lakes?

The entry, for those who are interested: http://pokemaniacal.tumblr.com/post/17760688728/stunfisk

Well, it’s true that most Water Pokémon do still take damage from Water attacks, but they do resist it. In much the same way, all Pokémon take at least some damage from Gust and Air Slash. I do think that Water attacks are, for the most part, using ordinary water (there are a few exceptions; clearly Bubblebeam is more than just bubbles, but trying to explain specific attacks is just asking for trouble) and that the damage is primarily in the force with which they fire it; for most Pokémon, it’s the impact of a Water Gun that’s doing the damage, not the water itself. For Pokémon that are weak to Water, obviously there’s no reason the water should be physically hitting them harder, so it seems likely that they are in some sense vulnerable to water as a substance. Fire Pokémon, obviously, do not take kindly to being dampened. As to the other two types, Ground and Rock… I vaguely recall reading a fan-fic once which suggested that Ground- and Rock-types possess a sort of exoskeleton made of a porous ceramic material, which can absorb a lot of damage (hence their traditionally high physical defence) but can become waterlogged, slowing them down and taxing their energy.

In short, I think that a Pokémon who is neutral to Water attacks simply takes damage from the crushing force of the water hitting it, while a Pokémon who is actually weak to Water attacks is somehow harmed by water itself, and has no business living an aquatic lifestyle.

I remember you mentioning how you have big ideas for changing the Type system and wanted to hear your opinion on my idea for a new type mechanic. I have this idea into changing the big group of Types into Biological Type and Elemental Type. Bio types would be things like bug, dragon or ghost while element types would be the water, fire, poison, etc… each pokemon would have 1 of each, not 2 of one or the other. Pikachu for example would become a beast/electric or mammal/electric. Thoughts?

Tricky…

I think the difficulty is that a lot of Pokemon that already exist belong to two types that would fall under a single category in your system. What happens to Shedinja? It doesn’t make any sense for him to be not a Bug-type, or not a Ghost-type; the concept just doesn’t allow it. Do you keep Grass an an elemental type, or use Plant as a biological one? You’re in trouble with either Sawsbuck or Abomasnow. Psychic causes similar problems. And what about Pokémon that just plain don’t have any elemental powers, like Raticate?

Besides, the egg group system already provides something like this. It doesn’t play into strategy at all, but why should it need to? Why should a Pokémon’s strengths and weaknesses be different depending on whether it’s a mammal or a reptile?

I think that the biggest objection, though, is that it says “no” in advance to a lot of possible designs for no real reason. Why can’t we have a Pokémon with both ice and electrical powers? Why can’t we have a Pokémon that’s a fusion of a mammal and a bird (gryphons, anyone?)? What reason is there to deny designers that option?

What do you think are the best and worst pokemon spinoffs?

Well, to be honest, I’ve only played three of them – Mystery Dungeon Blue, Pokémon Ranger, and the old Gameboy Colour version of the trading card game. Er… I guess I thought the best of those was Pokémon Ranger, and the worst was the TCG? I enjoyed all of them, though. Ranger had some interesting game mechanics that the main series could learn a lot from, and made good use of the partner Pokémon, while Mystery Dungeon is just an inherently fun concept (could have done a lot more work on their world building, though). I only put the TCG at the bottom because the premise was a little nonsensical – I mean, it was a game that was actually about playing the card game, and you could travel around the country challenging these, like, trading card gyms, and there was a professor in your home town who studied the trading card game in this huge lab full of expensive machines, and…

…I gotta get me an emulator of that s#!t.

I mean Aztecs, Mayans, and inca.

Again, this isn’t actually an idea. It’s a starting point, and as a starting point there’s nothing wrong with it, but it could be done well or badly. At this point all I can do is shrug and say “sure, those are interesting cultures, although I don’t know much about them myself.”

To put it another way, if you start from a design brief of “a Pokémon based on ancient Egypt,” one person might come up with Lucario and another might come up with Cofagrigus (as it happens, both of those are Pokémon I think are very well designed). I have absolutely no clue what you have in mind or how well it would work. If you’re asking “do I want more Pokémon based on ancient cultures?” then sure, I love those.

In my view I think a pokemon based off the early Americas religion would be awesome as well as something based off the mongals. Do you think it would work at all.

Xatu, anyone?

You’re going to need to be a lot more specific here. As starting points, there’s nothing wrong with them, but either could be done extremely well or exceptionally badly – what exactly is the idea? Also, “Early Americas” is very general – are we talking Great Plains? Mexico? Andes? Amazon Basin?

If you got up one morning and you were a pokemon who would you want to be and why them.

Hmm…

Maybe it’s the historian in me, but I’m very tempted to pick Xatu. The whole infinity of the past and the future, spread out before your eyes… on the other hand, there are a few hints that Xatu spend most of their lives paralysed with terror because of the things they’ve seen.

Hmm.

Maybe I’ll just play it safe and be a Druddigon. I’ll live in a cave being grumpy and eat anyone who bothers me. That’s pretty much my goal in life anyway.

I read the question you answered about making your own legendaries and it made me wonder what non-legendary pokemon you would make if you could make 1 evolutionary line. For me I’d either go with a line of Dolphin pokemon using sonar or a Capybara line that’s Water/Ground and has Sap Sipper as their name means “leaf eater”. What kind of pokemon would you make?

Someone actually asked me this a couple of weeks ago.

http://pokemaniacal.tumblr.com/post/35556857166/if-the-creature-design-department-at-pokemon-studios

The result was a Pokémon I’m tentatively calling Scribis.

http://pokemaniacal.tumblr.com/post/35617975056/ibises

It’s a stand-alone Pokémon, but I suppose it could do with a junior form – something that just scratches doodles in the sand with its beak without really knowing what they mean, and can see into the spirit world but can’t communicate with or understand other spirits. Maybe the evolution could even be tied to the Unown, since they were supposed to be connected with Scribis in the first place – he evolves once they’ve taught him how to use their script. That’d need a name… Scribblet? Eh; that sounds kinda dumb…

As for yours – the dolphins could work, but they’d need something to distinguish them from all the other Pokémon with sonar (e.g. Golbat) or sonic powers (e.g. Exploud). Not sure I see the point of the capybara except as an excuse to produce a powerful type combination.

This is gonna probably be a bad time, considering the influx of questions, but in Gold, Silver and Crystal, Blaine’s gym burns down, and it’s just him in that small cave (this won’t apply to HG/SS, where he had like a full gym, with puzzles and trainers.) Why do you think the Pokemon League let him stay as an official leader if it was just him in a cave?

Some of my speculation on the anime episodes regarding Blaine might be relevant: http://pokemaniacal.tumblr.com/post/28403196447/anime-time-episodes-58-and-59

In short, I think that because Blaine holds the rank of Gym Leader, and has given the League no reason to strip him of that rank, he has the inalienable right to run a Pokémon Gym in any area which currently lacks one. He may even have access to a certain degree of League funding to assist in its upkeep (hence the more complete Seafoam Gym in Heart Gold and Soul Silver).

What do you think it would be like to live inside a pokeball. And if gamefreak were to call you right now tell you that you get to design the next set of legendary pokemon what would you design and would you say yes.

Hmm.

Good question.

I am convinced that Pokémon remain self-aware while in Pokéballs, since they seem to be able to leave them of their own accord, and they can hear attack commands issued to them before they leave the balls. On the other hand, they lose their physical bodies and exist as some form of energy. I imagine it’s a lot like dreaming; your mind feels like it’s filled with fog, and you’re aware something about your situation is very odd, but you’re not really bothered all that much by it. You might be vaguely aware of the real world, and it’s relatively easy for an outside stimulus to snap you out of it. A more expensive Pokéball may help make this state more pleasant, or more appropriate to a particular kind of Pokémon (being in a Lure Ball is like dreaming of swimming, for instance).

Now, if Game Freak wanted me to do their work for them… well, how much would they pay me? 😉 Seriously, though – that would be a lot of fun, but I don’t think legendary Pokémon are something that should necessarily be designed in isolation. I believe they should be created with close reference to the story the game is supposed to be telling, and I don’t have any such story to work from at the moment. I do have a series of entries planned for the near future that may give you a better answer to this, though…

Questions, questions, questions…

Okay, so, when I left home this morning I had five unanswered questions waiting for me. Now I have nine.

What do I think of Abomasnow, and how does Snow Warning work? I think Abomasnow’s a great Pokémon; cool design, unique and interesting powers. As for Snow Warning… well, it’s anyone’s guess. I tend to stay away from trying to explain individual moves and abilities, because that way lies madness.

What do I think of Dusclops, and how he steps on Dusknoir’s nonexistent toes? Again, great Pokémon. Spooky, mysterious, evocative design, flavourful abilities, pretty much everything I could want from a Ghost-type. I think the trouble with Dusknoir is that Dusclops never actually needed an evolution in the first place, and there just wasn’t any room to make Dusknoir all that much better. Once the Eviolite came along…

What do I think of Magneton and do I think Klinklang is just a remake of Magneton? Magneton, again, I like; they’re alien and inscrutable, with all kinds of weird powers resulting from their magnetism that make them dangerous and difficult to understand. I’m not sure what Game Freak were smoking when they went with the whole flying saucer thing, but Magnezone is far from the worst design I’ve seen. On Klinklang: http://pokemaniacal.tumblr.com/post/17760687580/klink-klang-and-klinklang

What do I think of Pikachu? He’s adorable, and he has badass lightning powers; what more can you ask? I really don’t understand the people who hate Pikachu; I think maybe that’s a reaction to the massive amount of hype that surrounds him, which, admittedly, I don’t think he deserves, though he’s still a very nicely done Pokémon. I think he could stand to be a little faster and a little tougher (same goes for Raichu, come to think of it), because even with a Light Ball he’s still a very difficult Pokémon to use.

Am I going to review all the movies? Good lord no; I’d have to watch Arceus and the Jewel of Life again.

Have I ever played Dragon Quest 5? No.

Have I ever read the manga? http://pokemaniacal.tumblr.com/post/32215051289/hi-new-reader-here-ive-just-finished-reading-your

What’s my favourite type and what do I think of adding extra types? http://pokemaniacal.tumblr.com/search/grass-types http://pokemaniacal.tumblr.com/post/27973745274/if-you-could-add-an-18th-type-to-the-type-listings-what

Why don’t I like humanoid Pokémon? http://pokemaniacal.tumblr.com/post/17760678969/gothita-gothorita-and-gothitelle http://pokemaniacal.tumblr.com/post/17760680127/scraggy-and-scrafty

Okay; I don’t know what exactly has happened in the last week, but I can’t handle it. If you’ve only joined us in that time, I feel I should explain that this isn’t actually a question-and-answer blog. It just looks like it at the moment if you see the front page. Normally if I get an interesting question I like to set it aside for a day or two so I can think about it and give it a proper answer. It’s getting to the point where, if I do that now, I’ll have four more questions to deal with when I come back. I can only spend so many hours out of every day working on this blog and I kinda want to… y’know… keep actually writing stuff. For this reason, I must regretfully start saying ‘no’ to these mini-analyses I’ve been doing. I know I said I would try to do them all, and I’m sorry for backing out of that, but the thing about Pokémon is that there are over 600 of the damn things, and I have full-length entries on fewer than one third of them. If I try to deal with everyone’s favourite and give little one-paragraph snippets on everything… well, you’re not going to be getting anything that’s had a lot of thought put into it; it’s going to be my opinion as much as anything else, and you can find opinions anywhere on the internet.

Other questions I will continue to answer as far as I am able, but if I have several, I’ll prioritise them according to how interesting they are, and I’m not going to try to answer more than one or two a day. If there’s something you really want to know, take a look through the older entries. You never know; I might have written a 2000-word article on it. I’m going to see if I can get a search bar that doesn’t suck, so you can browse the older stuff properly.

Apologies to everyone who’s just gotten a half-assed answer to a question, but if I keep trying to answer everything, that’s all anyone’s going to get.