UPDATE 2.5: MEET THE TEAM!
Well now that we have the full team, let’s look at 'em!
Wilhelmina:
Yeah, Woolhelmina was one letter too long.
Technically Mareep/Flaafy/Ampharos are not on the list of Pokemon I’ve never used, I got one from the Dream World in White version that made it onto my team.
But nothing in White counts because I didn’t enjoy that game at the time or finish it.
Reina:
This run will also serve as a test of some of Universal Pokemon Randomizer’s features (more on that later this update) because in theory all I’ll need is a Dragon Scale to go from Seadra to Kingdra.
Castellia:
If it was a male Pineco I’d have named him Sting.
Thumbs up to anyone who gets that.
Anomalo:
Because AnamoloCarter is way too long of a name even if it is a reference to Anomalocaris. You can tell that Anomalocaris inspired Anorith because the Claw Fossil you normally resurrect one from is like how Anomalocaris’ claws were the first fossils discovered.
Also it looks exactly like one.
Also, the US/UM dex entries for Anorith say that people release them into modern oceans. Rampardos knocks down buildings. There was never a version of Jurassic Park in the Pokemon world.
Sid:
This is not the first run where I’ve had to drag someone who only starts with Wrap through the beginning of the game. At least Seviper should learn some real moves quicker than Dratini. For real though, this is how you waste an Attack stat.
Dogu:
Dogu’s name is in reference to the Dogu figurines that inspired its design. Ultimately it felt too self-indulgent to name it Hopkins just because I had a Baltoy in my Pokemon Mystery Dungeon fic whose name was Hopkins. He was partnered with a Sableye named Kelly.
If anyone gets THAT reference without Googling it then make yourself known because I’ll applaud you.
At any rate, this is where we begin. These six Pokemon, and only these six Pokemon, are all that I can use in battles for the entirety of the game. Catching things for HM use is acceptable, but those won’t be seeing any action whatsoever. Can this team get through the Elite 4? Probably, I mean, these games aren’t that hard. The real question is how much toil and frustration and me banging my head against a Gym that seems perfectly made to stomp my team it will take.
But hey, we lost the babby’s first rival battle. Unless I quit we really can’t go anywhere but up.
Oh, and for Trivia: Rowan actually has lines if you somehow grind your starter on level 2 Bidoofs until they evolve!
Unfortunately the check seems to simply be that your only Pokemon is not Turtwig/Chimchar/Piplup. But points for effort, Game Freak.
Where’s my damn Informative tag.
But how did I actually get my team? Well first things being first: Universal Pokemon Randomizer!
The Randomizer works on Gen I through Gen V roms. All you need to do is load a compatible rom and get to work. Even if you don’t intend to go full-on chaos mode with your game, Universal Pokemon Randomizer offers enough quality-of-life upgrades that I’d highly recommend putting your rom through it before beginning. Unless you really want a true-to-original experience, in which case don’t.
From here I hit “Change Impossible Evos.” What this does is fix any evolutions that would be impossible because most emulators don’t let you trade or some games lack the features required for a Pokemon to evolve. If you’re like me and never had friends are playing on an emulator it’s a great help to be able to use Pokemon you wouldn’t normally be able to.
Here I hit the “Random (basic Pokemon with 2 evolutions)” option. It gets you a starter-like experience with two evolutions, but with far more options. Plus you’ll usually end up with at least one Pokemon that has lategame potential this way.
Unless you chose Caterpie from the random options.
Set minimum catch rate is something I really need to remember next time I do one of these. It’ll save some wrangling with codes later on if every wild Pokemon just has a max catch rate. And besides, I don’t need to catch much.
“Lower Case Pokemon Names” is something I’m thankful for because the ALL CAPS in older games was something that bothered me.
I activated “Fastest Text” for this run but it’s a little twitchy in actual gameplay, with some text boxes that auto-scroll without my input. Or it just doesn’t like you setting the text speed to max in the in-game settings too.
The way that I typically do these runs is to choose the starter, and then hit up everybody’s friend random.org! The simple method is just to have it generate 5 numbers between 1 and whatever the last National Dex number is for this generation (493 here). If the number is partway up an evolutionary family, I’d roll back to the start because I’m interested in the development of the team. This will slightly skew the team composition in favor of Pokemon that evolve. If that’s not good enough you can also do work to create a list of National Dex numbers of fully evolved Pokemon and randomly select from that. I suppose that would be best in the odd case that you roll a Nincada or an Eevee.
While the team is random… I’ll do just a little editing. I’d reroll Unown and I swore on my master’s grave that I would never use a Luvdisc (The red Luvdisc slew my master). Castform would be chalenge absolutely accepted though.
Once you have the list, all you need then is to enter some force encounter codes, give yourself some Master Balls or find a code to make all captures successful, and go walking in the nearest patch of grass once the game lets you start catching.
It’s a little bit involved, but all the work is front-loaded setting things up.
If you’ve had random teams share your story!
NEXT TIME: Who got Interpol involved?