A brief look at the Cianwood City Softlock.
38The Generation 2 games are my favourite, and due to this the Johto region holds one of my favourite places in the Pokemon world, Cianwood City.
Cianwood City lies to the far west of the region and is only accessible via the sea, meaning you have to surf to be able to reach it. This leads to an interesting
situation you can find yourself in should you choose to do so.
As I just mentioned, it's only possible to reach Cianwood via surf. So if you only had one Pokemon in your team able to learn surf, then you could release it and find yourself trapped on the island with no way off.
Sure you could fly away, but it's possible to not have any flying pokemon.
In that situation you could use the rod, to catch a
water Pokemon, and teach it surf. But what if you don't have a rod? It's easy to miss getting one.
Well luckily there is one way off the island. If you talk to this kid, he will give you a Shuckle. Shuckle is able to learn Rock Smash, and thankfully at the top of the
island, there are rocks to smash. These rocks have a 15% chance to to give a wild Krabby. So you can catch one and escape. Except you can't. Like with the rods, Rock
Smash is an easily missed move. You get it from talking to the guy next to Sudowoodo after clearing it. If you just don't talk to him, you won't have the move. Meaning
you are well and truly stuck forever... forcing you to start a new game as you will be softlocked in Cianwood City.
So how did Gamefreak go about fixing this? Well in the Generation 3 games, they made it so you could remove HM's from Pokemon.
However, if you only had one pokemon left in the party or PC that knew surf, then it couldn't be removed. This fixed the problem on Gen 3, yet what about the remakes of
the Gen 2 games that came out a few years later?
Well with one small change to the game, the issue was solved. You see in the Gen 2 games, Rock Smash was a TM. It could be used once, then it would go away.
It was also deleteable.
In the remakes, Rock Smash was a HM. It was a move you had to obtain. It was a move that taught could be used an unlimited amount of times. It couldn't be deleted.
This means that if you find yourself in Cianwood City, with no ability to surf, teleport, fly or fish. You will always be able to get the Shuckle, teach it rock smash,
catch a Krabby, and escape. This small but significant change allowed Gamefreak to remove a potential banana skin in the game, and stopped players doing something stupid.
Unless of course, they just also release the Shuckle. In which case they deserve to have to restart.