Tag: Pokémon

Thoughts on the Pokémon Go Teams

I’m probably supposed to have to opinions on Pokémon Go by now, so we should talk about that.  Obviously if you know my writing then you know that I tend to be more interested in things like story and characterisation and world-building than in strategy and mathematics and the inner workings of the game, because frankly there are loads of other people on the internet who are just much better equipped than me to deal with the hard-core mechanical stuff.  And Pokémon Go, although I am having a lot of fun playing it, doesn’t give me a whole lot to pick apart, in the way that I like to pick apart episodes of the anime or whatever.  But I would clearly be in dereliction of my solemn duty as an Internet Pokémon Guru if I did not produce some form of rambling commentary on the bits of this game that have managed to catch my interest – namely, the three teams and their competing philosophies.

Continue reading “Thoughts on the Pokémon Go Teams” →

Anonymous asks:

On a scale of 1 to 10, how hot is Arcanine?

Well, almost all Fire Pokémon are explicitly described by the Pokédex as having a very high body temperature or extremely hot fire attacks.  Even if it doesn’t give us an exact temperature (and we shouldn’t necessarily believe these anyway; the 10000 ºC quoted for Magcargo’s resting body temperature is hot enough to vaporise steel), it likes to wax lyrical about the intensity of the fire produced by many Pokémon, telling us in Emboar’s case, for instance, that “a flaring beard of fire is proof that it is fired up,” and “it can throw a fire punch by setting its fists on fire with its fiery chin,” and “fiery fires fire flaring fire fiery flares fire” (okay I made that last one up but you get the idea).  

Growlithe and Arcanine are just about the only Fire Pokémon whose Pokédex entries contain no reference to their fire abilities at all, focusing instead on their loyalty, speed, and regal appearance.  Also, while Arcanine’s special attack is high, it’s not that high; it’s actually about average for a fully evolved Fire Pokémon, and two of Arcanine’s three possible abilities (Flash Fire, Intimidate and Justified) are not Fire-related.  So I think it’s likely that Arcanine is actually on the low side by the standards of Fire Pokémon – maybe a 3 or 4, with Growlithe likely being 1.  Of course, if you were to compare them to all Pokémon (of which Fire-types comprise only 8% of the known species) you’d probably still be looking at a 9.

Anonymous asks:

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.