One lunatic's love-hate relationship with the Pokémon franchise, and his addled musings on its rights, wrongs, ins and outs. Come one, come all, and indulge my delusions of grandeur as I inflict my opinions on anyone within shouting distance.
All things considered (gameplay, graphics, nostalgia, Pokémon Roster, storyline, miscellaneous shit… you name it), what is your Top 7 Pokémon Generations?
Without getting into detail (because you could spend hours, maybe days, arguing about this without coming to a conclusion anyone would agree on, and I just don’t want to go there and don’t think it’s particularly useful): Continue reading “Anonymous asks:”
Today’s Pokémon are probably the strangest thing Alola has thrown at me so far, and definitely spice up the early game a bit – electrical Bug-types with battery-like abilities, which (thank all the gods) conspicuously do not become butterflies or moths. We’ve had beetle Pokémon before – Heracross – and even stag beetle Pokémon – Pinsir – but Grubbin, Charjabug and Vikavolt have little in common with either, as we’ll see.
Grubbin is… well, a grub – a soft-bodied beetle larva. As far as I can tell, it’s not based on any one species in particular; beetle larvae mostly look pretty similar to non-specialist eyes (unlike caterpillars, which are often brightly coloured or have bristles, or eye patterns that make them resemble dangerous snakes). Grubbin instead achieves a distinctive look by exaggerating the mandibles of a beetle grub into two brightly coloured, striped horns as long as the whole rest of its body – in fact it kinda winds up looking like a stag beetle or Hercules beetle pupa. Continue reading “Grubbin, Charjabug and Vikavolt”
House Vikavolt: Our Power Grows
i have an idea on how to resolve the Yungoos and Gumshoos thing. What if there would be like a place in area where you could trade Yugooses and Gumshooses you caught for money or useful items or something? You would be told that the Pokémon are transported in their Pokéballs to their native region and released to wild, thus, in the long run, hopefully getting them all back where they belong. It’s just an idea though.
I kinda like this idea. It does run into the slight difficulty of drawing more attention to Yungoos’ home region, which doesn’t exist yet, but otherwise, it presents a significantly more sane approach to an invasive pest that’s still compatible with Pokémon’s baseline ethical framework.
Are you doing reviews of the Alolan forms as well? I ask because the Alolan pokedex is relatively short and I’m curious of your thoughts on some of the cosmetic changes, mechanic changes, and lore of some of them such as Alolan Raichu (lore especially there).
At the moment I’m thinking I’ll do them at the end of the Alola Pokédex.
I was wondering what you thought of the pokedex entries on Mega Glalie from Sun and Moon – “The excess energy from Mega Evolution spilled over from its mouth, breaking its jaw. It spews endless blizzards” and “It envelops prey in its mouth, freezing them instantly. But its jaw is dislocated, so it’s unable to eat them.” This seems like pretty direct evidence that Mega Evolution is harmful, and known to be such, by the people who put the dex together. Why are the professors pushing this?
I don’t know how harmful it can possibly be, seeing as mega evolution never lasts more than a few minutes and all the changes are instantly reversed. I think lines like this stress that mega evolved forms are not actually viable organisms and aren’t supposed to be; they’re ridiculous super-overpowered battle modes that exaggerate everything about the base Pokémon to the point that it becomes self-defeating in non-combat situations.
Do you think it’s possible that GF don’t actually WANT to make Pikachu clones every gen, but they’re forced to by, I dunno, Nintendo or some such for marketing’s sake? A bit of Executive Meddling, if you will. Maybe Mimikyu hints at this by poking fun at the needless (and desperate?) attempt to capture Pikachu’s appeal and popularity?
I think if there were a top-down policy on that, we’d probably see more of them in promotional materials than we do, likely at Pikachu’s expense. That, and… well, I don’t know how Nintendo manages its creative teams, but I would have hoped Game Freak had earned a bit of independence by now. I think they do it specifically to annoy me. Having said that, this is an interesting way of looking at Mimikyu; I’ll have to talk about it in my review.
It fascinates me that Leech Life being buffed so much in S/M has led to Absorb taking its place on the movesets of a whole lot of Pokemon, even those who have no other Grass powers or have ever had any previously. Obviously this is for game balance, but do you think we could take it to argue that LL and Absorb (and maybe Mega/Giga Drain?) work on similar mechanics, thematically speaking?
Honestly I kinda would have assumed that even before generation VII. How any Pokémon move works is super vague, and a lot of them probably don’t work the same way for all Pokémon, but both of these moves are doing something that somehow takes the target’s “life force,” whether that’s by sucking blood, or attaching roots like a Leech Seed, or just magic bull$#!t.
Do you have a favourite animal? An extant one, that is.
That’s a tough one… I had a conversation about this with Jim the Editor, whose first reaction is that my favourite animal must be cats. My response to that was that I have friends who are cats, but that’s not the same thing as cats being my favourite animal (otherwise I’d just pick humans), and that just confused the hell out of him because Jim doesn’t really “get” pets. I think I might go with the tuatara, which is a reptile we have in New Zealand that isn’t a lizard but looks like it should be, lives for over a hundred years, and has a secret third eye (I am not making any of this up).
ahem
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNxujJGnbB4
Okay, let’s go.
Pikipek and Trumbeak are woodpeckers, one of the broad classes of bird that Pokémon hadn’t previously gotten around to making an early-game Normal/Flying-type out of. Let’s run through the checklist… Pidgey’s a waxwing, Hoothoot’s an owl, Taillow’s a swallow, Starly’s a starling, Pidove’s a pigeon, Fletchling’s a robin, and Spearow’s not a sparrow. With the exception of Hoothoot and Pidove, they’re all based – more or less loosely – on members of the songbird family (or, well, technically they’re a sub-order or something, but who’s counting?), and most of them gain more raptor-like traits as they evolve. Which… y’know… is fine; that reflects the huge diversity of the real songbirds, but it would be nicer if they weren’t all (with the exception of Hoothoot) Normal/Flying-types with fairly generic powers and a bias towards speed and physical attacks. Continue reading “Pikipek, Trumbeak and Toucannon”
Pokémaniacal 