Generation IV Pokemon

[hatkirby]

Okay so I was pretty generous to Voltorb Flip before but I've got a bone to pick with it now. I do think it's a fun little puzzle game when played in a vacuum, because there's some deduction involved. But you need to win Voltorb Flip tons of times in order to get enough coins for one of the good TMs (which cost 10,000 coins), and there is too much randomness involved in the game for you to be able to do this in a timely fashion. Even playing with a solver, I lost just as many times as I won, which also usually meant that when I did win, it was at a low level so I was getting under 100 coins for that win. I wanted to be able to buy Thunderbolt, but Voltorb Flip quickly became grating.

There is an alternative though, because I could get the Thunderbolt TM in Diamond/Pearl/Platinum, trade my Ampharos into it, teach it the move, and trade it back, since HGSS and DPPt are in the same generation. The way you get Thunderbolt in the Sinnoh games also involves paying 10k coins for it, but the slot machine minigame is still intact. The question is: would the slot machine get me to 10k coins faster than Voltorb Flip?

Absolutely 100% yes. So, the slot machine is obviously rigged because it's a slot machine. But it's rigged in a very bizarre way. You spend 3 coins per pull, and the max payout (besides the jackpot) is 15 coins. You choose when to stop each of the three reels using the Y, B, and A buttons. This all happens on the top screen of the DS; on the bottom, for some reason, is a picture of a moonlit field. Sometimes when you put your coins in, a random Poke Ball will appear in the field. This is very important, because it's completely impossible to win if there isn't a Poke Ball there, and if there is one there then you're guaranteed to win money on that pull. So the stuff with the reels doesn't even matter because the outcome is predetermined each pull anyway.

This makes it sound like you're not going to make any money at all playing this game, but au contraire! The other weird thing about this minigame is that a Clefairy could randomly pop out of one of the Poke Balls on the bottom screen. If this happens, then you're probably going to get the jackpot within the next few pulls, which by itself gives you 100 coins, and also starts the bonus round. In the bonus round, pulls only cost 1 coin, and Clefairy will point at each reel in the order that you need to stop them. If you follow her instructions, you'll win 15 coins each time. There's 15 pulls in a bonus round, so if you do everything correctly then you net 210 coins in the round. There's also a high chance that another bonus round will immediately start after that. So you just keep on following Clefairy's instructions until the bonus rounds finally end, and you win big money.

I've been trying this for a little while and it's very bizarre. I had a set of bonus rounds that netted me over 2000 coins, and the next set netted me over 3000. I lost something like 200 coins between these sets, before Clefairy showed up again. There's definitely randomness involved because you don't know when you're going to activate a bonus round, nor how many bonus rounds you'll get, but there's clearly a lot of money to be made here. You don't even have to look at the top screen, which is weird. Just press X repeatedly to spin the reels, press Y, B, A to stop them, and then spam X again to start the next round. Eventually you'll get into a bonus round, and you can just watch Clefairy. It's not entirely mindless because you do have to pay attention, but it is so much easier and more reliable and faster than Voltorb Flip.

It probably took me like two hours to do this but I got the Thunderbolt TM! The trade went well and I give all of my Pokemon very normal names:

[hatkirby]

Some progress has been made! I beat the 8th gym! I caught Ho-Oh! Using a Great Ball! (I refuse to use the Master Ball). Woo!



I think I might need to add Ho-Oh to my party. It's stronger than any other pokemon I have by like 6 levels (it's level 45). My party has generally been underleveled this whole time and has survived and succeeded through sheer force of will. But the Elite Four is going to be tough. One of the struggles in older Pokemon games is that there's a real difficulty spike going into the Elite Four that you don't really have much of an opportunity to train for. I suspect my team is going to be pretty underleveled, so I'll take whatever advantage I can get. I do love how Gen 2 / HGSS has like. An entire second region to explore after beating the Elite Four. You think you're at the end and then it turns out you're only halfway there.

I also got the DS online services working! It was pretty goofy, for a number of reasons. First, the DS online services are dead and gone. Bye. Nintendo is dumb and took them down over 10 years ago. Oh. BUT there's a fan reimplementation called Wiimmfi that pretends to be the Nintendo online services and is able to do a bunch of the things that they did. HGSS are fully supported, which is really cool! There's two aspects to connecting to them, though:

• Getting the game to use the replacement online services instead of the dead Nintendo ones
• Getting the DS to connect to the Internet at all

The former actually turned out to be very easy, because at some point a few years ago a bug was discovered in the DS network library that allows you to use Wiimmfi without hacking your game at all! You just change your DNS settings in your connection details and the DNS server at the other end is configured to trick your DS into doing what you want. Score!

The harder part is connecting to the Internet at all. The reason this is a problem is because the DS is only able to connect to unencrypted or WEP-encrypted networks. You cannot connect to a WPA-encrypted network at all, which is what pretty much every network is nowadays because WEP is completely broken and please don't use unencrypted networks. HOWEVER I have bumped into this before. I have a second router in my closet that I dug out (and I also had to untangle some crazy long Ethernet cables which, whoo, wow) and I set it up and created a WEP wifi network just for my 3DS to use. I used MAC address filtering so that no one else can connect to the network, which should help keep things safe even though the encryption is insecure. The router had to be put into router mode in order for this to work, instead of hotspot mode, which means it has its own DHCP server and NAT, so there's a second network nestled inside of the main network for my house, which is funny to me. But it also just works perfectly fine! I connected to it with my DS and was able to access the fanmade online services! I looked at the GTS and some people were willing to trade me an Abra for a Glameow (which I don't have, oh well).

I did this all pretty much just because I want to trade Pokemon with @Ori XD. She's playing SoulSilver and I'm playing HeartGold so like... trading version exclusives!! It sounds like a good idea! I think Ori will not have to do any of the nonsense I did because she's playing on Delta Emulator and it claims to be able to just automatically use Wiimmfi, which, like, is a very nice feature for an emulator to have!

[✝AngelSacrifice✝]

It's really interesting to hear about work around for the DS' online capabilities! Kind of insane to me we ever used non encrypted networks like what where we even doing... I don't have a DS anymore, but I'm glad that people are still making homebrew stuff for it!

Also RIP no funny name for Ho-Oh.

[hatkirby]

security didn't need to exist until we had secrets worth stealing (account details for SceneKids.com)

Yeah I tend to not nickname legendaries because i RESPECT them too much (I give stupid nicknames to non-legendary pokemon also because I respect them, just in a different way). Also Ho-Oh's name literally has Ho in it (twice if you count backwards) so no work needed to make it funny.

[✝AngelSacrifice✝]

Oh no they are going to steal my emo Phill (like from dan and phill but emo) account!!!

Also that's very true... I'm sorry for not respecting your already funny name Ho-Oh

[hatkirby]

I did it! I beat the Elite Four!



It's similar to the team I posted before, but Anthrocon (Growlithe) and Madeline (Togetic) are replaced by BASPINGO (shiny Gyarados) and Ho-Oh (Ho-Oh). BASPINGO is actually just there as an HM pokemon (it knows Waterfall and Whirlpool) and it's like 15 levels below the rest. I think it's funny how it's completely blocking out my Heracross in the photo!

As expected, this was difficult. My team is between levels 41 and 46, and the Champion has THREE Dragonites, one of which is level 50. It took me two tries to go through the whole Elite Four, and I used a ton of Full Restores and Revives. Actually, I feel bad about this, but I also ended up using a Revival Herb on my Feraligatr. It revives and fully heals a mon in one go (like a Max Revive, which I didn't have any of) but also lowers their friendship with you by quite a bit because it tastes so gross and icky. And I'm like noooo my friend! I don't like using the herbal medicine but I had to! For the Champion fight! We'll rebuild our friendship.

I should say that between my two Elite Four attempts, I trained my team up a couple of levels. First, Heracross definitely has a slower experience curve than the others because it took noticeably longer to raise a level (Ho-Oh is probably similar but I didn't really try to level it up since it was already the highest level of the bunch at 46). Second, the place I trained was the patch of grass on Route 47, the path that goes toward the Safari Zone that's not in the original game. The patch of grass requires Waterfall to get to.



Since it requires Waterfall, it requires you to have beaten the eight gyms, and thus access to that patch of grass assumes further progress in the game than the rest of the area. So, the Pokemon in that patch of grass are higher level, including level 35 Miltanks. And beating a level 35 Miltank grants 1000 experience every time.

And the thing is that I can do that in like a couple of minutes, whereas walking 1000 steps takes longer, is physically harder, and can't be done over and over in quick succession like fighting Miltanks can. So it's unfortunately making the Pokewalker seem less useful to me. I think it's still kind of nice to be like ooh I'm going to work and I can't play Pokemon but my actions are still gonna get like 2000 exp for my Heracross or whatever. But the Pokewalker itself is unlikely to be a driving force in my Pokemon getting stronger anymore, especially because I'm sure there's wild mons in Kanto that'll give even more experience.

Anyway, I'm excited to explore Kanto! I've already gotten the gym badge from Lt. Surge, and I think Sabrina is probably next, since Saffron City is right there? Maybe Aunt Hilda and Zelda will be there!

[BeelieveinBees]

Congrats!!!

There's a bit of this energy with the Gyarados lol


You've unlocked the second half of the map! Exciting times.

[✝AngelSacrifice✝]

Noooooo not the drama of the medicinal herb with your starter pokemon T 0 T I'm sure Feraligatr will forgive you though!

I didn't know there is a whole other area you unlock! That's so cool!

[hatkirby]

Yeah!! No it's so awesome! You get the first credits roll and then you get to explore the entire region from Red & Blue. It's three years after the events of those games so you can see some of the after effects and some modernization and stuff. And the postgame final boss is actually the player from Red & Blue!!!!!!! Like he's not a villain, he's just the ultimate test of your ability. IIRC Red (the Red & Blue player character) in HeartGold/SoulSilver has the highest level trainer Pokemon (a Pikachu) in any Pokemon game.*

* with the exception of Pokemon that match your level or stuff like that.



^ The left side is Johto and it's what you originally have access to, and then it's like boom there's Kanto too! Surprise!

[hatkirby]

I haven't posted an update here in a little bit, and that's because the last time I tried to, I got very distracted and ended up writing a 4000 word blog post (which isn't even done yet) and started working on a little game! The scope of the game is pretty small so I hope I will be able to show it to yalls soon. Yes it is a Pokemon game.

But just as an update on my progress in HG: I have all 16 badges now! The gym leaders were tough but I did it! I battled pretty much every trainer in Kanto and my team is pretty solidly in the mid-to-late level 50s. The final Thing to do in the main story is to go to Mt. Silver and battle Red, but iirc he is Tough. I think he has a level 80 Pikachu. I can't deal with that yet haha. In fact I'm not sure how I'm going to get strong enough to deal with that. Ummmm.

I also got Rock Climb after getting the last badge and now I'm excitedly going back to all the places in the game that have climbable rock walls so I can figure out what secrets are hidden hence!