Amazing.
-
Check out the relaunch of our general collection, with classic designs and new ones by our very own Pissog!
-
Welcome to Smogon! Take a moment to read the Introduction to Smogon for a run-down on everything Smogon, and make sure you take some time to read the global rules.
Little things you like about Pokémon
- Thread starter Kurona
- Start date
Amazing.
Reminds me of how some Yu-Gi-Oh! card artworks have continuity and tell a little story. Love that shit.
It's always interesting to me how the TCG almost always has these 2 lines do something together mechanically
Other version exclusive, hell even Pokemon that are actually tied together rarely get gimmicks to this level much less ones that STILL get them. Pokemon 151's Electabuzz & Magmar also have the gimmick!
Subtle and clever joke in ORAS that is exceptionally easy to miss
especially given how borderline useless Float Stone is in competitive
They put a lot of failsafes and details into a mechanic that doesn't even remotely matter
And it's still broken, because this is gen 1. Moving the sleeping pikachu offscreen will cause walking to corrupt the game's memory.
Bulbapedia said:
One little thing I like in LGPE is that all three of Red, Blue, and Green show up as "Master Trainers", all based on the OG Kanto games' characters, and that when you look at their teams, they have quite a few parallels going on.
First is that obviously they all have one of the traditional Kanto starters in their final forms, ripe with a Mega Stone to Mega Evolve them, showcasing their ultimate forms. Red with Venusaur, Blue with Charizard, and Green with Blastoise respectively.
And then another parallel is that each one of them has one of the Kanto late-game single stage powerful Normal-types, and each one represents one of the three of them (I know Snorlax isn't a single stage Pokemon anymore, but back in the Kanto days it was). Red has a Snorlax, Blue has a Tauros, and Green has a Kangaskhan. The late-game Normal-type trinity is also represented well between the three of them. Their signature attacks also represent their individual flavors. Snorlax has Body Slam, which is because it's a big bear that uses its weight to crash-land and lean on its opponent, Tauros has Double-Edge which is an upgraded Take Down, representing Tauros as a bull that charges at its opponents, and Kangaskhan has Dizzy Punch, which was its original signature move and involves a spinning punch from Kangaskhan.
And the third parallel is that each one has a trade evolution from the original three-stage trade evolution families. Red has a Machamp, Blue has an Alakazam, and Green has a Gengar. Too bad Golem got left out, but there was only room for three after all.
While it does not apply to Green since she's using Blastoise the water starter, Red and Blue each have a high powered Water-type. Red has a Lapras while Blue has a Gyarados. These two are also strongly associated with Red and Blue respectively in the HGSS and in Gyarados' case even all the way back in the original Kanto games if you didn't pick Charmander. Lapras tends to be associated with Red in many media as the de facto Surf Pokemon.
They all also have different stone evolutions. Red has an Arcanine, while Blue has an Exeggutor, and both were high BST late game two-stage stone evolutions in the original Kanto games (in fact both have a BST of 455 in RGBY). Green meanwhile has multiple of them, including Ninetales and Victreebel, both of who were watered-down Venusaur/Charizard for people who didn't pick them, as well as Clefable, who is an early game stone evolution.
The final slot for Red and Blue is just a Pokemon that tends to be associated with them, Pikachu for Red since it's the mascot of the series while Blue has tended to have Aerodactyl in many of his later appearances like BW2 and the Alola games.
I think this is a pretty neat team structure between the three of them that really mirrors each other in fun ways.
----
Another little thing I like is the version-exclusive pairings they chose for version-exclusive pseudo-legenaries in SV, and in this case I feel it is a much better pairing of exclusives than SwSh.
In this case, the direct version exclusives pairs of pseudo-legendaries are Tyranitar (Scarlet) and Salamence (Violet), and Hydreigon (Scarlet) and Dragapult (Violet).
These pairs feel like very fitting version exclusive pairs because both pairs mirror each other more strongly than the pairs they chose in SwSh, both from a gameplay standpoint and from a design theme standpoint.
Tyranitar and Salamence are pretty close mirrors of each other. Larvitar and Bagon both evolve once at Level 30 into Pupitar and Shelgon, and then evolve again at roughly similar levels, Tyranitar at 55 and Salamence at 50 respectively.
But thematically both follow the insect metamorphosis process in their evolution line, except they are reptilian/draconic as opposed to bugs and late bloomers as opposed to early bloomers. Larvitar and Bagon are the "larval" stage, then Pupitar and Shelgon are the "pupal" stage who then become the imago Tyranitar and Salamence.
Tyranitar and Salamence have types that have opposite matchups (Rock/Dark and Dragon/Flying) and one is a slow bulky Pokemon while the other is a faster but less bulky Pokemon. Tyranitar's ability Sand Stream summons a sandstorm that gives it a Special Defense boost, while Salamence's ability Intimidate lowers its opponent's Attack by one stage, giving it an honorary physical Defense boost.
Meanwhile Hydreigon and Dragapult also have similar evolution levels. Deino and Dreepy evolve once at Level 50, then again at also similar evolution levels, Zweilous at 64 and Drakloak at 60.
Design wise their evolution lines' throughlines are a bit different but have a roughly similar concept of one->two->three. Deino has one head, then Zweilous has two heads each with autonomous minds of their own, and then Hydreigon has three "heads" even if only the center one is real and the two side heads are hands. Dreepy is a singular creature, then it evolves into Drakloak who carries a Dreepy on its head, acting as two autonomous creatures who fight as a team since the Drakloak cares for the Dreepy and battles alongside it, and then Dragapult is a bigger creature who carries two Dreepy on its head in its horns, essentially being a team of three creatures albeit with Dragapult as the boss and the Dreepy as the ammunition for Dragon Darts. I think there's a pretty neat mirroring of the design themes here too.
---
Just a few things I thought about that I think are pretty neat.
One little thing I like in LGPE is that all three of Red, Blue, and Green show up as "Master Trainers", all based on the OG Kanto games' characters, and that when you look at their teams, they have quite a few parallels going on.
First is that obviously they all have one of the traditional Kanto starters in their final forms, ripe with a Mega Stone to Mega Evolve them, showcasing their ultimate forms. Red with Venusaur, Blue with Charizard, and Green with Blastoise respectively.
And then another parallel is that each one of them has one of the Kanto late-game single stage powerful Normal-types, and each one represents one of the three of them (I know Snorlax isn't a single stage Pokemon anymore, but back in the Kanto days it was). Red has a Snorlax, Blue has a Tauros, and Green has a Kangaskhan. The late-game Normal-type trinity is also represented well between the three of them. Their signature attacks also represent their individual flavors. Snorlax has Body Slam, which is because it's a big bear that uses its weight to crash-land and lean on its opponent, Tauros has Double-Edge which is an upgraded Take Down, representing Tauros as a bull that charges at its opponents, and Kangaskhan has Dizzy Punch, which was its original signature move and involves a spinning punch from Kangaskhan.
And the third parallel is that each one has a trade evolution from the original three-stage trade evolution families. Red has a Machamp, Blue has an Alakazam, and Green has a Gengar. Too bad Golem got left out, but there was only room for three after all.
While it does not apply to Green since she's using Blastoise the water starter, Red and Blue each have a high powered Water-type. Red has a Lapras while Blue has a Gyarados. These two are also strongly associated with Red and Blue respectively in the HGSS and in Gyarados' case even all the way back in the original Kanto games if you didn't pick Charmander. Lapras tends to be associated with Red in many media as the de facto Surf Pokemon.
They all also have different stone evolutions. Red has an Arcanine, while Blue has an Exeggutor, and both were high BST late game two-stage stone evolutions in the original Kanto games (in fact both have a BST of 455 in RGBY). Green meanwhile has multiple of them, including Ninetales and Victreebel, both of who were watered-down Venusaur/Charizard for people who didn't pick them, as well as Clefable, who is an early game stone evolution.
The final slot for Red and Blue is just a Pokemon that tends to be associated with them, Pikachu for Red since it's the mascot of the series while Blue has tended to have Aerodactyl in many of his later appearances like BW2 and the Alola games.
I think this is a pretty neat team structure between the three of them that really mirrors each other in fun ways.
----
Another little thing I like is the version-exclusive pairings they chose for version-exclusive pseudo-legenaries in SV, and in this case I feel it is a much better pairing of exclusives than SwSh.
In this case, the direct version exclusives pairs of pseudo-legendaries are Tyranitar (Scarlet) and Salamence (Violet), and Hydreigon (Scarlet) and Dragapult (Violet).
These pairs feel like very fitting version exclusive pairs because both pairs mirror each other more strongly than the pairs they chose in SwSh, both from a gameplay standpoint and from a design theme standpoint.
Tyranitar and Salamence are pretty close mirrors of each other. Larvitar and Bagon both evolve once at Level 30 into Pupitar and Shelgon, and then evolve again at roughly similar levels, Tyranitar at 55 and Salamence at 50 respectively.
But thematically both follow the insect metamorphosis process in their evolution line, except they are reptilian/draconic as opposed to bugs and late bloomers as opposed to early bloomers. Larvitar and Bagon are the "larval" stage, then Pupitar and Shelgon are the "pupal" stage who then become the imago Tyranitar and Salamence.
Tyranitar and Salamence have types that have opposite matchups (Rock/Dark and Dragon/Flying) and one is a slow bulky Pokemon while the other is a faster but less bulky Pokemon. Tyranitar's ability Sand Stream summons a sandstorm that gives it a Special Defense boost, while Salamence's ability Intimidate lowers its opponent's Attack by one stage, giving it an honorary physical Defense boost.
Meanwhile Hydreigon and Dragapult also have similar evolution levels. Deino and Dreepy evolve once at Level 50, then again at also similar evolution levels, Zweilous at 64 and Drakloak at 60.
Design wise their evolution lines' throughlines are a bit different but have a roughly similar concept of one->two->three. Deino has one head, then Zweilous has two heads each with autonomous minds of their own, and then Hydreigon has three "heads" even if only the center one is real and the two side heads are hands. Dreepy is a singular creature, then it evolves into Drakloak who carries a Dreepy on its head, acting as two autonomous creatures who fight as a team since the Drakloak cares for the Dreepy and battles alongside it, and then Dragapult is a bigger creature who carries two Dreepy on its head in its horns, essentially being a team of three creatures albeit with Dragapult as the boss and the Dreepy as the ammunition for Dragon Darts. I think there's a pretty neat mirroring of the design themes here too.
---
Just a few things I thought about that I think are pretty neat.
I also think the respective designs work well with the version theme as well. i.e Hydreigon being more of a classic ancient dragon design whereas Dragapult is clearly based on actual human technology. Though Salamence itself doesn’t give off a modern vibe (its Mega does though) as the archetypal European dragon it is a bit more modern than say generic monster Tyranitar which could be described as an ancient Godzilla or even Dinosaur. Dragapult doesn’t have a Paradox associated with it, but I also liked how the Scarlet exclusives (Tyranitar, Hydreigon) have a future Paradox, and Salamence has a past Paradox.
I would have actually guessed that another reason to pair Hydreigon and Dragapult was to reference Hydreigon's original concept of being a tank (it's not present much in the current design, though the body stripes could look like treads if you squint), making both lines based on military hardware. Thad idea doesn't seem to work well with having Hydreigon be an ancient counterpart.
The Starters they were assigned lines up with the Starters their counterparts in the Adventure manga got; AND that choice was made due to the cover of the Japanese guidebook:
The artwork was drawn by Sugimori and this is also the first canonical appearance of "Green", though at this time she was just a nameless girl trainer. Sugimori wanted the image of 3 trainers with the 3 Starters facing off against each other and, with Red & Blue being boys, having a girl added some balance (though he probably had her facing away from the audience both so that Red & Blue's faces could be seen and so he didn't need to draw a random character's face). If you want to learn more about Green's history before finally becoming a character in the games, here's her Bulbapedia page. Or, alternatively, Leaf's Bulbapedia page. Yes, both Green and Leaf have different Bulbapedia page entries; the arguments in Bulbapedia's discussion tab for both characters is HILARIOUS (Green, Leaf).
While Red having Snorlax is for obvious reasons, Blue having Tauros could possibly be a reference to the dummied out Professor Oak battle that can be found in the Gen I games. Professor Oak is programmed with 3 teams, the difference is he has one of the Starters final evos. It's possible wherever this battle took place (either a bonus post game battle in his Lab or plans were for Oak to be the Champion as his Pokemon's Levels are on par with Blue's team; though there is also the possibility he was just a placeholder, we'll probably never know), he would have used the Starter that wasn't picked along with Arcanine, Exeggutor, Gyarados, and Tauros. Notably, the first three are Pokemon which Blue would often be seen with, including his Gen I Champion team. Tauros though wasn't, Blue never used a Tauros until Let's Go.
Red having a Machamp is interesting. Until Let's Go he never used one. In Gen II he had an Espeon, though that was replaced with Lapras in HGSS and Lapras has been on his team ever since. But Blue did at one point use a Machamp. For some reason in HGSS Blue swapped out his Alakazam, which has always been a member on his team before AND after those games, with a Machamp. Machamp would end up staying on his team in BW2's Pokemon World Tournament, but in those games it's replacing his Rhydon/Rhyperior.
BTW, it's also in BW2 when Blue would swap out his Pidgeot with Aerodactyl. This worked out in Let's Go as that meant Trace could use Pidgeot as his Mega Pokemon.
Like with Machamp, Red never used an Arcanine before, but Blue did. BTW, this is the first game Red did NOT have all the Starters as a member of his team, so while he had one of the Starters (Venusaur in this case), Pikachu, Snorlax, and Lapras, that left him with two empty slots for Pokemon he would have never used before. Blue would turn out to have plenty of extra Pokemon, especially with them adding in Tauros for that Oak battle reference, so with Red missing a Fire-type (and Blue having Charizard) they gave him Arcanine. And with wanting them all to have a Trade Evo, Machamp was the last pick; which left the only Blue Pokemon not represented being his Rhydon (though Giovanni's ace is Rhydon so it's represented).
Finally, I don't really have much to say about Green's team, though I will point out he having a Clefable could be a reference to Clefairy in the Pocket Monster manga and that Clefairy was almost chosen to be Ash's partner before deciding to go with Pikachu since yellow was a more neutral color to pink.
So using this logic, Dragapult would have been an Ancient Paradox Pokemon... wouldn't that just mean it would be alive again?
Ooh, wait, no, to show Paradox Pokemon being unnatural, instead of making it alive again, keep it part Ghost but change Dragon to like Water or Flying (or go extreme and do Fire and make it lava-themed).
I think its pretty cool that GF gave the Slowking line a new signature move this gen, Chilly Reception. What's even cooler is that it was likely inspired by the slowtwins running Teleport a lot last generation, which they didn't learn through normal means. Chilly Reception is a more flavorful version of that move which ensures Slowking can continue pulling off this strategy in SV and beyond, which is great since its largely unique to it.
Pity Slowbro didn't get any cool new moves though. Seems like its been getting the short end of the stick lately.
Pity Slowbro didn't get any cool new moves though. Seems like its been getting the short end of the stick lately.
I am not 100% sure it was actually inspired by teleport.
After all, teleport in the current "battle usable" form was never "legitimately" in Slowking's learnset.
We know it's likely based on a combination of a scene from one of the movies (where Slowking says a terrible joke about the cold atmosphere as it just started snowing) and the saying of saying a joke so bad it freezes the air then leaving in shame, and probably wanting to have a new interesting way to showcase the new Snow weather.
I think that the similarity with teleport is just incidental.
I may of course be wrong, but i don't think at GF they thought "hey people use this illegal transfer move from let's go on smogon, let's make a replacement for it"
So using this logic, Dragapult would have been an Ancient Paradox Pokemon... wouldn't that just mean it would be alive again?
Dragapult as an Ancient Paradox would be fun. It wouldn’t surprise me if all the pseudos get Paradoxes eventually, depending how long S/V goes on and how consistently they release new ones like IL/WW. Garchomp/Metagross would probably be the most likely (Metagross is coming back in DLC I think?) since they had Megas. Plus I’d love to see what they could do with an Ancient Metagross.
Yeah, I think the movie could be another inspiration + it does make sense flavor-wise for Slowking, but the timing of Slowking getting the move & its effect just seem a bit too perfect. Some people thought Slowking was broken last generation & it was largely because of the Futureport combo let it safely pivot out into another Pokemon while healing off the damage it takes. I think Chilly Reception is a pretty thematically fitting move, but giving it a pivoting effect which Slowking only had access too via Teleport after it dominated OU with it last generation seems just a bit too peculiar to merely be a coincidence.
Its kinda like how they gave Cyclizar Rapid Spin, Knock Off, Regenerator, and base 121 speed - all tools Tornadus-Therian had in prior generations (though most are locked to Tutor moves now). There's no way they just coincidentally made that Pokemon similar to Tornadus-T gameplay wise; they actively had to have been looking at Tornadus-T as a base when designing Cyclizar.
I think these moves are just part of them trying to get some elements previously never seen in VGC into it.
Glimmora, Stone Axe, Ceaseless Edge, Shed Tail, all are getting some formerly bss-only (if even) elements to the doubles scene.
Unfortunately there isnt quite a real usage for slowking though....
Glimmora, Stone Axe, Ceaseless Edge, Shed Tail, all are getting some formerly bss-only (if even) elements to the doubles scene.
Unfortunately there isnt quite a real usage for slowking though....
I think it was a coincidence
It got Regenerator because they wanted it to be the big user of Shed Tail. They wanted it to have all the synergy that would go with, so it also got U-Turn
They also wanted to emphasize Cool Bike Tricks with it, so it got Rapid Spin (sick donuts)...and Ice Spinner (sick donuts but on ice) and Trailblaze (zyoom) and also U-Turn again. Also probably Power Whip (though that might just be more the tail). (And not a sick trick but it probably got Overheat for similar bike reasons)
Knock Off is a nice gift but also ngl I think it & Taunt (& Mud Slap) also come from a combination "rowdy biker" and "we made this thing have 121 speed and put it towards a supporting role, it's going to get some extra goodies so people use it".
Honestly not sure why it doesn't get Spin out. It's not like they had qualms giving a few "signature" style moves to other Pokemon within the same generation this gen. See also: Shed Tail.
One thing I love about Pokémon is how its incredible diversity inspires creative ways to keep track of things.
For example, to remember the future paradox forms, I use the mnemonic ‘I Inversely Invigorate Ions Inside Invulnerable Icicles’
I - Iron Treads
Inversely - Iron Hands
Invigorate - Iron Moth
Ions - Iron Bundle
Inside - Iron Jugulis
Invulnerable - Iron Thorns
Icicles - Iron Valiant
Of course, Iron Leaves showing up threw a bit of a spanner in the works, but adapting to new challenges is half of the fun!
For example, to remember the future paradox forms, I use the mnemonic ‘I Inversely Invigorate Ions Inside Invulnerable Icicles’
I - Iron Treads
Inversely - Iron Hands
Invigorate - Iron Moth
Ions - Iron Bundle
Inside - Iron Jugulis
Invulnerable - Iron Thorns
Icicles - Iron Valiant
Of course, Iron Leaves showing up threw a bit of a spanner in the works, but adapting to new challenges is half of the fun!
Maybe Instantly?
I - Iron Treads
Inversely - Iron Hands
Invigorate - Iron Moth
Ions - Iron Bundle
Inside - Iron Jugulis
Invulnerable - Iron Thorns
Icicles - Iron Valiant
Instantly - Iron Leaves
That... AND that M2's Slowking's Japanese VA, Masatoshi Hamada, is a comedian known for his slapstick which includes poking fun at himself. Chilly Reception's Japanese name is "Cold Gag" which refers to a term in Japanese, Chinese, and Korea about a joke being unfunny. Bulbapedia explains it best:
Bulbapedia said:
Going to be real interesting to see which Sig Moves are distributed wider (and to whom).
Whatever works for you, though I myself am not seeing the connections between the word and mon.
Or is this a joke on how uncreative GF was with the Future Pokemon names?