Short update

C'mon, you thought that Cosmog was a Mirage too. ^_^

So yeah, I'm not going to play the demo anymore as it has nothing for me. I have Dragon Quest Builders and World of Final Fantasy to get through before I do anything else, but a lot of new stuff was revealed, including the final starter evolutions. The Tapus are going to be the most OP Pokemon ever - Nature's Madness is a Fairy-type Super Fang(cut enemy current HP by 50%) and its Z-move, Guardian of Alola, also does fractional damage(cut enemy current HP to 25%!), making it very powerful indeed.

A whole bunch of stuff revealed! (Sun and Moon)

Yes, plz, take my money! @_@

Well, despite many's wishes and hopes, the Chinese leaked pictures were accurate - those pictures showed the forms of the final evolutions of the starters to be true.

Despite the despair of getting spoiled to all the stuff, we basically got spoiled because Game Freak forgot to remove all the data of every new Pokemon in the Alola region from the demo file and you know what they say about hackers - they're like roaches on a dead body with this stuff! :p

But the good thing is that we never found out what the types of the final forms WERE, so here are some interesting info from the newest trailer:

1. Rowlet fully evolves into an owl hunter called Decidueye, and its secondary type changes from Flying to Ghost. It has a signature ghost-type move called Spirit Shackle which works like Mean Look - once hit, the opponent is trapped and cannot switch out. I expected something like this, but if it's a damaging move, it will be really powerful - I can see a Decidueye set with Toxic, Spirit Shackle, and a grass-type move being freakin' annoying and wiping out a trainer's ghost and psychic types. :)
2. Litten's final evolution is the pro-wrestling bobcat called Inceniroar, but it's not Fire/Fighting, that's been done to death. Nope, it's Fire/DARK. Yep, move over Mega Houndoom, there's a new bad boy on the block! Especially with its signature move, Darkest Lariat, a dark-type move that ignores stat changes. So any Psychic or Ghost types trying to buff their defense - forget about it, you're done like dinner. ^_^
3. Finally, Poplio looks goofy, but after evolving twice, it becomes the seal-nosed diva mermaid called Primarina, a Water/Fairy type. Yeah, Azumarill is strong, but Primarina can heal allies with its Fairy-type signature move, Sparkling Aria, which removes the burn status on whatever it hits. Actually, I think this will be the burn-variant of Smellingsalts - it removes the condition BUT does a whopping double damage! Makes Will-O-Wisp viable. :D
4. Tapu Koko's fellow guardian Pokemon have been revealed; Tapu Koko is the guardian of Melemele Island, is Electric/Fairy, and has an ability to proc Electric Terrain when it appears. The others have similar names and effects:  Tapu Lele is the Psychic/Fairy guardian of Akala Island and has an ability that procs a new type of terrain,. Psychic Terrain. This terrain makes the Sun and Moon meta flip the bird to Quick Attack moves even MORE - all priority moves are negated while this field is active!
5. Tapu Bulu is the Grass/Fairy guardian of Ula'Ula Island and his ability procs Grassy Terrain. Finally, we have Tapu Fini, the Water/Fairy Guardian of Poni Island, which has an ability to proc the Misty Terrain.
6. All the Guardians can use a unique Z-crystal to activate the Z-move, Guardian of Alola. What it does... IT SUMMONS A FRICKING GOLEM WHICH THEY FUSE WITH TO SMASH THE F*** OUT OF A FOE! It'll be a Fairy-type move since all the Guardians have the Fairy secondary type, so the Z-Move has to share the same type as all of them.
7. There was a weird smoke-like Pokemon with smoky antenna shown before Lunala, and many expect it to be the pre-evolved form of that legendary. It was revealed to be Cosmobog(no, I mean Cosmog - sorry, had Dragon Quest VII on the brain XD) with the ability Unaware, and it's a Psychic-type Pokemon. Go figure.
8. Alolan Persian gets an official reveal - it's much uglier with a huge bulbous face. One of the interesting things we didn't get was that one of its abilities is Fur Coat, the same ability Furfrou has. Well, it makes sense - Furfrou is a pampered poodle, and Alolan Persian is a pampered fat cat. ^_^ This would be a great ability against many Fighting and Bug type Pokemon since most Fighting and Bug moves are physical in nature - it could tank a Megahorn or Hi Jump Kick.
9. We then get into post-game stuff; once you beat the final challenges of the main story, you can go to Mount Lanakila, the top of the highest mountain in Alola, and enter a "Battle Tree" competition where you not only fight, but team up with, famous faces from the other generations - yes, Champion Cynthia returns as does Wally from OR/AS... and we also get a surprise; Red and Blue, the trainers from the classic games, make a return, and Red is as silent as always. :p

This is looking to be a cool generation, folks, and now I am off to build my teams. ;)

I've got good news and I've got bad news, which do you wanna hear first?

After reading an interview with Shigeru Ohmori, one of the people working on Pokemon Sun and Moon, I gleaned a few new things that will upset a lot of people, including myself, but I got over it:

Mega Evolution is confined to the post-game:

"We really wanted to have people kind of get used to this new idea, this new strategic element. So over the course of the main scenario of the main game, Mega Evolutions don't appear. But once you finish the story, you unlock the access to Mega Evolve Pokémon. You run through the main game learning about these new Z moves, and after the game you unlock more strategic depth by combining Z move with mega-evolve Pokémon."

 What a lot of hardcore fans of a game franchise hate is the post-game: It's basically stuff that's the aftermath of the story and some things are not available until that aftermath section, once all of the main story is over and done with. Disgaea D2 is furiously notorious for this, giving you playable characters from other games in the franchise like Emizel and Raspberyl.

And it looks like Pokemon's 6th gen mechanic, Mega Evolution, is being restricted to the post-game because this game's mechanic are the Z-Moves.

IMHO, I have no idea WHY fans hate this. The 6th gen games did not let you have the Key Stone right away. Even X/Y barred you from the Key Stone and Mega Evolution until you beat Korrina in the Tower of Mastery, which was after the third gym battle, and even then you only had access to Lucarionite and Mega Lucario and the Starterite of your Kanto starter you chose at Lumiose City.

Mega Evolutions are powerful but I only used one in my entire play of Omega Ruby (because Mega Mawile is awesome) and I didn't even use one in Pokemon Y. The Z-Moves I might use more often but I don't intend to harp on them much.

Confirmed: There are no Alolan Pokemon changes past the original 149.

"long-time fans of the game that have played since the beginning, and I really wanted to have a special surprise for those players. Also for the fact that Pokémon from the Kanto region of the original game are probably the most recognizable among long-time fans. So I really wanted to kind of focus on them and give them kind of them a new take on their appearance to really surprise them. But at the same time, by having the new appearance they kind of look like new Pokémon for a lot of new players who are maybe just getting started with Pokémon. So that was the reason we decided to focus on Kanto Pokémon."

It's straight from the Mudsdale's mouth, folks: Any future Alolan Pokemon will be strictly derived from the 149 Pokemon of the original Chromatic classics. There will be no Alolan forms of Johto, Hoenn, Sinnoh, Unova or Kalos Pokemon!!!

Again, a lot of fans will hate this because it'll be "Oh, the creators are Genwunners!!! X(" I admit I was born long before Nintendo was a video game company and had long since graduated from high school before the original Pokemon games came out, and I got hooked on the games after seeing Ash battle Brock in his gym in the anime, but after playing the original games, I enjoyed them.

But I am not a Genwunner. In fact, I didn't like 90% of the classic 149. The only Pokemon I liked were Starmie, Ninetales, Kangashkan and Vileplume. However, I am with the creators on restricting the Alolan forms to a certain number of one generation.

Technically, it's good: Even if you didn't given Alolan forms to Legendary Pokemon (that would make them Overpowered), the starters(why do this?) or Pokemon who have Mega Evolutions(the Mega Evolutions won't mesh with Alolan Forms), you still have over 650 Pokemon to work with. That is impossible without making the Nintendo Switch have the memory of a super-computer. Sadly, you have to accept that most of the Pokemon are never getting Alolan Forms.

So why not have a few Alolan forms from each generation? While I support the "melting pot" thesis(after all America and Hawaii in general are melting pots of culture and ecology), it would be hard to determine what Pokemon would work in which generation.By focusing on one generation alone, they can work with what they know.

Finally, the nostalgia factor. Yes, I am supporting the classic games here, but I am not a Genwunner. I'll get into a discussion in a later post. If Gnoggin's to be believed and the Pokemon Company's next Pokemon game, the one they will develop for the Nintendo Switch, is a Ratchet and Clank PS4 reboot of the entire franchise, which generation will they start off reworking in glorious 4K?

Yep, the original 151 of the Kanto Region. This is because Red/Blue/Green are the original O.G, in the immortal words of Zenmaster Blue. ;) Long fans of the series usually began their Pokemon careers training Butterfree or Pikachu in Viridian Forest, so it makes sense that this first wave of critters is the one most will connect with. While I love Mawile, Ralts, Lucario and Goomi, my first Pokemon love was Butterfree.

Now for the Good News: Nintendo's next console is not a console per se, but a dock for a handheld game system called the Nintendo Switch. In other words, you usually play it like a 3DS, but you can insert the device in a socket which is connected to your TV and you can connect a special controller or attach the button/joystick to a grip and play it like a Wii U console. They are going to develop Pokemon games for this device, which I hope I'll be able to afford in March 2017, when it comes out.

Pokemon Sun and Moon demo thoughts

I am going to include some things that were talked about in GameXplain's discussion video here.

One of Ash's Pokemon has been cloned and is now going to be in everyone's Sun/Moon game.

So I've just played the first day of the demo - it seems that, like the Omega Ruby / Alpha Sapphire demo, you can start it up again and it'll have different things going on - and I liked the experience. In the first day, I did the following:

1. I got control of Sun, the male trainer, and he got a Greninja from a mysterious person. (The name isn't visible, but I am betting it's Ash and he's sent his Greninja to Alola. The episode where Ash leaves his Greninja behind is still not dubbed yet and I have yet to finish watching the original X/Y anime past the Skiddo ranch!)
2. I met Hau, the 'rival friend' who will be fighting you with the starter you're strong against.
3. I visited my Alolan Pokemon center, which has a cafe on the left and a shop on the right. Both of these are unusable in the demo, they'll say they're closed for the time being. (The cafe owner is on a trip that is lasting a month, which references the time between the demo's release and the game's release. Nice touch.)
4. I met Team Skull for the first time, who made me laugh inside as they attempted to be cool gangsta punk thieves who demanded our Pokemon. I took one of the punks and his Yangoos, which dropped to two hits from Greninja's Water Shuriken.^_^ They ran off swearing revenge, and Hau gave me a Super Potion, which was nerfed - now it only heals 60 HP. Not like I needed it, I only took damage a couple of times.
5. Professor Kukui - yes, that's the name of the Professor here -arrived and invited Sun to do a trial on Ten Carat Hill. (You thought Dragon Quest remakes are bad with the puns? :p)
6. I talked to some of the people out and about and asked the old man to let me pass, so he did. I went up the trail and Kukui warned me about wild Pokemon. Not like the Level 25 Pikapeks were any threat and I only ran into a couple of them. (I know they should be evolved for their levels but the demo isn't going to spoil any evolutions it hasn't yet. I did glimpse a leaked Pokemon from a data mining site, but I was able to avoid staring at it for too long.)
7. There as also a trainer battle but it wasn't any harder. I liked how the trainer battle goes.
8. It seems this is an alternate universe were Kukui is a trial captain as he had Sun do his trial and gave us the Rotom-dex and Pokefinder. The trial began and we had to take photos of two Jangmo-o and two Kakomo-o, the new dragon-fighter Pokemon. This isn't Pokemon Snap 2, sadly - there was no zoom function. Kukui lent us his Level 40 Pikachu for the trial.
9. And when I took the photos, the dragons attacked. Luckily the Jangmo-o's only got in a Leer before Pikachu wiped them out with Iron Tail and Slam. The first Kakomo-o was a bit harder and got in a Tackle before the Pikachu Iron Tailed him to death.
10. The second Kakomo-o... was a totem battle. I love how Totem Battles work, and found that Kakomo-o has Automize? What? Is this a special move that only this Totem can use? It also called for a Rockruff, not a Jangmo-o. I guess this was so Greninja could take out the Rockruff with Water Shuriken and unleash the beast with its signature Battle Bond ability, transforming into the Ash-form of Greninja which is in the anime. It looked rather cool as it Aerial Aced the Kakomo-o and defeated it, then struck a victory pose. ^_^
11. Kukui rewarded Sun with his own Z-Ring and the Electrium Z-Crystal for Pikachu.
12. Then, the last event was a run-in with Team Skull again, and then in walked Plumeria, who looked like she was going to walk away. But we got the fight with her.
13. She sent out Golbat but the game had switched in Pikachu, so I unleashed the Z-Move, Gigavolt Havoc! It was awesome and that Golbat had no chance. Heck, I could have taken it out with Thunderbolt but I wanted to unleash the beast. <: li="">
14. After that, the group decided to celebrate with 'masalada' and then a trailer rolled to end the demo for that day, showing a girl with a Mudsale... another trial captain, maybe?

That was an awesome first-day event for the demo to start off with, reminding  me of how Ruby helped Steven capture a Mega Glalie and protect it from Team Magma in the OR/AS demo first-day.

I won't spoil anything else, just try out the demo yourself... and when the games come out, you can send a clone of this special Greninja to your copy of Sun or Moon!

Another thing I learned, from the GameXplain video, is...

Pikachu: "FREEDOM, BROTHERS AND SISTERS! WE ARE FREE FROM THE OPPRESSIVE SLAVERY OF THE HIDDEN MACHINES!!!!"

Tauros: "Say you." X(

HM Slaves are now a thing of the past. Yep, the new Poke-Ride feature which you can access from your Pokedex is going to replace the need to use HM moves. Which means that the moves that were usually vital to getting around the land in past games may now become TM moves instead and you earn Poke-Rides by defeating Trial Captains or Great Kahunas. Needless to say, 99% of the Pokemon community is cheering for this new feature. All in all, I think this is an improvement and hope it remains in future generations/reboots. :)

That's all for now. I will probably put up a team tag video on my Youtube channel in the future. Alola and ciao for now!

Yep, definitely seperated at birth ^_^

(First off, I apologize for misnaming some of the stuff in my last post. I hadn't checked it.)

As you know, Dragon Quest shares one of my top spots for favorite RPG series. The first Dragon Quest I ever played was the original Dragon Quest IV(which was renamed Dragon Warrior IV in the US - at least it wasn't renumbered like Final Fantasy IV and VI!), and the first character I liked was Princess Alena, who was a tomboy princess who loved to battle and was a martial artist. When she was retitled "Tsarvena" in the remake, I still liked her, and then she got a voice when she appeared in Dragon Quest Heroes for the PS4 and I fell in love with her...

Then we get the Bounsweet's final evolution, named Tsareena... and its description on the official site says "It punishes those with evil in mind", "only the strongest Steenee can evolve into Tsareena" and "it attacks with kicking motions"...

Yep, whoever designed this final evolution obviously pulled a ton of inspiration from Dragon Quest IV's tomboyish violent Tsarvena. Even the name is similar!

That tears it - this had better not be exclusive to Pokemon Sun or I'll cry. "Alena" is going to be a part of my Pokemon Moon team. I don't give a crap if its stats are horrid, seeing water, ground and rock type crumble to Trop Kick is going to be SO awesome. ^_^

A ton of new Pokemon Sun/Moon information

So now a whole lot of new data has been revealed over the past month and I decided I need to summarize a lot of it.

(1) First off, we got the starters' stage-2 forms. As you know, all Pokemon starters have three stages. Now we see that Rowlet becomes a dapper character called Dartrix, Litten becomes a meaner-looking cat with a cat bell called Lottacat, and Poplio turns into a dopey ballerina seal called Brionne. I have a feeling that the Chinese leaks for the final stages of these creatures is either going to be proven true or false, but I'm leaning towards false. I refuse to speculate on the final stages, but I'll go for any of them... well, maybe not Dartrix...

(2) As Bounsweet's evolutions are revealed - Steenee and Tsareena. They look awesome and Tsareena can get an ability called Queenly Majesty that negates priority moves. Priority moves are pretty weak, but anything that prevents a Swords Danced Mega Lucario from Bullet Punching you to death works.

(3) Mega Lucario? Yep, it's revealed that Mega Evolution will return in the games, but it probably won't be for a while as many game reporters got a chance to spend the first two hours in the games and we hadn't seen it. Dexio and Seena from Kalos(who seems to be young adults now, so chances are these games take place several years after X/Y) will show up and give you an Alakazite. Of course, some of the Mega Evolutions have been nerfed; it's revealed that Mega Kangaskhan's Parental Bond will only do 125% damage in two hits now - but I can't wait to import Mawile over... as long as they don't make me spend Battle Points. Yep, many of the Mega Stones are now swapped for 64 BP, so you'd better start building your competitive team to get a massive win streak!

(4) I know there won't be a lot of Alolan variants. Not all of the Pokemon will get Alolan variants, but one that gets a much needed variant is Grimer and Muk. They look really disgusting now, and Alolan Muk looks like a blob of toxic waster with stones all over its body and glowing rainbow colors that constantly shift, giving people seizures. I joke, but this is one disgusting Pokemon. It is also now Poison/Dark, meaning that Drapion and Skutank have lost their lustre, especially with a creature that has a venomous Shadow Punch.

(5) I found out where you get Festival Points for trainer gear - it's part of an online feature called Festival Plaza where you can meet other player trainers who give you quests and reward you with Festival Points. You can also play in some of the attractions with your Pokemon so they don't feel left out.

(6) Speaking of feeling left out... I have a bad habit of hoarding Pokemon I will never use in battle. Well, guess what? These boxed Pokemon can still help you in Sun and Moon! You meet this NPC who will take care of those Pokemon for you by sending them to a small island chain called the Pelagelago which consists of three islands - in the first one, they can gather beans and befriend wild Pokemon(Pokebeans are like Pokepuffs in X/Y, used for Pokemon Refresh); in the second island, they can explore a spooky cave and mine various stones, especially evolution stones! In the final island, you can let the boxed Pokemon train on their own and feed them special beverages to give them EXP. This means you no longer have to use these Pokemon if you need to level them up for evolutions for your Pokedex. This is a wonderful feature that makes your boxed Pokemon useful.

(7) Another Pokemon which got a lot of attention was Type: Null, which I probably mentioned in an earlier post. Well, it evolves into a powerful chimera called Silvally, which has the same sort of ability as... ARCEUS. Yep, it has 17 'memory chip' hold items that change its type from Normal to something else as well as a signature move which, like Arceus's Judgement, changes type as well. If you love Arceus but can't use him in tournaments, well, get ready for a weaker but similar variant. I only hope it is a genderless unbreedable Pokemon.

(8) We also find out that there is a fifth Trial Captain, Ilima, who is a girl whose type speciality is the Normal Type. I have a feeling that the totem battle seen in trailers will be part of her Trial Challenge. There is also another revealed Great Kahuna, Olivia, who is the Kahuna of Akume Island.

(9) For my final summary, there is another Pokemon I'm going to add to my team, Jangmo-o. It evolves into a Dragon/Fighting type called Hakomo-o, which evolves into a stronger Pokemon called Kommo-o. The fun thing is its abilities - Soundproof and Bulletproof. Yep, this dragon fighter is going to be immune to either all sound attacks(which means a Pixelated Hyper Voice, which would kill it in a single shot, won't work) or all projectile attacks(which means that Ice Shard isn't gonna work on it). I can see this Pokemon being a great competitive player.

There is a lot more I may have missed, but all in all, the info is going to be great, and I'll cover the demo a bit when I get it in a few days. Ciao for now!