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!

Why isn't Ash a married man now? (Another anime mini-rant)

I was watching Did You Know Anime, a spin-off of the popular Youtube series about gaming called Did You Know? and got some interesting info.

One of the creators of the Pokemon anime says that Ash rotates girls like a giggolo because, according to him...

Yep, one of the WRITERS said honestly that Ash's female leads are nothing buy eye candy. Yep, go ahead and cry sexist, folks, but that's what the Japanese think of women. This is because Japan's culture is far different from ours. They're only now getting a feminist movement when the usual lifespan of a Japanese girl was grow up, get educated in home economics, get married, have babies, and grow old and die while the husband works his butt of to support the family.

Another writer of the anime said in a novelization of the first season this interesting tidbit...

You thought 16 was pushing the legal limit for having a wife and babies? Well, in Japan, once you get into puberty, kiss your lifestyle of childhood bliss goodbye! You're now a man/woman and thus treated like one with all the consequences and benefits, INCLUDING MARRIAGE!

So yeah, that episode where Clemont, who is Ash's age, almost gets married isn't a joke - it represents what happens to 10-year olds, they are now able to get engaged and married! The modders of The Sims that created mods for school children to get married and  have WooHoo probably were Japanese.

Okay, I know I am being offensive to the Japanese people by saying all of that, but let's face it... when an anime writer states stuff like that, it's probably fact. After all, he has lived in Japan all his life and you have not, so stop griping.

I'm just saying that if Serena wanted to, she could pop the question to Ash right now and he could accept and marry her, even though they are pre-teens, because they are in a Japanese anime. Of course, because they are catering to us, the prudes who are old-fashioned and think kids are kids until the age of 18, they don't do that, but please... to all the Amourshippers, the writers said that Ash is not going to marry, he's going to string girls along until he and his story are finished, when the Hells Freeze Over, because the writers think that Ash is a lusty boy who needs to have a different girl on his arm every time he travels to a new region, and he's old enough to romance girls, according to them. So stop whining about Serena's removal from the anime. She was just another piece of eye candy, like Iris, Dawn, May and Misty. *sigh*

And for those who did not believe me, I've linked Did You Know Anime's Youtube page, you can just check it out yourself.

This is why I never PvP in Pokemon (mini-rant)

Well, they announced that the first Intercontinental tournament is happening for Sun and Moon right after it's release, which means that PikaHex and PokeSav won't be ready for it...

To be fair, I know how these cheaters feel - when I played The Sims I couldn't stand watching my Sims get stinky, wet themselves or faint from exhaustion or starvation. It was too bothersome, so I used Max Motives cheats to keep them happy and doing what I wanted them to do until they got all of their aspirations completed. Thank goodness I was banned from the Immortal Dynasty due to being banned from Carl's Forum, because I would have sank a year of my life into The Sims 4 instead of REAL games and abused Max Motives cheats.

The same thing goes for these losers - yes, they are losers because they won't sink time into the games long enough to breed for perfect IVs, even though nowadays there are easy ways to get 31 IVs in what you want(Friend Safari and Destiny Knot) and the perfect natures(Everstone breeding), and thus they use hacking programs to hack their games so they can have their dream Pokemon... even though the games are getting more and more diligent about squelching hackers.

Something like this needs to happen to force the hackers to stop their hacking and do things legit or force them to leave the VGC. This sort of hacking business is a betrayal of the game. Now, before you say anything, I am not condemning the use of hacking as a means to test out your dream team before you start working on it for real by asking friends to test out your team with their teams. However, using a hacked Pokemon in a serious tournament battle is just asking for trouble.

Luckily for me, I did not fall into the easy-way-out trap and become a Hexer. In fact, I never even heard of PokeSav until I saw ToyDualer(who has a lovely Maplestory video series, btw) teach you how to use PokeSav. I am a guy who spends hours on Dragon Quest VII training his heroes in every monster class to maximum to get a full team of Platinum Kings. If you know about how to get a character to become a Platinum King class by raising other monster classes and how hard it was to get monster hearts in the original Dragon Warrior VII, well, you can see how stubborn I am. I am a PSN trophy hunter and poured my soul in Kingdom Hearts 2.5.

"Half of the fun of traveling is the journey."

A lot of people forgot how fun a journey is and just want to get there instantly, so they cheat. I pity these people; chances are the first VGC for Sun and Moon will have to be canceled because nobody will attend because everyone forgot how easy it is to get a perfect team to Level 100.

Maybe they'll put out a new tier - the Traditional Tier, similar to the Traditional Tier of Yu-Gi-Oh which has no ban list. Then the hackers can be happy. :p

Whole bunch of Sun/Moon revealed!

(Not obvious but I photoshopped Eevee's head on Orgodemir, the Demon King from DQVII - I love the remake of DQVII)

HOLY S%*@, GAME FREAK! WHAT SORT OF SAKE WERE YOU DRINKING WHEN YOU CREATED THIS, AND CAN I HAVE IT?

Seriously, this is what a lot of people were freaking out over when they saw this new Z-Move for Eevee. Yes, two new signature Z-Moves have been revealed for untouched Pikachu and untouched Eevee, which means you can never evolve them. Pikachu got a pinball move which I think will be Ash's secret weapon if they ever have him do the Island Challenge - I can probably forgive the writers for making Ash look like something from a B-rate Saturday cartoon after Kalos if he spams this - and Eevee...

Well, meet Extreme Evoboost which totally rips off of Power Rangers; Eevee's eight evolved forms appear and empower Eevee... and he gets a boost doubling all his stats. Yep, it's like the side-effect of Ancient Power and Silver Wind, boosting all your stats, DOUBLED. This means that it'll be the OP in Little Cup but they'll probably ban Z-Moves in Little Cup considering they are so OP.

Of course, we now know how Z-Moves work. It's not enough to simply have the gem in your bracelet and have your partner wearing a gem... you have to select the Z-Move option and then the move you are going to transform into the Z-Move for that turn. (Yes, like Mega Evolutions, you can only use the Z-Move once in battle, and only once. It's a secret weapon.) So a move has to be sacrificed to become a Z-Move. Even so, Extreme Evoboost is going to be totally broken in Little Cup...

Also, if you know about Rockruff, the little dog Pokemon, we found out that it evolves into the wolf Pokemon Lycanroc... but what Lycanroc becomes depends on your version. If you get Pokemon Sun, Lycanroc will be a desert wolf which gains a signature move that is the Rock-type Quick Attack, AccelRock. (Yes, that is how it is written.) But if you get Moon, Lycanroc becomes a bloodthirsty werewolf which gets Counter instead. Now I have more fuel to the fire for AuraGuardian's joke vid about Pokemon who can kill Superman... Lycanroc Midnight Form with Focus Sash... ^_^

We get info on two new Pokemon - Pokemon Sun gets Passimian, a Fighting-type monkey which plays footballs with giant berries and has the ability Receiver, which is only useful in double/triple battles. If the Pokemon next to it dies, the ability transforms into the fallen's ability, meaning that the opponent has to deal with another dose of that ability, which triggers right away if it was something like Intimidate. Pokemon Moon(the version I will start with) gets Oranguru, a white gorilla which looks like a wise sage(it's even called the Sage Pokemon) which is Normal/Psychic and has a chance of having Telepathy, meaning it can avoid getting hit with the partner's Surf/Earthquake/etc... and it should because of its signature move, Instruct. It's probably going to be a go-last move like Counter which allows Oranguru to teach the partner how to focus and causes the partner to use the move it had just used AGAIN! That means: Those Pokemon which survived by hanging on with one HP? Nope, it's dead now. :D

Anyways, we also get some minor stuff about the Pokemon-Amie thing, called Pokemon Refresh. It seems that now you have to groom your Pokemon. You can ignore that, but if you want that shiny Crobat, you have to keep grooming it! Also, it seems that it mitigates the use of status removal items like Antidote as you can use a medical swab to clean it of the poison and paralysis conditions.

Finally, I relate the fact that yes, Virginia, you can customize your trainer to look like you, or your dreamboat fantasy girlfriend, or whatever, thanks to the huge amount of style options. I don't see as many for my self-insert avatar(the boy) but I'm sure we'll see something soon. Also, it seems that you buy clothes(or dye clothes) with Festival Coins, so I think that this game will take place during a festival and you can earn coins by mini-games or some other method. Maybe that Pyukumuku task gives you festival coins? Anyways, there's a lot of new stuff.

EDIT: I also forgot to mention the new Ultra Beasts that appeared, UB02 Beauty which looks like a woman with the hair looking like a waterskipper, and UB02 Adaption, which looks like a muscular red mosquito man, both attacking Tapu Koko. (I also mislabeled the Ultra Beasts as Pokemon but we don't know it they are Pokemon or actually aliens which are separate and thus uncatchable but you might fight them.) It looks like this "great catastrophe" I mentioned last post might be the Ultra Beasts invading the world and the Guardian Pokemon trying to drive them away. Stay tuned for October, when the Pokemon CO releases even more new info as the release date draws near! ;)

In the meantime...

I'll be playing my digital copy of Dragon Quest VII for the 3DS. I'm at the third-final land to be freed, but I need to get Multiheal for that dang Cumulus Hex. X(

Ash is Immortal (Anime Rant)

Get over yourself, girlfriend. The day Ash gets laid is the day when Pokemon come to the real world. :p

This blog is supposed to be about the Pokemon games, but I feel like I have to rant about the anime once in a while, especially now that I've been catching up on it. Recently CoroCoro(the #1 news sources for Pokemon) shows art images of Rockruff's two form evolutions(which are version-exclusive forms, which is a first) as well as the Ultra Beasts, which may not be Pokemon at all...

And this anime poster. Serebii.net says that Ash will go to Alola but since there are no gyms or Pokemon League, his goal will be different here. In the Sun/Moon Anime, Ash will be going back to school to catch up on the education he missed during the five years of his travels and he has to graduate from elementary school... or something like that. Maybe the story is that his mom, Delilah, calls him back home and says "We're moving to Melemele Island, and you need to catch up on your education", or he might be attending a Pokemon School like Pokemon Tech in that old Kanto episode and when he graduates, he takes the Island Challenge.

But this isn't about that, it's about my theory on Ash which points out a couple of things: One, I was spoiled to Ash's Kalos League tournament participation(he loses in the finals to Alain, the new main character of the Mega Evolution specials) and two, the poster hasn't got Serena in it.

Now, first off, Serena may be attending the school with Ash and this poster, being the first Anime poster we see, may not be giving up the entire story of who Ash is with this time, but then again, if Ash is in school, this season is a "high school anime" and there may not be any travel, the entire Sun and Moon story may be set in Melemele Island.

However, the fact that we don't see Serena in the poster has caused the Amourshippers(the people who think Ash and Serena should become lovers at least) to go apes*** and call foul. Worse, many fans of the anime have turned their backs on it.

So let me rant. The anime's story is owned (at least partly) by the creators of Pokemon, the Pokemon COMPANY. A company is "a number of persons united or incorporated for joint action, especially for business", as defined by Dictionary.com. Note the "business" at the end...

The Pokemon Company is BIG BUSINESS, and as such, has to make a PROFIT. If Pokemon was non-profit, it'd be more of a local thing and would stay in Japan, it wouldn't be as popular or the Juggernaut it is today because non-profit rarely expands far outside of its hometown due to the fact that the creators have to beg for donations to keep afloat, and chances are that Pokemon would have become charity games which live off of Social Security checks month by month instead of the massive megalith series that makes Mario and Luigi s*** their pants every year.

IOW, in order to be rich and famous, one has to make money.

If I have learned anything about politics, it is that it cannot avoid being corrupt. Even the Constitution had to be amended many many times. Every time a person campaigns for President, they make lots of promises... but once they are sworn in, 90% of the promises are deleted or compromised to suck up to the corrupt officials who brought them into power. I sincerely doubt that whoever wins this year's election will be a good choice to rule the USA, all we can hope for is that they don't rock the boat.

Politics is the basis for Big Business due to the laws of economy. The law of Supply and Demand - when people Demand something, you'd better Supply it, even if it's crap.

The problem with the Pokemon anime is that Ash is the Player. Yes, Ash was "born" as an anime character based on the main character of the classic games, which had no voice, no face, and no personality other than a single mom, a mean rival, and his Pokemon. So Ash started life as a ten-year old cute boy who travels with the Pokemon Mascot, Pikachu, which was voted the most popular Pokemon amongst Japanese kids.

The problem is, Ash is actually a CPU from Gamindustri and Neptune's sister. Okay, I'm kidding, but he's an Ageless Icon representing the main character of every Pokemon game. As such, he can never age. He has never celebrated his birthday, so he's always 10 years old.

Because of this, he can never enter puberty, which is usually the time Ash's jewels would grow and he'd start acting like Brock did in the anime, lusting over girls. But that will never happen because... he's Ageless as the writers want him to be Ageless as the instant his gonads develop and start spewing their hormones, Ash will turn into a young man like Alain and then all of the people they are targeting, the pre-teens who connect with Ash, will boycott the games out of rage and their moms will pull the plug on the show because "Ash is flirting with girls! This should be PG-13!"

Yeah, Pokemon has a very bad stigma of being a Kiddie Game because the original games were low-quality and had very little violence(except for Pokemon hitting each other) and no sex.

The problem is, because Ash is never going to become 11, he'll never have interest in girls. (He did have a blushing fit in that Pokemon Tech episode but that was just for laughs, he's never blushed over girls since.) As such, any girl he travels with is forever friendzoned.

Also, because Ash would become a Pokemon Master if he won a Pokemon League tournament, the writers decided never to let him win. I know it sucks, but people need to understand that the instant that Ash's dream is realized or he falls in love, then he'll be a more mature character and newcomers will not connect with him, so they'll stop watching the show and that equals net loss.