Tag: The Pokemon Company

What if my Blog was a Pokémon Game? The Paradise Region is Born

Hear Ye Hear Ye, Princess Pinkie has Returned with a new Pokémon Post


My sweet loyal subjects, as you may know I love theorycrafting and coming up with my own concepts for movies and games! I already designed concepts for about two Pokémon games..but non of them were about me! Now that I am a princess , I think we should change that. Sure we have Alola as a tropical region! Yet there were no gyms! You were the first Pokémon Champion ever.. it did not feel like the big leagues! It felt.. like a vacation! Yet what if I were to make my blog and it’s backstory into a whole new Pokémon Region and Pokémon Game! What would we get?! Today I will answer that question for you!

The Map

First of all we will need a general design for our region .. and that can be tricky! Hoenn has too much water for many while yet other people do not really like the whole circle motion you follow in Unova and Kalos. However Game freak really does seem to love this type of movement as you do it in Galar and Alola as well.. although a bit more disguised and tiered.  Luckily Paradise has gotten a map recently that we can use to give both the game designers as well as the pokémon fans what they like. You see Paradise is a heart shaped island, with the resort entrance lying in the tip of the heart and other things being located on the beaches around it.   The heart of the island is set for the pool area, everything seems to flock a bit around that so for our journey we will make the pool area our Pokémon League.  Since we already had a Hawaiian theme.. let’s make this one Mediterranean mixed with cuban elements. Latin..tropical! So let’s call the final city we visit Piscina City.. It’s pools after all.

The official Paradise Map!

By taking elements from our island we can easily make elemental towns! The starting town would be called Registrase which is a rough translation of check in! All around the heart we have some elements that can be adapted. My castle can be translated into a fairytale town, along with a fairy type gym!  Kaiju lake could be a lake filled with mysteries.. which in Pokémon games.. means ghost types.  The Bar or the restaurant could be converted into a fire town, while the docks obviously are the place to go for water types!  While we would be following the shape of the heart  we sometimes can move land inward for some new adventures.. or even go out to see for some water based minigames, or to investigate some strange events with gym leaders or other characters. The gardens could be thick jungle.. boucy ball beach could feature a roadblock pokémon that you can avoid by navigating trough half submerged caves. Plenty is possible, but as an idea we will scale our island up 100 times or so and turn all of our existing elements into towns.

A rough draft of how my Region would look in Pokémon Map style

Legendaries

Patchwork concept version of Patadeseo

Any good generation game has two box art legendaries and in this case it will be a Unicorn and a Duck legendary. A Fairy Fire type for the Unicorn, and a Water Dark Type for the duck! The Unicorn stands for Passion and the Duck will stand for Desire. We all know one can have a burning passion.. or a burning desire.. but in this case, that desire.. is when one pushes too deep. Let them be swallowed/consumed by desire.. let it be all around them with nothing else around.  Like a dark ocean.  The Unicorn we shall call Passiocornio and the duck will be called Patadeseo!  Both spanish portmanteaus of Passion Unicorn and Desire Duck respectively. Of course the duck would look really cool.  Plus words like Passion and Desire would fit really well in a tropical theme.  Of course to sell the games we need to avoid the word Desire so the games would be called Pokémon Passion and Pokemon Conviction.

Passiocornio recolour concept based on art by XiaoDarkCloud

Unlike other Pokémon legendaries who have been attributed to Pokémon life, we find out that Passiocornio and Patadeseo guide humanity, they have the ability to “speak”  through humans through a sort of voice in their head. It keeps the world of humanity going forward. It keeps humanity progressive, without these Pokémon humanity surely would lose the will to go on and become great pokémon masters!  So  you as the trainer will have to find a way to protect both these Pokémon from the evil team. Compared to other pokémon journeys that would have come before.. This journey would focus much more on what it means to be a trainer and dive into the human aspects of this world. Why do pokémon follow humans that closely, why do pokémon grow stronger when working with humans?!  Questions like these will be answered through the story with the legendaries as we really take a look at our part in this symbiosis. 

The Evil Team

Man in Black | Anime-Planet
Team Mahan Grunt

Since I brought up the evil team just now I think that is a good next step to take in creating this world. This time the evil team would take the form of the FBI like people. “Agents” who feel the world is better off with them in control. With them policing over the world.  Events with them would be them selling Pokéballs with tracking chips to people, breaking into a tower to turn around the signal so they can use the radio to eavesdrop on people and potentially them wanting to shut down Pokémon Laboratories because they do not feel 10 year olds are ready to have Pokémon yet.  Yet outside these evil deeds, we also see them volunteer to find every missing kid or help out with other problems in the Pokémon world.. as long as they receive praise and status. I will call them team Mahan. Which basically is a reference to the “The Man”  which is often used for government instances. I feel like having a red white and blue colour scheme would get me in trouble.. so let’s say they wear all black and look a bit like the agents in the Matrix.

Mahan Boss Orwell

The Leader of the evil team is called Orwell and while having a legit reason to be the way he is he will be among the more evil villains in the series. Orwell’s son.. George once took of on his trainer journey much like the player before him. Orwell did not want him to go.. but there was this passion in the boys out and Orwell knew he could not stop him.  Yet on his journey George met an untimely end.. Orwell tried to warn humanity to abolish kid trainers or even children having Pokémon.. but no one would listen and that’s when he realised humanity was stupid! It could not take care of itself… he would have to protect them against themselves.  By Capturing both legendaries he can link everyone’s Passion and Conviction and complete .. the Hive Mind.. a machine he can use to pierce the subconscious of all humans, this way he can protect them from themselves and enslave mankind .. free from it’s whims. Such a theme will be chosen because it meshes well with what Paradise and me are about.. but it also ties in nicely in the exploration of humanity story that is this game.

The Starter and the Rivals

Sobble crying is pretty relatable for me... | Fandom
Sobble Cries because all the starter Elitism and hate

That is right I wrote rivals as a Plural, so this means we are going to have multiple rivals in my game! Symbolising the variety of content you can get on Paradise. However this game will not feature all rivals such as Sword and Shield or  Kalos or any other multiple rival game.. no this game will only have one of them, you will have two.. but who they are all depends on your starting choice.. where in lies the biggest difference from all Pokémon games. You see I do not think we need more pokémon persé. With a Biodiversity of over 920 species we don’t need THAT much more. I’d rather see some extra regional variants to make old pokémon more relevant again maybe with an evolution here or there but I do not think each generation needs 100 extra pokémon. In my opinion one of the most toxic things about new games coming out .. is the starters.  People are SOOOO ungrateful when it comes to new starters.. and we have taken that whole grass water fire thing far enough! People are never really happy anymore.. which is why I propose a radical change in how starters work.. I will make a more in depth post about that some other day…maybe!

luizvc's Custom Pokemon Type Symbols | Pokémon elements, Pokemon, Pokemon logo
Pick what type of trainer you want to be!

My idea is that instead of just being asked what your preferred gender is, we also get a question about what your favourite typing is. From that question you will be assigned a pokémon of that type as a starter.. as long as it follows a few parameters, such as knowing an offensive move at level 5 and learning an additional one that gives a Same  Type Attack Bonus by level 15. You can get ANY Pokémon from that type in the game.  Which makes it a much bigger surprise and will make replaying your game feel more fresh. Your rivals would also change at least in my game.. they are bloggers based on your strength and weakness.  I’d pick fairy for example so my biggest Rival would be A guy everybody loves that uses steel type Pokémon and who is very friendly and loves doglike pokémon. 

Variable Rivals, this one might be the fire user

My weakness Rival would be this busy bee girl who specialises in fighting types but also carries a gardevoir as her magical girl. She lloves to lift weight and talk in length about her Pokémon on Radio Shows. Two very nice behavioured rivals, but say had you picked the Psychic type, one of your rivals would be the mysterious man with a one letter name  who would use dark types and act all mean.. even though it is just an act. He wears a tophat and talks with movie quotes a lot.  This would also impact the story at least in an illusion of choice kind of way. Where my steel rival with golden eyebrows  happily tags along you to defeat Team Mahan, a certain anime blogger for example has much less time..and is probably drunk.. so instead she rushes ahead.. only defeating half of the trainers.. leaving you with equally plenty experience to gather from these trainers…but the with your battles unfolding somewhat differently.

The League

The Fairy Type Gym Leader

The Paradise League would feature 8 gym leaders like normal, and they would be based on characters I have on my blog albeit less stolen. Instead of Nakiri Alice as my chef, we’d get a cook, that is also a chemist that loves cooking with his fire pokémon. His gym puzzle would involve gathering ingredients and applying some science to it to produce the correct dish. If you fail.. a clean up crew comes along.. they are annoyed that they have to work now and will attack and battle you. The fairy castle town will feature Chibi Pinkie as a Gymleader dressed like a jester! She wants you to give gifts to the Princess subjects.. they give you a small description of their desired gift..and if you give them the right one.. they WILL honor you with a battle. If you give them the wrong gift they get sad and Jester Pinkie will be angry and become more difficult in battle.  Other gyms would work in similar ways with gym puzzles involving a chore or event that is tied with Paradise actual location.

The Elite four is very simple!  It’s my writing Staff. Indigo would be a steel type user with Bisharp as his ace, Kuro would be a ghost type user with a Regional and better Dusknoir as their ace. Sunny would be a water type user and his ace would be a shiny Milotic that you see raise him from a Feebas earlier. The most ugly fish now turned beautiful is a great metaphor for Sunny.  Periwinkle would be a Dragon Type user.  Dragon’s symbolises his need to put obstacles in his own way by playing super shitty games! His team has a lot of Outrage users and he is an elite 4 leader with a twist. His Pokémon are of a higher level.. but they function like they don’t always obey him.. much like traded Pokémon of to high level.  Periwinkle’s Pokemon are so powerful he soldiered through.. but you need to take advantage of this by using paralysis and confusion tactics to fight him.. it’s not just sheer offence!   His signature Pokémon would be a Druddigon to symbolise this character best.

The Paradise Elite Four
Palm SIBERIA (Character) | aniSearch
Lovable Socially Awkward Professor Palm

The Professor of the Region is a part of this gym journey as well, she is a female professor called Professor Palm. She looks a bit like Palm from Hunter x Hunter as well and her gimmick is that she is massively socially awkward. She represents the geek in all of us, and while she can passionately talk about pokémon… each time she becomes aware she is doing it she freezes up!  She is the polar opposite of professor Sycamore and talks in a very stuttery wayl She is actually a woman of science and has that scientist nervousness! She isn’t a people person and is a bit awkward around children. She will be a fun addition to the Pokémon professor family! She truly is a scientist who dedicated her life to Pokémon. She will utterly be able to talk to the main character and then introduces us to the follower Pokémon mechanic after which she speaks to you trough your Pokémon. “Bulbasaur Tell Pinkie that this Pokédex can register all types of Pokémon” Kawaii!

The Champion

Can you beat the Paradise Champion?

At the end of your journey you would face the champion of Paradise and that would of course be yours truely! Throughout the journey you encounter me a few times. I’d  follow a princess theme!  So I’d be dressed regally like Iris and have mannerisms that hold in between Cynthia and Diantha.  An Amalgamation of the best elements of every female champion. I’d be the ruler of the island as well but this time we will show a person in power is actually not evil! I am sweet!  During the game I will use several teams but always carry my Sylveon with me.  I will  mention that I use several pokémon so all my friends can go out to play. When I support the main character I will carry a team of five pink pokémon, mentioning I have a sixth but people would go crazy if they knew I had it! Early in the game you can find me adopting a lost stuful! 

My champion team would fit a princess theme as well. I would have a Kantonian Rapidash to symbolise my unicorn. A Sirfetch’d would be my knight  and Bewear would be my teddy for tea parties.. speaking of tea parties , I’d have an Appletun and Polteageist to be the sweets and tea of a princess party. My final Pokémon would be my Ace Sylveon! I carry that everywhere I go. I know I said Rapidash isn’t in the Pokédex.. and it is not!  It is mine and mine alone! It will help simulate the bratty part of the princess. In My rematch team I use a hybrid of my pink team and princess team. Chansey with Toxic as a lead, Sylveon as an Ace, Bisharp instead of Sirfetch’d for coverage.the teapot would probably still make the team as well an Ariados would make the team for more toxic stalling options and finally I would have a Mew.. which we would give a new form, cause we gotta make some sales! And that  is how Paradise became a game!

The Champion and her first Pokémon League Team

And that is how I’d imagine Paradise as a Pokémon Region/Game. How would your blog look as a Pokémon Region?! What would your champion team be? Do you think my team fits me?! Let’s talk geeky, though I might be napping! Because remember! Friendship is Magic, but dreams are even more wonderful. Oyasumi!

If you want to help me fund this game.. ..but realise I am joking here and you just want to support me.. consider helping me out by buying me a cofee.. or as I like to call it .. A Royalty.. once again Oyasumi!

This or That: Which Pokémon is Tastier

Where did I put my new headgear… frick! Oh well , hi Island guests!   I decided to have a bit more fun with my blogs and well that means I am doing a lot of silier topics rather than reviews!   It has made blogging a lot more fun! Yet also a whole lot less  useful!  So let’s hope you read these things because you like me or my content rather than that you read my stuff to see if an anime or game is for you! I came up with a new little concept where under certain conditions I pit two options against each other.. and then I  pick! Today we will answer the important question! Which Pokémon will taste better?! I only want the finest cuisine now that I am going to ascend manager status!

Beef:  Tauros or Miltank

There aren’t all that many Bovine options in Pokémon, Bouffalant escaped the Abattoir because of the relation Miltank and Tauros  seem to have.. almost as if a male and female side of the same coin. We all know which one  of the two is scarier, but which one of the two would be tastier?  For those of you who don’t know, yes it is established that people eat Pokémon and these two are the most commonly mentioned being turned into burgers. Fan theories basically say they are the same pokémon in a way but gender variations..like Gardevoir and Gallade as it were. Or Glalie and  Froslass. So we already start with a pickle.. they will probably taste fairly similar. Tauros meat will be a bit more muscular and chewie while Miltank is a bit more plumb and has more fat.

So  I do believe that Miltank would be the more commonly used protein. It has the less pronounced taste. However I do believe that Tauros would be the more flavourful one. Miltank lives off its own milk a bit..which I can only imagine reducing it’s taste.  Tauros seem a bit more wild.. and might have a bit of a gamey aftertaste which I really could fancy..but best of all, Tauros has multiple tails.. Oxtails are great in taste and for soup  and sauces. Good for graveys as well.  So I am convinced that Tauros is the more flavourful one. Yet is it always  tastier?! The common population says  no. Chicken Fillet is still a lot more popular than chicken thigh and people really prefer the more neutral tasting meats. I however am not the safe cut kinda girl! I prefer the pieces of cow others pass up on , so I’ll go bull as well!!

Pork:  Grumpig or Pignite

I’d make chicken a category but there is only one chicken pokémon, so I think white meat is scarce in the world of Pokémon. So let’s pick our source of Pokémon Bacon. PIloswine is another option but I’d say that that again is more gamey and it would be the Miltank and  Tauros story all over again. Besides Ground, Ice type sounds like the meat would be really tough and would need to marinate a lot.. we don’t always have time for that so for today we will  compare two pigs with similar body types. Pignite is a fire fighting starter from the fith generation, while Grumpig is a psychic type from the Hoenn region. At first glance the latter has a lot of things going for it. It’s a psychic type that is known for using its psychic powers to eat berries. Which means it will have a lot of sweet, subtle meat that could be delicious! I am also very interested in eating something purple!

On the other hand Pignite is a fire , fighting type. The meat would be more firm and probably not as flavorful as it would eat whatever 10 years old starting their journey would feed it… so it will probably be fed a lot of pot noodles and redbull. Yet it has a very plumb body and some fats that can be beautifully rendered. I bet it could taste nice with some apple and thyme, maybe some sauteed onions. The most important clue to which one is the tastiest we find in their pre-evolutions. You see Spoink the prevolution of Grumpig dies if it ever stops bouncing on it’s own tail.It has an insanely stressful life. 

Stress can be tasted in an animal. Alternatively , Tepig is a starter which means it is bred to be friendly towards 10 year olds. Which means it probably has a plushie little life as soon as it is born where it is groomed to be friendly to be people.  Which I assume would be done by getting food, pets and other forms of love.. so it hungers for that same type of affection in a 10 year old.. those who evolve to early or who aren’t picked live with the professor for a while .. but some will eventually just be sold off for meat, but before that a Pignite will have had a good life.. and you can taste that. Besides it’s a fire type!  Which means it practically is self crisping bacon! That alone would make it the winner.

Duck: Kantonian Farfetch’D or Galarian Farfetch’D

So since I wanted to do at least some form of edible bird comparison I settled on a bird that I love to bits… but also love to eat!  Ducks!   In this case.. we even compare the same Pokémon.. but  from different parts in the world. You know much like how Irish Mutton is kind of tastier than Dutch Mutton. And yes while I would love to have a pet Duck, I still would eat them. Same would go for other pets.. on the premise they were bred for meat.. not as a pet that got  not picked and turned into meat instead.   So which one of these ducks… would be the tastiest. They both have a leak, in varying sizes. Galarian Farfetch’D has the bigger leak so I think it is safe to say that would be the tastier leak! It has also much more rich and vibrant colours.  Ratio wise I also think Galarian Farfetch’d would be the more balanced meal!   

Yet when I look at the duck itself I can not help but feel that the Kantonian Farfetch’D would be tastier. I do not know why… but sometimes you see a pig or a cow and think.. that seems like a tasty animal.. while other times you think, eeeew, I don’t want that in my Big Mac.  It’s that whole Bancho-Vibe Galarian Farfetch’D has. I’d think kissing a princess would be nicer than Kissing Jolene Kujo or  Poison from Final Fight.. would be not as  nice of a kiss then  Sailor Moon.  Sometimes you just know these things right?!  I feel Galarian Farfetch’D would be the junkfood duck! The one that ends up in the peking duck at that budget chinese restaurant while Kantonian Farfetch’D would be found at Bistro La Duchesse du Carnard Douce, or something!  Now it would be awesome if we could mix and match! Kantonian Bird.. with Galarian Leek.. but that sounds like that might be a delicacy I can’t afford.

Fruit: Cherubi or Applin

I failed to come up with a good vegetable this or that. My initial idea would be Oddish vs Bouncesweet.. but Oddish is Poisonous.  So out go the turnips. Then Amoonguss versus Shinotic for Mushrooms.. but Amoonguss is poisonous.  Shroomish and Shinotic are too different. In the world of Pokémon.. if it’s green it is most likely bad for you!  The kelp of Dhelmise drains life and don’t even get me started on how many leafs might actually be Razor leafs?!   No it’s best not to eat your veggies in the world of Pokémon!  Fruit however offers a few options. Cherubi and Applin are both tiny pokémon with relatively low stats and a mostly harmless move pool.  I think Applin might learn apple acid….but apple vinegar is a kitchen staple so that is safe. Apples and Cherries are both fairly popular fruits but both have a bit of a problem. The cherry has mutated into having a second head which might be a bit of an unsettling sight.. after all cherries might be to tiny to cut off the face.. so for those not wishing to eat something with a face.. this could be trouble.

Applin however is an apple that has a worm in it.. only in this case the worm is a tiny dragon.. somehow this causes it to merge with the apple and the idea of a worm in an apple is a pretty gross idea. Besides that there are plenty of normal apples in the pokémon world, but cherries are uncertain. Why eat the one apple that can fight back? I personally think that a worm living in an apple and having merged with said fruit is probably ceviched in the apple acid and might actually taste nice, still it is a pretty gross idea.. much more so than a two faced cherry!  My favourite cake is a Black Forest cake and my favourite fruit is a cherry!  Though peaches are close.. but since there is no peach Pokémon.. I had to pit the cherry against the apple.. and while the Apple definitely has the  tastier evolution.. I can’t escape the feeling that the little red guy looks super tasty! Both in it’s regular AND shiny form!

Dessert: Slurpuff or Alcremie

Let’s end with desert!  This one is a tough one. Alcremie is very VERY close to being my favourite Pokémon of all time, but could I imagine myself eating one?!  Yes!  Alcreamy is the whipped cream Pokémon, decorated  with fruit and other things. That is pretty tasty! I loved whipped cream, it is neutral and you can make a delicious dessert with it by combining it well.. it’s everything’s best friend!  Slurpuff on the other hand is a Meringue. which means it is egg whites whisked into stiff peaks and usually a lot of sugar! Meringue is a great desert if you combine! Like with Sea salted caramel and dark chocolate.. or with lemon!  Slurpuff also has a great nose .. amazingly so!  So he can help you find the ingredients… but that is kinda cruel! So I won’t do that! I really love Slurpuff and Alcremie so I would need to eat pieces of them in a dish I can not make a dish with them!

Alcremie has a big pro over Slurpuff though, it comes in many flavours and options!   Depending if you spin your cream right or left and how hard you can whip there are 71 Alcremies for you to whip up including it’s gigantamax cake form. However there are a few pretty gross sounding Alcreamies as well! Mint cream with Clover?!  Salted Cream with Ribbons?!  Those don’t sound very tasty… but they do look adorable. So this begs the question.. do we compare the average Alcremie flavour against Slurpuff.. or the best tasting one?!  Caramel Swirl with Strawberry sweet Alcremie sounds pretty delicious!  Or how about a Lemon cream with Blueberry one?! Pretty good if you feel like something more tart!. There is an alcreamie for every mood! And they are not that hard to make either! Meanwhile for Slurpuff you have to find some whipped dream… and I might prefer that to eat that over a Meringue. Plus spinning is good to lose all those calories Alcremie will put on!

And that’s it! A feast of Pokémon has been served! Which ones do you think I called wrong? Do you have another good idea for a This or That?!  Which Pokémon would you not mind eating? Let me know in the comments while I go rest up after such a hearty meal! May all your pokémon be tasty! Oyasumi!

Pinkie Writes: What if Ash was a Girl Redux: The Kanto Story

Hello again little lights! Did you know Moth’s love beer and bananas?! No that doesn’t have to do anything with today’s story I just wanted to say it! Wait does that mean I am drunk all the time?!  I don’t want to rip off Irina! Maybe she is a moth… then again.. she could just be Russian.  Lamp!  Uhm! Anyway it is time to rewrite Anime. What If Ash was a girl was one of more popular SEO things.. so I decided to pick it up again, as I strive for being a Moth VTuber. Let’s take another look at this story from the eyes of a Moth VTuber.. from far above.. and a little more impatient.. so rather than a series we will cover the entire first season in a single episode.

From Ash to Ashley

Ash is a late 90’s anime character that functions a bit as a blank slate. He is the son of Delia and Ketchum and (unknown father)  I am not even sure if he is a Ketchum or she started using her maiden name again. What we DO know about Ash father.. is that he is a Pokémon Trainer who to this day wanders the world to be a Pokémon Master. However since he never came up we can assume his achievements are.. nothing to write home about. Travelling without getting results. Thus Ash is almost a carbon copy of his father.. at least for season 1.  In the late 90’s the boy character would be a copy of the father while the girl character is a copy of her mother.. with a twist here and there.. and so we can establish a good baseline for Ashley!   Ashley would be a very different person than Ash.. as she would more likely be much more like Delia than the father. Which will result in some interesting changes in this journey. Delia having a more educative mind would mean Ashley would be a bit more studious and way less rebellious.  Since the Ketchum household does not have a man of the house it would also mean professor Oak  would probably have a much closer connection to Ashley!  In the pictures we see him take care of Delia in her husband’s absence so with no man there that offer would extend to Ashley!

This will lead to Ashley being much more knowledgeable about Pokémon from the get go but also a lot less brash.. It will also lead to Ashley not having a Pikachu as her starter.  As a result of her more girly upbringing she would have watched the study program her mom would recommend , rather than a battle show that makes Ash toss his Alarm clock to shreds. Ashley being like Delia much likely has all sorts of plushies around to grab instead.. plus Delia being  closer to her daughter would make sure she would wake up in time.. as well as Ashley herself having set the Alarm way earlier…after packing plenty of underwear. Ashley would arrive at professor Oak on time, knowing a lot more about what it would take to become a Pokémon master.. researching like her mentor.  Thus she would pick Bulbasaur as her starter.. naming it Flora.. because those who don’t nickname their Pokémon are terrible people! Like naming your dog, dog! Since she is more like Delia, she takes care of her stuff better. Naming her plushies and all that, which she will also do with her Pokémon.

Note: The Ashley Models are actually based on Episodes off Ash Crossdressing. He does this about four times in the entire series .. I simply recolored to match Delia more closely

Bye Bye Butterfree

Ashley would set off on her journey and like Ash encounter the spearow and pidges. However.. since Ashley has always been  protected she lacks Ash bravery and boldness. Instead she sees a flying Pokémon and it is super effective against her Bulbasaur, she would not dare to fight. At one point she would just flee from an angry looking Spearow and run away screaming. This would lead her to meet up to Misty who gets her Tsundere mode activated because Ashley is scaring away the fish. The two begin to talk and Ashley calms down.  Seeing a girl in a dress with all her underwear wrapped in plastic, rubber kitchen gloves and who knows what else in her backpack makes Misty be curious how this girl would be a trainer. She seems more like a Housewife. Hearing Misty talk about water Pokémon would interest Ashley however.. those are weak against her Flora, she could catch one of those. Misty teaches her how to fish and the two bond a bit.  Misty has a bit of a youngest sister complex.. but this girl makes her feel like an older sister a bit. She decided to teach the girl her ways and travel together until she reaches Cerulean city.. with Ashley learning to catch a Pokémon and catching a Poliwag.. naming it Dewdrop.Misty reveals her Staryu earlier.  Since no Pokémon are hurt the pair doesn’t go to the Pokécenter. Team Rockets raids the Pokémon Center and gets away.  Since the pair of Misty and Ashley had no urgency they would arrive later, only seeing another successful rate by Team Rocket.

Passing through town Ashley would pick up a strange yellow stone, she has no idea what it is.. and it seems to have fallen from the sky. Something seems to be inside it, this will come into play later and assures we can keep Team Rocket an element in the story. They go to the police office to turn it in but Jenny refuses to take it.. it’s just a stone.  Ashley calls up Oak and tells her she is in Viridian city like Ash did.. Professor Oak tells her it looks like amber.  The next day  Misty and Ashley travel into viridian forest and encounter Ash caterpie like usual.. but Ashley is a girly girl.. so she is scared of bugs! They run away and Caterpie feels a bit sad. No Caterpie means no food to distract Pidgeotto.. so no Pidgeotto either. Ashley does notice though there are a lot of flying Pokémon.. so in the Viridian forest she actually finds.. a Pikachu.. they are there and Ashley constantly has encountered so many flying types would want something to deal with that. Ashley’s Pokémon will be Gender swapped from the ones Ash will have, so all her Pokémon so far are female.  She does manage to catch a Pikachu which she names Amber.. after that weird yellow stone. Ashley would tend to groom her Pokémon a bit.. dress them up, because as per Delia’s advise.. she carries WAAAAAY to much stuff. Rather than facing the Samurai in Viridian forest, here the pair will encounter Team Rocket for the first time.  They want that stone back.  Knowing they are Criminals Misty refuses.. even though Ashley wants to avoid conflict.. the pair get in a fight and using her new Pikachu , Ashley wins her first battle.. Less convincingly so though!  Team Rocket then plans to get the Old Amber from Ashley for their boss.

Note: In Pokémon Games it is a semi tradition that female trainers have female Pokémon, this only came into play later.. but since Ashley nicknames Pokémon and grooms them it comes into play earlier. Also girly Pokémon were already shown in the series hence the decision

A Sweeter Brock

With a team like Poliwag and Flora you would think Ashley would not lose to Brock.. however since she was afraid to battle her pokémon had no battle experience causing her first loss. Flint helps her train up her Pokémon and discover some battle spirit along with Misty trying to help as a training partner. Misty already reveals her Starmie.. allowing Flora and Amber to train against it.. unlike Ash , Ashley DOES win her first gym badge legit on her second try.. Brock sees her growth and that same desire he had when with Ash would occur. He would join them on their journey.. trying to seduce Ashley a bit but Misty harshly puts him under control.. like she normally does.  Traveling with two girls Brock’s demeanour would be a bit less Casanova and instead make the seduction a bit more subtle.  Since Ashley is knowledgeable , Brock doesn’t need to be the exposition canon he is in the original, nor does he have to be the constant chef. He needs a bit of an alternate function so instead of cooking, he actually makes pastries.. making actual Jelly filled Donuts and of course still his Pokésnacks. He also functions a bit like a motivator for Ashley.. he often tries to defend the party but will often get taken down forcing Ashley to step in..so in a way he is like.. pastry chef Krillin.. in terms of roles.

During the next part for a while there won’t be any major changes in the story. The only difference is that in the fight between Ashley and Misty.. which in the original got interrupted by Team Rocket, is already over by the time they step in. Ashley knows Misty well and she already has more insight in her team and with Delia’s character evaluating abilities she easily outstratgesises the impatient Tsundere girl.. slowly we see Ashley come to enjoy battles more. Mostly though when she knows she can win!  Team Rocket gets defeated as well like always.  The Poké Tech university episode we will retcon as the introduction of levels in the anime was retconned anyway! Instead they encounter a school where they play Pokémon Card battles.. those cards had levels and just would be a sport of its own! Cross Promotion to sell other media seems like a good pokémon thing as well.  Everything at the school got retconned later so might as well get some mileage out of it.

Next we get to the point where Ash caught his Starters.. however there is a problem. Squirtle and Bulbasaur in particular are redundant to Ashley’s team.. so instead all three of our heroes get one each. Brock catches the Bulbasaur using his Zubat, Misty catches the Squirtle as it’s a water Pokémon and Ashley gets the Charmander. Ashley is a lot more careful with her catches so she does not hit her catching limit as fast as Ash. However during the Gary encounter it is revealed she has a major crush on Gary.. who in return has no respect for her. During the first part she would not have met him. Ash saw Gary leaving and he was late and live far away. So Gary must have been kind of late as well.. thus not have an encounter with Ashley early on.. at least he would not have picked a starter yet. Because she was there a lot in his youth he keeps thinking of her like an annoying little cousin and being a total jerk like he normally would. “Smell you later” makes Ashley think he likes her perfume and she is in some heavy denial, looking up to Gary and his giant Krabby she goes looking for her own.. Tiny Krabby is caught but only after seeing Gary’s first.. Ashley, missing two Pokémon however still has room in her team so Krabby stays in the party.

A Better Trainer

The whole “No Thunderstone” event in the third gym doesn’t happen. Ashley would not use a Pikachu against Lieutenant Surge anyway, her electric attacks are not effective. Instead she is worried about this battle, and Brock offers to trade his Geodude for her Krabby, (since the trade on the SS Anne won’t happen because there is no Butterfree)  she agrees but like Ash with his Butterfree decides to trade it back and face the gym with her very own Pokémon. She already got attached to Ruby. Here we see her take an Ash-like Strategy for the first time, making Poliwag hypnosis Surge Magnemite and having Charmander take it down afterwards. (Which is super effective, because Steel typing would be a thing even if it’s not discovered yet) The second fight is Bulbasaur versus Raichu and using Leech Seed, Ashley wins this battle. .realising that Surge quickly evolved Raichu will lack speed. She wins her third badge and Poliwag evolves into Poliwhirl. One major Retcon on the SS Anne event i would like to make is that James isn’t as cruel to his Magikarp.. it is later established that he is such a sweet guy to his pokémon even if they aren’t strong enough. He doesn’t buy the Magikarp at all because him having a Gyarados would kind of be overpowered. Instead he spends his money on trading cards and gets a “rare” card.. that is just a sticker taped over a Magikarp. The rest of this part happens as per usual.

Now events won’t change until the Sabrina gym, though Brock and Misty begin to comment on Ashley not catching a sixth Pokémon. Ashley however says she doesn’t want to send a Pokémon to someone else unless she absolutely needs to .. she won’t catch a Pokémon in vain and then have it not of use to her! Once again taking more after Delia. The Sabrina fight would see Ashley overwhelmed, however.. being the knowledgeable type and an understudy of Oak she knows that getting a Ghost is kind of useless.. after all the only ghost type here is weak to Psychic. Instead she discovers the laughing trick herself. She sends in Krabby and Sabrina chuckles at it’s size and Kadabra chuckles as well. Ashley will let Krabby make funny faces and foam beards and beat Sabrina with it! Brock remarks that Ashley has super sharp training instincts..(much like Ash does)  but also has some  serious knowledge and ghost type wasn’t good in her time! Also.. we are not making how often she dies into a meme! So no getting crushed to death my a chandelier!

Different but the Same

From here on out we see mostly small changes or seemingly small. Ashley does catch the Primeape like Ash does, the cap Primeape stole however is in her bag! Her father left the hat, and she keeps it with her a lucky charm of sorts. Which means Primeape can actually keep the hat this time around. The Erika Badge is where Ash crossdresses for the first time.. however there is no need now, this means no Rocket intervention in the fight , but Ashley struggles a bit more due to not having anything that is effective against the Grass trainer other than Charmander.. which she did nickname Fresa by the way. Krabby was named Ruby and Primeape she named Captain. Captain helps her a lot in this fight as it is neutral against the Celladon city Gym Leader, while most her pokémon are ineffective. She really wants a flying type.. and maybe a Rock type to face ice and bug pokémon better as well and of course flying.

Why did I mention the nicknames? Because he liked the cap so much or she in this case. Why do I bring these nicknames up now? Because this is the point where Ash gave away Primeape his second pokémon, Ashley however never had a Butterfree to give away… and she won’t give up Primeape either.. since she nicknames everything she is even more bonded to her Pokémon so she can’t give it up.. Also  there aren’t that many fighting Pokemon and she would know!  Rather than leaving Primeape at the P1 challenge right now she promises that once they win the Pokémon League they will do this together!  Primeape wanting her to be part of that agrees. Captain stays! So will all her Pokémon.

Ashley catches Muk and like Ash finds it smelling nasty.. However after learning Koga is the next gym leader she keeps it on the team, Nicknaming it Amethyst, she sends Ruby to the professor for now.. but will be seen swapping Pokémon out a lot more than Ash so none of her Pokémon would feel neglected.. she would wear a little mask to  interact with Muk though. Most other events would stay the same except for some Pokémon choices.  Ashley instead of Tauros catches a Chansey which she names Fabergé in the Safari zone and an additional one to send to her mom to help her with household chores. Now that she is gone she wants to provide help for her mother! Much like Mr Mime did in the original.. but Ashley’s mind would go towards this a bit sooner. No insane amount of Tauros though.  No Tauros what so ever instead when Ash fails to catch the Snorlax.. Ashley succeeds and she replaces the Muk slot with it. She names it Moon. Why does she catch an original owned pokémon?.. It’s not owned this time.. and now having a Bulbasaur , A Pikachu, A Poliwhirl, an Old Amber and a Snorlax you might see where I am going.. Ashley’s team will evolve towards being more of a team that resembles Manga Red’s .. because the two have a more strategic mindset and it is less starter heavy, making them seem less OP and her more like a real trainer.

Ashley’s Charmander evolves and it begins to disobey her. Unlike Ash this means she doesn’t keep it on her team, she has a stern talk to it.. taking a bit from Misty’s teachings and just sends it to Professor Oak telling it to come back once it listens to her or it won’t battle anymore. She then takes back the Krabby since the next battle will be Blaine. The Togepi thing happens like in the anime.. but Ashley feels really upset Togepi chose Misty feeling something is wrong with her. She finds solace in her own Pokémon strengthening their bond. Nothing changes until the Blaine fight.. on Cinnabar Island Ashley would revive the Old Amber into Aerodactyl.. to stop Team Rocket from ever bothering her again. She names the pokemon Marble. Marble replaces Flora for the next fight while asking Flora to talk to Fresa at Oak’s. With  Ashley swapping Pokémon in and out the feeling arises that everyone is more a part of her team all of them come with her on the journey. 

Like No One Ever Was

Ashley completely washes Blaine away and is beginning to win easier and easier, showing how much she has grown.  After getting troubled by Jigglypuff again, Ashley actually catches it, setting a trap for it while wearing Earplugs.  She is like her mother and wants to take care of it and the Jigglypuff clearly feels neglected. She can’t let that go so she goes out of the way for Jigglypuff to be included. She names it Sir Good Knight (as Jigglypuff Originally was a girl and all Pokémon get get swapped) and sets it to professor Oak for him to use it to tuck her Pokémon in.  Up until the Viridian gym battle we see no changes and even here there are very little changes. Team Rocket Battles Ashley and they are defeated as per usual.. however.. here Team Rocket is defeated for good! As we see them blast off again leaving the badge.. they fall into the Police station of the Jenny  where they robbed the Pokécenter first, they are put in jail and never return to the show again.

The Pokémon League starts the same, and most events that happen beforehand would take place in a very similar fashion.. again just with some minor battle variants. Gary would win and so would Ashley.. this time Ruby the Krabby evolves after ACTUALLY getting experience and it makes sense that it dominates the fight as Ashley actually trained it up pretty nicely! Ashley wins her second and third round without much trouble much like Ash and in the fourth round we see Gary get eliminated like he normally would. The bellsprout fight happens as per Usual except Ashley now Actually has  a bond with Muk so it makes more sense. 

Ashley asks Gary to cheer her on.. but he tells her he doesn’t have time to see losers lose, or something else Gary likes.. Ashley gives up her toxic crush on Gary but has trouble focusing on her battle with Ritchie.  A mirror match,  in teams happens in the fact that both use their Pikachu with Ritchie’s one coming on top.  In the end due to a swapping error on Ashley’s behalf due to feeling so hurt by how cruel Gary was she sends off Fresa the disobedient Charmeleon having taken the wrong Pokéball from Oak wanting to get Captain or Snorlax or whomever. Charmeleon sees his master is heart broken and realises she will be more sad if she loses. She remembers being rescued by Ashley and how much she loved it .. realising how much a brat it had become Charmeleon evolves into Charizard and beats Richie’s Pokemon. Ashley moved to the final 8.

Captain, Moon, Flora, , Fresa, Amethyst and Marble would carry her into the final four!  Ruby, Amber, Dewdrop Fabergé and even Sir Good Knight would carry her to the final. A parcel would be delivered to her.. from an unknown sender. A cap much like Captain has.. but girlier.. made to fit her sits in a parcel, with underneath it a Waterstone to evolve Dewdrop into Poliwrath. Did her father send this?! Is he somewhere in the audience?! As Ashley walks into the arena for one final match we skip forward in time leaving the ending ambiguous. Three friends are walking on a road that splits into four other roads. 

Everyone holds and it seems like everyone is walking a different route. We don’t see dialogue… All we see is a close up of Togepi crying as Misty is strolling down a route by herself.  We then hear footsteps catch up. Ashley joins her best friend telling that even though the journey may be over there are plenty of elements in the pokémon world left to uncover, she has heard that in some far away regions people do shows with their pokémon. She also has heard about a region called Johto so maybe she could try the gym leader challenge  there.. maybe she’ll win …. before it is revealed if she will say “This Time” or  “Again” All her Pokémon burst from their Pokeball to tackle hug her! Showing us she won’t just give them up.. A hand reaches out to pick her up and it’s Brock. “Whatever our next adventure will be… we will do it together”  An ending card would reveal some next generation pokémon!

The Biggest Pokémon Fan Game Pinkie Ever Played: Pokémon Rejuvenation

Hello again my sweet island guests! Yes this will be my second post of the day!  As we will do that now!.. Not always but I am for it!  While I try to do an animini each day I will also try to keep up my regular content…with the option to more freely skip one of my bigger posts here and there! So strangely one to two posts a day is most likely going to be less work! Those hours saved I can invest in this Pokémon Fan Game I have been playing! Pokémon Rejuvenation.

Pokémon What?!

Pokémon Rejuvenation is a HUUUGE pokémon fan game from the creators of Pokémon Reborn.. that Pokémon game with hookers, suicides, murders and pokémon being tossed into acid. While I loved the game for it’s dark tones, in hindsight Pokémon Reborn might have been a bit needlessly Edgy. Having a criminal team member cut a gym leader in half is fine and all.. but tossing her pokémon in the volcano and forcing her bisected upper half to watch her pokémon melt.. was a bit much.  Seeing a gym leader lose it all after alianating his daughter is fine.. and then him commting suicide ..does bring awareness that these are actual humans sure… but having his corpse plummet into the room of his daughters best friend, who then goes catatonic and put into an Asylum where she recieves Electroshock therapy by electric pokemon torturting her… might be overdoing it a bit.

Rejuvenation gives us the pleasure of having a slightly more “contained” story.  There still are deaths….but they are more so implied. The game brings some elements of magic to the story. People using the power of Arceus for themselves, people finding abilities through ancient spells to compete with pokémon a bit and people utilizing the more advanced technology and pokemon powers more into their everyday lives. Thus this game becomes more like a classical Pokémon story but made for an adult demographic. You play a main character that is significantly older than 10 years old as well and more in 16 year old to young adult range. In this game your mother gets kidnapped by a cult and the ship you are on gets sunk by the evil Team Xen. This attack seems to tie into you or your mother.. but you have no idea why!  There is also a connection to a sacrificial and apocalyptic cult that sends people to Arceus..for this world is certainly doomed. A young girl is trapped to relive this cycle of being sacrificed over and over again…but maybe in your generation she fights back.

Like in Reborn you can choose your own prefix and He/Him, She/Her, They/Them , separately from your avatar. This is always nice, though only important characters will really address you as the correct gender. Most characters will address you Gender neutral… which is still better than the endless being called him of other fan games. The game also has another big advantage over it’s older brother and that is… EASY mode.  Yes I know. .. that sounds like a babies way out but if you ever played Reborn and like me do not want to have to IV and EV train everything and carry 18 different teams and level them up.. this is a godsent.. and while the game indeed is easy compared to Reborn, next to the official Pokémon games easy mode still provides more than a challenge. With many special field types like in reborn affecting your attacks.. it still provides plenty of chances to be tactical for you and your enemies. With some confidence I can say that this is THE Pokémon Fan game for Adults…maybe next to Pokémon Fire Red Rocket Edition.

The Trainers

That is a lot of praise for me to give to a game I haven’t even completed yet. However after spending over 60 hours in the game, and probably over 70 by the time you read this, I have a fairly good impression what this game is about. one of its major strengths are it’s characters. During your journey you encounter a lot of trainers that seem to be based on the archetypal pokémon characters.  For example there is one boy who really wants to be the very best.. like no one ever was… but he doesn’t really have the skill to back it up. As a result he gets into a lot of trouble and is disillusioned and somewhat bitter. We encounter him a few times and we have to make choices…at one point we face a Gymleader of a xenophobic town.. she staged a play to show that outsiders can be powerful and inspiring.. right before the battle we face and defeat him and get a choice whether or not to let him face the gym leader before us. However there is too much at stake.. an entire town might never trust outsiders if we let the boy go first.  So we have to step on his dreams.

Then there is the poison gym leader called Venam. She is a brash girl living with her mother..but she is extremely loud and a bit Tsundere, we see how in a way she is similar to the character of Misty but instead of being an anime character we do get a lot of exposition on why she is the way she is. We get motivations that interest us in her as an adult. She tries to break free of her mold.. but that results in her mother kicking her out.  She has to deal with things like an adult.. like how is she going to survive and pay for food. All of it contributes to her character. We also have a battle girl whose father works for the criminal team. We see her believes being shaken and see her go on a journey  that fits someone who is on such a journey…much more than just doing the gym challenge she is doing her journey as a little soul search. Then there is you as the character. While you do not have THAT much development the way your journey across the gyms is being done is great. You are facing an evil organisation..of tremendous power.. you do not take the Pokémon Journey to be the champ.. no you use that journey as a measuring stick for your abilities. To see if you are good enough to face those who wronged you!

The game offers you a few moral choices which influence the world around you to an extent. Most of it is by experiencing the story but the game also offers you a subquest  system. For example you have to deliver a love letter from one guy to another.. and include medicine.. However if you are like me and are too poor to do the quest at that time you end up seeing them becoming friends rather than lovers. A psychic girl who has powers akin to those of trainers in the main games.. can’t help but abuse her powers, they corrupt her to an extent.. not into a bad person.. but into a different one all the same. Each location you visit and all important people you encounter have logic behind them. A city close to the woods is built from Lumber, a city worshipping Giratina over Arceus has found themselves being the subject of religious persecution in the past.. however while the rest of the world grew up.. and grew past their old bosses these people never could. We really get a WORLD we treat trough.. not just a map!  We even get Shadow Pokémon you can snag and purify! So it just about brings everything Pokémon ever offered in a single cohesive world as well.

The Pokemon

This game uses the classical pokémon up to generation VII , so no Galar Pokémon… right now.. the game is still being updated so who knows they might arrive soon! Some Galar music already made it into the game.  Much like Reborn the game introduces some new Mega Evolutions and their own variety for story events called Breach Pokémon. These are pokémon from a different Dimension that function like boss encounters throughout the game. Movesets of Pokémon have been slightly altered to be less “broken” and not give you access to anything overpowered early game. Sometimes enemies get their own signature moves. For the most part though they do remain the same. This does mean that to an extend you can use Serebii to help you build a team to encounter some obstacles. However that is not the way I like to play it.. because this game also has custom shinies. These are VERY well done shinies and almost all are unique and vibrant.. you’ll WANT to see a shiny and you can.. because shiny encounter rates are at almost 1/100.. compared to 1/8192.  So I play this game using only shines.. I only hunt the first I find per route and then I have to move on.. easy mode allows me to play this way and I am having a blast discovering these new forms.

Trade evolutions have been fixed and as you go along pokémon get increasingly higher base stat totals.  Which means that if you have a new shiny.. you’ll most likely want to put it on your team and some of your old one end up phasing out.  With the exception of a few statics here and there ..(which are pokémon you can see in the overworld and can only encounter once)  you slowly upgrade your team, your flying bug type vivillon gets traded in for the flying fire type Talonflame.  Your Ambipom gets traded in for a Traveller and so on. You are constantly upgrading your team and even though this game features a lot of mandatory grinding the high shiny encounter rate and the fact that you are always upgrading keeps the game fun.  With the difficulty on easy you can still use Pokémon you really like..as long as it isn’t Shuckle or Dunsparce ,yet you are very much encouraged to have a team larger than six. You swap out your pokémon, and to facilitate this there are pokémon switching stations everywhere! To help you train new team members or give you a more tactical advantage.

Grinding is made very doable by giving you access to a speed up mode, and high level wild encounters. In fact most wild encounters have higher levels than the trainers you encounter. The trainers however use more solid strategies. Each gym caps your level at a certain point after which in easy you can’t progress and on higher difficulties makes your Pokémon rebel against you…which you can undo by feeding them reverse candy. So you can not over-level either way.While it is pretty doable to level your main team with story content, if you need a specific pokemon or encounter an upgrade to your team you  can grind those up within a few minutes. You get the Exp Share early and grass encounters give plenty of XP so the creatures in this world really fit and facilitate the game.  Habitats also make sense if you know the pokémon. For example inside cities you will encounter doves, cats and trash eating pokemon, while the wooden cottage type of village has plenty of bugs. It does do better with this logic than the actual games so hey good on them! And if you don’t like hunting Pokémon.. there are a fair few achievements you can hunt to buy battle items for your Pokémon.

The Atmosphere

So this game provides a great and vibrant world,that feels much more like a living pokémon world than most officially produced worlds, with exception for stuff like Twilight Wings for example,  and they offer the perfect biological diversity in that world to be exactly the game they want to be.  This is Pokémon for adults. This is also reflected in just about everything else.  The music is stellar, recomposed tracks from all the other games, but those rethreads are amazing and SO atmospheric.  The controls are the standard RPG maker controls that are used for just about every other fan game I ever played, with a few extra conveniences such as a soft reset button and up to four registered items being assigned to the F-Keys. The game expects a certain type of player, someone who is passionate about pokémon and geekdom in general and it facilitates towards that rather than offering full on accesibility. Which is great… this is a fan game.. out on the internet for free.

My Graveler’s shiny pattern for example is based on Steven’s Universe, other shinies refer to some other products geeks will likely have seen or at least heard of. There is a museum in the game and the art on the walls are Gen I sprites of Pokémon.  Dialogue has subtle references to movies , anime or other geeky matters without being too obnoxious and  in  your face. Everything this game does oozes that is is made for people like me. It takes a heavy pro LBGTQ stance with you encountering many gay or bisexual characters and it being made a non issue. We get no Big Gay Al, or a gay couple getting better treatment in the story than other characters.. they are just a part of the world. It all has a great atmosphere, almost as if you are at a convention.. as a geek you understand all these characters, either from a cosplayers perspective or deeper down.

The game manages to use technology in a much more sensible manner than the regular pokemon games. Spinny panels are a thing.. but they exist not as a puzzle in this world they exist as a security measure.. they send you over an electric surface that will paralyse you if you do not know the password to turn it off.. or an alarm tile.. will not just send a pokemon towards you..it will get you captured. Gameplay and atmosphere are interwoven in this game. A puzzle never is there just for the puzzle’s sake. If a pokemon traps you in their lair and you have to do a jump puzzle.. it’s not just doing a jump puzzle.. it’s the collapsed area of an old passage that said pokémon have turned into a place for them to play it’s layout exisits for a reason in game as well. Often the game answers these things right about as questions pop in your head, this game knows the kind of person you are and uses that to deliver a potent package.

The Negatives

The game isn’t perfect, there are a few minor issues such as the fact that during a puzzle with some followers you are able to trap yourself.. if you save it then and there you might have to restart the game. I also experienced slowdown during my shiny hunts  if I was watching a youtube video alongside it.. so while it’s not a big issue.. this game really wants you to shiny hunt and not being able to have something to distract you can be tedious with longer encounter strings.  The game doesn’t always play fair some bosses see, to use gen I like AI that chose moves based on your input. Gym Leaders often have custom moves that can at times be brokenly OP if you do not have an encounter. Yet these are all very minor issues.

One bigger issue I have though is the lack of a journal. Where regular games are mostly a track from A to B and then to C and so on… this game has a lot of “Did you hear that Venam was training with a new move” kind of hints. Oftenly these lines are only ushered once so if you come out from a battle with speed up on and you miss an important line of dialogue there is NO way to retrieve it and find out where you need to go next.  This would be fine if you did not have to backtrack as much as you do. You do visit old cities on a regular basis and thus your next step can be anywhere around the HUGE world map.  So it’s best to keep a little notepad lying around if you do not play regularly. Nothing would suck as bad as forgetting you have to speak to this person two towns back next time you play.. and then a week later you forget.

Another issue I did encounter more then once is that some NPC’s are placed in front of objects you need to interact with. I am not sure if this is a part of the puzzle because if you look REALLY well you can just barely make out a few strange pixels behind said character but it would be quite a stretch to call it noticable. There game has a forum where you can search or ask for answers but the player base isn’t THAT big, you could be stuck for a while.  Some characters require materials like Shards as payment like the difficulty adjusting guy you can meet in the first town..however it’s not made very clear that he needs shards. He says he can give you a free difficulty change the first time.. so if you think Easy is to simple you can switch..but if you are like me and then realise that Normal is so much harder to a point it’s not as fun for me… you can not change it back until you obtain shards after the fifth gym. Luckily I had not saved since changing .. .but the game can be obnoxiously vague!

The Score

I still think the Rom Hack of Pokémon Rocket Edition is better for the hardcore pokémon fan, the little insights in the official story is much more appealing to everyone, this is much more a do your own thing  kind of situation where they basically create a whole new alternative world with pokémon.  I do very much enjoy that myself but it is a bit “novel”-like  there is a lot to read and not a lot of reading you can skip either. Since these people talk like normal humans they will not neatly end with the line where to go next. They will say bye.. or thanks for helping out last… which will be the line on repeat so prepare to read! 

The flaws it has though in no way hold a candle to the great atmosphere it has, the briljant way everything seems to be connected and the almost flawless pokémon/world design.. I mean Pokémon design as in.. who lives where. This is definitely a treat to play for both inexperienced as well as experienced trainers IF you at least manage to comprehend the typing chart a little bit.  This game treats you like a gamer.. like someone who is capable of forming a strategy and using their obtained knowledge of pokemon in a meaningful manner. This is a pokémon game for me… and I can even play a girly trainer with pink hair!
This is THE game for me! This is Pokémon for adults… playing it does feel rejuvenating.

A Pokémon Urban Legend: A Look Lavender Town Syndrome

Greetings once again mortals! Pokémon is a tricky subject to put in a Halloween context, I could talk about Creepy Pokedex entries but I have been over those several times already so it is time for something a bit different. A creepy story surrounding Pokémon. A Urban Legend if it were. A legend called “Lavender Town Syndrome”

A mysterious event

In the year 1995 Junichi Masuda was working on a track for a spooky town in the game of pokémon.  However his hearing doesn’t pick up certain frequencies that are in this mix.  Little did they know this would have serious consequences. February 1996 Pokémon Red and Green are released in Japan and everything is great, the game is a huge success. Yet in the spring of that same year the country is suddenly terrorised by a string of suicides of young children. They have no real connection or so it seems.Many of these suicides came completely out of the blue with some of the childerens having never even displayed somberness before. 

A link with these children however is made when more and more children  start showing up at the doctor’s office complaining about serious headaches. As it turns out, all these children have been playing Pokémon Red and Green! By the time a link is found over 200 Japanese children are said to have committed suicide. All of them have their game files saved in or near Lavender town. The theory was made that in a high frequency register there were a few tones that could only be heard by the untainted hearing of your youngest. On a binaural level their little brains were harmed. Nosebleeds headaches and various mood swings were detected in the children all across Japan, and Nintendo and Game Freak rushed out a fixed version where the tune had been changed into a lower register, cancelling the effects of this cursed song. 

A risky test!

A creepypasta that came out  in the year of 2010 dubbed “This the Lavender Town syndrome” While this disease was confirmed to be a hoax there might be more to this story.  The song actually does seem to wors on a binaural level. As tested by several people, standing long enough in Lavender town with the original rendition of the song leaves people with a mild sense of dread.  In some cases with more troubled listeners it is even said to have provoked anxiety attacks. This song has since leaked to YouTube so of course I decided to listen to this song for an extended period of time. I can feel rather somber, and I have over the past year on several occasions considered self harm or even beyond. So obviously I would be vulnerable if I had perfect hearing!  Would it affect me?! I could post the link here, but just in case there are very sensitive person with a compulsion to click on every YouTube Video.. I rather not!

When I started this test I did not not believe the myth. It has been more or less busted already, yet something did not sit right about me about the theorie! But more on that later. I listened to the song while I was doing other research for this post. About twenty minutes in I started to experience something!  No it was not  melancholy or headache, in fact it might not even be dread, instead I began to feel rather vulnerable. I was super grateful for my can of diet coke.. glad I still had that and that it was properly cold!  I also really loved my little snack I had with me. I did not experience a forced emotion but I felt slightly amplified in my own. That was still pretty weak though! I could just be under the influence of my own body craving something sweet.  So I took a risk and I looked up an edited version which claimed to have an amplified effect.

Once more up until the twenty minute mark nothing really changed..except for the fact that since I appreciated my snacks so much they depleted rather fast and I was upset about it. Yet 21 one minutes in I began struggling with my internet research, I did not remember what search prompts to type anymore. I forgot the existence of some of the simplest words.  I began to feel a vague feeling of dread but as it progressed it almost seemed as if I was experiencing sleep paralysis while I was awake. For some reason I felt I was going to die. The enhanced track is 11 minutes long and after the fear set in I finished the track but after that I had to turn it off.  That certainly was an odd experience.

The explanation of Lavender Town Syndrome is rather wrong but the creepy pasta is cleverly developed. The Version of the Pokémon game we got in the west, is basically a 2.0 or 1.5 version from what Japan originally got. The first version they had was quite a big mess filled with even more glitches, ugly sprite work and other flaws. This let to an update being published that did include a slightly altered version of the original lavender town syndrome. This already creates a credibility that there was something wrong with that song. It was something that had to be fixed. Yet there is no real clear explanation of what happened with the real song. It seems some complaints were shared between the real reason and the fake one.. but we do not know for sure. Yet why would you release an entire new game that just has some slightly better sprite work?!  In 1995 the Virtual Boy was a thing and those complaints about headache induction were also never fixed.

My grandpa used to be a hypnotist and while I never really had the audience or the patience to read trough the dry material that he had on how to practice that he told me that we can make people do just about everything if you can set up a suggestion well enough. For example he would do this act where he drew a circle on the floor and put people in. He would tell them they could not exit the circle. He experimented a bit with that and found out that a black or red circle.. or a white one worked more consistently than if he used other colours. Green and Blue were less efficient. Red means stop.. so it is much easier to convince the brain to stop!  This to an extend can explain “validation” of the Lavender Town Syndrome as well.  We KNOW something is wrong with the song.. so it’s not hard to be fooled into thinking it is more harmful than it actually is. Could we be hypnotising ourselves into these effects without knowing it? Or is someone else trying to hypnotise us?

The Science of Sound

The issue with the legend is that it only seems to apply to kids! This is where things go wrong. It is implied that in the high frequency range subliminal messages are hidden. Soundwaves CAN affect the body, however when it comes to sound the higher the frequency  the easier it effect is “scattered” and lost. What is inaudible to us most of the time means  you have to touch whatever is causing the sound. So already can see the chance of it having an effect being decreased. However Pokémon did appear on the Gameboy, a handheld device.  Making range.. improbable but maybe still possible. If  ever played a Gameboy in the dark you know how close you need to hold it to your face or how you have to play with it. The second problem is that in my research I never found a documented proof of high frequencies, being used as tools to induce depression. So the myth that kids here do something that tells them to kill themselves seems busted. It is most likely something to make the story a bit scarier!  As it targets something so innocent as a kid! If we assume that Lavender Town Syndrome could affect to everyone though it strangely becomes more realistic.

 There is a counterpart to Ultrasound sounds in the form Infrasounds. These are tones played at a frequency of below 20 hertz and are outside of our hearing range. However these tones have a big range and can reach you more easily. It seems that these sound waves can affect the gasses in your lungs and to a lesser extend the liquids in your body as well. Turbines or certain engine sounds are known to have these types of low tones and these can result in people getting headaches and experiencing nausea. Prolonged exposure can also produce feelings of anxiety and confusion. These symptoms are all very similar with the beginning stages of Lavender Town Syndrome. Could it be that the original Lavender Town song did not use high tones but instead got it’s effectiveness from it’s low tones? Could they have accidentally put in these sounds that make people anxious and can give headaches?!  Well a little more research shows it might not even have been accidental. While an engine/generator or a Wind Turbine creates sound as a byproduct there is one fairly well known entertainment source that in fact uses Infrared for it’s anxiety inducing effects. Infrasound is fairly commonly used in haunted houses!

Lavender Town is the haunted town so it makes sense and even seems that they probably designed their song like one in a haunted house. It hits that brief for me as well. So maybe they just overdid it and a few sensitive kids got sickish. Yet could it drive people to suicide? Unlikely.. at best it might be able to push people over the edge. Which is much more likely to happen from something constant like a Turbine than a limited area song such as lavender town.  Can sound make you depressed?  Well .. I did not find any documented causes of a song or sound causing a full on depression however.. the counterpart of Infrasound.. the earlier mentioned Ultrasonics have gained results in combating depression. People exposed to high doses of Ultrasonic sound can get cheerier. With these two sounds basically being counterparts I think it is fairly plausible that in high enough doses the opposite can occur as well.  It will probably require serious extended time that is unlikely to occur but it might be possible.

Over the Edge

Now for a possible hands on experience with what I shall refer to as “sound poisoning”. It occured about 11 years ago. Over my life I have experienced a few times where I wanted to end everything.. but never did I have difficulty to fight off that compulsion except for one time. I was on a vactation with friends! I knew I was prone to seasickness but my friends really wanted a boat trip and did not believe I would get super sick. They wanted to have a fun day with me.. so I took some travel medicine and hoped for the best.

We decided to sit in the middle of the boat as much as possible as a compromis so I would not get sick.. however since my motor skills are clunky I was slow in navigating the ship and the bow spots were taking So we had to move to the back. We were sitting close to the motor  and this boat had the engine basically right beneath us. Just 10 minutes of shore I began to feel queesy and before we even began to talk about the stop at the “secret” beach.. I was sick as heck! I was so sick and nauseous that I just wanted to stop feeling like that .. at any cost. I REALLY wanted to jump  headfirst into that screw so this horrible feeling would be over. It wasn’t THAT long of a boat ride either just about an hour…and by the time I was giving up the ghost we were already halfway there. Still even a minute seemed to long! I wanted to end it all right now just to stop feeling so increddibly sick! I have never been AS sick on a boat.

In actuality , I should be in a rather favourable spot! I had taken medicine to alleviate travel sickness and I knew I was prone to this so the night before I even went light on the drinks and the partying. Yet for some reason.. I felt so horrible to the core that I still remember that feeling as the most misserable I have ever been..and I’ve been trough a few other things.
It got to a point that I asked my friends to go deeper in the boat with me and not sit by the screws or things I could harm myself with because I needed a way to stop myself. My friends told me to fuck off because they wanted to look over the water and did not feel like moving to a spot with less view, one friend saw how bad I was and decided to come along though. We looked for some crew and in my best Spanish I tried to explain what happend..he helped me to an English sailor who took me to an off limits cabin in beneath the bow that the crew would use to get away from the annoying drunk people on their boat and have a little moment of quite. It also doubled as a lot of other things… but there was at least a table and some chairs in there.

My friend went back and I had a brief talk with the sailor who got me some water, as by then I was full on crying and so colour shifted that small kids on the boat were scared of me. I spend the most of the remainder of the trip there alone, and later on the way back I was completely alone.. but within a minute or 2 of being in the room and sipping my water I began to fell better. The secret day at the beach was wasted for me.. there was free barbecue and booze but I may have drank two small bottle of water and other than that spend the day recovering from my feeling horrible.

On the way back I thought. .. I am gonna die again.. but while in the cabin I felt was less sick. Sure I just lay on the floor of that room with my eyes closed waiting for the trip to be over.. but when I emerged as we were docking.. all my friends were sick. Except for one. They came to check up on me and after they took a stroll across the boat, spending some time in the front. My friends who sat above the engine all felt sick and one even glum. Could it be that our negative feelings were amplified by the Infrasound?! I can’t confirm it.. but while I have been forced on a boat after that.. I never felt THAT horrible! I did not even feel the same on return trip when I was “less” exposed to a source of Infrasound. So while I did not end up jumping to my death.. I am fairly certain that IF it was “Sound Poisoning” that day.. prolonged exposure can definitely push you off that edge. There are also sound devices that make you sick .. as some sort of prank device.. and my friends who never get sick plus some other people in the back got sick as well…so I always assumed it was plausible.

Theory

In an extrapolation of that let’s take a look at the Lavender Town Syndrome again and make it sound a bit more probable. From experience I have experienced anxiety and a crippling effect to my mental fortitude by a prolonged exposure to the original and enhanced Lavender Town Song. It triggered a need to escape from it and after which within minutes my fortitude returned to me. It also was nothing strong enough to compel me to any acts.. it just made me feel significantly worse. More so an amplifying effect for the negatives than creationary.
However from first hand experience I have also been pushed very close to that edge with similar complaints with or close to a possible source of Infrared sounds. So the myth is not without ANY merit. While playing through the game however the song isn’t played long enough to really receive a high enough dosage of sound to notice any effect as they only become apparent after the 20 minute mark. The way the town is structured no one will be out that long and exaggerated effects only trigger after 40 minutes.. which makes it near impossible.

However if we apply a simple modifier to this story things begin to make sense again. You see Pokémon released in February of 1996.. and in the early spring of that month the suicides have been registered. So these suicides happened somewhere in between February and the end of April.  So I wondered.. could people feel bad in that period?!  A little research does show that those months are within the Japanese flu season. It would account for the increased amounts of doctor visits as it already is flue season more people will go to the doctor. “Sound Poisoning”  enlarging your complaints seems possible so that kids felt sicker than with normal flu sort of makes sense.  My dad told me switching a device on and off uses more battery power than letting it run for a bit so if I took a five minute break I would often leave my gameboy running.  When your sick you play more sluggishly and eat soup in between and  maybe watch some tv as well… shiver in a blanket who knows.  So if we assume these are just sick children staying at home playing video games and idling about a bit .. I can see their symptoms get worse. For those very susceptible to these things I can see them get VERY sick and hopeless.

Perhaps they semi doze off with their handheld besides them and take on longer concentrations of sound. The need for peace and quite in Japan is already a bit higher so there being little to compensate might be possible and given how stressful the japanese school system can be they are already more inclined to depressive thoughts, as a known statistic. It requires some unlikely change of events to occur but the myth might not be fully impossible. If we take the super gameboy into account for example, the SNES peripheral that allowed you to play Pokémon in semi colour..with pokemon having their correct base colour all of the sudden.. it makes a lot more sense on why you would not briefly turn off the device when you eat a bowl of soup. That is also THE way to play at home without draining your batteries.  In a set up like that Lavender Town Syndrome would be more likely to occur.  One does not simply get up when feeling super sick to turn that off.. you just go limp and wait for the strength to turn that off.  as for how effective sound can be.. there are prank devices that use Infrared sound that are pretty crippeling. There are devices using it that are as effective as a bottle of Epikek and I have experienced how depressing intense nausea can be. 

So while it is unlikely that there is a Pokémon induced string of suicides.. it is  not impossible. It would be improbable enough that this could easily be covered up or discredited as a hoax. By simply helping spread the rumour that it is from high tones and making it exclusive to kids it becomes an impossible story. However!  Pokémon back in the first generation was almost exclusively played by kids, whom are both under a fair amount of pressure with the school system an are much more prone to become sick due to flue season. Back in those days, consoles had no sign of stand by mode and often a game could not even save as amazing as Pokémon could! You would lose a lot of progress so by instinct we already let our game run if we could not play for a tick. Prolonged exposure is quite possible in the mindset of the time.

How Pokémon would look on the SNES

So if we explain the myth that way, let’s look at actual change it would have caused in Japan. If we look at the suicide rates in 1996 in Japan about 3500 people in the age of 10-19 (deemed kids)  commited suicide in Japan.  That equals 291 each month. Now it is hard to exclude teens here as those take the biggest chair. .but children suicide is a HUGE problem in japan.  Let’s say teens take 75% of that figure that still would mean that somewhere between 140-and 210 kids would end their life in the period Lavender Town Syndrome was said to occur. This is within range of the myth’s 200! This doesn’t even include younger people still so even if teens take a bigger slice of the pie (and when I say teens I count 16 to 19 year olds) the number of 200 never fully seems out of reach. It’s on the high end of the estimate but if we consider that  Lavender Town Syndrome simply makes you more likely to take your life rather then forcing you to do so.. it doesn’t seem that odd that suicide rates would be at that specific number.  The numbers of the myth DO work out.

Lavender Town in the first game requires you to get a certain device to make progress, however this is the most cryptic part of your journey so far so I can see it as a bit of a bottleneck. It makes sense that children get stuck there for a bit. Especially in the first wave of players with no guides out yet. So among those unfortunate souls that were lost it would make sense in a way that they are in our around that part. Except for maybe victory road it is the most cryptic and tricky part of the game after all. So perhaps Lavender Town Syndrome could simply be a statistic that got interpreted the wrong way. Perhaps it is a mere case of unrelated events happening at the same time… yet perhaps everything did influence each other , more then we can ever know. In that case Lavender Town Syndrome would be less about killer cartridges and more about a freaky.. Final Destination like event…which would go mostly unnoticed.

So could it be that Lavender Town Syndrome is in fact real?! No.. most likely not. Yet there are situations surrounding it that make it simply less impossible than one might think! Given that a suicide in Japan is 3x more likely to be caused by a health induced concern than anything else only adds to this story for example! We might have misunderstood or told the story wrong but there might me more to this myth than we might think! Nintendo  or the Pokémon Company if I have discovered something I am fine with deleting this discovery.. in return for a trip to Tokyo and visiting the Pokémon Café and Poké Center at your costs! .. After the world has returned to normal of course! Because I also want to hug Chef Pikachu or server Pikachu!
Of course if you want me to investigate more Ghost Stories about Pokémon my dearest Nintendo I am also very willing to that.. same price!

What a Terrible Night to Have a Curse: Pokémon Cursed Review!

Hello again my mortals! I wonder what potions I could make out of you!  It’s Halloween Month on Paradise!  So I am offering a lot of Halloween content! That means taking a break from most of my regular posts to find some spooky content! This can be a bit tricky for Pokémon! But recently I heard rumors of a very special Pokémon game that is amazing for Halloween. Today  I am talking about a Rom Hack called Pokémon Cursed.

Halloween in Saffron City

This is a Halloween themed game… although I must say “game”  might be a big word. This game is a Rom Hack of Pokémon Red but it offers only about 15 minutes of gameplay. It has a good and a bad ending… maybe even two bad endings.. depending on how you interpret things. It is up to you the kid of Sabrina to survive a very creepy Halloween. You only have your trusty Marrowak to help you and a cute Halloween costume to go trick or treating with. The game features some mini events and a nice little story that is a perfectly great Halloween adventure paying some homage to a classic little ghost story.That even involves you Trick or Treating across Saffron.  Some spooky tree decals complete the atmosphere.
You and your mother Sabrina are holding your classical Halloween Tradition of battling. However this is the year you finally win….at least if you know how to play Pokémon. Winning with a Marowak is no easy feat! In fact it is VERY easy for you to make the game rather impossible to win. 

When the title-card has nothing to do with the game, you know you are in trouble!

As expected you will be dealing with a lot of ghosts in Saffron City! However these ghosts  are all Gen 1 Pokémon. That means Gastley, Haunters and Gengar. Three Pokémon that have the Ability Levitate, which makes them immune to ground type moves.. and they are ghost and poison types.  Meaning they are also immune to fighting and normal type moves!
Now wouldn’t you know, Marowak at that level this game is played at (24-32)  ONLY knows normal and ground type offensive moves! So you are up a creek without a paddle straight from the get go! Luckily there is one move that can change the tides! Marowak has the move Foresight.. a move that can “identify” ghost types! While it is never specified by game text that means now a ghost can be hit by normal type moves. IF you go trick or treating first and try to replace this normally worthless move you lose the game then and there! There is no option to back out and you have to start from scratch… unfortunately that “oversight”  shows a design mentality that completely sours this game for me. 

Haunter! Marowak has a bone to pick with you!

Horror or Horrible

This game requires a basic knowledge of pokémon strategies, if you do not know how to play Pokémon this game is fairly impossible for you.  It isn’t clear about having multiple endings and kind of feels like a  .exe  game .. which always ends badly! So even if you manage to “finish” the game you might think there is just a bad ending. This game makes it feel that it just has a bad ending. The bad ending isn’t that cleverly written and doesn’t feel all that creepy!  It tries  to play into the “ghost of lavender town” hype but by choosing Saffron City as a setting .. there is a disconnect with that myth! There is an explanation.. towards the end of the good ending that actually makes this an interesting bit of lore but unfortunately the way to reach that ending is…. almost near impossible without a walkthrough! So while I will not tell you where to find all things I will tell you what you need to find. 

By having your flesh eaten you turn from a GBA sprite to a Game Boy Colour one! Creepy!

The goal in this game is to find 5 ghost shards.. but you do not know that. It is never said you need them! It isn’t even really implied.  You  get Castlevania 2 like descriptions like “I saw them falling from the sky, use this to find them!  This problem becomes increasingly worse when you realise that the item you should use  to find the items doesn’t work. You get an item finder but since the Ghost Shards do not seem to count as official items, for some reason the Itemfinder does not detect them. Which means the brunt of the gameplay is pressing the A button on every tile. Until you find them! Unfortunately they are also not at logical spaces like behind a crate.  They literally can be anywhere! So that already makes the game basically unplayably annoying. But silly as I am … I actually  hunted for the items and found half of them… a YouTube walkthrough helped me find the additional two! But I stopped there! I wanted to find the rest myself.. I proudly marched into the executive office ..hoping the shards would help ..but no….So without any hints you have to figure out how to proceed. So I went to talk to every single NPC I could find again.. but not a single hint….*sigh* I guess I will interact with all random items. 

I have a Ghost Glock and a Ghost Desert Eagle!

A computer earlier gave me a mystery message, so I figured that was where I would start. It did not work.. but another random computer worked! Yay I guess?!t told me the elevator had unlocked and it did not.. instead on a normal wall somewhere in the building a secret elevator had spawned……… a random elevator spawned after interacting with a random item.  That elevator takes you to the final battle.. I got wiped in that battle. Your evil father shows up and he has a Porygon that is setting up powerful attacks.. Eventually he one shots you with Tri-Attack.. if he doesn’t his second Pokémon has priority moves which will without a doubt finish you off. You are going to catch a Ghost Pokémon to nullify his Porygon.. but there are no Pokéballs in this game… unless….. you interact with a specific cabinet in the game. Dear Rom Hacker..placing items in random spots is not a puzzle! But I must admit playing through this is rather horrifying. I was scared I would not be able to finish a simple pokémon game. There is no Pokémon game I can not finish! So I endured.

That is right! One of those people stupid enough to play this “game”

Deader than a Ghost

Is that everything that sucks about this game? Unfortunately no! To catch the ghost Pokémon there are a few trainers that are actual ghosts you can fight. Because they look like people IF you play Pokémon they look like trainers.. so it seems like you can’t catch them. Actually you can… but if you are anything like me  by the time you can do this you have already defeated all the ghosts you can battle… luckily there is a way  to battle new ghosts…. you talk to random people multiple times in a row making them repeat their dialogue six or seven times.  Because that of course is the instinctual way to catch Pokémon. All in all this game is really an unplayable mess of non logic that is barely even a game! There are two interesting battles in the game, against both parents and I really liked the battle puzzle idea they went for.

This happens every time I let a friend sleep on my couch after a night of drinking!

Unfortunately that puzzle needs to be solved once and after it is just a rinse and repeat.
The game tries it’s best to help you get some boundaries to the world but unfortunately  that is oftenly glitched. I spent over 30 minutes searching a room after I discovered I could clip into it.. I felt it was a secret entrance and I needed it.. .it was a glitch however and time was wasted. My player sprite had some issues at times, Focus Energy the move does not seem to work properly and the fact that you can deadlock yourself at multiple moments forcing a complete restart makes this 15 minute game still a slog to get trough! If you need to find the items you are searching WAAAAAY longer. 

Because Candy > Family

I expected a lot of this game as I saw it in a top 10 scary Pokémon games. Clearly that list only based it on scariness and not on quality as this rom hack has NO quality!  The good thing I will say about it is that it is cool to be Sabrina’s daughter celebrating Halloween with her. The audacity to make Blaine the dad however.. two characters who weren’t even close in age or demeanour ruin the idea of having an evil dad. The spooky tree texture in the background of the city is the best idea this game has. Mamma Sabrina is  great as well .. I really like it!  But yeah that’s it… as much as I want to like a Halloween game more this isn’t it!

I love those trees though!

 If you want a spooky Pokémon game you are most likely better off playing Pokémon Snakewood , I gave that my lowest rating before but at least it offers some content!  The first five hour of that game is fun and it has Kamina as a trainer. The quest for a good Pokémon Horror game goes on. Where I compared Snakewood to watching Family guy but as a pokémon experience I guess this one is like watching Troll 2 with the funny scenes taken out.  I am really sorry for the Pokémon games I still love you… I just really dislike this game!
But  I am keeping Sabrina’s daughter canon!

Lowest Score on the Spook Meter.. and since it isn’t a game.. it doesn’t even get a cocktail flavour!

Looking for Pokémon Halloween content turned out to be a bust.. so I guess I have to make some myself…..wait.. make some myself…..that gives me an idea!!! Mwuhahahahaha. Mwuhahahahahahaha! Mwuhahahahaha! Oh.. right! If you feel wish to pass on some money to be in case the ghosts get to you before you get to enjoy it, feel free to help me out via Ko-fi! I suspect a big fictional electricity bill is soming…as well as some real stuff of course! Check out my Ko-Fi page to see what ever project it is that I am working on. Projects! Mwuahahahaha.

Death by Steel : Pinkie’s First Pokémon Randomiser Nuzlocke Journal Part I

Hello Dear Island Guests! It is time for a new Pokémon series! While this one will not be weekly I am going to share my adventures of the first ever Nuzlocke I will try to complete! Every so often I will update you on my adventures in a journal form!  Taking you through my first ever Nuzlocke in the game Pokémon Heart Gold… but with a twist! Every Pokémon is Randomised.

About the Nuzlocke

What is a Nuzlocke you might wonder? Well it is a special way of playing trough Pokémon.
In it you have to nickname all your Pokémon, you can only catch one pokémon per route and only your first encounter ..and if you miss it.. no luck! If you encounter a Pokémon you already have you can  search for another though.  If a pokémon is reduced to 0HP in battle and it faints it is considered dead and you have to box it or release it and can not use it during your challenge again. If you lose your entire team you lose the Nuzlocke and have to start all over again. Then there are  several ways to play, like in some forms your items are limited or you can not leave a gym once you enter it.  Since I don’t want to be too depressed I made a few light rule tweeks.  So here are my rules:

Randomiser Details

-Pokémon have been randomised, thus I play this game emulated, I do own a legal copy of the game but for entertainment purposes a randomiser seems more fun. Because I know this game by heart and it is a lot more fun to highlight random Pokémon. Every Pokemon deserves love!
-Pokémon will also have their abilities randomised! This makes things a lot more fun! However evolutions and movesets will not be randomised.. their teachable move capabilities HAVE been randomised as .. I love randomness but I am not a strong enough Pokémon player to be prepared for ANY move! I got to have some structure.
-Starters are randomised into anything, and legendaries have been randomised into other legendaries. All trainers have randomised trainer class names and personal names just for fun.
-Items that can be found on the ground are randomised as well as pokémon held items! 
-If I ever lose the game I have to make a new randomisation so I don’t know what is ahead.

In Game Rules

-If A Pokémon Faints it dies and has to be boxed. Since I made sure everyone can learn all HM’s I can not use dead hm slaves. HM moves can only be taught to one party member to make sure I don’t spam surf or fly.
-If I encounter a duplicate pokémon I can search for a new pokémon on that route OR I can catch it to add a life to that Pokémon I already have.
-If I get knocked out by early Dragon Rage, or get stuck on an early Wonder Guard user I am allowed to keep the knocked out Pokémon in return for discarding all my Pokéballs or healing items.
-If I encounter a shiny I am allowed to try and capture it! However it then MUST be used on the team.
-I am allowed to grind and leave gyms!  I am not allowed to hack in rare candies to skip a grind.
-Mom has to collect money for me.. she is so happy to help me out.. it would be rude to tell her no!

With that ruleset I was ready to play my randomised copy of Heart Gold which I named Pokémon Pink Gold! I also made a nice visual for that so I can skip this block of text next time and keep you all updated even if you aren’t reading!

Today I became a Pokémon Trainer

I woke up groggily in my like 32 bit bed! Mom called! Today I was supposed to help Professor Elm out  with a Chore! I hobbled down the stairs and saw mom sitting at the dining room table. She gave me my Pokégear for my adventure even if I had no Pokémon.. a person can’t do without their gear. Before I left she also gave me a cellphone and a bag! It isn’t even my birthday Mamma! How sweet of you! Then she said she had something else that seemed pretty useful and she gave me the possibility to save and an options Menu!  That is super nice! The mamma I have in the real world never gave me an options menu! Perhaps that is why I am such a NEET now! After I got so many new stuff I ventured outside. The Neighbour Kid Ethan was out there playing with his Marill. Man he sure liked to run that thing in my face!  I did not have a Pokémon!  He reminded me that Professor Elm was looking for me! .. Jeez thanks Ethan.. he is the reason I got up this early in the afternoon! 

So I waddled over to the Pokémon Lab. I am not a strong walker so it felt a bit sluggish but eventually got there. There was a suspicious kid standing in front of the window and he shoved me off when I asked him what he was doing! Super rude! I got inside and Professor Elm told me that he had a friend named Mister Pokémon who made an amazing discovery.  He was tied up at the lab and he needed someone he could trust to go there. Despite having like three aides.. it was me he chose to send.. Odd to send a 10 year old to gather important research but hey!  He told me I would get a Pokémon so I had no complaints.  I walked up to a machine holding three Pokéballs. One held a Hitmonlee, one held a Feebas and one Held a Vigoroth.  Feebas I think is actually useless in this game, I am not sure if you could even evolve it and I am not getting far in a Nuzlocke with a pokémon that only knows Splash.
So I had to choose between either Vigoroth or Hitmonlee! Since Vigoroth would evolve once more and would turn into a Slaking who doesn’t know the ability Truant but instead has a Random ability I chose him!  He had a nice beard so I decided to name it Raist.

Raist and me set out to travel to the tall grass! We saw a few amazing Pokémon along our way to Mister Pokémon’s house. We leveled him up until he was almost level 10.. since he already evolved once his leveling took a bit longer than a random pokémon like .. let’s say Cyndaquil would take. On route 29 I saw a Machamp which would compliment my new friend nicely.   There was also a Heatran and a Houndoom there so straight away we had some good options!  Yet we did not have pokéballs yet so for now it had to wait! On route 30 we fought a few Uxie so we even had some legendary options.  I was looking forward to it all. Yet first we had an errand to run! We encountered an old man who had magical shoes! When you wear these shoes. a person would develop the ability to RUN! He gave me a pair that he had on him! It is kind of creepy that an old man who shows a 10 year old girl around town hands you shoes in your size.. but let’s be honest! He already had these running shoes on himself.. if the creep guy could run and I could not I would be in much more trouble so I accepted them.. he later came running after me.. to give me a map.

After fleeing from that creep I walked into some random guys house who was so glad to see me that he gave me a little satchel to store Apricorns in. This is hard fruit in rainbow colours that a man named Kurt might be able to turn into pokéballs for me! I accepted the gift.. looted his tree and traveled on to Mister Pokémon’s place.. who had a visit from the famous Professor Oak. The man talked about a lot of stuff , mostly promoting his radio show and then he gave me an egg for Professor Birch and a pokédex.. okay so this was his discovery? How is Mister Pokemon evolved?! If you have traveled so far why would you not go the extra mile to see Birch yourself?! The discovery that pokémon might hatch from eggs seems like a big responsibility to leave to ten year old me! But hey it got me cool stuff! I was now an official pokémon trainer! Or so I thought!  A phone call from professor Elm would change a lot. I had to rush back home.. as something terrible had happened.

Pinkie makes new Friends

Using the perverts shoes, I sped as home as quickly as I could! I had full confidence in Raist’s abilities as an evolved pokémon and then we encountered that red haired Douchebag from before! We fought him and Raist  smoked his ass. He carried an exeggcute! It was no match for my wild white beast!.. it even got Raist to level 10. The trainer dropped his passport.. which all trainers carry on them and I saw that Red Douche’s name was Indigo! He told me that he would become my rival and he would get stronger. I shrugged and ran off! It turns out that Indigo stole a pokémon from Professor Elm! .. Well he certainly did not take it from the machine then.. but no time to dwell on that.  I handed over the egg to be done with my responsibilities.  The professor was shocked that eggs existed.. even though we are in a remake taking place in a generation that already invented these features! Later remakes would tackle that issue a lot better!  But hey I played along and as payment I could keep Raist. Well yeah.. I already named it guy! I was gonna keep it anyway!

I walked outside and Ethan was in the grass with his Marril..he showed me how to catch a pokémon and handed me five Pokéballs!  Now I could make new friends yay!  However Raist disagreed! He killed both my encounter on route 29 as well as the one on route 46.. which had a small patch of grass you could pick pokémon up from! He both killed a Yanma and a Mankey! I guess he did not like to share!  So we had a little talk and I told him that if he had some Tomodachi it might mean he would live longer..as I showed it Yanma’s broken corpse he nodded showing me he would be more careful on route 30! There we were lucky enough to encounter one of those Uxie Legendaries again…but I ran out of pokéballs and we failed to get Raist a friend. I sold everything I had to scrounge up a few pokéballs for route 31 and there we finally encountered a cute Gorbebyss which is a pink fish pokémon wearing a purple shell bikini like thing. It is a Pokémon that sucks up it’s opponents bodily fluids as a way of battling. Since it was rather pink and happy as well as a male I decided to name it Dylan.  In a nearby cave I discovered a quagsire I named Heather. She was so durable and sturdy!   I leveled Dylan and Heather up a bit by murdering some Uxie and Zubat as well as killing the Pokémon of former Bugcatcher now turned dancer!  As he sat there among his dead pokémon I merrily continued my way to that blasted city!

Raist had reached level 11, with Heather and Dylan being at 8! I knew there was some work to be done before I could face the gymleader.. believing his ace to be at level 12. So first I went to some ruins to the south of the city where I solved the ancient puzzle of the Unown in like… 30 seconds or so! How did no one ever solve this before?!  If it was a complete slide puzzle I could understand but this was about as hard as one of those children’s block puzzles with a square shaped hole a triangle hole and a round hole!  I caught myself a Misdreavous there which I named Mallow. In a patch of grass I also found a Snubull which I named Lyn. My team of friends was beginning to grow!

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We were nowhere near ready to face Falkner though so.. it was off to beat up some monks! Which usually are fairy big pushovers. With random Pokémon though it turned out to be a tad harder. As I had killed two monks entire teams without much effort it was up to Heather to level up next. During one fight a monk sent out Kabuto! I had switched out of Heather before as his former pokémon was a grass type and she is 4x weak to that and Mallow fought in her stead. Upon switching in to the Kabuto Heather missed a Mud Slap or Mud Shot.. I always confuse those  and the pokemon used a water gun on her. Quagsire is a Bulky pokémon so she took it fairly well. I could easily survive even a critical hit of that. Heather surely could obliterate this tiny Kabuto. Her second attack missed again.. and that’s when it happened.  Kabuto revealed to have the move Absorb! .. I did not expect it.. I didn’t even know it learned that move.. and just like that Heather was gone! Drained of all life! My Quagsire was dead!

Misdreavous exacted revenge for Heather and we destroyed all the monk’s left! It gave us a useless TM . Indigo had also just fought all the monks so the place was literally littered with piles of dead Pokémon! While he got an escape rope.. I got a chople berry! So I had to walk past all the corpses again. On the way down I found a Cleffa I named Meg. We gave Heather a small burial and went on to take down the Gym Leader Falkner. While everything was randomised for some reason every gym trainer got given a ghost pokémon so we had to use a lot of potions to keep Mallow alive. We went back out to stock up again and I realised I got a lot less money than I would have hoped for! I bought three potions and healed everyone up and it was time to face the gym leader .. Falkner!  Little did I know I would discover about THAT power I had.. or that this would already be the last battle I would ever have with my new friends.

We started out fine.. Falkner opened up with Spinarak!  Mallow eats tiny spiders for breakfast and with a few ghostly moves it was gone..then the message on the screen read. Dancer Laura is about to Sent In Registeel.. Do you wish to swap Pokémon?! Excuse me?!  Registeel?! I also forgot I boosted levels a bit..thinking it would let me grind faster as well.. and so came a level 15 Registeel! I kept Mallow in, knowing sometimes the Regi’s get Explosion at an early level hoping that it could explode and we would be fine! Yet it used Metal Claw.. a high power metal type physical move that can boost attack.. sometimes. Of course he got the attack boosts!  I swapped in Megan and Lyn as sacrificial lambs.. while I came up with a strategy.. and both were clawed in half.  Then.. I swapped in Raist.. hoping it might trigger him using explosion, switching back into Mallow.. hoping for a miracle. The metal cleaved the little ghosty as it could no longer maintain it’s form! It fades away from the after life into complete death.  Raist came out next and he could take two hits.. such a champion he went down fighting!  Next was Dylan.. perhaps he could use confusion to keep the steel giant in place… but no!  My little pink fish soon got turned into sushi!.

Surrounded by my dead friends Falkner laughed at me diabolically and in panic I passed out!  However Falkner’s gym is several  meters in the air.. lets say about five or six stories high. And you walk through him on a balancing beam.. so passing out did not end well for me! I fell six stories down and left a pinkish red crater in the floor.. I was dead!  Then suddenly … I woke up again.. I was in my own bed!  Mom called me downstairs.. and said Professor Elm had a chore for me.. she handed me .. a bag.. a cell phone and even an options menu! What was going on here?  Outside Ethan stuffed his Marill in my face again… but something was different. Out in the grass to the West I heard other pokémon.. instead of Magikarp swimming in the river to the east there was a Kricketune.. what was going on? There was only one possibility! I returned by death! And the world becomes more randomised!  I stepped in the lab of Professor Elm as he told me for the second time, my very first pokémon adventure was about to begin!Mallow, Heather, Raist and Dylan you will be remembered. Lyn and Megan.. you were just death fodder! You will return.. in the next life!…maybe!

Days Past: 1
Number of Deaths: 6
Game Overs: 1
Gym Badges: 0

And so my Nuzlocke was not of to a good start! Luckily I wasn’t that far into the game yet so I felt motivated enough to try again! Will I have more succes in my second run?! Find out in the next episode! Will a Pokémon be named after you?! Maybe! Be sure to follow the blog and be active in the comments and you will have a good chance to be part of my team! And if you like being a small creature why not be a coconut?! By supporting my Kofi you can have your own little unique Coconut minion on Paradise! Or just leave a nice comment! Did you ever play a Nuzlocke? What is your favourite game to Nuzlocke in?! Let me know in the comments and I will see you on the next adventure!

Pokémon Top 5: My Favourite Fairy Types

This is it my friends! A Journey has come to an end! The 18th.. and final.. Pokémon typing top 5! Ending up with my favourite typing ever  was always the plan.. but it left some unexpected results. This list might not be the least factual top 5. Though my  top 3 is stable numbers 4 and 5 are fairly random picks! I will explain why in the final time we discuss our rules.

Rules and Honourable Mentions

As always only one entry per evolutionary line and if I dislike a final form it will be held against the previous form if said form does not have the ability to stand on it’s own. For example I really think Spritzee is cute but Aromatisse is a bit odd! I don’t dislike it as much as the community does so it is actually not my pick! That one would go to Floette! I love Floette and Flabebe but the final evolution is weird to me.. I can’t really recognise it as anything. I see the flower theme still but why did she have to go so big all of the sudden. I liked the subtle changes! Eternal Floette of course is viable without her but a normal Floette not so much. Hence this spot goes to Floette.

Now why this list isn’t as representative as others.. like always if a pokémon already made an appearance on another list, for example if I put Charizard on my Fire Type list it can’t also be my favourite flying type because that would be boring and really reduce our options.  Before this hasn’t really been a big issue. It usually involves maybe one pokémon slile Salazzle who I choose not to include on my favourite Fire type list so I could make her poison. Toxtricity was put on my electric list instead of the poison list. It’s  single exclusions. However.. here we go with all the pokémon that I mentioned in the top’s before that are among my favourite pokémon that share the fairy type. Mimikyu , Primarina, Klefki, Magearna, Diancie, Alolan Ninetales, Alolan Rapidash, Togekiss and Gardevoir. Gardevoir would actually take the number four spot  and Togekiss the number 5 most likely but all of these are insanely close to one another! I love the Fairy type that much! But shout out goes to Gardevoir.

Temporary forms are not allowed and this affects two mega-evolutions. I love both Mega Audino and Mega Altaria! Mega Audino because she is such a different Mega evolution as the rest, focusing more on support and Mega Altaria just looks nice and silly which I really like! So now I have to decide which of the two I have to highlight and I have trouble with this because I love them both a lot! Mega Altaria is slightly more useful and being a Fairy Dragon is amazing!  Still I feel Audino would cry more if I would not put it on this list! It deserves some love! So look up Mega Altaria in Google and praise the amazing Mega Audino here!

Finally a pokémon has to feel like a fairy type and while the type usually has that covered for me, I guess there is one exception! A pokémon I very much adore but I feel that would have been better off with the flying type to depict the “cleaner” air theme! That pokémon is Galarian Weezing. The design is amazing and fun and whimsical and I totally adore this pokémon in every single way! Including its ability! It just does not feel like a fairy to me!

Favourite Fairy Type #5 Tapu Lele

I really do not like putting legendaries on this list as I never really use them, they feel like cheaty pokémon and the island guardians are very much the same. Yet Tapu Lele has something the others do not! I use her pokémon card in my old school fighting type deck! For her ability to add a supporter card to my hand for placing her on the bench! She is a good wall to build up my field as well so this pink spirit person is close to my heart. I have used her in game as well since it’s a pink Pokemon..but let’s be honest here the entire top 5 is pink coloured! It’s fairy Pokémon after all!. Of all the Island guardians though I feel Tapu Lele embodies the type the best Along with Tapu Fini they have this pixie like feel that I think my blogging bestie would be deeply able to appreciate! I love how she is depicted in the anime and psychic terrain is superior to Fini’s fairy type field.

The pokédex entry for Tapy Lele is very strange. It is being called a very cruel pokémon and lacks the ability to feel guilt about her cruel actions. Which is something you do not seem to suspect from such a lovely looking creature! When we look up what she does however it only gets stranger. Firstly.. let’s delve into what drives her.. what fuels her cruel nature! Well it’s the scent of the flowers of Akala island of course. What does it do with that energy?! It heals the people and pokemon of Akala island but gives them her shiny scales that have these healing properties. This is also what she does in the anime, where she fights to defend the Alola league and later in an exhibition match she even heals Tapu Koko and Ash with her scales. That does not seem evil now does it?! Well a bit of a research shows that she REALLY likes healing people and covers people with these scales because she thinks it is pretty and fun! I am going with her here.. because that’s how I see the pokémon.. sorry it has a very femine energy!  Humans and Pokémon sometimes have a bit of trouble handling more scales than one and suffer overdose effects. Tapu Lele doesn’t really care because it’s too much fun to spread it’s sparkles around!  Odd!

With Tapu Lele being a legendary pokemon there is no real use in giving a battle set but it is usually used as a revenge killer. That means it swaps into something that has taken damage already to finish it off. For this reason the de facto item to equip it with would be a choice sash. Psyshock is nowadays preferred over psychic since it can attack the lower defensive stat which is usually better than psychics dedicated hit towards special.  It runs moonblast for Same type attack bonuses and then should be given Shadowball to cover it’s ghost type weakness. Focus Blast or Hidden Power fire can deal with it’s own Steel Type Weakness with focus blast being more unreliable but dealing way more damage. Since Lele is a revenge killer though and the enemy normally will have taken damage already and it’s special attack is great at 130, I personally think hidden power fire is the better of the two!

Fairy Type # 4 Jigglypuff

The Pokémon Mallow will strangle me for putting so high onto the list. But Jigglypuff is here for a simple reason! It is so super iconic that I had to put it on. Now do not get me wrong, I do find the anime Jigglypuff to be rather annoying myself but in Alola it finally got closure to it’s arc making it one of the few pokémon that got a narrative arc spanning over several seasons that came to a conclusion. That is commendable and an achievement. Besides that Jigglypuff is  probably my favourite character in Super Smash Bros Ultimate and most of the Super Smash games! I know it probably is not a high tier character but I love using it very much! Especially against 7 other Jigglypuff in the Classic Donkey Kong stage: 75m. It’s the most fun I ever had with Smash and even if my joy comes from outside the main franchise it Jigglypuff is amazing in Pokémon Snap as well.. being chased by that Koffing in one of the later stages! With it giving a performance at the end of the stage! It is a great pokémon and one of the most iconic fairy Type Pokémon out there.

What can I say here that people do not know yet about Jigglypuff?! It’s pokédex entries tell what everyone in the entire world knows about it! It has cute eyes.. and if it sings a song you will fall asleep! Eight generations of pokédex entries have not changed that at all.  What you might not know is how it works. Jigglypuff has the ability to sing in a range that exceeds 12 octaves. That range is boosted by the fact that it can manipulate it’s soundwaves and can match them to your brainwaves thus  directly making you drowsy. A jigglypuff song is so potent that cd’s with it’s sounds are sold near the bedding department ..just hearing a bit causes people to want to buy beds and hearing a lot.. well you all saw the anime. Jigglypuff’s lung capacity is insanely large. It just seems to be able to keep singing until his last opponent has fallen asleep. The song they sing isn’t always the one we see in the anime though! The song varies per region and in some regions in the world it would almost seem as if they are shouting! I bet that regional variant has a metal subtype!

The best way to run jigglypuff is with the moves, Sing, Mega Punch, Rollout and Rest then use his ability to grow larger on the battlefield to quickly defeat your opponents!  That is right I am talking about the Super Smash Bros Jigglypuff here! In the main game  running a Wigglytuff is fine but given that Igglybuff became a thing in the second generation there is no true format where Jigglypuff as a pokémon can truly shine. So just have fun with it in Smash Brothers! Rest is very hard to use but if you can use it consistently against your lesser skilled friends  it is amazing! Causing Knockouts at very low damage! Mega Punch is just fun to use! Hearing Jigglypuff’s determination! PUFF! PUFF! PUFF!  As you use it in rapid  succession!  Sing is a great way to get in  close enough to be able to use Rest on them and finish them off and Rollout can be lots of fun if you manage to keep the control a bit. It really is a trooper that can deal some serious damage.. even if it’s not in an actual Pokémon game!

Fairy Type # 3 Slurpuff

So from here on out these are absolutely my three favourite fairy type pokémon! Slurpuff has the honour of being my favourite physical attacking  Pokémon so in it’s own way it already is a winner! I adore both Swirlix and Slurpuff! They are goofy, pink and adorable!  Their evolution item the Whipped Dream is my favourite evolution item of the game and due to the amazing magic that is pokémon fan games I got to use a Slurpuff during a gameplay run as well. I named it Coolio and it was amazing! An absolute hero of my team! In fact Coolio pulled me almost that entire game and I became very attached to it! The love never faded though.  During the 24 hour Glimwood Tangle lifestream when I first saw a Swirlix I got so excited that I knocked my drinks over! Coolio-two would be a thing and even though it did not end up being named Coolio-two and was named Giga-Puddi..  as I loved to Dynamax it I had my second Slurpuff!  It shows up on Pokémon Showdown fairly regularly as well so this one is a keeper!

Slurpuff is an amazing pokémon that hasn’t been around for that long! It existed only since Gen VI , or the Kalos region so not a lot is known about this pokémon! By far the cutests fact is that its fur is filled with air so it is super soft to the touch and much lighter than it looks! It is airy, nice and huggable. What it is best known for however is that its  nose is 100.000.000 x more sensitive  than that of a human. This means it can pick up even the faintest smells. While dorkly made it suffer for it in a funny sketch , there is no actual dark lore for it in any pokédex entry. It seems to love helping out the pastry chefs of Kalos with it’s amazing nose! Making sure the pastries are finely tweaked!  It is so good at smelling that it can smell when people are sick and scientists and Slurpuff are working together to use this skill to develop all sorts of medical breakthroughs!  Slurpuffs nose is so perceptive that it almost can see a completely different world with its nose!  I imagine it is a bit like Daredevils sight ..but with smells instead of sounds!


Slurpuff loves to eat berries in combat because it’s main ability is Unburden.. something that boosts it’s speed when an item is lost. The combo that is pretty much used by everyone is along with the move Belly Drum! A move that cuts your hp in half but that instantly maxes out the attack stat to 4x its original value! Slurpuff does need to use this move because it’s attack  is only a lackluster ish 80 but after Bellydrum it is a scary 320!  With unburden boosting it’s speed and moves like Drain Punch to recover its health and  Play Rough for a powerful physical STAB this pokémon means game over for your opponent if they do not have a counter!  Coolio and I have gathered many victories using this tech and Giga Puddi , while I never used it online kicked some Gym Leader ass with this set! Against a skilled opponent  you may not find success..but if you do get success with it, you almost have a guaranteed win!

Fairy Type # 2 Alcremie

So this one hurts me a bit!  While I love Sylveon over any pokémon in the world, as for a single pokémon I have never loved a Pokémon more than Whippy the Alcremie. Whippy came to me early in my playthrough of Shield and even if it is the most generic strawberry, right-spin whipped Alcremie I love it so much! The sounds that it makes , the goofy smile when I call it over at a pokémon camp, the way it eats! Heck even the way it’s eyes go viciously angry when it wants to attack the cat scratchy thing!  I could have used a Sylveon but I did that a million times! Shield was Whippy’s moment!  I started my journey with a Sobble.. but he got boxed after he fully evolved. I  had a cute little Wooloo but that got boxed as well. Yamper was the only other pokémon that predated Whippy on my team.. and that one got boxed when I obtained Toxel. So Whippy  was the only Pokémon to accompany me from the first gym until the championship match! I haven’t played the DLC yet as I want to do both in one go but Whippy will be the first to eat the Gigantamax Curry! I love it very much and I gave it a lot of brothers and sisters since.. but none I love more than Whippy!

Alcremie has so many forms that it in a SINGLE generation has as many pokédex entries as most Gen I pokémon!  Most of them are fairly interchangeable depending on how you evolve it, which means when you make your character spin , what direction you make them spin, how hard you make them spin etc. It determines what flavour your Alcremie has. Pokédex entries define these flavours.  The flavours are : Vanilla, Ruby, Mint, Lemon Salted,  Ruby Swirl, Caramel Swirl and Rainbow Swirl! So this is the tastiest pokémon out there.. but also a very weird one to evolve. Given that there are quite a few decorations there are 63 possible ways to make your Alcremie look.. excluding the shiny I think! When it is Gigantamaxed Alcremie changes from a dollop of cream to a Giant birthday cake that fires Missiles of cream at their opponents. Each of them contain roughly 100.000 kilocategories and getting hit by one of those will make your head swim! Now that is one heck of an Epic Mealtime! When an Alcremie loves it’s trainer it will bring them berries/fruit they have decorated with whip cream.. so it’s just such a cutie! Oh  and in case you wonder.  the cake part of allcremie is not made out of batter.. no it’s hardened cream! So only the tastiest part of the cake as a Kaiju! What is there not to love!

Alcremie is not a slouch in terms of offense or defence either. With it’s special attack being at 110 and special defence being 120 it is a perfect pokémon to use Calm Mind in combat which buffs both these stats! Alcremie you see is more so a tank! With Dazzling Gleam as its same type offensive move and recovery to regain health it can outlast a great many opponents. The final move you add to it is of your preference. Mystical Fire is a good shoutout as it can cover it’s metal weakness! Alcremie has a very special Gigantamax move though, it’s move G-Max Finale not only allows it to recover ⅙ of its total health, so do its allies! Thus with a moveset like this Alcremie becomes a tank that can also apply a lot of offensive pressure. It lacks a bit of type diversity in it’s learnable movepool but for a wall role pokémon you get a pretty sweet deal if you side with alcremie!

My Favourite Pokémon: Sylveon

That is right! Not only is this my favourite Pokémon this is also my favourite pokémon of all time! That being said.. Alcremie is also my second favorite of all time! Unlike other pokémon with Eevee I am not likely to give it a nickname! While I mostly go for Sylveon sometimes I accidentally end up with other evolutions so most of my Sylveons end up being Sylveon the Sylveon. Yet since I hoard them so much they aren’t as dear to me AS Whippy!  I love them a lot and they love me a lot.. as that is the whole point of Sylveon. It’s about love! That is what makes it the greatest pokémon in the world. It evolves because it loves you….while knowing a fairy type move! It is cute, it has an adorable cry I can recognise anywhere, it is pink and I identify with this pokémon!  I want to cosplay Sylveon Gijinka before I die…I don’t think Alcremie Gijnka is a good idea.. though I can see that being fun with a girlfriend or something! Where Alcremie is my favourite pet.. sylveon is more than that.. it is my soul. It is my Blue Eyes White dragon, my Kamehameha! Sylveon is MY pikachu. It’s eyes, it’s ribbons I love everything about it’s design and it is probably the strongest Eeveelution in battle.. closely followed by Umbreon.. but hey Fairy is Super effective against dark.. so I win!

I have spread my “My Little Pony” beliefs here before! Friendship is magic!  I am a pacifist and believe that we fix the world not by fighting injustice but by creating happy places so we can stomach those injustices. I do not believe in a perfect world but I do believe in us creating our own little piece of heaven. Our own little perfect PLACE.  We can not always be there but we can try to reduce the toxicity in the world through kindness rather than through zeal.  Sylveon embodies that idea too. It uses its feelers.. which feel like ribbons but are actually it’s flesh to reduce hostile feelings in it’s targets. It wants to stop conflict! Except when facing cruel dragons like Hydreigon! When It knows nothing else can be done a Sylveon will jump into the frey and pound that dragon until it is defeated. Dragons are often a metaphor for obstacles people put in their own way and while Sylveon shows us that we should not fight others.. It teaches us it is important to fight our own demons . It loves us.. so we are lovable! We are worth fighting for!  When Sylveon walks with its trainer it wraps it’s ribbons around their arms as if you are walking with a very important person you love by your side. Showing that love does not have to come in shape, ways or forms. Loving a partner, loving a pokémon and loving family is all love! None is better than the other! Love is a deep friendship and as we know.. friendship is magic!

In combat Sylveon has seen a fair bit of use. Most commonly with its ability Pixielate, which turns any normal type into Fairy Types. This is often used to make its move Hyper Voice into a Same Type attack boosted move that pierces substitutes.  With 110 Special Attack and  130 special defence it basically can do what Alcremie does . However Sylveon has a more offensive presence. As a result you can equip it with moves like  Hidden Power Ground, Calm Mind and Shadowball along with Hyper Voice to make it more offensive. You can also turn it into a toxic staller like Umbreon by giving it toxic , protect and wish. Both sets are very viable though the offensive set is a whole lot more fun to use in non competitive gameplay. The fact that Sylveon can both be used as a wall and a sweeper makes it harder to counter than Alcremie. Hidden Power ground covers both of its weaknesses and if your opponent prepares for the wrong Sylveon.. they might make mistakes from which they can’t recover.. making Sylveon more mindgamey than most of the fairy types on this list and I love myself some mind games!

Sylveon embodies an ideal to me! It signifies me as a pokémon trainer, how I would be in the pokémon world. It has sweet lore, it has stellar design and it is even still pretty usable in battle. It does everything a good pokémon needs to do! I love pokémon! I love all 896 of them! That is right even the new Reggies and Calyrex are included, but none of them I love as much as Sylveon. At the end of this 18 blog post adventure I have written about 90! of my favourite  pokémon. Shouted out little more than half of that so even amongst the .. let’s say 150 I love most Sylveon .. and Whippy as well take a special irreplaceable place in my heart.
They mean a lot to me.. almost as if they are existing friends that always make me happy!
Pokémon like Mew and Bulbasaur will probably accompany them in my all time favourites but no matter how much I will play! I will always be most connected to Sylveon!

And that wraps up this series! It took me nearly half a year to finish this including all the times we had to skip a week!  Yet now it is finally done!  Now you know what my favourite pokémon! For one last time I shall ask you guys! What is your favourite pokémon of this type? Do you use the fairy type often and what Pokémon content would you like to see me do next?! If I was an eevee all of you would allow me to become a Sylveon! It was fun doing this series and see you in our next Pokémon adventure! Time to flutter off and scatter some pixie dust that makes people happy!

Check out the Entire Series right here… but be fast this only will works until the next Pokémon post!

Pokémon Top 5: My Favourite Dragon Types

We are almost done my friends! It has been a journey that with breaks and missed days took us almost six month! Today we list the penultimate favourite Top  5 Pokémon of a certain type! That type is the crowd favourite Dragon Type.. defeated by ice.. Itself.. why it is on this spot on my list and it is defeated by my favourite type! It is not a type I enjoy using a whole lot even. They are just such a hassle to raise. With most Pokémon Games having a lackluster after game..it’s hard to enjoy these before you are done with the game..so I still wonder how to train my dragon.

Rules and Honourable Mentions

This list was started to showcase as much love for Pokémon as possible so we only add one entry per evolution line and it can only make one list if it has a dual typing. For that reason Noivern is excluded from this list who’d definitely make it in the top 3 of my favourite dragons otherwise. Since evolutions are now much harder to stop I will also hold it against a pokémon if it evolves into something I don’t like. .and for this reason Axew is on my list! I love that little dragonny guy. But his final evolution, Haxorus, is sooooo boring. I don’t like the colour, it looks very murky and it just has no stand out traits. Thus I never like evolving my Axew past Fraxure.. and therefore it is a nice honourable mention.

The second rule I have always wielded is that a Pokémon has to feel like it’s part of the actual type. And The Dragon Type actually is mishandeld quite a bit. I don’t feel Latios or Latias are Dragons , I don’t think Zygarde in most of his forms looks like a Dragon, Altaria, Kindra , Sliggoo, Mega Ampharos.  None of these feel like dragons to me! But perhaps the biggest offender, yet a Pokémon I really love for it’s completely goofy design is Alolan Exegegcutor. It looks so unique for a pokémon and I love how in games you basically never see it’s head!  It is always off screen that is how big it is. Same for Pokémon Go.. that is hilarious and we did not have a better grass Dragon back then either.. we do now.. but it still earns a spot on this list.

Finally no temporary forms are allowed on this list. So Mega Charizard X is not allowed as for the majority of the adventure that pokémon comes with you as another typing. Not that I particularly love Charizard. No! My entry for this spot is Ultra Necrozma. I love it’s design I love it’s flavouring and most of all I love it’s musical theme! It is my favourite piece of music in Pokémon maybe.. though the Galar0 gym team is very good as well of course!  It is a an actual Dragon Psychic type in my eyes unlike the Latios and Latios and it is the single best boss Pokémon we ever fought. Also if you are not checking this out in WordPress Reader, check out the Ultra Necrozma theme below!

Dragon Type #5: Flygon

Flygon had the privilege of being the first Dragon Type I had in active use.  I caught myself a Trapinch as I liked it’s cry and went through the works with it! Ground types are quite useful and it matched my team fairly well. I did not expect it to turn into a dragon but that was a neat surprise. I For a long time I believed Vibrava was a Ground Bug type but I certainly had some fun with it. I really like it’s unique design , the rich green colour and heck I can even appreciate it’s shiny! Though I do feel that kinda belongs in the 90’s . It  is a bit lackluster in combat compared to some other Dragons but that also gives it some shine. I do not like how so many Dragons have super high stats but trash stats to begin with and in case of this evolution line it is all a bit more paced out. Vibrava has some usefulness. Even Trapinch is..so it is just a fun pokémon to carry around.

Pokédex entry wise there is not a lot to say about Flygon! In fact the only thing that really is explained in earlier games is that it has a red membrane over its eyes shielding itself from sand.  Its wings are powerful enough to whip up big sandstorms and as it prefers desert-like areas it has been given the nickname the Spirit of the Desert.  Even across versions this is usually the only thing that is said about this pokémon. Luckily we have Pokémon Sun and Moon.. you know those games where the pokédex entries all went a bit  heavy on the dark side?! Well in there it is stated that Flygon can beautifully sing and steal peoples heart so they wander through his deserts. It then uses sandstorms to hide Sandile and Krookodile in the storm so they can kill humans and pokémon or whatever they might prey on. They then share this prey with Flygon! So while Flygon is seen as a good boy by the fandom.. there is a dark side to it.. also there are Dakimakura of lewd Flygon’s out there so I bet it’s darkness goes even further.

In combat Flygon is pretty lackluster for a Dragon Pokémon. With a Base Stat total of 520 of which it’s physical attack stat and it’s speed stat are the highest at a total of 100 it struggles to keep up with other Dragons. However this does make it an excellent Dragon Dance user. It’s ability to levitate makes it immune to ground types, it is immune to electric types but very weak to ice. Which means you will probably want to run it as a mixed attacker.  Earthquake , Dragon Dance, Fire Blast (for scaring away those ice types)  and Dragon Claw makes a good set for this pokémon. Dragon Dance boosts speed and physical attack and while Fire Blast is inaccurate and special, it’s high base power and the fact that Flygon has a passable special attack makes it viable enough to use.  This isn’t an easy pokémon to use but if you can get a few Dragon Dance’s off and scare off your opponent it can surely bring you victory.

Dragon Type #4 Rayquaza

Rayquaza is probably my favourite looking Dragon Type ever! It should be my number one but I don’t like using legendaries.  It feels cheap. Yet Rayquaza and Mega Rayquaza look so amazing. They have unique moves and abilities as well. There is lots of lore and story around Rayquaza and it really feels like  it is a bigger part of the pokémon world. It even played an important role in Pokémon Mystery Dungeon. There is so much Rayquaza love that it really had an impact on me. Like how Zacian and Zamenzenta seemed really important.. just the story of their game was really bad. When A pokémon looks this amazing, you HAVE to use it in ORAS post game and there is significant content for it..it deserves a spot on my list

Most people know it as a part of the ruler of the Weather Trio. It was the Pokémon that put an end to the conflict between Kyogre and Groudon and it is a Pokémon that really has a beef with Deoxys.  It normally resides high above the clouds in the ozone layer. There it moves around consuming meteorites which have caused it to awaken to the power of Mega Evolution. It is said this pokémon is hundreds of millions years old and since the beginning of its life has lived about the clouds. Constantly flying through the ozone layer invisible from the land. It will only come down if Kyogre and Groudon will clash again. How exactly it stopped the Pokémon of Land and the Pokémon of water has been lost to legends. 

Rayquaza is not really allowed in much competitive formats let alone Mega Rayquaza.  Most sets are fairly similar amongst them and use Sword Dance for a powerful but trail sweeper, or Dragon Dance for a slightly less strong but more quick hitter. Personally I prefer the Sword Dance set as I love bringing Webs as hazards on my team which slow my enemy down! Equipped with it’s signature move Dragon Ascent, Victini’s Signature move V-Create (yes it can learn it but you can replace it with earthquake if you don’t want stat dropping moves)  and the always useful Extreme Speed this pokémon is a force to be reckoned with.  Like with Xerneas and Yveltal and to a lesser extent Zacian and Zamazenta these are pokémon you need to use in gameplay so this pokémon scores a lot of points for that. It actually feels cool instead of cheaty to use this legendary and the moves it has and uses really befit a legendary! I vastly prefer legendaries with signature moves that are actually useful. It gives yet another reason to use them in combat so Rayquaza is a solid pick.

Dragon Type #3 Hydreigon

There is something I really dislike about Dragons! Nearly all of them.. at least the ones that are good have a quadruple weakness. Everything except for my number two pick is quad weak to one of the dragon’s major counters. Hydreigon would have been my favourite dragon had it not had the worst quad weakness. It is a Dragon/Dark type so it can not take hits from Fairies. Add to that that it only evolves at the atrociously late level of 64! Which is 9 levels later than Dragonite.Still I LOVE this pokémon! It’s design is so fierce! It’s line mimicking that of a Hydra with it’s evolution getting more and more heads.. Dark and Dragon might be the coolest type out there. I don’t think there are any besides him either. It’s first evolution is super cute and it is the most fun line to have with you of all the dragons. It can do just about everything you expect a dragon to do and it’s cave colour scheme feels so in line with what we’ve seen in caves before! Thought went into this one!

The pokédex lore says this creature isn’t exactly the most kind. The dark type is called the evil type in Japan and this one really lives up to that name. It uses its six wings to fly in the sky but it is SO violent and aggressive that the only thing it needs to attack something is movement. It will attack and DESTROY anything that moves.Two of it’s heads.. the arm heads as they are called do not have brains so they continuously devour everything never feeling like they had enough to eat. The main head does join in for it’s fair share of violence though taking an almost equal share in all the killing. In Galar there are plenty of stories of Hydreigon that have destroyed villages entirely. As long  as Hydreigon spots movement it will continue to consume and devour until nothing but itself moves. 

Hydreigon is a very scary wallbreaker in the OU tier.. the most competitive tier so it does show how good it is. With its lowest stats being in the 90’s range and it’s special attack being at 125 this pokémon is very powerful but has no real weaknesses at least in the stat department. With the move Nasty Plot, it can continuously hail down Draco Meteor on your opponent. With a single move it can recover from the greatest weakness of  the Dragon Type’s strongest move. If you can set up beforehand it can even hit harder.  With additional moves like Flash Cannon , being a steel type move or Flamethrower being a fire type move it’s offensive coverage is great. Dark Pulse can give it a good flinch chance with high damage output still and moves like Roost will dramatically improve it’s survivability.  This pokémon both in lore as in combat is truly fearsome…unless you have a pink little creature by your side.. then you are probably fine!

Dragon Type #2 Dracovish

Generation 8 introduced me to my two favourite Dragon Types of all time.. and it is all because of the way Dragon Types are handled. Dracovish is one of the four fossil pokémon in the game and strictly theoretical this pokémon has the strongest move EVER in a pokémon game! I love it’s weird design! It feels and in a way is a science experiment gone wrong. But the positive is.. it doesn’t evolve and you can get this pokémon mid-game. This means Dracovish much like my number 1 can be an active part of your journeys.  While I did not walk around with a Dracovish the fact that it has a move that can have a base power of well over 5x that of the most powerful move in the game makes this a very odd thing in the pokémon world. I like oddities and this is what I feel Dragon’s can be like as well. Instead of giving us insane level requirements give us weird set up material for it to truely shine. Dracovish really utilised the Dynamax mechanic.. not Persé as the Pokémon that grows but one that really benefits from the weather effect.

Being introduced in Galar only we do not get a lot of trivia about this pokémon yet! What we do know is that much like Hydreigon it can be a bit ruthless. Weirdly enough even though it is a combination of two mismatched fossil halves it seemed to exist in the past like this as well. There it was driven to extinction by its own devices. It hunted for prey so fiercely that eventually it ended up starving itself due to overhunting. It has experienced other problems as well. It’s body is very much made to dwell on land and it can be fairly fast with running speeds of about miles per hours. It can’t maintain that for long though because it can only breath underwater.. as it’s head is a fish! That is just hilarious and if you have seen these lists you know I like awkward pokémon like that.

In combat Dracovish is very hard to use. With only a base stat total of 505 and his defence being his highest stat at 100, it seems very lackluster. However.. it knows the move Fishious Rend. Fishious Rend is an 85 base power move that doubles in power if the user goes First. Making it a 170 Base power move in that case. Since Dracovish is a water type it gets a same type attack bonus of 50% on that. So when it hits a Fishous Rend it would hit for 235 base power?! So far nothing that special! Most Pokémon with powerful moves get STAB (Same Type Attack)  Bonuses. Draco Meteor from  Hydreigon above would most likely still do more!  But then there is Dracovish’s ability! Strong Jaw.. which powers up biting moves by 50%. After all other calculations! So Suddenly this move takes a giant leap to a base power of 340 ish. Which is quite the number.. and then there is the Dynamax mechanic. Every water move used in Dynamax form sets up the rain. While you usually don’t want Dracovish itself to evolve, along with a rain setter, or a dynamax rain setter boosts it greatly. Because any water type  move in the rain .. you guessed it.. gets a 50% power boost post other calculations. Putting Fishious Rend’s optimal Base power at 510. With an item like a choice scarf or god forbid a choice band (you need web setters or paralysers or a trick room user)  this means Dracovish can attack as if it has been given 3 turns of set up from the get go. So unique but very cool!

My Favourite Dragon Type :  Appletun

No Dragonite is not on this list. I don’t like how it suddenly turns from blue to orange and gains the flying type after being found in the ocean. It doesn’t learn good flying moves either so it just happend to make it weaker to ice. If Ice is going to be my weakness I rather run with my Pokémon that is also an apple pie! This looks more unique, actually learns grass moves and again is available mid game! My Appletun had been with me for a very large part of my Pokémon Shield playthrough and I got so attached to it! It is amazing. Never EVER have I bonded so much with a Dragon. It’s compact design and it’s goofy animations make it a delight to have it walking around your camp and it is no slouch in combat either. It is not the most powerful or competitively viable pokémon but for the story playthrough it is incredibly good!  I named my Appletun Tarte Tartin because why not!  It sounds cute and fancy and it is actually related to Apple Pie! It is apple Pie! The fact that a baby dragon got into an apple and it evolves by eating yet another apple makes it a wonderfully wacky pokémon that I will hold close to my heart forever.

Pokédex wise we don’t see much difference from Dracovish.. it’s a fresh pokémon so there isn’t a lot to say.  This pokémon is popular amongst children because they would eat it’s skin as a treat. I am not sure if that means after it is dead or if it regrows.. but well eating the skin of something that is alive sounds kinda unappealing. No matter how sweet it may taste. Galar children are quite horrible either way if they kill this cutie or if they steal his skin! The pie of the little beast is slathered in nectar …the body is  about pie sized just fatter and higher. So dare I say it might be an American Pie?!.. Eeew… that gave me a visual I did not want. This nectar functions as an armor but it also lures in bugs which Appletun happily eats. Making the idea of kids eating it’s skin grosser… there is dead bugs in there kids! Still stay away from my baby!  It also has a Gigantamax form in which it turns into a giant apple covered in nectar! In this form it’s nectar has become more like armor but it also uses it to cover it’s opponents and drown them in the sweet goop!

Appletun has a special attack of 110 which is not bad for a Pokémon that evolves with a simple item.  It also gets a signature grass type move named Apple Acid which is a nice 80 base power move that lowers your opponents special defences  With an HP stat of 110 Appletun is quite bulky as well so it really works well with Leftovers as a held item to recover or Giga drain if it can deal super effective damage. With moves like Dragon Pulse and Draco Meteor on the side you have a wide arrangement of options available to you to deal damage. Choice Specs might also be a good shout-out as a held item. It really puts a bit of kick into this cake! It has not that many recognised movesets yet due to official tournaments and such not being a thing right now, so who knows you might have more fun with leech seeds, left over, giga drain to create the immortal apple pie!  With it unique Gigantamax move G-max Sweetness.. we get a pretty accurate description of using Appletun though! Sweet!

In the end I ended up without any of the classic Dragons all because of some piece of pie! It looks clunky, it has a bit of awkward lore with children eating it, it has good stats and the fact that both my number 1 and 2 can be a part of your journey in a significant capacity really helps. There is so much persona to Appletun and I really would love to see one scurrying across my house doing tired sighs from just moving little bits! I fell in love with this pokémon and a Dragon Type never did that before.It goes in against the stereotypical idea of a dragon and makes something still IS a dragon but also something completely else! Appletun has found it’s way into my heart like a worm..dragon-thing to an apple! The Winner is Appletun!

Who is your favourite Dragon?! Do you use Dragon Types a lot?!  How do you train your dragon?!  Let me know in the comments!   I expect to see a lot of Salamance and Dragonite.. but feel free to prove me wrong or right! Now it’s time for me to blast off again! As I found a new game in which I can catch a dragon!

Pokémon Top 5: My Favourite Ghost Types

Welcome again Island Guests!  We have discussed Pokémon 15 Types so far.  Three more to go!  The Ghost type is not super effective against the poison type I discussed last time..which had determined my order until now ! But it IS super effective against itself! One of the fan favourite types that is kind of frail. While definitely one of my favourites when it comes to Pokédex Entries this type is my absolute favourite. When it comes to actually favouring a type it’s actually quite mid tier for me!  I did this list once.. but my answers have changed a bit with how much I learned!

Rules and Honourable Mentions

As always to keep this list diverse I will not allow Pokémon that were on prior lists. I am not sure any ghosts made it on my lists normally due to how prominent the typing is. So there aren’t that many conflicting issues. However under the same rule I only add one entry per evolutionary line in! Since Gen VIII made evolution harder to cancel if I do not like a final evolution, I will mark down the previous forms. Even if it’s not a Gen VIII Pokémon it seems fairer that way. Pumpkaboo and Phantump are for me forms I really like, but both their final evolutions feel a bit meh! With Trevenant being okay but Gourgeist not feeling fully evolved for me. I can’t shake the “is this it?” feeling. It’s fine.. but it really feels like a mid evolution to me! So Pumkaboo takes this honourable mention. Had there been a form above Gourgeist it would have made the list.

Another rule is that ghost types have to feel like ghost types. Decidueye for example doesn’t feel like a ghost type to me and simply gets the type because it’s based on an extinct Owl. However I talked about him enough so he doesnt get the honourable mention on this rule. That goes to Dhelmise. While I very much get why it’s a ghost.. and it’s possessed seaweed around an anchor..and it fit’s the ghost ship theme.. I feel like it should be a Steel Grass type. Dhelmise gets the ability Metal Worker which effectively gives it a steel typing in the form of adding Same Type Attack bonus to his attacks but I feel that should have been swapped out for Possessed..which would give Ghost STAB as a result. In the end I do just see a seaweed covered anchor. I love it but it’s the ghost part that is implied rather than the steel bit. 

Temporary forms also do not count! So Mega’s do not count. This for me excludes Mega Banette. Which designwise is one of my favourite mega’s. I like Banette fine enough in it’s normal form but it’s mega is something I found really amazing. One of the best designed Megas and a Pokémon that could really use one.  Banette is somewhere like my seventeenth favourite ghost type or so but it’s mega might have made it a contender. Unfortunately..we judge pokémon for how they are for the majority of their journey, without any special items or so! So it falls short! The backstory about Banette being a discarded plushie swearing on revenge though! One of my all time favourites.

Ghost Type #5 Mimikyu

I thought Mimiky would be higher on this list. It is cute, has a great backstory, is fleshed out in the anime a lot and truly is a fan favourite! I love Mimikyu as well..but I do not like putting it on my team all that much! It’s design is top notch and I appreciate it a lot more than Pikachu itself..but it’s a physical ghost and fairy type. Which does make it rather unique but also a bit trickier to use.  To effectively use Mimikyu you have to sacrifice one moveslot to use Sword Dance. One for Shadow Claw and probably one for Play Rough ..because fairy types do not get a lot of physical moves either.  That means Mimikyu is one of the most rigid and less versatile ghost types with  three moves more or less being set. It managed to fight off Marshadow from the fifth place though, who is arguably the better physical ghost type due to its move Spectral Thief, by sheer love! There is so much fun stuff about Mimikyu including his Z-move! Let’s Snuggle Forever. The story of this Pokémon wanting love.. despite it cursing people to death if they see it’s true form.. is just heartwarming and wins me over every time.  Even though I do not always want to run it on my team.. I can not stop from helping to want to adopt one! It is high on my list of Pokémon Plushies I want to get and it’s song is one of my more played Pokémon tracks!

As for his Pokédex entries! I am so familiar with his lore that I do not even need to look these facts up anymore.  No one has ever seen Mimikyu’s true shape….well at least no one who did lived to tell the tale. However, looking at the true Mimikyu gets cursed ..which if you get a good view of the thing usually means you die. This made Mimikyu sad as he also wanted to be among people! So it created a disguise it could wear.  It noticed that humans really liked Pikachu so it based it’s design on that! So it could be loved as well.  For those of you unfamiliar. The Pikachu-like head is completely empty ..the actual eyes are on its body!  If it’s costume ever breaks Mimikyu gets extremely down and won’t stop working on repairing it’s costume, no matter how long it takes. It shall not rest until it’s costume is complete yet again. Mimikyu is a bit scared of sunlight, probably because it might think it’s costume doesn’t pass as much or who knows what is underneath that disguise it might be allergic to sunlight. Mimikyu can get jealous of Pikachu if it really gets lonely! Yet all in all it’s a crafty little who knows,  with a heart that wants to be loved and a disguise that wants to be hugged.

Like I said before, Mimikyu in battle is kind of boring to use. His Ability disguise  allows it to take one free hit per battle , without taking damage. (Excluding Hazards and status) Mimikyu’s strong ability however is countered with a lackluster stat pool. It’s physical attack is only 90, which is not bad but no where near the ballpark of others. Since it’s most targetable weakness is ghost it does really benefit from his high special defence and his decent speed. I ran Leech Life as a final move on mine since Gen VII really improved that move , giving it 80 base power instead of 20. With his high defences it can get a fair bit of recovery of types Leech Life is super effective against. It doesn’t offer much covery though as it overlaps a lot with both it’s fairy typing against dark and ghost typing against psychic. Woodhammer is an option to make it more diverse.. but that last slot really depends on what kind of teams you are facing.. you can not swap the other moves out at all so that one changes depending on what you face. I always give it it’s Z-crystal as a held item because I want to use Let’s Snuggle forever! Cause you know! It’s cute!

Ghost Type #4 Polteageist

My Polteageist Earl Grave was one of my favourite Pokémon during my Pokémon Sword and Shield run! I bet the nickname has been passed around a lot so it’s not very original but I did not want to go South African/Dutch with Dooibos  and it was a male and I felt Deadjeeling felt a bit more feminine.  Still I never thought tea would make such a good Pokémon. When I say good I mean that for a while it was amongst the top 10 most powerful Pokémon in Galar. I haven’t kept up with it so I am not sure if it got a bit nerfed but I know this Pokémon without any imposed limitations can kick ass and take names. It’s design like a pot of tea also is quite unique and I really prefer pure ghost types a lot!  With only two weaknesses, one that it always has covered, it just works for me!  Also it’s dead it loses some of those other aspects. I never got why Gengar got the poison type! This is just ghostly black tea haunting a cup! Sure you could add the water or grass type to it.. but it would only end up with more weaknesses.  So they did well with this one!

What many people did not know is that Polteageist comes in two forms and this has to do with a lore thing. Polteageists are formed if you leave a bit of black tea in a teapot and another ghost usually another polteageists comes to visit it in the night!  If it does it will move into the tea and possess it after it leaves the beverage a new ghost is formed.  Ever after they roam around. Usually they originate from fake chinaware but once every now and again it is an official antique teapot they possess. Which is also mentioned in the Pokédex. But this is actually a feature in the game! If you manage to tilt the camera below your Polteageist, you can see a blue stamp of a prime brand if you have the anique form. If there is nothing it is called the Phoney form. If you use a cracked pot evolution item to evolve it .. your Pokémon is a fake antique..however if you used a Chipped Pot.. it is the real deal!  There are no stat differences here.. and it’s just tea possessing tea but I love how much detail went in such a seemingly throw away pokedex line. When it trusts its trainer it allows them to sample some of their tea. However if it is angered it will shoot some bad tea in your mouth that will cause severe chills. No gruesome stories for this one it seems!

Polteageist has a Special Attack stat of 136. Which means it is more offensive than nearly all other pokémon I listed before. No more than 5 pokémon of the 75 I mentioned before are more powerful than this tea!  Yet that is not all! Polteageist gets the excellent combination of  Shell Smash, a move that changes all your stats .. dropping your defensive stats for offensive stats and speeds, as well as Stored Power.. a move that deals damage equal to the number of stat boosts you have gotten. It’s ability weak armor raises its speed when it’s hit by a physical attack and equipped with a white herb or a focus sash; this combination can wreck teams if they do not have a proper special wall.  (A wall is a pokémon whose main purpose is to take damage and shift momentum in your favour)  It also gets moves like Willow Whips to lower physical damage, it gets Shadow Ball the most powerful Ghost special move and it gets Giga Drain which with 136 special attack can offer you some very reliable recovery. This Pokémon needs to be taken out because with just two goes of Shell Smash it can nearly one-shot an entire team…as long as the opponent doesn’t have a dark type or priority moves. Truely a scary ghost!

Ghost Type # 3 Gengar

While I do not understand why it has the poison type, and that typing often is more a nuisance as a boon, I do love the original ghost pokémon.  That is right both in generation one and two there was only 1 ghost pokemon line for each. Gengar is a classic and for good reasons. His design is haunting, the idea of incorporating him with shadows pays off, and the way he reflects Clefable in a way has led to many interesting theories. He is still one of the better designed ghost Pokémon for me. Both his Giganta Max and Mega evolution are amazing in their own rights. I particularly like the Mega! Even if its forbidden to use because of how amazingly powerful it is! It fits in Gengars Pokedex lore! So love that one! There is something intimidating about Gengar. It seems the most insane and chaotic of the ghost pokémon and Haunter and Gengar are arguably the first pokémon that killed Ash. Haunter at least ripped out his soul long before Mewtwo and Mew ever turned him to stone! Gengar was also the first trade evolution I ever managed to obtain so he was something very special to me!  Later becoming one of my staples in Pokémon Stadium! I also had a Gengar toy which looks awesome and translucent!  So with this many memories he was sure to be on this list and I am fairly sure that no one really thinks this is a bad ghost type Pokémon!

Pokédexwise this pokémon used to be moderately innocent. His earliest entries seem to focus on that shiver you feel down your spine when you’re scared or anxious! They explain it is Gengar stealing heat from its surroundings. It can hide in your shadow or mimic to be your shadow and if  your shadow ever overtakes you on a full moon or when you are passing by streetlights it is actually the ghost running and having fun. As soon as early as Pokémon Silver though it already mentioned that it preys on lives to steal.  Hiding in the shadows to do so. It becomes quickly clear that this stealing of heat is more a stealing of life force. He also likes to curse you without reason.. just to have a laugh. Yet Gengar is at his darkest .. in Pokémon Sun and Moon. Sun’s ingame pokédex entry states: Should You ever feel yourself attacked by a sudden chill it’s the sign of an approaching Gengar. There is no escaping it. Just give up! Which… is quite dark!  Moon then explains that it was once a human himself and now he is looking for a traveling companion which he achieves by taking the lives of other humans hoping the dead turn into other Gengar. If you ever think .. well I will just not leave the house then.. Ultra Moon states.  Not even your house is safe… all Gengar needs is a Dark corner to wait for a chance to catch its prey!… Darn Game Freak.. that would have given Kid Pinkie sooo much nightmares!

Gengar got infamy in the competitive scene when Mega Gengar was released. In its Mega form it’s base special attack became 170. The most Powerful special attack ever. So promptly Mega Gengar was cast into the Ubers Categorie.. where it rests with all the overpowered legendaries. Since that is not possible in Gen VIII I will discuss his non mega evolving set from the Under-used tier! Here he works as a special sweeper with 130 special attacks.  Ev’s go into special attack and speed and it is equipped with Focus Blast, Shadow Ball , Sludge Wave and Substitute. The idea is to keep a substitute up and bombard your enemies from behind cover.  Since virtually all sound based moves, except for bug Buzz, which Gengar resists,  are normal type moves he works great behind a sub. These moves offer a wide variety and deal a lot of damage against fairly common archetypes. Myself I oftenly swap out Focus Blast for Thunderbolt since I oftenly lack proper covery against flying types and the paralysis chance is neat as well. The Focus blast slot once more is the most swappable slot.. though substitute can also be replaced if you face off against a trick room team!   Gengar has a few options and lots of types covered.  

Ghost Type Number # 2 Mismagius

Mismagius to me is mostly an improvement of Gengar.. but more femine. It has a bit more defence, for a bit less offensence, It lacks the pesky psychic type and ground type weaknesses the number three has and it has a hat! While Gengar feels more scary. Mismagius feels more ghostly! It also has a bit of a scholarly quality! A mage! …well duh! Oddly that mage like quality isn’t on to many pokemon. Alakazam is more a mentalist like Uri Geller, Gardevoir is more of a Bride or something. While we had plenty of warriors , there are not that many real mages. So as a D&D Player I am happy! It is also something I really would like to cosplay as a Gijninka version.. which is basically the pokémon interpreted as a human. I just love this design that much!  The colours are more vibrant than on Gengar, it has a  better shiny form then Gengar (it becomes greenish yellow, where Gengar slightly hue shifts to barely noticeable less saturated). I really like how it differs from the other ghosts as well. 

Most Ghosts have insanely dark Pokédex entries. Like people dying from looking at them, them praying on human lives just to have a playmate to stuff like “this ghost is a child that got lost in the woods and starved to death’  , this ghost carries its former human face with it and sometimes looks at it and cries tears of blood (yes that’s a  real in game thing). Mismagius though is a half and half. It is a chanting/spellcasting pokémon befitting its name.  While it certainly can cause trouble with it’s chants, such as intense migraines and visions of absolute terror , Mismagius can also induce Happiness in people with some of it’s chants. The Pokémon is feared for it’s wrath and the curses that it places but it on a whim also bestows positivity upon humans. For example , besides the happiness, Mismagius is known to be able to cast love spells. It can make two people fall deeply in love with another. This means some people desperately seek it’s aid. I like how it once again is a bit of a counterpart to Gengar’s doom and gloom.. and with him most of the other pokémon. It makes Mismagius much more of a balanced Pokémon, a creature you could actually see people use as a pokémon.

Mismagius is a Pokémon in the Never Used Tier. It’s offensive stat of 105 makes it an average  but solid sweeper. This rating is mostly based on how dominant Inciniroar was a presence in the Metagame though.  In Sword and Shield it would most likely be more successful due to a much lesser presence of Dark types. It is best on a team with Webs, Hazards and possibly Sleep. As it is dependent on Nasty Plot to get properly set up! It having Nasty Plot though means that IF you can set it up.. it gets powerful FAST. People really used to run it with Power Gem but that is a rather specific counter.  Due to how Dynamax fighting moves offer one of the best stat buffs, Dazzling Gleam might be a better shout. Protect and Taunt are good support moves to run on it and if you can run it on a team that keeps you in the driver’s seat when it comes to momentum this pokémon is great. As it doesn’t require a trade but just a Dusk-Stone to evolve this Pokémon is also a lot more viable to use on gameplay stuff. Let’s be honest if you are playing an older game who is going to reliably trade a Gengar to you?! You already need a friend with a game! So while it’s not the BETTER pokémon I think it is the better pick.

My Favourite Ghost Type: Chandelure

A lamp.. My favourite ghost type is a lamp! Back in the early days of my blog I bumped him down a little as recently I had used a Gengar again and to be safer with my audience! However since then it has climbed in my list again. Somehow this always climbs back to the top! I love purple flames! The whole dark fire thing is one of the tropes I like the most! I loved it in Underhero, I loved in Pokémon, I love anything that has a canonical purple black flame! It is my main in Pokken.. not that I play Pokken a lot but as far as it goes..it’s my main. I just want to own one and swing on its arms.  I also want to hug it ..as long as it doesn’t burn me!  The Pokémon also has a great Gijinka which I love very much.. but that might be a topic I cover on it’s own.  There is just so much to love! The  black frame.. the bluish intended glass, those endless yellow eyes and the dancing purple flames together create a stunningly designed pokémon. I absolutely adore the design and it is one of the very few Pokémon that uses a jet(ish) black in it’s design so well. Zekrom is a thing but other than that most pokémon are more a dark blue than a black.. yet here it works so incredibly well! This makes it more unique in my opinion. Of course Jynx used to be jet black but we like to forget about that one and even if we considered it.. it’s not much competition. This Pokémon perfectly fits it’s ghost fire typing for me and it works very well in my shadowy mansion with a big haunted library ..old tea pots and seemingly moving plushie collection!

While it’s  pokédex entry  is nowhere near as scary as both its earlier evolutionary stages.. which are a candle that mesmerises you by looking at it’s flame.. but also drains you off life force as you do.. or a smaller lamp that if it burns you , you will experience that pain forever from then on out. Chandelure still is a bit of a creeper. It is said to live in ancient dilapidated mansions. It hypnotises those who visit it with it’s swinging arms. Then it burns your soul from your body. Leaving around a soulless husk of a corpse. While a part of your spirit fades a part of it is doomed to wander this world forever, never finding rest. Being a generation V pokémon it has only seen pokédex entries in Unova, Kalos and Galar. Unfortunately missing out on those sweet sun and moon dex entries. However Shield does have a bit of a zinger as well!  It mentions that those who have their homes illuminated by Chandelure will not get light in abundance. In place of lights, there will be lots and lots of funerals. At least it hypnotises you before it kills you! So that is better as just giving into your fear like is the case with Gengar! I much rather be murdered by a Chandelure!  So of course it is higher on this list.

Chandelure is commonly used as a Under-Used Tier Stall breaker. That means this is the Pokémon you set in if your opponent is bunkering down. It gets the ability Infiltrator which allows it to negate substitutes which can come in handy against some Pokémon! Yet you normally do not even have to run it to be effective. Just by being one of it’s possible abilities means  they can not risk staying in against it if they are weak against its unique typing. Fire and Ghost is great against a great many Meta popular types so it should get the most powerful but reliable moves for those.  Shadowball and Flamethrower. Yes Fire Blast is more powerful but the general consensus in the gaming community is that due to its accuracy Flamethrower reliably deals more damage. However Fire Blast should be taken if the enemy has some very big special walls, such as Aggron! While it is super effective against it. Aggron also can use super effective moves against it.  This means Chandelure is a bit more versatile but also more tricky than say Gengar. Like most Chandelure is best if it can set up. It’s set up move of choice is Calm Mind. With it’s 145 base special attack it  can already pack a wallop but with just One Calm Mind already..it becomes a massive treat leaving you in control of the fight.

Chandelure is everything I want in a Pokémon. It is more versatile to use, it is a bit trickier to use due to how frail it is but it is also something that really can boost your team rather than just be a stand alone thing. It’s slightly more than just a cannon. Combine that with one of the best ghostly designs and its ability to literally leave it’s mark upon one’s soul and it is not hard to see why this one is my bright and shiny light on top of the Ghost Pokémon list.

So what is your favourite Ghost Type? Do you prefer any of the legendaries maybe? What is your favourite ghost pokédex entry?! Do you use the ghost types often? Let me know and let’s talk Pokémon! Next week..we shall cover our penultimate type! The Dragon-Type! Feel free to let me know your favourites on that one in advance! Now I still feel a bit under the weather so Pinkie is heading back to bed.. or next time she might actually be a ghost herself.