Pokémon Red and Blue/Pewter City

'In Pewter City, you will fight Brock, your first Pokémon Gym Leader. The Pokémon he uses in battle are strong. If necessary, build up the experience of your own Pokémon by having battles in the wild. Before you do either, visit the Pokémon Center in Pewter City, so if your Pokémon faint in battle, you'll resume your journey there, instead of far away.'

You Can't Leave
If you try to leave town to the east, you'll be sent to deal with the town's Gym Leader, Brock, at the Gym in the middle of town, below the museum. Until you've bested him, you're stuck here.

The Science Museum
It'll cost ya 50 to get into the museum (the large building in the north part of town), and while there's lots of interesting exhibits, nothing here will help you directly. The good stuff is in the back, but that way is blocked by one of those annoying plants... You'll have to come back later.

Here's a silly trick for the Yellow version: what the father upstairs says changes based on your Pikachu's mood. If your Pikachu is clearly upset (if you've left him in the computer too long, for example), he'll ask you to give him to his daughter! But the game won't actually let you.



Gym Battle 1: BROCK


Brock's Junior Trainer uses Ground-type Pokémon, while Brock himself uses Rock/Ground dual-types. Neither has any Ground or Rock-typed attacks handy, so Pokémon weak to such need not fear. Yet, their resistances should still be considered.

If you're playing Blue or Red, and you picked Squirtle or Bulbasaur, you should have an easy time of it, since both of these Pokémon can learn attacks that will eliminate these Pokémon in one or two attacks. But if you picked Charmander, or have a Bulbasaur without Vine Whip, then you'll have to fight a longer battle. For the most part, this is fine, but Onix has Bide. Bide will deal back the damage Onix took over three turns, and then double it. This is usually enough to seriously weaken your Pokémon, if not knock it out right away.

You have a number of options in dealing with this. The first is to just use your Charmander/Bulbasaur anyway. Charmander can use Ember, which will still deal decent damage due to the low Special scores of these Pokémon. When Onix uses Bide, Charmander should then switch to Growl until Bide ends. Bulbasaur can use a similar tactic with Tackle and Growl, and plant a Leech Seed which whose indirect damage will not trigger Bide.

Another option is training up a Caterpie/Metapod to at least level 12. This will give you Confusion, a Psychic-type attack which can take away large chunks of HP from these Pokémon. This can be hard to do in Pokémon Red, as Caterpies and Metapods are much harder to obtain there.

Pokémon Yellow presents an even bigger challenge. Pikachu is nearly useless against Rock/Ground-types, with its Electric and Normal attacks. But Pokémon Yellow provides Fighting attacks, which can more easily defeat Rock-based enemies. Level 9 Mankeys know the Fighting skill Low Kick, while level 12 Nidorans (of either gender) can learn Double Kick (which they can't learn until level 43 in Red or Blue). Either of these will allow you to take down Brock's Rock Pokémon in a few hits. Both can be captured west of Viridian City.

If you defeat Brock, he'll give you TM 34 (the Bide attack technique) and his Boulder Badge, which grants your Pokémon a small Attack boost (12.5%, in battle only) and allows you to use Flash (once you have HM 05).