Just out of curiosity, does anyone remember which Pokémon from Red and Blue was referred to in the Pokédex as the “Hermitcrab Pokémon”? That’s right: it was… Slowbro?
…huh?
No, I don’t know either. I guess Slowbro could be said to take inspiration from hermit crabs in that he uses another creature’s shell as his own, except that in his case the other creature is still living in it too and the shell is obviously too small to fit anything more than his tail inside it anyway… so yeah; I’m not sure what they were smoking when they came up with that one (but Slowbro is still awesome). I only bring up Slowbro because today’s Pokémon, some thirteen years later, actually is a hermit crab.
Took ya long enough! Continue reading “Dwebble and Crustle”
…now, don’t get me wrong. These three don’t even hold a candle to Trubbish and Garbodor, who are my new empirical standard for awfulness; I now measure everything bad in my life in terms of how much less appalling it is than Trubbish and Garbodor, and the effect on my morale has been nothing short of miraculous. However, the fact that Gothita, Gothorita and Gothitelle even exist tells me something very disturbing about Game Freak’s creature design department. It tells me that one day, during the development of Black and White, one of the creature design guys stood up and said to his friends, in all seriousness,
Today I get a tantalising glimpse of something I really wish the Pokémon games would spend more time on: the history of the Pokémon universe. There are a fair number of ancient ruins in the Pokémon world left behind by some now-defunct civilisation and there’s not a whole lot we know about them – personally I put this down to the fact that the archaeologists of this world are (speaking as an archaeology student) even more frighteningly incompetent, if that’s possible, than their zoologists. What we can figure out for ourselves, however, is that Pokémon were quite as important in the past as they are in the present, and a few in particular – such as this bizarre-looking creature, Sigilyph. Sigilyph’s curious appearance has a vaguely Native American feel to me but I don’t know a lot about American archaeology – I think a friend of mine said she looks sort of Hopi? The text of her Pokédex entries doesn’t draw on Native American themes so an alternative possibility is that they just started drawing and kept going until they got something that looked entirely spooky and alien – and either way, it worked. 
Heh. I can never resist an anticlimax. Truth be told, I think Cubchoo’s cute, and if we like polar bears for being the savagery of the Arctic personified, we love polar bear cubs for being cute as buttons. I don’t know whether I’d call him well-designed or not… “cute baby bear” is really easy and Pokémon’s done it before – see Teddiursa – so I guess the uniqueness of Cubchoo’s design is in the weird snot thing. I assume Cubchoo’s nose is constantly runny because it’s one of the classic symptoms of a cold, and he’s an Ice-type, which is… at once almost clever and a little contradictory because no Ice Pokémon would ever actually get sick from being in the cold. 
Today I’ll be talking about the desert crocodile Pokémon, Sandile, Krokorok and Krookodile. They are… well… crocodiles that live in the desert. That’s a good start, but it does seem to me like the designers have been reusing a formula again – and I’m not talking about the older crocodile Pokémon, Totodile, Croconaw and Feraligatr. What Game Freak have done is take a North African river animal, shift it a few hundred kilometres west, turn it into a Ground-type with a wave of their magic wand and said “eh; good enough.” Sound familiar?
Meet Litwick, Lampent and Chandelure, the candle Pokémon. These guys are Ghost/Fire-types: another new combination, which is practically a guarantee that what we’re going to get will at least be interesting even if it’s not strong. The fact that they’re Ghost Pokémon is also, oddly, a good omen in itself because Ghost Pokémon are inherently fascinating; I for one am still trying to figure out what exactly they are. In the Pokémon world, Ghost-types are generally feared and seen as malevolent spirits, but in many cases this is actually unjustified – Gastly, Haunter and Gengar, famously, are not actually evil but have a very disturbing sense of humour that can easily cause playfulness to be misinterpreted as aggression; Sableye’s predicament is similar. Some, notably Mismagius, Dusknoir and Drifblim, have mysterious powers that could be used for good or evil, and where they fall on that axis is extremely ambiguous. 
For reasons I’ll get to later, this one’s a bit of an odd duck (I mean this figuratively, of course, in contrast to Psyduck, who actually is an odd duck). Allow me to introduce the Zen Charm Pokémon, Darumaka, and his evolved form Darmanitan… two Pokémon that I personally find tremendously annoying, because if you fail to deal with them promptly they can and will leave huge smoking holes in your team. Most Fire Pokémon are very active but these guys are turned up to eleven, their internal fires producing enormous quantities of energy that they will burn up by any means necessary – and I do mean any; they even use their droppings as a way of offloading excess heat; I know this because the Pokédex tells us that people used to carry Darumaka droppings in their pockets to keep themselves warm (Pokémon: it’s kind of like that). Heaven help you if you get into a fight with a Darumaka while it’s fired up, so to speak – but, that said, they’re not by nature aggressive Pokémon, just overwhelmingly energetic. 
Yes, I’ve finally gotten around to the second of Unova’s three starters, the Fire-type Tepig… and so far it doesn’t look so bad. Tepig is pretty cute, I have to admit, and while it’s not the first time we’ve had a pig Pokémon, it is very different from the previous one – Grumpig is a manipulative Psychic-type that specialises in soaking up elemental attacks, while Tepig is intended as a physically-inclined heavy hitter with a bit of survivability. The only major gripe I have with Tepig is that his name is a little bit daft. I don’t know whether Tepig had a fan nickname before the English release of Black and White came out like Snivy and Oshawott (a.k.a. Smugleaf and Wotter) did, but if he had one it has to have been better than Tepig. I understand Game Freak must be running out of fire puns by now – they’ve already used char, magma, flare, molten, cinder, lava, explosion, torch, combust, blaze, erupt, coal and heat – but was tepid really the best word they had left? It makes me think of warm water – not even hot or boiling water, because tepid is basically a synonym for lukewarm. I’ll let Tepig pass on that, though, because he’s cute, generally nicely put together, and actually almost convinced me, for the first time ever, not to pick the Grass-type starter for my first play-through. So, let’s see what he evolves int-
Visit an island near Nuvema Town, the starting location in Black and White, and you might meet a Pokémon Ranger with a mysterious egg to give away. This mysterious egg will hatch into a fascinating insect, which will probably set you on fire. With any luck this, like that regrettable incident between Ash and Pikachu, will signify the beginning of a lifelong friendship. Unless you just decide to squash it. Meet Larvesta, the torch Pokémon!
Pokémaniacal 