Tag: pokemon design

In relation to the last question I asked you: Are there any dinosaurs or other prehistoric fauna you’d like to see as Pokemon in the future?

Have actually been asked this same question before but there’s no harm in thinking of some more…

My favourite dinosaur as a kid was Parasaurolophus (not exactly a traditional choice, I know, but to each his own), but I’m not immediately sure what you could do with her.  Parasaurolophus’ schtick is her long hollow crest, the function of which is a recurring topic of debate among palaeontologists, though it seems likely that it had something to do with communication, since the cavities in the horn are connected to the dinosaur’s nasal passages and could have produced a sonorous booming call at will.  Sonic powers aren’t exactly unique in Pokémon, though.  Maybe instead you could run with one of the more famous of the older, discredited hypotheses – that the crest was a snorkel – and make it amphibious or aquatic, but not actually a Water-type?  Sort of a Grass/Ground (or maybe just Ground with Water Absorb or something) swampy kind of creature, that submerges itself for hours at a time to hide from predators.

I leave you with a quote from the Wikipedia page on Parasaurolophus:
“One unusual suggestion, made by creationist Duane Gish, is that the crest housed chemical glands that allowed it to throw jets of chemical "fire” at enemies, similar to the modern-day bombardier beetle,“ so in fairness we can probably give the damn thing whatever powers we like.

See also this glorious image from one of Gish’s books directed at a younger audience.  I especially love the way the other dinosaur flails helplessly.

I don’t intend to say I know the process of creating new Pokemon goes in the company, but for the sake of argument lets say that the illustrators design their Pokemon family and hand it to the series’ overseer or project leader… Now lets say in a parallel universe, you were the overseer but your views on the Pokemon world are identical to how they are now… In all honesty, are there Gen 1 Pokemon that when brought to you, you would tell the illustrators to change it or scrap it?

Eh… that’s complicated.  A couple of people have asked me similar questions before, and my usual position is as follows: on the one hand, I certainly do think that a number of first-generation Pokémon are, shall we say, not great.  Many of them are quite straightforward adaptations of comparatively unremarkable real animals; I’ve never thought much, for instance, of Rattata and Raticate, Spearow and Fearow, Sandshrew and Sandslash, Krabby and Kingler, Goldeen and Seaking, or Seel and Dewgong (although personally I have an unaccountable soft spot for the last two).  On the other hand, I also maintain that the first-generation Pokémon can’t necessarily be judged by the same standard as their successors, because they were created in a vacuum, as it were, by a comparatively much less experienced design team.  Context matters, and the circumstances and aims of the project would have been very different.  So… I am divided on this question.

One detail that I don’t think ever got mentioned in your Create-A-Pokémon project was what Krakentoa’s cry would sound like. I mean, a creature as alien-looking as that would probably make noises so bizarre as to almost defy verbal description, but maybe you could compare it to some other Pokémon’s cry?

(For reference, here’s Krakentoa: http://pokemaniacal.tumblr.com/post/48350352582/presenting-krakentoa-the-deep-flame-pokemon)

Hrm.  Good question.  I’m sort of thinking a kind of screechy roar, maybe something like Venusaur, with a dash of Rhydon or Nidoking.  Anyone else have thoughts on this?

Some new bits of Pokémon X and Y info got me thinking: being a self-professed dinosaur nerd, what kinds of dinosaurs and/or prehistoric animals would YOU like to see get made into Pokémon?

You know, I would really like to see some more of the weird-ass Cambrian Explosion stuff like Hallucigenia (an animal whose name means “I really gotta lay off the special mushrooms”) played with.  Or, from the Mesozoic, maybe a Spinosaurus, just because I’d be curious to see where Game Freak would take the ‘sail’ thing.  A Spinosaurus’ sail is generally thought to have something to do with regulating body temperature in a hot climate, so the simplest interpretation would be to give it fire- or sun-related powers, but you could take it in other directions too – like thinking of it as a literal sail and working with wind- and water-related abilities.

On the subject of starter Pokémon, do you think Game Freak should stick to the Grass-Fire-Water trio, or should they try out other types? You mentioned in your ‘Starter Pokémon – Final Thoughts’ that the Grass-Fire-Water thing eases new players into Pokémon’s complicated type chart, but it also potentially creates confusion regarding type reciprocity. What do you think? Also, if Game Freak changed the starter types (but still a trio), should it still be fully reciprocal like Grass-Fire-Water is?

Starter Pokémon are actually going to be the subject of one of my ‘If I Were In Charge’ entries in the next couple of weeks (specifically, on the lyric “come with me, the time is right; there’s no better team") – so if you want to know exactly what I would do with starter Pokémon in excruciating detail, well, it’s coming up!

If you had to retype any Pokemon, which ones would you do and to which types? Personally, I think Nosepass and Probopass should have been Rock/Electric, Marowak to be Ground/Fighting, Serperior to be Grass/Dragon, Gyarados either pure Water or Water/Dragon, Lucario to be Psychic/Fighting, and Dunsparce to be Normal/Ground.

If I had to?  That’s an odd stipulation.  Why am I being so cruelly compelled?

There are very, very few Pokémon whose typing actually upsets me.  I’m okay with Gyarados being a Flying-type, for instance, even though Gyarados can’t fly, since Gyarados’ physical design is based on a kite, and I’m not bothered by Lucario not being a Psychic-type, since the fact that Aura Sphere is a Fighting-type move seems to signify that his aura-related abilities are just qualitatively different from what Psychic Pokémon do.  If I’m going to jump in and start retyping things… well, it really depends on what I can get away with.  I could add Dark to Raticate, Arbok, Persian, Hypno, Gothitelle and Cofagrigus, Psychic to Golduck, Steel to Electrode and Porygon, Flying to Sceptile and Rock to Conkeldurr, swap Normal for Fighting on Farfetch’d and Braviary and Flying for Water on Masquerain, quietly erase Watchog from existence while no one is looking, and finish up by eradicating the Ground type completely and dividing all of its possessions between Normal, Rock and Fighting.

Or I could play it safe and just make Charizard Dragon/Fire.  Y’know, whatevs.

This question is about the one you recently answered about trying to fill out the Pokemon ecosystem to give variety cabon copy Pokemon. I ask because I agree with both you and the questioner, so I wonder if different forms would be a solution? Instead of Goldeen and Finneon, they could be treated as 1 Pokemon with the same stats abilities and movepools, but have their different names and appearances. They would be looked up in the same place in the Pokedex, under a name like Fin Swimmer or w/e.

Maybe?  I do feel that the idea of Pokémon forms is underused, and this would definitely be a good way of showing that kind of variety in future generations – instead of a new bird Pokémon that’s basically the same thing as Pidgey anyway, just call it what it is and create a regional variation of Pidgey (maybe with slightly different powers, a la Nidoran?).  Saves time and effort.  I don’t think I’d want to condense any existing Pokémon, though.  I mean, we have them now, so I think it makes more sense to try and create more points of difference for them, give them more uniqueness and individuality.  My real problem is that Game Freak just aren’t interested in doing that because continuing to add more new Pokémon is their top priority – excusable, I suppose, given that it’s been proven by experience to keep the franchise going, but it still bugs me.

Recently ive been thinking about how you don’t like pokemon that step on others toes in terms of design. I, personally, believe they add alot to the pokeverse and here is my reasoning. In the wild, animals have been known to adopt identical traits and natures through evolution simply because it makes them more fit for survival. Looking at the ‘generic normal birds’ they keep adding. In the real world you don’t see one type of bird, they’re dozens upon dozens of species of them. So, to me… 1/2

So I think the second half of this question has been lost in the aether, but there’s enough of it here that I can get the gist of it, don’t you think?

So.  Yes; that is a legitimate point.  I disagree (as, of course, you are aware) but I think it is fair to say that (for example) Pokémon like Pidgey, Spearow, Taillow, Starly and Pidove convey the variety we see even amongst the ‘generic birds’ of the real world, and that this can be called a strength of that design philosophy.  I am inclined to believe, however, that the continued proliferation of ‘generic’ designs like these is simply rather poor prioritisation.  The aim (so far as I can make out) is not to construct a working ecosystem, or a realistic cross-section of the species you actually see in the world; the aim, I think, is to convey the diversity of life, to show how just how weird and amazing some species can be.  Sure, there are thousands of species of birds, but when you already have the pigeon, why would you do the starling and not the cassowary, or the quetzal?

Besides, if we actually try to imitate the spread of species we see in the real world, we’ll wind up with 90% of all Pokémon being Bug-types.

This question has to do with the idea of a Wind Type, or to be more specific… changing Flying to Wind. For me I feel like Flying is a very weird “element” and Wind helps specify what exactly makes a Flying attack different than a Normal attack. And it helps decide what Pokemon actually NEED Wind as a type instead of Flying, as Flying is an overpopulated type. Take Jigglypuff, would you think it would make sense for the Balloon Pokemon to be a Wind Type?

Flying is weird, true.  It seems split into ‘bird’ Pokémon and attacks (Pidgeot, Pelipper, Honchkrow, Drill Peck, Pluck, Brave Bird, etc), ‘wind’ Pokémon and attacks (Drifblim, Jumpluff, Gust, Hurricane, Air Slash, etc), and Pokémon who just happen to be able to fly.  Then of course you have stuff like Dodrio, who is a bird who can’t fly, Flygon, who isn’t a Flying-type because she has two types already, despite being a Pokémon that flies with wings, and Gyarados, who is a Flying-type because he’s based on a kite, even though he cannot fly and, in fact, has no powers related to either wind or flight at all.  In fact, you can see from Missingno.’s data in Red and Blue that there was originally going to be a Bird type, which was apparently scrapped, and I know of at least one Fakemon website which splits the Flying type in this way.  It’s worth noting that, in Red and Blue, Gust was actually a Normal attack, while Whirlwind and Razor Wind still are – what this suggests is that Game Freak initially considered wind-related powers to be ‘unaligned,’ which shows a remarkable shift in their conception of the Flying type when you compare it to Tornadus from Black and White.

The trouble is that I can’t help but imagine Wind would be very small, as it stands.  Although there are several annoying exceptions, most Flying-types appear to be Flying-types because they can fly with wings.  I could definitely see Pidgeot being Wind/Flying instead of Normal/Flying, Jumpluff, as you note, would be a sensible candidate for Grass/Wind (along with Whimsicott?), Tornadus would certainly have to be a Wind-type (but where does that leave Thundurus and Landorus?), Drifblim, Tropius and maybe Mantine, Emolga and Sigilyph should go in there, but that seems to be about it, as far as I can see.  Shiftry is a possibility but you’d have to think long and hard about whether his wind powers are really more important than the characteristics that make him Grass/Dark.  I’m inclined to disagree with you on Jigglypuff, simply because she doesn’t actually have any wind powers at all; she just happens to be light enough to float on the wind.  Gyarados presents a similar problem, though I’d probably stick him into Wind for the hell of it.  Pokémon like Crobat, Gliscor, Vespiquen and Ledian, who aren’t birds but have no strong connection with Wind either, probably have to stay in Flying.

Like eliminating the Ground type, this is, in the end, something that I probably would have done if I’d been mucking around with Pokémon since its inception but wouldn’t really want to do now unless I were intent on completely ripping the games to pieces and starting practically from scratch.