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Pokémon Red and Blue, simultaneously released in December 1997, follow the story of a young Pokémon trainer. He wishes to become a Pokémon master before his rival and also tries to put an end to the dastardly deeds of Team Rocket. The differences between the two games, which launched the Pokémon craze, are minimal — each version differs in its selection of rare and uncatchable Pokémon.

 

Categorization note: Glitches that count as large-skips are as follows: walking through walls; Cinnabar beach/Missingno. glitch; Pewter Gym skip; trainer-fly/Mew glitch; and save abuse glitches.

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Blue version single-segment: 1:58 by Mark McKenzie.

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Author's comments:

Thanks to:

As mentioned I became interested in Pokémon speed running when people started racing it at SRL, and a few days later mike89 came to me with the idea of speed running the whole game. I've always loved playing through the games, so I don't understand why I hadn't thought of it before, and by the next day I was starting attempts.

The huge issue with Pokémon single segments runs as you should know is how luck dependant they are. I absolutely loved the planning and testing that went into things like item management, but when it's time to do the run it all comes down to luck really. But for now let's move onto the run.

Just about every run is thrown out in the first 10 minutes. There are 3 points at which this can happen.

1) Your very first fight is terrible. His Bulbasaur is amazing at not attacking, this battle can take up to like 11 or so turns, minimum is 5. I got 9 which fairly crap.

2) At level 6 I check my Squirtle's stats. If it does not have both 12 attack and special, and 11/12 speed I toss it out and try again.

3) At level 11 I check the stats again. Originally I was content was 18+ here, but as I did more and more attempts my standards went up higher and higher. I demands at least 2 out of 3 of 19 attack, 19 special and 17/18 Speed. I ended up getting all 3 :D

Route 1: I have to fight a level 2 or 3 wild Pokémon here to have Bubble before Brock. About average luck with encounters here.

Viridian Forest: 2 Encounters is above average, but I didn't get poisoned so it's barely ok I guess

Pewter City: Brock went well, saw 19/17/19 special on my Squirtle. I'll be honest, I've gotten 19/18/19 before, three times, which is absolutely amazing, but all kinds of shit ruined those runs. The speed makes very little difference if any at all, so I'm still extremely pleased when I see this. Bought my items in the right order and moved on.

Route 3: This route has the most testing for attacks with Tail Whip vs Tackle vs Bubble. Some of the damage ranges did not go my way, the first bug catcher in particular was a bit of an asshole. This route is also famous for one of the most dangerous trainer in the game, Shorts Guy. Pidgey and Spearow combined have a 95% encounter rate here, so I pick up my flier here.

Mt Moon: Managed health perfectly, coming in on red bar to escape from the encounters quicker. Encounter luck was pretty great here actually, about 10 is average, and I scrapped out with 5, which is one reason I don't particularly want to redo this, having a run be so inferior just due to encounters isn't all too exciting. The Geodude I killed is to grow to level 34 in Silph Co, implemented only because of a route change of skipping Body Slam. I didn't catch a Paras in here however so...

Route 4: Had to catch a Sandshrew here, at 25%. Found one first go, beautiful.

Cerulean City: Misty is a giant dick her Starmie is an evil piece of shit that crits you every single turn and you're using inaccurate Mega Punch argh. Staryu was a bit of an asshole too. Second best time I've had to Misty to date with a cut and fly slave out of about 50 attempts, so I'm fairly happy this one went on.

Nugget Bridge: This is where all those good stats make a difference, I OHKO a lot of things here you don't with inferior stats. My first mistake was here, after Criting the rivals Pidgeotto I used water Gun instead of another Bubblebeam, costing me about half a second due to animation and scrolling for safety. It was really only in case Bubblebeam got its 1/256 miss (which has screwed me before.) I then just miss my down button on the Nidoran Lass and just stand there for a while, causing a glitch where she puts up her exclamation mark anyway. I was pissed about that at the time, costs like 2 seconds. Everything else was nice though.

Route 6: Escape rope in Bill's house lol. Battles went nicely, and got jingle skip on the Full Restore.

Vermillion City: I have this terrible terrible knack of selecting Ice Heals instead of Super Potions in this mart. I didn't this time, saving them frames! SS Anne went well.

Surge: HOLY FUCKING FUCK TRASH CANS!!! Shit cost me a full minute, I was blowing up pretty bad at this point. Surge himself was nice but those god damn trash cans........

Route 5: The first trainer here, with her Oddishs, can troll the hell out of you. I got off alright this time though. Make a few button errors just before going into Rock Tunnel costing like half a second

Rock Tunnel: Hahaha, going into the Oddish/Bulba trainer I was thinking, you know I should use a Super Potion, but I don't recall ever needing in Rock Tunnel, so I'll hold off. Holy crap I got lucky, and she's ruined past attempts to that point too. Mistake when I actually need to use the Super Potion after the Hiker when I get off the Bike....that was really dumb, cost a couple seconds again

Route 9: Easy trainer, pick up the nugget in underground without much trouble (no elixer, thanks Washeyy <_<).

Celadon City: The Pokémon centre here is really just to set my warp point to Celadon, it's a hub for Silph Co, Sabrina, Koga, and Erika. Bought a whole load of stuff at the mart for later on, stupid ass scrolling at X items.

Pokémon Tower: And this is where X items start. Behold that 100% Accuracy! But once again, the trainers here screwed me. First that Golbat, then THAT DROWZEE! I tested that shit like 100 times, and on 19 attack at Brock I always –always- OHKO it with Mega Kick. This time I knew I had the 2 PP to try to kill him and this shit happens....yeah I got mad.

Silph Co: This part of the run is really tricky because you're doing it earlier than you're supposed to, and as such you're highly underleveled. A recent route change is to teach Earthquake as soon as you get it rather than waiting till after the rival.......I still managed to jump the gun on that one too, prolly my biggest time costing mistake other than Drowzee. Unfortunately got poisoned by the last attack so I had to take an unplanned Centre here.

Saffron City: Sabrina is a unique fight in that you set up on two different Pokémon. This is because Kadabra is pretty damn powerful with that Psybeam whereas Mr Mime can't do shit, still had to take the centre afterwards for EQ PP sadly. Took a ton more damage on this fight than I normally do, getting highly unlucky from all attacks.

Could've actually lost the fight despite coming in at full health, but my luck just held out long enough. I use Dig on one of the warp tile to get out of the Gym, avoiding the long ass Dig animation.

Fuschia City: Koga's gym is kinda hard, just about all the Pokémon in here are right on the edge of OHKO range so sometimes they'll die and others not. It all went well this time though, got average luck on Weezing, hoping he'd selfdestruct turn 1, but oh well.

Safari Zone: Remember when I got poisoned by Nidoqueen? Yeah at this point, I couldn't actually remember if I took the centre or used the antidote to heal myself. So I grab an extra item here just in case. I later find out when scrolling down I do have it, so I toss the extra item, which is actually faster than scrolling all the way back up, so this only cost me about a second (but still was a brain fade and a half on my part)

Cinnibar Island: Thanks ParadoxKarl for telling me the right route for surfing to Cinnibar. heh. Loving those super repels. Those quiz questions are painful to watch through, sooo much text. Blaine's kinda a joke with Blastoise too, especially when he tries to heal them when they're at full health. This is also where I start avoiding text by having a full inventory, as he doesn't babble on about fire blast.

Celadon City: That's right, we get the 4th badge 7th! This is obviously due to Blastoise's type disadvantage, the extra few levels you get from doing the other gyms first JUST make sure Ice Beam can OHKO the Vileplume and Victrelbell. It's also on the item management, making sure you don't get her TM too.

Viridian City: Remembered to teach Blizzard to make room for Fissure this time! I used to mess that up all the time, including in my previous run. Gym itself is a bit of a joke for Blastoise.

Road to Indigo Plateau: And here we see why we had to teach Blizzard, that Gyarados. As if those X Accuracys weren't broken enough. A load more text that annoys the crap outta me, and some more fun with super repels. I should also mention how much I HATE Victory road, reusing Strength and those boulders...I fuck up so often in here missing tiles because of the lag, it's annoying, but it went all good. Deposit my slaves before to avoid their time at the HoF screen.

Lorelei: Lorelei, like Bruno and Agatha, has bad AI, in that she will just use any attack. Which makes her not so Elite when her pokémon carry Growl. X Speed is for Jynx, no idea why that's so fast. The power of 100% Accuracy and Fissure...

Bruno: Now this is some real shit. I am like 10 levels below him and my Surf can OHKO the Hitmons. What a Beast Blastoise is.

Agatha: This fight screwed me damn hard because that Gengar is a troll and knows Hypnosis and Confuse Ray. I considered in the past setting up on Golbat until I realised it had Haze which would eliminate all my stat boosts. A pretty meh fight overall.

Lance: That Gyarados you have no idea how ass he is. In retrospect I realise the X Speed should actually be used on the Dragonair (I thought he had Thunder Wave, that's only in Yellow) but I was soooooooo scared when I missed him.

Champion: This fight is pretty customary after the one before it, but it isn't without it's worries. I used the Full Restore on Pidgeot due to being afraid of Gyarados which ended up being no problem at all. And yes animations come back on, that's supposed to happen. All goes together with the music to make this the most epic fight ever!

Hope ya'll enjoy the run. I DEFEATED U!

Blue version with large-skip glitches: 1:26 by Thomas Wennink in 28 segments.

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Author's comments:

Where to start?.. I would like to begin by thanking a few people: primorial#soup for his excellent comments on my old Youtube run that made me redo my run and shave of so much time, Chamale for the great Walk through Walls glitch that made the run as fast as it is, Samthedigital, Cygnus, hanzou and a few more I might be forgetting for helping me (without them possibly knowing, even!). And of course the staff from SDA, because without them, this wouldn't be possible.

Originally, it all started with Metroid. To be precise, M2K2, SCU and Metroid Zero Mission. I started speedrunning MZM and somehow, via M2K2 and SCU, I got on SDA (and TASvideos.org) where a world opened up before me. After trying a lot of tricks in various games, I suddenly got the idea to speedrun Pokemon Blue/Red. One of my favorite games. It started with a weak 2:02 using a glitched Gengar level 100 to beat the game and it grew out to be much more then that.

I'll just list the comments on every segment because there are quite a lot of new tricks in the run. :)

Possible improvements:

You may see me in the near future with a Single Segment glitched Yellow run. Other then that, I may redo this run if I figure out better strats and tricks so you haven't seen the last of me. ;)

You can email me at thomas_wennink AT hotmail DOT com if you have any comments about the run.

Red version Single-segment with uber-large-skip glitches: 0:00 by Michael Weber.

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Author's comments:

well finally got the game had planned and worked on it discovered that the pokedex messages are slightly different from pokemon yellow and thus why one step extra is required. view this youtube link at time is good for you no rush as long as its verified. i am very honored to finally have my first run submitted and verified.

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