Can You Beat Pokemon Crystal With Only a Ditto? 

I love when he explained the Ditto vs. Ditto thing lol "waiting as I'm beaten by my own stupid strategy."

15:20 "so for this battle I'm pretty much forced to sit there until I'm defeated by my own stupid strategy." LOL. the rant before hand made that line so much better, and despite having no emotion in his voice I can tell how much it bothers him lmao

15:00 that fade transition into Ditto’s face made me lose it

So in short It's possible but A bit of a struggle

*Man goes crazy after completing hardest, most unfun challenge in gaming. Proceeds to do it a second time. More at 11.*

‘Transform’ ‘Transform’ ‘Transform’ “ *DITTO INTENSIFIES* “

Every Pokemon in Crystal: Who are you? DittoTwo: *I'm you, but stronger*

Right when he said: "I think we all know there's someone else I have to try to defeat before I can say this is over.." my heart ached for this man's sanity as I knew a certain primary color named mountain boi would crush it.

For those of you who aren't content with an open-ended answer, after doing some testing, I was able to determine a few things: - You need a good Ditto in order to beat Red; it benefits from having a high HP DV, the rest are copied from Red, which are nearly maxed as well. - What really matters is Stat Exp, which has to be applied/updated on the level 100 Ditto by depositing and withdrawing it from the PC. You can use stuff like Calcium to get them 1/3 of the way, the rest must be maxed via wild battles and phone trainers/E4 rematches. Note that in Crystal, the Battle Tower won't work for this. - Struggle strat will never work for Red, even if you crit every hit and Red misses every move(Brightpowder is the only way here) Ditto kills itself by the time you reach Blastoise. - The only way I found to beat Red is to transform into Pikachu. With perfect stats and near-perfect RNG (Scope Lens helps with this, but can be obtained only via Mystery Gift,) it's possible to get enough crits to wipe out most of his team. Blastoise will even help set up for Charizard at the end by using Rain Dance on turn one. I could be wrong, but I only tested this for a few hours. Extra notes: You need to have the first badge before you can pick up the Pink Bow. So backtracking was required regardless! Mirror Move on transform isn't the issue; it's the fact that Mirror Move won't let you use a move you already know for some reason(likely trying to prevent bugs.) So since transforming into Pidgeot means you have all of its moves too, it will always fail until you fight another team member. pigdab

If you decide to do this in Gen 3, please consider making the Ditto shiny, because shiny Ditto in those games become the shiny version of whatever they transform into, which might be cool to see.

One of my favorite things to do in Pokémon is look at the teams of the post game trainers and think “why are you not champion? Shouldn’t you be able to beat [insert champion’s name]”. So when you fought Blue my first thought was “shouldn’t he be able to beat Lance?” And then I remembered

You literally started a whole trend on RU-vid, you should be extremely proud of yourself

HERE'S WHAT YOU DO: Battle Red with 2 Dittos.

I did the damage calculations and you can do it...barely. You would need to crit every move, at least, with the following move combination: 1 tbolt and 2 quick attacks on pikachu, 1 thunder and 1 quick attack on espeon, three tbolts on snorlax, 3 thunders and one quick attack on venusaur, 1 thunder on blastoise, and 1 tbolt on charizard. You technically do not need one of the quick attacks to crit as you should only need to use 4, so you only require 13 crits. The chances of winning are therefore about 1 in 4.5 quadrillion. Even with the scope lens the chances of this happening are about 1 in 550 billion. Good luck.

I say it’s pretty impressive how far you got with Ditto alone. You beat probably 99% of the game or so with one Pokémon and that is pretty damn amazing.

Maybe you could beat Red with the Metal Powder. In Generation II it boosts a ditto's defense and special defense by 50% even when transformed. You wouldn’t be able to heal but I think this would be an overall net gain

I hope this becomes a series for every generation of pokemon.

The sequel everyone has been waiting for

Don't you know, You can't become champion of the pokemon league without knowing how to spam FULL RESTORES!

The reason mirror move failed is because the move was what broke your gen 1 runs. What happens is when you use mirror move, it uses one PP, then the copied move takes another PP. Because of this, it adds back one PP to the move slot. You couldn't struggle in gen 1 because it gave you one extra PP in an empty move slot, meaning you had one PP left on that invisible move, so the game wouldn't let tou use struggle. They stopped mirror move working in gen 2 when transformed to fix this.

Pikasprey, asking the questions no one is asking but everyone needs to know the answer to.

its really getting hard to find videos on youtube that are made carefully with planing... most channels nowadays just put out boring videos every day. i really appreciate your dedication and hard work man. you are doing good content :)

I remember when I caught six dittos and had them battle each other in Pokémon Stadium. It was the most pointless battle I'd ever done.

I loved the slow fade-in grinning face while you described being defeated by your own struggle strategy.

this is real content

"he slowly loses his pp before he is forced to struggle me to death" well ok then

no items ditto only *FINAL DESTINATION*

As much as I'd love to see how different a Heart Gold/Soul Silver version of this challenge would be, the new Struggle mechanics would make doing it by your rules impossible.

Introducing: POKEMON CRYSTAL NOW WITH 50% MORE STRUGGLE

I no longer celebrate living, and instead celebrate every pikasprey upload

This is almost a year late but I think the idea of Jasmine's Steelix knowing Sunny Day is for weakening Water moves, which it is weak against. Unfortunately it boosts another type Steelix is weak to... If you didn't pick Cyndaquil you might not even have a fire move at this point though, since fire Pokemon in Gen 2 are so scarce(though you can buy Fire Punch so)

Maybe the real end of the game was the friends we made along the way.

The last video: "Overall, I would not recommend this challenge." In this video: "I'm doing the challenge again guys." Paraphrased of course.

IT'S HAPPENING, PIKASPREY UPLOADED, EVERYONE REMAIN CALM, FOLLOW THE PROCEDURE.

"Did I beat the game? Man, I dunno." i respect that lmao

It would have been SO SICK to beat miltank with metronome-rollout, my condolences

Rename Struggle to Suffering. Just suffer through the entire game to win.

You can't hide that Colosseum BGM from me Mr. Asprey! I think it would be considered a win situation because according to Lance: "You don't get to be champion of the Pokémon League without knowing how to spam Full Restores!"

26:00 that mirror move thing isn't a glitch, according to Bulbapedia. Rather, it was a way of preventing the glitch which you encountered on your ditto run of gen 1. Its failure prevents you from having to use it 256 times just to be able to use struggle.

The ditto ditto fight was hilarious

I never knew the transformed Sprite would be a purple version in this game. I really like it.

Sounds like this was a real... struggle. ba dum tss

When/if he gets to gen 5, I vote that he uses a Ditto with its hidden ability to make thing less stressed-filled for him.

“So Mr. Ditto what’s the problem?” “I’m having trouble struggling”

I would like to think that after the Smeargle shenanigans, Red wasn't putting up with your shit this time.

Tmw your gimmick is to use your opponent's power against them, but they're too weak to make it an advantage

“So once again, struggling with Ditto is the way to go.” *pauses to consider life choices*

Pikasprey in the last video: "can I do this in other games?" Ahhh, yes, F o r e s h a d o w I n g

14:54 take a shot for every time he says transform

Next video: Can you beat Final Fantasy 6 with only a Ditto?

The run would probably be a bit more fun, albeit less impressively difficult, if you allowed the use of PP-restoring items in battle but not HP-restoring ones. That way you could struggle-strat through a trainer's useless first-pokemon, then restore Transform's PP and transform into another pokemon midway through the fight.

Omg that first Whitney first RNG gods of RNG said " Hey kid we like you!" And then they they said " ok you overused our goodwill now suffer.

should have named him ditwo

I like how Karen acknowledges your unusual choice of pokémon. 22:45

We can just dub the Kanto part as “postgame”

I'm just picturing Blue watching with steadily increasing confusion as your character throws himself into that fight over and over Later that night he calls Red and is like "uh, dude, do you have a brother or cousin or something? 'Cuz i just had a really weird series of battles"

I thought you were insane to do this once. *But twice!?!*

I've never clicked in a video so fast in my life! Now I know how it is!

Asprey.... you are insane. Thank you for documenting your insanity for us all

The moveset of npc trainers is weird, in US/UM by having a Ditto in my team I found that most trainer Pokémon have one or two moves, some of them even had just one stat boosting move like calm mind, others had useless combinations like quick attack + nasty plot. At some battles I was like dude wtf? Aqua jet only?

I think if you even get to Red with just a Ditto, you're allowed to relax a little on the rull restore rule ;) Well done dude! This looked.....horrendously tedious

Also also, that thing with the Ditto vs. Ditto was awesome. I especially love how Ditto's smiling face slowly faded in as you explained it, like a trollface but Ditto. So awesome. XD (Sorry for posting three comments in quick succession, I know I'm a horrible person and a spammer but damn it I like talking!)

“And the blob of goo hits him like a storm”. This made me laugh like crazy.

All of your videos are so well put together it makes them very rewatchable.

Can you beat Dark Souls 3 with only Ditto?

The last time I was this early Oak remembered his grandsons name.

I’ve been rly into watching gameplay from earlier Pokémon games lately and I love your style of videos/editing! It’s just a breath of fresh air from the other lets players I’ve been watching lol. Love to see the ditto champion 😎

Thank you! Other people that I have watched who did an only-ditto challenge just used struggle the whole time, making it very bland. Thank you for actually using transform!

6:40 “ He likes to put you to sleep to drain you peepee”... wiser words were never pronounced before!

R. I. P Dittwo. His true name was never recognized...

Red: He's the strongest Pokemon trainer of all time, for DAMM good reason.

love these videos man, keep em coming!

The amount of torture you put yourself through for these is very much appreciated!

You really missed out on the opportunity to name Ditto "Dittwo"

I always kind of assumed that Sunny Day on Steelix, as stupid as it is, was meant to be an answer to Surf in some ways. Think about it: You're guaranteed to have a pokemon that can use Surf by the time you meet Jasmine, which means 99.9% of the time you're going to be using it on Steelix. On the other hand, it's up in the air whether you have a fire type mon...

Never in my entire youtube life have I watched a whole video without skipping some scene. This Challenge or Run is so amazing and well explained throughout.

The fact that you named your ditto “DITTOTWO” and not “DITTWO” made me very sad.

In the interest of more strategic flexibility, I have two suggestions: 1. Use two dittos 2. Allow the use of ethers on untransformed dittos in battle, once per battle Changing the rules to include these would allow you to reset transformations and delay transformations using struggle, therefore giving you more options in battle. At the very least, allowing ethers would let you skip the first pokemon in a gym battle, so your transform could be of a more capable pokemon. That way not every battle is just “spam struggle”.

Thank you for uploading this. You're a great youtuber, i appreciate you.

Please keep these challenge videos coming. Absolutely the best thing I've seen all week lmao

It wouldn't be a Pikasprey video if he didn't have problems with Viridian Gym.

*slams fist on desk* Can you beat pokemon emerald using only ditto

This is my favorite of your videos because it combines several of my favorite things: ditto, my favorite Pokemon, and ridiculous challenges that you place solely upon yourself.

I love how watching Pokémon Challenge videos always brings me back to Pikasprey.

I'm excited to see you run this in Emerald, as you get access to what could possibly make or break the run by itself: Leppa Berries. Extremely valuable, as you can go into a battle struggling, and then restore PP for transform part way through to transform into your choice of your opponents pokemon. On the other hand, I think this is the gen where struggle foes to 1/4 the users max HP, which probably makes it impossible by itself

these videos make me smile! I love seeing you and your ditto overcome obstacles. even if you didn’t win against red, you have won my heart

Here's an interesting and semi relevant fact: In Crystal (and I assume gold silver too, though I haven't tested it), if you catch a mew that has transformed into your pokemon, you'll end up getting a Ditto in your pc box. Since there's no legal way to be fighting mew, they apparently just coded it so that catching "transformed pokemon" gives you Ditto.

10:03, what are you talking about? Isn’t that what everyone clicked on this video for?

This dude is insane. He legitimately does all the grinding...

I have been waiting for this... Can you beat Pokemon Crystal with only a Shuckle?

I'm so excited for gen 3s video of this, anyway keep up the good work

you really missed out on the ditto being nicknamed "dittwo"

*_Can you beat Pokémon Red with the truck Mew?_*

I think Red, if anything, is a superboss, and not the actual final boss, since the difference in levels between the final gym leader and Red is MASSIVE.

nice video, loved the ditto scene overlay thing you used

Legendary run! I’m gonna do some of these hopefully!

Finnally, i was way more excited to this than Red Dead Redemption

To be honest if you made it to red with only a ditto i'd say you completed it 😂

Dude, you got up to Red just using a Ditto? I think I could call that a success.

This is great. Don't even have to watch the video, can just have it on in the background and I'll still know everything that is happening. Pretty cool.