Anniversary: The Story Thus Far
With the 10th Anniversary Super Gauntlet going on, my brain has kicked into overdrive this week thinking about some of the lore concepts to come up. Of course, at this point we've only done Red, Bootleg Yellow (yes, I'm counting it), Gold and Silver, so we've still got a LOT of games to cover before we get into the plot, but ideas are already flowing. Things may change, but I just wanted to get down some current thoughts down while I've got it.
So one plotline the Lorecord has been playing around with for a few years now is that our last season, S10, took place in a Post Apocalyptic universe that S9 had been building up to (I wanna make a separate post on this) and we finally got an arc ending payoff with Wilting Y. Each person has their own thoughts on the timeline and what events led to this and what the aftermath was, but my gosh that moment we collectively went "OH SNAP" when connecting Mega Aerodactyl to Yveltal, there's no the question of what's going on in the Super Gauntlet.
Super Gauntlet is all vanilla games being played completely on real hardware systems. This opens us up to a lot of features we've never had access to! It's exciting but having all of the regions in their vanilla states feels like a new era. The world was rebuilt It's been centuries since The End. Someone hit restart on the universe. All thoughts that have come up in discussion before. But then something interesting came up: Our first loss.
Now I personally don't think a run needs Releases to become "interesting" but it can lead to some really fascinating ideas as we try to make sense of the loss. In this case, we were fighting over the need for Cut to continue the game. Our options were: 1) evolve the Kakuna (Simon) we already had in the party so Beedrill could learn Cut. Unfortunately, there was a pretty dedicated group of evolution cancellers, so doable but proving difficult. 2) With patience wearing thin, we could just deposit someone and go catch an Oddish. (Which is what eventually happened.) 3) It may be difficult, but we had a Spearow in the PC so if we needed to use it anyway to deposit someone, we could grab the bird then trade it for Dux, just like we did in the original Red run. But people were scared of the PC and for good reason, since sure enough we had a PC war break out and Marvin "Mushmouth" the Squirtle, Simon the Kakuna, and yes, even the Spearow, were all Released.
But interestingly enough, someone proposed that Dux was the one behind this. The question quickly became why. Maybe... just maybe... because this Dux was the same as the one from Original Red. That maybe Dux was trying to avoid the fate that killed him before. Maybe because he saw this group of relic hunters and knew that Ash did not have the most noble intentions in grabbing the Helix Fossil and would actually unleash an even greater threat in his quest chasing rumors and legends and whispers of the bygone era. Ash clearly obsessed about the past when it seemed almost everyone had forgotten about it. He spent hours at the museum in Pewter to learn about the gods and set out from home with a dream. He had already obtained things like the Helix Fossil, the Town Map, the Bicycle, all symbols of Chosen past and surely more to come. Maybe the death of Marvin and Simon was truly an accident but now that Dux has "awoken" the memories of his past life, he now starts a new personal quest to follow the Chosen to stop the Voices from destroying everything again. Which Dux may have been right about Ash sadly since the kid eventually did NOT revive Helix but eventually went out of his way to obtain the mysterious Missingno named Bucket who he used a few other times to expand his riches. Put a pin there, I'll get into his fate later.
And then it was added that we meet a Farfetch'd in Ilex Forrest too. Maybe the next time we would meet Dux. Maybe he was still traded by the little girl to someone else and that's why he refuses to listen to the Woodcutter's assistant. Now that he's aware of all of this, he ran from owner to find Celebi and get answers about these strange memories of a past life. Why is this happening? What happened before? Something to definitely look out for once we saw the stories of Gold and Silver.
Well, GS dual runs came up and we could see that the twins Raymond (Gold) and Xyler / Xylver (Silver) have very different personalities with Xy often taking advantage of his brother to expand on his own power and speed on ahead by wrecking anything and anyone in his path. He caught a Ledian early on, who has become associated as the Incarnation of Olden just as one would say Helix is an Omanyte (even if there have been times we've said not all Omanyte are Helix) and much later on it gained an on-again-off-again teammate status further solidifying Xy's reputation for being a "morally gray" character. All the more telling that he failed to get either of the Tower Duo while Raymond was able to get both. Raymond is a sweet kid, and a good kid. After his brother took his Chikorita and left him with a Geodude, Raymond stayed loyal to his rock friend and eventually got a Golem. He had a Slowpoke he made a king. He had the patience and kindness to evolve his Eevee into an Umbreon, and yes, he eventually befriended Ho-oh and carried it to League.
I mention all this because even if they seem like a pair of ordinary kids, no grandiose backstories (yet) or cool occupation, something of great interest came up towards the end. For one, we were told this was not a race but by gosh did it get treated like one. Johto lasted about a day and a half. Xyler beat the League while Raymond was still in Blackthorn City and just to dunk on him, he beat it a second time while Raymond was trying to win the first time. (In truth it's because we had one VERY dedicated player who wanted to get Ledian it's promised place in the Hall of Fame) But we got to the Trainer House in Viridian City and discovered we had some guests! Ritchie was one of our side game hosts from Yellow about a year or two ago, and NEEKO was from a Silver run from about the same period.
Neeko is especially curious to see here though because during his run, he was able to pull off some ACE glitchery most notably turning the Sudowoodo into a Celebi named ASUS. It was also said about this time that when we played Blazing Emerald Redo as a side game it was to wash the awful taste out of the community's collective mouth after some of the things that happened during our original Blazing Emerald run. There had also been joking how we ~never~ got to use the Pokemon Agony had before. And we sure ~never~ got to see some of the places that only exist in BE before. So there was some lore that Neeko used his own reality warping powers and Time Guardian friend to "erase" Blazing Emerald from the timeline. Agony.... Is another tale for another time, but let's just say I hc he did not take the idea of "fading from existence as everyone he loved forgets about him as some sort of punishment for things outside his control while he STILL suffers the consequences" very well. Neeko probably means well? But him showing up to beat down Xy (he swept us in the first encounter) is not a good sign for our power seeking scamp because Neeko has literally destroyed people before, he would do it again if he thought it would fix things. AND WORSE he's got ties to Celebi which brings us back full circle that maybe the one Dux was working for / went to meet in the forest with, was none other than Neeko. And given Xy's bad luck with birds (even his flier was "borrowed" after Raymond picked up Kenya then traded it to him) who better to thwart / keep an eye on this punk than the Leek Knight himself here to fulfill the divine duty he never got to fulfill?
And maybe he did. Maybe he didn't. I have two thoughts that if he did, what happened. 1) Neeko "erased" Xy's original adventure where we don't know and don't want to think about what he did to catch Neeko's attention when there was no one to stop him. This second time having Raymond go with him / instead of him may be specifically to stop that path of events from happening again. 2) Xy may have been the target but Neeko may have learned from his mistakes. Instead of going after him directly like he did with Agony, he tried to change the course by instead going after Ash. 3) ... Both are simultaneously true.
Ah yes, still got that pin?
Now before we started SGRed, we played a few intermission games to test out the system in preparation for the official run. One of those was Bootleg Yellow. We didn't finish it though, but we had a hero named Ash and he picked up a Squirtle so connections are there already. Since Missingno messed up our Hall of Fame data, we discovered that Ash was "dreaming of Marvin" as we watched a mini HoF play out with a corrupted Squirtle image. After the run, we got to go back and finish Yellow. Interestingly, since Ash had a full pack when he beat Giovanni, we had no space for the Fissure TM. Game Freak thought of this, so Giovanni doesn't disappear until you take it. So it looks like in SGR, Team Rocket never disbanded. BUT in Bootleg Yellow there's a greater focus on Team Rocket if I understand right and the League Rematch replaced Gary with Jessie and James as Champion. So Ash did end up finishing off Team Rocket so Johto events could proceed as they should. But how this came about is because after Yellow we have been playing Stadium2 with our games plugged in. There's a feature in Stadium2 that both lets you play the GB cartridges from an arcade mode and allows you to bring Pokemon from said cartridges into the arenas. Ash tried to withdraw Bucket and of course the game crashed. This seemed like The End for him. Except timeline wise this may have been what "saved" him assuming he completed Red, failed to defeat Team Rocket, whatever happened between Neeko and Xy the first time, Neeko went back and ripped Ash out of this Bad End but by doing so Ash ended up starting over in Yellow. Further complicating things is either Ritchie is here because while Ash had to set up events for Xy, Raymond didn't have that problem because Ritchie had done it. They're cool, just hanging out. That may mean when Neeko tried to fix things with Ash though, he accidentally booted out Ritchie. Alternatively, it could be that since the world is having these moments of repetition, Ritchie being a Chosen never forgot the old world and had his Yellow adventures ages ago. Seeing things play out (albeit differently this time) he's just here because he's worried about his home and wished nothing but the best for Ash. Which he did good so now Ritchie is just keeping an eye on things because he knows Neeko and is nervous about what he's up to. Please don't erase anyone this time. That caused such a mess... On the upside, whatever terror Neeko thought Xy might do didn't come to pass. Interestingly, ASUS ended up being the name of Xy's rival, so it's possible the redhead jerk was actually Celebi in disguise all along checking in on Xy to make sure he was good this time. Or ASUS being so aggressive was because he kept failing to stop Xy since he kept losing. It's funny then to think Neeko only showed up in the post game after having an "aw crap" reaction to Xy getting to the League miles ahead of Raymond but then Xy let his brother catch up. Only because like the Tortoise and the Hare he got cocky. Raymond defeated Red first so he kinda won the game. Red was vanilla Red of course so I'm not quiiiite sure what significance that would mean for Xy to reach him second. And with Ash and Ritchie around, technically we're not even sure who this Red is but it was (possibly) important to Neeko either way. So since Raymond won, that did ..... something??? We'll see.
But going back to Ash now. Why would he not have his team when starting over? Because after GS we went back to Stadium2 where Ash's team has been crumbling because of technicalities. First we ended up trading Bucket to Raymond but this turned it into a normal Ditto so it's no longer a cursed abomination. Ash could technically get Bucket back, but it'll never be the same. We also evolved our Onix into a Steelix so that's nice for him, but Ash can never bring him home now since Steelix would create a time paradox. So that's two members gone. As much as Ash cares about Pixie I bet he wouldn't dare risk her or the others remaining on a second journey if he started over in Yellow. Buuuut alternatively, Ash falling through a crack in the space-time thanks to Neeko may have honestly made him forget what happened. Was Red all just a dream? He's waking up 10 years old again being told Oak is waiting to give him his first Pokemon... Man, it was a nice dream being all action hero and finding creatures that shouldn't exist and all that. But... Just like Dux, it's possible as he went along this journey, even as things are slightly different, he's getting memories of what feels like another world. Another life... What happened to him?
And that now has my mind racing over other characters who may have had memories stirred. Ash's rival was named Blue. Is it the one from Original Red? From Gauntlet? What does he remember? Does Lance have this sinking feeling that for all his fame and fortune he's missing something? He had a wife, a whole family back in Naljo before the world fell apart. And now he's met not one but three new Chosen, how much deja vu is he getting from TPP shenanigans over the years? I have some thoughts on them, but that's for another post subject.
But for now, we got Ruby and Sapphire coming up on Monday!! And you know it's about this point in the series the stakes start rising. We've taken on mere mortals, now let's save the world from primordial titans! .... Good luck heroes.