Catching 'em all in Pokémon Yellow? NO THANK YOU!

Yellows designed to be frustrating as you're playing through the eyes of Ash Ketchum; a frustrated 10 year old who can't even earn his first two badges.

One thing I remember when I played yellow back then, was that the developers made sure to let Charizard use Fly in the game, but they forgot to let Dragonite use Fly.

I remember spending an unreasonable amount of time as a kid looking for an electabuzz in power plant with my Yellow Version because a friend of mine had got one there in his version. I also was convinced I could get my Kadabra to evolve if I just leveled him up enough. I think he was in the 70's before it dawned on me that it wasn't going to happen. Oh, the days before easily accessible internet were something else. Funnily enough, a friend told me that there was a glitch involving a trainer with a slowpoke and catching Mew. I dismissed that one, turns out, he was right though.

The sprites were drawn first and then the watercolor illustrations were painted based on those (with the artist making improvements to the design as he saw fit. He particularly didn't like the original fetus-like Mew). The later improved sprites were made to more closely match his illustrations.

Something to keep in mind is back when these games came out there were a lot more people playing the different versions. I completed my Pokemon Red Pokedex because between my cousins and friends we had all of the versions so trading was a big thing for us and we worked together to catch extras of the Pokemon we knew other people couldnt get in their version.

You can "evolve" the special pikachu in yellow by trading it to red/blue then back to yellow as that causes the game to read it as a regular pikachu

I never had a problem getting the three starters in yellow every time I played it to the point I didn't even know you needed to increase friendship to get them

Today I learned that the rival can have something other than Jolteon… I always thought that he had him because it would match Pikachu's electric type

Small thing of note - while October 15, 1996 is the "official" release of Japanese Blue, it was basically a collector's item at the time. There would be two more special giveaways, before it finally reached retail... about a month before Gold and Silver's release in Japan. Also most of its encounters were taken from either Red or Green, but there were some changes (like wild Jynx in Seafoam Islands, Clefable in Game Corner or different in-game trades).

You can give Pikachu a potion at full health over and over and it will increase it's friendship, making Bulbasaur basically free besides the walk there

For those who who want to do a Yellow Living Dex, use Crystal as it’s partner. Crystal fills in all Yellows missing species and because breeding is on the table you only have to reset Yellow once, though you do have to get Surf to get to Cinabar to revive the Mt Moon Fossil. This is because since a Gen 2 game is involved, you can just breed the Gen 1 starters you get from the second Yellow run, as well as both fossils.

I just kind of realized something, the way Gary bases his Eveelution off of how he wins or loses against you kind of fits his personality. If he gets defeated by a Pikachu twice he goes "Fine then I'll have a powerful electric type as well!" and gets a Jolteon. However, if he wins the first one against you then he assumes it's to easy and evolves his Evee into something weaker than Pikachu. If he wins loses one and then wins one then he feels no need to flex on the player character or to try to make up for any short comings so he evolves Evee into what he wants, a Flareon.

I find the eevee evolution of your rival somewhat interesting, as it seems to become something more difficult for your pikachu to handle if you fare better against him, with him getting a Pokémon WEAK to pikachu if you lose the first time and having jolteon who will resist pikachu if you won both, and flareon sandwiched between with neutral damage

I completed the pokedex in Yellow. I did it for the reason of getting a pdf of the gameboy printer pokedex pages. It took a long time! I really liked the experience.

On the box it doesn't say "Gotta catch'em all" but "special Pikachu edition", this is telling haha

Hearing it all broken down this thoroughly, I kinda start to understand why I never became a 100% completion kind of person with video games. I remember as a kid, I kinda wanted to Catch Em' All, but Yellow was the only version I had and nobody at school even knew what a Link Cable was. It took a moment to fully sink in, but once it did, I would never be interested in Pokedex completion from that point onward. Even to this day, Yellow really grinds my gears on some of those baffling exclusions made. Most specifically, the whole Raichu debackle. Raichu may not be my #1 favorite Pokemon, but he's the only one that's floated somewhere in the top 10 for all of my life alongside Gengar. Learning that my Pikachu would refuse me the Raichu I so desparately wanted was a heartbreaking betrayal that I would never live down. Much like my becoming disillusioned to the concept of Catching Em' All, this trauma would permanently sear a grudge against Pikachu in my head that I still hold onto to this day in all of my infinite pettiness.

Growing up I was always frustrated my Charizard could not learn fly in red and blue but my level seven Pidgey could. Until yellow fixed it

I weirdly love the old red and blue sprites it had an uncanny charm to it

Due to being able to trade back from Gen 2, you actually CAN complete the Pokedex in Yellow with just one other game. All of the Pokemon you can't get in Yellow can be found in Crystal. You can do the same thing with Red+Silver or Blue+Gold. In case you're wondering about getting all the Pokemon in Gen 2, you just need to add another Gen 2 game to any of the cross-generation pairs listed above, since no Gen 2 game has access to all of the Johto Pokemon (and you wouldn't be able to get more than 1 Johto starter, since you can't trade that back to Gen 1 and restart your game).

A normal playthrough should easily make you able to get bulbasaur without trying. I had no idea anybody considered this to be hard.