Dragonite

Dragonite is a dragon/flying-type Pokemon introduced in Pokemon Red. It is the final Pokemon of the dragon trainer Lance, the penultimate boss.

Stats

• Pokedex No.: 149

Background

In 2014-02, gained some notoriety during the first Twitch Plays Pokemon playthrough:

Here is a story involving Dragonite, the final dragon Pokémon you fight in the first game. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnUD2Ts6C-Q&t=65

In Pokémon Red, the penultimate boss you must defeat is the dragon trainer Lance. Lance is difficult because dragon type resists all starter types (fire, water, grass, electric) and the playerʼs most likely strongest Pokémon is a starter. Dragonite is Lanceʼs final most powerful Pokémon.

In February 2014, a livestream started called “Twitch Plays Pokémon” that allowed thousands of people to simultaneously play the exact same session of Pokémon Red by entering messages into chat like “up”, “down”, “left”, “right”, “a“, “b”, “start“, and “select” which correspond to the original GameBoy control buttons. The game would execute this torrent of commands in the order and speed that they were received. As a result, the player spent most of their time moving erratically and performing mostly nonsensical actions. However, since many of the people providing commands knew how to beat Pokémon Red, they provided the bias necessary to eventually get the player to Lance after about two weeks of 24-hour continuous playing.

After finally reaching Lanceʼs level 62 Dragonite, the playerʼs entire team had been mostly wiped with the exception of a level 36 Venomoth, a Bug/Poison type. What should have been a quick loss for the player ended up resulting in an unexpected victory. This is because Pokémon Redʼs bosses were programmed to always select moves of a type that were super-effective against the playerʼs pokémon. Lanceʼs Dragonite knew two normal-type damage-dealing moves (Slam and Hyper Beam) and two psychic-type status-affecting moves (Agility and Barrier). Fortunately for the Twitch Plays Pokémon Venomoth (named `AATTVVV`), the boss programming suffered a corner case bug: Dragonite would always select non-damaging moves such as Agility or Barrier since those were psychic-type and psychic-type attacks are super-effective against Venomothʼs poison type. But since neither Agility or Barrier cause any damage, the playerʼs Venomoth eventually defeated the Dragonite.

This unexpected victory inspired several artists who followed the Twitch Plays Pokémon stream to make drawings and compose songs about the feat such as the one I linked earlier titled “All-Terrain Victory”, named after the nickname for the Venmoth: “ATV” or “All-Terrain Vehicle” after the random name `AATTVVV` it was given when first captured.

This bug of Dragonite no longer exists in later remakes or games, much less in Pokémon GO. But this trivia explains why you might find Venomoth when you search for art of Dragonite.

See also

• Wikipedia:Dragonite