So was playing a non-pokemon game just a one time thing, or are you planning to play other games in the future? If so (and if you have a WiiU at the time) may I suggest Earthbound(Mother 2 in Japan) for the SNES virtual console? Its developers, Ape Inc.(who later became Creatures Inc.), worked on it before working on the original Pokemon Red and Green, and it may be interesting to check out just to see how it may have influenced the Pokemon series.

Well, Final Fantasy VII was sort of a special case, partly because I didn’t have any other pressing projects in the lead-up to X and Y, partly because it was a request from Jim the Editor, who has best friend privileges. I don’t want to say that I definitely won’t do it again, but I don’t plan to; certainly not in the near future.

I was wondering if you had heard about the “Twitch Plays Pokemon” thing? It’s pretty equally entertaining as it is frustrating to watch? If you haven’t heard about it yet, a guy modded a Pokemon Red emulator in order for multiple people to be able to play a single Pokemon game file at once. Essentially it has turned into 40-50,000 people playing one game and keying in commands at the same time…. you can see where things can get complicated and frustrating for everyone involved!

…you know, I was just thinking about posting something on this.

Here it is for those who haven’t seen it: http://www.twitch.tv/twitchplayspokemon

One player has aptly described the exercise as follows: “This isn’t a thousand monkeys at a thousand typewriters. It’s twenty thousand monkeys at a single typewriter, and half those monkeys are screaming and desperately trying to progress while the other half throw shit everywhere. It’s wonderful.” They have managed to flail and stumble their way as far as the Celadon Game Corner over the course of four and a half days, and have even evolved their Eevee into a Flareon (I had the good fortune to actually be watching at this glorious moment) and raised a powerful Pidgeot. On the other hand, they have released their Charmeleon, thrown away a nugget and a Moon Stone, and spent a good hour stuck behind the tree outside Erica’s Gym. The guy running this mess has said that he might hack the Surf HM into their inventory, since realistically there’s no way they’re going to get through the Safari Zone in 500 steps or less, but he wants to let them try first. Personally I’m not sure even that will help, because they’ll still need to either teach Pidgeot Fly and successfully target Pallet Town or make it through the Seafoam Islands… then again, they’ve gotten this far.

EDIT: …aaand they just stuck Pidgeot in the PC. They’re in trouble now.

After seeing you play and compare Pokemon to Final Fantasy, I recommend taking a look at either of a pair of games, whenever you have time. Person 3 FES for PS2 or Persona 4 the golden for Vita. They’re also RPGs and their mechanics have similarities with Pokemon and I feel like Pokemon would work nicely with the combat engine… elemental advantages, fluid combat, 8-slot moveset, and enemies, minus bosses, have HP and damage numbers similar to your characters.

I don’t actually own either of those consoles. I played Final Fantasy VII on my computer when it was released on Steam recently. Maybe if someone can recommend a good emulator and I have time I’ll take a look, but I certainly couldn’t promise a review; I have quite enough to do this year what with all the sixth-generation Pokémon to look at.

I came up with a theory about the development of why XY was so small. I think that Nintendo was originally going to release Gen V on the 3DS using the XY graphics engine, but something happened that pushed back the release date. To pad time, they decided to implement the new Poke designs. For instance, you can see statues of the Tao dragons in the garden (scrapped from the original draft of the game?) Plus Team Plasma’s knight-getup would make more sense if they lived in a European-type region.

I’m not sure I understand. Your proposition is that the generation with the largest number of Pokémon designs to date was the ‘filler’ generation meant to tread water until the 3DS was ready?

Do you have a favorite legendary trio?

Hmm. Not really, no, but if you asked me to pick one I think I’d go with the Legendary… er… DogCatBeastThings. You know, Suicine, Entei and Raikou. I enjoy the contrasting aesthetic goals at work in the three designs (beauty and grace vs. strength and stability vs. energy and dynamism), and their origin story hits my personal ‘sweet spot’ between “not enough legends to be legendary” and “wait, this actually breaks the universe,” while also having some very neat symbolism that purports to explain their powers (Raikou is the lightning that struck the Brass Tower, Entei is the fire that destroyed it, and Suicune is the rain that put it out).

Have you read Ryan North’s Dinosaur Comics? I have a feeling you’ll love it. :)

I know Dinosaur Comics, and it scares me. It’s like Ryan North can see into my soul, pull out my most bizarre neuroses and whimsical desires, and twist them into something new and beautiful and terrible all at once. With a tyrannosaurus.

You should all go and read it.

Any thoughts on the Pokemon Plus and Minus rumors that made the rounds recently? I personally feel a bit ambivalent, especially since it comes so soon after X and Y, but at least the design ideas seem fairly interesting…

Are you asking whether I believe them? Because at present I see absolutely no reason to, and given that, I see little point in analysing any of it either. "This one site says this one guy told them,” whoever they claim this one guy is, holds little interest for me. Obviously it could all be true; I don’t know. I’ll be waiting for something a touch more official before I pay any attention whatsoever, though.

Do you think they should implement an option in future games to simply give a pokemon to someone else without needing to trade?

Meh.

With the reveal of the first X and Y event pokemon, Diancie, in a recent Coro Coro issue, I thought I’d touch upon a theory of mine. Diancie is a rock/fairy type, a type that is only shared by carbink. Interestingly, they both seem to have a gem motiff. I heard Diancie’s leaked pokedex entry state that it compresses carbon in the air into crystal structures seemingly creating gems out of thin air. Now, wouldn’t it be interesting if Diancie was the mother of all Carbink?

Well, I’m normally lukewarm at best about this kind of speculation, but I do remember thinking when I first saw Carbink that it must evolve, because it didn’t ‘look’ finished, and being rather surprised when it didn’t… so I don’t know. I don’t think there’d be any precedent for a relationship like that between a common and a legendary Pokémon, but that doesn’t mean Diancie couldn’t be the first. Maybe?

How broken would you think Shedinja would be if it had Sturdy instead of Wonder Guard?

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say “not.”

Shedinja is weird, and there are a lot of Pokémon (or, at the very least, a lot of movesets) that will auto-lose to it, one-on-one. On the other hand, anything that can harm Shedinja, at all, is game over. It’s very all-or-nothing, and since it doesn’t look like Stealth Rock is going to stop being a thing any time soon, the burden is normally going to be on Shedinja’s trainer to keep things from tipping over to “nothing.” The fact that Shedinja can be insta-killed by five different attack types certainly hurts it, but the fact that it can also be insta-killed by burns, poison, entry hazards, weather damage, Leech Seed, Rough Skin recoil, a variety of Tricked items, and anything with Mold Breaker is at least as big a problem (and none of those things are really unusual). Ultimately, almost any Pokémon in the game can learn Toxic – and let’s not forget that Shedinja isn’t actually a top-tier offensive threat in its own right, either (it’s all but certain that, even with direct damage immunity, the vast majority of teams would have something to kill a Shedinja, so it can’t just rely on its invulnerability to wear everything down – it has limited time in play with which to contribute to the team, and Shedinja’s movepool isn’t great). Don’t get me wrong, Shedinja would be a lot more powerful if it just had flat-out immunity to direct damage, but without having a playtest for it, I still think we’d be looking at “interesting” rather than “broken.”