Author: pokemaniacchris

Anonymous asks:

You said you have a Uranium Nuzlocke going; I just wanted to let you know that there is a functional mystery gift feature. I’m not sure how it interacts with nuzlocke mode or if this promotion is still running, but they were distributing a shiny jerbolta (which is actually just sonic the hedgehog) and two items, I believe a destiny knot and a sachet? I’m interested to hear how your nuzlocke progresses regardless of whether you get these gifts or not!

Good to know; I’ll see if I can get it to work.  I think they were having problems with their online features recently due to… I think a DDOS attack or something?  Not sure what it was or whether they’ve fixed it.  But we’ll see.

And, uh… you really don’t want to know how the Nuzlocke is going.  I mean, I’m going to tell you anyway, but it’s… not pretty.

Anonymous asks:

I have to read a paper on “Celtoscepticism” for a Middle Welsh course I’m taking. Archaeology is such a bizarre discipline. How do you guys get anything done?

Well, I don’t know what Celtoscepticism is because Celtic civilisation is very much not my area, but to answer your question with another question… what on earth makes you think we get anything done?

Anonymous asks:

So I saw in one of your recent answers to a question, that you hated Dedenne, and I was just wondering why exactly you hate her? Mostly because I really like her design, and also that she is the only competitively viable Pika-Clone imo due to my Mono-Electric team, where she pulls her own weight pretty well.

Well… I didn’t use the word “hate” and I honestly don’t think I ever have with respect to Dedenne.  She is in some respects more deserving of respect than her predecessors.  Honestly, though, I’ve gotta say that your own endorsement of her as the only competitively viable Pikachu clone is a) not exactly saying much, and b) probably not true; if anyone’s earned that title it’s Pachirisu.  Ultimately, I would have thought that the rest of the post you’re referencing would have made my problem with Dedenne perfectly obvious: it’s not even her fault, really, I just get seriously rubbed up the wrong way by “template” Pokémon, when Game Freak decides to make the same damn Pokémon again and again because it worked so well the first time.  I’ve been done with the whole Pikachu clone thing as a basic idea for about three generations now, and Dedenne did nothing to change my mind.  If you particularly wish to know my thoughts on her in excruciating detail, you can find them here.

We Should Really Talk About Pokémon Uranium

So what the $#!t is Pokémon Uranium?

A fan-made bootleg Pokémon game, some eight years in the making, that was completed and released a few weeks ago.  It runs on what I think is some sort of homebrewed version of the Diamond and Pearl-era game engine hacked together in RPGmaker, with a number of general ease-of-use improvements like multiple save slots, key rebinding (I mean, if you’re playing Pokémon on your computer you can do that anyway through your emulator software, but it’s still nice), and a built-in Nuzlocke mode with a few optional rules.  More importantly, Uranium features a whole new region, Tandor, inhabited by about 200 fan-designed Pokémon as well as many of our old favourites.  It’s not unique in concept, of course, but to my knowledge it is, by a significant margin, the most ambitious project of its kind ever to actually see completion, which sort of makes it worth talking about, and probably even giving some level of playthrough commentary.

Continue reading “We Should Really Talk About Pokémon Uranium” →

The Philosophical Sheep asks:

Wouldn’t swalot be muk 2.0? And garbodor be 3.0?

Well, yes and no.  Swalot’s kinda dull, don’t get me wrong, and in terms of being a Poison-type blob it’s more or less the same idea.  Swalot’s schtick is different, though, in that it doesn’t have Muk’s industrial pollution theme – it’s a totally 100% natural formless blob – and instead is defined mainly by being essentially an ambulatory stomach with a face.

Anonymous asks:

Are you going to do the series where you decide whether a Pokemon is actually good or not for Alola?

Good question.  I mean, I’ll do some sort of individual review for each Pokémon once I’ve played the game, definitely.  I don’t know how much I want those to look like what I did for Unova and Kalos, though.  I think that depends on how I react to the overall feel of the whole group of 7th generation Pokémon.  Like, when I did Unova, a lot of the way I wrote those reviews was the result of my being frustrated about one particular decision and its consequences – namely, that Game Freak chose to use no pre-5th-generation Pokémon in Unova, but simultaneously undercut that decision by including so many designs that felt like one-for-one replacements for 1st-generation Pokémon (this one is here because they couldn’t have Pidgey, this one is here because they couldn’t have Geodude, this one is here because they couldn’t have Muk… etc).  And that’s why I did the whole “I hereby affirm/deny this Pokémon’s right to exist” thing, of course, because I had really strongly polarised feelings about… well, really everything in Black and White, not just the Pokémon designs.  I had very different feelings about Kalos; the Pokémon were… not better, Unova at its best is just as good as Kalos, but more consistent; I had trouble finding anything to seriously dislike in Kalos.  Well.  Except Dedenne.  But f%&k Dedenne.

So yeah, we’ll see what I think of Sun and Moon as a whole and go from there.  Honestly I’m even kind of toying with doing something really weird, like some sort of in-universe in-character discussion of the different Pokémon that just totally jumps off the deep end with respect to, like, being a review.  But I would have to see if I can make that work, or if I even like it.