Follow TV Tropes

Following

Video Game / Pokémon Gold and Silver
aka: Pokemon Heart Gold

Go To

All spoilers for Pokémon Red, Blue, and Yellow (and their remakes) are unmarked. You Have Been Warned!

https://mediaproxy.tvtropes.org/width/1000/https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/pokemon_gsc3.png
The Johto journey starts here.
Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver 

"Enter a whole new world, with new Pokémon to capture, train and battle! Meet Professor Elm and get the all-new PokéGear, including map, radio, cell phone and clock. Set the clock then watch as day turns to night and events take place in real time — and be sure to keep an eye out for Pokémon that come out only at night!"
Blurb on the back of the boxes of Pokémon Gold and Silver Versions

The year is 1996. A game from Nintendo and Game Freak called Pocket Monsters Red & Green is released in Japan to immense critical and commercial acclaim, becoming an international sensation after its release in the West as Pokémon Red & Blue. Recognizing the potential a success like this brought, the developers decide to create a sequel; like its predecessor, this sequel was developed for the Game Boy. Unlike its predecessor, however, it experienced some Schedule Slip that motivated the developers to shift the project to the Game Boy Color, for which it was eventually released. Aided by the late Satoru Iwata (who would later become Nintendo's president), Game Freak moved the series into the "second generation," unveiling a new region filled with more Mons, threats, and challenges to await players.

Set three years after the events of Pokémon Red and Blue Versions, a young trainer sets out to collect the eight badges of Johto (based on the Kansai region of Japan as well as portions of the Chubu and Shikoku regions) and challenge the Elite Four so that they can earn their own place in the hall of fame. Along the way, however, they have to contend with a callous thief and the reemerging threat of Team Rocket.

Released in Japan in 1999, North America and Australia in 2000, Europe in 2001, and South Korea in 2002, Gold and Silver introduced many new concepts to the series, like an In-Universe Game Clock (with certain Mons appearing or evolving during certain times of day), the ability to equip Pokémon with items, rare alternate colorations, genders for Pokémon outside the Nidoran lines (though some species are still genderless), and with that the ability to breed baby Pokémon. It also expanded and reconfigured numerous other gameplay elements, like the addition of two new elemental types (Steel and Dark, bringing the grand total to 17), splitting the "Special" stat into separate attack and defense scores, and new skills designed to give other elemental types a more level field to battle against the previously unbalanced Psychic-type.

One year later, an Updated Re-release appeared: Crystal. On top of a new subplot revolving around Suicune, a slight graphics bump, and other minor differences, Crystal marked the debut of the Purely Aesthetic Gender option in the series, offering players the choice of a male or female player instead of simply giving them a male character. The franchise was supposed to end there (Tsunekazu Ishihara stated in an "Iwata Asks" interview that the developers saw Generation II as too difficult to outdo at the time), but the intense critical and commercial acclaim the games received convinced Nintendo and Game Freak to continue making games, with the third generation being Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire.

In late 2009, these games were remade into HeartGold and SoulSilver for the Nintendo DS. Unlike the remakes of the first generation games (which mostly updated them to Generation III's mechanics and graphics), these remakes pulled elements from everywhere else in the series; not only did they include the added plot points from Crystal, the original storyline was further expanded upon, pulling in cameos and Continuity Nods from later regions. New minigames were added via the Pokéathlon and PokéWalker, and one of Yellow's main gimmicks was brought into play, allowing trainers to let one of their Pokémon run free behind them and interact freely with them instead of remaining on standby like the rest of the player's Party in My Pocket. Major changes were made to some areas as well, such as the addition of a new Safari Zone (noticeably missing from the original versions), which can be accessed even before beating the game, and new dungeon and Gym layouts.

On June 6, 2017, it was announced the Gold and Silver versions would be re-released for the 3DS Virtual Console via Nintendo eShop, adding the same features as the Virtual Console releases of their predecessors, including compatibility with Pokémon Bank and Poké Transporter and wireless battling and trading, as well as retaining the original Generation II games' ability to use infrared communication for Mystery Gift. Crystal was later announced to get the same treatment on December 14, 2017, with it releasing on January 26, 2018. This version of Crystal had the additional bonus of having the Mythical Pokémon Celebi available without the need for events.

The Iwata Asks interview for Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver Versions can be viewed here.

Finally, there was also a hilariously nonsensical bootleg translation of Crystal in Vietnam.


    open/close all folders 

    Tropes used in Gold, Silver and Crystal 
  • Ability Required to Proceed: If you try to go to Kanto as soon as possible, you won't get very far since there's a waterfall in Tohjo Falls you can't climb. You have to come back after finding HM07 Waterfall and beating Clair.
  • Advertised Extra: Most of the 100 new Pokemon introduced for these games fall into this. They are largely relegated to the endgame, where they're already outclassed and therefore useless, or the methods for obtaining them are Guide Dang It!. A large number of them aren't used by any trainers either. The vast majority of the Pokemon that appear throughout the Gen 2 games are from the original 151.
  • Animation Bump: Despite most Pokémon sprites suffering from color limitations, Parasect's sprite actually looks almost three-dimensional (helped by good use of dithered gradients and by Parasect's body being more or less of one color in the first place).
  • Anti-Frustration Features:
    • There's also a trainer in the Goldenrod City Department Store who will trade you a Machop for a Drowzee (in Crystal, the trainer will instead ask for Abra). Drowzee and Abra both can be found just before you enter Goldenrod, Machop is a fighting-type, and the one you're given is female. All of which make for some major convenience since the gym leader of Goldenrod focuses on normal-types, the most difficult move to handle is rock-type Rollout, and she has a female team who uses the move Attract, which, if your Pokémon is a male, can prevent them from attacking for several turns (in addition to being considered one of the most difficult bosses not just of these games, but of the whole series).
    • Ditto is conveniently located on Route 34, right where the Day-Care Center is. Ditto can breed with most Pokémon regardless of their gender or egg group, which allows for very early breeding access and makes it easier to breed in general. The catch, however is that Ditto has a low encounter rate.
    • These games introduce the move False Swipe, which leaves Pokémon with exactly 1 HP no matter how many times you use the move. This makes catching wild Pokémon a LOT easier, especially in this generation with the poor level curve. The one downside is that there were a very limited number of Pokémon that could actually learn the move.note 
    • It's minor, but Bill will call you to notify that your PC box has been filled up and needs to be switched in order to capture wild Pokémon, which beats having to figure it out yourself like in the previous generation. Unfortunately he does not call if you fill up the box yourself by depositing a Pokémon.
    • These games also introduced autosaving for entering the Hall of Fame (and exclusively for the Johto games, beating Red as well), meaning no more having to wait through the credits. This has been kept for every game after these games.
    • For some reason, if you disabled battle animations in the Generation 1 games, it will automatically turn them back on when fighting your rival as the champion. From these games onward, that no longer happens.
    • Kurt only made you a single ball per day in Gold and Silver, even though you could find 7 Apricorns a day. In Crystal however, he will make you as many of a single ball as you have Apricorns, making it worthwhile to pick up all the Apricorns every day.
  • Artifact Title: In Red, Blue and Yellow, Giovanni, a Ground-type specialist, was the leader of Viridian City Gym. In this game, he has been replaced by Blue, who uses many different types of Pokémon, but the badge he hands over is still called the Earth Badge.
  • The Artifact: In Red, Blue, and Yellow, Route 23 was a long route containing eight checkpoints where the Players confirmed their badges to proceed to Victory road. It's made redundant here due to the introduction of a reception gate and the shrinking of Victory Road, to accommodate the fact that the League has to be accessible to two regions now. However, there is a small spit of land, seven steps across, in between Victory Road and the League still called Route 23 with nothing in it. In the remakes the route is reclassified as part of the League.
    • The Daylight Saving Time option for the clock is rendered largely pointless in the Virtual Console release, since the current time is determined based on the 3DS system clock, so if you change the 3DS clock to go along with DST the in-game time will automatically match.
  • Artwork and Game Graphics Segregation:
    • The Bulbasaur family feature bluish-teal skin in official art, but bright yellow-green in-game. Additionally, Bulbasaur's bulb is the same color as its skin in-game, a trait carried over from its Super Game Boy sprites in Pokémon Red and Blue.
    • Croconaw and Feraligatr are depicted with bright blue skin in official artwork, but their in-game sprites depict them as a greenish teal. Crystal would recolor their skin to the proper shade of blue.
    • Raikou has purple cloudlike tufts of fur on its back in official art, but its in-game sprites color them orange. Additionally, Raikou's sprite features a large black mass on its neck and lacks the hornlike tufts on its forehead. Raikou's sprite in Crystal, meanwhile, is nearly 1:1 with the artwork.
    • Spinarak is canonically pale green with yellow legs and dark turquoise accents, but its initial sprites were dark blue and purple. This would be corrected in Crystal.
    • Sneasel's official art depicts it with a dark blue body and red feathers, but its Gold/Silver sprites appear brown-bodied with pale cyan feathers. This would likewise get corrected in Crystal.
    • Bellosom is an interesting case. The artwork gives it dark blue skin like the rest of its evolutionary family, with red flowers on its head and a green/yellow grass skirt. Its Gold/Silver sprites instead show it with lime green skin and pink flowers and skirt (due to palette limitations of the time the flowers and skirt had to share the same color). While its flowers and later its skirt would be changed to match the artwork, it has kept the green skin ever since with the artwork changing to reflect it.
  • Audible Gleam: "Shiny" Pokémon are accompanied by a sound effect and sparkles in order to distinguish them from normal ones if the games are being played on the original monochrome Game Boy system instead of the Game Boy Color. This feature was even kept in future games, where this feature would not have been needed to distinguish Shiny Pokémon.
  • Beneficial Disease: The Pokérus is a virus that infects Pokémon in your party, but rather than doing harm to them, it increases stat growth. Once cured, the effect remains for the Pokémon, but it won't be able to spread it further, so it's a good idea to keep an infected Pokémon in the PC, where the virus will remain indefinitely. Encountering the virus for yourself is actually rarer than encountering a Shiny Pokémon, but later generations make it easier to find thanks to online trading.
  • Blackout Basement: Many caves such as the aptly named Dark Cave and Mt. Mortar are exceptionally dark, preventing the player from seeing anything except the sprites of the Player Character and NPCs. Using Flash will light up the cave to normal levels.
  • Boss-Only Level: The Olivine, Cinnabar, and Viridian Gyms have no puzzles or mook trainers, only their respective Leader to fight.
  • Boss Rush: Again, the Elite Four plus a Champion are the 5 elite trainers at the League one must confront to complete the main game, and again, you must deal with all of them in a row.
  • Boss Tease: In the cellar of the Burned Tower, the player will first encounter the three Legendary Dogs Raikou, Entei and Suicune... who then promptly flee, requiring you to search the land for your battles with them.
  • Bowdlerise:
    • The sprite for the Sage class, who are clearly based on Buddhist monks, was edited outside of Japan and Korea so that the Sages' arms were crossed instead of having their hands placed together in prayer, as per Nintendo's Ban on Religion that existed at the time. The remakes left the sprites intact in all countries but Korea, though the Korean version's edits is more of a Cultural Translation case.
    • Some other trainer sprites are edited in the West. Mediums no longer carry prayer beads, Fishers no longer smoke, Beauties and female Swimmers don't wink suggestively at the player, and Beauties' skirts are lengthened.
    • Jynx's skin was changed from black to purple in the West and the 3DS Virtual Console release in all regions, due to concerns she resembled a Blackface-Style Caricature.
    • The Australian version of Crystal changes dialogue relating to the Game Corner to some laughably bland lines, presumably to avoid portraying gambling as exciting. These changes are absent in the Virtual Console release.
  • Breakout Character: Silver has actually gone on to become the most popular character of the generation. He ended up getting an expanded role in the remakes and Paul as an Expy in the anime.
  • Broken Bridge:
    • A Sudowoodo has taken residence on a fork in Route 36, initially preventing you from reaching Ecruteak. The Sudowoodo won't budge unless you use a Squirt Bottle on it, and you can only get the bottle after going the long way around to Goldenrod City and beating Whitney at Goldenrod Gym.
    • Your ability to explore Kanto is hobbled by the ongoing crisis at the power plant. Finding and returning the power plant's stolen parts will make the last four Gym Leaders and the western edge of Kanto accessible.
    • If you try to surf south from Fuchsia City, you will find the beach littered with impassible wreckage that some men are trying to remove. They will not finish until you arrive at the same beach by travelling east from Cinnabar Island.
  • Built with LEGO: For no discernible reason, the interior of Blue's gym looks like it's built out of giant LEGO pieces. These may in fact be N&B Blocks, a LEGO-esque building block briefly produced by Nintendo back in the late 60s and early 70s, when it was still a toy company.
  • Canon Immigrant:
  • Cap:
    • Unlike the other games in the series, stats cannot go above a value 999. In some cases, a glitch will cause the stat to roll over to single or double digits when attempting to go over that value.
    • Repeatedly defeating the Elite Four results in being declared an "Xth-time Famer". This number is capped at 200, and was intended to change at that point to a numberless message ("だい⋯なんかいだっけ? でんどういり"note  in Japanese and "HOF Masterǃ" in English), but due to an off-by-one error in the code, it instead just gets stuck at 200.
  • Chaos Architecture: Kanto is pretty much the same as it was in Pokémon Red and Blue... on the outside. However, several interiors for buildings and even caves have changed radically.
    • The road to the Indigo Plateau was radically redesigned.
      • In Red & Blue, the Pokémon League reception gate was a roomy corridor with a man at the end who would not permit you to pass without the Boulder Badge (the first of many badge-checkpoint guards) and exits only to the north and south. In Gold & Silver, the reception gate was Retooled into a crossroads that connected Johto with Kanto, and the badge-checkpoint only examined whether you had all eight at once.
      • Victory Road could only be reached after the long and winding Route 23 in Red & Blue, but here, the original Route 23 has been completely removed—the reception gate instead leads right to Victory Road itself. Admittedly, it would be redundant after already taking the long and winding Routes 26 and 27 that connect New Bark Town to the Pokémon League.
      • The Victory Road of Gold & Silver still generally resembles the original of Red & Blue, but the rooms are smaller and there are no block puzzles or trainers to complicate your path. Instead of exiting Victory Road to the east, the player must exit it through a new tunnel to the north.
      • In Red & Blue , the Indigo Plateau area consisted of both the Pokémon League building itself and an entrance pavilion featuring a small maze of statues. In Gold & Silver, the entrance pavilion has been Retconned into the new Route 23 and has been simplified to a short walk north to the Indigo Plateau, which is now just the Pokémon League building.
    • Cinnabar Island has mostly been covered in a recently-erupted volcano that was nowhere to be seen in Red and Blue. All that's left is a tiny patch of walkable land.
    • Numerous dungeons in Kanto have been reduced and several are no longer even dungeons.
      • The Power Plant has been reduced to three rooms instead of the large abandoned complex it was in the early games.
      • Mt. Moon was remodeled, only has a couple of rooms, and now has a special Mt. Moon Square with a shop for tourists.
      • Viridian Forest was originally a full dungeon, but in Gold and Silver appears in simplified version as a mere feature of Route 2, which has been re-scored with a Lighter and Softer version of the original Viridian Forest theme.
      • The entrance to Cerulean Cave, dwelling place of Mewtwo, has disappeared, explained away as the cave having collapsed since Red & Blue.
      • The Seafoam Islands are no longer accessible, one of the two blocked off and the other reduced to a single tiny room that serves as the new Cinnabar Gym.
      • Lavender Tower is now a corporate office building and a radio tower.
  • Circling Birdies: The new in-battle animation for when a Pokémon is confused features what appears to be bird head balloons circling around them. Notably, this is the first game where this trope is used for precisely that purpose; it would become a staple later on.
  • Combat Pragmatist: These games introduce the Dark-type, which often attack in very underhanded ways.
  • Competitive Balance: Improved in comparison to the Gen. I games with the addition of Dark- and Steel-types as well as the splitting of Special Attack and Special Defense, but the Psychic-type still has a tremendous advantage owing in large part to the sheer lack of Dark- and Steel-type mons. Most of the new Dark-types (Houndour, Murkrow, Sneasel) are reserved for the post-game in Kanto in G/S, while Jasmine's gym is really the only place you'll encounter Steel-types outside of the odd Magnemite. Further, Morty's Ghost-type gym uses the part-Poison Ghastly line and, despite having some better moves like Shadow Ball, this was before the physical/special split, so the they can't really take advantage of either of their physical-classed STABs due to being special attackers. Finally, the only new Ghost-type, Misdreavous, is only encountered very late in the post-game. Thus, a good Psychic-type Pokémon can still run roughshod over most of the game. Crystal makes some of the Dark-types appear sooner, but they're still rare and not major threats.
  • The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: Lance has three Dragonite, at Levels 46, 47 and 50. Dragonair doesn’t evolve into Dragonite until Level 55. His Aerodactyl also has Rock Slide, a move it is unable to learn until later games in the series.
  • Conservation of Ninjutsu: Played straight with most of the Kanto Gym Leaders, whose teams have a larger average level the fewer pokémon are on it.
    • Surge and Brock have teams of five pokémon with an average level of 42.
    • Erika and Misty have teams of four pokémon whose levels average to 43 and 3/4.
    • Sabrina and Blaine have teams of three pokémon whose levels average to 46 and 2/3.
    • Janine and Blue are outliers—Janine, the newest Gym Leader, has a team of five with an average level of 36, while Blue, a former Champion of the region, has a full team of six with an average level of 56 and 2/3.
  • Console Cameo: The playable character as well as the playable characters of the last games all have a Nintendo 64 in their rooms. Using the Mystery Gift option allows players to receive decorations for their rooms. This includes other Nintendo consoles released at the time, including the NES, SNES and the Virtual Boy.
  • Continuity Nod:
    • At several points in the game, Team Rocket members talk about how they were disbanded 3 (in-game) years prior.
    • Blue mentions that he was once the Champion until he was defeated by Red. His Gym team is the same as his Champion team from those games (except Pokémon Yellow, which gave him a different team), except without the starter.
    • Red, the player character from the first Generation, is the True Final Boss of the game on the top of Mt. Silver. His team comprises the three Kanto Starters, Pikachu, the gift Eevee evolved into an Espeon, and a Snorlax (implied to be the one that doesn't show up when you traverse Kanto yourself, as there were two originally).
    • Many NPCs originally found in the Generation I games are still present in their original residences in Kanto. In instances where they were replaced with different NPCs in Pokémon Yellow, the original NPCs are restored, such as the old man who likes to trade Pokémon and lives with his wife in Cerulean City, or the female trainer and her disobedient Slowbro.
    • While Cerulean Cave is closed, a hidden item called Berserk Gene can be found near it, referencing Mewtwo.
  • Convenient Weakness Placement:
    • You can trade for the Rock/Ground-type Onix in Violet City or grab the same-typed Geodude from the nearby Dark Cave to deal with local Flying-type Gym Leader Falkner.
    • If you didn't grab a Geodude from Dark Cave, you can get more from Union Cave near Azalea Town to deal with Bug-type Gym Leader Bugsy. There's also the Electric-type Mareep from the previous Route, who has an advantage over Bugsy's Bug/Flying-type Scyther.
      • In Crystal, one can also get Growlithe shortly prior, being one of many early-route additions made for the game.
    • In Goldenrod City, you can trade a Drowzee (Gold and Silver and remakes) or Abra (Crystal) captured from Route 34 for the Fighting-type Machop to beat Normal-type Gym Leader Whitney. And again, it being female means it would be immune to Miltank's Attract.
    • Surrounding Ecruteak City are routes containing a number of powerful Normal types (Stantler, Tauros, Miltank), all of whom are immune to Morty's Ghost attacks. If you travel a little further to Mahogany Town and Route 43 in Gold and Silver you can obtain a Girafarig that's not only immune to Ghost moves but knows Confusion (which is effective against Gastly, Haunter and Gengar due to their being part Poison-type).
    • To get to Blackthorn City, the location of Dragon-type Gym Leader Clair, you have to go through the Ice Path. Grabbing the Ice/Psychic-type Jynx or Ice/Ground-type Swinub there will help against the local Gym immensely. Alternatively you can use the previous Gym Leader's TM, the Ice-type attack Icy Wind, on a Water-type you may already have if you didn't/don't want to grab a new team member.
      • In Crystal, Suicune also becomes available immediately before the Blackthorn City Gym. Though a pure Water type, it comes pre-packaged with Aurora Beam, and can also learn the aforementioned Icy Wind, while having the high stats typical of a legendary to better suit it for combating Clair's powerful Pokémon.
  • Covering for the Noise: Team Rocket is conducting a radio-wave experiment in Mahogany Town and the Lake of Rage. If the Player talks to one of the characters in their hideout before defeating the Red Gyarados created by the experiments, they claim that the strange sound the player hears is really their whistling.
  • Creature-Breeding Mechanic: These games introduce the ability to breed Pokémon via at the Day Care on Route 34. The mechanics behind the process are somewhat complicated, but the gist of it is that you leave two Pokémon of opposite genders to eventually produce an egg. The main benefits of breeding are that you can potentially get Pokémon with higher stats and they can inherit new moves their species normally cannot learn.
  • Crown of Power: The King's Rock is an artifact which resembles a crown. When a Pokémon holds it, their moves may cause their opponent to flinch and miss a turn, giving the holder an advantage in battle. It also allows Poliwhirl to evolve into Politoed and Slowpoke to evolve into Slowking if they're traded by holding the rock.
  • Crutch Character: See the series' page here.
  • Cutting Off the Branches:
    • Kanto is based on its original incarnation from Pokémon Red and Blue, with any changes done by Pokémon Yellow being reverted. One of the most obvious examples is Cerulean City. The house next to the Pokémon Center is still inhabited by Dontae (the old man who likes to trade Pokémon) and his wifenote , and the female trainer near the Poké Mart has a Slowbro as in Red and Blue, as opposed to the Electrode from Yellow.
    • Blue still has his team from Red and Blue (as opposed to his Yellow team) sans his starter.
  • Death Mountain: There are three mountains that can be explored: Mt. Mortar, Mt. Moon, and Mt. Silver. For the most part, the only areas explored are the caves within the mountains.
  • Developer's Foresight:
    • After you beat Clair, she demands that you obtain a Dragon Fang from the Dragon's Den before she'll hand over her badge. If you get one via trading a Pokémon holding it or hacking and show it to her, she can tell you didn't retrieve it from the Den and will not count her request as successfully completed.
    • If you try to use Daylight Savings Time to roll the in-game clock to the next or previous day, your mother won't be able to as she's misplaced the PokéGear's instruction manual.
  • Disc-One Nuke: See the series' page here.
  • Distracted by the Sexy:
    • You will occasionally get calls from other trainers about how they failed to catch a Pokémon because they were distracted by a passing Beauty.
    • With the introduction of genders, a new volatile status condition, infatuation, was introduced. Caused by the move Attract, if the target is the opposite gender of the user, there is a 50% percent chance that it'll skip a turn and not act. This effect goes away if either Pokémon is switched out or faints.
  • Divergent Character Evolution: In Gold and Silver, the trainers who can call you will talk with a singular script that is slightly altered depending on the caller. Crystal gives them distinct personalities and speech patterns to develop them a bit more.
  • Door to Before: The duo of Route 45 and Route 46 acts as this for Johto as a whole, connecting Blackthorn City, the location of Johto's 8th and last gym, to Route 29, the game's very first route, located right outside New Bark, the player's hometown. The pair's practical contribution as a Door, however, is limited by the fact that you will almost certainly already have been using Fly for a while by the time you leave Blackthorn. It is also a one-way Door, given that Route 46 can only be traversed towards the South, since it's made up of many of the Pokémon world's infamous ledges.
  • Dragon Tamer: Blackthorn City is particularly famous for the amount of Dragon-type specialists that come from there due to it having a Dragon-type Gym and being home to the Dragon's Den shrine. Notable Dragon-type users hailing from there include Blackthorn Gym Leader Clair and her cousin and Indigo League Champion Lance.
  • Dueling Player Characters: At the top of Mt. Silver there's a battle with Red, the Player Character from Pokémon Red and Blue.
  • Dungeon Bypass: You can skip all of the trainers in Misty's Gym by walking around the pool and using Surf to get across the water.
  • Early Installment Character-Design Difference: The localizations edited several Pokémon's sprites to make them more in-line with their finalised artwork; for example, they removed the spots on Lanturn's head and an extra stripe from Feraligatr's belly. Some Pokémon remained Off-Model until Crystal, such as Sneasel being brown instead of bluish-black, and Unown's W form originally had its "arms" all curved to the left instead of sticking out at different angles.
  • Early-Installment Weirdness:
    • Overall, Generation II takes a much more conservative approach to what a new Pokémon generation would entail compared to later generations. The games are more like direct sequels to the preceding gen than the Non-Linear Sequels that later games would be. It wouldn't be until Pokémon Black 2 and White 2 that the series would try direct sequels again, and, even then, these sequels would be part of the same generation as their predecessors as opposed to a new one. Gen II's ties to Gen I are so strong that there's two regions (a new one and the one from the previous game) and 16 badges, and the Elite Four are fought in the middle of the game, rather than at the end. Though the credits do roll after beating the Elite Four; the game seems to treat Kanto as more of an extended postgame, making it probably the most extensive postgame in the franchise, than as the second half of the story itself.
    • When obtained, each of the badges will grant the player's Pokémon a permanent 12.5% power boost to moves of the type the badge corresponds with (for example upon getting the Zephyr badge from Falkner, the Flying-type Gym Leader, all Flying-type moves the players uses from that point forward will be 12.5% stronger). By the end of the game, after the player has gotten all 16 badges, this means all their moves besides Dark-type moves (as there existed no Dark-type Gym) will always be 12.5% stronger. This mechanic is not applied in PVP link battles, and would be immediately removed from the series in Gen 3 and not reimplemented in the Gen 4 remakes.
    • Like its predecessors, Gold and Silver have a bizarre TM list, which includes the elemental punches and Endure. This is also the only generation where Flamethrower, Ice Beam and Thunderbolt are absent as TMs,note  though Crystal introduces a Move Tutor at the Goldenrod Game Corner who will teach these moves for a steep 4,000 Coins. It wasn't until Ruby and Sapphire that the TM list starts having reoccurring moves across Generations.
    • The prize TMs given by the Gym Leaders for beating them are still on the weird side and few are real viable moves beyond the midgame, such as Falkner giving you the Ground-type and very weak Mud Slap instead of an actual Flying-type move, Bugsy giving you a really gimmicky move in Fury Cutter, and Clair giving you a really underwhelming 60 power move in Dragonbreath despite being the final Johto Gym leader. Additionally none of the Kanto Gym Leaders besides Janine and Erika gave you a TM for beating them. In the remake most of the Johto Gym TMs were changed to more sensible and generally better moves (such as Falkner now giving you Roost, Bugsy giving you U-Turn, and Clair giving you Dragon Pulse), with only Whitney, Morty, and Jasmine still giving you the same move. Additionally in HGSS all of the Kanto Gym Leaders now give you a TM for beating them.
    • Due to the way the programming handles how Status Effects are inflicted, Tri Attack can inflict Burns on Fire-types and Freeze on Ice-types.
    • To maintain compatibility with Pokémon Red and Blue, a Pokémon's gender, shininess, and hidden value that modifies its HP stat are all derived from the hidden values that modify its other stats, and the hidden values that modify Special Attack and Special Defense are always identical. Later games make all of these things completely independent of each other.
    • Berries in these games have generic names instead of the exotic-sounding ones that the later entries have.
    • The Mystery Gift has a completely different function from later games. Connecting two Game Boy Colors via the infrared port will give both participating players a randomized gift, which can range from furniture or dolls for the player character's room, medicine, battle items, the four otherwise rare (in Gold and Silver) Evolution Stones, or one of the Berries. This feature doesn't work on the Game Boy Advance due to that system's lack of an infrared port, though it's retained in the 3DS Virtual Console release, as that system does have a built-in infrared port.
    • The game mascots are not exclusive to their version like in later installments. The Legendary that isn't on your copy's cover can be encountered much later in the game after obtaining their "Wing" item in Kanto, though they won't have their signature move (Sacred Fire for Ho-Oh and Aeroblast for Lugia) due to being at a higher level.
    • From this generation onwards, the version mascots are Legendary Pokémon (as opposed to Starter Mons like in the first), but the mascots for Gold and Silver form a duo rather than being part of a trio like in all subsequent generations, and the mascot of Crystal is a member of a trio distinct from the aforementioned duo, as opposed to the next three generations, where the mascot of the third version (or in Generation V, of the sequels) would be the last member of the trio the initial pair draws from.
    • The player's mother doesn't heal Pokémon since she exclusively handles the player's finances. Professor Elm does that with a healing device in his lab.
    • These games started the trend of introducing certain foods as healing items. Unlike the other generations, the Rage Candy Bar functions as a Potion that heals 20HP instead of being a cheaper-but-rarer version of Full Heal note .
    • Despite the numerous Poison-type Pokémon from this generation and the last one, there are only a very small number of them that can learn the move Sludge Bomb. This means that despite being Poison-types, Pokémon like the Bulbasaur line, the Nidoran line and the Gastly line can't learn it until the next generation.
    • Several Pokémon have different shiny color palettes than what Gen 3 would introduce and make permanent. For example, Magcargo's shiny color in this generation is blue, whereas from Gen 3 onwards, it's purple note .
    • Pokémon hatched from eggs will be at level 5. From Gen 4 onwards, hatched Pokémon will instead be at level 1.
    • These are the only entries to have a symbol on the game box identifying their generation (the "G/S" logo). Later games would tend to just assume players could tell from the style of the box which games went together.
    • The Time Capsule lets you full-on trade with Gen I games, rather than the one-way transfer all future generations would use.
    • This was the game that introduced the Twins trainer class, with their main gimmick being that they have two Pokémon on their team that are counterparts to each other. Nowadays, they're more well-known for challenging the player to Double Battles, which would be added starting the next generation.
  • Easter Egg: The Radio Card allows you to pick up anything the Radio Tower transmits, but it also allows you to pick up other sound sources, including strange radio signals from the Ruins of Alph and (for a time) Mahogany Town and the area north.
  • Eternal Equinox: The game's Day/Night system is strictly split between Morning (4am-9:59am), Day (10am-5:59pm) and Night (6pm-3:59am).
  • Experience Meter: Your Pokémon's progress to their next level is now visualized by a blue meter below the HP bar.
  • Extra-ore-dinary: This generation introduced the Steel-type, composed mainly of Stone Walls and Mighty Glaciers with a large number of resistances.
  • Fantastic Livestock: There's a ranch where Miltank, an all-female species of bipedal cows, are farmed for their milk.
  • Fantasy Counterpart Culture: Johto is based on the Kansai region of Japan, as well as the western part of the Chubu region (in the eastern part) and the eastern part of the Shikoku region (in the southwestern part).
  • Fantasy Counterpart Map: Johto's map looks like the Kansai region to underscore it being a Fantasy Counterpart Culture.
  • Final Boss: You actually get two, and The Rival is not one of them. The Champion trainer in this game is Lance at the League, but then several more game hours later, you meet Red of Red and Blue, who is the True Final Boss and the strongest opponent in the game.
  • First Town: The player starts off in New Bark Town of course, a small town with the only notable landmark being Prof. Elm's lab.
  • Forced Level-Grinding: The cities tend to have Pokémon trainers that are at a higher level than the Pokémon (and sometimes even the other trainers) surrounding them. It gets bad in the late game, where (for example) the Mahogany Gym's trainers are all around level 20-25 while the Pokémon in the area just preceding them are only around level 15, and the Blackthorn Gym has trainers in the low-mid 30s while the Pokémon surrounding them are around level 20-25. It reaches a head in Victory Road, where trainers are level around 40-45 while the Pokémon surrounding them are still only level 30-35, and the Elite Four can reach as high as level 50. It's quite telling when the Elite Four levels are the lowest in the series yet the near-absence of an efficient experience source in the end game is very persistent. And then there's Kanto, where the Mons on the routes around towns are still as low as the old games, but the gym leaders are all near the Elite Four's levels...
  • Forced Tutorial:
    • After you get your Pokégear and set the date on it, your mother asks if you know how to use the phone feature. You could answer yes or no to this. Saying yes will only change the sentence, "I'll read the instructions. Turn the POKéGEAR on and select the PHONE icon," to "Don't you just turn the POKéGEAR on and select the PHONE icon?" The rest continues telling how to use the phone regardless.
    • Notably averted with the trainer near the beginning of the game who shows you how to catch Pokémon. The Generation II games were the last games the main series in which you have the option to refuse the man's offer until Sword and Shield.
  • Foreshadowing: Despite playing no role in the story, Red is mentioned several times throughout the game, foreshadowing his appearance as the True Final Boss.
  • Franchise Codifier: Gold and Silver introduced a slew of new mechanics, including held items, separate special attack and special defense stats, breeding, shinies, a day/night cycle, and two new types. They also set the trend of putting legendaries on the boxarts. Crystal then added a female player character.
  • G-Rated Sex: When leaving a male and a female Pokémon in the Day Care together (or some genderless ones like Ditto), they have a chance of leaving an egg, depending on their "interest" in each other. The Day Care couple claims the egg mysteriously appeared out of nowhere, bypassing any possible reference to sex.
  • Game-Favored Gender:
    • The gender of a Pokémon is based on a randomized hidden value that modifies the Attack stat; higher values result in male Pokémon (unless the species is exclusively female) and thus they're physically stronger. This was in place to maintain compatibility with the previous games, in which all Pokémon save for the Nidoran families were genderless. How this affect the female zigzagged on species-to-species basis though, depending on how much they actually relied on physical attacks; for example a pure special-attacker like the Alakazam line doesn't care about its Attack stat, and could find having a lower Attack beneficial even when it means it'll take less self-inflicated damage from the Confusion status.
    • Due to Shiny Pokémon being determined by having a specific set of DVs and how the Attack DV determines gender, females of Pokémon species with a 7:1 male ratio like the starters and the Eevee line can never be shiny in these games. This is because females of those species can never have an Attack DV higher than 1, while the minimum Attack DV that can result in a shiny is 2.
  • Ghost Town: Cinnabar Island has become largely abandoned due to being destroyed by a volcanic eruption over the Time Skip. The only people who can still be found in Cinnabar reside in the Pokémon Center, the only building that wasn't destroyed.
  • Good Taming, Evil Taming: The game introduced a mechanic to determine how much a Pokémon likes its trainer. It takes a lot of work to get a Pokeémon to dislike you, like letting it faint a lot and using bad-tasting items, with the only real benefit being to power up the move Frustration (when there are many better moves anyway).
  • Gravity Is a Harsh Mistress: Whenever something heavy falls, there will be a deep thud and the screen will shake. Occasionally, that something heavy is the player character.
  • Guest-Star Party Member: You can get two Pokémon from NPCs that aren't intended to be kept: Kenya, a Spearow carrying a piece of mail for delivery, and Shuckie, a Shuckle whose owner wants you to protect it from your rival. However, they can still be raised and used like any other Pokémon, and there are tricks that let you retain both of them permanently: transferring Kenya's mail to another Pokémon and handing that one over instead (the remakes will even give your Pokémon back if you try this) and reaching a high enough friendship with Shuckie. Alternatively, you can just never deliver Kenya to its owner's friend and you can just never talk to Shuckie's owner to give it back, as both are just optional side quests and the game will do nothing to punish nor discourage you from just keeping them.
  • Guide Dang It!:
    • Finding most Pokémon introduced in this generation can be difficult as not only trainers tend to use previous mons a lot more, but some of them can only be found by methods not recorded by the Pokédex.
    • The games do nothing to explain how breeding works and any of the benefits involved bar some vague hints, forcing you to look up a guide to figure it out. This is most notable with Egg Groups, one of the underlying systems that determines which Pokémon are even compatible to produce an egg. Similarly, some Pokémon can learn new moves only obtainable via breeding with specific species that know the moves, which again the games don't tell you about or what Pokémon get which moves. This isn't exclusive to these games either; every game afterward forces you to look this info up.
    • Items only get a single line description. For some, such as healing items, this is enough to cover what the item does. For others, such as held items, a one-line description leaves the item's actual use incredibly vague. A major offender is the Light Ball, the description of which reads: "An odd, electrical orb. (HOLD)". It does not tell that you that it will double Special Attack if held by a Pikachu (and only Pikachu). Others, such as the King's Rock, have an apt description for their basic purpose (May make the foe flinch. (HOLD)), but do not tell you that if held by certain Pokémon during a trade, it will cause them to evolve.
    • The mechanic where obtaining Gym badges will give your Pokémon a permanent 12.5% power boost to moves of the corresponding type is not mentioned anywhere in the game nor the manual. And this mechanic was exclusive to Gen 2 too, so few people are even aware of this mechanic's existence.
  • Have a Gay Old Time: One of the Trainers in the Burned Tower (removed in Crystal) is named Dick. A trainer in the "Firebreather" class, no less. It's probably not a coincidence that his name was changed to Richard in the remakes.
  • Herding Mission: In the Ilex Forest, you have to corner a charcoal maker's two Farfetch'd by some trees.
  • Hoist by His Own Petard: Starting from this generation, Pokémon under the invulnerability phase thanks to Dig and Fly cannot avoid getting hit by Earthquake/Magnitude and Thunder/Gust/Twister, respectively. They also take double damage while under those aforementioned phases.
  • Hot Skitty-on-Wailord Action: Trope Maker for the franchise via Egg Groups, though the Trope Namer didn't come until Generation III.
  • In-Game Banking Services: Part of money earned during fights can be stored with the player's mother. Once enough money has been saved, the player's mother can give several gifts, including rare items.
  • Intentional Engrish for Funny:
    • Earl speaks entirely in broken English, though in his Pokémon Stadium 2 appearance, he speaks normally so people could understand him, as he gave hints and advice that were imperative to battling.
    • The Rocket Grunt who steals the Machine Part from the Power Plant speaks in broken English as well. He explicitly states he is a foreigner in the remakes. Black and White reveals that he's from Unova and has since given up on Team Rocket to start a family in his homeland.
  • An Interior Designer Is You: You can decorate your room with various dolls and such, thanks to Mystery Gifts. Your mother can also buy things with the money you sent home after battles.
  • Late Character Syndrome: Most of the new-introduced Dark-types, such as Sneasel, Murkrow, and Houndour, are relegated to post-game Kanto, where their usefulness is diminished significantly. They're also only available severely underleveled by the time you reach them.
  • Lethal Lava Land: Clair's Gym in Blackthorn is filled with lava pools. You can't fall in, but the Gym's puzzle requires that you move boulders into the lava to create makeshift bridges.
  • Lighthouse Point: In Olivine City, where gym leader Jasmine will be tending to the ailing Pokémon that provides its light and sends you to get some medicine from across the sea in Cianwood.
  • Lost in Translation:
    • The two towers of Ecruteak each have a Punny Name that didn't quite make it overseas, due to the games' lack of kanji (which makes it easier to keep track of the Japanese language's nightmarish amount of homophones). In Japan, Ho-Oh and Lugia historically roosted on the Suzu and Kane towers, which were originally localized as Tin and Brassnote , all playing off of the metallic Theme Naming of the games. However, suzu and kane are also different types of ceremonial bell, with suzu in particular closely resembling the spherical "jingle" bells Westerners would be more familiar with. The translators caught on in the remakes, with the "Clear Suzu", "Tide Suzu", and Suzu-ne no Komichinote , leading to the Tin Tower being renamed the Bell Tower, which unfortunately cost the towers their metallic puns.
    • Wobbuffet's Japanese name is a pun for the phrase "That's the way it is". Naturally, this cuts down a lot of its humour value in the English dub of the anime. Translators did not make the same mistake with Wynaut.
  • The Lost Woods: Ilex Forest. Its high treetops block out sunlight so that it always appears to have a night palette. Viridian Forest subverts this because the forest itself is no longer a separate dungeon.
  • Luck-Based Mission: Shares a page with the rest of the franchise.
  • Mascot Mook: Ho-Oh for Gold, Lugia for Silver, and Suicune for Crystal.
  • Meaningful Name:
    • A Male Swimmer on Route 19 is named Tucker, who is panting heavily, clearly exhausted. Or in other words, tuckered out.
    • Gold & Silver reference Ecruteak's two towers, which are modeled after Kyoto's Kinkaku-ji (Temple of the Golden Pavilion) and Ginkaku-ji (Temple of the Silver Pavilion).
  • Merchandise-Driven: Pokémon Crystal Version received a promotional anime tie-in in the form of the The Legend of Thunder Made-for-TV Movie special.
  • Merging the Branches: While Kanto is primarily based on how it appeared in Red and Blue, Red's team includes all three of the standard Kanto starters plus a Pikachu, reflective of the Pokémon you could obtain in Yellow.
  • Missing Secret:
    • Some Pokémon have Egg Moves programmed for them that are impossible to obtain, whether because they don't have genders and cannot breed with anything other than Ditto (like Staryu) or because no eligible breeding partners can legitimately get those moves (Bulbasaur, Oddish, and Snorlax get Charm but nothing they can breed with learns it).
    • This is the first game in which it is possible to have a complete Pokédex despite having a clearly missing entry, the species in question being the then-event-exclusive Mythical Pokémon Mew. It wasn't as obvious back in Generation I, since Mew was at the tail end of the list and the interface didn't scroll past the last visible item (which is also the reason why fellow Mythical Pokémon Celebi doesn't have the same problem in these games), but it becomes apparent here:
      • If the "Old Pokédex" is used, Mew's slot 151 is not far from being in the middle of the list.
      • While the issue is usually alleviated by using the "New Pokédex" which places both Mythicals at the end, Celebi was made catchable during normal gameplay in the now-unlisted Virtual Console re-release of Crystal and Mew wasn't, leaving a permanently empty slot in the New Pokédex as well, this time in the second-to-last position.
    • The Unown Mode tracks down caught Unown forms, of which there are 26. The way its interface is designed however makes the complete list look like it's missing a 27th item.
  • Mustache Vandalism: An Easter Egg in Crystal has the player discover some graffiti in the Celadon apartment building and doodle a moustache on it.
  • Musical Spoiler: The souvenir shop in Mahogany Town (which is actually a front for the Team Rocket HQ) already has enough cues to indicate something is wrong about it; the biggest giveaway, however, is the unusual music that plays within the store.
  • My Name Is ???: Trope Namer. Your rival introduces himself as "???" after your first battle. The implication is that he told you his name, which is whatever you make up when reporting it to the police officer in New Bark Town. However, many players instead named him ??? thinking it was his actual name.
  • Mythology Gag:
    • Swimmer Susie on Route 41 asks "Wasn't there a hit song about a boy riding a Lapras?", possibly referring to the sixth ending theme song of the Pokémon anime "Riding on Lapras".
    • Cooltrainer Lois, who appears at the Lake of Rage after the Team Rocket HQ has been cleared out to belatedly seek the Red Gyarados, mentions having seen a pink Butterfree.
  • Nerf:
    • The move Psychic had its secondary effect of lowering Special (in this game changed to lowering Special Defense) lowered from 30% to 10%.
    • Blizzard's accuracy was reduced from 90% to 70%.
    • The Frozen status is no longer permanent, cannot be inflicted during intense sunlight (though using Sunny Day does not automatically thaw out previously Frozen Pokémon), and can be removed by having the Frozen Mon use certain Fire attacks or will eventually wear off on its own.
    • Fire Blast had its chance to inflict the Burn status lowered from 30% to 10%.
    • Partial trapping moves like Wrap and Fire Spin no longer prevent the target from attacking for their duration.
    • The Base Power of Dig was reduced from 100 to 60.
    • Anything with a decent Special stat in the first games had it assigned to either the new Special Attack or Special Defense, while the other stat got a lower value. For example, Chansey's good 105 Special was assigned to its Special Defense while its Special Attack became a pathetic 35, making it weaker than many unevolved Mons.
    • Slash, Razor Leaf, Karate Chop, and Crabhammer now score critical hits only slightly more often than regular moves, rather than almost 100% of the time, as in Generation 1. This has the side effect of nerfing some Pokémon who relied on these near-guaranteed criticals, such as Persian.
  • New World Tease: It's possible to head over to Route 27 in Kanto as soon as the player gets the ability to use Surf outside of battle, with an NPC even saying you've taken your first step there. Keep going without Waterfall, though, and you'll hit a dead end. Even once you get it, you can't explore Kanto thoroughly until defeating the Elite Four. For another aspect of this, the Pokégear won't pick up radio stations in Kanto without the expansion you get in Lavender Town, but you can listen to Kanto radio stations on the radios in people's houses along the routes leading to Victory Road.
  • No Fair Cheating:
    • In Gold and Silver, Clair will call you out if you obtain a Dragon Fang before challenging and defeating her, and will also hold on to her Rising Badge until you get the Dragon Fang in-game.
      Clair: You did not get that at Dragon's Den. Trying to cheat like that... I'm disappointed in you.
    • In the Virtual Console release of Gold and Silver, any Mew obtained through the Coin Case glitch will be denied by the Poké Transporter, unless the original trainer's name and ID matches 'GF' and '22796,' or the 8F glitch is used after transferring Mew to the Generation 1 games.
  • Non-Elemental: While Beat Up is classified as a Dark-type move, it actually deals typeless damage due to its unique mechanics.
  • Non-Damaging Status Infliction Attack: This game introduces Attract, which only works when used by gendered Pokémon, on Pokémon of the opposite gender, to infatuate them and reduce the chances that they're able to attack.
  • Noob Cave: Union Cave which for the first time in the series is an actual cave.
  • Nostalgia Level: For the only time in the series' history the player is able to travel back to a previous region. After beating the Champion the player travels to Kanto to defeat all eight of its gym leaders. While there the player also meets several characters from the previous games, sees what has changed on three years worth of time, and the True Final Boss is the protagonist from the previous games.
  • NPC Roadblock:
    • The RageCandyBar salesman in Mahogany Town stops you from heading to Blackthorn until Team Rocket takes over the Goldenrod Radio Tower. If you happen to try and go past Mahogany at any point before saving the radio tower in the remakes, he'll drop hints on what you have to do, mentioning Olivine, Cianwood, and the Pharmacy, referring to the sick Ampharos.
    • Also in Mahogany, a man blocks the gym's door, telling you to go sightseeing, and only leaves once you take care of the Red Gyarados at the Lake of Rage and defeat Team Rocket in their hideout.
    • In Kanto, a Snorlax blocks access to Diglett Cave and cannot be moved until the power plant crisis is resolved and the player collects the Expansion Card for the Radio from Lavender Town.
  • Numbered Sequels: Subverted; the Working Title of the games was Pocket Monsters 2: Gold and Silver, but the number was dropped in the final title.
  • Obvious Rule Patch:
    • The Special stat has been split into two distinct stats, Special Attack and Special Defense, to avert One Stat to Rule Them All.
    • Many additions have to made to balance out the Psychic-type. The new Steel- and Dark-types have a resistance and immunity to it, respectively, Dark is also super effective against it, stronger Ghost and Bug attacks have been introduced and accessible to more Mons thanks to having TMs, and the aforementioned split of the Special stat makes dealing with them easier on the Special side. At the same time, these two new types are weak to the formerly-lackluster Fighting-type, and one of them is weak to the previously-paltry Bug-type.
    • Trapping moves like Wrap can no longer stop the opponent from taking actions and Pokémon don't lose a turn when they wake up anymore, preventing the infliction of a Cycle of Hurting on anything slower than the user.
  • Old Save Bonus:
    • After reaching Ecruteak City, you can trade Pokémon between these games and Red, Blue, and Yellow by using the Time Capsule function in the Pokémon Centers. Pokémon originating in the older games will come with held items- for instance, the starter Pikachu in Yellow will come with a Light Ball. When using the Time Capsule, your Pokémon team must consist of moves and Pokémon that existed in the original games, though this does allow Pokémon to have moves in Gen I that existed back then but were only added to their move set in Gen II or Yellow.
    • Connecting to Pokémon Stadium 2 unlocks furniture and Pokémon dolls for your room. You can also unlock a special Farfetch'd with Baton Pass and a Gligar with Earthquake by beating your Rival in Stadium 2.
    • Just like in the original Pokémon Stadium, if the player beats the Master Cup with a Pikachu in their party, that Pikachu will get the chance to learn Surf, and even has the same overworld sprite.
  • Olympus Mons: These are the games where they became the default Mascot Mooks and much more backstory is given on them.
  • One Game for the Price of Two:
    • As per series tradition, some Pokémon are version exclusive. Unlike later versions, this doesn't apply to the Legendary on the box cover; you can still catch the opposite version's after beating the game and getting a special item.
    • Some Pokémon, like the original starters and Mewtwo, are impossible to obtain without transferring them from the original games.
  • Optional Boss:
    • The player never needs to encounter Lugia and Ho-Oh, or even set foot in their dungeons, but doing so can net you a powerful ally (provided you have the necessary Wing items). In Crystal, defeating the Elite Four is a requirement for getting them to show up (and in Ho-Oh's case, catching Raikou, Entei, and Suicune).
    • In the Virtual Console release of Crystal, Celebi can be battled without the need for events, though becoming the Champion is a prerequisite.
  • Padded Sumo Gameplay: Due to these games still having the Stat Experience system instead of the later Gens' Effort Values system, there is no limit to the overall amount a Pokémon's stats can be boosted, letting all of a Pokémon's stats get the maximum boost of 63 points instead of only being able to maximize two stats like in later Gens. Since every attack will involve two stats in damage calculation (HP + the relevant defense stat) while there is only a single offensive stat used, this results in Pokémon becoming much bulkier. This additionally gets exaberated by the held items introduced; offensive items just sucked in Gen 2, when aside from items that are exclusively holdable to a single mon or two, the only offense-boosting items were Scope Lens (which only slightly increased the chance of getting a Critical Hit) and items that boosted the power of a single type by a measly 10%. Conversely, this Gen introduced Leftovers, an item that passively recovers 1/16th of a Pokémon's max HP every turn, which when stacked on the aformentioned bulkiness of everything and the lack of strong offense, ends up giving everything absurd longevity. This results in competitive Gen 2 matches notoriously being much longer than competitive matches of all other Gens.
  • Palette Swap: These games introduced "Shiny" Pokémon, which have alternative colors and sparkle when they enter battle. They are extremely rare bar the mandatory Gyarados encounter at the Lake of Rage and whatever hatches from the special egg given to you in Crystal, so it's a major treat to encounter one.
  • Parental Savings Splurge: Downplayed, as the player's mother takes and stores a percentage of the player's earnings through battles, and occasionally uses that money to buy them items.
  • Peninsula of Power Leveling: See the series' page here.
  • Permanently Missable Content: TM09 (Psych Up) is really convoluted to get in Gen II. It requires the use of the Time Capsule to trade a Gen I Abra into a Gen II game, which the newly traded Abra will be holding the TM. Given how rare it is to even use the Time Capsule, especially well beyond the Gen II era, this TM is pretty much non-existent.
  • Pet the Dog: The Rocket extortionists on Route 43 will stop anyone who goes through the gate, but other than that, they'll leave you alone if you don't have any money on you.
  • Pop Quiz: You need to answer a series of questions in the Goldenrod Radio Tower to get the Radio Card for the Pokégear.
  • Port Town: Olivine City in Johto and Vermilion City in Kanto.
  • The Power of Friendship: Originally introduced in Yellow, the Friendship mechanic got an overhaul in this game. Like Yellow, it causes Pokémon to like you by fulfilling certain tasks or just walking around enough. Unlike in Yellow, it actually does something. Some Pokémon require high friendship ratings to evolve, while the mechanic is also the basis for damage dealt by the moves Return and Frustration.
  • Power-Up: Each badge gives a 12.5% damage boost to its associated type (i.e. the Plain Badge boosts Normal attacks), while specific badges give a 9/8 boost to actual stats. For balancing reasons, these don't apply to Player Versus Player battles.
  • Prolonged Video Game Sequel: Gold and Silver is slightly more than twice the length of Pokémon Red and Blue, since it features the entire region that Red and Blue were set in, as well as a brand new one for Gold and Silver.
  • Pupating Peril: The Larvitar line is a unique non-insect example. As Larvitar, it starts out as a small baby reptile before evolving into the cocoon-like Pupitar. When it fully evolves into the Godzilla-esque Tyranitar, it drops the Ground sub typing for a Dark Type, as they're fearsome Pokémon that can destroy mountains.
  • Railroading: There are many, many things that prevent you from progressing more than the story wants. Most frustratingly is the Ragecandybar guy in Mahogany Town who refuses to let you pass even after you defeat Team Rocket and get Pryce's badge because he's out of candy and needs to wait for a restock. Why that has him go out of his way to block your path and push you back into town for that makes no sense.
  • Recurring Boss:
    • Again, The Rival plays this role, running up and stopping you from proceeding in several spots while forcing you to fight him, including as the first trainer battle in the game, and again, whichever starter you pick, he will steal the Pokémon who is strong against it (The Rival now has his own battle theme instead of the normal trainer battle theme). The last time you run into him in a forced fight is in Mt. Moon in the post-game; he's not the Final Boss this time (at least, not in the handheld games).
    • In addition to The Rival, the two leaders of Team Rocket in this generation are both fought twice each towards the end of Johto, one after the other both times.
  • Recycled Soundtrack:
    • It comes as no surprise that most locations introduced in Pokémon Red and Blue come with their original BGM, albeit remixed. Some locations, which don't have their original BGM in the game, still share themes with other Kanto locations. The only exceptions (and aversions of this trope) are the Indigo Plateau and Victory Road. Battle themes from the Kanto games are also used while in Kanto, again, with several exceptions.
    • The game reuses and repurposes the "trainer encounter" themes from the previous installment: the old Team Rocket encounter theme is now used for physically imposing trainers such as Hikers and Blackbelts, the one for female trainers is now restricted to young female trainers such as Lasses or Twins, and the one for male trainers is now exclusively used with Officers, demoting the most common encounter theme from Generation I to being played for only two easy to miss trainers in the entire game.
  • Redundant Researcher: The Alph Ruins researchers are so incompetent that they can't assemble simple jigsaw puzzles or discern that the local Unown are being used as letters to spell out words in the same language. It takes the pre-teen player character to figure any of this out.
  • Regional Bonus:
    • The Japanese version of Crystal includes a building in Goldenrod City called the Pokémon Communication Center, which is tied to a number of extra features (e.g. online trading, wireless battling, etc.) that utilize the Japan-exclusive Pokémon Mobile System GB and Mobile Game Boy Adapter accessories. It also gives access to a Sidequest that allows you to capture the Olympus Mon Celebi — said sidequest was translated in English, but went unused until the Virtual Console release.
    • The Odd Egg is automatically available in the international versions of Crystal, whereas in the Japanese version it had to be redeemed for an Egg Ticket, which were only available via events using the Mobile System GB. The Tickets became impossible to obtain through legitimate means after support for the mobile connection features were dropped, rendering the Odd Egg unobtainable. This also applies for the Virtual Console release since all Mobile System GB features are completely disabled.
    • Similarly, in the Japanese versions, the Battle Tower requires the player to use the Mobile System GB to unlock it. In international versions it's unlocked from the onset in them.
  • Regional Redecoration: According to legend the Lake of Rage was formed from a bunch of Gyarados creating a massive storm that left a giant crater, which then filled with rainwater, creating the lake we know today.
  • Ridiculously Cute Critter: In comparison to Gen I and later generations, Gen II's Pokémon have designs that are more rounded and brightly colored, making them super cute, even when fully evolved. This is also the generation that introduced the idea of Baby Pokémon, which are juvenile forms of well known Gen I Pokémon.
  • Sequence Breaking: Similar to the first game, three of the Gyms in Johto (Gyms 5, 6, and 7) can be fought in any order. While the "official" order is Cianwood-Olivine-Mahogany, one could use Surf (obtained in Ecrutreak around the time of the 4th Gym) to go straight to Mahogany, do the next part of the Team Rocket plot, catch the Red Gyarados, and beat Pryce before doing the other two. Unlike with Red and Blue, where doing the Gyms out of order is difficult due to noticeable level differences between the 3 Gym Leaders, the levels of trainers and Pokémon around Mahogany and the Gym are roughly equivalent to those around Cianwood, making it very reasonable. Also unlike in the first games, there are no roadblocks that prevent the player from going on the routes to Olivine City, Mahogany Town or Lake of Rage (with Mahogany Town, the player just has to get through Mt. Mortar) before obtaining the Fog Badge.
  • "Shaggy Dog" Story: In Red and Blue, you could find a man in Vermilion City who was laying the foundation for a building. He still hasn't finished construction after three years due to being short on funds.
  • Ship Level: On their first trip to Kanto, the player has to board the S.S. Aqua. After that, it sails from Kanto every Sunday and Wednesday, and from Johto every Monday and Friday. The enemy trainers who are on the ship with you change depending on what voyage you are on (you get one set for the initial journey, another on sailing from Kanto, and a third on subsequent trips from Johto).
  • Short-Distance Phone Call:
    • Averted. Trying to call somebody when you're in the same area will have the game tell you to just talk in person.
    • The remakes give each character unique dialogue for each character's reaction when they realize that you're calling them while relatively close. This can at times be frustrating (even if it does make sense) if there's a specific character interaction that you can only have on the phone (such as checking to see if someone's waiting for a battle, to see if they're holding an item for you, or calling them for a battle as the remakes will sometimes allow you to do).
  • Shout-Out:
    • The first thing Earl asks you in Violet City is "Want to be a winner is you?"
    • The Fighting-type Gym Leader being named Chuck isn't exactly a subtle shout-out.
    • In the French version, the sailor sleeping on duty on SS Aqua is named Gaston.
    • Like in gen 1 when you first start the game, the TV in your house will be a reference to a real movie. In this case it says that "stars dot the sky as two boys ride on a train".
      • Except in the French version, in which she's watching On se calme et on boit frais à Saint-Tropez, because the lead translator thought the idea of her watching such a film was hilarious.
    • Teacher Colette on Route 15 asks "have you forgotten anything?"
  • Sidetracked by the Gold Saucer: In-universe, the gym guide of Celadon City is too busy playing the slots to show up at the Celadon City Gym.
  • Sliding Scale of Continuity: Definitely Level 3-4. Until Pokémon Black 2 and White 2, this was the only Pokémon game to be a direct sequel, which carries on with the major events from Pokémon Red and Blue. The Johto Pokédex is considered an extension of the Kanto Pokédex, you have to stop Team Rocket from returning to its former glory, the Pokémon League is at the same Indigo Plateau, and you get to visit the rest of Kanto as well. Most, if not all, characters from Kanto return, including the previous game's protagonist (who's waiting for you at the top of Mt. Silver). And many of them have moved on with their lives. The only reason this isn't Level 5 is due to having to start with a new protagonist.
  • Slippy-Slidey Ice World: Pryce's Gym in Mahogany Town is the Ice-type Gym, which means you have to navigate a sliding ice puzzle to reach him. The nearby Ice Path is also full of Ice-types and contains its own sliding ice puzzles.
  • The Smurfette Principle: Almost all the participants in the Bug Catching Contest are all boys. Except for Picnicker Cindy, who lampshades the fact that she's a girl who likes Bug type Pokémon.
  • Socialization Bonus:
    • Trade Evolutions have been expanded to include Mons that evolve while holding specific items, such as a Scyther holding the Metal Coat to turn into Scizor.
    • Using the Mystery Gift feature can net players bonus items they can't obtain otherwise, like multiples of the original Evolution Stones (Gold and Silver only; you can also get them from NPCs randomly in Crystal, while you could normally only get one each from Bill's grandfather in Gold and Silver) or furniture for the player character's room.
  • Soundtrack Dissonance: A mild example; the happy and upbeat theme from Pewter City also plays in the now-ravaged Cinnabar Island. This was changed in the remakes, where Cinnabar gets a Dark Reprise of its original theme.
  • Spin-Off: Pokémon Puzzle Challenge features Pokémon from these games and retells a simplified version of Ethan's (as it was released before Crystal, Ethan was the only player character as in Gold and Silver) journey to defeat Gym Leaders and the Elite Four in a Puzzle Game format.
  • Spectacular Spinning: Earl really loves his pirouettes.
    Liz: I saw him doing pirouettes while he was running. It was wildly funny!
  • Stalker with a Crush: Juggler Irwin certainly keeps...abreast of your adventures. It's even possible that he'll call you to gush about something you just accomplished. It's less subtle in Crystal, when he only behaves this way if playing as a girl.
  • Stationary Enemy: There's a path blocked by a Sudowoodo. It only reveals itself as a Pokémon, rather than a real tree, when it is watered.
  • Temple of Doom: The Ruins of Alph, even if just a tame example. Completing some sliding puzzles drops the floor out from under the player and they fall into a strange room full of only the mysterious Unown, which appears in 26 different forms. Crystal expanded on this area by adding move puzzles which would give the player extra treasure and some of the Unown's backstory.
  • Third-Option Adaptation: When it comes to Red and Blue's teams:
    • The question of who picked which starter canonically does not get an answer: Red has all three starters, while Blue has none (including his starter in the non-canon Yellow, Eevee, meaning that even if he owned one, there's nothing to tell which evolution he picked).
    • Instead of being a Vaporeon, a Jolteon or a Flareon, Red's Eevee evolved into an Espeon, an evolution which didn't even exist in Generation I. Averted in the remakes where Red has a Lapras in its place.
    • Possibly averted with the two Snorlax: the location where the only remaining Snorlax is crashing when the player gets to Kanto seems to imply that Red canonically caught the Snorlax that was sleeping by the Cycling Road and didn't bother with the other one.
  • This Looks Like a Job for Aquaman: The Poké Balls you can have made from Apricorns will have very high catch bonuses when used on specific targets (they're as effective as normal Balls otherwise).
    • Level Balls work best on Pokémon that are lower in level than the player's active Pokémon.
    • Lure Balls will grant a higher catch rate if used on Pokémon encountered via fishing.
    • Moon Balls get a bonus when used on Pokémon that reach their final evolution with a Moon Stone, though this doesn't work due to a coding error.
    • Love Balls grant the highest catch bonus possible (x8), but only if used on a Pokémon of the same species as your active one and are the opposite gender (due to a glitch it only grants this if they're the same gender).
    • Heavy Balls are more successful the heavier the target, and even have a penalty if used on lighter Mons.
    • Fast Balls supposedly work best on Pokémon species that try to flee, though a glitch makes it only effective on Magnemite, Grimer and Tangela.
  • Time Skip: The games take place three years after the events of Red and Blue. Unsurprisingly (and partially due to space limitations), a lot of stuff in Kanto has changed since then: a Magnet Train station now connects Saffron City to Goldenrod City, powered by a restored and now functional Power Plant. The Pewter Museum and Safari Zone are closed, respectively due to renovations and the owner taking a vacation. Cerulean Cave has collapsed, the explorable area of Mt. Moon has shrunk due to rock slides, and Cinnabar Island's town was destroyed by a volcanic eruption.
  • True Final Boss: You might expect the League champion, Lance, to be the final opponent, but this only ends the first half of the game. After the credits, you can travel through the original games' setting of Kanto and eventually reach Mt. Silver, where you can challenge Red, the original games' player character and one of the series' most powerful bosses.
  • Tutorial Failure: Dialogue from NPCs in the Bug Catching Contest suggest if you catch a shiny Pokémon you'll get more points for it. While the IVs required to make a Pokémon shiny will indeed give you the maximum bonus points for that portion, that's only a maximum of 29 points out of a possible 386, so unless that shiny was a Scyther or Pinsir, you may very well still lose. That said, a shiny is far, far rarer than anything you'll get for placing well in the contest, so this probably won't dissuade anyone from ending the contest with a shiny if they find one during it.
  • Useless Item: The Dragon Fang and Moon Ball are useless due to programming errors:
    • The Dragon Fang says it boosts the power of Dragon-type moves for Pokémon who hold it, but it actually does nothing because its effect was mistakenly given to the Dragon Scale (Seadra's evolution item) instead. This is fixed starting with Pokémon Stadium 2.
    • The Moon Ball is supposed to be good at catching Pokémon that evolve with a Moon Stone. Since only a select few species evolve this way, this alone makes it too absurdly specific to be useful. However, the game checks for the Moon Ball's index number from the first generation of games, which in the second generation is Burn Heal instead. Since obviously no Pokémon evolves with a Burn Heal, the Moon Ball never has a catch rate higher than a regular Poké Ball. The remakes and subsequent games fix this.
  • Useless Useful Spell:
    • Frustration and Return were new Normal TM moves introduced in this Gen, that are learnable by nearly every Pokémon, with the gimmick that their power was directly dependent on how much your Pokémon dislikes and likes you respectively. Both moves can cap out at an impressive max base power of 102, but due to how the friendship mechanic works, Frustration is just useless; first it doesn't take much to raise a Pokémon's friendship enough to make Return stronger than Frustration, and even at the base default friendship value, Frustration will be a weak move not worth having. Second, you have to try really hard to actually make a Pokémon dislike you, as just levelling up the Pokémon and walking around with it in your party will keep steadily increasing its friendship over time, while to decrease its friendship by any substantial degree would require you to intentionally get it KO'd over and over. As a result, Frustration is not practical to teach to any remotely longterm party member nor any Pokémon you are going to be levelling up a lot.
    • Most of the Apricorn balls obtained from Kurt, even ignoring the incredibly annoying way you have to obtain them, are of overly niche usage, if they have any real use at all:
      • The Love Ball is supposed to make catching Pokémon of the same species and opposite sex of your active one easier, but a glitch means it only works on those of the same gendernote . Even then, regardless of which gender it works on, it's incredibly overspecialized, especially since it's not likely you're trying to catch more of a Pokémon you already own.
      • The Fast Ball was supposed to grant a higher catch rate when used on any of the fleeing Pokémon, but due to a programming error, only does so for three; Magnemite, Tangela, and Grimer, all of which aren't hard to catch as is anyway, unlike the legendary beasts who you would want this kind of ball for. The Gen 4 remakes would instead change this ball to be effective against any Pokémon with a base Speed of 100 or more, giving it a lot more general usefulness.
      • The Moon Ball is supposed to make catching Pokémon that evolve via a Moon Stone easier, but due to a programming error, it instead works on Pokémon that evolve by a Burn Heal, which obviously none do and thus the Moon Ball is never any more effective than a regular Poké Ball. The Gen 4 remake would fix this, but due to there only being a few Pokémon that evolve with a Moon Stone, and none of which are hard to catch, it's still too niche to be worth going out of your way to get unless you just really like the ball's design.
      • The Level Ball has higher catch rates against Pokémon that are of a lower level than yours, and this aspect of it works, but due to yet another programming error with these balls, it ignores the Pokémon's remaining HP and status when calculating if the catch will succeed, meaning it essentially always treats the Pokémon as if it's fully healthy and thus makes catching it more difficult. This was fixed in the Gen 4 remakes, making it geninunely useful.
      • The Heavy Ball makes catching heavy Pokémon easier and actually works as advertised, but with the minimum weight threshold of which it has a boosted catching modifier against (being boosted against Pokémon that weigh at least 451.5 lbs/204.8 kg), there are only six Pokémon that can be found in the wild of the Gen 2 games that meet this threshold - Onix, Mantine, Gyarados, Lapras, Snorlax, and Lugia, the lattermost two being one-time encounters at that and the only ones that the Heavy Ball is more effective than an Ultra Ball for, while only Snorlax of that group is heavy enough to hit the 903 lbs/409.6 kg threshold for the maximum +40 modifier boost.note  It also reduces the catch rate of any Pokémon under 220 lbs, of which there are a lot and thus it's actually worse than a Poké Ball most of the time. The Gen 4 remakes would include more catchable Pokémon that meets the Heavy Ball's requirements (particularly the legendaries from Gens 3 and 4), leaving it still niche but more occasionally very useful.
  • The Very Definitely Final Dungeon: Mt. Silver. It's the last place you can enter after you've gotten all 16 Badges and contains the True Final Boss on the very top of the mountain.
  • Video Game Delegation Penalty: As before, the Day Care allows you to level up Pokémon as you walk, but with the catch of not being able to evolve while in there, as well as automatically forgetting the first move in their movelist upon learning a new move. Since breeding is introduced in these games, one ought to be careful if they want to keep one of the parents/are trying to get a certain move onto another Pokémon.
  • Vortex Barrier: Some chokepoints are blocked by a whirlpool which spins you around before shoving you back. Using the Whirlpool move on it cancels out the vortex and lets you pass.
  • What Happened to the Mouse?: What became of the Murkrow that opened the door to the radio transmitter and then ran off? (Did it become part of the female Team Rocket Admin's team?)
  • Wholesome Crossdresser:
    • The trainers in the Fuchsia Gym dress like Janine. One of them is a Camper (a male Trainer class)...
      Camper: That's right, I'm a boy! What's wrong with a boy dressing up as Janine?
    • The female player character in Crystal is forced to dress as a boy in order to enter the battle or trade centre, even when connecting with another copy of Crystal.
  • Wolverine Publicity: Charizard appears in the intros of Gold and Silver, despite being unavailable in-game (although it's on the teams of Lance and Red, the game's two "Champions", it isn't even their signature Pokémon). This is inverted in HeartGold and SoulSilver, where Charizard is indeed available at the very end of the game but is absent from the intro.
  • Wutai: Although the first four regions in the main series are based on Japan, only a few towns are actually obviously Japanese-influenced, and they're all in Johto. Of special note is Ecruteak City, whose music was remixed in HeartGold and SoulSilver to sound more Japanese. Interestingly, Cianwood City, which it originally shared music with, has a separate remix that does not use the Japanese-sounding instruments of Ecruteak's version.
  • You No Take Candle: Earl in Violet City and the foreign member of Team Rocket you encounter in Cerulean City both speak in broken English.
  • Your Princess Is in Another Castle!: Whitney and Clair will not give you their badges once you defeat them; Whitney will be inconsolably crying until one of her lieutenant trainers explains why to you, while Clair will be so incensed that she makes you go on a full sidequest before you can talk to her. Inverted with Jasmine (also Bugsy and, in Crystal, Morty), whom cannot be faced until you complete a sidequest in advance.

    Tropes appearing in HeartGold and SoulSilver 

  • Adaptation Expansion: Parts of Crystal have been added like the Suicune subplot and the Dragon's Den shrine, locations in Kanto that were left out in the originals due to space limitations (like Cerulean Cave) have been restored, brand new locations have been added, and Pokémon from newer Generations can be encountered and caught.
  • Adaptation-Induced Plot Hole:
    • In the original games, a woman in the gate between Ilex Forest and Route 34 gave you TM12, Sweet Scent, to help you complete your Pokédex. Sweet Scent has an out-of-battle effect to attract wild Pokémon, so this makes sense. In the remakes, her dialogue remains unchanged and you still get TM12 from her, but Gen IV's TM12 instead contains Taunt, a move that has no obvious use in aiding Pokémon captures.
    • Two of the Day-of-the-week siblings give different items than they did in Generation II, but keep the rest of the dialogue for their original item. Santos in particular had an unusually creepy and stilted way of speaking that is nonsensical now that he no longer gives out a Ghost-type item.
      Tuscany: "By way of introduction please accept this gift, a TwistedSpoon. Wouldn't you agree that it is most adorable? It strengthens Psychic-type moves." note 
      Santos: "Take this... ... Soft Sand... Ground-type moves get stronger... It will startle you..." note 
  • Apathetic Citizens: Averted. At one point, you dress up as a Team Rocket member. You can interact with the citizens of Goldenrod, although you can't leave the city, and what do they do when they see you? Tell you that you could be doing good instead. There is also a brief mention of the trainers at the Gym trying to stop Team Rocket when they take over Goldenrod, but they are completely ineffective.
  • Anti-Frustration Features:
    • In the old games, you could only catch Mareep after beating the Violet City gym, as the area it can be caught it is blocked off by an NPC who only lets you through if you have the badge. In the remakes, a patch of grass is added in the area just above said NPC, allowing players to catch a Mareep and get an advantage at the gym. This is especially helpful for players who picked Chikorita as their starter.
    • In GSC, the Elite Four and Lance don't get any stronger after you first enter the Hall of Fame, and you can only battle each of the 16 Gym Leaders only once. That means that once you beat Blue, your best option for leveling up your Pokémon to fight Red was to repeatedly rematch the Pokémon League, whose levels range from 30 to 40 levels below those of his Pokémon. HeartGold and SoulSilver not only offer a way to rematch the Gym Leaders with full, powered-up teams, but give the same treatment to the Elite Four and the Champion, making them even stronger than the Kanto Leaders and bridging the level gap between you and Red. Acquiring the Leaders' Pokégear numbers, however, is another story.
  • The Artifact:
    • Lampshaded example on Indigo Plateau. In the original games there was a nice man who would have his Abra teleport you home, since you couldn't fly between Kanto and Johto and thus your only other way back until you beat the Elite Four was walking back. The old man is still there in the remakes, but you can now use Fly to leave, and he states that most trainers find him unnecessary because of that. He actually doesn't even offer to Teleport you.
    • These same changes also serve to make the other means of travelling between Johto and Kanto, the Magnet Train and the S.S. Aqua, less necessary. Unlike the teleportation Abra, these are still fully functional in the remakes. This occurs because the Indigo Plateau is now considered part of both Kanto and Johto and thus serves as a flying source and destination for all other locations in the game, so to travel between regions the player can fly to the Indigo Plateau and then fly again to wherever they want to go in the other region.
    • Mr. Pokémon still gives you a Pokémon Egg to take to Professor Elm as a huge discovery, even though Pokémon breeding is now very well known and it isn't a huge breakthrough to see an Egg. Elm himself isn't even sure what the big deal is and says Mr. Pokémon calls him all the time to talk about Eggs. It's implied that in this case the special thing about the Egg is how rare Togepi is.
    • Bill will still give you his number, despite the original reason for needing it (checking the amount of space left in a PC box so you knew when to switch them) becoming irrelevant with the newer system automatically placing Pokémon in the first available space.note 
    • The remakes bring back Kurt's Poké Balls made out of Apricorns. For the most part, they're even more useful than before - they're easier to acquirenote  and the remakes fixed bugs with several of them from the originalsnote  - but the Lure Ball is simply outclassed by the Net and Dive Balls brought over from Gen III. Its 3x capture rate against Pokémon hooked with a fishing rod is far too specific to outshine the Net Ball, which confers the same capture rate against any Water- or Bug-type, or the Dive Ball, which confers a 3.5x bonus on Pokémon encountered while surfing as well as fishing. Interestingly, part of the reason for this is from attempts to keep the Dive Ball relevant after Gen III (it originally worked better on Pokémon encountered while diving, which isn't a mechanic outside of RSE and their own remakes). When the Lure Ball made another return for Pokémon Sun and Moon, they had to increase its catch-rate bonus to 5x for it to be viable.
  • Ascended Extra:
    • Despite being the version mascots, it was completely possible for a player to go from New Bark Town to Mt. Silver without ever finding or even learning about Lugia and Ho-Oh in the originals. Here, they're a required battle before the player can go to the Pokémon League, and are given a small subplot about them returning to Johto after many years.
    • Originally, the Kimono Girls were a group of mid-game minibosses who had to be beaten to get the Surf HM. They are now periodically encountered throughout Johto and are tied to the new Ho-Oh/Lugia subplot, with their gauntlet being pushed back to after you get all the Johto badges.
  • Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: Your Pokémon will occasionally pick up Accessories while you travel with it, which it may show off if you talk to it. It's up to them whether or not they want to let you put it in the Fashion Case if you ask them to hand it to you, and what can be found varies depending on the area. There's also Shiny Leaves, golden leaves that can be found in specific grass tiles in specific routes in accordance with a certain nature. If a single Pokémon manages to find all five of its potential leaves, you can take it to Ethan/Lyra's house and they will turn it into a crown for them, and if it is your first time doing so you'll also end up with a new star on your Trainer Card.
  • Battle Cry: One response when speaking to your Pokémon in the Elite Four and Champion's rooms is for it to unleash a battle cry.
  • Boss in Mook's Clothing: On Route 47, after coming out the north exit of Cliff Cave en route to the Safari Zone, there awaits a Double Team with a duo of Level 25 Electabuzz and Magmar. While that might not seem like all that much, they have Thunderbolt and Flamethrower, already-powerful attacks boosted by STAB bonuses, and moves like Thunder Wave and Confuse Ray (to inflict Paralysis and Confusion, respectively) to further mess with you.
  • Bowdlerize:
    • Firebreather Dick in the Burned Tower in Gold and Silver is renamed Firebreather Richard in HeartGold and SoulSilver. Which is still accurate, as "Dick" is a shorthand nickname for "Richard".
    • The Dirty Old Man peeking through Celadon Gym's window says it's great because "it's full of strong trainers!" instead of "it's full of women!" in the English version.
    • Due to the European game rating board PEGI getting stricter on gambling, both Game Corners have their slot machines replaced with Voltorb Flip (a minigame similar to Minesweeper) outside of Japan.
  • Bragging Rights Reward: Your rewards for earning all 16 badges and beating Red:
    • All Pokémon that were in your party when you defeated Red, regardless of their actual participation in the battle, will receive the Legend Ribbon.
    • You can visit Professor Oak and he'll give you one of the Kanto starters, and Steven in Saffron City will give you one of the Hoenn starters. This is the only way to get these Pokémon and you can only get one of each in a playthrough, making them exceptionally rare, but they're still starters that you get at level 5 with not really anything left to do.
    • You're also given the opportunity to face and catch Kyogre and Groudon, and if you trade for the one you don't have, you can also face Rayquaza. However, they spawn at level 50, which will likely be far below your team after beating Red, as well as the rematch teams for the Elite Four and all the gym leaders.
  • But Thou Must!: You're required to face the version mascot due to the plot, despite there being no real reason to do so.
  • Call-Back:
    • When you battle Red, he is the only trainer to still use the Poké Ball battle transition from the original Generation II games.
    • While many of the changes the original games brought to Kanto due to space limitations have been undone, they are still handwaved in the games: it is stated, for example, that the Cerulean Cave did collapse at one point, but has since been rebuilt.
  • Canon Welding: An event-exclusive cutscene involving Arceus has the player character briefly teleported to the Sinjoh Ruins, a ruin far away from both Kanto and Johto that was once a temple made by both the people of Johto (or, more specifically, the ones that made the Ruins of Alph) and the people of Sinnoh. This is the only place in the game where Cynthia, the champion of Sinnoh, can be encountered.
  • Chekhov's Gun: The random candy bar you got in Mahogany Town in Johto can be traded to a Kanto NPC for the TM for Explosion, the most powerful (albeit suicidal) move in the game.
  • Circling Birdies:
    • In the minigames, the player's Pokémon get circling Psyduck when stunned.
    • In the PokéWalker, the player's one Pokémon gets circling stars when KOed by a wild Pokémon.
  • Chip Tune: After acquiring all 8 Kanto Gym badges, an NPC in Game Freak HQ will reward you with the "GB Sounds" item that allows you to switch to remakes of the original chiptunes at will while exploring Kanto or Johto. It even includes chiptune renditions for areas that were added since the originals, like the Johto Safari Zone and Global Trade Station, or places in Kanto whose original Red and Blue tracks weren't available in the originals but re-added in these ones.
  • Console Cameo: Unlike the originals, both genders of playable character as well as Red & Blue have a Wii in their bedrooms.
  • Copy Protection: There are several points in the game, beginning to end, where ROMs will freeze up. The pirate community had an interesting time trying to play the game, which required continuous patching as more and more impassable gates were discovered.
  • Cutting Off the Branches: Unlike in the originals, Mewtwo is found in Cerulean Cave, thus Red never caught it during the events of the Kanto games (though its reappearance could also be interpreted as noncanon). The Legendary birds also make a return, but they aren't as explicitly one of a kind as the artificial Mewtwo is.
  • Day-Old Legend: An event allows you to create a Legendary Pokémon (either Palkia, Dialga or Giratina, all of them representations of space, time and anti-matter) with the help of Arceus. Apparently it involves deconstructing and then reconstructing the whole universe exactly as it was, only with an egg with one of these Pokémon inside it.
  • Death Mountain: Mt. Silver gets a major overhaul including a trip on the outside of the actual mountain to the snowy top. The Final Boss Red is fought in blizzard conditions.
  • Demoted to Extra: Although Suicune retains a level of importance as it did in Crystal, it's not the focus of the story as it was then, with Ho-Oh/Lugia taking its role as the Climax Boss. You can't even battle it until Kanto, and even then it's totally optional.
  • Developer's Foresight:
    • If you chose Chikorita, each of Silver's Pokémon will be two levels higher at Goldenrod Tunnel than if you choose Totodile or Cyndaquil - this is to compensate for the fact that his starter is still in second form (Quilava evolves at Lv. 36 while Croconaw at Lv. 30 and Bayleef at Lv. 32).
    • If you activate the time travel event and have Celebi faint in the battle against Giovanni, the opposite-gendered player character uses a Max Revive on it so they can return to their own time.
    • If you hack the game to have GB Sounds before you'd normally obtain it, you'll find that it's programmed to play the retro equivalent of songs that can only be heard before it comes into your possession, like the battle theme of Team Rocket or the music used when Team Rocket's invading the Radio Tower.
    • If you have ever only one Pokémon in your possession while in Cianwood City, an NPC in the Pokémon Center will give you a Tentacool he was about to release, even you got one before. This would prevent the player from being soft-locked if their own Pokémon could not learn Fly or Surf to leave the area.
    • If you raise your Forretress to maximum Friendship and trade it for Steven's Beldum, he'll comment on how much your Forretress likes you, asking if you're a fan of Steel-types like him.
  • Disc-One Nuke: See the series' page here.
  • Dub-Induced Plot Hole: Lyra/Ethan will occasionally call the player to tell them that their Marill evolved, but, if the player goes to their house, they can see it's still a Marill. This is a result of a "Blind Idiot" Translation: in the original Japanese dialogue, Lyra/Ethan instead mentions that they would be surprised if they were to turn around while walking around with their Marill only to find it evolving, and ends with "but that would never happen."
  • Enchanted Forest: The Forest area in the Safari Zone is, by default, populated primarily by Ghost-types, which count tree distinct varieties in the form of Ghastly, Haunter and Misdreavous to the single Grass- and Normal-types. The bizarre Psychic-type Mr. Mime is also encountered here.
  • Even Evil Has Standards:
    • One man in Goldenrod considers himself a bad guy, but says he won't hang out with someone in Team Rocket.
    • One of the Team Rocket Grunts in the Slowpoke well actually felt that Team Rocket went too far by chopping off the tails of Slowpokes for money (even though he wanted money).
  • Event-Driven Clock: Real-time is game time. The time of the day has a factor on what Mons you can capture as well as some other game-related events, as does the day of the week.
  • Exposed to the Elements:
    • Neither Ethan/Lyra or Red have any qualms about exploring an icy cave or climbing a snowy mountain with freezing temperatures, even with just shorts (Ethan/Lyra) or a t-shirt (Red).
    • Averted when talking to Pokémon of specific types, as they will complain about the weather (such as taking a non-Ice-Type in Ice Path).
  • Forced Tutorial: Just like in the originals, your mother insists on telling you how to use the phone. Just like in every Pokémon game, someone has to show you how to catch Pokémon. Unlike in the originals, the latter Forced Tutorial isn't skippable, turning it into this trope.
  • Foreshadowing: The design of Ethan's hat serves as subtle foreshadowing. While Red's hat is stylized after a regular Poké Ball, Ethan's has the pattern and colors of the stronger Ultra Ball. The Kanto portion of the story ends with Ethan defeating Red.note 
  • Ghost Leg Lottery: Bugsy's Gym in Azalea Town uses this mechanic as the mandatory gym puzzle. Fashioned after a spider's web, you have to raise and lower connecting cables to craft your path, and choosing the wrong path will force you into a trainer battle.
  • Gratuitous English: The names of the games in every language use HeartGold and SoulSilver in English. In the original Japanese, while the original Gold and Silver Versions used their respective kanji for "gold" and "silver",note  the remakes simply spell out "HeartGold" and "SoulSilver" in katakana. Meanwhile, the non-English European titles follow the template of "('Gold Version' translated) HeartGold" and "('Silver Version' translated) SoulSilver".
  • Grid Puzzle: Instead of the original Game Corner, European releases get a minigame that mixes Minesweeper with Sudoku and a bit of luck. Among the prizes that can be gained, there's Dratini.
  • Guide Dang It!:
    • Gym Leader rematches. Before you can request another fight, you have to get them registered in your Pokégear. To do that, you have to talk to them after meeting certain criteria. Problem is, you have to meet them at certain locations (some of which are rather obscure) at a certain time on a certain day of the week, instead of simply talking to them at their respective Gym. There's even a couple that are gotten from an NPC other than the Gym Leader. Good luck finding all of them without a guide, even with the NPC that will randomly call you to give info about a random Leader. A good example of this is Jasmine, who appears at the Olivine City Diner between 13:00-14:00. Said diner is not important in the least outside of this one time and looks like a normal house, so you may have just overlooked it every time you were in town.
    • Want to find a specific Pokémon in the Johto Safari Zone? Unlike previous generations, your Pokédex area listing doesn't include the Safari Zone, so you're on your own. After acquiring the National Pokédex, you can customize the Safari Zone using "blocks" to attract different species (mostly Hoenn or Sinnoh region Mons) that wouldn't normally appear at all, but again, good luck trying to attract a specific one without consulting a strategy guide for help.
  • Inconsistent Dub:
    • The twins in Azalea Gym have had their names changed from Amy & May to Amy & Mimi, presumably so Mimi wouldn't be confused with the female Player Character of Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire.
    • Every single trainer in Mahogany Gym was renamed.
  • Interesting Situation Duel: The battle with Red now has a Hailstorm effect, damaging all Pokémon except for Red's Lapras and any Ice-types you might have.
  • Lampshade Hanging:
    • The starting favor from Elm is changed from the player fetching an object that turns out to be an egg from Mr. Pokémon for Elm, to Elm asking the player to walk a Pokémon for him. When contacted by Mr. Pokémon in the scene, Elm thinks he is just bugging him about "another egg" (as Pokémon eggs are common knowledge since Generation II-III). This is a holdover from the Crystal version, where Elm asks a similar favor before he gets Mr. Pokémon's email.
    • The man before the Elite Four offers to teleport you back to New Bark Town, but notes no one takes him up on his offer because everyone wanting to go there just flew there. Completely true; the Indigo Plateau seems to be the one place in the entire game from which a person can fly to any city in Johto or Kanto.
    • Steven from Ruby and Sapphire makes a cameo in this game; when you first meet him, he mentions how all the trainers who gave him a hard fight looked very similar to each other.
  • Late-Arrival Spoiler: In the original Gold and Silver, you only found out you could revisit Kanto near the "end" of the game when an NPC stops you on your trip to Victory Road to tell you "you've just taken your first step into Kanto! Check your map!" In the remakes, everybody knows that Johto and Kanto are neighboring regions. It's pretty obvious after examining the world map (moving the cursor to the right side changes the "Johto" text to "Kanto" even if there are no Kanto locations marked yet), and not too far into the game people start mentioning places in Kanto you may come across during your travels. Even before the remakes were released, one of the trailers showed the protagonist taking the Magnet Train along with images of Pallet Town and other famous landmarks from Kanto.
  • Lost in Translation: In some of the non-Japanese versions of the game, the Celebi event has dialogue changed a little bit, never revealing that Silver is Giovanni's son.
  • Lost Woods: Viridian Forest returns to its status as a full time dungeon.
  • Luck-Based Mission: Shares a page with the rest of the franchise.
  • Misplaced Wildlife: The pond southeast of Route 30 blocked by trees in the original games is now accessible. On the Route 30 side of the pond, you'll encounter fresh water Pokémon such as Poliwag. However, as surfing and fishing encounters are common to all water tiles in a given area, if you move to the Cherrygrove side of the pond, you will meet Tentacool instead, which usually inhabit seas and oceans.
  • Mortality Phobia: One hidden walking Pokémon behavior occurs in the House of Memories (originally known as the Soul House) in Lavender Town; after spending enough time there, your Pokémon will grow sad, then afraid. Eventually it will get angry at you because you keep bothering it.
  • Mythology Gag:
    • It's clear that Red's team was influenced by Ash Ketchum's; not only is Red's Espeon from the originals replaced with a Lapras, making his team nearly identical to Ash's Orange Islands team note , but Red's Pikachu has the same move-set note  that Ash's Pikachu did in the anime at the time of the games' release.
    • If the player talks to a Togepi inside of Cerulean Gym it will begin crying, a nod to Misty's Togepi in the anime.
  • New Skill as Reward: The running shoes are usually given early-on in the Pokémon games in the series (that is, ones after Ruby and Sapphire), but in the HeartGold and SoulSilver remakes, they're given to the player after finishing a tutorial in Cherrygrove City.
  • No Fair Cheating: If you use a Walk Through Walls cheat code to walk through the Safari Zone Gate without going through reception first, the Safari Zone will be reduced to six plain squares and the only Pokémon you encounter are Level 20 Rattata. Strangely, the encounters are treated like regular ones instead of Safari Zone encounters.
  • Not Allowed to Grow Up: The Spiky-Eared Pichu you can get cannot evolve due to the amount of time travel it has been through.
  • NPC Roadblock:
    • The Goldenrod Gym is now blocked until you get the Radio Card from answering the quiz at the Radio Tower. The card is mandatory for the Kanto section of the game, but the quiz was presented as optional in the originals.
    • A guy in the Ice Path complains about losing his HM and won't let you pass until you find it. He literally shoves you back if you try to go past him. And once you get it, he just lets you keep it.
    • Lyra or Ethan (the one you aren't playing as) will simply stand there and block your way to Kanto until you defeat the mascot of your game.
  • Optional Boss:
    • Owning a special distribution Celebi and heading to the shrine in Ilex Forest with it will trigger an event that ends with a fight against Giovanni.
    • Unlike the original Gold and Silver, you can fight and catch Articuno, Zapdos, Moltres, and Mewtwo. Articuno, Zapdos, and Mewtwo are in their original areas, while Moltres is in a new room in Mt. Silver.
    • You can fight against Lance and Clair in a Multi Battle in the Dragon's Den. You'll need to beat your Rival at Mt. Moon first, since he's your partner for the battle.
    • The Frontier Brains from Platinum return using the same teams.
  • Peninsula of Power Leveling: See the series' page here.
  • Permanently Missable Content: Mr. Pokémon gives you the Exp. Share if you trade him a Red Scale obtained from battling the Red Gyarados. If you happen to NOT talk to him in between the time you battle the Red Gyarados and receive a Kanto Starter Pokémon from Professor Oak, he'll give you the orb needed to catch Kyogre/Groudon instead, leaving the Exp. Share unobtainable. However, another Exp. Share can be obtained from Goldenrod Radio Tower Lottery if the player can match 3 digits.
  • Rainbow Speak:
    • At the choice screen, names of starters are highlighted in colors of their types.
    • Starting from this game, bonuses and penalties induced by Natures shows colored text on relevant stats. For example, an Adamant Nature (+Attack, -Special Attack) will highlight Attack in red and Special Attack in blue.
    • Sinjoh Ruins and Mystri are highlighted in red, as well as time travel if you bring Spiky-eared Pichu to Elm.
  • Retcon: A lot of it due to the story being reworked to be taking place around the same time as Generation IV and after Generations I and III. Notably, the otherwise unchanged Johto Pokédex listings have been expanded by five entries to include evolutions for Yanma, Aipom, Lickitung, Tangela, and Piloswine (all of which were introduced in Pokémon Diamond and Pearl).
  • Retraux: HeartGold and SoulSilver have a key item called the GB Sounds (which is unlocked by getting all 16 badges) that, when activated, makes almost all overworld and battle music 8-bit, even for (some) tracks that didn't exist in any 8-bit Pokémon games (i.e. music originating in those games, other DS games, or the GBA games). Every Sunday the music radio station plays 8-bit tracks not accessible with the GB Sounds (i.e. music that only plays prior to obtaining the GB Sounds or music from radio stations, which aren't affected by the GB Sounds).
  • Rouge Angles of Satin: Invoked by one of the questions in the Radio Quiz, which Whitney lampshaded by telling the player how she got it wrong because she was confused between the words "apricot" and "apricorn" (which itself is a portmanteau of the words "apricot" and "acorn").
  • Shout-Out:
    • There's a Super Nerd on Route 8 in Kanto who asks "How does the magnet train work?" before the battle begins.
    • A pair of Bird Keepers on the route connecting Cinnabar to the Seafoam Islands stand only a few steps from each other and are named Bert and Ernie. Sadly, Ernie does not have a Psyduck. There's a Swimmer named Elmo on the same route.
    • When you battle your rival in the Underground Basement, as he sends out his last Pokémon, he says "Why so serious?".
  • Slippy-Slidey Ice World: The exterior of Mt. Silver beginning midway through the dungeon.
  • Spear Counterpart: The Bird Keepers to their designs in Diamond, Pearl, and Platinum, which had female Bird Keepers instead of male ones like the rest of the series (including these games), as they have the same clothing and hair color. However, since the Vs. Recorder upload data is shared with Platinum, the female Bird Keepers still appear in the Battle Frontier.
  • Stop Poking Me!: Talking to your Pokémon too much leads to it getting angry and defiant, even if it's at maximum happiness.
  • Super Cell Reception: The Pokégear's phone can receive or make calls anywhere. Including deep inside Mt. Silver, an area so remote that there are only three people in it and the route leading to it, one of whom is the nurse in the Pokémon Center.
  • Suspiciously Specific Denial: The shop that's a front for Team Rocket features a sign on the door that reads "Just a Souvenir Shop. Nothing Suspicious about It. No Need to Be Alarmed."
  • Temple of Doom: In addition to the Ruins of Alph the player can access the Sinjoh Ruins by having the Pokémon Arceus in their first slot.
  • Theme Naming: The Team Rocket executives are named after actual rockets and missiles: Petrel, Proton, Ariana (Ariane), and Archernote .
  • Totally Not a Criminal Front: The shop in Mahogany Town. "Just a Souvenir Shop. Nothing Suspicious About it. No Need to be Alarmed".
  • Useless Useful Spell:
    • The Fast Ball has been changed so that it now makes catching Pokémon with a high Speed stat easier. Only 13 Pokémon outside of the Bug Catching Contest and Safari Zone are fast enough to grant this boost.
    • The Heavy Ball's catch penalty now affects Pokémon that weigh under 451 lbs (which most Pokémon fall under), while only four more Pokémon are available over the originals that are affected.
  • Video Game Caring Potential: Done with the Walking Pokémon feature. You can't help but feel warm and fuzzy when you check on your Pokémon's status and they spontaneously hug you.
  • Villain Ball: Team Rocket attempts to contact Giovanni via Goldenrod Radio Tower by name. Apparently, it didn't occur to them that a wanted man like him would try to keep a low profile, but contact them without drawing attention to anyone who might identify him. In the Celebi event where this happens at the same time your character is confronting Team Rocket in the Goldenrod Radio Tower, the current you and the opposite gender friend encounters Giovanni in a cave listening to the broadcast as this happens, where he was in hiding.
  • Villains Out Shopping: Lampshaded. If you enter the department store while dressed as a Team Rocket member, one of the people remarks, "I never thought about it, but Team Rocket does go shopping..."

 
Feedback

Video Example(s):

Alternative Title(s): Pokemon Heart Gold And Soul Silver, Pokemon Gold Silver And Crystal, Pokemon Gold, Pokemon Silver, Pokemon Crystal, Pokemon Heart Gold, Pokemon Soul Silver

Top

Vulpix (Only) Has Flash Fire!

After a bad fight in his first Nuzlocke run, Alpharad tells Fyrus that if his Vulpix has the Flash Fire ability, his fortune might turn around. His Vulpix does, but what Fyrus doesn't realize is that's the only ability Vulpix could get and that Alpharad only said there was a chance it could have it as a motivation boost.

How well does it match the trope?

4.9 (10 votes)

Example of:

Main / MotivationalLie

Media sources:

Report