#oh bitty

Previously on Bitty Plays Pokemon, we were playing an emulator for a Randomized Red rom. Our team consisted of an over leveled Wartortle (named IDK), a mostly grass-type Sandslash (named Shushie), a Magnemite with no attack moves until raised (Usagi), an Omanyte (named Genie because of how his sprite looks), a Clefairy we bought from the Magicarp Salesman (named Blossom), and.... we have yet to get our 6th team member because we wasted all 15 of our Poke Balls trying to catch our Rival’s (Blue) Parasect.

Picking up where we left off, it’s time to head to the S.S. Anne! A few hilarities to come up though:

 - The game started up in Cerulean City. We haven’t played since March and have no idea what we were doing. I saw that the house the house that had gotten robbed was now clear and figured we needed to head that way.

- Despite me saying exactly where we were going, my niece seems to have a strange fascination with the Town Map. Color change because we left town? Better check the map! Went through the underground passage? Check the map. Board the ship? Map! Gone back to a town we were seriously just in 5 minutes ago? MAP!!! (the TPPer in me keeps wanting to make Cartography jokes.)

- Speaking of the ship, that did seem to be our next destination. It was pretty funny because my niece couldn’t understand why the old man (because randomized sprite) couldn’t let us pass without seeing the ticket. Every. Single. Time. So after I went to heal for like the third time (because I actually wanted to go level grinding and she wanted to explore the ship, so it seemed fair to do both), she started bumping the gatekeeper on the bridge going “WE HAVE THE TICKET, SO MOOOOVE >O”

- Doing a randomized run for a blind run is probably not a good idea because we keep “randomly” getting in over our heads. In this case, various things with Explosion. I was caught off guard by a Spearrow that managed to one-shot Usagi. One sailor in particular had a Palkia that more or less wiped out our entire party were it not for IDK being way over leveled for this area.

- I weep for all the EXP IDK keeps eating since she still remains Rose’s favorite. While we have gotten some level grinding in due to my niece automatically switching her in for every single battle, it’s very slow going for everyone this way. She more or less wiped out Blue without a hitch giving Genie some EXP at least before doing so. Note, I may play a bit while she’s gone to ensure when we get the chance, we have enough Pokemon caught to get the EXP Share OTL

- The hilarious follow-up to all this though: Now that we had gotten through, I naturally wanted to go to the Gym so we could finish with the town. My niece discovered she could Bike with the Voucher we picked up, so we made a trip to Cerulean. Then back to Vermillion. She thought she’d go east toward the seaside route because she was determined to get to Fushia before bed, but I had to assure her that we couldn’t go that way. So back to Cerulean… almost, when she saw a Jigglypuff and decided that she MUST HAVE IT!!!! and rather than going to Cerulean to restock our lost Poke Balls from last time, she just used Teleport to go back to Vermillion. We got our puff (finally a 6th team member! And her name is Bubbles to serve as companion to Blossom, our Clefairy. …I almost want a Chansey now to fill out the fluffy pink triad though naming it Buttercup seems very against Chansey’s usual personality XDD ) but rather than heading back to Cerulean, she decided we should try for the bridge again… and got distracted by Diglett Tunnel.

- Note, we have been through Diglett Tunnel before, and had to turn back because of our lack of Cut. She wanted to get rid of Genie, because she’s no longer enamored by his design, but we only own 6 pokemon, and I taught him Cut to at least assure her for the time being that we still need him. So once again, we make it through the tunnel, we’ve got our team, we’ve got the Cut, and I go to use it when the game smacks me with the cruel realization: WE NEVER BEAT MISTY.

- Speed forward through the long, LOOOONG trek back to Cerulean City (because of minor distractions), and sure enough, it’s time for the Gym. …. Reminder, IDK is at like level 33 now. Misty’s team consisted of a Psyduck at level 18, and a Landourus at level 21. Shushie made quick work of the former with Razor Leaf, while IDK basically one-shotted the Landorous with Waterfall. Getting another badge quickly lead to the question of: Oh hey, we got a badge! Can we go to the league now? And telling her that we needed 8 badges, she made a beeline after Surge.

- I was actually going to show her how annoying the “puzzle” was by explaining that if you click on one trash can- …. And I found the switch on the first one I clicked. SO, I went on to say the second switch had to be in one of the three nearby. Naturally, I clicked wrong, and went to show her how because I messed up, the first switch has now-!!! Stayed exactly where I left it! The next one we tried was right this time. GOOOOOO FIGURE. Surge himself was a joke though, I suddenly can’t even remember what he had because IDK got sent out and one-shotted him. Seeing as we’ve got the game set to Yellow teams, he only owned one Pokemon, which had my niece in stitches to see how bad we kicked his tail.

- Normally I would end this where we end one session, but starting up the game again today… not much happened. We made it to Rock Tunnel, took three steps in before she commented how we needed a Flashlight or something, and after the first battle in the dark she Dig’d out of there so fast it was pretty funny. I showed her on the Town Map how if we wanted to get Flash, she’d have to go ALLLLLL the way back to Pewter, which had her whinning, but she was determined that if we absolutely HAD to take the tunnel, she’d go for the flashlight.

- On the way back, we found a Vulpix, which she simply MUST HAVE (after trying to steal from various trainers along the route to get to the tunnel) and now we have our first team trade-in: Nanie. Unfortunately, sending Genie the Helix *ahem* Omanyte to the PC meant that we had to teach Cut to Bubbles in order to travel the pathways. On the upside though, Nanie is looking to be a pretty sweet teammate since she knows Poison Powder and Flash and Crabhammer. Here’s hoping we can find a Fire Stone. She also is now serving as our Flashlight. My niece also, without me telling her we actually needed to, randomly decided we should go on a catching spree on the way back to Pewter. No new teammates, in fact, one of the Diglett we caught (seriously, the biggest surprise of all was actually finding one in the Diglett Tunnel) wasn’t even given a nickname since she said it already had one. (Being that we both go “Dig-dig~!” whenever one shows up.) Still, once we got to the researcher, we happened to have EXACTLY 10 Pokemon for the HM!

- We also bought about 50 Repels during our latest excursion to Vermillion City (I was only going to buy a few, and she suddenly got curious how many we could afford altogether) and made very anti-climactic and quick work speeding through Rock Tunnel. It was pretty tense though, because between all of the trainers, and our lack of levels, we only had IDK and Blossom still standing when we made it out. |D;;

- Since there was so much back tracking though, I actually had the game to myself for a while for some SERIOUSLY NEEDED LEVEL GRINDING while she was in the shower. So ending on a high point, everyone is now only at most 10 levels behind IDK, and we figured Lavender Town to be a good closing spot for this session.