Tag: QandA

I was recently thinking how unfair it was that water was one of the more popular types, but doesn’t get its own status condition. I mean fire gets burn, electric gets paralysis, ice gets freeze, poison gets, well, poison, psychic gets sleep, and grass seems to cover most of the others in one way or another. So how about the “wet” status? It slows the victim down, makes it less evasive, and increases the damage of electric type moves. Rain will also give it to every non-water type. Thoughts?

Do you really think that’s necessary?

I mean… there are seventeen types.  Five of them are associated with status conditions.  Honestly, I’d kinda dispute associating sleep with Psychic; there’s only one Psychic-type sleep-inducing move, while Grass and Normal have three each, not counting Relic Song).  Electric with paralysis is a little off too, since there are actually quite a few non-electrical sources of paralysis like Glare and Body Slam.  Why single out Water as needing to have an associated status condition?

Besides, Water is already a powerful element, and Rain is already a powerful field effect.  There’s no need to make them both stronger by linking them with an effect that dramatically increases a team’s ability to use devastating moves like Blizzard and Thunder.

Is there any plausible logical relationship between a Pokemon’s name and its apparent inability to produce any sounds besides it? (Okay, so Onix can growl and Staryu does his “hya” thing, but you know what I mean.) Historically, did humans just name Pokemon based on the only sounds they ever heard them make? Or is it the other way around: once Pokemon were discovered and named, the Pokemon themselves adopted their new identity and, in accordance, adapted linguistically? Or something else?

What I’ve always thought is that, in the Pokémon universe, a lot of human words are derived from the sounds Pokémon made – so, originally, humans called something “gloomy” because it reminded them in some way of the Pokémon that makes the sound “gloom”, or name a substance “magma” because it’s where the Pokémon that makes the sound “magmar” lives.  I quite like this idea because it ties in nicely with the implication that the alphabet is originally based on the Unown, and continues to emphasise what a huge cultural debt humans have to Pokémon in that universe… although I have no doubt that certain specific words and Pokémon would still be difficult to interpret according to this model.

Which game had your favourite soundtrack, and what is your all time favourite piece of music from the games?

Now, as any of my friends will tell you, I’m not really a musical person.  In fact, it’s been suggested more than once that I have somehow managed to completely miss what music actually is on some conceptual level.  This being the case, you should probably take what I have to say about it with a grain of salt.

Having said that, I always felt that Ruby, Sapphire and Emerald had the best music.  In my opinion, the music was one of the two greatest strengths of the third generation, along with the inexplicably superior creative thought that went into writing the Pokédex (it’s just about the only generation, as far as I can tell, where anyone put any significant effort into writing new things about old Pokémon).  I mean, obviously the sound quality has continued to improve since then as the games’ technology has improved, but somehow the music of Ruby, Sapphire and Emerald is the only music that’s ever had me just sitting there listening to it.  My favourite track is probably the one that plays on the long forest road between Lilycove City and Fortree City… let’s see if I can find it… yes, here it is; this one.

Boltbeam and your Glaceon article got me thinking and I wanted your opinion on a concept. So this Pokemon is based off of a Tardigrade, a miniscule creature that frequents snowy hotsprings. The typing is Bug/Ice, but there’s an interesting catch: Because of hotspring environment and the need to repel predators, it developed the ability to use fire type attacks. Not only that, but it’s ability is Flash Fire, giving it a way to boost those attacks without STAB and covers the x2 weakness. Thoughts?

Hmm.  Well, the idea is cool, but the thing is, I kinda think there’s already a tardigrade Pokémon.  I first learned about the little buggers earlier this year (anyone who isn’t familiar with them should look them up, because they are awesome) – and my first thought was

“Oh, so THAT’S what Reuniclus is!”

It makes sense when you realise that one of the trivial names for tardigrades is ‘water-bears’, which finally explains Reuniclus’ teddy bear-like appearance.  It’s why one of Reuniclus’ abilities is Overcoat, which grants immunity to all damage from weather effects, it’s why an important part of Solosis’ flavour is its incredible resilience to a wide variety of environmental conditions, and it’s why the damn things ARE SO IMPOSSIBLE TO KILL.

In short, although it’s not a bad idea, tardigrades have actually been done.  Not to say you couldn’t try coming at Bug/Ice + Fire powers from a slightly different angle, because that is also an interesting starting point…

Ive been thinking this for a while now. When they designed reshiram and zekrom. I honetly feel it wouldve made MUCH more sence for zekrom to be fighting/dragon. I mean, a few shifts would have to be made, like signature moves and stuff. And there isnt a status ailement thats fighting based (confusion maybe?). But fighting is very much an “justified, honour” based time which contrasts with reshirams “sleek, passionate” fire (yes, thats what im going with, sue me). In combat it is also… (Cont.)

This question continues: “…in combat it would also be equal, if not ABOVE dragon/fire as it hits steel types hard. It fits a physical attacker very well. And c’mon. Fighting/dragon would be eeepppiiiccc. (Also that tacked on truth vs ideas thing, it fits that a bit better, probably)”

Hmm.

You know, when you put it like that, Dragon/Fighting makes a lot more sense than Dragon/Electric.  Bear in mind that the whole ‘honour and glory’ thing is as much my interpretation of the Fighting type as anything official, but of course I think it makes sense, and it fits very well with Zekrom’s ‘ideals’ thing.  I’ve probably mentioned before that I would have written Black and White very differently, allowing the player to choose between Reshiram and Zekrom, and having the story unfold differently depending on the choice, emphasising the differences between their ‘truth’ and ‘ideals’ instead of whitewashing them, and I think if you were going to go that way, Dragon/Fighting is a combination you could do rather a lot with.  Naturally, you’re right that it’s also a very potent combination offensively, and a much nearer match for Dragon/Fire (Zekrom wouldn’t miss Earthquake so much, and wouldn’t have to suffer the gross indignity of being totally walled by Steelix, of all things).

The flip side to that is this quote from Ken Sugimori:
“The tails on both Pokemon are the central points of their respective designs — they’re based off of those electric turbines you see, and they give the impression that they’re these great big generators of fire or electric energy.”
Clearly the designers regarded energy as being a very important part of what they were doing here, and changing Zekrom’s type to Dragon/Fighting would require significantly reworking his art to account for the loss of that particular resonance.  Reshiram would need to be changed as well.

In short, I like the idea lot, but I feel I should point out that there’s rather more work in it than you may have realised.

I am very confused on the Poison Type… I like Nidoran for example, a mammal with poisonous hairs for protection… It makes sense. I don’t like Muk or Weezing because they’re built off waste, which isn’t poisonous, it’s just unhealthy. Why are Bulbasaur and Bellsprout part poison? What’s poisonous about them? Why would Zubat want to be poisonous when he thrives on leeching the blood off living hosts? I understand Steel resisting an Arbok’s bite, but why resist Acid? What IS the Poison Type?

Few of these things are as problematic as you seem to be suggesting.

Go go gadget Oxford English Dictionary.

Poisonous, adjective. (Of a substance or plant) causing or capable of causing death or illness if taken into the body.  (Of an animal) producing poison as a means of attacking enemies or prey; venomous.

Waste can, in fact, be poisonous.  Many kinds of waste are conducive to the spread of disease as well as being poisonous, but they are still quite poisonous on their own – that is, the chemical properties of the substance itself are damaging to health, irrespective of the presence of any disease-causing organisms.  Bulbasaur and Bellsprout (and Oddish) are Poison-types because they, too, are poisonous, as many real plants are.  If you eat them, you will get sick and possibly die.  Zubat can happily use poison because most animals (and plants) are immune to their own poisons (incidentally, vampire bats are actually poisonous/venomous – their saliva stops blood from congealing in the same way as a mosquito’s bite; this is technically a venomous effect).  Snakes, likewise, can pump an animal full of venom and then suffer no ill effects when they eat it afterwards.

Acid, on the other hand, is a problem.  Many acids are in fact poisons as well, but it seems clear that the attack, Acid, causes damage by virtue of being an acid – that is, the substance your Pokémon is producing has corrosive properties because it is, chemically speaking, what’s called a ‘proton donor.’  Metals, generally speaking, do not like acids.  Most metals, when exposed to a strong acid, will react to form salts.  Salts, as the name might suggest, are very much less robust than metals.  Unless they’re all plated with a very inert metal like gold, Steel-types should not like Acid any more than other Pokémon do.

Honestly, I think this is just because the designers didn’t think it through in this much detail.  If it were up to me, I would say that Acid should be a Water attack with a chance to cause a burn, but unfortunately that’s what Scald does.  I guess the only reasonable in-universe explanation is that Steel-types have all developed extremely high resistance to corrosion, maybe by including a very thin layer of something like chromium in their skins, which is why they don’t rust either.

I’m probably a generic question asker (seeing as my previous question asked of you is something you’ve been asked hundreds of times apparently :P). But anyways, since everyone is always like “OMG Generation I iz teh besttt, evryting elz sux!” is there any Pokemon (singular or plural) of the First Generation that you “deny the right to exist?” You don’t have to go into huge detail about it or whatever, but if you can think of a few I’d be interested to hear you opinion!

Hmm.  Which one were you…?

Oh, right; you were the one who asked what I thought of the 5th generation Pokémon, right?  Yeah, it’s not that lots of people have asked me about it, it’s that it was originally the whole purpose of this blog.  That’s why I started writing, and that’s what the whole of last year was about.

Anyway, this question.

This question is tricky, not so much because there are no first generation Pokémon that are badly designed – there are – but because, counterintuitive as it seems, I don’t think you can hold them to the same standard.  They were created in a very different context.  First of all, there was nothing to compare them to.  This is particularly important when you consider that one of the biggest problems I had with many fifth-generation Pokémon was “well, this is just [Pokémon X] with a new paint job and a haircut.”  There’s no way you can reasonably make that complaint about Red and Blue (well, not without attributing some mystical foresight to Game Freak).  Second, the designers themselves weren’t that experienced.  Game Freak was only founded in 1989; it wasn’t that old when Pokémon was first released and they’d only ever made one or two other games for Nintendo, which never achieved any great notoriety.  Black and White were released when Game Freak had been designing  Pokémon for over fifteen years, and I am sometimes startled at how little they appear to have learned in that time (not that they don’t still produce some good stuff – they do – but that was true of the first generation as well).  Third, no-one ever anticipated that Pokémon would become the global phenomenon it has.  There was no guarantee that Red and Green would even be released outside of Japan.  Even when the games were remade into the Red and Blue that we played, you can see how low standards were for fixing problems in the code.  Today, Pokémon games are guaranteed an international release, and Pokémon is the second most profitable video game franchise on the planet, behind Mario (which, incidentally, means a much bigger budget).

What I am by slow degrees trying to say here is that mistakes were made in Red and Blue, and I’m okay with that.  I’m not okay with the exact same mistakes being made, repeatedly and often quite insistently, in Black and White.  The phrasing “I deny this Pokémon’s right to exist” was deliberately over-the-top, and meant to convey that if I had been on the design team, I would have scrapped the Pokémon in question.  I would never use it of any Pokémon from an older iteration of the franchise, and in fact I probably wouldn’t use it of a fifth generation Pokémon either, if I redid all of those reviews now – we’ve got them, and we may as well work with them.

This may seem like an odd question, but how do *you* play Pokemon? I mean, we hear all of your philosophical and abstract stuff which of course is amazing, but when you actually sit down to play one of these games, what do you do? Do you like to catch everything you see, or are you selective? Does your play-style change if you are replaying a game? Do you take competitive strategies into account or do you just brawn your way through?

*shrug* Sorta depends what I’m doing.

The very first time I played Black version, I caught every new species I encountered because I wanted to figure out what made them tick.  I also chose Pokémon to use without really having any idea what I was looking at or how it would evolve (when I decided to train my Larvesta, Invicta, I knew she’d be worth it in the end, but had no idea what she’d actually become or how long that would take – turned out the answer was “a while” but at least I had an Eviolite).  You only get one chance to play like that, and I think it’s a lot of fun because it really pushes the theme of discovery that’s so important to the series.

When I replay a game, sometimes I like to impose rules on myself, because Pokémon is a lot of fun but (let’s face it) not all that difficult.  The ‘Nuzlocke Challenge’ is one set of rules, but there are other ways you can do it – sometimes I limit myself to using Pokémon of only one type, other times I get my best friend to pick out a team for me and provide me with a bunch of eggs.  The Pokémon he picks are invariably awful, because he is a sadistic bastard – on one memorable occasion, I played through Leaf Green with a Beedrill, a Farfetch’d, a Lickitung, a Primeape (easily the strongest member of my team), a Tangela, and a special attacker Rhydon.  And you know what?  That Farfetch’d kicked ass.  Relatively speaking, anyway.  Sometimes I’ll just limit myself to using Pokémon I’ve never seriously used before.  That led to an interesting Ruby version playthrough with a four-man team of Masquerain, Armaldo, Solrock and Kecleon (since Masquerain was going to be my only Pokémon for a while, I prepared for this one by breeding a Surskit with Hydro Pump, because seriously, it’s Surskit).

As for competitive strategies… well, the thing to realise is that a lot of stuff that you have to think about when you’re preparing for a Battle Tower run or a battle against another person just doesn’t apply to a playthrough.  Trying to EV-train your Pokémon is just a waste of time, you’ll have limited access to TMs, you probably won’t be breeding your Pokémon so egg moves are out, you won’t have access to move tutors, and your opponents will rarely switch, which means that moves like Spikes and Stealth Rock are much less useful unless you plan to spam Whirlwind.  The other thing is that, since the AI opponents’ Pokémon never have any EVs until you get to Battle Tower type facilities, later in the game your own Pokémon will almost always be faster than them unless they have a massive advantage in level (which, granted, the Elite Four and Champion often will), which drastically changes the value of fast and slow Pokémon.  In short, I think it’s good to be aware of good competitive strategy because a lot of the properties that make Pokémon competitively strong do still apply, but you also need to remember that you’re actually not playing the same game.

Now that it’s been a while since Black and White came out, have you realized that Garbodor is, in fact, lovable and awesome in every single way? I spend about a dozen paragraphs explaining why, point-by-point, over on Bogleech, if you haven’t been there. Also, did you know that your hated Kricketune isn’t even modeled on a cricket? It’s a violin beetle!

You know, funnily enough, someone sent me a link to that article just a few days ago.

For the benefit of readers, here is Bogleech’s take on Garbodor

http://bogleech.com/pokemon/trash.html

and my (admittedly over-the-top) article from last year.

http://pokemaniacal.tumblr.com/post/17760677860/trubbish-and-garbodor

I still think Garbodor is absurd and horrific.  What didn’t occur to me at the time was the point you make in your article that some people might actually like things that are absurd and horrific.  Honestly I still kinda have trouble wrapping my head around that one, but I suppose it is a valid position to take.  I do really like the point you make about Garbodor forming a land/water/air triad with Muk and Weezing, because that does alleviate my concern that Garbodor is just Muk 2.0 (personally I’m still not sure I give the designers that much credit, but it’s difficult to make an argument from that kind of assessment).  I guess the thing to take from this is that, as much as I try to be objective about things and excise my own personal taste from my assessments, I can never really get rid of it.

As for Kricketune…
Go go gadget Google images…
Huh.  That is now a thing that I know.
It doesn’t make me think Kricketune is any less dumb, ‘cause all the things I hate about Kricketune are still things that they’ve changed from the violin beetle, not copied from it.  Also, from what five minutes’ of Googling can determine, violin beetles don’t actually ‘sing’ the way Kricketune and some other insects do, so crickets are still important for the idea (hence the name).

EDIT: Bogleech’s response on Kricketune:
Yeah, while I like him well enough, I’m just adding that in addition to other criticisms, Kricketune lives a shameful taxonomic lie. Technically, we still have no cricket pokemon, or even a grasshopper or other true Orthopteran. Kricketune wouldn’t even be able to jump with those nub-feet, and jumping is even more integral to being a cricket than singing. There are mute crickets, but if any can’t jump, I haven’t heard of them, and a cricket I haven’t heard of is hardly a cricket at all.