Tag: Pokemon Stadium

Pinkie’s first Pokémon Tournament

I felt like watching TV today, then I realised my tv-box broke. Since my youtubers haven’t uploaded my favorite content yet , yes like 90%  most of it is pokémon related, so I decided to do a little personal story. Inspired by the 30 day geek out challenge, post by A Geeky Gal I decided to talk about one of my first fandom moments. My first Pokemon tournament.

A foul boy
There I was, fourteen  years old, I did not really know where there was, dad drove me much to his dismay. I was somewhere quite a long drive from home judging by dad’s chagrin. I was to excited and nervous to notice any of it though! I would be on tv and win my first Pokemon tournament! i did not know I was not signed up and was there just battling in a no rules anything goes, friendly compo. No real winner, but you get points for winning, or something. I was too stupid to notice, so let’s be honest I was not going to win ever. Dressed in blue, with some pink boots (as I had a copy of Pokémon Blue to play on). Pokémon Stadium was about to come out and today viewers of Fox Kids, could already come and play the game and compete.  Tightly clutching to my purple gameboy colour. It had a sticker of Parasect stuck to its battery tray and upper spine, It had a bit of a fold around the eyes, but I loved Parasect..it was on my team as well.  The sticker also kept me from losing my battery hatch thing. I looked around, seeing the podium where I would soon be crowned the best *cough*. A boy about my age asked if he could see my team, I thought he looked mean and I refused. He shrugged bumped into me and he moved on. I sniffled, see I knew that he was mean!  He then approached a young very blond boy, about half my age, he asked to see his team, the boy proudly showed him. The meany started a new game on the boy’s cartridge and saved the game. The young blond boy was just eliminated from the competition, while smiling the older boy would walk off. The blonde boy cried…but unlike me he would make the tv. The other boy was not just mean anymore he was foul! I was scared! I did not want my dear friends to die. 

Wasn’t actually THAT guy… but my douche was in the dishwasher… so had to use a picture of another one!

Beating my peers
I traded the blond boy my Hitmonlee, a backup Pokémon I had that wasn’t really on my planned line-up. In fact he was even detrimental to my strategy. Someone else traded him a vileplume and another gave him a vaporeon. Eventually the boy had enough Pokémon to play a few matches.He didn’t win a lot..but he didn’t seem to care.
I DID win a lot. My team was made to beat my sister, she had a team of 6 mewtwo, she would catch it, transfer it to me start a new game and repeat the process until she had 6. We would then battle… after a thousand or so losses,I got pretty good at countering mewtwo. I figured a lot of people would enter with teams like this….and I was right. Of course this wasn’t allowed in the actual competition but little did I know I was not a part of that, I never went to things like these before. My team involved me using Parasect to spore a mewtwo to sleep, then use dream eater  on gengar or pin missile on jolteon to finish it off quickly. I also had a dig+surf rhydon and a fly moltres, to avoid attacks. Protect wasn’t a thing back then so those were nice to stall out Fire Blasts. Besides Mewtwo Charizard was used a lot. My bird Hades and rhino Sjaak dealt with that. My last Pokémon was a psybeam, because confusion was neat, Kadabra, my sister refused to give me the trade evolution, which was evolved after the tournament. All in all I managed to create a team what was good against the younger inexperienced kids meta. My sister had little imagination, mine got me a lot of wins that day. I apparently even attracted the attention of some fans who liked seeing a non competitive battler take down teams of mewtwo’s.  Even the blonde boy came to cheer me in, and give me my pokemon back, because he was going home. He thanked me , though I think that was his mother speaking, when I think about it now! Tv folk weren’t interested though!

Sheev and me are pals! Right Palps?

The real deal
At 14 year old I really fell into a bit of a gap. With the internet not being what it is today, I did not know all the details about Pokémon yet, like EV’s and things like STAB bonuses.  I just was really good at reading my sister who picked up what the playground said was the best to use. When the real compo was over and the pro-battlers ended the scene my luck soon dried up. I was trashed by people who actually leveled their mons to 100 rather than using Missingno. Yet those same people were very entertained that I managed to do so well against teams I should not win against. As a result I got this weird form of non-spoken respect and understanding that I would not see again until my first convention many many years later. I wasn’t a real battler, nor will  I ever be , because I HATE breeding and EV training. I wasn’t really part of the “Mewtwo is so cool’ group either. The latter didn’t dislike me for completely trashing them, I won..but it usually was close matches , and the first saw some potential in me. I was this oddball thing walking there that spoke about her Parasect I named Ed like it was my actual pet. Ed was such a swell pal and I genuinely cared for him.
In fact I might even still have Ed on my old cartridge.Baron the Alakazam and Mo the Jolteon would transfer to Johto, only to get deleted after realising Chikorita wasn’t all that amazing. Rest in peace guys!. All in all I had a swell day, I think I even surprised dad at how good at passionate I was in this game, because after that day, he never nagged about me playing Pokémon ever again. On the ride back he even wasn’t grumpy at all. I’d like to think in a weird way without understanding it to much, he was kinda proud of me that day. I had a great day, meeting peers, not being bullied for a a day and being well liked for a while.  It would take me awhile to find that feeling again. I got sick a few years later, just after I moved past the bullying, which prevented me from exploring it early. But that day I will remember, how nice it felt to trade Vuistje the Hitmonchan, the shoulderpats from total strangers and my dad remembering Ed for a good while after.  It was nice to play with fans and be a fan!

Ed, Dad and me driving home after a good day! Seatbelts drawn for saftey!

This short little tale was inspired by the Geek-Out Challenge of “A Geeky Gal’ click on her name to check it out! It was sponsored by the poor services of my telecom provider who donated a significant amount of free time.Special thanks to Ed, Baron, Vuistje, Mo, Sjaak Hades and KISS. Hope to see you in the next blog little monsters! Stay pink!

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Theory: Galar-Gate

So people are very pissy about the National Dex not coming to Galar, though I understand the sentiment I do not think there is reason for concern just yet.
I have my own theory on why the Galar region won’t have a national dex, and the reason can be found in the system it’s being launched on. For the first time it’s a main title on a home console.. that is also portable… but  what did the home consoles bring us before?

Some trust please
First of all, let’s get this out in the open. I do NOT think this is the end for Pokémon and I do not think missing the national dex is of much concern to be,  in all honesty I am not that much of a dedicated battler, because IV and EV training to be honest is just to much of a hassle for me. So, what will the National Dex not being there for me change? Not that much..sure I cant bring some old favorites that I brought time and time again on some old adventures, but let’s be honest I haven’t used those in the main game part anyway, because they are to high level. It’s nice to collect them all, but honestly in preparation of a new gen, once we did it in Gen VII  where would be the challenge to do so in Gen VIII anyway it’s just a transfer circus. So I do not get what the fuss is all about. Nintendo already told you , you will be able to use your old friends in future games. So why should we all do the salty internet thing where we destroy something we love, just because we cant have it exactly the way we want it? I will not boycott this game ,if I want to battle them all, I will most likely be able to on Pokémon Showdown anyway. So big meh. Do we really think Nintendo will just turn it’s back on the competitive battling scene? As if! People make mistakes. Todd Howard made Fallout 76, Blizzard made Diablo Infinite.. or whatever it’s called, EA…… yeah well those are soul sucking evil leeches who do not understand whats gaming about anymore, but let’s be honest that also applies to a lot of gamers. Times change, decisions will be made and even if we do not always agree with them it doesn’t mean we have to storm or burn our favourite studio after one slip up.

The Return of an old friend
Now I trust Nintendo, they have made nothing but good decisions in my book, I trust the Pokémon company too, aside from the Detective Pikachu game I haven’t played a bad Pokémon game…well the minecraft thing sucked pretty hard.
Pokémon from the get go was always several games in one, there was the pet based RPG, where you train your pets and level them up to defeat the final boss. An element that is still very much intact. There was this almost collectable card game, where you had to trade with each other to collect them all, national dex or not .. that is still something we can do, albeit a bit more limited, and then there is large online battle community that uses the whole pool of Pokémon to battle each other. That one right now is damaged, we can not  play that the way we want anymore, and sure competitive battlers can be salty about that… but for everyone else..big friggin whoop. Now , how can we fix the battle problem… if only the main consoles had a franchise of their own that would allow is to transfer all our captured pokémons to pit them each other in an arena without the whole leveling thing and the RPG…..wait a minute!
Didn’t that console with the weird ass ufo controller do this type of thing in 1998?
Yes it did, would it make sense to make a dedicated battler game without bogging it down with an adventure you have to complete to get acces to your z-moves and mega evolutions.. or soon dynamax?. I think it would.I think it’s time for Pokémon Stadium Switch.

Just battling
Sure it sucks having to pay for most likely another full priced game for something that used to be included in the older games, but think about it this way, how much more awesome can they make battle animations when they don’t also have to render an entire world. How much more smooth will servers run if the battling happens on different ones then the new raids and trading? It makes perfect sense to me. We are living in a world where you have to pay for certain extra elements in games and where DLC is almost a requirement. So why not split a game of many elements into smaller more containable segments, it gives you much cleaner results for your analytics. How many people prefer the RPG? How many like battling more, in creating diversification and segregation , there is just so much more room for improvement without polarising the other side. ‘We want harder battles!’ Well making Pokémon harder will make it less likely to be bought by kids, thats a big part of the demographic, making it to easy  the exact same thing happens. But rather than mediate between the two.. why not satisfy both by creating two games. We don’t need story hybrids like Pokémon Coliseum anymore now that we got the main game on the console..we can go back to good old Pokémon Stadium, with variable difficulties and not a world filled with cheaty items and such.. just you and your Pokémon against other online players or stronger NPC’s then you’d encounter in the adventure.
Competitive battling will be ”behind a paywall” but on the other side in the future those who do not care about the RPG element and just wanna battle can also do so, but let’s be honest the real competitive battlers are the ones who buy all the games anyway, and there is virtually no competitive game  left anymore that is as cheap to play as it is for the casual player. In fighting games you will need to buy all DLC chars to understand them enough, shooter games without vanity items are very sparse, and in racers you basically HAVE to buy the new tracks if you ever want to be able to find a match at all.  So I truly feel that around november up to early 2020 we will get the announcement about the Pokémon Stadium format returning with ALL pokémon, being in a game where it will be actually relevant. Hopefully adding in some resources to make raising a competitive mon a bit easier, as in my opinion  there should be no need to hatch 400 eggs to get a decent Pokémon.It would allow us to focus on the new mons for just a while, like Nintendo said, it would make sense with the new Pokémon Home being a thing and it would also mean that what Nintendo said about your Pokémon being usable in future games would be true. I for one would love to see a dedicated battling game that doesn’t rely on weird mechanics like the festival plaza but just straight up connects you and yours friends for a battle. I will at least be cheering as loudly as if I was ‘some guy’ at a Bethesda E3 presentation if they do.

So I might be alone in this but I trust the Big N and the Pokemon Company, I would definitely buy Pokémon Stadium 3. I hope the franchise will make a lot of money in the futre and that the Switch Pokémon games will be very successful. After all I would really like a Gen IV remake that isn’t as slow as the original and if Stadium 3 ever becomes a thing, it might even rekindle my hope for Pokémon Snap 2! But before that day comes to pass , I ask you all to be nice to our Nintendo Overlord, be nice to your Pokémon you put in Home and most of all stay pink!
Untill we read Again.