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[101 / 19 / ?]

Red's team as NPC in GSCHGSS

No.10193028 View ViewReplyOriginalReport
Many people theorize about the reason for Red's team in Gold/Silver/Crystal/HeartGold/SoulSilver, where he is a NPC and the final boss at that. However, it's rather simple and the explanations don't need to be extrapolated to non-main game canon.

>Red having all the starters means that Red in Generations II and IV is the Red of Yellow instead of the Red from Red/Green/Blue
This is simply not true. Yellow isn't canonical as per Generation II storyline. One example is the lady that gives Red a Bulbasaur in Cerulean City in Yellow. She does not reappear in Generation II, whereas the old couple whom the man in Generation I traded a Jynx for a Poliwhirl do reappear in the same location.

Gold/Silver (and by extension, Crystal) are touted as Red/Green sequels (and by extension, Blue's) but not Yellow sequels. This is further evidenced by Generation II Kanto using the exact same tilesets as Red/Green Kanto, which appear colorized when played on a Super Game Boy, Super Game Boy 2, Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, Game Boy Advance SP, Transfer Pak for Nintendo 64 and Game Boy Player for GameCube.

So why does Red have all the Kanto starters? The most reasonable assumption is that Game Freak didn't want to canonize Red's starter over the other two, so they gave him all of them.

What about Pikachu? Well, it's the mascot of the franchise so it makes sense to give Red a Pikachu. And Game Freak probably wanted to make a parallel between Red and Ash of the anime, giving a tip that they are counterparts to each other in their respective canons albeit not being the same character.

(continues in the next post)