Let's Play Pokémon FireRed: Intro

I was going to try to spread some of the word around when we went a week with only one vote, but as it got nearer I saw the narrative potential of the one major vote and where to expand the series from here.

I decided to do FireRed because, while my original plan would have been to go through the Generations in order, the available movesets here fit better with the particular challenge. 

FireRed (and its counterpart LeafGreen) is the 2004 remake of the original 1996 Pokémon Red and Green (Red and Blue in the US). It follows the same basic story with some slightly updated translations, a new set of lategame/postgame areas, and most importantly all the gameplay mechanic and quality-of-life improvements of Generation 3. It is for this reason that I usually reccommend players new to the Pokémon franchise start with these games rather than the original releases in spite of having a bigger personal connection to those older games.

For anyone who has gotten this far without having any idea what is going on, Pokémon is an RPG where you collect semi-magical creatures for research and competative fighting. The original games had 151 individual monsters to catalogue and choose from, and each successive generation has added at least a hundred more per game.

The reason the games come in pairs is because certain monsters are exclusive to one version or the other. The developers wanted to foster social interaction via trading with friends, and Nintendo wanted to simultaneously double their sales and hock their fancy new Game Boy Link Cable. This philosophy has continued on as the generations have gone by.

Because of the nature of how I will be paying this game, there will be a few edits to the file that make it differ slightly from how you would play this on a Game Boy. Specifically, since trading is impossible, I have made it so that evolutions that involve trading will be accessible by other means. Otherwise, this will be an authentic experience and I will point out for those playing along where a such a change may occur.

I still have a few scheduling and mechanical kinks to work out, but I should be able to post Part 1 a week from today and have an update ready every Saturday.