Hello and welcome back to my latest bad idea. Sticking with last week’s Pokemon trend, I decided to make use of something I picked up a gaming convention last year for this week’s run. If you ever get a chance to go to the Midwest Gaming Classic in Milwaukee I would highly recommend going. This week I’m going to be playing Pokemon Green. Now what makes this game a challenge is the fact that it was only ever released in Japan. So with almost no knowledge of Japanese I only have my knowledge of the game and the attack animations to serve as a guiding light. I’ve played fully through the Kanto region through various games so I have a pretty good idea how to get around at this point. Since I’m playing the very first Pokemon game there are tons of exploitable things I can do to make my run easier. The first thing is that I’m going to pick Charmander and primarily use him during the run. I’m doing this because Charizard learns Slash at level 36, and slash is a high damage physical move that almost always lands critical hits in Generation One. The second thing I’m going to do is write down what level my planned team knows certain moves so I don’t accidentally skip learning a move I need. Third is catching Articuno and Zapdoes when I have access to them because it will help me cover my weakness in the Pokemon League. Fifth and finally I’m going to get a Nidorino that knows Horn Drill, a low accuracy one hit KO, and buy a bunch of X-Accuracies to exploit the glitch that allows Nidorino to have 100% accuracy when using Horn Drill to defeat anything Charizard, Articuno, and Zapdoes can’t handle, my final two team members will just be there so I have Pokemon that can learn the HM moves needed to navigate through the game. While these strategies could be applied to a normal playthrough of Pokemon Red or Blue, it’s an interesting challenge to see if basic reading ability is truly needed to enjoy a game like many boxes suggest.

Hello and welcome to my bad idea of the week. As I said back in my ‘Low Dex’ Run of Pokemon FireRed, you might have expected me to do the classic Pokemon Nuzlocke someday. You’ll be glad to know that today is finally the day I do a Pokemon Nuzlocke. For those that are unaware, a Pokemon Nuzlocke is a special rule set that can be used to make any run of a pokemon game much more difficult. The two main rules are that if a Pokemon faints, it’s considered dead and cannot be used for the rest of the game, and you can only catch the first Pokemon you catch in each area. There’s a plethora of extra rules one can apply if they desire to modify the experience. In the past I only played about half of a Pokemon Pearl Nuzlocke up until my main damage dealer had fainted and I didn’t feel like grinding my Pokemon to catch up. Level grinding and knowing the biggest challenges a game has to offer are two of the most important things you need to form your strategy. For example, if you pick Charmander in Pokemon FireRed, you should either make sure you have a pokemon with a fighting type move or overlevel your charmander to the point where it can sweep Brock’s entire Rock type gym or your run will end right then and there. For my run today I’ll be playing Pokemon Emerald and using Mudkip because he’s a viable pick for the entire game. In retrospective I should have added the No Duplicate Pokemon clause so I didn’t get three Poochyenas in a row. Overall I think it’s a fun playstyle if you want to mix things up for your next pokemon run.

Hello and thanks for taking the time to answer my poll last week, after collecting the feedback I have an idea of how I want to move forward with this blog. Now for this week’s round of suffering, Super Mario Brothers 2. Now at first glance you might be thinking, “Oh the game where you can play as Toad and Princess Peach while throwing turnips? That’s not a challenge at all, what are you trying to pull here?”. Well stop those thoughts right now because it’s time for a Nintendo history lesson. You see, there are actually two versions of Super Mario Brothers 2. One is the turnip throwing version which is globally known as ‘Super Mario Bros 2 USA’. The version that I’ll be playing today is now referred to as ‘Super Mario Bros: The Lost Levels’. Originally, the Lost Levels was supposed to be the true sequel to the original Super Mario Bros, designed for players who had mastered the mechanics of the original game. However, Nintendo of America deemed it too hard for American players, so we got the version of Super Mario Bros 2 that most are familiar with today. If you want to play the Lost Levels today, it is available on the 3DS and Wii U Virtual Consoles, along with Nintendo Switch Online’s NES game library. While I do consider myself at least decent at 2D Mario games, I will admit this one intimidates me a bit because of its legacy. I personally stopped somewhere in world two out of the game’s eight worlds. If you really want to try it out I would highly recommend using the Nintendo Switch version so you have access to the rewind feature.

Hey everyone,

Things have been very hectic the past few weeks and I’m wondering what games or challenges you would want to see me play. Leave a comment below and I’ll be sure to take all of the feedback into consideration. If you have time I would appreciate it if you fill out this poll about the posts so far.

https://forms.gle/nKrsiZEfTmJ9EnRQ6

See ya next week