July 22nd: Colosseum of Darkness

Today was the day we decided to try battling with Colosseum. Well, we were going to use Colosseum but decided on using Gale of Darkness instead since it was newer and offered what we believed was the same functionality. I don't think any of us did enough real research beforehand. After watching one video of it about a month before, I had to put in a request to make sure that playing the game with four Game Boy Advances and no GameCube controller was even possible. The answer is yes. The video I had watched just happened to be one player using their Colosseum save and a GameCube controller while the other three used GBAs. I also just had very little familiarity with how the GameCube worked with GBAs.

Like the previous entry, this was not written at the time it happened. This was instead written on July 27th with the assistance of a screen recording to aid in recounting the events.

- From the main menu, going to VS Mode -> Group Battle got us to the menus for setting up the game.
- The "Opponents" setting is where we tell the game that our battle would use four GBAs.
- During this session, Cla was using a save on Aar's Fire Red cartridge with some Pokemon brought in from Box to form a team. The rest of us were using third generation games and saves that we happened to have.
- Next was to set the rules up so we could have the game cap our Pokemon at level 50.
- A few other rules got changed to better suit the experience we were looking for.
- After getting those settings in place, it was time for us to connect our GBAs and associated games.
- For the four GBAs mode, the game requires that the systems link up one at a time in the very specific order of player/port 2, 3, 4, then 1.
- Spent the next 18 minutes trying to get all of the systems and games to cooperate.
- We couldn't get it working at all with Malt's copy of Emerald. Our thought was that Emerald being a newer game had something that broke compatibility with Gale. We didn't know for sure and didn't have a great way to verify that.
- Some online searching done at the time of this writing suggests that maybe third party link cables just really dislike Pokemon Emerald.
- Malt switched to a different cart that he brought (I don't remember if it was Fire Red or Leaf Green) and that decided to work.
- Once the GameCube decided that everything was to its liking, we all had to press the 'A' button on our systems for some reason. Then, it was time to choose a team.
- The graphics used to show which players would be on which teams are terribly designed. The way it works is the two columns of the graphic show which players go on a team. This is only evident in the graphic by there being a hard to notice gap between the columns covered in the center by a "vs".
- We misread the graphics and thought the rows indicated the teams. Instead of choosing Aar/Cla vs. Malt/Me, we were put into the far more imbalanced Aar/Malt vs. Cla/Me.
- We discovered earlier that the game doesn't actually cap levels for battles. If a Pokemon is above or below the level range in the given rules, it is just prevented from being entered to battle.
- The two saves with much more developed teams were put against two that weren't far enough along to stand much of a chance. I was not put on the advantageous side of this fight.
- To pour more salt on the wound, I hadn't done anything with the save after getting Jirachi, so the poor level 5 Pokemon was going to be entered instead of Cass.
- After player-team selections, it was time for each player to determine which Pokemon would be entered, along with which one would lead. Since we set the rules to use the full party, this really just amounted to us choosing who to lead.
- I chose Sredsa on the assumption that getting some Double Team and Swords Dances in would be our only way of really turning the tide in our favor.
- The battle began after the selections, with Sredsa and a level 75 Bulbasaur led against a Raichu (Lv. 58) and Dewgong (Lv. 59).
- I distinctly remember making it no further than three moves into the match before Aar made a comment about understanding how I beat Steven.
- After getting two Double Teams and one Swords Dance in, the Raichu one-shot Sredsa with Thunder.
- This game makes the brutal decision to force trainers to switch in a new Pokemon immediately after one of theirs faints instead of after the turn is over. This means that a Pokemon can be switched in and take damage even if the previous one fainted.

I would continue to describe the event of this battle but I don't have many interesting things to say about it. Cla and I continued to struggle against the insurmountable odds, taking only two of their twelve Pokemon down. Malt's Dewgong was taken out by Cla's Parasect not too far into the battle. Aar's Swellow one-shot Annie and got poisoned by her Effect Spore ability, succumbing to it several turns later.

I feel like Cla and I probably could have made more happen if the level differences weren't so vast. We held out for a total of twenty turns lasting eighteen minutes. I skimmed through and I'm pretty sure the number was twenty turns.

For the experience of doing the battle through Gale of Darkness, I'm not sure if it was entirely worth it. Options were missing that would have made the experience better, but there's a good chance that many of them apply to Generation 3 as a whole and not just to Gale. Having the level caps disqualifying Pokemon instead of adjusting their levels to meet the requirements is the biggest one.

The 3D models were a mixed bag, with some Pokemon looking good and others being weird or ugly in ways that make the sprites look better. Breloom looks weird in this game. Dewgong (Water type) floats in the air but Swellow and Altaria (both have Flying typing) normally sit on the ground. It helps that the animations for the models and for the attacks seem to be good all around.

The sound that Pokemon make when they're put to sleep or sleeping is really loud for some reason. It also sounds like a bubbly version of the sound a big piece of sheet metal makes when it's wobbling.

Even with the poor balance of the match, technical difficulties, and Gale having some oddities, I'm glad I got to experience it. I've always thought of the linking functionality that Nintendo had between their consoles and handhelds during the sixth and seventh generation as being extremely cool. In retrospect, that was likely a result of how unique it was to Nintendo for that period of time.