Forests and Representation: Let's Play Pokémon Part 2

Music: Viridian Forest

Viridian forest is the first area of the game that I'd describe as sprawling, untamed nature. There's a clear way through Viridian, but that way still runs through paths of tall grass and nests of Bug-type Pokémon, and the music creates a grungy punk atmosphere that you don't see in the settled parts of Kanto. The player has now gone into the woods, an unprotected and dangerous locale where they are for the first time on their own. Viridian forest is not a difficult place to navigate, but it is wild.

BUG CATCHER: Hey! You have POKéMON! Come on! Let's battle 'em!
There are three Bug Catchers in Viridian forest, each with very similar teams. I will not be covering them all. Bug Catchers are characterized by their use of Bug-type Pokémon, which generally evolve at lower levels than other Pokémon but also lack long term strengths. Bug-type moves are universally physical prior to the fourth generation, but have low base power and very few Pokémon learn Bug-type moves.

Illust. Ken Sugimori

This is ahead of where my discussion is, but the generation II games have several hidden opponents representing key staff members for the Pokémon games, and in them Tajiri represents himself as a Bug Catcher. His original idea for Pokémon was based on the insect collecting he practiced in his childhood. What does it say that one of the most influential creative minds of the late 20th century chooses to represent himself as nothing greater than a young boy with a hobby? Is it humility, that even now the games are just a time capsule for his childhood? Potentially an understanding that he's only a piece of an idea that's grown far greater than himself?

Or perhaps this is merely how Tajiri prefers to identify because it is how he sees himself. Since generation III trainer classes have been used to identify the traits of each individual player, and this idea may have originated from how the staff used them in Gold, Silver and Crystal. It would be interesting to encounter Tajiri on Omega Ruby & Alpha Sapphire or X & Y's wifi and see how he represents himself now, especially since Bug Catcher isn't a publicly available trainer class in ΩRαS.

Each in-game trainer class tends towards a theme. For Bug Catchers this is using otherwise-neglected Bug Pokémon, which are typically not fully evolved despite how early they can reach their evolutions. This Catcher's Weedle is barely on par with an untrained starter Pokémon. Statistically the Weedle line has the same totals as the Caterpie line, but where Caterpie's final evolution invests in Special Weedle's invests in Attack, and the points Caterpie invests in Defense Weedle splits between HP and Speed.

Weedle's primary advantage is that it learns Poison Sting, a 15 base power move with a 30% chance to inflict poison. In terms of status effects poison is easily the weakest, as all it does is take off 1/16th of the inflicted Pokémon's max Hit Points at the end of each turn. Burn damage is second weakest, taking off the same value but also halving their Attack stat. Paralysis and freeze are tied for second best, with the former preventing the opposing Pokémon from executing its moves 25% of the time and also reducing its Speed by a quarter, while freeze can never be guaranteed unlike these other status effects but can completely immobilize a Pokémon with close to no chance of recovery. Unlike in later generations, frozen Pokémon can only dethaw through items (unavailable in player-versus-player) or by being hit by Fire-type moves. Getting frozen means that a Pokémon has been removed from the game; trying to compare a 1/16th HP reduction to that, when every other status has some volatile stat or move-affecting effect, is like trying to compare the longbow to chemical weapons. Sleep is the best status because it can be guaranteed to happen 60~100% of the time on key moves, and immobilizes the opponent for one to seven turns. They can't attack on the turn they wake up, so it's the strongest status with virtually no risk nor drawbacks, unlike freeze which at best is 10% chance only available on certain Pokémon that tend to be questionable choices for status inducers.

While Butterfree runs a double powder set, Beedrill uses the stat-boosting Swords Dance and Agility to build up as the best Bug-type attacker in the game. Both moves boost a stat by two stages (two out of six), Attack for Swords Dance and Speed for Agility. Critical hits in Blue are based on the Speed stat, so not only can Beedrill set up to always go first it can also help secure its own critical hits. Beedrill is the only Pokémon to learn Twineedle, a base 20 move that hits twice and has a 20% chance to inflict poison with each hit. If the first hit is a critical hit then the second one will as well, which upgrades Twineedle to a net 80 BP and if poison goes off the opposing Pokémon also loses 1/16th of its maximum HP at the end of the turn (and every turn thereafter.) The Swords Dance/Agility set is the first generation ancestor to the modern Dragon Dance strategy, which splits the difference by increasing both Attack and Speed but only by one stage instead of two. The optimal Swords Dance/Agility is probably Scyther, one of the better Bug-types in Blue Version. Typically Swords Dance users pair it with Hyper Beam, aiming to set up a one-hit kill that will negate that move's recharge cost and then proceed to sweep through the rest of the opposing team. Most of them can't actually access Agility as well, which puts Beedrill and Scyther in a weird niche. Dragonite, one of the best first generation Pokémon in general, has a similar gameplan but only needs Agility because he already has a base Attack stat of 134.

If you were going to use Bug-types as an answer to Psychic-type Pokémon, Beedrill would be the way to go. (Which speaks more to the game balance issues with Bug-types than it does Beedrill's greatness.) In addition to the Twineedle option described above, Beedrill is the only Bug-type capable of learning Pin Missile, a risky multihit move that strikes for 2-5 hits (average hit of 3, although you have the same odds of getting a 3 as you do a 2, and a 5 as you do a 4) for 14 base power each. If the first hit crits, so does every hit that follows, for a net 72 average and 120 maximum. This is questionable because it relies more on random chance than Twineedle does, although critical hits are easier to secure through Agility boosting. Twineedle can also get a one-hit KO off of Alakazam, one of the best Psychic-types in the game, and on Exeggutor who has a 4x weakness to Bug. Scyther would be statistically better, but has no Bug-type moves.

Basically what you can take away from this is that if we're really gonna start trashtalking Pokémon and call Butterfree total garbage, then Beedrill is another man's treasure. Like virtually every Bug-type you will not want it when you're up against the majority of first generation threats, but when you're staring down Alakazam, Exeggutor, Jynx or Slowbro, and the opponent doesn't have any of the other threatlist Pokémon to switch into (I would call Rhydon a hard counter to Beedrill but everything is a hard counter to Beedrill) you will be thankful to have gone sifting through somebody's garbage.

BUG CATCHER: cut it!
Every battle opens the same way from hereon. I lead with Bulbasaur, who sets up Leech Seed on the opposing Pokémon. I then sweep with Tackle. Because of the difference in the opposing Pokémon's base Attack compared to Bulbasaur's Defense, the opponent cannot overcome the HP that Leech Seed is refunding me each turn. I then take their money and walk. If String Shot is able to shift the turn order and Weedle procs its 30% poison things become slightly interesting, but this is only marginally more engaging than autobattling through hordes in Shin Megami Tensei.
BUG CATCHER: Ssh! You'll scare the bugs away!

POKéDEX: electricity could build and cause lightning storms.
The franchise mascot can only appear in Viridian forest 5% of the time, or in one other remote location 25% of the time. What's interesting is that when Pikachu debuted, she was ostensibly just another rare Pokémon like Clefairy, Jigglypuff or Scyther. Her role in the anime series and subsequent rise to stardom allegedly came off of a combination of fan popularity and an executive decision to choose a gender neutral mascot--the story circulated since 2004 is that Clefairy was originally billed as the series' mascot, featuring prominently in the first Pocket Monsters manga, and from there having gained significant ground with fans. This resulted in a switch being made in the first episode of the April 1997 anime, with Satoshi's (Ash's) Clefairy being changed to a Pikachu, and animation cels being redrawn to accommodate that. The hole in the story is that it originates from Joseph Tobin's Pikachu's Global Adventure: The Rise and Fall of Pokémon, a book written in the aftermath of Ruby & Sapphire's 2003 crash as a reaction to the apparent death of the franchise. (I say this knowing full well the irony that my own writings are a reaction to its rebirth.) The Rise and Fall of Pokémon, while academically reputable, cited no source for this story and does not contain personal interviews with Tajiri nor any of the other Pokémon staff. The reliability of the Clefairy legend is thus questionable.

Numbers-wise the problem with Pikachu is that her evolved form Raichu splits itself between Attack and Special, going 90 both ways. This evolution line is pretty fast (base 100 Speed which is faster than 60% of Blue's overused Pokémon) but because it's a mixed physical-special attacker with low HP and Defense there aren't reliable ways to faint the stronger Pokémon before they get in one attack and KO poor Pikachu. Remember that Dragonite back there has 134 Special, and he's far from the standard these Pokémon have to compare to. To take advantage of Raichu's Speed and get around her frailty you can start with a Substitute/Rest set that puts up a sacrificial wall between Raichu and the opposing Pokémon, then recoups the expended HP later after taking the lead, and Raichu can benefit from the same-type attack bonus off of Thunderbolt while having a 10% chance to paralyze. Essentially you throw paralysis out from behind the Substitute to make attacking safe, but there are better Pokémon for this. Jolteon can do practically the same strategy with better Special, with Raichu's only advantage being that she can have Body Slam in her fourth slot, and the mythical Pokémon Zapdos is better at the actual mixed Attack/Special gameplay that Raichu is supposed to be good for. Raichu's niche is that Pikachu can learn the Water-type move Surf, countering the Ground-type Pokémon that otherwise neutralize her. This is only available through a special move tutor in the Nintendo 64 game Pokémon Stadium, or by way of a 1999 Nintendo Power distribution event.

Without any formal tutorials, Viridian forest introduces two kinds of items; those represented on the overworld as Poké Balls, and those invisible to the naked eye. The latter broke my trust with the game as a kid and unleashed my imagination in a terrible way. Suddenly every single tile could have an item on it. I spent hours trekking through any suspicious territory mashing the A button, searching for any signs of treasure. The worst part is that I was sometimes rewarded. It fueled the type of mentality that gave birth to the Poké Ball button codes or 151st Pokémon-catching myths. (One of which is actually not a myth, works perfectly fine and which I will be taking full advantage of.)

Viridian forest is a completely boxed in environment that nonetheless feels endless. The player has the impression of a sprawling forest opening out on all sides into an expanse, fueled by the incomplete view of either side of route 2 that the rest house exteriors give. It can never be seen in one image in its entirety, and so becomes larger in the player's mind than it is in the cartridge. For the kids like me that were experiencing their first real video game, Viridian presented a rich environment from which all of nature seemed to be pouring out of. It was engaging, detailed and a little gross. At seven I was also left with the impression that someone had drawn out the forest for me, precluding any knowledge of the Brickroad quandary. It's rare to reflect on the people that design JRPG dungeons, but when I experienced my first one I was left wondering who it was that drew up and critiqued these spaces.

Pokémon Special Vol. 1, July 2000. Personal scan.

The scan at right is an example of one way in which Pokémon's multimedia approach characterized the geography differently depending on how much of it one was exposed to. It comes from the first English run of Pokémon Special, renamed Pokémon Adventures. The illustration is reversed as a result of the entire book being flipped to read left-to-right instead of in the original right-to-left order. Sometimes sentimentality must trump canonicity; and the 2000 printing is on higher quality paper than the right-to-left 2009 reissue.

The manga format preserves the monochromatic quality of the original games, although for any kids playing on original hardware the addition of black and white was arguably a clearer picture over different shades of green. Contrast that to the anime series, which mapped out Viridian forest in full color. The forest in the manga was burgeoning with possibility and exotic Pokémon species not found in the games, planting the idea in the player's mind that perhaps these areas were living environments containing more than what they could find in the cartridge.

The second Bug Catcher in the area switches to a strategy partway through our battle that I once detested but now understand better. The Pokémon he sends out is Weedle's evolved form Kakuna, who normally inherits Poison Sting and String Shot from Weedle but when caught in the wild only knows Harden naturally. This Kakuna is the latter type. Harden increases Defense by one stage and has no other effect; combined with Kakuna's naturally high defense, it makes her one of the most effective cocoon wall Pokémon, effective in that she can stall for somewhere around twenty turns but cannot fight back in any way. Metapod follows the same "strategy." I'm opposed to this because all it does is drag out the inevitable. Stalling does not actually change the momentum of a Pokémon battle, it just preserves it in miniature, and in order to make use of stall competitively you have to invoke passive damage moves like Poison Sting/Twineedle. One of the gym leaders will actually use this better version of stall later on. Viridian forest is inundated with Kakuna and Metapod encounters that drag out the journey, but as an adult I realize their real purpose; to consume PP. The Metapods and Kakunas being fully hardened means it takes up to twenty times the normal PP to get out enough attacks to drop one, which wears out your best offensive moves quickly and forces you to use weaker attacks that may not get the job done versus genuinely dangerous opponents. Viridian forest does make use of good stall, by subtly wearing you away with intermediary cocoon Pokémon, poisoning you with Weedle and then throwing the army of Caterpie at you to knock you out. The scale of it is just so massive that it's difficult to perceive as a child.

Incredibly, in fourteen years I had never once discovered this hidden Antidote. It's right at the start of Viridian, so in order to find it you'd have to walk all the way back after learning about hidden items and then check the tree.

SIGN: LEAVING VIRIDIAN FOREST
PEWTER CITY AHEAD
The end of Viridian forest is the end of the early game. After this the player is on their way to becoming a credible Pokémon trainer with badges to their name and the skill to back it up. The region surrounding Viridian city is an abundant ecosystem teeming with options for the player's nascent team, and Pewter city will test how well she can train and make use of those options.

See you Thursday.