Appendix:Red and Blue walkthrough/Section 1
Starting Out
Turn the game boy on, and--well, let's begin! After the intro, and pressing A or Start on the title screen, you'll see the main menu.
You should be able to select from New Game and Option. (You may have Continue as a selection, this is if you have already started and saved a game on this cartridge.)
Moving down to Option and pressing A will give you three options, You don't need to touch them, but I recommend putting the Text Speed to Fast. Go down to Cancel and press A , and you'll be back on the main menu. Make sure you have New Game selected and hit A.
And... Professor Oak appears! He briefly introduces the world of Pokémon and the Pokémon themseleves. But you know all this right?
When he asks you for your name, you can chose from:
- New Name
- BLUE or RED (Corresponding to the version you are playing on.)
- GARY or ASH
- JOHN or JACK
If you don't want any of the preset names, go to New Name and press A. Here it's a simple case of moving around to the letter you want and pressing A to select it. To remove the last letter, press B. Once you're done entering your name, select ED in the bottom right corner.
Now you are introduced to your rival! Chose his name in the same way, and you'll be teleported off to Pallet Town!
Your House
You start the game in your bedroom, sitting in front of a SNES. Now it's time to get accustomed to the controls:
- D-Pad (Arrows) - These will move your character around. Go on, try it! They will also move your cursor around in menus.
- A - This is the games all-purpose "do" button. It will let you talk to people, push buttons, search things and a whole load of other stuff.
- B - Cancels selections and lets you exit menus.
- Start - The Start button will open the in-game menu for you.
The PC in the top-left corner of your room has some purpose. Move in front of it, face it, and press A.
Your PC is your item-storage system. You can only hold 20 items in your backpack, so if you have too many you can put them in your PC. The system is simple. If you want to put in items you select Deposit Item and select an item. If you want to get an item out select Withdraw Item and then select an item. Finally, if you want to get rid of an item permanently use Toss Item and select the item to remove.
Your PC already holds an item, a Potion. Select Withdraw Item and hit Potion x1. You're asked how many to withdraw. Since there's only one Potion, just hit A.
Now how do we get out of menus? Hit B a few times and you'll be sitting in your bedroom.
Maybe it would be a good idea to save our game now. So with nothing selected, press Start.
Most of the items are self-explanatory. For now, select Save, the game will ask you if you are sure you want to save. Select Yes. Once it is done saving and the menu has disappeared, the game is saved. You could turn off the Game Boy now and continue from exactly where you are later.
Enough of this, let's go downstairs. Walk on top of the stairs in the top right corner of the room.
When downstairs, you see your Mom sitting at the table. If you talk to her you'll find that she watches too much television, and that apparently Oak has been looking for you.
To get out of your house, there is a mat at the door. Simply walk right through it and--welcome to Pallet Town!
Pallet Town
Pallet Town a rather boring, quaint town, having only three houses. The house you just came out of is yours, the one to the right of that is your rival's house, and the big building is Professor Oak's lab. You can walk all around town and talk to everyone, but Oak will not appear. Looks like we should just go out of town, walk to the tall grass above just Pallet Town and...
Oak appears! He must have been hiding behind one of the signs or something.
Anyway, apparantly, it's dangerous to be walking in the tall grass because Pidgey could gnaw our faces off at any moment. According to Oak, people without Pokémon are hermits who never see the outside world. Either way, this deluded old man wants to offer us a Pokémon. Once you're in control of yourself, it's time to decide which Pokémon you're gonna have....
Charmander - Fire-type
Charmander is the hardest Pokémon to use for beginners, he is weak against the first two and the last Gym Leaders, he's only really good against Gym #4. His last evolution, Charizard, while powerful, has a bit of bad weakness with his Fire-type.
Squirtle is a Pokémon with a medium difficulty. He can defeat Gyms #1, #7 and #8 easily, so he destroys the hard guys. However, Squirtle's movepool is relatively limited, and he has trouble against the second gym.
Bulbasaur - Grass / Poison -type
Bulbasaur is perfect for beginners. He can easily mop up Gym #1, #2 and #8, while at the same time having a resistance to the Pokémon in Gyms #3, #4 and #6. Two of his only real problems are the seventh adn fifth Gym, but at that point in the game you should have some great Pokémon to back him up. His evolutions are top-notch.
Once you have chosen a Pokémon, it's your rival's turn; he will always chose the Pokémon that is strong against yours. When you try and walk away, he will battle you! Time to get ready for your first battle, trainer.
Battle: Rival
When inside battle, you'll send out both of your Pokémon, they are Level five, which is shown by the :L5 aside each Pokémon. Under that is the Health bar, showing each Pokémon's remaining HP. You win a battle when you take all of your opponents Pokémon down to 0 HP, you will lose the battle if all of your Pokémon reach 0 HP.
Chosing Fight will allow you to choose an attack against your opponent. Your Pokémon will have two attacks regardless of who you chose. The first one with hurt the enemy, and the other one will lower one of the enemy's stats. Keep using the attacking one, which will be either Tackle or Scratch. If your Pokémon starts to lose a lot of HP, you could use that Potion we got out of the PC earlier; go to Item and it will bring up a list of the items you are holding. You only have a Potion, so select it and then select your Pokémon.
This is the same way you use the Item menu when you're not in a battle.
Once you have defeated your rival, you will get 175 credits, and he will leave. (Don't worry if you didn't win the battle, you won't lose any money from it, and practice makes perfect anyway.)
If you win the battle, your pokemon should gain enough experience to grow to level 6.
Now leave Oak's lab and go out of Pallet Town. Then you'll be in Route 1.
