LA's Rainbow Adventure

With the recent announcement of Sword and Shield, I have made a possibly ridiculous decision to set myself a play-every-game challenge before Generation 8 makes it to us and will document it in this Journal. I will be dusting off all of my spare Pokemon cartridges and assembling teams to take me through each region numerous times so that everything is "complete" before the new games arrive.

Since I have some duplicate game carts (I slipped and fell on eBay), I have slot these in as an additional playthrough per region e.g. "Mind Crystal" is actually my second copy of Heart Gold.

The following is a record of my progress to date:

Kanto: Red // Blue // Green // Yellow // Fire Red // Leaf Green // Lets Go Eevee

Johto: Gold // Silver // Crystal // Heart Gold // Soul Silver // Mind Crystal

Hoenn: Ruby // Sapphire // Emerald // Omega Ruby // Alpha Sapphire // Delta Emerald

Sinnoh: Diamond // Pearl // Platinum // Quartz // Titanium

Unova: Black // White // Grey // Black 2 // White 2 // Grey 2

Kalos: X // Y // Z

Alola: Sun // Moon // Stars // Ultra Sun // Ultra Moon // Ultra Stars:


By "complete" save file I mean, E4 is beaten. I may consider completing up to Red for the Johto releases but that will be time-dependant.
This is not a Nuzlocke challenge and there are no super-strict rules involved. The only one that I am sticking to is that I cannot duplicate a species between games e.g. if I use a Gyarados in Blue, I can't have one in Diamond etc.

I'll hopefully make a post weekly and add updates to progress in the original post. Feel free to make some suggestions to teams as we go - I don't have anything set in stone yet!

~LA

You do have plenty of time to do it, as SnS are most likely going to come out sometime in November, although it is still a lot to play through if you're going to do literally every game in a generation when some versions are nearly identical to each other.

Some of these games though....are they like ROM Hacks or something? Like, Game Freak never made a Z or a Grey, so....

Living Arrow said:

Since I have some duplicate game carts (I slipped and fell on eBay), I have slot these in as an additional playthrough per region e.g. "Mind Crystal" is actually my second copy of Heart Gold.

Click to expand...

Yeah, I'm not using hacks or anything like that - just wanted to give a name to each of my additional carts :)

oh, I missed that part, gotcha

In this first week I spent most of my focus on getting things underway with Kanto and Johto. For the most part, running to the first gym has been easy but there were a couple of challenges along the way.

In Crystal I had my sights set on Teddiursa but catching one of them was pretty annoying - not only are they rare and only found in the morning, they are able to run from battle, too! I was very lucky and caught the third that I found.

In HeartGold I had the worst time trying to level Spinarak. Damn, that thing is weak! Really looking forward to it learning Night Shade or anything better than Poison Sting!!

In Red, I had expected to struggle with Brock since my team consisted of only Charmander but it turned out that this was much simpler than first thought. I guess this is because Onix's special is so poor? I don't really know but for sure Misty is going to be more of a problem for me...

The following is a record of my progress to date:

Kanto:
Red: Badges [1] Charmander (14)
Blue: Badges [1] Squirtle (14)
Green:Badges [1] Bulbasaur (13), Rattata (9)
Yellow: Badges [1] Pikachu (10), Mankey (12)

Johto:
Gold: Badges [1] Cyndaquil (13), Hoothoot (11)
Silver: Badges [1] Totodile (12), Sentret (12)
Crystal: Badges [1] Chikorita (12), Teddiursa (12)
Heart Gold: Badges [1] Spinarak (11), Wooper (11)
Soul Silver: Badges [1] Ledyba (12), Mareep (14)

Hoenn:
Omega Ruby: Badges [1] Beautifly (12), Nuzleaf (15)

Sinnoh:
Diamond: Badges [0] Piplup (7)
Pearl: Badges [0] Chimchar (7)
Platinum: Badges [0] Turtwig (7)

Alola:
Sun: Trials [0] Litten (6)
Moon: Trials [0] Popplio (6)

I really didn't play all that much this week as I had a bunch of other commitments but at least I did manage to play a couple of games! Red and Crystal were really the only two that I managed to put any time into this week and I haven't gotten particularly far in either.

Red: Badges [3] Charmeleon (24), Clefairy (25), Arbok (26), Kadabra (24)

In Red I carried on to Mt. Moon to pick up my second team member - a Clefairy. When I started the hunt of this I looked up the encounter rates and it turned out that the little puffball is more common on the lower levels of the cave. I had no idea that the early games made splits in encounters for different zones of the same area so this was a nice surprise. It took maybe 20 mins before I found one but that wasn't too bad - I've waited much longer for much worse Pokemon!
With Misty coming up I focused levelling on Clefairy and taught her Mega Punch which got us through no problem. Ekans and Abra soon joined us and we ploughed through trainers to Lt. Surge. He was a complete cakewalk as my Arbok had learned Dig from TM. We are now ready to cycle to Lavender Town.

Crystal: Badges [2] Bayleef (17), Teddiursa (18)

No catches for now in Crystal. Defeating Bugsy was super simple with Teddiursa - I taught her Swift from the TM in Union Cave so she can smash down a lot of the opposition in one or two hits. Next stop, Goldenrod City!

Again, Kanto took the majority of my focus as I worked my way through a badge or two on each game. In the background I was shiny hunting for a Litten and managed to get one on egg number 43!

The key points for me to call out here are that:

BEEDRILL IS SO LAME. Damn that thing does no damage and is hard to level up! I can't wait for it to get a decent attack - Fury Attack is simply unreliable and frustratingly weak.
KRICKETOT BIDE TRAINING IS INSANE. Must have died 5 times trying to level up to 10 to evolve into Kricketune. Yes, I know that I could have switch-trained but where is the fun in that?! :P

The following is a record of my progress this time around:

Kanto:
Blue: Badges [2] Wartortle (21), Jigglypuff (19), Sandshrew (9)
Green:Badges [2] Ivysaur (20), Raticate (20)
Fire Red: Badges [2] Beedrill (18), Fearow (20)
Leaf Green: Badges: [2] Butterfree (20), Pidgeotto (20)

Johto:
Mind Crystal: Badges [1] Phanpy (9), Slugma (12)

Sinnoh:
Diamond: Badges [1] Prinplup (16), Kricketune (13)

This week I spent some time getting the Black/White/Grey trio started and carried on with Red, Soul Silver and Mind Crystal.

Red has given me some quite interesting moments as I'm training Pokemon that I've never really taken before; Clefable with Mega Punch and Arbok with Dig are both putting in the work much more than expected! No surprises, Kadabra is destroying anything that we come across and actually the weakest member of the group is Charmeleon. Level 30 and my Fire-type still only has Scratch and Ember... Not ideal. The team has rapidly grown recently and there is only one more team member to pick up (albeit not for a while).

Another nice surprise was the training of my Oddish, now Bellossom, in Soul Silver. Turns out Acid is actually poretty awesome especially with the Sp. Def drop that it sometimes gets. Thanks to my Gloom, Whitney's Miltank was a cakewalk!

The following is a record of my progress this week:

Kanto:
Red: Badges [4] Charmeleon (30), Clefable (30), Arbok (30), Kadabra (30), Vaporeon (25)

Johto:
Soul Silver: Badges [3] Flaaffy (25), Ledian (23), Bellossom (23)
Mind Crystal: Badges [3] Phanpy (23), Slugma (23), Skiploom (25), Eevee (18)

Sinnoh:
Pearl: Badges [1] Monferno (19)
Platinum: Badges [1] Grotle (20)

Unova:
Black: Badges [1] Panpour (12)
White: Badges [1] Pansage (13)
Grey: Badges [1] Pansear (13)

Living Arrow said:

Unova:
Black: Badges [1] Panpour (12)
White: Badges [1] Pansage (13)
Grey: Badges [1] Pansear (13)

Click to expand...

Are you not using any of the three starters in your playthroughs of Gen 5?

beck0n said:

Are you not using any of the three starters in your playthroughs of Gen 5?

Click to expand...

I will be but on the version 2 of each game - I wanted to keep the Grass/Fire/Water core but didn't want to double up and thought this would be the best way to handle it :)


This week I didn't cover too much as I was away with work for most of it. Mostly I tried to cover different generations and managed to get through a badge each on a few games. Nothing gave me too much hassle this time around other than a Patrat using Bide which I wasn't paying attention to on Grey - it annihilated my poor Pansear after I had taken it to red health.

The new captures were also fairly simple for me as both the Sawk in Grey and female Buneary in Diamond appeared as my first encounters in Pinwheel/Eterna forest respectively!

Johto:
Heart Gold: Badges [2] Ariados (23), Quagsire (20)

Sinnoh:
Diamond: Badges [2] Prinplup (22), Kricketune (24), Buneary (20)

Unova:
Grey: Badges [2] Pansear (20), Herdier (20), Sawk (22)

Continued with my journey this week and spent a good amount of time working on Gen 1. I am becoming increasingly amazed by how bad Charmander and Bulbasaur's growth has been. Both Pokemon seem to be far weaker than I remember them and they are being continuously out-shined by other members of the group, especially the psychic types Kadabra and Hypno. Wartortle has definitely been the best starter so far but I think that this is mostly due to Bubblebeam being so effective in these earlier stages of the game.

It also turns out that Shinx had a significant change in its early move pool between D/P and Platinum. I think that in many respects this is a good thing as Spark, Shinx's first attacking electric move, is more accessible and makes the experience of training it a lot better. Very very annoyingly, however, they made Bite a later level move in Platinum which I needed to get through the first gym. This took a fair amount of grinding to get to but eventually the Coal badge was mine!

I didn't want to delete my previous save of Let's Go Eevee so made a new profile instead to create a new file. This is definitely a massive improvement over the other titles and means that I can do the same thing when I get Sword and Shield later in the year!

The following is a record of my progress this week:

Kanto
Blue: Badges [3] Wartortle (27), Jigglypuff (27), Sandslash (25)
Green:Badges [4] Venusaur (32), Raticate (30), Hypno (31), Graveller (28), Jolteon (25)
Lets Go Eevee: Badges [1] Eevee (11)

Johto
Gold: Badges [2] Quilava (18), Hoothoot (17)

Sinnoh
Quartz:Badges [1] Luxio (19), Staravia (14)

Kalos
X: Badges [1] Chespin (15)

I managed to make a load of progress this week thanks to taking a break from work for a while. Nothing particularly strange or outstanding was seen this week but I did make a note of how frail Tympole is compared to the impressive bulk of Munna in White. This allowed me to switch Munna comfortably in to Lenora's Watchog without fear of its biting attack doing too much damage.

In Alola my three playthroughs were simple enough but it took my Popplio on Moon three tries to defeat Ilima and his Smeargle! I don't know why but Popplio was so much weaker than the other two starters in this fight and could always be defeated in one or two hits. Afterwards, at the Verdant Cavern, none of the starters faced a problem but I suppose they were fairly over-leveled at this point. I expect US/UM/USt to be muh more challenging as I won't be using the starters on those and will instead take alternative Alola-region Pokémon for the playthrough.

Here's this week's progress:

Johto
Silver: Badges [2] Totodile (17), Furret (17), Zubat (11)

Hoenn
Emerald: Badges [1] Treecko (15), Ralts (11)
Alpha Sapphire: Badges [1] Lombre (20), Dustox (16)

Unova
White: Badges [2] Pansage (22), Munna (21), Tympole (20)
White 2: Badges [1] Tepig (13), Sewaddle (14)

Kalos
Y: Badges [1] Braixen (16), Vivillon (15)

Alola
Sun: Progress [Verdant Cavern] Torracat (18)
Moon: Progress [Verdant Cavern] Brionne (18)
Stars: Progress [Verdant Cavern] Dartrix (18)

This week was all about Kanto and pouring hours into the hefty stint between Celadon City gym and Fuschia City. All of this included the Rocket hideout, Pokemon Tower, cycling road and route east of Fuschia which takes quite a lot of time to get through!

On the whole I managed to level my teams pretty evenly despite some members standing out as much weaker than the others – the most notable mentions being Arbok and Raticate. I'm still pretty annoyed with how bad Charizard is since it still hasn't learned any truly useful attacks and I'm relying on its Slash more than anything else.

My biggest surprise has been Flareon. I see this fire-type get a lot of hate online for being a poor special attacker but that really doesn't matter if you teach it decent physical moves. I saved my TM for Body Slam until this point and it doesn't disappoint when running on Flareon – I've mostly had 1-hit kills and levelling him has been incredibly simple!

Below is my progress this week…

Kanto
Red: Badges [5] Charizard (39), Clefable (39), Arbok (38), Kadabra (39), Vaporeon (38)
Blue: Badges [5] Blastoise (38), Wigglytuff (38), Sandslash (38), Machoke (38), Flareon (38)
Green: Badges [5] Venusaur (38), Raticate (38), Hypno (37), Graveller (38), Jolteon (38)

Another week of building up some distance in this challenge and I decided to focus on Gen IV followed by filling some gaps in Gens V and VI. Mostly this included the use of the honey trees in Sinnoh to get the third team member for each game which took a couple of days to get the Pokemon that I actually wanted.

All of my teams seemed pretty comfortable leading up to their respective gyms but I had two particular points to mention in this round of training.

The first is that Blitzle is so frail! I love Blitzle/Zebstrika but it get extremely frustrating when you have to heal after almost every battle or you get one-shot by something that nothing else at the same level would suffer with. My main irritation was that my little zebra was continuously one-shot by Lenora's Herdier while my Panpour and Timburr had less of an issue. This really bugged me as I really wanted her to get as much experience as possible but the Leader wasn't about to let that happen without a dangerous bait-and-switch technique.

The second point to mention is the upcoming challenge of putting Poochyena and Surskit through the Rustboro gym in Delta Emerald. Thankfully I'll have Bubblebeam on Surskit and Bite on Poochyena when I get there but will this really be enough? Specifically I'm concerned about getting past the Nosepass…

Here's this week's progress:

Sinnoh
Pearl: Badges [2] Monferno (25), Buizel (21), Cherubi (21)
Platinum: Badges [2] Grotle (24), Shellos (24), Vespiquen (24)
Quartz: Badges [2] Luxio (24), Staravia (24), Wormadam (24)

Hoenn
Delta Emerald: Badges [0] Poochyena (8), Surskit (13)

Unova
Black: Badges [1] Panpour (19), Blitzle (19), Timburr (22)

Work in the past couple of weeks has been hectic and I've struggled time to put into the project. In the moments where I have found a chance, my mind has wandered a fair amount and I struggled to keep track of my progress. I had a little time this morning to review each game and make sure all my Duckletts are in a row before moving on.

The key progress this time around was mostly linked to Johto and Sinnoh…

I have decided to remove one playthrough – "Titanium" is actually my current main save of Pearl and I've decided not to reset it this time around so will hold onto my Sinnohdex over there 😊

I also noticed some errors in the records of a few previous saves which I have also detailed below.

Here's the recent progress:

Kanto
Yellow: Badges [1] Pikachu (13), Mankey (14)

Kanto
Gold: Badges [4] Quilava (24), Noctowl (24), Pineco (25), Stantler (15)
Silver: Badges [4] Croconaw (24), Furret (24), Golbat (24)
Crystal: Badges [2] Bayleef (17), Teddiursa (19), Slowpoke (12)
Soul Silver: Badges [3] Flaaffy (25), Ledian (25), Bellossom (25), Eevee (17)
Mind Crystal: Badges [4] Phanpy (24), Slugma (24), Skiploom (25), Umbreon (25)

Sinnoh
Diamond: Badges [2] Prinplup (26), Kricketune (26), Buneary (25), Stunky (19)
Pearl: Badges [2] Monferno (26), Floatzel (26), Cherrim (26), Shieldon (21)
(21)
Platinum: Badges [3] Grotle (28), Shellos (28), Vespiquen (30), Cranidos (24)
Quartz: Badges [3] Luxio (28), Staravia (28), Wormadam (28), Gligar (27)

Kalos
X: Badges [1] Quilladin (16), Flabebe (10)

Errors to update:

Omega Ruby: Badges [1] Beautifly (11), Nuzleaf (15)
Alpha Sapphire: Badges [2] Lombre (20), Dustox (16)
Black: Badges [2] Panpour (19), Blitzle (19), Timburr (21)
Grey: Badges [2] Pansear (17), Herdier (17), Sawk (21)

Game removed:

Titanium:

It's been a while but some gameplay has still been taking place in fits and starts. I spent some time in Sinnoh, and Alola but more importantly finished two journeys through Kanto!
Both Blue and Green have now come to a close with the Elite 4 crushed by my diverse teams. I have never used some of the Pokemon that I have selected for these games and it left me with mixed feelings towards some of them.

In Blue I have to say that my star players were Blastoise and Sandslash. Both never really had trouble with taking down major opponents and they were responsible for a lot of the Elite 4's defeat. At the other end of the scale, Wigglytuff was absolute garbage. Its defences were low and its attack power not much better. Of the whole team, the pink balloon was the weakest and most likely to get OHKO'd by reasonably powerful opponents. Maybe it would be better in later generations with the addition of the Fairy type and a better movepool…

The Green playthrough threw up key team members in Venusaur and Jolteon. Both were so powerful that I don't think they ever fainted in the whole playthrough. Jolteon in particular seemed to OHKO most opponents with its Thunderbolt which made stretches of the game super easy to whizz through. The worst member of the group was Golem. I know most people would expect it to be Raticate but really the Rock type was pathetically weak to any special attacks and its movepool was limited. This left me wondering if the Alolan form would be better in Gen 7…

Here's the recent progress:

Blue: [COMPLETE] Blastoise (47), Wigglytuff (49), Sandslash (48), Machamp (47), Flareon (46), Weezing (46)
Green: [COMPLETE] Venusaur (47), Raticate (46), Hypno (47), Golem (47), Jolteon (48), Tentacruel (47)
Ruby: Badges [5] Combusken (32), Swellow (31), Mawile (32), Cacnea (25)
Emerald: Badges [2] Grovyle (16), Ralts (15), Whismur (16)
Diamond: Badges [3] Prinplup (33), Kricketune (30), Buneary (28), Stunky (27)
Black: Badges [2] Panpour (24), Blitzle (23), Timburr (23)
X: Badges [1] Quilladin (19), Flabebe (13)
Sun: Progress [Route 5] Torracat (25), Crabrawler (18)
Moon: Progress [Iki Town] Brionne (21)
Stars: Progress [Heahea City] Dartrix (21)

The last few weeks haven't generated a whole lot of game time (see the spoiler) buuuut I did finally manage to make a particular glitch work for my games!

Most people have probably heard of the WiFi glitches that can be exploited to allow players to obtain old event download for generations 4 and 5. I have used the Gen 5 glitch for some time now and I think that it is really great that we can do this as we can re-live in-games events such as Victini's capture at Liberty Garden or the Zoroark cut scene in Black and White.

The problem that I, and a lot of other people, have had in the past is managing to get this to work for Gen 4. Since the WiFi connection needs to be unsecured or have WEP access, this can be tricky to set up but I finally managed to make this work using a double connection using my iPhone's Hotspot feature and sharing an open connection with my MacBook. This has allowed me to get my hands on the shiny event Pichu to unlock Spike-eared Pichu in HGSS and the Manaphy egg in DPPt.

I love running playthroughs that are completionist-style so making this work will allow me to do this properly in the future rather than having annoying gaps around my PC box 😊

Here's my progress this time around:

This week I focused on the final of my Gen 1 games and ploughed a number of hours into Yellow. For the most part I didn't really have a different game experience than Red/Blue but there were some differences that did catch my eye towards the end. The Gym Leaders all seemed to have updates to their rosters which made them either simpler to defeat (Koga) or more challenging (Blaine). Also, the attacks that the Elite Four used in Yellow were way better designed than Red/Blue. A freaky update was the change in colour of Jynx's sprite; the change from black to purple makes the sprite's edges difficult to define and it looks really out of place compared to all other sprites in the game.

After completing Yellow I took a trip to Unova and battered my way through to Elesa on Grey.

Here's my progress this week:

After getting a taste for Unova last week on Grey, I followed up this week on Black and White. I must have been remembering Route 4 wrong as I thought it was different between these two games but there was really nothing between them. I know there is a difference on B2/W2 but it seemed to me that there would be a difference here, too.

Anywho, I realised I had been dumb on my capture selections in these games and had to change plan. Since my only copy of White had already grabbed a Munna, I couldn't take a Solosis as I don't want to double up on types. I guess I'll pick up the plasma baby in W2?

The sandstorm routes were generally ok and Elesa didn't give me as much trouble as I have seen in the past – in B2/W2 with challenge mode she can be absolutely lethal!

Here's my progress this week:

The majority of my focus for these weeks lay with the Sinnoh region and picking up a couple more Gym badges with a touch of Silver to finish off the week.

Sinnoh was generally good to me and most of my objectives could me met fairly easily with the exception of Croagunk. In Diamond I had planned to pick up the poison/fighting type at the Great Marsh but it wouldn't show up for me on the binoculars. I even tried resetting the clock to different dates to trigger a change but for some reason I still couldn't get it to appear. I'll keep checking in but for now I've decided to carry on without it. Skorupi in Pearl, on the other hand, was a simple snag compared to the purple frog. Really interestingly, the exclusion of a fifth team member has resulted in a clear level difference between Diamond and Pearl which I honestly hadn't expected to see so drastically for only a small section of the game.

Into Silver I caught Snubbull as my FIRST ENCOUNTER west of Ecruteak. I checked out how rare this would be without the swarm being triggered and found it to be 1%!!! I was so lucky on this capture – I had initially set aside an hour to try and find it which is why I've managed to make so much progress on the save in one go.

The following is a record of my progress this time around: