(Little) Things that annoy you in Pokémon

In fairness to Cozmo, he didn't have any official art until after the games were made.

The anime gave him this design for his appearence in 2003


Which seemed to be the basis for his official card, released in 2004


But if I had to guess neither of these were really entered into the "canon" proper, like a style guide for the character, otherwise generations likely would've used the design, Adventures probably would have updated him for his later appearences and they'd probably have given him a unique model in ORAS (for contrast, Lanette did).

Same goes for Captain Stern & the Trick Master (Dock uses this same sprite, by the way, i think its just the generic "middle aged guy" sprite) but they didn't even get a card.
 
In fairness to Cozmo, he didn't have any official art until after the games were made.

The anime gave him this design for his appearence in 2003


Which seemed to be the basis for his official card, released in 2004


But if I had to guess neither of these were really entered into the "canon" proper, like a style guide for the character, otherwise generations likely would've used the design
Actually since RS GF themselves provided Model sheets for Game characters in the anime, like this:


probably cuz they noticed how the anime screwed over Gen 1/2 mon designs before hand.Like Chiko and Gligar colors. And Sugimori himself did Cosmo's card
Though Capt Stern seems to have been anime exclusive for design from what I've seen. Literally has no official art otherwise
 
Actually since RS GF themselves provided Model sheets for Game characters in the anime, like this:


probably cuz they noticed how the anime screwed over Gen 1/2 mon designs before hand.Like Chiko and Gligar colors. And Sugimori himself did Cosmo's card
Though Capt Stern seems to have been anime exclusive for design from what I've seen. Literally has no official art otherwise
While true I still think that they weren't properly canonized into "this is how Professor Cozmos should always look". They provided design work for anime purposes (probably out of necessity I suppose) but outside of Cozmo's TCG that design never came back, and other "important but undesigned" characters never even got a card much less edits in other misc/game appearences.


I guess what I'm saying is that gamefreak probably also turned Charles (the heartbreaker) into kamen rider for the anime

But that design will probably never be referenced outside of it.



Which all makes Lanette interesting because I wonder if she did have official art drafted but never released or acted on in the original. Because while the design she has in ORAS has differences they feel more in line with the other RSE -> ORAS design updates


-Black headband
-Green strapped dress with a black undershirt
-Glasses

She lost the ponytails but the wavey fanned out hair still gives a similar vibe. And this design also got used by Adventure (unlike Cozmo, who retained his same, different design through out)

e: Basically in my mind I picture you go up to gamefreak/tpci with like "hey we want to do a Hoenn thing" and then gamefreak/tpci gives you a set of design guidelines to follow. Lanette would be part of that, but Cozmos would probably just go "he's a Scientist".
 
Emerald has a move tutor for Softboiled. This would be fine, except for the part where no mon obtainable in Emerald without trading can make use of it.
It was also in Firered and Leafgreen, Emerald simply ported over all of the FRLG move tutors, which were all Gen I TM moves, and added many Gen II TM moves to the mix. Pokemon XD also had Sky Attack and Self-destruct from Gen I TMs and Nightmare from Gen II TMs.
 

Celever

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This is a slightly random and unimportant thing that I just realised and probably isn’t worth pointing out, but...

Since Gen V, what exactly is the point of move tutors? With the exception of XD, where the move tutor functioned as a TM and was one-use, the whole point of move tutors was that they could be used as many times as you wanted. But since Gen V where TMs were multi-use anyway, all that move tutors served to do was add unnecessary grinding time to being able to learn each move, and just having more TMs would have streamlined the process greatly.

Which is to say that changing TMs to multi-use was in my opinion a good change that again just made everything more convenient. Just that move tutors should probably have been cut at the same time.

This is somewhere where SwSh does fairly well. I mean, grinding raids is dumb, but also much better than grinding shards or BP.
 
This is a slightly random and unimportant thing that I just realised and probably isn’t worth pointing out, but...

Since Gen V, what exactly is the point of move tutors? With the exception of XD, where the move tutor functioned as a TM and was one-use, the whole point of move tutors was that they could be used as many times as you wanted. But since Gen V where TMs were multi-use anyway, all that move tutors served to do was add unnecessary grinding time to being able to learn each move, and just having more TMs would have streamlined the process greatly.

Which is to say that changing TMs to multi-use was in my opinion a good change that again just made everything more convenient. Just that move tutors should probably have been cut at the same time.

This is somewhere where SwSh does fairly well. I mean, grinding raids is dumb, but also much better than grinding shards or BP.
Maybe it was to ensure that you couldn’t get moves like Outrage and Dark Pulse too easily? I believe those were available in Lentimas Town, which was after the 6th. TMs could be very least placed in locations later in the game to limit their use, but that wouldn’t be practical to place NPCs in random locations just to teach one move. In the case of the Alola and Galar games, move tutors exist to encourage you to do Mantine Surf and Max Raid Battles and to force you to keep doing them.
 
Move Tutors are definitely treated as their own thing for vague gameplay purposes. The moves are treated as "better" (mileage my vary wildly) and since they're added in follow up versions they piecemeal them and treat them as grind spots to dovetail with whatever content they want to push.

I think they also just dont want to add TMs, for whatever reason. See also: SWSH did the same thing with the Isle of Armor
 
I remember reading in a German Magazine several interesting things before Gen 2 came out with each sprite of the Gold version being shown and some dialog. And I recall some of the following things that stuck to this day in my head:
- Heracross suppose to be the final evolution of Pinsir
- Legendary Beasts are referred as legendary Dogs
- Phanpy, Donphan and Lugia are water types
- Lugia and Ho-oh are legendary birds (thus I assumed they are the expansion of the legendary bird trio from gen 1)

And over time, I thought those were all mistranslations, misintepretations or what have you. But some of these are interesting because of the Spaceworld 97 demo that got leaked. We know that the Legendary Beasts suppose to be Dogs instead of Cats. I don't know when everyone started to call them dogs and for what reason, I think them being intended to be dogs is kinda interesting.
At least it would kinda justify that a major magazine that covers something like that could get it wrong, since they could assume the 'dogs' got redesigned instead of becoming completely different things. Like when you look at the old sprites, Raikou looks like a dog that melted and Entei doesn't scream lion to me.

It feels disappointing to see that Pinsir got shafted like that because Mega Horn could have been his signature move and be a pretty formidable rival to Scyther.
I don't mind Phanpy and Donphan being Ground types. I feel that makes more sense to them. And I don't think the demo has them as Water Types either.
Lugia because of what I mentioned really hurts being a Psychic Type. For one, Water would have made great sense since it is a rival to Ho-oh. And it's always shown in water.
According to DYKG's video regarding Lugia, Psychic Type was just chosen because "I wanted to make him look powerful", as in powerful because how broken they were in Gen 1.
 
I doubt any of what that magazine reported was actually from the prototypes that the magazine knew about. Magazines (& even official guides) often just have wrong information due to poor fact checking, assumptions &/or carelessness.


The "beasts" moniker I don't think was even a thing until years later: a lot of people just refer to them as "dogs"
 

Codraroll

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According to DYKG's video regarding Lugia, Psychic Type was just chosen because "I wanted to make him look powerful", as in powerful because how broken they were in Gen 1.
This sounds reasonable: arguably, it was a thing in the first two generations to slap Psychic type on something when you wanted to underline how "special" it was. All Pokémon have strange powers, but the Psychic-types are shown to be just a bit stronger with them. There's really no reasons for Pokémon such as Exeggutor, Jynx, Slowbro, or Starmie to be Psychic, other than "look, they can do weird stuff with their minds in additional to their elemental powers!" Even Mew could feasibly have been Normal-type given its design concept. A secondary Psychic typing was the thing they went to when they wanted to give the Pokémon special powers outside of what was implied by their primary typing. It didn't really have anything to do with the "theme" of the Psychic type.
 
This sounds reasonable: arguably, it was a thing in the first two generations to slap Psychic type on something when you wanted to underline how "special" it was. All Pokémon have strange powers, but the Psychic-types are shown to be just a bit stronger with them. There's really no reasons for Pokémon such as Exeggutor, Jynx, Slowbro, or Starmie to be Psychic, other than "look, they can do weird stuff with their minds in additional to their elemental powers!" Even Mew could feasibly have been Normal-type given its design concept. A secondary Psychic typing was the thing they went to when they wanted to give the Pokémon special powers outside of what was implied by their primary typing. It didn't really have anything to do with the "theme" of the Psychic type.
That seems to be the reason we are getting a mythical/legendary Psychic Type in ever single generation. It comes of as less special after so many generation. But can't disagree with what you said regardless.
 

QuentinQuonce

formerly green_typhlosion
And over time, I thought those were all mistranslations, misintepretations or what have you. But some of these are interesting because of the Spaceworld 97 demo that got leaked. We know that the Legendary Beasts suppose to be Dogs instead of Cats. I don't know when everyone started to call them dogs and for what reason, I think them being intended to be dogs is kinda interesting.
The dogs v cats debate has gone on for years at this point and it's not one that needs reviving (personally I think there's a perfectly fine argument to be made for either) but I believe the person who designed them did say they're meant to be based on a tiger, lion, and leopard respectively.

Though I've always thought that calling them "beasts" is neater (and complements the Kanto "bird" trio) and usefully sidesteps whether they're meant to be dogs or cats. Personally I've always felt that Entei looked somewhat canine while Raikou is unambiguously a feline, and Suicune doesn't really lean towards either. And that's without getting into the theory that Suicune, Entei, and Raikou were once a Vaporeon, Flareon, and Jolteon which just makes things even more convoluted since Eevee is more like a fox (or vaguely a rabbit).



1613409234905.png
 
Every trainer starting from gen 5 has their team with the exact same levels, except for their ace which is usually two levels higher than their team. Pokémon Sword and Shield (and a bit of gen 7 battles) did have some level variety, but the trainers still follow the same formula for determining their levels (one strongest Pokémon + one or two Pokémon one level lower than their ace + one or two Pokémon two levels lower than their ace). I like the NPCs having level diversities because it kinda tells us a bit about how they raise their Pokémon and which they value more.

For example, Red's highest leveled Pokémon is his Pikachu because it's his strongest, and then followed by Blastoise, Charizard and Venusaur (the Kanto starters), then Snorlax (busted in gen 2), and lastly Lapras or Espeon (the rare Pokémon that are not too powerful). Steven's strongest Pokémon is his Metagross, and then Skarmory (which he uses a lot like in the Emerald tag battle and for flying around), and then the two fossils (rare Pokémon) and Aggron (a three-staged pokemon with good BST that he also used in the Emerald tag battle), and lastly his Claydol (regular two-staged Pokémon with a good encounter rate).

Now every trainer follows the same standard. Does Gamefreak expect me to believe that every trainer raises their Pokémon the exact same way?
 

QuentinQuonce

formerly green_typhlosion
Every trainer starting from gen 5 has their team with the exact same levels, except for their ace which is usually two levels higher than their team. Pokémon Sword and Shield (and a bit of gen 7 battles) did have some level variety, but the trainers still follow the same formula for determining their levels (one strongest Pokémon + one or two Pokémon one level lower than their ace + one or two Pokémon two levels lower than their ace). I like the NPCs having level diversities because it kinda tells us a bit about how they raise their Pokémon and which they value more.

For example, Red's highest leveled Pokémon is his Pikachu because it's his strongest, and then followed by Blastoise, Charizard and Venusaur (the Kanto starters), then Snorlax (busted in gen 2), and lastly Lapras or Espeon (the rare Pokémon that are not too powerful). Steven's strongest Pokémon is his Metagross, and then Skarmory (which he uses a lot like in the Emerald tag battle and for flying around), and then the two fossils (rare Pokémon) and Aggron (a three-staged pokemon with good BST that he also used in the Emerald tag battle), and lastly his Claydol (regular two-staged Pokémon with a good encounter rate).

Now every trainer follows the same standard. Does Gamefreak expect me to believe that every trainer raises their Pokémon the exact same way?
Yeah, I've always thought this. The Gen 5 way is such a lazy way to signify "here's the ace", and since Pokemon grow at different rates anyway your in-game team is rarely equalised in level unless you've been careful to keep it that way.

I discussed this briefly on another thread, but Emerald does a similar thing with gym leader rematches which always stood out to me: each gym leader gets a couple of non-Hoenn Pokemon which starts out in its basic stage and is a few levels lower than the rest of their team, and then gradually raises it up in each subsequent rematch until it's evolves fully. My headcanon as a kid was always that this was an exotic Pokemon (to them, anyway) they'd just acquired and were unfamiliar with, and that they're rematching you specifically to train it.
 
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remember this guy in the desert resort of BW? He gives you a soft sand if you talk to him. You will find the blackglasses in the sand right in front of him.

Now, this is extremely minor, but why does the guy that wears black glasses not give you the blackglasses item? He gives you the soft sand instead, which is something you would expect to find in, you know.... the sand (so where you find the blackglasses).

I wonder if some developer at GF did this on purpose.
 

Pikachu315111

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remember this guy in the desert resort of BW? He gives you a soft sand if you talk to him. You will find the blackglasses in the sand right in front of him.

Now, this is extremely minor, but why does the guy that wears black glasses not give you the blackglasses item? He gives you the soft sand instead, which is something you would expect to find in, you know.... the sand (so where you find the blackglasses).

I wonder if some developer at GF did this on purpose.
Player: Why were you holding Soft Sand?
Guy: Lost my glasses in the sand, I was digging to find it.
Player: They're on your face.
Guy: This is my extra pair.
*Player checks space in front of them and finds Blackglasses*
Player: Found your glasses.
Guy: Good job, thanks!
Player: ... Aren't you going to take them back?
Guy: Nah, I'm already wearing my extra pair and ordered a new spare a while ago. So you can have them.
Player: Why were you digging for it then?
Guy: Had I found it a few minutes ago I could have canceled the order for the new glasses, but I didn't so I can't so here we are.
Player: ... Did you bury someone?
Guy: NO! And it's not like he's using those glasses anymore.
Player: Good point. Have a good day. *Walks off*
Guy: Already going better than this fool! *Stomps on sand beneath him chuckling*
 
Player: Why were you holding Soft Sand?
Guy: Lost my glasses in the sand, I was digging to find it.
Player: They're on your face.
Guy: This is my extra pair.
*Player checks space in front of them and finds Blackglasses*
Player: Found your glasses.
Guy: Good job, thanks!
Player: ... Aren't you going to take them back?
Guy: Nah, I'm already wearing my extra pair and ordered a new spare a while ago. So you can have them.
Player: Why were you digging for it then?
Guy: Had I found it a few minutes ago I could have canceled the order for the new glasses, but I didn't so I can't so here we are.
Player: ... Did you bury someone?
Guy: NO! And it's not like he's using those glasses anymore.
Player: Good point. Have a good day. *Walks off*
Guy: Already going better than this fool! *Stomps on sand beneath him chuckling*
 
Player: Why were you holding Soft Sand?
Guy: Lost my glasses in the sand, I was digging to find it.
Player: They're on your face.
Guy: This is my extra pair.
*Player checks space in front of them and finds Blackglasses*
Player: Found your glasses.
Guy: Good job, thanks!
Player: ... Aren't you going to take them back?
Guy: Nah, I'm already wearing my extra pair and ordered a new spare a while ago. So you can have them.
Player: Why were you digging for it then?
Guy: Had I found it a few minutes ago I could have canceled the order for the new glasses, but I didn't so I can't so here we are.
Player: ... Did you bury someone?
Guy: NO! And it's not like he's using those glasses anymore.
Player: Good point. Have a good day. *Walks off*
Guy: Already going better than this fool! *Stomps on sand beneath him chuckling*
To be completely honest I've definitely had cases where I thought I lost my glasses but had them on my nose, and if you wear glasses irl and this didn't happen to you you're lieing because it definitely did.
 

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