Day 1: Hoothoot. Also, What have I done

So one day a good friend of mine told me that I needed to have more long-term goals. He had a point: I am aimless! Useless! Not very dependable! A man child, as it were. I've decided I will create a blog with a goal. A difficult, arduous goal. I will update it every single day until that goal is completed. And that goal is to beat Red in Pokemon HeartGold version, playing only one battle a day.

Yep.

 

 

 

Yes, I'm aware this could literally take years. No, I'm not crazy. This... this is going to happen.

There's a few rules I'm going to try to adhere to, but I might change my mind later. The only thing that really matters is uploading every day.
1. I'll try to train four main Pokemon fairly evenly. Yes, this will increase the length of the game exponentially. If that drives me insane, I might take it down to three or two. I should mention I haven't decided what those four Pokemon will be. I don't even remember Generation 2 all that well. This is the one with Togemon, right?
2. My Pokemon have to be caught and raised in HeartGold. That means no importing from a GBA game and no trading with friends.
3. No gamesharking or cheating, obviously. I might make an exception if I get really attached to training a Pokemon that needs to be traded to evolve. In which case I'll just do the cheat to evolve them (if it exists, I've never cheated before.) I might also make an exception to unlock all the content that you need Event Pokemon for, like that one where you meet Giovanni.
4. I'll try to play on an alternate day/night schedule so there's more variation in the daily Pokemon. No promises though.

 As a disclaimer, this isn't going to be an exhaustive Something Awful-style Let's Play. I'm just going to focus on uploading a battle a day. When I reach some big landmark like a Gym battle or a new Pokemon, I might put more effort into this. But for the most part, expect a single screenshot of the day's battle. And so, without further ado...

 We begin with Prof. Oak's usual spiel. He asks for your gender and your name because immersion. I go ahead and enter the name I use for almost any game...

I think I like it because it's marginally less shocking, and marginally more original than Hitler. Besides, the Pokeverse is basically a socialist utopia....

Before long, I'm choosing my starter Pokemon. The fire starter is usually my least favorite starter, but hey, this blog is all about growth, right? Might as well go against my own instincts and choose the schnozjew hedgehogy thing. All the Generation 2 starters kinda suck, anyways. Oh, and don't worry, I didn't give him the name of a mass murdering tyrant. Mostly because I didn't have any good ideas. He's just Cyndaquil.

Together we venture onto our first Route, Route 29. This next step is the first goddamn step into the rest of my life. Oh, and I gotta say, having your Pokemon walk behind you in HeartGold is seriously the coolest thing ever.

 Soon, I come across my first of many, many battles...

A Hoothoot. They tackle one another until Hoothoot faints. That's... pretty much it. And that's going to be it 95% of the time. Exciting!