Tag: fan games

The Dag asks:

What are your opinions on Pokemon Reborn, and whether fanmade games could possibly find elements of themselves incorporated into future canon games?

I don’t think I have an opinion on Pokémon Reborn; I don’t know anything about it.  The second part of this question… I think might have some legal or at least moral hazard to it?  Like, if someone creating a Pokémon fan game creates a cool new mechanic, and that mechanic is later incorporated into a commercial game and the original designer is not compensated in any way… well, I don’t think that would be illegal because (as I understand it) you can’t copyright a game mechanic and it would be extremely difficult to prove that Game Freak didn’t come up with the same idea independently (unless they straight up jacked the fan game’s code, which… well, why?), but it certainly seems sleazy to me?  And, indeed, arguably more so than doing the same with a mechanic from a game that had its own profitable release and was designed by a paid developer.  I don’t know; if I worked for Game Freak I think I might avoid even looking at fan games just so I didn’t need to have that debate with myself.

Anonymous asks:

Seeing that you did a post about Pokemon Uranium, have you ever heard of or played Pokemon Reborn or its sister game Pokemon Rejuvenation? These games also play with darker themes and provide an additional challenge of 18 gyms. They also added the mechanic of interacting with the environment through field effects, Terrain abilities and expanded on them greatly to create many interactive fields from forests to icy surfaces, and even a chessboard. Would you consider doing a post about them?

Well, I’ll finish this one first.  But maybe?  We’ll see.

Anonymous asks:

What do you think of Allerglen, the fanmade game Pokemon Ethereal Gates take on Darmanitan’s zen form. I think it’s much more useful, since it has high speed so it can actually get attacks in (And a staff member has promised future updates will buff its special attack)

I’m not familiar with Ethereal Gates, but just looking it up quickly now…

Doing Zen Mode this way does make a lot more sense – part of the reason it just doesn’t work for Darmanitan is because Zen Darmanitan is trying to be a tank when it inherently starts with less than 50% HP, which is something of a recipe for failure.  Allerglen can take hits with its fairly solid initial defences and then strike back hard in Zen Mode.  The trouble is that you still have only one moveset that you have to use to fill two different roles.  Allerglen’s initial attack and special attack are sufficiently awful that it wants support moves like Stun Spore so it isn’t just wasting its time before Zen Mode activates, whereas once it’s in Zen Mode it wants Quiver Dance and as many special attacks as it can think of.  It’s definitely more flexible, and Zen Mode sucks a lot less for this Pokémon than it does for Darmanitan (who is so much better off without this unique and interesting ability that it’s just not funny anymore) but I suspect the problems with the ability are a little more systemic than that…