Jim the Editor has been taking a break for Christmas and New Year’s, but he’s back now, so we’re once again streaming our playthrough of Final Fantasy X, at 9 am Saturday NZ time/8 pm Friday UK time/some time on Friday afternoon US time, idk figure it out yourself. As always, we’d love to see you there!
Gsgdgd asks:
If there were one show you wanted your entire audience to watch, what would it be?
I’m not sure there is one; I don’t watch a lot of TV. Um, I’m watching Schitt’s Creek right now and enjoying that; a little while ago I watched Bojack Horseman, which I thought was fantastic. I watched the first season of Bridgerton with my mum; that was fun. I don’t think any of those amount to “my entire audience should watch this.” Jim the Editor and my brother both want me to watch One Punch Man, but I have yet to start it. None of this answers your question. Um. I dunno, probably Black Books, honestly. It’s a British sitcom about a misanthropic Irish drunkard who owns a bookshop in London (3 seasons of 6 20-minute episodes each). It’s all on Netflix, or here on Youtube if you don’t have Netflix (whoever owns the rights, they don’t seem to care about getting it taken down). The humour is… very 90s/early 00s British, in a way that has not seemed to resonate with Americans I’ve attempted to share the series with in the past, so I wouldn’t guarantee that everyone will like it, but… y’know, give it a go.
Galarian Stunfisk
Well, it’s a bear trap.
I don’t think it’s more than that.
…I have to talk about it anyway, don’t I?
Stunfisk was… a Pokémon I had very mixed feelings about in 2011, then promptly forgot about for most of the next 8 years. But now it’s back with a shiny new Galarian regional form, and I suppose I just have to deal with that. Original recipe Stunfisk’s angle was that it’s a flatfish that hangs out on beaches and mud flats and zaps you if you step on it. It’s like a flounder or plaice mixed with an electric eel – or like a stonefish, that kills you with horrifically painful venom if you step on it – or like a stargazer, which is a fat ugly fish with eyes on the top of its head that isn’t flat like Stunfisk but does bury itself in sand and can produce electric shocks – or like a torpedo ray, which is flat and lives on the sea floor and can zap you but doesn’t really look like a fish-fish – or like a mudskipper that can survive on land because it can breathe air through its skin. It’s a rich tapestry of derpy fish that all come together to produce one supremely derpy derpfish, is the point.
New Stunfisk… is also still a fish, but in addition to being a fish, is a bear trap. So, I guess, let’s talk about bear traps.
Continue reading “Galarian Stunfisk”hugh_donnetono asks:
What’s your opinion on the Beta Sinnoh Pokemon? (especially arceus)
I’m not sure I have an opinion on them, or feel I need to. I mean, a lot of them are placeholders, right? Many of the leaked sprites are just… clearly unfinished; that’s what a beta is. Arceus especially; people meme on beta Arceus, but it seems pretty clear to me that no one ever planned for it to go into the finished game looking anything like that (likewise Rotom). They knew they wanted Arceus to exist, and they had a rough idea what they wanted it to look like, but they hadn’t finalised the design or done proper sprites yet. The only Pokémon that seem to me like they had a genuinely different design in the leaked beta materials – not just unfinished art – are Rampardos, maybe Hippowdon, Lumineon, Lickilicky (back sprite only), Togekiss and the Garchomp line, and most of them… well, yeah, they just kinda look like first drafts of the Pokémon that they are. Beta Rampardos seems a bit less naturalistic, maybe a touch more manic? Beta Togekiss has shades of Latias and Latios, and I do think it looks pretty cool, but I’m not sure it works as an evolution from Togepi and Togetic. Beta Gible, Gabite and Garchomp have different colour palettes and are… I guess my instinct is maybe a bit simpler, a bit more gen I-II-like? They’re fine, I suppose; I think the final designs are more visually interesting.
The one thing I do think is kind of interesting is the mystery Pokémon, Kimairan, that seems to have occupied Giratina’s slot, whose sprite is clearly a draft but looks like a kind of six-legged griffin thing. My guess is, Game Freak knew they were going to have another legendary Pokémon in that slot, but hadn’t quite figured out what the third piece of Space/Time/??? ought to be, or what role they wanted this Pokémon to have in the mythology of Sinnoh. Even the final release of Diamond and Pearl is, in my opinion, pretty noncommittal about what Giratina actually represents (compared to, say, Rayquaza in Ruby and Sapphire or Kyurem in Black and White), so I honestly wonder how much, if any, of Giratina’s role in Platinum was sketched out in advance. Kimairan might have represented… dreams, maybe, or the world, or life, or a fixed point of reference within space-time. Maybe at this stage of the beta they didn’t even know they wanted this mystery Pokémon to be part of a trio with Dialga and Palkia yet, and it was just something completely different. The point is, I think they probably ditched Kimairan and created Giratina because something clicked about the way they wanted to tell the story of generation IV, and they realised that the Pokémon they’d made wasn’t right for the role they needed.
[This question was promoted to the front of the queue because the submitter is supporting me on Patreon! If you enjoy my writing and like getting my answers to cosmic dilemmas like this one – or just think I deserve something nice for my work – consider visiting https://www.patreon.com/pokemaniacal and signing up!]
A Pokémon Trainer is You! XXXI: Firestarter
[Catch up on the story so far here!]
Last time, on A Pokémon Trainer Is You:
Try to remember the other guy’s name?
- You already know his name; the Narrator’s being a jerk
Excuse you, I am a fµ¢£ing delight. But whatever, if it’s that important to you I guess I’ll put in an effort. What’d you say his name was? “Blue”? God that’s so fµ¢£ing dumb. Blue is, like, at best a passable name for a small predatory dinosaur. Kids got no damn business being named Blue. Who gave him that, his dumb parents? Probably named him that so he’d be, like, “calm” and “sensible” or some bull$#!t? Ugh, no wonder he’s such a basket case. We gotta see about changing it.
Yeah, yeah, whatever, I heard you, get off my ass already.
Which Pokémon do you try to catch?
- Try to find the source of the fires [you might not catch anything]
Aren’t you supposed to be, like… doing… something? Eh, whatever, not like it’s any of my business. Scallion and your other Pokémon have a pretty vague and subjective concept of time, and Blue has no sense of responsibility or commitment. Besides, you’ve made surprisingly good time this far, so if you want to spend a couple of hours clambering up and down dry dirt hillsides looking for an unknown Fire Pokémon, no one’s going to stop you.
Continue reading “A Pokémon Trainer is You! XXXI: Firestarter”James Crooks asks:
React to this: https://www.sbnation.com/secret-base/22177214/which-pokemon-would-make-the-best-basketball
“Which Pokémon would make the best basketball?”… hmm…
Well… the answer’s obviously Jigglypuff, right? Round, bouncy, probably about the right size?
I guess it’s worth further investigation…
This article only examines five Pokémon, which… I mean, I think there are many other possible choices not considered here, but they do correctly assess that Jigglypuff is a good choice. Yes, technically Ditto can just Transform into a basketball, but I don’t think that’s really in the spirit of the exercise. Even if we allow it, there are better choices – Mew can also Transform, but is much less likely than Ditto to faint and lose its shape, while Arceus might be able to just conjure a real basketball from the void. These suggestions are unworthy, in my learned opinion. Disqualified.
Continue reading “James Crooks asks:”Pokémon Studies in 18th Century France
I think we should start 2021 with a weird curiosity, don’t you?
I’ve been reading the excellent book Millennial Monsters: Japanese Toys and the Global Imagination by Anne Allison (2006), which has two chapters on Pokémon (and one on tamagotchi, arguably Pokémon’s immediate spiritual predecessor). In discussing Pokémon’s place within modern Japanese history and culture, Allison cites a very early Pokémon strategy guide, published in Japanese in 1996 (and never in English, as far as I know) and titled simply ポケットモンスター図鑑 (poketto monsutā zukan, or “Pocket Monster Illustrated Guide”). This book has all the things you’d normally expect of a strategy guide, like game maps and encounter tables, but also has some developer interviews and a short section on the history of the Pokémon world. I haven’t laid hands on a copy of this book myself, nor would I be confident enough in my Japanese to translate it myself, but Allison’s summary certainly includes some points that Pokémon fans today might find… eyebrow-raising.
Continue reading “Pokémon Studies in 18th Century France”particle asks:
What would you think about scalar-typing? To keep it simpler you could have half, normal, and double value typings. STAB, weaknesses and resistances just get multiplied by .5 or 2. Girafarig could be normal & half-psychic, golem could be double-rock, maybe something like bibarel could be strictly half-water.
My worry is that it sort of… makes the game more complicated without adding any actual strategic depth. You’re still multiplying together a bunch of factors to figure out whether you can KO a given Pokémon with a given attack in one shot, or two, or three; there are still going to be some Pokémon that survive particular super-effective attacks and others that don’t. The decision-making processes, both in team building and during battles, are going to be the same; there’s just more variables to keep track of. I’m not sure there’s any compelling reason for it either; I don’t think there are any Pokémon that really need half- or double-strength types to properly express their identity. Also, double STAB would be crazy powerful and the idea makes me nervous. Pokémon already has some pretty big damage multipliers and I don’t think we need bigger ones.
P.S. Merry Christmas to readers who celebrate it, and happy solstice to those who don’t. I’m just sitting here in my made-up paradise country enjoying the summer sun and the freedom to gather in groups with people outside my household, so… uh… don’t worry about me, and stay safe, everyone – especially those in the US and UK.
Galarian Zigzagoon, Linoone and Obstagoon
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…okay, I guess we have to talk about the Gene Simmons badger.
Along with Weezing, the Galarian forms of Zigzagoon and Linoone, with their regional evolution Obstagooon, were some of the first Pokémon of Sword and Shield we ever met. This was when Nintendo confirmed that Galar would have regional forms, just like Alola did – something that we’d all been anticipating for a while, but couldn’t be sure about. Obstagoon was a big deal for another reason: it was the first regional evolution we’d seen. Linoone come in two forms, Hoennese and Galarian, but only the Galarian one can evolve. According to those initial teasers, Zigzagoon are native to Galar, and this “regional variant” is actually the Pokémon’s original form – a loud, belligerent and undeniably fabulous origin for one of Hoenn’s, frankly, duller Pokémon.
Continue reading “Galarian Zigzagoon, Linoone and Obstagoon”x asks:
Was Coalossal created for the industrial revolution, after the revolution, or did it inspire the revolution? Actually, did the revolution happen at all?
Well, the Pokémon world resembles the modern world in enough important ways that I think there has to have been an industrial revolution; like… they have mechanised agriculture, they have coal power, they have mass-produced textiles, they have modern urbanisation. Maybe those things didn’t happen all at once and in the same place, the way they did in 18th and 19th century Britain, though? I don’t believe that anyone at Game Freak – or indeed anywhere in Pokémon’s corporate structure – has a detailed idea of what the history of the Pokémon world looks like, outside of the explicit lore of each region (and even then, I’m not altogether convinced they care much about fitting the history of different regions into a single overarching narrative); maybe they used to, because a lot of early stuff suggested that the Pokémon world has the same history and geography as the real one, but much of that is overwritten or contradicted by later media.
Continue reading “x asks:”
Pokémaniacal 