Pokemon Battle Tower Doubles

I grew up playing Pokemon. Starting with Pokemon Blue Version in gen 1, I’ve played a Pokemon game from almost every generation released to date. However, the most fun I’ve had in any Pokemon game was doing cooperative double battles in the Battle Tower of Pokemon HeartGold.

HeartGold came out when I was a freshman in college, and I preordered it to pick up on release day. Generation 2 was always my favorite, with two full regions and a lot of my favorite Pokemon. Obviously, I was super excited for a remake of that generation. I played through the game like normal, finished all 16 gyms, beat the Elite Four, and took down Red at the top of Mt. Silver. I figured after that, I was done.

My roommate at the time got SoulSilver, and he taught me about Effort Values, Inherited Values, and the Battle Tower. The main story of Pokemon was only the beginning. The real game starts once you can access the Battle Tower and breed up some powerful Pokemon. I felt like such a noob, but it was fantastic to be able to bring new life to a Pokemon game.

The first Pokemon that I bred to get a Battle Tower entrant was Scyther. Not necessarily an amazing option for competitive play, Scyther is my personal favorite Pokemon and it can hold its own in a lot of situations. Once I had the skills and move set that I wanted, I started playing through singles in the Battle Tower to test my mettle.

After I figured out how the Battle Tower worked and got a few wins under my belt, my roommate suggested that we do double battles. As the name implies, a double battle pits 2 on 2, as opposed to the traditional 1 on 1 of older Pokemon games. Players can use 2 of their own Pokemon and control both, or they can work together with each player controlling only 1 of their Pokemon and coordinating attacks with each other.

As much as single player Pokemon requires skill, it has nothing on the nuance and complexity of double battles. Fighting with 2 Pokemon opens up the opportunity to combo moves, but also forces you to consider the effect that moves will have on your allies. Many moves affect all combatants, and thus can do damage to your opponents as well as Pokemon on your side. Some of the best team combinations take advantage of these mechanics in clever and interesting ways. Initially, I didn’t pay any mind to what Pokemon would work well together, we just went in with the Pokemon that we liked. What we started with, however, turned out to be an amazing combination that we stuck with for nearly the entire time we played doubles together.

I led off with my Scyther, and packed a Typhlosion as my second Pokemon. My roommate began with his Rhyperior, but I can’t recall what his second Pokemon was. It’s inconsequential anyway, as his Rhyperior rarely died. The beauty of this combination was something that gradually unfolded over time.

One of the first things we appreciated is that Rhyperior’s Earthquake didn’t affect Scyther because of his Flying type. Earthquake is an immensely powerful Ground type move, augmented by the Same Type Attack Bonus that Rhyperior receives. Furthermore, it hits all Pokemon around the user, allowing us to hit both opponents at once. Tons of damage, without the side effect of damaging my own Pokemon.

Soon after, we realized that Rhyperior’s Lightningrod ability pulled Electric moves away from Scyther and onto Rhyperior. Scyther’s Flying type makes him weak to Electric moves, but Rhyperior’s Ground type makes him completely immune to Electric. This means that any Electric Pokemon we encountered were hit 2x by Rhyperior’s Earthquake, and couldn’t possibly do any damage with Electric type moves.

Finally, Rhyperior’s hold item was Quick Claw, an item that causes the holder to strike first 10% of the time. Scyther has particularly high speed, and often struck first. Rhyperior, however, is notoriously slow and often attacked last out of the 4 Pokemon on the field. Quick Claw gave him the first hit for the occasional clinch victory, and I swear it happened closer to 50% of the time than 10% as it is supposed to.

Other than those key benefits, our combination just had really good cohesion and a lot of type coverage. What Scyther was weak to, Rhyperior was often strong against, and vice versa. In the few cases that we needed something else, I could swap in Typhlosion and use powerful Fire moves without much risk to Rhyperior. Fire does half damage to Ground, Rhyperior was bulky anyway.

We spent many an evening in the dorm room, playing the Battle Tower doubles over the Nintendo DS ad hoc connection. We never got tremendously far in, and would often die in completely unfair ways, but we really had a good time. Other than the one time when we were on a roll and the connection spontaneously dropped when we were not more than 5 feet from each other, it was super fun. To this day, I don’t think anything I’ve done in any Pokemon game has come anywhere close to those evenings.

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