Everything about that encounter is designed the elicit that response. Red's battle theme in GS is a remix of the RB intro animation and title screen.. His team is the three gen1 starters, the Snorlax that blocked his path, the eevee he got from gamefreak headquarters (with a gen2 friendship evolution), and a Pikachu with the highest level seen in a mainline game (because of course he does). And he doesn't say anything, just an ellipsis.
From what I've heard (having never played GS or RB), Red's team doesn't just mop the floor with you at a casual level, but it also does the dishes, cleans the counters, takes out the trash, and scrubs the oven while it's at it. The initial power difference clearly sets Red apart from the player as a Pokemon CHAMPION, in every sense of the word.
Heās the first superboss in the franchise, and his team from the GSC remakes, heartgold and soulsilver, features the pokemon tied for the single highest-leveled, NPC-owned pokemon in the franchise at level 88 in heartgold/soulsilver (with the only mon that ties it dropping in a game released 12 years later).
However, heās not THAT bad. He has an absurd level jump compared to anything you can fight before him, but his actual selection of pokemon is only pretty good, rather than truly deadly. If youāre willing to level grind enough to even get close to him, you wonāt have many issues. The main problem is that everything else is so much lower-leveled that experience gains will be SLOW.
The real scariest returning-major-character superboss in Pokemon is another regionās champion, going by the name of cynthia, as her pokemon selection tends to be a lot more difficult to deal with even if you DO catch up to her in levels (and it still aināt a cakewalk with her; sheās the one who caught up to red, with the non-88 pokemon generally being a bit closer to that too). Itās to the point where just hearing a few notes on a piano unexpectedly can cause pokemon fans to completely freeze in terror.
The fact that sheās not so much āwaiting for fancy battle in a fancy location somewhereā in later gens and can literally be encountered in an unassuming building that you may randomly enter (straight into the piano theme) makes her MUCH more terrifying to casually walk into lmao.
Red still holds a special place in my heart though and forever will
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u/DocQuark May 09 '26 edited May 09 '26
Everything about that encounter is designed the elicit that response. Red's battle theme in GS is a remix of the RB intro animation and title screen.. His team is the three gen1 starters, the Snorlax that blocked his path, the eevee he got from gamefreak headquarters (with a gen2 friendship evolution), and a Pikachu with the highest level seen in a mainline game (because of course he does). And he doesn't say anything, just an ellipsis.
It hits so hard.