Ia! Ia! Pokéthulhu fhtagn! Let's Play Pokémon HeartGold!

Hello and welcome to Let's Play...



Table of Contents

1. Introduction (this post)
2. Start of a Journey, A Crazy Girl and Her Water Rat, and A Fetch Quest
3. A Thief, Some Fights, and Violet City Gym
4. Clipped Wings, An Egg, and a Cave
5. Somebody Call for an Exterminator?

Before we begin, I'm going to lay a few ground rules:

• I will not be ending LP posts with a chance to name pokémon; if you're not in #talkingtime on irc.esper.net when I ask for a name, too bad so sad. (Unique pokémon, like Sudowoodo and Snorlax, will be forum-nameable.)
• I won't be talking about how to cheese pokémon--competitive play isn't my thing. I will, however, link to pokédex entries using my favourite 'dex as a clickable image.
• This LP will be done in a narrative format, similar to Chorocojo's (see SomethingAwful or their LP Archive).
• There will be image-editing, but only because retyping the script manually is a gigantic pain in the ass. If someone wants to dump and format the game script to make everyone's life easier, though, I would be happy to credit him/her and give him/her first naming rights to unique pokémon.
• After the second LP post, there will be a contest for drawing art on the Trainer Card's signature line. You will need DeSmuME or an emulator which produces compatible saves in order to participate (I'll post a save, you'll post an image and your save); the winner will have an exclusive chance to name my rival. Your entry will be rejected if the names or images you post are ones you would object to your parents seeing. One entry per contestant, please.
• Fanart is acceptable, even encouraged.
• I will update this Friday, and then every Friday thereafter. You have 'til this Friday to give me names. And no, no 'Pants', 'FUKT', or any of the usual drivel. This is horror, not comedy. (Although, I won't punish you for laughing.)

So, without further ado...

In the wee hours of the night, I was tossing and turning... Dark and terrible images disturbed my slumber, each more frightful than the last. When I could stand no more, I nicked one of my mother's sleeping tablets in hopes of dreamless sleep.



Naturally, the pill worked altogether too well...but fortunately my mother would know naught of my theft, as usual.



These devil-beasts swarm the land, as the professor knows and will assuredly tell me. Few will dare to enter the cities, for all know full well of the power of the dodecahedral stones and their ability to control these beasts. In the wilderness, only those who control even one of such beasts are safe, however...



This beast, Marill, has eldritch command over the waters. As I predicted, the esteemed professor tells us all about them. However, he is among those whose minds have been swayed unnaturally by such beasts. Heed not his words, for that way lies madness.



Now...allow me to identify myself to you, my humble readers.

Gender and name, STAT! As with most Pokémon games, the character's gender is entirely irrelevant in gameplay terms. Additionally, vote on the starter. You have three options here, so choose wisely.


Chikorita is a small Pokémon, primarily pale green in color, with a darker green leaf and necklace of buds. It has a large head in proportion to the rest of its body, with large red eyes that appear to have no pupils. It has four short legs with a single nailed toe each, and a small tail. Its most distinguishing feature is the large leaf on the top of its head, which is usually longer than the rest of its body. It has a "necklace" of small green buds around its neck.

Chikorita can spawn vines from its neck and create leaves from the big leaf on its head. Like many Grass-type Pokémon, its foliage emits a sweet odor that has calming and healing properties. This leaf also has the ability to check the temperature and humidity of the surrounding air.


Its fur is bluish on top of its body, but a milky color on the underside. Although called the Fire Mouse Pokémon, Cyndaquil seems to be a composite of features from the echidna, seen in the flames erupting from its back, and the shrew, the general shape of its body. Its eyes are often closed, as it is still young. It has four red-colored spots on its back from which its flames erupt. It lacks claws on its forelimbs, but has a single claw on each hind foot.

Cyndaquil is capable of defending itself by using the fire on its back. The fire grows more powerful as the Cyndaquil becomes more angry or defensive. Cyndaquil is also able to expel obscuring smoke to lower the accuracy of its opponent.


Totodile look like small, bipedal blue crocodiles (similar to its evolved forms) with red spines on their back and tail, the one on their back being larger with additional ridges next to the back spines. Totodile's head is large, with crocodilian ridges above its eyes, and much of the head’s size is composed of Totodile's snout and strong jaws. There are two visible teeth on the tip of its upper jaw, and two rows of three teeth on each side of its lower jaw. Totodile's mouth is often depicted open. On its chest is a yellow, somewhat V-shaped pattern that extends to Totodile's arms, with a line bisecting the pattern at the middle. Totodile have five sharp claws and three toes. Its eyes have red irises, and there is a dark-colored pattern around the eyes that is depicted as either dark-blue or black.

Despite their small size, Totodile are very powerful, especially when underwater. Totodile have a very large set of jaws for a Pokémon its size, just a playful nip can be painful. It can also bite with ice cold fangs.

Next Time: Start of a Journey, A Crazy Girl and Her Water-Rat, and A Fetch Quest

Girl named Maria, Cyndaquil named Quilliam. Let's do this.

Gotta go with Chikorita. Not only is it the inferior choice (perfect for LPs!), its already accessorizing with a necklace for when you inevitably go with the girl MC.

A vote for the girl character, and an anti-vote for Totodile as that was the starter in Chorocojo's LP of Crystal. Go with one of the other two.

And mine of Shiny Gold.

Go with the girl, name her Samantha. She's always looked like a bit of a Samantha to me. Also Cyndaquil because hell yes fire types.

I really liked RC's pokemon let's plays so I will be watching this very carefully

The girl (don't care about the name) and Chikorita, because I always pick the grass starter.

I just did a Marathon of Chocorojos Pokemon LP, looking forward to this.

Female, is all I'm going to vote for.

I'd just vote for Chikorita, and you're going to get me to replay my Soul Silver game, aren't you?

You are.

There are some fun things you can do in HGSS, if your timing is good enough. In particular, it's the only recent game with an exploit allowing you to (relatively) easily get unlimited shiny Pokémon. Although all the 4th and 5th generation games have RNG-based exploits for getting shinies, most of them require a random shiny Pokémon already (or else cheating) in order to provide information needed to carry them out. In HGSS, you can do it purely in information given by the game, more or less; what you have to do is save before the red Gyarados, reset the game, note the date and time (from the DS's point of view) at which you load the game, catch it, note its stats (all of them, including things like nature and characteristic) then go back to save and repeat five more times. That reveals enough information about the game's internals that you can do some relatively insane things like breeding flawless shiny Pokémon, and catching random shinies in the wild. I'm not sure if you'd be interested in that sort of thing in this LP, though.

Trainer: Armitage

Anime has already established Professor Armitage's surname as an acceptable female name. Plus it's my daughter's middle name.

Starter: Cyndaquil
Starter Name: Dunwich

I will try to IRC lurk to help choose appropriate Pokenames.

^^I assume you're meaning human-feasible amounts of "timing is good enough" since, well, any PRNG with time or button input can be frotzed "with good enough timing".

Female, Chikorita->Bayleef->Meganium

Yep, I've done it myself on an actual DS. (It takes me about an hour of trying to hit the right timing, though.) On an emulator it's much easier, as you can slow the game down.

As I'm pretty much never going to get 60fps out in the field (until I get my laptop), timing won't be an issue. However, I will not be making use of this particular failure on the developers' part in this LP—as I said, I won't be cheesing the game.

Besides, if you wanted to you'd be better off just using Pokesav. I mean, you're using a rom.

Since everyone always uses the female character in Pokémon LPs where such a choice is available, I'm going to encourage you to be different and pick the male character.

My god. You're the first person to vote male so far. I was tempted to flip things over and make the female character actually be a trap, earlier.

That's why I didn't even make MC name / gender an option in my LP. Everyone always chooses girls.

I was tempted to vote male, for a 10-year-old Professor Armitage, but male seemed to be a lost cause. I don't really care, I just want names with Chthonian roots. Henry would also be an acceptable name for a lad.

I also want something named Cthaqua. It's cute. But I'll lurk IRC to get it in if I have to.

Unfortunately, only the Japanese versions support HG/SS as far as I can tell, and doesn't support DeSmuME's savefile format (ugh). There's an alternative which can use wifi, etc. but I can't remember the name of it—and it's required to get event pokémon. (I tried PokéGen, but it crashes whenever I try to load one of the Gen4 PCDs. )

Male trainer, Cyndaquil.

male, fire dude.

Male named Shocky, Cyndaquil named Mohican and don't let him evolve in to Typhlosion. Also, you should try savestating for a shiny.

Male and Chikorita.

Male named Sir Cucumber
Chikorita named PERCY

Totodile is obviously the chibi version of Dagon!!!

Male and Cyndaquil!

Male and Chikorita.

Male named Gomez and Totodile.

Fixed that for ya.