Little things you like about Pokémon

So took a quick look at the Pokemon Youtube Channel today and noticed they have a little series of videos called "Pokémon Championships History" about memorable moments in the VGC. It only has 4 episodes, the first two were posted months ago though the recent two are only a few weeks ago so it's on a bit of an erratic schedule (and for all we know the 4th was the last episode, especially since it covered THAT VGC moment). Instead of posting the videos here gonna just link to the Youtube videos:
 
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I like how the current duo of protagonists in the Gen 9 anime (Pokemon Horizons), Liko and Roy, represent the Nintendo Switch in their names and color schemes of their outfits. Namely, the iconic Red and Blue Switch. Especially since Gen 9 itself is on the Switch.

Liko starts with L, which is also in "left", and her outfit color scheme is dominantly light blue. This is the color of the left Joy Con of the iconic Red/Blue Switch.

Roy starts with R, which is also in "right", and his outfit color scheme is dominantly red. This is the color of the right Joy Con of the iconic Red/Blue Switch.

Essentially they embody the most well known dual color scheme of the Nintendo Switch and its joy cons, both with their names starting with L and R, as in left and right, and their outfit color schemes matching the left and right Joy Cons of the most well known color scheme of the Switch the flagship platform that the ninth generation of Pokemon is on, starting with its base games Scarlet and Violet at present, and they are the stars of the Gen 9 anime series, Pokemon Horizons, which is an incredibly neat detail.
 
I haven't praised the Galar fossils in a while, let's do that. Because we've all seen plenty of "Counterparts" where not only is one option obviously superior, but where keeping them similar doesn't even seem to have been considered. But the Galar Fossils, not only are their BSTs the same, the BSTs are determined based on a formula determined by which two body parts are being used. Their abilities also follow a clear pattern, as do their moves. And yes, the end result is still a wide variety of tiers, but that's more the nature of game balance.
Like, I'd argue that Arctovish and Dracovish weren't badly balanced, just that one of them got fairly unlucky with how the chips fell. Compare to, say, Zacian/Zamazenta, where you wonder if the designers even understand their own game.
 
So according to Bulbapedia, Counter in GSC (very specifically GSC and not Stadium 2) can reflect Horn Drill and Fissure if they miss. And the countered damage does KO. If this is true (it's obscure game mechanic information on Bulbapedia, kind of up in the air), that's freaking hilarious.
 
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Hugin said:
I haven't praised the Galar fossils in a while, let's do that.
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No.

Karxrida said:
So according to Bulbapedia, Counter in GSC (very specifically GSC and not Stadium 2) can reflect Horn Drill and Fissure if they miss. And the countered damage does KO. If this is true (it's obscure game mechanic information on Bulbapedia, kind of up in the air), that's freaking hilarious.
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Huh, never saw Wobbuffet as the "nothing personal, kid" type.

Pikachu315111 said:
So took a quick look at the Pokemon Youtube Channel today and noticed they have a little series of videos called "Pokémon Championships History" about memorable moments in the VGC. It only has 4 episodes, the first two were posted months ago though the recent two are only a few weeks ago so it's on a bit of an erratic schedule (and for all we know the 4th was the last episode, especially since it covered THAT VGC moment).
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Spoke too soon, since posting this they've released 3 more! and they've expanded into the TCG & GO:
 
I stumbled upon this video essay about Gen III's Pokéblocks that came out recently.


So the whole system behind Pokéblocks, naturally, is an overcomplicated and obfuscated mess. Lots of information about it is not really communicated to the player and you need literal spreadsheets to keep track of things. I'd watch the entire video since it's fascinating. However, the ties to the Nature system lead to an interesting (if flawed) use case in the Safari Zone that's talked about starting at 35:02.

The short version is that Pokémon prefer specific flavors of Pokéblocks based on their natures (e.g. +Attack natures like Spicy), and when you're in the Safari Zone you can throw a block to sus out potential natures of a wild encounter based on their reaction. (Technically, the main use case for using Pokéblocks is to keep the wild Pokémon from fleeing, but regardless). You can put also blocks in the feeders scattered around the Safari Zone to attract Pokémon that like that flavor.

While flawed because there are way better and more efficient ways to hunt down Natures released in the same gen (Emerald introduced Synchronize's matching mechanic, for instance), both of these scenarios give a cool, non-Contest related way to use the Pokéblocks. It also provides a neat way to throw out bad blocks since their quality has no impact on their effectiveness in the Safari Zone. I'm a huge fan of game design like that.
 
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Something that gets me, for as much as Gamefreak doesn't understand the tech they use too much, or the coding oddities, RSE interestingly had something that we the player have ironically due to emulation have gotten wrong: the colors for graphics
For those unaware, the GBA not only lacked a backlight before SP at first, but also handled color differently, having a different standard than typical sRGB monitors (same with GBC!). As such, the devs compensated with specific palettes so that in the hands of the player, mon colors were correct.
Unfortunately cuz the GBA was emulated *before the console was even out for most*, most pirates or hackers got the raw, incorrectly viewed palettes. Which for Gen 3 has severely hurt rep, especially since GB player similarly didn't handle colors like the OG GBA, moreso only dimness
But let's see how drastic it is...
Note: the filter used is by Pokefan531. They've made a shader for Retroarch here, based on extensive research of the GBA/GBC: https://forums.libretro.com/t/real-gba-and-ds-phat-colors/1540/220

First, the infamous purplely blue mons...
Wartort.png

machok.png

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Well look at that. The orange for Salamences wings become redder as well, Machoke is closer to a steely grey, and Wartortle's tan isn't soo yellow

For orangish pink mons...
pinks.png

Much less orange shifted. It's similar to Gen 4/5 pink if not for dimness

Speaking of orange
orange.png

Dragonite in particular benefits shifted red/green levels, not as yellow as raw

And for overall super saturated tans that plagued many mons for raw...
tanners.png

No longer as yellowish or green

For more comparisons, see here. It even has my custom saturation boost after the GBA screen filter (not sure why Imgur acts like this is mature, ignore that message): https://imgur.com/a/t89rpaI
 
Sonikku A said:
Something that gets me, for as much as Gamefreak doesn't understand the tech they use too much, or the coding oddities, RSE interestingly had something that we the player have ironically due to emulation have gotten wrong: the colors for graphics
For those unaware, the GBA not only lacked a backlight before SP at first, but also handled color differently, having a different standard than typical sRGB monitors (same with GBC!). As such, the devs compensated with specific palettes so that in the hands of the player, mon colors were correct.
Unfortunately cuz the GBA was emulated *before the console was even out for most*, most pirates or hackers got the raw, incorrectly viewed palettes. Which for Gen 3 has severely hurt rep, especially since GB player similarly didn't handle colors like the OG GBA, moreso only dimness
But let's see how drastic it is...
Note: the filter used is by Pokefan531. They've made a shader for Retroarch here, based on extensive research of the GBA/GBC: https://forums.libretro.com/t/real-gba-and-ds-phat-colors/1540/220

First, the infamous purplely blue mons...
View attachment 543590
View attachment 543591
View attachment 543592

Well look at that. The orange for Salamences wings become redder as well, Machoke is closer to a steely grey, and Wartortle's tan isn't soo yellow

For orangish pink mons...View attachment 543593
Much less orange shifted. It's similar to Gen 4/5 pink if not for dimness

Speaking of orange
View attachment 543594
Dragonite in particular benefits shifted red/green levels, not as yellow as raw

And for overall super saturated tans that plagued many mons for raw...
View attachment 543595
No longer as yellowish or green

For more comparisons, see here. It even has my custom saturation boost after the GBA screen filter (not sure why Imgur acts like this is mature, ignore that message): https://imgur.com/a/t89rpaI
Click to expand...
I remember reading about this on Twitter (I think from the same guy you mention?) a few months ago and it's fascinating stuff. As an aside, a few other GBA games (especially the SNES ports) had to alter their color palettes to compensate for the lack of backlight.

I really hope the Gen III games make it to NSO eventually just to see how accurate the games' visuals turn out. The Switch's GBA emulator is apparently one of the best in existence, and covering this common blind spot (which I think they did based on how Minish Cap looks slightly darker on Switch compared to my DS Lite) would just reinforce that.
 
Sonikku A said:
For more comparisons, see here. It even has my custom saturation boost after the GBA screen filter
Click to expand...


something interesting is that despite the shiny colors falling on the same situation, they just kept their satured versions canon instead of trying to replicate the result people saw on the gba screen. I wonder how many shinies wouldnt be considered bad if we got their less saturated versions?
 
Lemingue said:
something interesting is that despite the shiny colors falling on the same situation, they just kept their satured versions canon instead of trying to replicate the result people saw on the gba screen. I wonder how many shinies wouldnt be considered bad if we got their less saturated versions?
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Heck, many returning Gen 3 mons in DP kept their palette, despite DS Lite being fairly close to standard sRGB. It's dumb
And then you have the Castform forms keeping the same sprite even in BW
 
Sonikku A said:
Something that gets me, for as much as Gamefreak doesn't understand the tech they use too much, or the coding oddities, RSE interestingly had something that we the player have ironically due to emulation have gotten wrong: the colors for graphics
For those unaware, the GBA not only lacked a backlight before SP at first, but also handled color differently, having a different standard than typical sRGB monitors (same with GBC!). As such, the devs compensated with specific palettes so that in the hands of the player, mon colors were correct.
Unfortunately cuz the GBA was emulated *before the console was even out for most*, most pirates or hackers got the raw, incorrectly viewed palettes. Which for Gen 3 has severely hurt rep, especially since GB player similarly didn't handle colors like the OG GBA, moreso only dimness
Click to expand...
Are you saying the GSC's handing of colors was also different than standard sRGB?
 
Koraidon and Miraidon in general are some of my favorite Legendary Pokemon in a while. Despite how accomplished they are as Ubers, in-universe they're depicted as very strong but not unassailable to battle against, which helps them slot in as a companion from the start of your journey. Despite their lower in-story power, it also lends more credence to why they'd deign to cooperate with your character (something I've always had to suspend a lot more disbelief for with other Legends), partly because they're not so much abnormally strong as "Normal fish in a smaller pond" due to the Time machine.

They also both have very dynamic designs and are very expressive in cutscenes, while hitting a nice balance of animal behavior and clear intelligence to communicate with the cast.
 
QuentinQuonce said:
The fact that my Youtube timeline keeps recommending videos with titles like "10 obscure things you never knew about Pokemon" and they're all basic-ass stuff like Azurill changing gender or Missingno having 3 or 4 different forms. I appreciate I'm not exactly paddling in the shallow end but c'monnnnnn.
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Okay so while it is about 7 minutes' worth of content stretched out into 15, this is the kind of content I'm here for:

 
thornAvery said:
I think it was an absolutely inspired decision to have Brassius' Sudowoodo tera into a grass type
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It was certainly a funny trailer reveal. As for inspired, well depends. Did they decide on having a Pokemon not of their specialty Tera into one before assigning everyone's Tera ace or was it because of instances like them able to make Sudowoodo a Grass-type did they decide to do so?

I personally think the most inspired one being Iono's Mismagius as it's not completely for aesthetics like most of the other Gym Leader (there is a bit of it with Mismagius feminine figure & exaggerated design could be paralleled with pop idols, but it's not overt like a fake tree becoming Grass-type, a honey bear becoming Bug-type, and a cloudy bird becoming Ice-type). Mismagius has Levitate so by turning Electric it loses the only Weakness it would have. I've seen a few loses, both normal and nuzlockes, to Iono because of this. Not to mention Mismagius is relatively fast, hits decently hard, has Confuse Ray, good chance of raising its Special Attack with Charge Beam, and if you were unlucky to get your Pokemon paralyzed by one of her other Pokemon than Hex is a death sentence. It's a Pokemon that some may need to use Iono's other more manageable Pokemon to set up with (or you have a Skeledirge and just kept clicking Torch Song).
 
Sudowoodo into grass was fine. The problem was every gym doing the equivalent of that. If it was up to me, the intended route would have the early gyms all go from off-type to same-type, the mid game gyms would go from same-type to same-type+, and the league would go from same-type to off-type. Demonstrate the 3 possible uses of Tera for players in roughly increasing order of difficulty.
 
I miss when the games did shoutouts to the anime that were subtle (unlike, oh let's say... Ash-Greninja).

There's a great one in XD where one of the trainers in Mt Battle will ask after being defeated "I've heard someone has the same team combination as me. Do you know him or her?" Seems like a throwaway line, but when you consider her team composition (Cacnea and Chimecho) it becomes apparent it's a reference to the team James had in the anime when XD came out.

Speaking of the Team Rocket trio in the anime, I only watched the occasional episode of Journeys and mostly followed it thanks to recaps and Yung Dramps' enjoyable Every Pokemon Seen In The Journeys Anime thread (was really hoping we'd get a followup thread for Horizons, js...) but I'm really pleased that the Rocket trio got some of their old Pokemon back. I always felt that Team Rocket tended to form strong bonds with their Pokemon, and it always felt incredibly sad when they had to let one go (as opposed to Ash, who routinely discards his Pokemon with nary a backwards glance). It's a shame they couldn't get all their old team members back, but I guess nothing says that they won't meet them again someday. But it's nice to see Seviper, Yanmega, Carnivine, and Mime Jr in particular come back to them, since they were dropped incredibly abruptly in the BW series.
 
Probably just coincidence but I find Incineroar's return for the DLC funny because VGC players are (reasonably) dreading that thing's centralization again, meanwhile as someone following Singles my brain thinks "can THIS check Kingambit?" thanks to typing and the mon not running Defiant anymore for Intimidate. If it keeps Taunt you could bring it in and out with Parting Shot to remove any SD buffs, or Wisp it as the last mon (while not fearing Fire if it uses that Tera) to prevent infamous sweeps. People joke about the Anti-Priority fighting move but this cat feels like it'd play an even bigger part in a GF effort against the King

Pikachu315111 said:
It was certainly a funny trailer reveal. As for inspired, well depends. Did they decide on having a Pokemon not of their specialty Tera into one before assigning everyone's Tera ace or was it because of instances like them able to make Sudowoodo a Grass-type did they decide to do so?

I personally think the most inspired one being Iono's Mismagius as it's not completely for aesthetics like most of the other Gym Leader (there is a bit of it with Mismagius feminine figure & exaggerated design could be paralleled with pop idols, but it's not overt like a fake tree becoming Grass-type, a honey bear becoming Bug-type, and a cloudy bird becoming Ice-type). Mismagius has Levitate so by turning Electric it loses the only Weakness it would have. I've seen a few loses, both normal and nuzlockes, to Iono because of this. Not to mention Mismagius is relatively fast, hits decently hard, has Confuse Ray, good chance of raising its Special Attack with Charge Beam, and if you were unlucky to get your Pokemon paralyzed by one of her other Pokemon than Hex is a death sentence. It's a Pokemon that some may need to use Iono's other more manageable Pokemon to set up with (or you have a Skeledirge and just kept clicking Torch Song).
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I think Mismagius is also the Gym Leader's "Wake Up Call" boss fight, the one they make harder to ensure you have to be strategizing or learning the type chart by now to keep up with the difficulty curve (think stuff like Misty's Starmie, Whitney and Morty, the evolved Rival Battle on Hoenn Route 110, Gardenia's Roserade, Lenora's Retaliate Watchog, etc). A fight that relative to what preceded it has fully evolved stats and some synergistic building so that you can't bowl it over on brute strength without at least a SE member and in other cases a few team members working for a stratetgy (reducing stats, setting a Status Condition, or just more than one prepared to battle at that level).
 
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Just found out the random events in Pokemon Ranch not only had Pokemon requirements, but there was 13 added events for the Japanese only Platinum update.

Special note to the Dash event requiring Pokemon from Ambrella's previous game, Pokemon Dash.
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Edit: There's a couple more cool ones.

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Plusle and Minun reference being cheerleaders by becoming a cheer squad.

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Unown becoming a QWERTY keyboard.

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20 Makuhita and Hariyama forming a sumo parade, while 8 create a sumo tournament.

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A Rock type playing whack-a-mole with a bunch of Diglett and Dugtrio.

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Two round Pokemon orbit Solrock and Lunatone like a solar system.

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Water types finally getting to swim.

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And certain Pokemon rivalries getting a spotlight, with Dragonite and Salamence being considered rivals here.
 
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