Tag: Dog

Hey there little monsters! Normally we would pick up to the story of what if Ash turned into a girl this week. However with my grandfather passing I decided to dedicate this week to pokémon talk which serves in memory of my grandfather. Today’s I will tell you about the concept of a Pokémon game  me and my sister developed while sleeping over at our grandparents place. We spend the entire time crafting our own region and custom Pokémon as well as our evil team. Today I will take you on trip through our little vision.

The Heather Region

Our game would have been set in the Region we called the Heather Region.. (translated)  heather is a type of growth or land that is very common in our area. Though my grandparents didn’t actually live on heather it was injoke based on how we referred their house as. The region was entirely based on their garden with gyms being based on rooms of their house. The player would start as bright student of Driveway-Village  and would travel across places like Tullip-Town, Rose-shrine-city, Cascade City, Magicherri, Composthold and White Arch town. There were a handful of other villages which I either forgot because they were minor or do not translate well. Like Lamphoven, which was a reference to a lamp that had a phillips bulb.. a company that is based in the city of Eindhoven.  Like the garden the region was mostly boomerang shaped with mountains instead of hills to the north a neighbouring country ruled by a madman to the west. A desert to the east. (there was a sandy construction lot in real life.. not actual desert) To the south there would our variation of indigo plateau. Since back then Johto and Kanto shared a league name we just named it New Indigo Plateau cause we kinda thought it had to be called that.

The gym leader representing the bathroom  was a water type user . The fire type leader of the Rose-Shrine-City Kitchen Gym dressed like a chef but could not actually cook . Lamphoven was the home of the electric gym leader, her gym represented the computer area. She was very flirty to girls The home office represented the psychic types because in our minds working people where all very smart like psychic types as well. Some of the typings were a bit more far fetched like the living room was normal type because all normal types back then.. or most of them .. like jigglypuff and clefairy and snubbull felt pink and soft and they had pink couches. The garage gym had rock types because it had a stone floor.. and the laundry room had flying types because their drying machine used this hot air hose that was always very prominent in the room.. as we figured the birds in this gym would glide on the hot air. It was kinda cleverly crafted if I do say so myself. Grandpa liked it too.. he said. 

Flora and Fauna

We came up with an interesting concept for the games. We would divide the game in two versions as well. Pokémon Flora and Pokémon Fauna, unlike the Gen I and Gen II games out at the time you’d pick on professor to assist. Professor Jan (my grandpa’s name)   would assist you in Pokémon Flora as he would send you on a quest to protect the lands of Heather from a Pokémon infestation by catching them or by defeating them in battle. He especially hated mole Pokémon (as grandpa hated animals in his yard and killed many mole mouse and bug) in our version though you could still just catch them all to solve the problem. You’d also encounter more grass and ground type pokémon in this version.  It would be somewhat of the ‘evil story’ as you take out all animals to make Heather blossom again.

Pokémon Fauna was the ‘Good Side’ where you followed professor Toos (grandma)  who would try to welcome as many life forms as possible, as she loved animals and to have everyone around. In this version you’d move pokémon to Toos research garden similar to what Oak had in the anime. So Flora would be more of a Noah’s Ark verison of pokémon… or a trump version where you end up yeeting them all over a wall maybe.. we never settled on endgame.  Fauna would have been a more classic experience with the Pokédex.

There was also Team Eco based on my quite successful and rich but distant uncle. They sold nature friendly but crappy pokémon equipment.. like bio-degradable pokeballs.. but that meant the pokémon inside lived in constant fear of being stuck. Potions blessed by Jomanda.. a dutch.. touch healer person who “positively radiates’ your water bottles for health benefits. She was a new age white witch of sorts who at the time was relevant but to our child minds was silly and scamming so we used that. They cared for profit only and would wear outfits quite similar to team flare.. but mixed with hippies.  They would use very natural pokemon such as grass ground and bug types. While Flora would have many exclusive grass and ground types, Fauna would have extra normal and bug types.
Our legendaries were based on grandma’s lapdog, whose name we will redact to Fido cause the real name is way to specific,  and grandpa’s magic Cherry Tree who we gave the name Mystertree .. as I was old enough to read english well enough and it seemed like a great name. Most of the Pokémon designs we made I can not say where great though.

My designed Pokémon

We never made a very full Pokédex for the game unfortunately I think we came up with about 30 pokémon and I do not remember the names or designs of my sister’s Pokémon very well. We decided to make non animal starters .. because grandpa needed to like them too. So we ended up with a grass Pokémon that was themed after a cucumber.. would evolve into a zucchini and  end up as an eggplant. Their names were based on their dutch names. Komkom, Courcour and GineGine (after aubergine) .

Our water starter was a bubble that would get larger with more small bubbles as it grew. This one we named in english.
Blue-Bubble.. the blueberry bubble, Purble.. the berry bubble and Rainbubble…the rainbow coloured bubble who knew self destruct cause bubbles so big pops.  It’s pokédex entry stated it that it loved to play with it’’s trainer in the tub and that it occasionally swallows rubber duckies. It would get jealous when his trainer is playing with soap bubbles and would attack them with his own.

Our fire starter was based on a fire pit. Grandpa loved to light these when we stayed with them in summer in the yard. It would evolve into a gas barbeque as its final form but we never settled on a second form, but their old coal barbeque was up for consideration, as well as a burning table ..because I accidentally set on of their tables on fire once. The first one would be named Korf.. after the dutch word Vuurkorf.. being a fire pit. The final evolution was called Schirck..it has to do with the german word for burning and our dialect from Limburg as well as some other things which make it a bit to long to explain properly.

Other Pokémon we invented was a grape that would end up evolving into wine. There was also  a snake based on the garden of Eden..which had moves like apple toss. (In that period we were still being thought religion and it came up for either me or my sister)  and the final one I distinctly remember was a compost pokémon who was our muk clone so it became it poison type named Compie. Yeah I know weird typing..but it smelled so poison!

When things became  to slow we blatantly plagiarized things. We had a pokémon named Scrappy that evolved into Scooby for example and our legendary trio became a legendary quintet. There was a Red Tyrannosaurus, a Blue Triceratops, Black Mastodont , Yellow Sabertooth Tiger and Pink Pterodactyl. I think they were called Jaty, BiTi, Zama, Trisa and Kimpte. Let’s see if a reader is smart enough to figure out how we got those names! Our main legendaries where Fido and Mystertree. Fido was normal ghost type.. normal because it was based on a normal dog.. and ghost because it was dead and back then neither of those types had a legendary. Mystertree was a Grass ghost type… grass because it was a tree… ghost because.. you probably know where this is going…it was dead.

People of Heather

Even though we went clever in some aspects the same can not really be said for the people inhabiting the Heather Region. The main trainer was a girl rather then a boy but we fixed the issue of Red and Blue .. where you always start as Red even if you had Blue version. You either started with Fauna .. basically my sister or Flora basically me. I remember this making me upset because my sister said that Flora could walk weird like me so that Fauna could be faster. My sister didn’t mean this as insulting but she had to make sure her version of Pokémon was better…because she was better in Pokémon (she was not..but she attack me and hit me if she lost so I played to lose..but she would kick me if I lost intentional so I learned full well how much moves did so I could convincingly lose ) again since not listening to her usually resulted in her launching punches at me .. I agreed but I felt upset that even game me would walk funny. She also wanted to dibs mom and I would get dad… but me and dad do not exactly go along well.. she punched me until I relented. Grandpa told us to play nice and gave me a chocolat for being the bigger person.. actually telling my sister that after which we played nice so she could earn her chocolat as well. However by now I was losing my heart for this.

So we named everyone to people from our village or family. Gym leaders  were based on family. Funniest one now would be dad’s somewhat actively bisexual polyamorous uncle. Back then we did not know. At a family party he was talking to my gay uncle and mom..I was playing waitress when I overheard him saying call me Sletje, which basically translates to little slut. Even though I was .. I think around 14 or 15 here I had no idea what a slut was… I really am panda… so we called him Gym Leader Sletje or translated Gym Leader Little Slut. Little Slut had a catchphrase ‘Hey Listen’ which he would say to access. We did not know about Navi at the time.. which reminds me first time I played Ocarina of Time my first Zelda game.. my sister forced me to play it under the name Turbann (Tulband in dutch) 8. My gay uncle was the gym leader ot the living room just so he could use jigglypuff (fairy types weren’t a thing by then so it’s not meant as a cruel thing to gays or anything) because he sings a lot and really stuff that is waaaay out of my comfort zone.. like italian opera stuff and other classical stuff. In our game he would try to kill us with boredom.

For some reason we decided to name all bug catchers after a classmate of my sister. Cochise was his name. We ended up changing the class to Cochise as well so eventually we ended up with Cochise Cochise wants to battle. Of course we decided to also design a pokemon named Cochise who only knew the move Cochise.. which would have been a bug type.. but we never got around to designing it. Hikers became fat ladies and where called …… ‘s mother.  So rather than Hiker Anthony you’d face Anthony’s Mother. BEcause there was one mom that was REALLY fat and it was a joke towards her.. not PC I know.. but hey we designed this as kids. The champion would be Mario (like super mario) that way we figured we could sell the game to nintendo more easily. 

Game over

Eventually my grandma became less mobile and she got a brand new mobility scooter. That was way more interesting to play on than designing a pokémon game. I would race my sister,  who got to ride the scooter first of course by sliding down the hill on a large plant trolly. Of course I shouldn’t have.. because I was bound to gravity so way faster.

I also always had to babysit my tinier nephews because my aunt made me responsible for them even if I did not feel like playing with them.  One time they wanted to play pranks by ringing doorbells with my sister and I did not feel like it so I went inside for a drink. My aunt scolded at me for so long for leaving her child unattended (they had a tiny one of like 3 or four with them) but my sister was 12 and her oldest was like 10 but I somehow ended up being responsible so every time those kids were there.. I would be in trouble if they broke anything or did something bad. It pissed of my mom that she did that but dad seemed fine with it so I couldn’t exclude myself.

It at least ended up with us gradually forgetting about our Pokémon project so it was never fleshed out more. Being in a reminiscing mood lately I just remembered it and figured it was a nice story to share with you. It’s a shame it never became a full world concept but I think we got the basics knocked out pretty well.  Of course grandpa was a bit insulted he was basically a bad guy what wanted to move all animal life and grandma just said we earned a treat for our hard work and good play but still it was really nice to do and something I have only done so once ever since, for my tabletop campaign.. which currently is unhealthy. Who knows maybe one day I will create a concept for my own Pokémon game again. As for now Pokémon Fauna.. has fainted.

I do hope you guys do not mind how I pay tribute this week. It just felt like a sweet thing to do where I give grandpa his own little place here in my safe space. What would you like to see in a pokémon game, what kind of pokémon would you design? Which one of the ones I mentioned is your favorite! Sorry that I am not an artist .. I tried my  best to draw these from my own memory. Even if you are looking at those though.. .Remember..
I am not weird, just very pink!
Until we read again.

XO
Pinkie