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reides · 3 months

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as you probably know, the most recent pokemon games feature pretty significant pokedex cuts due to the sheer magnitude of pokemon that are now available to us. this means that some pokemon are simply not featured in certain mainline games, which adds a unique element to a lot of pokemon's ribbon master journeys. re: my experience with reides, working around unobtainable ribbons wasn't exactly a new experience - after all, there were no available shadow horseas/seadras/kingdras in pokemon colosseum or pokemon xd, so i knew that my kingdra wouldn't be able to get the national ribbon (granted to purified shadow pokemon) - but it still was something i had to consider and plot out carefully as i brought him up towards the more recent generations. for example, reides was unable to get the hisui ribbon (granted for taking a photo with your pokemon in the region's photo studio), as the horsea line was not featured in legends arceus... and, for a long time, i figured that he wouldn't be able to get any of the ribbons (and marks!) featured in scarlet and violet.

but then... the dlc happened. the glorious, glorious dlc.

the horsea line was re-introduced into the pokedex when indigo disk - the second batch of dlc for scarlet and violet - dropped. needless to say, i was EXTREMELY hype about this. in my previous post, i mentioned not being sure if reides would be able to join me in this current generation of pokemon. i wondered if i'd have to brave the long, long queues of pokemon shield in order to get the master rank ribbon on him and make him a true ribbon master... but fortune smiled down on me, and reides was miraculously granted access to generation 9 of the pokemon games.

before i get into reides' journey through paldea, kitakami and unova, here's a quick reminder you can find each part of reides' ribbon master journey here on my personal website, or here in my ribbon master tag on this tumblr! it spans from my childhood copy of emerald version to my... uh... adulthood (lmao) copy of scarlet version... so it's quite the sizeable read! to everyone who's stuck by me for this whole challenge and expressed support for my lovely kingdra: thank you so much! and for anyone new to the reides saga: welcome, and i hope you enjoy my posts about him!

with that handled... it's time to cover a brand new generation of ribbons and marks!

as a big pokemon fan, i tend to play new games and dlc the very moment that i can. in the current era of #gaming, that means obsessively checking for game updates on the night of dlc releases. as i mashed that + button on my pro controller to check for updates to my copy of scarlet, i felt especially nervous. thanks to people being mischievous and sneaking alleged leaks around on twitter, i knew that the horsea line was supposedly being introduced into the game... but i'm extremely skeptical by nature. (can you believe that some people go on the internet and lie?!?!) i didn't want to believe that reides' ribbon master journey would continue until i saw a little horsea (or seadra... or kingdra...) swimming around in a digital body of water myself. once my game finally updated, i sprinted over to blueberry academy as SOON as i could and began running around the terarium in search of a horsea. i found one swimming around in a lake almost immediately.

when i tell y'all... the scream i scrumpt... LMFAO. joking aside, it felt like i could finally breathe again. i was SO READY to plop reides into my file and get right to grabbing the ribbons and marks that were added for gen9. unfortunately, gamefreak had other plans for me, and pokemon home was under maintenance. after falling dramatically to my knees, i busied myself with getting the rest of my team for the dlc ready. this included grinding out the necessary bp to unlock wild starters in the terarium, then embarking on a shiny hunt for my fav starter pokemon of all time - totodile! after hours and hours of looking around, i managed to catch one successfully in a love ball and named him barge. along with the rest of my indigo disk team, barge would go on to be close friends with reides. anyway, after a lengthy maintenance, pokemon home was eventually ready to go. i leapt right in, retrieving reides and plopping him into my party. i'm a huge fan of the updated pokemon models in scarlet, so i was hype to see the one that they gave shiny kingdra. i was NOT disappointed in the slightest!

LOOK AT HOW GORGEOUS HE IS. the tiny scale details... the glossy shine... my god. as much as i liked the sleekness of the models in gen8, i like the more realistic ones that gen9 introduced a whole lot more. the devs did a phenomenal job; kingdra looks absolutely majestic. with my full indigo disk team now present in my copy of scarlet, i had to take a group shot and treat everyone to a sandwich!

reides met five new pals: bane the weezing, grunge the krookodile, bento the snorlax, axe the haxorus, and, of course, barge the feraligatr! i shiny hunted for all of them myself, as i really enjoyed doing the same for my kitakami team during my teal mask playthrough.

i wasn't quite ready to take on the indigo disk plotline, though. my first order of business was grabbing a ribbon for reides - namely, the paldea champion ribbon! i hopped on a plane and flew back to paldea, signing up for a spot in the academy ace tournament.

i really love the vibes of the academy ace tournament; everyone is so passionate about the battles, and the music is an absolute JAM. i was especially happy about reides' first experience as a competitor in it, too, because my fav character in the game just-so-happened to show up for it!

that's right: arven - the man, the myth, the legend - challenged me and reides to a battle.

shoutout to him holding his pokeball upside down. just one more reason as to why he's truly one of the best pokemon characters. (btw, as happy was i was to see arven, i always feel so bad to fight his mabosstiff. that's my FRIEND!!!!!!)

anyway, after sweeping his way through everyone in the academy ace tournament, reides was granted the paldea champion ribbon for his efforts.

after nabbing that ribbon, i decided that i should really get a move on with the indigo disk's actual plot, as i wanted to avoid spoilers and also REALLY wanted to know what happened next in the plot. i was pretty invested in the hooks that teal mask introduced and was especially worried about kieran. (just why did teal mask's plot force us to lie to that poor kid, btw?! just thinking about it gets me so annoyed. i'd go through an 'evil' arc too if i was in his shoes, i'll tell you that.) even though it's not really relevant to reides' ribbon master quest, i figured i'd share some photos of his storyline adventure, too.

(btw, i'm writing this post in feb 2024, which means that indigo disk has been Around for around 2 months and thus the spoiler embargo is pretty much lifted - but, still: be warned that there are some spoilers for indigo disk beyond this point!)

the battles in indigo disk ended up being pretty tough; i was glad that i put time aside to train up my team properly. we managed to take on the blueberry elite four and kieran and ultimately Prevailed - even if the battles were quite close, at times! i was kinda sad that there was no ribbon associated with beating all of them - it would've been nice to finally get some form of an unovan ribbon on my ribbon master - and i was also pretty shocked that the dlc didn't introduce a battle tower. regardless, even if reides didn't get a ribbon for his performance in the battles, it was still awesome to include him in them, and i had a whole lot of fun.

i also brought reides along for the Shenanigans following the blueberry academy plotline.

luckily for me, briar, carmine and kieran were chill with waiting in the underdepths of area zero while i took reides on a bit of a photoshoot. it was just so pretty down there!! how could i resist!!

anyway, silly little wanderings aside, it was really cool to have reides involved in the big showdown against terapagos. i was especially happy when kieran snapped out of his funk and i got to battle alongside him. his hydrapple even used dragon cheer, powering reides up during the battle. it made the whole experience feel all the more significant.

with everything all sorted out, i ended up being really happy with the indigo disk's overall plot. i definitely liked it a lot more than teal mask's narrative and was really pleased that we could become proper friends with kieran once more. (i still wish that we could've apologized for lying to him, though.)

now that i was safe from indigo disk spoilers and emboldened with love for pokemon as a whole, i decided to pick up my ribbon-collecting in earnest once more... though the next ribbon on my list was not actually a ribbon. it was a mark! introduced in gen8, marks are basically the same as ribbons. i think of them as little stickers on pokemon, haha. the first one that i set my sights on was the gourmand mark, which has a chance of being randomly given to your pokemon after eating a meal with them! these meals can be the store-bought ones or the ones that you make yourself via the picnic system.

frankly, i have no idea WHEN reides got this mark, as i went sort of crazy with buying lots of different meals. (i really like the food art in this game, okay!!) it definitely didn't take long for one of these meals to really strike his fancy, though. he got the gourmand mark very quickly and also got the title 'reides the gourmet' along with it!

i then decided that i'd try to get the other two marks on reides in one fell swoop. the first of these marks was the itemfinder mark, which your pokemon has a chance of getting when they pick up an item in the overworld. to get this mark, you have to make use of the let's go feature, which allows your pokemon to walk alongside you. the second of these marks was the partner mark, which... can be quite the ordeal. your pokemon basically has a 1/100 chance to get this mark with every 10k steps that you take. additionally, your pokemon also has to be friendly towards you in order for them to have a chance at getting this mark. since both of these marks rely on random chance, i knew that i could get really unlucky and end up going off on one hell of a grind for them... but i decided to just take it one step at a time. instead of focusing on getting the marks to trigger, i wanted to wander around and enjoy the sights around the various regions of the game. after all, i was lucky to even HAVE reides in this generation - and these marks gave me the perfect excuse to take lots of photos with him, too!

i was especially happy to take some photos of him with aske, my shiny gallade who joined me for my teal mask journey. as you guys know, reides the kingdra is named after a character that i play in a dnd campaign. similarly, aske is named after another character in that campaign; he's reides' boyfriend!

i also enjoyed roaming around *as* reides while using the new synchro machine, too! i'm not sure if items that you pick up count towards the itemfinder mark in this mode, but i'd like to think that they do.

thanks to my casual approach to getting these marks, i actually have no idea how long they took for me to get on reides. one day, i just happened to check and they were BOTH there, so i guess the 'grind' truly ended up being completely painless. in the following screenshot, i'm hovering over the partner mark, but you can see the itemfinder one at the end of the row above it, too.

with the marks now handled, i had one more ribbon to get on reides before he could become a true ribbon master. this ribbon was the one that i was the most nervous about by FAR. the master rank ribbon is granted to your pokemon once you emerge victorious in one (1) online battle against another player... but the catch here is that the battle has to be in the master rank. for me, it meant climbing from the beginner rank all the way up there.

naturally, i procrastinated with this ribbon a whole lot. i took reides along for the (amazing) epilogue when it dropped in january, taking more pictures with him and making more memories... all the while wondering just when i'd get around to tackling the Final Ribbon.

as it turns out, i didn't actually end up procrastinating on it all that long. my friend cody visited me a few days after the epilogue dropped, and my other friend blee stayed over at my house for his visit, too. both of them knew about reides the kingdra and we decided that we'd tackle operation: final ribbon acquisition together, with blee spearheading it as someone very well-versed in vgc. over the course of a few days, we managed to get up to master rank - running into a bunch of really interesting teams and occurences during the climb of legend. (special shoutout to a dedenne who kept trying to spam nuzzle on pokemon who were completely immune to it, but who successfully spread the glory of Cheek Pouch via entrainment onto us all.) i learnt a truly crazy amount of stuff about the competitive world of pokemon and really enjoyed all of the different rental teams that we tried out.

upon arriving in the master ball tier, we had to switch gears, though, as we couldn't use rental teams anymore and, instead, had to build one from scratch so that reides could be included in it. i ended up building this portland regional finals team as per blee's recommendation, though we swapped out raging bolt for reides, himself. since it was my own team and not a rental one, we gave nicknames to each team member.

my entei is one that i got in an event years and years ago (they're shiny and in a cherish ball), so i couldn't nickname them... but just know that they are 'flamberge' in spirit. o7 reides also got an electric tera type (and tera blast as part of his moveset) for fun, as his namesake is associated with storms.

it was a lot of fun making this team!!! the very specific ev-spreads that some of the pokemon required gave me a newfound appreciation for all of the feathers that i happened to pick up while wandering the terarium... not to mention all of the mochi that i collected while oustin' ogres in kitakami.

once the team was all built, it was time to get the final W in order to secure the ribbon at long last. we could all breathe a whole lot easier, as when you rank up to another ball tier, you can't "demote" to a lower one - so falling back into the ultra ball tier wasn't a concern. victory didn't evade us for long, either!

after a REALLY fun battle against someone named alex, operation: final ribbon was finally complete.

reides - along with the rest of the team who helped clutch out the victory - got the much-coveted master rank ribbon.

upon getting this ribbon, it finally happened.

reides the kingdra officially became a ribbon master.

a journey that began back in october 2023 finally came to a close. with his 91 total ribbons (since his two golden memory ribbons have 48 ribbons in total within them), reides now has each and every single ribbon that he can possibly attain from his origin game of emerald version to the current pokemon generation.

i'm sure that all of my posts speak for themselves in terms of the sheer amount of effort that i put into this challenge. there were many times that i thought i hit a "roadblock," be it in the form of a gruelling grind or worries over not being able to access something due to hardware restrictions. in the end, however, reides was able to rise above all of the challenges. i got sooo much help and support from friends over the course of this whole challenge, so i have to give a BIG shoutout to every single one of y'all! and, of course, i have to extend thanks to all of the people who posted about their ribbon mastery experiences online, as i definitely couldn't have guided reides to this point without them. i'm hoping that the posts that i made about reides' journey can serve as a guide of sorts to anyone who wants to pick up the challenge for their pokemon, too!

at any rate, reides is my very first ribbon master and i definitely plan on keeping his ribbon collection up-to-date in future generations of pokemon. i say it time and time again, but the ribbon master challenge is amazing because it gets you interacting with aspects of the pokemon games that you may have never even thought of trying out. you form a true emotional bond with your pokemon, and it's just... so very fantastic. you make so many memories!!! so while there might not be an update to the reides saga until those generations are out and about, i'm already excited to keep on hunting for ribbons and am hoping that the horsea line is included in every single game going forward! because, quite frankly... it's what reides deserves. >:)

before i Sign Off on this post, however, i wanted to share something i bought to celebrate reides; namely, a custom shiny kingdra diorama from nerdidecor on etsy.

ISN'T IT SO CUTE!!!!! i put it right on my desk next to my pc so that i can always have a little reminder of my amazing ribbon master with me. i'm hoping to get more shiny kingdra stuff in the future, too!

either way, thank you all so much again for keeping up with me and my beloved kingdra! i'm already looking forward to being able to write up another one of these posts in the future! until then, reides is definitely going to enjoy a nice vacation from ribbon hunting. rest assured that i will be taking the very best care of him!!! :D

#ribbon master #jamietxt #pokemon #reides the kingdra

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beepborpdoodledorp · 1 year

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The more I think about it, I’m not sure if it was intentional or not but the way Arven is advertised in comparison to Nemona and/or Penny in SV’s promotional material is goddamn genius

I think the general opinion on Arven (which I was a part of) prior to release was that he was the least intriguing out of the three rivals. Nemona’s role and personality was shown to us from the get-go and gave people enough to form an opinion on her, and information on Penny wasn’t as abundant but had enough tidbits scattered here and there (like the website mentioning she doesn’t come to school often ‘for some reason’) to at least let us know there was more going on with her than what’s shown at surface level. Arven’s revealed traits? He likes cooking and sucks ass at Pokemon battles. So going into the game we have lower expectations of Arven in comparison to Nemona and Penny (even more after his first scene where he does nothing but be a douche and run away after we kick his ass into next year), and then we all proceed to do a double-take when he turns out to be the best character in the game by a landslide.

I don’t know if they did this on purpose but either way, I applaud you, GameFreak.

#pokemon #pkmn #pokemon sv #pokemon scarlet and violet #arven #trainer arven #arven pokemon

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mendelpalace · 10 months

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The Desks of Developers - A Pictorial Series In the late 90s, the Japanese gaming magazine "The Playstation" ran a monthly feature on the workspaces of famous gaming devs. I've collected four of these here and translated the original editorial commentary (which includes some remarks from the devs themselves).

Shmuplations recently uploaded these magazine scans of various game devs and their workspaces. So far they have pics of:

Hideo Kojima (Konami)

Satoshi Tajiri (GameFreak)

Oji Hiroi (Red Company)

Masaki Iizuka (Artdink)

The website itself features translated descriptions and commentary, so bee sure to check that out as well.

#Shmuplations #Workspace #Hideo Kojima #Satoshi Tajiri #Oji Hiroi #Masaki Iizuka #Konami #GameFreak #Red Company #Artdink #Video Games

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axolotlsauce · 3 months

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You know what, let's talk about palworld. I dont have anything else going on until 9:40.

One of the biggest talking points I see brought up with this game is the unoriginality. And uh... yeah. I'm yet to see a pal that doesn't have a DIRECT analogue to one or two pokemon. That said that is without playing the game, but still.

Now, I don't actually give a fuck about the integrity of pokemon's copyright. And you know what, I don't think most people who are bringing this up do either. People aren't "white-knighting" for the billion-dollar company, I think they're mostly just pointing out that it's pretty lame for a pokemon clone to have such unoriginal designs. (I think. I haven't personally seen every individual tweet about palworld.)

I mean, even ROBOPON had original designs. (Even if that meant that one of them had to be a toilet.)

Same goes for heavy-hitting pokemon-likes like Yo-Kai Watch, and the ones that are borderline fan-games like Coromon. A lot of the fun comes from the original creature designs. Everything I see of Palworld looks like they wanted to have the real pokemon, but had to do some legally distinct homework-copying. It reminds me of Watchmen, where Alan Moore wanted to use DC comics characters, but had to use "analogues" of them instead.

There's also a lot of unoriginality from what I've seen of the gameplay. The world looks very "generic open world," and a lot of the Juice of this game seems to be a bunch of other popular games kinda... conflated. That said, it's a little ironic to be complaining about unoriginality when everyone else has already pointed out that it's unoriginal... or is it fitting? who knows.

Also one of them is yellow totoro. How Wacky.

A lot of people also seem to take issue with the, uh... edge, of this game. Now while "Pokemon with GUNS" absolutely sounds like something an insecure teenager would come up with after being told by their schoolfriends that pokemon is for babies, I welcome it honestly. First-Person-Shooter gameplay is a pretty cool addition to make to this genre. That said, some other elements kinda seem like they were implimented by someone trying to look cool in front of a 14-year-old. But uh, I can't really comment on that, since the internet can't be trusted, and I haven't played the game. Can you actually sell peoples' body parts in this game? I don't know if I trust that random article I saw.

Part 29: THE POKEMON KILLER??????

no.

Do you guys remember Yo-Kai Watch? remember when that was a big deal? How many of you even knew that the series had a 3rd and 4th game? Probably a statistically unlikely number of you, because this is a website full of cool nerds. That said, it's pretty clear to see that most people do NOT remember the LAST big pokemon killer.

Also, nintendo isn't gonna sue. The developers aren't formally marketing it as "pokemon with guns," no aspect of the gameplay was patented by gamefreak, and while derivative, the pals are juuuust barely distinct enough to not infringe any copyrights. I think. I'm no copyright lawyer, this is just how I see it. The pokemon company hasn't ever, to my knowledge, gone after anything that was derivative of pokemon unless it was something like a fangame that was directly using their IP. (Ironically, the type of game that impacts their profits the LEAST.... sigh...)

And you know what, while Palworld isn't gonna kill pokemon... I think nothing but good can come from letting the pokemon company think that it WILL. Because let's be real here, if ANY series needs some competition, it's pokemon. SOMEBODY has to force them to get their shit together.

And yeah, as dubious as I am about palworld... I can't lie. It looks SIGNIFICANTLY BETTER than pokemon violet. (Both graphically, and just, uh, in general.) And you know what, I would still say that even WITHOUT gen 9's crazy technical issues.

"Nintendo will NEVERRR ALLOW THIS ON SWITCH LOL!!!!"

Have you seen the shit they WILL allow on switch? Go on the eshop right now. Scroll past enough hentai games, and you'll probably also see at least one legally-distinct pokemon fangame like nexomon, coromon or temtem. Why would nintendo not allow such a hotly-selling game on their platform. If the game is going to make bank either way, why would they NOT choose the option that means THEY GET A CUT OF THE PROFITS? Something that, by this logic, they would think that they're owed to begin with? I get that nintendo and the pokemon company tend to be counter-intuitive and stubborn, but I think we can trust them to do the thing that makes them More Money.

Overall: Palworld is... interesting. A lot of aspects of it are VERY uninspired, but I can't see it doing anything but good. Even if you hate it on principle (the old "Digimon Sucks!" Syndrome), at the very least it can serve as a lesson to actual pokemon.

Okay so pokemon probably won't implement GUNS, but hopefully a wildly successful clone like this might give them the idea that they might actually have to TRY to make money in future. Or maybe they'll get it into their heads that they could make even MORE money if their pokemon games were also fresh, interesting, and... good.

Well all-in-all, while I probably won't be playing palworld anytime soon (and who knows if my curiosity will still be itching by the time it comes to a platform I actually own) I think its presence is more likely than not a net positive.

It's worth mentioning that I don't have, like, credibility... this is just my take on things. Why was it necessary to give my take? Because I'm so much cooler and more important than everyone else, obviously. But that doesn't mean that I know shit.

#Palworld

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epicspheal · 3 months

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Went to the Pokemon Center website just to be nosy and noticed this on the front page I have a strong feeling Pokemon Day may be announcing re-remakes of the Johto Games and/or Legends games for them Now I got mixed feelings on this. I think the whole yearly release cycle for Pokemon games is too much and the devs (regardless if this is Gamefreak or ILCA or anyone else) deserve a break. I hope if we are getting Johto games they'll be released next year just to give time to breathe That being said, I am looking forward to Johto games just because the region deserves some more spotlight especially if we do get a legends games that focuses on the lore.

#pokemon #pokemon johto #ho-oh #lugia

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thegothgainer · 10 months

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A couple of my favorite things from each Pokemon generation

I have a lot of negative things to say about recent Pokemon, but I kinda want to offset that with a list of some of my actual favorite things. There are a lot, so I'm going to try and list just one from each gen.

Gen 1

Probably the hardest to come up with, since later games mostly improved upon the formula. I could just say "it's the first Pokemon game" but that feels like a cop-out. So, instead, I'll say it's the sort of mystery it had. You'd find new things out from being told by friends. There were rumors about how to catch the mythical Mew. There was the superstition that holding down certain buttons would help catch Pokemon. It may have just been a thing of its time, given the state of the internet back then. But there's something about getting information from guides and friends instead of an ad-ridden barf of a website that made Pokemon feel really personal.

Actually, I just remembered one more positive in me. Gary being an absolute asshole. I love being able to take my rival down a notch. I don't want to feel bad I destroyed my rival because they're a great person. I want to rub it in Gary's dumb face.

Gen 2

The phone system. Being able to get calls from trainers, asking for a rematch was the coolest thing. It made the world feel so alive. Like there were things going on while you were training to become a champion.

I'm surprised we don't have anything like this in modern Pokemon games. A fake social media network would be sooooo cool to see within Pokemon. Gen 7 kinda had this with the photos, but the responses weren't from NPCs you've met. It felt kind of flat to me. But if Youngster Joey followed me and commented on every picture of a Ratata I posted, I'd be stoked. If my rival sent pics of their travels while I did mine, it would make me want to go out and find those places and show them up. I think there is a lot of potential to make the Pokemon world feel more lived-in in the games.

Gen 3

So, Gen 3 is two things, but both because of the same reason: Puzzles and Exploration.

Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald had a lot of depth to the maps. You could climb your bike up the side of a mountain and drive over a bridge from where you were just standing. The sense of exploration was strong too. You could dive underwater and see the depths. Too much water, my ass.

Exploration felt worth it too. Especially the Regi trio. Three legendary Pokemon you get just by wandering around and hearing myths and solving puzzles. None of it is part of the main story. You feel rewarded for exploration. We got a whole open world in Gen 9, but none of the exploration really feels as worth it as it did in Gen 3.

And the puzzles were really fun too. They had a slight challenge to them as a kid. In the newer games, the gym challenges feel a little more like filler than a challenge. The themed puzzles were almost a staple of Pokemon gameplay at this point, from spinning tiles, to cracking ice blocks to pushing boulders around. It was a part of Pokemon's DNA, and honestly, I miss it.

I put these in the same category because of the Regi trio. They are the result of exploration and puzzles, and I really feel like they highlight everything that was great about Gen 3 gameplay.

Gen 4

The best thing I remember about Gen 4 was the lore. And it had to be in Gen 4! This was the game where the creation trio was introduced. But seeing all this lore really helped to flesh out the world a lot. I really want to see more story outside of the main storyline and Pokedex entries. I want to know about the wars that happened long ago. I want to know the myths that the mythicals were involved in. I want to know more about this world that GameFreak has created. We do see a little bit of that in Legends: Arceus. And I love it for it.

Gen 5

Sprites.

I never had the opportunity to play the Gen 5 games until after I completed Gen 7. But I do remember that I was blown away by the personality that the sprites brought. Every single one was animated in such a way that really highlighted that Pokemon's personality. The idle animations in modern games can feel a little bland and stiff. But just look at this! Wings flapping, mouth chomping, this guy feels alive. This kind of personality really helped the Black and White games feel so organic.

Gen 6

Pokemon Amie.

It's one thing to select an item, click use, and then just heal your Pokemon up. But, I'm playing Pokemon because I love my partners in crime. I want to give them the praise they deserve, not just run to a salon and select the option to groom them. And feed them. It was like a dumbed-down Nintendogs, and I would love for there to be more Pokemon games that expand on this idea. Or even just bring it back in full in a new game.

Honestly, the whole online capability of the game was great, that whole section on the lower part of the 3DS. It was really easy to find trades, battles, etc, something that I think the new games lack for some reason.

Oh, and Megas were also really cool. Probably the best "Gimmick".

Gen 7

Gen 7 was in a kind of transition period, but honestly, it had one of my favorite stories. A lot was going on, and it was great. Runaway hooligans, interdimensional travel, mind control... this game had it all. The characters are fun, especially Guzma (what a name, by the way). And from what I remember, post game for Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon were really cool for having all of the big bosses from previous games show up and say what happened in the worlds in which they won.

Runner up is wild double-battles (SOS battles). I miss in-game double battles...

Gen 8

This one is a tough one. Not that I particularly hated Gen 8, no. It's just that it was in a sort of experimental period that Gen 9 greatly improved upon. It was the first attempt at a semi-open world, and it was pretty cool, but underwhelming. But, it definitely opened up my mind to what Pokemon could be. They were finally trying new things that strayed from the original formula. Raid Dens were a neat concept, but just didn't feel like it had the epicness it was going for. The Wild Area was cool, but not as explorable as I hoped. But, at the very least, it let me know that Pokemon didn't have to be just the same linear path every generation. Maybe in the future we can finally get back to the exploration and collection that made Pokemon so enjoyable. Which led to...

Gen 9

Everything that Gen 8 was trying to do, Gen 9 improved. Not perfected. Far from it. But it started getting closer to what I imagine to be my perfect Pokemon game. I'm not going to explain my perfect Pokemon game here, but I will highlight a few things about Gen 9.

First, of course, is open-world exploration. I remember taking on the challenge of doing the gyms in reverse order. And while I would have loved some better scaling, it was just really cool to be able to do the gyms and story in my own way. I really hope they fix it up a bit and continue it.

Then, there's the story itself. The game went real. A little darker than some of the previous games, but not edgy dark. No spoilers, of course, but it was good to see characters get plenty of character growth and screentime. It was cute. It was sad. It was fun.

Raids were also improved. It still has its connection problems. But the biweekly 7-stars feel more of a challenge. I don't like that it's built around FOMO and I feel it should rotate. And when they drop support for the game, there will no longer be 7-stars. Maybe they'll patch something in, but I'm doubtful. Still. I do enjoy it better at least than previous raids.

If I could, I would also add in some of the side games to this list as well, but this is already a long post, so maybe in another.

Anyways, I'd love to hear what all other people enjoyed about these games. I know there's a lot of hate for these games every gen, and I know I've rambled about things that I would have liked to see done better. But there's also plenty to love about this franchise.

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game-boy-pocket · 14 days

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What would Nintendo have to do to get you to bootlick them?

This is a very weird question.

I dunno man...

Confess about Joycon Drift, offer everyone free replacements with an updated model instead of just fixing the controllers without removing drift?

Make every game they release on NSO purchasable individually with a 100% garuntee that it will be available on future consoles as long as you use your Nintendo account? And on that note they could start releasing Gamecube and Wii games as is instead of waiting for the chance to make a 60 dollar remake.

Start allowing their first party games to get discounted more often and maybe lower the prices of their smaller scale games, I don't care how pretty Link's Awakening remake was, it is not a 60 dollar game, nor is Mario vs Donkey Kong.

Make Pokemon Home free with NSO, also intervene with Gamefreak so that Pokemon becomes a series known for quality instead of how many of their creatures make good dolls?

Embrace the fan game community instead of rejecting it and only shut them down if they're trying to make money?

Stop shutting down emulation websites and instead try to actually compete with emulation by making better emulators with more features? Unlikely but maybe they could offer mod support for retro games like Steam Does? Pretty sure even Sega does this with their Genesis roms dumped on Steam.

Even all these things might not be enough because I don't really like just being a blind consumer who is incapable of criticizing something they like. And I'm probably not even covering all the things they've done wrong here, just the ones can think of at the moment.

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kwoomochi · 1 year

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Redraw of old official Ethan art from the gamefreak website

#pkmn #pkmn fanart #pokemon #pokemon fanart #trainer ethan #ampharos #mega ampharos #unknown #johto #pkmn hgss #heart gold soul silver #pokemon gsc #gold silver crystal

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desudog · 3 months

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???????? I kind of hate the "being a hater for sport" type of bloggers on here recently

Literally also "no standards" is such a cope when pokemon fans are recognized by game freak themselves as willing to eat Literally Any Slop They're Given. Like I'm a pokefan too but "no standards" and "bad taste" is kinda synonymous with "pokemon fan" it's not like it's anything other than video game junk food.

Also just like, cope harder. A game in early access that just dropped is more fun for most ppl involved and also has less issues on launch and the team who made it literally didn't know anything about unreal engine and "learned as they went" meanwhile s&v had falling through floor glitches on professional launch. Put that in your juice box and suck it.

Next; I don't think most of the people who's played and enjoyed the game are convinced they do have good taste. Every streamer I've seen play it opens the stream with not high hopes and gets genuinely surprised at it being fun. I don't think anyone goes into this game twirling their mustache and tipping their top hat thinking they're better than ~mere pokemon fans~ and like, shocker alert. Most of us who enjoy it are... pokemon fans. The only people who I've seen not like pokemon but like palworld are ppl who don't like pokemon because of labor and quality concerns but still hold the creatures dear.

But like, are we gonna pretend there's no enjoyable and original designs in pw? I mean, let's take a look.

(Apparently the argument for the last one is that is a "bootleg of absol". ???.)

And pokemon? Who has been literally just reusing old pokemon people have nostalgia for as new ones with redesigns? You don't like the lack of creativity of the inspired pals? What about these? What about the pokemon who genuinely look like shit? The ones that "just look like [animal/object]" with no creative spin? If any of these were palworld designs pokefans would be out their ass posting about how uninspired they look.

(I had more pics but mobile image limit and they saved as unusable files)

Nintendo and Gamefreak both take pokemon very seriously and also do not care about the consumer. It's blatantly obvious the past few years they're just squeezing pennies from us like an old towel and think release quality doesn't matter because we're pigs who will eat any slop. Palworld is a genuine parody/joke game with indie dev team that "just wants to make games people will enjoy, not break any new ground." Nobody is convinced it's a gourmet meal. It's literally the game of people who haven't even used the engine it was coded in before.

Like look, I get it you're autistic. We're all fucking autistic on this website. You took it personally when change happen. You feel unstable in your SpIn because of the recent quality drops. First of all, chill, fucking POKEMON will not be outcompeted by a dev team that includes someone still in SCHOOL and a bunch of people who literally saved every version to a thumb drive bc they didn't know what they were doing. The competition will be good for GameFreak. 2, stop taking it out on random Japanese people you have only seen through fucking machine translated Twitter tweets. If you don't like the game, just walk away. Maybe reblog 1 or 2 lighthearted memes about it. Ranting in the tags and being a cock is just not necessary. I don't like Hazbin Hotel, I'm not going into the tags and shitting on it regardless of how bad quality I think it is or if i yhink the fans have bad taste- because that would be a cock thing to do. Bitch about it privately in dms or post replies, pin a printed out picture of it to your wall to throw darts at, I don't care! Being a dick to someone for enjoying something that you don't just makes you look petty and soulless. And stop grabbing at any even semblance of a claim agaisnt them that you see regardless of truth. Stop desperately looking for ways to ensure the ruin of an indie japanse team. It's literally just a game designed to be silly with elements they know people like, and with their attention to details commonly complained about and improved on in their own game, probably games they also love.

Also getting mad bc some designs are "furbait" is so unaware. Nintendo also does that shit on purpose they just act like it's not. Grow up. If anything you should be happy all those yucky porn artists have a new tag to divide their time with. Also getting mad about one of the actual heavily inspired pals for being too horny when it's literally based off the "horny lizard that beats its partners and forces them to join its harem" pokemon is just stupid its genuinely stupid. They're animals bro.

(Gamefreak fucking makes a pikaclone every release its kinda a thing. And their past few releases literally revolve around recycling nostalgic old designs cus they know their real fanbase is 20 to 30 year olds who would buy the next game even if it was literally comprised of flat pngs like bad gmod mods.)

The only criticism I can genuinely agree with is that drawing inspiration aledgedly from a fan made pokemon is bad and the effected pals need to be redesigned.

Behold- innovation!

(Also on the topic of gamefreak unoriginality, are we gonna pretend pokemon didn't get in legal trouble after basing a pokemon after a real person orrrr)

That person is entitled to their opinion but I haven't thought pokemon fans have standards in the past few years either. Genuinely so many people will suck off gamefreak so hard its cock tip is poking out the seat of their pants and then get mad at people for going haha ark with pokemon. Stop covering for Nintendo, you will not be rewarded. You will just continue to be exploited. Have some fun. You were that kid in school who shat on Digimon when someone else brought up liking it. The people who play palworld are still gonna buy pokemon games. Nintendo won't feel this at all. Gamefreak will keep on making shit games unless someone like palworld enters the scene to force them to up their quality. The worst case scenario is Nintendo doesn't even pay them any mind and keeps making games that are fucking near unplayable on launch.

#sorry its 4 in the morning and i cant sleep

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insaneiceshard · 7 months

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Pokemon Pixel Font(Black & White 2)

BOY YOU WOULD NOT BELIEVE THE DAY I'VE HAD!

Alright first things first here's the font I made, you'll understand why it's here later! PLEASE shoot me a message if the link doesn't work, that last thing I'd want is a dead end for a poor artist.

RIGHT, so I've been working on a Rain world AU where all the RW characters are placed in the Pokémon universe. I've already drawn Rivulet's sprite but I wanted to put them on a game's UI just to make it look realistic. I looked online and Pokémon B&W2 looked the best and I can make animations for the slugcats as well! When I downloaded the UI and got to work replacing all the text, I realized something very unfortunate.

Pixel fonts fucking SUCK.

Every single fuckin one gets labelled as "8-bit" or "meant for pixel art!" BUT THEY'RE ALL LYING TO YOU.

I haven't scoured the internet but the most popular ones look nice, but as soon as you scale them down to anything below 12 pixels they look like absolute dog-shit. This isn't horrible, for most people 12 pixels is enough! but when you're trying to replicate a game's Ui...

I tried adjusting the alphas in Krita, applying the text in Paint, scaling the image and then applying the text. NOTHING worked. The core issue was that Pokemon B&W2 had it's own custom font and nothing I could make would look anywhere close as good.

At this point my autism got activated (if it hadn't been already) and I had the brilliant (downright shit-brained) idea. It would just be easier if I made the font myself.

Good god I wish I had just looks a bit harder. I still have no idea if someone has done what I have, and I'm still too lazy to look!

I made the font. I scoured for tons of screenshots from dozens of websites to replicate every single character down to the pixel. I kept having issues where my font heights where constantly getting bigger and smaller. Spaces that used to be 3x3 were 4x3 when I looked back. I chocked this up to my disabled ass not being able to count 9 pixels. 10 pixels, no- now its fuckin 8.

I need you to know that at this point I had been working on this for 4 hours. 4 hours of squares and numbers. My brain was reduced to fucking mush. And then Gamefreak took the mush, put it in a blender, and fed it TO THE FUCKIN VOID SEA.

Different consoles used separate fonts. You can tell because the UI's are different everywhere the characters are sightly shorter. This makes sense, If you have a smaller screen, reducing the font size by a pixel could save you some valuable space! But at this point it had already done it's damage on me. I'm not proud of it but I cried. I have no idea which characters had been effected because I used so many different references that I just gave up. On top of all this, the games have something weird going on with the shaded parts of the text and the only way I could somewhat replicate it was to use 3 different text layers.

So. To anyone out there who specifically needs the Pokémon B&W2 font, you have it now. It's not perfect, but it'll do.

I hope no one has to go through what I did.

Ever.

oh- and here's what the final product looks like.

#rain world #pokemon #pixel art #long post #vent #?

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dopethingexpert · 7 months

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what's the Pikachu on the far right? I don't recognize it :0

its the elusive n possibly rarest early pika, 1995 pika from GAMEFREAK's website!

notice the rugged stripes, ears, n tail! it even has claws!

only thing i added was the scar, thought it looked cool on it. also referenced the defiant expression Sugimori-sensei drew for pikachu on the cover of pokemon yellow's international release

here u have da full illustration 1995 pika comes from, if u wanna see!

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telltaletypist · 2 years

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i was so confused for the longest time listening to pokemon discussion bc i legit thought gamefreak was a website or magazine or something

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tierknee · 1 year

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The Evolution of Multiplayer in Pokemon and My Pokemon Journey

Pokemon and multiplayer have always gone hand in hand. From trading and battling in Red and Blue, to taking on the journey together in Scarlet and Violet. It’s interesting how Pokemon made the most solitary genre in video games, JRPGs, into some of the best social interactions I’ve had in my entire life. From the beginning, trading and battling against other people’s teams and collections set Pokemon apart from the rest. It’s easy to think that’s really where most of the social innovation stopped, but there’s still a lot to be said on the strides this series has taken.

The way I see it, you can really split this progression into three eras. You’ve got the Game Boy era, Pokemon Generations 1-3, that were limited by hardware at the time. You had link cables or at best, a wireless adapter jutting out of your GBA. You’ve got the DS era, introducing online play (I’d argue the single largest innovation in franchise history), and you’ve got the Switch era, making experiences in Pokemon game more and more communal over the last couple generations with a touch of Pokemon Go for good measure.

The games that started it all have the simplest multiplayer experiences to offer, but they’re still evergreen pillars of the franchise in the forms of trading and battling. You and someone else with a Game Boy could square up, pitting your strongest teams against each other, or you could trade Pokemon to fill out the vast 151-strong Pokedex. Pokemon’s roots come from collecting bugs and childlike, rural exploration. By being so straight forward, the original few generations still have that organic encouragement of meeting up with other people physically, in-person. For all the advances and improvements future generations provide, a little bit of that original intent shifted over time as the internet became more and more ubiquitous.

The leap from the Game Boy to the Game Boy Advance was a massive one by almost all accounts. In terms of playing Pokemon games with other people, it was mostly the same. Link cables. By the time we get to the Hoenn region, we’re already at the point where cell phones are getting more and more common, and the internet is becoming more apart of our daily lives. GameFreak was well aware of this, carrying entire hardware peripherals that would push the likes of the Game Boy Advance further on. With the introduction of the Nintendo DS, however, everything goes global.

Pokemon Diamond and Pearl brought the series into the internet age, taking advantage of Nintendo WiFi Connection to connect trainers across the globe! It may seem novel, being able to trade and battle Pokemon online, but in 2007, this was a gamechanger. This was of a time and place where social media was relegated to MySpace and AOL instant messenger, not nearly as ever-present as the likes of Facebook and Twitter. Forums and web boards flourished with the influx of online Pokemon. This time period just so happens to be when I personally started going on community-focused websites and planted the seeds of what would become lifelong friendships. So, yeah, on a personal level, the mere act of playing and trading online really helped me navigate social waters I wasn’t even perceptive of at the time.

After such a huge step forward, what comes after feels unsurprisingly tame by comparison. Pokemon Diamond and Pearl took the franchise online, and with Black and White, it kept a majority of Gen 4’s functionality. Black and White also went in a lot of different directions in terms of silly gimmicks GameFreak likes to try generation to generation. Remember the Dream World? You’d go to an actual website on your computer or phone to meet other Pokemon and get unique items, but I mostly remember it being a giant bore. They made up for it with the C-Gear, always keeping online functionality right at that bottom screen - an improvement they would take into the next generation.

The transition from Black and White to X and Y brought us Pokemon Bank, a cloud-based application where you could continue to store your Pokemon for years to come. Pokemon had always made efforts to make sure you were able to transfer your Pokemon all the way back from Ruby and Sapphire through future generations. It’s…not the most elegant process, but with Pokemon Bank, we get a modern solution to an ever-growing Pokemon problem. It’s not a direct multiplayer facet on its own, but in the context of what you do online, it’s a crucial addition to the franchise.

X and Y by far have the easiest to use and most straightforward online functionality. It, too, existed primarily on the bottom screen, but it has a much easier to parse user interface than the C-Gear. By this point, I’m in college, and while robust online features are necessary, the attention to detail on local functionality was equally important. Pokemon X and Y were up to the task, emboldened by the Nintendo 3DS hardware, which itself was also more of a social machine (rip StreetPass).

College is also where I originally got into Pokemon Go, which honestly could use it’s own video. Pokemon Go brings back those organic roots I mentioned the original games thriving in. It’s a different experience, built for mobile devices and once again fostering community and in-person communication. I’ll never forget seeing upwards of 100 people on a cool July evening, swarming our college campus, as there were plenty of Pokestops and gyms in a walkable range. Pokemon Go was the defining social experience of 2016, and in the context of Pokemon’s multiplayer innovation, changed the series forever.

Back in the main series, we get to Pokemon Sun and Moon. I’m wrapping up my college career and the onset of Pokemon Go definitely had the following traditional generation not hit as hard on campus or online. The feature set was…fine, but they GameFreak’d it up by having it work so well in the previous generation, just to shake things up with the Festival Plaza in Sun and Moon. It was more confusing with less features, and I’d be lying if I said it didn’t have a part in my general apathy to the games at the time. Serviceable, but I have easily the least to say about it. Communication-wise, this was the calm before the storm.

Remember how I said Pokemon Go changed everything? I think it’s one of the most defining aspects of Pokemon’s transition to the Nintendo Switch, as everything from the Let’s Go remakes of the original games, to Max Raid Battles in Sword and Shield, to an entire game built around cooperative experiences, are ripped straight out of Pokemon Go. It’s by far the largest shift the franchise has had since going online.

Pokemon Let’s Go is definitely more of a footnote in the whole multiplayer aspect of Pokemon, as it stripped out a lot of the social features on top of the gameplay being a lot more like Pokemon Go in general. It does still shine a light on where the series goes next in Pokemon Sword and Shield. One of, if not THE best part of vanilla Sword and Shield were the Max Raid Battles, where you and three other people would team up to take down a Dynamax or Gigantamax Pokemon, presented very similarly to Pokemon Go’s Gym Leader battles. It wasn’t perfect, especially if you were forced to have an AI teammate or two, but it’s something they’re carrying over into Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, so you know it was a big enough impact to warrant bringing it forward.

With Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, it really feels like the culmination of a lot of different paths Pokemon has been going through the last few years, communication being front and center. They’re refining Max Raid Battles, expanding the Wild Area to the entirety of the game, and the vast majority of the game can be played cooperatively. It’s genuinely touching to be able to share all the shiny grinding, the item scouring, and every other little goofy thing we do in Pokemon - together.

#Pokemon #Pokemon Scarlet and Violet #Pokemon Go #Pokemon Diamond and Pearl

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