Game Boy/Game Boy Color - what are you playing right now?

[Ziggy]

Ah, gotcha. Yeah, this is exactly why I never played a lot of NES/SNES ports on the GBC and GBA.

[opa]

7 badges in on Pokemon Silver. I think after you beat the first region you go straight into Pokemon Red/Blue world, right? There's so much content in this one cart I don't know that I'm capable of handling it. lol

[Jagosaurus]

Man... I played DKC so much on GB. We took a road trip to Colorado (24 hours across TX, NM, & CO) & spent 90% of it with my GB & DKC... and SML . This was still my OG grey GB with a big screen and light add on.

Started emulating Pokémon Yellow with my son yesterday. He was so fired up. This is the version I had as a kid vs Red or Blue. Strange I'm having to explain this game came before cards or movies/TV he knows. We were there for it all coming up. Kids now just know Pokémon as part of pop culture.

[opa]

Gen 1 for life.

I beat Pokemon Blue using only Blastoise. My total time was 10 hours 12 minutes. I wasn't going for a speed run but I'm sure it was actually under ten hours if you take into account the time I left the game running to get more coffee. My final moveset was Hyper Beam, Bite, Hydro Pump, and Water Gun. I'm sure there were a couple of more ideal moves for the elite four I could have used, but I was around level 74 so most enemies died in one hit.

A few comments about my solo run:
- I did do the mew glitch twice. Mew's are great for your HM's and it's fewer slots taken up in your party. When you go to heal that's another little animation you get to skip at the Poke Center. I never fought with them, however. I like the thought that, in the canon of this story, a little ten year old kid is walking around with not one, but two, of the rarest pokemon ever; and he only chooses to use a giant snapping turtle.

- For whatever reason I never got the bicycle. I got the voucher, and I fully intended on getting it, but I just was so focused on doing the bare minimum for the story that it wasn't until the end that I realized I didn't go to Cycling Road. I wasn't aware you could skip that.

- Teleport is actually incredibly useful. I forgot how much back-and-forth you have to do in the very beginning of the game. Teleport warps you back to the last pokemon center you used. So if you need to travel back to a specific town after a quest, just keep teleport locked onto that town's poke center. Granted, once you get fly, teleport is kind of unnecessary but it is still good for the early game.

- Since I was only using one Pokemon I did not have to fight random encounters. In fact, I would often use repels to get through caves or other long stretches that have random battles. I got all the experience I needed from fighting the trainers and this is when I noticed something. I didn't keep track but I swear it seems like I only fought the same 30 pokemon (the most frequent being: arbok, ekans, koffing, ratatta, pidgey, growlithe, grimer, muk...). Actually, let me rephrase this: most of the trainers in the game seem to be Rockets or have the same general pokemon as Rockets. I'd rather fight a freakin' bug catcher again than another Rocket. Once you start ignoring the world and stick to the plot railroad, the variety really takes a nosedive. Maybe this is just an issue with Red and Blue. From what I've played of Silver it seems to switch things up a bit.

- My rival was named "TURD". After defeating him in the Pokemon Tower he called me "a stinker." I found that fairly amusing.

Overall, I'm not sure I would recommend going through Pokemon Blue with a single pokemon. Granted, not sharing experience allows your level to be significant enough to plow through pokemon that can still hurt you based on their type. I think maybe choosing two pokemon that can cover each other's faults would be a more sound strategy (and at least you don't have to stare at the back of only squirtle's head for the whole ten hours).

[opa]

Ignoring my own advice in the previous post...
After a little swapping of save files around, I now have Bellsprout as my starter in Pokemon Blue. Not sure I'm really gonna get into it today but I look forward to the new adventure.

[Nemoide]

I've been playing Kwirk for original GB lately. This game is really pretty good for what it is! You play as a little tomato guy who has to get through mazes with some rotating pieces and pushable blocks. It starts off easy but becomes QUITE hard. Thankfully you can choose any level right of the bat with no password or anything.
It's a frustrating game, but since you can put it down after a minute or two and come back to it without any real progress lost (theoretically if you know what you're doing each level should be clearable in a matter of seconds) it's not frustrating enough to make me quit.

As I've come to familiarize myself with the pre-Color era GB games, I feel like games like Kwirk are great examples of what the system excelled at. Engaging little puzzle-heavy games that can be played in small chunks! It's not exactly a profound gaming experience, but it's a good way to kill some time.

[o.pwuaioc]

I've been playing Kwirk for original GB lately. This game is really pretty good for what it is! You play as a little tomato guy who has to get through mazes with some rotating pieces and pushable blocks. It starts off easy but becomes QUITE hard. Thankfully you can choose any level right of the bat with no password or anything.
It's a frustrating game, but since you can put it down after a minute or two and come back to it without any real progress lost (theoretically if you know what you're doing each level should be clearable in a matter of seconds) it's not frustrating enough to make me quit.

As I've come to familiarize myself with the pre-Color era GB games, I feel like games like Kwirk are great examples of what the system excelled at. Engaging little puzzle-heavy games that can be played in small chunks! It's not exactly a profound gaming experience, but it's a good way to kill some time.

I second Kwirk's recommendation. After the first section, it really does ramp up the difficulty, but I think that's the charm - figuring out complex puzzles. I think I've set it down and years later picked it back up and had to refigure out some of the puzzles I once had got, so there is replayability, too.

[Ziggy]

Has anyone ever caught them all, or attempted to catch them all? Sorry... Catch 'em all?

I've played through Pokemon Red a few times over the years, but I more or less play it the same way every time. Charizard is my starter, and I've never tried anything different. Well, I now have a copy of Pokemon Blue for the first time ever. I'm thinking about playing through it with Blastoise being my starter, and then trading him to Red after I'm done. And maybe I'll see about catching them all in my Red version (and trading from Blue what I can't get natively in Red).

I just put two fresh 2032's in my Pokemon carts (a little more capacity than the stock 2025 that come in them) and I have a Retrode with the GB adapter to back up the saves, so I feel a little more comfortable attempting to catch them all. Catching them all was never something I remotely cared about, but now that I don't have to worry about losing my save files I might go for it. I definitely wont binge play to get them all. This will probably take me many years. Every few years I might feel like playing through the game, and then I might catch a few more.

[alienjesus]

I have caught 'em all, in several of the games at this point. I actually found red, blue and yellow some of the more frustrating games to do that in despite having the smallest number to obtain in the series, as if you do it legitimately as grinding can be quite slow and most pokemon simply evolve by level up.

I have completed the pokedex in gens 1,4,5 and 6 at this point. Gens 2 and 3 will ahppen at some point but they're definitely the most frustrating ones to complete.

[Ziggy]

The low encounter rate is annoying. It just took me roughly 30 minutes to get a Pikachu in Viridian Forest, and that's not even one of the harder ones to get. I didn't even consider the grind to level up all the ones that need to evolve! At least, as far as I can tell, when a Pokemon evolves your Pokedeck still registers the prior state as owned, so you don't have to worry about getting multiples.

But like I said, this is why I will catch 'em all over the course of many playthrough which will probably happen over the course of years. Instead of grinding to level up certain Pokemon just to evolve them, I'll just make those part of my main 6 and evolve them "naturally."