Anonymous asks:

Bulbasaur is slightly curious, no? Why do you think the devs decided to give a starting Pokemon a dual type? It risked confusing new players, and there’s nothing about the design that particularly screams “Poison-type” anyway.

Ehhhh I don’t know about that. Poison has no interactions with Fire and Water, so it doesn’t mess with the basic starter trio at all, which is how they teach type interactions, and new players will meet dual-type Pokémon on literally the first route anyway (Pidgey is Normal/Flying). It’s true that Bulbasaur doesn’t really need to be Poison-type, and I’m tempted to put that down to Game Freak not having finished figuring out what Grass-types actually were yet. Continue reading “Anonymous asks:” →

Anonymous asks:

I’ve got a challenge for you, if you have the time! Your hatred for Nosepass and Probopass is legendary around these parts of Tumblr (by which I mean your blog). How then would you ‘fix’ them to make them more interesting to you? So a challenge along the lines of your suggested improvements for the Top Ten Worst Pokémon! (don’t worry, we’ll do good ol’ Garbodor another day)

ohhhhhhhhhh goddddddddd

whyyyyyyyy

Okay, well… part of the problem is, the most interesting thing about Nosepass and Probopass is probably their link to the cardinal directions, but that link goes through the dumbest thing about Nosepass and Probopass – their giant red magnetic noses. Also, it’s just bizarre to have a Pokémon that can only ever face directly north (how do they even fight like that?), and I kind of want some excuse to give them multiple faces, so that they “face” both north and south, or in all four cardinal directions, but then doing that would force us to abandon the cool moai inspiration. Continue reading “Anonymous asks:” →

Anonymous asks:

The Gen I Fighting-types are all martial artists or athletes, but.. what the heck makes Primeape a Fighting-type? Can’t be its temper because hey, Gyarados ain’t a Fighting-type. If anything its temper should make it a Dark-type, along the lines of Tyranitar, Sharpedo, or Hydreigon.

Well, there was no Dark-type in generation I, and to be honest I think that’s probably the main reason Primeape isn’t Dark/Fighting or something (that’s probably what I would do with him). Given that Primeape is humanoid in shape and has no particularly spectacular magical abilities, it makes sense that his fighting style would wind up having some resemblance to martial arts techniques, even though Primeape doesn’t appear to be influenced by an specific martial art like many other Fighting Pokémon are.

Anonymous asks:

Can you offer a reasoned guess behind the Dark secondary typing to Crawdaunt & the star-shaped crest included in its design? Bulbapedia suggests “Crawdaunt’s shell may be based on batesian mimicry in association with Sharpedo, as it resembles an open shark mouth with a star on the nose.”

Well, the Dark type has to do with Crawdaunt’s violent, aggressive nature and its habit of driving other Pokémon away from its territory. Dark Pokémon are linked with malice, so fighting purely for the sake of violence (contrast Fighting-types, who fight to improve their skills) seems like a reasonable Dark-type trait. You can compare here Tyranitar, Hydreigon, and Incineroar. As for the star thing, I don’t think I’d read too much into it. It looks like a starfish, and Crawdaunt is an aquatic Pokémon, so the motif is on-theme. It looks a little like a crown, which expresses Crawdaunt’s higher status compared to Corphish. It adds a little more variety to the colours of the design, and some interest to the contours of Crawdaunt’s head. I don’t think it needs to be more than that.

Monstarfunk asks:

you don’t like oranguru??? why is it the stalker pokémon??

I didn’t say I didn’t like Oranguru, but it is indisputably the Stalker Pokémon.

Go to Tapu Village and check out the oasis area with the caravans. Next to the oasis, there is a man who will confide in you that he “[feels] like someone’s eyes are burning into the back of [his] head” and that it’s “giving [him] the creeps!” Directly behind him, hiding behind an old oil drum, is an Oranguru. Watching him. Just… watching.

Anonymous asks:

In your opinion, what Pokémon best represent each type and what they’re all about? So like, what’s the most representative Normal-type, Ice-type, Dragon, Ghost, Fairy, Ground, and so on?

Hmmm… wellllll, I’m going to hedge my bets by saying that there are several types, like Normal and Ground, where I don’t know “what they’re all about” and I’m honestly not sure a convincing answer exists, perhaps not even in the minds of Game Freak’s designers, but let’s give it a shot… Continue reading “Anonymous asks:” →

Rockcutter64 asks:

Since they seemed to have abandoned mega evolution for the moment, any idea what you’d do with megas of the 2nd gen starters?

Not really… I’ve never been wild about any of the generation II starter Pokémon (not even Meganium, who enjoys the benefit of my blanket fondness for all Grass Pokémon), and honestly I don’t really like designing mega evolutions very much. Typhlosion in generation VII actually got an interesting little almost-signature-move (she shares it with Moltres, and it can be bred into Growlithe, but hey, who’s counting?) – Burn Up, which gives you one really powerful Fire attack and then strips you of your Fire type, which in Typhlosion’s case makes her typeless. I’d sort of like to give Meganium and Feraligatr something new to match, and then maybe these putative mega forms could have new abilities that mesh with the signature moves somehow. For Typhlosion, you could have her automatically regain her Fire type at the end of the turn after losing it (for any reason – Burn Up, but also Soak, or anything else added to the game in the future that can cause a Pokémon to lose its original type) and increase her special attack whenever that happens. Meganium ought to have something better than Sweet Scent that emphasises her ability to quell violence and conflict or restore life… maybe a kind of mass Wish, a delayed full restore that affects everything in play, with an ability that causes all healing from Meganium’s moves to recur one turn later, with reduced effect. And Feraligatr can just… I don’t know, be able to bite everything in half, or whatever.

Anonymous asks:

Is it just me or have Psychic types really gone through an overhaul? In the first generation it was populated by bizarre, unnatural creatures like Mr Mime, Hypno, Exeggutor, and Starmie and now it’s basically the generic legendary type.

Well, I mean, I agree completely with your assertion that French mimes are bizarre and unnatural, but other than that, I don’t think so. Inkay and Malamar the mind-controlling land-squid in VI fit the bill of “bizarre and unnatural” to me, and V had Gothitelle, Sigilyph, Reuniclus and Beheeyem. I think partly you’re maybe just noticing that there are very few Psychic-types in generation VII. Like… Cosmog, Cosmoem, Solgaleo and Lunala are basically all one thing, then there’s that freaky prism demon, and Tapu Lele, and other than that, there’s… what, Bruxish and Oranguru? And honestly Oranguru (a.k.a. the Stalker Pokémon) gives me the creeps every bit as much as Hypno ever did.

Anonymous asks:

People wonder why Psyduck isn’t a Psychic-type, and I do too, but why isn’t it a Flying-type? It’s a bird, and all other generation I birds are part Flying-type (including Farfetch’d, who is also a duck, and Doduo/Dodrio, who are also flightless).

I think this may in fact be the best argument for thinking that Psyduck is not a duck at all, but a platypus, which I know people have suggested. There’s an important caveat here that even at the best of times Game Freak doesn’t quite seem to know what the Flying type actually is, and frankly neither do I, but other than the beak there’s not a lot which is especially ducklike about Psyduck. He has arms and webbed hands rather than wings (likewise Golduck), learns no Flying-type or bird-themed attacks aside from Aerial Ace (which… look, just f&$% Aerial Ace), and his body doesn’t really look feathery the way most bird Pokémon do.

Anonymous asks:

Do you have any feminine and masculine Pokémon designs that you’re fond of? Or not so fond of? For example, for feminine designs I really like Roselia, Froslass, and Primarina, but I’m not a fan of Jynx or Lopunny. For masculine designs, I’m very fond of all of the Gen IV Fighting-types (minus Toxicroak), but not Machamp or Diggersby. Hm. Maybe I just don’t like rabbits… What about you?

Eh, I think to some extent what counts as “masculine” or “feminine” is probably pretty subjective, and I don’t think the designers consciously intended for all of those to be strongly one or the other. Like, Lopunny or Jynx, sure, but I never thought of Toxicroak as unusually “masculine,” and Toxicroak, Diggersby and Roselia in the games actually have a 50/50 gender split (then again, so does Lopunny). Also my brain sometimes parses the masculinity/femininity of Pokémon designs in weird ways (Hawlucha and Typhlosion are definitely feminine to me) that I wouldn’t necessarily expect other people to share. So I just don’t think it’s all that useful a category for thinking about Pokémon designs unless the in-game gender ratios suggest that it’s consciously being invoked.