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.
What are your thoughts on a potential Diamond and Pearl remake?
Eh. On the one hand, I sort of think there are better things Game Freak’s designers could spend their time on – the original Diamond and Pearl are basically fine, I feel. They hold up a lot better than the original Ruby and Sapphire did, anyway. On the other, I suppose I wouldn’t exactly be averse to seeing the writers tackle the cosmic Pokémon of generation IV again, take a fresh look at them, maybe play around a bit more with their roles in the Pokémon universe, and try to do something interesting with the way myths and legends work in shaping our understanding of their world. I guess that means I’m basically neutral on the idea.
Eugh, Probopass; hands down. I have to have a disclaimer whenever I talk about Probopass that I know it’s based on a moai statue, and I still think it’s horrendous. It has flying drones called mini-noses. WTF.
I saw this on Pokémemes today, under the title “Technology Lent to More Design.”
The artist may have been trying to make a point, but I’m not entirely sure what it was. Purely because it was on Pokémemes, I initially assumed it was an attempt to prove the superiority of either the first or the fourth generation as compared to the other, but if so it’s not clear which one the artist favours, so I’ve decided that this is unlikely.
As the picture illustrates, the newer designs are generally more detailed; the older ones are more likely to have large plain areas of block colour without ornamentation or patterning (broadly speaking – you might get the opposite impression by comparing, say, Jynx and Abomasnow). Personally, this is something I like about the newer designs – I think, on balance, that I prefer the original Garchomp to this redesign, but I feel there’s a lot to be said for this Charizard (though I don’t like the way the flame’s been done; it looks more like a bristly tail than fire, which fits when you see that style of flame on, say, Emboar or Typhlosion, but not on Charizard). I think the thing to take away from this, though, is that they both work. There’s more than one way to interpret a design concept, and some people are going to like one way of doing it, and some people another.
What do you think?
– Do you like your Pokémon clean and simple, or detailed and elaborate? – What are the advantages and disadvantages of these two extremes? – Has the artist still managed to capture ‘Garchomp’ with this different aesthetic? – How about Charizard? – And what the hell is the title “Technology Lent to More Design” supposed to mean, anyway?
Pokémaniacal 