Donald's Tower

Poke-continuty

2011-04-28T23:22:00.000-03:00

Update from previous post: Beat FFIII thanks to a metric shedload of job grinding. Decided not to go for 100% completion because that requires Onion equipment, pretty much. Started into Strange Journey but got sidetracked pretty badly by a little thing called "I didn't know it acted like a roguelike".

So I decided to finally get 646 in the Pokedex instead. And let's go inside the numbers...

2: Number of consecutive hours I spent in the Pokeshifter minigame. 6 at a time is a pain, but logical. Also, the number of times I had to recharge my DS Lite during the procedure (thank you Easter holiday for making it that I could do it without getting in trouble at work).

210: Number of Pokemon, at least, that I ended up Shifting (I went from box 8 to 15, you do the math.)

13: Number of levels my Giant Chasm Ditto grew in the process of breeding the Pokemon that I sent in, which were largely final form.

12: The Route used for grinding. One long stretch of grass that it's easy to trigger Audino grinding with? Probably saved me a good 3 hrs when compared to doing it in the Giant Chasm.

24,922: Amount of experience earned by a L1 Duskull holding a Lucky Egg when it kills an Audino at L49.
30: The number of levels a Fast group Pokemon (such as Duskull) gets from 24,922 exp.
06: The TM that makes these numbers possible (Toxic).

And finally 1 gets four facts:
- The number of times I dropped my DS
- The amount of hours since I last saved and thus lost the progress
- The number of Nintendo World Report writers who said "Goddamn" upon seeing the screenshot I took in celebration...
- And the number of Pokemon from my first 3rd generation file that I still have, and is now sitting in box 14 or something - Blair the Blaziken.

I first spoke of Blair in 2003, in the Universal RS Adventure Archives over at the still-flailing Azure Heights forums. Because of the data cutoff necessitated by going from GBC to GBA, and the notoriously dead batteries of GSC games, it's the longest-lasting Pokemon I've owned. I yanked it out of Pokemon Box in 2008, Pal Parked it up to Diamond, then over to Platinum when that superseded Diamond in 2009 and now to White.

Its nature sucks (Gentle: +SpDef, -Def), its effort is jacked to hell because I used it ingame before EV reducing berries got that effect, and I think its moveset is something like Bulk Up/Slash/Flamethrower/Brick Break. I don't even want to know what its IVs are, but if I find out it's triple 31 or something I might cry. Still, I've had that Blaziken since I was in my freshman year of university, I was still working at libraries and the Toronto Maple Leafs were making something allegedly called the "playoffs".

Hell, if R/S allowed you to see the date of acquisition mine would say March 19/03. That's the launch day of Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire in Canada, or at least when EB Games called me to pick up my preorder (it's the 2nd game I ever pre-ordered, with Zelda: Wind Waker being # 1). I'm never letting it go, and that's pretty much the only Pokemon I'll say that for.

(Yes, even my uber-rare Wish/Heal Bell Lickitung from the New York Nintendo World - back when it was the Pokecenter, I think - could be available. One of these days, I'm going to open the Pokemon equivalent of Ebay and let it run like the lady who sold a mint Stadium Events for the NES for $22k.)

But what I can't wait for is the inevitable RSE remakes next gen. I'm going to send Blair back home, and probably create a time paradox in the process. But I don't care. It's already had a long journey through time - or so says its status screen in White - so it's only a few more years until it'll return. I don't know if GameFreak will include some sort of easter egg for people who manage to hang onto a Pokemon that long, but we'll just have to wait to find out.

Is there anyone else out there who still has a Pokemon that knows what it's like to play with an Afterburner light? Let me know in the comments.

Paralysis by Choice

2011-04-17T21:17:00.000-03:00

My preferences in games tend to focus on 3 genres - puzzle games, 2D platformers and eastern RPGs. And even then, there's some pretty big holes in my JRPG history:

- I've never played a tactical RPG beyond the tutorial for Final Fantasy Tactics on PS1 (exception being the PVP portion of Pokemon back in the day, which only counts for a certain definition of tactical)
- I've beaten less than half of the Final Fantasy games (1, 4, 6, 7 and 10).
- I've never played an Atlus RPG, though I picked up Strange Journey for a song and want to get my hands on Persona 3/4. Also Radiant Historia, though it scares the crap out of me.

I've started playing Final Fantasy III (DS) today, in what would be my 4th attempt to beat the 4th DS game I ever bought (of approximately 60). The farthest I've ever gotten in the game is the point when I get the 2nd set of job crystals, at which point my brain shuts down at trying to process the party options I've got and I go running back to Pokemon to finish filling a Pokedex.

Notice the Final Fantasies I've beaten - they're the ones that have the simplest character technique-building system (locked-in jobs at the start, Espers, Materia and only the basic Sphere Grid respectively). If it gets any more complicated than that - like a full job system or heaven forfend, 12's License Grid - I have no idea what to do because I want the optimum setup with the least amount of time.

The same thing happened with Pokemon, in retrospect. Once the system moved beyond 130 options and one set of simple stats, I was done.

So if I get freaked out by this in a genre that I've pretty much been playing since I went through gaming puberty in 1995, it's no wonder I haven't broken out into open-world games (even though I've had access to GTA: San Andreas since about 2005), western RPGs or shootan of any kind. Though one would think that I'd be more into shooters now that they're basically down to the Final Fantasy IV level of railroading compared to the fact that I beat Final Doom when I was 12.

I don't want to be a fanboy, it's just come down to circumstances.

To start changing this, I'm going to see FFIII through to the end even if it takes me 50 hours to figure out that I should go Dark Knight, Devout, Summoner and Knight in the endgame. From there, it'll be on to Strange Journey to see if I'll be able to handle Persona without pulling an Evoker on myself.

How to fill a 'dex in 12 days

2011-03-19T09:03:00.000-03:00

Due to some RL issues, I've been unable to update for a while (as you can tell), but those have largely been resolved - so I just had a mild case of writer's block (and concentrating on playing the US White). In fact, I've put 56 hours onto the game clock since the 6th, not even counting the time I've lost soft-resetting for what have you (usually non-sucky natures).

In fact, I managed to fill the entire Unova-dex last night, finishing with Hydreigon. And people are accusing me of having no life. Admittedly, that was true for the first few days, but that always happens with a hot new release.

But let's face facts:
1) If you catch everything possible in every area and explore the optional areas, you'll have a caught count of 100+ by the first credits. The second credits fill in about 15 more, and throw enough money at you that you can afford to buy full sets of vitamins to dope up Woobat and Swadloon for their happiness evolution. That takes about an hour per route/cave. (If you're going for Cryoganal, catch something at level 31 and use a Repel). This takes an hour a route and maybe 45 minutes for Cryo.

2) The GTS, despite having its share of L9 Reshiram requests, actually works decently well if you're throwing something up and making an offer. I was able to get both my Gothitelle and Mandibuzz by throwing up their counterpart - I got them in a half hour. Then the game speeds up breeding for foreign Pokemon, so...

3) As mentioned, the Lucky Egg does a LOT to speed things up. I wouldn't have been able to take Deino up to its final form without getting 6k experience in Audino punting.

4) Speaking of Audino... even in the late game you've got 3/4 odds of finding something that gives anywhere from 2k to 4k base experience in the low 40s. Vanilluxe certainly enjoyed it, at least. Generally, once something's in the late 30s it can survive to get KOs on the Route 12 Audinos (easiest to trigger since there's only one long patch of grass).

5) The new experience curve set up a situation where I got 10k experience for a freshly hatched L1 Pokemon while holding the Exp Share. Or 23 levels. I could probably do more if I had done it with the Elite 4. And now that I realize the Stadiums fill up quite dramatically post-credits - with L67 Pokemon and trainers who randomly hand you PP Max for no readily apparent reason, not that I'm complaining - there's a fresh source of Exp Share abuse daily.

6) I still have my import Black for Reshiram, Tornadus and trade evos + a second DS. That's all I used it for, though.

So add all that up, and yes - it's possible to complete a regional Pokedex in two weeks. Especially when you commute to work and have an hour lunch at said work.

There is no Gray. Or spoon.

2011-02-13T21:19:00.000-04:00

So during the big Black and White press tour, one of the developers was asked about Pokemon Gray. His response was not unexpected: "We finished this story with the Black and White versions".

Suuuuuuuuuure.

Now, I know I said that Word of God trumps all in this very space a few months ago. However, there's a point when executives have to lie. And asking about the sequel when on a press tour for the original is certainly one of them.

Is it possible that they could be cutting this generation off prematurely? They've thrown just about every other tradition out the door in the 5th gen, so it's possible. And I'm not sure if they would cross the White Forest/Black City, or just run both. However, it's incredibly unlikely that they would let this go early.

There's no less than four Pokemon or items (largely related to Kyruem) that would form the storyline basis for a 3rd version. And of course, follow the money. Because of the engine work being largely done and paid for, 3rd versions have maybe 20% of the production costs of the first two and have the built in hype of a new mainline Pokemon game to sell 6 million+ worldwide.

And you know what you call a company who (supposedly) announces new products while on the marketing tour for the existing ones? Osborne Computers. Or Sega, or Sony Ericsson, or Nokia. One of those companies is bankrupt, one is stuck whoring Sonic until the end of days, and the last one is in the process of becoming a subsidiary of Microsoft. (The 3rd one is basically irrelevant in its markets.)

Nintendo and its subsidiary companies all have a history of blatantly lying in their marketing, too.
"There is no GBA redesign in the works." - Official Nintendo statement, January 16, 2003. Guess what got announced the next day?
"The DS is a 3rd pillar of our platform strategy." - Nintendo, E3 2004. That lasted until Nintendogs/Mario Kart DS started printing money.
"The next Zelda game will launch in 2010." - Miyamoto himself, up until the E3 demo last year. Oops, now it's 2011.

The question becomes what platform Gray would go on, and I'm tempted to call it for the 2DS. Now, despite what Serebii Joe is claiming about the ease of programming DS->3DS compatibility (for trading and such), programming DS->DS compatibility and pointing out that the games can be played on the 3DS would probably be easier. There's always two sendoff games for the old system from Nintendo before they drop programming for portables - a Kirby game of some kind, and a 3rd version of Pokemon. The first of those two was announced last year with the 3DS launch announcement.

We don't have precedent to go with to decide, though. Crystal was Game Boy Color exclusive after Gold/Silver were dual-mode Game Boy/GBC games and the GBA was out in North America, while Emerald was a GBA game despite coming out after the DS release. In both cases though, the new system was not out in Japan at the time of Crystal/Emerald's release, which is why they got held back. And Crystal probably could have been dual-mode, all things considered. In this instance, unless Gray launches next week in Japan and nobody knows it, it's not going to beat the 3DS to market. And IGN (doubtful source) did have a reference to Black and White having 3DS enhancements up for a while but have since removed it.

But in the end, I think TPCi's (or Nintendo's, considering they're the majority shareholder) interest in ROI will win out, and I won't have to buy a new console that I can't friggin' afford right now to play Gray. I look forward to the February 2012 CoroCoro reveal, the September 2012 importation, and the March 2013 campout where I hand out Melotta and Keludo like candy.

English Name Awards

2011-01-30T15:56:00.000-04:00

Alternate title: "Internet Throhs Party As Nintendo Lawyers Fail To Put A Sawk In It"

Before we get onto name theory, there's something I forgot for my Gray requests, so we'll call it #8:
All elemental stones available for purchase in a shop during the game.
This is pretty much the only thing Red/Blue got right - having the element stones available during the game is a Pokedex completionist's dream, and there was a tease for it in Black City at grossly inflated prices. Maybe put them in the 5th badge city next to the guy who sells the bitter medicines.

As more and more of the English names get confirmed by outlets such as Nintendo Power and IGN, it's becoming more obvious that the image I linked in the last post is the nearly-full list of localized Pokemon names. The only thing we don't have is the event legends, and those will probably be found by March 8 and not released until next year anyway.

And lemme tell ya, there are some real winners in this bunch.

The Fogarty Trophy (best case of self-plagiarism): To Woobat/Swoobat, as if they needed another reason to be referred to as expies of the Zubat family, the damn names even rhyme. When they reboot again in Gen 9, can we get some Vamphire action in this joint?

The Stalag 13 Cup (best tribute to Hogan's Heroes): To Klink, who is perfectly named as both the aforementioned Colonel and the Pokemon know nothing. NOTHING.

The Supersonic Memorial Trophy (most obvious theme team ever started): Durant, who will definitely get the ball inside of 2 minutes on the inevitable basketball theme team. Though I wonder if white Hitmonlee can jump.

The Darwin Award (worst names for an entire evolution family): Tie between the mushrooms (Foongus and Amoongus) and the new Fighting family (Timburr, GurDURR and ConkleDURR). One is the most obvious lame pun in history and clearly written by the anime writers, while the other sounds like something Moose Mason would think of.

The Reactin Trophy (most similarity to an allergic reaction): Tie between Axew and Cubchoo. Pass the tissues, please.

The Big Pecks Cup (name that wraps around to brilliant): Unfeazant. Not only is it not a pheasant, but you'll have an unpleasant time using it. Honorable mention to Purrloin (it's a Dark cat that learns Thief and steals experience from other, usable Pokemon).

The Colbert Reward (name the Internet called a long time ago): Emboar for Tepig's final evolution. Though most people called it for a prior form...

The Don't Have A Cow Cup (most likely to be seen on a t-shirt): "Fuck you, I'm a Heatmor".

My requests for Gray

2011-01-22T22:49:00.000-04:00

First off, my brother-from-another-mother/heterosexual life partner Ryan has actually started blogging. Check him out here and let's all hope he updates more than I do. Everything about the bus is true, by the way.

Someone asked recently if a mid-tier Pokemon in the tier listing (specifically, Solosis/Yuniran) is worth using. I should clarify: Just because something was "Mid" in the tier list doesn't mean you shouldn't use it, and if I was adding Upper-Mid and Lower-Mid to the listing Yuniran would've been the former. Especially since it can do things Sigilyph/Shinbora can't (like use Electric moves and Psycho Shock before the endgame). And I might have to re-evaluate that list since it turns out Rankurusu/Reuniclus is going through a Smogon suspect process right now. We all know what that means.

Having taken a few weeks off to grind Dragon Quests before VI comes out (BUY IT, YOU FOOLS!), I've begun to consider the inevitable 3rd version, which will undoubtedly be called Pokemon Gray and feature Kyurem as its version mascot. But that wouldn't justify me spending $35 on the remake.

But these things would.
1) Move Tutors
Isn't this one of the most obvious things to include in the 3rd version, considering move tutors debuted in a 3rd version (Crystal) and have been in every one since? Well, yes. But in addition to the things that were tutorable in the GSC remakes (less String Shot and Outrage), here's what needs to be in the Tutor list for Gray:

- Everything in this post that isn't already on the list
- Air Slash (because it's now one of my favourite moves to use and would make the genies more usable)
- Hard Roller (provides a unique physical Bug option for Pokemon who can learn Rollout - imagine my shock when Golem could get this - and dicks over Minimize users)
- Mountain Storm (so I get the best of both worlds with Dageki)
- Any 4th gen TM that got replaced with something fiendishly lame (Roost, Dragon Pulse, Dark Pulse just to name 3) EXCEPT Stealth Rock. Leave that one alone, for the love of Goddish.

2) A slightly expanded Unovadex
Now hang on, you say. Wasn't the point of the 5th gen to be a fresh start with no old Pokemon? Well, yes. But I'd like to go through this generation without another set of remakes - especially since I can still play my 3rd gen games on the same system I play Black and White on. So I'd like to see them add a few Pokemon into the main storyline that are:
a) Hoenn-dex Pokemon, and
b) Fill in types that aren't well represented in the Unovadex.

Mainly, I'd like to see the Swellow, Breloom, Absol, and Sharpedo families brought into the early game, and for the fishing rod to be available earlier so we can get our early Milotic. Special Water, physical Grass/Flying, and pure Dark in general are kinda difficult to use in this game (although Dark does have two Top-tier guys ingame, they're dual-typed). Of course, if they do that, they'll take the opportunity to bring back Pikachu... sad end.

3) The Ability Tutor
Yes, I know I've harped on this before. But it's not known if they're going to add 5th gen Pokemon to the Dream World before this game - if ever - and those guys got Dream World abilities for a reason. Maybe I just want a Shadow Tag Chandelure really badly, I dunno.

Stick it in the Battle Frontier if you must, but I want to be able to access those 3rd abilities without playing Farmville, and if it costs me BP that's a sacrifice I'd be OK with making.

4) Shiny mascots
Little known fact that might help online: Anyone who pulls out a shiny Reshiram, Zekrom or Victini is cheating.

There is no way to force a shiny encounter with either one of the mascots or Victini, as it will just re-roll if a shiny ID comes up. I don't know if this was a glitch or intentional but either way, we know Reshiram and Zekrom will both be catchable in the 3rd version. Let's hope we can get some sparkly action going this time, huh?

5) At least one of Victini, Kerudio, Melodia, or Genesect to have an ingame catch opportunity during the story
This is the one with the slimmest odds of happening - hell, Victini is the only one that even has a catch location in B/W, and it still requires an unlock from a wi-fi event. Still, each Pokemon listed has an ingame event (two move tutors and Genesct's cassettes at the P2 Lab), so maybe they can throw us a bone and give us a chance to catch a previously event-exclusive Pokemon ingame. At the very least, it would mark the first time a Pokemon was exclusive to the 3rd version.

6) The game is the final DS game published by Nintendo before they move full time to the 3DS, and the RS remakes are held until gen 6.
Every handheld generation has the big final game that's compatible with the old system before support gets dropped. The Game Boy had Pokemon Gold/Silver, the GBC had Shantae, the GBA had Pokemon Emerald and later, Final Fantasy VI Advance.

A 3rd version of the fastest selling Pokemon series in history would be a fine way for the series to depart the 2D generation while they prep the 3D gimmick for gen 6. To that end, there wouldn't be an opportunity to release the remakes until 2012 (Japan) or 2013 (US) by which time they need to have buried the original DS family.

And those dates happen to coincide with the 10th anniversary of Ruby and Sapphire's release.

But RS still doesn't have the pent-up demand for a remake that GSC did, and there aren't any massive, Red Gyarados namedropped in the opening hints of the RS remakes as far as we can tell. They need a couple of years to break away from the point where RS is playable easily before jumping in - and they can sate that demand with a 6th gen.

7) No Kanto
This should be self-explanatory.

---

Your homework is to study this picture. This leaked out from the Official Nintendo Magazine, and Pokebeach confirmed it - that appears to be every English name for the 5th gen.

I'll update the tier list posts appropriately, and have comments shortly.

Punting hoarders in the face

2011-01-06T23:53:00.000-04:00

We interrupt this program to bring you a mild rant.

On Tuesday evening, I had two run-ins with the collective pain in the rear known as hoarders. In this case, it's the people who populate RedFlagDeals, and the people who abuse everything ever posted at CheapAss Gamer.

In this case, I had two examples. First, I went to Future Shop to burn off a Christmas gift card and picked up Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey. As it turns out, I had purchased something left over from the first printing, so it came with a soundtrack CD. Or in this case, a nicely-pressed data disc with a bunch of .wav files.

Some quick Googling turned up this Joystiq story about the problem. No problem, I go to request a replacement disc, only to see that it's sold out. How can a replacement disc be sold out? Turns out that once I hit the forums, more people requested the disc than actually purchased copies of the game, leaving me holding the bag.

Now, a couple of things I should point out:
1) I was only going to rip the damn things to .mp3 anyway, so all I had to do was run them through Audacity (which is what I did).
2) Part of the problem was on Atlus's end for not requesting proof of ownership beforehand, such as a UPC code from the box.
Still, I'm not Joe Q Public, so imagine their reaction when this happened. Especially since I grabbed it on sale for $25+tax (regular price: $40) and someone could have made the same choice.

The more egregious example, however, came when I swung over to a local Rogers Video store. My cell carrier and almost-employer also runs video stores across Canada, and for a while also sold video games. They're where I picked up God Hand and Zack & Wiki for $25 total. Unfortunately, they've elected to get out of selling the vidya. As a result, after Christmas they had a buy 1/get 1 sale on all video games, new or used.

When I went to check out the store that evening, I expected that there probably wouldn't be a lot of the CoDBlops of the world, but there may be 1 or 2 things that may be worth employing the limited amount of free cash I had. When I got there, the video game section was GONE. According to the clerk, about 15 people lined up before store opening on the first day of the sale (12/27, in my city) and bought everything.

It wouldn't be so bad if they were going to buy a copy to give as New Year's gifts or what have you, but to a man they all admitted that they were going to spin the stuff on Ebay or get mad trade credit at FutureShop/Gamestop/Best Buy.

So instead of picking up a couple and giving other people a fair shot at some inexpensive games, they throw them to the corporate overlords who will mark them up to $5 below retail and sell them at a massive profit. And then they'll lower the trade value on the games, so when I go to trade in, say, Other M in a month, I'll be the one getting screwed.

Thanks, assholes.

I don't have a problem with capitalism. What I do have a problem with is people such as the one pictured intentionally fucking with the market, making it harder for me (who actually wants to play these things) to find them at a lower price. I've bought cheap games in the past and thought "this might pay off someday", such as finding Disgaea DS for $10. But I'm going to play the damn thing before I sell it (if I sell it).

I'm certainly not going to walk into a store, build a pile of games up to my crotch including multiple copies of the same game (confirmed by the Gaffer who took the original photo) and spin them for a profit.

Dueling Version Exclusives

2010-12-31T23:44:00.000-04:00

Now that we have a release date of 3/6 and even knowledge of when the gerbils and Celebi are being released (and those events have already leaked), a lot of people are going to have to make the decision on what version to buy.

Not to be racist, but I'm going with White on this one because I value White Forest and it making sure I have to do less Pokeshifting than I would with Black. Wanna know why? Here's the list.

But I had to resort to deciding based on the additional Pokemon, because looking at the version exclusives in this gen didn't help one bit.

Pre-National
Note: Monmen/Churine (the Grass-types) are not version exclusive as they can be ingame traded for each other in the respective versions.

Psychic types
White: Yuniran/Daburan/Rankurusu
Black: Gothimu/Gochimiru/Gochiruzeru
Stat wise, White gets the advantage on Special Attack (105 in the first form? Yowza) and HP, but Black's have the advantage on speed although neither one is fast by any means. The kicker is the ability advantage - there are way more situations where Magic Guard or even Dustproof will come in handy than Frisk ever will.
Advantage: White

Flying types
White: Washibon/Wargle (Normal/)
Black: Baruchai/Barujiana (Dark/)
Oooh, a Dark type. Except the only thing that kept Wargle Low in the tier list was the location and late evo - Wargle especially is absolutely amazing post-National as it can actually do damage. Baruchai's offensive stats, as previously mentioned, are TERR-IBLE.
Advantage: White

Flying type Legendary Genies
White: Voltolos (Electric/)
Black: Tornolos (no dual type)
Both having identical stats means it comes down to typing and movepool - and Voltolos having the advantage of STAB Thunderbolt out of the box when you get it + just enough Special moves to be usable gives it the win.
Advantage: White

Version Mascot Dragons
White: Zekrom (Electric/)
Black: Reshiram (Fire/)
These things were designed to be perfectly identical to each other, and it works out pretty well. I do have to give the edge to Reshiram since it can super-effect the only thing that resists its other STAB - although quite frankly, 100 power off a base 150 Attack stat is going to KO whatever hits it anyway.
Slight advantage: Black

Post-National
Early-Pokedex Bugs
White: Caterpie/Metapod/Butterfree (/Flying)
Black: Weedle/Kakuna/Beedrill (/Poison)
Butterfree still has Compoundeyes, right? And a 98% Sleep Powder? OK, just checking.
Advantage: White

2nd Gen Debuting Dusk Stone users
White: Misdreavus/Mismagius (Ghost)
Black: Murkrow/Honchkrow (Dark/Flying)
Ah, a usable Dark/Flying. Mismagius is a decent Special-attacking Ghost, and obviously Black wins the 1v1, but this one really comes down to preference.
Advantage: None

Dark-typed dogs
White: Poochenya/Mightyena
Black: Houndour/Houndoom (/Fire)
Both of these final forms have base 90 Attack, but Houndoom has 110 SA and a second usable STAB. This one isn't even close.
Advantage: Black

Mushroom-based Spore users
White: Paras/Parasect (Bug/Grass)
Black: Shroomish/Breloom (Bug/Fighting)
Again, not even close. Breloom has 100+ base stats (or close to it) on Parasect, just enough Speed to be dangerous, and STAB Fighting is pretty good in this game in case you forgot.
Advantage: Black

Differently-charged Pichu ripoffs
White: Minum
Black: Plusle
Nobody cares either way. Next.
Advantage: None

Gender-exclusive 3rd gen bugs
White: Illumise
Black: Volbeat
This didn't get a lot of press yet - but the existence of 3-stage boosting moves in this generation swings this. Namely, the fact that Tail Glow is now +3 to SA. Granted, it doesn't do much for Volbeat's 47 SA, but at least it's a gimmick. Illumise has... Flatter. Yeah, I'll take Volbeat.
Advantage: Black

Final tally:
Pre-National: White 3, Black 1
Post-National: White 1, Black 3, 2 draws
Total: 4-4-2 (push)

So yeah, unlike last time when Heart Gold was the clear winner (and idiots bought more Soul Silver anyway), there's no clear winner on the version exclusives in this game. Granted, you'll see more of the pre-National ones, but Black roars back to make it an even fight in the end. Also, Plusle and Minum can go take a flying leap.

Technical Incompetence

2010-12-29T20:22:00.001-04:00

"I'm pretty sure my choice of Water Pokemon is about to get future endeavoured. It failed Test 1: 'Can it use TM13?'"
- Twitter comment in reference to Gamengorge, 9/28/10

In my many Black and White playthroughs, this isn't the first time I've been shocked - SHOCKED - that a Pokemon didn't have the capabilities to use a TM. It seemed to be endemic to the Water type as I learned when Swana was compatible with Ice Beam, but not Blizzard, but upon further digging over at Veekun it seems that certain rules from the last generations are being chucked out the window.

Specifically, the rules would be:
- Starters get wide compatibility for attacking moves, and the final forms get Earthquake. Not this time: Snivy's compatibility is Grass moves, Aerial Ace, and Normal moves, and neither it nor Oshawott's final form (in correction of something I posted in the tier lists) learn Earthquake. At least Tepig's family did all right (but it also gets the benefits of two STABs).

- Water types learn Ice Beam and Blizzard, full stop. (Not anymore: Gamergorge doesn't get either one, and Swana misses on Blizzard as previously mentioned.)

- The average final-form Pokemon in gen IV had roughly 40 TMs (30 + mandatory 10) that they learned. With 3 more TMs and only about 20 existing ones changing, this has gone down to only 15-20 over and above the mandatory ones in gen V.

So what's responsible for the changes?

The biggest thing is probably the fact that TMs are now basically HMs that don't require the move deleter to get rid of. Once you get say, Ice Beam and can throw it on anything that moves, the game needs to restrict the Pokemon that have access to it. (Especially given that you've already beaten the Dragon gym).

Another factor is that some of the newer TMs pay much more attention to flavour than they would have in gen IV. If Ice Breath (TM79) existed last gen, it probably would have gone to every Water type not named Magikarp (giving it an automatic learnbase of 90+ Pokemon) and probably a few Dragons (like the Latis). Instead, its movepool is roughly 15 out of 649, and all of that is Ice types and Mew (who of course learns everything). There's no Pokemon (again, Mew excluded) that can learn Ice Beam and Boiling Water simultaneously, and there's an obvious reason - if you're capable of breathing Ice like that, you can't emit water hot enough to be "boiling".

Lastly, there's still the factors of last gen's TM base to consider. Remember, we're one generation removed from Stealth Rock being either one of the first two TMs you get (in Diamond/Pearl/Platinum) or buyable for $2k in a department store (HG/SS). They've gone to great lengths to reduce Stealth Rock use by seemingly preventing it from showing up in random Wi-Fi battles, and TM76 is now a 30 power Bug move (which makes it as unappealing as you can get). If Stealth Rock was introduced in gen V, it would likely have its natural movepool (which is all Rock-types) + maybe a few Ground types, and that's it.

So on March 6, make sure to keep a Pokedex handy online (such as Bulbapedia or Veekun) and check that TM's capability before you start throwing it around willy-nilly. You may not like the results.

Black/White Ingame Tier List; The Special types

2010-11-30T23:46:00.002-04:00

Part 2: The Special Types

You saw the Physical types last time, so let's go with the Special types for now. Note that I've also updated Part 1 with first location data (which I've worked into the listing for the Special types).

Fire
Tepig/Pignite/Emboar
Other type: Fighting (last 2 only)
Rating: High
Evolution path: Basic, L17, L36
First obtained: Starter Pokemon
Yes, it's the 3rd consecutive Fire/Fighting starter. Yes, if they do this again next gen, I will be distributing pitchforks and torches for the inevitable raid on TPCI. Fact is though, it gets extra effort simply from being the starter and it's designed for speedrunning - in the mono-Fire run, I got through to Yaguramu Forest inside of 2 and a half hours with it.

Darumaka/Darmantian
Rating: High
Evolution path: Basic, L35
First obtained: Route 4, accessible before 3rd gym
If you don't have Tepig, you'd better have this for a Fire type. The only problem this has is random fluke misses with Hustle, but that's also jacking his 90 base attack even higher when he makes contact. (Just... don't use Rock Tomb on it.) And once it evolves, it's a 140/95 monster that can afford to step down to Fire Punch and still manages to one-shot everything in its path. Any concerns about raising it should be nulled by the fact that it's available before a Bug gym. Mmm, destruction.

Litwick/Lampent/Chandelure
Other type: Ghost
Rating: Med
Evolution: Basic, L41, Dusk Stone
First obtained: Tower of Heaven (before 6th badge)
You'll be tripping all over these things when you get to the Tower of Heaven, and it does need a little babying to get it to the final form. However, it can beat up on its own and a Psychic type in the tower, and you should have a Dusk Stone either from the Cobalion cave or from picking it up from a dust cloud. Shadow Ball is also available pre-E4, and you get to skip the awkward middle stage and make it the 145/85 SA/Speed monster that will get Shadow Tag banhammered again it deserves.

Pansear/Simisear
Rating: Low
Evolution: Basic, Fire Stone
First obtained: Either in Lot of Dreams before first badge (if Oshawott was the starter) or Yagurama Forest
The monkeys are pretty much ingame fodder - and Pansear's got the toughest call of all, since the point where you can elect to make him useful is the point you can throw it out of your party for Darumaka. If you're using it, you have to use ingame supplies keeping it alive until it can learn Crunch (at L43) before triggering evolution... so yeah.

Larvesta/Volcarona
Other type: Bug
Rating: Low
Evolution: Basic, L59
First obtained: Larvesta hatches from an egg available upon getting Surf (after 6th badge)
Yes, it's true that Volcarona is amazing. However, the effort you could be putting into raising this somewhat weak Bug/Fire (good luck against all of the Boldore in caves) and getting it to the point of being awesome is effort you could be putting into leveling up a full team. Also, it learns nothing but physical moves and has higher Attack... until it evolves and suddenly gets a base 130 SA. Do yourself a favour: Hatch the egg (10,000 steps!), stick it in a box, and catch its mommy in the postgame when it's L70.

Heatmor
Rating: Low
First obtained: Victory Road
Anteaters are supposed to be cool, too. It's just... average - typical Fire movepool with the noted exception of Bug Bite (lol), and no real reason to raise it over Darumaka. At least it can beat up the Durant inside for easy Exp... except it doesn't even evolve. Sad end.

Water
Oshawatt/Dewott/Samurott
Rating: High
Evolution path: Basic, L17, L36
First obtained: Starter Pokemon
As seemingly always, the starters are high. However, Oshawatt ended up being the best of the 3 (shock, awe) - there's a lot of Water types that have near-identical Attack and SA in this game, and Samurott simply ended up with the best stats of the bunch. And it was given tools to work on both sides of the aisle - either Shell Blade to Waterfall on the physical end or Water Pulse to Surf with a stop at Boiling Water on the special end.

Panpour/Simipour
Rating: Mid
Evolution path: Basic, Water Stone
First obtained: Dream Lot before 1st badge (if Snivy starter) or Yaguramu Forest
It's amazing what a lack of competition will do for a guy - Pansear has identical stats (literally) and it's Low, where Panpour comes in Mid. The difference is, Panpour is competing with... not a whole lot, while Pansear has Darumaka and Litwick making it redundant on both ends. And learning Boiling Water at L22 is the last thing it needs before you can trigger evolution, so it gets a lot more powerful a lot earlier.

Tympole/Palpitoad/Seismitoad
Other types: Ground (last 2 stages)
Rating: Mid
Evolution path: Basic, L25, L36
First obtained: Yarumagu Forest (before 2nd badge)
It's a basic Water with a strange addiction to sound moves until L25, when it suddenly grows legs, a Ground type and croaks like a madman. Also, Uproar getting its power jacked (90 pwr now) is kind of a cool gimmick. Unfortunately, his movepool naturally is Special when Ground is more of a physical type, and once again, it's got lower in both Attacks and Speed than even Panpour.

Tirtouga/Carracosta
Other types: Rock
Rating: Mid
Evolution path: Basic, L37
First obtained: Fossil in Ancient Castle 1F, revivable immediately
It's inferior to Archen in every aspect, but that's largely because Archen's stats are the highest of anything not legendary or psuedo-legend in this game. Between Sturdy, insane Defense and the highest Attack in the type, it packs quite a punch. However, it also inherited the Rock type's traditional Speed or lack thereof, so Sturdy is going to come into play a fair bit.

Ducklett/Swanna
Other types: Flying
Rating: Mid
Evolution path: Basic, L35
First obtained: Route 5 Drawbridge (before 5th badge)
Boy, it's a good thing Ducklett comes up after the Electric gym - he'd look a lot worse otherwise. Given that there's not a lot on the Special end of the Flying type in this game, it's worth filling in an open slot if you need it. Its stats are in the range between Tympole and Panpour, and STAB Air Slash at L27 is quite fun indeed. At the very least, if you feel the need to carry an HM mule, Swanna learns 3.

Frillish/Jellicent
Other types: Ghost
Rating: Mid
Evolution path: Basic, L39
First obtained: Hodome City (with Surf)
Ironic that you need something pre-existing with Surf to get this. It's better than Basculin (the other Pokemon who has this same issue) if only because of Water Absorb + Recover giving you the ability to save healing items mid-battle with Recover and a useful second STAB. Unfortunately, it requires a bit (OK, a lot) of grinding once you can get it.

Basculin
Rating: Low
First obtained: Ingame trade (for Minccino) in Hodome City
Ah, Basculin. Great for raising your team but not so much when you get a hold of it yourself. The ingame trade one has the wrong ability (it either has Reckless or Rock Head, when you want Adaptability for the extra STAB), and once you can catch your own you've already got something around the same level that can Surf. Oh, and it learns 4 HMs if that's your bag.

Alomomola
Rating: Low
First obtained: Hodome City (requires Surf and a water spot to appear)
It's Basculin crossed with Audino. Oh, and it learns Wake-Up Slap. Yipee. It's not quite as useless as its brother from another mother (Luvdisc), and base 165 HP is kinda cool, but it's a lot of support moves and not much else. I suppose there's something involving Submersion (makes opponent Water-type) and the Net Ball... oh, who am I kidding.

Electric
Joltik/Galvantula
Other types: Bug
Rating: High
Evolution path: Basic, L36
First obtained: Thunderstone Cave
There's two High-tier Pokemon that go out of their way to signal their awesomeness: Joltik and (see below). In this case, if you don't get an ability flash at the start of battle, you have Compoundeyes and the result is 120 + STAB/91% accurate Thunder. Yes, please. I'll take several. It's even easy to level it up with a Flying gym immediately following, is easy to get unlike its colleague of the same type in the same cave... it's probably my new favourite Pokemon, to be honest.

Blitzle/Zebstrika
Rating: Mid
Evolution path: Basic, L27
First obtained: Route 3
Honestly, there's not a lot of Electric in this game - the Electric gym has exactly 3 (these two Pokemon + Emolga), and since both of its abilities are contingent on stray Electric moves it kinda kicks Blitzle in the metaphroic crotch. The tradition of a low movepool for Electric types continues unabated - especially on the physical end, where his best moves are Spark or the potion-draining Wild Bolt (and that doesn't come up until Victory Road or just before). Still, random Nitro Charge right before the forest is quite handy.

Emolga
Rating: Mid
First obtained: Route 16
Part of Emolga's problem is that it's a royal pain in the ass to get - 5-10% odds in shaking grass, which is purely random to begin with, and the rest of the time you get Audino. This can vary between taking 5 to 100 minutes (I've encountered both). The other issue is that although it's quick, there's better support Pokemon, and its attack stats are kinda meh (and it has to be bred for Air Slash which you're not going to do ingame).

Thundurus
Other types: Flying
Rating: Mid
First obtained: Roams after 8th badge
It's base 125 SA, learns Discharge shortly after acquisition if you don't have the optional Thunderbolt TM, and picks up Grass Knot so it's not an auto-switch for Ground types. The things that kill it are a) no secondary special STAB at all, and b) the fact that it only shows up post-8th badge and is a roamer, which makes it likely you'll just want to stick with Galvantula.

Tynamo/Eelektrik/Eelektross
Rating: Low
Evolution path: Basic, L39, Thunderstone
First obtained: Thunderstone Cave
It's the perfect counterpart to Calm Mind Suicune - both have no weak (thanks to Levitate). But to get the awesome typing, you have to handle the following problems: 1) Slow growth rate. 2) In the first form (where you catch it), its movepool is Tackle, Thunder Wave, Charge Beam, Spark and THAT IS IT. No TMs until it hits L39, and not even having a Flying gym on the other side helps. Here be Magikarp. 3) It's slim odds to even find the thing in Thunderstone Cave (2% until you get to the optional 2nd basement, then it goes to 8%). You'll want to look out for this Pokemon's evolved forms in the late game - it's why Axew is so necessary - but raising it may be more trouble than it's worth.

Stunfisk
Other type: Ground
Rating: Low
First obtained: Sekka City (before 7th badge)
This type combination: Nice concept, bad execution. By the way, Electric/Ground doesn't null either one of the component type's weaknesses, it's slow as *expletive deleted* which is the last thing an Electric type needs, and it's kinda hard to raise it because the next gym is Ice. Ruh roh raggy. The random Water moves are interesting, but not enough to save it from NFC West-level mediocrity.

Grass
Cottonee/Whimiscott
Rating: High
Evolution path: Basic, Sun Stone
First obtained: Yaguramu Forest (Black), ingame trade in 2nd badge city (White)
Let me explain that 77 base SA is about the lowest I'd tolerate on a Grass type, then let me point you in the direction of base 116 Speed. Also, the "Mischevious Heart" ability that it has half the time - including guaranteed with Modest if you have to make the ingame trade in White - means that irregardless of the Speed, its non-damaging moves will go first guaranteed. This wouldn't be a contest if it had Sleep Powder.

Snivy/Servine/Serperior
Rating: Mid
Evolution path: Basic, L17, L36
First obtained: Starter Pokemon
You ever wondered why Snivy looks so smug? Well, he knows that if he ever gets released in the Dream World, it'll pick up the ability that makes his Leaf Storm insanely broken. However, for now he's stuck with a limited Grass-type movepool + Aerial Ace + Coil (Att+Def+Acc), and that's it. He's the first starter in HISTORY that doesn't even learn Earthquake. It gets bonus effort for being a starter, but that's it.

Petilil/Lilligant
Rating: Mid
Evolution path: Basic, Sun Stone
First obtained: Yaguramu Forest (White), ingame trade in 2nd badge city (Black)
This is the reason Smogon had a "Upper-Mid" tier in their list - if you're going to use it, you have to accept the fact that its movepool is Grass, Grass and Grass. It does learn Sleep Powder, and has access to Butterfly Dance (+1 to both Special stats AND Speed), which is about the most broken stat move in the game, but if you're going to fit this role Erufun gets the job done a lot better.

Pansage/Simisage
Rating: Mid
Evolution path: Basic, Leaf Stone
First obtained: Dream Lot before 1st badge (Tepig starter) or Yaguramu Forest
I might have to use this one in a future run - it's a lot closer to Panpour than Pansear, in that it learns a quality move (Seed Bomb, in this instance) at L22 and can get evolved right after. It even has a quality movepool on the physical end (it learns Leg Sweep for some reason - wtf) and doesn't miss Acrobat since it grabs it by TM anyway. The only problem is, there's another physical grass type to worry about...

Deerling/Sawsbuck
Other type: Normal
Rating: Mid
Evolution path: Basic, L34
First obtained: Route 6 (accessible before 5th badge)
Ah, Deerling. Higher attack than Pansage, but available a lot farther back in the game - thankfully, before the Ground gym which is just where it's useful. It also gets a lot more powerful Fighting move in Jump Kick, can get Megahorn by returner, and doesn't need to worry about healing once it learns Wood Horn (75 power physical, 50% recovery).

Maractus
Rating: Low
First obtained: Resort Desert (after 3rd badge)
It's the Caturne problem, except Maractus doesn't get Dark STAB and loses out on a lot of movepool as a result. If you're going to use this thing in a world where even Lilligant exists (and can be obtained in the next city when they comp you a Sun Stone), don't. About the only thing it has over the rest of the type is Accupressure, and that's too random to rely on ingame and with something that has the traditional Grass weaknesses.

Ferroseed/Ferrothorn
Other type: Steel
Rating: Low
Evolution path: Basic, L40
First obtained: Thunderstone Cavern
Everyone draws parallels between Ferrothorn and Forretress, and I never used Forry ingame either (of course, that was largely related to the fact that I couldn't FIND the bloody thing). You're trading Bug for Grass on STAB - and Bug doesn't have Power Whip, so advantage Ferrothorn, but you're also trading Sturdy for a Rough Skin knockoff. Not worth it either way.

Foongus/Amoongus
Other type: Poison
Rating: Low
Evolution path: Basic, L39
First obtained: Route 6 (before 5th badge)
Of the two Grass types on the same route, Deerling wins by a mile. You've got a low-stat Grass/Poison (the first of the game, but still) who doesn't even learn Sleep Powder or Stun Spore. Much like Voltorb, this Pokemon exists solely to troll you on the world map and should be treated as such.

Ice
Vanillite/Vanillish/Vanilluxe

Rating: Mid
Evolution path: Basic, L35, L47
First obtained: Freezer Container (before 5th badge)
The Ice type is set up to win quite well for the rest of the game when you first get to the Freezer Container - after that, the gyms go Ground, Flying, Ice (oh, this thing learns Mirror Shot and Flash Cannon) and Dragon. Based on that, you'd think it would be high... except for the highly limited movepool (Ice, Steel and Weather Ball by returner at oh, L47) and slow experience growth it has. Still, it's the only easily obtainable Ice type/Ice Beam user pre-E4, so it's Mid.

Cryogonal
Rating: Low
First obtained: Mt Helix (leads up to 7th badge)
The main problem with this thing - besides 30 base Defense meaning a Mudkip's Tackle can bring it to red - is that it's so blooming hard to get. It's 1% in spring/fall, nonexistant in the summer months, and even in the winter it's 5%. So basically, don't even bother going for it - Vanillite ends up with higher base SA anyway.

Cubchoo/Beartic
Rating: Low
Evolution path: Basic, L37
First obtained: Mt Helix (leads up to 7th badge), post-Victini Mystery Gift
I did carry this for a while when they were distributing the special Mystery Gift version and got so frustrated that I ditched it just after it evolved. Everything's worse with bears indeed - it runs off Attack but it needs its egg moves to have a usable physical STAB until evolution, 'til then it's stuck with Icy Wind. Do not want, even with a 1.5x EXP bonus.

Psychic
Sigilyph
Other type: Flying
Rating: High
First obtained: Resort Desert
Ah, now we're cooking with gas. Pretty sure every Fighting E4 member packs Rock Slide strictly for this guy - and with 103/97 on the Special Atk and Speed, you know why. Comes with every usable Special move for its STABs, and gets Shadow Ball as well as comedy Charge Beam/Flash Cannon options. Or, you can run 3 moves + Fly and have a usable mule as well. Definitely pack this for the end game.

Gothita/Gothorita/Gothitelle
Rating: Mid
Evolution path: Basic, L32, L41
First obtained: Route 16 (Black)

Solosis/Duosion/Reuniclus
Rating: Mid
Evolution path: Basic, L32, L41
First obtained: Route 16 (White)
Both covered at the same time because they're virtually identical - Solosis has higher SA, but Gothita has decent Speed and can Thunderbolt instead of relying on Thunder. Both of them are good enough for government work, but you get more out of the box benefit with Sigilyph whose ability (Magic Guard) is actually useful when you get it.

Munna/Musharna
Rating: Low
Evolution path: Basic, Moon Stone
First obtained: Lot of Dreams (after 1st badge)
Maybe Bel should have let Plasma run off with this thing, she may not be as weak ingame as she is. It's like Solosis except everything is worse, and it doesn't have a lot of the movepool options until after the Elite 4 by which time this should be rotting in Box 1. At least it's easy to fill that slot in the party considering they give you a Moon Stone as part of the plot...

Woobat/Swoobat
Other type: Flying
Rating: Low
Evolution path: Basic, happiness evolution
First obtained: Underground Waterway
At least the form that appears in caves is slow so you can run with it. Although they tried to push it as the Golbat equivalent (right down to hitting final form by happiness), it's not as annoying. Unfortunately, the extra speed came at the expense of everything else - base 77 SA is the lowest of the type, and the fact that you have to put up with an unevolved Pokemon for an unknown amount of time dooms this to the box.

Elgyem/Beheeyem
Rating: Low
Evolution path: Basic, L42
First obtained: Tower of Heaven
You get it later than the version exclusive Psychic, and you sacrifice HP for defenses or a slight boost in Speed. The non-Flying Psychics have a similar movepool so it comes down to how soon you can pick it up - and as mentioned, Elgyem loses that race. Plus, it creeps the hell out of me.

Dragon
Axew/Fraxure/Haxorus
Rating: High
Evolution path: Basic, L38, L48
First obtained: "Axem Cave" (needs Surf)
If you're going to come in after the 6th badge, you need to be quite special to still come in at High - and Axem delivers. It comes in a few levels below the team but is instantly compatible with Dig, X-Scissor, and Aerial Ace (all of which you should have) so you can level up in the cave, and you know which one to catch right away since the game tells you at the time of encounter which ones have Mold Breaker. 97 base Speed might doom it in PvP, but it's great ingame, and it's still rolling up to a base 147 Att at the endgame. And this right here is your Tynamo-family murderer in the endgame what with Mold Breaker laughing at Levitate.

Druddigon
Rating: Low
First obtained: Dragon Helix Tower (available before Badge 7)
It's pretty sad when a Dragon packing 120 base Atk and potential for the equivalent of STAB on Crunch/Rock Slide is a Low. However, such is the fate of Druddigon, who has the twin problems of being the slowest Dragon in history (literally) and being available before an Ice gym, when everything is likely to outrun you and KO you in one shot.

Deino/Zweilous/Hydreigon
Rating: Low
Evolution path: Basic, L50 (!), L64 (!!!)
First obtained: Victory Road
So how many reasons does this thing have to be Low? Late acquisition? Check. Insane evolution requirements? Check. Ability that causes random misses which will inevitably come at the worst possible time against the final boss? Check. The Larvesta Syndrome - where it focuses on one attack until the final form, then switches? Check. Even Lance thinks the last boss before the credits is cheating, since he has Hydreigon a full 10 levels below where you can get it.

Dark
Purrloin/Liepard
Rating: Low
Evolution path: Basic, L20
First obtained: Route 2.
And finally, the sole pure Dark in the game... and it's probably the worst early Pokemon since Sentret. Great job. Sure, sticking a random Dark type in the early game is neat - but its STABs consist of Pursuit, Assurance, and Night Slash in the 40s by which time you've ditched it. It's not even a good HM mule, since everything else it does is handled better by one of the two early Normals.

So the final tally of high Pokemon: Lillipup, Sawk, Scraggy, Sandile, Drilbur, Archen, Tepig, Darumaka, Oshawatt, Joltik, Cottonee, Sigilyph, Axem (13 total). Grab a combination of those 13 and your game will be a cinch.

Black/White Ingame Tier List: The Physical types

2010-11-29T02:05:00.001-04:00

Since Black and White's release, Smogon has been running a thread to determine an ingame tier list for Black/White to correspond with similar lists they have created for other generations. I've chipped in a few times, but after what is now my 6th playthrough of Black and White, I think I've furrowed out the best Pokemon of each type in the game.

The main factors for a good ingame Pokemon:
1) How faster am I getting through the game by using them? Higher offensive stats, or more move type variety, or learning awesome moves, means you rank higher.
2) How soon can I start using them in their final form? Happiness evolutions, evolving at ridiculous levels or trade evolving hurts their placement (though not as much as it would with the GTS being available).
3) As a type, are they useful for clearing Gyms/Elite 4 members? If you have access to Fighting, Ghost, or Dragon moves, it certainly helps.

This is strictly for getting to the end credits for the first time, and only ranks Pokemon that you are guaranteed to encounter ingame. So Zoroa and event Pokemon (read: Victini) are flat out. The same goes with the version mascots (since they last a whole 2 battles at most), and of course DQs the two Pokemon that can only be encountered legally postgame at L70/75 (Kyruem and Landorus).

Since this is going to be a long post, I'm splitting it into two entries - this one will be the pre-4th gen physical types (Normal, Fighting, Poison, Ground, Flying, Bug, Rock, Ghost and Steel). In the case of dual-types, their stronger STAB gets priority, with the determination on the "however I feel like it" methodology.. The ranking is a simple 3 tier system: High, Mid or Low, unlike the Smogon system.
Normal
Lillipup/Herdier/Stoutland
Rating: High
Evolution path: Basic, evolves at L16 and L32
First obtained: Route 1
You should probably grab 2 early on, in fact - one for Pickup, one for battling since Pickup ones get an inferior ability (Sand Fence v Intimidate for the basic forms with Vital Spirit) at evolution. Starts on the first route and has access to stronger Bite and then Crunch, Take Down works OK until you get Strength. Kinda dies out at the endgame when additional variety is needed, but he's still great up until the lategame.

Patrat/Watchog
Rating: Mid
Evolution path: Basic, evolves at L20
First obtained: Route 1
I don't know what it is about this thing - maybe it bears too much of a resemblance to the King of Derp - but for some reason, I just don't have as much confidence in this one than I do with Lillipup. Its movepool (Super Fang, Hypnosis, Mean Look) points to it being a support Pokemon, but there's better Pokemon for that anyway. Which is why it's Mid.

Audino
Rating: Low
First obtained: Route 2 (any shaking grass patch)
When you catch this thing at the US release, nickname it "Rare Candy" since that's this thing's purpose in life - to prevent grinding. When you do catch it, it learns a lot of healing and support moves but its attacking movepool (that can't be used by other Normals) is kinda nil.

Minccino/Cinccino
Rating: Low
Evolution path: Basic, evolves by use of Shiny Stone (found on Route 6, after 5th gym)
First obtained: Route 16 (accessible before badge 4)
OK, so it turns out Sweep Slap is a jacked-up Doubleslap (25 power instead of 15, 10 PP). Good to know. However, it's basically a gimmick that doesn't work well because it can't combine Technician with Skill Link (its Dream World ability) for a super ability that would give it any reason to exist with Stoutland (who you should either have or be getting when it can be evolved).

Bouffalant
Rating: Low
First obtained: Route 10
It comes on Route 10 (when as has been established, Normal types are useless), its trademark move is Double-Edge with a new name, and its abilities are useless. Of course it's Low. If you come immediately prior to the Elite 4, you have to have something that makes you stand out...

Fighting
Sawk
Rating: High
First obtained: Forest area before 2nd badge
Base 125 Attack, enough Speed to be dangerous, Fighting is a major type in the endgame (sweeps the final boss, for one thing), and it can survive fluke OHKOs with Sturdy and KO coming back. It even has Double Kick for screwing over Sturdy. White players, I apologize for the 20 Repels you'll have to buy to get this thing when it comes up right before a Normal gym - but it is damn worth it.

Scraggy/Scrafty
Rating: High
Dual-type: Dark
Evolution: Basic, L39
First obtained: Route 4
Spoilers: It's the 3rd best Pokemon you can catch on Route 4, which is like winning $250k on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. You have to check for the good ability (Overconfidence) to enhance its killing ability, but Fighting/Dark is shockingly versatile and it has access to Brick Break at L20/Hi Jump Kick at L31.

Throh
Rating: Mid
First obtained: Forest before 2nd badge
I personally prefer Throh because it has access to a 80 power Fighting move that ignores stat changes and gets this at L25 (don't be fooled with the base 40, it always criticals). However, it is slower and the Attack stat is lower, and the 10 base in each defense doesn't make up for the loss in Speed.

Timburr/Gurdurr/Conkledurr
Rating: Mid
Evolution path: Basic, L25, trade
First obtained: Forest before 2nd badge
If it wasn't for being a trade evo, this would be top - but I can't guarantee that you have access to trading. That and any Special move worth a damn brings it down. Still, natural Rock Slide before you have the TM... don't sleep on this one.

Terrakion
Rating: Mid
Dual type: Rock
Evolution path: Basic (legendary)
First obtained: Victory Road
By all rights, this should be high - two of the best physical types in a Pokemon that has base 129 Attack, and it comes with a 90 power/20 PP Fighting move that the rest of the type would kill to have. The only issue is that it a) comes in near the end of Victory Road, and b) it's probably 7-8 levels behind the rest of your team.

Cobalion/Virizion
Rating: Mid
Dual type: Steel/Grass, respectively
Evolution path: Basic (legendary)
First obtained: Cobalion in cave on Route 5 after 6th badge and Surf, Virizion in forest before Sky Arrow Bridge, Cobalion must be caught first.
You can take either one of these - Cobalion doesn't have to split its attack effort to get good STAB (comes with Iron Head instead of Giga Drain) and Steel has a boatload of resistances, while Virizion's STAB isn't completely redundant with Fighting. Both come at the same level (42) and can be accessed once you get Surf, but they're still Mid because Sawk and Zurugga are that awesome.

Mienfoo/Mienshao
Rating: Low
Evolution path: Basic, L50
First obtained: 7th badge city
You'd think something that can match Sawk's attack stat AND recover 30% of its health every time it switches out would be higher than low. However, look at the options you have, then consider that Mienfoo first shows up in the 7th gym city and kinda sucks until it evolves. Yeah, I'll stick with Sawk too.

Poison
Trubbish/Garbodor
Rating: Low
Evolution path: Basic, L36
First obtained: Route 16 (before 4th badge)
Pure Poison, on the whole, is a horrid typing. This thing does not help the types reputation - it's more Swalot than Weezing, with tricks better suited for competitive play. The fact that the next gym when you catch it is Ground doesn't help matters.

Ground
Sandile/Krokorok/Krookodile
Other type: Dark
Rating: High
Evolution path: Basic, L29, L40
First obtained: Route 4 (before 3rd badge)
Gators gonna gait. You'll know out of the gate if you got a defensive one (Intimidate) or offensive one (Overconfidence), and both of these types are handy. Especially when it's potentially giving you 50% attack boosts on every KO. At the final form, base 117 Attack and 92 Speed? Yes plz. Oh, and it's on Route 4. Someone check the sand in that joint. (Catch at L15 for massive damage.)

Drilbur/Excadrill
Other type: Steel
Rating: High
Evolution path: Basic, L31
First obtained: Waterway Cave (after 1st badge)
The Ground type wins in this game, let me tell ya. If you don't go for the gator, you get the epic mole. It learns Rock Slide before it should, has Claw Sharpen for any accuracy problems, and his relatively low defenses are boosted by the fact that it resists everything and its mother-in-law.

Golett/Golurk
Other type: Ghost
Rating: Low
Evolution path: Basic, L43
First obtained: Dragon Tower (after 7th badge)
It's too bad this one comes in so late - on paper, Ghost/Ground is an awesome type combination (three immunities, two useful STABs). It takes quite a bit for me to throw out one of the above two though, and base 55 Speed and its strongest other STAB being a Shadow Punch that may or may not be Iron Fist-boosted...

Flying
Archen/Archeops
Other type: Rock
Rating: High
Evolution path: Basic, L37
First obtained: Fossil available after 3rd badge, can be revived immediately
Yes, it takes more than 50% from anything and it loses its attack stats if it loses more than 50%. However, even the basic form is in the top 20% of new Pokemon in terms of base Attack, and we know how useful Rock/Flying is from Aerodactyl. And unlike previous fossils, it's at or above your level when you get it - and it levels at the same rate as everything else.

Pidove/Tranquill/Unfezant
Other type: Normal
Rating: Low
Evolution path: Basic, L21, L32
First obtained: Route 3
Senator, I served with Staraptor, I knew Staraptor, Staraptor was a friend of mine. Senator, you're no Staraptor.

OK, the basic early Normal/Flying has a lot to live up to. However, the Pidove line's movepool is all wrong for its role - even with Super Luck. It learns Return and Fly - so does everything else in this type.

Rufflet/Braviary
Other type: Normal
Rating: Low
Evolution path: Basic, L54
First obtained: Route 10, White only, before 8th badge
I wanted to rank this higher than Low, I really did. Base 123 Attack, Encouraged Crush Claw and Superpower... it's the closest to Staraptor. Unfortunately, the double whammy of "Route 10" and "evolving at L54" doom it. Best thing to do in this case is to wait until the postgame and grab a Braviary out of the double grass on Route 11.

Vullaby/Mandibuzz
Other type: Dark
Rating: Low
Evolution path: Basic, L54
First obtained: Route 10, Black only, before 8th badge.
OK, so we have a Flying type... with a Dark dual, that's interesting... stuck it lategame? Made it focus on its defensive stats to the point where its best attacking stat is a 65? Uh, yeah. White wins this round.

Tornadus
Rating: Low
Evolution path: Basic (legendary)
First obtained: Begins roaming after 8th badge, Black only
So you run all over hell's half-acre trying to shove this thing in your Master Ball, and you catch the first pure-Flying Pokemon in history - then you realize that specially-focused Flying type without having access to Air Slash is a losing proposition. At that point it runs with Fly, but the rest of the movepool is Special, and largely limited to Psychic and Shadow Ball, and you probably have Shinpora at a higher level with STAB Psychic... and you stick it in the box.

Bug
Sewaddle/Swadloon/Leavanny
Other type: Grass
Rating: Mid
Evolution path: Basic, L20, happiness evolution
First obtained: Forest after 2nd badge
You know what happens when you give Parasect a usable Speed stat? This guy. Bug is actually a potent type in Black and White (Flying gym notwithstanding) especially later on, but the killer is that it's a happiness evolution. Once you hit L20, it's a race against the clock to get it to evolve before it gets Slash, and if not Leaf Blade/X-Scissor - and for some reason it can Shadow Claw too. Just keep it away from the fire monkey.

Venipede/Whirlipede/Scolipede
Other type: Poison
Rating: Mid
Evolution path: Basic, L22, L30
First obtained: Forest after 2nd badge
This may be my favourite Bug/Poison in history - and not because I managed to catch it shiny twice while chasing monkeys. It has decent attacking stats then takes several levels in badass at L30 when it becomes Scolipede and suddenly has 90/112 Atk/Speed and can get Megahorn for a Heart Scale. However, you can only do so much with a Bug/Poison typing which is why it's a Mid-tier.

Dwebble/Crustle
Other type: Rock
Rating: Mid
Evolution path: Basic, L34
First obtained: Resort Desert (after 3rd badge)
For the second time in history we have a Bug/Rock Pokemon who can attack. My main concerns with this Pokemon are twofold: 1) If you need something with STAB Rock moves, you get the fossils within about 20 feet, 2) It's slow. Slower than a speeding Gran Turismo 5 install. Also, I'm pretty sure Shell Smash was something you drank in Chrono Trigger and ended up losing your Gate Key. The big problem for any Bug type is that X-Scissor is a TM, so it can be thrown on a lot of things that need some extra coverage and you can SE the things weak to Bug with other Pokemon that can survive 2 hits.

Karrablast/Escavalier
Other type: Steel (Escavalier only)
Rating: Low
Evolution path: Basic, trade (with Shelmet)
First obtained: Route 6
The concept of Karrablast and Shelmet's evolution? Awesome. The execution? Eh... not so much. When it evolves, the speed falls through the floor (grabbing a helmet will do that) and it's going to start getting 2-shot by a lot of things (even with extra Steel) or at the very least drain your Hyper Potion supply. Hey, maybe it'll get Bullet Punch in Gray?

Shelmet/Accelgor
Rating: Low
Evolution path: Basic, trade (with Karrablast)
First obtained: Sekka City (before 7th badge)
Another Pokemon hurt by when you can get it (7th gym and the necessary trade means you won't see it for a long time). Sure, 145 speed is amazing and 100 base SA will put a lot of dents in things, but pure Bug means it has pretty much no variety and a lot of things resist Bug as a type.

Durant
Other type: Steel
Rating: Low
First obtained: Victory Road
Another victim of bad placement. In this case, it's even worse because if you're not careful in Victory Road where you've caught it, you'll go outside while leveling this thing up and run into Heatmor (the Fire-typed anteater with 45% appearance rate). Game over for the steel ant at this point. Also, any Special attack can probably 2HKO even through the resistances with 58/48 HP/Special Defense.

Rock
Roggenrola/Boldore/Gigalith
Rating: Med
Evolution path: Basic, L25, trade
First obtained: Waterway Cave (after 1st badge)
Ironically, the thing that helps it defensively (no Ground type = it may survive stray Water/Grass moves) hurts it offensively (no Ground type = no STAB on Dig/Level Ground/Earthquake).And of course, it's a trade evolution, so there's no guarantee you'll get the final form. Still, it's still quite powerful (if slow) and Sturdy will save your bacon more than once.

Ghost
Yamask/Cofagrigus
Rating: Low
Evolution path: Basic, L34
First obtained: Ancient Cave (after 3rd badge)
OK, so it'll survive a lot with its defense - but in case you've forgotten, this list is admittedly biased towards things that can kill stuff quickly. And Yamask isn't going to do that very much - sure, base 95 at the end is pretty good, but its Special moves are Ghost, Ghost and Ghost (which means you can't touch Normals) and the two elements of its movepool that may help it aren't available until postgame. And base 30 speed. Still, you'll laugh when you Mummy the Overconfident Waruvile.

Steel
Klink/Klang/Klinklang
Rating: Low
Evolution path: Basic, L38, L49
First obtained: Thunderstone Cave
Fact: Its abilities are fundamentally useless ingame because the last mandatory Double Battle is before you can first encounter them. Fact: Its movepool is Steel and Electric, which as Magnezone will tell you, needs Hidden Power help badly. Fact: What it can learn is largely Special when it has base 105 Attack. Fact: You need to bring a Fighting type to the end credit fights because N shows this twice.

Pawniard/Bisharp
Rating: Low
Evolution path: Basic, L52
First obtained: Route 9
Oh, how I wanted to love this thing. It's a friggin' Power Ranger (or at least looks like one) and it's hard to believe it took them 4 generations to combine the 2nd gen's new types. It's just not fast enough and there's too much Fighting (its quad weakness) flying around after you catch it for it to be worth a slot on your team. That and L52 evolution makes it dead weight.

The Special types

Donald's Pokemon Black/White Review

2010-11-21T17:04:00.000-04:00

This review is based on a Japanese version of the game. Certain online features such as Dream World will have to wait until the North American release due to a lack of Japanese knowledge on the part of the writer.

When it was announced several months back that the Black and White versions would feature no old Pokemon for a majority of the adventure, there was some fear among experienced players that everything would just be cloned over from the 1st generation like they did in Ruby and Sapphire. Despite some evidence to the contrary - namely the 3rd consecutive Fire/Fighting starter - enough has changed and enough of the annoying things from prior games have been excised that this is the most enjoyable ingame romp yet.

Addition Through Subtraction
The key is that a lot of the little annoying things in the game - Golbats, HMs and the old experience curving - have been ditched. Golbat is pretty self-explanatory, but there is a grand total of 1 time in the game prior to the Elite 4 where you need to use an HM out of battle. The first time through, I didn't even pick up Strength until two cities after it was needed and didn't miss it.

If you're the kind of person who wants to explore the side areas - and you should, considering the rewards are pretty powerful Pokemon and some good moves - you will need Strength and Surf. But since you're probably using them as in-battle moves anyway, it won't cause you many problems going through.

The other major timesaver is that it's quite easy to add new members to the team if you need to. Although they did take out the Vs Seeker, it's made up for with four things:

- Repeatable TMs
- A way to trigger an encounter with a wild Pokemon that has the highest base experience of any Pokemon in history
- A new experience curve that gives Pokemon more experience at lower levels
- A free Lucky Egg during the course of the storyline

All of these boosts make it really easy to use favourites or cool-looking Pokemon, although there are certain ones that are still more equal than others.

Story Considerations
Although the bar isn't set very high for Pokemon storylines, it was set by Platinum with the Team Galactic storyline. At least from what I can gather from reading story FAQs, the TVTropes article and various fanon that the storyline is actually deeper than the one in Platinum. Much like the older heroes in the game, it's a reflection of the maturity of the franchise.

(Again, this is subject to further reflection once the English version is out.)

New Pokemon
Let me lay it out first; A 3rd consecutive Fire/Fighting final form of the Fire starter is annoying, and if Pokemon #655 is Fire/Fighting, there may be mass homicide. However, I've been able to play through the game five times over with wildly varying teams in each one (even allowing for the one mono-fire expirement).

The only odd thing is that there's not many specially-focused Water types - you have Daikenki (who ends up with a better physical movepool anyway), Brungeru (the Water/Ghost) and, uh, that's it. Of the other Water-types, they're mainly physically focused - if Kerudio wasn't an event Pokemon I'd be a lot happier.

Conclusion
As usually happens, I've basically put away my 4th gen games at this point - the only times I've booted one since were to get Mew and to refresh the Pokewalker in Heart Gold. For a game that I really can't even read, this is one hell of an accomplishment.

If this is the end of Pokemon on the 2DS, it's a helluva way to go out.

Meeting transcript: How Garchomp got Rough Skin

2010-10-27T22:31:00.000-03:00

When the Dream World abilities were announced, the questions were flying fast and furious. Who did Ninetales fellate to get Drought? Is Wobbuffet legal now? And most importantly... how in the hell did Garchomp get Rough Skin when Salamence got Overconfidence?

The last one boggled my mind until my spies at GameFreak came through with a recording of the decision - and it didn't go down as you would think. I originally put this on GameFAQs, but it was too good to waste over there.

---

Masuda: Monster of the week, sign in please.

*Garchomp enters*

Masuda: Ah, Garchomp. Welcome. I must say, you had a good run last generation. Getting banned before Platinum was beyond our wildest espectations.

Garchomp: Thanks, boss.

Sugimori: We want to replicate that success this time around, so we're going to give you an awesome Dream World ability. The problem is, we couldn't decide which one to give you.

Masuda: So we're going to settle this the old fashioned way. Gardevoir, could you send in... The Wheel of Abilities.

*A Wheel of Fortune-like wheel floats into the room. It is 24 pegs wide, with 4 pegs for Huge Power and 2 pegs for Sandstream, Shadow Tag, Rough Skin, Sand Fence, Sand Power, Intimidate, Overconfidence, Speed Boost, something called "Reverse Technician" which would be a 50% boost for attacks over 60 power, and Bankrupt.*

Garchomp: Ooooh, this looks like fun.

Sugimori: Wanna give it a spin?

*Garchomp spins the wheel*

Sugimori/Masuda: Wheel of Abilities, turn turn turn. Tell us the weapon that he should earn.

*The wheel is slowing down, and looks like it'll land on Huge Power.*

Garchomp: Aweso...

*... but it clicks over one peg to land on Rough Skin.*

Garchomp: ARCEUSDAMNIT!!

Masuda: Well... that's the way it goes. Sorry, Garchomp.

Garchomp: Tell it to the Oddish I'll be eating for dinner tonight. *Exit Garchomp*

Sugimori: Uh, why was Rough Skin on there? I thought we were trying to clinch a ban for it again. Lemme check...

*Sugimori walks over to the wheel and pulls at the Rough Skin tag to reveal that it was covering Mold Breaker.*

Masuda: WHO RIGGED THE WHEEL?

Tajiri: *laughs*

Flareon: Hey, let me spin that one!

Masuda: NO!

Killing It With Fire

2010-10-19T22:48:00.000-03:00

Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Darumakka

As promised, I decided to mono-type run Black shortly after solving the White gametape as much as I could. The rules where simple: Only Fire-type Pokemon can obtain experience points during the game, except for one Double battle that is mandatory before I could get a 2nd Fire-type. Other Pokemon can be used but strictly for HM muling.

In order of obtaining, the team was:
1) Pokabu family
2) Yanappu/Baoppu (the former is the Grass monkey that took the Exp in the mandatory double battle. Latter is the Fire monkey.)
3) Victini
4) Darumakka
5) Hitomoshi family (aka The Candle)
6) Meraruba family
7) Reshiram (where Baoppu got ditched)

There is one Pokemon eligible but I didn't use due to obtaining it late: Kuitaran (the Anteater).

In order of awesomeness and ingame tiering, the order goes something like this:

Sir-Not-Available-Anynore Tier: Victini
Fire/Psychic is a great offensive type combo, although Victini's best Psychic move goes Confusion -> Zen Headbutt -> Psychic by TM in the East Isshu area. It was my main anti-Water between Grass Knot as soon as I got it and Thunderbolt in the Surf area. Of course, it's not available anymore until the NA launch, so... yeah.

God Tier: Darumakka/Hihidaruma
One word: Wow.

Sure, his baby form has Hustle. Sure, the result of Hustle is that his Rock Tomb is about as accurate as a Obama biography produced by Fox News. But when it hits, it hits HARD. I was able to stick with Fire Punch pretty much from L22 on as both forms have an innate Attack boost, and mine was Adamant (perfect nature for Encourage ones) running a 140 base Attack. Moveset was Fire Punch, Dig, Rock Tomb/Slide, and Strength until I could use Earthquake (again, postgame).

Good Tier: Pokabu line, Reshiram
You might be wondering why a cover legendary is on the same tier as a starter relatively assumed to be the 3rd best Fire/Fighting starter ever. Simply put, you can't play this way without the former, and the latter gets 2 battles total before you see the credits for the first time. That and the Fighting type STAB actually made him useful against the Dragon gym, and it could run Wild Bolt (off TM 93) with its high HP. Moveset at the end: Nitro Charge, Brick Break, Wild Bolt, Dig/EQ for Enbuoo and Dragon Pulse/Flamethrower/Extrasensory/Fly for Reshiram.

Needs Babying tier: Baoppu, Hitomoshi, Meraruba
In order of severity:
- Baoppu was the weak link most of the way, especially since I wanted Crunch on it for some perverse reason which means keeping it until L43. I couldn't even grind it up with the free Lucky Egg because I needed Acrobat to be high-powered (which means no items on it). It picked up upon evolution but the lack of a dual type and no real ability while equipped with Acrobat kills it. Moveset: Flame Burst, Acrobat, Crunch, Grass Knot

- Hitomoshi is bad, but the final form is a) badass, and b) available at level 41 if you get a good draw on the dust. Will-O-Wisp + Evil Eye (50 pwr special Ghost, 2x if the opponent has a status) was a good combo, but you get Shadow Ball shortly after it so that becomes the go-to attack. Flame Body was also appreciated for random burns + egg hatching (see below). Moveset: Shadow Ball, Flame Burst, Solarbeam, Will-O-Wisp

- Oh god, Meraruba. Sure, it evolves into a badass (Ungamoth) but that happens at level 59. The irritating part is that its main moves as a baby are all physical, and that is the better attacking stat, but the final form is base 130 SA so I ended up ditching mine in the post-game and soft-resetting for a Modest one in the Ancient Cave. Still, seeing something go from L1 to L24 in one Pokemon because of the new experience formula and the Exp Share? Awesome. Moveset: Bug Bite, Nitro Charge, Return, Leech Life (Meraruba) - Flamethrower, Bug Buzz, Psychic, Butterfly Dance as Ungamoth.

Other things I've learned in the run:
- Gyms that give you hell: 1st (obviously, that's what its there for), 8th. And that's it. You're going to beat 2, 3, 4, and 7, 6 is neutral, and the 5th uses a Ground/Steel as the main Pokemon in which you can win a damage race.

- I was able to go through the game with just 1 HM, except for a few items and the whole getting Meraruba/TM 24 sequence needing a Water-type for Surf. Cut's last use was around the 4th gym, and all of the Surf areas pre-first credits are optional. Love it.

- As mentioned, there's a new experience curve that is still being worked out, but the offshoot is that if you are lower leveled than what you get experience from, you get more points. Proof of this is that I got Meraruba immediately after getting Surf, and it was even with the team by the time I returned to the main game.

- Nothing warmed my heart more than seeing the champ use 3 Bugs.

- Can a brother get a Flamethrower TM earlier? Like maybe, I dunno, before the Elite 4?

- Even with the EXP curve, Kuitaran has the problem of a better Special Attack and a largely physical movepool. Hopefully Gray's move tutors are kinder to him. Then again, there's a whole class of Pokemon I'd probably have to trade eggs in for an ingame run - including Wargle. Sad end.

Black/White launch week awards SPOILERS

2010-09-25T23:04:00.000-03:00

Confession time: I've been playing White for the last several days. I went with it over Black for now because quite frankly, it showed up first. And apparently I'm not alone, since about 3.6 million people have bought the game in Japan already by "press" time.

Right now, I just finished the 6th badge and am rocking a full party, though I could use a Flyer. I'll list them after the break since there's spoilers involved. But right now, I think I'm far enough along to hand out some preliminary awards

Best Mea Culpa:
Me.

What can I say, the spanish dude got it right. Props to him... I still cannot fathom how he got the leaks of the Pokemon, but he did. Serebii Joe needs to chill, though - surely you have a site to run, there's no reason to spend several hours a day posting on GameFAQs, of all places.

Best incident of self-inflicted gunshot wound:
To Nintendo of America for sending DMCA takedown notices to PokeBeach and Serebii. News flash guys, this is 2010. Stuff leaks. Not even Apple is immune to leaks, and they decapitate the leakers when they catch them and hang their heads from 1 Infinite Loop as a warning to others.

Both sites got nailed for posting pre-release stuff from 2ch, not sprites as is to be believed, but using the DMCA as a club instead of tightening your own security or starting a Smash Dojo-equivalent site to get ahead of the leakers is a pretty cheap shot. And why does the UK allow this to happen to Joe? I almost wish I had the kind of free time to run my own news site/podcast, if only because I could mock them for trying to run a takedown on a site that's not in US jurisdiction.
(Last warning: Everything after the jump could be considered a spoiler.)

Honorable mention for "Best Incident of Self-Inflicted Gunshot Wound": GameFreak for another Fire/Fighting starter, while at the same time buffing the other two. I have to use it to be sure, but come on...

Best Proof That The RNG Likes To Mock Me:
The game features a set of elemental monkeys that match the starter types (Grass, Fire, Water). You get 1 near the first badge city (the one your starter would beat, to use against the 1st gym which would beat your starter) and the other two are found in a PokeRadar-like system in the game's first forest. (Walking around grass areas causes one square to shake, and if you walk to it you generate a rare/exclusive encounter. Emonga is caught this way, along with the monkeys and the game's Metal Slime equivalent, Tabunne.)

Since I picked Smugleaf for my starter, I got the Water monkey and had to catch the Fire and Grass ones in the forest. I KOed the first one I encountered when trying to weaken it. After that, it took about six hours over a three day period before I got the Fire monkey again and was able to catch it. In the intervening time I got 15 Tabunne, 8 of the Grass monkey, the evolved form of White's exclusive Grass type, 6 of the Water monkey, and TWO shiny Fushide.

And if that's not bad enough, the evolved form of the Fire monkey looks like it's doing a pose made famous by Reggie Fils-Amie or Bob Charlie in Super Punch-Out. Seriously.

Best Moment of House Building By The Excretion Of Bricks:
When the Dream World abilities were leaked. Three abilities known to get a Pokemon banhammered from competitive tournaments (Drought, Drizzle and Shadow Tag) going to the Vulpix family, Politoed, and a Ghost/Fire type with base 145 Special Attack that didn't need much help?

Full list is available here. Other winners: Speed Boost Blaziken, Cloud Nine for Lickililly, Technician for Breloom, and Overconfidence for Feraligatr and Salamence.

Best Argument For Catching Your Pokemon As Low Leveled As Possible:
As promised, I'm using Meguroko for my Ground type. It comes from about L15-L18, so I figured I'd grab the L17 one that has Overconfidence. Problem: At L16 it learns Assurance and scrolls the usable Bite away, with a Move Maniac three gyms down the road. Trying to level something up with Sand Tomb and Assurance should only be attempted by a trained professional.

Best Wild Pokemon Keeping Pokemon Centers In Business:
Darumakka. I'm pretty sure I had to run to the healing house on the route where you find it about 20 times while trying to grind the aforementioned Meguroko - and it wasn't the only thing croaking. Hustle + Fire Fang + base 80 attack = OW OW OW. That Mono-Fire run looks so much better now.

Best Excuse To Quote YuGiOh Abridged While Playing Pokemon:
Zeburaika.
"And some kind of... zebra-unicorn thing. Whatever it is, I'll see it in my nightmares."

Best Reason To Love Compoundeyes (Black/White edition):
Denchura, launcher of 91% accurate Thunders. Butterfree's Sleep Powder is for catching, while Denchura straight up kills stuff.

Best Counter To Calm Mind Suicune If This Was R/S:
Shibishirasu and its evolutions. It's a Levitating Electric-type - so no weak, much like the legendary gerbil of days of yore.

Best New Evolution Method:
Evolving Chobomaki and Kaburumo requires you to trade them... for each other, during which the latter apparently steals the former's helmet. Wicked.

Best Move Nobody Can Use Yet For A Damn Good Reason:
V-Generate. 180 power Fire, 95% accuracy. Even though it lowers 3 stats including Speed, it's coming from Victini (most likely) so what's going to survive to take advantage? Especially with a White Herb. Nobody learns it yet, so look out for Gray's Move Tutors.

Best Catcher So Far:
Surprisingly, Miruhoggu. It learns a Sleep move (Hypnosis), Super Fang and Crunch by the time it's L22. Crunch, Fang, sleep, chuck. Who knows, maybe you'll trigger the random "One Click Catch" I did when catching the first Fushide.

Best Concussion Induced In Pursuit Of A Badge:
The 6th gym is a Flying-type gym that takes place in an airport hangar. To get to the leader at the top of the gym, you have to shoot yourself out of cannons to get to higher ledges. Now, I've played Secret of Mana so I appreciate the joys of cannon travel, but not when it launches you headfirst into a wall.

Best Interface Feature They Removed For Some Stupid Reason:
L = A in the Options. This game begs for one hand + stylus controls, yet they removed the option for it. For shame.

Best Music So Far:
The Bicycle and Plasma Battle songs.

My current party: Jarooda (final form Smugleaf), Gamageroge (Water/Ground), Nageki (Fighting type, Hariyama expy), Meguroko evolution, Denchura and Victini all at about L37.

Where's Sakurai?

2010-09-08T21:12:00.000-03:00

After some sober second thoughts, I stand by what I said about the leaks. If by some fluke they are real, I'll definitely mea culpa publicly, but I don't suspect that will be a problem.

The Spanish guy with the apparent leaked copy of B/W has spent the last couple of days "leaking" the new Pokedex order, which I won't link because he doesn't deserve the hits. But there's a couple of things that I want to know about the project:

1) How come anyone even remotely connected to Black and White hasn't signed an NDA that makes the Platinum guide look tiny?
2) Why don't they have the equivalent of a Smash Bros Dojo for the Pokemon series?

I suspect the answer to #1 is "they are, but someone is willing to break". So if I was in charge of the marketing, such as say, a community manager, I'd first remind everyone of the NDA and get them to sign off again. That should theoretically stop the leaks, especially if they're threatened by loss of face or (more likely) their job.

If not, and the leaks continue, it's time for a false flag operation.

I'd mock up a screenshot showing something that would cause the entire community to collectively cream - for the sake of example, a mock screenshot of Charizard with the types showing Fire/Dragon instead of Fire/Flying. After narrowing down who might be leaking, I'd provide them with the shot and give it 24 hours. If the shot comes out on 2ch, they're fired for violating the NDA. All you need is one horror story and the rest of the company will fall in line.

And yes, I have personal experience on this. I worked for a technology company that I'd prefer not to mention and was put in a Gray Powell position for several months. I never saw a leak, but that's probably because they threatened to sue us out of existence if we didn't stay in line.

So now that we've shot the leaker out of a metaphorical cannon, we need an official source for news. And the answer actually played out really well for Nintendo a couple of years ago in the form of the Smash Brothers Dojo.

The audience who would follow leaks would be the ones who would refresh the site every night at Japan Time, waiting for the things that were CONFIRMED FOR BRAWL~! and cursing the name of Masahiro Sakurai whenever something wasn't up to their standards. Hell, that's why the US Brawl site got so much heat when they included the phrase "Real men use items" in a random screenshot - Smashboards just about lost their minds.

The main thing is that it keeps the game in the news not just on your fansites, but you'll get a boatload of people submitting the updates to sites like Joystiq or Nintendo World Report, which means it'll get published if only to shut people up. That means more free marketing for you. And considering Nintendo went to the trouble of buying a 40 in Famitsu, a little free marketing is always worth it.

Just who should you believe, anyway?

2010-09-05T20:54:00.000-03:00

It's been nearly a month since the last update since there really hasn't been a heckuva lot to talk about, and I haven't had time to really dive into my first ever UK import (Jam With The Band) to do a full writeup on the game. Plus, a little thing called Hurricane Earl hit yesterday and KOed my power for a full day.

When the power came back on last night, I saw that the community was in one of its typical uproars over a purported series of pictures claiming to be evolutions of the Black and White starters. Reputations are being shredded and accusations flying as the community breaks down along lines that can be summed up with two infamous memes.

On one hand, you have the "GameFreak just shot itself in the foot. I don't know how much you know about these evolutions (I'm an expert)" crowd.
And on the other hand, the "This looks shopped, I can tell by some of the pixels and having seen quite a few shops in my time" group.

So with that, a special comment on the September 3 leak controversy.

For what it's worth, I'm in the latter group. There's too much evidence pointing to the fact that these were shopped - quite well, admittedly, and it's enough to fool 60% of the people which is probably what you're going for if you're out to troll.

But they're all attributing it to either 2ch - and haven't we been down this road before with believing anywhere that Anonymous hangs out? Oh, right, we did - or a Spanish website. And how in the bluest of blue hells would a Spanish website get the game early without either getting knocked off the internet by the long arm of Nintendo's lawyers or getting shot leaving Japan? As of this writing, the release time is still 12 days away, don't forget.

Even quality website owners and news staffs are reporting this as a possible fact, though with a healthy amount of skepticism. Credit to them for it, since we see news reports on rumor and speculation all the time in other media. But it's the ones that are going balls to the wall to promote a falsehood that really get my ire up.

Most of the denial evidence is coming from imageboards, but so is the original source. And let us not forget the lesson of Shaymin Sky's leak. For whatever reason, the Pokemon community attracts its fair share of people who fake it for the lulz.

With that in mind, my hierarchy for Pokemon news goes as follows, with higher beating lower in terms of where my belief is, but sites of the same level able to disprove each other:

Sold instantly: Word of God. This includes Pokemon Sunday announcements, CoroCoro and other gaming magazines, Masuda's blog, and the odd release from Pokemon Company International (remember, they announced Reshiram/Zekrom's existence).

Good chance: Pokebeach, Filb.de, and Bulbanews. They exercise the skepticism I want when reporting on news from the lower ranks, and break stuff pretty quickly.

Citation needed: Serebii, Pokejungle.. The former brings way, way too much arrogance to the news, willingly defends information proven to be false, and go so far as to disable one of my mouse buttons every time I visit the site. In tech blog terms, Pokebeach would be Engadget, and Serebii would be Gizmodo. Pokejungle, god love 'em, posts everything they get... but in Pokemon terms, their accuracy makes Horn Drill look like Aura Sphere.

No chance in hell: Anything on 2ch or a derivative (including 4chan) unless confirmed by at least level 2.

I just received inside information from a special source that there are 6 base 680 Pokemon. Zekrom and Resheram are the biological and artificial energy pokemon, respectively. There is a negative energy Pokemon as well.............. Hold, on. Here are the sprites. [Shows fake-ass picture]

If I posted this on a Japanese web site in Japanese, it would be all over the web. - Smogon poster, hacker alias "WarriorPrince".

I think I've gone into enough reasons why you should take these things with a box of salt.

It's been 145 days since the formal announcement of Black and White, and as we move into the last weeks prior to Japanese release... good night, and good luck.

A wild Zubat disappeared! (Oh, and some other leaks)

2010-08-10T00:20:00.000-03:00

Update on The List: NBA Jam is now in "Buy at $20" mode, since EA decided to release the game on PS3 or 360 as a download once the exclusivity on NBA Unrivaled expires next April. As it is, they're making it the bonus for buying NBA Elite. Since they apparently decided they don't like money, I can pick it up for $20 or perhaps used.

---

Perhaps the biggest story of the week was the announcement made by Masuda on his blog stating that Black and White are only going to feature new Pokemon until after the Elite 4 and the National Pokedex is inevitably obtained.

Praise be to Goddish.

It's awfully hard to believe you're in this "brand new world" every gen when you keep running into Zubat, Magikarp, Tentacool, Zubat, Geodude, Zubat, Machop, Abra, Zubat, and of course, Zubat in every single cave/route/whathaveyou.

There will inevitably be expies of these guys - Koromori is clearly filling the role of the bat, and something leaked (more on that below) that will probably play the Geodude part. Still, it'll be DIFFERENT. And when you're 5 generations into a game, that's what you look for.

And now, for something completely new... the leaks.

Emonga: Electric/Flying, squirrel, sorta looks like Pachirisu but isn't, has Static. I'm not just asking for someone to dub Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons with this thing and Stantler, I'm DEMANDING it.
"Hey Emonga, watch me pull a Buneary out of my hat!"
"Again?"
"Nothing up my sleeve... Presto!"
(Arcanine uses Roar)
"Whoa... don't know my own Strength."

Victini: Fire/Psychic, "Incinerate" (jacked up Fire-type Bug Bite), requires event download. I am LOVING the power the Fire type is getting this gen - mono-Fire may actually be viable as a team now. I'll probably use it on my first White playthrough (Black's dance card is already full with Hihidaruma and Pokabu).

Swana: Water/Flying, Swan, Keen Eye/Pigeonheart, "Windstorm" (accuracy changes depending on weather). OK, probably going to be the Pokemon on the (hopefully) limited Surfing routes.

Gigaisu: Rock type, Sturdy, High Pressure Pokemon. I smell this thing's prior form being the Geodude of this gen, and that's cool...

Sturdy now a permanent Focus Sash:...

...

... wut.

OK, seriously, this is competitively awesome but is going to piss me off to no end ingame. I hope something new has Trace so I can walk through a cave with it and determine if it has Sturdy or not. Otherwise, I'm going to have to use Smugleaf's grass move 2x to get rid of the inevitable Rocks, and that's if they don't Explode in my face first.

Still, competitively, this is really going to make suicide leads fun. Forretress, for example, Stealth Rocks/Toxic Spikes, survives the inevitable Fire move, goes first with the Custap Berry and Explodes the crap out of it. It's all good from there.

Kurumiru: Bug/Grass, Swarm/Chlorophyll, "Bug Resistance" (hits 2 Pokemon at once). Early game bug, shame it can't get CompoundEyes in an evolution. Or... can it?

Moguryuu: Ground, mole-like (Hi Diglett!), "Sand Throw" or "Sand Power", learns "Drill Liner". Needs more information, but I'm probably sticking with Meguruko for now.

Mamambou: Water, the Nursing Pokemon, Hydration or "Healing Heart" which is a multi-target Hydration. I was hoping it was an ability involving Heart Scales in a Honey Gather-like fashion, but I'll take what I can get. $20 says it's somehow connected to the worst Pokemon ever (probably an incense or some other item).

Miruhoggu: Precaution Pokemon, Keen Eye/Illuminate, Minezumi evolution, probably doomed to life as an HM whore. Unless Illuminate/Keen Eye get a Sturdy-like rub...

Shikijika: Normal/Grass, appearance changes based on seasons, Chlorophyll/"Herbivore" (Motor Drive, but for Grass moves and the Attack stat). Probably not a final form so it could get some fun evos based on the season stuff.

Seasons: Changes every 30 days, certain areas accessible or not depending on the season. At least they kept it to a month instead of the Safari Zone time limits for this content...

TMs do not expire.
Oh.
My.
FUCKING.
God.

The only way this isn't completely awesome is if there's 142 TMs and 71 of them are exclusive to each version. Actually, that wouldn't surprise me in the least given the extent they've tried to differentiate the games. Or, they have to change the TMs for compatibility and the new ones are original-GSC level bad.

How much hell are we going to have to go through to get Earthquake, though?

Rotational Battles: It won't replace the 6v6 singles, no items, Final Destination among the North American community, but it'll do better than probably even UU. There's a lot of added strategy in trying to determine the optimal point to attack and being able to outpredict when there's 3 options. Basically, if the regular game is Hold 'Em, this is Omaha Hi-Lo.

Miracle Shooter: Points are earned in wireless battles to allow the use of items from the Bag. This includes Potions, X items... and Revives. The battles where this will be enabled will be rare as hell, though - especially if you can Revive a sweeper late game. Real men use items, but a lot of people I know won't.

Battle Subway: Battle Tower ON A TRAIN. 'nuff said.

Deru Power: Using the High Link/Dream World functions, you can unlock special abilities such as bonus EXP or Pokemart discounts. This can also be given in local (or wi-fi?) with the C-Gear. If one of these is reduced EV training time, hatching or (god forbid) IV luck the gap will definitely be closing.

Dream World Pokemon have different abilities, Vaporeon gets Hydration: OK, I'm going to be spending 150+ hours in the Dream World for sure. Especially if these bonus abilities for the other evos give Flareon a reason to live. (Hah!)

September 18 (or more realistically March 2011) can't come soon enough.

Local news at 10

2010-07-31T22:39:00.000-03:00

Just a quick follow up to my questions from the other day: Apparently I'm not the only Canadian who feels this way. Fellow Canadian ranter and LPer Slowflake called this out in a recent rant looking back on the 4th generation (viewable at point 16 here). Although the whole article is worth a read, point 16 is especially cogent for that discussion.

~

So today I had the occasion to do something that's not normally available - engage in heavy use of Tag mode in Dragon Quest IX with a group outside Japan. It was an organized event by EB Games/Gamestop and they lured us all in with the potential for a DSi XL, but about 20-30 people hung out for a couple of hours and picked up maps and unlocked titles for each other.

The biggest attraction of the day, however, was the appearance of someone with a Japanese cart and a save who could hand out maps that were only released in Japan. And as soon as I can level up a bit and unlock the area with all of the metal slimes, much grinding will ensue.

Of course, the most common question asked at the meetup was "Why don't they just do these things over wi-fi?"

Most of what I play now is JRPGs, which heavily play off of the commuter culture in Japan. And based on that, a Twitterer who I will keep anonymous out of respect for his private account is calling that the Dream World will bomb in the West or be neutered as a result.

I have to wonder, though - the C-Gear, or the equivalent of tag mode, is also going to be looking for infrared (???) and more importantly, wi-fi signals. It's the first time we've ever been able to do a live trade without having to be at a Pokemon Center if it works as advertised. And the Dream World (based on the trailer that came out this week) is a wi-fi based thing that uses the PC, so there's no reason why NOA/Pokemon International would need to neuter it.

I know I'm going to abuse the hell of it, if only because it's going to be a lot easier to catch the older Pokemon than the stupid mini-game they're replacing Pal Park with. (That's not to say Pal Park was a picnic - why is Shuckle a Pokemon of the SEA?)

The other reason why they'd want to keep it open would be simple - follow the money. If you don't think there's going to be advertising on the website that Nintendo could make a boatload of money off of, you're nuts. This is getting the kind of hype that ends up with a 7-digit number for sales on both games in the March 2011 NPD report, and a lot of them aren't going to pull out Adblock Plus. Hello, Google Adsense revenue!

And as much as I liked doing tag mode, I look forward to a day when I can tag with a random obsessed otaku in Japan over wi-fi. Now, if we can get WPA support into Black and White...

Altaria's Cheapness Revisited

2010-07-29T22:37:00.000-03:00

Something happened a couple of weeks ago that has a portion of the Pokemon community scratching their head.

Not the video chat for DSi owners that has a local function for some unknown reason. Unless you wear a Blackberry helmet.

Not the new heart-shaped Pokemon that means they apparently decided to evolve the worst Pokemon ever.

No, the decision is currently on Smogon's front page (as of July 29) - apparently they've kicked Salamence upstairs out of their most common metagame to ubers, the land of Dialga and Kyogre, future home of Reshiram and Zekrom.

wtf, you say.

It's not a usage based thing - if that were the case, Scizor would have gotten kicked upstairs a year ago. Salamence was top 10 consistently, but Scizor's been #1 with a bullet since Platinum launched. However, it was deemed too unbalancing to be in standard play and kicked out.

Now, you might be wondering why I care about this - I unofficially retired from competitive Pokemon in 2003 and officially retired a year later to concentrate on my job and a well-run wrestling fed where I was in the midst of a massive push. (Smack anyone who says I was suspended by the Netbattle admins for excessive gambling, I'm not Michael Jordan and the Netbattle admins were nowhere near as powerful as David Stern).

But I still observe the game, and I find it kind of curious that they've run their formal suspect process on eight Pokemon in the last couple of years - Garchomp, Wobbuffet, Deoxys-E, Shaymin (Sky), Manaphy, Latios, Latias, and now Salamence. And all eight times, the Pokemon has ended up being deemed too powerful.

And that's where I have a problem.

I have to give them credit for being somewhat open with the process - even with the last process, where they only had 9 voters, the entire chat log was posted for public consumption. But it still comes across as a giant echo chamber to an outsider like me (who only reads the Battle Frontier/Black and White discussion threads most of the time).

On two separate occasions, a Pokemon has been legalized and then kicked back upstairs. What this suggests to me is that there's a contingency who cares about these things, and find these Pokemon highly annoying or too powerful. They complain and in discussing the game with other people, float the opinion that it needs to be banned. They form opinions and manage to get it to an up-and-down vote, and if the vote comes off incorrectly, they keep at it until a review process occurs. Eventually, it's gone.

One person I'm following on Twitter suggested that the average player has an aversion to luck, which is why Double Team/Minimize and the one-hit KO moves are banned and have been realistically since the days of Cat-Gonk (which is before I played, to put it mildly). Without the possibility of a luck factor, these Pokemon grow too powerful and end up chucked. They talked about testing legal DT and OHKO after the Pokemon were taken care of when the process started, but oops, something came up all the time.

But let's look at the Pokemon that got chucked: Two Pokemon who realistically shouldn't have been legal to begin with (Wobbuffet and Deoxys-S), four Dragons, a check for the dragons (Manaphy), and a check for the check (Shaymin Sky). Hmm... sounds like a good team for a tournament circa 2007. It's not like the Latis had the Soul Dew, that was flatout gone. But as it stands, there's now three final form Dragon-type Pokemon left in their standard game: Dragonite, Kingdra and Altaria.

And I bet if I put effort into it, I could get Dragonite banned by the time Black and White come out in North America. It's on the same stat level as the other 4 Dragons that got banned and has some unique/powerful things it can do. Namely, its priority hurts a hell of a lot more than Deoxys-E's or Scizor's.

So here's my three questions about the results of this process.

1) Why is the OU tier considered the "standard" game and not the uber tier?
Name me a sport or game where the second-tier game is the most common - the only thing I can think of is Major League Soccer for people in the US who don't have access to the English Premier League. The poker game that gets all the publicity is No-Limit Hold 'Em, fighting games are usually between top tier characters, and FOX doesn't show the AAA National Championship game in October when the World Series is going on. Why does the only competitive turn-based strategy game with any play restrict itself like this?

If I'm playing in an NHL 11 tournament, I'm not going to play with the Maple Leafs even though they're my team in real life - if there's something on the line, I'm pulling out the Blackhawks or Capitals. If there's one thing that's fundamentally broken, then fine - kill it (see: RBY Mewtwo, Akuma in SSF2 Turbo). But if they want to introduce variety into the game, why not let the trainer use whatever the frack they want?

2) Is the Dragon-type, in of itself, fundamentally broken? Has the type been enhanced too much?
Let's see - defensively, it resists four of the most common types in the game and is only beaten by itself. Offensively, it hits everything but Steel for neutral damage and only 2 Pokemon in that type don't have one of its attack stats >100. The type has four moves (Dragon Claw/Pulse/Draco Meteor/Outrage, with a fifth exclusive in Spacial Rend) that are 90+ power, so these moves will HURT, and three of them were added in Diamond and Pearl. Hell, 3 Dragons and 3 Steels was (and still is) a functional team idea.

Is Altaria, by virtue of its type, 1 well timed boost away from being a top 10 OU?

3) Is the Pokemon simulator concept broken?
The whole purpose of a battle simulator was to provide people an opportunity to battle Pokemon as close to the cartridge as possible. But with the existence of WFC battling in Gen 4, I honestly didn't think they would go to the trouble of coding a simulator - especially after save files were hacked and Pokesav was released in English. (The lesson, of course, is never underestimate the boredom of programmers and the desire of people to skip the whole 'training' process.)

The predominant real-life metagame - Youtube battlers aside - however, is what's used for the Pokemon Company's sponsored events. Currently, that's doubles. No doubt by 2012, we'll have to raise teams for 3v3 battles at the VGC. Yet the most dominant battling program doesn't even have doubles implemented yet, talk of implementing 6v6 (every Pokemon on the field at once) aside. At this point, the version of Shoddy that implements doubles should be considered part of the preorder bonus for the Pokemon MMO, along with my Platinum FAQ.

Will there be a simulator next generation, or will the Dream World and other Black/White features provide all of what the average trainer needs? Could Battle Revolution 2 for the Super Wii provide simulator functionality? Who knows.

All I know is, my Smogon location/tag now reads "Real men use dragons". Read into that what you will.

Unleash the leaks

2010-07-14T01:01:00.000-03:00

List update: Got 5 of 16, and should be able to get Other M pre-ordered for my birthday. DQIX comes in on Friday.

Before diving into the latest revelations from this month's CoroCoro, I need to say this about the drama that broke out over the weekend after Pokebeach posted a couple of preview pics for Black/White from the latest movie:

1) Consider your source for a minute about the arrest threats (yes, there were arrest threats). The source is 2ch. As a rule, 2ch and all descendants where Anonymous hang out (read: 4chan) should be taken with an entire desert of salt.

2) The sites that ripped Pokebeach's admin WPM for posting pics (Bulbanews and to a lesser extent, Serebii) are the same ones who posted images of the very scans I'm reporting on now, and the latter posts episode summaries (WITH SCREENSHOTS ZOMG) and magna scans on their sites. I don't know which site posts full DVD-quality videos of the movies as WPM accused, but I don't particularly give a crap. Point is, there's an old line about glass houses that works here.

3) We know the MPAA is scared shitless of people pulling out cameras (see the story of the woman jailed for daring to tape the worst movie ever for their own use), but do we know if Japan's film industry has the same reaction? I would think not.

Now, to the leaks.

~ Kibago: Dragon, Rivalry/MOLD BREAKER. Sold. And it looks like Larvitar, so it's inevitably going to learn Earthquake and probably a Fire move. If this is the Gible equivalent, holy **** look out.
~ Koromori: Psychic/Flying, bat, Klutz/Unaware. Something else has Unaware? Be still my heart. And this may mean death to Zubat, in which case this will officially become Game of the Forever.

~ Minezumi: Normal, Keen Eye/Run Away. Rattata equivalent, hope it gets a good evolution.

~ Rankurusu, Psychic, "Dustproof" (all party Pokemon immune to Sandstorm/Hail) or Magic Guard. Sounds like it might be fun to use, and there's more Magic Guard love.

~ Gochiruzeru: Psychic, Frisk, can null all items for 5 turns. A gimmick Pokemon on paper, but probably a good one. I won't use it in game but I'll keep it handy for VGC play.

~ Wargle: Normal/Flying eagle, has the Encourage ability and a 2-turn move that sounds like it may stop the other Pokemon from attacking. The only problem is that it's going to get OHKOed by anything Ursaring does.

~ 3v3 battles (previously leaked). We know from the leak that if you're on the sides, you won't be able to hit the opposite side (if you're on the left, you can't hit the Pokemon on the far right). If you're in the middle, your moves get powered up. Moves and abilities will exist that protect your Pokemon from Surf, Earthquake, etc on your side.

I never really got the hang of doubles, and I'll admit that my first thought for triples was "Ghost, Protector, Explosion". Still hasn't changed based on the revelations, though I'll make sure the Exploder's in the middle.

Here's what I need to figure out - are there going to be moves that only 2 Pokemon, and will you be able to pick them? I'd love to say, take out the two Pokemon on the side while leaving the one in the middle alive for some reason.

~ DSi-exclusive video chat: Given that allowing my face into the game would instantly elevate the game to an M rating due to the sheer horror of it, I'm going to pass. (That and my first camera-enabled DS will be the 3DS.) Local doesn't make sense unless it's some sort of early warning system while you're trading Pokemon. And it's going to mean the games will be region-locked for DSi use, so...

~ Infrared enabled cards for "speedy trading". I hope this doesn't mean that I have to upload stuff from Heart Gold/Soul Silver instead of my main game (Platinum) since as far as I can tell, the DS doesn't support infrared unless it's built into the black cards used for HG/SS and the Pokewalker.

~ The game will support a Dragon Quest IX-style "Tag mode" (called "Passing by"). I don't have any sort of personal experience with these sort of passive modes until I can dig into DQIX this weekend, but if this means a lot of downloadable areas for old Pokemon then bring it on.

~ The uploading of saves works either for a single Pokemon or for online battling, but it requires the evolution of Munna to unlock. Because it's based on dreams. This kills the "Drowzee baby" theory, but also means that the whole Munna family is a gimmick. Yay.

Current Black/White ingame team: Smugleaf, Firepig, Meguruko, Hihidaruma, Kibago, Koromori

So much for importing Black and White

2010-06-20T22:21:00.000-03:00

Going into E3, I wasn't expecting a whole lot of stuff coming out of Nintendo's conference. I was expecting that there'd be the usual 1 or 2 games for the end of the year, and I'd be able to import Black and/or White - heck, I was even thinking about grabbing whichever system had the better conference between the Triple and the 360. (BTW, the answer would have been Sony coming out of the Monday press conference.)

Then came Tuesday, and Nintendo dropping more bombs per minute than any press conference I've ever seen. (For a random sample, see the June 16th Penny Arcade.) As such, we have to reconsider this thing.

For starters, if I buy one system this year it's not the PS3, it's going to be the 3DS. Word is they're going to have 20-30 games in the launch window, and my backup DS is going to hell in a handcart right now as it is. Plus, if I'm going to get a system that uses 3D I may as well grab one that I can afford and doesn't need glasses considering wearing 3D glasses over my prescription ones is bad.

But that's still no guarantee that the 3DS is going to come out this year... no problem. There's literally 16 games that have or will come out this year that I want to pick up. Basically, I'm not going to have TIME to try and play a game in Japanese when I barely had enough Pokemon/Japanese language knowledge to get through Heart Gold and Soul Silver before release. If I play Black or White early it's going to be vicariously through FAQs.

Here's my shopping list, starting with the stuff that's already out in 2010 and I still need to pick up:
~ Glory of Heracles (next $10 sale on Amazon, it's mine)
~ WarioWare DIY
~ Monster Hunter Tri
~ Trauma Team
~ Super Mario Galaxy 2
~ Backyard Sports: Sandlot Sluggers (don't laugh, I'm supporting a studio in my hometown by doing it)

And now the games confirmed for release in 2010 based on "WANT~" factor:
1) Epic Mickey (4Q 2010)
If you told me that Warren "Deus Ex" Spector would appear on stage at a Nintendo E3 conference, I would have laughed in your face. Throw in an awesome graphical style and Oswald the freaking Rabbit (once traded for Al Michaels) and this is officially day 1.

2) Kirby: Epic Yarn ("Holiday")
The fact that Kirby Wii exists was shocking enough, but the game itself looks like it's going to be a console Canvas Curse. In case you didn't know, this is a good thing. Even if it's Perrin Kaplan's final revenge by making ANGRY KIRBY~ canon.

3) Dragon Quest IX (July 11)
I've bought the last three mainline Dragon Quest games that came out in North America (8, 4 and 5) and enjoyed all of them immensely. And hey, maybe if I buy this one they'll bring over 6 with Slime Curling.

4) NBA Jam (October)
It's NBA Jam, and the original developer is involved. I played the original and Tournament Edition to death on the SNES. Add in the potential for the First Baller as a hidden character and yeah, I gotta get this one.

5) Donkey Kong Country Returns (Holiday)
I picked up the Metroid Prime Trilogy recently and have a new respect for Retro, so the fact that they're going to do something different is nice. If it's more DKC2 than the original, this is going to be amazing.

6) Super Scribblenauts (October 2010)
The original was a great sandbox but the controls weren't exactly tight. They've added d-pad controls and even the stylus works better. Plus adjectives. Yeah, you got me.

7) Sin and Punishment: Star Successor (June 27)
Just picked up the original on Virtual Console to try it out, and it's actually kind of fun - if a little frustrating with analog controls. I suspect the sequel will be a lot easier to control with the pointer.

8) Metroid: Other M (August 31)
Originally they had this scheduled for my birthday, which would have been the best birthday present in history. Still, two weeks after ain't bad. And it's a Metroid game done by the Ninja Gaiden guys, which means it'll make diamonds look soft.

9) Goldeneye (October)
Thankfully, my hatred for Activision and everything they currently stand for means I can knock $5 off the top by buying this used. It'll serve as my return to a true first-person shooter after my last one was, ironically enough, the original.

10) Golden Sun: Dark Dawn (Holiday)
This one's conditional, as I want to take a weekend or two and play the originals before confirming. 4 Warriors of Light could swap in here. If it holds, this'll be my Christmas RPG.

So I probably won't have a problem hitting Club Nintendo Platinum next year. All told, this is nearly $1000 worth of games. All donations will be unexpected, but appreciated.

June CoroCoro leak - And The Leaks Played On

2010-06-14T00:35:00.000-03:00

So after giving the recent leak a couple of days to simmer and to work out some of the information that was missing, we need to look at this another way. Specifically, I'm looking at this the way the Center for Disease Control does in "And The Band Played On" (as cited by ESPN's Bill Simmons in this column of April 16).

This breaks down to three simple questions:

What do we think?
What do we know?
What can we prove?

Going revelation by revelation, let's start with features.

Random Online Battles
What do we think? I think this was a stunning omission from the gen IV DS games designed to sell Battle Revolution, and now that it's integrated into the DS games proper we're not seeing another console battling game in this generation.
What do we know? I know this is going to be flooded with Elite 4 teams, hacks, and ubers. Making it functionally useless except as a team checking measure.
What can we prove? That Nintendo may be softening their stance on this whole "internet" thing a little bit.

Professor Araragi, first female professor
What do we think? I think we know how they're writing Brock out of the anime for this generation.
What do we know? We have an entire region suffering from a collective bad hair day between the female trainer and our professor friend.
What can we prove? There's a lot of traditions being chucked out the window with this generation.

Zekrom: Dragon/Electric, ability "Tera Voltage"
Reshiram: Dragon/Fire, ability "Turbo Blaze"
What do we think? Kyogre and Groudon have new best friends. Tera Voltage sounds like either a Scrappy for Electric v Ground or a jacked up Motor Drive, Turbo Blaze sounds like a jacked up Flash Fire.
What do we know? Two very powerful typings (Dragon/Fire resisted by Heatran, Dragon/Electric has 4 Pokemon) and the ability names means these guys are not playing any defense.
What can we prove? The third dragon will be a neutral color (gray) and will have a type that's early in the type chart and formerly Special (Ice has the clubhouse lead)

Meguruko: Ground/Dark, Intimidate or "Overconfident" (+1 stage ATK boost every KO)
What do we think? I think this is one of the very, VERY few occasions in which I will ignore Intimidate on a Pokemon because Overconfident is that nasty. Also, I think this is a 1st form of at least a 2 stage family, and the final form is going to be this gen's Dragonite-class Pokemon.
What do we know? If it has Pursuit, it's going to be even more broken coming in on say, Rotom and getting a free +1.
What can we prove? The only thing keeping this out of my fulltime party ingame is if it gets the Slow growth rate.

Hihidaruma: Fire, "Invigorate" (ignores added effects for higher damage) ability
What do we think? I think Invigorate will work with any move that would trigger Shield Dust, will be about a 20% boost, and will be a competitive darling because you actually get a benefit for taking luck out of the game.
What do we know? The design for this Pokemon is based on a gorilla that beats its stomach, meaning it's -190 to get Belly Drum.
What can we prove? If it's another Fire/Fighting type, heads will roll.

Shimama: Electric, Lightning Rod/Motor Drive, has "Wild Bolt" (recoil move)
What do we think? I think Wild Bolt is more Take Down analogue than Head Smash analogue, and that this is a base Pokemon.
What do we know? Motor Drive means slow and relying on the boost, and this will be another argument for an Ability tutor.
What can we prove? If you don't think this image is too cute for words, please obtain a soul at your earliest convenience.

Mamepato: Normal/Flying, "Pidgeon Breast" (Hyper Cutter for Defense) or Super Luck
What do we think? Between its pose and Super Luck Honchkrow can file a gimmick infringement lawsuit, and someone involved in the RBY localization is going to get an undue amount of crap for using the name "Pidgey" already.
What do we know? It's your obligatory early game bird and will probably evolve twice.
What can we prove? It's already better than Pidgey and probably not as good as Starly.

Gear: Steel, Plus or Minus, move "Gear Saucer" (multihitting move)
What do we think? Plus/Minus could be a controllable split evolution. Also, an early revelation of a pure Steel could mean that Steel is going to be an early gym (if not the FIRST gym)
What do we know? There's an awful lot of multi-hitting moves in this leak, for some reason.
What can we prove? Given that it looks like Bronzor with a coat of paint and some pieces missing, it's going to have something to set it apart from its fellow round Steel.

Munna: Psychic, Forewarn/Synchronize, "Telekinesis" ("causes foe to float"), the Dream Eater Pokemon
What do we think? This better not be a repeat of the counterparts introduced in Gen III (Beautifly for Butterfree), because by appearances and the fact that it's based on the Tapir like Drowzee it could be a replacement. If it's a baby form, it's going to LOSE Synchronize when it becomes a Drowzee.
What do we know? Telekinesis is another move that's designed for double battles for use on your partner, because it's hard to determine why you'd want to give your opponent Levitate (if that's what it does) unless they have Overconfidence.
What can we prove? That they have REALLY planned this out considering a reference to a pink Pokemon with a floral pattern existed since Rock Tunnel of RBY.

Chiramii: Normal, Cute Charm/Technician, Sweep Slap (multi-hitting move)
What do we think? An ability has not been ignored this harshly since, ironically, Cute Charm on Clefairy. And its English name is probably just the last i lopped off.
What do we know? Yes, it's based on the Chinchilla. And it's going to be another early game Normal (think: Rattata)
What can we prove? Any other similarities between this and Pachirisu are entirely coincidental.

My current Black/White ingame team: Grass starter, Fire starter, Meguruko, Hihidaruma (please let one of the Fire types get a second type).

Signs your Pokemon may be about to kill you

2010-06-12T01:35:00.000-03:00

First of all, yeah, I buggered with the template if you're curious. I'd like to think it gives this blog a little more personality than solid white.

I'd post a comment here about the new Pokemon that leaked out of CoroCoro today but I'm too busy drooling Homer Simpson-style over the Crocodile. New, awesome type combo of Ground/Dark + ability that only makes his resistance, er, attack higher every time it KOs something? When it gets type bonus on Earthquake? I'm never letting it out of my party. Especially when it could be the next Garchomp.

However, the map of the new region that leaked out appears to have maybe 2 cities on it. The first Sinnoh map we saw looked the same, but rumors continue to flow that they're actually moving to ditch the 8 gym format. If I had spies at GameFreak, they'd be saving the same thing. Which begs the question of what happens if there's no 8th badge to control outsider Pokemon.

Hell, it's entirely possible that they might extend the rules for outsider Pokemon to include every Pokemon. And if they really want to go all out with it, it may be more than rebelling while in battle.

Here's some of the warning signs you should watch out for in the next generation when your Pokemon may be ready to kill you.

* When using Whirlpool, you get halfway across before the Pokemon jumps back INTO the Poke Ball

* Your Pinsir came with Guillotine and won't let you delete it

* A large portion of Weezing's Smokescreen ends up going back into your face

* Your Fighting types have replaced the punching bag they normally use for workouts with a Real Doll that looks suspiciously like you

* Everyone raves about how good your Drapion's Sniper is, but it has Battle Armor

* The Daycare calls to tell you that your two Beedrill have suddenly grown a whole hive and they sound like the horns at the World Cup

* Every time you call out Houndoom, it licks its lips

* Scyther has been asking Porygon2 to pull up the Clint Marlachuck video more often recently

* After using TM 09 on your Shroomish, it only remembers the "Bullet" part.

THIS IS GREAT NEWS!! FOR FURRIES!!!

2010-05-29T01:53:00.000-03:00

Some quick thoughts while trying to unsee Reshiram's rather phallic feathers...

... is this the first time Nintendo of America has broken a Pokemon before Pokemon Japan?

... they better have some epic announcements for the hour conference at E3 if they're blowing the release date for Black and White three weeks before on their Twitter? Then again, Killzone 3 got announced by a GamePro cover, so what do I know.

... about 20 other people have said this, but it bears repeating here: The only reason Reshiram is the Black mascot and Zekrom is the White mascot is purely for contrast reasons.

... ReshiRAM. ZekROM. Wanna take bets on how many other legends are going to have technology jokes in their name? Is the Giratina-analog going to be called WenCPU?

... Time to Rule 34 of the female trainer and Zekrom had to be 6 hours, and Reshiram within 20 minutes. Good lord.

... Zekrom's going to be Dark-type or some psychotic new combo that's part Ghost. I don't know about Reshirom, but if one more person suggests this means a Light type, slap them. If a new type was coming it would be shouted from the heavens. I'm leaning toward Dragon/Psychic.

... could they hurry up and announce the final forms for the starters already?

My Virtual Console Czar platform

2010-05-28T01:49:00.000-03:00

Given that I love a series that some say hasn't innovated since 1998, you'd think I have a love for old games. You'd be correct - visiting the Nintendo press site on Mondays to see what will be available on the Virtual Console that week is one of my weekly habits, along with watching Raw and cursing the fact that I continue to have to work for a living.

However, recently I've come up empty. In fact, this month has seen a grand total of ONE release - and it's a game I've bought twice in Kirby Superstar. The most we'll likely have this month is two games unless they launch a new system on Memorial Day, which has odds similar of that of a Pokemon MMO being announced at Electronic Three next month. (That is to say, never.)

At one time, there were five games a week coming out. Presumably this was to seed the service, as it has gone from 5 all the way down to 0. Some might say the rise of WiiWare (and recently, DSiWare) has something to do with it, or blame the general lack of care toward old games on other consoles. But still, this service can get a lot better and serve as a huge moneymaker for Nintendo as long as someone gives a crap about it.

Which is why I'm throwing my hat into the ring for the apparently non-existent position of Virtual Console Czar (North American division).

But of course, if you're running for office, you need a platform.
Article the First: There will be one release every week on Virtual Console. No exceptions.
There are eight systems that are available on Virtual Console - up from 5 at launch with the Neo-Geo, C64 and VC Arcade added later. Taking out games that aren't available due to licensing issues or publisher existence failure still leaves an immense number of games that should still be available for publishing (ESRB issues aside). Even a solo C64 game is better than nothing, because someone will have nostalgia regardless.

Hell, Nintendo has at least 25 games that could be released unencumbered. Surely one of the many quiet weeks they have had in the last year could have been filled in with say, Devil World for the Famicom (it's referenced in Brawl for Ra's sake).

Point is, there's no excuse for going quiet most weeks. If I was appointed to run the VC, there would be a game a week, unless Miyamoto personally hand coded a WiiWare game. And even then, we'd put out the arcade version of Donkey Kong in tribute.

Article the Second: Hey EA, want some free money?
The main 3rd party publishers that you see on the VC are Capcom, Konami, Namco, Hudson and recently SunSoft. Notice that these are all Japanese publishers. But if there's going to be games that only come out in other territories, North American should have its own exclusives. So let's get some Western publishers online.

Just with EA alone, you have the Road Rash series, the Mutant League series, The Immortal, the Skate or Die games... the Genesis section alone would get a massive boost. I don't know why they haven't come onside, but we would make every effort to have them onside. Even if they decided to do HD remixes of their games.

Speaking of...

Article the Third: An HD remake will not preclude the release of the original.
Also known as the Bionic Commando Corollary - Capcom has gone on record as saying that the main reason Bionic Commando for the NES is not on the Virtual Console already is the existence of the Rearmed game for PS3/360/PC.

The Wii may not be able to run the HD remake, but why would you turn down the original? A small but significant portion of the audience either doesn't have access to a HD system or would prefer the original game anyway, so let it see the light of day again.

Article the Fourth: Citation Of Fair Use And Licensing
Also known as "We're getting Earthbound on the VC come hell or high legal fees". If we can claim public domain for Donkey Kong, isn't half of the music they're worried about being referenced in the public domain in the UK?

Obviously, this is the hardest situation to deal with - getting the licenses for things like the Lion King SNES game, DuckTales for the NES - but I'm sure Disney Interactive and Capcom can be convinced to have a little revenue sharing. There's already a precedent for it with the first Turtles game (UbiSoft has the license now, but the original was a Konami/Ultra release), which has a 100pt premium.

Article the Fifth: Mutually Assured Sales
If appointed as czar, I'd ask for three minutes at E3 to tell the assembled masses this: "July 5 will be Mother week on Nintendo downloads. Mother as a translated NES import, Earthbound, and Mother 3 ported to WiiWare with an all-new translation". (Acknowledging the existence of the Mother leak and the Mother 3 fan translation so the folks at Starmen.net.) The key is that where it would be possible, we can use VC games to sell WiiWare titles and even DSiWare titles if applicable.

Article the Sixth: Pricing Correction
I recently had occasion to purchase SNK Arcade Classics Volume 1, and at the same time it made at least two of my purchases (Baseball Stars 2 and Neo Turf Masters) redundant. So instead of paying $9 a shot for World Heroes, Fatal Fury, etc on VC I can spend $30 and get 16 games? Yeah, I'll do that.

SNK/D4 Publishing is probably the worst offender of the bunch. Between SNK Arcade Classics, the Samurai Showdown/Art of Fighting Anthology, the King of Fighters collections... That's at least 40 games that would have no reason to exist on VC if you follow retail releases at all. So first thing is that NeoGeo games get an automatic, across the board reduction to 700 points.

Last year around Christmas, Sega temporarily lowered the price of a bunch of games, and what happened? Even after the sale ended, I still ended up buying Shining Force (original). Temporary price reduction brings attention to the back catalogue and gets people out buying points again - the sales for Gold members on Xbox Live have to be working or they would have cut them off long ago.

Article The Seventh: Timing Is Everything
This week, Nintendo had a golden opportunity to make some metaphoric hay on Virtual Console by releasing Mario World 2 to coincide with the release of Mario Galaxy 2. And yet, we're still waiting. Unless there's a New Super Mario Brothers Wii 2 coming out later this year, there really wouldn't be a better time.

Going on with the above though, why not use releases of existing franchise games to push VC to the masses? Aside from the fact that most of the fans probably have these games already, the expanded audience could be encouraged to try hooking up to the Internet to grab a free game. This would not be a Gamestop exclusive thing, but a first run of say, Metroid: Other M could have a code to download Super Metroid, the original... or perhaps both?

But perhaps the best opportunity would be to put games that may be attractive to the expanded audience into things like Wii Party and Wii Relax. For Wii Party, a good match would be something like Ice Hockey or maybe a future release of Super Spike V-Ball (came with a 4 player adapter). Wii Relax? How about a puzzle game like a version of Tetris or a Yoshi's Cookie?

So that's where I stand. Most of this has been repeated elsewhere, but it's better than bitching about it on a podcast.

An FAQ update, more on the gerbils, and 5th gen revelations

2010-05-16T00:24:00.000-03:00

First, if you follow me on the Twitter (which is also on the right side of this blog), you know that I turned off my laptop's wi-fi long enough to do a round of heavy FAQing today. I'd say I'm about 1/12 of the way through the walkthrough portion of the guide to this point.

Since the only time I can really write is on weekends - though I do try to do it for several hours at a bent - it's going to be a while before it'll be ready for posting. But I'm just glad for an opportunity to plagiarize myself.

A lot of news came flying out rapid fire this week, so let's start with an update on the gerbils. A screenshot has gotten out from Japan (viewable here; link contains Japanese text) showing, among other things, the natures.

Thanks to a kind soul at Smogon, the natures translate as follows:
Raikou: Rash (+SA - SD)
Entei: Adamant (+Atk -SA)
Suicune: Relaxed (-Def -Speed)

Since the easiest way to force a shiny is to lock it into a certain IV set (see also: Quiet shiny Heatran with Eruption from the 3rd Ranger game), this is likely locked in at this point.

Entei is obviously the big winner here, while Raikou probably has enough Special Defense to survive being Rash. Who uses Earth Power anyway besides a stray Claydol? Suicune gets laughs because why would you give something with a flinch move a -Speed nature, so it's probably going to be ignored even harder now.

And finally, we have the release of images from CoroCoro with the first pics of the 5th gen starters and trainers. Sample image has been uploaded to my Photobucket and more images should be on the front page of Pokebeach at the time of the post and have been uploaded elsewhere.

The male trainer: Honest to Goddish, it looks like they aged up Lucas and gave him some more hair. Then again, Lucas had the younger Revolver Ocelot look going and they seem to have gotten away from that. Six Pokeballs. Enough to kill anything that moves.

The female trainer: Um, yeah, they did age up the trainers. Apparently, they're going to be 16-18. Which mike explain the shorts that would make Daisy Duke herself blush. Maybe she should cut off the giant ass ponytail and use that to extend her cutoffs a little bit. And are those pockets, or did she decapitate Klonoa and shove his head down her pants?

The grass starter: God, he's so cute and yet you want to punch him in the face for looking so smug. It's either based on the gecko or a Japanese legged snake... which could mean a Grass/Dragon final form. Which would be awesome.

The fire starter: OMG A FIRE PIG I WANT THIS. This WILL be my starter (though I'm importing the Grass one as well) unless his movepool has absolutely nothing in it. And they've got two major influences for the final form: A form of the final boss from Twilight Princess, or the boar god from Princess Mononoke. Plus there's no way they can make a Fire/Fighting type for three straight generations... right?

The water starter: I'm sort of waffling on this one. It's either the mutant offspring of Piplup and Bidoof or Mudkip and a snowman with that shell of his. Based on the coloring it'll probably go Water/Ice or just stay Water in the final form. People think it's cute - and hey, it's a Water otter (Wotter?) but I'm just not feeling it. Maybe if it was paired with Cyndaquil and Chikorita, I'd be more into it (also known as the Totodile principle).

HT to rtwelve on Twitter for having the proof on Wotter

Why I'm Allergic to Fat Eggs

2010-04-30T22:25:00.000-03:00

There's certain Pokemon that I just don't want to use if blowing through a regular battle or (god forbid) a tournament situation. Some of them have movepool issues, some of them are too slow for an ingame rush, and some of them spilled ink on GameFreak staffers at the time of their development and lose on all counts as a result.

But there's one I have hated for nearly 10 years, to the point where I actually built entire GSC teams around getting it out of the way when I played competitively. One of my greatest moments was shutting up an annoying git on the bots with an Alakazam, and only because it had Psychic, Fire Punch AND HP Dark.

It's the fat egg.

If modern tiering rules were in place at the time of GSC and the bots weren't run by someone who got nuked from Azure Heights due to not knowing when to quit arguing with He Who Has The Button, I have no doubt that the egg would have been the first or second suspect (behind Snorlax) and probably banned for severely imbalancing the game. At the tail end of the game, it was being used even more than Snorlax - something like 35% of the time. Granted, there isn't as much choice (or as many battles) on GSBot then there would be on modern Shoddy, so it's not as impressive than Scizor getting 25% now. But at least Scizor (and Snorlax then) were actually doing damage.

Check that Bulbapedia link above again. Look at the base stats. They're like modern Garchomp - perfectly designed to be gamebreaking. Now consider that the equivalent of EVs in the 2nd gen allowed you to max everything. Imagine if natures existed in 2nd gen and the defense boost existed.

As it is, it had 1 true counter - and that required a 10% boost item since the Choice items didn't exist yet. It's imbalacing on the defensive end because it can recover constantly and has a perfect Counter for any physical attack you care to throw at it. It shouldn't take an hour and a half to have one battle, but I had more of those than I care to count.

I took a sabbatical from battling after Ruby and Sapphire were released, largely due to the fact that I was sick of debating the cheapness of Beedrill (I'm not saying you can't battle with it, I'm saying right now we can't use it so why bother programming it in). Once this got sorted out, I dipped my toes back into it when I wasn't e-fedding... and then I read blueshirt's moveset FAQ. Which includes, and I quote:

"blisseyisadirtylittlecheappinkwhorethatputregiceoutofajob"

in the description of Regice.

Yes folks, the Pokemon that single handedly made half of the attacks in the game UNUSABLE was back and worse than ever.

I haven't been back since.

Though I have thought about it again - the pendulum has swung so far to the physical side that Blissey is down to about 11-12% usage instead of 33%. Still, is there anything that can be done to nerf it?

Movie Gifts - The new Lovely Kiss Nidorans

2010-04-12T22:28:00.000-03:00

Coming soon, to a theatre near you according to Bulbapedia, are four special Pokemon - three shiny gerbils and a fateful encounter Celebi. In addition to unlocking that one event in HG/SS, they all have new toys that nearly caused me to kill a Skitty upon finding out about them.

And the gerbils are all shiny, if you're into that sort of thing. But anyway...

Raikou: Zap Cannon, Weather Ball, Aura Sphere, Extremespeed
Entei: Flare Blitz, Extremespeed, Howl, Crush Claw
Suicune: Sheer Cold, Aqua Ring, Air Slash, Extremespeed
Celebi: Leaf Storm, Recover, Healing Wish, Nasty Plot.

"I'm killing Skitty right now!"

Let's look at this for each one:
Raikou: Zap Cannon is functionally useless in a world with Thunderbolt TMs (Voltorb Flip notwithstanding), and Extremespeed gives him a little bit of priority. Weather Ball is fun for Rain teams and even Hail teams (100 base Ice! Suck it Gliscor!), but oh mama, Aura Sphere. Ghost + Fighting is still resisted by little to nothing... and the ones that can take Shadow Ball + AS don't like getting Thunderbolts to the face.

Entei: I have to say, the fact that they're playing to this very blog with Crush Claw is amusing enough (hey guys, it's supposed to go to Dunsparce). Still, Howl makes Extremespeed and the long-awaited Flare Blitz extremely potent - so the question is, who's your physical Fire, Entei or Arcanine? Entei has Stone Edge and Iron Head, but Arcanine has Intimidate... hrm.

Suicune: Probably comes out of this with the least - let's face it, Sheer Cold is BANNED YOU *redacted* in most serious battles and it needs Extremespeed the least. Still, Aqua Ring could be a real pain in the rear on something with these HP/defense stats, and Air Slash is nice for coverage if nothing else. (So much for Ludicolo stalling it out).

Celebi: It only gets one new toy, but what a toy it is. The question is, does Celebi have the defenses to pull off more than one Plot before it gets hit with one of its multiple weaknesses and dies or BPs out of there? It's too bad Celebi doesn't have a tail, though - flavour-wise, Nasty Plot is one of the last moves you'd expect to see on Celebi.

This is part of the joy of post-release content for Pokemon, though - this may be the craziest post-release thing we've seen since those fateful Valentine's Day promos in New York that led to the existence of Lovely Kiss/Horn Drill Nidoking back in the GSC days. Or Eevee with Growth. Or Bubble Magikarp. The problem with all of this goodness is that because of the mandatory Shiny on the gerbils, their natures are locked in as well. And it's not known what nature that's going to be.

Basically, what this comes down to is this: If Raikou is stuck on something stupid like Bold, it's a stinkbomb waiting to happen.

Rapid Reversal

2010-04-08T10:19:00.000-03:00

Thanks to DarthVivi in the comments here and a couple of people in the secret board who e-mailed me to direct me how to file a ticket advising GameFAQs management as to what happened last week.

Although they probably get hundreds of these tickets every week - usually after every swing of the banhammer - the management understood what happened and after I could re-verify everything the account was restored to its old level.

I'd like to think that my tenure didn't have anything to do with it, but as long as it came back I can still post on the boards... and I did kind of miss it. It's become such a part of my interwebs routine that it's awfully hard to quit it cold turkey.

Lastly, to the person or persons who caused this whole situation to begin with, I would like to refer you to the reply given in the matter of Arkell v. Pressdram.

So Long, GameFAQs (for now)

2010-03-31T23:38:00.000-03:00

April 8/10: See most recent entry

On July 28, 2000, I made a stunning discovery - the site I had been hitting for the one hour a day I could use my ISP's dialup internet for grabbing Pokemon guides had message boards. And hey, I recognize one of the posters - it's the guy who wrote that really good FAQ for the Yellow version.

I picked a username that turned out to be, in retrospect, an unintelligble mess ("cmsnrub25") and started posting there. I started on the Yellow and Red boards, went to 217 (the "Pokemon" special interest board) and built up some great relationships with the regulars on the Pokemon Gold/Crystal boards as well that we ended up carrying over to a secret board. I gained the confidence to write FAQs for them and damn near got a job (only stopped by a Chapter 7) because of it.

I made Saturday picks, proved I could handle quadruple-overtime NHL games in Vancouver by posting on the NHL (sorry, "Hockey") board at 4:45am my time and xfd'd the Sharks.

I somehow managed to get invited to a second secret board - so secret that it doesn't exist - and did the right thing for a fellow poster when they were going to get boned over by my former employer. I was even considering getting into an Extreme Warfare Revenge diary.

That won't be happening anymore, thanks to a bit of my own stupidity.

It seems that based on what I'm seeing from people on Twitter, someone managed to guess the e-mail address that I was using to sign into GameFAQs. For the sake of clarification, this was an e-mail account that I signed up for in 1999. It went from my primary account, to a junk mail account, to the point where I switched full-time to Gmail (about 2005) and I stopped using it.

Clearly I let it lay unused for too long, but when the GameFAQs/Gamespot merger happened in 2004 it carried over my private e-mail to being the e-mail tied to my account. I thought it had a reasonably secure password - good length and multiple cases, though in retrospect I probably should've grabbed a GRC password when I first heard about it.

I never thought that someone would know to try password recovery on the account after they picked up the Yahoo e-mail, but they did. And apparently they did and went batshit with inflammatory posts, harassment of a user, etc. Long story short, I get sent a tweet just after my last break at work asking if everything's OK at GameFAQs.

My first thought is "Wait a second, I haven't been on the boards since this morning - just read a couple of FAQs at lunch."

But I get home, check GameFAQs - and I'm suddenly suspended with a modded message history a mile long. Keep in mind, I usually average one or two deleted messages a YEAR. Suddenly I've got 13 and I'm suspended. I go to change my password because it's dawned on me that someone had to have gotten in through the dead e-mail - on the occasion when I've had to log in outside of the same lappy I've used for two years, it's been on PCs I know to be secure.

I can't change the password because what I was using to log in isn't correct, and of course I can't recover the e-mail. So of course, it's gone.

I can't read the posts that were made any more, but to anyone who may have been offended by what I did, I don't expect you to believe a word of this. Just know that I would never post in a fashion like that unless you've basically walked up to me on the street and said you murdered my family. I sincerely apologize, but also accept that it's too late at this point.

I've got a backup account tied to my contributions, so "Donald" on GameFAQs will still be submitting updates assuming I can find that one spreadsheet for the Platinum guide, and hopefully a Platinum and Heart Gold/Soul Silver walkthrough down the road. But I'm done with the boards. I've been looking for an excuse to walk away, and this seems like as good a time as any.

If you're reading this on GameFAQs, I can be reached by e-mail, in the blog - maybe now I'll do more than 3-4 posts a month with my extra time - or on Twitter. I don't use AIM or MSN, and have a Facebook ban that lasts until 12/31/2999 (Protip: Don't replace all your pictures with Zippocat, even if they ruin a Christmas surprise with their advertising service), so those are the best ways to reach me.

- cmsnrub25 out

Donald and Kozuki vs. Excessive Level Grinding

2010-03-25T23:42:00.000-03:00

So I've played through all 16 badges of Heart Gold now and hit a massive roadblock - one that's going to require either more grinding that should be allowed by law, or me busting out my Action Replay for an emergency supply of Rare Candies.

The situation? I'm going to get slaughtered by Red if my party holds as it is.

Kallen (my character)'s team is as follows:

Butterfree (Rakshata): Bug Buzz, Psybeam, Gust, Sleep Powder
Utility, sleeper.
Electivire (Akatsuki): Thunderbolt, Thief, Ice Punch, Earthquake
Surrogate Electric killer, is going to get me a Light Ball when I eventually fight Red. Currently packing Fire Punch in that slot.
Scizor (Gurren): Bug Bite, Bullet Punch, Rock Smash, Strength
It's a freaking Scizor, with Technician. 'nuff said.
Houndoom (Seiten): Flamethrower, Dark Pulse, Thunder Fang, Nasty Plot
Venusaur killer
Starmie (Gekka): Surf, Ice Beam, Psychic, Grass Knot
Fills in holes on the team, beats Charizard and puts a nice dent in Blastoise/Lapras
Hitmonlee (Burai): Hi Jump Kick, Earthquake, Blaze Kick, Rock Climb
Need Rock Climb to get to him, need HELLOJUMPKICK to get rid of Snorlax

The problem is, they're all L56.

Red's LOWEST Pokemon is L80.

I've heard of people beating it from 20+ levels down, but even that would take me to L65 and would still take forever.

Let's look at the three ways I could pull this off:
1) Wild Pokemon. Um, no. The highest leveled Wild Pokemon in the game are in the Unknown Dungeon or Mt. Silver, and those top out at L50.

2) The VS Seek... oh, wait, they ditched that in favour of the PokeGear. OK, that's fine, I can call up trainers and beat around level 50+ trained Pokemon. And the Gym Leaders can get rematches... but for the fact that you have to call them at very specific times in order to do it, which means buggering around with the DS clock since I work for a living and can't exactly whip out the DS while I'm talking to someone on the phone.

I'd like to think that this is some sort of ploy to sell DSi, for all you have to do is jump back to the main screen, switch the clock, and reboot the game. Where I have a DS Lite, I have to reboot the game twice for a simple change of the time, and to get all of the trainers and Gym Leaders I'd have to do it 21 times.

3) Grind the Elite 4. Probably the easiest to work with, but there'd still be some 1 or 2 involved since I'm not even ready to fight Will v2 yet. And even then, it'd be approximately 1 level per Pokemon per Elite 4 run so... 20 runs? It's not like I have Lucky Eggs to work with, I still haven't had a fat egg swarm yet.

Of course, if they had coded things properly so that Red was at a reasonable level, instead of having to jack up the rat so it gets the "highest leveled Pokemon held by a trainer" crown back from Barry, this wouldn't be a problem now would it? This has become my biggest beef with the game, inasmuch as I'd like to get my hands on the full game's content including the two bonus starters and the Groudon/Kyogre quest. But not when it's going to run the game clock over 100 hours when I haven't even sniffed the Battle Tower yet.

Localized Walls of Text

2010-03-22T21:59:00.000-03:00

First of all, the giveaway went as well as can be expected. That is to say, I gave myself everything over again but nobody else had a Pokemon game with them or already had them. (Hell, one of the guys had a freakin' Yu-Gi-Oh game with him. No, he was not a freaky fish guy. In America.)

I did end up getting both - Heart Gold was pre-ordered in full, Subpar Silver by way of swapping Rhythm Heaven (because I have no rhythm) and the first Layton game. In what can be only described as the worst trade since Kessel for 2 1sts and a 2nd, I also traded my unused Pearl and basically unused PBR for the first guide and $7 off the second.

Now that we have the North American versions, I can update the original review of the Japanese version with the stuff I didn't get to the first time...

The Pokewalker
Two MILLION steps? Are you frakking insane?

With that said, I'm actually using it quite a bit. Not for catching things yet - I'm trying to build up to 100,000 watts so I can get all of the Pokemon out of it, which by my estimation will take anywhere from two weeks to two months depending on how many walks I can justify. It's actually forced me to change my routine at work though - I'm on the 11th floor of a 18-story office building, so on breaks or lunch I go down to the ground floor, walking around the office complex and getting a good tour of the downtown. All while leveling up (random Pokemon here).

The times I've dared to use the Dowsing Machine or encounter Pokemon it's mainly been vendor trash - Geodude, Slowpoke, and Oddish with the more common items. I'd like to go back and get some of the rare stuff, but again, you need the Watts to unlock the courses - and the one you really want ("easy" Spiritomb, Feebas, etc) is 100,000 Watts at 20 steps each.

Probably the most annoying thing is that if you level up to a point where you would learn a move, you miss the move. Whoopsie. Good thing I got to Blackthorn already, or that would really be a problem.

Oh, and I like how there's already people trying to cheat the Pokewalker. It's called running, folks. The only one I support is a dryer, tumble with no heat. Don't do what someone I know did and try to wash it, though. $10 for a refurb after shipping is not fun.

Voltorb Flip

"I miss the Game Corner already. Card Flip comes off like a high-risk Picross demo." - my 12:30am tweet on 3/16

This was the first impression I got when arriving in Goldenrod and throwing a fit when I couldn't buy the coins for Dratini or TM 35. It's a tricky game at first until I was able to get a handle on the strategy for it - but it's still freaking annoying when you're up at L6 and get dropped because you misclick a bomb.

The strategy for it is summed up pretty well in this FAQ, and I'm not going to recreate it here. Just next time Pokemon Company, please include an option to buy coins. If you can afford it, then you deserve the rewards - and there's no gambling involved if the reason for taking out the slots was truly for the sake of avoiding the "gambling references" ESRB descriptor.

Also, it's dangerous to go alone. Take this.

Other Stuff
- As predicted, Dialga is a gamebreaker. I actually stopped using it after it sat back and laughed at Whitney for about 10 minutes straight before Dragonbreathing it to death. (Though to be fair, I ditched my entire team at that point for eggs).

- 1, 2, 3, 1, 2 still works for Extremespeed Dratini even when you know what the actual answer is.

- Now that I understand what they're saying when you talk to the Pokemon following you, I can actually somewhat tolerate it. Just do yourself a favour - don't look at your dragon's Orb the wrong way, or it may be YOU getting Dragonbreath to the face. Wonder what would happen if it was say, a Thick Club Marowak?

- I realized recently that there are actually five families that are post-National exclusive despite being in the Johto Pokedex - Porygon, Sneasel, Houndour, Electabuzz and the one I forgot... Slugma. Now do you see why I thought it was only four families?

- They kept Donphan in Gold, so these are remakes of the Japanese versions as I suspected they would be. So the final score is still 8-3-2 Heart Gold in the version exclusive race. So much for "Superior" Silver, right GAF?

- I am this close to setting up a Twitter feed for my Gold trainer. Watch this space.

Announcement regarding HG/SS Launch Day

2010-03-09T23:01:00.000-04:00

3/12/10: Please note - the time has been moved up as EB Games is opening an hour early for the launch. I'll be there at 10:00 ADT.

Still waiting to pick up my copy of NA-version Heart Gold on Sunday, but I did come across a homebrew app recently that when combined with a DS flashcart, lets me create my own Pokemon distribution ROMs.

I'm choosing to use my powers for awesome, however - and I wish I could've done this at Platinum launch, but figure now I have the bigger platform of a blog so I can hopefully get some people to show up for this.

On March 14, I'm going to be at EB Games in Dartmouth, NS (Mic Mac Mall) to complete my preorder, hopefully get the Ho-oh figure and (maybe) the Monster Hunter Tri demo. The store opens with the mall at noon on Sundays, but I'm going to be there as close to 10am as possible.

And I'm going to have 2 DSs, and every relevant distribution ever done to make sure everyone's as ready as possible for the launch.
The things that will be handed out:
- The three unlock items (for Platinum only) - Secret Key, Member's Card and Oak's Letter

- Japanese Mew for D/P/P

- TRU Manaphy/Dragonite/Darkrai and Gamestop Deoxys (D/P/P)

- The relevant HG/SS events: Jirachi, Arceus, and the shiny Pichu (note that this is handed out reluctantly, as the Spiky-Eared Pichu is without question the most useless event Pokemon in history)

- The event Regigigas and Shaymin that unlock stuff in Platinum

If you have to know why I have to do this, it's simple: I want as many people as possible to have access to these events - the event Pokemon rarely if ever show up in Canada, and the event items were limited distribution to people that have wi-fi. If they're going to lock away game content in this fashion, then I feel we need to have as wide a distribution as possible.

Remember, March 14. 10:00am. EB Games, Mic Mac Mall. Be there or be hexagonal.

Quick & Dirty Thoughts: Sands of Destruction

2010-02-22T01:24:00.000-04:00

I was originally going to call this "x things I Think I Think" but I'm pretty sure Peter King of SI would be crying gimmick infringement. So I'll stick with "Quick & Dirty Thoughts" while waiting for the NA release of Heart Gold and a newly-functional Pokewalker. There are no spoilers here.

I recently picked up Sega's "Sands of Destruction" (aka World Destruction) because I needed a RPG to play and Glory of Heracles got off to a really slow start. Plus, I was ticked at the world as it was and destroying the world seemed like a good idea at the time.

I did manage to finish it, so it had to be doing something right, but it did have some issues. For starters...

- The battle system is equal parts simple and frustrating. You'll basically ignore an entire class of your attacks starting about the 1/3 mark of the game once you build up a stat system. The frustrating part is that some random encounters need 2-3 attack buffs just to do any damage at all, and that's if you're not missing all of your attacks. Plus, the enemies will sometimes get 8-9 turns IN A ROW for one guy - especially egregious with boss battles where these attacks are doing 1/4 of your health per hit. That's not Pokemon Battle Frontier cheap, but it's close.

- The cutscenes can be skipped, which is nice. However, the in-battle cutscenes can't. This gets annoying for two reasons - when the boss is unleashing its super move for the nth time you want to skip it, and once you start being able to use yours regularly you want to see them once and then go on. My clock finished at 23 hours and I'm pretty sure I could've taken 1-2 hours off if I could've skipped the super move cutscenes just in the second-last dungeon I did.

- It seems like the developers were counting on me using DS Sleep Mode a lot more than I did. I was playing this game a lot prior to going to bed, and can count at least three or four times where I was at least an hour (counting the story sequences) from the last save and had to turn it off because the next save point was two areas away. Either let me save anywhere, or put a heal and save point in towns and at the start/end of each extended areas. Is it that hard?

- The last character you pick up is useful for about an hour before he becomes bloody pointless. His only useful skill (a revive spell) gets trumped by the mandatory party member you get shortly after, and he needs either a metric assload of grinding or cash spent on skill points before he's caught up to you - which screws over the rest of the party when you have to buy their 2nd-best equipment at the endgame. Five party members is enough, especially when 4 of them are useful and you only have 3 slots.

- There's a lot of delays when the character is speaking while the lip-syncing catches up. I have to wonder if this was a localization issue.

It's not all bad, though.

- The storyline has a nice hook in which you appear to start out as a Villain Protagonist - wait, I'm the one who's trying to DESTROY the world? Even after things shake down to a basic RPG plot, it's still what I was looking for at the time and has some cool twists near the endgame.

- I'm a sucker for a Kato plot and Mitsuda music and wonder what it would've been like if they weren't going for a SERO B (equivalent to a low-end T game for the ESRB, though I'd have rated it E10). It's not as good as Chrono Trigger, but what is?

- The game doesn't use the stylus unless you want to play with the camera, and the camera is usually in the right spot so it doesn't come up at all. The game does a good job of using both screens for battle (unlocking a second set of attacks) and having the map up top where I'm more comfortable looking was a nice touch. The only thing I'd do is give an option to switch the map to the touchscreen and maybe allow control with that method.

I wouldn't pick it up for full price, but might look into it if I get more cash and if it comes up on an Amazon sale.

3 Things For Gen V - The Dark Gym

2010-02-01T23:12:00.000-04:00

In the Japanese version, the Dark type is actually equivalent to "Evil" with Psychic being the equivalent of a "Light" type. This may be the only reason why the type has been solely under-represented in terms of Gym Leaders and Elite 4 members.

As a matter of fact, there's only been two primary users of the Dark type - Karen (Johto) and Sidney (Hoenn) and no Gym Leaders. Compare that to the other types...
(Elite 4 members in italic font)

Normal: Whitney (Johto), Norman (Hoenn)
Fire: Blaine (Kanto), Flannery (H), Flint (Sinnoh)
Water: Misty (K), Wallace (H), Juan (H - Emerald), Wake (S)
Electric: Surge (K), Wattson (H), Volkner (S)
Grass: Erika (K), Gardenia (S)
Ice: Pryce (J), Glacia (H), Candice (S)
Fighting: Bruno (K/J), Chuck (J), Brawly (H), Maylene (S)
Poison: Koga (K/J), Janine (K)
Ground: Giovanni (K), Bertha (S)
Flying: Falkner (J), Winona (H)
Psychic: Sabrina (K), Will (J), Liza/Tate (H), Lucian (S)
Bug: Bugsy (J), Aaron (S)
Rock: Brock (K), Roxanne (H), Roark (S)
Ghost: Agatha (K), Morty (J), Phoebe (H), Fantina (S)
Dragon: Lance (K), Clair (J), Drake (H)
Steel: Jasmine (J), Byron (S)

So in terms of underepresented types, we have Ground, Grass, Flying, Bug, Steel and Dark. Of those, Dark hasn't had a Gym Leader and one of the Elite 4 is quite frankly, a joke. And because of the apparent hatred for Sneasel and low levels of the Johto Elite 4, Karen can't use a full Dark team and has to use two Poisons (Vileplume and Gengar) to fill out her roster.

There's enough quality Darks already to allow for a full team - Umbreon, Houndoom, Spiritomb, Draipon and Tyranitar as the closer. Add in the inevitable newcomers a 5th gen would bring in with potential new type combos and this would be an absolutely vicious 8th gym.

And if they want to play up the "evil" aspect of the gym, I'd set up the 8th gym leader as someone who's got their trainers under some sort of mind control. Or if you prefer, More Than Mind Control. They don't have to be the leader of Team WhateverTheHell - we did that already, and it wouldn't have the same impact as when Giovanni shows up in Kanto. All they have to be is the ultimate manipulative bastard, give them a Dark Pulse TM and send them up to the Elite 4.

3 Things for Gen 5 - Visible stats

2010-01-31T11:58:00.000-04:00

The hardest thing about raising a competitive Pokemon is the hell that you go through in trying to figure out IVs. The existence of stat calculators still requires farming a bunch of Rare Candy or having a useful friend battle you on wi-fi in L100 mode to know what exactly you're dealing with.
The second thing I'd like to see next gen is probably the least likely to happen, but would definitely be useful for the competitive crowd - a way in the interface to ascertain IVs.

There have been baby steps in this regard - Emerald introduced the "IV Guy" at the Battle Frontier who gives you an idea of your Pokemon's relative strength and what the highest one is. Diamond and Pearl introduced characteristics which flag the highest IV and give you a 1/6 chance of guessing that IV, and Platinum has the Hidden Power revealer who can help narrow down the range of IVs (because they would have to equal a particular Hidden Power type).

But next time around, a lot of people would appreciate GameFreak throwing open the proverbial kimono and letting us view them in some fashion. I can think of 3 ways to accomplish this:

1) An in game NPC
The odds for this one are long, but it could be couched in another way. In the city where the Daycare would be, a NPC would be set up who would give the 6 IVs, HP/AT/DF/SA/SD/SP order. If they want to keep the masquerade up, have the NPC say something like "These are your Pokemon's lucky numbers" or have the Footprint guy return and say they're measurements of the Pokemon's feet. Though the latter is highly unlikely given that they'd have to explain Diglett. (In the immortal words of Magnemite, "HE HAS THEM? FEET?")

2) A bar chart
This would be a brand new interface for the series, with six line graphs separated into 32 segments and the last segment reached is the appropriate IV.

3) Contest chart
Similar to the above, except they use a 8 point chart in a hexagonal shape similar to the way the Contest stats are viewable after the Poffins. For those who settle for 28 IVs in most stats, this would be sufficient though a star at the top could be used to represent 31.

The target market doesn't pay attention to this anyway, but it would be nice to throw the competitive gamers a bone like they do - and given that they're running the Video Game Championship two years in a row, clearly someone there gives a flying fadoo about the competitive gamer.

3 Things For 5th Gen - Why we need an Ability tutor

2010-01-29T22:24:00.000-04:00

To the shock of absolutely nobody, word leaked out from Nintendo's financial statements that a new Pokemon RPG is being developed by Game Freak, and they announced the game will have new Pokemon. Knowing that GameFreak only develops main series Pokemon RPGs (and Drill Dozer/Pulseman), and there isn't new Pokemon unless it's a new generation... we're probably going to get the 5th gen started this year.

With that in mind, this weekend I'm going to try and post full entries regarding three things I want from the 5th generation.

A couple of years ago, I was breeding Staryu for a Battle Tower run (this was Diamond, so no Battle Frontier) and finally got into a breeding groove. After about the 50th Staryu, I finally got one with the IVs I was looking for - Timid, max Speed/Special Attack/HP, high Defense and Special Defense. Due to Pokemon's rules about incest meaning I couldn't use it as a parent, I had to soft-reset to get rid of it. Why would I do that?

Two words - Ability: Illuminate.

Yep, a perfectly good Pokemon lost because it happened to lose a 50/50 coin flip.

After taking my frustrations out by punching out a Cthulhu doll, I thought that since we have Move Tutors, why not an Ability tutor?

They managed to reinvent the Shards in Platinum for the Move tutors, so let's take one of the otherwise useless MacGuffins - the Pearls - and have an NPC in the 8th badge city request them in trade for changing the Pokemon's ability.

In the game's data, abilities are noted by the Pokemon's "class", and Pokemon that have one ability have the same one in both class slots. For a Pearl, our tutor will switch the existing Pokemon's class so that it goes to the other ability. For example, my Illuminate Staryu from above would switch to Natural Cure. If I bring him a Big Pearl, however, he would activate a 3rd class (or both at once) which would unlock a 3rd ability.

Some potential 3rd abilities - I wanted to turn this into a full post, but got writer's block around Lapras (final forms only):

Sandslash - Rough Skin
Wigglytuff - Huge Power (giggity)
Slowbro - Unaware (It doesn't notice that something is BITING ITS FRAKKING TAIL)
Farfetch'd - Speed Boost
Starmie - Clear Body

And if starters can take advantage of it, Blastoise can finally get Intimidate (I'm sorry, but if you've got two giant cannons pointed at my head, I'm intimidated).

The point is, if they can keep people from whipping their DSi across the room - especially considering I'm going to end up with an XL, which if I chose to whip it across the room I'd probably decapitate someone - it's better for all involved.

The streak has been beaten

2010-01-14T23:09:00.001-04:00

The record has fallen. 2,364 consecutive wins... with an Accupressure Drapion.

Video linked at the original post.

Wheel of morality, turn turn turn. Tell us the lesson that we should learn.

2010-01-11T21:05:00.000-04:00

"Played Pokemon with my bro yesterday - his Pokemon were stolen from the Emerald Battle Frontier, yet he called me cheap for using Garchomp " - my Twitter, December 26/09

Around Christmas time, I had a chance to battle live with my brother for the first time since he moved across the country. The rules were standard 3v3, and my team was Tyranitar, Scizor and Garchomp - he used a bunch of Pokemon that thanks to the AR, he was able to steal from the Emerald Battle Factory and ran up to Platinum.

There were two battles, one of which was a Scizor kill that he pulled a GreenPikachu on (pulled the plug at the last kill so I couldn't upload it). So let's deal with the first one - here's how it went.

I lead Tyranitar, he leads Whiscash.
Sandstream kicks in.

I switched in Garchomp, Whiscash Earthquakes for light damage. Garchomp Subbed in the face of a Rock Slide (probable misclick), then Swords Danced and dodged the Earthquake by Sand Veil. He switched in Armaldo who got Outraged to death. Donald 3, brother 2

Miltank comes in, gets Outraged, becomes fine hamburger. Donald 3, brother 1

Whiscash back in, Garchomp now confused. Garchomp kicks himself in the crotch and the Sub gets broken with an Earthquake, but a second Outrage connects and that's the ballgame. Donald 3, brother 0.

---

So here's the thing: If you're going by commonly held competitive logic, I was the cheapass here. After all, I abused "hax" (Sand Veil), used a Garchomp and pulled 3 top-OU Pokemon against what amounts to a team of UU Pokemon.

But I don't even know if my brother's even been to Smogon. (Michael, if you read this, lemme know.) I don't know if he gives a crap about tiers and all the stuff the Stop Having Fun crowd uses. And considering the only rule we set out were 3v3 I could've pulled out the Spore Ninjask and he probably wouldn't have complained.

But I didn't resort to using an outside device to steal AI Pokemon from the frakking Battle Frontier for my team.

Who's the cheapass? The guy who plays to win within the rules, or the guy who plays like Eddie Guerrero?

HG/SS version exclusives - a Dr. Jack Ramsay special

2009-12-23T02:10:00.000-04:00

If you're purchasing only 1 of Heart Gold or Soul Silver, and you haven't decided which one based on nostalgia, the main deciding factor for which one you're picking up is usually the version exclusives. So far, it appears most people are leaning toward SS (at least based on the Media Create sales out of Japan), but should they be?

In the immortal words of Winston Wolf, let's not start licking SS's "popsicle" just yet. We need to do some math on this. So I'm going to rip off every sports series preview ever and go position by position trying to determine which game you need.
Exclusives:

Early Game Bug (Spinarak/Ariados v. Ledbya/Ledian)
Spinarak and Ariados have one trick - trap-passing with Spider Web and Baton Pass, and passable offenses. Ledian has no offenses and no tricks beyond almost, but not quite unlike dying. If you're desperate enough to need something for Baton Pass, Ninjask is attainable in both games and learns BP on its own so you can pass it around. Advantage: Heart Gold

Fire Stone users (Growlithe/Arcanine v. Vulpix/Ninetales)
Arcanine is well known for having the highest stat total among non-legendaries/Slaking and for being the only true legendary dog in existence. It also has Intimidate which provides an auto boost to its Defense and a surprisingly variable ingame movepool of Fire move, Reversal, Crunch/Bite and Extremespeed. As much as I like Vulpix, its movepool goes Fire move/Extrasensory and a bunch of support moves, and no Intimidate. Advantage: Heart Gold

Red/Blue animals (Mankey/Primeape v. Meowth/Persian)
Probably the toughest call to make. Primeape has Sleep immunity or a 6 1/4% chance of opening up the proverbial 40lb box of rape, but Meowth gives Pickup and Technician and has most of the moves it needs to take use of that. Best to go with the sure thing in this case. Advantage: Soul Silver

Elephant or Bear (Phanpy/Donphan v. Teddiursa/Ursaring)
This is subject to change, as both families are in different games in the original North American games (Silver had Phanpy/Donphan, Gold had Teddiursa/Ursaring) but the original Japanese game and the currently available versions of HG/SS have it set with the listed arrangement. Ursaring is a pretty good Normal type with a sky-high Attack, but it's hard to argue with a type-bonused Earthquake from Donphan's attack. Advantage: Heart Gold

Major Birds (Gligar/Gliscor v. Skarmory)
Based strictly on ingame, unless you can hurl Gligar to another game to evolve it it's going to lose to Skarmory - less stats all around, despite finally being able to use Earthquake without an outside game Skarmory can do a lot of the same things, etc. If you can evolve it, Gliscor beats Skarmory. Based on that... Push

Minor birds (Mantyke/Mantine v. Delibird)
Mantine is a decently-powered Water type with insane Special Defense and a good HM compatibility. Delibird is Delibird. I don't need to say anymore. Major advantage: Heart Gold

3rd gen mascots (Kyogre v. Groudon)
Kyogre is one of the most dominant Pokemon in existence and it's consistently among the top used Pokemon in an anything goes environment. With auto-rain, that makes it a major team player. Groudon, although powerful on its own, can't hang with Kyogre. Advantage: Heart Gold

3rd gen freaks (Sableye v. Mawile)
If you want something with NO WEAK ZOMG~, get a Spiritomb. Sableye is going to be actively useless half the time, and only mildly useful the other half - whereas with Mawile, you get something with Intimidate or immune to it. Advantage: Soul Silver

3rd gen oddballs (Baltoy/Claydol v. Gulpin/Swalot)
This would be closer if it wasn't for the fact that SS essentially got a worse version of Muk, who isn't exactly setting the world on fire, Claydol is a shockingly versatile Pokemon with a lot of type variety and free entry hazard clearance. Advantage: Heart Gold

Exclusive without an event (Latias v Latios)
The attack and defense stats get swapped both ways, but Latias's Special Attack is still high enough that where Latios is KOing everything in one hit and dying, Latias is suriving those same hits and 2HKOing. I'll leave it up to the reader to determine which you prefer while actively encouraging you to grab the event and make this a moot point. Push

There's three other rivalries in play, as there's Pokemon easier to get in one version over the other.

Adjusted rarities
Bug Catching Contest (Butterfree v. Beedrill)
Butterfree is a top-5 Pokemon ingame thanks to 98% accurate Sleep Powder. Beedrill... isn't. Major advantage: Heart Gold

Game Corner required (Ekans v. Sandshrew)
This isn't as relevant thanks to the Safari Zone expansions, but given a choice between a type-bonus Earthquake and potential Intimidate... yeah, gimme the Earthquake. Advantage: Heart Gold

Version mascots (Ho-oh v. Lugia)
Too close to call here, Ho-oh's massive offenses and 50% odds of burnination meeting Lugia's massive defenses and just usable enough offenses. Push

The final tally:
Heart Gold: 8 (2 major)
Soul Silver: 2
Push: 3

So yeah, if you want to make your life easier ingame, grab Heart Gold.

The (2nd) greatest Battle Tower streak in history

2009-12-13T20:32:00.000-04:00

Edit: As of January 13/10, this record has already been broken. Youtube video evidence here: http://bit.ly/85QCQk

On September 6, a Smogon poster named peterko moved to the top of the board's unofficially official Battle Tower list when he had a streak end at 696 consecutive wins. Immediately after that, he began a new streak that would last over 3 months and came to an end last night... at 2,362 wins.

The team that was used:

Latias @ Choice Scarf
~ Trick
~ Thunder Wave
~ Charm
~ Recover

Registeel @ Leftovers:
~ Curse
~ Amnesia
~ Iron Head
~ Substitute

Garchomp @ Lum Berry
~ Substitute
~ Swords Dance
~ Earthquake
~ Outrage

You'd think it quite crazy that 2000+ wins could come with 3 offensive moves, but it's possible.

The key is Latias, whose purpose is to allow for Registeel or Garchomp to set up. Tricking them into a move that Registeel can no-sell long enough to set up for 10 turns creates the ultimate tank, who can only be brought down by a critical hit, a Pokemon with 400+ Attack and a Choice Banded Earthquake (Rhyperior), a OHKO move or a Sunny Day-aided Fire move from something with Blaze active.

To last for 2300 wins, you have to have a lot of patience and quite frankly, enough luck to choke a horse. I can never get past 110 wins in the Battle Tower because even the best laid plans get thrown astray by a critical hit or a run of OHKO moves. Indeed, the streak finally came to an end at the hands of a Gliscor with Guillotine, U-Turn, Counter and Earthquake (holding a Focus Sash).

In 2362 wins, this Gliscor came up 10 times prior to the final match, and it never used Guillotine - it was always using Counter, where it would promptly get Tricked the Scarf and let Registeel set up for a sweep. The 11th time... Tricked into Guillotine, 1st hit breaks the Focus Sash, 2nd 3rd and 4th all hit. Quick as a flash, the streak is over.

The streak was so long it broke the Battle Tower - literally. After 1,743 wins (249 * 7), the Battle Tower loops back to itself. Although you don't get the Palmer messages the second time, when you get to 1764 you fight a Scientist with Palmer's exact Pokemon. The only thing I'm shocked about is that it didn't happen at 1785 (or 255 * 7).

I don't know if I'd ever be able to beat this streak even if I traded for max-IVd version of the Pokemon. Even if I had the same luck peterko originally had, I just don't know if I'd have the patience to keep the same streak going for 3 months.

peterko, we salute you.

The first three generations are dead to me

2009-11-29T00:04:00.000-04:00

Recently I was going through my backlog of games to try and set up a plan of attack for beating them all. During the process, I found the following Pokemon games:

1st gen: Red, Blue, Yellow and Stadium 1

2nd gen: Silver (the same one I wrote the FAQ using), Crystal, Stadium 2

3rd gen: All 5 + the Gamecube games

After looking it over, I decided to add them to the pile of stuff I'd be eventually throwing up on Kijiji for the simple fact that 4th gen has completely spoiled me, and I can never go back to anything playable on a GBA.

Right now, I have completed files on Red, Blue, and Yellow, a dead battery on Silver and Crystal (thank heavens for the Mega Memory Card), a half-done Fire Red run from before Diamond/Pearl launch day, and barren Ruby/Sapphire/Leaf Green/Emerald games that were strip-mined for Pal Park.

Now that you can get every Pokemon with either 1 game + an internet connection or just DS games, I don't need to play anything from 3rd generation back any more. I tried reading goon runs (RedChocobo's epic Let's Play runs for Emerald, FR and Crystal) to see if it would inspire me to bust out the GBA again but nothing. Why is that?

First off, I can't go back to RBY because the inventory in that game is broken - 20 in the main, 50 in the PC, and that's it. Good thing there's only 20 usable TMs... oh, wait. The base game comes down to "install Dugtrio/Jolteon, problem solved". Add in the lack of running shoes, and little things that they got rid of like having to go into the Pokemon menu to use HMs... yeesh. I know the originals were groundbreaking, but when the newer games largely use the same formula with a much improved interface, the original games just can't hold up today.

The 2nd generation makes minor improvements to the 1st but I just played Johto/Kanto again in HG/SS, so if I want to explore Johto again I can blow away the file on HG and start again. Oh, and the whole "doesn't save anymore because the battery died PSP-style" issue can't help matters. I could replace it or use a *gasp* emulator, but I got an exemption from the soldering portion of shop class in junior high so it's not really feasible.

And then there's 3rd gen, but I got enough satisfaction out of clearing Emerald a couple of years ago and can redo Kanto again if I want to for some stupid reason in HG/SS. The 50 TMs return identically in 4th gen, and of course the changes to physical and special moves in 4th gen threw me for a major loop when I had to speedrun Ruby for a fresh set of Regis (this was pre-movie Regigigas). Once you can use Breloom with three types of move (Grass, Electric, Fighting) off the physical attack instead of one, it's hard to go back.

If I ever get a chance to start a retro game of the week blog (which is the plan if I retire before I'm 27 by way of hitting the lottery or a game show), I might revisit them for the heck of it. But for now, make mine Platinum.

My retirement from Mystery Dungeon

2009-11-16T23:33:00.000-04:00

There is a main-game related blog entry I want to do, but it's an ongoing story and I'm holding off until it's over - which looks like it'll be December 23, 2012 at the pace it's going now. It involves the Battle Tower and a streak that looks like it's going to make Cal Ripken Jr's look short.

When I get bored of the main games, I'll sometimes borrow a copy of one of the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games. I keep thinking that as someone who appreciates a good eastern-style RPG, I really need to get into rougelike games in order to have a fuller appreciation of the genre. But not any more. As of November 16, 2009 I am officially done with the Mystery Dungeon series.

And here's why.

It's not just the randomly generated dungeons - hey, I can deal with that. It's always a little bit of fun. The storyline is better than the main games... but the core gameplay drives me insane.

First off, there's escort missions. To quote X-Play, "we don't LIKE escort missions". When I rented Sky recently, one of the optional missions had a 3-part escort mission. The escorted Pokemon make (name deleted as I don't want to waste time banning 50,000 usernames for the same person from the comments) look smart, and have the battling talent of a L14 Magikarp.

OK, just don't take any mission that involves escorting someone. Except there's a mandatory one in the first game, and the most recent series has 3 or 4 mandatory ones. With Pokemon who enjoy dying by walking into anything, suicidal Beldum, and a Bidoof.

I thought I could get through that, but I reached the breaking point tonight. Early in Explorers of Sky, you unlock an optional mission starring Bidoof. Clearly, someone at Chunsoft needs their head examined for this decision. You get a decent Snover, but still, it's a frakking Bidoof. You get a boss fight against said Snover, and they make it 11-on-3. But then you have to go through five floors of hell after that with just a Bidoof.

At the bottom, you meet a Jirachi - who proceeds to tear you a new damhole in two hits. You lose half your items and get to go down again... and have this exact sequence happen 4 times on the final floor before the Jirachi rematch after you rebuilt your supplies...

Bronzong used Hypnosis! (Note that Bidoof has Tackle and possibly Rollout for offense. This will happen.)
Bidoof is asleep!
Bronzong attacks!
Gulpin attacks!
Lunatone attacks!
Bidoof is asleep!

Repeat until death and power cycling of the DS.

Take all of the BS odds you encounter in the Battle Tower - such as someone losing a 313 streak on 4 straight CHs, or 1-in-4096 odds - and multiply that by 20. That's the level of frustration a rougelike can cause you.

All I can do now is sit back, say "at least it's not Ranger" and plan my next Platinum runthrough...

The (Ingame) Winners and Losers of HG/SS

2009-10-30T23:33:00.000-03:00

The 4th gen mechanics have caused a severe altering of everything you ever knew about the ingame Pokemon. Aside from ones that are now showing up ingame for the first time, certain monsters are now suddenly usable - or no longer usable. The major culprits for this of course, are 4th gen mechanics and the sudden lack of elemental punch TMs, as you'll see...

Winners
1) Gyarados
I'm pretty sure Gyarados is the first Pokemon in the history to be promoted from HM mule status. Back in GSC, all the Red Gyarados did was take up a slot in my party between New Bark and Victory Road for the water HMs because there were a lot of good Water types on the special end of the spectrum. It's now a lot easier to use a physical Water-type and even then, you can use it for Surf as its SA is now "meh" instead of laughable. Plus, it can be soft-reset for stats and nature.

2) The collective Safari Zone Pokemon
There were about 20 Pokemon that couldn't be obtained in the originals before Kanto, and most of them are now available much earlier in the game. This includes Jigglypuff, Clefairy, Murkrow, Misdreavus (also available outside if tearing your hair out doesn't appeal to you), Kangaskhan, Cubone, Marowak, Lapras on days beside Friday, and my new favourite - Larvitar. At the very least, you can use a non-Geodude Rock-type for a while - and having something with Sandstream helps big time when the final boss has auto-Hail and three things with Blizzard including a Lapras.

3) Butterfree
This was a 3rd gen benefit, but still... 98% accurate Sleep Powder. Soul Silver players are SO screwed. I know I mentioned getting Butterfree is a pain before, but you did the same thing in RBY right?

4) Tangela
Now that Tangela can evolve, Tangrowth has become the best ingame Grass-type and anti-Water device since the stones are STILL rare as heck unless you spend half your time in the Pokethlon.

5) Spearow and Hoothoot
Spearow has Aerial Ace prior to evolution and confirms that anyone who uses the Pidgey line needs to submit to drug testing. Hoothoot now has Air Slash and Uproar to actually be usable (lay off the Hypnosis, though).

Losers
1) Kadabra and Alakazam
Oh, how the greatest ingame monster has fallen. And it was set up so well, considering if they crossed the Game Corner of HG/SS with the original's department store, you'd win the game with $11k. But the major thing is that instead of type coverage that would make Mew reconsider its position in life, you're stuck with Psychic move/Focus Blast. Not really that fun, is it?

2) Mareep family
Unfortunately, Mareep has gone from "powerful team member" to "ingame fodder". The big problem? No Fire Punch gives him type coverage of Electric, Electric and more Electric until it gets to Ampharos. By which point, you've punted it for something with actual variety in its learnset. Signal Beam and Power Gem are just plain teases.

3) Houndour, Sneasel, Electabuzz, Porygon
Or "the four families that don't appear in Johto for some stupid reason". Surely Houndour could appear on, say, Route 37 at night in place of Fire-type du jour? Or would that have made the Ghost gym too easy? Sneasel suddenly becomes passable in the 4th generation, and it was in the Ice Path in Crystal, so why leave it out? Electabuzz has a baby form, so you would think it would be available and why can't the Goldenrod Game Corner borrow a few Porygon to sell at a discount?

The final Heart Gold/Soul Silver review

2009-10-17T19:36:00.000-03:00

If a Pokemon game's story can justify a spoiler warning, there will be spoilers. Viewer discretion is advised. This review may contain language that may be offensive to young children and 2nd gen fanboys.

When starting Diamond and Pearl, the player is greeted by a television report discussing a Red Gyarados. The minute this was revealed, the speculation for a GSC remake went from non-existant to ludricrous speed. Nostalgia blinded everyone to the flawed execution of the second generation games and ??? was promoted as some sort of good character.

This wouldn't be the first time this phenomenon was observed amongst the hoi paloi of the Internet Pokemon Community (IPC) - after all, we saw this same pattern played out after Ruby and Sapphire's release with Fire Red and Leaf Green. The key difference is that in the 3rd generation, the remake was followed up by a canonical 3rd version for the true 3rd gen games (Emerald for Ruby and Sapphire) which was a superior experience in practically every area. The same thing happened in the 4th generation, except they got the order backwards and put the best game of the generation out before they put out the remake.

That isn't to say that Heart Gold and Soul Silver are bad games, but once you've had Scizor it's hard to go back to Heracross. What remains is what 2nd generation should've been crossed with a 5th generation tech demo.

The Interface
The first striking difference is that the games have moved practically everything to the DS's touchscreen in addition to the traditional button controls. After some experiementation, the best control method is setting L=A in the options at the start and using the left hand for movement/confirmation with all other functions on the stylus in the overworld.

The issues come in if you've been using the traditional controls for moving Pokemon around the boxes. It doesn't take any more button presses to move a Pokemon from the party to a box, but when swapping a Pokemon - say, from a party to the box and vice versa - instead of being held in reserve, the Pokemon swap spots automatically. And yes, there are enough HM spots that you will have to navigate HM mules again.

The boxes are the only major problem with the new interface, though. It's easy to roll through the Pokedex, and the item menu can go from front to back in about 15 seconds with a full inventory because you can skip through them 6 at a time and touch the one you need right away. The only changes I'd like to see implented in 5th gen is have encounter rates built into the Pokedex and subdivide evolution/battle items.

The World
Pokemon has basically been running the same storyline since 1995, and only in Platinum did they go beyond and bring in a truly villianous character in Cyrus. The main problem I had with the original games after the 40th playthrough is one I've harped on before - because they decided to bring in two continents, both continents are compressed to hell.

Now that the games are on gigabit DS cards, there was the chance to bring in far more content for both continents. The additions - the Pokethlon, Safari Zone and an actual dungeon for the Seafoam Islands - were OK, but I still wanted more. And when they should have gone with higher levels all around for Gym Leaders, they only raised half of them by 1 level and actually lowered the levels for the rest or changed Pokemon to be less difficult. Kanto went up a bit all around, but Red took back his crown as "highest leveled trainer in existence" with a L88 rat and there's still an insane amount of grinding required unless you hop your clock around like a madman to set up the Gym rematches.

One thing that deserves credit is the expansion of the Safari Zone. Almost every Johto-debuting Pokemon is now obtainable prior to the Elite 4 - though the apparent abject hatred of the Dark type continues, as neither Sneasel or Houndour is in there. You'll have to spend at least 110 days (or 2 hours resetting the DS clock) to get everything out of it. Oh, and have fun catching something with a catch rate of 3 with Safari Balls (here's a hint: There's an ingame trade post-game, use that. It's a lot easier to get another Forretress and trade it for Beldum).

The main thing I blatantly ignored in Platinum was the contests - staying with the 3rd generation ones would have been just fine, thanks - and they've been thrown out for the Pokethlon minigames. All told, they're a fun distraction and you do have the urge to keep playing them to fix a major problem with the originals (the lack of evolution stones). The hurdles game is an overhead version of Stadium 2's "Run, Rattata! Run" minigame, but my personal favourite was the snowball fight.

There was a bit of legendary overload in this game, though - largely because of the decision to eliminate the need for the GBA slot. Did we really need the birds again, when we just got them in Platinum? I find it hard to believe they stuck a standard encounter in these games just to placate the competitive players. If they were doing that, all three of the gerbils and the Latis would be standard encounters instead of roaming.

The additional legendaries and mingames provide a bunch of quick distractions, but there's still not enough story meat. Platinum is fun to roll through (except for the damn snowfield), but HG and SS are chores. There's two Rocket dungeons, and that's it. Could unlocking the alternate Lati and the bonus fight requiring a fateful encounter Celebi have changed my mind? Probably. At the very least, throw a bone to Kanto aside from the "restore the power" quest. It's 10 minutes tops and serves a redundant purpose now that you can fly to Indigo Plateau and go right from there to anywhere in Johto.

Even the most addictive postgame content - the Battle Frontier - is basically a copy/paste from Platinum with the HG/SS tutors and learnset changes added. I'm not sure if this is was planned or if they were going to change other things around and ran out of time prior to release. Either way, they could have held off on this for a week to change a few of the Frontier Brains around.

Then again, this is the same game that thought a String Shot tutor was a good idea.

Difficulty
The developers ensured this game would be harder with the split of physical and special moves and the punches being tutored at the Battle Frontier. Unlike GSC, Kadabra/Alakazam isn't a god and Mareep is nearly unusable without the availability of Fire Punch. This of course, cripples those who started with Cyndaquil. At launch, I was quoted on a prominent messageboard (GAF) as saying the starters went "1) Totodile, 2) Cyndaquil, 3) sharked L100 Magikarp with just Splash, 4) Chikorita". After using all three for a runthrough, I'd knock out the Magikarp as the gap has closed between Cyndaquil and Chikorita - by Cyndaquil's extremely limited movepool and Chikorita learning just the right moves and HMs to serve two purposes ingame.

Fire is one of my favourite types, and I always get disappointed when I can't use a good Fire ingame - so I was severly let down after going from Platinum (Infernape! Houndoom! Magmortar! Huzzah!) to Cyndaquil (physical Fire moves and Swift make up the majority of his movepool, and his Attack pales in comparison to his SA), Magmar and the version type until you get Ho-oh. (Like Shannon Tweed, Flareon is never the right answer).

Totodile is probably the easiest starter of the bunch, and it even makes the Red Gyarados somewhat obsolete except for HM muling. However, I must warn you - the Arceus event is being distributed in November, and if you use it to unlock one of the DPP mascots, you WILL break the game if you use it at the first opportunity. Because the first opportunity is "the minute you walk into Violet City", and they become able to fight for themselves at about level 3. Plus, they learn their entire natural movepool by L46, including Aura Sphere and Earth Power. And they come with items that give them 20% bonuses to everything they already get type bonus for.

You end up relying on the dragon with backup from Geodude and a starter because the rest of the ingame Pokemon kinda sorta BLOW. Pidgey and Hoothoot, I met Starly. Starly was my friend. Starly tore apart Diamond, Pearl and Platinum. You, Pidgey and Hoothoot, are no Starly. Furret is the poor man's Rattata, and Soul Silver players are at a severe disadvantage because they don't have Growlithe (best non-Cyndaquil option for Fire) and can't get Butterfree (still the best sleeper ever) unless they go to the Bug Catching Contest.

The rest of the Pokemon aren't really worth mentioning, except that the Extremespeed Dratini is best saved for competitive play if you're into that sort of thing because raising a Dratini from L15 after the 8th badge without the Vs Seeker is an experience that will have you ripping your hair out. The fact that you have to call for rematches again and have to do it at a specified time made me ransack the internet for a 999 Rare Candy cheat. The game throws two massive curveballs at you - Clair and Red - where you have to go up levels, and without being able to call for a rematch at your convenience really drags the game down. The second registered item slot would have been perfect to have the Seeker in. Between that and the amount of clock-changing you have to do to unlock things...

Conclusion
For me, the Pokemon games are a "default game". I blow files apart all the time and play Pokemon when I don't have the urge to attack my backlog - which is often. All you need to know is this - I played more of the originals than anyone, and my main game that I play is still going to be Platinum. Heck, I started a new file the day I finished this review.

The interface changes are nice, and I can't wait for the next generation or release in this generation to see what they're going to do to refine them. It's just that the storyline needed a major repair and got a mild tune-up.

Disclaimer:
Due to a lack of Japanese knowledge, I wasn't able to use the PokeWalker. I'll post my impressions of it when I can read the instructions and avoid pitching it into a million pieces - which is what I ended up doing.

Shattered dreams: The Pokemon MMORPURGER

2009-09-30T23:24:00.000-03:00

Note: I'm planning to do a CGW-style review (read: no score) of HG/SS once I finish a third run with Chikorita as a starter. But for now...

A few months ago, I went into detail as to why a main-series Pokemon game on a console would never happen. If I went to Las Vegas and was asked to set a line on the possibility, it'd be 30,000-1 (or roughly the odds the St. Louis Rams will win Super Bowl 44). But the odds for a Pokemon MMO? 4,000,000-1 (or the Rams win the next 2 Super Bowls).

Oh, I know, the entire Internet would be lined up to preorder it day 1 (or so I heard) and it may be the only game capable of toppling the WoW juggernaut. But there's a lot of reasons Nintendo's never going to greenlight it...

1) Money, money. Yeah, yeah.
The first question has to be how the hell they're going to support the ongoing maintenance required for a MMO. This requires a lot of money, and Nintendo's certainly got the coin to at least get a game off the ground - but that's money that can be used to pay for new tea tables for Miyamoto to turn over.

In addition to standard development costs for a full game, there's ongoing server maintenance, paying GMs and programmers for patches. These things aren't cheap, and any money going into PokeMMOn is money that's not being spent on R&D or funding new projects.

Nintendo's not going to make it a no monthly fee MMO (think Guild Wars) or a free-to-play/microtransaction MMO (think Club Penguin or a lot of Korean MMOs), so they'd inevitably go to the WoW model of base game + monthly fee in order to turn a profit. And when you consider that Pokemon is a series designed exclusively for kids, Mommy and Daddy won't be happy when Billy and Sarah ask for raises in their allowance to pay the toll for the game they got them for Christmas.

(For a further examination of Pokemon's marketing, grab the September 22 episode of ListenUP.)

2) Wrong place, right time
Realistically, what Nintendo platform is suitable to handle a MMO? And is Nintendo Wi-Fi, where you use the 10 digit friend code (cell phone #) to get the 12 digit friend code, set up to handle a MMO?

In order to handle game updates and character storage, you need a system that has usable storage. That leaves the regular DS flat out, as there's no expandable storage. Sure we have 4 gigabit DS cards (used for The Another World, the Level 5/Studio Ghibli joint) but a MMO is going to need even more than that.

The Wii and the DSi both have SDHC support, so theoretically you have up to 32GB available. Even 8 GB SD cards are cheap now - I got a 8GB microSDHC for $35 at Walmart a few months ago. But that may be too much additional expense for players to bear. The DSi has 256MB internal, and the Wii has 512MB. If you're lucky, you'd have 3/4 of that available and it's no way suitable for an MMO. Nintendo would much prefer to make this as easy as possible, but the fact is the earliest system that could be designed for a MMO would be the next rev of the Wii (with HD-DVD drive).

And even then, there's the hurdle of Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection. They haven't even brought in random matchmaking into the DS games, and the only systems that use friend lists and other "modern online features" are 3rd party efforts. Again, this isn't going to change until the next generation of Nintendo systems (both handheld and console). The DSi doesn't count here.

The easiest way out for Nintendo is to put it on PC, but they haven't developed a PC game (as far as I know) in their company's history and would rather fall on their sword than let a 3rd party company handle it. (I'd give it to Blizzard personally, but it'd be delayed to 2018). And can you name a MMO on ANY console in history that could remotely be considered succesful? The only one I'd even think of being in that ballpark is PSO (no monthly fee style) and that ended up dying for the most part with the Dreamcast.

3) Everything you know is wrong
As mentioned in the console post, the developers have said they prefer players trade in person rather than work online. But people always say that there would be a lot of people who would be willing to play different roles in PokeMMOn.

Really cool articles about dancing in Star Wars: Galaxies from CGW aside, I can't think of any MMO that's known for a player base willing to do anything. In Pokemon you'd likely have a makeup of 55% casuals, 40% hardcore PVPers, and 5% in the other roles (collectors, breeders, contest fiends, et al). Eventually, the PVPers would end up running the show based on sheer time in the game, and the other players would get frustrated and quit when they get called a n00b (or prole, or whatever) for the Nth time.

The other thing, and it's a minor thing but one that worries me, is the effect this would have on Pokemon's canon. There's only a few birds, gerbils, Regis etc to go around in the current world (the ones you catch and the occasional user in the Battle Frontier) - but what happens in a MMO? Is there a 40-man raiding group going to get Lugia? And if so, who's going to end up with it? Do they respawn so that everyone and their mother-in-law has one?

There's simply too many things that have to be considered before a Pokemon MMO would get published, and why bother doing it when you can sell 2 million DS games in a week for a tenth of the effort and five times the profit?

Heart Gold-Stopping Design Insanity (or: "How The PokeGear Ruined Everything")

2009-09-15T22:53:00.000-03:00

Now that I've had a chance to dive further into Heart Gold/Soul Silver (13 badges at the time of this writing, looking for Chanseys due to my mild OCD about getting everything at the first opportunity), I've noticed some things that are driving me batty during the playthrough.

First of all, among the buyable TMs are Return, Dark Pulse, Taunt... and STEALTH ROCK. Yes, for the low low price of $2,000, you too can have the move solely responsible for preventing me from using entire types of Pokemon in PvP!

Now, I realize that this isn't going to stop most people from using it, since anyone who needs mass quantities of TM76 could've played through the first badge on a second game and traded it over, or is playing on a simulator. Still, at least that prevented casual use until now. This is probably the nastiest purchasable TM since Double Team was available (for $1000, by the way) in the halcyon days of RBY.

Next is the new (or old) Itemfinder. In trying to chase down the Machine Part, the thing was bloody useless - maybe the instructions will make more sense when I can read them in something other than Japanese, but I eventually had to resort to running around the Cerulean gym like an idiot jabbing A. At least with the Dowsing Machine, you can eliminate a lot of space in one touch if the item doesn't appear.

But probably the most irritating thing is everything that goes in the Pokegear. The radio was functionally useless in the originals except for catching Snorlax, so I can understand adding something to it. And they did, in the form of the Hoenn and Sinnoh sound stations. A good idea and probably better than the Poke Radar, which I've gone on record as wanting to break a developer's legs over. But why restrict it to a day of the week for each? I'd rather not waste an appointment space on my phone's calendar that says "Catch Bidoof today", and I doubt anyone else would either. Make them each post-National stations and I'd be a little happier at using the radio to charm a Pokemon. (Or build the GB Player and this into a "pPod" item and kill two birds with one stone.)

I also prefered the Poketch Marking Map to using the PokeGear Town Map for legendary Gerbil and Lati tracking. Sure, it's just two additional button presses, but it's a lot easier to just have the map there and have it auto-update than hit the menu every time. Of course, it appears that these games are tech demos for the 5th gen engine, so we'll probably be stuck with this for the forseeable future. (Of course, they could just not have roaming Pokemon, but what do I know?)

The thing that really grinds my gears, however, is the return to the phone system instead of using the Vs. Seeker for rematches. Look Bug Catcher Wade, I don't give a flying fadoo that you beat a Bellsprout... I just want to know when you bothered to level up your stupid Caterpie so I can KO them while grinding my Mareep. (yeah.... stupid Bellsprout.) Although getting the calls from Mom that she bought me type-resisting berries - thanks to her, I've got enough Yache Berries for an entire platoon of Garchomp - and other hold items, it'd be just as easy to have the guy in the Poke Mart when I walk in.

Again, this is something that may be remedied after the localization - and unlike the originals, you can ignore the call by going into the menu. But if I need to grind at the endgame, I'd like to be the one who controls the timing for the rematches. Emerald was sorely missing this feature, and these games are going to feel the same way.

Other quick hits:

- I never realized how much Mareep relied on the elemental punches until now, especially Fire Punch. I finally had to get rid of it for Magnemite around Ecruteak City because if something's going to take up a slot in my party with its only usable attack being Thundershock, it can at least have a boatload of resistances.

- The relative hatred of Fire-types continues unabated. Houndour still is Kanto-exclusive pending a nightime visit to the new Safari Zone, Typhlosion is going to have the same problems Mareep did (not learning anything beyond its own type until high levels) and I couldn't find a Magmarizer anywhere. And Flareon's still a comedy option, before you ask (especially when it comes at L5 now).

- Miltank has Scrappy, which means it's still going to put a dent in Giratina with STAB attacks. Next time I get a chance, I'm using Dialga for native Stomp/Rollout resistance and Attract immunity.

- Lance broke out Pokesav again - LEVEL 40 DRAGONITE. At least Rock Slide is legal on Aerodactyl this time.

- I brought home a massive haul in a 2+ hour run to the Safari Zone - among previously unattainable-in-Johto Pokemon were Murkrow, Misdreavus, Mr. Mime, and Larvitar. I really hope someone goes into detail as to what can be done with the customization, since it may throw the concept of a version exclusive out the window.

- Modest Ho-oh on the 3rd Poke Ball. Hells yeah.

Quick and dirty HG/SS release thoughts

2009-09-11T21:50:00.000-03:00

Normally Pokemon games get their street dates shattered about a week before release, but Heart Gold and Soul Silver managed to go until the day before release before getting squirted out to the teeming masses.

And between Smogon, Serebii and Pokebeach, we now know 80% of what's going to show up in an FAQ sometime around April of 2010. There's some things I like about the remakes... but the amount of sickening fanservice in this game makes me wonder just how far shoved up their nostalgic ass we have to go.

First...
The things I like:

The Gravity tutor.

Legends and even STARTERS from previous generations available. Now all we need is the Ruby/Sapphire dongle Pokemon catchable.

Gym Leader fights that pose a challenge, assuming we can ever get to them.

The delicious tears that flow because people STILL haven't figured out the easy mode to beat Whitney's Miltank (it's called Geodude, guys...)

Being able to rape the game in half and stuff it through a mailbox (IGN.com) with the Origin Form Giratina learning everything before L50. (Even Aura Sphere.) If you have a Movie Arceus, this game is officially a speedrunner's dream.

Aqua Jet/Belly Drum Azumarill being legal for a few hours (then again, this happens every time).

Death to the Defog HM. (Of course, Whirlpool... yeah...)

Togepi not only has an attack when you hatch it... it's Extrasensory.

Kanto is actually a usable continent, pending the release of the wild Pokemon locations.

The things I can do without:

The Gym rosters staying largely the same or regressing (see: Whitney). Couldn't they have at least given Bugsy Ledian and Spinarak? And Clair getting Gyarados just makes it easy mode.

Pokemon following me. And it sounds like you can't turn it off. I'm sorry, I just found that annoying in Yellow (and evolved my rats as soon as they learned Thunderbolt so I could get rid of the things) and now that I CAN'T GET RID OF IT... I'd say more, but Penny Arcade sums it up quite well, I think. Unless they start finding Master Balls.

Raising a Caterpie to Butterfree. I might have to adjust the ingame monsters list as I forgot just how much of a pain in the tukus it is to get to Butterfree in the first place. Still, 98% Sleep Powder...

The rumored tutors (priority moves ahoy) falling through, and no expansion to Rapid Spin... yet they found room to make String Shot a tutor. String Shot. I wish I was making this up. Without question, the worst tutor move ever.

Most of the Johto Pokemon still being stuck in Kanto (Houndour, Murkrow, Larvitar, etc) while I have to trudge around without a Fire type for the nth time.

And probably the one thing that makes me irrationally angry... the GB Player. Maybe it's because I play with the volume at minimum so I can listen to podcasts and such, but the fact is they devoted programming time to 1999 graphics and sound to appease people who are living in the past. That's time they could have devoted to, I dunno, making Chikorita not suck.

But this is the hand we got dealt, and I suspect my clean game is going to end up as Soul Silver while I run through Heart Gold whenever I'm really bored and not beating the best Pokemon game of this generation (Platinum).

Moves that we need to see

2009-08-27T20:53:00.000-03:00

There's over 400 moves in Pokemon, and 92 of them are TMs in addition to the 40 or so move tutors in Platinum. But they're overdue to change the TM list - probably as soon as the next generation - and there's a few moves that need more exposure either as a tutor or TM. Plus, a few moves that I wouldn't mind seeing introduced next time around.

First, the candidates for TM or Tutordom:

Rapid Spin
#1 with a bullet. If Stealth Rock is going to continue to be one of the most commonly available TMs in existence, it needs a check. Making Rapid Spin a common move (and hopefully with the same changes I suggested a few months back) gives Yanmega among others new life.

Power Gem
Rock is primarily a physical type, but there is no 100% accurate physical Rock move. Special Rock has two, and Power Gem is just powerful enough to be possibly useful (70 power, though ideally it would be +10) while picking on a defensive stat that tends to be lower overall for the ones that are weak to it. The only complaint is that a whole 2 Pokemon gets STAB on it (and it's bloody Corsola and Probopass) and the other Pokemon that use it have better things to do.

Wish
Although usually following "Yeah, I" it's not as if the flavour of the move prohibits it from being used. In the right hands (something slow and bulky, perhaps) it could provide a great deal of support to allow a switching Pokemon to survive a stray priority move. And it would put a certain pink whore out of a job.

Crush Claw
75/95/20 with 50% chance of making successive hits more powerful? I'll take two. Problem is, it comes from Zangoose first and has to be bred, which gives it a learnset of approximately 8 and all of them have no room for it except comedy Sandshrew sets. This would more than likely be a tutor move, and if it can be, let's make sure it goes to Dunsparce for massive damage. (I'd use a Choice Scarf Crush Claw 'sparce in a heartbeat as long as I could breed one with Serene Grace).

Gravity
Not just for the theme song for the Joystiq Podcast. Again, this move has a single-digit learnbase (9, yippie) and has so many effects (neuters Flying type and Levitate, makes things vulnerable to Spikes, etc) that bringing this in as a TM or tutor would throw the entire game into chaos. And again, we need to put the fat whore out of a job.

Punishment
The only major problem this move has is 5 PP, otherwise it's a great counter to things such as Dragon Dance Pokemon provided you can survive a powered-up hit (good luck). Add this to something with Intimidate - or even Bibarel with Unaware? - and shove the Dances right back whence they came.

Aura Sphere
This one has the least odds of happening given that its current learnset is a mascot, Togekiss and a bunch of banned Pokemon. Clearly, they think it's powerful enough to have to hold it back dramatically. Still, if they insist on keeping Double Team in its current form a TM, they're way overdue to bring in a powerful move not affected by evasion mods. Yes, I remember Swift Dancing. I was there. It sucked.

And there's a few moves I'd like to see introduced next time around and used as TMs:

False Swipe with Extremespeed: A 80 power, low PP (15 prefered) Normal move that cannot faint. It's a dual purpose move: It makes catching this less of a pain in the rear, and lets you play some serious mind games in PvP. Speedswipe w/a priority move? Or how about with Whirlwind/Roar and an entry hazard?

Fighting Flamethrower: A 80-100 power physical Fighting move with 100 accuracy, 10-15 PP and no drawback (or a small odds of causing flinch). I went over this before, but the only 100 accuracy Fighting moves with decent power are the ones that lower TWO stats. I know the Fighting type is supposed to be all about power, but certainly something like Medicham (who's part Psychic) at the very least can figure out a way to hit unless evasion is in play without making itself vulnerable?

Breaking The Mold: A field effect move that neutralizes abilities for all Pokemon for 5 turns. There's moves that change abilities, suppress them, change them to Insomnia or let you copy them, but it'd be interesting to see what would happen when we can go back to RBY for a minute. (Only problem is: Use this move and all of a sudden Regifailure can switch in and start beating crap down for three turns before Slow Start kicks in. It'll blow you away [IGN.com]).

Starter Showcase

2009-08-24T22:13:00.000-03:00

One of the rules for the Greatest Ingame Monsters post was that I wouldn't include the starting Pokemon because it would've made the list nothing but a ranking of the various starters.

And while on vacation recently, it gave me a chance to sit down and do a full ranking of the starters. All of them.

Red/Blue, Fire Red/Leaf Green
1) Squirtle
2) Bulbasaur
3) Charmander

A lot of this ranking came down to the general usefulness of the Water type over the best of the Grass type. In RBY, Squirtle is favored by all the speedrunners for its ability to learn the two good HMs and to abuse the crap of the $200 Ice Beam TM (look it up). And in Fire Red/Leaf Green, Bulbasaur might've picked up an early Sleep Powder but the old ingame advantage of being able to beat the first two gyms gets beat down thanks to a new Dark-type Bite beating down Starmie. Charmander, for all of its popularity and the FR/LG Metal Claw addition, just had a bad Gym arrangement for the Fire type (it beats 1 and pushes against another).

Yellow
1) Pikachu

And ironically, it's still better for you than the Eevee you would've gotten otherwise.

Gold/Silver/Crystal, Heart Gold/Soul Silver
1) Totodile
2) Cyndaquil
3) Chikorita

For all intents and purposes, the GSC starters are the worst of the bunch. Totodile has two major advantages over the other two: It has access to an early Ice move (Ice Punch in GSC, Ice Fang in HG/SS assuming natural movesets stay the same) and it hits final form at L30. Cyndaquil has no natutral variability out of Fire moves and Thunderpunch but it can't even pick that up until it hits final form at L36. And Chikorita... worst starter ever. Unquestionably. Sure, it's good for defense, but that's not what you look for in a starter. It can't even Sleep Powder, which if you can't attack is the least you ask for out of a Grass type.

The problem is that Totodile falls to Starmie/Lapras in GSC and the mandatory Red Gyarados in HG/SS.

Ruby/Sapphire
1) Torchic
2) Mudkip
3) Treecko

The jump to the new stat system brought the toughest decision of the groups. All three are pretty strong, but the only time I ever bothered to do a solo-starter run, it was in Ruby with Torchic (eventually Blaziken). Since they all evolve at the same levels and work out well against the same number of Gyms, the deciding factor was actually how they would fare against the Elite 4 and champion - and Torchic wins that pretty handily.

Emerald
1) Mudkip
2) Treecko
3) Torchic

Emerald really buggered things up for Torchic though - where it could hold its own against the Water gym, the new additions plus the Champion training Water as well knocks it to last. Mudkip's movepool gives it more variety than Treecko (and hey, STAB Earthquake in the final form - great success!) to give it the edge.

Diamond/Pearl
1) Chimchar
2) Turtwig
3) Piplup

The biggest factor in Chimchar's success is the limited Sinnoh Pokedex in DP. Because of it, Chimchar can work well against practically every gym, and the original gym arrangement gives Chimchar the ability to function well against every Gym. Turtwig is a strong number 2 due to the natural Earthquake it gets as soon as it evolves into Torterra...

Platinum
1) Turtwig
2) Chimchar
3) Piplup

... and it's the natural Quake that gives him the win in Platinum. The Ghost gym going 3rd when he learns Bite in the early 20s works in his favour as well - the only gym he can't really be used in is Candice's, and even then he can still take out Piloswine with a type bonused attack.

Kantoverdosed

2009-08-05T21:15:00.000-03:00

Last Sunday, the worst kept secret in Pokemon was officially announced when they announced you would be able to go to Kanto in HG/SS after beating the Elite 4.

Even though this should come as a shock to absolutely nobody considering it's a remake, there was still much rejoicing. (Yaaaaay.) And I really have to ask - why? Haven't we been there enough?

I mentioned this a few entries ago, but just for review (especially since I made posts to this effect on at least three message boards): Kanto has been playable in every generation since the game was made.

1st gen: Duh.
2nd gen: GSC's infamous 16th-assed Kanto
3rd gen: Fire Red/Leaf Green
4th gen: HG/SS's Kanto, hopefully bearing less of a resemblance to a vacuum (please do not suck AND blow simultaneously).

I understand there's a lot of nostalgia for the original games and that they're the best selling Pokemon games ever. But at some point, you have to say enough is enough and quit living in the past.

Rather than remake the same routes for the 5th generation and have to buy 3-5 games again like I've ended up doing the last two gens, I'd do the following:

1) Create a storyline that is big enough to cover the main game plus 4-5 postgame legends, and one of:
2a) Create a tower (Tower of Legends, perhaps) that has access to the old game's starters and offers resetable legends at the end, or...
2b) Offer a downloadable game that acts as a 5th generation Pokemon Box. Although Nintendo hasn't shown Activision levels of dickery yet with download content, the incentive would be that it would be included with a brand new version of the game. Bought your game used? 500 points, please.

Storage would be handled by a SD card, and 4th gen games would have deposit privileges only. 5th gen games could deposit at any time, with withdrawl available upon getting the National Dex. (And that stupid Ranch restriction where they have to return from the file from which they came is ditched with prejudice.)

This eliminates the need for what would have to be a Emerald remake, and hopefully stop the fan whinging for yet another trip to a territory more worn out than a WWE main eventer's welcome.

Mainline Pokemon on consoles - like oil and water

2009-07-31T20:17:00.000-03:00

A few months ago, Phil Kollar did an interview with the Pokemon developers (WhatTheyPlay) in which they admitted that they focus on creating a handheld experience and they aren't working to bring it to the Wii or to any other console.

Despite this emphatic statement from the creators, the frothing demand for a mainline Pokemon RPG on the Wii increases daily. "Console Pokemon" is right up there with "Pokemon MMO" (which is a whole other entry on its own) on "What game should they make" lists (as seen at the Gaming Age forums).

Which makes me wonder if I'm completely missing something, or if the hardcore Pokemon community has lost its mind.

First of all, everyone seems to forget that the name Pokemon is short for Pocket Monsters. Key word: Pocket. Doesn't that imply that the series is intended to be on portable systems to begin with?

The biggest advantage that being portable gives the series is to allow for trading, and one of the common arguments is that the introduction of the GTS brought wireless trading so you don't have to do any local trading anymore. But as Matsuda would remind us, that's not the point:

"Trading is a core concept of Pokémon. So when you're trading, you meet with a friend and decide which one you want and which one they want. I would like to emphasize real-world communication. You don't see each other online."

Also, a combination of past history and future needs hamstrings the development of a traditional Pokemon game on a console (for our purposes, a "get badges, take down evil team, beat Elite 4, complete Pokedex, beat up everyone you know in a 5-mile radius" game). Although all Pokemon got represented in XD's Battle Mode (and in Colosseum's), the fact is this generation is probably going to end with either a PBR 2 (supporting HG/SS connectivity) or with HG/SS itself. The next gen is going to add another 100 Pokemon at minimum, putting the total near 600 Pokemon with a similar number of attacks to animate.

And development of this game would have to be handled by "Genius" Sonority, who see fit to use models for the original 151 Pokemon that date back to Stadium 1. Let me put this another way: Current 3D Pokemon models were designed for a system that started its design the same year my favourite baseball team made the playoffs.

If they didn't upgrade the models, the same people that want this game to happen would lose their minds, and to get it to a decent 3D model for that many Pokemon would fill a Wii disc with no room for story. Or god forbid, the My Pokemon Ranch models. Why go to all that effort, when they can create a DS RPG at maybe 1/4 of the cost, and sell 5.66 million copies in nine months worldwide like Platinum just did (according to Nintendo's Q1 financial report)?

The last thing to realize is that Nintendo as a whole (giving Metroid to Team Ninja aside) is a very conservative company that has a massive foothold in Japan. And Japan as a culture has gone whole-hog portable between Pokemon/Dragon Quest IX on the DS and the success of the Monster Hunter series on PSP. That, among other things, is why I would be shocked if Iwata stood up at a E3 press conference and said "Pokemon RPG, on the Wii, spring 2010. And it works with the Vitality Sensor."

Pokemon's biggest ingame monsters

2009-07-21T22:54:00.000-03:00

One of the most common memes on the GameFAQs Pokemon message boards are to ridicule any poor prole who dares to ask for help with their ingame team. Basically, "everything works ingame".

But if all Pokemon are equal, some are clearly more equal than others. And all things considered, these are one man's best bets if he needs to do a speedrun and chuck his starter.

10) Ramprados (Diamond, Platinum)
Despite how much of a pain he is to raise as a Cranidos (and to get, especially in Platinum), bear with me. Because of the way his experience curves, as the levels increase he levels up faster and faster. His main feature is Mold Breaker, though - you have no idea how much easier the Galactic double battle is when you can laugh at the Bronzor and their Levitate. He's just fast enough to avoid being a complete glass cannon...

9) Lapras (Fire Red/Leaf Green)
Sure, it's somewhat late to the party - but when it gets there, it turns everything upside down and all for the low price of a little leveling and a quick visit to Mr. Psychic's house. During the Silph Co run it'll level to the point of learning Body Slam and Ice Beam on its own, and it tears the back half of the game apart.

8) Zigzagoon (Ruby/Sapphire)
The only Pokemon on this list not in it for their ability to tear things apart - but the original Pickup distribution giving you Nuggets, Rare Candies and Hyper Potions off your first Pokeball? I'll take five, thanks.

7) Machamp (Gold/Silver/Crystal)
Strictly on the list for the purpose of survival against Whitney and that damn cow of hers. And even after that, he's growing 1.5x faster than the rest of the team so you might as well let it hang around. There's a Dig TM right after that so you can even use it against Morty. (Shame this won't happen in the remakes, stupid Levitate).

6) Nidoking (Red/Blue/Yellow)
It's amazing how much a quick evolution can help you. In Nidoking's case (L16 + a Moon Stone and you get two in Mt Moon) it almost triples Nidoran M's TM capability, and it learns enough of the expendable TMs to have a hell of a lot of move variety. Despite being nasty, it's not as evil as...

5) Dugtrio (RBY)
You should never need to use a starter against Surge, and here's why. Thanks to the way RBY criticals function, Dugtrio got double damage about 30% of the time with that insane speed, and it had Slash (a high CH move). Dig getting downgraded and not having Magnitude in FR/LG cost him a top 3 spot.

4) Butterfree (FR/LG)
If you're trying to play it somewhat straight (weaken, sleep, throw) then Butterfree is your god and it's all thanks to 98% accurate Sleep Powder. He's not a killer, but he's a crippler and probably the best crippler in the history of the game (ingame).

3) Golem (GSC)
The perfect combination to beat GSC quickly: The Geodude family to start, then finish with #1. You get it early and Rock Throw beats the first two gyms, at which point you get Magnitude to take everything out. Bonus points for a natural Earthquake. Although the last two gyms give him pause, he's still damn lethal. Don't believe me? Ask the speedrunners.

2) Staraptor (DPPt)
It's like they took every complaint about the early-game Flying types and made the ultimate Flyer. Intimidate and jacked up attack/speed keeps him tearing things apart and he could feasibly be used against every gym except the first and last. Throw in Close Combat and Return (he's an amazing candidate for the bonus Return TM in Platinum) and it can even beat the Rocks and Steels that stop a typical Flyer cold.

1) Alakazam (GSC)
The math is simple:
1 Abra + $9,000 = broken.
It's so easy to raise Abra when you have three base 75 special moves available for purchase in the city next to where you catch it. And Alakazam's Speed and SA are both high enough that no matter what, he's going to go first and probably take something out as you move up the chain of Psychic moves. Did I mention he can beat the Elite 4 on his own except for two Pokemon (Umbreon, Houndoom)?

Pokemon by (x)

2009-07-15T20:39:00.001-03:00

So after a haze of exhaustion on the way home from work today, I got to thinking a little bit - what would happen if GameFreak was owned by another publisher instead of Nintendo? Aside from the multi-platform implications, it caused me to have several scary thoughts, outlined below.

Microsoft Game Studios: Instead of a RPG, a M-rated shooter with bullets, blood and breasts. A 17-point achievement for catching a shiny Pidgey ("Memetic Mutation"). Event Pokemon available for 240 Allards instead of being distributed for free over wi-fi.

Sony: 3-D graphics out the ying-yang because 2D is for suckers. You'd have to take out a second job to pay for stat drugs in game. The games would come on a proprietary format and Spiderman would be in the Elite 4. Kingler kept out of high-level play after everything attacks the weak... nah, too easy.

EA: Although the games would stay as they were (except maybe a PC port), Pokemon Stadium would be released every year. As a side effect, the announcer would provide such salient advice as "If you hit the Pokemon, they lose hit points".

Activision: If they actually bothered to release it because GameFreak wouldn't allow it to be ~~molested~~ ~~diddled~~ exploited, it would be released annually with some sort of Poke Ball peripheral that would make the games cost $90. Treyarch and Neversoft would take over development after GameFreak bolts to join EA Partners, and although Smogon loves the games for giving Rattata a 2 catch rate they become nigh-unplayable for everyone else.

Valve: Although the games would be high quality, Valve's perpetual development cycle would mean we'd be anticipating Pokemon Crystal's release in 2009.

Ubisoft: The two versions would consist of Tom Clancy's Pocket Monsters and Assassin's Monsters, both games requiring massive amounts of unnecessary stealth to complete. The third version? Imagine: Mudkipz.

Capcom: Pokemon Diamond: Championship Edition. Search your hearts, you know it to be true. And every starter would learn Sketch 8 times per game.

SquareEnix: Nomura takes over NPC design to ensure proper amount of belts and zippers. Red and Green re-released on every platform known to man.

Atlus: Level cap raised to 9999, Arceus available as a bonus boss after beating the game except its base HP is 1 billion. May's chest swells even further. Instead of evolving by level up, trade, etc Pokemon evolve by the trainer pulling out a gun and SHOOTING THEM IN THE HEAD.

Bethesda: A first-person RPG where NPCs now have voice acting. Despite using approximately five voice actors for the whole game, all is forgiven by the community after Professor Oak is voiced by Liam Neeson or Samuel L. Jackson. No Mutants Allowed threatens a boycott because Nintendo isn't publishing it, but eventually folds like a cheap suit.

SNK: Champion's party has 6 L100 max stat Pokemon. Chosen from the ingame legendaries. May be dual-published with Capcom.

PopCap: You thought Pokemon was addictive before...

A real World Cup of Pokemon

2009-06-23T21:45:00.000-03:00

On the list of things that I would ever do if I ever got in Bill Gates's will/got some stock in Berkshire Hathaway - right after get a CFL team in Halifax and get ringside seats for Wrestlemania 26 - would be to hold a World Cup of Pokemon.

Clearly this isn't a new idea - in fact, I got prompted to write this entry after seeing one in progress at GameFAQs - but this wouldn't be an online thing. So we're looking at taking the Video Game Championships and blowing it out into a major event, with cues taken from the World Cup, World Hockey Championships and the Little League World Series.

At which point you're probably thinking "Wait... what?"

See if you can follow me for a minute, though.

My ideal setup would be 32 people from 17 countries. Looking at the events page at Project Pokemon gives us 10 European countries (UK, France, Spain, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Belgium, Netherlands, Sweden, Finland) - apologies to any countries I've forgotten. North America would have the US and Canada, Australia brings more PAL love, Japan and South Korea are practically mandatory, Brazil and South Africa to hit the missing continents.

The key is that while 16 countries are playing down, the host country is having their national championships at the same time with 16 regional qualifiers. This keeps the interest in the host country high as the host country is guaranteed a berth in the finals. (LLWS influence - US v. the World).

The core format would be a 3-day, double round-robin tournament. All battles are 6v6 singles. Ideally, GameFreak would have brought the auto-L100 function to local wireless play, but if not we'll have to make due with PBR. Sleep Clause would be on, Freeze Clause would be in play if it can be automated. Known ubers and Wobbuffet are banhammered (but alternate Rotom forms are in play), and the matches have a 30-minute time limit to discourage DT use. Also, anyone invoking the Platinum weather glitch or any other glitch will be drug into the street and beaten about the head and neck with a large trout, then thrown out.

Day 1: 32 players divided into 8 pools of four. In order to guarantee everyone 6 matches, this round would be a best 2 of 3 matches. Top two in each pool advance to Day 2. After Day 1, the players can change their team but it is locked in after that.

Tiebreakers are: head to head record, then Pokemon differential, then a one-game tiebreaker if needed. This would only be invoked if it made the difference between qualifying or not. (Also, I just guaranteed that this tournament's going to get slammed to high hell on Pardon the Interruption. Woo hoo!)

Day 2: 2nd round robin. Survivors of day 1 are thrown into a single 8-player bracket and everyone plays each other once. Top four in each bracket advance. Same tiebreaker rules apply, but they will be invoked in the event of a tie for placing as well. This is because...

Day 3: Quarterfinals, semi-finals, and the championship matches. The winner of the two brackets plays the 4th place finisher, and 2nd plays 3rd in the quarterfinals. The championship match is another 2 of 3 match pitting the home country champion against the interrnational champion.

Aside from the all-expenses-paid trip to the site of the tournament, quarterfinalists receive $2500 cash and whatever Nintendo console is out at the time with a good-sized game collection. Semifinalists receive $5k, finalists get $10k with $25k going to the winner. (All dollar amounts in US funds, adjusted for currency).

And for those who want to follow the tournament, we'd have a couple of livebloggers updating the tournament site with up to the minute results. The Day 3 action would be set up for live streaming with a system similar to the one used by Leo Laporte for the This Week in Tech network, with the right combination of intelligence and snarkiness provided by having yours truly calling the play with Smogon's Jumpman16 on color commentary.

This would take a lot of planning and I'd have to find an appropriate site for the first one, but if it works well it could be an annual or biannual event.

Update to the Platinum Location guide and news musings

2009-06-20T20:17:00.000-03:00

I've submitted an updated version of the Platinum Location guide to GameFAQs, which should go live on Monday. It contains the following:

- A rollup of a lot of typo corrections and filling in some missing "other method" information (mainly that I missed Route 226-230 pretty badly for swarms/Pokeradar information). HT to The Mattinator @ GameFAQs for also pointing out that I've been spelling Kirlia wrong for the last SIX YEARS.

- Added in a section where I explain how to regenerate legends in Platinum. I'm pretty sure this is a new feature for Platinum, but I'm not sure.

Speaking of new features, there's been a lot of news recently hitting about GSDS, so let me get some quick hits in:

- So Kyogre/Groudon AND Rayquaza are going to be catchable? Can we get random Latis so I can throw out Ruby and Sapphire? In all seriousness, I get the feeling as the release date nears we're going to find out that Lotad, Seedot et all are going to be version exclusive, they're going to open up Cerulean Cave so we can catch Mewtwo... basically, they're going to make it so DSi owners aren't completely boned as far as finishing the Pokedex goes (as long as they have friends with Pokemon, which sums up Japan in a nutshell).

- The movie Arceus unlocks Dialga, Palkia, or Giratina at L1. Watch them come with their orb and the other two Pokemon's special moves (as I rub my hands in glee at the mere thought of a Spacial Rend Dialga...)

- Jirachi's new toy (Draco Meteor) makes it the first Pokemon to resist the move while learning it except for Arceus-Steel. Good for a gimmick, anyway.

- I have to ask: Is the 1st-slot Pokemon following you going to be a menu option? Sure, I'm going to have Lucario out in front for a while to lure all the furries into shotgun range, but it's going to get old after a while.

- It may take the PokeWalker to get me to raise something to L100 this gen, because you don't need to otherwise. (btw GameFreak, if you could bring the auto-L50/L100 options to local wireless play, that'd be great).

- Bulbapedia headline: "(site) reports HG/SS will include Kanto". Not exactly a big story. Now, if they DIDN'T include Kanto, even Iwata would hear the fanboy rioting as he goes to his daily swim through the piles of 10,000 yen bills at NCL. In fact, there's a part of me that kinda wishes they left Kanto out and blew out Johto. But as it stands, the streak of Kanto being playable in every gen continues. Fire Red/Leaf Green remakes for 5th gen confirmed?

A little story of awesome customer service

2009-06-02T19:30:00.000-03:00

In the meatspace, I'm a customer service drone. I've done it in various roles since 2004 and if Malcolm Gladwell needs an example of someone who's done 10,000 hours in a role for a sequel to Outliers, he can call me. So I know what good customer service is all about.

Recently, one of my DS Lites developed a crack. It started small and ended up massive, to the point where I could see the innards of the hinge when opening it. I decided a week ago Monday to call Nintendo about it.

The timeline:

Tuesday: Call Nintendo, get instructions for sending the package in. They're paying for return shipping, since it's under warranty because I registered the thing for Club Nintendo.

Wednesday: About 6:00 my time, drop the package off at the shipper.

Saturday: Check the tracking, it's about to arrive.

Monday: Package arrives at Nintendo. They look at it, determine that the DS is boned, and...

Tuesday: I get a Twitter message that there's a package waiting for me at home. I get home... and it's a new DS Lite. Same color, intact hinge and everything.

They freaking OVERNIGHTED the replacement.

It's not going to take stuff like a 2D Mario on the Wii for me to keep getting Nintendo products - it's the awesome customer service.

Pokedex design for fun and profit

2009-05-21T22:47:00.001-03:00

There's been a lot of hand wringing since the remakes were announced as to what the Pokedex is going to contain. Since the split Pokedex is practically guaranteed, let's go inside the numbers for a second and see what we can determine. For our purposes, let's assume it's required to go to Kanto.

The baseline for the number of Pokemon in the Johto Pokedex is 130 - that's the number of Pokemon between Chikorita and Celebi, plus any Pokemon you need to get the Pokemon through evolving or breeding. There are certain families that are going to appear because they always do - the Red Gyarados means Magikarp and Gyarados are going to have to appear as a story event and the families that always appear will probably continue to. So yes, you get to be sick of Tentacool all over again.

But that brings us to 147, and Diamond/Pearl caught no end of flak for having only 150 in its regional dex. Certain Pokemon have counterparts, though - the Oddish line has the Bellsprout line, Miltank needs Tauros until they create a calf in the 5th gen and they're probably going to need some Pokemonn to balance
out the ones that only appear at specific times or to stock the Bug Catching Contest.

So how do we get a decent number for Johto (somewhere around Platinum's 210)? It's actually pretty simple. Take the New Pokedex from the originals and toss out the Pokemon you had to bring up from the 1st gen games - 9 starters, 5 fossils and five legendaries. Celebi won't be required as an event, so that gets us to 230. I'm sure we can find 20 Pokemon to toss out to bring it down to 210 while still keeping the Gym Leaders well stocked just by looking at older Pokemon that didn't show up until Kanto anyway.

Here's who I'd ditch:
The Rattata family, the Nidorans, the Diglett family, the Ponyta family, the Doduo family, the Grimer family, the Cubone family, Kangaskhan and Mr. Mime.

By tossing out 20 Pokemon that are either redundant or were original Pokemon that didn't show up until Kanto, you get to a clean 210.

But one concern that's been brought up - what to do with the evolutions or baby forms for these Pokemon that came in since? Consider for a moment that there's 20 existing Pokemon that have evolved or formed a babby since the 2nd gen. Are we going to re-create the scene in FR/LG where you literally could not trade in a Pokemon from outside until you got the National Dex, even if it came from another remake? Probably, if they want to recreate the GSC experience as much as possible. So what do we do?

There's actually a clean solution for this, though. There's 5 babies and they require an item to create. It's a lot easier to breed in the post game, so if I was in charge an item I'd put the breeding items post game and simply exclude the babies from the Johtodex. That brings us to 225. You can take 3 out from Magnezone, Leafeon and Glaceon since they have to be in a specific location to evolve. Leave the Dubious Disc in Kanto, since Porygon2 might be as good if not better than PorygonZ (especially if you go by their Twitter feeds) and put the move returner in Kanto for Piloswine's evolution and you have 220.

Of course, if they choose to deny the existence of the other evolutions I can understand too. I just want to rip stuff up with Togekiss in-game.

This is all my own opinions based on past actions in remakes and my limited knowledge of Pokedex design.
Edited 5/21/09: Forgot Tangela/Tangrowth

Time for some move updates

2009-05-12T22:37:00.001-03:00

This is a modified and updated version of a post originally made on the GameFAQs Pokemon Diamond board on April 11, 2008. The original can be viewed here.

Every generation sees a few moves get modified in the name of competitive balance. Sometimes it's because of a mechanic change (like the Special split), sometimes it's in the name of nerfing stuff (like original Dig). But there's still a few moves that could use some tweaking, and that's where I come in.

Let's start with a prime complaint I see whenever people make 5th gen requests - HMs that aren't Surf or Waterfall blow, and the fact that you have to carry Tropius/Bibarel/HM whore du jour is a pain. So here's what I'd due with the HMs. (All numbers are Power/Acc/PP unless otherwise indicated).

Cut
Now: 55/95/25 Normal
I'd make it: 60/--/20 Steel
Thematically it makes sense as you need something sharp to cut stuff. Moving it into Swift territory makes it a decently usable move and beats up the one guy that uses evading Rocks. The only thing holding me back is that Scizor doesn't need any more help.

Fly
Now: 90/95/15 Flying
I'd make it: 90/100/15 Flying, bypasses Protect, impact goes last
In order to improve Fly, I stole a side effect from Shadow Force (which doesn't get used much anyway) and added the extra effect to provide a chance to miss 2 attacks. It'll still force switches, but if you Fly against a Machamp you won't get Stone Edged to death.

Strength
Now: 80/100/10 Normal
I'd make it: 80/100/10 Rock
Strength's out of battle effect involves moving rocks. The original battle animation involves hurling a rock at the opponent. You make Strength a Rock move, and Rock moves suddenly become usable in the Battle Frontier among other places.

Defog
Now: 15 PP, lowers opponent's evasion, removes battle obstacles and entry hazards on opponent's side
I'd make it: Would remove entry hazards on the user's side
I can't help but think this was an error on GameFreak's part, but they didn't fix it for Platinum so I dunno. Maybe in the remakes? Either that, or just dump the Fog altogether.

Rock Smash
Now: 40/100/15 Fighting, 50% lowers Defense one stage
I'd make it: 50/100/20, 100% lowers Defense one stage
Combination of "make it a usable early game move" and to provide a concept for a move that lets you take a couple of quick jabs before dropping the opponent with a power move like Manny Pacquiao (or Brock Lesnar, for the MMA crowd).

Rock Climb
Now: 90/90/20 Normal, 20% confuses
I'd make it: 90/100/20 Normal, 30% confuses
I thought about making it 100/100 but that slaughters Return. So we'll make it stop missing, and up the confusion chance by a mildly significant amount - the only problem is it completely obsoletes Body Slam.

And while I'm at it, let's fix some other moves as well.

Acupressure: 10% of increasing current stats, 10% to recover 50% of HP, 5% of Ancientpower boost, 5% nothing. Let's just make it the official move of Press Your Luck and get the "NO WHAMMIES" chant started on wi-fi.

Assist: If the Pokemon you get your move from is still alive, you get a 20% power boost because they're helping you out on the move.

Baton Pass: 20 PP, because I've never seen this used for more than 5 PP.

Brine: Becomes physical and learned by Bibarel. A move that doubles when your opponent is under 50% on your better and a move that cuts the opponent's HP in half? YES PLZ. Also makes Wake a bigger pain because Gyarados among others love this move.

Double Team: If this is going to be learned by everything that can learn a TM, it can't be so blatantly broken. The new effect would be that the next move is a guaranteed miss - a delayed Protect with the same failure odds.

Drain Punch: Gets an additional 5 base PP to bring it to parity with Giga Drain.

Fire/Ice/Thunder Fang: Originally I thought about making them elemental Body Slams, but that'd be too broken and ruin the concept of the elemental punches. At the very least bring them to parity with the punches - 75 power and 100 acc. They have two added effects, so...

Gastro Acid: If used on Slow Start, the affected Pokemon gets its stats restored. Regiphail no longer.

Hammer Arm: 100 accuracy and lose the Speed lowering. My fellow Canadian ranter Slowflake covered this (#15, link mildly NSFW) - why does every physical Fighting move have a drawback? Either power up Brick Break to 90 or fix Hammer Arm.

Knock Off: Knocks item off, then deals damage - make it like Swagger and Flatter where the boost occurs THEN the side effect.

Last Resort: Instead of being unlocked by using the other moves in your moveset, it'll get unlocked by going under 25% like a Salac Berry boost. If it's a Last Resort, you should be able to FIRE MAH LAZER in an act of desperation.

Natural Gift: Right now, it consumes the berry when used basically allowing it to be used once. If it's going to be the physical Hidden Power, let it keep the berry so you can use it multiple times.

Rapid Spin: If there are hazards on the user's side: +5 power for every layer of Spikes, changes to Rock type if Stealth Rock is down, and 30% of poison/Toxic if Toxic Spikes down. It'll provide incentive to use a Spinner (especially if they drop Stealth Rock).

Stealth Rock: Either ditch the multiplier for Rock weakness/resistance, or make it only kick in after it's used twice (6.25% dmg otherwise). As it stands right now, there's a pretty heated debate as to whether it needs the banhammer.

Tailwind: 1 speed stage boost for 3 turns? Not enough, especially given how rare it is. 5 turns and a 1-stage PRIORITY boost (where everything acts like Quick Attack)? That's a winner.

Did we need Heart Gold and Soul Silver? Really?

2009-05-08T21:02:00.000-03:00

So despite my best efforts at misinformation, Yahoo Japan and Nintendo decided to announce that yes, they are remaking Pokemon Gold and Silver for a release in the fall in Japan, with the inevitable NA release probably next spring.

I used to have a running tally in my signature on the GameFAQs boards that added two weeks every time someone asked for a remake, and I tried to convince myself (and people on The Twitter, Joystiq et al) that Nintendo was more interested in trolling the obsessive fans and would end up releasing something more appealing to their expanded audience. Like Hey You Pikachu DS or Pokemon Channel 2.

But they went ahead and did it anyway. And as someone who played the second generation games more than would be healthy, I'm not sure if I'm happy about it.

Let's look at what great innovations the second generation brought:

- Events based on time of day and the day of the week
- The split of the Special stat into Special Attack/Defense
- Dark and Steel types
- Two regions in one game
- The coolest Pokemon
- Running legendaries

All of these things are either gigantic pains in the ass or were refined to be much better in the newer games. Having the clock worked out well until it killed the game's internal battery.

The Special stat, although pretty meaningful in the long run (it made Mewtwo only slightly broken instead of being a proto-Arceus) was upstaged by the split of moves in gen 4. There were barely any Dark and Steel types, and those were sacked away until the endgame anyway (Tyranitar, Houndoom, and Skarmory was a version exclusive).

Running legendaries were old the minute Raikou took off - they're supposed to be rare, but it shouldn't take me five hours or cloned Master Balls to get these things. And not only is it questionable - and unlikely - that they'll use the Crystal storyline so Suicune's going to be running around, but if the trend of making the GBA games unneeded (largely because of the DSi) continues the Latis will probably be running around in the post game too.

The coolest Pokemon? Purely debatable, and I spent most of the time on my original playthrough using Alakazam, Golem, Machamp, Lapras and Fearow to rape the game in half and stuff it through a mailbox (@igndotcom). Notice anything? Not a single GSC Pokemon. There were maybe ten usable families debuting in GSC plus a couple of trade evolutions, and they've spent two generations evolving everything else to make it usable. Feraligatr's good now because of the physical/special change giving him Waterfall and Ice Fang/Punch to play with, but Typhlosion's a one-note gimmick and Meganium is outclassed by everything, for one thing.

And finally, the concept of two regions in one game has done nothing but set an unnecessary expectation that sets off a torrent of bitching all over the internets and offline. If they had held off on doing it for one generation, it could have been done so well - and you would still have the prior games if you wanted to go to Kanto. As a result, the developers ran headfirst into the limitations of a dual GB/GBC game and the end result was two inferior continents. The description of the 2nd gem games as a half-assed Johto paired with a 16th-of-an-assed Kanto might be unfair to the developers, but the complete lack of branching (Johto) and a point (Kanto) is pretty clear.

Hell, there's more post-game content in Platinum, which has a whole 2.5 cities, 6 routes and the Cheating CPU Frontier. That little island has more content than Kanto, which can literally be beat start to finish in an hour and a half. (30 minutes if you Dodrio Mode it through Pokemon Stadium 2).

So the question becomes, am I going to buy the remakes? After all, when Diamond and Pearl came out, I pre-ordered both of them, one version each at two different places. I think I've figured out my plan of attack, though - especially as if I do end up getting them I'll probably end up FAQing them out of force of habit.

If there's a significant amount of content added - enough that both regions are anywhere near Sinnoh-sized - then I'll end up pre-ordering one (Gold, because I got Silver in 2000 and want something different) and hoping Best Buy re-runs the deal they did in Canada for Platinum where you get the player's guide for free. Because let's face it, 624 page guides are cool. Otherwise... we'll throw a Garchomp at the bridge when we get there.

Still, I can't help but wonder what the 5th generation would have if they took all the effort around remaking games and focus it on making a good 5th generation. Or maybe they'll bring in a Flare Blitz tutor Flareon can't use and not evolve Farfetch'd again.

It's not going to stop me from speculating about the remakes here either.