Why I'm Allergic to Fat Eggs

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

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

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)

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.

Donald and Kozuki vs. Excessive Level Grinding

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.

Localized Walls of Text

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

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.

Quick & Dirty Thoughts: Sands of Destruction

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

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...

3 Things for Gen 5 - Visible stats

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.

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

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.

The streak has been beaten

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.

"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.

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

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.

The (2nd) greatest Battle Tower streak in history

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.