Pokémon Blue Kaizo is an extremely difficult romhack of Pokémon Blue. Almost every trainer battle is mandatory, and most trainers have strong and well-balanced teams, and boss fights use many legendary Pokémon. Additionally, some of the routes are replaced with complex mazes. This TAS catches a Poliwag and uses it to win so many battles that it reaches level 100, and then uses a level 100 Dodrio to defeat the Elite Four.
Battle Strategy
In addition to trying to win battles in as few moves as possible, there are other important considerations for a speedrun.
When my Pokémon’s HP is at or below 20%, battles are in “redbar” mode. Enemy Pokémon’s sound effects no longer prevent me from selecting attacks, which saves around two seconds per Pokémon fought. This run would be an hour longer if not for redbar. When my Pokémon is not in redbar, getting hit to lower my HP is a priority. When I level up in redbar, I skip the level-up sound effect, unless I just defeated the last Pokémon in my opponent’s party.
When Poliwrath KOs itself against a Kangaskhan just before Lavender Town, this reduces the number of “slow level-ups” that will take place before I use Rare Candy in Lavender Tower. Each slow level-up is about 150 frames slower than a fast redbar level-up.
Healing PP takes a long time. I avoid healing in Pokémon Centers unless absolutely necessary. Before Celadon City I have to be careful with my use of PP-restoring items like Ether, but in this romhack, the department store sells Ether so I can buy enough for the rest of the run in Celadon City.
When an opponent uses Explosion, its health bar is depleted instantly, rather than the slow decline that we see when KOing the foe with an attack. So it’s usually quickest to manipulate an Explosion miss, and if Poliwrath is faster, I’ll use Submission and miss first.
In the battle with Giovanni, I have to defeat Gengar, but his AI is too smart to use Explosion against Poliwrath. Poliwrath needs two hits to knock out Gengar. In this generation of Pokémon, when you switch in a Pokémon, the AI chooses its move after your swap. So I swap in Psyduck to get immediately hit by Gengar’s Explosion, expediently getting the KO. I should have used Charmander, so I could later use the ablative Psyduck strategy against Lorelei’s Cloyster.
Overworld Strategy
Because Pokémon Centers are slow, I only use them four times: At Mount Moon, when Poliwhirl's PP is depleted. At Cerulean City, which sets a teleport destination to Escape Rope from Bill's House back to Cerulean. In Lavender Town, which sets a teleport point to dig back from Celadon City. And at Cinnabar Island, which sets a teleport point for digging out of the old lab.
Some areas have the encounter rate set to maximum, which means the player will encounter a wild Pokémon every three steps, so Repel and Super Repel are used to avoid encounters. Some other areas have an encounter rate high enough that using Super Repel is faster than using luck-manipulation to avoid every encounter in the area.
Sabrina can be battled at any time after clearing the Silph Co building. Battling her after Blaine, when Poliwrath has reached level 100, makes the Saffron Gym slightly quicker.
Pokémon Used
These are the five Pokémon used in this run:
Charmander is the fastest for the first battle, and after that I’ll never use it again. I teach it Cut and Dig, which it can learn quickly because it only knows two moves.
Psyduck is caught on a mandatory encounter tile – the player will encounter a wild Pokémon every three steps in the grass on Route 2, and that grassy tile can’t be avoided. So I might as well catch Psyduck to use as my HM-ployee for Surf and Strength. If this encounter could be avoided somehow, catching Psyduck would be unnecessary, and a future run could use Squirtle, Poliwrath, or Snorlax for Surf.
Poliwag is the primary battler for most of the run. This Poliwag has DVs of FFEE, which means 15 Attack, 15 Defense, 14 Speed, and 14 Special. Ideal would be FxFF, but I was unable to manipulate for those, and this Poliwag is close to ideal. It is nicknamed "!" to save time on displaying its name. I considered some other primary battlers to defeat Brock, such as Squirtle, Oddish, and Ponyta, but Poliwag was the best choice.
Poliwag’s key advantage is that it knows Bubblebeam, a “short-delay attack”. With battle animations turned off, there are still two types of animation in this game. Attack moves with a secondary effect, like Bubblebeam, have a shorter animation than moves with no secondary effect like Water Gun. Short-delay attacks are 60 frames faster than long-delay attacks, so this time difference adds up quickly. It also evolves quickly and learns a good set of moves; its only weakness is bulky Water-types like Slowbro and Vaporeon.
Fearow is caught to use Fly. It’s best to catch it after most of my visits to the Pokémon Center, because each Pokémon in the party slows down the healing animation.
Dodrio is caught just before Victory Road. It knows Body Slam and Hyper Beam, which are short-delay moves, and Drill Peck, which lets it hit Gengar when needed. In Pokémon Blue, when a Pokémon KOs its target with Hyper Beam, there is no need to recharge the move afterward. This makes Hyper Beam the strongest move available in a TAS, and Dodrio has some of the highest Attack and Speed of any Normal-type that learns this move. Its DVs are F1F4, with perfect Attack and Speed, and low defense is preferable because I need to knock out a Ditto on Victory Road.
I calculated that Poliwrath would need 68 moves to defeat every Elite Four Pokémon, whereas Dodrio can do it in only 33 moves. I considered Seaking because of its instant-KO attack, until I discovered that in this romhack Horn Drill only has 1 PP. I considered Electabuzz, until I discovered that its Thunderbolt attack is a long-delay attack in this romhack, making it too slow in battle.
At the end of the run, I have encountered every Pokémon except Pikachu, Tentacool, Slowpoke, and Magikarp.
Note on Glitchless Category
As Pokémon Blue is so buggy, the speedrun community has a particular definition of “glitchless” – glitches encompass errors that cause unintended changes to memory. These rules allow the use of Gen 1 misses (every move that is “100%” accurate has a 1/256 chance to miss, except Swift), and an oversight where the player can walk away from the second trainer when challenged to two battles at the same time. Major glitches such as Missingno or walk-through-walls cannot be used in this run.
Conclusion
This was a long and complex project, and I hope you enjoy the result. The rerecord count is only about 50,000, but if it included BasicBot iterations, the count would be more like 10,000,000.
A potential future TAS should look into catching Fearow on Route 12, Dodrio on Route 14, or Kangaskhan in the Safari Zone, as I suspect they could be better battlers than Poliwrath. Whatever gets used as the HM-ployee for Surf should have a nickname, as I didn’t realize how many times I would have to Surf in this run.
ThunderAxe31: Claiming for judging.
ThunderAxe31: This movie follows the same ruleset as the published Blue and Yellow movies. The reason why the Poké Doll wasn't used, it's because it's because it's unobtainable before Marowak in this hack.
The execution seems very optimized and makes proficient use of Gen I knowledge. Accepting as a glitchless publication.
Spikestuff: Processing...