So, assuming that you are even reading this, it's safe to say that you are at least a little interested in Pokemon, right? I bet that you have spent quite a lot of time catching and training the little critters. I would also bet that you have tried out, or are at least a little interested in playing link battles against other trainers, right?

Then you might find a little program called Pokemon NetBattle of interest to you!

NetBattle is a Pokemon simulator for the PC; it plays like a stripped- down version of the Pokemon games, in that you can battle other players online, over the internet. Now that the Diamond and Pearl games for the DS have Wi-Fi capabilities, this might seen a little unnecessary: that's all well and fine if you happen to really like the gameplay of Diamond and Pearl, but have you ever asked yourself what it would be like to play some of the older generations of Pokemon online? That is the basic premises of NetBattle.

Originally created in 2003, NetBattle was for many years the ONLY way of playing the Pokemon games online with other people. It's still unique in that it is the only program still actively used that allows you to play competitive Pokemon of the first three generations (The Red, Blue and Yellow era; the Gold, Silver, and Crystal era; and the Game Boy Advanced era) with other people without trying to organize a large Pokemon meet-up in real life, which would obviously be quite difficult.

Would you like to hear more about this amazing program? Then you're in for a special treat, as I have compiled a how-to guide to using the program below, complete with pictures!

First off, you can download the latest version of the program here.

How to use NetBattle

This is what the program looks like when you start it up:

Not really a whole lot to see here... click on Team Builder to make a team to use in battles.... if you have just downloaded the program, Start Battling will be crossed out and you will not be able to get on any servers, because you have not yet made a team, so let's learn how to make one!

This is what the front page of the Team Builder looks like. I've color-coded some boxes of note for you to see where they are and what they do:

Pink area: Click in this area to change your avatar from 1 of 15 images selectable. As you can see, I have selected Psyduck.

Yellow area: Type in your desired username in here. Note that if another user has already chosen the nick that you want on whatever server you try to connect to, you will be automatically booted off and will have to select another name.

Green area: Pokemon NetBattle allows you to use the sprites from any of the games leading up to Pokemon Emerald. Note that if you choose sprites from one of the earlier generations of games, and then put a Pokemon from a later generation of Pokemon games, the oldest sprite for that Pokemon will be the one chosen. ie, if you set your graphics to Yellow version and put a Medicham on your team, you will be forced to use the Ruby/Sapphire Medicham sprite. Note that you can play any generation wish sprites from any other generation; meaning you can have a RBY team that uses sprites from Emerald, or an Advanced team that uses sprites from Gold, or any other combination.

It was promised that one of the features for a newer version of NetBattle would be to let you pick the sprite for every individual Pokemon on your team, but this is one of the many things that may not ever happen, since NetBattle has not been updated in almost two years...

Black area: These are automatic messages that you can have the game say to your opponent whenever a game ends, whether you win or lose. You can just leave these blank if you want; it's what most people do.

Blue area: This lets you type in any extra information about yourself, or the Pokemon team you are currently using. Protip: put any information about any rules you are playing by that deviate from the standard in here, but try not to go overboard with NO SKARMORY NO SNORLAX NO FIRE BLAST NO BATON PASS NO ROAR, because then you just end up looking like a douche, and nobody will battle you!

Purple area: This lets you know what version of the games you are playing, and whether or not you are playing with a modified database. Some servers have modified databases to add or remove certain moves or abilities to certain Pokemon. Since the last update to NetBattle did not provide the extra moves added to the game from Pokemon XD, most servers now have them added to their databases. Servers that make changes beyond that are known as 'mod servers'. These are mostly for fun, and not meant to be an accurate representation of the actual game.

In order to change what version of Pokemon you are playing at any given time, go into the 'version' tab at the top of the screen. There you will see several options:

True RBY: The original 151 Pokemon with the moves and game mechanics of Red, Blue, and Yellow. Note that this is the preferred mode of RBY for tournament play in most circles, so some people may not battle you with a true rby team if you have a RBY with trades team.

RBY with Trades: This allows you to play RBY with additional moves that are legal in Red, Blue, and Yellow that come from Gold, Silver, and Crystal. Pick this option if you want to play with things such as Thunderpunch Magmar or Surf Tauros in RBY.

True GSC: This allows you to play Gold, Silver, and Crystal with the first 251 Pokemon. Tradeback TMs for Pokemon from Red, Blue, and Yellow that do not have equivilants in GSC (ie, Swords Dance Tentacruel) cannot be used in this mode.

GSC with Trades: Most GSC players use this mode. It allows all legal move combinations on all 251 Pokemon in the game.

Ru/Sa only: Also known as '200', this is the mode that allows you to play with only the 200 Pokemon obtainable between Pokemon Ruby and Pokemon Sapphire. Was popular before the additional Pokemon made availible in Colosseum, Fire Red and Leaf Green, Emerald, and XD: Gale of Darkness all came out, but is now even more obscure and rarely played than the first two gens.

Full Advanced: This is what the majority of NetBattle users play, and is the default option. This allows you to play with all 386 Pokemon as of Pokemon Emerald, and also allows the use of move tutors that did not exist in 200, such as Substitite being able to be used on almost every Pokemon in the game.

....now that that's covered, let's move on to actually constructing the Pokemon themselves.

Building a Pokemon Team

This is what the Pokemon screen looks like. You access this by clicking on one of the six PKMN tabs near the top of the Team Builder window. Once again I have used my magical MS Paint skills to outline certain points of interest

Green area: This is where you select the Pokemon you want to use. Type in it's name here to do a search, or simply click on the arrow and scroll down the drop-down menu to find the Pokemon you want (they are listed in Pokedex order). When you have found the Pokemon you want, hit the 'Switch' button next to this area to comfirm your selection.

Blue area: If you want to nickname your Pokemon, type something in here. Note that NetBattle allows you to use 15 characters in a Pokemon's nickname, different from the 10 allotted in the actual games; this is one of those untrue-to-the-game quirks of NetBattle that nobody ever really thought was important to fix. If you do not wish to nickname a Pokemon, leave this box alone.

Black area: The Pokemon's held item. As Pokemon could not hold items in Red, Blue, and Yellow, this option does not show up in those versions.

Red area: This is where you pick out the moves that your Pokemon can use in battle. Use the arrows to scroll down the list to find a move, or if you know that a Pokemon can use a certain move, type it in one of the four boxes at the bottom and you will be directed to it. Select a move by clicking on the empty box next to it.

NetBattle allows you to play with any moves that a Pokemon can learn, whether they be obtainable as an egg move, on level-up, inside a TM, or only learnable at a special promotional event. However, NetBattle will not let you play using combinations of moves that cannot be obtained in the actual carts. An example of this is Salamence; there was an event in Japan that gave Bagon the moves Wish and Iron Defense. However, this special Bagon egg did not have any 'normal' egg moves, and you cannot breed the exclusive moves on this Bagon to another Pokemon; this means that, a moveset using the move Wish along with another Bagon egg move, such as Hydro Pump, cannot be allowed. Egg moves that are impossible to have on one Pokemon due to diverging egg chains, such as a Charmander with Beat Up + Dragon Dance, also cannot be played with. Unless, of course, you are playing on a modified server.

You may notice that button that says 'Expert' on it. If you click on that, you get yet another screen....

Here is the Expert Mode screen. As the name implies, this is where you go to fine-tune your Pokemon's stats beyond what moveset and item to give it. If you want to actually win battles, you will become very familiar with this screen!

Black area: The nature of the Pokemon you are using. Natures did not exist before Ruby and Sapphire, so you do not have this portion pop up in games before then.

There are 25 natures in Advanced, which effect stat growth; a stat can be boosted, reduced, or uneffected by your choice in nature. thankfully NetBattle shows you what natures will effect what stats with a green + and a red - sign, although you may want to try to memorize them anyway for your own reference down the line.

Blue area: Ths covers three things: the Gender of your Pokemon, it's ability, and whether or not the sprite is shiny or not. Abilities did not exist before R/S and gender and shinyness were not known in RBY, so these do not show up on those screens. Note that certain Pokemon only have one ability, or can only have one gender (or are genderless), so you might not be able to change these settings on all of the Pokemon in the game.

Yellow area: The Pokemon's IV's. These range from 0 to 31, and effect stats; at level 100, a Pokemon with a 0 iv in a stat will have a lower stat in that area than a Pokemon that has the same nature and EVs (more on that later) that has 31 IVs. Most of the time you want to simply leave the IVs of a Pokemon on the default of 31 on everything; however, using the move Hidden Power may require you to change them according to the Hidden Power type that you want.

Pink area: EVs. The EV system did not exist before R/S, so versions of the game before then do not have to worry about this.

Every Pokemon can have a total of 510 EVs, or effort values. For every 4 EVs put into a stat, that stat will be one point higher than normal when you reach level 100. You can only put a total of 255 EVs into any one stat; you can use your 510 EVs to put up to 255 in two stats, or you can spread them around however you like; the default setting gives you 85 EVs in all six stats, but most of the time you will want to change this. As you can see, I want the Pokemon in this screenshot to be able to hit fast and do as much damage as possible, so I have put 252 EVs into both Attack and Speed, and put the remainder into HP. You can change your EV spreads by sliding the little bars across the screen with your mouse. If you want how you currently have your EVs fixed to stay right where they are, click the 'Lock' checkmark to the right of the corresponding bar.

Green area: just a note, you always want to make sure that this box is checked. This will 'snap' the scrolling bars that you use to modify EV spreads, making sure that you are always using an amount of EVs divisible by 4 in your stats, so you don't waste EVs.

One more thing: you can lower the level of any of your Pokemon if you wish to play with Pokemon under level 100, but this is not recommended as most people play with all six Pokemon as level 100. Your Pokemon do not gain experience in battle or anything of the sort, as Pokemon do not gain experience in link battles in the actual games.

Keep in mind that whatever Pokemon you decide to use in the PKMN 1 slot will be the Pokemon you start out every battle with; you can change the order that your Pokemon are in by hitting the 'Arrange' button at the bottom of the screen. This is what a completed Pokemon in the PKMN slot 2 would look like:

Do this for all six slots in your Pokemon team, and you will be ready for battle!

Connect to a Server

Save your team, exit the team building screen, and to to Start Battling. When you do, you will will be shown a registry of all the active servers, and will be prompted to connect to one of them:

Double-click on the name of a server, or just click once and hit the 'connect' button, and you will connect to your server of choice.

If for some reason the registry is down (or if you have been banned form it, teehee), use the Advanced option to type in the IP of the server you want to access, and you will be able to go in.

This is what it looks like when you finally go into a NetBattle server:

On the left-hand side of the screen, you will see a list of all the users on the server. People who appear to be faded out are either marked as away, or are in the middle of a battle.

If a user is a Moderator on a server, they will have one star next to their screename. Moderators are typically able to kick a troublesome user off of a server, or ban them for up to 1440 minutes (exactly 24 hours) Administrators have two stars; they have the same powers as a Moderator, and in addition can permanently ban a user from their server. Unfortunately, there is no 'middle ground' in banning on NetBattle; a user cannot be banned for any longer than 1440 minutes without being permanently banned and then unbanned whenever the admin feels the time has been done for the crime. This means you better be on your best behavoir if you don't want the staff of a server to 'accidently' forget to unban you, if you catch my drift!!

I challenge you!

Now we can finally move onto the fun part of NetBattle; Battling!

In order to battle with another user, you will either have to issue a challenge to them, or accept a challenge from them. This is how that is done:

When you see a user online that you would like to battle, double-click on their username. This window will pop up:

Before challenging somebody, review this, and make sure you are challenging the opponent to play exactly how you want to play!

The checkmark boxes near the bottom of the screen show several different options that have become standard to Pokemon battling that you can turn on or off at your own whim. I'll go over what they mean:

Sleep Clause: With this turned on, your opponent cannot put more than one of your Pokemon to sleep at a time. A rule commonly enforced in official Nintendo tournaments on the actual games, this has been a mainstay of tournament battling ever since the original Pokemon Stadium, due to the near-broken nature of the Sleep status.

Freeze clause: no more than one Pokemon at a time can be frozen on either player's team. Freeze is THE most broken status condition in the game, but thankfully there is no move that can cause freeze outside of the opponent being unlucky enough to get frozen from an Ice attack.

Self-KO clause: If you and your opponent are both down to your last Pokemon and your opponent uses a self-ko move such as Explosion and kills both of your last Pokemon, your opponent is declared the loser. If this is not turned on and the situation I just described occurs, the match will be considered a tie.

Apply PP Ups: increases the PP of all moves on both your team and the opponent's team. Stall teams benefit from this being turned off, so usually this is something that MUST be turned on in tournaments.

Stadium Mode: Allows you to see your opponent's team of six Pokemon, while the two of you pick three Pokemon to use in a 3-on-3 battle.

Challenge Cup: Randomizes both your team and your opponent's, giving you six Pokemon with movesets you do not get to choose with levels set based on the power of the Pokemon (crap like Rattata being at a much higher level than, say, Metwto). This option really lenghens the lifespan of NetBattle for those that find that they do not have what it takes to compete on a more serious level of play, but even the best of the best play this for shits and giggles every now and then.

Level Ballance: adjusts the levels of the Pokemon on both players teams so that weaker Pokemon are a higher level than stronger Pokemon, allowing them to do more damage. Most people get pissed off at you if you challenge them with this, so avoid this like the plague if you don't want to put up with your opponent's bitching.

Battle Timeout: keeps track of the amount of time it takes for you to make a move: if five minutes go by and you have not chosen an attack to use, you are declared the loser. A warning message is displayed in the battle screen when you are 30 seconds away from being counted out.

Unrated: the servers keep a record of how many wins and losses a player has had on that particular server; if you do not want a match to count towards your record, check this off.

Show Enemy HP: NetBattle shows you the % of health your opponent has left by default; if you want to see actual numbers instead, check this. Many people that play R/S prefer for this not to be checked off, because it can reveal how many HP EVs a player is using on a Pokemon.

Disallow Spectators: if you do not want people watching your matches, checkmark this. Note that mods and admins on a server can override this and still watch your matches if they want to; politely ask them to leave in the main chat if it bothers you!

Use Stadium Present: This option is only selectable in GSC. Basically the move Present's base power was glitched in Gold and Silver to a point where it could be high enough that a Level 5 Clefairy could OHKO a Level 100 Umbreon with the move...this glitch is not present in Pokemon Stadium 2.

One last thing: the terrain that you are battling on really only matters if you plan on using the moves Secret Power or Nature Power in Advanced. Random Terrain is the default; if you notice that your opponent has bothered to change it from that, it probably means they are using one of the two moves!

Now to show you what it looks like when you are being challenged:

Notice how it lists the rules of the challenge in that little box there.

Now to show you what an actual battle is like!!!

Here is the battle screen. All of that hard work to get to something so simple, huh?

Most of this is self-explanatory, but I'll go over how everything works anyway:

Attack Tab: displays all of your attacks on that Pokemon for you to select.

Pokemon Tab: click on it to switch Pokemon. Select the Pokemon you want to bring in, and hit Switch

Text Box: allows you and your opponent to communicate with each other. Press the Send button, or just hit Enter, to send your message. As you can see, I am doing a little trash-talking with Tamagon!

Forefit: use if you want to give up and end the match.

This is what the screen looks like when you have completed a battle:

A score will be displayed, and the Forefit button will be replaced with a 'Leave' button, allowing you to exit the battle. NetBattle will prompt you to save a log of the match; this can be disabled in the Options menu.

That's pretty much it. Now that you have the know-how to use this amazing program, go out there and kick some Poke-ass!