2nd Gen The Road to Kanto

[Dragon]

After you've defeated Johto's Elite Four and Champion thus entering the hall of fame becoming a pokemon champion yourself, you get a Ticket to ride the S.S Aqua from Olivine City, all the way to Kanto. If you remember playing R/B/Y first, this might of been a nostalgic twist for you!

However, the Kanto region from the R/B/Y games years ago got a few changes that were brought upon the GSC games. For instance, Janine is the new leader of the Fuchsia Gym. Obviously because, her father Koga became a member of Johto's Elite Four. Her pokemon aren't too different from her fathers, as you'll see Weezings and the signature Venomoth, and she even dresses up like a ninja! And like her father, she gives you the TM Toxic if you win.

Blue is now the Gym leader of the Viridian City Gym. Blue becomes the new manager of the 8th gym, ever since the whole Team Rocket fiasco that went down during the old R/B/Y games, so, yes, Blue now steps in to fufill that role, and you'll probably remember the majority of his team like Rhydon, Pidgeot, Arcanine, and so on, except his main starter pokemon. He's more of a diverse gym leader!

The Pokemon Tower has been replaced by a Radio Tower. But not worry about the gravesites, they were moved into the newly added Soul House. You can't go upstairs in the Radio Tower though, since it's blocked by a guard ever since what happened to Goldenrod's Radio Tower, taken over by team rocket.

There's many more things on what happened to Kanto over the years, but still, the main point of this thread is discussion! Did you enjoy travelling throughout the Kanto region, as part of GSC's post game? What would you liked to see in Kanto? What were any disappointments? What would you add? Feel free to discuss and share ideas!

 

[CelticsPhan]

Years back, Kanto was a pleasant surprise considering I thought the game was over after Lance. I didn't even know I was going into the same region as RBY until I landed in Vermilion. And the Kanto soundtrack with GSC's soundfont is gorgeous.

Upon many playthroughs of GSC (in large part Challenges on this board), I saw how condensed Kanto appeared to be. Simple tile changes and removals made me assume they had space issues. And that was the case; the story is that Satoru Iwata (please understand, famed for holding banana) stepped in and cleaned up the game to finish Johto and still have extra room for Kanto.

Disappointments: Stripdowns of Mt. Moon, Cinnabar, Seafoam Islands, the Safari Zone of all things and other features that made Kanto what it was. If I had known this would be the last game with accessibility to two regions, I would've been okay with that. I dare say that it's a cookie-cutter version at worst. The Kanto selection is miniscule, but that's to make sure everybody held onto their RBY cartridges. What would Slugma and Houndour be doing in Kanto? That was ridiculous.

The level curve is out of whack of course, but the average Kanto trainer shouldn't have stronger Pokemon than Johto's Champion! When you figure out the Power Plant situation, Kanto's badges go down like water.
It takes me 15 minutes in playthroughs now to run through Kanto although I should smell the roses and enjoy what the early 2000s had to offer.

Pluses: Kanto looks and feels new with the new soundfont, day/night and color palette that GSC a staple of GBC sales. I've played this game countless times but I love to go back to Kanto because it feels like a homecoming of sorts. There's a true endgame in Mt Silver which acts as the Pokemon League for Kanto's badges. Red is a challenge even if you've defeated him in past playthroughs.

Overall, this was one of my favorite additions to a Pokemon game alongside the Battle Frontier and Wi-Fi. Maybe someday Pokemon carts will have enough space for two regions.

 

[Sirfetch’d]

I enjoyed it so much <3 It was certainly unexpected as I thought the Johto Elite Four was the ending of the games! Boy was I wrong haha. It was very nostalgic for me getting to relive the experience of Kanto. I was overall impressed but there were obviously a few disappointments. I was sad to see Viridian Forest to be a shell of what it once was, the lack of Seafoam Islands was depressing, and not having access to the Safari Zone was a bit of a letdown as well. Overall though I enjoyed the experince!

 

[NotThatOneAgain]

Upon many playthroughs of GSC (in large part Challenges on this board), I saw how condensed Kanto appeared to be. Simple tile changes and removals made me assume they had space issues. And that was the case; the story is that Satoru Iwata (please understand, famed for holding banana) stepped in and cleaned up the game to finish Johto and still have extra room for Kanto.

This is actually incorrect. It's a long and very persistent myth that must be killed. They actually had a lot of space, in fact so much they could even had fleshed out Kanto and inserted a third region, had they wanted. The main issue was: Time.

The game was soo big, they had to finish everything off and didn't realise that they had taken things waaaay over their heads. As a result, when the time got short, they had to rush everything and finish debugging the Safari Zone and start inserting new tileset for the Pewter Museum. Then they realized the time was running out and they had to discard these projects at the possibly last minutes.

Actually, If you look at the ROM, you will see empty spaces everywhere. They weren't even close to running out of space, but they sure did ran out of time. However, for Crystal, they could work with this again, and at this time, they extended the storyline, added the move tutor and inserted a new Battle Tower. Still, Kanto needed a serious makeover, but the time was running out for them yet again. Had they been given a few years extra, they could of made it happen. But as it was, you can't delay such things. It has to be released in time, when the GBC market was still alive. And Crystal were still a HUGE improvement if you ask me, and you actually got two new trainers on Route 6. Well, better than nothing, I guess.

 

[CelticsPhan]

This is actually incorrect. It's a long and very persistent myth that must be killed. They actually had a lot of space, in fact so much they could even had fleshed out Kanto and inserted a third region, had they wanted. The main issue was: Time.

The game was soo big, they had to finish everything off and didn't realise that they had taken things waaaay over their heads. As a result, when the time got short, they had to rush everything and finish debugging the Safari Zone and start inserting new tileset for the Pewter Museum. Then they realized the time was running out and they had to discard these projects at the possibly last minutes.

Actually, If you look at the ROM, you will see empty spaces everywhere. They weren't even close to running out of space, but they sure did ran out of time. However for Crystal, they could work with this again, and at this time, they extended the storyline, added the move tutor and inserted a new Battle Tower. Still, Kanto needed a serious makeover, but the time was running out for them yet again. Had they been given a few years extra, they could have made it happen. But as it was, you can't delay such things. It has to be released in time, when the GBC market was still alive. And Crystal were still a HUGE improvement if you ask me, and you actually got two new trainers on Route 6. Well, better than nothing, I guess.

I guess I should've said that was a rumor, but some of this comes from interviews on the creation of the game on Nintendo's website. Even today, I bet they wouldn't want people to know that Kanto was rushed in essence. No, scratch that, they said that there was a rush to get Gold and Silver out as the GBC was complete. And for all I've played Crystal and G/S, I should notice the added trainers and everything. I almost gave people the wrong information until you came along.

https://www.pocketmonsters.net/content/Iwata_Asks_HGSS#
should patch this up.

 

[Limey-chan]

Returning to Kanto in GSC was bittersweet.

As has already been said, the opportunity to return to the Kanto region with updated graphics, sprites, sounds, Gyms etc was mouthwatering. Being able to go back and explore it all over again was absolutely the icing on the cake after completing your Johto adventure. Seeing how things had changed, recognising the throwbacks to the original games, it was awesome.. in prospect.

However, having played through the Kanto region on GSC, I felt a tad disappointed. It was so, so stripped down. There were only two or three fairly quick quests to complete, and defeating the Gym leaders didn't feel like much of an achievement.

Another big disappointment for me was the lack of replayability. Once you'd gotten the eight Kanto badges, there really wasn't an awful lot of reason to return, save for catching a few region exclusives to complete your Pokedex (and even then, there weren't many to find).

So yeah, returning to Kanto was an awesome idea, and in the end I guess i'm pleased that they included it in the Gen II games; but it feels so stripped-down and almost empty that once you've done everything there is to do there's really no reason to go back, and it's all over pretty quickly.

 

[HollyYoshi]

I've got to tell you, even despite all the strip-downs, being able to return to Kanto was awesome. It was really interesting to see how much it had changed over the years.