Gym Reviews: Kanto

Hello, readers. My name’s Bill, and I’ve been running the operations of the construction company Brick ‘n’ Break for the last few years. And we’re the best of the best. Well, the best available anyways. The Leagues seem to think we’re the best, so that’s what counts.

You see, we’re the crew responsible for setting up those Gym puzzles you Trainers have to navigate to get to that Gym Leader. Not that we came up with the layout ideas. No, that’s up to those fickle Gym Leaders. But we work around their requests and make a new creation every few years or so for them, on request of the Leagues. And let me tell you, if you’re looking for a career in construction work, any work sanctioned by the League works out very well on the financial side. Maybe not so much in health cover, but those are the risks that come with the job!

This here’s my own personal recount on what we did for each of the Gyms, starting with the Kantonian Gyms. For a number of these I talk about two designs, as the Leagues request we perform maintenance and sometimes entire updates every so often if the Gym Leaders want something new. Some say that’s hardly cost effective, but there’s some reasons for that. An older Gym design gets around after a while, and trainers can just go look it up on the internet and walk straight in with a plan in place. And Gym Leaders hate that sort of thing.

Pewter Gym

He might as well have just asked for a straight path to him.

This Gym was, I daresay, one of the easier ones we ever worked on. Brock didn’t seem to be one for puzzles – he was more concerned with how many rocks we could fit into it, to be frank. That much seems to be a running theme of these Rock Type Gym Leaders, come to think of it. The only thing he was particular about was the sort of rocks we put in place. That was a bit of a bother – he wanted an awful lot of rocks, all equal in size and around the perimeter. And not just the regular sort than can be broken by a stray attack either – had to be reinforced. We had to bring in a few tonnes of compressed dirt too to use for the arena. Nice rich soil there, albeit we made sure first there weren’t any weeds within the stuff, and that it could handle the weight of Pokémon like Brock’s Onix and regular Dig attacks.

More rocks, but still a simple path for challengers.

Construction went smoothly for the most part. Brock didn’t complain much, although he did keep distracting our female workers by following them around the gym, then asking them to go out with him (and later on begging them). He wasn’t into elaborate mazes or the sort – just a straight path from the door past reception to his battling arena. He told his trainers to stand by some of the rocks we placed in the middle, and called it a day. When we came to update the gym it was much the same – Brock just wanted more fancy rocks, but the path was still mostly just straight to him, with an alternate path around the Gym Trainers. Brock didn’t seem worried that any Trainer wanting to avoid battles could just walk around them. I suppose he wanted an incentive for challengers to try and be smart in getting to him.

Cerulean Gym

I wouldn’t drink from there if I were you.

Water Gyms are always harder to deal with than what they seem initially. Part of it is regulating the temperature and flow of the darn thing, along with filtering any dirt or leftovers of Pokémon attacks out of it regularly. There’s a big filtering system working below this gym – you can hear it humming at work if you listen hard enough on a quiet evening. But then you have harder problems to contend with. For instance, you have Trainers which have fresh-water Pokémon, and sea-water ones, and you can’t have both salty and non-salty water in the same pool of water!

Misty was more fickle than Brock, and the first Gym puzzle I was in charge of for Cerulean was slightly more complex than a straight line, but luckily she seemed to have the above problem in mind. By having the platform paths encircle a block of water in the middle there were separate pools of water, and so we could overcome that problem. Of course, this did complicate the water filtering problem as we needed different types of water maintained, but as said – these difficulties just comes with the job.

At least there was a place for the kids whenever there was a school swimming carnival now.

But later on, Misty decided to change the system. Her Gym Trainers apparently didn’t like swimming about in the irregular pools of water, and trainers with the capability to use the move Surf were starting to just walk around the puzzle and Surf up to her. So for the newer design she went and had a whole swimming pool installed for them. Here there were two paths for Trainers – one a pool entry filled with swimming Gym Trainers – if they didn’t mind getting wet – and the other around it on one side. The other end got a whole bunch of swimming equipment set up. Misty said it was for decorative purposes, despite us pointing out that one could lose some equipment like a hand drill within that mess. She then had a tall stairway installed for her position in the gym. It was a bugger changing the whole water filtering system, but at least that was just a matter of machinery and it didn’t introduce many occupational hazards.

Saffron Gym

It sure was easy to get lost in there.

This was one of my first jobs, and I had been expecting to be working on a dojo-style Gym at the time for someone specialising in Fighting Types. But when my crew and I got there, we found out that the previous Gym Leader got kicked out and replaced by another one, who called herself Sabrina. When we asked the League about it they gave us a response equal to a shrug and just said that we should work on her Gym, and when we asked her, she said… well, I actually can’t remember what she said. Huh. Well, I remember that she was very persuasive, so it must have been a good reason behind it.

She was a mostly quiet one though – she only popped up every so often to tell a construction member they were about to hurt themself with a hammer or something (which she was always right about). She wanted a rather unusual Gym, made up a whole bunch of identical rooms all next to each other. We had to make sure those walls were sturdy, able to withstand any attacks so people couldn’t just crash their way through the puzzle and bring a need for repairs. We tested that out on a few Rhydon. That was simple enough. The harder problem was setting up the warp tiles. They’re a darn expensive piece of technology, but as usual it seemed that price was no object for the League. While my crew tested them out I made sure they had a map on them so that they wouldn’t get lost, something that was far easier to do than it seemed.

Fancier bells and whistles, but same old puzzle. Still, nice chair!

She went for the same identical Gym puzzle when we came back. All we did was change the tiling and add some fancy details here and there, to make the whole places more aesthetically pleasing. It isn’t often that Gym Leaders don’t want an update, but when I asked… well, strike me down, I don’t remember what she said then either! I suppose it doesn’t matter.

Celadon Gym

I wonder why that old man by the entrance kept looking inside?

This sure was an annoying Gym puzzle to construct. It was a Grass type Gym and so I thought that we’d just need to go in, make a greenhouse out of the building, implement a watering and lighting system, wheel in the plants and call it a job well done. But then that Gym Leader, Erika, insisted that not one male step inside the building! I have no idea why she’s fine with male Trainers challenging her (although I suspect the League forbade her banning them), yet she didn’t want any male construction worker inside, or even a male Gym advisor. Fittingly, all the Gym Trainers were also female.

As you can imagine, effectively halving my workforce made the operation a much longer one. The male members just buggered off to the Game Corner, seemingly all too eager to respect Erika’s demands. I can’t say I was fond of her. She even kept dozing off when someone needed her thoughts. Luckily I still had a way around the exclusion that also applied to myself – I had a camera system set up so I could still supervise the whole operation and see how it looked from above.

That last point was necessary as Erika seemed keen to drive home the whole ‘females only’ theme with the first gym design make-up. All those trees and the path make up a ♀ – the female symbol. Of course, it’s only something one can really appreciate from up high, but it’s something a few Gym Leaders are keen in having in their gyms. We also put in a few Cut-able trees. It seemed she was keen on making it annoying for trainers by making it necessary to have a weak HM move known to one’s party Pokémon to actually reach her, despite the fact it meant replanting for her Gym Trainers. We left a healthy supply of replacement trees for them to use.

Not quite a hedge maze, but annoying enough all the same.

The second Gym design was completely different, requiring a whole makeover by us. This time around Erika wanted a whole maze, complete with hiding spots for the Trainers. This still included a number of Cut-able trees as well, along with a sprinkler system which would catch any trainer walking through the maze. Erika claimed was just for effect, but I suspect it was just a way for her to make it harder for Fire Types to take out her Grass Types. She may have slept a lot, but she seemed much more cunning than she let on.

Vermilion Gym

Surge is a fan of recycling.

Lt. Surge’s request initially left us confused. The part asking for switches and circuits, along with an electric fence, made sense given favouring of the Electric types. The additional part about a whole bunch of rubbish bins was the odd part. I’m not sure why he wanted bins actually – he said something about true soldiers needing to find the answers at the bottom of the trash at times, but that didn’t make a lot of sense to us.

Regardless, he certainly thought outside the box with his Gym design. He had us set up a rather tricky system of switches placed inside the bins around the Gym, in which two specific switches would deactivate the electric fence installed around his position. The catch was that a trainer would need to hit the correct two ones in a row, and their positions reset if they failed to do so. The Gym Trainers would stand around the bins so it was likely challengers would need to face at least a few battles too in their attempt to get through. It was a bit of a pain for my electricians to set up, and a few of them did zap themselves a few more times than they would have liked during construction.

Also electricity. Surge really liked electricity.

It’s a well known Gym, I’ll give Surge that. A common subject of complaints, perhaps due to Surge insisting that anyone going to a wrong bin would receive a mild electric shock. He said that this toughened up soldiers, whatever that meant. He seemed rather pleased about the feedback on his Gym at any rate and was content to stay with the same puzzle when we came around. He just asked for more electricity, really.

Fuchsia Gym

Don’t run headfirst!

Just take a look at that picture. Doesn’t seem like we did much for this gym, right? Well, look closely. I mean really closely. Because from these top down views you can make out the boundaries of the invisible barriers we had to set up.

Yep, Koga sure was a tricky one. He was also weird, what with his whole ninja background he kept bringing up. Kept appearing behind my workers in an attempt to check up on them and gave half of them a fright. I tried to catch him on film to figure out how he did it, but he just appeared to come out of nowhere.

But I digress. To be fair, we don’t really use invisible walls, just glass that’s well set up so that unless you pay a lot of attention from ground level you won’t possibly notice that it’s there. Until you run into it. I suspect Koga may have had some delight watching over-eager trainers run at him, demanding a challenge, only for them to knock themselves out. We did make sure that glass can withstand Pokémon attacks, after all. And you know why Koga had all those Psychic Pokémon in his gym? To muddle with a challenger’s mind when they navigated the gym. It looks easy when you see it from these bird-eye view images, but try making your way through it yourself!

I challenge you…uh, which one of you is the Gym Leader?

His daughter Janine was also evidently a fan. When we next visited for renovations, she was the new Gym Leader. Her father had managed to make it into the big leagues. Or rather, just the Kanto Pokémon League as an Elite Four member. Anyway, she opted to go with the same idea and layout. But she made it trickier, removing that platform her father positioned himself on for challenges, and having all her ninja trainers disguise themselves as her! If that’s not a confusing puzzle, I don’t know what is.

Cinnabar Gym

Not the most exciting layout…

Oh, Cinnabar. There’s a sad tale for you. But I best start with the first gym layout.

Blaine was a scientist. A rather weird guy if you ask me, and a bit too prone to making puns about Burn Heals. For his Gym he had us rig up a quiz system. I can’t say it was a very inventive idea, but at least it was an easy one to implement and I suppose it made sense for a Gym puzzle. Trainers who didn’t know squat were forced to have a battle in order to proceed. This made it a test of knowledge, as well as a test of skill in battles. All we had to do was have some reinforced doors set up, tied to a computer system which gave questions and demanded an input. We had to have a series of rooms as well, large enough to accommodate Pokémon battles.

Then the volcano erupted, not long before we were to pay Blaine another visit. The whole island was devastated, including the Gym. A Pokémon Centre was hastily rebuilt, but nobody was really keen to stay right there and then. But what did that mean for Blaine? Well, he just up and moved! Hauled what remained of his life work to the damp setting of Seafoam Islands and told us that he wanted his Gym set up there for the time being. So while he took on challengers in a small cave, we got to work on a new Gym design.

No, look at the one below…

That’s the one.

Luckily he didn’t want too much. I think recognised the challenge behind revamping a cave, and so what we did was relatively simple, if you ignore all the grunt work in levelling the ground and clearing out rocks. I have to say, we had a neat little pattern made from the tiled floor. Managing a flame emblem from that was quite the achievement. There were no fancy electronics behind this, but one way or another Blaine got enough Gym Trainers behind him to act as obstacles and fill in the gaps of the mini-maze. I hope his makeshift Gym will serve him well and last until he can get back to Cinnabar.

Viridian Gym

It’s not a tough maze, but the panels make up for that.

Bah, this place. Probably the most disliked Gym puzzle for my team. I don’t blame them either. Giovanni didn’t really seem like a nice guy to me. Kept watching us work and had this sort of demeanour to him that gave me the chills.

But that was not the problem for this Gym. The walls are easy enough to install after all, and the maze isn’t complex. No, it was the darn panels he had put in between the small maze making up the Gym. They’re a weird piece of technology. They propel the person forward in the direction they are set to, and by waxing the floor along the path it’s very hard for someone to stop until they hit a different floor tile, or a wall. And it also somehow sends the person spinning as they travel too. Here’s an example.

You spin me right round baby right ithinkimgoingtobesick

I can’t say I know how it works, but it does the trick. But with these Gym puzzles, we have to test them out to see if they are safe. And those in my team who did test them out did not feel well afterwards, I can assure you! It was as if Giovanni wanted to make his Gym puzzle as obnoxious as possible to deter challengers from coming.

I think the new guy liked Lego or something.

Then one day Giovanni up and left without even a note. The League took their time before appointing some youngster in charge. What was his name… Green, or Blue, or something? Some sort of colour. We made sure that he didn’t know about the previous setup, let me tell you. And he was content in just having some blocks set up as decoration and a straight path to him rather than having a puzzle to speak off, and we were quite happy to comply. It did seem odd that he didn’t have any Gym Trainers unlike any other Gym Leader, but that wasn’t our concern.

But then he found some Trainers, and I bet one of them told him about Giovanni’s old set up because he absolutely loved the idea. And then he had us come in and put in over a hundred of the blasted panels!

This is what hell would look like to some of my team.

I tell you, I pity any challenger coming in. Because seeing the side effects on my crew who had to test out every possible path made me feel sick, and I dare not imagine how they felt. I suppose there’s always one rotten puzzle in the pile though.

Well, that’s all of the Gyms in Kanto I’ve overseen. Some of them were quite problematic, but that’s part and parcel of the job. And luckily, I didn’t have to step on any panels myself. I’ll sign off on here, and may well return to tell you tales of Gyms from other regions I had the honour of constructing!

Written by bobandbill.
Edited by An-chan, Bay Alexison, Hoenn, Richard Fightmaster and Slayr231.
Images from Bulbapedia and Serebii.