Big rules here, little rules down there, let’s go.

Here we are, back in Veilstone City, ready to raid the Team Galactic HQ.

Continue reading “Pearl Kingslocke: Episode 21” →

Big rules here, little rules down there, let’s go.

Where were we?  Oh yes.  The Frozen North!

Oh, you flirt; stop it! 😉

(but seriously, no, keep going)

Continue reading “Pearl Kingslocke: Episode 20” →

Big rules here, little rules down there, let’s go.

So – last time I’d just finished training a moderately competent team on Iron Island out of the Pokémon assigned to me by the Devil (look, this is just the kind of phrase you wind up using in this run; deal with it), only to draw the Five of Pentacles when I entered the gym and learn that I won’t be allowed to use any female Pokémon.

Well, first things first: Judy, Sunfire and Gran Nite have to get back in the kitchen, along with all my other female Pokémon.

More importantly, Justice is still in play, and some slots just opened up in my party, so guess who’s coming back?

Continue reading “Pearl Kingslocke: Episode 19” →

Big rules here, little rules down there, let’s go.

Look, I know everyone was eager to see me take on Canalave City with only a drastically underlevelled Blissey and Girafarig, an Unown and a Blizzard/Slam Quagsire, but I felt like I had to do just a teensy bit of off-screen grinding, maybe not quite enough to get Du Fromage and Anna up to the levels of the old team, but enough for them to be… well, competent.

Yeah, I guess that’ll do.

Continue reading “Pearl Kingslocke: Episode 18” →

Big rules here, little rules down there, let’s go.

We now have access to Surf, which lets us go to not just Canalave City but several other side paths and hidden areas throughout Sinnoh, including one or two that are big enough to be worth drawing cards for.  So let’s have a little exploration episode with no dumb plot $#!t.

Continue reading “Pearl Kingslocke: Episode 17” →

Big rules here, little rules down there, let’s go.

So there’s a Team Galactic goon here being a goon and doing goon things.  Maybe Cynthia knew all about this and realised someone had to go and deal with it, but didn’t want to have to speak to her grandmother, so she engineered a bull$#!t pretext for the player to go to Celestic Town instead.

Continue reading “Pearl Kingslocke: Episode 16” →

Big rules here, little rules down there, let’s go.

I may have a bizarre Johto-only half-team, but I can still enjoy my small victories.

Continue reading “Pearl Kingslocke: Episode 15” →

Rules here.

Last time, we’d just drawn the Ten of Wands, giving the first commenter a chance to change the rules.  Let’s see what we got…

So, commenter and esteemed Patreon supporter hugh_donnetono has chosen the path of chaos.

Perhaps the meaning of this comment and rule change is not immediately clear to you.  Hugh_donnetono has mostly just removed several rules I had to follow – is this not good?  But observe.

Continue reading “Pearl Kingslocke: Episode 14” →

Big rules here, little rules down there, let’s go.

(Also, I’ve just remembered that the Eight of Cups should have actually been put up on the board when I drew it a couple of episodes ago, to remind us that Andi has to stay in the Mate Crate and that there should currently be only three Eights in the deck; I’ll add it next time)

INTO THE MARSH!

Continue reading “Pearl Kingslocke: Episode 13” →

Big rules here, little rules down there, let’s go.

Something really funny about Diamond and Pearl is that they come at a point in the Pokémon series before anyone had actually made Game Freak stop putting fµ¢£ing casinos in all their games for small children, but after Nintendo had kinda figured out they should probably tone down the gambling references, at least for the international market (and, y’know, also long before the emerging mobile games industry would totally normalise the idea of designing video games to get children to gamble).  Thus, we have the PI (Private Investigator) trainer class.  These guys are shown tossing coins in their sprites and their dialogue is all about luck, chance and guessing, which makes them seem like pretty rubbish private investigators.  They also use a lot of very luck-heavy moves – Carlos here has three Goldeen, all of whom know Horn Drill.  This is because, in the original Japanese, they’re not investigators.  They’re gamblers – a trainer class that appears in the Kanto games, both original and remakes, and returns in Let’s Go Pikachu and Eevee renamed “gamers.”  The generation IV gambler just happened to have this noir-style sprite with the long coat and fedora that could believably be renamed “PI” in translations – not a switch you could easily pull with the generation III gambler, who is an old man with threadbare clothes and a dice cup.

This has nothing to do with the challenge run; I just thought it was important knowledge to share.

Continue reading “Pearl Kingslocke: Episode 12” →