Cerberus87

I prefer to only use Pokémon I like... even if they're Legendaries. :P


Sad, too. Yes, her original design was problematic (although, I don't think she was intended to be based on blackface), but she's had purple skin for 15 years now. Haven't we moved on? There's an entire Generation of fans (ie. people who started with Gen 3 or later) who might not even know she ever had black skin to begin with.


After Sylveon was the only Eeveelution introduced this Gen (when they were traditionally introduced in pairs, sans the original trio), I'm not so sure of it. You'd think they would've introduced a Dragon to be a weak-to counterpart like Espeon was to Umbreon, and yet, they didn't. Sadly, I don't think a Dragon Eeveelution's going to happen. :(


Maybe, she could get Electric moves? Ice/Electric is a good pair, and Base 130 Sp. Attack is pretty much the only thing Glaceon has going for her.


Bruno's always easy, LOL. {XD}

While Lance was easier than he was in Stadium 1, he was still challenging, especially if you tried to use an Ice type, like many people did. Even with Surf, Lapras struggled to get past that big bad Tyranitar. In fact, even Starmie didn't fare too well, either. Strong, bulky mono-Waters like Vaporeon and Suicune did the best.


Ironic, since the Nidos were pretty much the only Moon Stone evolvers (sans Jigglypuff) who were readily available before the postgame in Johto.


Yeah, Smogon actively discourages themed teams. You need to drop that Houndoom for Talonflame and Garchomp, pronto! Diversity is the Devil!

You're certainly not alone in hating EV training. One of many reasons why I prefer to play RBY/GSC (and hacks based on them).


Well, it's telling that Johto's strongest episodes were usually the ones that involved characters and storylines from the games (ie. Gym Leaders, Red Gyarados, etc). One reason many of us watched the anime, after all, was to see game characters and events depicted on-screen, and GSC were full of good material. (Plus, even with all the time they had between GSC and RSE's release, there were still several significant game characters who never appeared once, such as Silver, Karen, and Janine. Would it have killed them to cut some of the more useless COTDs for them?)


They did a poor job of developing Tracey, I admit. Even to this day, we still don't know anything about his friends and family, things we could easily gotten way back in the Orange Islands. Just because he wasn't a game character didn't mean they had to forgo character development.

Brock was definitely good in the beginning, but you could tell by the end of Indigo that his character was starting to hit a dead end. Just how many times could we continue to laugh at him hit on the same identical Joys and Jennys over and over again? Seeing as few people have said good things about the Brock of Johto, AG, and DP, it probably would've been for the better if they had just left him behind on Valencia Island.

I'm a huge Lorelei fan, too, although being straight and female, I liked her for being a strong female role model (Lance was my main crush). We both use a lot of Water and Psychic types, we both wear glasses, and we've both had similar hair colors over the years (not kidding... I've been burgundy, red, and blonde, too, in that order).

As a girl, I thought it was the coolest thing ever to walk into the Indigo Plateau for the first time and see this strong-looking woman standing there. It left a really strong impression on me of what an Elite Four member should look like, and the fact that Lorelei gave me so much more trouble than the next three only helped. (I lost to her, like, 8 times before breezing through Bruno/Agatha/Lance... Only to lose to Blue at the end, of course.)

On the flip-side, it was the biggest buzzkill ever to walk into that same building for the first time in Gold and walk into that icy-looking room... only to find some joker in a clown getup standing where Lorelei should've been. With a freaking Xatu as his ace! Are you kidding me? :rolleyes2:

And, just a couple of rooms later was pushover Bruno, who not only stuck around and had the same weak unevolved Onix, but was even promoted up a spot! To be fair, I thought Karen was really cool--good design, cool Pokémon, and very cool post-battle quote--but otherwise, the Gen 2 Elite Four was a huge step down, and the lack of Lorelei was a big reason why.

Why did they get rid of Lorelei? And, why hasn't she been seen or heard from in any game since FRLG? Conspiracy-sounding or not, I have a hunch. Although other trainers (including the Psychic Clown), past and present, have used Jynx, Lorelei's the only trainer who actually had one as her ace, and, for better or worse, it's the Pokémon that's most associated with her (both her anime and Adventures adaptations used one prominently). Giving Lorelei the spotlight inevitably means giving Jynx the spotlight, which is the last thing GF wants to do (hence, no evolution in Gen 4 and no Mega in Gen 6).

(And, if that is the case, I wish that the remakes had retconned Jynx out of Lorelei's team. If FRLG had done what they should've done and A) included Gen 2 Pokémon in the Kanto Dex and B) waited until Gen 4 to be made, she could've had a powerful Mamoswine, instead.)

Recently, I wrote this outline of how a future Gen 1 remake could write Lorelei out of the Elite Four WHILE still treating her character with respect and opening her up for future game appearances (neither of which FRLG did):


Yes, I'm a big Lance/Lorelei shipper, if you can tell. :P I'm also a huge fan of Lugia.

I've never been a fan of Tauros, myself, and he's a rare Safari Zone catch, anyways. (Although, I think you can use a variant of the Old Man glitch in RB to catch him normally on the coast of Cinnabar.)

Yeah, just the move Psychic was overpowered. It was a must on any Psychic type and even a few non-Psychics (like Clefable).


Even worse is that they constantly design Ice types to be slow, bulky Jacks of All Stats with low speed, above average defenses, and low-to-average attacking stats, which means that most of them can't even begin to keep up with all of the Base 140 Attacks and Base 130 Speeds that were handed out like candy to other types (especially Dragon, Fighting, and Steel) in later Generations. The fact that Special Ice Types (the majority of them) have no better moves other than the very widely-distributed Ice Beam and Blizzard hurts them even more; where's the Ice Type Overheat?

Alas, I think the Fairy Type was GF's way of throwing in the towel on Ice. They recognized that it wasn't strong enough to fulfill its purpose of killing Dragons, but they also felt that it was too far gone to be worth fixing, so they just created a new type, instead. :sideways:


I find it mightily coincidental that GF's two most hated types (Psychic and Ice) just happen to belong to their most hated Pokémon. You know, the one who was deliberately passed over for an evolution in Gen 4.


She has a cute design, I guess, but I just can't help but feel that Glaceon is taking up a slot that could've gone to a more unique type (like Dragon).


Sadly, all Eeveelutions have to be single type for some reason. Maybe, the idea for Glaceon should've been used for a standalone Pokémon, instead?


Looking at Koga's Stadium 2 team, Steelix might actually be a better choice than the Nidoroyals. She doesn't really have to fear anything from his Pokémon except a very weak (Base 65 Sp. Attack!) non-STAB Fire Blast from Muk. The Nidos are good backup, however.

In R2, Electrode's gone, but he has Magmar and Lapras, which cause obvious problems for Steelix.


I'm on the East Coast, actually. Mid-Atlantic region, to be exact.

Yeah, typical Smogon Drone, there. :rolleyes2: "Unbalanced, " of course, equates to "didn't exclusively cater to competitive multiplayer," and "introduced some of the most useless monsters in the series" equates to "not enough things with Base 150 Attack and Base 200 Speed."

People like that usually don't even play the games anymore (mostly because "the story sucks," or something like that) and exclusively use simulators like Showdown. If you ask me, I wish they'd leave the games to the rest of us and stick to their precious simulators so they can battle all of the Garchomp, Talonflame, and Aegislash they want (with other Garchomp, Talonflame, and Aegislash, of course) without having to deal with anyone who has the nerve to find that crap boring.


I admit was a big fan of the Kanto/Orange era. It was never anything deep (although certain episodes, like "Go West, Young Meowth," had some good storytelling), but it was always, at least, funny and guaranteed to make you laugh. It was good for what it was: an entertaining kids show designed to promote and sell video games. (Just compare it to some of the other video game cartoon adaptations to see what I mean. The Pokémon anime could've been a lot worse.)

Johto, in comparison, was a major disappointment, especially since I loved the Gen 2 games so much. The wacky humor of the first two seasons had been replaced with something far staler and obnoxiously kiddy, and the slow pacing just made it a slog to watch through. Like many, I wanted to see more of the characters and locations from the games, not one throwaway COTD after another.

Master Quest was a slight step up, I'll admit (although still not on par with Kanto/Orange). Even if it didn't make a lick of sense in the games, the baby Lugia was sooooo cute. I also enjoyed the Red Gyarados episodes, which were surprisingly faithful to the games (as much as the anime could be, that is). Any seasons after that, though, I could care less about.


I wrote this at another site a few months back:

While I loved having Psychic types on my own team, they were a nightmare to deal with in Gen 1. They had virtually no weaknesses, and only other Psychics resisted them. The combined Special stat also worked greatly in their favor.

To get a clue of how difficult Sabrina is, this is what I often use to beat her when I play RBY nowadays. Hey, it resists Psychic, has good Special, and has good Attack; it's also the only Psychic (besides the Slow family) that can learn Earthquake in Gen 1, which is pretty much as close as you're going to get to a SE attack on Alakazam (save for possibly Persian's Slash, but Persian has no Special bulk). Hurray for glitches! ^^

I think my problems in dealing with Psychics are part of the reason why I ended up loving Dark types so much in Gen 2. I love Houndoom and Tyranitar, too.


Apology accepted. :)

I do agree with that. If there was any Gen to be an Ice type, it was Gen 1. The nerfs you mentioned, along with the additions of Steel, a certain strong Rock type that wasn't weak to Ice and had good Sp. Defense, and even just the split of the Special Stat (Lapras, Dewgong, and Articuno lost firepower, while Cloyster lost bulk) really hurt them. Like Psychics, Ices went from Heroes to Zeroes in just the matter of a few Gens.

Hmmm, Psychic and Ice... Wait, a minute. Do I smell a conspiracy? {D:}


I'd like to see a Psychic/Flying Mega, myself. I think it should've always been a Psychic type, IMO.


HP: 65
Attack: 60
Defense: 110
Sp. Attack: 130
Sp. Defense: 95
Speed: 65

Now, here's Vaporeon's:

HP: 130
Attack: 65
Defense: 60
Sp. Attack: 110
Sp. Defense: 95
Speed: 65

They look different on paper, but functionally, they're very similar. Accounting for the HP/Defense difference, their Physical bulk is similar, and Vaporeon only has slightly less Special firepower. Their Sp. Defense stats are the same, although Vaporeon has more HP to go with it. They're both slow and have bad Attack. That's called not even trying.

If they just had to make an Ice Eeveelution, it needed to be as different from Vaporeon as possible:

HP: 65
Attack: 110
Defense: 95
Sp. Attack: 60
Sp. Defense: 65
Speed: 130

Physical Jolteon, sure, but at least, it's more distinct. (And, Ice needs all the speed it can get with those matchups.) And, being a Physical attacker, it now only has to compete with the likes of Weavile, Mamoswine, and the stray Physical Water (like Gyarados or Feraligatr) for teamslots, instead of almost every single Pokémon that can learn Ice Beam.


Unfortunately, Electrode is almost guaranteed to outspeed your Earthquake user, which is the last thing you want when your opponent is pulling the old Toxic/Double Team trick. (Although, you could always use a Nidoroyal, I guess.)


Well, Mewtwo's one of my favorites. :P Nowadays, I'm more likely to use Tyranitar, however.


Ah, so you're in Brazil. I'm in the US, if you haven't already figured it out.

I think one big reason Johto was loaded with so much filler was because of poor planning. One big reason Kanto went by so quickly was because Gold and Silver were well into development when the first season was made (hence Ho-Oh having a small cameo in the first episode), and they didn't want Ash to still be going through Kanto when those games were released. Of course, they ended up finishing Kanto a little too early, hence the Orange Islands arc. (Which I actually enjoyed, despite the cast change and its purpose as "filler.")

On the other hand, by the time the anime started Johto, GF didn't have any other games in development. They weren't planning to release any more Generations after Gold and Silver, and there weren't any indications that they would change their minds. Even back then, the anime existed primarily to promote the games, so the end of Johto could've meant the end of the anime, itself, and since it was such a money-maker, they obviously didn't want that to happen. Thus, they stretched out Johto for as long as possible, and since returning to Kanto wasn't going to happen like in the games, they had to stretch out Johto even further.

To make matters worse, most of this filler was boring, poorly-written fluff, which irritated even the show's target audience, who badly wanted to see the characters and cities from the games, not some dull, throwaway Character of the Day who had nothing to do with Gold and Silver other than being in Johto.

It was in early 2001 that we first learned that Gold and Silver weren't, in fact, going to be the last games. The anime was midway through Season 4 (widely regarded to be the worst, most filler-laden season) at the time, and towards the end of the season, the first Generation 3 Pokémon debuted in the anime.

The final Johto season (and first to air after Ruby and Sapphire's announcement) is often seen as the least worst of the three, quickening the pace a little and including more characters and events from the games, all while working towards a pretty decent payoff. With new games on the horizon, they could now work towards an ending, since they had somewhere else to take Ash after Johto, but sadly, the damage was already done and the show would never reach the heights of Kanto/Orange again. (Plus, we were all growing up by then.)


You can partially blame a certain dark-haired Pokémon Watcher for that (who I liked, for the record). So many people whined and moaned about him replacing Brock (I think even to the point of sending hate mail to Ted Lewis, his English VA.) that they immediately brought Brock back in Johto and tried to recreate the original trio as much as possible. After that debacle, replacing Ash with someone based on the Gold and Silver protagonist would've been suicide.

Also, the fact that the one thing to have characters other than Ash as protagonists (including characters based on the GSC protagonists) would end up being a ratings flop doesn't help matters, either.

Thank you for your comment! Cordelia appears to be a favorite! :D

I didn't know that...but that explains why they had a MD in both of them. That's kind of a sad fate for the GBA. I felt like they never tapped fully into it's potential, especially GF as while Emerald was fun it could been more beautiful as the GBA hacks are.

I wonder...if the rumors are true the next handheld console doesn't sound like a DS...perhaps the DS line which the 3DS continues will die off after a few years.

I wouldn't have minded a bulkier Mega Pidgeot. I think Nocowl though is the bulkiest of the regional birds (at least it resists a lot) in the real games, so if they give it a Mega I'll like Nocowl to stay on the bulky side. I would like it to be Psychic/Flying though. While Mega Swellow should be faster and stronger with perhaps Gale Wings (it's models have wind under it's wings in a way reminiscent of Talonflame), and perhaps be Electric/Flying. Staraptor should be Fighting/Flying with Tough Claws. Pidove's final's Mega should be... Normal/Flying or Fairy/Flying with Regenerator or Pixielate. As for Talonflame Fire/Flying with Gale wings or a fire version of Normalize.

This one I have to sort-of disagree with. I mean, you could just as easily argue that Psychic type Pokémon were "meant" to be strong--the type was associated with magic, intelligence, and mysterious, yet powerful forces, and it was home to the games' very first banned Legendaries. Even in the anime, both Sabrina and Mewtwo were portrayed as terrifying and unstoppable, and they sure as heck were in the games. (Lance's Dragonite was a pushover in comparison.)

And, yet, that didn't stop them from creating the Dark and Steel Types and weaker Psychic Pokémon (ie. Xatu and Girafarig), and now, the type is considered to be one of the games' weakest.

Not (almost) every Pseudo-Legendary and Box Legendary in existence had to be a Dragon, nor did they have to give the type almost-drawback-free Base 120 and 140 Power Moves. Nobody made GF turn the type into a marketing tool for power-obsessed fanboys.


I don't mind "girly" Pokémon, myself. Of course, I AM a girl. :sideways:

Ice, to be fair, already had its function stolen by Water, as almost every Water type can learn Ice attacks, while usually having better stats, better movepools, and better type matchups. The fact that so many Dragons are 4x weak (because GF insists on making 90% them Flying or Ground) makes it even easier to kill them without STAB, and Dragons are less likely to carry Electric than Fire.

This was true even in Gen 1. With the exception of Lapras (which was still part-Water), you more than likely took on Lance with a Blastoise, Vaporeon, or Starmie instead of a Jynx or Articuno. Why? Because, the former three could do more than the latter two (and much better).

As for Steel, it's still a very powerful Defensive type, and it gained a newfound offensive advantage against Fairy.


I know. Poor Pidgeot never seems to catch a break. (Just wait until they start giving the other birds Megas.)


It's also completely redundant with Vaporeon. Vaporeon was already the Articuno/Suicune to Jolteon's Zapdos/Raikou and Flareon's Moltres/Entei, and Glaceon ruins the trio in the same way that a Water type Legendary Bird would ruin Articuno/Zapdos/Moltres. The fact that they didn't even TRY to differentiate Glaceon from Vaporeon--both blue, both slow, both bulky Sp. Attackers--makes it even worse. The Pokémon was literally created just so they could have another Eeveelution, not because it was actually needed.


Oh, yeah, I remember that. Koga was very difficult (especially if he led with Electrode; many guides actually suggested restarting if he did), and Karen could be a pain. I still remember slowly wearing her Umbreon down with a Mewtwo that had Submission/Recover (the only thing even resembling a Fighting type that I had) way back when.


I think a lot of us did. (Hence, the reason why the US ratings plunged and the Entei movie bombed.) Even as a kid, I saw the first Johto season as a Jump the Shark moment (way too much filler and it also started getting lighter and kiddier), despite enjoying the region so much in the games.

While people point to Ruby/Sapphire and Hoenn as the "killer" of Pokémania, they were really just the last nail in the coffin. The decline truly began with the Johto anime. For better or worse, the marketing and popularity of the games was heavily tied up with the anime at the time (see Yellow), so the anime Jumping the Shark was enough to hurt the games' popularity and sour the entire franchise. You can see this in the fact that Crystal (the first game to come out after the Johto anime) only sold 6.39 million (worse than even Emerald and Platinum, let alone Yellow), while Gold/Silver sold a whopping 23.10 million (second best selling games ever, beaten only by Red/Blue).

The fact that most of the original fans also started hitting puberty around this time (and the franchise wasn't growing up with them as a certain other Turn of the Millennium kids franchise eventually would) only made matters worse. To be an open fan of Pokémon in middle school in 2002 was like wearing a giant "Kick me, I'm a dork!" sign on your back. You were supposed to start moving on to "grown-up" games (unless you were a girl, then you were supposed to ditch games, altogether) like GTA and *insert other mindless violent shoot 'em up made for the Xbox/Playstation*.


I agree. I think another reason his ace was changed was because of stupid, close-minded people being uncomfortable with him having a male Gardevoir (the main reason why Gallade was created to begin with). ORAS ruined Wally, if you ask me.

I most certainly do kind (mega)Houndoom-person...ehh...Cerberus87 ^_^ Are you perhaps interested in these kinds of music as well? :3

I think much of that had to do with the P/S split, one of the few innovations of the later games that genuinely improved them (and wasn't just another thing geared solely towards competitive players). For example, even with the P/S split, all of the pre-Gen 4 Psychic attacks remained Special, and all of the pre-Gen 4 Dark attacks switched to Physical, so they needed to create new moves for Physical Psychics (like Metagross) and Special Darks (like Houndoom). The elemental types (ie. Water, Ice, Electric, and Fire) were also lacking in Physical moves (pretty much just Waterfall, the Elemental Punches, and a few others), so they needed new moves as well.

Of course, not all of this was 100% "good," such as with the Dragon Type. In the first two Gens, it was a mostly defensive type with only a few weak moves and strong (but not overpowered), bulky Pokémon with balanced stats (ie. Dragonite and Kingdra). In Gen 3, it started to swing far more offensive with the introduction of moves like Dragon Dance and Dragon Claw and Pokémon like Salamence, and Gen 4 took it up to eleventy with buffed Physical Outrage, Draco Meteor, and Garchomp. Gen 5 furthered the trend until Gen 6 brought out the Fairy Nerf Hammer. GF literally turned an entire type into a marketing strategy for competitive meatheads.


And, if Staraptor wasn't enough, then came Talonflame, aka "Smogonbird." Even with the stat boots and Mega, poor Pidgeot still seems to be rotting way in the trash heap. :(


New evolutions had a precedent in Gen 2 (ie. Steelix and Kingdra), although many of the Gen 4 ones had very questionable designs. And, while Leafeon was okay, Glaceon and Sylveon can go die in a fire; Grass was the only other Eeveelution type they "needed." (And, if they just had to make another one, it should've been Dragon, the Infinity+1 Element. Vaporeon already covers the same purpose as Glaceon and much better, IMO, while Sylveon is just ugly and a cheap marketing ploy.)

Togekiss, Mamoswine, Weavile, and Honchkrow were good, though. (And, genuinely needed, IMO.)


I've never gotten all of the "hype" over the Battle Frontier (or battle facilities, in general), myself. The characters are uninteresting, the AI is completely rigged, and it's nothing more than a single-player version of boring old competitive battling. Stadium, at least, had the Gym Leader Castle (my favorite area, too) and a more genuinely challenging AI.


Blaine's Clefable (which was actually in R1; Chansey's what he had in R2) was there to make him harder and less of a Poor, Predictable Rock. It was a bulky Normal type that knew both Thunderbolt AND Thunder, so Water types had a hard time getting past it. It also had Ice Beam to give Ground and Rock types trouble. Stadium often did that with the type specialists, especially in R2. It forced you to pack a diverse team and use strategy.

Which is sad. They should've given it Extreme Speed (though now it won't help it's Mega as much due to it being special oriented).

I like talking to you, too. :)

If you ask me, I think competitive battling has had a poisonous influence on the games.

While there was a "metagame" of sorts during the first two Generations, competitive battling was a niche, at best, back then. Not only were fewer people online, in general, (I wouldn't get my first internet access until 2003, well after I had grown out of the games), but the larger fanbase was also younger and didn't really understand the "deeper" mechanics of battling to begin with. (For most of them, "competitive multiplayer" amounted to 6 Mewtwo vs 6 Mewtwo (with the possible Ember/Flamethrower/Fire Blast/Fire Spin Charizard) during recess on a couple of GBCs smuggled into school.)

Because the actual "competitive" demo was so small, GF largely ignored them back then. Changes like Dark/Steel and the split of the Special stat were made because Psychics and high-Special Pokémon were just as overpowered in-game (and in mainstream battling outlets like the Stadium games) as they were in competitive 6v6. And, most of the other changes GSC brought to the table were largely for the benefit of casual play, such as Day/Night, expanded storyline, multiple regions, and of course, gender selection. (Even breeding and held items were geared more towards casuals when they were first introduced.)

That changed when Gen 3 rolled around. Pokémania was over, the backlash had set in, and the few original fans who stuck around for RSE were older and knee-deep into competitive, desperate to prove that Pokémon wasn't a "kids game." "Stall" was barely seen at all in Gen 2 outside of competitive 6v6 all-Leftover teams, but GF listened to the complaints anyways, and implemented Natures and EVs, reducing everyone's bulk and raising the bar for entry into competitive (and making breeding more of a necessity for getting "good" Pokémon). And, in place of second regions, we got Battle Towers and Battle Frontiers, instead, as postgames, just in case anyone who didn't have any friends wanted to go competitive. (It was "screw you" to people who didn't want to go competitive at all.)

It shouldn't be any surprise that it was during this Gen that a little site called Smogon reared its ugly head.

It only grew worse with Gen 4 and the advent of Wi-Fi. We saw a bunch of new items and berries introduced that had no purpose other than competitive battling, and the Power Creep started getting insane. Gen 5 only furthered these trends with the introduction of "Dream World" Abilities, which served almost no purpose other than adding even more Power Creep to the games. Meanwhile, in-game play continued to be watered-down and postgames nonexistent; even Gen 5, with its stronger story, had a postgame that was equally as shallow and competitive-oriented as Gen 3 and 4's.

The fanbase continued to get older, and Smogon's influence continued to grow. Competitive battlers started to dominate online message boards, and they had no qualms about attacking anyone who got more out of the games than hollow number-crunching for "perfection." It started to become quite common to see people say "Pokémon stories suck" and ditch the actual games for battle simulators, where all they had to do was plug in a few names and numbers, no thinking required. Divisions between so-called "Karenites" and "Smogonites" ran deep and were only continuing to grow.

Now, here we are in Gen 6... and, competitive battlers have literally become GF's primary target audience. XY don't even try to hide it anymore. The story is as fast and shallow as possible for ease of buttom-mashing, and the new Exp. Share makes it even faster and easier. They even made the breeding/EV-ing part more accessible, with Super Training and NPCs directly referencing IVs, which is a good thing, because it's not like there's anything else to do in the postgame. ORAS amps it up even more with the Smogonization of Wally (a character who originally represented the opposite of their philosophy) and a NPC at the Battle Resort that says the following line: "Truly strong Trainers sometimes must be prepared to choose Pokemon that can win rather than their favorite Pokemon."

As an older, non-competitive fan, I've never felt any more alienated from the rest of the fandom and even the games, themselves, as I do now. How did it get like this? Will it ever stop? Is it even possible to go back? :(

Dammit, the site ate the long-ass reply I was originally going to send to you. >:( I don't feel like typing it all out again, so I'll just say that I agree with everything that you posted (especially in regards to EVs, Smogon, and the Stadium games). Sorry I couldn't give you more.

Thanks for the link. I'll be sure to check it out.

They really should've given the pidgey line Gale Wings huh? I mean it's dex entry mentions Mach one speed...yet it's not all that fast.

I agree 100%. The advent of Natures and EVs didn't do anything but make the games needlessly complicated and create the elitist monster known as "the metagame" (it shouldn't be a surprise that it was during Gen 3 that Smogon was created). It was no longer about winning with your favorites and treating your Pokémon as friends, but instead, mindless number-crunching for "perfection."

And, what angers me even more about it is how GF has been catering more and more to this crowd in recent Generations, whether it's by lobotomizing in-game postgames so there's practically nothing to do *but* competitive battling (which includes battle facilities) after beating the League, or dumbing down the story so much that it's easy to button mash through it and get started on breeding/EV training as fast as possible. The Smogonization of Wally (a character who originally symbolized overcoming obstacles and winning with your favorites through the power of friendship) in ORAS is the final kicker.


Oh, definitely. When I played Pokémon Christmas (a Gold hack that includes a P/S split) recently, I loved being able to run Shadow Ball on Gardevoir (a Pokémon that benefits greatly from being plopped back into the older stat system...Mine actually survived a Self-Destruct!) and use Weavile (a line I've always loved but could never use because of their lack of Physical STAB), period.


The Sevii Islands had a lot of potential, but they were very poorly-handled. I think a good remake (ie. not FRLG) could salvage them and make them into more of a real region (like a true game counterpart of the Orange Islands), but I'd be down with seeing a "3 years earlier" Johto, too. Azalea and possibly, Goldenrod Gym could have different Gym Leaders, and they could do a Lugia/Bird Trio story in the Whirl Islands (to reference Pokémon 2000 and parallel the Ho-Oh/Dog Trio story of Crystal).


Well, I like to read about them. :P My knowledge is mostly limited to the first two Gens, though.


I've heard a lot of things about Serebii, and not nice ones, unfortunately. One of the members (who I'll just call "Lightning Feline") I had a problem with at the other site (which I'll call "Grass Starter Farm") is also a member there, if you've ever had the misfortune of running into him.

Well, I ain't a mod, so I can't do that, but I'm sure some mod will come around eventually and do that.

I loved that scene...I wished that the other remakes had such exchanges between gym leaders.
Yeah, I don't doubt that. If the Johto protags are as old as the Hoenn ones then Bugsy is probably 12, if so he'll be 9 in a past Johto.

Just a heads up, we already have an underrated games thread:

http://www.pokecommunity.com/showthread.php?t=341119

Yeah, it wouldn't. I do wonder how young Bugsy is...he may become the youngest gym leader then...which I think is currently either still Liza and Tate or Iris took the throne in White.
It is a big part of his character. You know he doesn't seem to be all that different from Janine...both a bit of a father's complex XD.

So you'll like to see Johto in another Kanto re-remake too (I stalked your convo with Betty)? Which gym leaders would you replace if you could replace any of them?


Since Falkner is rather young I would replace him with his father as irc he's the previous gym leader according to NPC's. Perhaps Bugsy too. I'll like the order to be Whitney first (perhaps the train in Saffron takes us there which is how we get to Johto at the beginning, or have Violet be blocked)...wait Whitney seems quite inexperienced too. Johto certainly had several young gym leaders now that I think about it.

I posted this in the "What are some features that you don't want to see again?" thread:


I never did any kind of competitive battling outside of the Stadium games, but one thing I liked about them was that it was very much possible to use an in-game team and be reasonably successful, so long as they they had good movesets and synergy. With the advent of Natures and the EV cap, that was no longer possible, especially if you couldn't breed before the postgame (like in FRLG, for example). I don't know about you, but I get attached to my in-game teams; it feels wrong to send them off to rot in a PC Box just so I can have "perfect" Pokémon.


I know. I hate how Red Gyarados wasn't really good for anything but HM Slavery. Luckily, HGSS (and various Gen 2/3 hacks with a P/S split) fixed this.


The main thing from the later games I wish existed in the earlier games was the Physical/Special split. (Even if it meant my Alakazam losing its elemental punches.) Like the aforementioned Gyarados, there were way too many Pokémon back then who had the wrong stats for their typings, and it's one of the few later Gen changes that actually simplified things, rather than complicated them.


This is true. At least, for Bruno, Agatha, and Lance. The former two are weak to the game's strongest type, and the latter can be trolled by an underleveled Poison type, thanks to an AI glitch. Lorelei and Blue, on the other hand, aren't nearly as exploitable (save for bad movesets).

Now, Yellow, on the other hand, is a different story. Yellow fixed most of the AI glitches from Red/Blue, and gave everyone better movesets. Bruno and Agatha, admittedly, are still pushovers, but Lance is harder (though, still easy with a good Starmie).


That's how I feel, too. GSC was basically RBY's own B2W2, which is why it's still my favorite Gen. It also makes me wish that the remakes had been made closer together, if not within the same Generation. A lot of the closeness between RBY and GSC was lost in FRLG and HGSS, IMO.


Yeah, the RB Missingno is pretty safe. It's the Yellow version that can crash the game.


I don't blame you. A couple of months ago, I quit another Pokémon site because of a couple of "excessively argumentative" people.