Tag: Pokemon Company

Pinkie Plays : Moemon Emerald Extreme Radomiser Nuzlocke (Episode 3) A Brawl with Brawly

Hello once more little lights! It is time to continue my playthrough of a very special Pokémon game.. modded so instead of Pokémon it is all Magical Girls. We have had a great start so far and now are nearing the second gym with zero fatalities.. but a fair few close encounters! With our wonder guard Jigglypuff things are looking good for now.. but what about  the rest of the team! Will we be able to defeat Brawly.. what team and moves will he have.. and what will he be called! Find out in today’s episode..  or read back on the other Nuzlocke posts at the bottom of this piece.. Basics and rules are explained in Part 1. The entire series can be found in the post Carousel at the end of this post!

Poorly leveled!

We start the episode off with a Team Recap! Currently we have Sakura the Rhyhorn with the ability static, to paralyse her foes on contact. Currently she only has ground type moves which led her to be nearly killed by a Shadow Tag Zapdos.. a Flying Pokémon with an ability that prevents pokemon swapping out! Through the use of struggle she was saved and leveled to level 13.  We have Usagi the (C)Raichu  who is level 14 who can cry tears that causes effects if other Moe’s make physical contact with her. She only carries electric moves. We have got C.C. The Gardevoir who has the Huge Power ability and rolls with moves like Fake-Out, Psychic, Psycho-Boost and Mist Ball. Umara the Slowpoke has Keen Eye with some more basic moves like Water Gun and Bubble.. but she also rocks  Luster Purge and reflects! Murmur the Porygon 2  has the ability poison point and can attack our foes with Vice Grip and Earthquake while she also is the cut user of the team and can prevent swapping Pokémon by the use of mean look! She is level 13.  Our Ace is the Adorable Miku the Jigglypuff who with the Wonder Guard ability can only be hit by super effective moves (and thus fighting moves) She attacks with Crush Claw or Double Slap and can sing Supersonicly to confuse her foes. She also has the move Camouflage which can change her typing to get more mileage out of Wonder Guard …maybe!

Last time we were asked to deliver a letter to Steven Stone.. who hangs out in some strange cave in Dewford town and today’s adventure begins there.. with me strolling along the beach looking for hidden items, finding a Big Pearl AND a Big Mushroom! While it is nice to have some cash money Dewford town doesn’t actually have a Pokémart so for now they are useless.. it also means I can not purchase potions unless I travel back.. but then I would have to travel on the perverts ship again.. and an old man named Briney who has a very loving relation with a Moe Girl called Wingull.. so I decided to enter Granite cave. A hiker gives me the HM for Flash.. but without a HM slave to teach it .. this isn’t going on my main team! Time for our encounter.. with Umaru being on the hotseat of being kicked off the team things are exciting for her! She might become my flash user! That does turn out to be the case when I find out that my encounter is a Corphish (I love that Pokémon). I capture it  and since it is male.. looks like a girl and has twin tails I decide to call it Souji after Souji Mitsuka. Umaru disappears in the PC for now.. but not before finding a second encounter.. Squirtle.. darn that would have been better.

Souji has the moves Rock Tomb and Pain Split for now.. and is level 8 so we will need to grind her up!  Which is a cool way to discover what Pokémon I could have gotten. Umaru is quite happy to be in a PC with a Spearow I named Asuka. They have a little party with cheetos! In the cave I find Paras, Haunter, and Charmander as well as a Doduo.. I decide to forsake switch training and only use Souji to level up on Charmander and the Doduo. Souj almost gets killed by a Muk due to me using the speed up button a bit too much! I need to stop doing that.  Switching into Usagi she kills the Muk and levels up to level 15 while Souji learns Payday at level 10.. Free money for me.. but not a great move. It does allow me to grind on the Squirtle and Luvdisc that I encounter later as well and at level 13.. Souji learns the water move Octazooka! So now  he has a great move!  These Pokemon are hitting me hard though so I decide to grind the entire party out until level 15. The need for this is immediately shown because I STRUGGLE here.. at one  point Murmur gets poisoned with no more potions in my Inventory.. she would be killed for sure.. but apparently I failed to sell Morning sun! In a desperate attempt I teach it to Murmur and pray I encounter something before she dies of poison! It works. I heal her and barely make it to the Pokémon Center… I need to go back to get some potions!

The Search for Steven

I go back to Petalburg and Decide to level my weaker Pokémon in the grass there.. that other cave might just have level 8’s but suddenly Haunters and Dusclops started showing up left and right tearing my team to shreds. I pick up a couple of potions, a set of antidotes and some more Pokéballs… knowing fully well that Mr Briney is chasing the young girl around the table again! I can’t let this last too long! When everyone is level 14 I go back.. and will look for Steven. Things are going south fast.. as I descent further in the cave.. those Dusclops turn into wild Mewtwo encounters… who outspeeds Sakura so she can’t guarantee to run away. A hard fight later.. Sakura learned of the Earthquake.. and is on 2 hp!  I am trapped in darkness.. am I really supposed to take Brawly down first?! Well.. I am lost in the dark now! Might as well try to avoid using Flash whatsoever! Umaru is still having her party after all.. The wild Mewtwo is part of the same route as Souji was.. being in a granite cave.. so I can’t even try to catch it.. unless it is shiny.. but I think shinies aren’t in this romhack! (shiny clause is a special rule that states you can capture shinu pokémon even if the encounter is not eligible to be captured)

The way towards Steven is a gruesome trial , while my Pokémon are powerful.. My team is extremely weak to grass and has no good counters for ghosts yet.. and what do you know this cave is filled with these sorts of Pokémon!  It doesn’t help that I don’t remember this game very well.. but well on my way I at least encounter what Souji is going to evolve into.. for a brief moment I forgot Crawdaunt was dark type and I nearly got CC killed.. but luckily swapping into Miku is always the correct answer! Since I really do want experience on my Pokémon though I can’t constantly lead her. Every floor my HP is chipped of a bit more.. but I finally reach Steven. He gives me the move Uproar for delivering the letter.. which. .isn’t particularly useful to me!  I want to exit the cave with an escape rope I bought but I realise I have not taken enough screenshots in the cave yet.  I miss a few for my posts.. so I need to go back in and hope you don’t notice my Pokémon’s level… or read this line! While I do I encounter a Moltres..  Luckily C.C could one shot it with Psycho Boost. Well.. at least I found Steven.

Little Gym of Horrors

With everyone being at the abysmally low level of 15 .. it is time to face the gym leader. Note that the previous gym leader’s ace was this level as well so I assume that EVERYTHING here  will at least be this level.. if we face  Regi.. we might lose monsters here. Immediately I forget that Brawly’s Gym Puzzle in this game was darkness, I am more used to the “puzzle”  in Oras and I get in a Double Battle Unprepared for what is to come! As Sakura and Usagi come out, the opponent’s send in Swampert and Ampharos.. . This can kill Usagi!  I want to swap her out.. but Swampert has got the move Arena trap.. which basically means that Usagi is dead already! I need a miracle here! Round 1 I let Usagi use Stockpile to up her Defences.. the Ampharos Attacks her but the Swampert uses Water Sport … Bonemarang takes half of Swamperts Health… I am willing to lose Sakura here.. but Usagi is my Baby I need to keep her safe if possible! Round 2.. Usagi Stockpiles again.. the Swampert uses a thunderwave to Paralyse Usagi… thank Arceus! The  Ampharos uses minimize. Sakura finishes Swampert off with a second Bonemerang. With the taste of vomit in my mouth from stress I let Sakura sweep here.. while I swap Usagi out for Miku .. just to be safe because of the minimises.  This isn’t good I am way too attached to Usagi already! Looks like she won’t be the only one crying!

The next fight.. against a gym trainer which I make sure to battle Solo isn’t much easier.. the woman uses a Kyogre for crying out loud.. still leading Sakura I know I have to rely on Usagi to clutch this one! I need her to take a hit from a Legendary… she does so like a champ and did not even cry that much! The Kyogre lives a hit from Usagi though and brings her well into yellow health some tears flow.. but soon the tears are washed away by the blood of the slain enemy Kyogre.. The stress of it all is actually starting to get to me!  This isn’t an easy gym! The enemies are slightly lower level than me.. but these are all such powerhouses! The Third Trainer uses a Seaking.. he stands no chance against my team..but Sakura needs to swap out again!  This time I try to let Souji take advantage of Payday to rake up some extra coins .. I am going to need them! The final fight before the gym leader uses a Puppitar who has a sprite that has way too much work in it for a Puppitar! The Pupitar fight levels up C.C. and she learns Light Screen! I make room for it over Mistball! Praise be to  Baby Mew, I have both the barriers now! This will allow me to live so much more!  I just wish I had them on the same Pokémon!

I take a little breather before the Brawly fight before I move back in. Brawly tells me he would like the be called Bug Catcher Jill. I lead Miku as  I am  too scared to use anything else! His first Pokémon is a Houndour.. okay we can take that! It has the poison point ability and poisons Miku..so I am spending resources to keep her free of that status! Eventually Miku takes down the Houndour and she is up against a Wooper, who tries to put Jigglypuff to sleep.. how ironic. It is level 19 though.. I am 3 levels under!  I might need to grind again already! The last Pokémon is a level 16 Lombre! Since no one is super effective against it I decided to let Miku sweep the gym! What do I get as a reward for being scared to death half of the time?!  The Move .. Defence curl… Wow.. that sucks.. even for early gym standards!

The First Death

Before heading to Slateport I decide everyone needs to level up to level 18. I know the Gym in Mauville is a bit away.. but I am on the level of regular gym trainers right now .. if not a tiny bit over.. My team isn’t balanced enough yet to play around typings smartly and I do have a lot of unevolved Pokémon, only CC and Porygon 2 (in this Generation)  are fully evolved.  Well Usagi as well but she is my darling little baby! I don’t want to risk her! So a few levels on her won’t hurt! During grinding however.. something terrible happens! Sakura gets killed!…By A luvdisc! One of the weakest Pokémon in the game! It does outspeed Rhyhorn so Sakura failed to run from the Water Type which before I have only seen carry Water Pulse.. and my 2x it’s level Rhyhorn could survive one hit of that.. poorly but she could!  I was grinding and most of my other Pokémon were damaged so I felt running was the safer route.. when Luvdisk used Waterspout! A move that deals more damage the more HP you have. Since Luvdisk was at full HP.. Sakura got washed away… I am sorry girl!  You will be missed.. Asuka the Spearow joined the team for now.. which involved an awful lot of grinding! But I figured since I already had a Psychic Type and a Water type.. the Flying type would be better to deal with our weakness to grass.. though with Sakura gone.. the weakness was kind of fading already!

Usagi destroyed the Luvdisc and everyone caught up to the level of the Gym Leader we beat. Asuka learned Milk Drink which is one of the best recovery moves.. but other than that no real moves were learned. Jigglypuff learned Flail Over doubleslap. I told Flail is a bad move but if Miku gets poisoned I can let her take damage until she is really low health and use Flail with a high base power… yet low mortality rate (if I have staked out my opponents move) Wading through the mountain of Luvdisc corpses.. Sakura was buried looking out on the Gym.. she had saved her friend Usagi from the crazy Swampert before! The Gym where she pulled her weight hard but also was in danger a lot.. We all boarded the pevert’s ship again.. not even caring he was lewding his tiny girl again. We all felt empty and not just because we ran out of Power Points.. on the way to Slateport .. Usagi cried for the loss of her friend… and so did her trainer…..

Want to Read everything in this Series?!

Steampowerd Pokéballs : Creating my own Steampunk Pokémon Game

Fancy meeting you her lads and ladies, it is Steampunk month and Pokémon.. is not something you can immediately connect to that sort of thing.  While there may be a steampunk Romhack out there that I am not familiar with.. I have found nothing of the sorts just set.. so I decided to create a concept of my own. Including a few new regional variants.. and if I decide to make Steampunk Pokémon from scratch this will be the game they will be featured in! So let’s take a look at my Steampunk game.

NOT a Mainline game

To determine how my game will look like I first needed to decide what type of game it would be!  Would it be a mainline RPG adventure or would it be something of a spin off game. Like Pokémon Conquest or Pokémon Mystery Dungeon. I have decided against creating an entire new mainline game! Why?! Because I would need a new region.. and we have a perfectly good region to create a Steampunk game. Galar  already has a fair few Steampunk elements in it..it just got modernised. Steampunk games tend to have a more dystopian vibe as well. So I decided to combine the Galar region with the game series that already has this vibe..albeit in a more cyberpunk like setting. The Pokémon Colosseum series. In this series you get equipped with an artificial arm…. (that’s a big thing)  and go capture Shadow Pokémon… by just making a few tweaks to the formula we can adapt this into a new game.

The Player Character

The artificial arm that is so important to this series is called the snag machine. Playing a character with a mechanical arm is very steampunk.. so it fits like a glove. A snag machine allows you to steal Pokémon from other trainers, which the main heroes need to steal so called Shadow Pokémon, a Pokémon that an evil organisation has tried to power up by closing their hearts and making them all about battles.. turning them into weapons. Again this is a trope that works pretty well in a Steampunk setting, but technology has come to  far. So instead of being a sequel to Pokémon XD Gale of Darkness it will be a prequel to Pokémon Coliseum.  But there is a problem.. in those early days the technology to make Shadow Pokémon did not exist. After all, Cipher did not exist yet. So we are going to need a new evil team.

The Evil Team

Like the Colosseum games, this game will be all about fighting the evil team and the big villains would be Team Tesla. What makes this organisation different from the others ..but remarkably close to team Cipher is that they HATE weak Pokémon. A weak Pokémon is a useless Pokémon in their eyes so if a Pokémon loses.. it is weak and they try to modify it it. Which leaves us with a counterpart to shadow Pokémon. This Pokémon Steampunk game will feature “Augmented” Pokémon. These are Pokémon that have been captured by Team Tesla for being weak and given augmentations. Like metal parts, exoskeletons, weapons and different things. However these Pokémon are too weak to just flat out remove it. You have to make sure these Pokémon can be strong enough to undo the augmentations.  In  more ways than one mirroring how Shadow pokemon work. They will get augmented secondary typing.. and all augmented pokémon moves are super effective against other pokémon.. and they work just like shadow pokémon work.. however instead of rampaging causing damage these devices overheat damaging the pokémon if you use augment attacks too much.  You can cool them down by having them rest for a turn or vent steam.

Tesla Grunt with an Augmented Snorlax

Team Tesla would have also been the ones who “actually” discovered the snag technology, using it to steal Pokémon from trainers they have defeated. You in this game start off as a member of Team Tesla.

Steel Type Eeveelution

In a tutorial you are given a rental pokémon and forced to steal a Pokémon of a person. A young boy with two Eevee. You steal one of them and then are forced to hand it over to Team Tesla for augmentation. Let’s say the leader of the team is your father.. Thaddeus Tesla. You are his daughter (because the last two games you played a male) while Eevee is undergoing augmentations you get regrets and decide to rescue it. However it turns out your eevee is special and it evolved into a steel type eeveelution.  A new Pokémon in the game. You find yourself overwhelmed but the young boy shows up again with a Flareon and helps you escape.

The boy tells you he saw you weren’t all that evil and knew you would do the right thing. He shows you how to properly catch normal Pokémon and allows you to keep the Eevee as he believes the bond you had with Eevee allowed it to achieve this special Eeveelution.. but in return you have to help him stop Team Tesla. He then introduces himself as Samuel Magnolia. What follows is a plot where Team Tesla.. who has their claws deep inside the Pokémon Foundation and the Galar government is trying to organise lots of tournaments.. to steal all the weak Pokémon and make them stronger. With these stronger Pokémon they wish to engage with the Kalos region in a new war.. so Pokémon and humanity will  fight forever more and grow infinitely stronger. With their elites somewhat based on the four horsemen.. but of course being pokéfied. Your father of course represents War and is their leader, but there would also be an elite trying to infect creatures of a certain arena with the original form of Pokérus.. to cause pokémon to grow faster..but make them sick as well.  One town would be ruled by a leader who creates food shortage in his village.. giving food only to the strongest and since death does not exist.. one leader.. who wishes everything to turn into ghost pokémon…because that is totally fine!

Team Tesla Logo and it’s boss.. your Father Thaddeus Tesla

The Pokémon

Samuel Magnolia , the aspiring Pokémon Professor

You will join Samuel Magnolia, in the resistance and fight against Team Tesla. Equipped with their own Snag device you can steal their augmented Pokémon and bring them to Pokémon technicians James and Thomas.  James can use his machines to  use steam to “sweat” off the parts the pokémon have put on them… because all those parts are just “glued”  on of course. We have to make this child friendly..but they have to be strong enough to resist the heat.. or the moisture. So you have to train them up. With all the parts that fall off, Thomas will build you machines to progress through the game. A motor for your bike.. a Balloon so you for your bike so you can float across those mountains and more. It would be similar to how your bike got upgraded in XD Gale of Darkness.. or how you earn HM’s in the regular games. It would also force you to at least use Augmented Pokémon a bit. If that is too tedious we can always make the ones you need storywise already strong enough to proceed.

Ancient Galarian Drifblim

Besides from the steel type Eevee there would not be that much Pokémon.. but it will introduce a few “ancient” Galarian forms.  All the pokémon found will serve the Double Battle Format that is iconic to this series. For example we would get a Galarian Drifblim (and Drifloon). While in the original Drifloon is a Balloon, Drifblim.. is still a Balloon.. so now we can actually make it a blimp! Since once again that is very iconic in Steampunk settings.
So we would get a Flying Fire Type Pokémon that instead of an ability like Aftermath would get an ability like “Carry” which is an ability I just made up.. that makes its partner Immune to Ground type moves.  This would already be great since the Steel Eevee is weak to ground.

Ancient Galarian Klang

I would also give Klink an Ancient Galarian Form, one that reveals this form might be the ancestor of current day Klink and Magnemite. Being a steel electric type it looks a bit more like old timey gears and rather than growing to a big one it becomes more gears as it evolves.  Possibly I would add some clock elements to it as well, this way it can feasibly learn abilities like “me first”  or give it an ability that can speed boost it’s partner pokémon by accelerating it in time… or the counterpart slowing down the opponent.  More Pokémon would be steampunk ified that way.. with abilities that focus on helping an ally! To make the double format more prevalent in the world. Pokémon like Toxicity who resemble an electric guitarist would not be found in this game, neither would Ditto , Porygon and of course Metwo.  For Legendaries, we would mostly stick to the Regi’s.. but there is a special spotlight for Volcanion and Magearna. 

I will save coming up with more unique Pokémon for a later post, but the trouble with Steampunk is mostly type diversity it is a world where there will be plenty of Steel and Fire types which means ground Pokémon will be a big problem.. which is why I will make Ancient Galarian Ludicolo an Electric Ground type. Why?! Because it is a Pokémon Colosseum game..  in it you face a man named Mirror B.. who constantly shows up and uses his Ludicolo to battle you! It is quite annoying! Of Course Mirror B would make his return.. but well since games plays out in ancient times.. we get his ancestor! Mirror A!  Ludicolo always had a tricky typing to deal with and this time it will not be different.. especially since it has drought.  Back in these times.. the Wildlands had a junkyard settlement where Mirror A and his gang used to live.. they are the second evil team.. the one that is more played for jokes.. so this Ludicolo starts as a Lotad that Mirror A finds from his Lombre and Stunfisk.
You beat his two Pokémon and they flee and all he is left with is an egg and he swears revenge on you!

The Characters

<In this Section I will use art of the original Sword and Shield characters as.. making art is a tad to specific.. just apply steampunk (and potential gender) modifiers on these descendant characters >

Sonia the Decedent of Samuel and the Player Character

Which brings me to the final part of this game set up for now.. as mechanically the game would almost be exactly like it’s older counterparts.. just with more modern Pokémon references it will still be a Pokémon Battle Double battle game with purification mechanics, tournaments and limited exploratory gameplay! This one is much more about battle tactics than the main series and would be quite a bit harder. The main character is a nameable female with orange hair. She would look a lot like Sonia from Pokémon Sword and Shield.
You will play a slightly older trainer than in the main line games, around the age of 15/16. The young boy you encounter, Samuel Magnolia, is clearly an ancient ancestor of professor Magnolia we encounter in the Gen VIII games?! “But wait?! Pinkie you just said we looked like Sonia.. isn’t she the granddaughter of Professor Magnolia?!” That’s right.. and this game is gonna show you where that side of the genepool comes from. 

Pierce and Marnie, future offspring of the Motostoke Spy!

Like I said this game is about double battles, but where it is different is that you will quite regularly battle alongside other members of the resistance. While you fight alone in tournaments, during a raid on a Tesla base you fight with partners. Every partner has a specific team preference. Samuel for example likes to use Grass and Fire pokémon and likes to set up the weather with Sunny Day. So if you bring Hail Pokémon.. your team work will suffer. Meanwhile other people might prefer the rain, or even the hail.. one might bring a Galarian Weezing that ignores abilities.. so it is up to you to balance your teams to fit your partners as well.  So you can train up several Pokémon.  The resistances members will resemble the gym leader families. For example one will be this almost alpine like.. large woman, who prefers to use Wooloo and other normal types along with grass types.. with her battle style relying on putting leech seed up and lower stats so you can focus on damage. She is connected to Milo. We also meet Marnie and Pierce’s ancestor who likes using the dark types.. whose battle strategy focuses on Confusion/Flinces  and single target damage. Then there is Raihan’s ancestor.. a fellow resistance member who desperately wants to be the hero himself.. his strategy is to knock you out along with his opponents so he can say he did all the work. 

Raihan , part of the family line of the Solo Aviator

Of course all would follow some steampunk archetypes as well. With Pierce and Marnie’s ancestor being the spy type, Raihan’s ancestor being a hotheaded aviator and Milo’s ancestor being a tradesperson. All having their own little quirk. Battling with Samuel a lot.. who battles using Eeveelutions.. Being a professor researching these strange events makes a little romance bloom.. that while only implied you can tell will have a good ending.. because you know how the Magnolia name descendants.. look a lot like that Tesla girl. I think it is a nice way to include a romance without including a romance..  and with everyone being both an archetype as well as an ancestor it can be quite neat to link everyone in this world to their modern day counterpart.. adding some fun to an already delightful format! Puzzles you would do reflect the characters as well. With the aviator you’ll infiltrate a skyfort having to deal with winds, with Samuel you’ll do sciency stuff, like align electric pokemon to power doors and with the Motostoke Spy you will find yourself sneaking past search lights and finding hidden entrances and such.

The Team Tesla Sky Fortress one of the Final Dungeons in the Game

And that would be my blueprint for a Steampunk pokemon game. I’ll be honest… I would LOVE to play a game like that.  It might be a bit hard to imagine if you haven’t played XD Gale of Darkness but there is so much that would work for a SteamPunk scenario. These wind puzzles, the sneak puzzles we have seen before in Pokémon games so making them an actual part of the plot could do so much. Forcing you to battle with a partner might not be something people look forward to but given how bringing extra tech by cleaning pokémon from their steampunky augmentations will allow you to power level.. it will give you a chance to learn some more advanced battle strategies. it could be so fun! So how would you do a steampunk Pokémon game? What Pokémon would you want to have an ancient Galarian form? Let me know and let’s talk Pokémon!

Revenge of the Ghost Pokémon Trainers Part 1

Hello again Mortals! I already have run dry of creepy Pokémon Rom hacks.. I planned a review of Pokémon Dark.. for you all but this ended up being edgy dialogue in the first two towns and then reverting to a normal Pokémon Ruby run. Since I already did a ghost pokémon top 5 .. twice.. and talked about their pokédex entries a lot I needed a new angle! During the Pokémon Games we have encountered a lot of Ghost Pokémon Trainers.. but most of them have been odd! Either by the lack of ghosts in their respective generation. Everyone of these trainers has a clear theme going on in their appearance.. yet non have a theme matching that! Today we will fix that.. at least for the first three! With Part 2 coming the day after.

Rules

For this post I will give every trainer a team of five Pokémon.  Most Elite 4 members run around with themes of that approximate size. Teams will never have doubles but previous forms of Pokémon are allowed. Each member will get two lower tier Pokémon, two mid tier pokémon and an ace. This doesn’t mean the High  tier pokémon actually have to be Amazing or the low tier entries having to be bad monsters.. it all has to do with their respective level.  I will not go in depth on movesets but will discuss their fighting style..which names some moves. For description of those moves, feel free to use google or ask me in the comments.

I will not take their original aces into account as that would give Agatha, Morty AND Allistair a Gengar as an ace. Usually aces have some overlap with their generation while in hindsight other pokémon are clearly better fits.  This one is all about the air a trainer has. All will be placed around an Elite 4 ish level or “rematch” team level to have access to the widest amount of Pokémon.  None of them have legendaries but since they have a sixth slot still available you can tell me what Legendaries they should have in their final party slot or something. I do not look at generations and more or less assume a timeline as if made as a present day remake. The type of ghost is more so determine in what kind of environment they would be in rather then their actual region.

Agatha

Agatha is the O.G. Ghost Pokémon trainer appearing in the first game and the many many remakes  and rom hacks of Kanto. She is the one who least follows a theme and is just “the old ghost lady”. She is famous for her quote to tell people not to use the strongest pokémon but their favourites. Which might be an element we can use.  So if we consider Agatha as a grumpy old lady.. who showcases  using favourite pokemon and not just the strong I think this is the team we would get.

Low Tier 1: Sinistea

Obviously an old woman would drink a lot of tea in the world of stereotypical anime characters. So it would make sense for her to have the tea pokémon.. and yes the fact that she has the cup does indeed mean that the pot is higher on her team list but no one has just a teapot or just a teacup it’s kind of a set. I imagine Agatha’s elite four room having one of these cast iron bistro tables where she is sipping her tea and when a trainer steps in she taps her cane on the floor and the teacup comes flying to her aid. This is where she proclaims she is a ghost pokémon trainer and about the power of using your favourites. The teacup would then fly into battle as the match begins.

Low Tier 2: Shedinja

This Pokémon is famous for only having 1 hp , but the ability wonderguard, which only makes it take damage from super effective moves, hazards and status effects.. and weather.  If you do not come prepared for a Shedinja though you will have a very bad time. I think Agatha would want that to be a lesson we learn! Always be prepared. Since Shedinja is a Bug and Ghost it would hard counter the Psychic type that Gengar is so known to be weak too, it is likely that a trainer would have such a pokémon because Bruno is the trainer they fight before. While Shedinja can be deemed a terrible Pokémon Agatha is all about making it work. It can fall very easily but if ill prepared you will suffer inevitable defeat. Almost like a lecture!  I think that fits Agatha quite well.

Mid Tier 1:  Gengar

The third Pokémon Agatha is likely to send out, unless the AI smartly swaps would be Gengar. It is the defining pokémon from her generation and the way she summons a Gengar from the shadow of her staff is too cool not to use. It might no longer be her ace because I think that is a bit too cliché it still fits her pretty well as a monster. Something that is almost as old as she is. She would not run it in any Mega form or Gigantamax form  because she feels those new methods are poppycock.. revealing a bit of a Genwunner style of thinking would really fit with Agatha’s older mind thus justifying this Pokémon.

Mid Tier 2: Decidueye

I remember my dad’s aunt collecting owls, and it seems like a pretty grandma thing to do. I know a few old ladies that collect owl statues or even owl macrame and stuff like that, plus  the whole theme of Wisdom applying to Agatha makes a lot of sense as well. We can even go further and explain that this archery owl pokemon has been based on an extinct and ancient owl that used to live on hawaii in some of it’s glory days before it was tainted by tourists etc. The old versus the new world is once again a theme that really can work with our old little lady trainer.

Ace:  Polteageist

Obviously this Pokémon would be Agatha’s ace. Not only is it a perfect pokémon for an old lady, it also is VERY VERY powerful if used properly with stored power. So it fits for what is most likely the most powerful ghost trainer out there. It’s ability that will boost it’s stats when taking physical damage/decay is a perfect allegory for Agatha’s age as well. While her body withers her experience only makes her stronger and stronger.You can easily imagine the anime  Brock going “That’s Polteageist ability Weak Armor, as it’s body crumples the spirit goes so much faster”  and then Agatha saying “That is right.. just like me.. while my body crumbles my mind has already figured out what you will do next.. I will always be one step ahead of you”. Black tea is also her favourite flavour of tea.. so it really works out very well!

Morty

Morty is the “cool” guy of Pokémon trainers. He is fairly noble and caring for pokémon. He is engaged with the whole death at the burned tower and feels more like a guy who watches over the dead. So his team would have a few members that follow that theme a bit. He still is a bit bland and is by far my least favourite ghost trainer. He feels like he might have some things in common with Spark from the Pokémon Go memes, but instead of talking to an egg he still talks to the dead. Other than that.. he just is some blonde dude!

Low Tier 1: Phantump

Morty is the gym leader of Ecruteak city, which is near a fairly forested area. While it isn’t officially a forest he still lives fairly close to Ilex forest as well and seems like the type that would go pray at a shrine. So either if it is the woods in front of his town or the forest of Ilex he seems the wandering type. Phantump is the spirit of a boy or girl who got lost in the woods and starved to death.  Being a sort of guardian figure of the dead it makes perfect sense if Morty picks one of these up and soft core uses it as his “Pikachu” but a bit weaker. 
He seems like the type that would have a pokémon sitting on his shoulders to me at least and this would be the one!  Of course it would not be a great member of his team but he can still annoy you with leech seed.

Low Tier 2: Doublade

While he doesn’t have that much flavour Morty does have a bit of that J-RPG protagonist look. Wandering into dangerous places  to help the dead it seems like he should use a physical tool that allows him to fight with his pokémon. As to me he seems like the type that would do that.  He misses the mystical qualities most of these ghost trainers have so his ghost team would most likely be focussed on a more physical approach. Not completely but still! We don’t have a lot to work with here! He does seem like the type he would be very friendly to his pokémon so I see him being very touchy and affectionate to his pokémon so it makes sense if he would litteraly carry as many of them with him as he possibly can. 

Mid Tier 1: Golurk

While this pokémon officially belongs to Shauntall I never really saw the connection! It looked cute to see her fly one in the Manga but it is more of an opposites thing. With Morty however Golurk works like an ancient protector.  Once again a physical attacker that is more straightforward than most ghost pokémon. Golurk is also one of the most good natured ghost pokémon out there being truly created as a protector and laborer and I think those are values that belong to Morty WAAAAAY more than they would ever do to Shauntal!

Mid Tier 2:  Dusknoir

This one is mostly on the list because everyone seems to think this ghost pokémon is really cool looking and i have to agree! It is however a pretty worthless battler that has a horrible moveset… Which makes it perfect for Morty as he probably canonically is the weakest trainer of the lot. He is the fourth gym trainer which is only matched by Fantina.. but she as a trainer in the games has actually been hard!  She is trying hard while Morty is more laid back. Dusknoir embodies this feeling quite a bit as it is not so much about attacking but more about out-stalling it’s opponent. Even better for Morty this Pokémon is said to take lost spirits in his body and guide them home! That does seem to fit Morty!

Ace: Rotom

This cheerful little pokémon seems like a perfect ace for Morty! It might be a bit mischievous but it is also quite the workhorse. It seems to have the right vibe for Morty trough and trough! Once again it seems like a spirit he can take care off. It could even be his gym puzzle. Where Rotom possesses all sorts of electrical appliances or electric doors and you have to make him jump to a new object to pass. Befriend a spirit and make it move on. It could be a fun way to tie in puzzles with the gym leader and the team.

Phoebe

Phoebe is the least spooky ghost trainer ever. When you see her you think you are facing a water pokémon trainer.. but no you already faced that in Ruby and Sapphire, even in Emerald. Maybe fire then as she is one of those Hawaiian Hula girls and Volcano’s and all? No Flannery took care of that. So how do we fix Phoebe?! Well it’s quite simple! Hawaiian Beach theme …for GHOSTS! Phoebe feels bright and bubbly! With a charismatic personality, a healthy skin colour and what must be a purple deficiency among ghost trainers it is time to do her right and give her a great team.

Low Tier 1: Pink/Female Frillish

There is a surprising amount of Pokémon that fit Phoebe like a glove! However not a single one stems from her generation!  It would take two generations before there even came along a pokemon that even remotely fitted her. While  once again the fact that I used a non fully evolved pokémon indicates that I indeed have taken its evolution as one of her squad as well and arguably the Blue Frillish would be better given her dress.. I chose the pink one because I do not like the evolution of the female version, while I do like the look of the male evolution. To give her a bit of diversity! Ghost Water isn’t an amazing typing  so Phoebe probably is worse with this team than she was before it really does fit her like a glove. Aqua Jelly ghost! Just look at her! She even has a little pink element! And Frillish looks tropical enough to boot!

Low Tier 2: Dhelmise 

While Dhelmise is not a low tier Pokémon but since it will get Gyro Ball we put this on the lower level themed slot so the speed difference is larger.  Dhelmise being a ghost Anchor once again ties in with Phoebe’s all tropical theme..Perhaps she dives for shipwrecks and fights of pirate ghosts.. it seems like something she might do! Heck even if she just hunts for pearls at the bottom of the ocean her ghost pokémon can help her here. With Dhelmise helping her sink faster. It is a Ghost Grass type which means Phoebe will end up with a Fire, Water, Grass core making her seem like a somewhat justified Elite four member!  

Mid Tier 1: Blue/Male Jellicent

Frillish evolution looks kinda strange in it’s male form but at least it does not have that weird lipstick mouth it’s evolution has. I do not mind Wobbuffet having that or even Jynx ..despite the questionable design ethics on her in general.. but a water pokémon having a puckered up lips sticky mouth seems wrong. It lives underwater.. and it’s a ghost!  Why! I do not get it.. but hey Phoebe’s Dress is blue and that staple that female trainers can only use female pokémon in the game is outdated and should be taken out of the game anyway so now we have some incentives for that as well. I can imagine really cool visuals that part of her dress is the Jellisent slowly manifesting from it’s ectoplasmic shapes! We should make this happen! Now I need an animator who loves pokémon and works for free!

Mid Tier 2: Palossand

With a Ghost, Ground type that mimics a sandcastle I do not think I have to try hard to convince you it belongs to this girl, although it’s pre-evolution will be given to a trainer on the second half of this article. The ground typing gives Phoebe gives an answer to electric types and as a good Elite 4 member you should have a varied mix of secondary typings to make your opponent sweat! Where  Agatha focusses a bit on mixed strategy with a bias on good special attack, Morty focusses on Bulk and Physical attack, Phoebe even more so seems like the defensive ghost type specialist. This makes her a great early elite four member because her role is not persé to win but to burn you out of resources, something that seems like a nice little challenge for a second elite four member. Palossand is an embodiment of that role as well as it fits her quite well.

Ace: Alolan Marowak

Phoebe at least to me has a dancer estetic, it seems like she might have been born in the Alola region given her dress style and more pigmented skin fit the location quite well. So it seems to me that giving her the fire dancer pokémon that also happens to be a ghost type is the perfect fit for her ace. I could easily see them dancing together. Like  Morty, Phoebe seems one of the better and more socially natured ghost type users so it also makes sense that she would get a good guy or girl ghost as her ace.  While most Gym Leaders are good natured with phoebe it seems a bit more a dominant trait. At least when we compare her to Allister, Shauntal and Fantina even compared to Accerolla. Fantina is flashy and cocky, while Shauntal is more an egghead and a slight clutz. Accerolla is more of a child and Allister is just creepy. Phoebe seems much more the type that rescues lost animals on her island or fights pokémon poachers or something. You know.. the main character’s  female friend from one of those ecological awareness cartoons of the early 90’s.  Alolan Marowak is easy to unify with that.

Tomorrow we will finish up this list with Fantina, Shauntal, Acerola and Allistair!  What is your favourite team so far? The day this post goes up live I am still in the mid of a move so I might be slow in replying to your comments! do not let that stop you though! Speaking of not stopping I could always use more money to help me move! If you have some money you do not seem to be using, consider supporting my Kofi! I thank you all and have a good fright night!

Top 5: Favourite Poison Type Pokémon

Hello Island Guest welcome to a post about another pokémon typing!  The final typing that is super effective against its predecessor (except for the last one being super effective against the second to last)  is my second favourite typing of all times.  The poison type! This might be the only type where there isn’t a single pokémon I dislike. It is also the only type in which I have used EVERY single one of them at one point or another in some form of game at least. So here we go!

Rules and Honorable Mentions

Pokémon who appeared on older lists are not welcome here, which excludes at least 6 older entries and more if we encounter their evolution line. The Nido’s , Bulbasaur, Venusaur,  Toxtricity, Scolipede, and Vileplume are amongst them and all their evolutions are poison type from the get go too. A special shout out to Venusaur here who was passed over in favour of Bulbasaur on my previous list. But also a shoutout to Toxel..who basically looks like a poisoned baby-like creature! I love it so so much! It’s pretty worthless in battle so I gave it a spotlight here!  Venusaur is here because…well! He’s my buddy!

Another rule is only one entry per evolution line. Where in the past I put pokémon off my list because I did not like the final evolution this week I had to do the opposite! This did not make my top 5 because I am not the biggest fan of Foongus. Amoonguss the bulky grass poison type mushroom is a favourite tank of mine. Yet it suffers a bit from Voltorb syndrome. Where, I do like the voltorb idea. Encounter an item and go….. Oh no it’s Voltorb” encounters were repeated with Foongus! Only where Voltorb is optional.. Foongus route is not! There are some pretty good things hidden in there as well so you have to endure static encounter after static encounter.. which made me like the pre-evolution less! The rom hack Reborn uses it too! So while I love my tank-shroom, Foongus encounters are a bit jarring.

All Pokémon have to feel like what type they belong to and the poison type actually really does this well.  There isn’t really a Pokémon I would not place on this list. The only exception where I find the poison link a bit flimsy is with Victreebel. That is just a flesh eating plant and though I am sure it’s saliva is highly poisonous it is the one Pokémon I feel did not exactly need the poison type. Bellsprout and Oddish are counterparts of sorts. I had blue and got Bellsprout while my sister got Oddish in Red.  I would have loved to see Victreebel get a different typing to reflect that. Like Grass ground or normal even.. who knows. All in all it just feels like a pure grass type to me so it will not be on this list.

Temporary forms also do not make it to this list and the one that is my favourite in that.. and also the only temporary poison form.. is Eternamax Eternatus. While the story in Sword and Shield was very lackluster it did have an epic evil fight conclusion unlike most pokémon games where the final fight against evil is a bit….meh!  Obviously this isn’t as good as Ultra Necrozma  but hey! For being thorough! Here it is.

Poison Type #5 Muk & Alolan Muk

This is one of the few Alolan Pokémon that kept its original typing and gained one. The other being rattata and meowth got a typing that was kinda harmful to it. Normal and Dark is NOT a good typing, regardless how much I like Galarian Zigzagoon and later Obstagoon. Muk however got a Dark type added to it’s poison typing. Poison Dark is a great typing! It’s only weakness being ground! So this is one of the few pokémon that arguably just got an upgrade. The colourful palette also made it stand out more but nothing to me can beat the classic Muk design! I loved it when Ash had it on it’s team and I have used Muk on several occasions myself. Including my run of Pokémon Infinite Fusion.. where it got fused into even greater things!  Muk is such a great example of simple done right! It’s Alolan form made it a lot more special when it was about to fade into obscurity so this is just a Pokémon to me that is solid through and through. Rainbow coloured pokémon.. great! A rainbow colour pile of stench and poison crystals even better! Still I would love to hug a Muk! It’s weird but if Pokémon would be real that would be on my bucket list… probably as a final thing!

Muk and it’s pre-evolution Grimers primarily live in sewers, this has several reasons.  First of all they like to gather in smelly places where sludge gathers. Making the stench of the place worse. It can take shelter in these places and nearly become invisible. It also keeps it safe from things that might prey on it because it’s own scent is already so bad it can cause fainting.  Added with the sewer smells and it’s hiding it is perfectly safe. How it detects those places though are very unclear because to degeneration Muk have lost their ability to smell.  My plan of hugging one might prove challenging because touching a Muk will spell trouble. It is very poisonous and a single touch will give you high fevers and cause you to be bedridden for days! It feeds on anything repugnantly filthy so the sewers do seem like a great place for it to live for that as well. This trash eating is what in fact causes Alolan Muk to look so rainbowy.. As the trash moves through its body it sparks all sorts of different chemical reactions as there are some many poisons in its body! It’s teeth and claws are not actually teeth and claws but crystallized poison.. which can prove fairly lethal. The weirdest pokédex entry though states that even the footsteps it leaves behind are poisonous.. uhm…it as feet?!

For combat we shall lose Alolan Muk as it has fewer weaknesses and more same type attack bonuses. It fills the role of a bulky physical sweeper, that means it uses its attack stat , defence stat and health stat which are all in their low hundreds. While 100 is no where near bad and in fact good, it is lacking to some others so it’s set is a lot more situational.
First of all you give it Knock Off, which is a move that deals very good damage as well as it disables your opponents item..which is super important in Pokémon.. Knockoff wins matches. It also gets pursuit which is yet another dark type move that doubles  in damage if your opponent switches out. That means Alolan Muk is a pace setter. Fire Type and Poison Jab for other physical attacks complete the set and with an Assault Vest, which increases defence but at the trade of you only being able to use offensive moves make this a great momentum attacker!  Watch out for ground types though!

Poison Type #4  Garbodor

This is one of those pokemon that gets hated because they are a thing rather than an animal.. and worse than that.. they are just trash. Well being a trash pokémon DOESN’T make you trash! Trubbish and Garbodor are something I really want to protect… also I want to hug them again… not sure what it is with me wanting to hug fictional waste material but I imagine trubbish all jingly with all the cans and bits and bobs in it when you hug it and the trash garbodor is made off seems super fluffy! Kinda like bad mash potato or something. I bet a real life Garbodor would be more composty but I bet it would be mighty interesting to dig around in it to see if you could not find any “treasures’ ‘.  Perhaps I am so in love with Garbodor because when I see him I see a ripped teddy bear..stuffed with Trash. This pokémon also got one of the very few Gigantamax forms I like (the other being Chonkachu and Orbeetle and Allcremie.) I love how there is like a giant wind up boat.. but then a real car that is smaller and a Pokédoll that is almost as great as a taxi.. it feels so random! Also why would anyone throw away these amazing toys! It would be amazing if Garbodor plays with them!

Pokédex wise this pokémon is kind of interesting. It is one of the more unpopular pokemon yet it has never skipped a pokédex entry since it’s introduction so I guess that Game Freak must love this guy as much as I do!  While originally it’s pokédex entry says nothing special.. it eats trash which gets turned into poison and the poison that it makes depends on what it eats. Therefore if you get poisoned by a Garbodor, you are in very much trouble as no doctor in the land can tell you with what type of poison you have been affected. Regardless of what the poison is .. it is so concentrated even if you are hit with it for a bit.. you suffer through all of its effects. It can completely cripple an opponent this way by covering it in random toxins. Sword and Shield added some darkness to that changing it from “the poison will cripple you” to. “anything that is already weakened can instantly die from this poison”  while Sun and Moon  described how the arrival of Grimer and Muk reduced the Garbodor population.. If you read my previous entry we see that Muk eats trash.. as a result Garbodor of the Alola region are slightly stronger..because they constantly have to fight for their lives to not be eaten by Muk.

Garbodor is a Never Used Tier Pokémon meaning in the  competitive scene  it is in the lower bracket. In it’s tier however it is the BEST hazard setter you can have.. and a hazard setter is what Garbodor is. Entry hazards deal damage effects on switching in pokémon in. Examples are webs that slow your opponent, floating rocks that heavily damage flying types or in case of Garbodor.. spikes that can damage or poison your enemy.  Spikes can be set in layers, two layers for toxic spikes (one layer causes the poisoned status and the second treats poisoned as if hit by toxic)  while regular spikes can be set in three layers. The first layer deals ⅛ of a pokémons total health in damage with two layers it stacks up to ⅙ and the third makes it so that any non flying pokemon takes ¼  of their total health in damage upon switching in. This means Garbodor is a good lead (first pokémon to send out)  with moves like Spikes, Toxic Spikes, Gunk shot and Explosion.. equipped with a Toxic plate for extra gunk shot damage.. or Black sludge for recovery. If your opponent has a ground type do not lead Garbodor and if your opponent has a poison type replace Toxic Spikes with the move Stomping Tantrum. Garbodor thrives when having an adamant nature.  It has very average stats but when you put EVs in  Attack and Speed.. it should not matter THAT much and it can still punish pokémon in its tier.

Poison Type#3 Salazzle

Gen VII introduced a lot of great new poison types. I love Toxapex as well and how they feed on corsola.. and as a result can come into Corsola SOS cries.. in which case they begin to kill Corsola to eat it instead of your team.  Well actually that’s it’s pre-evolution but that is not even the pokémon we are talking about here. Salazzle is a pokemon that only evolves from a female Salandit.. it’s a gimmick! It is so poisonous that it can poison the unpoisanable. It can poison steel and other poison types. Due to its second typing fire.. making it’s acid much more corrosive. I love the design. It looks like one of those egg stealing dinosaurs and I used to watch a lot of dinosaur series like The Land Before time about Littlefoot and his friends. There were these egg stealers as well that always scared me. Added with its graceful colour scheme and that weird look Salazzle has on her face she really seems quite powerful for a pokémon that small. Just by looking at it you know it can deal a lot of damage. It has this “evil” vibe which I really dig for a pokémon like that. 

Now.. normally I would give my own worded interpretation of Pokédex entries but in Sazalle’s case I have to quote her Pokemon Sun Pokédex entry because it’s just weird to me . “For some reason, only females have been found. It creates a reverse harem of male Salandit that it lives with.”  That’s right the term reverse harm is used in a pokémon game…for a POKEMON! Uhm..ewww… I doubt the reverse harem is will they won’t they type of scenario here as it’s still animals. It makes the Salandit males gather food for her and if they fail at this task it slaps them in the face..with a flaming palm.  Jeesz this pokémon is just getting weirder.. and we aren’t there yet… no.. this Matriarchy determines their leaders or a winner from their fight not by who wins a battle but who has wood the most male Salandit. They achieve this by some poisonous pheromone that draws them in. This pheromone however  seems to draw in any males.. as Salazzle pheromones are being used by human women as a thick and luscious perfume that helps them attract men. Do they get to slap their spouses in the face when they come home without food?! “You forgot the milk!!” WHACK! Now I want a Salazzle even more! Even if I don’t like men! I do like food!

Salazalle can be found in the RU tier, standing for Rarely used which is one tier higher than Garbodor. In its tier it’s one of the deadliest most feared pokemon! It is a glass cannon but if your opponent lets a Salazzle set up a bit.. he or she  is deader than dead! With an excellent 111 special attack and 117 in speed there is little that can outspeed it if you EV train both of these. With the move Nasty Plot it can boost its attack by two stages.so if you lead it and your opponent sets out the wrong pokémon to begin with.. you will do amazing damage. Fire Blast, Sludge Wave and Hidden Power (Ice , Water or Grass depending on your opponents team composition)  will make it blast trough your opponents as if they are nothing.  A single misclick and your opponent can feel if they just got hit by a firey bitch slap in the face

Poison Type #2 Crobat

Zubat is probably annoying Pokémon out there. Every cave is filled with millions of it…billions of it! If you are a bit like you will probably have traveled across Kanto numerous times and played pokémon mystery dungeon a lot.. where it is JUST as annoying.. so when you see a zubat you might want to strangle.. it until the light leaves it’s.. ey…. darn it!  Anyway one time I was playing Pokémon XD Gale of Darkness and I caught a shadow zubat.. I needed a flying type on my team because I had a big fighting weakness.  So I ended up purifying it and naming it Bruce… Bruce soon evolved into a Golbat and we become close friends.. which resulted into Bruce becoming a Crobat.I fully expected it to be bad because it was gen 2 of a fairly lackluster gen 1 but oh my! Bruce was a stone cold killer. It was so strong it became my team’s ace! So then I trained one up in Pokémon Diamond… which I named X-Wing  as I nicknamed all my pokémon after Star Wars things.. With Piplup being Jango Fett.. and Bidoof being Slave 1.. (which is a funny joke if you know Bidoof)  Anyway X-Wing… soon became my ace. It’s speed and attack made it amazing and the bright purple design made it cute enough for me to use as well!  It even made me appreciate Zubat and Golbat.. though their horrible early gen sprites.. really put me off them for a while.

Pokédex entry wise Crobat is quite bland. Nearly all it’s pokédex entries state that it’s legs that it has as Golbat evolved into wings. This makes it a lot faster but this speed makes it tricky for it to stop. It also has almost completely loses its ability to walk on land. It can still crawl but it looks really clumsy when it does so. Becomes it no longer has legs only wings it has to sleep upside down using its back wings as legs. This makes it more uncomfy and costs it a lot of rest.  That honestly would be it if it were not for our favourite pokédex entries in the sun and moon series. One of them states that  That Crobat constantly hungers for blood even if it does not feast on it for a little while it will become to weak to fly. Like a vampire it targets trainers and pokemons neck able to drain their blood in an instant. Another entry seems a bit more innocent but paired with that last one just now tells us the absolute horrible truth.. It fangs are so sharp if a Crobat bites you in the dark you’ll never even know that you have been bitten.. I am not sure if that is because you die or it can painlessly suck but given that it’s always hungry for blood, can drain you in an instant.. I can make assumptions.

Crobat is in the Underused Tier  which is the second highest  normal series (if we do not count Ubers which is basically for the strongest only) that means this pokémon is actually very well respected. All of that comes from the ability to have a move called Super Fang which halves hp regardless of defensive stats.. and Brave Bird.. A high Damage recoil move. Crobat also has Infiltrator as an ability so it becomes a fast sweeper. Super Fang and Brave Bird should not be accompanied by a poison move but rather by Taunt and  Roost. Though Taunt can be swapped out for a powerful poison move if your opponent does not require a great amount of set up. Like almost all Poison types on this list EV’s go into Speed and Attack and then you can have a lot of fun with this pokémon. A physical poison move instead of roost  during gameplay can also work as you have access to potions and all in there. 

My Favourite Poison type: Poipole

So my favourite Poison type is a bit of an odd one out my dear readers. It is not very useful in combat ,  it doesn’t get too amazing moves, it’s stats are bad and it basically just exists to evolve. Yet it is my favourite Poison Pokémon on it’s sheer design and flavour alone. Also it’s shiny and absolutely briljant. It’s evolution is still very amazing but not as greatly designed as it’s main. It’s soooo…..pink … and purple! I love it! It has a bit of a mythical pokemon quality like Celebi, Victini or even Mew and   yet also very starter-like qualities but very much twisted towards something more unnatural. It is one of my biggest inspirations for the Eldritch Baby Luma in my online Dungeons and Dragons campaign. Since Poipole  basically counts as an evolve Legendary I am also not discussing a moveset for it. It has no real place to shine. It’s usable in the main game and I had so much fun with it like that but basically it is the Sunkern of the legendaries (Sunkern has the weakest stats of any pokémon) ..So a pink weakish creature that doesn’t get enough love? I think you are beginning to see why I love it so dearly. Also it’s evolution Naganaendel is pretty amazing as well. I just love Poipole that much more!

Poipole is an Ultra Beast, it comes from Ultra-Megalopolis which is a city  in Ultra space. However this Ultra Space and these beasts have some fair overlap with Lovecraftian Horror. It’s  codename for Ultra Beast hunters is UB adhesive, but unlike all other beasts, Poipole is never causing a rampage. It is a gift given to you by Ultra Reckon Squad (Yes there is a lot of Ultra’s here) Poipole in it’s world is a popular starting pokémon. It does seem to be more akin to Eevee and Pikachu upon inspection though. So basically we are dealing here with the Pokémon Mascotte of another world. In sheer concept alone this of course is very interesting. The little thing seems to have a lot of joy in spraying it’s opponents with poison. For this it has a horn on its head that is actually a needle.. like one from a syringe. It isn’t described as particularly lethal or vicious but it will laugh gleefully when you are covered in it’s poison. Bodywise and lore wise it seems to have been based on a bee or hornet larva where it’s evolution becomes an Eldritch Hornet. While in this world they have no gender, in Ultra Space they dwell in groups and hives. These take the structure of that of a wasps nest. 

Since Poipole only featured in one game, and it was an updated version game rather than a new version not that much is known about Poipole besides that. It has appeared in the Manga where it followed Zosie around and even followed her orders from time and time again even when not being owned. It works like all other Ultra Beasts where it’s ability allows it to get a stat upgrade after taking down your opponent. It’s evolution also gets that with better moves to boot!  While Poipole is not useless it feels like running the game with a Pidgeotto .. not Pidgeot.. Pidgeotto it’s prevolution.. or heck an even better comparison. It feels like running with a Nidorina. You know you aren’t getting the maximum potential out of this thing. Poipole is a pure poison type but gains the dragon typing when it evolves into Naganadel. For this to occur it must level up while knowing the move Dragon Pulse. Yet while Naganadel is better at every step, it looks cool as heck, it has good movesets and is a pretty good Ultra beast, I can not help but love Poipole so much more.I really want to try and see if I can get far in the game using just a Poipole at one point.. but I would need to learn how to hack my games! Please make a UB fangame for someone! Let us show the Ultra Megalopolis league gym challenge or something! I want more Poipole in my live.

So sometimes to be my favourite pokémon, you do not have to have Nostalgia on your side, you don’t even have to have great stats. Heck you don’t even have to be all that useful. Sometimes love just happens for no reason.  I could easily say it is because it is quite pink..but even if the shiny would have been the normal one , I would have loved it all the same.. Sometimes Pokémon is just about the ones you like!  Those you want to hug , protect and keep safe.. but also want to keep a part of your journey. Poipole is that pokémon for me! While I do think everyone has one of those picks among their favourites… I would never have thought it would be the poison type that made me a fall in love with a cute and innocent thing! The winner is Poipole!

And that concludes this list! Who is your favourite Poison type? Do you like the typing?
Let me know and let’s have a nice pokémon talk! Now it is time for me to have lunch so I am off! I will see you guys again some other time! Hmm Lunch!

Pokémon Top 5: Favorite Electric Types

The electric type in Pokémon is a bit of a weird one. Super effective against only the water and flying type, and weak only to ground. As a result it is one of my least used typings. Since I mostly start with a grass starter I tend to start with a grass and rock/ground core rendering this typing a rather ineffective addition to my team. Yet there are so many great electric pokémon. So today let’s look at the ones that are SO special they won a spot on my team anyway in this week’s top 5.

The same rules like always would apply to Pokémon… but.. I have a problem here. Hardly any of the rules are applicable here! Normally I’d say only one entry per evolutionary line where if the evolution and its necessity is factored in should I dislike where forms go. Yet every single electric type has amazing evolutions. There isn’t a single one I’d disapprove off. The only one that kinda meets this brief is Yamper. I adore Yamper and do not feel very strongly about Boltund. It’s a good dog but I liked the clunkiness of the first form a lot more.. like the whole “loaf” feeling it has going. Boltund is only a type of dog I prefer slightly less.. but hey since I need honorable mentions it counts.

Pokémon that featured on other lists do not count either,since I love Galvantula so much and it was on my bug list, it will not feature on this one. Otherwise it would most likely be in the number two spot yet again. The honorable mention goes to it’s pre-evolution Joltik whom I love dearly as well.. technically it could make the list because it’s not Galvantula..but since I have the one entry per evo line rule as well it still felt wrong. Still it is so adorable so it deserves more shoutouts than I can give it!

In every other list I managed to mention a pokémon that did not feel like it’s typing to me.. the electric type doesn’t have that to me! All of them feel tied to their given element. The Psychic type gave me trouble with this as well but with these ones.. I am convinced I could even show the biggest pokémon non believers a picture of a pokémon and ask what type it is and you’d all guess correctly.  Luckily I also made a rule that disallows  temporary forms because of how situational it is .. which gives me my final honorable mention Pop Star Pikachu.  Just because it is because.. It’s Pikachu in pink.. This one would be disallowed either way because….

The Pikachu line in Pokémon has always been a bit lackluster except for the whole mascotte thing of course. Kantonian Raichu wasn’t all that good. While normally I say that an entry in the anime is beneficial this applies to me for everything but the Pikachu line.. and to a lesser extend Greninja and even Charizard. All the Pokemon Ash made hype.. kind of let you down in the games. The final evolutions less than Pikachu ..but if you saw Ash first.. they still feel lacking in oomph compared to how they are build up. Raichu was always one of those for me.. We see Pikachu do such epics things and ours.. fizzle.. as if we are playing with a bootleg. However this all changed when Alolan Raichu came along.

While it stats do not change , it addresses the generic looks of the original Raichu and they give it an additional typing in the form of the Psychic type. Electric Psychic is a great offensive typing!  It is super effective against flying, water, poison and fighting which actually makes it great to use next to Rowlet or Popplio, who both have a weakness to poison and Litten which has a weakness to water.  Regardless of the starter you choose this is a great accompaniment to them all. In Kanto, Normal Raichu doesn’t help you much when you pick Squirtle and if you start with Bulbasaur going with Geodude would be a better way to cover your flying weakness.  But let’s back up a bit and talk a bit more about the looks. Original Raichu was originally meant to be a midway station between Pikachu and Gorochu and in a way you feel that. Alolan Raichu has much more finality to it’s design. The surfing on it’s tail with electromagnetism, the tanned look, keeping Pikachu’s cuteness. I really adore it’s looks.

Statwise this Pokémon still feels like a relatively weak end station. It’s main offensive stat is only 95 which is okay enough but something you can easily find a better answer for. For reference the area between 70 base stat and 100 is deemed okay and above 100 a stat is great. So 95 is good enough. However here is where it’s new typing comes into play. Since Generation VII Raichu can learn Calm Mind.. the best set up move for special attackers. It raises special defence and special attack. Prior to this Raichu had no proper setup for offence, only evasion so even if it made it hard for an opponent to hit it could never really hit back hard either. It’s move pool has also vastly expanded. Same Type attack bonus boosted psychic hits harder and more reliable than most electric moves and using the ability surge surfer it’s speeds can reach insane levels so even in its core moveset it already deals a lot more with it’s own weaknesses.  It can set up defensive screen which half damage, it can set up terrain and it can set itself up to hit hard.  While it’s still frail it reviced a lot of weaknesses with the originals and when you look so adorable when dealing a fair amount of damage as well as be Hau’s best buddy! You are doing something right!

I was trying to decide whether to put the final evolution of the magnemite line in the Steel Type top five or the electric top five. In retrospect I should have put it in the other one as I like a lot less of those.. but since in Gen I the line was still pure electric I always see it as that first. Magnezone is on this list because it lets me combine two of my least used typings in a pretty amazing pokémon that is very weak to ground type moves though. Magnezone came to me via a trade in Gen V, it was a very random trade but there it was. A magnet Ufo that to me.. had some cop vibes/patroller in it as well. I did not know that Magneton could evolve. It was named Kilowatt. The original trainer was LeLouche all of people.. I never figured he would be into pokémon! Kind of makes sense though with all the tactical battling.

While I never really was appealed by balls and magnets sticking together they already looked very gleefull in Pokémon Snap when you fed them apples.. I always remembered those happy eyes. I imagined this Ufo like thing do the same thing and I was immediately sold. A magnetic Ufo who doesn’t want that?!  These pokémon are so Magnetic they attract each other and then become unable to move! That sounds clunky! I like that as well! Implications that this pokémon has alien contacts were made in Sun and Moon.. when all pokédex entries were particularly ominous and it added to it’s mystery. While made by man scientist kept trying to evolve it again.. could it be that in the future this will be the first pokémon we see get a stage 3?  <Pinkie Explains: A first form is called a basic.. the second form a stage 1 evolution.. if that evolves it’s stage 2>  Will it call something from out of space like a new legendary tied to it?! Kind of like Carbink and Diancie? Mysteries keep surrounding this pokémon, along with the unique and fun design I think Kilowatt is a keeper.. Had I not sold that game for convention money back in the day.

In combat having using steel and electric moves are basically it’s entire bread and butter. It also gets hyper beam which then can do big damage with the Analytic ability. Since Magnezone is a fairly slow Ufo with a base speed of 60 so the ability is quite usable as well.It will outspeed ground types.. but unless you equip it with a Balloon you’ll want to swap out when those come out and threaten your space ship anyway. It’s special attack being at 130 as a base value is amazing and really makes this a floating attilery thing. It’s best when paired with big damage moves such as Zap Cannon, Flash Cannon and Hyper Beam, I either run it with Magnet Rise ..which makes it immune to ground type moves with a Life Orb as held item or I put it on a Balloon and give it Signal Beam  as well for some extra type coverage and possible confusion. The first set is usually better though. It also makes sense that it floats on it’s own abilities..being a Ufo at all.. why would a Ufo be on a balloon? That is just silly.

What’s up with my favorites  and quad ground weaknesses. This is yet another that could look at a patch of soil and die in agony! Yet poison electric is such a cool typing. I really like the poison typing as well. Much like my Pokémon flying list though.. this would have been an ideal candidate for the sound type! Which funnily.. I would make weak to ground types.  This pokémon is all about playing air guitar.. or Keyboard as some version of this pokémon would.  Toxtricity has two forms, the Low Key form and the Amped form. This is on Toxel’s (its basic stage)  nature. If it has an energetic nature like Rash or Bashful  it will become Amped and if it has a more tranquil spirited nature.. for example Modest or Mild. That is SUCH a great idea. Letting a pokémon evolution look differently based on their character. Amazing!  I really love the colours of the Amped form myself.. but the Low Key version is pretty neat itself. Competitive it’s mostly Low Key though since the Modest Nature fits it the best. That’s a bit a let down in that system for me. 

Lorewise there isn’t that much known about the pokémon yet except that is quite arrogant and it plays air guitar or Electric organ to generate up to 15.000 volts on electricity. It’s poisonous nature is never really mentioned anywhere..but I think it comes from being a punker.  Or from being purple! In the world of pokémon the colour of your skin quite oftenly depicts your typing. I wonder if Lucario gets bullied for being blue but not being a water type?! The design however looks so friggin amazing, this is one of the coolest designed electric types out there. Tying it’s theme to the electric guitar was a briljant stroke that we untill now have only seen in a trainer type. I can just imagine  it singing the Sex Pistols version of I did it my way while frying it’s opponents with its electric waves or tossing some goop their way! This is a rebel and for once I like that.

In combat you mostly would like to rock out with a Low Key… Mild Toxtricity. It’s defences aren’t good at all and you really want to capitalize on it’s special attack of 117 without compromising it’s speed and preferably not it’s attack either since that being close to a 100 at 98 can allow you to run it as a mixed attacker.  It should be decked out with the ability Punk Rock which boosts sound type moves by 30% offensively while reducing damage taken by 50% defensively. This one definitely needs it’s own signature move Overdrive to be good, but if you equip it with Boomburst it might even be scarier. The last one has a base power of 140 so boosted by 30% that is one of the most powerful moves in the game. Though still not coming close to a fully boosted Fisheous Rend.  As a third move and fourth move I’d run it with Toxic and Venoshock, but that is mostly when I have other toxic users or stallers as well.  There are other options as well like some physical attacks like Gunk Shot.. or Throat Chop to give it something to defend against the psychic type. As an item you definitely want to give it some Throat Spray. As a side node why are some many electric type pokémon names so hard to spell?!

Ah the moment I begin writing this entry I realised how big of a whole I have dug myself. I normally blab on movesets and designs and Rotom.. has six forms, six typings and six designs. This is going to be a tricky one. Technically this one even has nine forms, if we count the pokédex, phone and drone form as well. It’s also the weakest pokémon on the list of today..but I can’t help but to love Rotom. It’s such an amazing concept. Basically he is the poltergeist that make your electric devices go bump in the night. It’s very mischievous as well. It loves to ruin your day. If it possesses the microwave it gleefully burns your favorite clothes, if it possess your fan it giggles why blowing away important documents and if it’s a freezer it will freeze your bath  water or give you a very cold shower. When it possesses a lawnmower it will destroy all your flowers and when it possesses the washing machine.. well you probably have a good idea what happens then! Let’s hope you don’t have any wooden floor.

The concept of a ghost pokémon animating things is great of course and since it is a ghost electric type animating devices makes so much sense! The fact that it loses its ghost typing and replaces that with the element it possesses even more so. If you have the ability to swap devices this pokémon can be incredibly versatile, although a bit of a hassle to set up. Will you run it as a lawn mower for the water type gym or will you run it as a  fridge to defeat that guy who has some strong ground types? The sky is the limit.  Having access to water-fire-grass-flying-ice OR ghost typing as a secondary STAB is an unparalleled feat for a pokémon. I know temporary forms do not make the list but these are semi permanent and I count this pokémon in its entirety so it’s all good! If your game does not have an area to swap rotom tools you’ll just have to work with the one traded to you. I like the idea of customisable pokémon and it doesn’t get much more customisable than this.

In the competitive scene Rotom Wash is the most popular form to use. Water Electric is a great typing and since Rotom has the ability levitate it doesn’t have all that many weaknesses. Rotom is mostly used as a trickster. Use Will O Wisp to burn your opponent and lower their attack stat. It’s a bit in that “float like a butterfly sting like a bee” segment of things. I like Rotom Wash the most myself as well.. the square design with that pipe as some form of weird tale is adorable. It can be a bit more offensive due to learning scald. You can get those burns while attacking, yet each Rotom is fun to use in it’s own way. I had a blast when trying Rotom Freeze uit for the first time. Rotom Mow i’d say is the most tricky form to use but if played well it can be hard for your opponent to deal with as well. Rotom Fan i’ve seen a lot in Showdown battles and now that Dynamax Air moves boost speed it has quickly become much better than it was before!  Maybe a full Rotom Playthrough would be fun.. it would be pretty balanced at least.

The first electric type I ever actively  used and my strongest pokémon in my favorite pokémon game. At least in main line Pokémon games! In Pokémon Stadium I used Pin Missile Jolteon to take down my sisters all Mewtwo team. I am not sure why that worked so well back then because I never was able to reproduce it. Ampharos though I can make good time and time again. I am using it again on my Pokémon Reborn playthrough..but that games runs so much more horrible now than it did before.. so much lag.. so now I only play it when someone is live streaming and I need some side content.  Still Ampharos is there for me. My first one did not have a name, I needed to remember the new pokemon names still. The second one was called Apple, I think, I used it during a Soul Silver playthrough I named things after fruit. I used one in my main team in Gale of Darkness XD  named Shaun and my custom shiny Ampharos in Reborn is called Choked Sheep (because it turned blue, and my nicknames are descriptions)

I also played the crap out of the pokémon in Pokémon Stadium 2. If I can get  the monster early on I will use it. Now it took me way longer than I am willing to admit to discover that this one has a pink shiny… oh no.. I admitted it!  So now that I know that it makes this pokémon even better though I only have a few pink ampharos (pokemon plural is the same as singular) on Pokémon Go due to community days. I never had a pink Amphi in a fun game though.  I am always drawn to it no matter what media it appears on almost as if it’s a beacon drawing me in.. what do you know! Pokémon Lore bride.. Ampharos only lore is that it can store electricity in it’s tale to shine very bright. So it functions as a lighthouse. This light is so bright that it can even be seen from space. It seems to hurt it’s own eyes though so it doesn’t really like using it.. the way it moves.. is also kinda clunky and it isn’t exactly elegantly shaped. I begin to see why I like this.

In Galar my troupe of sheep isn’t that special when it comes to stats.  It has a special attack stat of 110 which is great but it is on par with most the electric types here that take less work to evolve.Yet in this last generation my baby got robbed of its mega evolution. In its mega form my sweet hairless sheep had an amazing 165 base special attack and gain the dragon typing as well as a bunch of wool back as fancy luscious locks. It’s so good as a Mega, even though the hair kinda looks silly, that’s what made it so sexy to me! Not as in Bomchikawawa sexy but non sexual sexy! That is a thing! Mega Amphi is kinda like my Totoro! So I was robbed! I can’t even put it to words but this pokémon is so charming to me! If I only could make one pokémon real this would be a consideration. It would probably be Sylveon in the end.. but the whole flesh ribbon things is kind of off putting. I am not going to make a battle set because all my Amphi’s were different and I love them all and I feel one of them might cry if I favor the other and I just can’t bear to imagine that!  Given the fact that I consider the feelings of digital picture I resetted over twice, and that they are still with me in spirit tells something on how much I love this pokémon! A deserved number 1.

What is your favorite electric type?! Did you ever use one of these in your team?! Do you use the electric type a lot? Leave your thoughts in the comments and let’s start talking Pokémon! Don’t forget to subscribe to my blog if you want to make sure that you catch nexts weeks Earth Shattering top 5! That’s right! Bring your balloons cause there will be earthquakes! Now I have to go to the store because my Joltik drained all my batteries!


A Rare Candy? Pokémon Mewtwo Strikes Back Evolution Review

This Pokémon Movie has been on Netflix for a good while now and while I originally planned to review all the Pokemon movies leading up to it, I have felt the call call of nostalgia. Mewtwo Strikes Back Evolution is the CGI remake of the first Pokemon movie. It’s weird animation style caught the eye.. and the critique of many. So is this movie truly an evolution or did I wish the original had it’s everstone equipped? 

Update: I found out I can’t make Netflix Screencaps! So while I actually had an impressive selection of cool screenshots.. we will have to do with stock google images.

How does it Look?

I think it is best to address the elephant in the room first and that is this movies looks. It uses a fairly strange CGI look that has gotten a lot of fans scratching their heads. Ash looks like a young boy! Also everything looks almost as if we are watching a weird claymation cgi hybrid. Models can feel a bit oily and this doesn’t really match with any pokémon style we have seen so far. After seeing the entire movie twice now though I must say, I am not opposed to this , I am not in love with it but I think it has some big advantages over the old style on the one hand and comes with a few downsides on the other. A mixed bag of negatives and positives.

Let’s start with the negatives as most people out there come in with a negative mindset about this movie, rather than scaring you off by proving your are wrong right away, I will side a bit with the haters first. While modern animation is increasingly moving towards fluidity in motion and stripping things of non essential elements to increase focus on what is important, this is not what can be seen in Evolution. There is a level of clunk to the motions, the models seem to polished and glossy and Ash his redesign seems odd. Brock feels a lot more dishevelled, team rocket seems a bit overly moe and way less “mean spirited” and there are some odd choices  when it comes to certain pokémon. As a result this definitely is a style we need to get used to. It doesn’t feel right and that feeling is indeed hard to turn off. Due to the clunkiness in some motions but the focus on detail it’s flaws really stand out as well.

Yet to me there is a charm to this clunk. A lot of the clunkier attack animations really reminded me of playing Pokémon Stadium again or the later Coliseum games.  There is a level of mechanicalness that conveys something computer game esque.. and for a series that started out as a video game, I actually kinda see a lot of charm in that. I would love to see a pokémon game in this graphic style someday, and while Ash design is weird, for the first time I believed he was 10.  Misty and Brock are visibly older than Ash which validates his demeanour a lot more. While I watched the original run I often find myself annoyed at Ash. Stupid choice!.. Now I see him much more as a naive kid and I feel much more in tune with his mindset. 

The action also feels a lot nicer in this 3d style. While the animations to fire off an attack can feel clunky, these models have more weight to them.. smoke animations feel more simulated, dust clouds more calculated. If Charizard is dropped in the sand.. it feels like someone just threw a heavy creature in the sand. Fire has more “heat” to it, water actually feels wet..instead of being a spirally  blue beam. Pokémon eyes feel more alive, where watering eyes in normal anime style are usually a cycle of frames there is more motion to them. While this does not apply to all pokémon and less to the humans this version had a sense of gravitas in some of it’s graphic design. Which I think is very important in things like these.

I can see people hate this and would not think they are wrong but I can also see people really liking it. It has that Jump Force feel to it and that isn’t for everybody but I do think it makes battles more exciting.. and that’s an important part of pokémon. Now regardless if you like the style or not this movie has some stunning cinematography.  Shots are really beautifully framed. Camera angles are so much more carefully chosen. It feels a lot more cinematic in the big moments. The moment Ash rises from the clone laboratories followed by all the other pokémon nearly dropped my jaw. The end framing and the secret ending again..both beautiful shots! Regardless if you like the style or not, the shot choice was among the greatest in pokémon history.

How does it sound?

Now that you all think I am nuts for being positive on the looks let’s throw my credibility further in the trash by talking about how much I loved the sound design. The weird star trek and star wars stock sounds that were everywhere in the first movie have been replaced by long standing sounds in the pokémon anime. When Mewtwo activates stadium lights we no longer hear the first tones of a lightsaber and when Mew is waking up under water we don’t hear star trek effects from his shield. Explosions sound like proper explosions now and feel like they are canon to the pokémon series but done really well.  It seems all the voices have been re-recorded as well to match the new animation flow a lot better than using the old tracks would…unfortunately that doesn’t always pan out. 

Not all the voice work in this movie is great. Mew firstly feels a bit less cutesy than it did in the original..which was a source of great joy for me. The original mew sounded a lot more dreamy, while this one sounds a bit more kiddy. It isn’t bad just not as great as the original..I kinda cringed while it laughed once. It’s giggle is pretty bad.  Speaking about bad. Jessie and James have been voiced really poorly in this movie. I could not decide who was worse. James voice lines really feel phoned in.. but match the character while Jessie tries harder but really REALLY feels off brand to me. Her normal tones of arrogance and disdain are gone. While the new voice does line up with the cuter model more.. I can’t help to constantly think these are not Jessie and James. It somehow makes them have even less impact on the movie than before. Misty and some of the other trainers are a bit meh as well.The ace trainers who use their Blastoise Shellshocker and a Venussaur called Brute-Root I really had trouble understanding. At least when they called out their pokémons nickname.
Misty was okay but at times she was a bit flat.

Ash and Mewtwo are quite okay and Brock has his highlights but the real star is the voice actor of Pikachu. You can sense Pikachu’s emotions so well from the Pika Pika’s. During the chase by Mewtwo’s pokeballs we really can hear the fatigue in it’s cries, but the best moment is absolutely following Ash’s death/petrification. The anguished cries of Pikachu felt so real.. there was so much pain inside just the word Pikachu being repeated, it was crazy. Never EVER have I felt so much for Pikachu. I could tell exactly how distraught it felt and it’s tears weren’t even show! Instead of constantly focussing on Pikachu.. that cinematography cuts away .. allowing us just to hear its voice as we can hear it’s little spirit break.  Some great sound design in that scene and some incredible voice acting.

The music and the sound design are amazing in general. Gone is “Brother my Brother” that melodramatic song from the first version that I absolutely hated. Instead they choose for much more neutral background music that sound like they could be in a Final Fantasy game.
Which again enforced that video game movie feeling for me. Where the vocal song had issues keeping up with the story beats and felt poorly timed and thus melodramatic this version goes for a different approach. Silence, during a few scenes this movie decides to fade away the sounds only leaving some impact sounds  or for a brief period even nothing at all. It works so well as you see the seen as Ash sees it.. something terrible. The Final Fantasy esque music oddly really fits the setting of Mewtwo’s castle as well and keeps for a much more neutral accompaniment of the story. It boosts the story and scenes rather than trying to explain it on it’s own and overall I’d say this movie does it waaay better than the original.

How did it change?

I am not going over the movies story again because I think this story is so famous it would be redundant and I already embellished way too much again on looks and sound. Are there any significant changes to the story? Yes and no again honestly. The story is mostly a one on one translation of the original. However this time we get the extended cut.. not the Pikachu’s vacation stuff that was placed there to hide the dark and twisted beginnings of the original! This time…. ..it’s darkest part is still skipped. We get a set up for Mewtwo.. but the story about Fuiji’s cloned daughter dying in front of Mewtwo is completely emitted from the story again, so if you want to see that you will still have to watch the first movie, in Japanese.

Missing this however causes a slew of narrative problems that the first dubbed version also had. In the sub version we see a young mewtwo growing up in the tank. Sharing a collective dream with the three starter pokémon and a young girl.  They are happy together and monster 150 learns about friendship. Something goes wrong and all the clones end up destabilizing/disintegrating including the little girl which taught Mewtwo about humanity. Her disappearing is accompanied with him crying.. the girl tells the ultimate pocket monster that he should not cry as she has to go and it can not be helped. However when a Pokémon sheds true heartfelt tears it is claimed to have some healing powers. We then see Mewtwo being picked up by Team Rocket and strapped to another machine.. alone.. his humanity fading away. While the second part is included as we start with Giovanni finding Mewtwo.. we see the evil part.. however the good part.. and the big reason why he has his change of heart are omitted and it is a worse movie because of it. 

However this movie knows it had to censor that important scene so they make their fair attempts to rectify this.  While Mewtwo is the 2 dimensional version of himself they use Mew’s dialogue as a reason to snap him awake more. Mew,although somewhat uncharacteristically , tells Mewtwo that true strength doesn’t come from the advanced techniques his clones have.. it comes from the heart.  This prompts Mewtwo to make his clones attack without using techniques or their special ability he will just win with their presence. This explains why the pokemon suddenly just try to slap each other and why they get so tired and hurt with it.. they don’t have the heart for it. It lifts up one of the weaker scenes in the original and it gives Mewtwo a makeshift redemption arc in the fact that due to seeing Pokémon truly care.. and their heart is more in stopping the fight and everyone siding with Ash that he can acknowledge their strength and stops thinking of himself as a superior. It isn’t as strong as feeling his heart again but at least it’s something.

Other than those changes not a lot has been altered, some lines are a bit different here and there. For some reason Jessie and James don’t show up as vikings anymore.. but now dress like sailors on a paddle boat, which was random.  The best joke from the movie is a alteration when Brock tries to seduce a girl with his “famous Jelly Filled Donuts” hinting at that dubismn and there have been some changes to the layout of the arena. Which makes much more sense the way it is now.  It’s all fairly minimal but I would say that this version has a lot more consistent world building. 

Did it Evolve? 

So is this movie a true evolution? Honestly?! Maybe… It fixed almost all the issues I had with the initial version but replaced them with some others. Storywise it’s a step up from the  dub, sound wise three steps up from the dub and visual.. well that depends on the person. So if I had to say if it is an evolution I’d say yes. However it isn’t a particularly useful evolution. It’s like your typical normal or bug type evolution. It helps your Pokédex out but you don’t really gain that much more from it otherwise.  It’s a more contemporary , cohesive and impactful version of the story. It looks weirder now and packs a bit more punch, but in the end it has the same moveset and really doesn’t add anything to your team. It’s nice that it’s there but the memories you made with the pokemon come from when it was unevolved. Back then it mattered.. right now..only for completing.

Since it is on Netflix I do feel it is the perfect medium to see such a movie, so I do recommend you take a peek at it. I really hope they will do something else with this visual style.. preferably a coliseum like game for the switch or so. For this movie it’s fine, I did not waste time watching it but I also gained little experience. It’s like using an old rod to get a Magikarp in order to train your level 60 Zapdos.  Sure it can be fun to blow the fish away and it offers even some experience, but if we put it in perspective it hardly seems to matter. It’s good with my favorite moment being the “death” scene by the great voice acting. Yet it is also very inconsequential.

XO
Pinkie

I Love The Darkness: Pokémon Reborn

When we think of Pokémon we think of a colourful world full of creatures to befriend. We think of lighthearted stories or in the case of Sword and Shield.. barely any story at all. We think of happy clefairies dancing and lickitung sushi eating minigames. Yet what if we look at pokémon in a different way? What if we go darker? This is what the amazing Rom Hack, Pokémon Reborn is about. 

Terrorists and Hookers

The game begins rather uniquely. You can choose a gender, including non-binary and up to six avatars regardless of what gender you choose to identify with. A nice touch, now you can play as whatever avatar you like best.  After that we get a wholesome train scene. Some guy talks to you about the Reborn region and the gym challenge there. Then it starts. A mysterious incident happens on the train.. and while you drive into the train station of reborn city, the train explodes. Terrorists have struck! While you arrive at the station you encounter a happy and bubbly girl, who was fascinated by the explosions.. she claims to be the first gym leader and tells you to meet her soon. At this moment you get control and you can walk around. Normally there is this guy who tells you that science is amazing explaining new features of the game. That guy is also walking around here! I decided to talk to him. “You were on that train?” He asks me?  “So was my wife”. We all know what happened here and it hit me like a truck!

Just like my hometown!

When we exit the screen we get a cut away scene,  to a policeman who captured the terrorist responsible. The terrorist is tied in a small room, cuffed to a metal chair. When he refuses to talk the policeman takes out his torkoal and tells it to super heat the chair. With the screams of the terrorist we are told we aren’t playing any random pokémon game. We are playing Pokémon Reborn. We get taken to a building where we get one of 21 starters. All the pokémon up to gen 7 are in this game and you can choose each starter. I chose Piplup a choice I came to deeply regret. As soon as we leave the pokémon lab we can battle a few trainers. These are all hoodlums or hookers.  The hoodlums use your standard Team Rocket Esque pokémon while the hookers named Doxies, use baby pokémon who use charm and attract. When you win.. you win 3 or 4 pokédollars…because these people don’t have any money. After a few battles I encounter a group of ruffians who are bullying a zigzagoon (but it can be a bidoof as well if I am not mistaking) they are scaring it and threatening to toss it off a bridge. I call out Piplup to school them! Piplup has a bad nature ..(for now) and I end up losing the fight. When I return to them to save Ziggy.. it is gone. It was tossed off the bridge. I then find out the water is acidic in Reborn City, and the zigzagoon died. I can’t live with myself and reset the game.

Can’t let a good boy die!

A real Gym Challenge

It is time for a new run, I choose my main boy Bulbasaur instead. This game is hard and I will need it’s bulk! Zigzagoon is alive again! Unfortunately .. the wife of the technology guy… is still dead. This time I know what’s ahead and I grind a bit, I even manage to catch a bidoof to assist me. We win. When healing up I see someone selling pokémon for 500 bucks! Sure I will allow myself to be Magikarp scammed! I’ll use a Gyarados!  Unfortunately this is not Pokémon..this is Pokémon Reborn.. I basically get robbed of my money and end up without a pocket monster! However I’d advise anyone to buy that pokemon as it will grant you a side quest that will encompass a fair few hours as you get revenge and go find your promised pokémon. After exploring the first ward in the city I got a hand full of okay pokémon. Bidoof already evolved to Bibarel and I think this is the perfect time to take on the first gym.  I was dearly mistaken.

This is like a Pokemon Game where all leaders are Whitney!

Pokémon Reborn treats gym leaders like actual competent people. Every single gym leader (which includes gyms for each type)  uses a full team of six Pokemon. Not only that each gym leader uses actual tactics. The explosion loving girl is the electricity type gym leader, and while you can not really find any ground type Pokemon to counter her.. her move sets are made to compensate any flaws in her team. Bulbasaur can take electricity fairly well… so virtually every single Pokemon on her team has a move that can hurt it normally.  Not only does this apply to the gyms it also seems to apply to wild monsters to an extent. It seems as if Pokémon in this world have developed better defenses against this hostile environment.

To distinguish gym battles from regular battles though, all gyms are hosted on special fields. These are like the terrains in Pokémon Main Games but more complex. For example during the steel type gym fight, the entire room is covered by mirrors. Every beam type attack is powered up.  Every special attack.. when missed is reflected off the wall and has a second chance to hit..if they dodge that.. you need to dodge as well. If you miss with a physical attacks some of the mirrors shatter and those who miss take damage of glass shrapnel. The Dark type gym is shrouded in darkness.. which empowers dark type moves..but by using electric moves you can turn on the lights weakening dark moves instead. Using electricity again will power up your electric move but short circuit everything out going back into darkness again.  Those are some deep strategies! Now this is a challenge.

Blub!

Suffering and Sorrow can be great!

Now you might think you can just grind levels and overpower your enemies one by one.. but no you can not. You see in Reborn pokemon and human are further apart, so when something is overleveled it stops obeying you regardless if it is traded or not.  Essentially this means the Gym Leaders ace is always the strongest pokémon and you can NOT outlevel it.
Now your monsters can still gain xp and it would be a shame to lose your pokémon because it because unresponsive so the makers made a clever new item. The common candy, an item that brings your pokémon down a level. This way you can still always focus on your team.  The fact that I do use these things a lot is a testament of how easy it is to actually level .. and that is a good thing.. because you might have already figured this out if you read between the lines… the gym leaders use a full team of six that can benefit from their fields. Essentially this means that you have to have a solid team to face them each gym. You can’t just pick Bulbasaur and hope to steam waltz through everything.. you can not  waste a slot on Bulbasaur in a psychic or fire type gym. You are going to need a team made for your next challenge. Gone are the days of coasting you need to work to be a master in this game. 

The difficulty can be somewhat relentless at times, you are constantly fighting a battle against the unknown. The evil organisation in this world is experimenting with forced mega evolution and augmenting or mutating pokémon, which means you never fully know what to expect.  Fairly soon in after the game I encountered a street that was fully torn up.. huge rifts torn in the streets.. a girl crying as her boyfriend just fell to his death by this event… the reason for this is a giant weaponised tangrowth who the evil team is using to tear the ground asunder to unearth something they want to find. You have to navigate across these chasms by bursting through gang territory, by raiding warehouses and saving a popplio from dissolving in acid. The game while difficult encapsules that atmosphere.. you are not meant to make this in one go.  You need to push as far as you can.. retreat to a pokémon center and lick your wounds. You need to adapt.. say goodbye to the pokémon you want to use.. and take that one that offers you an advantage. We are not in Agatha’s ideal world… the stakes are real this time. At times it can feel “not fun” it can feel like you are struggling and suffering..but that in a way is the point. In Reborn you shall not feel powerful.. in Reborn you make due.. and try to get by the skin of your teeth.

Hey no fair!

Reborn is one of my favorite pokémon fan games ever, even if I have yet to complete it. (Updates are brought episodic and I am not sure it is fully finished yet, but at least there are 18 gyms already so safe to say you are good for a solid while). The feeling of this world is so unique and gut punching real that it is truly a sight to behold. We all wonder why people alway play by the rules in pokémon right?! Well in this world they don’t. At one point you challenge a sick fighting master. Yet the evil team is on her trail. She battles with the leader and when she is putting up a good fight, the team leader uses his garchomp, not to attack her pokémon but to cut her in half.  Her distraught pokémon promptly tossed in the volcano and dies as well. People use pokémon as weapons in this world not as friends and somehow it manages to balance it’s difficulty to reflect that. While I loved my Pokémon during my runs of the game, I had a team of about 20 that I had to use. So I did not bond as much to that one pokémon in my party.. as in this game you should really not do that. 

Cause Bulbasaur can’t do *censor peep* against huge Steelix!

This world feels cold.. and sometimes victories can feel hollow. For example a certain gym leader upon his defeat will get so depressed by his defeat that he ends up committing suicide by taking jumping of a bridge. One of the next gym leaders, his daughters best friend witnesses this event as she lives right next to the place where he landed. The sprite of her house even shows stains indicating where he landed. As a result this girl is traumatised and put up in a mental ward. Which uses Electabuzz to experiment with electroshock therapy on children. You have to rescue her from these experiments which leads to an even bigger story line that will have you flee reborn city for a while. Trying to keep this vulnerable kids safe.  Never do you feel in control though. Never do you feel like the champion, you feel like you are being chased and as such this game gets a bit of survivor horror genre vibes. Which resources do you use.. do you stay there and gather or do you try to push on. Which battles have consequences and which reset you? Pokémon Reborn doesn’t feel fair.. it’s not about winning, it is about surviving. 

And evil machine Pokémon!

Amazing design

Obviously a game with this tone can not really use the original soundtrack assets from pokémon. It would not fit theme wise..so the soundtrack has been very overhauled and it is truly amazing. The songs in this game feel broody and dark, dystopian. Gym battle themes feel like you are facing someone truly powerful and boy are they powerful. I managed to beat about 7 gyms so far (like official badges..not including any invalidated ones)  and while they changed it up a bit in the more recent updates I can say nothing but praise for this soundtrack. Each area is so memorable. Simple decisions can be super effective. One gym leader..who feels barely human has the gym leader theme others have played backwards, causing you to feel very uncomfortable. The sound mixes so well with the theme of this game that I would think this is an official product. Very little about this feels ..fangame to me!

 While it uses GBA style graphics and to an extend borrows from  the original pokémon tilesets it goes completely it’s own way. From the water that is a rusty disgusting brown to all the derelict graffiti covered  buildings. From the ash covered beaches of a volcanic island to a toxic wasteland that has it’s grass turn into a sickly purplish shade due to all the chemicals leaking into the ground. This is pokémon like we have never seen before.  The boss pokémon look a bit less official with some sloppy sprite work here and there but they do feel properly twisted for this story. The game also features increased shiny rates and many shinies have received customisations that look absolutely stunning. On one of my attempts, I managed to get a Golem (you can get an item to get trade evolutions)   whose core had a magma-ish glow while it’s rock have been darkened I squealed in excitement. Shinies in this game look absolutely amazing and with the higher encounter raid they made the much needed grind quite a bit more exciting.

Not Pokémon

This game is definitely not going to be for everyone. There is a steep learning curve, and I mean steeeeeeeep,  but for those who like a challenge this game is truly excellent. The writing feels somber but not needlessly edgy..well maybe a bit..but at least it’s consistent to the entire world so never feels out of place.  There are plenty of lighthearted bits as well to make it all tolerable and digestible! It has a pretty great story that does feel like it respects what pocket monsters can truly do. It respects the power that inside. Yet at the same time this did not completely feel like a Pokemon game to me. It feels like a JPRG more akin to Final Fantasy VII or Nier. It feels as if the pokémon are a mechanic .. in a non franchise game.
I’d say they more take on a role more similar to the concept of “magic”. A mage in one game is not persé like a mage in the next. These creatures are not your pets.. and there is no one to evaluate your pokédex and give you shoulder pads. These are your shoulders and together you fight to survive.

These guys don’t Muk around!

Pokémon Reborn is free to play and is fully made in RPG maker. It features online trading and online battling (though I would not expect to much out of that)  and to any gamer who likes darker RPG’s I say definitely check this one out. At a certain point it even gave me Chrono Trigger Vibes (especially in the future bit) .  There are a handful of colourful locations as well but to the pokémon fans who are in love with Pokémon Go and Let’s Go, I’d say.. this is not like that at all. Puzzles are as hard as the battles and require you to actually require you to read some dialogue. However unlike in other fan games where you can get quizzes that  need you to look up stats of pokémon or so on the internet.. or know them by heart ..this game does offer you all the right tools. While hard and grindy it never really asks you to EV train.. or breed… like some of the more hardcore fangames do. This one is all about strategy … and surviving… and I love it dearly for that.

For those interested you click here to get Pokémon Reborn yourself!
Let me know if you decide to play! Remember I love you all! Keep Smiling and Stay Positive! Even darkness can be amazing!

XO
Pinkie

Five Games that Influenced my Life!

Naja from Blerdy Otome is such an amazing person. Not only is she a Blerd with a Blog. She is also one of the core team members of OWLS. She is the person we speak to for OWLS business and when I want to ask advice on dating sim gifts for my friends. Now she is even providing me with content for my blog! In the form of telling you which 5 games have had the biggest impact on my life… For those who have been following me for a while .. I bet you can at least guess two of these.. or at least come close. How many can you guess?! 

Since I spoke about all five of these in tag posts or regular posts before I decided to make a little game of it! How well do you know me?
For each correct guess you get a point! For each sort of guess… .(when you guess stuff like.. “oh.. that one game… with that weird plumber guy.. whats the name again?) you get a half point! Let me know how well you know me by sharing your score in the comments and receive praise from me!

Here’s what your scores shall mean:

0 Points: Clearly you need to Sign up to this blog to learn more!
1 Point: Congrats you have better memory than a Goldfish!
2 Points: So you actually read my stuff huh?! Sugoi!
3 Points: I am impressed you scored better than most of my IRL friends!
4 Points: I am touched, you actually care! Are we friends now?!
5 Points: You REALLY know me well and you read everything! I love you!

Half points are rounded up.. just be sure to add somewhat to the point sentence where it fits best.

The obvious one
Pokémon Blue & Gold & Everything Else
(Handheld Nintendo thingies)

The girl that started out as a Pokemon Blogger  , choosing Pokemon as one of the games that is most influential in her live? No way right?! See if you did not guess I would pick this  you clearly have not been reading anything of my content. However picking out a single game is a bit hard. Pokemon is not a single game that has defined me, it is an entire series. that influenced me. Each installment has taught me something new , each game has its own story for me. I told you the story of my first Pokemon game before. Of course my Pokemon love began at Pokemon Blue which was that first game.. but my favorite game .. and the one I went out of my way to get myself.. with my own money in my own time was Pokemon Gold.

Back when it came out there was a game store a couple of times over I’d frequent. It was helmed by a woman .. I think her name was called Patricia.. but I might be misremembering that. She had this little store and we used to talk about games. Even if I was just a kid , we had a similar taste in games. We were both very hyped for the second pokémon game… which was in a time before it was SUPER hyped with global releases. Back then the Gameboy colour  was not region locked or at least we could play american games on our handhelds so Patricia.. or maybe her name was Saskia…. ordered American version and she kept one behind for me. So when I found out I could play this game earlier than anyone in the school it blew my mind!

Back then my motor skills had already started to decline noticeably so I did not really have anyone to brag off against as I was being bullied..but still! I spend all of my money on that game and I must have finished it at least 3 times per each starter.  This was a game I worked to get, it was the game I earned and it was the game that held me up trough one of the darkest periods. Cyndaquil and Mareep were there for me! But still I do not think that singling out a game in this franchise is possible for me! I love it all.. it’s more than just a video game. It is an experience that for me always meant feeling less lonely.

The Other Obvious One:
Ducktales
(NES)

If you never heard me talk about Ducktales before I am pretty sure you have not read a lot of tag posts. I think I mention this game in nearly every single blog tag I do. When something about music is asked.. ducktales is there as well.  As a kid I always moved wonkey and clutzy.. I got therapy for it but it never seemed to get that much better. My crude motor skills weren’t on par with that of a “normal” person. As such I ran more clumsily and could not hide as easily and sports never where any fun for me. As a result I missed out. Both my female friends as my guy friends kind of began to shun me because I  wasn’t good at the games they played. To give me something to do that did not get me hurt or alienated my mom and dad tried to let me play some video games. The first games I got were Super Mario Bros 3 and Ducktales.

Ducktales was SUCH a good game and too this day is. Whenever I feel blue I put on that amazing soundtrack or play one of the two versions of that game. It’s just so good! I mostly play the amazon and the moon stage as those are my absolute favorites but I oftenly finish it as well.  I think I completed the race to the number one dime so many times that had I actually gotten the dime.. I could pay for the game right now. Playing Ducktales was the first time I felt .. equal to friends who came over.. later even better. Gaming was fine motor skills which where fine for me I could do this like any other normal kid. While gaming I wasn’t any worse and that joy it gave me stuck with me .. and it made me a gamer, that is how I wanted to spend my time. In a way it’s one of the pillars who I am today and that is exactly why it fits here.

Since I try to share different version of this song each time!

The One You Might Remember:
Donkey Kong Country
(SNES)

Donkey Kong Country was one of the first games I was proud on beating. It was a fairly hard game and back then one of the longest games I had played.  There was just so much there. Not that much more than a mario game in actuality but there where so much more mechanics to learn to study, mini games to play, things to collect, secrets to discover.  Compared to Super Mario World this game very hard. Even the last level of the first world wasn’t anything to be trifled with. The mine card stage in the second world .. had me stuck for almost a year until I managed to beat it (I never said I was good). However there was something so appealing to this game that I wanted to get further. No matter if I wiped in the jungle world, the temple world, the forest world, the ice world, the toxic world or the kremlin country! I game-over’ed sooo many times. I reloaded so many stages and honed my gaming skills with this game. It taught me lessons about perseverance and how to adapt and react more quicker. It made me a better gamer.

Beating Donkey Kong made me experience pride, an emotion I had never really experienced before. I could do something some of my classmates did not. Back then they were still talking to me. While I would not say they respected me for it.. they acknowledged I was good in something. A thing that wasn’t important to them sure..but still. It gave me a sense of Identity. The SNES gamer kid that can beat some pretty though games.. I beat the Lion King on SNES too!  It was great to finally be something. This is the point in my life where I became a geek. It might sound very weird to get some self gratification out of something like that but before that I was just “that awkward kid” sure I had good grades but I didn’t do anything for that.. that was just there. I did not study harder as other kids.. in facts most of the time I coasted.. I never knew why other kids hate homework so much because it took no effort. So it did not feel like something I actively defined myself with.. so Donkey Kong and kicking thats game’s ass was the first thing I did. 

You get an extra half point if you hear the song in your head right now!

The one the sharp ones could get:
 A Hat in Time
( PC)

I have not been shy about my love for A Hat in Time, the 3d platforming sensational game by Gears for Breakfast.  Why this one is important? It pulled me out of a burn out as gamer. It came out at a period I was at my poorest. I had no money to spend on games and what money I did spend on it felt wasted. Every game began to feel the same to me.  There was this slog. You had to craft or level even in platformers. Grinding out gear to add playtime, and everything had to be a massive open world, with deep brooding characters.

During the Wii Era I fell of Nintendo like a brick, landing in the xBox 360 camp.. mostly due to it launching with the game Kameo.  Even before trying my hand on some more serious games on PS2 and that xBox that was not the upcoming one. Aside from Pokémon I did not really allow myself to play cutezee games. Which was fine for a while. I had fun with Halo , Gears of War, Prince of Persia, the Arkham games and all that sort of stuff. Fallout, Skyrim, etc. Yet they got old to me. Around the time Breath of the Wild and Horizon Zero Dawn came out.. I thought I was done being a gamer.  Yet a little kid brought me back.

I would have colored you pink if I had that option!

Hat Kid made me see that there still was a play for people like me. It just  made me return to my old loves. The shooter stuff and the fighter stuff I played because it was popular.. it had elements in it that I liked like a nice story and colourful blips and characters but when they added more and more stuff to make it like the popular games it all lost it’s charm.

Hat Kid reminded me what I actually liked about gaming and brought me back to it. I switched back to platformers like A Hat in Time but also stuff like “The Messenger” , I got Mario Marker and in time even got gifted a switch because that was my style of gaming. I found the sort of games I liked and even if I try to  go for those other genres . .like trying another shooter.. I rarely end up finishing those. Yet each Platformer or colourful adventure I touch gets finished. With it’s great Soundtrack, the charismatic Hat Kid herself the unique and super charming levels this game was something I absolutely needed.

I also never shut up about this music!

The Odd one out:
Star Wars The Old Republic
(PC)

This spot almost went to Chrono Trigger or Final Fantasy VII the once that let me enjoy narrative games, that in a way started to make me love anime or at least it’s tropes. I emulated Chrono Trigger and rented FF7 for PC. Yet recently I’ve been steering away from that a bit again. I rather play 10 , 10 hour games than a 100 hour game to be honest.  Yet there is once game that made me discover so much more about myself. Which fundamentally changed me. It is the game that made me discover Pinkie. It also made me discover sides about myself on fundamental levels though some more in hindsight as others.

It gave me a ton of my life’s missions, catchphrases, style and more. This MMO did this in no way through its own means though. I mean sure it’s a good game, and the story lines were nice.. but this game isn’t important to me because of its core gameplay it shaped me because I adored roleplaying it it. The character I made became a blueprint in ways to how I wanted to live my life. How I thought in some things… behind my “filter” of normalness and it shaped me into the person I am today.

Star Wars Roleplay COuld get weeird at times!

Her name was Sy’ra Delina at the end of my roleplay she was about my age but she started out younger (time moved a bit faster in  roleplay in the game unlike for example WoW).Daughter of the Alderaan Noble, Maximilian Delinda and his evil sith wife Ragnya. Sy’ra was  unbeknownst to her father and herself .. bred by Ragnya to eventually be the host of her new body. After her mother murdered her father Sy’ra was shipped to Tatooine, where she was beaten every day and tortured to break her mind. She would be taken out into a cave and beaten bloody. At the end of the day she had to walk through the desert back to the house if she wanted to get dinner. (Her mother tried to feed her hatred believing it would make her stronger in the force) .

As soon as se left the caveSy’ra saw her blood fall in the white sands and mix into pinkish like crystals. A symbol to her that she would be safe for at least a few hours. No pain and she could get stuff like food.. that still at least made her a bit happy. And so Sy’ra would take this lesson and later become “ The Pink Sith” Sy’ra was inspired to be different. Like for me how bullying ended each day after the school bell and how the sound mellows me out still.

After a whole incident with her mother that made Sy’ra lose her mind for a bit.. and other people fixing it she discovered she had a niche to offer in the world of the Sith. The Power of Friendship. While she did offer genuine friendship Sy’ra would never really get into friendships with liabilities or people who made her weak.She carefully picked her allies using her positivity to gain powers well beyond her level. This usually involved other players as well. While many classic Sith players despised how different she was, every honest GM had to acknowledge what happened was fair. Through the power of friendship and positive thinking Sy’ra made a big impact on roleplay guilds the character was in. In the end she became so powerful not trough fighting but because of the bonds she had become untouchable. Those who wished to harm her would have to face an army of pissed of Darths and Lords.

Not my actual character (I lost my pics of her) but the riight hair! The chibi I made once way before Pinkie was a thing!

Unfortunately the camp that hated me was much more personal friends with the GM. and they told me I could either choose to retire the character.. where people would think of her as a friend.. or I would have people begin to resent for no real rp reason but because the character had to much influence in the guild.. even if it was legit.. I had outplayed the other side so much that I had t leave or be reset.

So Sy’ra took her leave from the organisation she was part of , to raise her daughter and go rescue an old friend and with the bonds she had build she would live her happily ever after still. Sy’ra left on her own terms and with her own words. She would have friends for life which people seemed to agree on. Guildless roleplay really burned out for me fast unfortunately but I fondly think back at the character I wrote. Pink, happy, keen on giving everyone advice who needed it. I discovered it is okay to be different and I became more confident in being different. TOR came at a time where I was at my sickest. It was my way to socialise and to have bonds. Based on how Sy’ra gave advice.. people came to ask it to me in real life as well. People feel at ease with me to share deeper things and I loved that role. Not only Sy’ra mattered I mattered. I wasn’t just an invisible person….which really mimicked why I liked pink so much. So Sy’ra is me and I am Sy’ra, one with limitations and one without and the way I want to live my life now is right in the middle of those! Reaching beyond my limits, but  little at a time. Slowly..like a drill… piercing the heavens…

The House Delinda Crest.. In Sith Reading “Friendship is Magic”

So how many of these did you guess correctly? How many points did you score? What are the games that influenced your life? I will not tag anyone as I don’t know who of my readers are big gamers.. most of you focus on anime, so I will open this to anyone! If you REALLY want to be nominated consider yourself nominated if you earned at least 2 points in the game! That way you still earn it on your own accord! Remember I love you all.. I just love those who had a bigger score more now! Keep smiling and stay positive!

XO

Pinkie

Thanks again to Naja! So my dear readers please click the Blerdy Orange Crush to visit her blog!

Pinkie Plays on eBay: Weird Pokémon Listings

It’s time to search for more Pokémon. Since Jason Paige told us to search for them far and wide I have decided to go to the nooks and crannies where you do not normally find pokémon. Now eBay is not a weird place to search for Pokémon as there are plenty to be found. But today we will look in categories where you do not expect them.  Like Antiques, Specialty Services and eBay Motors. We will look at odd items that will make you wonder, why do they exist.. how did they get tagged here or what does this have to do with pokemon?! The search rules, I can only use the tag pokémon in the search bar and can only select from the first 10 pages of hits.  In each I’ll find something I would buy.. something I would not buy and something I wonder if anyone buys!

Category 1: Health and Beauty

Pokémon is not something I would connect to health items… sure I bet there is some makeup .. which happens to be tied in to the item I really DO want. Yet there was a surprising number of health items as well. Items like Pikachu Bandages or heatable of coolable rice packs. So you can create your own pokémon heat or cold pack. A shout-out goes to the Pokemon Bath bombs, who thought it through that children would not like to see Pikachu dissolve in their tub but instead they made bath bombs that release little pokemon. Would buy if I had a bath.

Item that I do want: Eveelutions Eye Brush Set

I am a bit messy with makeup, my eye brushes keep getting lost, and when I do my big make up I usually lose something. I have very poor vision -5, and 4,75 so I am blind as a Zubat when I am in front of my make up mirror.  With the flesh shaped blob that I assume is my hand blocking my view applying makeup properly can be a struggle at times. I would wear contacts but they made my eyes deteriorate even further so now I have pink glasses.
Anyway with the Eeveelutions make up kid not only I would get a set of brushes I want to treat with actual care.  I would also gain a much more lengthy brush which would actually help me with my nearsighted application blobby shape troubles! I would also buy the “thunder shock*  eyes, eye shadow set. The Brushes are about 25 dollars and the eyeshadow about 9, it has some nice zippy colours I could actually use like lilacs and such.

Totally in love with this!

Item that I do NOT want: Pikachu Electric Toothbrush

Now I do like the idea of an electric Pokémon being used for an electric toothbrush but  just look at this thing it is super unpractical. Not only do you get a brush that you can’t find anywhere else, the way you attach it also seems rather unpractical.  The toothbrush looks extremely flimsy as well but is acompanied by a massive chockachu. How do you even hold this thing I wonder. It’s cheeks will light up which is cute…but how will you see it if you are brushing your teeth? They clearly did not think this thing trough.

How do you hold this?

Item that I think Nobody wants :Pokemon Ball Orthoptic Eye Patch Amblyopia Lazy Eye Occlusion Therapy Treatment

Does your kid have a lazy eye AND does he wear glasses? Did the doctor not put a patch on the eye or you want to cover it up with a mediocrely sewn Pokéball? Than this item can be yours for the amazing price of 9 british pounds. You can have your pokeball sewn up to sock for your kids glasses in both a red OR a black patch… in two sizes of choice. Yet I wonder how many lazy eyed bespectacled children would think.. let’s go and see if eBay has something that makes me look a lot  cooler! With a pokéball?! I really wonder.

The pokéball kinda looks like a freaky eye like that!

Category 2:  eBay Motors

So apparently pimping your ride out with some pokémon decalls is fairly popular.  From bonnet .. I think that is the word, stickers shaped like an evil gengar too a Ducati Motor Riding Bag with cute little pokemon on them.. and a lot of  ornamental number plates. This category had a lot more stuff in it than I thought. Unfortunately no Pikachu car.. so for my wishlisted item.. I had to be creative. I am not allowed to drive anyway so meh!

Item that I would buy: Pikachu Steering Wheel Cover

I have really sensitive palms, in the driving lessons I took I always found a steering wheel to be a rather uncomfy thing. Luckily on eBay I can get the softest looking steering wheel cover I have ever laid my eyes upon and it’s shaped like Pikachu as well. I did not know people wanted to have their steering wheels resemble a Pikachu.. but I totally can get behind the sentiment. In fact it’s that hard to get a complete Pikachu upholstery for fairly cheap.  Like for 200 bucks you can pretty much have the electric mouse, all over your interior. I think that would look kinda cute with the pink car I would hypothetically get.

It looks so soft!

Item that I would not buy: Sexy Misty Window Decal

(Bad stuff)

I originally selected this item as the trash I think nobody would buy! Because this has very little to do with pokémon. We see a misty that looks like her outfit is being possed by Senketsu from Kill la kill. Creeping up her outfit to the max. She has a lusty gaze in her eyes and the word cock written all over her tank top. Why she would write that on I am not sure?! There is only one avion  pokémon in that criteria.. Blaziken (and kind of Combusken) and that was not a pokémon she ever used nor seemed to desire. So I do not get the shoutout. She must hold some serious airbags underneath that shirt as well because there would have been plenty of room to write Rooster as well, at least there would not be any misunderstandings. Why is it not on the nobody will ever buy this list then?  Because it was the only item that was being watched during my research by no less than 34 people even! Vagrants!

Item that I think Nobody Wants : Trucker gear stick with Pokeball Gear Knob

There were a lot of Gear Knobs shaped like Pokéballs for Honda Civics during my search.. which makes sense because from what little understanding I have that  stay at home tuner car. Like the Vin Diesel wannabe’s all get a Honda Civic. It’s one of those cars that is driven by people who put weird shaped body parts underneath them and  make it look cooler.. then they go to Mcdonalds and play music really loud from their subwoofer things. I haven’t really heard of pimping out one’s truck though. I mean I saw some pretty pimped out ones.. but that’s usually not really something akin to pokémon. I just don’t see many truckers liking the franchise. I might be stereotyping here.. but  I honestly dont see anyone taking out their entire gear shifty thing to put on in that has a pokeball nob.Surely if someone wants this.. there are easier ways.

Is it even a gear or is ithat other thingy that makes the Wruh-huh sound?

Category 3: Music Instruments

So obviously the Pokéflute is a thing.. however that instrument is actual more like a toy..that based on conventions though.. can still produce a catchy tune. Most of the stuff found in this category is sheet music though.. and some kind of tuning device that features Bulbasaur… it’s nice to see that my boy gets some love. Yet it’s boy.. starters have a very low female encounter rate so we can assume! Of course there where a few interesting other items in this category as well

Item that I do want: Pikachu Electric Guitar

I do love when things come together. An Electric Pokemon.. and an Electric Guitar.. that is pretty neat. It’s like one of those videos where people cut styrofoam things in equal slices or how playdough is made into on big non breaking string.It works. Since the pokemon theme is excellent to play on an electric guitar it works even better. The design of this thing is pretty stunning as well. They even placed the Pika head and tail in positions so you could play it and still show of the pokémon without covering it with your hands and all. That’s neat. Still if I would have it I would not play it.. I would hang it on my wall. It would just liven up any room and does not deserve to be in a guitar case or something… also I can’t  actually play any instrument let alone electric guitar. For a wall ornament though $1250 dollars is a bit pricey.. given that that is almost three months worth of rent for me. If I ever win the lottery or become a famous cewebrity though….

Now I would love to see an Electric Guitar with Galarian Zigzagoon

Item that I would not buy: KORG MA-2, Pokémon Metronome

This is a case of solid idea, bad execution. It’s that styrofoam video again but this time they slice unevenly. Its that playthrough with two mixed colours smudging up destroying the clay. The “electric item” so Pikachu works thing .. for my feeling doesn’t apply. It feels like a rhythm computer is always electric anyway even if we also have analogue metronomes.. it feels like the difference between a car and a bike. Pikachu on a gameboy is meh.. Pikachu on a electric car is clever.  There is a difference..to me. For a metronome they simply picked the wrong pokémon.. obviously it should have been the one pokemon that made metronome a signature thing in the first series, clefairy..or that thing that stole the idea and made it his.. in the form of togepi. If you make a pokémon themed Metronome… use an actual metronome pokemon!

This should have been Clefairy! It would have been Pink! PIIIIINK!

Item that nobody should want: THIS pokéball Ocarina

First of all, why would you even make a pokeball Ocarina.  We already have the pokéflute made into an actual playable instrument.  That is a canon game item made into a real item that sounds and looks iconic. Never did an Ocarina feature in the series nor does this thing actually look like an ocarina. It doesn’t even look that much like a pokéball either. It’s badly painted with some jaggedy lines. Which geek is geeky enough to think.. I would like the pokémon ocarina while for less money they can have the actually Iconic Ocarina in video game lore. A hardcore pokémon fan  would rather want the flute because that’s an actual thing and the hardcore geeky ocarina player would want the Ocarina of Time as it looks much more like an actual instrument.. plus people at cons wil recognise it. To me this feels the same like putting that “mug” your son made on display..without the emotional undertones. For almost 40 dollars there are better ways to spend your pokédollars.

Just so much wrong for me.. But I am sure at least the maker had fun! Which is what counts

Now with that out of the way we shall take a break from eBay for now. Yet there are still plenty of weird pokémon practices going about that I haven’t told you about yet. To find out more about the treasure trove that is eBay and Pokemon please follow the blog so you will not miss the next episode. If you wish me to do the same with your favorite anime show..let me know in the comments. With that I will be off, I love you all, keep on smiling!

XO

Pinkie

Should you wish to help me buy any of these click the cute picture!

The Most Hated Pokémon: Simisear

On “Mon-Days” we put a single Pokémon in the spotlight. Last edition was about my favorite Pokémon Sylveon, so this time we go the opposite route. Today we look at Simisear, the Pokémon, not me, but the world hates the most. Today however we are going to give it some love and attention. Pokémon have feelings too and all deserve some love and affection.

The Ballad of the Trash-Monkeys.
To understand Simisear, we are going to need to look at it’s pre-evolution and it’s little brothers first. The monkeys which oftenly get referred to as the trash-monkeys, Panpour , Pansear and Pansage were developed to resemble the Three Wise Monkeys. You know .. the See no Evil, hear no evil and speak no evil ones.
The origin of these monkey’s actual lies in the land of Pokémon, that’s right Kanto… I mean Japan. Over a door in the Tōshō-gū shrine in Nikkō these monkey were carved into stone by a man named Hidari Jingoro. Of course he carved plenty of other things in there as well, all meant to represent come stuff Confucius used to say. With the monkey’s said to represent the code of conduct and lifecycle for man. At this point I need to point out that in our western world the Monkey’s basically represent the opposite of what they mean in the East.
While in the east, speaking, hearing and seeing no evil is a good thing, in the West we see it as denying stuff , allowing evil to roam the world by not acknowledging it is there. In Japan and then likes, when you see no evil, it means your eye is not turned on vices, when you speak no evil, it means not speaking ill of anyone and when you hear no evil…well I guess you don’t have thin enough walls to hear your neighbours or something, maybe not listen to metal or something… take your pick. Here is where it gets interesting though, the Pan-Pal’s are monkey’s who FAILED at their wise Monkey’s counterpart. Pansage can be seen removing the mouth from his hand, Pansear can be seen putting a hand to his ear to listen, and Panpour is seen peering out, and is just squirting NOT closing its eyes. So while in the land of the rising sun, these monkey’s would be sinners, in our civilisation they should kinda be heroes, for standing up what is right. There you go, looks like those little rascals already got a little more interesting.

Sinners to us, Wise to the Japanese
Heroes to us, Foolo the Japanese

Hearing a lot of evil
With this established, it’s already a bit more understable why these monkey’s get no love, but what makes Pansear and it’s evolution that much more hated? Does it really deserve the hate because it’s a bit of a fool in Japan? Heck no! Simisear might be looked at as a fool in Japan and that shines a bit trough in it’s design. He looks a bit derpy, and like it’s brother is prone to vices. So, part of our problem is we never really understood pansear and Simisear as westerners.  It’s hard to appreciate what you don’t know. Pinkie over here, must admit she kinda likes the design of simisear. Let’s for example compare it to the other fire type monkey.
Infernape is clearly based on Journey to the West’s Son Wukong, that’s kind of why he reminds you of Goku. Yet Infernape in my opinion , even though it’s a lovely Pokémon on its own, is the more faulty design of the two. Gen IV had a lot of “overly designed’ pocket monsters.  Simisear feels much closer to something you can keep as a pet, or use for battling then the beloved Gen IV starter with a hated typing. It’s design might be basic and a tad bland, sure but it actually feels like an animal you can befriend, play with and challenge a league with, Wukong the Pokemon to me just feels like a weapon. Sure it looks dopey, it’s not cool and might have a weird haircut, but it’s an animal.. it’s not Furfrou that we can groom,it’s meant to look dopey because it’s a foolish monkey. Besides, haven’t we looked past stupid hair before… and after. Simisear does not deserve the hate for it’s design.

We can love Simisear despite a bad hair day

It’s innocent!
‘Well, maybe we can hate Simisear then for being that fool, if the Pokédex says it’s an idiot, I don’t want it in my party!’ Of course it’s not an idiot in the Pokédex. Simisear and Pansear are some of the sweetest monkey’s out there. Pansear likes to collect fruit and uses its fire powers to lightly toast them to make them taste nicer, while Simisear is a hoarder and devourer of sweets. Like charmander Simisear has a little flame to keep alive. In case of our simian pal though that flame is inside itself. That little flame is fueled by sweetness. So can you really hate a monkey that just really loves to eat fruit and candies? In its very core it’s quite an innocent creature that is not made and build for battle, and once more that is reflected in it’s very being.

Keep that flame alive little one!

Sure it’s battle prowess is nothing to write home about,  you will not be able to use it in an extremely competitive situation…but neither are so many mons that don’t get the hate. Dunsparce is quite loved, and that has a lot lower usability. Sunflora is objectively the final evolution in the game and it’s not as much shit upon.  Flare Blitz, Grass Knot Life Orb or Focussed Simisear is not that bad to run. It even can be runned as a passable special attacker. It’s offensive stats are decent enough, and it’s speed is high enough to compensate for it’s subpar defences, certainly when choiced. However Simisear was never designed to be one of the competitive mon’s. The Monkey’s were much more of a crutch, to learn new players about type coverage early.  They were designed to take along on your Pokémon journey through Unova without having to care about IV’s , EV’s and the likes. You are given a little monkey friend to build a more solid team around your starter, and though Sycamore might have had a sweeter deal a generation later, I will always remember my first monkey friend, it was a Pansear and faced the elite four with me as a Simisear and I had absolutely zero qualms in using it. You can hate on a Pokémon for it not being cool, or for not being very useful, but by flat out hating a Pokémon just for hating it, you might tarnish someone’s fond memories of their first playthrough of a certain game. Do not take away the magic and remember: When you can only be bitter about this little monster, you might very well be killing a poor little monkey from the inside! Keep the flame alive, be sweet!
I love you Simisear!

Don’t be sad little monkey, Pinkie loves you!

So let’s try a little something to fuel that flame! Let’s keep Simisear alive, by saying something positive about the adorable monkey in the comments, tell your friends and keep the chain going! Let’s make a spirit-bomb of sweetness and love! Poképals, share your love, and stay pink!
Until we read again!