I thought about posting here upon seeing this thread, though I was unsure about it. But now since I got tagged, I decided to give it a shot. It took a few days to get this post done because I wanted to focus on other things and I wanted this post to be pretty good. It could probably have become even better if I had spent more time on it, but I wanted to get it done rather quickly and not spend an eternity on it like I tend to do for longer posts here on the forums.
Introduction
It has been many years since I last played G/S/C. I think the last time I played them at all was in 2010 (and then it was only to compare some things in them to how it was in HG/SS) and the last time I played them seriously must have been in 2006 or maybe even earlier. I am currently not playing them and I have no plans to return to them anytime soon. In fact, I am unable to return to the since the batteries of my game carts are dead. Because of that, I wasn’t really sure what to post here. So, for the lack of something better, I decided to simply post some of my memories from G/S/C as well as some general opinions of the games. I hope that’s okay. I have already said several of these things in other posts here at the forums, so I want to apologize for repeating myself at times.
My first Pokémon game was Blue, but my second was Silver and my third was Crystal. Gold ended up being my fifth. Before I got either of the Gen 2 games myself, I had seen other people playing them. The most notable was one guy at a summer camp one year, I recall him having a lot of cool Pokémon on his team. Yet he did not use any of them, he just trained a Mr. Mime instead. I think I also had the opportunity to play the beginning of the game after having the chance to borrow it from a kid at school, but I never got very far and had to give it back quickly. I remember getting to the point where I got to pick my starter, but not much further than that.
English is not my first language, and I did not understand everything when I played through G/S/C as a kid. However, I understood a bit more in Silver than in Blue. I also played Silver a bit differently compared to Blue, I was more willing to take risks now. In Blue, I had often gotten stuck because I was afraid to explore or backtrack (though I think the Kanto games could also have done better when it comes to telling the player where to go next, their game design is a bit lacking in that aspect, but that’s for a different discussion). I had also learned a lot about the general gameplay and game mechanics after playing Blue, which was very useful when I played through Silver.
Memories from the games
I have many memories from playing G/S/C. Especially from my first playthrough of Silver, so let’s start with everything I can remember from it. I picked Totodile as my starter because my mindset as a kid was “The Water starter is objectively the best in every possible way and anyone who says otherwise is wrong”. And in a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy, I remember that my starter Totodile managed to solo basically the entire game by itself. It had a moveset of Slash / Bite / Surf / Hydro Pump, which I thought was the optimal moveset for a Feraligatr back then. That said, I did have some other team members as well. The ones I can remember were Ampharos, Togetic, Umbreon and eventually Lugia. Unsure about the last one though. It might have been Pidgeot, but I’m not sure.
I remember that since I only used my starter, it became a Feraligatr very early. I think it happened around the rival battle at the Burned Tower. I also somehow managed to evolve my Togepi into Togetic relatively early, around Cianwood or so. I remember it evolving around level 15. Not sure how in the world I managed to do that, but I did. I don’t think my Ampharos was fully evolved until I was in the post-game, but it evolved from Mareep into Flaaffy around the same time as my Togepi became a Togetic. As for Umbreon, it evolved from Eevee during the post-game, when I was going to Kanto with the SS. Aqua for the first time. I don’t remember the movesets for most of the team, but apart from Feraligatr, I am pretty sure my Umbreon had a final moveset of Faint Attack / Psychic / Shadow Ball / Moonlight. Despite being a defensive Pokémon, I recall it working pretty well offensively as well.
When I started that playthrough, I remember that I set the clock completely wrong because I was sometimes very stupid as a kid. I set it so it was mostly night during the day and day during the night, it was like I was playing Moon or Ultra Moon 15 years before they even existed. I remember that I almost never got to groom my Pokémon at Daisy’s because it was in the middle of the night for me when it was 3-4 PM in the game.
While I mostly managed to solo the game with my starter Feraligatr, I had some hard battles along the way. I remember losing against Whitney on my first try, then I managed to beat her on my second try. Not sure how, but it might have involved sacrificing the other members of my team against her Rollout-using Miltank and then sending Croconaw back in once the Rollout had ended. I also remember that when I faced Lance, my Feraligatr was out of PP for most of its moves. But then it learned Hydro Pump during the battle (which means it must have reached level 58, crazy!). I ended up having only PP left for Hydro Pump and used it to beat the remains of Lance’s team despite it not being very effective against his Dragonite.
Regarding the main story in the games, I remember that my favorite part was when Team Rocket was taking over the Radio Tower in Goldenrod. The first time I played Silver, I thought of it as “the mystery in Goldenrod City”. It was really fun, but I remember that I got disappointed by the story ending pretty much afterwards since I had expected it to continue into something more and even cooler. When I played HG/SS, I remember that I got massively disappointed by the story, especially the Radio Tower part. It was nowhere near as great as I remembered it from G/S/C.
I remember that even back when I played Silver for the first time, I really didn’t like the rival. He was so mean and cruel, he reminded me of the jerks and bullies at school so I did not approve of his role in the games. I also got annoyed by how he randomly ambushed me at times. I remember that on my first playthrough of Silver, I made it all the way to Olivine once before beating Morty. But then I met the rival there, and I thought he was going to battle me, so I actually turned my game off, losing a lot of progress.
I also have some memories regarding specific Pokémon in this playthrough. First, there’s Sudowoodo. In this playthrough, I encountered it as a roadblock, and I defeated it because I thought there would be another one to catch later on. There had been two Snorlax in Blue, so surely there must be two Sudowoodo in Silver, right? Nope. Because of that, I never got a Sudowoodo on that playthrough. But I learned something from that, so I made sure to catch it in all subsequent playthroughs of the Johto games.
Second, there’s Larvitar. I had managed to find a Larvitar at Mt. Silver, and then one of my friends told me that Larvitar apparently had a really cool evolution. So I started training it. But then, my friend told me that he had been wrong. His friend (which I did not know at that time) had told him that it was not Larvitar’s evolution that was cool, but rather the evolution of Larvitar’s evolution. So it meant more training. I continued training my Larvitar, it reached level 30 and became a Pupitar. Okay, not so cool. But since it apparently had a cooler evolution, I continued training it.
I was wondering when it would evolve again. Level 38 maybe? Nah, too early. 40 is more likely. But it didn’t evolve at level 40 either. Okay, I’ll just continue training it. 42 then? Nope. 44? 45? 48? Okay, it
has to evolve at level 50. But upon reaching level 50, Pupitar still hadn’t evolved! How long was this going to take? I was starting to lose patience, but I was still determined to see that cool final evolution, so I continued training Larvitar. Then a thought occurred to me. In Blue, there had been Dratini. It evolved into Dragonite at level 30 and then into Dragonite at level 55. What if it was the same for Larvitar, if it was the “Dratini of Silver”, so to say? It had evolved into Pupitar at level 30, maybe it would evolve into whatevertar at level 55? And that’s exactly what happened! Upon reaching level 55, my Pupitar finally evolved into Tyranitar. Which was really cool, just as I had been told.
I also want to talk about my experiences with catching Lugia and Ho-Oh for the first time in Silver. Regarding Lugia, I had somehow learned that it had to be found at Whirl Islands. But where exactly, and how was I supposed to find it there? I explored the Islands thoroughly, and I don’t remember exactly how, but I somehow managed to make it to the bottom where Lugia resided. I was for once smart enough to save before encountering it, because I remember that I failed to catch it the first time around but I could simply reset the game. Then I successfully got it on my second try. I must have been in school when I first encountered it, because I remember that I was walking home with a friend to his house when I made my second attempt. We were both so excited that we couldn’t wait until we got to his house, we just had to catch it along the way! I have a memory of us walking over the railway which we had to cross to get to his house, hopefully we did watch out for trains when we did that. Anyway, I eventually managed to catch Lugia, by that point we had reached my friend’s house. We were both super happy and excited about it. I showed it for my other friends the next day and they were very surprised.
Then there’s Ho-Oh. I had managed to get the Rainbow Wing from a random NPC in Pewter City so I could access the Tin Tower. Looking back at it now, that is a very random way to get an item for a legendary Pokémon. Anyway, I went to Tin Tower to explore it. One of my friends, who was more knowledgeable about Pokémon than me at the time, had told me that he had been at Tin Tower in Gold but there was “nothing” to be found there. Well, there had to be something! I explored the place and eventually managed to solve the puzzle, making it all the way to the top where I found Ho-Oh! I managed to catch it as well. The next day at school, I showed it for my friend and he was very surprised.
I also remember that I had some guidebooks for the games. One for G/S and one for Crystal. Sadly, I can’t remember exactly what they featured and I do no longer have them, so I can’t go back and check. I think they were missing a lot of vital information though. But at the same time, they did teach me some notable things such as where and when to find Lapras, which I would never have been able to figure out on my own.
One other thing I remember from Silver is that I managed to solve how to access the Magnet Train before any of my friends did. There was even friend to one of my friends who I did personally not know at the time (but I would later get to know him as well) who was a big expert on Pokémon, but he had not figured out how to do this. So I got to meet him and tell/show him how to do. That was really cool.
Last thing I want to share from Silver is that I remember that I let some friends borrow it and play through it. First, there was one guy in my class. He kept it for a very long while, but I don’t think he ever managed to beat the main story. And I don’t think he evolved his Quilava into Typhlosion either for some unknown reason. I eventually got the game back from him, but I had to remind him a lot to bring it back to me. Then I let another friend borrow it as well. He managed to beat it at least, and we often played together. I later got it back from him when he felt done with it.
That’s it for Silver. Next up is Crystal. On my first playthrough of it, I remember that I used Chikorita as my starter, and it was not good. In fact, it is the worst starter I have ever used and my least favorite out of all starters that exist. It was an utter nightmare as it struggled in almost every single important battle, the only exception was Whitney out of all trainers. I remember that my then-Bayleef nuked her so hard. It was a bit overleveled in that battle though. On my second playthrough, I used Feraligatr again instead of Meganium, and it rocked just like in Silver.
As said in the unpops thread, Crystal is my favorite Gen 2 game, and my overall favorite Johto game. It did some neat improvements over G/S and I appreciated those. It is not without issues though, I missed being able to catch Mareep as it is one of my favorite Johto Pokémon lines. But I could at least get it through trade.
Crystal also featured the first ever battle facility in the series, the Battle Tower. When I played Crystal as a kid, I occasionally tried to beat it, but I never managed to do so. At best, I managed to win one or two, maybe even three battles in a row. Never more. I always found it so hard to beat. I would love to go back and give it another try now that I have more experience with battle facilities thanks to having played a lot at the facilities in the newer generations.
Then there’s the legendary beasts. Roaming legendaries is a concept I have always disliked, and I am not happy about how it was introduced in G/S/C. But I liked how Suicune was no longer a roamer in Crystal. I know for sure that I never managed to catch all of the roamers in either of my games, though I managed to catch all of them (albeit on different games) in order to complete the Pokédex. Speaking of which, I remember that I completed the Pokédex on all three of my Johto games, the only ones I missed were Mew and Celebi, the two mythicals. There was apparently a Celebi event for G/S/C in my country (according to what a guy on a different forum told me) but I missed it. As for Mew, I suppose I could have gotten it through the Mew Trick on R/B/Y, and I did so on my very last replay of Red, but then I never traded it to any of my Johto games.
Sadly, I don’t have much else to share from Crystal. So let’s move on to Gold. Unlike the others, I only played through it once. I know for sure I played through Crystal twice, and Silver at least twice as well, maybe even three times.
From my Gold playthrough, I remember that I picked Cyndaquil as my starter, and it is my favorite Johto starter nowadays. Totodile is second, and Chikorita last. On my Gold playthrough, I created my “Dream team” for that time. Sadly, I can’t remember all of the members of it right now. I know the first three were Typhlosion (starter), Feraligatr (traded over from another game) and Bellossom. The last three might have been Ampharos, Togetic and Pidgeot (or maybe just 1-2 of them), but I don’t remember exactly. Though I remember that I really liked that team and had lots of fun with it.
That’s it for my memories related to the specific games. Next, I want to share some thoughts on various general things about G/S/C.
Sprites
First, the sprites. On the whole, I think the sprites in Gold are generally much better than the sprites in Silver. There are some exceptions though, I think the most notable is Lugia.
Silver Lugia is amazing. It looks so terrifying, as it is about to shoot an Aeroblast right at you.
Gold Lugia, on the other hand, is terrible. It looks really derpy in a very negative way, not suitable for a mascot legend at all. I don’t know how or why they made it looks so bad, it is as if they made it look bad on purpose. Can’t believe they used this as the basis for the Crystal sprite rather than the Silver sprite, though it looks a little better in Crystal at least.
Interestingly, the opposite happens for Ho-Oh.
Gold Ho-Oh looks rather intimidating, this is not a bird you want to mess with.
Silver Ho-Oh on the other hand, looks like a derpy chicken.
Then there are some sprites that look awful in G/S, but good in Crystal. One of the most notable is Raikou.
In G/S, it doesn’t even look like Raikou. Half of its facial features are missing (and the colors are a bit wrong, though that might be because of technical limitations). I have seen G/S Raikou being nominated as the worst sprite in Pokémon history, and I’m actually willing to agree.
Fortunately, they fixed it in Crystal. Now it looks just like it should.
On the whole, I can understand why they mostly used the Gold sprites as the base for many of the Crystal sprites. I think Crystal has the best Gen 2 sprites for the most part. They look livelier and more colorful, this is probably because the GBC had better color capacities than the regular Game Boy. I also like how they are animated. Some are still better in Gold or Silver though. Another thing I liked was how Gold and Silver had different sprites, that was something really unique and pretty cool in retrospect. Though at the same time, it was a bit unnecessary and I understand why they never did it again in any future games.
Breeding and baby Pokémon
When I was a kid, I was into the Pokémon TCG a lot. In fact, it was how I got into the franchise in the first place. It started with the TCG for me, not the games or the Anime. I used to collect, trade and battle other kids with the cards. Now I no longer do (lost interest in the TCG during early Gen 3), but I have some really good memories from the TCG. Some that are actually related to the games, so I decided to share them here as well.
First, the TCG fooled me a bit with one card named Moo-Moo Milk.
Full info
here.
It has images of Miltank on the milk bottles, as well as a Cleffa standing by the door. Since I did not know about Cleffa at the time, I thought that the Pokémon on the image was a pre-evolution for Miltank named Moo-Moo. It wasn’t until much later that I learned how wrong I had been about that.
Then there was another thing. The Mareep line had been featured in the first TCG set for Gen 2, Neo Genesis. Then Mareep got featured in the next set, Neo Discovery, as well. I also had an empty spot in the Pokédex right before Mareep in my games. Why would they feature it in both TCG sets, and why was there an empty spot right before it in the Pokédex? I thought that this could only mean one thing: Mareep had a baby form! These two things made too much sense for me to not believe this. So I put an Ampharos and Ditto in the Day-Care, excited to see what baby Mareep would look like… and then I was very disappointed when the egg hatched into a regular Mareep instead of a baby Mareep.
Another memory related to breeding is this: I remember reading once that if you bred a shiny Pokémon, the odds of getting a shiny from the eggs were high. So I decided to try this by putting my shiny Gyarados and a Ditto in the Day-Care to see if I could get a shiny Magikarp. I hatched 3 eggs or something, but none of them were shiny. I thought that the rumor I had heard had been false, and I did not have the patience to keep trying, so I just gave up. Maybe if I had had higher patience, I could have gotten a shiny Magikarp eventually. But it never happened.
I also remember that I had a Typhlosion that I tried to breed together with a Ditto, but it just never worked. I got the message “It is brimming with energy” or something instead of the standard messages you would get that indicated that they could breed successfully. Now that I look back, I believe this was because their IVs were too similar. In G/S/C, two Pokémon can’t breed if their IVs are too similar because of a potential family relation (which they didn’t have in this case). According to Bulbapedia:
If the Defense IVs of two partners are the same, and the Special IVs are either the same or differ by 8, the two Pokémon are incompatible. This is due to the high likelihood of a family relation, hence the inability to breed.
I remember being very annoyed by how my Typhlosion and Ditto couldn't breed when all of my other Pokémon could breed with Ditto. If I had known about the thing with IVs back then, I could just have caught a different Ditto and used it instead. But I didn’t do that. I didn’t need to either, because a friend bred a Cyndaquil on one of his games and traded it to me, which I could also use for any future breeding.
I saw some posts here in this thread about how there aren’t any good places to hatch eggs quickly in G/S/C (as well as R/S, FR/LG and HG/SS), and I agree. But there was one path for hatching eggs that I used in the games which featured Kanto. I started in Saffron City (taking the train from Goldenrod is good in G/S/C), then went west to Celadon, further out to Cycling Road, down through it and east to Fuchsia, then east to routes 12-15 and further up to either Lavender or Vermilion, then to Saffron again. Then I just repeated this cycle until all eggs had hatched. Far from the most efficient method and nowhere near as great as just having a straight line in most modern games, but it worked.
Music
I want to talk a little about the music in the games as well. I agree with a lot of the tracks green_typhlosion posted, but not all of them (“Places and People” is actually one of my least favorites from G/S/C), and I wanted to add two more favorites of my own.
Goldenrod City. This is my favorite city track in G/S/C. It gives a relaxing but also bittersweet and melancholic vibe, which I think is perfect for a big city. I always spent a lot of time in Goldenrod in G/S/C just so I could listen to the music. Unfortunately, I do not like the HG/SS version at all, I think the remakes ruined it completely.
Lake of Rage and the surrounding routes. This track always gave me a feeling of exploration, that a grand adventure was taking place. I like the original version, but I actually like the FR/LG version the very best. The HG/SS version is also okay, but not the best.
Training spots
One thing that is very important for me in Pokémon games is training spots, especially during the post-game. G/S/C are far from the best in this area, but they were decent for their time at least. When I trained Pokémon in the games, I never really bothered with rematches through the PokéGear (unless one of the trainers I had registered called me through it, but that rarely happened). Instead, I always used Cal at the Trainer House, as well as Rival rematches at Mondays and Wednesdays. I often used E4 rematches for training as well, or battled wild Pokémon in or around Mt. Silver. Later on, I also discovered that the trainers on the SS. Aqua could be rebattled infinitely, so I abused that like crazy on the days when the boat sailed.
The most underrated Pokémon in G/S/C
As for the most underrated Pokémon in G/S/C, I want to nominate Togetic.
Is it good? Probably not. It has pretty lackluster stats and an annoying evolution method, but it has a quite good movepool. I remember using it a lot during my playthroughs and I recall that it actually worked quite well. Far from the best, but still very fun to use. I also loved using Metronome and seeing what random moves I would get from it! But sometimes I got really bad results, like that one time I only had Togetic in my party, went out to fight a random Pokémon on Route 29, used Metronome, and got Explosion! Which led me to whiting out and losing a lot of money. And stupid as I was, I didn’t reset my game afterwards, I just continued as if nothing had happened.
Opinion on the games
My overall opinion of G/S/C has changed massively over the years. In the distant past, from when I first played Silver and up to some point during Gen 3, I often considered G/S/C to be the best Pokémon games. This later changed after playing Emerald and D/P as I started to prefer those instead. Then, upon the announcement of HG/SS, I started thinking more positively about G/S/C again. But after the disaster that HG/SS were, I started getting very negative towards G/S/C. I considered them the worst games along with R/B/Y and HG/SS (and I sort of still do, but I don’t think G/S/C are the very worst anymore). When discussing G/S/C on Pokémon forums after I got back into Pokémon thanks to B/W, I was extremely negative towards G/S/C and I hated on them for every little thing they did wrong (and even for some things they did right) while I refused to acknowledge anything positive or good about them.
But as time went on, I realized that G/S/C weren’t that bad. While I didn’t think they were
good, I could agree that they had been good for their time at least. And as time went on even further, I realized that I actually liked G/S/C better than HG/SS. And that is my current opinion of them as well. G/S/C are far from my favorite Pokémon games, but they are not my very least favorites either as that award goes to HG/SS. On the whole, I consider Gen 2 to be my least favorite, but that is more because of HG/SS than G/S/C.
In the past, I also used to see nostalgia as something very negative. When other people said that their favorites were G/S/C or HG/SS because of nostalgia, I thought that was a very stupid reason for liking a game. I personally preferred my own “superior” reasons (as I saw it) for liking the newer games instead. But now that I look back, I think that those who like or prefer a Pokémon game because of nostalgia are allowed to have that opinion. While I still disagree with them, I can respect their opinion. And I have realized that I personally have what I like to call “positive nostalgia” for G/S/C. As said, they were good for their time, and I had tons of fun with them back in the day. Far from enough to make them my favorite games, but enough to make me actually like them in the end. Now that I look back at them, I can do it in a way more positive way compared to in the past.
As I said in the unpops thread recently, and as I said above, I prefer G/S/C over HG/SS. I think that G/S/C had a special atmosphere or just a “feeling” that the remakes didn’t manage to recreate. Neither did the remakes do any significant or noteworthy improvements over the originals, so I prefer G/S/C because they were at least good for their time and I have a (positive) nostalgic attachement to them which I don't have for HG/SS.
That said, when I look back at G/S/C now, there’s no denying that they have some really serious issues. The level curve and the Pokémon distribution has been talked about so much to the point that there’s no need to say anything more about them. There’s also the lackluster post-game. You have an entire second region to explore, but it isn’t
good. G/S/C also did a very bad job at showcasing many of their new mechanics and features in a good way, such as Steel/Dark-types or breeding.
I also remember from when I played Pokémon as a kid, when I wanted to replay a game, I’d rather replay R/B/Y than G/S/C. I think this might unconsciously have been because of the level curve and R/B/Y having overall better gameplay than G/S/C. I wasn’t really able to figure out why back then, but somehow, I just thought R/B/Y were much more fun to replay than G/S/C. I did enjoy the post-game of G/S/C more than the post-game of R/B/Y though.
Going back to G/S/C again
As for playing G/S/C again… I am currently unable to do so because the batteries for all of my games are dead. However, I have considered re-buying Crystal from the 3DS VC. Partly because it is my favorite Johto game, but it would also be nice to have a version of it that will never die due to internal battery. Apart from that, there are two major things I want to do in Crystal which I never got to do in my original cart. The first is to beat the Battle Tower in some kind of way. The second is to catch all the legendaries. While I managed to catch Suicune, Lugia and at least one of Raikou/Entei in my Crystal cart, I never caught both of the two remaining beasts. And because of that, I never got to catch Ho-Oh in Crystal either. Plus, as a bonus in the VC version, I will have the ability to catch Celebi as well!
So that is something I have been thinking about, but I’m not sure if/when it will happen. I am currently burnt out on Pokémon and I really need another break from the games once I am done with my current project. I have considered taking a break from these forums as well, the main reason I have stayed up to now is because I have had some long posts in the works. But now I am finally done with all of them (the last ones were my two recent long ones about the Johto games in the unpops thread, but now this one ended up being pretty long as well). So maybe I’ll end up taking a break for the forums as well. Not sure though. We’ll have to see.
Last words
To end all of this, how about a photo? I love adding photos and images to my posts here on the forums because I think it makes things more fun to read. So, here’s a photo of my three G/S/C games!
Only the cartridges because I do no longer have the boxes.
Those are my thoughts on G/S/C and my memories with the games. I tried to make this post as structured as possible, hope everything makes sense. I mostly just wrote down everything I could remember. Ask if you have any questions. This also got much longer than I had planned. I thought I was done with making long posts here on the forums for the time being, but that was wrong. Maybe after this instead. But this was very fun to write at least. Not sure if I’ll be able to contribute anything else to this thread after this. Thanks for reading.
