Catching 'em all in Pokémon Yellow? NO THANK YOU!

finishing a living pokedex was very satisfying and really fun it gave me a new appreciation for the game the variety of ways to obtain pokemon how robust the core concept was from the start and how the game aged exceptionally well even after several decades it was so much fun actually that i want to do another one if you don't know what a living pokedex is the goal is not to just fully complete your pokedex but to possess every single pokemon in the game i made a video on how i approached getting a living dex in pokemon red and blue spoiler it led to me building a website the links for both the video and the website are available in the description so what game should we go for now how about the next entry in the series pokemon yellow version special pikachu edition or just pokemon yellow is fine funnily enough pokemon yellow is not a new game but an upgrade of pokemon red and blue which were themselves an upgrade of the original pocket monster games see the original pokemon games pocket monster red and green were released february 27th 1996 in japan with an upgraded blue version releasing on october 15th 1996. this latter version would serve as the basis for pokemon red and blue which released september 28 1998 in north america and one year later in europe on october 5th 1999. after pokemon became an international smash hit thanks in part to the anime adaptation a special edition of the game based on said anime was released between 1998 and 2000 it is common practice for japanese games to be released several times with special editions and still happens to this day you can see it with games like animal crossing originally a nintendo 64 game the persona series or every fighting game ever so what is different between pokemon red and blue and pokemon yellow well something you will notice right away are the pokemon sprites they finally look like something now most of them at least they resemble their current design instead of being what what is this and that and that's just comparing to red and blue pocket monster's design were even worse note that this only affects the front sprites so the bags still look weird looking at you rattata also as this version was based on the anime a lot of characters were modified to fit their anime counterpart some trainers have a different design like brock misty or the rival characters from the anime make an appearance such as jesse and james nurse joy and her chansey and officer jenny and the pokemon used are different giovanni now has as persian and several gem leaders have their team changed as well on the gameplay side your starter is now of course pikachu you can not choose any other pokemon and your rival now starts with an eevee whose evolution depends on how you fared during your first two fights finally you have access to an exclusive surfing minigame on route 19 called pikachu's beach except you don't in the original version at least as it required a special surfing pikachu only obtainable through events or via pokemon stadium thankfully this was changed in the virtual console release but still that was stupid but what about the important changes the part that actually matters the pokemon well there are three main differences in how pokemon encounters and availability are handled first the pokemon that you cannot obtain in yellow version those are based off of the anime as well pikachu being a starter pokemon no other pikachu or raichu appear anywhere and you can't evolve your starter this is the special pikachu edition after all next as ash catches a caterpie and pidgey in viridian forest both appear there with weedle now being unavailable then jesse and james's signature pokemon ekans coughing and meowth cannot be found finally jinx electabuzz and magmar are not available in pokemon yellow because because uh uh well i i don't know why but i'm sure there is a good reason next change red and blue starter pokemon bulbasaur charmander and squirtle are still available in game and given to you by specific trainers throughout the story however of the three bulbasaur is only given to you once you reach a certain friendship level with your pikachu without going into details pokemon yellow features a friendship system which is more of a proof of concept that would be expanded upon in gen 2. basically the more you have pikachu in your team the more he likes you the more you suck at the game the more he'll do this [Music] plus there are a lot of fun unique interactions in the game after that we have pokemon yellows in-game trades the pokemon you receive are different from red and blue two trades were removed and pokemon previously only available via in-game trade can now be encountered in the wild finally pokemon encounter rates saw some tweaks i will not go through every single area in the game but to me the changes look like the developers wanted to make rare encounters feel special more rare pokemon can appear but at a lower rate with common pokemon being a lot more likely the best example being viridian forest caterpie went from a 45 encounter rate to 55 yet metapods rate was reduced from forty percent to twenty percent and both pidgey and pidgeotto can now appear at a rate of twenty four percent and one percent respectively so now that we know the differences between red and blue and yellow how do those impact the living pokedex challenge and most importantly is one version better than the other well most of the strategy we came up with does not change since the core game works the same there are still unique save file choices we still cannot get eggs and there still are a lot of evolutions one aspect that does change however is how starter pokemon are handled because all three are available at some point in the game we only need to play pokemon yellow three times once for each evolution step good right turns out we are still battlenecked on playing the game four times because of the fossil pokemon and the eeveelutions plus while we needed to start nine save files to get all starters you can trade them at the very beginning of the game as soon as oak's parcel is delivered in pokemon yellow you actually need to play through the game until at least cerulean city while increasing pikachu's friendship to be given the starters another aspect are the encounter rates the changes introduced in pokemon yellow end up widening the gap between good and bad luck the living pokedex challenge forces us to catch every single pokemon which means if any is rarer the time spent finding it will be longer on average since we have to look for it in the safari zone for example tauros goes from a four percent encounter rate to a ten percent one but we are still stuck with other pokemon having a four percent encounter rate next to that dratini sees its rates lower from 25 to 20 making it a bit harder to find even with the inclusion of dragon air with a 10 encounter rate it sounds fantastic at first before you realize it is only level 15 with an exclusive to pokemon yellow lowered catch rate to add insult to injury making common pokemon even more common means we are less likely to encounter different types of pokemon while looking for a rare one in the new and improved cerulean cave goldbat goes from a 20 chance to appear on floor 1 only to a 40 chance on all floors and by the way chancy's best encounter rate in the game goes from 10 to 5 the changes to encounter rates can be an upgrade if you are really lucky but if i wanted the entire game experience to be based on luck i would be going to the casino speaking of the casino rewards in pokemon yellow cost the most while both scyther and pincer are available they are more expensive than their red and blue counterparts with 6500 coins each and porygon is 99999 coins like red as opposed to 6 500 in blue where things get really silly is pokemon exclusivity instead of being the definitive gen 1 pokemon version yellow decides to set the stupidest of precedence for the series here is the list of pokemon not available in yellow version the beedrill line right you the wheezing line jinx the arbok line electabuzz the persian line and magmar the first line consists of pokemon catchable in either pokemon red or blue but the second and third line are ones obtainable in red only or blue only basically not only you cannot complete your pokedex with yellow version alone you cannot do it even if you play one of the other versions meaning you still need to play through both red and blue anyway and having magmar and electabuzz be part of that list forces you to play the story until you get surf since you need to access cinebar island and the power plant this is dumb as fun as the living pokedex challenge is i will not be attempting it on pokemon yellow it is strictly worse than doing it on either red or blue and the exclusive pokemon demand you play both versions on top of yellow anyway plus the game time will most likely be longer due to certain pokemon requiring you to play a significant part of the story more than once in the end the most efficient place to get rare pokemon is red and blue as the changes were made without convenience in mind it is not necessarily a bad thing mind you but our challenge suffers greatly because of it if you wish to attempt a living pokedex challenge in yellow go for it keep in mind though you are picking the most frustrating gen 1 version it remains a fantastic challenge so good luck and have fun in the meantime i will look elsewhere and start preparing for the game i have been longing to complete a living decks in for quite some time [Music] you

Channel: Lyra made a website

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Length: 13min 46sec (826 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 09 2022