TRAINER'S EYE #155 - "The Arcanine Take Down" ft. RBY Pokemon Challenges - As The Pokeball Turns

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
RBY Pokemon Challenges (00:00):
I am RBY Pokemon Challenges, and this is
my Pokemon story.

David Hernandez (00:42):
welcome to, as the Poke Ball Turns, we'll
interview people about theirexperience with Pokemon.
My name is David Hernandez.
I'm joined by RBY PokemonChallenges.
You can find'em over on YouTubedoing the hardest Gen one solo
challenges on YouTube.
and he's here to share his storyand how he got on into all this.
RBY.
Welcome to as the pickleballTurns.

Hello.
Thanks for having me.
you can call me Teo, by the way,but yes, from RBY Pokemon
Challenges and GSC PokemonChallenges actually.
So appreciate you having mehere.

Absolutely.
And you know, when I sent youthe message to have you on the
show, you know, I've been a bigfan of yours for a while because
I love how you approach yourcontent.
specifically I think I found youthrough either the Water Dragon
REOs video, or specifically,especially for sure, me two.
And before we, you know, divein, anything, what made you kind
of want to do the hardestchallenges?

(01:33):
Have you always had an affinityfor it or is it just something
that turned into content?

Yeah, so what I do on my channel is
really, I guess influenced bythe way, I played Pokemon as a
kid.
'cause like I played Pokemon aton as a child.
My first game ever was PokemonBlue and.
You got, kind of sick of justplaying Bulbo Charmander
Squirtle from the start of thegame.
So I got my hands on a gameShark way back in the day, you

(01:59):
know, when you had to like plugthe game shark into the game
boy.
Right.
and I used to just change mystarters, changed my Pokemon,
changed my moves.
I did all this stuff just tokind of keep the game fresh and
interesting.
And so it translated to a lot ofwhat I do now on my channel.

So for those who don't know, the game Sharks,
the old school where you couldhack the game and be able to get
like infinite rare candies orget the glitches or whatever
have you,

Right.

During those times, I guess you would get
like a different type ofstarter, like say a Spearow or
get like a Nidoran or a Vulpix.
Is that kind of what you woulddo?

RBY Pokemon Challen (02:33):
Absolutely.
So, I mean, it started with thatstyle where I would, just hack
it.
So the second you went to routeone instead of Pidgey, for
example, you'd be findingJolteon, But after a while of
doing that, I got to the pointwhere I was like, wait, what if
Jolteon had a poison type?
Because it, you know, maybe justis interesting to see how the
poison type Jolteon would do.
I don't know.

(02:54):
So, you know, I never likedplaying the game just as it was.
I liked to kind of take thingsfurther and just experiment with
things to see what I could dobeyond that,

It's like you wanted to test the limits of the
game itself and see like how farcould you push the

I.

boundaries of, I guess, obtainability to
impossibility?

Right.
And it, it's one of those thingsthat's very interesting now
because, you know, in the newestversions of Pokemon, they've
added things like Terraforms,right?
Where you like terastilize.
I'm probably not saying thatright, but, where you can
actually change the Pokemonstype in these newest versions of
the game.
And it's just interesting to methat I was basically using a

(03:36):
game shark to do somethingsimilar way back in the day.

So what you're saying is Pokemon should pay you
because this idea 25 years agoand here we are.
They're using it now.

I know, right?
I should have totally documentedit and patented it back then.
You know,

Yeah.
Yeah.

I, I don't think I would win against
Nintendo's lawyers and thePokemon company's lawyers, but,
you know,

God bless our souls if any of us get attacked
by their lawyers, and we're now,we're all screwed,

se Seriously.
Seriously,

I guess it sounds like you continued with
the games.
Did you go, what was the seriesafter that?
After Gen one?

Yeah, so honestly, like I said, Pokemon
Blue version was my first gameever and I had one of those old,
you know, gray game boys, likethe original brick game boys
that you could probably use as aweapon.
Right.
Um, but

It's like with

yeah.
Yeah.
And you know, so it was theoriginal and so I had one of
those from my mother.
She had gotten it, I don't knowhow, but somehow she had that in
the house.
And so I got Pokemon Blueversion, but then for a long
time I couldn't actuallyupgrade.
I didn't have the Game Boy coloror Game Boy Advance, et cetera.
it wasn't until I was in juniorhigh that I actually got Pokemon

(04:50):
Silver, and then I hadn't playedGen three and beyond until I was
in college.
So for like years and years andyears.
My only Pokemon games werePokemon, red, blue, yellow, of
course Pokemon Silver, PokemonCrystal.
And then I had gotten, finally,eventually I got a in 64 with
Pokemon Stadium but those werebasically my games as a kid.

That's wild.
'cause usually most people wouldtear off after a while if they
have to play the same game for,I'm assuming since middle
school, we're talking four tofive years.

Yeah.

the Pokemon RBY and a little bit of GSC for four
to five years.
Nonstop.
Well, not nonstop, but you knowwhat I mean.

Yeah, I, I mean it really was like that,
you see, just, just a littlebackground on me.
you know, without going into toomuch detail, I was my parents'
second kid, and I was born whenthey were 20.
So we were broke, like, broke,broke.
I remember asking my dad forvideo games and he was just
like, what?
Like, we don't have the moneyfor that.

(05:50):
What are you on?
So it was actually mygrandmother who would help me
save money.
And finally, once I had savedenough money, was like, you can
buy a video game.
So I got her to take medowntown.
We went to Walmart.
I remember back in the daybuying Pokemon Blue version as
my first game.
And because of that experience,like for many years there, I

(06:13):
didn't really get new games.
I didn't have other consoles, etcetera.
So Pokemon Blue version was mygame.
I played it religiously.
I played it day and night, andlike I said, eventually I got a
game shark so that I couldchange Pokemon and this and that
and the other thing.
But, so I guess what it led towas me diving into that game.

(06:34):
Deeper than I think a lot offolks would like.
A lot of folks would just playthe game, maybe do a catch'em
all, maybe you know, somedifferent team building
challenges, but eventuallythey'd get sick of it and move
to the next generation.
Whereas for me, for quite a fewyears there that was what I did.
I played Pokemon Blue and Iwould just do all kinds of crazy
things in that game.

It reminds me, similar to my experience with
Gen three.
gen

Hmm.

favorite generations.
And the reason why is because Iwas lucky enough, my mom was
able to afford to gimme anNintendo ds.
I remember I went on a campingtrip and I left my Ds on the
chair to go use the restroom.
It was like one of the movingbuses.
And you know, I was maneuveringthrough and.
I am the bus driver decides tostop and I literally kid you not

(07:18):
did a flip in that middle of theair and landed next to my chair.
when I look next to me, my DS ison the ground and it's broken.
So it's, it's unusable.
It's basically the screen islike completely, you know, black
and white and whatever.
So I can't use the DS and Ican't afford a new one.
So this is like really fresh,right When Diamond and Pearl

(07:40):
just launched, so we're talkinglike a few months.

Hmm.

I missed out on, not missed out, but I was
delayed on gen four because wecouldn't afford to get a new
Diaz.
Those were very expensive,

Yeah.

I had to go back to gen three and play those
religiously for multiple times.
I played them so many times.
I could probably memorize it atthis point.

Right, right.
And I mean gen three, honestly,with the larger number of
Pokemon, of course, what it waslike 380 or so at that point, I
wanna say.
But

like that.

I.
Like, obviously you had tons andtons of Pokemon, you had
abilities.
Natures like so many moremechanics than Gen One had.
Like Gen one was so basic, butyou know, it's, it's nostalgia,
I guess.
So probably the same for youwith Gen three.

When it came to Pokemon specifically, was the
games the only way you can kindof engage it with it at that
age, or did you do the anime orthe cards at all?

Yeah.
So I got into Pokemon cardsbecause of my neighbor.
he was, you know, one of thoselike only children who got
everything that he wanted,right?
So

Oh my gosh.

you, you gotta remember when Pokemon
cards first came out, they hadlike a starter pack that you
could get, and I forget what theshiny that was like guaranteed
in that one was.
you know, so you'd buy thisstarter pack and then you'd buy
all the, you know, like normalbooster packs.
Right.
And he was one of those kids whohad his shiny charr card, which

(09:06):
was the thing back then.
You know, like, I think I saw anauction that one of the
original, first gen of TgcCharizard cards that was in mint
condition went for a ridiculousamount of money.
But, At that time, he wouldcollect them.
So of course I, I was hisneighbor kid and I had to try to
follow what he was doing.
I eventually convinced Grandmato help me get some Pokemon

(09:28):
cards,

Oh,

but I,

out to grandma,

yeah, seriously, no, grandma was the
whole reason I was playingPokemon dude.
Like without her, Mom and Dadwere not, not gonna have it, you
know?
So, but I never played the cardgame like properly.
It was more just collecting.
then the anime, of course, Ialso watched quite a bit, but I
had, I used to have it on VHS,like the first season, the

(09:53):
Indigo League.
it was one of those things wherethis, this is really dating
myself, but back in the ninetiesit used to be a thing where
whenever you made like magazinesubscriptions.
You would get these things thatwould come around where you had
to make like X number ofsubscriptions or whatever, and
then you could get a discount.
And so same grandmother, shewould get these, you know,
magazine subscriptions,whatever, but somehow you could

(10:17):
also get like music CDs and youcould get VHS tapes on some of
these.
And I remember that she hadgotten her subscription with my
Pokemon VHSs coming, so It wasback in the Indigo League.
I had the VHS tapes and I usedto just watch those religiously.
Of course.
it's the whole reason I was soupset when Pokemon yellow came

(10:39):
out because my Pikachu could notuse thunder shock on Brock's
Onix.
You know, like I was like, comeon, this is based on the anime.
I have to be able to beat Onyxwith Pikachu, but no.

Never did, unfortunately.
Tried a couple times.
Trust tr here multiple times Ishould say.

Yeah.

So you were in this circle of Pokemon and

Hmm

know, you said you eventually in college is
when you finally went into theother games.
Do

hmm.

have particular favorite region outside of the
first two that you reallyenjoyed playing?
Or is it kind of still those twothat you hold fondly?

for me, gen one is the greatest Pokemon
generation of all time.
And, it's not close.
It's not close.
Like, yes, I, I know that peoplewill say like, but the Gen one
games were buggy and they had somany mistakes and even come on,
there are gen three remakes ofthose games, but Gen one was

(11:33):
that generation for me, where itwas all new, it was all fresh,
it was all like, when.
Professor Oaks says A world ofdreams and adventures with
Pokemon awaits right?
Like that's my feeling towardsGen one.
As I got to later gens, I feltthey were so meticulous about
trying to balance things out andadd new mechanics, that for me,

(11:55):
it actually took away a littlebit from the magic of the
original generation.
But that's just me personally.

I guess I could see that because, I mean, it's
kind of ironic when you considerB Two's the most broken Pokemon
of all time in general one,

Yeah.

But I guess I get from your point, because you
know, when you talk about Genone and gen two, It's a very
simple mechanic.
There's no EVs.
All IVs, I believe are maxed, bydefault.
And then you come into Gen threeand gen four, now they're having
to be more conscientious of,well, what kind of Pokemon do we
want to put out there?
'cause it's gonna affect ourVGC.
It's like, at that point, Ithink it went from discovery to

(12:30):
where Pokemon's more nowestablished and now they're
having to make sure that they'reI guess, doesn't.
short circuit stuff, I guess, ifthat makes sense.

Yeah, I think they started to realize
after.
Nintendo Cup back in Gen onethat they needed to do something
to actually make competitivebalanced.
It seems like from there onwardthere was much more of a focus
on competitive balance in thegames, whereas Gen One is just
so inherently imbalanced.
it's more about the story andabout the experience for me, I

(13:00):
guess in that sense.
But There's a lot of funchallenges that I can foresee
doing in later gens, but fornow, gen one, that's, that's
just because it's my, it's my OGfavorite, you know.

I was curious, do you have a favorite Pokemon
at all?

of course my favorite Pokemon of
all time is Arcanine.
people who watch my GSC channelwill know because I'm doing this
big.
Minimum battles series wherewe're finding every Pokemon that
can beat the game without anyoptional battles whatsoever.
And every time that we get toArcanine, I scout ahead to the
next gym, the next section toshow'em that section is

(13:35):
Arcanine.
He's, he is the legendaryPokemon.
Okay.
Like, I don't, I don't want tohear about any, you know, other
Legendaries.
No, he's the legendary Pokemon.
So, you know, fight fightingwords.

OG before the OGs

Well, I mean, it was episode two of the
anime.
He was shown next to the threelegendary birds of Kanto in the,
uh, Pokemon Center in ViridianCity.
So originally, I'm pretty sureArcanine was actually supposed
to be the ultimate Pokemon thatMewtwo became, but that they
retconned it and made me twoinstead.
That's, that's my, my, you know,tinfoil hat theory here.

That is such a spicy take.
I've never would've thought ofthat because I remember that was
Arcanine was one of the firstones, and I even thought it was
legendary'cause it's called thelegendary Pokemon for a reason,
you know?

Right, right.
Exactly.
So, I'm just saying, I'm just,just throwing that out there
that maybe just maybe Arcanineis actually supposed to be the
best Pokemon.

So when we come to talking about you starting
YouTube, your YouTube journey,what led you to want to start
into YouTube.
What made you wanna startcreating content?

so I didn't actually intend to make a
YouTube channel for quite awhile.
And what had happened is, so Ilive in Japan, and during Covid
of course, everything shut downhere, just like I think it did
for a while over there in theStates.
And I was working for theseEnglish conversation schools
here at the time.

(15:03):
Of course they were losingstudents like crazy because of
covid.
Uh, nobody wanted to go tothese, you know, optional after
school things, you know?
Right.
So my boss basically came to meand said, Hey, we're gonna start
making content for things likeYouTube.
So you gotta figure it out.
for me personally, whenever Ihave to learn something new,

(15:23):
whether it's programming,whether it's, video production
and editing, things like that, Ialways like to do projects of my
own that I'm actually interestedin.
That's how I motivate myself tolearn new skills.
So I actually started theYouTube channel.
as a way to learn about it,editing and learn about, you
know, video production basicallywhile just doing something that

(15:44):
I personally found interesting.
So that's why I started thechannel originally.
It wasn't just because I wantedto, you know, make videos about
Pokemon.
That was just kind of abyproduct.
Of course, it eventually took onits own thing and.
I was watching my, works YouTubechannel, you know, sit there
with like 20 subscribers and Iwas starting to get hundreds,
and I was like, oh, wow, youknow, I can actually do this.

(16:06):
You know, and I was starting to,you know, make advice to my
boss, like, maybe we should makecontent more like this.
And they wouldn't listen to me.
I, it's like, okay, well, youknow, like.
You know, but I mean, that, thatis how it goes.
But, so when I started thechannel, of course I wanted to
do something that I wasinterested in Pokemon, but I

(16:28):
also wanted to not just repeatwhat everybody else was doing.
because that's not veryinteresting.
Like, you know, my favoriteYouTuber at the time in the
Pokemon space was J Rose 11, Iif you don't know J Rose 11 and
you're listening to this, like,what are you doing, you know?

he's a very good str.
Similar content to what you weredoing actually.

Yeah, but I, I mean, I didn't want to
just copy what he was doing, butI latched onto something that he
had done a couple times, but hehadn't really taken it all the
way, in my opinion, which isminimum battles, right?
So he did minimum battles withlike teams and changing Pokemon,
and then he did two solo runs atthe time that.
Were minimum battles.

(17:08):
It was his Poliwag run and hisGastly run.
He had done his minimum battlesfull game solo runs with a
single Pokemon.
And that just got me thinking,well, if he can do minimum
battles with first stagePokemon, then there must be a
massive number of Pokemon thatcan do minimum battles.
Right?
So.
That's how I actually startedout was a minimum battle series,

(17:29):
just trying to find everyPokemon that could possibly beat
Gen one on minimum battles.
Turns out that it's about 78Pokemon give or take.

I guess just to get some clarity, for those who
may not know, what does it meanto beat Pokemon RBY on minimum
battles?

Yeah, so again, I, I think I mentioned it
a little bit earlier, but thatmeans that you take no optional
battles whatsoever.
You do no grinding whatsoever.
You can't fight wild Pokemon.
You can't fight any trainersthat are not required to move on
in the game.
I.
So in Pokemon red and blue, thatturns out to be 68 required
trainer battles.

(18:03):
Assuming you don't poke at all,glitch or use any other glitches
to move around.
And in Pokemon yellow that turnsout to be 65 required trainer
battles.
So basically you're essentiallysaying, if I only fight these 65
trainers, can I beat the game?

And basically, you said 78 Pokemon can only do
it

Yeah, so I did it in Pokemon yellow and I
did it with 78 Pokemon.
But you gotta keep in mind thatof those 78, there are some that
are really reasonable to do itwith and there are some Pokemon
that are really marginal, and Iwas really doing a lot of
resetting to get it to work.
So.

a different type of shiny hunting where
you're not soft resetting forthe shiny hunter.
You're software setting open.
The odds of the moves of the,

Yeah,

AIs actually used.

yeah, it was much later than that, that I
started using the overlay that Iuse now.
I now basically.
wrote a, computer program thatwill track things like resets
and and whatnot in real time.
And.
I know for a fact that I haveone run that I've shown on the
channel where I literally reseta thousand times in order to
just demonstrate to peopleclearly this is not reasonable,

(19:14):
this is not reasonable.

times

It is possible, but it is not
reasonable.
Like'cause Gen one is differentfrom later gens in that there's
what's called the one in 256glitch.
Any move can miss one in 256times.
So.
Essentially, there is no suchthing as a truly impossible run

(19:37):
in Gen one, as long as you canhit ghost types, which is
another discussion.
But basically nothing isimpossible in Gen one outside of
that one limitation of not beingable to hit ghosts.
Otherwise, you will eventuallybeat the game with any Pokemon.
It's just a question of is itreasonable to do so?
and.

(19:57):
That's, I guess one of thecharms to me of Gen one is that
you can actually get theseincredibly lucky situations,
whereas in later gens, ofcourse, they made it where a
hundred percent accuracy means ahundred percent accuracy,

Mm-hmm.

suddenly there are actually completely
impossible battles.
Right.
So it's just kind of aninteresting quirk of Gen one, I
guess to me.

So just to give an idea of your rules.
So this is the rules you havelisted on your YouTube.
You have no zero dvs, whichmeans the lowest possible stat.

Yeah.

no items in battle, which obviously it's Gen
one.
Oh.
Or basically you wouldn't usehealing items.
You wouldn't use like X attacks,X defends.

Right?

have no stat boosting vitamins, so you don't
boost any of the Pokemon stats.

Yes.

have no other Pokemon in battle except for the
hm Pokemon, like I guess aPidgey or Paras is usually the
ones you go to.

Yeah.

then your timer starts when you select a new
game.
Right.

Right.

so what I wanna ask,'cause you also have a
scoring system, and I

Yes.

you came up with this.
So the

Yeah.

it starts with a score of a hundred points.
It's minus 0.1 points for areset.
You have a minus 0.25 peroptional battle and so forth and
so forth.
How did you come up with thatscoring system?

so this was in summer of 2022 that I
introduced that, and I wasbasically trying to find a more
objective way to compare Pokemonin minimum battles, because the
difference between minimumbattles and say a speed run,
right, is that.
the challenge is different,right?
When you're in a speed run, yourwhole point is like, how fast

(21:26):
can I execute?
You know, knowing the, correctplaces to escape rope from
knowing exactly when to open themenu, when not to open the menu.
There are all these littleintricacies there, but in
minimum, battles content.
It's more about can you beat thegame within the constraint of
just these few trainers, And.
So nothing is necessarily goingto be completely consistent

(21:48):
there.
So you need to have a systemwhere, you know, sure, you maybe
take more resets with thisPokemon, but how does that
compare to a few other things?
Right?
for me personally, based on thefact of trying to beat the game
on minimum battles as my go-to,I consider it worse for a
Pokemon to take optional battlesthan to just reset.
If I can reset within reason, ifI can see like a logical way to

(22:12):
win the fight, then I'd ratherjust reset and try to get
through.
That's my opinion.
nobody else has to agree withthat.
That's just my approach.
And so I always felt like, okay,resets aren't really worth that
much unless we're taking tonsand tons of resets, at which
point, sure, you know, thisPokemon is terrible, but, um.
I, I would rather in general,take a couple resets rather than

(22:36):
fight an extra battle.
Then I also limit TMS as much aspossible in my runs.
And the reason for that isbecause in Gen one in.
Particular, there are very fewgood moves, if I'm being honest.
Like, you know, when you look atcompetitive Pokemon in gen one,
it's like, you know, ice beam,blizzard, thunderbolts,

(22:56):
earthquake, you know, hyperbeam, body slam.
You know, like there's only afew moves that are actually
considered like top tier andviable in gen one.
The problem that I see in again,this is just my personal
opinion, but when I watch a lotof solo challenge content, is
that they end up just using theexact same strategy with

(23:16):
multiple Pokemon, because thoseare the only viable moves.
that's good and fine, but for mepersonally, it just gets to be a
bit repetitive as the runner.
Like, okay, so every time I'mjust gonna add these same moves
on.
I found it just to be a bit moreinteresting to try to beat the
game with a Pokemon withoutusing those tms, or at least as

(23:38):
much as possible without usingthose tms.
so by doing that, like I've hadsome really bizarre and
interesting runs come out ofthat.
For example, Tentacruel inPokemon Yellow.
I beat the game on minimumbattles with a Tentacruel
without using a single tm inspite of the fact that it
doesn't learn a single strongmove until it gets to hydro pump

(24:01):
at like level 50 something.
The rest of the game.
I was running, poison sting, Iwas running rap, I was running
water gun at one point.
I was, I actually used constrictin order to slow down kogas
Venomoth enough that I could useWrap in order to defeat it.
So basically like I've had runsthat came out that were really
interesting because of the factthat I tried to beat the game

(24:24):
without using those moves andwithout level grinding and
without using vitamins.
Like just some kind of crazyhardcore, like, you know, we're
almost going like Kai level ofcraziness here and we're staying
in vanilla, Pokemon, red, blue,and yellow.

So just to give some context, just since you
used Tentacruel as example, youstart out with acid supersonic
and wrap.

Yeah,

You don't get a new move until level 18 with
poison sting

yeah,

and then you got water gun constrict, God
forbid,

yeah,

and that's really all you're working with
and

yeah, yeah.
Exactly, exactly.
So the, the whole point is youdon't have a single move that is
stronger than like 40 poweruntil you get to hydro pump at
the very end of the game.
And.
It's a slow level up groupPokemon, so you're also not
getting to level 18, forexample, very quickly.
So, you know, you're beatingBrock basically with, supersonic

(25:19):
strats and Wrap stratsbasically.
Like it's, it gets ridiculous.
It gets ridiculous quick,

And I

hey,

talking about because I think the other
option, usually people, they gofor the badge boost.
the badge

yeah.

who don't know, it's where if you use a status
move such as sword dance,agility, whatever have you, in
gen one.
If you have the badges and youget all the boosts, they all get
a plus one, I believe, or a plustwo if I'm not mistaken.
So eventually becomes to thepoint to where you're just using
those moves and those Pokemonthat had those moves or have
access to those moves are theones who come out on top.

Yeah, it's, it's related to the
badges, but it's, it's not quitea plus one or plus two.
What it is, is it's a plus12.5%.
So if you've got Brock's Boulderbadge, for example, that's a
12.5% boost to your attack stat.
So if you use a move likewithdraw after that, that boosts
your defense.
The games programming has thiserror where it also raises your

(26:13):
attack by 12.5%.
So.
You can get some crazy stuffgoing with the badge Boost
Glitch, like I have only seenJay Rose 11, for example, use
the badge boost.
Glitch up to six timesintentionally in a battle.
But I had to run way back in theday where I showed using 18
badge boosts in a single battlein order to overcome an

(26:36):
opponent.
Yeah.
So I was running squirtle.
and basically what I was showingwas that Squirtle was really
struggling to beat Lance becauseit's just a, you know, not very
strong Pokemon.
So I was all, all the way at theend of the game, I'm playing on
minimal battles.
I can't backtrack, I can't goget more rare candies, I can't
go, you know, fight moretrainers.

(26:57):
I have to beat him with what Igot.
So what I was showing was thatbasically by using withdraw.
Six times and then using doubleteam six times, which I know
people hate double team, but itwas for the badge boost.
That was the point.
and then also getting Lear fromthe Gyarados six times.
I had 18 badge boosts on thatPokemon and.

crud.

That and that turned that situation where
six badge boosts effectivelydoubles your stats.
So by the time you have 18 badgeboosts, you have doubled and
doubled, and doubled.
You are now eight times youroriginal stat.
So at that point, even aSquirtle is just basically a one
hit KO machine, you know, using,surf or using, you know,

(27:42):
blizzard, whatever it's using.
It doesn't matter.
You're just destroyingeverything at that point.

Right.

Yeah,

18.
Can you imagine 18 boostedescort,

yeah.

anything?
Could probably be the, thebelief for.

Right, right.
Exactly.
I mean.
I have runs, one of the nicethings of this live overlay that
I use is that you can see mystats in battle in real time.
So I've had runs where I'veshown, like all of my stats are
literally 999 at this point.
So you know, I should be oneshotting anything at this point,

(28:18):
even with some sort ofridiculously weak bog.

One thing I wanted to ask, because I've,
I've seen your overlays.
You always use Pokemon yellow.
Why just Pokemon yellow?
Do you not wanna go to Pokemon,red and blue, or you just prefer
that game?

I do play Pokemon Red and blue as
well.
Like the video on my channel isactually a ROM hack of Pokemon
Red and blue that I put togetherwhere all the AI trainers are
using the Smogon competitivemove sets.

Yes.

Which is a whole, fun, interesting
challenge in and of itself.
And I'm looking to play withthat a little bit more.
But, yellow is my base gamebecause of the fact that
overall, there are nitpickyplaces where we can argue, but
overall, Pokemon yellow is aharder game than Pokemon red and
blue.
And it has to do with twofactors.

(29:47):
Number one is the fact that theyrevamped all of the gym leaders.
Teams move sets in that versionof the game, and in some cases,
they just outright changed theirPokemon to be better.
just to give a very clearexample, when we look at the
Koga fight in Pokemon red andblue, he's using two Koffing, a

(30:07):
Muk, and a Weezing.
Well, the final Weezing canbasically be cheesed in that
fight by just using dig or flyagainst it because it has.
At least a one in four chance ofusing self-destruct.
So you can have a Pokemon thathas no business winning that
fight, but as long as you getthe dig or the fly off, you're
at least one in four to win.

(30:28):
Once you get to the Weezing inPokemon Yellow, on the other
hand, he's rocking threeVenonats and a Venomoth, and
they're using, of course, theMove toxic, but they're also
using Psybeam and Psychicthroughout the.
Battle and the Venomoth hasdouble team to be extra trolley
against you, so it's actually alot harder to beat Koga in

(30:49):
Pokemon yellow than in PokemonRed and blue.

Now you've done so many different ideas by the
Hmm.
my idea, which I was flatteredyou did the Venomoth bug and
psyche type.
So definitely

Yeah,

'cause that was my idea.
That was my

yeah, yeah.
Thank you.

you're welcome.
what's one of, I guess, one ofyour favorite videos that you've
enjoyed or one challenge thatyou enjoyed that you were
surprised by?

So one of my favorites, I guess, of all
time.
So I'll, I'll, I have to giveyou a top three because I've
done so many at this point.

yeah, yeah.
Go for it.

So, so my first favorite video that I
ever did was when I did a fullgame, level five, no experience
run with Gyarados in Pokemon Redand Blue.
And the point of that video isthat every trainer in Pokemon
Red and blue, except for Misty,has at least one Pokemon that

(31:37):
uses a non-damaging move againstthe player.
And what that means is that.
Even a level five Pokemon withthe right moves is theoretically
capable of beating the entiregame.
Of course, you end up usingcompletely op, broken
strategies, like substitutedouble team toxic rest, right?
But it's still possible is thepoint.

(32:00):
So.
When we talk about solochallenges in Pokemon Red and
blue in particular, it's not aquestion of can the Pokemon beat
the game?
It's just more a question of.
How consistent is it or whatlevel do you have to get to?
Pokemon Yellow, on the otherhand, actually has more trainers
that always attack you.
Misty's first Pokemon alwaysattacks you.

(32:20):
Erica's first Pokemon alwaysattacks you, and the champion's
first.
Pokemon the Sandslash alwaysattacks you, so that changes the
calculus quite a bit.
Where now in Pokemon Yellow,it's not actually possible to
just cheese the game with anyPokemon.
There are actually a lot ofsituations where if you are at a
low enough level, you'reguaranteed to be knocked out by

(32:41):
the opponent.
I love that run just because ofthat, that's what I was trying
to show with that.
the second run that I love isthe Mewtwo with no repeat TMS
run.
This is like a really oldie onthe channel, but I was trying to
not use the same moves in anyboss battle that I had used in
the previous run.
So like the second I usedpsychic in a battle, psychic is

(33:02):
off the table, I ended upbeating rival six.
So the rival just before you goto the Pokemon League with the
move set of rage, substitute andreflect, and basically.
What happens there is rage ingen one is not like later gens.
The second you use rage.
You cannot stop using that move.

(33:23):
You're locked in permanently.
But by using reflect.
You cut the physical damageagainst you in half and then you
set up a substitute and nowyou're also able to tank a bunch
of physical hits, and it turnsout that the rival's first
Pokemon the Sandslash loves touse Fury swipes against you.
So it's hitting you like two tofive times with this incredibly

(33:45):
weak move, especially after it'scut in half with reflect and it
builds up rage to the maximumamount.
And it turns out that rage whenit boosts your attack in gen one
also causes the badge boostglitch.
So all of your other stats arealso increasing your speed, your
defense, your, special are allgoing up.
So you're actually becoming moreand more defensively bulky every

(34:08):
time he does that and rage turnsout to be enough to win that
fight.
That one was just insane to me.
Like it's such a ridiculousstrategy, but I was trying to
keep the good moves for theElite Four and the Champion, so
it was like, oh, I guess I canuse rage here.
It worked.
Yeah.

I think this is also, if I can, intercede real
quick.

Yeah,

a good example of how diverse your rules have
given you.

right.

anybody who listens, when's the last time
you've ever used rage in aPokemon battle?
Do you even know what rage doesnowadays?
How many

I.
Yeah.

that move, you know?

Yeah.
Well, and in Jed one, they maderage, like a level up move on.
A lot of Pokemon, like char art,I remember would learn rage, but
it was at such a high level.
You'd think it was a really goodmove.
And so as a kid, the first timeI played, I always thought the
newest move was the better move,right?
So I'd replace the older moveswith the newer moves,

Mm-hmm.

and then you get to rage and you're like,
wait, what?

Especially for me, especially when you see the
animation on Pokemon Stadiumspecifically, you see it red.
I'm like, oh, this is a strongmove.
And it's like, no, it's notjust.

Yeah.

Very liable.
It's tackles even better, Ithink,

Yeah, exactly.
At at least before it boosts up.
Yeah, tackles significantlybetter.
so that's one of the things inPokemon Red and Blue, if you're
up against the Charizard team ofthe rival, like the champion
will end up sometimes using rageat the end.
You know if you have any Pokemonthat isn't weak to fire,
basically he's got at least aone in four chance, a lot of

(35:35):
times a one in two chance ofusing rage.
And then you're just kinda like,ah, come on.
Like this is supposed to be thechampion battle, really like.

Right.
And you gotta Pokemon that knowsRage that's locked in and we'll
never switch it again.

Yeah, but it, it's just hilarious when
the AI uses it against you andyou're just like, okay, free
win.
you know, might take multipleattempts on this fight because
he, he just has a chance to puntthe fight basically.
So, you know, but anyway, so, sothat was just, it tickled me so
much to be able to actually win.

(36:09):
A serious battle in a Pokemongame with rage.
That, that just was so funny tome.
so I loved the No repeat MovesMewtwo, I loved, of course, the
level five Gyarados.
And then the third one I wouldsay was that Tentacruel run with
no tms, just because of the factthat what I find in these no TMS
runs when I do them is that itputs more pressure on you to

(36:30):
actually think about how movescould interact with certain
situations.
Right.
So The Tentacruel usingconstrict in order to lower
opponent's speed enough that nowit can use wrap, which worked
differently in gen one.
It actually locked your opponentout of moving, you could create
these like, you know, strategieswhere constrict is now a useful
move, which I don't thinkanybody's ever said in the

(36:53):
history of Pokemon.

I time ever in a podcast history has been ever
said.

Yeah.
So, uh, constrict is useful ifyou're trying to beat the game
with no tms, with a Tentacruel.
you know, so,

Only that situation.
That's it.

it, it's, it's a very niche
situation, but it does work.

Tangela.

Tan it too.
Yeah, tan it could get it done.
the problem with Tangela ofcourse, is that you got Tangela
so late in gen one, right?
It's just on that little patchof grass just south of Palette
Town.
So.
I remember playing the game andgetting Tangela and seeing its
moves and just being like, Nope,this Pokemon just goes into the
box.
It's there for the catch'em all.
That's it.

I think Tangela doesn't learn a new move until
thirties either.

Yeah,

if you did tangle, no tms, it would be,
you'd be worse than Tencor,honestly.
Lemme

yeah.
Yeah.

Yeah, your first, oh God.
So if you did Tangela, you wouldactually get a new move blind at
level 24, but you'd be stuckwith constrict for 24 levels

Yes, exactly.
Which is why we don't do Tangelaruns.
Come on.
I,

coming soon to a video near you on YouTube.

RBY Pokemon Challeng (38:07):
seriously.
Seriously.
But I, I mean it, you know, evenShuckle gen two, right?

Right.

It's rocking, constrict, but at least
it has that massive defense andspecial defense.
But Tangela doesn't have any ofthat,

It

you know?

dude, you'd have to rely on struggle at that
point.
I don't even know

Yeah,

get through the game with that.

yeah.
I mean, like, you could getthrough the game once you
actually got moves, but in theearly game, oh my gosh.

Yeah,

pain, pain.

was just thinking Brock.
Yeah, Brock would beat us.
You wouldn't be able to do it.

Yeah.
Nah, it's, it's not pretty, I'lltell you that much.
It's not pretty.

It sounds like, you know, from experience, do
you have like flashbacks goingin your mind right now?

Oh yeah.
Like I'm of the opinion, andthis is another one of my hot
takes, but I've, I've put it outon the channel quite a few times
that Brock is actually thehardest trainer in the game, in
solo runs.
the reason is because he resistsnormal and flying type moves.
And basically that's everythingthat you have in the early game
for most Pokemon.

(39:06):
So like when you do a solo run.
my good friend Scott's thoughts,I'll pick on him because, you
know, I'm sure he is fine withthis, but he tears Pokemon based
on speed, based on time throughthe game.
And what I found in watching hisruns is that if you just watch
the first Brock section, howlong it takes him to beat Brock,
if he beats Brock in sub fourminutes, the Pokemon's gonna be

(39:28):
top tier.
It's at least going into top twotiers.
If he takes more than about sixor seven minutes to beat Brock,
that Pokemon's like straightdown to the bottom.

And I think that was kind of intentional
when you think from a gamedesign perspective, you know,
they wanted

Yeah.

be kind of that gateway for people to understand
types.
You know, there's so many typesearly on that don't do well
against, Brock specifically towhen you see later rock type gym
leaders.
You think of Roxanne, you thinkof, I think it's Roark.
They're not as challengingcompared to Brock.
I'd say Roxanne's probably asclose because of rock, tomb, and
nose passes a pain in the butt,

Right, right.

there's ways around it to where it doesn't
restrict a Pokemon.

Yeah.
And I mean, in gen three theystarted actually adding TMS
before the first gym and whereasin gen one you had nothing to
work with, like, you grind to ahigher level.
That's the answer for gettingthrough Brock.

and a poker ball and a wish, that's about
it.

Yeah, exactly.
So I mean it would, that's kindof the beauty of Gen one in a
way.
But it's also, the big.
hurdle in these solo challengesand it's, it's why you'll see a
lot of solo challenge runnersredo the same Pokemon rather
than like trying the Pokemonthat they know are gonna be
nightmares to get through.
Brock.
I think the bigger guys havegenerally done everything, but I

(40:44):
sometimes see, you know, YouTubewill recommend to me newer
Pokemon, you know, challengerunners and smaller channels,
and I see a lot of the, oh,that, that Pokemon's pretty easy
to get through Brock.
I see why you chose that one.

They're just trying to put their toes into
the

Yeah.

Don't let, they gotta just, they gotta, they
gotta swim before they can,surf.

Exactly.
Exactly.
But you know, it's, it's one ofthose where you're, sometimes
you load up a run and you say,okay, this one's gonna take a
while, sweetie.
You know, take, take the kid tobed and, you know, I, I might
not see you for a couple days,

A couple days.

dude.
I'm not kidding.
Ditto runs, come on.

Oh my gosh,

Yeah.

I said, y'all, you're on the same level with
shiny hunters.
You're a different breed.
I can't do

Yeah.
No, I mean, shiny hunting for meis, is where I, you know,
couldn't do it anymore either.

really of all the

Yeah, yeah,

shiny hunting's, your hard no-go and
you're

yeah.

on Brock and trying to do minimum battles.

Well, so, so the thing about shiny
hunting is that, of course, myfirst introduction Tohin was gen
two.

Sure.

in gen two, shinies are kind of bad.
Like they can't have the bestdvs and they can't be zero dvs.
They have to have like theserandom.
Numbers in between, So like asolo runner is generally gonna
be like, I either want the bestof the best or they're me and
they want the worst of theworst, you know?
So, Chinese like, don't reallydo it for either of those in gen

(42:14):
two, you know.
Later gens.
Of course, they, they changedthat up where it's not directly
attached to IVs anymore, butback in the day, that's how they
were originally introduced, wasbased on IVs or dvs as they
were.

The last thing I wanna talk about is, you know,
you were originally in theStates and you went over to
Japan, and that's where

Yeah,

at.
Now

yeah,

I want to talk about the culture of Pokemon,
because

yeah,

from Japan, it's different your

yeah,

you know, being both in the states and now of
course overseas.
how is the feelings of Pokemondifferent from your experience?

yeah.
So I mean, the first thing thatyou notice in Japan is that most
Pokemon names don't translate.
So like Pikachu?
Yeah, sure.
Pikachu is Pikachu in Japanese.
Eevee, they would say Eevee.
So yeah, I mean it's the samebasically.
But if you try to say Charizard,they're gonna look at you like,
what?
Because it's in Japan, right?

(43:07):
and there are tons and tons ofPokemon that have different
names here.
So that's the first thing thatyou notice, And sometimes the
names actually make more sense.
In Japanese than they did inEnglish.
in other cases they seem to makesignificantly less sense.
Like Venomoth in Japanese ismore fun.
So it sounds like a power rangersort of thing.

(43:29):
Mor fun, right?
Like, you know, and that's,that's cool at all.
But it, it removes any like.
Connotation of like poison onthe Pokemon, which is one of the
reasons why I was joking aroundthat clearly this Pokemon was
never meant to be a poison typewhen I did the psychic bug,
Venomoth.
Right?
Clearly it's meant to bepsychic.

(43:51):
but, you know, there, there aredifferences like that.
It, other thing that I noticedhere is that it's much more, you
know, like.
Compared to my day, right whenI, when I first got into
Pokemon, it seemed like Pokemonwas kind of its own niche,
especially amongst boys.
Whereas here there doesn'treally seem to be any sort of
gender separation.

(44:11):
Like boys and girls, they bothlove Pokemon, they both love
different characters.
and I think that's super cool,like.
What I would teach in publicschools here in Japan.
I could go with Pokemon related,games and whatnot, and everybody
would get into it.
So it was, it was super cool inthat aspect.
but the only other thing I guessI would say is that because
Pokemon's from Japan, you find alot more random Pokemon stuff

(44:34):
all over the place.
when you come into the mainairport to enter Japan, NATA
Airport in Chiba Prefecture,it's just outside of Tokyo.
They have this whole like muralof all the Pokemon generations
on the wall.
Like as you're walking betweenterminal two and terminal three,
it starts with, Pikachu,Bulbasaur, Squirtle and

(44:55):
Charmander, and it shows them asthey like, evolve into their,
final forms.
And then it goes to, okay, nowit's Pikachu with Chikorita and
Cyndaquil and Totodile andevolving.
And it goes all the way to the,you know, Scarlet Violet, know,
starters now where you see.

Yeah.

just huge mural, right?
So like when you come to Japan,like Japan themselves are like,
look at our Pokemon, look atthis wonderful thing that we
have created.
But like Pokemon was the startof my journey towards getting
interested in Japan and youknow, I wouldn't be where I'm at
today without Pokemon.
So you know, there is that likeI'm sure there are tons of other

(45:36):
people here who have that samesimilar story of.
When they were kids, they, likeme, loved Pokemon, loved Dragon
Ball, loved, you know, sailorMoon, whatever it was that they
were into from Japan.

Mm-hmm.

RBY Pokemon Challen (45:48):
eventually, you know, kind of builds this
bridge between two completelydifferent cultures, two
completely different, societies.
And yet you can come here andyou start talking Pokemon and
you get people like, well, youknow, you know, like we, we can
have those relationships.
So it's, it's kind of cool, youknow.

Well, Teo, I have one last question to close
off this interview, and it'sgonna be a fun question.

Cool.

what six Pokemon you would bring to a
battle.

So I've talked about this before.
My strategy back in the day whenI used to do link battles on the
playground.
'cause that's how it used to go.
We actually connected withcable, right?
what I learned.
Way back when, you know.
So 1996, you know, when this wasall going down was that speed is
the most important stat in thePokemon Games.

(46:36):
I think that's actually true.
Basically in every game thathas, you know, the standard band
battle mechanics, that speed isthe key.
So I was running back in theday, a team that included
Jolteon, because it's fast.
Mewtwo obviously was fast.
I loved Venomoth because it wasfast.

(46:58):
I loved electrode because it wasfast and it could go boom.
what else did I have back in theday?
I had Zapdos because it was fastMy last Pokemon, what was I
running?
Oh, I had an Arcanine becauseit's my legendary Pokemon of
course.
and then my Arcanine, of coursewas cheated with a game shark to
be level 255 and no earthquake.

(47:19):
So, you know,

Good luck against battling against him,
man.

yeah, no, no.
I mean, that was gen one though,you know, and I mean, like.
It wasn't competitive.
Guys, don't, don't worry.
I wasn't like cheating, youknow, competitive battles with a
255 leveled Pokemon, But it wasjust like, that's how we used
to, to play.
But I just knew speed, speed,speed, speed, speed.
So it was kind of crazy.

(47:44):
My team building was not logicallike most people would be,
probably.
But hey, I, I always hit first.
That was my strategy.

Yep.
Hit first and then, we'll seewhat happens afterwards.

Exactly.

But Teo, thank you for coming on As the poker
ball turns.
Before you go, if people want tocheck out your content, if they
want to connect with you, wherecan they go?
By all means, please plug away.

Yeah.
So I have two channelscurrently.
RBY Pokemon Challenges.
Of course, you can look it up onYouTube and GSC Pokemon
challenges where we're doing aGen two challenge series.
I also have a discord that'salways linked on my.
Videos.
So if anybody wants to directlycontact me, that's a good way to
do it.

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TRAINER'S EYE #155 - "The Arcanine Take Down" ft. RBY Pokemon Challenges

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}TRAINER'S EYE #155 - "The Arcanine Take Down" ft. RBY Pokemon Challenges