With the fantastic Pokemon Gold and Silver remakes released a little over a month ago, and the recent announcement of Pokemon Black and White I figured it would be as good a time as any to write a Pokemon themed editorial. Of course the inspiration for this Editorial came to me the other day when playing Soul Silver and having a hard time trying to get past the obstacle in Blue's gym. So I took my collected knowledge of the Pokemon games and picked the Gyms that caused me the most problems and threw them all into this editorial of anger:

5) The Slip n' Slide Gyms (Mahogany-GSC)

This type of gym only really effects Pryce's gym in Gold, Silver, and Crystal, and it actually preps you for the upcoming Ice Path that leads you to Blackthorn City. However, this doesn't mean it's an easy gym to get through. I feel the most annoying thing of all the gyms are the trainers inside that you have to defeat in order to battle their leader, but a good few of them fortunately are optional. However, this gym's obstacle, which is an ice floor that zips you across the room until you hit a wall, trainer, or patch of floor takes a while to get used to, which is why with one misstep you could wind up facing all five of Pryce's minions. Sure you could possibly use the exp that defeating the lackey's would give off, but if you're not prepared your team could take some serious damage, which would force you to go to the Pokemon Center to heal, only to come back to the gym and redo the entire obstacle inside. Luckily Pryce only has a couple of ice types which you could just burn away, but it's the principal of the matter.

4) The Pokemon Platinum Gyms (The Sinnoh Region-Pt)

You may feel listing an entire region as a cop out, but out of all the Pokemon games I've actually never even picked up Diamond, Pearl or Platinum, so I'm just going to have to add these based on what I've read, and what I read was that Pokemon Diamond and Pearl were too easy for the long time fans and that for the third game (which normally combines the first two games in the series) Platinum, the designers redesigned almost every gym to make it quite more challenging. A giant grass clock to overcome, rising and sinking water tides, and a completely dark gym that looks as if you need flash to get around in (caves and buildings that use flash are always one of my least favorite parts of the games, as Flash really is completely useless outside the field), make these gyms look quite difficult and equally quite aggravating.

3) The Gyms That Require HM Use (Celadon, Cinnabar Island, and
Blackthorn-RBYGSCLGFRHGSS)

While Cinnabar and Blackthorn's gyms require Strength to get through in Gen II, Celadon's gym requires Cut in 10 of the 16 games making it the main offender. However, the Blackthorn gym is the only of these gyms that actually requires a strategy to help you get to it's leader. Instead of cutting down a tree and facing a trainer, In the Blackthorn gym, one must use Strength to move boulder's around a dungeon and drop them onto the field, covering giant craters of lava, allowing you to successfully pass. Requires a bit of thinking but more so it requires a pokemon that knows the move Strength, which if you come without you find yourself in a bit of trouble, opting you to either get a Pokemon that's (usually) weaker from your box that knows the HM or delete one of your tougher Pokemon's more likely stronger moves, which either way is frustrating.

2) The Moving Floor Gyms (Mossdeep and Viridian-RSHGSS)

In Ruby and Sapphire the Mossdeep City gym's floor is covered with tiles that whisk the player across to another area of the gym when stepped on. The only way around these nuisances is pulling switches that changes the direction certain tiles point, allowing the player to access the Gym Leaders when all the switches are pulled. The problem with this is that you must go through quite a few trail and error processes and battle a many of trainer before you successfully navigate yourself to the head of the gym. Unfortunately similar to the Mahogany gym, if you've faced to many trainers and are too weak to fight, you must go heal yourself and return to the gym to redo the entire obstacle. The Viridian gym in HeartGold and SoulSilver done away with the switches, and just have sliding floors that interconnect with one another. Take the right path and you'll slide right to Blue. Take the wrong path and you face a trainer. Once again, trial and error must be used, hopefully with a good outcome.

1) The Invisible Floor Gym (Ecruteak-GSC)

Dear lord did this gym give me Hell as a child. In Gold, Silver, and Crystal, the Ecruteak Gym has an invisible floor which can cause many problems for someone who doesn't know what they are doing (i.e. Me). The body of Morty's gym is a dark pit and if you step in the wrong place, you will be sent back to the beginning of the path and begin again. It would seem that no matter how many times I'd try to take one step on that path I'd be shot right back to the start. Actually, there was about an entire year that I gave up on Gold and Silver because I couldn't navigate my way through the Ecruteak gym. It wasn't until I was a little older that I finally made my way through the gym, only to be F*cked over by Morty's ghost pokemon, thus requiring me to start again. Luckily, in HeartGold and SoulSilver, as flames light up the dim patches within the gym. While there is still one path to Morty, sections are lit up revealing Trainers that must be battled in order to reach the Gym Leader. Still annoying, but slightly less mind-f*cking.