Yung Dramps
awesome gaming
Matt apparently not only confirmed Mega Jynx used to exist but also that there was a scrapped second form for Celesteela? What the heck could that have been
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SPOILERS! Mysteries and Conspiracies of Pokemon
- Thread starter stage7_4
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Matt apparently not only confirmed Mega Jynx used to exist but also that there was a scrapped second form for Celesteela? What the heck could that have been
My realistic hypothesis is that Celesteela had a form change like Xerneas and Kyurem-Black/White, changing only slightly for battle.
Perhaps Mega Jynx was one of the Megas planned initially for the Kalos follow ups which were confirmed to exist thanks SM’s source code being leaked?MFW:
Regardless, looking back at it, if Megas we’re going to be discontinued, I would have been like the Kalos follow ups to be real, not because I think the third version would be a good buisness model, but only for new Megas and the more time with Mega Evolution.
I think there's two possibilities regarding Celesteela:
A: in battle visual change, probably just with it's thrusters
B: originally the Ultra beasts may have all been planned to have A/B forms for which version you played but were scrapped due to increased dev workload, and buzzwole and pheromosa were the only completed forms and were reworked into seperate beasts.
A: in battle visual change, probably just with it's thrusters
B: originally the Ultra beasts may have all been planned to have A/B forms for which version you played but were scrapped due to increased dev workload, and buzzwole and pheromosa were the only completed forms and were reworked into seperate beasts.
Yung Dramps
awesome gaming
Considering the Pokemon we're talking about I think it's just as likely that they decided against it mid-development of XY or even ORAS due to its history of controversy. It's noteworthy that this is the only cut Mega with remnants in various code when common sense dictates there must be a ton of others we don't know about whose only pieces of evidence for existing are gathering dust in a vault somewhere.
Jynx was more likely to be intended for XY because it was part of a group of trademarks in 2012 that included most of the XY megas.
https://pokemonfigure.blogspot.com/2012/06/pokemon-trademark-expands-merc-scope.html
The anime also showed cloakless Burmy, which always existed via concept art but has never actually been used in the games, so I think this is a reasonable assumption.
I never realized that Black/White Kyurem had different activated "forms" like this. I think I just assumed they changed/glowed like Reshiram and Zekrom do.
QuentinQuonce
formerly green_typhlosion
The Elite Four talk in another thread made me think of something I've often been mildly curious about. In GSCHGSS, Will tells the player that he trained his Pokemon until at last he was accepted into the Elite Four.
So who recruits and appoints the Elite Four*? Is there a board of directors in the Pokemon Association? Is it put to a democratic public vote? Do the group themselves decide? Are positions offered as and when to highly-skilled professional battlers or do these people have to proactively apply? And did Lance officially leave to become the Indigo League's Champion or was it more akin to an internal promotion?
So many questions...
*In the regions where this isn't directly explained, I know Kukui does it in Alola for instance
So who recruits and appoints the Elite Four*? Is there a board of directors in the Pokemon Association? Is it put to a democratic public vote? Do the group themselves decide? Are positions offered as and when to highly-skilled professional battlers or do these people have to proactively apply? And did Lance officially leave to become the Indigo League's Champion or was it more akin to an internal promotion?
So many questions...
*In the regions where this isn't directly explained, I know Kukui does it in Alola for instance
I think at least for the Indigo League in Kanto and Johto, I'm inclined to believe Professor Oak is in charge of that League. Kukui running the Alola League seems to be inspired by him once having taken on the Kanto Gym Challenge and Oak may have been an influence for him. Professor Oak seems to have authority over how that League operates since in both RBY/FRLG and GSC/HGSS, he's the one who steps forward to formally incite the player into the Hall of Fame once they have defeated the Elite Four and/or the reigning Champion. Considering there's an implication by Agatha that he used to be a very strong Trainer before becoming the researcher he's known as nowadays, I imagine he may have founded the Indigo League and that the rules of how it operates were created by him.
The other regions' Leagues are a bit less clear though. I don't think the other professors hold as much authority as Oak does in his own region, and since unlike Indigo most of the other regions (namely Hoenn, Sinnoh, Unova, and Kalos) have a reigning Champion who has held that position for years and is well known and respected as a Trainer and in a career outside of it. Steven, Cynthia, and Diantha probably hold authority over their respective Leagues and are formally in charge of it seeing as how they're long time veteran Champions with long careers. Alder too, although he formally relinquishes his title in the time between BW1 and BW2 and passes it on to Iris who is the newest Champion of Unova in the latter. Steven in Emerald and to an extent ORAS shows that he too has the right to pass on his authority to someone else to serve as reigning Champion and the person in charge.
Galar is pretty obvious though, Leon doesn't have the same authority over the Galar League like other veteran Champions, that's held by an actual League Chairman, which for a while is Rose. Though Leon eventually does gain that authority himself after he loses to you, as while he formally loses the title of Champion, he ends up inheriting Rose's former position as the League Chairman after the latter turned himself in, and now he's the current Chairman. Paldea also has a Chairwoman in Geeta, although in this case Geeta is also formally the one in charge of the League.
Just my thoughts on those.
The other regions' Leagues are a bit less clear though. I don't think the other professors hold as much authority as Oak does in his own region, and since unlike Indigo most of the other regions (namely Hoenn, Sinnoh, Unova, and Kalos) have a reigning Champion who has held that position for years and is well known and respected as a Trainer and in a career outside of it. Steven, Cynthia, and Diantha probably hold authority over their respective Leagues and are formally in charge of it seeing as how they're long time veteran Champions with long careers. Alder too, although he formally relinquishes his title in the time between BW1 and BW2 and passes it on to Iris who is the newest Champion of Unova in the latter. Steven in Emerald and to an extent ORAS shows that he too has the right to pass on his authority to someone else to serve as reigning Champion and the person in charge.
Galar is pretty obvious though, Leon doesn't have the same authority over the Galar League like other veteran Champions, that's held by an actual League Chairman, which for a while is Rose. Though Leon eventually does gain that authority himself after he loses to you, as while he formally loses the title of Champion, he ends up inheriting Rose's former position as the League Chairman after the latter turned himself in, and now he's the current Chairman. Paldea also has a Chairwoman in Geeta, although in this case Geeta is also formally the one in charge of the League.
Just my thoughts on those.
With regards to Paldea, I think it worth considering that Champion is not a singular/Zero-Sum title that way it's suggested to be at least in Galar and Leagues like Kanto, with context of things like the DLC suggesting that the team you battle against "Champion" Geeta is lesser than some like Nemona, or at the very least is not Geeta's own best. I always had the impression that Geeta was the strongest member of the League establishment and the first trainer recognized as Champion level, but the "Champion" Title is more an accolade than a position with her serving as the Final Test or "benchmark" thanks to her Chairwoman position.
Something I'd also be curious about is how much formal recognition the BBA League Club has. They obviously style themselves after the Elite Four + Champion structure of most regions, but they're one of the only Leagues that's Double Battled focused in-universe and by all accounts are just a club at a recent (if still very prestigious) School. It also stands out because BB seems much more battle focused for its curriculum while Naranja/Uva Academy is much more all-rounder with things like Battle, Capture, History, etc all coming up in the classes you can take.
With Paldea's League kind of having an air of a Job Interview with Rika, is it something other leagues would put weight behind formally (like how the Anime and Manga have alternatives to Gym Badges to qualify for a challenge)? Is it something akin to having an internship or experience on a Resume if you try to apply to be a League Member (as opposed to a challenger). however that process goes in practice? Is it like a Sports Team where it builds a record to improve your chances of being picked up/get networking?
I also wonder if there being a School League at BBA vs N/U is a matter of funding vs just choice/personnel due to the School situations (N/U not being as Battle Heavy and having had a massive turnover recently due to the Team Star incident). I doubt it's a matter of the Region itself since BBA is in Unova which obviously has its own League (I always forget the timeline but how recent would the Plasma incidents have been around the time of SV?).
And less a conspiracy but also a related matter this makes me think of and want to put somewhere: AU where Nemona goes abroad to BBA (Penny confirms this is possible outside Exchange Programs) to see how her Battle Craze fares with an Academy more up to reciprocate. Also a verse where Kieran attends the main school and ends up in Team Star (because even if she improves over time, Carmine is overbearing enough to be considered a bully Sibling and certainly causes that sort of stress to Kieran during the Teal Mask)
QuentinQuonce
formerly green_typhlosion
I would imagine the Indigo League long predates Professor Oak. Bulbapedia seems to think the first Pokemon League competitions were 150 years prior to the events of RBY, though I'm not sure what that's based on - the Adventures manga and the Origins anime depict the League having a long history, though I don't think either case solidifies it as 150 years.
I know they invite him in the games, but I always took that as "Professor Oak, we'd love to see you" rather than a plea for him to challenge them or because he's the League's founder. The email they send to his lab ("There's an e-mail message here! ... Calling all Pokemon trainers! The elite trainers of Pokemon League are ready to take on all comers! Bring your best Pokemon and see how you rate as a Trainer! Pokemon League HQ Indigo Plateau. P.S. Professor Oak, please visit us!") could be taken to mean the League didn't exist prior to that, but I always interpreted it as meaning "we've been closed for a while, but our training's over now and we're open to the public again". The gym system in Kanto has clearly existed for a while, and none of the NPCs at the Indigo Plateau or at the badge checkpoints (or, really, in the whole of Kanto come to think of it) imply that the League is a new thing.
iirc there's dialog in Legends Arceus that implies that there's a more active battling scene in Kanto (& other regions)
This topic could also apply to the Ultra Beasts and also the entire franchise, but there is something that always bothered me about the nature of the Paradox Pokemon and their introduction to Paldea. From the journals I've read from Area Zero, the reason why the Professor wanted to bring the Paradox Pokemon to the present was to make a paradise for their family, specifically Arven and their spouse. This reasoning comes off as extremely selfish- the professor wanted to bring Pokemon from another dimension with little to no regard for what the Pokemon's feelings are for their sake of their own ambitions.
To continue out from that, is it really fair to call out the opposing Koraidon/Miraidon for killing the professor? Imagine if you were living your life normally until someone or something captures you and literally takes you across space-time just for the sake of someone's own goals. Of course Koraidon and Miraidon have a right to be angry and view the professor as an enemy. It can be seen as a form of self-defense if anything- what Professor could be seen doing is a form of kidnapping, or illegal wildlife trade since they recieve coporate funding. What makes matters worse is that the AI lets a child carry another specimen despite knowing well that species could also potentially turn aggresive and attack the player; in fact, the truth that the player could catch the Koraidon/Miraidon that killed the Professor comes off as extremely dangerous, negligent and selfish for both the public trainer, and Pokemon.
And then at the end, Clavell actually states that the commonfolk cannot know of the incident within Area Zero, the existance of Paradox Pokemon, and the fact that the professor was killed- as if he knows it will make the school look bad ( Professors were alum and Heath, the person who did the first exploration of Area Zero was sponsored by the director of the academy ). And the fact that the player is allowed to capture the remaining paradox Pokemon from this event despite the dark history of the Professor fate and the dangers surrounding one of them comes off as selfish, risky and unethical, and the school not facing consequences for the events surrounding the Professor and the Paradox Pokemon ( not even trying to find a way to send the Pokemon back instead of letting them inhabit Paldea ) really feels wrong and undermines SV's story- I think the conclusion of the school and Paradox Pokemon was too light for themes they were trying to discuss with the nature of for-profit and non-profit programs.
To continue out from that, is it really fair to call out the opposing Koraidon/Miraidon for killing the professor? Imagine if you were living your life normally until someone or something captures you and literally takes you across space-time just for the sake of someone's own goals. Of course Koraidon and Miraidon have a right to be angry and view the professor as an enemy. It can be seen as a form of self-defense if anything- what Professor could be seen doing is a form of kidnapping, or illegal wildlife trade since they recieve coporate funding. What makes matters worse is that the AI lets a child carry another specimen despite knowing well that species could also potentially turn aggresive and attack the player; in fact, the truth that the player could catch the Koraidon/Miraidon that killed the Professor comes off as extremely dangerous, negligent and selfish for both the public trainer, and Pokemon.
And then at the end, Clavell actually states that the commonfolk cannot know of the incident within Area Zero, the existance of Paradox Pokemon, and the fact that the professor was killed- as if he knows it will make the school look bad ( Professors were alum and Heath, the person who did the first exploration of Area Zero was sponsored by the director of the academy ). And the fact that the player is allowed to capture the remaining paradox Pokemon from this event despite the dark history of the Professor fate and the dangers surrounding one of them comes off as selfish, risky and unethical, and the school not facing consequences for the events surrounding the Professor and the Paradox Pokemon ( not even trying to find a way to send the Pokemon back instead of letting them inhabit Paldea ) really feels wrong and undermines SV's story- I think the conclusion of the school and Paradox Pokemon was too light for themes they were trying to discuss with the nature of for-profit and non-profit programs.
Clavell (or Geeta, more likely) covering it up to the public is probably less "makes the school look bad" and more "we probably don't want Paldea freaking out over a bed of super weapons and also a time machine".
I also think we should probably steer clear of the "kidnapping from another dimension/timeline/environment" thought processes when they're both wild animals who seemingly adapt to the crater pretty well and also you know...how pokemon training works, in general.
Calling out the other raidon for killing the professor also isn't something the game really does. It brings it up as a fact to make the other raidon a threat, explain what happened to the real Professor and to explain why our raidon has trauma. Narratively it's just the ultimate sign of the professor's hubris; we get to side step that because we defeat it directly and then catch it on normal terms. We defeated it twice, its claim on the territory is nulled and now we can make it happy like you would an especially angry stray cat.
I mean we call it out because it's grimly funny to catch a murderer (and then we do it again! and then 3 more times!), but that's different.
(Also I think that maybe the fact we can capture the paradoxes, and the other raidon, is likely meant to be like...story/gameplay segregation)
But hey while we're here...
The game doesn't bring it up directly but the fact the League is still keeping tabs on and letting Briar go down there for further research (including publishing some of the findings) shows they're probably more open to doing more down there. Though messing with the time machine more is likely off the table. The lab was in dissarray, the two people who could do anything about it are dead-dead and presumed-dead (if the AI actually went through time or not is irrelevant, it cannot exist outside the crater...), the machine's prime directive is to bring in more paradoxes and several routiens that even the AI couldn't overcome on its own, the lab locked out people until we put the disk in and now the elevator to the machine is out of order....and messing with time travel more is probably not a good idea.
I also think we should probably steer clear of the "kidnapping from another dimension/timeline/environment" thought processes when they're both wild animals who seemingly adapt to the crater pretty well and also you know...how pokemon training works, in general.
Calling out the other raidon for killing the professor also isn't something the game really does. It brings it up as a fact to make the other raidon a threat, explain what happened to the real Professor and to explain why our raidon has trauma. Narratively it's just the ultimate sign of the professor's hubris; we get to side step that because we defeat it directly and then catch it on normal terms. We defeated it twice, its claim on the territory is nulled and now we can make it happy like you would an especially angry stray cat.
I mean we call it out because it's grimly funny to catch a murderer (and then we do it again! and then 3 more times!), but that's different.
(Also I think that maybe the fact we can capture the paradoxes, and the other raidon, is likely meant to be like...story/gameplay segregation)
But hey while we're here...
The game doesn't bring it up directly but the fact the League is still keeping tabs on and letting Briar go down there for further research (including publishing some of the findings) shows they're probably more open to doing more down there. Though messing with the time machine more is likely off the table. The lab was in dissarray, the two people who could do anything about it are dead-dead and presumed-dead (if the AI actually went through time or not is irrelevant, it cannot exist outside the crater...), the machine's prime directive is to bring in more paradoxes and several routiens that even the AI couldn't overcome on its own, the lab locked out people until we put the disk in and now the elevator to the machine is out of order....and messing with time travel more is probably not a good idea.
The incomprehensibility of Oinkologne having trivially different stats depending on its gender is a reference to perfume commercials.
The Quaking Earth Titan also suggests that the Paradoxes can co-exist to some degree with the native species, with the danger being a large population of them being spat out by the time machine and doing damage by outcompeting. If we take their "No Egg Group" status at face value, the Paradox Pokemon are effectively sterile in the present, so it's not significantly different than something like Domestic Cats that have been Spayed/Neutered: they won't sustain a population but can do serious damage even in a single generation IF they are not kept under supervision of an owner (or in this case trainer), so taking obviously-meta playstyles like Shiny Hunting out of the equation, the player capturing and training a few individuals is the only theoretically ethical way they can be studied outside Area Zero.
I'm not sure what the Mystery or Conspiracy is with the Professor: The game makes blatantly clear that their bringing the Paradoxes into the present is dangerous and a sign of their hubris, which culminated with losing control of the Raidons in a territory dispute that got them killed thinking they could intervene, a pop-culture trope that well pre-dates the Pokemon IP, much less this entry. No one really "calls out" the aggressive Raidon anymore than they do the Tiger that mauls a dude wandering around its territory. The player catching the Raidon isn't really an abnormality for this series, given plenty of non-Paradox species are described as dangerous or territorial and commit no such action: before SV, the last recorded case of Pokemon attacking humans, especially their own trainers, was Shadow Pokemon in Orre who had to be explicitly conditioned and in a frenzied state to do so, while being acknowledged as abnormal. The only other comparable instance we have is Terapagos breaking Kieran's Master Ball and even that instance doesn't clarify if Terapagos doing so was aggression or simply being overloaded given it only tries that after being terastalized and shows no Disobedience of Kieran before, something the series maintains Powerful Pokemon can do even up to this entry.
Keeping the Paradoxes a secret doesn't really have much to do with the Academy's reputation so much as the fact there are these mutant super creatures down there that we don't understand and we don't want people or poachers running around unauthorized disturbing them further (Arven being able to take a Flying Taxi confirms people can get in and out of the Crater outside of authorized supervision by the League). It sure would suck if over the decades multiple terrorist/criminal organizations had emerged that would have use of a population of Pokemon on the level of Legendary species just chilling out for potential capture, but I'm sure that wouldn't make a dangerous fighting force or enticing casino prize or anything.
I also brought up the capture part, but as far as the Paradox Population... yeah it sucks but what the hell are they supposed to do about it? By the game's depiction the concern isn't these things being in the crater, it's them getting OUT of the Crater into the wider Paldea region, so probably best to let sleeping dogs lie where that's concerned. These potentially invasive species being in an environment that by all indications can sustain them for the duration of their natural lives is probably the best the world has the infrastructure to achieve as a solution. Sending them back certainly isn't an option considering
- There is literally no basis for what time period to actually send them to (the only speculative timeframe is Scream Tail being a Billion Year old Jigglypuff... which literally predates multicellular life and probably isn't an earnest suggestion), and sending them to the wrong time has the same risks as keeping them here but without even the smidge of knowledge or holding environment for the crater
- The Time Machine is kind of dangerous to mess with considering it caused this whole problem just by being on for a Decade AFTER the person who started this problem died while being monitored by an AI that actively wanted to shut it down.
- No one left knows how this thing works as intended, much less how it would work in reverse (the AI putting itself through is as much to get away from and shut the Machine down as to land in a different time). Even if we wanted to mess with the machine, literally no one left alive in the present knows how the functioning machine worked, nevermind how to further develop it.
I don't even get what the school is "escaping" consequences for: the Professor isn't implied to have lied or deceived anyone when seeking funding to research Area Zero (which extended beyond the Time Machine with things like the publicly known-and-used Terastal Orbs), and up until the main plotline literally nothing was known to be amiss as some kind of cover up (as compared to the bullying that preceded Operation Star at the school itself just a year prior) since the AI was maintaining the Professor's identity. I'm not even clear if the Time Machine existing in and of itself was supposed to be called out as opposed to the Professor's use of it (bearing in mind Bill had a Time Machine as the Gen 2 trading mechanism and no body really cares).
The Slakoth line is one of the strangest lines of Pokemon created. We all talk about Slaking, how it has an abnormally high BST of 670 but has a crippling ability in Truant that forces it to only move every other turn, being a unique novelty/gimmick Pokemon in that regard, which Gen 3 had a few of (like Shedinja). But while Shedinja has IRL bases in cicada molting their shells, Slaking has another unusual trait that I always found interesting: the existence of Vigoroth as the middle form.
Slaking has the same ability as Slakoth and the same overall throughline lore of Slakoth of being a lazy, do-nothing Pokemon who just sits there and does nothing all day, being very low energy creatures. Hence their ability Truant. And they're based on sloths, which makes sense.
But the real unusuality that no one really talks about is what's between them, Vigoroth, who is an anomaly. It's the complete opposite, being extremely high energy and full of vigor, hence its name, and its signature ability is Vital Spirit, aka it can't sleep. Its lore is that it's so energetic that it must keep moving and rampaging and attacking at all times, and being unable to move is dangerous to it because then its energy will overwhelm it.
It's definitely odd how this thing exists the way it does and between Slakoth and Slaking. A low energy Pokemon who does nothing but sleep evolves into an extremely high energy Pokemon who can't stop moving, and then evolves again into something that is once again low energy, never moving much, only it now has much more power than before.
Vigoroth is definitely an odd beast that contributes to the weirdness of its line.
I want to tell you all a story about my favorite non-sensical pokemon encounter in the entire series.
It appears in exactly one game, despite there being five of the kind.
It is in a location which represents a plethora of broken rules and one of a kind circumstances, and yet it still manages to break rules beyond rule breakers.
Most importantly, and hilariously to me, it represents the consequence of several short-term decisions made independently of one another that all come together to create a single event. The actual impact of said event is equivalent to that of three people independently taking a casual stroll, all coming from different directions with destinations far apart, somehow simultaneously but independently synchronizing in a brief episode of distraction, resulting in all parties colliding head first.
No history is made in this event. There is, if any at all, a brief pain, with the brunt of the sting being embarrassment, but that in short time is itself forgotten. Yet, inexplicably, despite it being a data point worth little more than a moment's consideration, the exact butterfly wing flaps which precisely directed this scene into existence, made one at a time over the course of a decade, each the result of input from people across the globe, the lack of any one rendering the rest impossible, are all preserved in pristine condition. Combined, they create a fossil record with enough material to create a rich story of each participant's path, a story which I will share here and now.
And so we start from humble beginnings.
In Pokemon Red and Blue, Mankey and Meowth are a pair of version exclusive Pokemon. Mankey is found in Red, while Meowth is found in Blue.
Pokemon Yellow split version exclusives down the middle, taking some from Red and some from Blue, in this case making Mankey available while leaving out Meowth. While most of these divisions were seemingly arbitrary, this was a bit of a special case, as both had a very specific role to play relevant to their availability.
Being based on the Anime, Yellow gave Meowth a role as a symbol of sorts for Team Rocket, with Jesse and James using it in their battles and Giovanni having his anime appearance's iconic Persian in his boss battles. Separately, being the game where Pikachu was locked as the player's starter, there became a need for the game to feature stronger counters to Brock. Enter Mankey, which fulfilled this role by being slapped into the very beginning of the game with the new addition of an early Fighting type attack.
Beyond simply exchanging version exclusives, Yellow also made changes to wild encounters across the entire game. This meant that, instead of just appearing in one extra place on top of where it and Meowth were found in Red and Green, Mankey was placed in an entirely different set of locations. This shuffle included far more than just Mankey alone, so it was relatively natural as a part of the game overall. As a self contained decision, it all worked out quite nicely.
Generation 2 in the meantime was pretty light on version exclusives, but among them was that same pair copied from Generation 1, with Mankey in Gold and Meowth in Silver. Their dynamic was a little different this time, as instead of simply being a bit flip on each encounter table they were actually found in different places between games in addition to being exclusives.
Famously, GSC does include the Kanto region alongside Johto. This version of Kanto was itself reduced in scale across the board. This was a necessary compromise at the time, being well documented as a product of factors such as cartridge space limitations and a somewhat bumpy development. Cerulean Cave, appearing in the postgame of the first games and not having much new ground to cover given it's big hook had long since become common knowledge across many a playground, was among the things cut from Kanto in the final release. I have to imagine it was one of the very first places to meet such a fate.
Mankey and Meowth were revisited when the Generation 1 games were being remade for Firered and Leafgreen. While in name being a remake of Red and Blue, there were lots of small details specific to Yellow that the games chose to hang on to, especially at the very beginning of the game. Easily the most impactful of these was in readding Mankey as an early counter to Brock, an area which the developers were clearly pretty concerned about.
The nature of this inclusion immediately created a problem though. Mankey and Meowth could not remain as 1-for-1 version exclusives as they were in Red and Blue, as Meowth absolutely could not preform the gameplay function Mankey was put in place to do. But if the player could only get Mankey here, where would Meowth go? Would one be exclusive while the other wasn't? If they were both in the game, where would they both appear?
The solution they landed on was interesting. Meowth would be found in the same locations the duo were previously exclusive to, while Mankey would be added to all of the places where it was found in Yellow, as well as Rock Tunnel for whatever reason.
This decision made it so that both of them were available in both games. This is just a little awkward given the fact that, up to this point, the pair were version exclusive counterparts in every single game in the entire series, including both the games they are directly remaking and the games which inspired them to deviate from the originals. It was also awkward given Firered and Leafgreen, unlike Yellow, didn't alter encounter tables across the game. Instead, the games remained mostly faithful to Red and Blue, but various places had to have their encounter tables altered to squeeze in an extra Mankey or Primeape chance, and this itself led to a few other minor knock-on effect for Pokemon like Nidoran. One example of this, I would guess, is that Sevii features wild Persian a lot as an attempt to keep a sort of symmetry between the two lines, matching the wild Primeape in Route 23 and Victory Road per Yellow.
I'd also personally wager that Meowth's starring role in the Anime was a factor in this decision. Red and Blue's version exclusives were decided independently of the Anime's influence, and the persistence of Team Rocket probably led the duo unexpectedly becoming the single most lopsided version exclusive pair in terms of popularity. Meowth is one of few pokemon that could have reasonably caused fan frustration for those who bought the remakes without happening to know the version exclusivity of the original games.
Despite the incongruencies created by the implementation, as a self-contained decision, this worked out swimmingly.
In addition to the previous shenanigans, Firered and Leafgreen also pretty dramatically shuffled the Cerulean Cave encounters. They're nowhere near as wild as the ones from Red and Green, with a lot of the weirder and more obviously anachronistic encounters being removed, but it still keeps that little bit of bizarre and inexplicable edge. Of note, there are three new Pokemon present this time that weren't present in Generation 1. Wobbuffet is a hilarious inclusion, definitely strengthening the image of the dungeon as an RPG gameplay challenge, as it is possibly the most lethal wild encounter in the series given Shadow Tag. Machoke is... here. It's not that weird, and there's a bit of a thing going on with stage 2 of 3 mons with Golbat, Kadabra, Graveler via Rock Smash I guess...
Also, Primeape is there.
I have no clue why.
It could be as another scary endgame RPG monster? It's kinda scary as a wild encounter with high Speed and nasty Cross Chop crit potential. But it's not exceptionally scary the way something like Wobbuffet is.
It's not really relevant in theme either. Machop and Machoke? Those two pretty much only appear in caves at this point, so that checks out. Mankey and Primeape have appeared in caves, but they aren't really tied to them in any way, as they mainly appear on areas just outside caves in rugged terrain. Primeape in Victory Road harkens back to Yellow, and Mankey being in Rock Tunnel is... itself kind of weird given that it wasn't there in either Red and Blue or Yellow. So I guess this isn't wrong, but it isn't especially right?
And it's weird that FRLG went pretty far out of its way to add two distinct Fighting types to this one cave, when in all of RBY not one could be found here. Adding just one of them would make sense, as the area is trying to give a sort of unreadably strange vibe by having no consistent type theming, and having both Electrode and Magneton makes sense given both appeared in Red and Blue and have especially scary properties as wild Pokemon. (extremely high Speed + Explosion and Magnet Pull + a typing that is tough to crack) Compared to these, the two fighting types add substantially less than the sum of their parts.
With all that said, this is not really that impactful a decision. Sure. Primeape is in this cave now. You've got to read Braille to get in this silly place to begin with. As an isolated decision, it... is.
Finally, we get to Heartgold and Soulsilver. The games are remakes of Gold and Silver, and while they're well known for featuring highlights from Crystal, when it comes to wild encounters, they pretty much always follow Gold and Silver to the letter. Beyond this, they're also games made to be truly complete. With issues related to cartridge space behind them and a clear vision of the end product in mind from the start, the developers could effort to add heaps and piles on top of the original games, with new features out the ears across the entire game.
Additionally, though I am not sure this is outright stated anywhere, I believe HGSS was also probably made with much more of a mind for fan-service. GSC featuring Kanto is perhaps still the most over the top fan-service inclusion in the entire franchise, but it was pretty apparent even back then that the whole thing was a shadow of its former self. Also, FRLG itself probably received a fair bit of flack for remaining faithful to the original games in some places at the expense of fan service, namely with regards to cross-gen evolutions. So, with a game being made to complete GSC and an aim to pander to fans with as much stuff as possible, it was pretty much inevitable that the games would feature Cerulean Cave.
Our pieces are in motion now. Their point of convergence is clear now, but let's still do a brief recap.
With wild encounters, the standard is to default to the encounters from the original Gold and Silver. But here, as this cave was not in Gold and Silver, they must look elsewhere.
They find the encounter tables from Generation 1, and take a brief look. Firstly, Red and Green. It's utterly, indecipherably random. Any intent or correlation implied by the decisions here are lost, perhaps vaulted in minds no longer present, or perhaps eroded over by the sands of time. JP Blue, impossibly, is even less understandable. Next, Pokemon Yellow arrives, and for all it presents that can be firmly understood, it still manages to bring nothing to the table. A cave where Golbat and Graveler yet again reign, appearing in over half of all wild battles, is an unacceptable blandness that overpowers any spice brought to the table by the paltry offerings from a rare chance at a Sandslash, Lickitung, or Gloom.
Lastly, there's Firered and Leafgreen. It's got a flavor fitting incomprehensibility, but it also has just a modicum of consistency, one that might let a programmer working on the very final dungeon of a very long roleplaying game that perhaps bit off a little more than it could chew plug them in without too much thought. As nice as it is to have a well prepared appetizer, it is well understood that what everyone really came here for is the main course. While the chances of each encounter are jostled around slightly to create some variance befitting the day/night system, the pokemon on each floor are copied verbatim.
Then, at some point in the obligatory mirroring of the game to its sister version, somebody catches it. How it is found, and why this change was decided, we may never know. I have a hunch that the decision was purely a bit flip, a consequence of a functional form of thinking meant to do nothing more than filter out undesired Primeapes. After all, Gold and Silver seemingly pride themselves on diversifying the nature of their version exclusives somehow, whether they're found at different times of day, or in different places entirely, a trend which Mankey and Meowth dutifully follow elsewhere. Perhaps, though, there were moments of thought, however fleeting, considering the strangeness of the consequences of their functional choice. Might they have been dismissed due to a knowledge of context, an expectation of the unknowable in the Unknown Dungeon? Or maybe it was consciously done as a placeholder, a way to solve the pressing contradiction in the present, but leave solving the issue to someone down the line. Is it possible that somebody lucidly, with a full night's rest and a morning coffee, accepted the notion of cats in caves?
Whatever the reason, the result is the same.
In Pokemon Soulsilver, the player can find wild Persian in Cerulean Cave.
It appears in exactly one game, despite there being five of the kind.
It is in a location which represents a plethora of broken rules and one of a kind circumstances, and yet it still manages to break rules beyond rule breakers.
Most importantly, and hilariously to me, it represents the consequence of several short-term decisions made independently of one another that all come together to create a single event. The actual impact of said event is equivalent to that of three people independently taking a casual stroll, all coming from different directions with destinations far apart, somehow simultaneously but independently synchronizing in a brief episode of distraction, resulting in all parties colliding head first.
No history is made in this event. There is, if any at all, a brief pain, with the brunt of the sting being embarrassment, but that in short time is itself forgotten. Yet, inexplicably, despite it being a data point worth little more than a moment's consideration, the exact butterfly wing flaps which precisely directed this scene into existence, made one at a time over the course of a decade, each the result of input from people across the globe, the lack of any one rendering the rest impossible, are all preserved in pristine condition. Combined, they create a fossil record with enough material to create a rich story of each participant's path, a story which I will share here and now.
And so we start from humble beginnings.
In Pokemon Red and Blue, Mankey and Meowth are a pair of version exclusive Pokemon. Mankey is found in Red, while Meowth is found in Blue.
Pokemon Yellow split version exclusives down the middle, taking some from Red and some from Blue, in this case making Mankey available while leaving out Meowth. While most of these divisions were seemingly arbitrary, this was a bit of a special case, as both had a very specific role to play relevant to their availability.
Being based on the Anime, Yellow gave Meowth a role as a symbol of sorts for Team Rocket, with Jesse and James using it in their battles and Giovanni having his anime appearance's iconic Persian in his boss battles. Separately, being the game where Pikachu was locked as the player's starter, there became a need for the game to feature stronger counters to Brock. Enter Mankey, which fulfilled this role by being slapped into the very beginning of the game with the new addition of an early Fighting type attack.
Beyond simply exchanging version exclusives, Yellow also made changes to wild encounters across the entire game. This meant that, instead of just appearing in one extra place on top of where it and Meowth were found in Red and Green, Mankey was placed in an entirely different set of locations. This shuffle included far more than just Mankey alone, so it was relatively natural as a part of the game overall. As a self contained decision, it all worked out quite nicely.
Generation 2 in the meantime was pretty light on version exclusives, but among them was that same pair copied from Generation 1, with Mankey in Gold and Meowth in Silver. Their dynamic was a little different this time, as instead of simply being a bit flip on each encounter table they were actually found in different places between games in addition to being exclusives.
Famously, GSC does include the Kanto region alongside Johto. This version of Kanto was itself reduced in scale across the board. This was a necessary compromise at the time, being well documented as a product of factors such as cartridge space limitations and a somewhat bumpy development. Cerulean Cave, appearing in the postgame of the first games and not having much new ground to cover given it's big hook had long since become common knowledge across many a playground, was among the things cut from Kanto in the final release. I have to imagine it was one of the very first places to meet such a fate.
Mankey and Meowth were revisited when the Generation 1 games were being remade for Firered and Leafgreen. While in name being a remake of Red and Blue, there were lots of small details specific to Yellow that the games chose to hang on to, especially at the very beginning of the game. Easily the most impactful of these was in readding Mankey as an early counter to Brock, an area which the developers were clearly pretty concerned about.
The nature of this inclusion immediately created a problem though. Mankey and Meowth could not remain as 1-for-1 version exclusives as they were in Red and Blue, as Meowth absolutely could not preform the gameplay function Mankey was put in place to do. But if the player could only get Mankey here, where would Meowth go? Would one be exclusive while the other wasn't? If they were both in the game, where would they both appear?
The solution they landed on was interesting. Meowth would be found in the same locations the duo were previously exclusive to, while Mankey would be added to all of the places where it was found in Yellow, as well as Rock Tunnel for whatever reason.
This decision made it so that both of them were available in both games. This is just a little awkward given the fact that, up to this point, the pair were version exclusive counterparts in every single game in the entire series, including both the games they are directly remaking and the games which inspired them to deviate from the originals. It was also awkward given Firered and Leafgreen, unlike Yellow, didn't alter encounter tables across the game. Instead, the games remained mostly faithful to Red and Blue, but various places had to have their encounter tables altered to squeeze in an extra Mankey or Primeape chance, and this itself led to a few other minor knock-on effect for Pokemon like Nidoran. One example of this, I would guess, is that Sevii features wild Persian a lot as an attempt to keep a sort of symmetry between the two lines, matching the wild Primeape in Route 23 and Victory Road per Yellow.
I'd also personally wager that Meowth's starring role in the Anime was a factor in this decision. Red and Blue's version exclusives were decided independently of the Anime's influence, and the persistence of Team Rocket probably led the duo unexpectedly becoming the single most lopsided version exclusive pair in terms of popularity. Meowth is one of few pokemon that could have reasonably caused fan frustration for those who bought the remakes without happening to know the version exclusivity of the original games.
Despite the incongruencies created by the implementation, as a self-contained decision, this worked out swimmingly.
In addition to the previous shenanigans, Firered and Leafgreen also pretty dramatically shuffled the Cerulean Cave encounters. They're nowhere near as wild as the ones from Red and Green, with a lot of the weirder and more obviously anachronistic encounters being removed, but it still keeps that little bit of bizarre and inexplicable edge. Of note, there are three new Pokemon present this time that weren't present in Generation 1. Wobbuffet is a hilarious inclusion, definitely strengthening the image of the dungeon as an RPG gameplay challenge, as it is possibly the most lethal wild encounter in the series given Shadow Tag. Machoke is... here. It's not that weird, and there's a bit of a thing going on with stage 2 of 3 mons with Golbat, Kadabra, Graveler via Rock Smash I guess...
Also, Primeape is there.
I have no clue why.
It could be as another scary endgame RPG monster? It's kinda scary as a wild encounter with high Speed and nasty Cross Chop crit potential. But it's not exceptionally scary the way something like Wobbuffet is.
It's not really relevant in theme either. Machop and Machoke? Those two pretty much only appear in caves at this point, so that checks out. Mankey and Primeape have appeared in caves, but they aren't really tied to them in any way, as they mainly appear on areas just outside caves in rugged terrain. Primeape in Victory Road harkens back to Yellow, and Mankey being in Rock Tunnel is... itself kind of weird given that it wasn't there in either Red and Blue or Yellow. So I guess this isn't wrong, but it isn't especially right?
And it's weird that FRLG went pretty far out of its way to add two distinct Fighting types to this one cave, when in all of RBY not one could be found here. Adding just one of them would make sense, as the area is trying to give a sort of unreadably strange vibe by having no consistent type theming, and having both Electrode and Magneton makes sense given both appeared in Red and Blue and have especially scary properties as wild Pokemon. (extremely high Speed + Explosion and Magnet Pull + a typing that is tough to crack) Compared to these, the two fighting types add substantially less than the sum of their parts.
With all that said, this is not really that impactful a decision. Sure. Primeape is in this cave now. You've got to read Braille to get in this silly place to begin with. As an isolated decision, it... is.
Finally, we get to Heartgold and Soulsilver. The games are remakes of Gold and Silver, and while they're well known for featuring highlights from Crystal, when it comes to wild encounters, they pretty much always follow Gold and Silver to the letter. Beyond this, they're also games made to be truly complete. With issues related to cartridge space behind them and a clear vision of the end product in mind from the start, the developers could effort to add heaps and piles on top of the original games, with new features out the ears across the entire game.
Additionally, though I am not sure this is outright stated anywhere, I believe HGSS was also probably made with much more of a mind for fan-service. GSC featuring Kanto is perhaps still the most over the top fan-service inclusion in the entire franchise, but it was pretty apparent even back then that the whole thing was a shadow of its former self. Also, FRLG itself probably received a fair bit of flack for remaining faithful to the original games in some places at the expense of fan service, namely with regards to cross-gen evolutions. So, with a game being made to complete GSC and an aim to pander to fans with as much stuff as possible, it was pretty much inevitable that the games would feature Cerulean Cave.
Our pieces are in motion now. Their point of convergence is clear now, but let's still do a brief recap.
- Mankey and Meowth are version exclusives in Red and Blue
- Yellow picks Mankey over Meowth as it's version exclusive. Rather than simply picking one, however, it dramatically changes the roles both play in the game, including where they are found in the wild.
- Gold and Silver copies the version exclusive pair of Mankey and Meowth from Red and Blue. The Generation 2 games do not feature Cerulean Cave, which is among many things cut due to restricted development resources.
- Firered and Leafgreen aim to remake Red and Blue, but also utilize small changes meant to modernize the games by taking influence from Pokemon Yellow. The consequences of this are a chain reaction of changes which result in a totally unique distribution for the two lines in the wild, with them being decoupled as a pair of version exclusives.
- Heartgold and Soulsilver aim to remake Gold and Silver, but have the resources and time to put a lot of extra goodies on top of the original games, as well as a desire to cater to fans as much as possible.
- Lest I forget, somebody put Primeape in Cerulean Cave in Firered and Leafgreen for reasons yet known to mere mortals.
With wild encounters, the standard is to default to the encounters from the original Gold and Silver. But here, as this cave was not in Gold and Silver, they must look elsewhere.
They find the encounter tables from Generation 1, and take a brief look. Firstly, Red and Green. It's utterly, indecipherably random. Any intent or correlation implied by the decisions here are lost, perhaps vaulted in minds no longer present, or perhaps eroded over by the sands of time. JP Blue, impossibly, is even less understandable. Next, Pokemon Yellow arrives, and for all it presents that can be firmly understood, it still manages to bring nothing to the table. A cave where Golbat and Graveler yet again reign, appearing in over half of all wild battles, is an unacceptable blandness that overpowers any spice brought to the table by the paltry offerings from a rare chance at a Sandslash, Lickitung, or Gloom.
Lastly, there's Firered and Leafgreen. It's got a flavor fitting incomprehensibility, but it also has just a modicum of consistency, one that might let a programmer working on the very final dungeon of a very long roleplaying game that perhaps bit off a little more than it could chew plug them in without too much thought. As nice as it is to have a well prepared appetizer, it is well understood that what everyone really came here for is the main course. While the chances of each encounter are jostled around slightly to create some variance befitting the day/night system, the pokemon on each floor are copied verbatim.
Then, at some point in the obligatory mirroring of the game to its sister version, somebody catches it. How it is found, and why this change was decided, we may never know. I have a hunch that the decision was purely a bit flip, a consequence of a functional form of thinking meant to do nothing more than filter out undesired Primeapes. After all, Gold and Silver seemingly pride themselves on diversifying the nature of their version exclusives somehow, whether they're found at different times of day, or in different places entirely, a trend which Mankey and Meowth dutifully follow elsewhere. Perhaps, though, there were moments of thought, however fleeting, considering the strangeness of the consequences of their functional choice. Might they have been dismissed due to a knowledge of context, an expectation of the unknowable in the Unknown Dungeon? Or maybe it was consciously done as a placeholder, a way to solve the pressing contradiction in the present, but leave solving the issue to someone down the line. Is it possible that somebody lucidly, with a full night's rest and a morning coffee, accepted the notion of cats in caves?
Whatever the reason, the result is the same.
In Pokemon Soulsilver, the player can find wild Persian in Cerulean Cave.
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I cannot cite the source as I do not remember, but I believe it was a DidYouKnowGaming Video for RS, but the idea behind the Slakoth line is this: Slakoth is lazy, Vigoroth is motivated, and by the time Vigoroth is fully evolved, it realizes being hard work isn't worth and goes back to being lazy. This of course translates to gameplay by having first two members having Truant of course.
The Slakoth line is one of the strangest lines of Pokemon created. We all talk about Slaking, how it has an abnormally high BST of 670 but has a crippling ability in Truant that forces it to only move every other turn, being a unique novelty/gimmick Pokemon in that regard, which Gen 3 had a few of (like Shedinja). But while Shedinja has IRL bases in cicada molting their shells, Slaking has another unusual trait that I always found interesting: the existence of Vigoroth as the middle form.
Slaking has the same ability as Slakoth and the same overall throughline lore of Slakoth of being a lazy, do-nothing Pokemon who just sits there and does nothing all day, being very low energy creatures. Hence their ability Truant. And they're based on sloths, which makes sense.
But the real unusuality that no one really talks about is what's between them, Vigoroth, who is an anomaly. It's the complete opposite, being extremely high energy and full of vigor, hence its name, and its signature ability is Vital Spirit, aka it can't sleep. Its lore is that it's so energetic that it must keep moving and rampaging and attacking at all times, and being unable to move is dangerous to it because then its energy will overwhelm it.
It's definitely odd how this thing exists the way it does and between Slakoth and Slaking. A low energy Pokemon who does nothing but sleep evolves into an extremely high energy Pokemon who can't stop moving, and then evolves again into something that is once again low energy, never moving much, only it now has much more power than before.
Vigoroth is definitely an odd beast that contributes to the weirdness of its line.