Pokemon RBY Speedrun

[Master Kirby]

Pokemon RBY Speedrun

Since I have not played my Red version in a while, I thought it would be fun to give myself a new challenge. I had recently read about people doing speedruns of Metroid Prime, and it gave me the idea of seeing how fast I could complete Pokemon Red. If anyone else wants to give it a try, you can post here to tell how long it took, and what your strategies were.


Here are the criteria that I decided to follow for this game:

1. You must play through a Pokemon RBY game, beating each gym, the entire Elite Four, and your rival, until you reach the credits. This signifies completion and your ending time.
2. I decided that I would not use any tool-assisted measures to cheat the game. I figured that if that was allowed, people with Gameshark or Action Replay devices could just give themselves the 8 badges, unnaturally upgrade their Pokemon, and sweep through the Elite Four.
3. Use of in-game glitches are allowed, since the nature of a speedrun is to take advantage of any in-game means necessary to beat the game quickly. I chose to make use of the Mew trick, though I will not duplicate Rare Candies since it would cheapen the game the same way Gameshark modifications would.

Optional Rule:
I decided not to trade in any pokemon from another game. I will only use Pokemon and TMs from one game. The only time I would link to another game would be to evolve a Pokemon through trading (Gengar, Alakazam, Machamp). I have called this an “Optional Rule” because this is where the line between simply cheating and making use of the game mechanics gets blurry.


I consider the Mew Trick legal because you only get level 7 Pokemon, with their base moves. You still need to level them up. I'm sure basically anyone would agree that trading in a level 100 Moltres would be considered cheating. What I am talking about when I discuss this “Optional Rule” is whether or not you want to trade in a Pokemon that is at a similar or lower level to your current team, but has been given its moveset by using TMs from another game. For example, I once beat the game by solely using a Mewtwo that knew Psychic, Ice Beam, Thunderbolt, and Recover. (I taught all the needed HMs to a Mew which was never used to battle.) Since it was only level 5 when I traded it over, I still had to train Mewtwo myself. It was just naturally stronger because of its moveset and the fact that Mewtwo have the best Special stats.


Getting back to the topic, this rule is something that you would just have to decide yourself if you want to will follow or not. I would think it would be fine if you wanted to trade in Pokemon with previously made movesets as long as they are at natural levels (no level 100s!). I just chose not to do this myself since I wanted to play only using a single set of TMs and Pokemon caught in my game.


------------------------
Now that the terms of play are out of the way, anyone is free to join in this challenge. Just post to explain what your strategy is, any updates that you want to share as you play, and when you beat the game, let us all know what your final time was.


Let the games begin!


------------------------
Here is the progress I have done so far. Feel free to join.


Preparation:
I'll start by explaining how I am approaching this task. In order to beat this game as quickly as possible, I thought up some guidelines to control how I play. By following these guidelines, I should be able to speed up the process.

• Only train a small team with diverse movesets. By training fewer Pokemon, they are each able to receive a larger portion of the total earned experience points. Ex. A team of two will level up 3 times faster than using a team of 6.
• Trainer's Pokemon give 1.5X the EXP that a wild Pokemon of the same Species and Level would give. Since a smaller team grows faster, try not to battle wild Pokemon, and skip many of the trainers.
• Go as directly from one Gym to another as possible, only fighting as many trainers as are necessary for success.
• Take the shortest route necessary. You could wander all over the place picking up items, but most aren't needed if you are only using a few Pokemon on your team.
• I will rely mostly on having a strong offense. By only using two on my team, they should eventually get leveled up to the point that I could sweep through anyone in very few hits.

I will be playing my game on the Pokemon Stadium (N64) Gameboy Tower. This allows me to play at double the normal speed. Since it doubles the in-game speed also, the only difference is that I don't have to sit around spending as much real time waiting for the next chance to press A.

Starting a new game:
- The first thing I did was to change the text speed to the fastest setting and turned off battle animations. That should cut out a lot of time.
- I started by leaving my house, and walking out of town. Prof. Oak stopped me, I chose Squirtle, beat Gary, and ran directly to the Viridian City Mart to pick up the package, which I ran back down to Pallet Town. I delivered the package to Prof. Oak, and he gave me the Pokedex. I then went back up to Viridian City, running from all wild pokemon, and saved the game.

Leveling up and more:
- Since Squirtle was only L6 having only beaten Gary during the first battle, I wasn't in any shape to fight him again at Route 22 on the way to Victory Road.
- I ran through Viridian Forest, only battling the two bug trainers that I couldn't avoid. They brought me up to L8, and I learned Bubble.
- I entered Pewter city, bought some potions and pokeballs.
- I used Bubble to quickly defeat Brock and his Trainers, and received the Boulder badge and TM 34.
- Now that Route 3 was open, I started on my way to Mount Moon, fighting all but two trainers. Since Squirtle was getting all the EXP, he began to grow fairly quickly.

Mount Moon:
- Upon entering Mount moon, I saved and planned the route I would take.
- When I resumed, went through the cave picking up a few useful items as I ran from Zubat, trying to only fight the trainers that I couldn't avoid (and the occasional Geodude that was just as quick to KO with a Bubble).
- I fought the last Team Rocket member blocking my way, defeated the crazy scientist who wanted all the fossils for himself, and exited the cave, saving my game in the Pokemon center in Cerulean City.
- By the time I had finished Mount Moon, Squirtle had evolved to Wartortle, and was around Level 18.

Coming soon ... Choosing My Second Team Member