Pokémon Thread XXX: Hot Skitty on Wailord Action!

[Maat Mons]

You specifically said that evolved Pokémon are rare because they get caught. I'm saying they're rare because of a lack of resources, a problem exacerbated by human activity.

My first post was specifically about Pokémon getting caught. My second post was about humans affecting Pokémon populations in a broader sense. Anyway, I'd taken you to be implying that resource scarcity was an explanation to be considered in place of human intervention, rather than alongside it. Sorry if I misunderstood.

I think what Celestia is getting at is that human-induced evolutionary pressures are, in fact, evolutionary pressures, and therefore something to which the concept of "fitness" applies just fine.

Well that's fine, but as a pedantic point, I still take issue with applying the phrase "fitness to survive in the wild" when what is meant is "fitness to survive in human-modified environment."

[Lord Raziere]

So I just beat Pokemon Firered Rocket Edition...

Spoiler: Rocket Edition:

Show

...and while its a darker version of the Kanto story, it actually makes everything make more sense.

You play a pink-haired rocket grunt, the gameplay is shaken up by the fact that you steal pokemon from trainers but get very little money from winning trainer battles, limiting your access to things like pokeballs to catch your own pokemon. its great playing the bad guy for once. you get promoted from grunt to admin to executive to boss, able to steal stuff from more trainers as you go. there are bunch of sidequests where you can do crimes for people for rewards with branching options to do the good thing here and there.

but what I didn't expect this game to do? have an actual story. I thought I'd just be badass rocket trainer who makes everything succeed for team rocket for once or something, but no. Its more like, the rocket protag's story is a side journey to Red's story, where you go around Kanto doing jobs at different times while Red's journey is happening at the same time, just almost never where you are. In some ways you do all the things that set up stuff for Red to solve, or go places to do things at times he doesn't. Team Rocket still goes through all its usual plots that get foiled, but your the one doing all the stuff that succeeded, Lance has this crime rehab program in case you want to be good, and thats just how it starts out.

as it gets deeper, the game delves into the political backstory of this version of Kanto, detailing the war it fought between it and Johto. Lance is portrayed as a Johto foreigner who won the war and now rules the region, with the other side being Oak, the previous champion and various other scientists that were apart of the Mewtwo Project to try and win the war: Blaine, Fuji, Shigeki (the old man in viridian who teaches you to catch stuff) and this team of course funded by Giovanni. the Mewtwo Project failed for a few reasons, Oak decided to surrender and Giovanni decided to make Team Rocket as this group to take back Kanto from Lance, giving Team Rocket a political motivation of driving out a foreign power from their region.

I thought that hey, thats cool, maybe I'll just go catch Mewtwo and beat Red for Team Rocket or something? But no. it goes harder/deeper.

see, turns out? this version of Oak is evil, and decided not to engineer the ultimate pokemon....but the ultimate human trainer, reasoning that a pokemon's true strength didn't come from power from a human's ability to lead and command them to their fullest potential, and thus made Red to be this ultimate trainer puppet of his to beat everyone and basically allow Oak to takeover Kanto by being an advisor to Red and speaking for him because Red is so specialized in pokemon and nothing else- not even socializing. Mewtwo it turns out, isn't capturable- its too powerful. So instead you go and capture what is called "The Catastrophe" another failed clone of Mew....that turns out to be Missingno. Yes. Seriously. THAT Missingno. The legendary of this game is literally Missingno. complete with this blocky glitch sprite, you catch it with a master ball and everything.

Team Rocket still falls and is disbanded by Giovanni....so the grunt goes to the pokemon league in revenge for team rocket, gets there too late as Red beats Blue, then Oak comes in to start puppeteering, claiming he is Red' interpreter since he speaks very little, and wants to start enforcing more strict policies in the name of "public safety"- he's a tyrant, its made very clear he's just doing this to take over the world with Red as his figurehead-so I the rocket member, stopping at nothing, use my stolen pokemon team of magnemite, scizor, seadra, dragonite, arcanine and missingno. to defeat Red himself then defeat Oak when he finds that his toy trainer doesn't work. my rocket trainer basically ends up saving Kanto and possibly the world from evil Prof. Oak with the power of a freaky glitch pokemon when Oak himself tries to desperately enter his name into the records to become Champion and the Missingo basically glitches the environment to stop that.....

and how it really ends is that at court, Red is medically examined to not be a human being in sound health and thus denied from being Champion and being genetically modified is judged to be too dangerous to practice pokemon fighting in civilization, Blue turns down championship, making it all default back to Lance. Oak's crimes aside from assaulting Agatha because he decided love and honor was dumb for evil intellectual reasons and she thought him being ruthless was hot so he assaulted her for backing him up for the wrong reasons and thus he gets exiled and he won't get funded for his research ever again and my rocket member.....well they accrued a bounty of like, 328,000 pokedollars or something big like that for numerous crimes they committed without shame or going to the police officers once to lessen any of this and thus earned 55 years in penitentiary prison.

.....What you thought this was going to have a happy ending for my rocket member? Hah! Nope. Just because my grunt saved the world from Oak, doesn't mean they get off scot free. No, they're doing hard time for life, this may be a more cynical pokemon world but its still pokemon and they're a Rocket criminal thug who stole from pretty much every trainer in the region without doing anything to make up for it, this was a No-Mercy run of pokemon, of course its not going to have a good ending for the criminal. Despite it all, Lance is the one who wins in the end. its wild.

oh and the stinger at the end reveals that Bill and Elm meet at Oak's basement lab with Bill having copied Oak's research that made Red.....probably so they can make Gold. this whole thing was made to keep in line with canon events, technically.

so yeah, this game is a creative romhack in that its the Kanto region but from a different perspective and done in a different order, taking the structure and modifying it so that you have to go through a familiar region in an unfamiliar way. and honestly the bad end I got was entirely avoidable- there was police officers I could've gone to, to like lower my bounty for returning the pokemon I stole. it makes me wonder how different the game would be if I did it as crimeless as possible, what would change from my playthrough which did all the crimes to the max. I'm guessing the final cutscene with the judge would be the one that would be most different, probably.

also during like the climax, Oak observes/implies that my rocket character is also silent and seemingly "meant to be controlled from afar" just like Red, which might be implying that the rocket protagonist is also somehow a genetically engineered human, but Oak doesn't seem to know about the rocket member until that moment, which either means there was a second person making them but its never explained who made the rocket protagonist (or its just a nod to the fact they're both PCs). the rocket protag does have pink hair though, its oft commented on throughout the game, and Oak's basement laboratory is filled with dittos probably used to help make Red.....so maybe The Rocket protag you play in this is a human clone from one of those dittos or a ditto that took on human form that somehow escaped, made its way to Celadon and became a rocket grunt for some reason? it might explain why they kept changing appearance so fast when promoted. so potentially, this whole game is about a failed Mew Clone, catching a second failed mew clone, to beat another failed mew clone. magnificent.

But yeah, this was a fun change of pace from normal pokemon fan games. they did a good job of structuring this so there were boss equivalents throughout each leg of the journey despite you not getting badges for most of the game, they spun their own story while made the conflict of Kanto more complex, in the end didn't really change that what Team Rocket was doing was ultimately bad....it just that in this game, there were other bad people involved and Lance's policies while legal, care more about the economy of Kanto than its actual prosperity. Blue actually comes out looking like the best person morally, because he's just a normal kid who actually followed the advice of caring for his pokemon and doing everything right, got the championship and Red the puppet comes and takes it away from him.

So yeah, if you don't mind a darker interpretation of pokemon, Pokemon Rocket Edition's good, I'd recommend it just for the experience of playing a rocket grunt for once, but having an actual story with it is good to. I'd give a 8/10, B+ kind of rating myself.

[MCerberus]

So I just beat Pokemon Firered Rocket Edition...

Spoiler: Rocket Edition:

Show

...and while its a darker version of the Kanto story, it actually makes everything make more sense.

You play a pink-haired rocket grunt, the gameplay is shaken up by the fact that you steal pokemon from trainers but get very little money from winning trainer battles, limiting your access to things like pokeballs to catch your own pokemon. its great playing the bad guy for once. you get promoted from grunt to admin to executive to boss, able to steal stuff from more trainers as you go. there are bunch of sidequests where you can do crimes for people for rewards with branching options to do the good thing here and there.

but what I didn't expect this game to do? have an actual story. I thought I'd just be badass rocket trainer who makes everything succeed for team rocket for once or something, but no. Its more like, the rocket protag's story is a side journey to Red's story, where you go around Kanto doing jobs at different times while Red's journey is happening at the same time, just almost never where you are. In some ways you do all the things that set up stuff for Red to solve, or go places to do things at times he doesn't. Team Rocket still goes through all its usual plots that get foiled, but your the one doing all the stuff that succeeded, Lance has this crime rehab program in case you want to be good, and thats just how it starts out.

as it gets deeper, the game delves into the political backstory of this version of Kanto, detailing the war it fought between it and Johto. Lance is portrayed as a Johto foreigner who won the war and now rules the region, with the other side being Oak, the previous champion and various other scientists that were apart of the Mewtwo Project to try and win the war: Blaine, Fuji, Shigeki (the old man in viridian who teaches you to catch stuff) and this team of course funded by Giovanni. the Mewtwo Project failed for a few reasons, Oak decided to surrender and Giovanni decided to make Team Rocket as this group to take back Kanto from Lance, giving Team Rocket a political motivation of driving out a foreign power from their region.

I thought that hey, thats cool, maybe I'll just go catch Mewtwo and beat Red for Team Rocket or something? But no. it goes harder/deeper.

see, turns out? this version of Oak is evil, and decided not to engineer the ultimate pokemon....but the ultimate human trainer, reasoning that a pokemon's true strength didn't come from power from a human's ability to lead and command them to their fullest potential, and thus made Red to be this ultimate trainer puppet of his to beat everyone and basically allow Oak to takeover Kanto by being an advisor to Red and speaking for him because Red is so specialized in pokemon and nothing else- not even socializing. Mewtwo it turns out, isn't capturable- its too powerful. So instead you go and capture what is called "The Catastrophe" another failed clone of Mew....that turns out to be Missingno. Yes. Seriously. THAT Missingno. The legendary of this game is literally Missingno. complete with this blocky glitch sprite, you catch it with a master ball and everything.

Team Rocket still falls and is disbanded by Giovanni....so the grunt goes to the pokemon league in revenge for team rocket, gets there too late as Red beats Blue, then Oak comes in to start puppeteering, claiming he is Red' interpreter since he speaks very little, and wants to start enforcing more strict policies in the name of "public safety"- he's a tyrant, its made very clear he's just doing this to take over the world with Red as his figurehead-so I the rocket member, stopping at nothing, use my stolen pokemon team of magnemite, scizor, seadra, dragonite, arcanine and missingno. to defeat Red himself then defeat Oak when he finds that his toy trainer doesn't work. my rocket trainer basically ends up saving Kanto and possibly the world from evil Prof. Oak with the power of a freaky glitch pokemon when Oak himself tries to desperately enter his name into the records to become Champion and the Missingo basically glitches the environment to stop that.....

and how it really ends is that at court, Red is medically examined to not be a human being in sound health and thus denied from being Champion and being genetically modified is judged to be too dangerous to practice pokemon fighting in civilization, Blue turns down championship, making it all default back to Lance. Oak's crimes aside from assaulting Agatha because he decided love and honor was dumb for evil intellectual reasons and she thought him being ruthless was hot so he assaulted her for backing him up for the wrong reasons and thus he gets exiled and he won't get funded for his research ever again and my rocket member.....well they accrued a bounty of like, 328,000 pokedollars or something big like that for numerous crimes they committed without shame or going to the police officers once to lessen any of this and thus earned 55 years in penitentiary prison.

.....What you thought this was going to have a happy ending for my rocket member? Hah! Nope. Just because my grunt saved the world from Oak, doesn't mean they get off scot free. No, they're doing hard time for life, this may be a more cynical pokemon world but its still pokemon and they're a Rocket criminal thug who stole from pretty much every trainer in the region without doing anything to make up for it, this was a No-Mercy run of pokemon, of course its not going to have a good ending for the criminal. Despite it all, Lance is the one who wins in the end. its wild.

oh and the stinger at the end reveals that Bill and Elm meet at Oak's basement lab with Bill having copied Oak's research that made Red.....probably so they can make Gold. this whole thing was made to keep in line with canon events, technically.

so yeah, this game is a creative romhack in that its the Kanto region but from a different perspective and done in a different order, taking the structure and modifying it so that you have to go through a familiar region in an unfamiliar way. and honestly the bad end I got was entirely avoidable- there was police officers I could've gone to, to like lower my bounty for returning the pokemon I stole. it makes me wonder how different the game would be if I did it as crimeless as possible, what would change from my playthrough which did all the crimes to the max. I'm guessing the final cutscene with the judge would be the one that would be most different, probably.

also during like the climax, Oak observes/implies that my rocket character is also silent and seemingly "meant to be controlled from afar" just like Red, which might be implying that the rocket protagonist is also somehow a genetically engineered human, but Oak doesn't seem to know about the rocket member until that moment, which either means there was a second person making them but its never explained who made the rocket protagonist (or its just a nod to the fact they're both PCs). the rocket protag does have pink hair though, its oft commented on throughout the game, and Oak's basement laboratory is filled with dittos probably used to help make Red.....so maybe The Rocket protag you play in this is a human clone from one of those dittos or a ditto that took on human form that somehow escaped, made its way to Celadon and became a rocket grunt for some reason? it might explain why they kept changing appearance so fast when promoted. so potentially, this whole game is about a failed Mew Clone, catching a second failed mew clone, to beat another failed mew clone. magnificent.

But yeah, this was a fun change of pace from normal pokemon fan games. they did a good job of structuring this so there were boss equivalents throughout each leg of the journey despite you not getting badges for most of the game, they spun their own story while made the conflict of Kanto more complex, in the end didn't really change that what Team Rocket was doing was ultimately bad....it just that in this game, there were other bad people involved and Lance's policies while legal, care more about the economy of Kanto than its actual prosperity. Blue actually comes out looking like the best person morally, because he's just a normal kid who actually followed the advice of caring for his pokemon and doing everything right, got the championship and Red the puppet comes and takes it away from him.

So yeah, if you don't mind a darker interpretation of pokemon, Pokemon Rocket Edition's good, I'd recommend it just for the experience of playing a rocket grunt for once, but having an actual story with it is good to. I'd give a 8/10, B+ kind of rating myself.

Spoiler

Show

I like the darker pokemon settings that explored if all the problems that lead to the bad guys being around just didn't vanish. So Kanto-Johto still had really weak systems to prevent gangs of criminals. There's nothing stopping another tech CEO from getting a savior complex. And... wait hold up was Eternatus an allegory for nuclear energy?

I've been spitballing recently because my IRL group had been wanting to move away from dnd so a setting where after Red leaves Lance just sort of snaps trying to prevent another Rocket situation... which he fails at, leading to things going Orwell. Nobody is setting out to be blatantly evil.

[Rater202]

I was today years old when I larned that the original show runner for the anime wanted to end the series with the Pokemon revolting against humans and episodes like the one where the Tebtacool and Tentacruel attack a resort and the one where the Diglet and Dugtrio sabotage a damming project being meant to foreshadow it.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

I was today years old when I larned that the original show runner for the anime wanted to end the series with the Pokemon revolting against humans and episodes like the one where the Tebtacool and Tentacruel attack a resort and the one where the Diglet and Dugtrio sabotage a damming project being meant to foreshadow it.

There was also at some point supposed to be a movie with a tyrannosaur. Not a tyrannosaur pokémon, a tyrannosaur. In that movie we'd learn more about the relation between our world and the pokémon world. So those first season scenes where non-pokémon animals appear (like Pidgey eating a worm) probably aren't actually goofs at all. It's only when Pokémon became a world wide phenomenon that looked like it might stay that the series was forced into this medieval stasis where nothing really fundamental can ever be changed or revealed about the world.

[MCerberus]

early pokemon was wild.
The mangas (plural, one was tonal whiplash central and gave us chef Articuno, and the other one...)
the comic strip mostly about Ash's mom
the original lore about pokeballs that was low-key terrifying and not the part about researchers being beaten to death by Primapes.

[Rater202]

...What was the original lore for Pokemon?

[MCerberus]

the pokeballs put mons in a coma so that their entire life is just a string of confused violence.
It explains Ash's Pikachu

[TaiLiu]

Did everyone know that Magikarp is my favorite Pokemon of all time? Then my second favorite Pokemon is Gyarados.

Nice. My cousin's favorite is also Magikarp. I recently got her a hat with a Magikarp on it.

I was today years old when I larned that the original show runner for the anime wanted to end the series with the Pokemon revolting against humans and episodes like the one where the Tebtacool and Tentacruel attack a resort and the one where the Diglet and Dugtrio sabotage a damming project being meant to foreshadow it.

There was also at some point supposed to be a movie with a tyrannosaur. Not a tyrannosaur pokémon, a tyrannosaur. In that movie we'd learn more about the relation between our world and the pokémon world. So those first season scenes where non-pokémon animals appear (like Pidgey eating a worm) probably aren't actually goofs at all. It's only when Pokémon became a world wide phenomenon that looked like it might stay that the series was forced into this medieval stasis where nothing really fundamental can ever be changed or revealed about the world.

early pokemon was wild.
The mangas (plural, one was tonal whiplash central and gave us chef Articuno, and the other one...)
the comic strip mostly about Ash's mom
the original lore about pokeballs that was low-key terrifying and not the part about researchers being beaten to death by Primapes.

the pokeballs put mons in a coma so that their entire life is just a string of confused violence.
It explains Ash's Pikachu

Do you all have citations on this stuff? Would love to read more about early Pokemon.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

This seems to be the primary English-language article about the tyrannosaur movie, with links to the more original Japanese blog.

P.S. One of the first things they say is that things like the Pidgey eating a worm are actually goofs, real world animals were not intended to appear.

[TaiLiu]

This seems to be the primary English-language article about the tyrannosaur movie, with links to the more original Japanese blog.

P.S. One of the first things they say is that things like the Pidgey eating a worm are actually goofs, real world animals were not intended to appear.

Thank you! So the Pokémon world was once quite similar to our world. That's pretty cool. I'm sorry to hear about Takeshi Shudo's alcohol use disorder and how the rejection of his script contributed to it.

Yesterday I watched Secrets of the Jungle. I really liked it. It's too bad they stopped making movies after.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

Yesterday I watched Secrets of the Jungle. I really liked it. It's too bad they stopped making movies after.

My guilty pleasure in terms of Pokémon movies is Pokémon Ranger and the Temple of the Sea. I think it ranks maybe middle of the pack with people who know their Pokémon movies, but honestly if you'd cut out most of the scenes with Ash in them you'd probably be left with quite an entertaining 30 minute James Bond parody action comedy.

Well, if you ignore the fact that the movie wouldn't have a climax in that edit...

[TaiLiu]

My guilty pleasure in terms of Pokémon movies is Pokémon Ranger and the Temple of the Sea. I think it ranks maybe middle of the pack with people who know their Pokémon movies, but honestly if you'd cut out most of the scenes with Ash in them you'd probably be left with quite an entertaining 30 minute James Bond parody action comedy.

Well, if you ignore the fact that the movie wouldn't have a climax in that edit...

It was a good movie even if it wasn’t the best. We probably won’t get a Pokémon Ranger movie ever again.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

It was a good movie even if it wasn’t the best. We probably won’t get a Pokémon Ranger movie ever again.

Or a Ranger game. Although they're maybe not really needed anymore now that the main series can scratch the itch of seeing Pokémon running around the overworld.

[TaiLiu]

Or a Ranger game. Although they're maybe not really needed anymore now that the main series can scratch the itch of seeing Pokémon running around the overworld.

Yeah, but the Ranger games had other things that the main series don't. The temporary capture of Pokémon versus building a permanent team gives it a different feel. Also, you get to play a park ranger instead of a wrestling manager.

[Rater202]

Yeah, but the Ranger games had other things that the main series don't. The temporary capture of Pokémon versus building a permanent team gives it a different feel. Also, you get to play a park ranger instead of a wrestling manager.

A Pikachu who is just way too into this ****. "Kaa kachu'pi 'pikachu!' ka Pika-pi, pika 'pipi,' chu Pii'ka pikapi ka pika-pi'... kaa... Chu... piii!'

Trainer: "I don't know what they said but this guy's gonna make me a fortune."

[TaiLiu]

A Pikachu who is just way too into this ****. "Kaa kachu'pi 'pikachu!' ka Pika-pi, pika 'pipi,' chu Pii'ka pikapi ka pika-pi'... kaa... Chu... piii!'

Trainer: "I don't know what they said but this guy's gonna make me a fortune."

Sorry, I'm not sure I understand the joke. Could you explain? :O

[Lord Raziere]

Sorry, I'm not sure I understand the joke. Could you explain? :O

Pokemon in the anime seem to actively want to fight for the sake of fighting and will at times insist on doing things that their trainers will agree to despite it not being their plan that day. so if that continuity is any indication, a pokemon not wanting to fight is the exception not the rule, and that there is nothing stopping a pikachu from just wanting to become a champion-winning pokemon and fight whoever just because they want to aside from their trainer saying "no". so far from pokemon being forced into any of this, they often actively seem to want to participate for fun, and I think there is a couple times where pacifistic trainers worry about their pokemon's health and don't want to hurt them but the little cute pokemon's just like "nah I can take them, bring it on, trust me" and the trainer ends up learning that their pokemon can take it and start to like battling more.

[Rater202]

Sorry, I'm not sure I understand the joke. Could you explain? :O

You referred to a Pokemon Trainer as a wrestling manager.

In DBZA, Recoome is reimagined as a pro wrestler.

So I took his "rhymes with doom" speech and ran into ito a Pikachu speech translator.

so you just have thi one really intense Pikachu going ham and of course their trainer has no idea what they're saying but hey, if they're into it.

[TaiLiu]

Pokemon in the anime seem to actively want to fight for the sake of fighting and will at times insist on doing things that their trainers will agree to despite it not being their plan that day. so if that continuity is any indication, a pokemon not wanting to fight is the exception not the rule, and that there is nothing stopping a pikachu from just wanting to become a champion-winning pokemon and fight whoever just because they want to aside from their trainer saying "no". so far from pokemon being forced into any of this, they often actively seem to want to participate for fun, and I think there is a couple times where pacifistic trainers worry about their pokemon's health and don't want to hurt them but the little cute pokemon's just like "nah I can take them, bring it on, trust me" and the trainer ends up learning that their pokemon can take it and start to like battling more.

Oh, okay. So the Pikachu is gonna win its trainer lots of money cuz it loves to fight.

You referred to a Pokemon Trainer as a wrestling manager.

In DBZA, Recoome is reimagined as a pro wrestler.

So I took his "rhymes with doom" speech and ran into ito a Pikachu speech translator.

so you just have thi one really intense Pikachu going ham and of course their trainer has no idea what they're saying but hey, if they're into it.

Oh, I see. Not familiar with DBZA but I love the image of a really aggressive and ambitious Pikachu paired with a laid-back trainer.

[MCerberus]

Go players, I'm hearing they redid the models and it didn't end well. On a scale of 1-dexit how bad is it?

[Bartmanhomer]

I wish Pokemon should added a third type instead of the single/dual type.

[Maat Mons]

Would be nice if the Flying type could be given to everything that can fly.

[TaiLiu]

Go players, I'm hearing they redid the models and it didn't end well. On a scale of 1-dexit how bad is it?

I don't play, but I've been hearing that it encouraged a fresh wave of transphobia amongst Go forum-goers.

I wish Pokemon should added a third type instead of the single/dual type.

Polite disagreement. I think that'd make type matchups too complicated.

Would be nice if the Flying type could be given to everything that can fly.

I think this would make things too complicated, too. Mew can fly, but I dunno if the flying type is appropriate for it.

[LaZodiac]

Flatly, every pokemon that can fly being given flying type would so overvalue electric type, and undercut ground type, that the entire game would collapse in on itself.

[TaiLiu]

Flatly, every pokemon that can fly being given flying type would so overvalue electric type, and undercut ground type, that the entire game would collapse in on itself.

That's also a good point. Electric is already a powerful type. It doesn't need the help.