News: Famitsu rules out certain Alolan Forms

[BettyNewbie]

It was because:

1) Too lazy to create new Pokémon
2) Clueless about making old Pokémon useful again in competitive, so why not turn them into something they clearly are not and never have been

To me it's quite sad to see Fire!Ninetales scavenging the depths of the lower tiers whereas Ice/Fairy!Ninetales will certainly see use because of its typing and possibly stats. Sandslash will probably remain crap since Ice/Steel is pretty horrid defensively, but the others will all see a boost because the new Alolan forms are simply better, and make the old ones redundant. If to boost a certain Pokémon you have to basically turn it into something else (because that's what these Alolan forms really are), then you have to start thinking whether your concept of balance is truly great.

One only has to look at the VGC to see how horribly unbalanced Pokémon is. I'm surprised there's even official tournaments of this game anymore.

Perhaps Sun/Moon was what took me to become completely disenchanted with the franchise, especially since these kinds of things like Alolan Forms and Z-Moves have already been done by other franchises, like, 15 years ago.

Now the reason Lapras didn't get an Alolan Form is probably because, since it's such an iconic Pokémon, it makes little sense for it to get one. Lapras' purpose in life is to ferry people around. Why make it into something it's not? Same with Arcanine.

This perfectly sums up my feelings about Alolan Forms. They're essentially butchering the designs, themes, and lore of old Pokémon as an alternative to creating new Pokémon, which just doesn't sit right with me. Ninetales wasn't created as a Fire type out of random (it's based on a kitsune, which has nine tails and breathes fire), and the Ground type is a part of Sandslash's very design (even its Japanese name has "sand" in it). By changing these Pokémon's typings and stats, you're changing what they fundamentally are and basically turning them into brand new Pokémon.

 

[MarinoKadame]

Pokemon is slowly getting more stuff that digimon had.

Now even pokemon has different colored pokemon as a new form and type just like the BlackAgumon and the like in digimon.

It also now has real exclusive signature move that no other pokemon can learn (Alolan Raichu+Snorlax Z-Moves), Digimon had signature moves tied to the digimon .

 

[Altairis]

I was really confused about this at first but now I get it. Because these Pokemon are found in Alola that means that they don't have special formes, right right.

I was actually kind of excited about the Alolan Water-type Arcanine. I wonder how leakers were so convinced that it existed; maybe they tossed it since it was leaked? I would have really liked to see Alolan formes of some nice Pokemon that I like, like maybe Dragonite. But oh well.

 

[Mister Coffee]

Literally so confused on how any of the old lore of the original Pokemon are being disrespected when the only thing being done to them by Game Freak is that they're giving them an additional form to suit the Alolan environment? Which seems to be the whole point of Alola forms existing in the first place?

Can someone explain to me why this such a heinous crime, or am I missing a bigger picture, here?

I personally don't think it's disrespecting any of the lore of these pokemon, because I can totally buy the idea of these pokemon migrating and adapting, it's not farfetched in the least and the lore of the original pokemon still exists because the original pokemon exist.

The issue is: Why have the Alolan Form concept at all?
They could seriously have invented any new kind of game mechanic that they wanted and they could have invented lore for why it is happening by writing classic fantasy pokemon lore to back up their new mechanic, this is how it'a always been.
The mechanic they chose to build into this game is redesigning older pokemon that (from as we have seen so far) are not very powerful and adding them into the game as brand new pokemon that still hold the original name and basic design of it's predecessor. Yes they added lore that makes sense and even designed the lore so that it works to logically explain why this mechanic was placed to fit in with the new region and its overall themes.
At the core of what the Alolan Form mechanic is, you have to ask why did they want to do this specific idea in this particular fashion?
I keep hearing people say "Finally! Raichu gets the spotlight", but at the core of what they are doing, it's not really "Raichu" who's getting the spotlight, it is "Alolan Raichu" that is gaining all the attention. In fact if anything it's making the original Raichu even less popular than it was before.

What sucks about me writing all of the above... at my core I hate admitting that it is in fact doing this, because I think Alolan Forms are really cool. I mean I love Alolan Exeggutor, and really want to play around with the spectacular looking Alolan Ninetails... but I can't ignore the effect that these Alolan Forms will probably have on their predecessors.
Don't get me wrong, I'm super excited for this game, this one realization wont change that, but I will admit, after this realization, I can't really look at Alolan Forms the same way, now I kind of see them as pokemon doppelgangers.

 

[Cerberus87]

Literally so confused on how any of the old lore of the original Pokemon are being disrespected when the only thing being done to them by Game Freak is that they're giving them an additional form to suit the Alolan environment? Which seems to be the whole point of Alola forms existing in the first place?

Can someone explain to me why this such a heinous crime, or am I missing a bigger picture, here?

Not really a crime but behind the innocent "Alolan form" is a lame attempt at competitive relevance to these Pokémon. The Mega Evolution was more obvious.

I don't understand the concept, because it breaks the logic we've seen in Pokémon until now. Adapting to its environment without losing its identity was the characteristic of only a few Pokémon. Eevee, first and foremost. Another forgotten example is Burmy, which has actual Formes. Castform, too.

Most importantly, why is Alolan Ninetales still a Ninetales? When there's split evolutionary path IRL, DNA changes and each being becomes a different species altogether. Why didn't Ninetales become a different species without anything to do with Ninetales? Why call the new monster a "Ninetales"? The difference is so much that it becomes akin to mistaking apples with bananas.

Ninetales was demoted to the lower tiers because of more prominent Drought abusers. To me it's senseless to bring it back a notch by turning it into something it isn't and calling it "Ninetales". It's as if I nicknamed a Staraptor "Pidgeot" and pretended Pidgeot got a buff. It didn't.

Other creatures have weird motivation. Meowth, a Dark-type? Why? There's already a Dark-type house feline! Purrloin. Liepard could be a Persian that mutated when devious enough. There was no need of a Dark!Persian.

Ice-type Sandslash is also weird. If the climate grew too cold for Sandshrew to live, they'd all die off and lose to things like Sneasels and Snorunts, not mutate into Ice!Sandshrews. Another problem: did Sandshrew already live in the cold island or were they brought there? If they were inhabitants of the island, when did the climate become cold enough for them to change? If they were brought there, then why would anyone bring Sandshrew to a climate it hates?

They're adding retcon after retcon after retcon with a single goal: metagame. And the fandom loses because we could have a richer setting instead of this horrible mess that the lore became after the dreadful timeline split. (speaking of which, why no new Megas announced? why abandon this concept you based an entire gen around?)

Again, it's not a crime, but this: why aren't these Pokémon original designs like in the past instead of transmutations of old ones? What constitutes their identity as Ninetales/Sandslash/Meowth/Rattata/Raichu/whatever? Why didn't they change further and become new species? In the past we didn't get a "Hoenn Butterfree", we got a Beautifly. In fact, Beautifly has more of Butterfree than Alolan Ninetales has of Ninetales! That's the point I make.

This concept they came up with in 2016, I already conceived in the GSC days. I thought shinies were different type back then, like how Gyarados would be Fire-type when red and so on. Turns out they weren't. Shininess has no use in battle. If type changes were to be introduced, it had to be then. Why now?

 

[Rivvon]

While I do concede that Alola forms could have easily been their own separate Pokémon, knowing how people are in general that wouldn't have helped anything. People complained when Purrloin was revealed in gen 5 because "we already have some cat Pokémon!" So if they had made Alola Ninetales into its own separate Pokémon, people would have complained "we already have a few fox Pokémon!" (Actually, people complained about Fennekin in gen 6 for that exact same reason...)

And I also get the idea that it's not quite the same Pokémon; "it's not Raichu that's getting the spotlight, it's Alola Raichu." But really, what else could they have done? I mean, when Pikachu got its Cosplay "forms" in ORAS nobody said "It's Cosplay Pikachu, so it's different from regular Pikachu and doesn't count." You could even make the same argument with Megas ("it's not that Mawile is good, only the Mega is") but at that point the only option at all would be to completely redo every single Pokémon's BST to make some of the less-popular Pokémon more competitively viable but even then that only helps it in a competitive sense...

I also don't quite think these forms "disrespect" the "lore of the original." Original Ninetales still exists, so it's not like that aspect of it is gone forever. And you can argue that the reason why Ninetales was based on a kyuubi-no-kitsune to begin with is because the other regions allowed it to develop that way. So you could reason that other regions may make it develop differently. Honestly... the only Pokémon whose lore is so important that they shouldn't be changed, in my opinion, are the legendaries. Other Pokémon's basic concepts can be simple or far-reaching but aren't so "important" that form changes should be off-limits to them.

 

[Hikamaru]

This CoroCoro scan mentions something like "Pokemon you met in Pokemon GO have special forms" and as we know, the GO roster is 1st Gen only. So yes, this does pretty much seem to confirm 1st Gen only as far as Alola Form distribution is concerned.

 

[MegaKuriboh]

Yeah, I've grown to accept that they'll all be Gen 1 Pokemon *sigh* well, at least they're designed well, and they're mostly being used on forgotten Pokemon too! I really hope that art leak is real because those designs are just as great as the ones we have now (just give me Megas for Unova and Kalos Pokemon and I'll be a happy camper).

Also I don't understand why a Pokemon NEEDS to be based on a legend from our world? Like sure that can be the basis of how the Pokemon was designed, and the inspiration, but other than that Pokemon are their own being entirely. You're forgetting that this is a magic world where you're using a turtle with canons to shoot water at your plant that walks and hits you with vines. Ninetails is it's own animal that adapted differently in Alola, that's all.