained an occasional joke between us, and I even shared it with others. It was only when it was brought up during a segment of heavy criticism towards the first Pokémon generation that a thought came to mind. I sent screenshots of our chat bashing Gen I to a genwunner friend of mine- Geo- purely as a joke. Geo’s replies to these hot takes and disbelief towards the notion of beating the game with a Butterfree prompted me to declare a challenge:
Trial by butterfly.
We would each do a run of Pokémon Yellow, with the intent of riding the Butterfree train to victory. In order to capture the general spirit of an inexperienced kid playing Pokémon for the first time, we set some ground rules. A Butterfree had to be obtained as quickly as possible, but the use of a full party was allowed. Rather, they had to be neglected in favor of raising a super bug, relegating them to such roles as meat shield, HM slave, and eye candy. Oh, and we were barred from using savestates or fast forwarding, putting us at the mercy of the bug ridden, slow, clunky gameplay of the original Pokémon games.
I’m sorry to people that have nostalgia for these games, but I’m not taking back that description above. Credit where due to Gamefreak for making the franchise, but this game has not aged well. Used to later generations as I am, I was completely unprepared for going all the way back. It had been over a decade since playing a vanilla Gen I game, and, just… never again. This was a consistent struggle for most of my playthrough, and I can say with utmost certainty that I did not enjoy it very much at all.
Still, I had to prove that I was the very best, like no one ever was. Armed with my starter Pikachu- which I named Sporky (that’s not a typo)- I caught a Caterpie. I dubbed them El Diablo, first for laughs, and second for personal narrative:
The form of the destroyer had been chosen, and Kanto would suffer.
Geo and I also adopted different strategies. Whereas they were going for a more tactical approach with careful grinding and extensive use of vitamins, I opted for pure brute force. Say what you will, but that turned out to be the correct course of action for me. While our starting times were close, I steadily outpaced Geo as we continued. I found this rather surprising at the time, considering that I’d literally never played through Yellow for any meaningful amount of time.
Funny thing, though. Turns out that Fire Red and Leaf Green- which I am quite familiar with- are very faithful remakes, and all of my knowledge of them applied to their predecessors. That ended being my greatest advantage, as, combined with forcing my way through, it allowed for an efficiency that Geo was unable to match. In fact, by the time I beat the game with a time of 8:55, Geo had less than two hours to beat three more gyms, get through Victory Road, and defeat the Elite Four and champion. Geo conceded rather than make the attempt, which is entirely sensible.
Thus El Diablo took its place as master of Kanto. The masses bowed before its awe inspiring might, or were crushed by it. Its compound gaze was inescapable, and the region plunged into an era of darkness, and despair. A real happy ending, you know?
We’re light on specifics of my journey, but it was really nothing special. It was Pokémon, a statement that’s as much of a testament to consistency as it is a declaration to the franchise’s biggest weakness. Could I have written out a painstaking recreation of the harrowing battles against foes like Lance and the champion? Maybe, but that’s actually not the point. It’s the aforementioned experience, and the frustrations that came along for the ride. What good is my sense of pride and accomplishment™ when the victory didn’t even feel like it was worth it?
I referred to the gameplay as slow above, and I mean it. Not being able to run and being forced to select your bike from the bag each time are just awful. The bike only helps so much, at that, and the Fly screen is super clunky, in that you have to cycle through until you hit the right location. Using the PC can be a hassle as well, since the cursor resets to the top of the list after each action. You have to keep going back down instead of it just staying there, which, while it seems a minor annoyance, should be nonexistent to begin with.
Speaking of the PC, we cannot forget the bag. I hate the bag in this game. You can barely carry anything before it’s full, requiring you to sell or toss items, or make a trip to a Pokémon Center to dump stuff in the PC. I’m not as bothered by the lack of different sections as others might be, but I can also see criticism there. I won’t begrudge that aspect too much, but the lack of space just sucks.
The real cream of the crop, though, is the battle engine and trainer AI. Few places before have I ever encountered such levels of jank. Have you ever accidentally confused a game’s enemy AI so much that they switched Pokémon out for several turns straight? I sure did, and it confuses me more than it did the game. Or, have you ever witnessed the majesty of having Gen I Wrap used on you? Why, it’s really fun to not be able to attack for several turns, and be given no indication that it’s over until the gods of RNG decide. Best of all, status effects only take place during a Pokémon’s attack phase, regardless of whether it’d make sense. This includes poison, which is just weird.
I was even witness to an event so baffling that I struggle to find words for it. During my battle with Lance, his Aerodactyl used Hyper Beam. Nothing sounds wrong on paper there, until he bypassed the cooldown and used Fly the very next turn.
I couldn’t have finished Yellow sooner after that.
The one thing I’ll give Pokémon Yellow is that it’s the same battle system we’ve had since forever, so I didn’t have to fumble around. At the same time, however, I have to wonder whether that’s really a problem. We’ve seen increasing refinement to the battle system in Pokémon, but the base gameplay hasn’t changed in decades. I’ll often find it plain tedious after a while, and I think there’s room for innovation, or a complete overhaul. Personally, I’d love to see combat like in Spectrobes: Beyond the Portals, in which you actually play as the titular Spectrobes themselves. Directly controlling the Pokémon you’ve raised in real time combat sounds amazing, regardless of how much I do enjoy turn-based combat.
In the end, though, I have proven myself to be the Butterfly Master. El Diablo and their merry band of meat shields will remain one of my more memorable teams, honestly, and may their memory live on. We already have another challenge in the works, this time with Beautifly.
Until next time.