@zubat I’ll eventually be teaching Beedrill Hyperbeam (along with Golduck) because there’s nothing more badass than a Beedrill blasting a friggin Hyperbeam into another mon’s face haha. Oh and I also swapped the slot of Wiggly/Lanturn for Nidoqueen (currently a Nidorina). I’ve always really liked Nidoqueen but never actually used one.
You’re making me want to do another runthrough of Crystal even though I just finished it a couple of months ago…
STOP IT!
P.S. Did you catch the Heracross behind Kurt’s house? Headbutting those trees has always worked for me.
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@mjs61290 Do it, dude! But try Crystal Clear this time 
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@mjs61290 Close! I caught in a tree directly to the left of the house below Kurt’s. Same thing with Heracross, always really liked it, never used it. Let me say, he is also a friggin BEAST! I can’t believe Heracross learns Aerial Ace by level up. Seems a little busted early game.
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Gen 2 is my favourite Gen. 10 year old me got rekt by Whitney’s Miltank so many times.
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100% agree, nothing beats the first time I got a GBC with Crystal. How amazing was it that I could go on an adventure, even whilst in my parents’ car or at my grandparents’ house. I played Red after Crystal and Silver and enjoyed it almost as much.
It’s difficult for me to choose between games but in some ways I feel gen 3 was the peak of the games if not gen 2. Again the excitement of getting a new console, the music, seeing new Pokemon we had been waiting for, the right balance between simplicity and complexity, building bases and fighting our friends, the refined Kanto remake Fire Red, learning about Deoxys. I feel like there was more to do and I probably spent the most time on that generation.
Gen 4 was also good with more mechanics and the amazing HGSS, but it wasn’t quite the same. I stopped before gen 5
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Let us also not forget, gen 2 is the king of weird and wonderful. If it’s isn’t singular designs, it is singular movepools and/or stat distributions. The whole gen is nuts.
It had to happened this way because they tried to flesh out the competitive side. Stall machines and utility mons galore.
The one thing I always found disappointing though is how many of these brilliant designs they made totally useless, more so than any other gen. Sunflora, Magcargo, Dunsparce, Yanma, Corsola, Girafarig, Delibird, Lanturn, Togetic, Murkrow, Sneasel, Octillery, Piloswine, Ariados, Ledian, Noctowl, Sudowoodo, Stantler, Furret, even things like Jumpluff and Politoed to a certain extent. Most barely memeable UU material in their first gen. 20+ years later and many of these are STILL totally useless.
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@c0ll3ct0r I’m gonna pretend you didn’t just bad mouth my Girafarig. (Although, yeah I get it haha)
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You can throw Mantine in that list, too. A great concept ruined by its stat distribution. It could have been a terrific Special sponge with that 140 SPD, but then Pokemon went and gave it 65 HP. If it even would have had something like 80 HP, it could have seen legitimate use, especially considering its SPA wasn’t bad (base 80).
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Lol, I actually had it on the list, but it got deleted when I rewrote some parts of the post. The problem with Mantine unfortunately is the quad weakness to tbolt/Thunder, boltbeam is everywhere and even if they jacked it up to Regice levels it would still be a massive problem, with Electabuzz and Magneton ruling GSC UU, and GSC OU being the most electric heavy tier ever.
Still, I could definitively see some niche use with better HP in ADV, Mantine is a better fit there (we see it once in a blue moon as it is already.)
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Posting a picture of the Neo Gen box in another thread today made me think about something else and I’m curious if any of you experienced the same:
Exclusivity/Unattainability
When base was released I was 7 years old. I didn’t have much of a conception about money, I got a small amount and then I used it and for a time, Pokemon cards were the greatest, so every krone went into that. Then after a while you realize you have other things you want to spend money on as well, and with the constant barrage of “should you really spend this on these flimsy cards that you can’t really play with/what if you grow tired of them etc etc” from family, you start to think twice.
Fast forward to Neo, capital spending on Pokemon is down, and packs are a bit more expensive than they used to. So every pack is bought with a little icy feeling in my stomach, a little whiff of the “this is not a good idea”-feeling. But you want them, you want them so much, and every once in a while you get a hit, a Lugia or a Ursaring or whatever. But every pack is that much more precious and costly, always wondering if this will be the last one.
Fast forward 9 years, I start buying boxes. Turns out, nothing has changed. Neo Gen 1st ed is three times the price of Base unlimited, which means I essentially repeat the process. The volume of Neo is smaller, more “special” in a way, more limited. I don’t churn through packs in the same fashion I would with Fossil or Jungle.
Even to this day, the idea that Neo is “special” in a certain kind of way is fixed into my brain.
Funny thing is, this feeling is actually mirrored in the games as well. RBY batteries last forever, GSC has some of the worst battery lifespan ever so if you’re like me you never got to fulfill the post game experience in a way (even years and years later I burnt through a Crystal battery in no time.) In RBY it is easy to glitch your way to items and other building blocks, in GSC the glitching is more troublesome and more risky. And every gen from ADV onwards, your save file isn’t deleted.
All in all, Gen 2 is definitely the most troublesome generation in a way, but that is also part of what makes it special.
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I solved this problem by simply buying them digitally on my 3DS. That way they last forever 
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That’s certainly a most valid option (or at least it was up until recently.) 
Too bad there isn’t Dodrio speed on the 3DS. I don’t think I could be bothered at normal speed for anything more than going through the story mode anymore, even with the Dodrio it is almost unbearable.
League + Level 42 Rapidash and Tangelas as the best grinding option is torture. And I have to say, as much as I love GSC the most fun part of those games for me was always using my teams on Stadium 2. They really need to re-release that game as a switch option or something (slottet for 2023 I believe.) If they add a wifi option I’m gonna have a heart attack. 
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That’s the funny thing about Gen 2. It has TONS of problems. Horrible level scaling, terrible team building choices, weird placement of new Pokemon (can’t get Gen 2 Pokemon like Houndour and Larvitar until you get to Kanto? Seriously?), weird gym leader rosters (why do the Gen 2 gym leaders use mostly Gen 1 Pokemon?), etc.
All that, and yet, they remain my favorite games ever. Just goes to show how much inherent value those games have.
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Totally. God forbid anyone gets access to the mighty Slugma before the homestretch of the story mode. 
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How Slugma wasn’t in Burned Tower is beyond me.
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Or Dark cave or Mt Mortar or…well, anywhere else but a few grassy patches with the Fearows and Grimers right next to the ocean in Kanto.
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You could argue that this isn’t the best Pokemon soundtrack, but you’d be wrong.
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Skip to 1:32:20
Great thread. Currently doing a crystal run through and collecting the other games so i can do a full pokedex. Having a real blast. Theres just something mystical about the whole experience.
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