Pokémon Red and Blue/Starting out

Kanto

The adventures in Pokémon Blue take place in the land of Kanto. This includes many cities and routes that the trainer must visit.

Beginning the game

Choose the New Game option in the menu which appears after the presentation. After setting your and your opponent's name, the game shall begin with you appearing in your room in Pallet Town. The first thing to do is to withdraw the Potion which you shall find stored in your computer.

After that, it's time to go! Explore Pallet Town a bit and you'll find your house, your rival's house and Professor Oak's lab.

Professor Oak's not in his lab, so you'll have to go to look for him somewhere else. The water-barred route to the south is not an option, so the only choice is to go north.

Once you step on the grass, Professor Oak shall appear yelling at you how dangerous is the path to the north, and he'll bring you to his lab, where his grandson (your rival) is awaiting. After a bit of talk, he'll grant you the chance to choose between one of the three starter Pokémon of this game: Charmander, Squirtle and Bulbasaur.

Charmander has the strongest Attack and Speed of them. By contrast, his defence is weak.
Squirtle has the greatest level of defence. It also learns the best variety of attacks. Nevertheless, it is quite slow.
Bulbasaur is the best with Hit Points and Special Attack. On the other hand, it learns few good attacks by itself.

Bulbasaur
Charmander
Squirtle

Whatever Pokémon you choose, your opponent shall select the one which has type advantage over yours. After you have both chosen your starter Pokémon, your rival shall challenge you to a battle to test your newly received Pokémon.

In this first combat, an agressive tactic is the best. Charmander's Scratch and Bulbasaur and Squirtle's Tackle are the best moves here. Keep on using damaging moves against the opponent's Pokémon, and don't forget to use the Potion you withdrew earlier from the PC if it is necessary, using it to restore up to 20 HP to your Pokémon (even though you lose a turn). Following this strategy, you should be able to beat the other Pokémon and win your first battle.

Route 1

After defeating your rival, you can leave Pallet Town by heading north. This will bring you to Route 1, the first of many numbered Routes that connect the cities and towns in Kanto. Travel north, zig-zagging left and right as you go. Route 1 is home to a number of ledges: small cliffs that you can jump over if moving south, but not if heading north.

Route 1 will where you will see (and walk through) your first patches of tall grass. The most common way of encountering wild Pokémon is through walking through tall grass. When you are standing inside the grass, the game will check for the chance of an encounter every step you take. Unfortunately, you have no Pokéballs right now, so you cannot catch any of the Pokémon you meet. The Pokémon you will encounter in this and other Routes are listed in a separate section.

The first man you see on this Route will give you a Potion if you talk to him.

Viridian City

This is the first urban area you will enter after leaving Pallet Town. The first building you will come to will be a Pokémon Center. Northeast of the Pokémon Center is the Pokémart. Usually a Pokémart would sell you goods like Pokéballs or recovery items. However, the first time you talk to the proprietor, he will give you a package to deliver to Professor Oak. Until the package is delivered, he will sell you nothing.

If you continue north of the Pokémon Center, you will eventually run into a man who has fallen down, in a rather inconvenient place. You cannot proceed north past this area at this time. To the west you will find Route 22, but since you still can’t catch any Pokémon, there is little reason to go there.

Next to the pond you will find an object that looks like a tree with two branches. This is a Cut tree, sometimes referred to as a bush. Until later in your adventure, Cut trees are impassible obstacles. If you search the town, you can find a back pathway that dead-ends at another Cut tree. However, when you reach the end, you will see a Pokéball on the ground. This is an item. Examine it (face it and press A), and you will find that it is a Potion, now yours to keep.

The Pokémon Center

A Pokémon Center is a very useful place. If you enter the Pokémon Center and talk to the first attendant (closest to the entrance), she will heal all your Pokémon for you, for free. Your Pokémon will no longer be fainted, will all have full HP, and will also have full PP (a statistic that controls how much you can use a single move in battle). You can do this any time you wish.

Return to Pallet Town

This is as far as we can go towards our adventure at this point. Talk to the man in the Pokémart to receive Professor Oak’s package, then return south to Pallet Town, back down Route 1. When you give the package to the Professor, your rival will enter. However, he is not interested in battling this time. Professor Oak will give him, and you, a Pokédex. The Pokédex contains a screen for each and every Pokémon in existence. (In this game, there are 151.) However, until you catch the Pokémon, its page will not appear. Completing the Pokédex is one of the things you can do after you beat the game, but since that there are some Pokémon that don’t exist in a game. You will need to trade (using a Game Boy Link Cable) with another copy of Pokémon Red and Blue that has caught one of these Pokémon. Some Pokémon, namely the starter Pokémon and their evolutions, cannot be caught at all save for the one you received when you began your adventure.

At this point, Professor Oak will now give you five Poké Balls. Now that you have these, you can catch the wild Pokémon you meet, not just battle them.

Before you leave Pallet Town, enter your rival’s house (due north of Professor Oak’s lab). Inside you will find your rival’s sister. If you talk to her, she will give you the Town Map. This item displays a map of the Kanto region (the same one listed at the top of this page, in fact) and lists your current location.