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.
I read an interesting Twitter conversation this morning between two major figures of the Pokémon community: Joe Merrick, who runs serebii.net, one of the most important (if not the most important) English-language Pokémon fan reference sites, and Pokémon YouTuber Tama Hero. The topic at issue: what exactly is a “main series” Pokémon game? Because I firmly believe that no human of Earth should use Twitter, I reproduce the conversation here in full:
I’m curious/forget if you addressed this in a post – did you breed your Psychu to have an Ice-type Hidden Power and Timid Nature, or did you just get lucky?
Pure luck, actually. When I found the character who identifies your Hidden Powers, I just went through all the Pokémon I had at the time to see if any of them seemed useful. Not sure whether I’ll keep it long-term as Hidden Power isn’t exactly a strong move, but I’m not sure what else Psychu can learn that I might want instead (I still have a blackout on any information I haven’t yet found for myself in the game).
Greetings fellow Pokémaniac. First of all id like to say i love the blog, your thoughts, ideas and stories can keep me reading and thinking for days on end. Keep up the good work. So I’ve played every Pokémon gen, unfortunately haven’t got round to playing black/white 2 yet, and im only part way through Moon as it hasn’t grabbed me like i thought it would. In my opinion though, X and Y have been the best games to come so far (I’dtellyouwhybutI’mrunningoutofcharacters) Your thoughts on this? Ty.
Glad you’re enjoying it!
So obviously I’m still not done with Moon, because my writing process makes me play so slowly, and not ready to offer a final assessment or ranking. I really like everything I’ve seen so far though – the worldbuilding is excellent, the story is shaping up to be quite interesting, there are some cool characters, and although I still like generation VI’s Pokémon designs better, VII’s seem like they’re fine. My official position – subject to change in weeks to come – is that V has the best story, but VI was better overall. VII still has a shot at overthrowing either or both.
Do you have a master post for all the Pokemon reviews?
Hmm. Not… really? If you go here you can find links for all of the reviews sorted by type, so that’s probably the best way to find any particular Pokémon you’re looking for, or you could look at https://pokemaniacal.com/category/unova-pokedex/ for everything from Unova. We are working on getting everything sorted into categories and hopefully by the time you read this, all those options will be available in the ‘Post Categories’ section.
One day, I hope to be able to upgrade the site plan and then everything will be searchable… One day…
I had an argument with a friend way back when Pokemon first came out. He thought I was wrong when I referred to Pokemon like Vileplume and Venusaur as ‘Grass-Type’ because he thought the type was called ‘Leaf-Type.’ Someone confirmed I was right and that was the end of that. But that’s something that stuck with me. Wouldn’t ‘Leaf-Type’ make a little more sense? Or even better, calling it ‘Wood-Type?’
I think “Plant-type” would have made the most sense, really. A lot of the languages that the games are translated into go that way, actually – Type Plante in French, Typ Pflanze in German, Tipo Planta in Spanish. The Japanese 草 or くさ (kusa) really does seem to literally mean “grass” though, as far as I can tell, and Grass is what it’s been for twenty years now, so I doubt they’re ever likely to change it at this point.
Have you read Dating a Team Magma Grunt? It is ridiculously adorable! :3
Okay so I looked it up, and… I don’t like to make a habit of reading and reviewing fan fiction or web comics or whatever, because if I start doing that then everyone will ask me to and it will never bloody end… but yes. Yes it is. And also hilarious.
You didn’t just miss Go – you also missed regional-variant Pokémon finally being a thing in the games. We now live in a world inhabited by ice-breathing Vulpix and long-necked Exeggutors.
Okay but I missed that deliberately because I avoid spoilers from upcoming Pokémon games and I DIDN’T READ ANY OF WHAT YOU JUST SAID LA LA LA I’M NOT LISTENING
How would you explain the difference between the Rock Type and Earth Type? Because they’ve always seemed pretty similar to me…
I don’t; I complain about it and loudly wish that I could just get rid of Ground-types altogether.
I’m replaying HeartGold atm and just got to Bugsy when I noticed that his gym is spider web-themed, like Burgh’s and Viola’s. Why does GF make bug gyms with spider web designs? Can’t they do something else? Would be cool if they made like a beehive or an anthill gym or something, imo. Whaddya think?
Well, in point of fact they did make a beehive gym – Burgh’s original gym design from Black and White, before the renovations that took place in Black and White 2. It was not one of their better gym designs, to be honest; the gimmick was that some of the walls were made of gluey honey and you could walk through them, which effectively just made moving through the gym painfully slow. So, in answer – they can and they have, but it takes more than a good theme to make a gym fun.
If you had the chance, would you rearrange the National Dex? And how? I’m also talking the possibility of merging spiecies like the Nidorans or Illumise/Volbeat, that kind of stuff.
Well… yes and no? By which I mean the National Pokédex doesn’t remotely resemble how I would structure the Pokédex if I were starting from scratch (I think I would arrange Pokémon by habitat, similarly to what you can do with the Fire Red and Leaf Green Pokédex, or perhaps by egg group), but seeing as we have the damn thing as a known and established entity, I don’t think that getting rid of it or changing it would serve any particular purpose.
Pokémaniacal 