Celadon City: Erika's Gym, the Game Corner and Giovanni's Hideout

Celadon City wears many hats: a Grass-type Gym, the biggest department store in Kanto and a Game Corner whose basement serves as Team Rocket's secret base. Its boss, Giovanni, battles the player there for the very first time, and along the way the anime turned the city into the capital of perfume.

Contents

• Celadon City, home of Erika and the Rainbow Badge
• The Celadon Game Corner and its coin games
• The Team Rocket Hideout, hidden beneath the Game Corner
• Department store, Celadon Condominiums and other places to visit
• What changes in Celadon City from one game to the next
• Celadon City in the anime
• Celadon City at a glance
• Frequently Asked Questions

Celadon City, home of Erika and the Rainbow Badge

In Kanto, Celadon City can be reached by two routes: Route 16 on the west side and Route 7 on the east. You visit it in Red and Blue, Yellow, Gold and Silver, Crystal, then in the remakes FireRed and LeafGreen and HeartGold and SoulSilver, and finally in Pokémon Let's Go, Pikachu and Let's Go, Eevee, spanning five generations of games. You can Surf across its central pond, and a tree you have to cut down stands near a dead end to the east.

Its Gym, devoted to the Grass type, is one of Kanto's eight. Erika is its Gym Leader; whatever the game, beating her earns you the Rainbow Badge. HeartGold and SoulSilver even get her out of her Gym: on weekends you'll find her by the fountain between 3 and 5 p.m., and she's happy to give the player her number there. With her contact saved, head back to the same spot on a Monday for a souvenir photo together.

Like its English name, Celadon City, the French name Céladopole comes from a color: it combines céladon (celadon), a shade of green, with polis, the Greek word for city. Other languages also stick to colors: the Japanese Tamamushi evokes the green wing cases of certain beetles, the Italian Azzurropoli and the Spanish Ciudad Azulona opt for azure, while the German Prismania City and the Chinese and Korean names refer to a prism or a rainbow. The city sign plays on the same image with its rainbow-colored dreams, which become sweeping rainbows in HeartGold and SoulSilver.

The Celadon Game Corner and its coin games

No other Game Corner exists in Kanto: this one, which Red, Blue and Yellow as well as FireRed and LeafGreen call the Rocket Game Corner, closely resembles the one in Goldenrod City, in Johto. You buy coins there, 50 for 1,000 Pokémon Dollars, or 500 for 10,000 from the second to the fourth generation, then try to grow your stack so you can walk away with TMs, items or even Pokémon, which you collect in the building next door, on the right. To hold on to your coins, you'd better stop by the city's restaurant first: it hands out the Coin Case, called Boîte Jeton in the French first-generation games and renamed Boîte Jetons in FireRed and LeafGreen.

Alongside the slot machines, Gold, Silver and Crystal add a card game that the other generations don't have. The slots' jackpot, 300 coins, comes from lining up three 7s, and when the last one falls just short, a few Golem sometimes come crashing onto the screen to force it into place, though not every time; you play one to three lines, at one coin per line. One of the machines is said to be lucky, and the player who usually sits at it leaves it free in the morning. In the card game, the deck has 24 cards, each pairing one of four Pokémon with a number from 1 to 6: betting on an exact card every time turns out to be profitable in the long run, with an estimated return of more than 34%.

HeartGold and SoulSilver keep their slot machines only in Japan; everywhere else, they give way to Voltorb Flip, a cousin of Minesweeper. The board's 25 tiles, laid out in a five-by-five square, each hide either a multiplier from 1 to 3 that boosts your winnings or a Voltorb that ends the game on the spot and wipes out the coins you've built up. At the end of each row and column, the sum of the numbers and the count of Voltorb guide the player, who would do well to clear the safe rows first.

The Team Rocket Hideout, hidden beneath the Game Corner

In Red, Blue and Yellow as well as in FireRed and LeafGreen, the Game Corner is only a facade: its basement houses the base of Team Rocket for the entire region. Getting in takes some effort: in the main hall, a poster hides a switch, and the Grunt standing guard attacks the player as soon as they try to press it; once beaten, he leaves the stairs to the basement floors clear.

The hideout goes down four basement floors. Arrow tiles cover the second and third: step on one and you spin around and slide off wherever the arrows point. The elevator in the southeast serves every level, but you first have to get its key from the Grunt guarding it on the lowest floor. At the end, in the boss's office, Giovanni sends out Onix, Rhyhorn and Kangaskhan, or a Persian in its place in Yellow, where Jessie and James also step in. His defeat puts into the player's hands the Silph Scope, the device that finally lets the ghosts in the Pokémon Tower of Lavender Town reveal who they really are.

In both Let's Go games, a kidnapping leads to the hideout: while visiting the Pokémon Tower in Lavender Town, the player learns that a Cubone has been kidnapped, and it's by the arcade machines of the Rocket Game Corner, the place's new facade, that they track down the kidnappers. What follows stays true to the original versions, with one extra encounter as early as the first basement floor: Steffie Fatale, an undercover spy who is named only in the French version, gives the player a Team Rocket Set there. Down at the bottom, you face in turn a double battle against Jessie and James, Team Rocket Admin Archer, whom you have to defeat to free Cubone, and finally Giovanni, down to a Persian-and-Rhyhorn duo. Once you've beaten the Pokémon League, four Master Trainers set up in the hideout, and Archer offers a battle every day in Giovanni's office.

🚀 Team Rocket hid its base beneath Celadon City's gaming tables: find the organization in our Team Rocket collection.

Department store, Celadon Condominiums and other places to visit

In the northwest of the city stands the department store, a Poké Mart that is the largest in the entire region. The guards blocking access to Saffron City are thirsty, and it's in Celadon City, in Red, Blue and Yellow as well as in their remakes, that the player finds something to quench their thirst: a drink that finally opens the way into the neighboring city.

It's in the Celadon Condominiums, also known as Celadon Mansion, that a completed Pokédex earns the player a Diploma: the building actually houses the offices of GAME FREAK, the studio that develops the games, and several team members chat with visitors there. Its ground floor also fell victim to localization: outside Japan, the butsudan, a Buddhist altar seen in Red and Blue, passes itself off as a sculpture of a Diglett, as Nintendo of America at the time rejected any religious reference. In Let's Go, Brock waits in front of the building to offer Tea and Pewter Crunchies.

The Pokémon Center gains depth in Let's Go. A partner tutor there teaches signature moves to the player's partner Pokémon: Floaty Fall for Pikachu, Glitzy Glow or Baddy Bad for Eevee. A Picnicker trades, as many times as you like, her Alolan Sandshrew for a Sandshrew in Let's Go, Pikachu, or her Alolan Vulpix for a Vulpix in Let's Go, Eevee. Finally, a fortune-teller asks which flower you would water and which you would pull up; those two choices affect, until the end of the day, the nature that the wild Pokémon you run into will most often have.

What changes in Celadon City from one game to the next

The Game Corner's prizes vary by version. Porygon is almost always the most expensive Pokémon there, at up to 9,999 coins, except in Crystal, where Larvitar tops it: 8,888 coins for a level 40. Red and FireRed offer Scyther, Blue and LeafGreen Pinsir, and Yellow offers both, along with Vulpix and Wigglytuff. Gold and Silver, like HeartGold and SoulSilver, showcase Mr. Mime and Eevee.

The city itself changes too. Its population fluctuates from one generation to the next: 81 residents in Red, Blue and Yellow, 63 in Gold, Silver and Crystal, 82 in FireRed and LeafGreen, 68 in HeartGold and SoulSilver. In the pond, you can fish up Poliwag or Goldeen in the first generation; when you Surf there, Gold, Silver and Crystal offer only Grimer and Muk, while FireRed has Psyduck and LeafGreen Slowpoke. As for the man standing behind the pond, he gives TM41 to anyone who reaches him with Surf in Red, Blue and Yellow, then TM26 in Let's Go, where you need Sea Skim to get to him.

Other visits exist in only one game. Crystal places Eusine, who grew up in Celadon City, in the Pokémon Center; once Raikou, Entei and Suicune have joined the player's team or PC, he tells them about a sighting of Ho-Oh at Tin Tower, where he fully intends to go. In HeartGold and SoulSilver, Cameron photographs the team in front of the fountain on Tuesdays and Fridays; FireRed and LeafGreen hide a Move Tutor at the edge of the pond whom only Surf can reach, and who teaches Soft-Boiled to just one Pokémon. Finally, Yellow fixed an oddity from Red and Blue: in the hotel lobby, designed like a Pokémon Center, sat an invisible PC that nonetheless worked without the slightest hitch.

Celadon City in the anime

The animated series makes Celadon City the city of perfume, a dense metropolis bristling with skyscrapers. Glimpsed at the very end of "Primeape Goes Bananas" (EP025), it takes center stage in "Pokémon Scent-sation!" (EP026), where Ash Ketchum shows up at Erika's Gym, in the middle of the first season.

Much later, "Chikorita's Big Upset" (EP136) gives the city a university, and Professor Oak, we learn in "Fossil Fools" (EP163), once taught there himself.

The spin-off series come back to it as well. In "The Chase," an episode of Pokémon Generations, the International Police raid the Game Corner, which served as Team Rocket's piggy bank: several members end up arrested, and the Pokémon held there are set free. Pokémon Origins, for its part, opens its "File 3: Giovanni" in the Team Rocket Hideout. Red frees captive Pokémon there, then finds himself for the first time face to face with the leader of Team Rocket.

Celadon City at a glance

Frequently Asked Questions

• What type of Pokémon does the Celadon City Gym use?
  The Grass type. Erika, its Gym Leader, gives the Rainbow Badge to those who beat her, in every game the city appears in.
• How do you get into the Team Rocket Hideout in Celadon City?
  In Red, Blue, Yellow, FireRed and LeafGreen, a poster in the Game Corner hides a switch guarded by a Grunt you have to beat before you can press it. In Let's Go, you follow the kidnappers of a Cubone taken from Lavender Town all the way to the Rocket Game Corner.
• Which Pokémon can you get at the Celadon Game Corner?
  It depends on the game: Porygon, Abra, Dratini, Scyther or Pinsir in the first generation; Mr. Mime, Eevee and Porygon in Gold and Silver; Pikachu, Porygon and Larvitar in Crystal.
• What can you find in the Celadon Condominiums?
  The offices of GAME FREAK. A completed Pokédex earns the player a Diploma there, and several members of the development team chat with them.
• What is Celadon City known for in the anime?
  Its perfumes. It appears as a dense city covered in skyscrapers, with a university where Professor Oak once taught.

In short

In Celadon City, only a few streets separate a Badge, a Game Corner and a first showdown with Giovanni. Games of chance, prizes and residents change from one generation to the next, but the city remains the stop where you stock up before the next leg of the adventure, and the anime added a fragrant touch.