I may be totally wrong here but in the last post you were asking why Giovanni would want a gym and the financial side of it. What if the gym’s are somewhat akin to the games in that if a challenger loses they have to pay out? I know (or at least think?) that it is never really mentioned in the anime, but what if the same rules applied? This could explain why the Cerulean gym needs the ‘shows’ to generate funds (because without Misty they obviously aren’t that competent)? Just a thought

That’s a very good point… it goes both ways, of course – the Gym Leaders would have to pay out if they lose – but the Cerulean Gym example does support that. We see Ash lose Gym battles, and he never pays up, but Ash’s financial situation is vague at the best of times anyway. I guess it depends on how tough you think Gym Leaders are supposed to be: we know from context that they’re meant to be tough but beatable, but do we imagine that they lose about a third of their matches? Or more like one tenth? They would have to win many more matches than they lost in order to pay even for simple things like maintenance (and Blaine manages to keep his Gym – which undoubtedly has ridiculous maintenance costs – despite spurning weak challengers). We also have to question the amount paid by a defeated trainer – in the games, this varies according to the level of your strongest Pokémon and the number of Badges you have. Does this seem realistic, or would there be a standard wager that amateur trainers can easily afford?

Honestly the whole economic situation of the trainer lifestyle is totally opaque to me. Paying out to a trainer who beats you is only going to move money around between them, presumably they have to buy food, and it seems clear that you don’t have to be rich to be a full-time trainer, so obviously they must be making money somewhere, but they don’t really produce anything, so who’s paying them?

Any plans to review the Elite 4’s and Gym leaders of the games in a similar manner to how you reviewd the champions? (obviously not individually, that would take forever)!

Well, I might… with a few exceptions, though, those guys don’t get enough characterisation to be particularly interesting, so if I did, I would probably focus on quite different ideas – changing notions of what Gym Leaders and the Elite Four represent as the games develop, that sort of thing. I’m not totally sure there’s actually enough there to make a whole series of entries out of it, but I guess it might be worth a try.

What, what the hell? “Please note: none of the art on this blog is mine, because my art is banned in most nations ever since an unfortunate study linked it to psychopathy in minors.” What is this?

A joke. If you take everything I say seriously, you’re liable to end up lost in a twisted nightmare world, where your only companions will be the ghosts of anger and sorrow, and your only escape the sweet eternity of death.

(This, incidentally, may or may not be a joke; I refuse to accept responsibility for your fate)

If you could add an 18th type to the type listings what would it be and what would its strengths/weaknesses be? Would any previous Pokemon become this type? Would it be defensive/offensive/physical/special/fast ect.?

I think the better question is “would I do it at all”?

There are a lot of things I’d change about Pokémon, given the chance, including rebalancing the weaknesses and resistances of the existing types, but I don’t really see the need for a completely new one; I struggle to think of any concept that couldn’t be adequately expressed by one of the existing seventeen, or a combination. Moreover, when Dark and Steel were added, there were only 151 existing Pokémon – now there are 649. I wouldn’t want to add a new element without also committing myself to creating upwards of 35 Pokémon with that element in a single generation, and probably adding it to at least a dozen existing Pokémon. From a purely practical standpoint, that would be a nightmare.

Still, you did ask…

After Dark was added, a lot of people started clamouring for a ‘Light’ or ‘Holy’ type, and I suppose I could go along with that. If so, I would want to use it as a balancing mechanism, so resistance to Dragon attacks would definitely be on the cards, as well as weaknesses to Poison and possibly Psychic attacks. Resistance to Ghost attacks is sort of necessary for thematic reasons, but Ghost is already one of the weaker offensive types, so I’d really have to give Ghost an extra strength or two somewhere else to make up for it. I think I would make Light and Dark super-effective against each other. As for old Pokémon with this type… well, Volbeat and Illumise would be good candidates for Bug/Light, but no-one cares about Volbeat and Illumise. Cresselia would definitely get it. You could probably get away with slapping it on Clefable and maybe Arcanine. Togekiss would probably get this in place of Normal. It could potentially replace either of Jirachi’s types. Sunflora would be an obvious candidate. I’m really tempted by Dark/Light for Absol, but I’m not sure you could get away with it; maybe for an evolution. Electric/Light might work for Luxray. I can’t really think of any fifth-generation Pokémon it would work for, aside from maybe Cryogonal, at a stretch.

I will emphasise again that I would actually prefer not to add a new element, but if Game Freak showed up on my doorstep and told me “we want you to be team leader on the next Pokémon game, on the condition that you let us have an eighteenth type,” that’s more or less how I’d handle it.

I’m just wondering, are you ever going to do a “Top Ten Most Overrated Pokemon” list?

Hrm…

Tricky.

What would I base that on? Pokémon that get a lot of attention for being powerful, but have flawed or uninteresting designs? Pokémon that Nintendo dote on even though they’re weak?

The tricky thing about “overrated” is that it implies there is some sort of rating for me to evaluate. I don’t really think I could do this without some source of data on the popularity of different Pokémon.

Seeing as these gaming companies are sheer and utter fools, due to the line of classic RPGs becoming MMO (Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest and even Shin Megami Tensei), what is the likely hood of Game Freak making Pokemon an official MMO and how badly/ well do you think it will do?

Well, I don’t know much about business or marketing, or about the games you mention. I do know that Pokémon is one of the big items for Nintendo’s portable consoles, and I also doubt that those consoles will be able to support an MMORPG any time soon. So, assuming Nintendo want to go on selling consoles, I don’t think that will happen for the foreseeable future, no.

As for how it would do… well, you should probably ask a marketer or entrepreneur; such things are beyond me. I imagine anything with “Pokémon” on the label would sell reasonably well.

Why do you suppose the legendary birds aren’t on the power bracket?

There was a preliminary round. They had 35 legendary Pokémon and wanted 32 so they could have a neat tournament format, so they put the Kanto birds up against the Johto beasts before the main tournament started. Suicune, Entei and Raikou won.

I didn’t cover this because I was late to the party and didn’t know about the event until the preliminary round was over.

There’s a lot of legendary stories that pretty much ruin each other, the Arceus vs. Mew thing being the biggest one, but what about Groudon/Kyogre and Regigigas? I personally don’t like the whole “pulled the continents apart” so I refuse to acknowledge its existence. What would you do with that story if you were in charge of all that?

Hrm. I don’t think there necessarily has to be a conflict between the two; we can assume that Groudon raised a single Pangaea-like landmass out of the ocean while Regigigas was responsible for dragging the continental plates into their present positions. Basically, Groudon and Kyogre are primordial beings, while Regigigas is from a more recent era. Alternatively, though, since I don’t think we’ve ever seen direct evidence of Regigigas’ power, you could suggest that “towing continents” is a simple exaggeration. After all, the image of Regigigas running around the face of the planet, dragging India a few metres northward before nipping off to shove the two halves of North America a few metres closer together, is just a little bit absurd.

I think my first assumption, if I wanted to keep the continent-towing, would be that there are multiple Regigigas, dragging multiple plates in multiple directions and often working at cross-purposes (hence earthquakes and such). The second would probably be that they didn’t come to exist until long after Groudon and Kyogre went to sleep. They’re not elemental forces in the same way that Groudon and Kyogre are; they don’t drive continental drift for the sake of continental drift. Rather, they generally have some reason or another for dragging a continent – moving it to a warmer or cooler region of the planet, or further away from a rival Regigigas.

I find your use of he and she odd. It makes it seem like you’re referring to specific Pokemon rather than a species in general, as if there is only one of each Pokemon. It also raises some questions about questionable gender categorizations and why you would say one Pokemon is male over female.

*shrug* I just do it.

I never feel comfortable referring to Pokémon as “it,” with a few exceptions (mainly the non-legendary genderless Pokémon like Staryu or Metagross), and I have an instinctive revulsion towards using “they” to mean “he-or-she”. Although my native language is English, I study Greek and Latin, so I’m used to the idea that words can be inherently masculine, feminine or neuter regardless of biology or even common sense (that one scene in Aristophanes’ Clouds where Socrates is telling Strepsiades he should say things like ἀλεκτρύαινα and καρδόπη… well, it’s hilarious if you know what they’re talking about; take my word for it). Don’t ask my why I consider Ho-oh feminine or Lugia masculine, because I’m afraid the answer is quite beyond me.

Anyhow, gender in Pokémon. Weird subject, first of all because Pokémon uses “gender” as a synonym for “sex” and it’s not; “male” and “female” are sexes, not genders; masculine and feminine are genders, and that’s something quite different. Actually their use of the incorrect term implies a whole lot of interesting and bizarre things about Pokémon reproductive biology, but I won’t get into that because it would take far too long and the real reason is probably that the translators were just squeamish about using the word “sex.” Also, the fact that the characters in the TV show almost universally refer to their Pokémon as “it,” as though their sexes are unknown and irrelevant, is bizarre. I mean, even before Gold and Silver introduced the concept to the games explicitly, the writers must have assumed that Pokémon could be male or female. Until Attract starts to become a factor, though, it just never comes up. Ash must know that Pikachu is a dude. I mean, sure, maybe he’s never lifted him up to check between his legs, as it were, but he must have asked! Yet Pikachu is almost always “it” (occasionally “he,” but I think these are actually errors by the dub team), as are all the protagonists’ other Pokémon. Why do they all so often lack such basic knowledge about their own Pokémon?

I’m going to stop now before I accidentally write an entire entry on this.

With regards to genesec’ts current reveal i’m curios to know what you think of the theory he is a kabutops just modified. as kabuto (and 99% likely kabutops) lived 300 Million years ago according to the pokedex and genesect is a heavily modified hunter from 300 Million years ago odds are they could be related. Keep in mind plasma… who made genesect… are unova based and might not be aware of a pokemon roaming kanto.

Well, my normal position on a lot of theories like this (Cubone is an orphan Kangaskhan, Gengar is Clefairy’s shadow, you killed your rival’s Raticate, etc) is that I think they’re a lot of fun and, if they’re consistent with the evidence, I would probably roll with them if I were writing a fan fic or something just because they add extra details to the world, but I just don’t think there’s enough there to demonstrate that the creators intended for us to make those connections. I guess then you get into Death of the Author stuff, but that still makes my head spin, so let’s not go there.

Anyway this theory.

I was going to say that Genesect was a jungle Pokémon originally, but I can’t remember where I read that now, so I suppose I may have just made it up… still, I am bothered that Genesect has no water-related abilities at all (aside from the Water Techno Blast), since Kabutops is primarily an aquatic Pokémon. The Pokédex does suggest that Kabutops was a transitional state in the adaptation of a species of Pokémon to life on land, though, so I’d be happier suggesting that Genesect was a descendant of Kabutops who’d more fully committed to a terrestrial lifestyle (I don’t think Kabutops’ age ever has been specified, actually; he could well be older than Genesect).

As for Genesect being a Unova Pokémon and Kabutops a Kanto Pokémon… well, do remember we’ve got 300 million years of continental drift (or… Kyogre/Groudon antics… or Regigigas towing landmasses around… or whatever) to account for. Kanto and Unova could well have been neighboring regions once. The workers at Twist Mountain find remains of all the known fossil Pokémon, so I have to assume Kabutops did in fact exist in Unova at some point.