498 Words About: Catching an Abra in Pokemon
Apart from Magikarp I can’t think of another pokemon as useless as Abra, yet I spent close to an hour walking up and down the same patch of wild grass trying to catch the damn thing. The reason was simple: I wanted an Alakazam.
If I’m being honest, on my first run of Pokemon Blue I wanted Haunter because his design was sick. I didn’t care about his stats, I just wanted a cool ghost-type pokemon and was disappointed when I accidentally evolved him into Gengar.
Eventually I opened up a guidebook for the game and realized that Alakazam was arguably the best choice for a psychic-type pokemon, and he was actually pretty cool visually (there’s something about a man with two spoons). My mind resolved, I headed to Route 24 with 4 Pokeballs in my pocket, and got to work finding an Abra.
Less than 10 minutes later, I was walking back to the shop for more Pokeballs.
Abra has one move when initially caught, but this single move makes it difficult to actually capture it. The move is “Teleport” and it’s exactly what it sounds like. When the player encounters an Abra in the tall grass they have a limited window of time, typically one “turn” before Abra will use Teleport and disappear. Some guides recommend using the move “thunder-wave” to paralyze Abra so it can’t move and then try capturing it, but most just say throw a Pokeball and hope it works. Outside of the Safari Zone, pokemon in the original Red and Blue versions don’t run from battle, allowing the player the chance to strategize how to capture them.
Abra doesn’t give the player this chance.
Abra will teleport and the process starts over.
Pokemon is a strategy game as much as it is a science-fiction role-playing videogame, and Abra is one of the few instances where players would have to incorporate strategy outside of combat encounters. There was always some aspect of this, but it was usually selecting Pokemon to include in my team, or which pokeballs to use as I approached stronger enemies. Abra was unique because it insisted that players would have to preemptively anticipate a Pokemon’s behavior and then act before it did. While not as cerebral as in-combat actions, this was a change of pace from catching other pokemon.
Even Pokemon like Mewtwo or the three legendary birds(Articuno, Moltres, and Zapados) followed the traditional pattern of the game: encounter, fight, and capture.
Capturing Pokemon was about using the knowledge of the in-game mechanics to weaken a pokemon before attempting to capture it. Using knowledge of pokemon types, offensive vs defensive moves, and assessing the optimal HP range for actually throwing the ball all contributed to steadily building up a complete pokedex. Even if players didn’t recognise this, the game’s structure’s were intuitive enough that these thoughts and strategies didn’t have to be calculated out.
Until Abra.
14 pokeballs later I was out $2800, but rich in one Abra.
Joshua “Jammer” Smith
9.23.2024
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