Let's Play Pokemon Fire Red
In Analogue
How do you even play Fire Red in analogue? Simple, I have a pretty robust battle system for doing pokemon battles on paper, even solo! So, I'm going to follow the Fire Red walkthrough available on Bulbapedia , and sharing the journey here with everyone. The progression of pokemon in this system is also different, but not wildly so, the numbers are just condensed down a bit.
This is going to be a pretty normal run of Fire Red otherwise, no fancy challenges going on. The only differences being that version specific pokemon are available as if I were playing that version, and trade evolution pokemon will be able to be evolved around level 40.
With that all explained, we'll get on to Part 1
Part 1: Meeting our Starter
For this section I'm going to go step by step of how I convert pokemon from the games to this system, using my starter of choice: Squirtle.
After being handed out new friend from Professor Oak, we need to do a couple thing. First, we're going to look at Squirtles' base stats. Those are easy to convert, just divide them by 36 and round up.
[Converting Base Stats] HP 44 → 44/36 → 1.2 → 2 ATK 48 → 48/36 → 1.3 → 2 DEF 65 → 65/48 → 1.8 → 2 SpATK 50 → 50/36 → 1.4 → 2 SpDEF 64 → 64/36 → 1.7 → 2 SPD 43 → 43/36 → 1.2 → 2
Now that we now our lil guy's stats, we need his IVs. IVs in this are simple, just roll 1d6 for each stat and divide by 2. This does not use EVs because I had to have some sanity and keep things as slim as possible. You can also take an exisiting pokemon and divide their IVs by 10, to get the same result!
[Determining IVs] HP roll 3 → 3/2 → 1.5 → 2 ATK roll 1 → 1/2 → 0.5 → 1 DEF roll 6 → 6/2 → 3 SpATK roll 4 → 4/2 → 2 SpDEF roll 5 → 5/2 → 2.5 → 3 SPD roll 3 → 3/2 → 1.5 → 2
Definitely the Squirtle of all time, hard to argue about those numbers. We can now, determine Squirtles Stat Ranks. These aren't that hard to remember, it's just Base Stat plus it's IV. But, we do need it for Squirtle's starting HP.
A pokemon's starting HP, ie at level 1, is it's Base HP (2) times 6, plus it's HP Rank (4). This gives us 12 + 4, for 16 HP.
Now, we need his Nature. To do this, we roll 1d6-1 twice. The first one gets us his buffed stat, the second gets us his nerfed stats.
[Nature Rolls] Buffed Stat: 1 - 1 → 0 (minimum 1) Nerfed Stat: 5 - 1 → 4
With buffed ATK and nerfed SpDEF, we got a Naughty lil fella. With his nature, his Base ATK goes from a 2 to a 3, and his Base SpDEF goes from a 2 to a 1. Not ideal but I can work with this.
We're almost done, we just need his Ability and Moves, and one cheeky roll after that. Squirtle only has two abilities; Torrent and his hidden ability Rain Dish. So, we roll 1d6, and on a 6 he has Rain Dish. Otherwise, he has Torrent. If he had three abilities as options, we'd need to be more specific, but I'll be sure to show how that works when it comes up later.
[Ability Roll] 5
Torrent it is! In this, Torrent activates when Squirtle has any Status Condition (poisoned, paralyzed, etc), and adds 2d6 to the Power of his Water-type moves. That will make more sense during the tutorial fight against Gary.
To know what moves Squirtle has, we just look at his Generation 3 learnset on Bulbapedia. In the game, Squirtle is level 5, but for us he's level 1. We just divide the game levels by 20 to get this, same for the levels a move is learned.
Squirtle knows two moves: Tackle and Tail Whip.
Tackle is a Normal-type Physical Move with 35 Power. To convert that over, we just divide the power by 25 and round up. So, Tackle has 2d6 Power.
Tail Whip, on the other hand, does not deal damage. It is a Normal-Type Status Move that lower's the DEF of all adjacent opponents by one stage. For us, that means it lowers all opponents Base DEF by 1.
Now, because I love shiny pokemon and love to gamble, we'll roll to see if our Squirtle is shiny. Now, I will not be doing the 1/8192 odds of FireRed. That shit sucked and always sucked. For this,. I'm rolling 2d6, and if I roll double 6s, the pokemon is shiny. A little under 3% chance. This will be happening for all pokemon I encounter that I can catch AND for the rivals pokemon. So, with that out of the way, drum roll please!
[Shiny Roll] 4 & 3
Ah, dangit.
Now for the tutorial fight, I'm going to do all of what I just did for Gary's starter Bulbasaur. I won't go step by step like I did for mine, but I will be keeping records of it so that his pokemon are consistent for each time we encounter him.
I WON'T be doing this for every trainer in the game, just Gym Leaders, Elite 4, and Gary. They are the most important, major fights so they should get the special attention.
The First Battle
For this first battle, I'm going to go turn by turn to show how these battles are handled. For every other non-major battle, I'll only mention them if it was especially difficult or if I lost more than once.
First, Me and Gary send out our starters.
Squirtle and Bulbasaur both roll their SPD. For Squirtle, we look at his Base SPD of 2 to know how many d6s we roll. We roll, and add his SPD Rank of 4.
[Squirtle Roll] (5 + 2) + 4 SPD Rank = 11
[Bulbasaur Roll] (2 + 3) + 3 SPD Rank = 8
We go first! Since we're such a low level, and only know Tackle and Tail Whip. Squirtle is going to use Tackle.
Accuracy and damage checks are done in the same roll. Because Tackle is a Physical move, Squirtle rolls his Base ATK and the move's Power. Bulbasaur defends by rolling it's Base DEF and adding it's DEF Rank.
[Squirtle Attack Roll] Tackle 3d6 ATK + 2d6 Power → (1, 5, 4), (1, 1)
[Bulbasaur Defense Roll] 2d6 DEF + 3 DEF Rank → (5 + 6) + 3 DEF Rank → 12
Now, we take all of our dice and spend them until we meet or exceed Bulbasaur's defense. We spend all of our dice to meet Bulbasaur's 12. We add any remaining dice, in this case none, and Squirtle's ATK Rank together to deal that much damage. Squirtle's ATK Rank is 4, so we deal 4 damage.
[Bulbasaur's HP] 17 → 13
Now, it's Bulbasaur's turn. Gary does the same as us, using Tackle.
[Bulbasaur Attack Roll] Tackle 2d6 ATK + 2d6 Power → (1, 3, 6), 2
[Squirtle Defense Roll] 2d6 DEF + 5 DEF Rank → (4 + 2) + 5 DEF Rank → 11
Bulbasaur spends their 6, 3 and 2 to meet 11. Because Bulbasaur spent 3 (or less) dice to meet our defense, their attack is a critical hit. Bulbasaur rolls the move's Power again, and adds it to their remaining dice.
[Bulbasaur Critical Roll] 3 & 4
With their 1 remaining from the attack roll, Bulbasaur adds up everything to deal a whooping: 1 + (3 + 4) + 3 ATK Rank → 11 damage.
[Squirtle's HP] 16 → 5
We cannot survive any attack that hits harder than a stiff gust of wind. But, we'll continue as is, a loss here doesn't matter. We don't lose any money, we don't pass GO, we don't-
[Squirtle Attack Roll] Tackle 3d6 ATK + 2d6 Power → (5, 1, 4), 6, 6
[Bulbasaur Defense Roll] 2d6 DEF + 3 DEF Rank → (4 + 2) + 3 DEF Rank → 9
We spend our 5 and 4 to hit 9, and we get a critical hit of our own! Let's roll that Power again.
[Squirtle Critical Roll] 1 & 2
Well, bad roll but we had a lot of dice left from the attack. So, let's see how much damage we do: 1 + 6 + 6 + 1 + 2 + 4 → 20 damage.
We knock out Bulbasaur, even from full HP. Netting us a fat wad of 80$, cash. Our Squirtle gains 10 XP. Pokemon need 100 xp to level in this, and the amount rewarded is based on the level difference of your opponent. Because Squirtle and Bulbasaur are both level 1, Squirtle gets 10 XP.
The scale here is a little weird, mostly because 1 level is equivalent to 5 levels in the games. So leveling is intentionally on the slower side.
Oak's Parcel
With that, we go an retrieve Oak's Parcel, get our PokeDex, and then begin the game properly. We're not worried about wild encounters yet, we'll just run from anything we encounter until we buy some items first.
We'll pick up the free potion from the PokeMart employee, and the hidden one in Viridian City before we stop by the PokeMart proper.
For now, we'll buy 10x PokeBalls, getting our complimentary Premier Ball. 2000$ down, leaving us with 1080$. With the rest, we'll buy 3x Potions and 1x Antidote. Leaving us with the 80$ we got from Gary.
Next time, we'll work on exploring the nearby routes and getting our early team started before traveling into Viridian Forest!
