The Legend of Pikablu

who's that Pokemon I promised this one isn't a trick question Jigglypuff seem come up up think you've got it alright it's Meryl so what's the big deal about Meryl I mean it does have a pretty strong evolution with its new fare and typing and huge power it also does have the hilariously sad looking baby form but for a long chapter in my childhood this middle stage Pokemon had a huge spotlight in my life but for at least a year I would have guessed a different name we would have called it pika blue today's video is a fun little look back at some of the craziest rumors and stories that pass through concerning pokemons lore during its earliest days outside of Japan with a focus on the one that captivated me the most the mysterious pika blue it's actually really hard to explain to people pokemons ludicrous surge in the late 1990s it was everywhere it didn't just have a toy section it dominated toy shelves through the entire store with every form of media imaginable before other franchises started doing the same the original red and blue games sold over 30 1 million copies combined way more than all the sold copies of X Y Omega Ruby and alpha sapphire combined and that doesn't even include the 14 million more from the pokemon yellow side version in many ways Pokemon was a universal language and with that language came a treasure trove of urban legends and as such for at least a year of my life I heard everyone in the United States refer to this blue little guy as pika blue how did this happen as Timmy Turner would say ah now today if Japan so much as releases a brief exclusive item the Internet is there to pounce on it and translate it to the rest of the world immediately the sceptile leaked for pokken fighters that got to the rest of the world instantly and now we're able to watch the japanese trailer for it worldwide with websites like YouTube but the 90s internet was little little bit different there were no translation tools barely any video clips and even images were hard to find in a size that was larger than a thumbnail around the time of pokemons release in the United States less than half of homes even owned a computer while barely one-fourth of homes even had internet access at all so an pokemon blew up in late 1998 early 1999 in the West fans took any bit of info from Japan that they could on the future games and speculated as much as possible Meryl was one of the Pokemon first revealed in the second generation as early as the Pikachu summer vacation short that came along with the first movie this short aired in the summer of 1998 in Japan before the West had even gotten the Pokemon video games and because of this when Americans first went to try and find the mysterious Pokemon from a possible sequel game they found this little blue mouse a lot whether it was from the movie short in Japan some of the first official Japanese screenshots or even Pokemon card promos like the tropical island set Meryl was pretty visible to the world even before Japan got pokemon gold and silver in late 1999 while we may never truly know where the first mention of peak blue was uttered you can still find traces of it across the surviving Internet today almost always on a poorly made beginners fan website through classic web creation tools like tripod geo cities and Angel Fire my best guest is someone saw a picture of this creature maybe a small screen shot and noticed that it had some similarities in its face to Pikachu the most popular Pokemon over time tales of this mysterious blue Pikachu passed from person to person like wildfire from the playgrounds to locker rooms until enough people had heard the rumor to start posting about it to their websites with added myths and maybe some false information given enough time to pass through the internet the tale of pika blue was born only now the legend had been built up so high that it was ridiculous pika blue was now the hidden evolution beyond Raichu one of the strongest Pokemon in existence and part of an elite crew known as the Polka gods oh and by the way I totally have one you can only get it with an extreme gameshark cheat code that only I know how to do and if you can't get it you're probably just doing it wrong pulling up scraps of information from these early internet fan sites it's actually hilarious to see how many of these crazy ketchup pika blue cheats there are enter the code in your game shark and put a Raichu in your party then turn the code on and change the nickname of your new Pokemon at the name Raider topeka book there's a million different tricks beat the leaf for a hundred times catch missingno and then use a water stone on ride you the list goes on and on here's a website that made my eyes bleed it has a code to catch Mew but you need to have all 150 Pokemon plus pika blue for it to work dang somehow the tale of pika blue was so strong that an official licensed Pokemon product immortalized the legend on tops Pokemon anime trading cards for their set on the first movie a couple dozen of the cards are dedicated to the Pikachu summer vacation short for several of these card descriptions that completely botch the names of some of the pre revealed generation 2 Pokemon pika blue is mentioned by name in eight of these cards on the back and snubbull is constantly called Beru now snuggles name actually makes sense it's a transliteration of his Japanese name guru but how did they get snuggles Japanese name right while inexplicably passing over Merrill's barrels Japanese named Mari Roo is really close to what the original English translation would become I did some snooping around and believe it or not Meryl was presented to us with its Japanese name several times across the internet in the late 90s this page from Nintendo of Japan site in early 1999 shows Marui right here with the name spelled right below it this one is my absolute favorite though while the web archives from the wayback machine unfortunately don't save all the pictures check out this blurb from May 1999 on the official Pokemon website these are exclusive pictures of three new Pokemon who will appear in Pokemon silver and gold they're American names haven't yet been confirmed but in Japanese they're named Kira Hana coho and Marie room from left to right oh it's almost like the official websites for this stuff had the correct information all along all these hundreds of fan sites we're lying sorry tops you got bustard you really think someone would do that just go on the internet and tell lies in future prints of the same set tops would correct their mistake on Maryland stumbles names but it was too late the power of internet rumors made their mark on a real Pokemon product now kids had official purchasable proof with pika blues name on it there were a ton of other rumors that circulated in this same way I could go on about all of them for hours but here are some of my favorites trying to find the mysterious 151st Pokemon meal oh that's easy all you have to do is use strength on the truck that you see on the island across from the SSN this was a cult classic probably as popular as the peak blue myth the rumor felt impossible to prove though because you can't normally learn surf until after the SSN has already left I did learn a cool trick recently though board the SSN get cut then intentionally lose a battle and you can leave the ship before it sets sail then you can come back with surf later and the truck doesn't do anything oh of course in firered/leafgreen there's a hidden lava cookie tucked deep beneath the truck on the land perhaps as a reference to the original herb 'end but no mew to be found another popular place money would suggest to find mew is Bill's garden by completing very specific tasks bill will let you enter the space that the game shows above his home into a garden where you can capture exclusive Pokemon like Moo pika blue and other Polka gods that mysterious face right above his house was just so enticing but in firered/leafgreen they ended up correcting what was surely a graphical mistake in the original games by extending that wall fully behind his house we've used that term a lot hoecake gods just what are they honestly it's a huge overarching term for Pokemon that you couldn't get in the original games either the mysterious generation 2 Pokemon we knew nothing about strange cases like the Venus toys that gastly creates in the Pokemon anime and then there's just straight-up faked Pokemon my personal favorite of all these are the accepted names of Pokagon evolutions for the original three starter Pokemon this was 15 years before we finally get mega evolutions but once upon a time the legend was that Venus or would evolve into sabes our Charizard would evolve into charcoal and Blastoise would evolve into get this Rainer these just might be the three worst fan names I've ever seen in my life what somehow you can find legends about these specific three names all over the Internet oh yeah you need a missed stone to evolve them obviously that gives you all the pokey got evolutions the list goes on and on with fan fiction that gets worse by the second with Pokemon likes spooky the evolution for Gengar or how about the made-up classics like dooms say and doomsday millennium the list goes on forever I'm sure you get it the internet was a very different space in the late 90s and people believe things too easily but still some of this seems so fake it just doesn't add up how did anyone believe these outside of small children the answer is simple Pokemon already made the impossible happen thanks to these two characters especially one is the hidden 151st Pokemon in the pokédex it can't be found in the game naturally but special game shark codes and Japanese contests have made it for real oh yeah and it can learn every move in the game and we've already done a whole video on this already but missingno is a glitch Pokemon it's a garbled mess of graphics it has the hidden bird type that can't even be found in the game and it gives you what seems to be infinity items in the six slot taking at face value both of these insane rumors are somehow completely true because these tales were actually real it became a lot harder to tell which stories and myths were actually faked Nintendo even added to the fun with their own fake Pokemon Nintendo's official website and yes this is what their official website looked like back then posted a story on April Fool's Day that involved how to evolve your likho tongue into a Luigi Nintendo power dropped a detailed ruse on how to evolve your Dragon Knight into a Yoshi submitted by Jay Esther jester oh that's good that's about all I've got for today but it definitely was a lot of fun going into the wayback machine and digging through all these pre 2000s websites to relive this era out of curiosity I went to Twitter to see how many of you had ever even heard of pika blue before and it looked like at least a solid chunk of you have never heard the tale hopefully today either help you learn about this strange era of Pokemon fandom or maybe gave you a little nostalgia for how crazy those early Pokemon years used to be if you want to learn more about some of the other mythical tales across Pokemon you can check out my tales about the pokémon Mewtwo and missingno right here and if you enjoyed this video consider clicking the subscribe button to follow this channel and get updates when new videos crop up thanks for watching today's video and I'll see you guys next time with more Nintendo content

Channel: TheJWittz

Views: 1,274,139

Rating: 4.9372478 out of 5

Keywords: Pikablu, Marill, Pokemon, PokeGods, Charcolt, Rainer, MissingNo. (Video Game Character), Missingno, Pokémon, Pokémon Gold And Silver Crystal (Video Game), Pokemon Facts, Nintendo

Id: pOIang1NuVU

Length: 11min 11sec (671 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 13 2015

Reddit Comments

[u/CompuITguy]

What he absolutely nails here is just the insane rumors/myths that surrounded Pokemon during the early years. Pokemon was at its peak, however information (reliable info especially) was hard to come by. The internet was still in its infancy and many people still did not have it. So when any new rumors came about (like Mew and the truck) there was no real way to verify it.

[u/Eagleby18]

I wonder if anyone else but me heard this rumor from gen 3: if you catch all the Regis and bring them to the sealed chamber, you get to fight Regiegiegie, the master of the four Regis and the first Normal type legendary. Yes, those little shits on the playground almost exactly predicted Regigigas years before it was made.

Oh, but notice I said four Regis. To make Regiegiegie appear, you needed not only Registeel Regice and Regirock, but also Regigrass. To find Regigrass you have to cut down every single blade of grass in the Hoenn region. Yes, it grows back when you go to a different area, but the game will remember you cut it. Then where the last blade of grass was, there will be a hole in the ground. In there you'll find a Braille puzzle like for the other three Regis. Solve it and you fight Regigrass. Oh, and make sure you have the right HM slave to solve the puzzle before doing all this, because once you leave the cave, the entrance disappears and you have to start all over again. What's the HM you need, you ask? Oh sorry, I forgot.

And if you seriously go through with cutting down all the grass In the entire game (me) and nothing happens, then obviously you missed a spot somewhere. Since the game doesn't indicate which grass you have and haven't cut down, you should just do it all over again just to be safe.

[u/King_Cosmos]

Pikablu was one of my favorite poke legends! I still name all my Marill "Pikablu" to this day.

[u/Thaddeus_T_Third_III]

The memory lane trip is strong with this video. I can't tell you how many times I tried using strength on that truck by the SS Anne to get a Mew. I thought I must have made a mistake before or done things in the incorrect order, or didn't fulfill some specific set of required circumstances to get the Mew. Thank goodness for nugget bridge glitch!

[u/justignorme]

Jesus, put a NSFW warning before that Spooky.

[u/wammy71]

I miss the dark ages of the internet.

[u/Artoo_Detoo]

When Misty was replaced by May in the anime, for the longest time, foreigners thought May's Japanese name was Kimi before Advanced Generation was released. Those who watch the subs know that her actual Japanese name is Haruka. The reason why people thought her name was Kimi at first is because to foreigners, "Kimi" sounds reasonable for a girl's name, and in Japan, "kimi" means "you." So someone called her "you," and foreigners pounced on it as "Kimi" being her name.

Not game-related, but another sign of how communication between Japan and other countries have improved over the years.

[u/menace64]

No mention of Mewthree?

Casual.

[u/Mikesodope]

I still remember trying to use my water stone on Riachu... this video is dead on.