Explosion
 Cyndaquil, Quilava, and Typhlosion

Name Meanings

Game Boy Games: Gold/Silver/Crystal

Yay! New fresh starter for all those Fire Trainers in Gold, Silver, and Crystal! I love variety, don't you? Cyndaquil is a starter Pokémon--you get one from Professor Elm.. He's what I started with...you didn't expect less of me, did you? Your "rival" (that dirty Pokémon thief) steals the one that's strong against you, so you should have a good backup.

Now anyone who started with Charmanders back in R/B/Y knows how tough it was to get through the first two gyms, cause of a Rock and then Water gym. Not so here at all. The First Gym with Falkner is Flying, and it's fairly good to get along since flying falls to Fire. And with the second one--Bugsy and Bugs, whooping that gym is a snap. He's also good in the Steel Gym with Jasmine, because Steel is weak to Fire. (Magnemites are steel, along with that funky ass Steelix that killed me many times cause I didn't level up well. ¬¬) He gets a little tougher to fight with later in the game, but he's still worth it. Cyndas become Quilava at Level 14 and Typhlosions at Level 36.

Cyndaquils start out with Tackle and Leer, which are basic normal moves. Smokescreen comes at Level 6, Ember at Level 12, Quick Attack at 19, Flame Wheel at 27, and finally Flamethrower. Of course, this is all much later if you let it evolve as you raise it.

Game Boy Advance: Ruby/Sapphire/Colosseum/FireRed/LeafGreen

Of course they're not in Ruby/Sapphire. There's no point when you have a new starter. And they're not in FireRed/LeafGreen. Hello? Charmander? Why did you even ask?

You can get Quilava in Colosseum, though. In the second town, Phenac City, you'll encounter Miror B (a bad guy) in the Mayor's place and have to fight a couple of grunts there. Afterwards you'll have a choice of which way to try and leave the town. If you try and leave via the eastern exit you'll see that you have to fight Mystery Troop Rosso who is dressed in all red to show that he'll give you the fire Pokémon. He'll have Quilava in his team, so capture it. As in, steal it.

That's right. You get to steal Pokémon. But only Shadow Pokémon. So I'll explain this whole Shadow Thing now so I don't have to do it anymore.

Shadow Pokémon are treated like normal Pokémon with a special move called "Shadow Rush" that has no type so it affects everyone. When "wild" they belong to another trainer and can use three of their four moves with the fourth one being replaced by Shadow Rush. You know you're facing a Shadow Pokémon because a girl follows you around (default name: Rui) that can see the evil aura of Shadow Pokémon and she points out when they're there.

You catch them the same way as wild Pokémon, by weakening them and tossing a Pokéball. You have a machine that changes any Pokéball (you have to buy Pokéballs still) into a Snag Ball so you can steal other trainers Pokémon. Once captured the Pokémon forgets all of its moves except Shadow Rush. It has a five-sectioned bar where its experience normally would go to show how much of a shadow Pokémon it still is. You clear the bar by putting the Pokémon in battle. You also clear it by calling to them when they're in hyper mode.

A Pokémon goes into Hyper Mode when you try and use Shadow Rush and it randomly decides to put them into Hyper Mode, When this happens, they don't attack. After they're in hyper mode, using any other attack besides Shadow Rush will probably make the Pokémon attack its teammate. There's also a random chance of the Pokémon attacking the trainer which does nothing but waste the turn. There's a call command on the battle menu instead of Run (since you can't run from trainer battles and here you initiate many of them). Calling will wake up sleeping Pokémon and will bring hyper Pokémon back to their senses and knock a chunk out of their shadow meter.

For every bar you lower the meter the Pokémon remembers a move. Once you clear it all you can go to Relic Forest and use a stone that summons Celebi's powers to cleanse the Pokémon so it can gain experience and level up like a normal Pokémon again. Cleansing will unlock the experience gained by the shadow Pokémon while they were a shadow Pokémon, remove Shadow Rush and replace it with another move the Pokémon knows, and give them a ribbon to show they were a shadow Pokémon. After that they're a normal Pokémon.

Anyways, they have Blaze Ability, which makes their fire moves boost at low HP. An ability I never tap, since I hate low HP.

Opinionations

Cyndaquils are adorable! They're all fiery and little and look like pissed off porcupines!  (And that makes sense, with their name being based on porcupines and all.) And unlike Charizards, they look pretty sweet the whole time they grow and evolve. Typhlosions are very much the badass. Overall, they're wonderful.