A Public Service Announcement to Game Freak

Dear Game Freak and Sophocles,

 

I understand you created a wonderful on-line hangout called the Festival Plaza. It was created to help fellow trainers hang out and use services that would help Pokemon out. To ensure people got plenty of Festival Coins, you created global missions where people could reach a goal in a few weeks. Logically, these goals could be met - with over 7 million Pokemon trainers, it only took one task a day to get to your challenging rewards...

PS:

Yes, I really hate to be the bearer of bad news, but so far the Global Missions are hitting zero for zero. The first challenge: Have the community catch 10 million Pokemon in two weeks. Now, they had to Island Scan and capture those scanned Pokemon a million times.

So where were these 34,000 trainers that could have scanned 2 Pokemon a day(which the game so kindly let us do, scanning five Pokemon codes that gave 100 points) that were supposed to give a million scans within two weeks?!?!

I wish I was kidding. :(

This is a bad omen for Pokemon.

That's not to say people don't want to play Pokemon, but Game Freak is making a serious mistake thinking that if you Pokemon, your life is Pokemon, and you eat, sleep, drink, and s*** Pokemon.

That's not the case. There are two types of players in any video game community: Casual and Hardcore. Hardcore players get 100% or that platinum trophy on their PSN games. Casual players only finish the game story, then trade the game in for store credit at GameStop. Those who do keep the game usually replay it to exploit it for fun things like speed-runs, glitchfests and, in Pokemon's case, breeding a team that can kick Da Hacker's @$$ in VGC201X.

In my opinion, all video games which have a community are 99% Casual players. Yep, 99% of those Pokemon trainers Sophocles wants help from to develop his Festival Plaza only come to his place to beeline to GTS to trade their Yungoos for Tapus or Lunala. Nobody gives a **** about developing the place past Level 9 so they can ask people visiting to recommend Treasure Hunts to get Gold Bottle Caps from those lotteries.

Most trainers do not care about playing past the end of the story and becoming the Alola Champion. They'll be spamming Tauros Charge in tiny spaces to hatch their eggs or dumping said eggs off at the Poke Pelago with Mohn at Isle Avue and then turn off their games and go back to Call of Duty or whatever they want, coming back to hatch their eggs, stuff them in Isle Evelup for two weeks to get them to max level and force a Gold Bottle Cap on them so they can be viable for Battle Spot. :p

This is a bad omen for Pokemon. I love Pokemon Sun and Moon, I love the story... but that's all I love. I don't care about making a VGC team or getting bottle caps or even training EVs anymore. Once I stop the Ultra Beats and capture them with my in-game team at Level 80 and stuff Necrozma in a Pokeball, I'll be shutting down the game and earning platinum trophies.

Game Freak hoped that the Global Missions would make people play Pokemon more. It failed.

Pokemon will only become a zombie franchise(one that gets worse and worse over time - they haven't broken 100 new Pokemon since Unova) and eventually fade away and die at the age of 25 if Game Freak doesn't figure out how to pull people into on-line. Instead of giving up stupid coins we don't care about, how about meeting the goal of the mission gives the player some really cool stuff like a rare move or a rare Pokemon?

I hate to be a soothsayer but these Global Missions are not working. Game Freak needs to patch an update removing them and put in something else or make Festival Coins easier to obtain.

Pokemon Moon gets its first speed-run!

So... uhm...

Yeah, I haven't updated this until long after I beat Pokemon Sun. Oops. My bad. (This is actually a picture I made with Pokefinder in the game and downloaded by pulling out my 3DS's memory card and put it in my computer.)

But I know you viewers don't read this blog for information, you have Youtube for that. Instead, I wanted to share something interesting...

One of my favorite videos to watch on the WWW are speed-runs. Speed-runs are basically races to see how fast you can complete a video game. While Mario games are the most popular, I've seen speed-runs for my favorite games like Kingdom Hearts(Bizkit047 and Bl00dyBizkit, cheers!).

Pokemon speed-runs are in my Top 5, especially the glitchless any% runs. This is because Pokemon refuses to be sped through. Especially later games; they focus a LOT of the story. But the pros don't let that stop them; they break the games over their knees anyways, and I love how they do it. Check out this Pokemon Black speed run by Vulajin!

So I wasn't expecting this, considering how soon the games came out, but...

  Someone actually speed-runs Pokemon Moon!

Put up a week ago by a Youtuber called omegarevolution, who has a nice gaming channel with the usual suspects(Pokemon and Final Fantasy XV), this guy managed to rush through Pokemon Moon, one of the most story-intensive games, in a tad shy of five and a half hours. (5 hours, 30 minutes, 35 seconds) Being a typical speed-runner, he complains about RNG being the reason he didn't break 5:30, but even so, that's impressive. I decided to skim the video to find out what he did and write up a file on what I could have done(if I was interested in speed-running).

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. ^_^