Home in Time for Christmas - a Pokemon Red "nuzlocke" challenge report

[Seperallis]

FINAL


So another 1st Generation fuck-up is that you must manually select a PC box to fill with pokemon; if the box you select is full, you cannot catch pokemon. Luckily I only lost one attempt at a pokemon due to this garbo, but you can imagine the amount of small-child rage-filled resets this caused back in '98 when you lost an attempt at a legendary due to a full PC box.

Anyway, after adding Lashawnda the Goldeen to the growing reserves list, Patrick easily destroyed everything as we surfed our way from Fuchsia to Cinnabar Island. After stumbling over La Concha the shellder and accidentally speedrunning through Seafoam Islands, BOI landed on the island ready to get this quest over with, but the gym is locked; you have to find the key to the gym in an old burnt-out mansion on the island, which is a perfectly safe, sane, and sensible ask for a small 10-year-old child. Regardless, we dropped our fossil from Mount Moon off at the local Jurassic Park lab and made our way into a slightly fire-infested house to dig for items and pokemon.

While clearing out the nerds and looters within (and grabbing Forge the Ponyta), I decided to spend a few hours preparing my team for the coming trials and getting them on-level, as it were. this only took several hours and all my antidotes to earn parity with Blaine's level, but it was worth the effort; Trap and Yeet doused the flames in the Gym to earn our seventh badge. We eagerly left north for Veridian City, where Patrick and Trap dodged around fissures and horn drills to make quick work of Giovanni (again) and earn our eighth and final gym badge and deliver a TRUE DOSE of Japanese JUSTICE by allowing the world's most dangerous crime boss to roam freely across the countryside and study pokemon because he said "Sorry."

What a true shining example for our children.



Leaving behind Baby's First Moral Lesson, we busted through WHAT one last time to make our way through Victory Road, snagging Anal Beads the Onix, and reaching the Indigo Plateau - home of the Pokemon League and the Elite Four challenge. I wasn't entirely happy with facing them just yet, however, as running in straight away would leave me about 12 levels below the final challenge. I tried to grind levels in both Victory Road and the Pokemon Mansion on Cinnabar, and I must say that I still don't know which of these places is better and faster. Regardless, I either suffered a sudden and severe rush of shit to the brain, or the repeated level grinding in Victory Road numbed my mind so much that I could feel its moisture on my shoulders, and I overleveled nearly all my pokemon past Lorelei and apparently forgetting the E4 challenge begins at level 56, not 60.

Thankfully, Lil' Ratto was still of a level for use against Lorelei.
This was it, the final challenge. It was do or die, all or nothing, win or lose.
Go time.