Joe Cool asks:

Have you had the chance to take a look at the recently leaked Space World ’97 demo of Pokemon Gold and Silver? I would love to hear what you think about each of the scrapped and heavily altered Pokemon designs. If you haven’t seen them yet, you can find them here: https://tcrf.net/Proto:Pok%C3%A9mon_Gold_and_Silver

Wellll, I saw it, and I kinda went back and forth on whether to say anything about it, and eventually just sort of waffled until it felt like the moment had passed, but here we are, so…

The synopsis for people who haven’t seen any of this yet is as follows: The Cutting Room Floor, a community that studies material from video game development that was cut from commercial release, recently got hold of a very early beta version of Gold and Silver.  This version of the game was available to play at Nintendo’s Space World trade show in November 1997 – almost exactly two years before the games were actually released in Japan.  Only a tiny part of the game was actually accessible in the demo without debug commands, but all the Pokémon and maps of most of the region (though nothing that tells us much about the story) are in the code if you know where to look, and the effects of those two years of development are pretty evident.  It features a region apparently based on the whole of Japan (with Kanto being reduced to a single city – Pallet Town is intact, Pokémon Tower stands in the northeast, and we have the most important buildings from Saffron City and Celadon City, but the rest is almost unrecognisable; the Kanto Gym sits in the location roughly corresponding to the Indigo Plateau), Gold and Silver’s day/night mechanics and Pokégear with radio and cell phone functions, as well as 100 Pokémon that were not in generation I.  Not all of these are the same as the 100 Pokémon that we actually got in the final commercial release of generation II.  Some were already known from concept art that has leaked over the years, such as the scrapped Fire and Water starter Pokémon, or the early version of Girafarig’s design, but several are completely new to us.  Continue reading “Joe Cool asks:” →

ShadJV asks:

Two follow up questions (unrelated to each other):

1) How do Pokemon without arms “hold” items”? I realize it would vary (and I’m not asking you to explain ALL of them) but just… like how do you give voltorb a quick claw? And even ones with arms, how do they battle without being severely handicapped from having to hold a berry without crushing or dropping it in a huge fight?

2) How does Pay Day work then? I’ve still never understood where the coins come from.

1) We do see quite a few Pokémon in the anime holding one particular type of item: Mega Stones.  The stones are usually set in wearable accessories – even for Pokémon with dextrous hands, like Lucario and Gardevoir, so as not to interfere with battle techniques.  You could probably generalise that to most other items, and create custom fittings to suit the anatomy of almost any Pokémon (Voltorb is admittedly a difficult one, but I’m willing to trust that some Poké-world artisan has figured it out).  I suspect trainers may be able to buy an assortment of these from specialty tailors and jewellers. Continue reading “ShadJV asks:” →

Might be Squidward Tentacles asks:

I am the culmination of your dreams…and nightmares…

Some of these villains were over the top, some were pretty within realistic “levels of insanity” like Giovanni (Pokémon mafia) and Ghetsis (manipulating with a front) . I seek your creativity! How would YOU, the great Chhrrrriiiiis, make a villain team?

Culmination of… dreams and nightmares…?

But… putting aside the sheer improbability of a threesome with Chris Pratt and Grant Gustin, why in the name of all that is holy would Game Freak choose that as their design for an evolved form of Garbodor?

…uh… anyway…

Pokémon likes villains who believe on some level that what they’re doing is justifiable, even necessary.  Which makes sense, because that’s what villains are like in the real world – only a rare few psychopaths are conscious of being evil; most evil people think they’re doing what they have to, because it’s their job or because it will protect their family or because it will help their country or any number of other excuses.  It takes real training and effort to recognise that something you’ve done is evil, because you think of yourself as a good person, and good people “by definition” don’t do evil things.  Continue reading “Might be Squidward Tentacles asks:” →

Stufful and Bewear

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Stufful

Let’s start with some simple, direct Pokédex quotes about Bewear.

 

“Many trainers,” Moon version tells us, “have left this world after their spines were squashed by its hug.”

…well.

Just in case we hadn’t gotten the message, Ultra Sun clarifies that after you’ve been faced with a Bewear intimidation display “life is over for anyone who doesn’t run away as fast as possible.”

So… yeah. Continue reading “Stufful and Bewear” →

Sandro asks:

Can you put together any reasoning for why Pokémon can learn only four moves? I mean, I can understand from game perspective but from in-universe perspective? I suppose complicated magical moves would make sense but some moves like Tackle or Peck are really just simple basic body movements. How does learning how to breathe fire or squirt water make you forget how to ram your face into stuff?

Obviously there are compelling gameplay reasons for it, and early seasons of the anime (which doesn’t need to care about that) actually do play fast and loose with this rule occasionally – Drake’s Dragonite uses no fewer than ten different attacks in Ash’s Orange League championship battle.  But cases like that are the exception, not the rule, and often seem meant to illustrate that a particular Pokémon is unusually powerful and skilled – most Pokémon can’t do it.  Why?  I think we need to compare how athletic skills and martial arts techniques work in the real world (because that’s basically what Pokémon attacks are).  Continue reading “Sandro asks:” →

Ty asks:

Glad the Mr. Mime question got the ball rolling! I just have one more for the time being regarding your favorite Vileplume. With Alola forms in mind, if you could pick any region where Oddish’s evolutionary family had a regional variation, which region would it be, and what would make the Oddishes, Glooms, Vileplumes, and Bellossoms different there?

Yeah I think when I moved to WordPress people… forgot(?) for a while, I guess, that they could do this?  So thanks for that!  Anyway, Vileplume.  I wasn’t sure how to begin going about this, but I did some reading and learned about a property of the Rafflesia genus of flowers (which Vileplume is based on) that I hadn’t previously known about.  Continue reading “Ty asks:” →

ShadJV asks:

Been meaning to ask… how do you think items work? Berries are obvious, but items that give type bonuses are harder to explain, and then there’s items like EXP Share (how do they get experience without fighting) or Amulet Coin (where does the money come from)?

Well they definitely don’t all work in the same way, so realistically this is not going to be an exhaustive answer, but let’s try.

To answer the question with another question: why are Pokémon allowed to use items in battle at all?  Berries, I suppose, you can excuse, since wild Pokémon do it and they’re just natural supplements and snacks, and plausibly the same holds for Herbs (of the White, Mental and Power varieties), Leftovers and manufactured foods like Lava Cookies, but how is it fair to let a Pokémon carry a tool that measurably makes its attacks more powerful?  Why not give them Mediaeval plate armour and maces at that point?  Why has no one in any known Pokémon League cared to draw a line somewhere on the saner side of spectacles that amplify magic? Continue reading “ShadJV asks:” →

Not Squidward Tentacles asks:

I hope I don’t inspire a thought…because I love your writing!!!

But…just as vinyl records will one days produce nothing more than scratching noises, and the tv will one day return to just being a square plastic box…will you one day stop writing on here?

Well, I probably will die eventually, as have the majority of humans in history.  Obviously I have set certain mystical contingencies against that event, whose details I shall not divulge for the sake of readers’ sanity and/or plausible deniability.  But ultimately, the Endless Void claims us all.

I don’t think I’ll stop writing before that though.  I might stop writing for this blog, and I might even (stars forbid) stop writing about Pokémon, but I don’t think I can stop writing altogether.  It’s in my nature.  And after all, someone has to shriek at Game Freak whenever they do something stupid.