A look back at: Pokemon Adventure: Blue Chapter

 Just four days from my previous look back and I am already done with the next hack. Granted, a beta, but still. In any case, the Adventure X Chapter games, I do plan to indeed check out all the side chapters as beta as they are. Yellow was already done, so I decided my next one would involve Blue. The romhacking scene sure does love making tributes to all sorts of characters and such, and I feel like Blue/Gary doesn't get nearly as much coverage as he should. Being the son of Oak, you'd definitely feel eager to know about his adventures, how he got through everything and managed to be the champion before Red did. Playing as Blue felt quite nice.

At least until you see what he goes through. Of course, Blue is as arrogant as ever. He loves his family, and wants to keep the pride for his family going strong. While I'm not too familiar with the Pokemon Adventure manga, I can definitely see the Oak family being a line of champions (because Prof. Oak himself was one). I can also see Koga being a Team Rocket member, and Agatha being an old acquaintance of Oak's. There's not a whole lot of actual substance here. From what I played in Red Chapter, I do know he tries, and fails, to catch Mew. Interesting that this time it's from Blue's perspective, who got there first, but with Red's loss now in a cutscene. There was a weird little sidequest too, and you can come back to get a Pikachu of your own after it. But there were some odd references as I went along, with the herp derp kid, the old man who does a Sailor Moon reference, and Ash's family apparently being in the game. Furthermore, there's no catching of Pokemon as the game ends early before you are able to do any of that. No Pokeballs, you just get your Scyther in the beginning, a Charmander from Oak, and if you remember where it was, the Pichu (now a Pikachu). That's it. You battle your bully Mike, Koga of Team Rocket, the Mew (not winnable), and also a Machoke that was after the old man I mentioned before.

Real shame that these other chapters were left unfinished for years. There's a ton of potential you can probably salvage from it.

A look back at: Pokemon Blazed Glazed

 What exactly does Blazed Glazed even mean? Should've probably made Blaziken into its mascot with that, but nah, it's more or less a refurbished version of Glazed. Air quotes on "refurbished" however, I gotta say, there were a few things that were...questionable. I enjoyed the new spriting of the mons in the original, plus the holdover voices that were given. Those were actually not in Blazed Glazed. There were some mons, like the prominent ones like Charizard and such, that got new sprites, but most got the regular sprite treatment. The cries are recycled and you can tell what replaces what in the dex this time. It honestly felt like Blazed Glazed was the prototype instead of the other way around. And the plot? It was entirely the same. No real differences whatsoever. The good news is that the plot of the original Glazed was decent enough that I can overlook the shortcomings, I enjoy the gym fights, the return to Johto, the crazy villains (including the church guy) and how everyone has some sort of ulterior motive. Plus the thing that allows you to hear Pokemon talk, and the fun dialogue with legendaries and that scarved Pikachu among other things.

Blazed Glazed only has one strength, and that's the better-used mons. There's a few Gen-6's added to the mix, while others got shuffled around. Some, sadly were rendered inaccessible (I don't believe you can get Wynaut, as there's no Lax Incense I can find that can breed a Wobbuffet with properly). Also some rather strange moments with wild encounters, like for example, Sylveon replaces Qwilfish, but you can encounter them while surfing in New Bark Town for instance. Surely enough, it's hard to say that Blazed Glazed would knock out it's apparent predecessor out of the water. It only really improved on new mons, new movesets, and that really was it. Everything was untouched or somehow made a little less great. Since Glazed is one of my favorite ROM hacks, Blazed Glazed doesn't fall too far behind, it was just, well, not as much of the improvement that I thought it was.