Good morning everybody, and welcome back to VG Myths, the online internet video game TV show that is, yes, completely 100% serious right now. Pokemon Red & Blue are the classic monster-collecting games that started the largest multimedia franchise in human history, and yet, not once has anybody ever actually tried to be good at them! Let's fix that, shall we? First, let's define the rules: Our goal is to beat the entirety of Pokemon Blue, on official hardware, without any of our Pokemon taking a single point of damage for any reason. Status ailments themselves are okay, but taking damage from one is not. And of course, causing damage to ourselves via moves like Selfdestruct and Substitute is also a no-go. To complete the run, we must collect all eight badges and defeat the Elite Four. Wrong-warping to the end credits isn't gonna cut it! The run is officially complete after dealing the final blow to the Champion. Of course, given the length of the run, saving the game is allowed, but save-scumming is banned! We're not allowed to turn back the clock to undo any badly made decisions. If a mistake is made, we have to live with it, or die with it. If at any point we take a single point of damage, the run is entirely forfeit. We must delete our save file and start the game over from scratch! And one small important note: I'll be covering most events in chronological order, but for the sake of keeping things coherent, I'll be jumping around the timeline a bit. When my Pokemon wibble-wobble between level 5 and 500, that's why. With the rules set, it's time to start our Pokemon journey! And of course, immediately after choosing our first Pokemon, you reach the game's first roadblock. PIKASPREY: Hello internet users, my name is Pikasprey, and apparently I'm the anthropomorphized representation of Pokemon challenge runs, here to ruin Gamechamp's day by reminding him of the unfortunate reality that he is, in fact, bad at video games. Immediately after choosing your starter, and before you're even capable of gaining a single experience point, you have to have a one-on-one battle with my own hand-picked starter. Since both the player's Pokemon and my own are essentially still babies, one-hit KO's are impossible. This run is dead before it can even get off the ground. You'd have to get outlandishly lucky to get through unscathed. GAMECHAMP: While that may be true, there's a surprisingly simple strategy that gives us the maximum chance of success: Squirtle only knows Tackle and Tail Whip. Tackle only has 95 accuracy, and Tail Whip merely lowers our defense. Charmander, meanwhile, comes with the best starting attack move, Scratch, with 100 accuracy. We just need to keep resetting over and over and over, until Squirtle finally wastes its turn about six times in a row. PIKASPREY: That sounds like it's gonna take forever. Are you even certain that this run is the best idea? GAMECHAMP: Nope! I am fully aware that this is a terrible idea! And that's why, instead, I'm temporarily throwing Pokemon Blue in the trash for a casual playthrough of Pokemon Stadium 2! Ever-so-coincidentally, this is in our best interests! Pokemon Stadium 2 contains the ultimate secret weapon for the No Damage run: After beating about half the game, you unlock the Dodrio Game Boy Tower, capable of running the Game Boy games at quadruple speed! Remember when I said this run was being done on official hardware? Just because it's officially supported by Nintendo and Game Freak doesn't mean it's not literally made of cheese! Thanks to this baby, we're able to accomplish the herculean task of playing Pokemon and having a life at the same time. It takes less than a minute to get back to the rival after each reset, within half an hour, you're likely to see a perfect match-up, punching Asprey in the face six times in a row to officially get this run started! PIKASPREY: Oh no, and here I was thinking that you would faint after one more Tail Whip. GAMECHAMP: You're not quite out of the setup phase yet: You'll have to do one more roll of the dice, about a 1-in-3 chance, to catch a Rattata. This Rattata, dubbed General Squeaks, will be our main Pokemon for the rest of the run. It evolves into Raticate, having both a great Attack and Speed stat, and a move learnset that keeps it useful both in the early game and the endgame. In particular, Quick Attack is an extra-priority move absolutely required to make this run feasible. If an opponent uses Quick Attack, they will always attack first, unless we use Quick Attack ourselves, effectively forcing us to use Quick Attack against every opposing Pokemon that also has Quick Attack in its own learnset. Now that we finally have a run that both gets past Asprey and catches a Rattata, we have enough options to transition into a much more careful, much more boring playstyle. For the rest of the game, we're gonna be overleveling our Pokemon to the point they're able to one-hit KO all required opponents. Except for specific exceptions like Quick Attack, the Pokemon with the higher Speed stat moves first in battle, and our opponent will be forced to forfeit their turn if they're a dead corpse. But don't start bowling over just any wild Pokemon for EXP! Believe it or not, Caterpie is an absolute nightmare. Even if a move has 100 accuracy, it's still not a guaranteed hit, thanks to a programming error dubbed the 1-in-256 glitch. When checking if a move hits, 100 accuracy moves are given a value of 255. When attacking, the game rolls a random number between 0 and 255. If the random number is lower than the move's value, the move hits. Unfortunately, 255 is NOT a larger number than 255, meaning unmodified 100 accuracy moves have a hit rate of roughly 99.61%. .39% might seem astronomically low, but keep in mind: The more times we roll the dice, the more likely it is to come up Tails at least once! To put things into perspective, even with all the strategies I'm about to explain in this entire video, the odds of finishing a playthrough without witnessing the 1-in-256 glitch during a required battle are only about 67%. If we were to add on any extra risk during wild Pokemon training, the odds of a successful run would quickly approach zero. Thankfully, as long as our Pokemon has a higher speed stat than our opponent, running away is 100% guaranteed. Additionally, Viridian Forest is home to Metapod and Kakuna. Both of these Pokemon only know Harden, which doesn't deal any damage whatsoever. Our first short-term goal is clear: Burn Viridian Forest to the ground! Be warned: Even at 4X speed, this is gonna take you a couple days. In real time. Flamethrower is a 100 accuracy move with high attack power, and by the time we learn it, our stats will be high enough to one-hit KO all of Brock's Pokemon in the Pewter City Gym, earning us the Boulder Badge! Then we immediately went back into Viridian Forest to grind up Metapod for General Squeaks. We're not done until they're completely extinct! The path to Mt. Moon features several trainer battles against opponents that might potentially know Quick Attack. Flamethrower simply isn't fast enough! Of course, only take out the trainers that explicitly block the path and simply walk past any that are optional. Also, pick up Water Gun in Mt. Moon and teach it to General Squeaks. This will let us take out higher-level rock Pokemon without having to train up Ceave any further. And keep in mind, Cerulean City is located just past a one-way ledge! PIKASPREY: That's right! And before you can leave the city, you'll have to rematch me! This time I have a level 18 Pidgeotto, complete with Quick Attack. You'll need a Raticate around level 40 to guarantee a one-hit KO. Since there are no Metapod or Kakuna in the grass west of Cerulean, you'll have to do all of that grinding entirely within Viridian Forest, which you did, and now I'm thoroughly punched in the face. Ow. GAMECHAMP: While there are still a ludicrous number of required battles blocking the path, none of them will be quite as buff as that Pidgeotto until after we unlock a new, safer and faster source of experience. Beeline for Vermilion City, grab the bike voucher, then backtrack to Cerulean for the bicycle itself. It's time for Phase 2 of our training regimen: Leg Day! South of Cerulean is the Day Care center, at which you can leave one Pokemon. This Pokemon will gain exactly one experience point per step the player takes. Using the bicycle and the Dodrio Game Boy's extreme speed, this is the absolute fastest, safest and easiest grinding method available to us. Head to the underground tunnel, throw on your headphones, pull up your favorite workout playlist, and bike for a couple days. As always, I literally mean "a couple days". At level 61 I was finally brave enough to enter the S.S. Anne and punch Asprey in the face for the Cut HM. PIKASPREY: That wasn't very nice of you. GAMECHAMP: Before we could use Cut, we also had to beat Cerulean Gym, where calamity struck. PAST GAMECHAMP: Quick Attack... and I'm gonna move Quick Attack to the front, now Quick Attack is the default move... What? What?! Are y- No?! Noo!! Nooo!! Oh my god! Oh my god!! YES! YES!! YES!! YES!! YE- [laughing] YES!! Oh my god!! [laughing] Oh my god!! PRESENT GAMECHAMP: After that brush with death, we obtain the Cascade Badge and earn the right to use Cut, but first we need a Pokemon that can actually learn it! While Charizard is technically capable, any Pokemon that knows an HM can't be put in the Day Care, and I didn't want to forfeit the option of leveling up Ceave if I didn't have to. There are wild Kakuna just above Cerulean, so we grabbed one of them and swap-trained in the same location until it evolved into Beedrill. Before entering Rock Tunnel, I'd also like to grab Flash. While Flash is technically optional, I opted to assume if I didn't use it, I'd manage to accidentally bump into every single trainer like an idiot. There are just enough non-dangerous wild Pokemon for us to catch, including an Abra we can teach Flash. Once you've decimated the last trainer in Rock Tunnel and reached Lavender Town, I've got awesome news: This is the damageless run's breaking point! Just south of Lavender is an NPC ready to give you a TM for the savior of the run, Swift. Up to this point, absolutely every time we attacked an enemy, we opened ourselves up to the 1-in-256 glitch. Swift, however, has a special gimmick: It always hits. Rather than simply having 100 accuracy, Swift goes one step beyond and throws the accuracy check in the trash, thus bypassing the glitch entirely! Give it to General Squeaks for a 100% safe method of attacking most wild Pokemon and trainers. Of course, this only applies if we're strong enough for a guaranteed one-hit KO, the opponent doesn't know Quick Attack, AND the opponent isn't a ghost. For ghost Pokemon, I taught Raticate Dig, an extremely high-power move that also happens to be super effective. Don't worry, while this does technically mean giving our opponent a turn, our opponent's ghost Pokemon will never know any moves that are capable of hitting an underground target. It's required to get the Silph Scope in Rocket HQ to identify and defeat the ghost Marowak in Lavender Tower, but "required" is in quotation marks! Instead stop by Celadon's mall and buy a Pokedoll. As anybody familiar with Pokemon speedrunning is already aware, the devs were asleep at the wheel while programming the ghost Marowak. The Pokedoll allows the player to run away from wild Pokemon with 100% success, and despite being a required story battle, ghost Marowak is legally considered a wild Pokemon. Turns out running away like a little sissy baby is a 100% valid method of soothing Marowak's wayward soul, letting us safely murder Team Rocket and obtain the Poke Flute. While in Celadon, stop by Game Freak's HQ to politely borrow Nathaniel Bandy. Buy a Thunder Stone, evolve him into Jolteon, and immediately pawn him off to the Day Care center. Don't worry Nate, we'll take you back out in a week or so! Head west to grab the Fly HM, wake up Snorlax, and run away like a little sissy baby, forcing Snorlax to dematerialize out of existence! You can get through the entirety of Cycling Road without triggering a battle by hugging the right wall, thus reaching Fuchsia City! The Safari Zone here is absolutely essential, both for the required HM's, Surf and Strength, as well as offering a great variety of catchable Pokemon without any risk of taking damage. These include Mayro the Doduo to teach Fly, Nick Robinson the Kangaskhan to teach Surf and Strength, and most importantly, Etika the Nidorino, who'll be absolutely vital in the endgame. Unfortunately, we're not actually allowed to Surf until beating Koga's gym. Koga has a level 43 Weezing with massive defense, overpowering it with Swift is gonna take even more massive attack power. But rather than going back to the Day Care center, we can multitask with a better option: Mug the entire world! We're gonna need a lot of cash in the near future, and it just so happens trainers drop their wallet in fear after murdering their Pokemon. Keep a strategy guide handy to see what every trainer has in advance. If they don't have a Pokemon that knows Quick Attack and they're decently lower level than us, Swift will be a guaranteed team-wiper, building up both Raticate's stats and our bank account simultaneously! This also gets a few of the gyms out of the way, by now they're total pushovers. After obtaining most of the world's wealth, I still wasn't quite as powerful as I wanted, so I started training against the wild Pokemon just outside of Fuchsia until level 95. This is high enough to beat Koga, as well as Asprey in Silph Co. PIKASPREY: Oh cool, I lost again. GAMECHAMP: Important note, we're reaching the threshold where boss battles have Pokemon too beefy to beat with Swift. You'll have to risk the 1-in-256 glitch by using more powerful moves. Nevertheless, with all that done, we now have access to the final and best training location for General Squeaks in the entire game: Seafoam Islands! Where we train for two friggin' levels. With General Squeaks at level 100, raid and nonchalantly curb-stomp the final gyms. With the eighth badge in hand, we've officially earned the right to enter Victory Road and fight the Elite Four! It's time for the absolutely final grinding session, and it's a big one! By this point, we've been streaming for nine total days, the vast majority of that time spent grinding, and it was finally too much for me to handle. No joke, this run was causing me actual, literal recurring nightmares where I'd do something embarrassingly stupid, like take damage by stepping on a thumb tack. And in my disoriented dream state, I convinced myself that even though I only imagined getting hit, imagined damage is still technically damage, and thus forfeits the run! In the interest of getting this run over as fast as possible so I can both get this video out and manage my stress, I chose to do the rest of the Day Care grinding off-stream in a more peaceful environment. I can only hope you all trust I didn't immediately jump into a horde of Caterpie as soon as the camera was off. I also trust that you agree with me that imaginary thumb tacks don't count as a hit. Several days later, on November 29th 2019, I booted up the stream for one last time. This is the finale. Our final team consists of only three Pokemon: General Squeaks, the level 100 Raticate, with stat EXP maxed or near-maxed from training, knowing the moves Swift, Bubblebeam and Dig. Nathaniel Bandy, the level 100 Jolteon, given a full helping of ten Calcium to boost his Special stat, and knowing the move Thunderbolt. And finally Etika, the level 79 Nidorino, given a full helping of Carbos to boost his Speed stat, and knowing the move Horn Drill. Prep yourself with an arsenal of X Accuracy, X Speed, Ethers and the Poke Flute, and you are finally ready. Walk into Route 22 to catch up with Asprey for the penultimate battle. PIKASPREY: And this one is really just a formality, since I unfortunately suffer from good AI. Any trainer with good AI will prefer moves that are super effective against the player's current Pokemon. Nidorino is a pure poison type, and my Pidgeot knows Agility, a psychic-type move that does absolutely no damage. Regardless, Agility is still technically super effective against poison, meaning I'm legally obligated to use it on every single turn, no matter how incredibly obviously stupid this strategy is. GAMECHAMP: While Pikasprey is busy doing literally nothing, we can set up the ultimate unbreakable combo. Use X Accuracy and six X Speeds, then take down Pidgeot with one of your standard attack moves. X Accuracy is absolutely, ludicrously broken: Rather than simply raising the accuracy of our moves, it causes them to skip accuracy checks entirely, similar to Swift. This even applies to Horn Drill, a move that has low accuracy but always one-hit KO's on contact. Once the combo is set up, Pikasprey has effectively already lost the entire battle. Horn Drill will drop every one of his Pokemon as soon as they show up. Take your victory lap through Victory Road, and prepare yourself for the final battle. Restore your PP at the Poke Center, make sure Etika is at the front of the line, and walk through the doorway to your destiny. Remember: Save scumming is banned! There's no turning back. Tonight, you'll go down in history as either the ultimate champion, or the ultimate failure. Lorelei's Dewgong, as I'm sure you're already aware, will always try to counter Nidorino by falling asleep. It doesn't work. Set up the Horn Drill combo to take out her entire team risk-free. Remember to use an Ether immediately after to restore Horn Drill to full, and swap Raticate into the front slot. Bruno isn't gonna be so easy: Use Bubblebeam on both Onix, Swift on Hitmonchan and Hitmonlee, and swap to Jolteon to overpower Machamp with Thunderbolt. Against Agatha, you'll have to swap between Raticate and Jolteon every turn. Put Jolteon in the lead, Thunderbolt, Swift, Thunderbolt, Swift, Thunderbolt. Finally it's Lance's turn: Thunderbolt Gyarados, then swap back to Etika to trick Lance's Dragonair into spamming Agility, and Horn Drill combo the rest of the fight. Pidgeot no longer knows Agility, so keep Nate in the front slot. Use one more Ether to refill Horn Drill, and walk through the doorway to our final rematch with Asprey. PIKASPREY: And this is where it all comes to an end! No human being has the willpower to survive Viridian Forest powerleveling twice in one lifetime! There will be no more VG Myths! When people think of Pokemon challenge runs, they will think only of me! I'm about to end your entire career! GAMECHAMP: One-shot Pidgeot with Thunderbolt, one-shot Alakazam with Swift, one-shot Rhydon with Bubblebeam, one-shot Arcanine with Thunderbolt, and swap to Etika for one final AI loop against Exeggutor. PIKASPREY: Hold on there, Champ! You just made a critical mistake! While good AI makes me prefer super effective moves, there's another AI modifier that's given quintuple priority: I'll never use moves that inflict status ailments against a player that already has one, even if it's super effective. I'm not stupid enough to use Hypnosis on a Pokemon that's already asleep. Instead I'll always either use Barrage or Stomp. You're completely open to take damage on the next turn. The run is officially over. GAMECHAMP: Close, Asprey, but as an AI trainer you've still got one last weakness for me to take advantage of: You're a dirty cheater cheater pumpkin eater! The AI doesn't simply choose its move at the start of the turn like the player does. If the player moves first, the AI will wait to make its final move decision afterward, meaning there's one more loophole that can get us out of this! The Poke Flute functions in battle as an infinitely reusable awakening. Use it to wake Nidorino up, thus removing its status ailment. Since Nidorino's status is normal, Asprey is forced to cheat and make an otherwise impossible move decision: Hypnosis! PIKASPREY: Well, I guess this is what I get for completely disregarding the rules of the game. GAMECHAMP: Since opponent trainers don't have to worry about PP, we're now effectively unbeatable. It's only a matter of time until Hypnosis misses, letting us gradually set up our combo. Obliterate Exeggutor, select Horn Drill once again, gather your thoughts, and make gaming history by absolutely annihilating Blastoise and crowning yourself the Untouchable Pokemon Champion! The Pokemon Mr. Perfect Run is... After all is said and done, I have to say this run was an unforgettable experience! If you'd like to try it out yourself... don't! Please, this is a very bad idea! Seriously, if a challenge run is giving you literal nightmares, it has passed thoroughly into unhealthy territory! Do a challenge run, I- I always encourage doing challenge runs, just... Just don't- don't do this one! Please, you deserve better! PIKASPREY: And if you wanna see more of me, you can head on over to my channel, where I make all sorts of different videos, many of which feature me exploiting the mechanics of different Pokemon games in the form of challenges and softlocks. But that's all I have to say here. Peace out! GAMECHAMP: Plus, a quick shout-out to everybody who my Pokemon were named after: Ceave Gaming the Charizard, Smallant the Abra, Skip The Tutorial the Beedrill, WatchMojo the Metapod, Nathaniel Bandy the Jolteon, Mayro the Doduo, Nick Robinson the Kangaskhan, Still Gaming the Hitmonlee, and Chat the Lapras. Links to all their channels are in the description! Plus, a personal thank you to Etika. I like to think he would have thought this was cool. Couldn't have done this without ya. And finally, special thanks to all Patreon backers, including: [Gamechamp reads out the names on the left] [Yes, even that one] [Gamechamp reads out the names on the left] [Gamechamp inhales sharply] ... nakakapag pabagabag? [Gamechamp continues reading out names] ... I u-- No! Are you se- [inhales sharply] [struggling]
... Brfxxccxxmn pcccclll mmnr- I can't! [sighs] [struggling]
... prxvclmn nckssqlbb one one one one six! [Gamechamp reads the rest of the list like a champ] Let me know how much this video sucks and how to improve in the comments below! An endless supply of Metapod smoothies for watching, and get out of my house! [BONK!]
When he named Nidorino it caught me off guard, I fr got a little emotional