Day 6: Hoothoot

i tackeld it until it died

Day 5: Sentret

I'm back on the right track from yesterday, but by the end of this battle Cyndaquil was in pretty bad shape. It's not a big deal, though, because a girl in overalls gave me 5 potions on the first day. I'm thinking potions will be key.

Speaking of items, people have mentioned that I should just use a ton of repels to make it through the game. That kind of defeats the purpose though, so I'm adding rule number 5:

5. No repels

It's gonna be a slooow burn, baby.

Day 4: Geodude

By the way, playing for like 3 minutes a day screws with your sense of direction. I've been dicking around Route 49 for the past two days. Thankfully, that guy up there told me it was a dead end. Getting turned around like this will not make things go any faster..

So Game Freak apparently decided to give Geodude Metapod AI in this game: it uses Defense Curl 90% of the time. Cyndaquil's Leer can counter it, but I didn't see the point in locking them in an eternal cold war, so I just tackled through it. It... wasn't very effective.

Day 3: Spearow

A new Pokemon each day so far. I feel like when I play these games, I usually just get bum rushed by a thousand Ratatas. I wonder if loading the game one battle at a time screws with the RNG used for choosing which Pokemon show up.

As for the battle itself, Spearow did a growl and a peck. The peck did 1 damage. I spammed tackle because tactics.

Afterward, I decided to look at Cyndaquil. It had something in its mouth, so I grabbed for it...

Shucks.


By the way, you don't see it in these screenshots, but Cydaquil is actually female! There's like a 1/8 chance of that happening. Pretending to be fascinated by things keeps me sane!

Day 2: Sentret

I've made it to Day 2. I should get some kind of award!

You can see Cyndaquil is a little beat up from yesterday's battle. That wouldn't be a problem, but Sentret opened with a scratch that did critical damage. I had to use a potion already. Other than that, pretty standard battle. Cyndaquil leveled up and learned SmokeScreen! Not that I'll ever use it.

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!