Just a reminder

I want the latest poll in this group Pokémon-designing effort of mine to stay open a couple more days – so vote, if you haven’t already!  The current poll is to decide which of several design concepts we want to use; the winning concept will be turned over to any artists who want to take a crack at drawing the thing.

http://pokemaniacal.tumblr.com/post/40509072465/lets-vote

I’ve set the poll to close at 9:00 on Saturday night (New Zealand time, so for a lot of you that’s probably Saturday morning or very late on Friday night).  At the moment it’s a very close contest between some sort of giant tube worm creature and a fusion between a squid and an oil lamp, either of which I think could be really interesting, but don’t count the others out yet!

White 2 Playthrough Journal, episode 3: Graduation Day

Official Nintendo art of Cheren. Er... is it just me, or has he gotten really pale and skinny since the last games?Jim and I head back to Aspertia Town, eager to check out the first gym of our new quest.  We are delayed on the way by Alder, who leaps off a cliff again to prove that he hasn’t become any less manly since we last saw him.  Alder has a precious gift for us, something that will make us even more unbelievably powerful than we are already: a handful of Oran Berries.  We stare at him in disbelief for a moment, then throw the berries in his face and run for it.

In Aspertia City, we quickly learn that the new Pokémon Gym is actually an extension of the Trainer’s School we saw earlier.  The interior of the building contains the School itself, which boasts all the usual books and blackboard diagrams explaining things like status ailments and type matchups, complete with a couple of intense-looking students trying to memorise everything.  Out in the backyard is the Gym – a fairly plain dirt field with a couple of battle areas marked out in white.  The Gym Leader is none other than Cheren, the other rival character of Black and White.  Cheren is an uptight, bossy fellow who is nonetheless very clever, hardworking and loyal.  He’s also a great deal more powerful than either of us have any right to be at this point.  We shrug and decide to go for it anyway.  Cheren orders his minions to assume their positions, before taking his own place on a platform at the back of the arena.  This place turns out to be a tremendously unimaginative Normal Pokémon Gym.  Both of Cheren’s trainers boast one Lillipup and one Patrat each, and fare poorly against our now quite well-trained Pokémon.  Cheren himself is just as uninteresting (and appears surprisingly sweaty) – he turns out to have only a Patrat and a Lillipup himself, although much higher in level and spiced up a little with his signature move, Work Up.  He complains later that he’s having trouble getting used to battling without his regular partners; I guess he’s supposed to tone it down for us noobs.  Sansa manages to defeat both of them quite soundly by paralysing them with Thunder Wave, while Jim has been level grinding with Dovahkiin so obsessively that the little guy now knows Force Palm, a move Cheren’s Pokémon are utterly unequipped to deal with.  Cheren muses that he’s glad his first ever challengers were so impressive, and hands over a pair of Basic Badges (the same badge formerly given out by Lenora in Nacrene City), along with the TM for Work Up.

This Gym is meh.

 The Aspertia Gym. Screenshot ganked from Bulbapedia.

The first Gym of a game usually is, I grant you.  Unlike most other Pokémon Gyms, which normally sport gimmicks or puzzles to work around as you fight your way to the Gym Leader, the first one typically features only a winding path that may or may not allow you to bypass the other trainers and head straight for the leader (Brock, Roxanne and Roark’s Gyms allow this; Falkner’s does not).  The first Gym of Black and White, the Striaton Gym, went the extra mile to change that with its triplet Leaders, who took on challengers with a Pokémon that had an advantage against the player’s starter.  Now, I certainly think this could have been done better, but I really loved the concept as a basic introduction to the type system by new players; if nothing else it really hammered home the importance of the Grass/Water/Fire relationship and encouraged players to use it to their advantage rather than simply blundering in with the strongest Pokémon available.  Cheren’s Aspertia Gym doesn’t do any of that, which is especially ironic given that it’s based in the backyard of a school for Pokémon trainers.  I don’t mean to suggest that the Aspertia Gym should have tried to replicate the lessons of the Striaton Gym, because it should be clear that it would just feel forced and artificial for anyone who’d played Black and White.  It would make more sense, since the Trainer’s School has just been teaching us about status conditions and battle items, to have players fight Pokémon that emphasise one or both of those themes.  It might be effective, for instance, to give players some firsthand experience with the different status conditions by including one trainer who uses paralysis, one who uses poison, and one who relies on sleep, before giving Cheren a selection of Pokémon that employ all three.  Anyway, that’s enough soapbox time for me; back to the story.

 Remember how awesome these Pokémon are? Neither do I!

As we leave the building, Jim and I are once again accosted by Bianca, who, delighted by our progress, presses upon us the TM for Return and a pair of C-Gears, the godawful devices that permanently occupy the lower screen of the DS and facilitate the multiplayer functions of Black and White 2.  Cheren emerges from the school and greets Bianca, whom he apparently hasn’t seen since the events of Black and White, almost two years ago.  He doesn’t even have her XTransceiver number, which provides the opportunity for everyone to swap contact details.  Jim and I are thus introduced to the people we can contact for help on the XTransceiver (a wrist-mounted video-phone capable of managing up to four-way calls) and the types of assistance they can offer.  Bianca can check the strength of your friendship with each of your Pokémon, any time and any place.  Cheren can list the weaknesses of any Pokémon in your party, or explain the effects of your Pokémon’s abilities (including a few details that aren’t included in the ability description, like Magma Armour’s secondary effect of making eggs hatch more quickly).  Professor Juniper, of course, can check your Pokédex and will give you hints about catching more Pokémon, but she can also tell you how to evolve any Pokémon in your party.  She even knows the really obscure ones; I later tested her on Eevee and she listed all seven methods.  While these are clearly useful features, I have mixed feelings about them.  They greatly diminish the amount of important information the game hides from you, stuff you need to know but probably won’t find without looking up a walkthrough on the internet.  Goodness knows I would have loved Professor Juniper’s help when I was mucking around on Sapphire version trying to evolve my Feebas.  On the other hand, they put all of that information right there, just for the asking, so that there’s no longer any interest in playing around with the game to try and find it for yourself.  I suppose what I’m asking for is a middle ground, where the game will tell you how all the weird evolutions go, but only if you work for it.  Of course, perhaps this way of doing things simply recognises that most players in this day and age will just look it up on Bulbapedia or what have you.

Once all this is done, Hugh arrives to challenge Cheren to a Gym battle, right there on the street.  Cheren indicates that he’d be happy to have another battle, but he needs a moment to prepare, and asks Hugh to follow him into the school.  When Cheren leaves, Hugh explodes with indignation at being put off, and proclaims Cheren ‘weak’ before storming into the school after him.  I… am beginning to think that every entry of this playthrough journal is going to include at least one hint that Hugh is a dangerous psychopath.  Jim firmly declares that he is not our problem, and we turn to leave Aspertia City for our next destination: the second Unova League Gym in nearby Virbank City.

I don’t want to be a bother, so I’ll try to make it quick: Great balls. I’ve read your articles about how you think Poké Balls work, which I love, but where does Great Balls, Ultra Balls, Net Balls, et cetera, fall under that theory? If the Pokémon chooses to be captured, how can these “better” Poké Balls be better at capture?

I think there might have been a discussion about this in the comments to some other question a few months ago… somewhere.  Not sure I remember it all that clearly now.  Hmm.

The eventual conclusion was that stronger Pokéballs are more effective because they are more comfortable for the Pokémon inside them.  I think that being in a Pokéball is a lot like dreaming; their awareness of the world around them is dimmed and their perception of time goes completely out the window, but they can still hear, and they can ‘wake up’ if they realise something is seriously wrong.  Great Balls and Ultra Balls might introduce a mild euphoria into this sensation – a pleasant dream, if you will – so that the Pokémon simply enjoys being inside enough to think twice about a trainer it might otherwise reject.  After all, the trainer has gone to the trouble of buying a more expensive Pokéball, or selecting a more appropriate one.

That does still leave a major difficulty, though: dealing with all the specialised types of Pokéball.  Some are reasonably easy to explain – I imagine that being in a Lure Ball feels like dreaming of swimming, while perhaps being in a Moon Ball feels like being bathed in moonlight.  Others, not so much – some Pokéballs work based on circumstance, like Dusk Balls and Timer Balls, and I have no idea how those would function.  The most troublesome is the Luxury Ball, since the name seems to imply that it is extremely comfortable for Pokémon, and makes them more friendly as a result, but has no effect on how easy they are to capture in the first place.

In short, this is my best guess at how they work, but I am painfully aware that some types of Pokéball simply do not appear to fit the model.

I love how you describe Black and White 2s’ protagonist designs. I cannot stand these, and this is the first pokemon game where both the main characters look terrible to me. Do you have a favorite “protagonist” of any of the pokemon games (including X and Y). Mine’s the X and Y girl, as she looks like she actually has a personality other than being ambiguously heroic

Oh, I don’t think I’d go so far as to call them terrible.  They look a little bit ridiculous, but I think one of the things you just have to accept about this universe is that anyone even slightly important is going to look ridiculous (to a degree that, broadly speaking, increases through generations).  The player characters generally haven’t done that as much, but really, Brendan’s hair… hat… er… whichever it is…

Personally?  I’ve always had kind of a soft spot for Ethan (the male GSC/HGSS player character) although I agree with you regarding the new female character; she does has a certain je ne sais quoi.

Let’s Vote

Okay.  We have a selection of design outlines for a Water/Fire dual-type Pokémon.  The next step is to take it to the artists and have them figure out what this thing will look like, but first we have to pick one!  The design submissions are all collected in the last post here – http://pokemaniacal.tumblr.com/post/40241228717/lets-recap-this-whole-making-a-pokemon-business – so I’m not going to describe them all again. Read before you vote!

P.S. There should be a poll visible in this post.  PLEASE LET ME KNOW if you cannot see it!

White 2 Playthrough Journal, episode 2: Achievement Unlocked!

Our protagonists, ladies and gentlemen! That's me on the right and Jim on the left. I'm not usually a chick; I just play one on TV. Official art is copyright of Nintendo.Where we last left our intrepid heroes, Princess Leia and the Cornfield Kid, they had just left their home of Aspertia City and were marching boldly towards nearby Floccesy Town in hopes of finding Hugh, ‘cause if that kid’s left alone for too long I ain’t being held responsible for whatever happens.  On the outskirts of Floccesy Town, however, we encounter… oh, good lord; it’s Alder.  Alder, famous in Black and White as Unova’s Champion, is an exuberant giant of a man with flaming red hair, pecs of steel, and a poncho that makes him look like he belongs in a Peruvian folk band.  He has a disturbing habit of jumping off cliffs in order to get to the ground faster, which he demonstrates now, leaping from on high to land smack in our path as we attempt to enter Floccesy Town.  Alder proclaims that he is going to train us, and marches purposefully into Floccesy Town.  We follow, hoping for some sage advice like “one strategy is to use Pokémon that you capture in your party!” (that is a legit quote from the official strategy guide, by the way).  When we reach Alder’s house, however, it turns out that he has changed his mind.  He isn’t going to train us, because we already have something we’re supposed to be doing – finding Hugh and delivering our spare Town Map.  This is, admittedly, important.  After all, if Hugh gets lost and starts to feel confused and alone, he could…

…anyway.  Alder sends us on our way, and we wander off to the east of Floccesy Town to see what we can find.  Here we meet a few trainers, who give us sage advice like ‘if you make eye contact with a trainer, you have to battle!’ and tell us how amazed we’re going to be by their Patrat (undoubtedly, it is in the top percentage of all Patrat).  We encounter a typical Pokémon-style roadblock in the form of a Hiker who won’t let anyone without a Gym Badge pass, and, unimpressed, turn north to Floccesy Ranch.  Here we finally track down Hugh, raring for a couple of practice battles; Jaime and Ulfric stomp him quickly enough.  At this point the owners of the ranch, a husband and wife team, wander past and greet us, casually asking whether we happen to have seen a Herdier, since they have two who normally stick together, but can’t find the second one at the moment.  Not to worry, it’ll surely turn up… right Hugh?

Uh… Hugh?

This is Hugh, who may be a sociopath. He is our best friend! I would trust him with my life! 

Hugh is glaring at the owners with utter vitriol, fists clenched, a vein popping on his reddening brow.  He demands to know how they can possibly be so nonchalant and storms off to find Herdier and make sure it hasn’t been killed or eaten or whatever.  Jim and I look at each other and shrug as Hugh’s muffled obscenities fade into the distance.  We split up to determine what Pokémon can be found at Floccesy Ranch.  Jim almost immediately finds a Riolu, the juvenile form of his favourite Pokémon, which he captures and names Dovahkiin.  We quickly determine (unsurprisingly) that Riolu is very rare here, and chalk this up to Destiny.  He and I both capture Mareep as well, out of sheer Gold and Silver nostalgia, naming them Elisif and Sansa, respectively.  We continue to hunt, and reflect on the number of Pokémon species we’ve found so far.  Almost from the get-go, Black and White 2 have been offering us a great deal more variety than their predecessors, with Pidove, Sewaddle and Sunkern appearing on the road out of Floccesy Town in addition to the more standard Patrat and Purrloin, but Floccesy Ranch is making things very interesting indeed.  We soon identify Azurill and Lillipup in addition to the Mareep, Riolu, Patrat and Pidove we’ve already noted, and later find a few Psyduck as well.  If this keeps up, it’s going to make Black and White 2 much more enjoyable to replay than the previous games, which offered a grand total of five species before the first Gym battle, counting the starter (Patrat, Lillipup, Purrloin, and one of the elemental monkeys).  We applaud this change, and move on.  While Jim hangs around level-grinding, I wander off to find Hugh, who is searching the ranch for the missing Herdier.  I decide to humour him and help look.  We eventually manage to track down the sheepdog Pokémon by the sound of its barks.  When Hugh realises its voice is coming from just around the corner, he dashes off to find the owner… leaving me to deal with the black-clad ginger fellow who seems to have abducted Herdier.  The villain introduces himself as a member of Team Plasma, the organisation that attempted to conquer Unova two years ago.  He proclaims his annoyance at being interrupted in the middle of his mission, and prepares to deal with me using his most ruthless methods: he throws a TM at me and runs away, leaving Herdier behind.

Uh… okay?

I mean… if that’s how Team Plasma handles its opponents these days… by throwing useful items at them and then legging it… well, then, honestly I’m totally fine with it.  I hope one of them has a Master Ball.

 This is Alder. He jumps off cliffs and we hate him. Not necessarily in that order.

Hugh drags the owner over to see Herdier, screams at him again for not being more concerned, and leaves in a huff.  What can I say?  Kid’s got issues.  Jim and I stick around a little longer to train before heading back to Floccesy Town to consult Alder and see if he’s ready to teach us yet.  Alder, for his part, seems keen to keep jerking us along.  He comments in surprise that we’ve already grown a great deal in the time we’ve been away, and now he would like us to help him teach someone else!  We mutter darkly that the time we’ve been away amounts to more than two thirds of the time we’ve been trainers, but grudgingly follow him into his house to indulge in practice battles with two young trainers and their elemental monkey Pokémon.  This little episode seems intended to replace the Striaton Gym sequence of Black and White, which teaches new players how to make use of (and avoid falling foul of) the type chart.  Alder first has you fight the monkey who is weakest against your starter Pokémon (in my case, Pansear), and then the one who is strongest (Pansage), similarly to how the Striaton Gym pits you against a Gym Leader with a type advantage, but gives you the monkey capable of defeating him.  Honestly, I think the Striaton Gym’s method was clearer and more instructive, though the point was somewhat hamstrung by the very limited variety of Pokémon available, which forced the lesser Gym trainers to use Lillipup rather than actual Grass-, Water- or Fire-types.  Alder’s way of doing it is neat enough, though I fear it may not be explicit or forceful enough for anyone who doesn’t already understand the system.

Alder explains to us that a new Pokémon Gym has just been opened in our hometown of Aspertia City, and suggests that we return there to check it out.  This will be the subject of my next entry, though there’s one more thing to talk about today: achievements!  Pokémon now has an achievement system, which is introduced to us by a very peculiar and rather pushy fellow known only as Mr. Medal as we leave Alder’s home.  He hands us Medal Boxes containing a bunch of silvery disks stamped with question marks.  These are ‘hint medals,’ and contain somewhat vague hints at things we can do to earn the actual medals that will replace them, like ‘catch a lot of Pokémon,’ ‘save often,’ ‘visit Pokémon centres,’ and so on.  Mr. Medal has people stalking us to keep track of when we earn our medals, and will track us down at Pokémon Centres whenever he needs to deliver one.  Many video games (perhaps even most, these days?) have similar systems, and although receiving medals for catching 5 Pokémon or using not-very-effective moves 10 times or whatever is a bit groan-inducing for experienced trainers, I actually think it’s quite a nice way of encouraging new players to explore everything they can do with the games and ‘learn the ropes’ as it were.  It’s reasonably unobtrusive and doesn’t slow the game down much, so it’s not as if it’s getting in the way of anything, and I’m fairly happy with it.

Anyway, that’s all for now – see you next time, when we challenge the newly-minted Aspertia Gym!

Have you ever read the Cave of Dragonflies’ theory on history of pokemon training? It seemed to match-up most of what you said on how pokemon’s reasons to train. I know the franchise especially the show and manga tries to show the partnership a mutual beneficiary relationship but I felt its efforts were lopsided depending on which form of entertainment especially the game, but since its gameplay and the show being for kids.

I can’t say I have, but let’s take a look… Go go gadget Google.

You mean this, I imagine?

Hmm.

Yes, I think I would agree with most of that; it makes a great deal of sense.  The theory on apricorns is… interesting, put it that way. I never thought to imagine them as a carnivorous plant that consumed Pokémon as an energy source.  Apricorns and apricorn trees are normally portrayed as entirely benign; I can acknowledge the possibility that they are extremely dangerous to the unwary, but it’s still difficult to swallow (particularly given that Pineco and Beedrill have been shown not merely living in but outright infesting apricorn trees).  It’s a very clever explanation, though.

There are only two other points that I have real trouble accepting.

One is that ‘experience points’ are a real and measurable property of Pokémon distinct from any real world phenomenon; I remain convinced that experience and levels are just abstractions designed to simplify the process of growth and evolution for the purposes of gameplay, and that we’re supposed to imagine Pokémon as getting not stronger exactly but more skillful and more confident.  I am likewise convinced that evolution is prompted by emotional and psychological factors in many (most?) species, and closely tied to that increase in confidence and self-awareness.

The other is that humans are in some sense ‘outsiders’ in the Pokémon world, who evolved in our world and were somehow transported there.  It’s true that humans are generally treated as being fundamentally different to Pokémon in some sense that’s never quite defined, but I think that the general feeling created by the franchise is that humans and Pokémon are ‘supposed’ to be together, that they developed together (granted, this could be a result of human cultural indoctrination, but honestly I’m not yet willing to rule out the possibility that the Pokémon world is the result of a Judaeo-Christian style creation by Arceus).  I don’t think it’s impossible for humans to have evolved in the Pokémon world at all (putting aside the fact that it would be an astonishing coincidence), in spite of their obvious physical defects in comparison to most species of Pokémon; actually, I think that this suggests that the ability to train and command Pokémon came first, followed by superior language ability, upright stance, advanced vision, weaker musculature, and all the other attributes we associate with the evolution of anatomically modern humans.

But that’s just me.  The Cave of Dragonflies version does make a lot of sense.

Let’s recap this whole ‘making a Pokémon’ business

So, I don’t know if I was making myself clear enough in this process of creating a Pokémon, so people have been getting a bit confused over what I was wanting, and on top of that I think I chose a really awful time to do it, since people were busy with Christmas and the New Year and such (including me), so I want to take a moment to recap where we are at the moment.

Here’s what’s happened so far:

1. I decide that my readers are going to create a Pokémon, as a team effort, for my amusement.

2. I take submissions on the Pokémon’s type, and hold couple of polls to narrow down the choices.  Eventually we decide on Water/Fire.  I have a feeling people started voting for that one in large numbers because I expressed a preference for it, which may have been a mistake in retrospect, but it’s what we’ve got so let’s stick with it for now.

3. I ask for suggestions and discussion on how to interpret Water/Fire as a type combination.  At this stage I was trying to avoid actually designing a Pokémon, and instead just think of interesting ways of using the elements together in a way that could work with any of several designs (I think maybe I wasn’t clear enough about what I didn’t want at this stage).  I decide not to hold a poll on this, and just retain all the ideas for posterity.  Think of it as a brainstorming session.  The results are here: http://pokemaniacal.tumblr.com/post/38613760900/yay-discussion.  Please do have a read of these before doing anything else!  The final design does not have to use all or even any of these concepts, but I think they’ll provide helpful inspiration!

4. I ask for people to start coming up with actual, concrete design ideas – no artwork yet, but written descriptions of a Pokémon’s appearance and powers, and anything else particularly important to what you have in mind.  This seems to be where we got stuck, so I’ll include here the ideas I’ve received so far that matched what I was asking for.  What I’m hoping for now is that people will continue to submit paragraphs like this in the comments, and that other people will discuss those ideas and suggest ways to improve them.  Once that’s been going on for a while, I’ll create another poll so we can choose a single design to work with, and the next step will be to open the floor to any artists who want to take a crack at drawing this thing.  Anyway, here’s what I’ve got so far:

From Finger1st: use a base model of a fish crab lobster or whatnot and have it live in a tropical area near islands with volcanoes. It’ll eat lava and stay close to surface of water to absorb sunlight to feed off of. Then have it use physical fire attacks like flare blitz which would make more sense than a flamethrower under water. Kind of like its excreting the excess lava. Also since it would feed on lava water gun wouldn’t make sense either so aqua tail or jet would also work. It could possibly be a hermit crab and use spinning attacks like fire spin, whirl pool, rapid spin,etc with an occasional apperence on land kind of amphibious.

From Adam Dreifus: I was thinking perhaps of something based off of the giant tube worm. Maybe the first form lives deep on the sea floor, where the intense water pressure crushes it into a tiny shape (represented by it being a small creature with an incredibly disproportionately high weight. The second form could be some sort of massive Cloverfeld-esque kaiju thing, it’s back covered in firey wormlike growths. There are a lot of potential ways of taking it. Perhaps it is normally trapped underwater by the terrible pressure, but the burst of heat it releases from its back can occasionally bust it loose, where it rises to reek untold havok on the neighboring shoreline. Or maybe play up the siren angle more. It uses the wormlike growths as lures to draw in sailors and seagoing pokemon in order to feed. Maybe it is some kind of Pokemon equivalent of Charybdis, where the alternating currents of hot and cool water that it releases results in a terrifyingly large whirlpool, and resultingly it is the cause of all sorts of superstition and ghost stories among seagoing folk.

In a similar vein, from Random Access: To elaborate on the tube worm design. I was thinking we should give it a fiery mane, which would look kind of like the red plumes that comes out of its mouth, except it would be around its head. Its bottom a slimy blob-like appendage which looks a lot like lava, that way if there’s a group of them it would look like they were all sticking out of a lake of lava. Unlike the tube worm, though, I think we should give it expressive eyes, ones that always look agitated because they always only want to be left alone on the sea floor.

As for characteristics, I was thinking it feeds on the energy of underwater volcanoes. I also have a really cool idea that it has a symbiotic relationship with other deep-sea pokemon. You see, the more these tube worm pokemon (lets just call them ventorms for now) feed on the volcano’s heat, the less likely the volcano is to erupt due to decreased pressure. Because of this, the other pokemon continually bring it food from the ocean’s surface in order to promote their continual growth, sort of relating it to the way real tube worms rely on bacteria from the surface to provide them with necessary compounds. However, pokemon should never come near it without a food offering as a ventorm will take this as a challenge and immediately attack the unfortunate loiterer. Ventorms also always expel extreme heat from their mouths in their attempt to relieve themselves of excess heat.

From Chewiana Jones: What if we had an enormous squid/oil lamp hybrid that lived deep in arctic oceans, getting most of its nutrients from volcanic vents and small deep-sea Pokemon prey and burning oil (for warmth) in small amounts inside its body, which could look somewhat steampunk furnace-ish structure with more organic parts like the eyes and mouth mixed in and a body made of translucent, durable membrane with golden light shining through, supported by a skeletal framework. However, when it starts to run low on oil, it flares up its flames and rises like a hot air balloon to closer to the surface. There, it hunts pokemon like Walrein and Dewgong by expelling oil like squid ink and then lighting it on fire, then eats them and uses the oil for more power.

From 4Dragons: So my idea was a two headed lizard, one head for swallowing lava, one for water. It has two seperate digestive systems and two tails. With one tail it can blast a hyperpressure blast of water, with it’s other it radiates extreme heat. When it blasts it water through it’s heat it makes steam jets. It can use it’s tails seperatly too, when it has no lava it has to use water and the same for when it has no water, it has to use lava. It lives wherever it has relativly easy acess to both, basicly on small volcanic islands.

From Andrewq: 1. Charybdis the sea monster. She kind of looks like a Kraken, all mouth and pointy teeth with tons of tentacles or flippers (if she doesn’t live in the water, which is a possibility). In Greek mythology, Charybdis swallowing and spitting out tons of water results in whirlpools in a narrow strait, but we could have instead a boiler-like belly that heats the water before it is Scald-ed out. That way, alternating currents of hot and cold water create the maritime disasters. Charybdis-mon lives in a remote cave accessible by the sea and wreaks havoc on passing ships because she’s always hungry. After she appeared, the port town she terrorized was abandoned and became a haunt of Ghost-types, who also enjoy the shrouding factor of the steam that rises continually from her whirlpools. You know how in Harry Potter, the Revulsion Jinx (“Relashio”) sends out fiery sparks if you’re on land, but a jet of boiling water if you’re underwater? I can imagine a signature move that operates like Scald if you’re battling in a wet environment but like Flamethrower if you’re high and dry.

2. Flaming alcohol-mon was created by accident in a laboratory explosion. He looks like a glowing glass beaker (not radioactive, though) and probably floats, a bit eerily. This little guy can manipulate a special kind of clear liquid that can douse fires or itself be lit on fire. You could call it flammable water… or vodka… Yet it tries in vain to put out any fire it ever sees, conscious of fire’s devastating potential. Poor guy. The hope is that if he gets stronger, he will be able to put out more fires. Flash Fire is probably a must, maybe Water Absorb or even Guts, as well.

From Crazedgamer111: My idea was the lava and water Pokemon that is either split down the middle or at the waist. I prefer at the waist because I like the “belt” idea I had. The upper and lower half of its body mix together to solidy into an earthy belt-like portion on its waist. Im thinking the name, Girdlearth, is fitting. Pronounced Gurd-learth.

Girdlearths are capable of varying extremes of emotion and strength because of their varying elements are work. Trained properly, Girdlearths can balance the opposing forces (through the use of it’s ‘belt’) and be a Pokemon of great love, companionship, and strength.

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There’s actually a fair few of these, but they were sort of scattered through the comment sections to several different posts, which made them difficult to work with and kept people from discussing them (again, I think because I wasn’t clear enough about what I didn’t want in the previous stage).  Continue to create new ideas if you haven’t suggested one already, and if you can think of a way to improve an existing one, speak up!  Also, if I’m still not explaining this adequately, someone, please ask me!  Bear in mind that I have no idea what I’m doing here!

Next episode of the White 2 playthrough journal will be up tomorrow; this whole business of the announcement of X and Y has disrupted my plans a little by giving us all so much to think about.  See you then!

Why do you think on the future of moral/ethics of pokemon? I wonder in Gen 6, they go with extreme human rights as in pokemon are a dangerous menace. Opposite of Team Plasma. BW addressed the former issue (although rather more simplistically and implied notion more people are morally better than one would think) Therefore, I always tried to distinguish games, manga, tv for they treat it differently. Interestingly in BW2, N hoped for a world with no pokeball I thought that was a bit fascinating

Y’know, I really don’t know.  It’s anyone’s guess where they’ll go with the next games.  (Incidentally, I think this question has been sitting in my ask box since *before* X and Y were announced).

What I always thought would be enormously fun is to have two or more criminal/enemy factions in the world, like Team Aqua and Team  Magma in Emerald, who have opposed views on the relationship between humans and Pokémon.  Black and White 2 (which I haven’t finished playing yet, so don’t quote me on anything) are doing something like that with Rood and his ex-Team Plasma faction, but the division between ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys’ is still very clear there.  I thought it would be really interesting to have a group dedicated to shifting the balance between humans and Pokémon, like Team Plasma, in the same storyline with a group dedicated to maintaining and exploiting the current order, like Team Rocket – because a leader like N might be your enemy because of circumstance, but no one would hate a leader like Giovanni more than him… so you have a situation that’s like “who’s the bad guy now?  Why?”

…I have to do this, don’t I?

All right.  Let’s get a look at you.  Gotta figure out what the cringe-to-awesome ratio is.

I didn’t actually watch the Nintendo Direct broadcast when it first came out, ‘cause it was, like, the middle of the night in New Zealand and I’d been squinting at passages from Herodotus for two hours, so my immediate reaction was “I’m gettin’ too old for this $#!t.”  So now you get to experience my first impressions of the broadcast as I watch it.

Brace yourselves.

Oh hi there, Satoru Iwata.  Sure, I’ll listen to your… whatever.  Knock yourself out.

Yay for nostalgia time.  You know, I’ve always had mixed feelings about the whole two-versions thing, but he’s right, it does promote trading, and thereby interaction between players, and helps keep Pokémon from being a solitary pursuit… just as long as the damn link cable keeps working.

You have all the cool stuff from Gold and Silver to choose from, and you pick “shiny Pokémon” as the thing that defines that generation for you?  Ah, whatever floats your boat, I guess.

Yes, double battles were cool, and it was neat that Ruby and Sapphire were released overseas so much more promptly than their predecessors.  The wireless adapter that came with Fire Red and Leaf Green was great too, because it actually worked.  You’re right, Iwata, that was a big step.  Um… you don’t have any thoughts on the decision to remake Red and Blue?  No?  Okay, that’s cool.

And you’re rushing through the rest of the games.  Yeah, I guess you’re tired of the retrospective stuff.  Fair enough, I guess.  Time to talk about the new 3DS games.

Hey, Pikachu; how’re you doing?  Yeah, yeah, I know you’re excited, Iwata just told us OH MY GOD DID YOU JUST ELECTRIFY THE EIFFEL TOWER?

Right, trailer starts in earnest.  We have mirrors, that’s pretty.  And a full-sized player character image instead of a dinky little sprite, that’s a first.  And… wow, okay.  Yeah, I don’t know if “breathtaking” is totally fair but that is pretty.  And… it looks like we actually are in France, because that doesn’t look exactly like the Eiffel Tower, but it’s close, and Pikachu was definitely in France.  New region is based on Europe, I guess, the way Unova was based on New York?  That’s kinda cool; I like Europe.  (Please let there be a town based on Athens, please let there be a town based on Athens)  Also our running shoes have been replaced with roller skates.  That’s… actually kinda awesome.

AND STARTERS, with their foreign language names already set, no less.  The Grass-type… Chespin, who is… I guess like a chipmunk with a chestnut helmet?  And- oh, wow is that the battle interface?  *ahem* Sorry.  The Fire-type… Fennekin, who is… a fire-fox, which… well, yeah, y’know, that was kinda Vulpix’s thing, guys, and… yeah, okay, it sort of looks like you’ve given it psychic powers as well, which… was also Vulpix’s thing to an extent, and also Zorua’s as well, sort of, but I guess foxes are kind of important in Japanese culture and mythology so I’ll reserve judgement on that one.  And, the Water-type… Froakie, who is… a frog.  Well.  All right.  I’m guessing they never read my entry on Seismitoad but it’s not like I was expecting them to.  Maybe they’ll do something else with Froakie besides give him sonic powers.

I see… lots of cool forest, a wild Pikachu, some other ‘traditional’ Pokémon… they seem to be making a point of that.  I suppose that means they’re not going to do a Unova again and bar old Pokémon from their new region; hallelujah.  WHOA raging columns of fire; please don’t tell me that’s a Gym; I don’t want to be bacon.  And… okay, these are the new legendary Pokémon, I imagine.  Giant… evil… Y-shaped bird… getting kind of a vulture vibe from this thing?  I kinda think that designing a Pokémon specifically so it looks like the letter Y when seen from below is sort of a stupid design choice but it doesn’t impact too much on vulture-mon’s appearance from other angles, so I’ll let them have that one.  And his counterpart… the blue crystal rainbow stag thing.  Okay.  Sure.  Why not?  I’m not really sure what they’re trying to go for with this one, because the choice of a stag and the forest setting seem to imply they’re aiming for the old ‘nature guardian’ archetype but the whole rainbow crystal aesthetic doesn’t seem to mesh with that.  Hmm.  I wonder what they have in mind there?

Pokémon X and Pokémon Y?  Okay, so I guess you’ve finally run out of colours.  After Black and White I suppose anything else would have started sounding forced.   Speaking of which, there must be something significant in those names, since they wouldn’t abandon the traditional naming scheme without good reason, particularly after Black and White had such significant titles (the central theme of those games being duality, and the reconciliation of dualities).  Only… what the hell do X and Y signify?  Only thing that comes to mind for me is the two axes of a Cartesian plane, which… hmm.  Well, they are making rather a lot of the 3D-ness of it all, as they usually do.  Given that, I suppose it would make sense to have three games, X, Y, and Z to represent the three spatial axes of a three dimensional world.  It doesn’t exactly have the same delightful symbolic resonance as Black and White, but I suppose I should wait for the games to come out so I can experience the plot before I give a final word on that.  Based on the flaring of the letters in the logo, it looks like stag-dude’s antlers are supposed to recall the shape of an X the way birdie’s wings form a Y-shape, so… I guess they could be going for a land-and-sky thing based on X as the horizontal and Y as the vertical.  Kinda paints them into a corner with Z, though, since Z is just… y’know… the other horizontal direction.

And you’re giving it a single release date for Japan and overseas!  Wow, you’re really committed to this, aren’t you, Nintendo?  Er… wait. Japan, the Americas, Europe and Australia.  Um.  Hello?  New Zealand here?  Um… are we Australia now?  Guys?

Oh, whatever.  Yes, thank you very much too, Iwata, that was… interesting.

Hmm.

This is either going to be amazing and wonderful, or a catastrophic waste of time and resources.

Possibly both.

I have to review the new Pokémon, don’t I?  All of them?  It’s, like, my schtick, isn’t it?  And I have to do the whole “I hereby affirm/deny this Pokémon’s right to exist” thing again?

…great.  Well, that’s my project for all of 2014.

I’m not totally sure what to make of this.  I am made slightly uneasy by the emphasis the trailer puts on the visual aspects of the games, and the amount of work that’s going into a complete redesign of the graphics.  I mean, I’m sure the games will be visually stunning, and that’s nice, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t really care all that much; I was totally happy with the old Ruby/Sapphire graphics engine.  Still, that doesn’t mean they won’t be paying attention to the other aspects of the games.  The graphics of Black and White were hyped too, and that didn’t stop them from having the best story the series has yet produced (continuing to reserve judgement on Black and White 2, since I still haven’t finished playing).

So I suppose my final word on this is that I don’t really do optimism, as a rule, but Pokémon X and Y haven’t made me want to beat my head against the wall.  Yet.