BettyNewbie

If I may... I'm writing fanfiction based on the female player characters, beginning with Leaf. Once her story is wrapped up, I'll go to Kris's story, with "Ms. Mario" (as you and I suspect plenty of others like to call Lyra) as a supporting character, then I'll chronicle May's adventures, then on to Dawn, then Hilda, then Rosa, then Serena, on to whoever the female player character in Sun/Moon is, and so on.

In regards to Generations giving the female player characters the shaft... that's just a small part of an even bigger problem that even includes a T-shirt where (Arceus forbid) Luke takes Leia's place in an early Star Wars scene. Because, you know, all marketers are misogynists by nature. That is definitely one thing that gets me ticked off.

I do think some of the Omega Ruby/Alpha Sapphire designs are an improvement over the originals, particularly Roxanne, whose schoolgirl uniform in Ruby/Sapphire looked a bit off to me--her schoolgirl uniform in Omega Ruby/Alpha Sapphire, on the other hand, looks more convincing IMO.

Yeah, since Crystal was the first game to have a female character, it would've made perfect sense to use her for the events from Gen 2. One can only hope that if an episode involves the Legendary Dogs and Eusine, they'll use Crystal instead of Gold.


Now I kind of want to write a fanfic about Misty and Tracey's adventures. Or, given my other creative outlet, make an Orange Islands hack that centers around those two. (But I already have enough hack ideas floating around, no idea when I'd get to that if I did it).


Yep, I knew Electric Tale of Pikachu had them end up together, but I couldn't remember if the anime itself ever did. I also couldn't agree more that it made no sense to keep them around after Johto. Not only does it cheapen them as characters due to the stagnation in development, it also makes no sense from a storytelling point of view. There is no reason for Team Rocket to be there, so you have to keep beating a dead horse with the same old ruses to make them have some reason to be there. It's just sad, really.


I think that would be doable! It wouldn't even be that out of place, since I've already kinda-sorta implied that my NPC-self and Flannery are on a date at one point in Christmas too :p


Yea, I was leaning toward giving him the evolved forms of those two, since he would be in the second half of the game, it would make no sense for ALL of his Pokemon to be NFEs, haha. Smeargle doesn't evolve, and Marill would probably have stuck around like Pikachu, but the other two would definitely evolve IMO.


I'm not really sure what to say to add to this, since you pretty much hit the nail on the head there!

I'm sorry :( That's some straight up bullshit on their part. Seriously. It's like, there's really no reason they have to choose one or the other anyway. Why not just have both of them together, as friends and equals? Or better yet, only focus on the girl as being the protagonist for a change, and leave the guy out! Guys get to be in the spotlight all the time and it's stupid.


Yeah, I think the only reason people shipped Misty and Ash at first was because, for a while there, it looked like they were going to make him actually become a decent trainer over time like he did in the games, so the idea of a Gym Leader and a future Champion dating seemed believable. They were both young and had a ways to go (since Misty's sisters were still in charge of the gym in the anime's canon at that point) so the idea that they would eventually grow up and fall for each other seemed reasonable. But of course, none of that happened, since Ash was totally NOT like Red as time went on, and the pairing made less and less sense. But the pairing with Tracey would probably have worked out a lot better.

While we're on the topic of shipping, how do you feel about Jessie x James? I don't think it was ever explicitly made canon during the anime, at least while I was watching, but it was often very heavily implied.


It won't actually be the first time I gave Tracey a cameo in one of my hacks, but it will be the first time to show up in one that was worth caring about xD. He had a cameo in the original version of Sterling Silver from... like... almost a decade ago. He was just some random trainer you could battle in the Mobile Room at the PCC in Goldenrod, once you had the "PokéMobile" key item, which was an in-game representation of Crystal's Japan-only Mobile Adapter. People liked the game at the time, but the demo that was released is pretty forgettable by today's standards. But Pyro and I have both talked about rebooting it multiple times in the past, and that's actually what that GBA hack I sent screens of will be. In the original demo, you started in Johto and then would have moved on to a new region. This time, and every other time we discussed a reboot, you would start in the new region, then return to Johto for the post-game, since that was a more natural way to do it. Tracey will probably end up in reboot as well, and of course you've seen his assets in Red++ already, to know he's going to be there. I will probably wait until v3.0 to include him, because it seems like he needs to have a Smeargle on his team, and obviously he needs his Marill, neither of which are in Red++ yet.


Hmm, that could work. There is already a random NPC who looks like a Rocket Grunt during the legend festival already. In the 2012 version he was just there as a comedic moment, since his dialogue was something along the lines of "So, I thought this was supposed to be a costume party. This is awkward." And since Team Rocket was originally on the island looking for Lugia when the player first arrives there looking for Jasmine, having them return for the festival would certainly be believable, and having Lance investigating in disguise and then revealing his identity would work I think.


Even still, I don't have animations for the new Pokemon that it needs to have for the Christmas theme, and having a handful of them randomly not be animated would feel weird. I'd still keep the Crystal poses, they just would be static like the other games is all.


If I ever pull it off, I'll let you know :p


Same. I don't really have nostalgia for Gen 3+ regardless of how old they are at this point, and that includes the remakes. I still think of anything starting with Gen 3 as "the newer games" because in my mind, they aren't that old. I'm sure part of that is because of that whole "my brain was hit by the y2k bug" thing where I think 1998 was like 2 years ago because I count forward or backward from 2000 instead of the actual year. (I also used that as an excuse for including anachronistic stuff in Pokemon Christmas while still claiming it is the same year as GSC. An NPC in Goldenrod said something like "Were we hit by y2k or something? I swear it's been 2000 for like... 14 years...")

But I'm getting offtopic (sorry, I'm tired, and I've had a few beers, but wanted to reply tonight so I don't forget). Yeah, it would've been a much better tribute to the anniversary and a much better nostalgia trip if they had gone back to the original designs for the characters instead of going with the remake designs. And including Mega Evolution was even more dumb in the special than it was in the games. If I cared about seeing something digivolve, I'd watch Digimon. I guess when it comes down to it, the same thing can be said about Generations and Origins that Doc Brown said about the Cafe 80s in Back to the Future 2. "It's one of those nostalgia [things] that isn't done very well." They got some of it right, but they put in a lot of stuff that doesn't belong there along with it. While it's probably fine for kids these days who don't know any better, those of us who were there the first time around can tell that it's off, and it doesn't always work.

Will reply fully some time tonight when I'm at home, but what happened with Generations?

The second link was the one I was thinking of, lol.

And yeah, he really is a mess. While we're sharing memes and comics:



But yeah, I really don't see why people still ship Ash and Misty. I mean, it never really made sense to begin with, but especially not now. He's so useless! Tracey would be a much better pairing with Misty, even though I never really thought about them as a potential couple before somehow. Tracey was always a more interesting character than Ash (not that that's saying much) but also a lot better than people gave him credit for. Everyone was so caught up on "he's not Brock" that they never gave him a chance.

While I haven't actually scripted an encounter with Tracey yet, he's definitely planned to be in Red++ before it's done. I've been including entries for him when typing up data for the Battle Tower to eventually use (not added to the project yet), and I was planning to have the player meet him normally as well during the post-kanto story.


My only issue with including him in the Lugia event is that Christmas' Lugia event was a direct reference to Pokémon The Movie 2000, and he wasn't in that. That said, it already isn't exact, and there was already a Rocket event on the island, so having him make a return as part of the Legend Festival wouldn't be unwarranted. It would probably just be a cameo in that regard, showing up for the festivities and to be ready in case Team Rocket came back during the festival, but you would still get a chance to battle him while he was there and stuff if I did that. I don't know how that sounds to you, I can keep thinking about it. Just one way that came to mind for how to include him in the Lugia Event on South Isle. (And yes, I do realize that it was confusing to call it South Isle, when there is already an area called Southern Island in Hoenn, which also ended up in Red++).


Yeah, I was already porting things from Crystal as it was. One or two things from Crystal I didn't really want, like the animated sprites (I don't have animations for the new Pokemon anyway, and tbh they always kind of felt like a gimmick in Crystal and Emerald. It wasn't until later gens when the sprites and animations got more detailed that they actually felt necessary and not kind of weird IMO), but aside from that, yeah, Crystal has a few more options to work with on its own, and the fact that its a disassembly opens up WAY more options as well. Hopefully having to restart won't push away any fans of the original. That's my main hesitation. I've been swearing up and down for the past 2 years that the full version won't make you restart, and so now I'll feel like a liar, even if it is for a good and understandable reason.


Yeah, I knew where the names Ash and Gary came from :p I meant that Secrets and Rumours was inaccurate originally, since it claimed to be a Red Remake with the rumours added, but you didn't even play as Red and your rival wasn't Blue, they were both just mentioned by NPCs and signs and stuff (like a sign on Route 1 that said something like "Gary sucks. -Ash" and whatnot.


That's definitely possible. It might also be that Hiro, when said out loud and not written, sounds a lot like Hero, and he wasn't the "hero" of the story, just a character of the day, so they probably thought it would get confusing in that way too. But I'm sure a lot of it was the fact that it sounded too Japanese to use that as a name. (speaking of the Rice Balls, I kinda want to get a booth at a small anime convention and sell "Brock's Donuts" which would be triangular powdered donuts with a chocolate strip on them to look like Onigiri as a joke).


That sounds pretty believable.

"You need to make this character as a tribute to Mario!"
"..What?"
"And to Red! From Gen 1! He's the player that started it all! We need to add a reference to him!"
"...But sir, he's actually-"
"...one of our biggest and most recognizable characters? Right! Put it in!"
"-already in the game..."
"I like your attitude! Stay on top of it!"

And yeah, I can totally understand holding a grudge against the remakes, or some of the games in general. Even though one of my favorite trainers and one of my favorite Pokemon are from Hoenn, I still haven't forgiven RSE for some of the stuff that they should have included but ignored haha.

I've seen fan art where Misty had grown up and achieved her dreams, met back up with Ash, and was like "omg..." because his ass was still 10 and a loser. I'm not sure how to find it again because if I google "Misty Fan Art" I have a pretty good idea of what will show up and it isn't what I'm looking for. But it shows that at least other people agree with us that they want to see the characters mature, move on, and achieve their goals -- and think Ash is useless.


Yeah, in the last release, I did mention that Lance was training in Unova or something, as a line of throwaway dialogue to explain his absence. Honestly though, I should try to work in a way to have him appear later in the game. Of course I didn't want him to have the same events as original GSC, since it's supposed to be a sequel, but you're right that he does need to be somewhere. Any thoughts on a good place for him?

And don't worry, Christmas isn't dead. I'm going to come back to it once I finish up v2.4 of Red++. Since v3.0 will be in development for a long time, I figured I should go back to Christmas and finish it up. Honestly, I'm thinking very seriously about copying my stuff over to Pokecrystal instead of finishing it out as a Gold hack like it is now. I know that would make people have to start new saves, but at this point I think everyone would be starting fresh in the full version anyway. Porting it to Pokecrystal would speed up development of new stuff, would fix some bugs that are the result of awkwardly trying to port features from Crystal over to Gold (these are mostly bugs related to gender selection and the extended tileset patch), and it would also make some of the planned features easier to add, such as Friend Safari in Johto's Safari Zone, and re-enabling the Kanto Safari Zone. I don't really think it would be doable to try and add the Safari Battle Mode back in on Gold, but using the disassembly, it would be a lot easier. Plus, after getting so used to working with a disassembly and the ease and flexibility that comes with it while making Red++, going back to the old fashioned way of hacking to work on Christmas becomes a pain and makes me not want to do it. But it shouldn't take very long to copy my work over. Maps and tilesets could just be ripped and imported, new scripts could easily be copy and pasted over, and the same for text changes. Then you just have minor things here and there like adding Pickup again, but that was hella simple and I still have the code written down for it anyway. So yeah, Christmas isn't dead, just on hold.


Adventures fans need to get a grip. Also, in one of the really old versions of Secrets and Rumours, we indiscriminately used "Red" and "Ash", and "Blue" and "Gary" to refer to the players (since the player wasn't either of them, and Blue wasn't the rival. The old versions were super inaccurate). I'm sure they hated it back then hahaha.


That's my guess. I'd like to know where they pulled "Ethan" from anyway? Or better yet, why he was Jimmy in the anime...


I feel like the Mario connection is a lot stronger than the Red one, but I can see it a bit. Not to mention the fact that we all thought Marill was a Pikachu evolution back when he was first announced. Back when we thought he was called Pikablu. I wouldn't be surprised if it was a result of Nintendo intervention though, whether it was for a Red connection or a Mario connection or both.

(Side note: I still reference Pikablu a couple of times in Christmas, as well as a few of the other Gen 1 rumors. The 2012 version had an NPC in Kanto mention something along the lines of "I hear a kid found a really rare Pokémon on the docks in Vermillion three years ago." for example, and another NPC in the 2014 version has a Marill that he nicknamed Pikablu. Plus, when you battle Green, she is on top of Cerulean Cave, complaining that the path to Brick Town is blocked.

I'm not usually patient enough to discuss what's offensive and what isn't. :P

What exactly killed it? I know what sent the Power Rangers' fad to its ungodly death (i.e. Pokemon and the atrocious "Turbo" season), but I wasn't paying enough attention at the time to remember why nobody was into Pokemon after its own fad died.

Yes... XP

Good points, and did you see Ash's "redesign"?

I'd rather have just about anyone overshadow Ash at this point, especially the female leads haha. And yeah, the others definitely dodged a bullet in that regard. I don't think anyone would buy them in the sorts of roles that GF loves to put them in. smh.


This could be a case of me forgetting something since it's been a while since I worked on Christmas. I was thinking that I had someone else as the champion, and was going to make her the Champion when you rematched the E4 after Kanto. But you're probably right, I do kind of remember already making her the Champion in the Johto release. Just a blonde moment, ignore me.

And yeah, I'm trying to make sure that the other player has at least some role in things, by making them into a second rival, and trying to give them roughly as many battles with the player as Kris has, to keep things fair, and also having them give you things or help you at different points in the game.


Thanks, glad you like the Flannery sprite! :) Also, I actually already have sheets of all the trainers, but I still appreciate it. I'll come up with something!


I generally call her "Leaf" since everyone knows who I'm referring to, whether they use that name themselves or not. If you say "Green", you pretty much always stir up an argument between people who say that Gary should be "Green" and people who think he should be "Blue" and the girl should be "Green" due to the weird way the versions were released internationally and the resulting localization changes vs the original Japanese etc. But yeah, the actual basis for calling her Leaf is a stretch at best.

When it comes to the male PC, I tend to call him Gold or Hiro (as referenced by Christmas), since Hiro was the first non-color name choice in the list of defaults. I don't call him Ethan at all.


I have no problem with brunette PCs, especially since I'm a brunette irl (as if my simself didn't give that away) but yeah, her hair color wouldn't have been any crazier than Dawn's, so it had to have been something else and equally stupid :/ The fact that she has unused data in the rom does indicate it was a late design change, and I'm still not convinced it didn't start as a joke and people just went along with it. (Seriously, she looks too much like a bad Mario cosplay to have been serious).

I do agree that, especially in the anime, they do not do the female PCs any justice at all. They are basically just Ash's new girlfriend for the season, and eye candy for the viewers, and that needs to stop.

While I did make it so Mei (the female PC in Christmas) says she wants to be a coordinator if you played as Hiro, the same type of thing happens if you play as Mei. Hiro declares that he is only interested in becoming a Breeder. Kris, the rival, still takes on the gym challenges and wants to become the Champion like you, regardless of your gender. She just doesn't actually make it (well, as far you know from the Johto half) but she keeps trying, and wants to eventually. I would never make the female characters just be pointless side characters, for multiple reasons.


I may try making a custom sprite for her, the same way I did with Flannery. Flannery's sprite in Red++ and other hacks I've put her in was originall Whitney's Gen 2 sprite, heavily edited to be Flannery. I could probably take another sprite, do the same thing, and end up with a Hex Maniac sprite that fits the style properly if I take the time to do it right. That will probably be a change to get lumped in with v3.0 though, unless someone else makes one in the meantime. I'm more focused on finding and fixing bugs for v2.4, since it's supposed to be the "long term support" release while I work on all the big, interesting, save-breaking stuff that will be in v3.0 haha.

As for the female PC, no, she's still Green. I sometimes call her Leaf when talking about her, and the filenames for her sprites say "Leaf" but her in-game list of names are:

NEW NAME
GREEN
ASHLEY
NICOLE

So no worries there, I haven't changed it back. You really can't go by the filenames all the time. For example, the overworld sprite for the Looker is called "tennant.png" because I think he looks like David Tennant, even though he doesn't call himself that in-game. Well, one trainer on the SS Anne does say something like "I thought I saw David Tennant at the party, but I was mistaken." as a reference to it, but yeah.


Well, rich and famous people can often retire at young ages like that, and the Elite Four might count as such. But in seriousness, yeah, that makes a lot more sense for Agatha than Lorelei.


Yep, I always play as the girls when I have the chance because I like to play vicariously.

And yeah, the "she was only in Crystal" argument doesn't hold up at all. Probably someone at gamefreak decided they didn't like her, and gave her an unwelcome makeover. I could sort of go along with wanting to give her a natural hair color. If all they had done was make Crystal a brunette instead of having blue hair, but otherwise kept the design the same, I'd've been ok with it I think. But there was no need to just completely replace her with a cheap imitation of the real thing and act like we wouldn't notice.

And yeah, ORAS!May's contest outfit is so tacky and fugly and isn't something I'd wear for a contest unless maybe it was a super tacky Halloween costume contest. Even without making her wear pants, she didn't have to wear THAT.

I'm going to have slightly disagree with you on part of this. While I don't like the characters being slutty and overly sexualized like they did with Sabrina for example, I have no problem with some characters wanting to be cute and girly, because that's just life. In the case of Marina, I especially don't have a problem with it. I don't think being a badass suits her character at all. Though to be fair, this could be a case of us both projecting something of ourselves onto the first female player character. You clearly enjoy the tough image and competitive nature, and want more characters to be that way. While I of course love strong female characters, I never saw Crystal aka Marina as a badass, because I imagined her as more like myself. While I'm not really ditzy like she is in the anime, I have no interest in being a badass. I'd rather be cute and girly (or sometimes just comfy and lazy, or other things depending on the day, but eh) and I guess I project that onto her when playing as her. So naturally, I want to see her depicted the way I imagined her, which is going to be at odds with the way you imagined her.


I agree with you on Janine, I'll go ahead and change that. Not entirely sure why I used that one instead of her Gen 2 sprite.

On the female rocker, I honestly don't see it. Pia Carrot also tried to claim the sprite looked "too stiff" or something, and I still didn't see it. I'm not the one who made it or anything, so it isn't a case of being biased toward my own sprite. I just legit don't see the problem with it :/

On the PI trainer (actually used for the Undercover Rocket on Nugget Bridge in here, since he is clearly not in a Rocket uniform on the overworld, and that sprite makes him look like a stereotypical "suspicious person trying to look inconspicuous" which he is) That sprite definitely has issues. The shading is annoying to get right. I tried to devamp it once with bad luck, someone else devamped it, we both tried to work on it, and I'm still not satisfied with it. So I agree it needs work. But I do like the design itself if it can be adapted appropriately to Gen 2 style.

On the Hex Maniac, it was again problematic. The only resizing I had to do on the sprite was to make the skirt of her dress fit into the frame properly. The main issue I ran into was shading. But yeah, the proportions are off. Its clear that if she was standing up, she would be very tall compared to the others. But again, I prefer this design and don't want to use like the Gen 3 Hex Maniac. (And no, I'm not one of those people who are obsessed with her Gen 6 design, never understood those people, I just like it better than the old ones that I remember).

On the Giovanni Gym sprite, I never really noticed the head size issue, but I can sort of see it. I guess the hat and such kind of distract me from the size of his actual head haha.


As an introvert, I'd much rather retire to a small island and only deal with the occasional weirdos than to be bombarded day in and day out by obnoxious wannabe champions who love to run their mouths and whatnot. But I'm not Lorelei. My plan was to have it be temporary when she left to deal with that, possibly do some other things as well, then return to her usual job. I do agree that it doesn't sound like Lorelei to quit her job for something like that.


Don't even get me started on Lyra. I hate her so much, I played HGSS as a guy (first time I've played as the guy since Silver) so I didn't have to look at her. I honestly don't understand the point in her outfit swap at all. It isn't even fanservicey IMO. It looks like she's cosplaying Mario for no good reason. And ORAS!May is just weird looking. She's way too skinny, her eyes look strange, and... yeah, I prefer the original design for sure.

I will say that I loved how XY let us customize our players for a change. I know some people loved it and some people found a way to hate it, but I enjoyed it. Since I play slightly vicariously, I was constantly updating my outfit either to fit the area or to fit my mood that day. I clearly don't play as vicariously as I do with like The Sims, but yeah.

Will give this a proper reply after work.

I know that Origins wasn't for everyone. Some of the things that people complained about (such as the HP bars being distracting, or dialogue that was taken directly word-for-word from the games) were things I liked, since they helped tie it back to the games more closely than the regular anime does, even if it still had several FireRed elements that shouldn't have been there.

Then again, what I've always thought the anime should've done was this:

Instead of always focusing on Ash, and giving him essentially a new girlfriend/eye-candy-tagalong each generation, it should've just followed the current protagonists from the latest games. It could've kept the same style and tone it was going for, but it would've probably helped boost sales of the games. Think about it, if a kid has just been given Emerald as his first game, knows nothing about Gen 1 and 2, then turns on the anime and sees a guy based on the player from Gen 1 being chased by someone named Team Rocket who are nowhere to be found in Hoenn in the games, it will just be confusing. Wheras if the Kanto (and Orange Islands filler) had ended with Ash winning the league and going on to do something else, the Johto saga could've followed Ethan and Kris or whatever the anime would've called them, follow the events of GSC in the same loose way that Kanto did RBY, then have their story wrap up so the Hoenn saga can follow May and Brendan. I feel like by this point, people who have been watching from the beginning are sick of Ash, and people who are just starting don't even know who the hell Ash is supposed to be at this point, so it's just gotten silly. Plus doing it the other way, you wouldn't have to make up excuses for Ash to be 12 forever and forget everything he learned in the previous year or two each time he goes to a new region. Just my opinion, anyway.


Yeah, the art in Stadium was pretty iffy for most trainers, and I couldn't remember what her design was like in there. The only game that I knew for a fact had her slutty outfit was Pokémon Puzzle League for N64, since its Pokemon elements were taken 100% from the anime, and its gameplay was taken 100% from a completely unrelated game called Panel de Pon (or to US audiences, "Tetris Attack", which was literally a romhack made by Nintendo to replace the characters and text to reference Yoshi's Island instead of cute fairies). But you're right, I definitely prefer her original design (or in Red++'s case, this slightly reshaded version by Chaos Rush. In fact, the current release used sprites for all leaders and E4 by chaos rush which were in Gen 2 style sprites to match the others, but modeled on the official Gen 1 artwork. The only exception is one of Giovanni's sprites (he uses his normal sprite in Rocket appearances to look like a mob boss, and a second sprite for the Gym battle, since in-game text indicates most people don't realize the Gym Leader is also the leader of Team Rocket, so I wanted him to look more "undercover" so to speak.


To me, Lance looks more like... I dunno, a college Freshman in the anime, but I imagined him being closer to our age. I don't want him to look like he's in his late 40s or anything either, I guess I just still got the impression he was older than the anime version looked to me.


That always bothered me, too. That's why I brought Lorelei back in Christmas, and in the Kanto half it will be explained that it was just a temporary leave during the summer to take care of a problem, and Will filled in while she was away. Haven't really decided what to do with Agatha yet, but I don't want her to disappear. Especially with her being and old character, the implication of her disappearance in the canon games may as well be that she died and nobody cared, which is not a fitting scenario. (I have no plans for her to be dead in my canon, btw. I also seemingly talked Rangi out of killing her off in a planned sequel to Christmas and Polished Crystal, since we decided that our hacks will exist in a shared universe).


I feel like the goal was just to sexualize Team Aqua and make Team Magma look like the stereotypical nerds for whatever reason. They've been doing that a lot lately with several of the characters. On the one hand, I get it, they're pandering to their audience since a lot of people are into the characters in lewd ways. They do it with the anime too. Dawn is basically just walking fanservice in the anime, with the way she runs and jumps around in a tiny skirt that only anime physics keeps from flashing people, all while claiming she's like 10 or whatever. So if they'll do that with Dawn, I'm not surprised that they took an adult like Sabrina and made her dress like she's going clubbing. While we're on the subject, they did the same thing with Karen. And just like with Lorelei, I liked her LBD better than her HGSS outfit.

No you're fine, it was my bad. I read it while I was already in bed, told myself I'd reply in the morning, then forgot in the morning because the notification was gone. I'm at waffle house right now but I'll reply when I get home. Sorry I'm such a dingus >.<

I haven't actually started watching Generations yet. I was originally excited, since it seemed to originally be marketed as if it was going to be like Origins, but covering all of the games or something. So since I enjoyed Origins, I was pretty excited to see a longer version. Then, of course, it turns out that the episodes are apparently really short and mostly disappointing, so I don't know what to think anymore. I probably will still take the time to get caught up at some point, but obviously not in much hurry given the way they're handling it.


On the Lorelei issue, honestly, her anime appearance kind of annoyed me. He outfit was completely different from the games, her chest was unrealistic af (to be honest, based solely on the pics you posted and my memory of the orange islands anime, I think her chest was a lot larger in the original anime, although it's still obnoxious in Generations for sure). I think her hair and face were closer to her actual appearance in the original anime, but I like that Generations at least made her outfit match ONE of her official outfits. Last time I checked, none of the games have Lorelei wearing heels, a tiny micromini skirt, a red bustier, and a jacket. I would've preferred the simple elegance of the black long sleeved mini dress she wore in the original games.


For Lance, I do prefer his anime design, although I feel like his face almost makes him look younger than he is supposed to be. But over all, much closer to the real design. The one in Generations doesn't look like Lance at all.


Bruno is probably the least like his canon appearance, though. I could maybe believe him as the master of the Fighting Dojo, but not as Bruno.


I'lll also agree that Agatha looks by far the closest to her canon appearances. I feel like she's an underappreciated character, so it's good that they at least did her justice here.


When it comes to the remakes, I have to agree, I was really confused by the admin redesigns in ORAS. With Team Aqua, I was never sure if they were meant to be black or just super tan due to being "pirates" and such. But regardless of whether it was intended to change their race, everything else about them changed to, making them completely unrecognizable. I'm sure similar things might happen in Sinnoh remakes, although maybe not as drastically. By Gen 4 they had already started diversifying the designs on the admins in the main games and in the remakes, so they might still be recognizable at least. I'm sure they would get a lot of costume changes, for better or for worse. Maybe Team Galactic would get new uniforms, their original ones always bothered me anyway. I'm sure your favorite champion would get a Sabrina-style makeover too.

I was also pretty annoyed by the way they changed Flannery in ORAS. I always liked how even though she was cute, her outfit was more casual and comfortable instead of anything crazy. Just a crop top, baggy jeans, and sneakers. Then along come the remakes and they make her less casual and more "oh btw look at my cleavage" instead.

Well, technically, Kanto would've been due a remake the same time Hoenn was by that reasoning. But I haven't seen any indication that they are considering remakes when doing the new remakes. They basically just do paired versions named after the new region games in that generation, then often add elements from the third version to one extent or another, such as HG/SS including some of the Crystal plot points, and the Battle Frontier being where the Battle Tower was in Crystal. That said, I never wanted Sinnoh the first time around, so I'm certainly not pining for a remake xD


Objects and Skins both would be nice, since you kind of need both for immersion. But yeah, I wish they'd released a pack like that for TS2 or TS4. I haven't bought any of the expansions or stuff packs for TS4, but I have the TS2 complete collection (I had a few already, but got the complete collection for free from a promo on origin around the time TS4 launched). Maybe one of these days I'll get to where I can make my own objects and clothes and stuff for one of the sims games I have, so I can play more with themes.

Definitely hard to believe about those kids, but I guess it's true. Heck, since my brain was hit by the y2k bug, it's even harder to believe. I see signs near cash registers that talk about needing to be born by at least today's day in 1995 to buy alcohol, and my first thought it always "Since when can 5 year olds buy alcohol?!?" but then I think about it and realize my mistake.

But yeah, I do agree that they would probably be better off just re-releasing them on VC, but I know people are going to continue to whine about it until they release Sinnoh remakes with Mega Evolution and Primal Reversion Arceus and Ash Greninja and whatever other nonsense kids are on about by then, so GF might give in and do it anyway.


I like the DS-Style Pokemon sprites fine, though I'm not really bothered by the Gen 3 ones looking like revamped Gen 2 sprites, due to Gen 2 being my favorite to begin with.


Yeah, the console versions are super limited (And from what I've seen, the handheld releases aren't even close to the same games at that point). I always download a lot of CC as well, and spend a lot of time designing lots and sims. Sometimes I can relate a little too much to that sims meme that goes around from time to time. "Spend hours making family and house ; Spend 15 minutes actually playing them." That's not always me, but I enjoy the sandbox aspect of it a lot, and get carried away trying to creatively do things. I don't know that I have one particular favorite theme for CC though. I feel like I have a hard time finding good CC of 80s and 90s stuff, and that's something I like using when possible and fitting -- if for no other reason than my tendency to play vicariously.

Yeah, HG/SS and all the later DS games had a much more polished look and feel to them. I assume nostalgia for what were these kids' first Pokémon games must be the reason so many people want Sinnoh remakes. While I didn't want Sinnoh the first time, maybe a modern remake that wasn't rushed would make them at least slightly more playable?


Thanks! Though in fairness, I can't take credit for the trees. They were made by someone else, and are actually the same base tree as Liquid Crystal used, but in what I think to be a nicer looking palette (well, it was dark in the screens due to the time of day, but yeah).

And yeah, Rusturf Tunnel was always weird for its revamped Gen 2 tileset. Not sure why they did that. It feels just like something a crappy hack would do.


I know I would have places to use it if I included the Double Battles, but you're right, it really isn't super necessary. Between some of the classes that are already in, and some that are planned (Jessie and James, Couples, Twins, Jr & Sr, Ace Duo, etc) I know it would have places to show up, but it would be a lot of work, and wouldn't feel right asking to just take someone else's rewrite of essentially the entire battle system and ask if I could just take it. That's different from using things that are released for public use, like crysaudio and pokered-gbc, for example.


The only sims I played on console was Sims 1. I played Sims 2 on my parents old slow desktop, but it ran better on my old laptop (which just had intel integrated graphics, 2gb of ram, and like a dual-core processor). Now I have a "gaming" laptop that's a few years old at this point, but since it has an actual graphics card and stuff, I don't get any issues with games crashing like Sims 2 would still do on occasion with my old one. I would get sooo frustrated when that happened. Usually I'd get tunnel vision while focused on building a huge community lot or recreating a real place, forget to save often, the graphics chip would malfunction crashing the game, and I'd lose the lot. Glad that isn't an issue anymore, even with Sims 4.

When it comes to CC, I made a little for Sims 2 but nothing worth releasing. I tried, but I was never that good with photoshop, so I just downloaded things other people made. I've done that a little with Sims 4 and made some fairly decent maxis-match graphic tees, but that's about it so far lol. Again, mostly just stick to things that people who are much more talented than me with photoshop have made. (Although, come to think of it, I did once mod a computer in Sims 2 to replace the "Write Novel" interaction with "Hack Pokémon" and had the screen show various hacking tools open instead of Simlish MS Word. And to keep it consistent, all of the screen images for that computer's interactions were Windows XP instead of the fake Simlish OS.)


I guess I'd have to see how complicated it would be to maintain versions with and without natures. That would also bring the version count up to 4. Normal + Natures, Hard + Natures, Normal - No Natures, Hard - No Natures. But like I say, it's not something I'm worried about right now.

I'll be honest, I hate just about everything about DPPt. I think the map graphics look really bad even on the DS, and even worse on the GBA. I despise Sinnoh's legendaries, and the story progression alternated between "trying too hard" and "breathtakingly boring", etc. Gen 4 kind of made me quit Pokémon for a while, but then HG/SS were announced, and I was like "SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY". Sure, HGSS were far from perfect, but it was a chance to go back to Johto, and it was the most hyped I had been for a Pokémon game since Crystal (probably still the most hyped I've been since then, too). I also think HG/SS graphics look better than DPPt despite being in the same generation. They still could use improving, but yeah. Honestly one of my biggest pet peeves are hacks that use DPPt assets in a Gen 3 hack, and hacks that put Sinnoh legendaries in for no reason (yet another reason why I barely play Gen 3 hacks xD).

Maybe that didn't turn into too much of an anti-Sinnoh rant. I can get pretty worked up about it sometimes, trying not to though. I have to agree on Gen 3 though, I think FireRed's OW's look the best. TBH I think FireRed's graphics over all look the best, although some from RSE are nice too. I think for the most part, RS had better tiles than E though, as far as the natural things like trees were concerned. That's why even though Faraway Island only appeared in Emerald, it uses Ruby and Sapphire trees in Red++ haha.

As for the Gen 3 hack, here are a few random screenshots for you: http://imgur.com/a/sbCqM


That's another thing I want to look into adding in the future: Some of the Yellow-exclusive features that aren't Pikachu as the starter. I already have Jessie and James encounters, and all of the Kanto starters are available in roughly the same areas as Yellow. The Beach House is there, and the Surfin' Dude is a Move Tutor who will teach Pichu, Pikachu, or Raichu how to Surf. In the future, I want to port the Surfing Pikachu Minigame now that Yellow has been disassembled. I may also look into Pokémon following you. My only hesitation on that is that I'd want to do it like HG/SS and let any Pokémon follow you (since there isn't just a single starter that you can only get one of, like Yellow, so it would get weird trying to make only your starter follow you) and that would be a ton of walking sprites to make and include.

Speaking of Jessie and James, I don't know how keen he would be on sharing it, and I'm sure it would be a huge pain to try and include at this point, but I know that a user has been working on putting Double Battles into Gen 1. He's basically rewriting the entire battle engine in the process though, so I don't figure it would be reasonable to try and include even if he was cool with it. (Fun Fact: When he posted a video showing it off, one of the top comments last time I checked was "Please tell me you're working with Mateo to put this in Red++" and I had to laugh. It still amazes me how much attention Red++ gets these days, even in threads that have nothing to do with Red++.


Yeah, I got bullied too even without Pokémon being involved. I wasn't really bullied because of Pokémon though, so I guess I didn't really worry as much. Like I say, my friends still played it, even if the "popular" kids weren't doing it anymore. I'm trying to remember when I got into the Sims. I know I didn't start right when it came out. I played Sims 1 on Playstation at a friend's house, then we both got Sims 2 and I wanna say it was pretty new at the time. I think the "Holiday Edition" bundle was the current thing at the time. Then I got hooked. I stuck with Sims 2 once Sims 3 came out though. I played Sims 3 on a friend's computer and didn't like it as much. I enjoy Sims 4 now, but I still pull up Sims 2 from time to time. Can't let Meadow Thayer get too bored.


That's not even to mention the fact that Gen 1 basically says that not only are there wars, but people use Pokémon as weapons to fight them. There are a lot of mild "fridge horror" moments in Gen 1 if you actually read what people have to say, and stop to think about it long enough.


I've already had at least one or two LPers accuse me of being "obsessed with Zigzagoon" or having "a Zigzagoon fetish" because of Christmas. I think that's over the top, but it is one of my favorites, and once the expanded Pokédex routines are in, him and his pickup ability will almost certainly happen, regardless of other abilities becoming a thing.

As for natures, I know you're right on that too. I just know it also got a lot of positive response when Rangi added natures to Polished Crystal... which is basically Crystal++, since he was inspired by Red++ and we've decided to have our hacks take place in a shared universe. Sailor Mars Rei and the Ecruteak Shrine are in both Christmas and Polished Crystal, for example, and they'll be in Red++ and Spirits and Legends when the time comes as well. Not to mention other references or continuity nods between them. We also have been making plans to eventually collaborate on a sequel to Gen 2 (well, Christmas is already a sequel, but a sequel set further along than Christmas was).

Yeah, I definitely feel like Gaia deserved its HotY win. I greatly prefer Gen 3 style over Gen 4 just in general, so it's always nice to see a hack that uses Gen 3 style graphics getting attention amid the sea of crappy Gen 4 rips. To be honest, Gaia gives me hope for the hack that Pyro and I have been working on in our spare time. It does the same thing, using a mix of FrLg, RSE, and custom tiles while making an effort to make sure they all work together. It also has a story that will focus on exploration and will involve several ruins throughout the region. But thematic similarities aside, it won't feel like a ripoff of Gaia by any means. It's currently on FireRed, but we've also talked about switching it to Emerald since we have mainly been focused on mapping and graphics so far. We just go back and forth on the features. Things like Dive can be done in FireRed, as other hacks have proven, and we've already come up with a way to do a version of Secret Bases without even needing ASM that looks like it will work. Decorating won't be the same, it would be more like the way you decorate the room in Gen 2 probably, but yeah. We've been sticking with FireRed due to it having multiple region maps, more trainer sprite slots to use, and various other things. Most of the RSE-Specific things we want we should be able to add (it already has Day and Night inserted using one of those noob-friendly tools). I can show some screenshots of it at some point if you like. We don't have a thread for it anywhere since it's in early stages and we only work on it randomly at the moment. No sense getting flooded with "yo when this will be ready" and stuff when we're focused on other things at the moment.


Yeah, the anime being adapted via Yellow is my justification for adding Anime references in hacks as well. That's why Jessie and James are in Red++, and why I don't feel bad about wanting to include the Orange Islands instead of Sevii Islands. After all, people look at Red++ as "What FireRed should have been" according to various people in the threads, and I remember at the time, we were all pretty disappointed that the new island region wasn't the Orange Islands (and also disappointed that we couldn't go to Johto). So if we can make it work, I really want to make Red++ go Kanto -> Orange Islands -> Johto. Orange Islands would be a pretty small region, since Johto is obviously a full size region. I have ideas to make the story stretch that far, so they wouldn't just "be there to be there" or anything. But if three regions is too much, I figure I'll just have it go Kanto -> Johto instead.

As for the emo kids, I mean, I've been a fan since the games came out. I didn't give it up when the fad wore off either, but I guess I never felt the need to justify it by finding something edgy. I was just like "ok, well, you guys suck. I'm not going to stop playing it just because it isn't cool anymore" so I still played in middle school and highschool. And the fact that I was a band kid meant most of my friends were still into it anyway, and the preppy kids had plenty of other things to give us a hard time about anyway. Then once I got to college, Pokemon was cool again anyway haha. So I know it's possible to not go that route, but I know people did. *shrugs*. Kids.

As for music, well, I'll admit that I did listen to some of those "Hot Topic" bands as you called them, and still do from time to time. Then again, I listen to a little bit of everything. I mostly listen to pop and rock from like the 70s, 80s, and 90s haha.


Those were my thoughts exactly. Going back through Gen 1 so much, reading NPC text, paying attention to Pokedex entries, etc... it was pretty clear that the games weren't as "cutesy" as they are now. Pokémon and People died, because that's real life. Pokémon were depicted as real animals in the Pokédex. They hunt each other for food, they attack humans, etc. While some hacks overdo it and take those things to edgy levels, doing them right and mentioning or alluding to them in more subtle ways can still make for a game with darker elements that doesn't feel like a 13 year old wrote it. Also, the starter probably will be Eevee in Spirits and Legends, and might also be the starter in that side hack I mentioned. Pyro and I made the starter be Eevee in the old Sterling Silver hack (cancelled a long time ago, but actually being rebooted as that side-hack), and in an old version of Secrets and Rumours, we made the starter be Eevee while giving the rival Pikachu (to be like the inverse of Yellow).


That's a fair point, most competitive players do seem to gen their Pokémon anyway, and there are a lot of negative natures. I'll have to think about it more. That said, even if they are dumb, I don't think anyone is going to say "Oh, I'm not going to play this now because there are natures" but I could be wrong. Even still, like I said in the thread earlier today, they certainly aren't a priority even if they do end up happening, since I never cared about them anyway.

As for Abilities, yeah, some of them can make quite a difference. Magnemite having Levitate, for example. Only problem there is that, you know, there are a ton of Abilities now, and that would be a LOT of coding.

I'll give this a proper reply either on my lunch break or after work, I really hate typing a lot on a touchscreen. Just didn't want you to think I was ignoring you :)