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Welcome to my in-depth walkthrough for Pokémon Blue Version!  If you've ever struggled to beat the game, fear not, for I am here!  With pictures!
Let's get started.

When you start the game, don't forget to check out the options, probably increasing the text speed.  Go ahead and start your game.  Read through the dialogue with Prof. Oak if you wish, but you'll probably just spam the B button and ignore it.  Go ahead and name yourself and your rival, then the game begins!

You begin in your room facing the TV.  Don't forget to check out the PC in the northwest of the room and pick up a potion:
Head down the stairs and leave your house.  Once outside, head to the north of town and into the bushes.  Suddenly, a voice shouts out, "Wait!"
(https://d3esbfg30x759i.cloudfront.net/ss/WVW69i-9BCoZRPovs3)(https://d3esbfg30x759i.cloudfront.net/ss/WVW69i-9CBINSBedUQ)
After a long cutscene where you follow Oak, you end up in his laboratory, getting a free Pokémon for your troubles.  Now, in the past, you may have thought there was an actual choice here.  But I'm here to tell you that the correct choice is Bulbasaur.  Really.  Trust me on this one.  You need to pick Bulbasaur.  No joke.
(https://d3esbfg30x759i.cloudfront.net/ss/WVW69i-9DrwbMCMeU8)
After you get bulbasaur, go ahead and leave the lab.  Er, battle your rival.  Before you battle him you should save, because you need to beat him without using your potion.  Vitally important.  Did you beat him?  Good.  Let's leave town to the north to Viridian City.  Oh, by the way, make sure you don't battle any wild Pokémon.  Experience points here are key.

When you arrive in Viridian, the first (and only) thing you should do is head to the shop.  The shopkeeper gets your attention.  Ignore him (or read what he has to say, it's up to you) and get OAK'S PARCEL.
(https://d3esbfg30x759i.cloudfront.net/ss/WVW69i-9GUAkGS3poY)
Man, a fetch-quest already?  This game sucks.  Oh well.  Let's head back to Pallet Town, ignoring the wild Pokémon as we did on the way, and deliver the Parcel to Prof. Oak.  After being very thankful and stuff like that, he gives you a plot device.  Er, I mean a Pokedex.
(https://d3esbfg30x759i.cloudfront.net/ss/WVW69i-9H-0L5vnhFS)
*Triumphant music plays*
Alright, now that we have that settled, we have places to be!  Head north again all the while avoiding enemy Pokémon, past Viridian City, and all the way to Viridian Forest.  Don't forget to pick up this potion from Viridian City though:
(https://d3esbfg30x759i.cloudfront.net/ss/WVW69i-9KA8I3VOldV)
Once in Viridian City, the only wild Pokémon you're allowed to battle is a level 5 Metapod.  Don't battle any other trainers or wild Pokémon.  This part is vital.
At the end of Viridian Forest is a "boss battle" of sorts.  Before you start, make sure Bulbasaur is level 7, and that you pick up these potions:
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When you battle this Bug Catcher, make sure to use Growl exactly 4 times.  We want Growl's PP to be exactly 36.  Right now your Bulbasaur is level 7, and I know that's scary, but you can beat him!  Just make sure that when you do, you have at least 16 Tackle PP left.  When we finally escape from Viridian Forest and head to Pewter City, we want our Bulbasaur's stats to look like this (yes, the move order matters):
(https://d3esbfg30x759i.cloudfront.net/ss/WVW69i-9UOAZyOObxd)
I realize this means you can't heal at the Pokémon Center, but that's why you have the 3 potions.  Go ahead and heal up your Bulbasaur and save the game.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Welcome back, everybody!  Before we begin, I want to make sure you've saved.  Yeah, right when you started playing again.  Save.  Make sure your cursor is on the save button.  Do that.  This is the most important part of chapter 2.  I'm not kidding!
Welcome to Pewter City guys.  There's not a lot to do here, so we're just going to walk east past that funny looking boy just standing there- huh?!  He stopped us!  How rude!  Well, we'll show him.  Stand exactly two squares south of the youngster when walking to the east.  When he stops you, skip through his monologue with B as fast as you can, then spam the START button as soon as he finishes talking.  If you did it right, your menu will be open with the cursor over SAVE.  You'll notice that you can't move your cursor.  You've already figured out what to do next, haven't you?  I'll wait for you to save and reset.
(https://d3esbfg30x759i.cloudfront.net/ss/WVW69i-9XC0vCNcGjC)

You back?  Good.  So, when we load up our game, we get creepy monologue out of nowhere, and a youngster starts walking toward us from the west.  Quickly!  Run east and escape him!
We did it!  Welcome to Route 2!  Now that we're here, it's time to go back to Pewter.  Head west until you're just right of the Youngster, and do a quick stat check on your Bulbasaur.  (Don't forget his HP needs to be full.)  Once you've done that, go ahead and talk to the Youngster while holding up on the D-pad, and watch the magic happen.
(https://d3esbfg30x759i.cloudfront.net/ss/WVW69i-9Zqg9SIeJ1q)

once you've done the above

You should note three things about walking through walls- walking too far from the edge of generated tiles WILL cause the game to reset.  Stay as close to live tiles as possible.  Also, if you stop moving, your menu will pop up.  You can close it with B or START, however, and continue on your way.  Finally, entering a building ends the walk through walls effect.

[close]

Wow, this is so cool!  We showed that Youngster, yessir.  Alright, onward to Celadon City!
Aside:  If you want to make a quick stop at Cerulean Cave, be my guest, but we're going to skip it for time purposes.  We're not scared or anything, I promise.
(https://d3esbfg30x759i.cloudfront.net/ss/WVW69i-9eoIVAdbxOF)
Once we've seen all 1 sights of Cerulean City, head south towards Saffron City.  We're going to play Mexican for a bit here, and walk STRAIGHT past the border.  That's right, don't even enter the traffic stop, just walk straight around it, baby.  Anyway, head south through Saffron's buildings until you hit this one right here:
(https://d3esbfg30x759i.cloudfront.net/ss/WVW69i-9jfwgxJfwX1)
That's right, we're FINALLY going to use a Pokémon Center!  Hooray!  Go ahead and heal your Bulbasaur up, then head west to Celadon City.  But first, you should save.
I'm serious.

Ah, Celadon City.  Beautiful.  Head southwest to the restaurant (if you can't find it, it's the row of houses below the Game Corner.  If you can't find the Game Corner, tough luck) and enter it.  Head all the way to the back and talk to the guy skulking in back.  He'll give you his Coin Case!
(https://d3esbfg30x759i.cloudfront.net/ss/WVW69i-9moQl-5pIK7)
Now that we have this machine of war, we can start gambling it up.  Just kidding, we won't be doing any gambling.  Sorry if I got your hopes up.  Once we've entered the game corner, head north and pick up the 100 coins invisible on the ground, then talk to the nerdy man just down and to the left for 20 more coins.
(https://d3esbfg30x759i.cloudfront.net/ss/WVW69i-9opcDK4DWZh)(https://d3esbfg30x759i.cloudfront.net/ss/WVW69i-9r4QsYI1dGx)
Alright!  We have a whopping 120 coins!  Head into the Exchange Corner to receive a lovely Abra from the counter on the left.  What are we doing with this abra?  FIND OUT NEXT ON...
POKEMON BLUE!

Top of the morning to you all!  Oh, it's not morning.  Sorry, I slept late.  Anyway, let's get started by saving your game.  What?  It's a good habit to get into.  So, what are we doing today?  Well, put down that Abra for a minute and I'll tell you.
We're going shopping!!!  Yep.  So, what are we shopping for?  Here's a rough list:
Fresh Water
Great Ball
Expensive Item worth a bit of money
Enough cheap things to make your bag have 7 items
So once you've budgeted that all out, it's time to head back to Saffron.  Since we have the Fresh Water the guard will let us pass back into Saffron City.  Make sure you've used the Pokémon Center here in Saffron as well.  Head south down towards Vermilion City.  We're going to do something called the "Long-Range Trainer Glitch", or "Trainer-Fly" glitch, depending on whether or not you're a speedrunner.  We're going to use this trainer right here:
(https://d3esbfg30x759i.cloudfront.net/ss/WVW69i-95wk3IKCNkF)
How to perform the LRTG:
0) SAVE YOUR GAME YOU DUMMY
1) Stand just off-screen of a trainer whose range extends all the way.
2) Take a step toward the trainer so that he loads while holding START.
3) Your screen should now look like the picture.  Go ahead and use Abra's teleport.  Turns out you CAN run from trainer battles!
Once you've teleported back to Saffron, head north toward the Dojo.  Once inside, you need to get this guy's attention:
(https://d3esbfg30x759i.cloudfront.net/ss/WVW69i-98eAH5clL_I)

Notice

Make sure you walk around the statues, otherwise the game will freeze.

[close]

Go ahead and let his Machop sweep your team.  You'll end up back in front of the Pokémon Center in Saffron.  Double check that Great Balls are in item slot 6.  Head south towards Vermilion again, but this time you'll be stopped by a disembodied voice saying something about getting stronger.  Weird.  Anyway, this disembodied voice probably wants to battle, so let's fight!

Notice

Well, actually, if you're on a cartridge, the game is probably gonna glitch out and freeze.  If you're on an emulator, it probably won't, but some emulators/ROMs won't support this particular glitch very well.  If you're on the Virtual Console, you've got nothing to fear.  If you ARE on a cartridge, it'll just take a few tries, but the more you do it the easier it gets.  Almost as if your game is sentient and getting "used to it".

[close]

Ok, I want you to take a deep breath.  MISSINGNO. WILL NOT HURT YOUR GAME.  It does glitch out the current Hall of Fame, but that's irrelevant to our interests.
(https://d3esbfg30x759i.cloudfront.net/ss/WVW69i-9_4w3xJI_fc)
Alrighty, you know what we're gonna do here?  We're gonna weaken MISSINGNO. a bit, preferably with your Bulbasaur's Tackle.  Careful though, MISSINGNO. knows Sky Attack!  Now, open up your bag and swap out Great Balls (which you now have 129 of!) with that expensive item so that the expensive item is now in the 6th slot.  Now you're going to prove how manly you are.  I want you to catch MISSINGNO..  That's right.  Do it.  Otherwise you're a scaredy cat who's too afraid to do anything remotely fun.  DO IT.

Spoiler

(https://d3esbfg30x759i.cloudfront.net/ss/WVW69i--C5kYpKPkgQ)
yeah, no big deal

[close]

Did you catch it?  Good.  Now enjoy the next couple of minutes cause they're pretty cool.  Also, that expensive item that you bought earlier?  You now have 128 of it.

Notice

It's worth noting that the Virtual Console will turn MISSINGNO. into a Rhydon.  I recommend re-nicknaming it MISSINGNO. so that you can keep track of it.

[close]

Let's finish up this part of our journey by going back to Celadon and selling our hard-earned illicit goods for some sweet profit.  In Chapter 4 we'll be stealing candy from a baby (old man?), getting killed by a seasick swordsman, and creeping on a girl alone in her cottage.
On second thought, maybe I just shouldn't tell you what's coming.

Welcome to Chapter 4!  This section is a little bit tricky, so start off by saving your game, then heading north from Saffron City (it's pretty much our base of operations) and hop that ledge that lets you get back into Cerulean City.  Whatever you do, DO NOT USE THE POKEMON CENTER.  Head to the west end of town and enter the building with the backyard.  There's a Rare Candy out back that we're going to steal.
(https://d3esbfg30x759i.cloudfront.net/ss/WVW69i_v2nIY5-v6E-)
After getting our Candy, head north towards Nugget Bridge and allow your rival to "smell ya later".  Upon dying, we warp back to Saffron City to begin the MISSINGNO. glitch again, this time soothing our sweet tooth by multiplying our Rare Candies.
Once you've multiplied whichever items you need, head west to Celadon and enter the Dept. Store.  On the third floor, talk to the person behind the counter to get a Poke Doll.  While you're here, you might as well get an evolutionary stone or two.
(https://d3esbfg30x759i.cloudfront.net/ss/WVW69jMP1YoH48n4qE)
Since we're in Celadon, we might as well get our hands on an Eevee.  Head around to the back of Celadon Mansion and climb the stairs to the top and get that Eevee.  Evolve it if you want, level it up as well.  You'll be using it to speed through the game.
Now that we have our fluffy killing machine, it's time to get serious.  Head back to Cerulean City and right everyone who's ever wronged you.  Kill Misty.  Kill Turtle (your rival).  Kill Nugget Bridge.  Kill Bill.  Wait, don't kill him.  We need him.  If you want a Mew, don't head north past Nugget Bridge just yet.  First, use Cerulean City's Pokemon Center (and make sure you have Poke Balls!).  Then once you've beaten Nugget Bridge, head to the left with extreme caution.  There's a long-range trainer here that you can use to set off a LRTG with your Abra.  Go ahead and do that (you warp back to Cerulean because we used the Center ;) ) then head back up past Nugget Bridge, then east until you battle a Youngster with a level 17 Slowpoke.  Go ahead and kill him, Teleport back to the Pokemon Center, head back north to Nugget Bridge, and watch the magic happen.

Now that you've got your very own Mew, we can do a couple things.  The first is to talk to Bill to get access to the S.S. Anne, which is definitely something we can do.  But if you want to break the game a little more, save your game and wait for the next Chapter!

...Well, I suppose we can do a little bit more. 
(https://d3esbfg30x759i.cloudfront.net/ss/WVW69jMP54EewqIN-a)
Head back to Saffron City, then east to Lavender Town and scale Pokemon Tower.  Blow up your rival with assorted high-grade explosives, then continue up to the Marowak Ghost.  Use the Poke Doll to bypass needing that stupid Silph Scope and rescue Mr. Fuji.  For your concern, he grants you a cute little flute that you can use to get to Fuchsia City.
(https://d3esbfg30x759i.cloudfront.net/ss/WVW69jMP8x0geiigeY)
Man, Fuchsia is spelled REALLY weird.  Until next time, where we become Blue Jesus!

Hello, welcome to Chapter 5!  Save your game!
(https://d3esbfg30x759i.cloudfront.net/ss/WVW69j2QbLQP-L47bS)
So, if you've been keeping up with the guide, you should have quite a few high leveled pokemon.  However, that's not all we need.  We also need an Escape Rope, to make sure we don't get stuck.
Don't worry about it, it'll be fine!  Alright, so now we need to travel to Fuchsia City.  Just outside Fuchsia is a route full of Venonats and Bellsprouts.  Go ahead and let them use PoisonPowder on your Pokemon.  This Pokemon needs to be very powerful, like in its level 60's or 70's.

(https://d3esbfg30x759i.cloudfront.net/ss/WVW69jMnbXM_74X90z)

Anyway, once you've done that, head back to Fuchsia's Pokemon Center and deposit all your Pokemon (except for the poisoned one).  Then, head to the Safari Zone.
(https://d3esbfg30x759i.cloudfront.net/ss/WVW69jMYCMASf1peG5)

Heck yeah we'd like to join the hunt!  Once we're in the Safari Zone, head back inside, select NO, and save and reset your game.
(https://d3esbfg30x759i.cloudfront.net/ss/WVW69jMncDcXhVtiBS)

Once we reload our game, leave the Safari Zone... or try.  The guard will be confused and somehow not recognize you.  Go ahead and tell him no, you would not like to pay twice, and leave the Safari Zone.  Head down toward the Pokemon Center area with the ledge and walk along the entire length of it until your Safari Zone steps are almost up.

Notice

It may be beneficial to save your game constantly during this part of the glitch so as not to screw up or done goof.

[close]

When you have one step left, jump off the ledge and you should stop right in midair.
(https://d3esbfg30x759i.cloudfront.net/ss/WVW69jMsa2EBO3HTpR)

Coming back down to Earth we find ourselves yet again in the Safari Zone, but this time, something's different...

(https://d3esbfg30x759i.cloudfront.net/ss/WVW69j2QdZUyBJfIT4)
Yeah... I don't think that's supposed to happen.  Oh well, let's roll with it.  Keep walking around our confines until your super overpowered Pokemon faints.  We awaken in front of the Pokemon Center to find our strange abilities have not yet left us!  Let's put this power to good use and do dumb stuff... like walk on water, all the way to Cinnabar Island!

(https://d3esbfg30x759i.cloudfront.net/ss/WVW69jM10-IYFmFkZT)

notice

Be careful where you walk, some tiles don't actually exist and will cause the game to crash.  You'll get the hang of it.

[close]

We're going to replicate this glitch multiple times to access the following gyms:
(https://d3esbfg30x759i.cloudfront.net/ss/WVW69jM11YQOeHFj9x)(https://d3esbfg30x759i.cloudfront.net/ss/WVW69jM13TwTaGX5_N)(https://d3esbfg30x759i.cloudfront.net/ss/WVW69jMnir8hJ-QpiS)

caution

We need an escape rope to leave Saffron City's gym, because the Rocket grunt will not leave.

[close]

And that's literally all there is to it!  Once you've gotten all 7 badges (Misty, Erika, Sabrina, Blaine, Giovanni, Koga, and Lt Surge), it's time to face our ultimate battle.

but it's not the end and it's not that challenging