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  1. Mateo
    October 30th, 2016 6:40 PM
    Mateo
    All I can say is that I trust you to handle it well, no matter what you do.
    Even if it doesn't get included in Red++, I have a feeling that I'll end up involved in an Orange Islands hack using Red++ as a base at some point. I wanna say I've discussed the idea with Cartmic (another old hacker who I keep in touch with) so that could still happen. We've also been given Koolboyman's blessing and support to make "Pokemon Brown++" once Red++ is done. It would be the same region and story as Brown, but with all the updates and features that Red++ brings to the table, and any other tweaks and improvements that we (including Koolboyman) think are fitting. So those are two things to look forward to at some unknown time in the future. Gotta finish Red++ first, and gonna be finishing Christmas before that, so it'll still be a ways off. But yeah.


    You'd really love this.



    The soundtrack that 4Kids threw together for the first movie is SO dated it hurts. It's a literal Who's Who of cheesy late 90s pop music (Britney, Christina, NSYNC, 98 Degrees, Aaron Carter, the list goes on).

    As a Doctor Who fan, you should probably recognize the singer named "Billie" on the soundtrack.
    Grr, they stole my idea! lmao.

    And yep, I still have that soundtrack on CD, and actually listened to it the other day because I could. And yep, I'm very familiar with Billie aka Billie Piper aka Rose Tyler :p


    Yeah, that theory actually works pretty well, LOL. I hope they have Gary return with Blue's new grown up design just to finally prove it to us and give us a good laugh.

    Plus, Ash, if anything, may have actually REGRESSED in age in the Sun/Moon series:



    What's worse than being a stupid 10 year old loser? A stupid 8 year old loser, that's what!
    Yeah, I really dislike the art style they went with for the Sun & Moon anime. He barely even looks like Ash anymore.


    If there was a gen to do something different with the E4, it was Gen 3. Why couldn't they have based the Hoenn Elites around a theme other than monotype? Or, made them all double battles? As the first non-Indigo E4, they should've had a different "gimmick" to set them apart. Instead, what we got were poor man's versions of Karen, Agatha, Lorelei, and Lance, with half of them not even able to throw together decent teams.
    Double Battles would've been a nice gimmick for them. It would've been their style, too, since Gamefreak loves shoving a new battling gimmick in our faces when they come up with it. Oh, there are Mega Evolutions now? Better make XY/ORAS be like 99.44% pure mega evolutions. Oh there are Z-Moves now? Rev up those Z Bracelets cause we're going Z-Moving!
  2. Mateo
    October 30th, 2016 4:08 PM
    Mateo
    I kind of favor Orange over Johto since A) it's never been in a game so it'd be new, and B) it's more connected to Gen 1. Plus, having Johto means having to do something with Ho-oh and the Dogs, which may take attention away from Lugia and the Birds.
    Well, Johto is my favorite region, but the Orange Islands were fun. So if I had to choose, I'd go with my favorite region. :p


    Yeah, I saw all three in theaters myself. I loved the first two, while I thought the third one was boring.

    Again, critics clearly weren't the target audience for these movies, so them liking Entei better than Mewtwo and Lugia doesn't mean much. Plus, the Mewtwo movie suffered from having a bad dub, so it's almost not even a fair comparison. I think the first movie would've scored far higher had the dub closely followed the original Japanese version.
    Yeah, I sometimes wish we could go back in time and stop 4kids from being a thing, and let someone who knew what they were doing be in charge of the dubs, for that and related reasons. #BrocksDonuts


    Which is why I can only laugh at Pokeshipping 2.0, aka. Amourshipping. These teens seriously thought that Serena was Ash's One True Love and that she was going to join him in Alola and eventually grow up to marry him and all that crap. They completely fell for the writers' shipping bait and are now all shocked and butthurt that Serena's getting promptly written off and replaced with a new girl just like every other female protagonist on this series.

    Ash is always going to be some dumb 10 year old forever and ever, so he's never going to have a One True Love. It's a waste of time to ship anyone with him at this point.
    Ash's OTP is Ash x Being 10. I almost believe the fan theory that Ash never grows up because he saw Ho-oh at the start of his journey. According to one of his 'dex entries, "It possesses seven-colored wings. It is said that those who see Ho-Oh are promised an eternal happiness." What is eternal happiness for Ash? Being 10 and on an adventure with his Pikachu.


    If Gen 2 seemed a little better, I guess it was because the Champion was a former E4 member (Lance) instead of a brand new character like Steven or Barbie.

    Gen 3's biggest problem was that it completely reused types that had already been used in the Indigo E4. For being the first non-Indigo Elites, you'd think that GF would've been more creative with the Hoenn E4 (especially when Phoebe and Glacia didn't even have enough Pokémon of their respective types to put together decent teams).
    Yeah, that's exactly why I think Gen 2's was better about that. It showed that Blue moved on with his life after being defeated, Lance moved up to be the greatest trainer in the region, but used his power and fame for good instead of evil, and it showed other trainers we'd seen before moving up in life as well.

    Gen 3's, like you say, had the Champion being the only one people talked about, reused types (did this with the Gyms too) and had trainers that couldn't put together a decent team with the Pokemon they made available. That aspect of Gen 3 felt rushed and was a let-down in general.
  3. Mateo
    October 30th, 2016 2:24 PM
    Mateo
    So, the Orange Islands have been scrapped. I guess we're not going to see Tracey, then?
    They haven't been scrapped yet, I still want to do them. I just mean if there turns out to only be enough space for one region, then I would go with Johto. But whether or not they make it in, Tracey will still happen. I probably worded that wrong. I just meant that I have my doubts as to whether both will work, and if they don't, I'd go with the canon regions. But like I said, I do still want to use the Orange Islands too if I can.


    As far as I know, Entei was the last Pokémon movie to be released in theaters nationally in the US, and it was a total flop (although critics supposedly liked it a little better than the previous two, but critics were never the target audience of these movies anyways).

    According to Bulbapedia, Takeshi Shudo hated how the movie turned out:

    The identity of the woman who returned home with Spencer Hale was not revealed in the movie itself, but was confirmed in the screenplay to be her mother. This also acted as one of the reasons why Takeshi Shudo retired from making Pokémon movies after this movie as well as the start of his retirement from any Pokémon anime-related media, as he, upon learning who she was by getting a copy of the screenplay, mentioned that Sonoda had fundamentally misunderstood the point behind his screenplay, stating that had his own mother been alive and he been in Molly's shoes, he would have never abducted another person's mother.
    I wanna say only the second movie actually came to my local theater. We had to drive to another city to see the first one, then the second one came to the theater here, and then I don't think the third one came here but I could be mis-remembering. I'm not surprised at all that it did poorly, although I am surprised that critics liked it better than the first two.


    Yeah, that's about all we have left. *sigh* I guess, at least, we didn't have to see Misty remain a perpetual 10 year old loser for 20 years like a certain other character.
    Exactly. Ash is a lost cause at this point, he's always going to suck, and gets worse with every new season. But the characters they don't show can be doing anything that makes sense for them in our minds.


    Actually, I'd say that the marginalization of the E4 began in Gen 2. Those were the first games to treat the Champion as a separate, more powerful trainer rank (instead of simply whoever beat the E4), and the replacing of Lorelei and Agatha without fanfare marked the beginning of E4 members being seen as unimportant, disposable characters.

    And, while the Gen 1 Elites had anime cameos and got to appear in stuff like Monopoly and Master Trainer, the only non-game canon to even acknowledge the Gen 2 E4 was Adventures (which acknowledges everything from the games in its own twisted, emo way). Karen and Will never appeared in the anime, nor in any other manga or promotional tie-in.

    (This, by extension, has also meant that Janine doesn't exist anywhere besides the games and Adventures, as well, since she only ever existed to fill Koga's old Gym Leader role. Plus, the anime had previously created a new character in Aya that already filled any role Janine could've possibly played in the anime, anyways.)
    I don't know, I feel like Gen 3 was still really the start of it, since the E4 in Gen 2 was just a continuation of the story from Gen 1. Obviously, Agatha and Lorelei being unceremoniously scrapped was a bummer, but I still feel like Gen 3 was worse about it than Gen 2 imo.
  4. Mateo
    October 30th, 2016 12:42 PM
    Mateo
    Glad you like the idea. Even without Sabrina, I always felt that Cerulean Cave should've been part of a TR plot. It's kind of dull in vanilla, where it's nothing more than a place to catch Mewtwo and grind on high-leveled Pokémon.

    So, Johto is the planned postgame? Always wanted to see how it was before GSC.
    Yeah, it always felt random and empty. Adding a Rocket event there will hopefully be a welcome change. :)

    And yep, the planned post-game is Johto. What I'd kinda LIKE to do is put in a small Orange Islands as a second region, then let you go to Johto. But that is probably going to be too much, so Orange Islands will almost certainly be cut in favor of Johto. ROM size shouldn't be an issue, but space in the save file might become problematic with too many areas, since I'd have to have space to store flags and variables used by all the new events and trainers and whatnot. So I feel like it would be better to stick with canon regions than anime-only regions in that case.


    It may not have also bombed in theaters like the Entei movie did.

    Plus, this also means that they could've also done a movie based around Ho-oh and the Legendary Dogs since Entei wouldn't be getting its own movie. Never liked how Ho-oh never got its own movie.
    I don't think the Entei movie even came to the theater here. I know I watched the first two in theaters, but I only saw the later ones by renting them on VHS. The Entei/Unown movie was pretty weak for sure. I'd rather have had one that was Ho-oh and the Dogs instead, and gotten a better Celebi movie earlier like you say. I think others would've felt the same way, too.


    Hard to believe that it's now been 11 years since she was last seen on the show, and 14 years since she was last a regular cast member.

    What upsets me the most about her was that she was written off without having ever been allowed to fulfill her goal. She wanted to be the greatest master of Water Pokémon, not be stuck running a gym with her bimbo sisters. We got glimpses of this with the Whirl Cup arc, but it was her final season, so it was too little, too late.
    Well, we can still have the head canon that she went on to fulfill her dreams off-camera eventually. I'd rather believe she did it and we didn't get to see it than believe she was stuck being miserable and forgotten.


    I'm not sure if they were necessarily the military (I always felt that Rocket butt-kicking was something Lance did on his own time), but they were definitely treated as more important characters in Gen 1 than they were in Gen 2.

    I mean, consider that they were the among the few NPCs to even have unique OW sprites in RBY, something that even the Gym Leaders didn't have. They were also frequently alluded to throughout the game as these powerful, superstar trainers that others looked up to.

    It seems that the shift to the E4 being generic bosses happened once they started making Champions their own characters (vs just being the rival like in RBY). They started to no longer be seen as the strongest trainers in the game and became just obstacles standing in front of the Champion, little different from the Lasses and Youngsters you see in front of Gym Leaders. Wonder why this happened?
    Well, it started in Gen 3, which is one of the times we got a new showrunner and the games tried to distance themselves from the old games. I'm sure it's just another thing they did to try and make things fresh that didn't work out so well in our eyes.
  5. BettyNewbie
    October 30th, 2016 9:23 AM
    BettyNewbie
    Okay, then.
  6. Mateo
    October 29th, 2016 11:03 PM
    Mateo
    Just now saw these. I'll reply tomorrow, didn't want you to worry I'd disappeared.
  7. Mateo
    October 29th, 2016 7:31 AM
    Mateo
    That's a really good idea. Sabrina, of course, probably needs to be in Cerulean Cave. Maybe, there's also Rockets in there that she and Mewtwo are trying to fight off.
    That could be cool! Yeah, I'm sure people wouldn't expect it if they go into Cerulean Cave and see Rockets inside. Then Sabrina could be stood on the pedastal in front of Mewtwo and talk to you, then a couple of Rocket Executives show up, and the two of you battle them. It would be sort of like the Lance event in GSC. Then once the Rockets are defeated, Sabrina lets you talk to Mewtwo.

    Then, after that, you could get a call from Prof. Oak asking you to return to the lab, and he'll give you a ticket so you can take the Seagallop Ferry to Johto, to help investigate rumours that Team Rocket is causing trouble over there, as a nice segue into the post-game.


    It would also worked had they just done Celebi as the 3rd movie instead of Entei. The first Johto season ended with Ash delivering the GS Ball, which could've then been immediately followed up with the movie.

    Johto's lack of character development is a sore spot for me, as I really hate how the show handled Misty after Orange.
    Definitely agree. A Celebi movie more closely related to the game would've been better than the Celebi movie we got and definitely better than the Entei/Unown movie.

    As for Misty, it definitely hurt to see her grow as a character just to stagnate and be swept aside.


    Well, the purple hair was actually an early anime design, and most strategy books even back then didn't use anime art.

    Looking around, it appears that Purple Lance also appeared in the second Master Trainer game they made that was based on Johto/Gen 2:



    Weird that he still had his old RB anime look here instead of the one he would actually appear in the Johto anime with. However, the game came out in 2001, and Lance didn't appear on the anime until 2002, so it's possible that no Gen 2 artwork for him existed yet when this was made.

    I should also point out that unlike in the original Master Trainer, the E4 don't appear in this. Gen 2 seemed to mark the beginning of E4 members being non-entities overshadowed by Gym Leaders and Champions rather than important, powerful NPCs, a trend that sadly hasn't broken much since then (step forward, PWT).

    The Gen 1 E4 still gets attention (most recently in Generations), and the Sinnoh E4 surprisingly got a lot of love from the Ash anime, but otherwise, the majority of E4 members are generally ignored (heck, the Gen 2 E4 likely doesn't even exist in the anime), many of whom aren't even anything more than generic punching bags even in their games. Pretty unfortunate.
    I only have the Gen 1 Master Trainer game. Somewhere. It's still at my parents' house unless one of my brothers took it with them for some reason. You're probably right though, they couldn't really use his design before he showed up.

    It is really weird how they've started doing that sort of thing with the E4 though. They're supposed to be the greatest trainers in the region, and to a certain extent, they're kind of like the defacto military, stopping threats that are too great for the normal police force (since Lt. Surge was an American, the Elite Four are probably like the JSDF) as evidenced by them being dispatched to take down Team Rocket attacks. To have them suddenly be ignored is such a weird shift.
  8. Mateo
    October 28th, 2016 8:01 PM
    Mateo
    Maybe Sabrina befriended Mewtwo, who destroyed Cinnabar Mansion and fled to Cerulean Cave to escape from Giovanni and Team Rocket. Mewtwo could take some of his personality and backstory from the original Japanese version of the first movie, where he was an anti-hero rather than a villain (unlike in the dub).
    Only catch with that is, why was Sabrina around to befriend Mewtwo? It doesn't seem like it would be immediately apparent what the Gym Leader from Saffron was doing in Cinnabar Island's research lab while it was working on a top secret experiment for the Rockets. The logical answer seems to be that she was hired to help control Mewtwo once it displayed Psychic abilities, and she befriended and helped Mewtwo instead of trying to domesticate him for the Rocket Scientists. I guess we'd just need to have a way to explain that in-game.


    You can try it using this list. Keep in mind that the first Johto Season actually starts with the last few Orange Islands episodes, and that the last few Johto episodes are actually part of the first Advanced season. (Don't ask me why, but that's how this list is organized.)

    Of course, filler wasn't the only thing wrong with Johto. There was also a huge lack of character development, especially for Misty and Brock, and then there was the debacle that was the GS Ball.
    They should've just done the GS Ball the same way it was in the games. Have him receive it in Goldenrod, take it back to Kurt, and then encounter Celebi. Have it not even be part of the normal episodes at all, and purely part of the Celebi Pokemon Movie. There was no need to make such a long and awkward deal out of what was originally a tiny side quest key item.

    And it's true, there was indeed a lack of character development, but I was thinking that if you cut out all the filler, the arc as a whole would go by quicker, making it less noticeable as to just how much they slacked in that area.


    Even with 10 more item spaces, the bag's still far too small.

    Love your ideas for the v3.0 bag. Sounds like it'll function similarly to FRLG's bag (which used a case for TMs instead of a normal pocket).
    Another possible idea is to expand the Item pocket even more, add some additional pockets for Berries and for Medicine and stuff, and then shrink the PC storage. I figure keep it around for things like the Potion at the start of the game and some other things, but maybe decrease its space to like 20 items, since you'd want to keep most of them on you anyway. Just a thought.


    I've read that the purple hair came from his RB sprite:



    By the time of Yellow, official art came out depicting him as a redhead, and the rest is history.

    BTW, what strategy guide are you referring to? I know Purple Lance was in those board games, but I don't recall ever seeing him in any strategy guides.
    I looked back again, and I was wrong. It doesn't have any art of him, just his sprite blown up a bit in that section. Given the coloration all trainers used back then, that meant he had purple hair, as you pointed out here. My bad :p
  9. Mateo
    October 28th, 2016 4:25 PM
    Mateo
    Read both your posts, will reply properly later tonight. Visiting my parents and my little brother since he's back in town from college for the weekend.
  10. Mateo
    October 27th, 2016 9:33 PM
    Mateo
    I know it's been done a million times in terrible fanfiction, but I think Sabrina should be part of the Mewtwo sidequest. They're both powerful, yet kind of misunderstood psychics. This storyline could start as early as the TR Silph Co takeover.
    I could see that working, yeah. I also feel like Team Rocket needs to have some post-game encounter involving Mewtwo. I know Giovanni disbanded it in the gym, and I know that the Sevii Islands in FrLg had a Rocket event that was a precursor to the ones in GSC. I somewhat like the idea of various groups of Rockets acting autonomously, possibly with some in-fighting amongst Admins, and some groups not realizing Giovanni is gone, then the group we see in GSC would be the factions that won out. Not sure how to translate that idea properly into gameplay though, sounds more suited to a fanfic than the post-game of what is otherwise a pretty normal Red Version game. But even if it doesn't go in-depth with those ideas, I could see some sort of Rocket event where they are trying to recover Mewtwo, and also some events with the admins from HGSS as foreshadowing, while also completely ignoring the Sevii Islands (since this isn't a FireRed demake). I wouldn't make Sabrina into a Rocket or anything, but I can see how her involvement makes sense. Not really sure what to do for it, though.


    Same here. It never made sense to me how such great games could make for such a lame anime (or how the "filler" arc that directly preceded it could turn out to be so much better written and more enjoyable).

    The parts of the arc that did take influence from the games, such as the gym battles and of course, the Lake of Rage weren't bad (in fact, the gyms were arguably better than Kanto, since Ash actually earned all of these badges), but you had to sit through a ton of bull**** to get there. Plus, Ash had a really lame team made up of mostly NFEs, and there was practically zero character development for anyone. Misty and Brock pretty much did nothing but stand around and cheer Ash on (and drool at Joys and Jennys, in the case of Brock).

    And, the less said about how the GS Ball was handled, the better. Ugh.
    I wonder how it would feel to go back and watch the Johto series but skip all the filler episodes as much as possible? It's been so long that I'm not sure how horribly disjointed that would be, but it seems like an interesting idea, given the nature of the Johto arc.


    Yeah, no need to have Tea when you don't even have held items.

    Definitely hoping that v3.0 has a larger bag. Even after all of the things you've changed, we're still stuck with RBY's awful, limited bag in v2.4.
    It isn't the same size bag as Gen 1. The PC is still 50 items like it was, but the Pack was increased slightly to 30 items instead of 20, bringing it up to the size of Gen 3's main item pocket. I was going to add other pockets while I was at it, but I wasn't really confident enough to try something like that in v2.0, and I couldn't go around shifting data in RAM and the save file in a minor update, so I'm just having to wait. But yeah, in v3.0 the plan is to have:
    - 30 item "Item Pocket"
    - Ball Pocket with enough slots for each type of Ball. Not sure on a number yet because I'm thinking about adding some of the specialized balls from later gens.
    - Key Item pocket, that can hold all Key Items. Some will be removed, such as the Town Map which would be part of the Pokegear thing
    - TM Case/Pocket that would hold all TMs and HMs. The plan would be to use a flag array like I said, meaning that instead of... 55 items times 2 bytes per entry plus the amount of items and cancel option, so.. instead of 112 bytes being needed to store the TMs and HMs as a normal item pocket, using a flag array would let me use... 7 bytes. That would only work since I wouldn't need to store a quantity for each item and they wouldn't need to have an actual Item ID. To be honest, they're barely items as it is, they're already treated as a special case in just about everything that DOES anything with items, they just have Item IDs so they can be in Item Balls and Marts. Sorry if that got too technical. Long story short, they don't have to act like normal items, so I can do them differently and save a lot of room by not treating it like a normal item pocket.


    They may have even (sort of) reused his original design for her. Anyone who played Pokémon Monopoly back in the late 90s knows that Lance wasn't always a redhead:



    Looks a bit like a male Clair, doesn't he? Put them side-by-side, and they could pass as twin siblings:



    Probably no coincidence that Lance's personality makeover roughly coincided with the change of his hair color. Red is a color associated with warmth, bravery, and heroism, so it was more fitting for the kinder, more heroic Lance of GSC to have red hair and wear red clothes. (Which he looks far better with, anyways.)
    I can see the Clair connections. I forgot that he used to be purple, even though I had Pokemon Monopoly, Pokemon Master Trainer, and the Gen 1 strategy guide lol.


    You should also do what FRLG should've done with its postgame TR storyline, aka. have Lance and Lorelei team up together against Archer and Ariana. It was clearly meant to be a direct precursor to Gen 2's Lake of Rage storyline, so there's no reason at all why Lance wasn't involved.
    That sounds good. Not much to say here though since I already sort of went to town on Team Rocket's post-game stuff in an earlier reply :p
  11. Mateo
    October 25th, 2016 5:32 PM
    Mateo
    Actually, I'm not watching it. I just lurked through the threads for the Hoenn episodes a little bit.

    I almost feel like Red++ and Christmas should have a dose of "girl power" in response to Generations, if you know what I mean. Christmas is already off to a very good start with having Kris as the Champion, Green as the final endgame boss (assuming it's the same as the 2012 version), and the planned postgame stuff with Lorelei.

    Red++ could also do something with Lorelei in the postgame, as well as maybe do something with some of the female gym leaders (like Misty or Sabrina).
    Those all sound like good ideas. Like you say, I was already somewhat doing that with Christmas, and knowing me, I'll do a bit more with it in the full version of Christmas. I also like the idea of doing something with Sabrina at some point, in addition to the Lorelei events to foreshadow Christmas. I will probably give Flannery additional post-game appearances too, because, well, she's Flannery. :p


    The Orange Islands also allowed them to continue to tease things from GS, such as Tracey having a Marill, the introduction of the GS Ball, and the 2nd movie centering around Lugia.

    While Kanto got rushed to a premature end, the exact opposite ironically ended up happening with Johto. With no new games immediately on the horizon and talks about GS possibly being the final Pokémon games, the anime's writers wanted to make Johto last as long as possible, hence the sluggish pace and loads of pointless filler. For all of the hype and buildup it got, Johto turned out to be a very disappointing anime, which sadly began the downfall of Pokémania.
    Yeah, Johto is when I stopped watching the anime, even though Johto is arguably my favorite region. Like you say, it got really sluggish at that point and was less fun to watch. Plus by that point, Ash was already getting more annoying to me in general, so all of it together caused me to stop viewing as much. I did still come back and watch a few more here and there as new seasons came out, but not like I did with Kanto and Orange Islands. (And it goes without saying that I watched the Flannery episodes).


    LOL!

    You probably already know this, but the Tea was an anti-sequence breaking measure GF implemented into FRLG. They wanted to keep people from skipping Rock Tunnel and getting into Saffron early by trading in Pokémon holding vending machine drinks.

    Interestingly, it was actually possible to do this cheat in RBY, although you needed Stadium or Stadium 2 to pull it off (since RBY don't recognize held items).
    Yeah, I was thinking that once held items are a thing, I'll probably add the Tea item for the same reason that Gamefreak did. But without that as a possibility, and with the still-very-limited bag space, that was just a waste of an item slot for no real reason except to imitate FireRed, so it didn't happen yet.


    Yeah, RBY Lance had no characterization beyond "Dragons are cool!" and even seemed to act like kind of a brat when you beat him (more like Clair, interestingly). In GSC, we not only learned about his family and where he came from, but we also got a better sense of his personality and the warm, kind, heroic man he is.

    Of course, this is yet another place where FRLG dropped the ball, completely reverting him back to his one-note RBY characterization instead of fleshing him out more and setting up his later role in GSC.

    I love Lance so much that I sometimes get a little sad when he's not in a Pokémon game, and I can tell that you feel the same way about Flannery with the way you always give her cameos in your games.
    I didn't notice it before you pointed it out, but I guess they did kind of re-use his Gen 1 personality for Clair in a way, although they expanded it a bit more. Come to think of it, maybe she should show up at some point too?

    But yeah, when I expand the storyline further, I'll make sure Lance gets his GSC characterization instead of his RBY one, for sure!
  12. Mateo
    October 23rd, 2016 7:59 PM
    Mateo
    Reading about the Hoenn episodes of Generations has only further confirmed the special's sexist bias.

    Yes, they showed Brendan.



    Look, I can kind of see the argument for favoring the boys in Kanto/Johto since RBY and GS didn't have female PCs, but there's absolutely NO way in hell you can get away with that argument in Hoenn. There's little question of which Hoenn PC is the most iconic and recognizable, and it ain't Brendan, that's for sure.

    At this point, it should be clear that Generations is just going to show the male PCs and give the middle finger to the girls.

    In fact, even the female NPCs seem to be getting the middle finger. As far as I know, only three female characters of significance even appeared in the entirety of episodes 1-7, two of which were in the same episode: Lorelei, Agatha, and Courtney. Out of all the female characters who exist in Gens 1-3, are they really the only ones who are worth any screentime? Not even Misty, Sabrina, Jasmine, or Clair?

    Generations can go completely **** itself. Whoever made it clearly doesn't give a rat's ass about female fans and female characters. I guess I should be used to this treatment by now, but it's still angering.

    ....
    I'm honestly surprised you're still watching it. I'm probably not going to actually start watching it at this point if that's the way they're going to be. That's absurd!


    Well, the fact that they ever considered such broken, glitchy messes like RB acceptable to release in the first place should probably tell you that GF probably weren't the best judges of quality.

    It's possible that GS may have indeed suffered from deadline issues. I read somewhere that the games actually had gotten delayed by about a year, which is why the Orange Islands arc ended up happening in the anime. The Kanto arc was rushed to be finished by the time GS came out (Gen 2 was already well into development by the time the anime started, hence Ho-Oh's cameo in the first episode), but since GS got delayed, they had to create a new mini arc to fill time.
    I hadn't heard that explanation for the Orange Islands, but it makes perfect sense. I know that GS were already well into development by the time that the anime came out, and that that was why Ho-oh was in the first episode, why Togepi appeared, etc. The fact that it had no game connection and was very character-of-the-day driven with random standalone islands, it makes the most sense as a filler arc that they could end at any time when they were ready to start on the Johto side. And of course, the deadline and delay issue is a good explanation for the lackluster Kanto appearance. The things we come to realize later.


    Same here. The big reason FRLG disappointed me so much was because of how little they fixed from RB.

    GSC also had more polished storytelling than RBY. I can certainly tell you that most of my love for Lance comes from GSC and not RBY, that's for sure.
    That reminds me, I had someone comment in the Red++ thread recently saying they were lost because I had moved the Tea key item. So I had to remind them that Tea as an item only existed in FireRed, and they needed to go get a normal drink out of the vending machine to give him. Haha.

    But yeah, I assumed GSC was where your love for Lance came from. There wasn't much to his story or personality shown in RBY, but they really expanded his character in GSC and made him a real person. Made him a lot more relatable and likeable too. Kinda like how Flannery's characterization made her come off as more real to me, which is part of why I like her so much. Plus aside from her hair, she looked like a real person too.


    Oh, Gen 3 was probably the PEAK of money-grubbing from GF/Nintendo. The fact that they even made you buy those two mediocre Gamecube games just to fill the Pokédex says it all.
    Joke's on them, I never bought any of the Gen 3 games, I just pirated them.
  13. Mateo
    October 23rd, 2016 12:32 PM
    Mateo
    Maybe it won't derp this time. Internet seems more stable today than yesterday, so fingers crossed!

    I know that the Gen 5 Pokémon got a ton of criticism (especially Vanillite and Garbodor) and that many people hated being forced to use only new Pokémon in BW, but I've seen just as much criticism of XY's and Sun/Moon's small rosters and the new Pokémon getting overshadowed by new forms of old ones.

    As far as I'm concerned, "Alola Forms" offend me FAR more than some ice cream or trash bag Pokémon ever did. If GF thinks that lobotomizing old Pokémon and morphing them into something they're not is the way to attract older fans, then they're sadly mistaken.
    I wouldn't say that I'm offended by Alola forms, but a lot of them are pretty lame. I think I'm still more bothered by a Pokemon that looks like Peter Griffin playing in a trash bag than I am by a pretty Ice-Type Vulpix/Ninetails. I don't think they were necessary, but I at least like the design better, and I'd be more likely to use them. But most of the Alola forms are stupid and I have no use for them.


    Also remember that GSC were the last games directed by series creator Satoshi Tajiri, so it seems that he never intended for Pokémon to continue on and on forever and saw the games as a two-part series centered around Kanto, Johto, and their 251 Pokémon. I wouldn't be surprised if he may have had differences with Masuda (and possibly Nintendo) over GSC and the future of the series, which led to him quitting as director.

    And, while the franchise's post-Pokémania Dork Age is associated with Gen 3, it actually began midway through Gen 2 with the failure of the Johto anime. Although GS still sold very well (around 24 million copies), Crystal did not (around 6 million), so Gen 2 really was kind of a dark time for GF. If Masuda really had issues with GSC, the total collapse in sales and popularity that occurred midway through Gen 2 only confirmed his misgivings.

    This is likely the real reason RS were a hard reboot rather than the GBC/GBA compatibility issues. Both Masuda and Nintendo wanted to wipe away the negativity associated with the late Gen 2 era and start fresh.

    Notice how Gen 2 and Johto basically ceased to exist in Gen 3. Even FRLG had few-to-no references to Johto or Gen 2, let alone RSE, and the Gen 2 Pokémon themselves were extremely hard to obtain, mostly either stuffed into postgame areas (Safari Zone, Sevii Islands) or left to spinoff Gamecube games (Colosseum, XD).

    Even in Gen 4, HGSS were relegated to the tail end of the generation and got quickly overshadowed by BW (which were announced before HGSS were even released outside of Japan), so the remakes barely had any time in the spotlight compared to ORAS and even FRLG. And, none of the games released since then have even touched Gen 2, opting for Gen 1 or Gen 3 nostalgia instead.

    I'm a huge fan of GSC and Johto, myself, so GF's seeming dislike for the games is saddening. I think GSC's biggest problem was that they tried to do more than either GF or the hardware itself were capable of at the time, hence the clock/battery issues and half-empty Kanto. The games also had other, smaller issues like poor distribution of Gen 2 Pokémon, Johto Gym Leaders mostly using Gen 1 Pokémon, awful level curve, and disappointing E4.

    However, the games' many positives still outweigh the negatives, and the negatives can be fixed in hacks.
    The idea that they just didn't have enough space to include a full Kanto is a myth perpetuated by people who have no idea what the inside of the games are like. For example, look at all the new areas and whatnot that Polished Crystal has added without having to make the ROM bigger. In Gold and Silver, there are several entire ROM banks that are completely empty that could've been used for anything. One ROM bank is enough to hold all of the event, script, and text data for most of the towns in Johto, so they could've put tons of events in there. There are also several fully-inserted but unused maps, and plenty of room that they didn't have to shrink the existing Kanto maps. I have heard the anecdote that originally they couldn't get the rom to fit on the cartridge even with only Johto being available, and then someone stepped in and rewrote half the engine to waste less space and they put Kanto in. Sounds like hogwash to me, though. And even still, there was plenty of room in the rom to have filled out Kanto better. I'm guessing it was more a case of laziness and/or approaching deadlines.

    But like you say, the great thing about it all is that hacks can still fix what Gamefreak left broken. My plan for the Kanto half of Christmas now is to restore Kanto maps back to being the same size they originally were (since some of the towns, routes, caves, etc were shrunk or removed), and to of course add more events, since the story was very clearly not finished at the end of the 2014 version. Looking around in Pokecrystal, it even looks like part of the Safari Zone functionality is still included as well, just not referenced by anything. This means that it could include the Safari Zone properly as well. Originally, I was going to put some form of Friend Safari in the Johto Safari Zone (based on numbers in the Pokegear, not Friend Codes, since GBC doesn't have that), and then probably open up the real Kanto Safari Zone again. I know in the past I put a fake Pal Park there (it looked like the Pal Park, and they called it the Pal Park, but it was just a place to catch Pokemon normally) but I think re-opening the Safari Zone would be better.

    I think I got a bit sidetracked, sorry :p


    Exactly so. However, GF is still wrong in this thinking, because many of us found GSC to be better games than RBY and would be more taken in by nostalgia for Gen 2. In fact, GSC are far more likely to top people's "Favorite Pokémon Games" lists than RBY, so what does that say?
    Very true. Most of us who grew up with Gen 1 and 2 all saw GSC as the better games. Sure, Gen 1 started it all, but it was also a buggy mess. If it wasn't for nostalgia, it would be almost unplayable to some of us at this point due to how broken it was mechanically. Yet another reason that I deny being a Genwunner any time someone brings it up. If I was one, I wouldn't think Gen 1 needed fixing, so I wouldn't be making Red++ lmao. But yeah, Gen 1 has a place in my heart for nostalgia, but Gen 2 and Johto are the ones who make it into my top list, and I know other people have to be the same way.


    Gen 7 has proved that it IS somehow possible to transfer GB/C Pokémon into later games (since Sun/Moon will be compatible with VC RBY), which means that it probably could've also been done back in Gen 3. This is something that Pokémon Box Ruby & Sapphire on the Gamecube could've been utilized for, IMO.

    Of course, had GF done this, then there wouldn't have been any need for FRLG or for Gen 3 being a hard reboot, in general, which (again) makes me think that it was a creative decison on GF's part. The hard reboot feeling and many removed features in both RSE and FRLG certainly frustrate me, as well, enough to probably sour me on the entire generation.
    I'm sure right. They could've done it if they'd wanted to, but instead they chose to reboot it. Another reason is probably gonna come down to Money, as well. Why make it so you can keep using the ones you have, when they can make you have to buy even more games to complete the Pokedex? That was probably someone higher up stepping in and saying "No, let's not make an adapter that people will buy once. Let's make 2 new games so they'll have to buy both."
  14. Mateo
    October 22nd, 2016 6:15 AM
    Mateo
    I'm tired of seeing all these new forms and "makeovers" of old Pokémon, especially when they're very obviously being used as a substitute for new Pokémon. It was bad enough when it was just the Legendaries getting a million different forms.

    I get that Unova's large Pokédex wasn't exactly well-received, but the solution to that isn't to skimp on the new Pokémon and have 25% of the Regional Dex be "makeovers" of old Pokémon. That just comes off as lazy and desperate.
    Well, in general, people always complain about the new Pokémon. It doesn't matter what their typing or design is like, one fan or another complains about all of them, and "those genwunners" stereotypically complain about anything newer than Gen 2 as being trash just by nature of it existing. If anything, I wonder if the smaller amount of new Pokémon and the new forms added in an attempt to make Gen 1 Pokémon be talked about and used again were an ill-informed attempt to pander to "genwunners" due to the 20th Anniversary. I don't know if it's true or not, but there is that quote that gets passed around as coming from Gamefreak claiming "If we made a game the way fans ask us to, it would suck. You want every region, but only the first 150 Pokémon" and other stuff like that. Can't say for sure, but those are my suspicions.


    I've started to get the sense that GF isn't as fond of GSC as the fans are. Notice how throughout this 20th Anniversary celebration, as well as even the nostalgia pandering that happened back during XY, Gen 2 and its Pokémon have mostly been excluded.

    It's one thing to give less attention to Gens 3 and later, but Gen 2 was just as much a part of the Pokémania Era as Gen 1. Most of the same people who grew up with RBY also grew up with GSC and are equally nostalgic for both games. So, why has the nostalgia pandering been 100% Gen 1? Heck, it seems that even Gen 3 gets more attention than Gen 2 does, as was especially the case in Gen 6.

    Then, I realize that I probably just answered my own question--"Most of the same people who grew up with RBY also grew up with GSC." By virtue of being sequels, GSC fans ARE pretty much the same group of people as RBY fans, so from a marketing standpoint, it doesn't make as much sense to focus on Gen 2. GSC only bring in a slightly lower number of the same fans as RBY, so you get more bang for your buck with RBY nostalgia. And, even RSE nostalgia has the advantage of bringing in a different, younger generation of fans. Gen 2 nostalgia lacks a niche compared to Gens 1 and 3.

    GF's own biases may be a factor, too. While he's never said anything, there's fairly good evidence that Masuda actually dislikes GSC. Notice how the very first games he directed (RS) seemed to go out of their way to do the opposite of everything GSC did:

    - One standalone region (Hoenn) instead of two connected regions (Johto/Kanto)
    - Brand new story featuring a brand new cast instead of a direct continuation from the previous games
    - Legendaries that play an active role in the main plot instead of sitting around waiting to be caught
    - New Pokémon that are designed more to replace the old ones rather than complement them
    - Friendly, happy rival (Brendan/May) instead of an angry, belligerent one (Silver)

    And, all of the main games released since then have followed the same general template first established in RS, which only makes GSC stick out like a sore thumb compared to the other gens. If Masuda really hates GSC that much, he has certainly done a good job of minimizing their legacy and impact on the franchise.

    For GSC fans like us, it's a tough pill to swallow, but it seems to be the hard reality. Maybe, one day, Gen 2 will finally get its time in the spotlight, but in the meantime, it will forever remain ignored and overshadowed compared to Gens 1 and 3.
    I can totally believe that Gamefreak aren't nearly as big of fans as players are when it comes to GSC. The games were originally meant to be the last in the franchise, and as such they were probably a bit lazy with them. As a parallel, some people seem to absolutely love my old Halloween Hack, but I have absolutely no idea why. It barely changed anything. It was something I slapped together one afternoon when I was bored. I'm ashamed that I even released it like that, so I don't really bring it up at all, and I get confused why some people seem to like it. Gamefreak might feel similarly about Gen 2 for the same reasons. Sure, there were a lot of engine updates, but it was still based on the Gen 1 engine pretty heavily, and it wasn't particularly original. It was just a sequel to the original game, with a half-empty version of the original region for you to return to. Trying to look at it objectively, I could see why they might be disappointed with it and not like being reminded of it, even though as a player, Johto is one of my favorite regions and I love going back to it every chance I get. While I haven't played it yet, seeing that Glazed had Johto in it was one of the main reasons I thought "well, maybe this will be worth checking out after all" and stuff.

    As far as the nostalgia angle, you have some good points. Given how closely to one another they were released, pretty much all Gen 2 fans are also fans of Gen 1. I think I've met a few people who said they started with Crystal, but pretty much everyone started with Gen 1, Gen 3, Gen 4, etc. Just pandering to Gen 2 nostalgia probably doesn't work, like you say, since it probably alienates a few people who were around for Gen 1 but left. That said, if they left after Gen 1, what are they still being pandered to for?

    The hard-reboot of Gen 3 always bothered me. I can understand that ok, from a technical standpoint, it wasn't feasible to allow backwards compatibility since the link cable works differently from a hardware standpoint if I remember correctly. That said, they could still have just like... let you use the Gamecube adapter to import Pokemon from Gen 1 and 2 into the Gen 3 version of Pokemon stadium, then imported them from that over to Gen 3. That shouldn't have been very hard. It might've even made me want to buy a Gamecube. (I technically have one that lives at my house, but it doesn't belong to me. It's a friend's Gamecube and their copy of Phantasy Star Online Episode I & II is the only disc for it, lol). Even though I liked Gen 3, I was still irked by the lack of features that were in Gen 2. The clock was practically unused and uncheckable, there was no Day/Night which made it more annoying to evolve Espeon and Umbreon (who were my favorite Eeveelutions at the time and still pretty much are), and other "minor" details like that. Then when ORAS came out, they continued the tradition by removing player customization and other things that were in XY. I've come to the conclusion that Gamefreak doesn't believe you can have Hoenn without removing at least one or two perfectly good features from the previous games for no reason.
  15. Mateo
    October 20th, 2016 2:44 PM
    Mateo
    Heh, really clever idea!
    Thanks! Yeah, I was sitting here thinking about how I could go about implementing it when it occurred to me just how similar it could be done to the Pokedex. Then I realized that showing the trainer's location on the map would probably look nicer than just showing the area name as text, it could be done in about the same way. Then flavor text about the trainers would work the same as the Pokedex entries. The option for listening to their cry would then just be replaced with the option to call them (and of course tweak the UI a bit so it blends in with whatever I come up with for the Pokenav thing).


    Yeah, that pretty much goes back to the original point of GF doing things that crappy fangames already did a decade ago. It's one thing when a 16 year old amateur hacker does it, but I generally expect better from GF.

    I hate that the first Ice/Fairy and Ice/Steel Pokémon are both cheap recolors of old Pokémon and not new ones. Or, that the only two Grass/Dragon Pokémon are a Mega Evolution and Exeggutor with a stretched-out neck. Too many unique, interesting type combos are being wasted on "makeovers" of old Pokémon.
    I will say, I thought it made perfect sense to give Exeggutor a new form in Alola. He is a tropical palm tree who has usually been in non-tropical climates, so it made sense to me for him to have a form that looked like a coconut palm in the environment it was suited to. I thought the Dragon typing was stupid, though. I feel like if anything, it should've been done like a Rotom form instead.

    That said, you're definitely right that it was really lazy for them to give us new type combinations but do a half-assed job of using them. To quote Ron Swanson, "Don't half-ass two things, whole-ass one thing." Instead of trying to make up all these new forms and new Pokemon, they should've just focused on the actual new Pokemon and done a better job of it.

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