All these years, I’d heard nothing but “How did game freak expect kids to look up brail at the library to solve the Regi puzzles”
But no one seems to mention that the Japanese version came with a full braille guide alongside the manual. I guess that makes sense, but you’d think in 2025 it would be more common knowledge at this point!
props to all the american kids who looked it up, that is cooler. just, the compalints about including braille are lame. It’s a really cool thing to include to gate superpowered pokemon.
I remember looking this up on the internet and my brother getting mad at me. “When I played Gens I and II we didn’t have internet access. I had to figure out everything myself!” So as a result I’ve always felt guilty about this. I only had a loose copy of Pokemon Sapphire that we had found on the street, so I would have had no idea whether or not the manual explained the braille puzzle.
This puzzle uses pokemon trivia to spell a word using braille letters.
The first letter has the clue “Baby” - Wynaut, Pichu, and Togepi are baby pokemon and the others aren’t. Cross-referencing braille, we get the letter “F”
The second letter has the clue “Night time is my time.” It’s a Twin Peaks quote/Sky Fereirra album. Anyway, it refers to mons that you can only catch at night. That’s Ariados, Murkrow, Houndour, and Banette. From Braille we get “R”
The third letter has the clue “___ walk with me.” Fire walks with me… more Twin Peaks. The twin peaks stuff is just for flavoring but “fire” is important. Vulpix, Houndour, and Entei are fire types. From braille we get “O”
The fourth letter has the clue “can’t sleep.” These pokemon literally can’t sleep… due to the abilites Insomnia and Vital Spirit. That’s Ariados, Hypno, Murkrow, and Magby. Braille gives us “G”
I borrowed the North American strategy guide from my local library, which had a braille alphabet and explained the more cryptic Regi stuff. Libraries! They’re good, folks.
This is what we’re losing by media going all-digital. The kids will never know what it’s like to have your life changed by a scratched CD you found in the grass by the sidewalk
There is a direct throughline of me obsessing over the Regi mystery to being obsessed with games like VoidStranger. I love having to leave the game and do some research or draw a map etc to figure something out. Makes the game more than the game
If not a guide, possibly a letter. I wrote them to find Misdreavus in Gen 2 and they sent a letter reply telling me where/when. Naturally as an eleven year old I never considered saving such a thing…
Oh I see why it seems like it, but I have no frustrations with Cerulean Cave at all. It’s my favorite area. I love it. No two games have the same cerulean cave, it received revisions every single time. Nah, my frustrations lie elswhere.
So this was my first time completing Leaf Green, vanilla. And now I’m playing a patched version that changes a few things, while I go get the versions exclusives I need to complete the Pokedex. Just got home from working, kind of tired, will write the criticisms later, if I ever get around to it.
But off top:
I think it was a poor choice to lock the cerulean cave behind the entire postgame sidequest. Being given access to gen 2 pokemon in a fan service fan fiction location before I’m able to complete the original pokedex and train in cerulean cave was definitely why I never completed fire red or leaf green before.
The way the momentum is derailed after cinnabar to dip into this side content is also really annoying. The game would be a lot better if they kept that a. optional, and b. for after the elite four.
I want to enjoy the extra content added to Red and Green, but only after I’ve been given a chance to experience the original completely.
By the way, I am zooming through my second playthrough, this time Fire Red, and enjoying it a significant margin more than my first playthrough. This is a slightly modified version of my own curation, which helps. I still have criticisms to write out later of FR/LG, but for now I’ll just say I’m enjoying it a lot more. Having the original chiptunes patched back in with a GB Sounds mod blasting all along the way goes a long way to make the new areas feel like an addition rather than a distraction. But, I also added a mod to make it so you can opt out of visiting the sevii islands immediately after cinnebar, and go back whenever you please. This was huge for me as I really missed having the Earthquake TM the first time around. Using Dig until the endgame on my nidoking was hell.
