The Perilous Pundit Introduces Showdown

Hello, plebeians and psychopomps of Showdown! This is your favorite advice-giving, all-knowing guide presenting the multiverse's knowledge—the Perilous Pundit! And in this installment, I'm going to give you a quick introduction to Smogon University's official simulator: Pokémon Showdown!

Everyone knows the Internet offers countless pearls of wisdom for the thirsty—but I intend to surpass them all and make you all intimately and uncomfortably close to PS!. "But Perilous," you might be saying. "I am a true professional at Pokémon Showdown! I got to 1400 Elo on the ladder, and I'm auth in some fucking room!" Well, you know what? Screw you. Sit down, shut up, and read this, or else I'm going to tell everyone about what you did with those pictures. Even your mother.

Logging on to PS!

"Hey, Perilous, I definitely know how to do this," you're telling me, drool pouring from your lower lip like a blown-up dam. "Why are you teaching me how to log on to a site I use every day?" For one, there are many unworthy simulators or servers you might stumble upon, places where no sane individual would go, such as frost.psim.us. You don't want to go to that place. It's like a bunch of perverted 14-year-olds decided they were the most clever beings in the hemisphere because they play Monotype.

Okay, so make sure you log on to the right simulator. I'll do so right here so you can watch.

www.showdownpokemon.com
www.pokemonshower.com
www.psim.ca
www.peesim.us
http://www.pokemonshowdown.com/porkparty

There we go. It's also a link my favorite private room. Tell them P2 sent you.

Your Username and Password

The meaningless and insignificant tabloid that I deign to write for has already spoken on usernames. However, due to their tiny little brains not being able to focus on the important issues, we've neglected to tell you about passwords.

Password security is very complicated. I believe that you—yes, you, sitting in the basement with the Doritos crumbs making your neckbeard look like a giant shard of orange peel—are worthy of my advice, though. You've often heard that "password" is the most common password, and thus, you should avoid it as you would a burrito made of thumbtacks. This is not the case! Hackers will assume that you're not using "password" as your password because of how often people are advised against using it. Therefore, using "password" as your password is completely safe and endorsed by me. If you're really paranoid, you can capitalize one of the letters or some shit.

User Options

I've included a list of the most vital user options, carefully marked with numbers. All the others are rather irrelevant and trivial, much like the licensing board that decided I couldn't be a surgeon with my "unfortunate tendencies." Joke's on them—I made my own accreditation board and became a politician.

Arrow 1: An appropriate username. I chose this after discovering that for some reason, the vile Mods of the simulator look down upon names referencing genitalia, proving they don't appreciate art. They probably wouldn't even listen to my black metal a capella group's mixtape.

Arrow 2: Changing your avatar. Remember, your avatar should symbolize something about your inner soul—or you can make it a girl and get PMs from thirsty morons. Fun for the whole family!

Arrow 3: I don't know what this means, but I'm sure you could just randomly PM a bunch of Voices demanding to know. Feel free to spam them a bit if you have to.

Arrow 4: If you click this, you will receive an alert whenever Global Moderator Temporaryanonymous is near you. He is a wily and unwieldy ne'er-do-well whose hobbies include amateur amputation and poisoning water supplies. If he is near you, you should start running and never, ever stop.

A Sampling of Rooms

As you can see, there are a lot of rooms on PS. I've pointed out several for you, because quite frankly, you're incapable of doing this on your own—

Arrow 1: PS finally succumbed to popular demand and made a room for Violent Goose Chasing, one of the most popular activities enjoyed by PS users. Here, you can meet up with fellow goose chasers, choose what weapons to bring, and learn how to explain to suspicious game wardens, civilians, and police officers that it's just a harmless game and that they don't need to worry about why you have a taser and explosives. All in good fun.

Arrow 2: These jackasses refused to let me start my roleplay entitled The Pundit, Jennifer Lawrence, and the Estonian Secret Service. It really hurt my feelings.

Arrow 3: This room promises it will give you advice, but they're no fun. They seem to think that airline pilots are not willing to let an untrained citizen take the reins for a minute, even to do a sweet flip. Don't worry, The Happy Place. I have my ways.

Arrow 4: Competitive Tutoring is a great place to learn how to play Pokémon. However, Pokémon is a terrible and unbalanced game, so don't play it. Learn chess, or bridge, or read about the Time Cube.

I think something's gone wrong. I'd better go and see. This could be bad—oh, hi, Tempo. It's nice to see you, buddy!

How's it going? Can I serve you a Hot Pocket? Some sort of snack?

No, I'm not in the mood to play Catch the Axe today. I have some writing to do—

We'll be back in another issue of The Player. SteelEdges sucks and does it for free. Tempo's memes are the dankest.