Red's Revenge

Recently I took part in Gamesugar's first podcast, in which I discussed the new Pokémon games. Aside from that minute or two where I say "like" a few dozen times, it went well, but also a bit long, so the entire conversation didn't make it in. One of the missing parts was my theory regarding the last battle in Pokémon Gold/Silver. Much like the events of Citizen Kane, Final Fantasy VII, or The Sixth Sense, I don't think it counts as a spoiler if I say it's against Red, the protagonist from the previous Red/Blue games. What you might not have known is, he's also the hero of G/S too, and Gold, the new G/S trainer, is more evil than all of Team Rocket combined.

Think about it - if you played R/B, you probably had a veritable army of strong and rare Pokémon. What did you do when you got G/S? Most likely you transferred all of them to the new game, trading them for Pidgeys or whatever backwards compatible crap you could get your hands on. In essence, Gold travels three years back in time to steal all of Red's Pokémon. Red is then left to rebuild his legacy with a bunch of Ratattas, which he does. The one problem I have with this scenario, though, is if I had been living in a mountain for three years, training and patiently waiting for my day of revenge against the time-travelling kid who stole all of my Pokémon, I'd probably have something better to say to him than "..."

But then again, if you didn't take any of Red's Pokémon, you still battle him at the end, but you can just pretend he's just a crazy cavedwelling 13 year-old. It's like those recent WRPG games where you can do good things or evil things but the ending is roughly the same regardless.