In Ruby and Sapphire, we say goodbye to Team Rocket and are instead confronted with not one but two villainous organizations vying for supremacy on the island of Hoenn: Team Aqua and Team Magma. Sapphire pits you against Team Aqua while Team Magma exists on the edge of the plot and doesn’t really do anything, while the situation is reversed in Ruby. The more complicated plot of Emerald tosses you into confrontations with both teams, because really they’re both pretty crazy. See, Team Aqua and Team Magma aren’t simple criminals like Team Rocket and, theoretically anyway, they aren’t in it for the money. Their plans revolve around the climate of Hoenn and of the rest of the world – specifically, how it might be improved. Team Aqua love the sea, because the sea is where life began, and want to deepen the world’s oceans, while Team Magma love the land, because the land is where more diverse and complex life forms arose, and want to expand the world’s landmass. Continue reading “Team Aqua and Team Magma”
Month: Jun 2011
Team Rocket (part 2 of 2)
Let’s recap: Team Rocket disbands following the events of Red and Blue, squirming from the embarrassment of having their criminal empire taken down by what amounts to an angry, homeless, ten-year-old amateur toreador. Where police, private security companies and government agencies failed, your character succeeds – I will leave it to you to decide whether this is a reflection on the awesomeness of the average Japanese ten-year-old or the uselessness of the average Japanese law enforcer. Let’s not poke holes in the plot though; it’s shaky enough as it is and probably can’t take much more. Let’s look instead at what happens three years after Giovanni dissolves his organization, when Team Rocket returns in force, this time in the western province of Johto. Continue reading “Team Rocket (part 2 of 2)”
Team Rocket (part 1 of 2)
So, the wireless internet here in Greece totally doesn’t suck that much, so I’m going to start a five-part special (code: four-week period in which I write as much in seven days as I usually do in three) on the human villains of the Pokémon series – and where could I possibly start but with Team Rocket?
Team Rocket, as everyone with even a passing familiarity with Pokémon knows, are the series’ main villains, showing up in Red/Blue/Yellow, Gold/Silver/Crystal, and the more recent remakes of those games, Fire Red/Leaf Green and Heart Gold/Soul Silver. They are also the regular antagonists of the TV show, in the form of the bungling Jessie and James and their long-suffering Pokémon companion Meowth. I’m not going to talk about Jessie and James, a goldmine of comic relief though they may be, because this is really supposed to be about the games and they only show up in Yellow, which is based on the TV show to some extent. Continue reading “Team Rocket (part 1 of 2)”
Basculin
All right, so there’s these two fish, and they hate each other. Okay, Game Freak, I like where you’re going with this. What else?
Oh, you mean that’s it? All right, well, what do the two fish evolve into?
…nothing? That’s… err… nice. So, uh, what differences are there between the two fish?
…there’s a red one and a blue one.
*facepalm*
Today on Pokémaniacal I have the dubious pleasure of discussing Basculin. There are red Basculin and blue Basculin, and they hate each other. That’s really all there is to it, and to be honest even that seems to be open to interpretation; the Pokédex entry for Basculin on Black version says that red and blue ones will start fighting the instant they meet, but the entry on White version contends that Basculin sometimes do mingle with schools of the opposite colour, despite normally hating each other. So, to make this clear… the only vaguely amusing thing about these Pokémon is that they hate each other… and they don’t even hate each other all that much! We don’t know why they hate each other – well, actually, they seem to hate just about everything, but we don’t know why they hate each other particularly – nor do we have any reason to care since there’s nothing else interesting about them. Continue reading “Basculin”
Venipede, Whirlipede and Scolipede
After having Sewaddle, Swadloon and Leavanny show the Bug/Grass dual-types of yester-year how it’s done, it’s time to try pushing our luck and seeing whether we can do the same for the half-dozen assorted worthless Bug/Poison Pokémon. Here’s the latest addition to this already overfull type combination: Venipede. To be honest, I don’t have a whole lot to say about Venipede or his evolved form, Whirlipede. Their main defining feature is that they’re extraordinarily ill-tempered. Beedrill were ill-tempered too, of course, but that was something they grew into – Weedle are perfectly sweet, if disturbingly pointy – and it was mainly about defending their nests from predators anyway. Venipede, on the other hand, have deep personal grudges against just about everything, which they express by repeatedly and insistently poisoning you. Continue reading “Venipede, Whirlipede and Scolipede”
Sewaddle, Swadloon and Leavanny
I knew it was coming. When Game Freak put together Black and White, they decided to abandon all existing Pokémon in favour of new ones, which meant it was once again time to get out their sheets of formulae on how to design standard, comfortable everyday Pokémon, and one of these old standards is the caterpillar Pokémon. So it is that we come to meet the obligatory caterpillar, Sewaddle, the obligatory cocoon, Swadloon, and the obligatory butterfly, Leava-
Wait. That’s not a butterfly. That’s a leaf insect.
Praise the gods, they did something different! Continue reading “Sewaddle, Swadloon and Leavanny”
Pokémaniacal 