Zinc Plays Let’s Go Pikachu!
Episode 1: I AM NOT IN CONTROL OF MY LIFE PLEASE HELP
Alright, so I know what some of you are thinking.
"He’s doing this again? Why bother?”
That’s a fair question.
Anyway.
My name is Riley Zinc and I’m a college dropout and genuine disappointment.
I hope you enjoy as I flounder through the land of Pokemon and yearn for real, intimate relationships in my actual life.
Oh. Uh. I overshared again, didn’t I? Didn’t even wait for you to ask.
Ah, thank you. He annoys me already and I can’t explain why.
I understand now. Carry on.
I hope it doesn’t land me in crippling debt in the end!
So am I playing a game, or is this a game within a game? Or was that introduction a game and now I’m out of the game in the—
Nevermind.
That’s just my face.
Ooh, the outdoors. Haven’t been out here in... months. It’s so cheery, it makes it hard to wallow in my own self-pity.
I suppose I should speak with the professor first, right? Or am I wrong? Am I making the right choice?
I see I chose poorly.
Ditching Flint, I wandered to the north to find Professor Oak, practicing his Snow White lines for the yearly Pallet Town Play.
He always gets to be the main star. I’m usually a shrub.
I’m not bitter.
: o
Is it really that strange? The Viridian Forest isn’t too far away. Wait, it’s not stalking me, is it?
Just to be safe, allow me to stuff it into this tiny, magical container.
Has a human being ever been caught in a Pokeball? Did the person come back out intact, or were its bones and organs crushed into a little sphere?
You know this is a video game and not the real Flint because doesn’t give me mocking nicknames. I kind of prefer this Flint now.
What are you plotting? Why would you smile at me as if you were happy?
This Pikachu is about to regret wanting to come with me. ... Though I suppose a cute nickname wouldn’t hurt, right?
"So cute!” said Flint, “No one will suspect it if I taught this tiny bastard Covet and stole their shit!”
Um. Thanks? I threw a ball at it. Do you lack depth perception?
Am I being insensitive?
Please don’t ask us to scatter your ashes across Kanto. That’s... awkward.
Have you ever heard of Bulbapedia?
Oh. Did I... just negate your life’s work?
I’m so sorry please pretend I didn’t say that.
Are you ready to be let down, Chupin?
"Through some mysterious force”? It’s native to Kanto.
I have a mom who’s not dead?!
Wait! Please, don’t go...!
She locked the door.
Alright.
Hello?
Oh god, what happens when you mow the lawn and it’s in the ground?
May as well give it an appropriate name for this run.
For having an entire musical number about traveling to Viridian City, it’s not all that hard to get to.
The mart man then gave me a package to give to Professor Oak because I can’t say no without wilting.
Hm. I’m pretty sure I already got a sunburn just from being outside for ten minutes. It’s not great.
No.
I know you taught that thing to pickpocket! I don’t want to see it!
Uh, electrocute it, I suppose.
Chupin doesn’t have pockets to pick.
Yes, I felt that second-hand embarrassment. You don’t have to bring it up.
I think Chupin enjoyed that Eevee touching his butt.
I knew it.
Your head is so large. How do you pull your shirt over it?
Hm. What to do?
Yes, that’s a good idea.
Wait WAIT I DON’T WANT TO MUG THE CHILD. CAN I GIVE THE MONEY BACK?
No one can find out we mugged that child. Speak of this to no one.
How is this even a certified gym if it’s always closed? Isn’t a gym leader’s job to stand there and take challengers? What kind of business would someone like this be involved in that would take them away from this responsibility?
Nevermind. Let’s just go to the next gym.
Is that a weed?
No, but it is phallic. Shouldn’t take too long to defeat, at least.
Is it... going to do anything...? Um.
When in doubt, sprint away from socially awkward situations and hope you will never face that person again during your lifetime!
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My internet went out for four days and rather than, y’know, read a book or something, I decided to annoy my friends by replaying Let’s Go Pikachu and doing what we’re now calling ‘The Banana Challenge’.
Named after my pikachu this playthrough, the Banana Challenge is simply that I only battle using my pikachu and no other pokemon. I do this because it irks my friends, which I enjoy. I didn’t grow up with any pokemon games like they did - we’re of the same genration but I had a weird childhood - and so I kind of Don’t Care about learning the game or playing well. My satisfaction comes from my friends yelling at me “you can’t use electric moves on rock types!” and similar objections. While they’re off playing the new framerate abomination game, I’m just swinging my pikachu like a pillowcase of bricks at everything in sight.
What makes this better for me (and worse for my poor friends) is that I’m using what I call ‘The Vinci Strat’, which is named after my first playthrough’s pikachu: Vinci. Because at some point during that first playthrough I realised I could catch a whole lot of pikachus and feed their candy to MY pikachu to make her stronger.
I also realised that those pikachus are very, very close to the start of the game.
I also realised you get a lot of leftover candy which sells for 10 coins a piece.
So I started this game, named my Pikachu as ‘Banana’ and off we went right away to the forest to chain-catch what ended up being 300 pikachus. All the XP plus all the candy resulted in an extremely overpowered Banana in about three-to-four hours.
This was before the first gym. This was before pretty much *anything* that was important. The game let me do this. I could just... do this.
After the first 100 pikachus they became so easy to catch it was basically a guarantee. I didn’t even run out of pokeballs because I could just sell candy to buy more. The only thing that actually stopped me was that Banana leveled up so much that I couldn’t feed her anymore Pikachu Candy, so that was that.
Everyone in the first gym died in one hit, once I realised I had to use the non-electric moves.
“Oh you’ll have to use other pokemon eventually,” my friends said.
Nope, guess again.
Not long after that I bought a Magikarp (also to annoy my friends) but discovered there was a good use for it - in so much as it was completely useless. It’s only available move does fuck all which made it the perfect partner for double battles against those Team Rocket guys.
Banana forever.
And finally to make myself really insufferable I got a TM for a move called ‘Pay Day’ where my pokemon just throws a fist-full of coins at their opponent.
I love it.
It’s insulting, it’s visually hilarious, it’s demeaning, it smacks of arrogant snobbery, it’s completely off-brand for a heroic pikachu protagonist, and also it gives me a few hundred extra coins at the end of every battle.
With Banana being so overpowered it was sufficient to knock everything out in one hit for quite a while after.
Eventually some things started to need two hits, and then three, but that just meant I got more coins at the end of the battle. I used a PP up on it (much to my friends’ horror) and it’s still working really well for me. I can buy whatever I want and not worry about cost. I’m an absolute jerk.
It doesn’t work on ghosts but I can just electrocute those guys.
So that’s where I’m at now: an extremely overpowered pikachu who beats everyone to death with money, occasionally paired up with a very useless fish.
My internet’s back now so I have other things to do, but I’d like to try and finish the game with Banana and see if the challenge holds out.
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