I just reached Koga in Pokemon Blue and I need to tell this story.
I don't have any Pokemon that are good against Psychic types. I remembered that Koga's gym also used Poison so I put Quake (my Sandslash) at the front of my party and hoped for the best. He was only level 34 when I reached the gym leader. I wasn't sure if I could beat him, but I decided to give it a try.
His first mon was a level 37 Koffing. Since I'm playing Blue I didn't have to worry about levitate, so I smashed him with dig.
Next he sent out a level 39 Muk. Two digs.
Another level 37 Koffing. Took him out with dig.
By now I was starting to remember more about Koga. I remembered that I used to spend a lot of time grinding around his gym because I always had a tough time with him. I was starting to wonder what was so difficult about him.
Finally, he sent out his last mon: a level 43 Weezing. This bastard had almost 10 levels on me. No one on my team even came close. Luckily I still had a full team at this point, so I felt confident I could beat him, but I decided to keep Quake out and see how much damage I could do.
Koga used self destruct. It was like he knew he couldn't win, but he wanted to spite me by robbing Quake of valuable xp. I was pissed.
Quake lived with 23 hp to spare and leveled up.
