Part 46: Mauville's Sights: Old guys and Gambling

Side Notes #05: Mauville's Sights: Old guys and gambling

Old guys

You ever wondered what these guys deal was? Well now you can find out and, spoilers, there's not much. There are five old guys that can appear in Mauville's Pokemon Center depending on the final digit of your Trainer ID. If it's 0-1 you get the Bard, 2-3 gets the Hipster, 4-5 gets the Trader, 6-7 gets the Storyteller and 8-9 gets Giddy. When you meet them you can have one interaction with them and can't do anything else until you mix records. From there, you get the guy that was in your friends' game, as well as getting another interaction with your guy. So yeah, one interaction is all we're gonna get then. Let's go over them.



The Bard will sing you a song consisting of six phrases from the easy chat system. He'll be dissatisfied with one of the phrases and let you change it. The noises he makes sound kinda like the words in his song. This song will be transferred to your friends' game. But yeah, he does nothing for you.



The Hipster will tell you a new "trendy word" that gets added to your easy chat list. There are 33 words he can give you, but you only get the one unless you mix records, where he'll give you another one. There's some fun phrases in it, but it's still whatever.



The Trader is maybe the best old guy, as he will give you one of four decorations (Duskull Doll, Ball Cushion, Tire, or Pretty Flowers) for one of your decorations. All of them can be obtained normally throughout the game by buying them, though the Tire is the rarest of them, being part of the Lilycove sale. Hey, at least you get something from it. When he goes to someone else's game, the item you traded that you traded him will be part of his offer.



The Storyteller will give random statistics of the player in all kinds of tasks, from number of battles, to number of ledge jumps, to how many times you've used the Cable Car. Seriously, the list is long and dumb. He will also list what your friends have done in that same story when you mix with them, as well as give you another of your statistics, up to four in total. Yup, also useless, if neat, I guess.



Giddy will tell you a "scintillating story" that consists of a bunch of yes or no questions that are about all kinds of random crap from the easy chat system. And that's it. So as you can see, you're really not missing much when it comes to these guys, thank god. However, Emerald introduced another group of people like this where you are missing a fair few things depending on who you get.

We'll get to them later.

Gambling

It won't be too long until PEGI shuts down all the Game Corners or turns all the Pokemon games into 12+ hellscapes, so let's see what crazy stuff can happen in this Game Corner. Well, we've got the Slots, as well as the Roulette. Let's start with the slots.




Oh hey, compared to previous ones, now there's twice the chance of getting a jackpot, with the both the blue and red 7s. You even get something if you line up a 7 but the last one is the wrong colour, as well as some guaranteed payouts if you get some ball cherry things. There are also replays, which give you a free spin, as well as the Power icon, which increases your chances of Reel Time.

Reel Time

When you get enough lightning bolts to go on the top of the machine, there's a chance Reel Time will happen, giving you a certain amount of spins where when you press A is the symbol it'll land on. It won't slip, or stop just before, you're able to actually time getting the big bonuses. Though no matter what, Reel Time will end when you get the big 300 bonus. So since you can get a max of 5 spins under Reel Time, the most you can get is 660 coins, which, uh, isn't a lot. It's faster to just buy coins at the end game instead of bothering with the slots, as always.



Now for the Roulette table, though there's not much to talk about here. Just select a row for 3x the payout, a column for 4x the payout or an individual Pokemon for 12x the payout. As more balls get dropped, the odds will change for the rows and columns depending on where things landed and balls stay on the roulette until 6 have been dropped, where it then resets. If a ball gets trapped between two others, then a Shroomish or Taillow will come get it out.

There is also a Game Corner Service Day, where payouts are doubled, so the 3 bet table for Roulette becomes a 6 bet table. The Service Day does not apply to the slots.