OMG OMEGA RUBY!!!

[Elite Overlord LeSabre™]

(1974 Oldsmobile Omega)

(Raise your hand if you saw this car reference coming from a mile away...)

So, Hoenn remakes...

Yes, they're officially a thing now. Can't say I'm absolutely thrilled for them, but I can't say I have no interest in them either, and watching A's recent misadventures through Hoenn in the Twitch Plays Pokemon Emerald stream did get me somewhat more interested in the region, though the absurd amount of surfing (and creepy swimmers) is still off-turning for me. And Fortree. Dear God, what kind of warped city planner/civil engineer builds a town IN TREES?

A few questions I need answered before committing to buying them:

*Are there still trainer customizations, or am I stuck with May's default look? Will they debut outfits exclusive to these games? Will any of them have cute floral prints? What outfits will be carried over from X/Y?

*Are they bringing back Secret Bases and Contests? I hope so, those are probably the best thing to come from the originals. Imagine, Secret Bases with your custom character, which you can share via wi-fi. That is probably the single most exciting prospect of these games, in my opinion.

*Post-game facility? Hoping it's Emerald's Battle Frontier, and not some crap like the world tournament or 4th gen's frontier.

*Will the teams be handled like they were in the original (i.e., Magma is up to no good in Ruby while Aqua is stirring up trouble in Sapphire) or are they going to try a mix like Emerald did? The boxart suggests the former, but with Game Freak, you never know.

*Are they gonna throw in random characters from past games? Hope the answer is no in this case. X/Y were very good regarding this; don't ruin things now.

*I really hope they dump the Match Call, or at least give the option not to take a trainer's number if you don't want to. The originals gave you no say in the matter, and some trainers were annoyingly persistent with their calls. Nobody nearly as bad as Joey, but at least you could refuse Joey's number...

*Will I have enough money after all my September/October anime conventions to afford the games? This is something nobody will know until the time comes.

So yeah. Hoenn ranks among my least favorite regions due to its topography, but if they include enough enticing elements I might be tempted to play through it again. Only time will tell. Hopefully these will be decent-quality remakes like FR/LG and not a crappy, rushed effort like HG/SS.

Random fun fact: The Oldsmobile Omega is a sister car to the Chevrolet Nova, which, as we know, was the inspiration for the name of the 5th gen region. Perhaps Game Freak is fascinated with the X-platform GM compacts of the 70's...

 

[BettyNewbie]

Oh, the Olds Omega! I've never owned one, myself, but I did have a pretty memorably bad experience looking at one for sale about 7-8 years ago. It was a 1975, red-on-white, and the owner said it was a clean, original car; it turned out to be the rustiest piece of junk ever, not even fit for the junkyard! Nothing worked, the paint looked horrible, and the interior was trashed. Biggest. disappointment. ever.

(Luckily, I ended up snagging a nice 1978 Nova not long after. Red-on-red, no rust, and it ran okay after some work. It served me for a good 3-4 years before I sold it.)

Classic cars aside, I want to ask you about this statement: "Hopefully these will be decent-quality remakes like FR/LG and not a crappy, rushed effort like HG/SS."

How was HGSS a "crappy, rushed effort"? The only really "lazy" things I can think of about those games are the reuse of the Platinum Battle Frontier and keeping the Yellow callbacks from the original GSC (like the Mt. Silver battle) instead of replacing them with FRLG callbacks. Otherwise, I thought they were pretty fully-featured remakes, merging the Gold/Silver and Crystal storylines, adding new areas, redesigning old ones, fleshing out many characters (like Silver), adding new features (like following Pokémon), and so forth.

If any remakes were "rushed," it was FRLG, IMO. I posted this in the forums a couple of days ago:

FRLG were obviously rushed out in a hurry, as you can see from the staggering list of unused maps and sprites located with the games' data (Including possible data for Pikachu's Beach!), and the fact that the games removed so many features that had been present in previous ones (like day/night, berries, and contests). For whatever reason, they just didn't take the time to develop the Sevii Islands any more than they had to. Even Kanto was barely any more developed than it was in the originals (arguably less so than it was in Yellow).

Why did they rush the games so much? We know that GF was working on Emerald at the same time, so it's possible that they didn't want to delay that game any more than they had to (especially with the GBA's successor, the DS, coming out later that year). They may have also been in a rush to win back the many people who scorned Ruby and Sapphire's lack of older Pokémon and connections with the previous two regions.

I'm not trying to start an argument or anything, just curious to see your thoughts. You're probably the first person I've seen that's called HGSS "lazy" instead of FRLG.

 

[Elite Overlord LeSabre™]

Last thing first, actually, and this is probably a more personal thing for me. Secret Bases in 3rd gen had the ability to read a Pokemon party in another compatible version and insert that team into one that you could battle in the base. So it made me livid that they didn't do the same for Mount Silver and include the ability to insert your character's name, sprite, and party as the final battle (this would use the Dual Slot) instead of simply rehashing Red. Doing that would make it seem like HG/SS were successors to FR/LG instead of the two apparently taking place in alternate universes. (It would also give a chance for my fave character to make a reappearance). My LG party would have posed quite the challenge. Red was a complete pushover.

My other major gripe was that no attempt was made to adjust the levels of wild Pokemon in Kanto. The trainers are in the high 40's/low 50's while some wild Pokemon are as low as level 3 or 4.

They took the time to give the Rocket Executives names but little else to develop any personality to match their new names and outfits.

I probably shoud've added that too much effort was lavished on useless stuff like Voltorb Flip and designing a new character (Lyra/FemMario) instead of reusing Kris.

And tbh the whole "Pokemon following you" thing annoyed me more than anything. Think back to the very first episode of the anime: The initial reason Pikachu never got in Ash's Pokeball was because it was being a disobedient little prick. That's more or less the impression I get from that feature - they're refusing to be obedient and get into their Pokeball.

And to defend FR/LG, these were the first games to include an Elite Four who grew stronger in a rematch battle, introduced the Vs. Seeker, still IMO the most convenient rematch mechanic, and were the only game to include the Fame Checker, which helped a bit to develop the character of some of the region's major trainers. And the Sevii Islands still felt more complete than the half-done Kanto in HG/SS.

But really, if HG/SS could have allowed us to import our FR/LG party into Mt. Silver, better-developed the Rocket Executives, and fixed the huge wild Pokemon/trainer Pokemon level disparity in Kanto, I probably would have a much better impression of them.

Oh, the Olds Omega! I've never owned one, myself, but I did have a pretty memorably bad experience looking at one for sale about 7-8 years ago. It was a 1975, red-on-white, and the owner said it was a clean, original car; it turned out to be the rustiest piece of junk ever, not even fit for the junkyard! Nothing worked, the paint looked horrible, and the interior was trashed. Biggest. disappointment. ever.

(Luckily, I ended up snagging a nice 1978 Nova not long after. Red-on-red, no rust, and it ran okay after some work. It served me for a good 3-4 years before I sold it.)

We've been burned a few times buying older cars too. Dad bought a 1979 Ford Fairmont, only 23,000 miles, but the thing started rusting, pieces began falling off, and the engine suddenly died enough times that my mom refused to drive it. Then there was the '94 Jeep Grand Cherokee where the A/C never worked, the radio died after a year, and the lower body parts began rusting away.

What I like about the Omega/Nova is they're relatively lightweight cars with a large engine bay, so you can drop a V-8 under the hood and upgrade the suspension and have yourself a pretty nice hot rod.