Happy 19th Birthday, Pokemon Gen II

So today is the 19th anniversary of Pokemon Gold and Silver being released in North America. Having played the Silver version ridiculously extensively when younger, I feel like Gen II remains my favorite to this very day. The grumpy you’re-no-fun part of me says it was because I was old enough to truly appreciate it but still young enough to have a child’s awe. Oh well. I still think it’s my favorite generation.

It just felt BIG. All the activities you could do made it feel big. That you had two regions made it feel big. The different day/night cycles and weekdays made it feel big. It felt big and lively.

When I got the Ruby version, yes, the graphics were much better. But the day/night was now a technicality and it just didn’t feel as big. Oh, it was probably as big or bigger in terms of actual tiles, but it didn’t feel big to me. Silver felt big. Silver felt really big.

I’d say Silver and Fallout New Vegas are my two favorite RPGs of all time.

 

The Pokemon Direct

So the Pokemon Direct just aired. The long-awaited main series titles for Switch are called Sword and Shield versions. The region is called “Galar” and seems to be based on England. From what I’ve seen it looks interesting.

I think the most revealing part is that Game Freak seems to (as of now) be backing off from Sun and Moon’s not having conventional “gyms” per se, with the direct showing a normal gym challenge. The starters look decent, at least.

The “more for the Pokemon brand” is, in my opinion, a  hint that someone from Sword/Shield will be a later Smash Ultimate DLC fighter. I mean, I like gimmicks and think the Persona 5 Joker was a nice Snake-style choice, but my head must take precedence over my heart. Dreams of obscure fun characters must give way to the likelihood that it’ll be probably be stuff like characters from this and Fire Emblem Three Houses.

 

Kris, Then And Now

The heroine of Pokemon Crystal with physics-defying hair, known as “Kris” for her default name, was the first playable female main character in a Pokemon game. While I don’t have anything against “Lyra”, the differently-designed one who succeeded her in the remake, I still like Kris’ design better.

In a bit of unintended similarity, almost two decades later, the name “Kris” would be given to the main character of Undertale sequel Deltarune. The two look nothing alike, and their names have different inspirations (the first is obviously derived from “Crystal”, the second is derived from Frisk, Undertale’s main character).

The Paper Cow and The Paper Wasp

So, there are two types of enemies in video games that have a reputation for being memetically impossible, for being tough, for being bad. These two are Whitney‘s Miltank from Pokemon Gold/Silver, and Cazadors from Fallout New Vegas.

These happen to be two of my favorite games of all time and I played both extensively. And I can say that I never found either of them that challenging.

First, Whitney’s Miltank. I have an idea as to why she got the memetic reputation. Because Gold/Silver, at least the initial portion, is a very, very easy game. Even as a child, I still knew it was a very easy game. So, anything that makes you grind a tiny bit or use a tiny bit of optimization will look harder in perspective. I never found the Miltank that hard, even by the game’s standards.

Second, the Cazadors. They’re easy to take out compared to say, Deathclaws. My speech-optimized first courier could easy handle them (this cannot be said for some other opponents.) They have venom, but thanks to the “generosity” of legion assassins that dropped it after I took them out, I had plenty of antivenom at all times.

(I also think my playstyle might have helped. Because I mainly ran through the main quests and didn’t wander around, I could navigate cazador-filled areas in short, prepared bursts, so I wasn’t caught by surprise.)

So I’m considering these paper tigers. Or paper wasp-thingies and cow-thingies.

The Nintendo Direct

So, the newest Nintendo Direct was released.

Nothing for the new mainline Pokemon and Fire Emblem games that we still know very little confirmed knowledge of save for the fact that they exist. (Either E3 or a standalone announcement, I suppose, which makes sense given their size and prominence). So, that disappointment was there-if you can call it a disappointment.

As for me, well, it was like “ok, stuff that looks kinda neat, stuff I’m not really interested in, oooh-No More Heroes, ok, ok, Undertale for the Switch-Whoa! Ok, ok, hmm, that was decent, port announcements, ok, uh, uh, so I suppose it’s-uh, wait-SMASH BROTHERS! WHOA BABY IT’S SMASH BROTHERS!”

It is, indeed, the announcement and reveal of the newest Smash Bros. My delight can hardly be contained.

My five least favorite antagonists

In no particular order, some of my least favorite antagonists in fiction:

SCP-682 (SCP Foundation)

“The Greek” (The Wire)

The Soviet Leadership (Red Storm Rising)

Andries Rhoodie/The Rivington Men (Guns of the South)

Missingno (Pokemon)

_ _ _ _ _

Missingno:

Missingno is just a glitch. It bugs me so much how a programming error can be treated by fans as some sort of creepypasta scary monster. It’s like making a Fallout or Elder Scrolls fic starring the Glitched Monster From ________.

SCP-682

Now this is what happens when “meme” powers become reality. The lizard is indestructible. That’s it. It’s dull and lame and boring.

“The Greek”

That he’s in one of my favorite shows of all time illustrates that even good works of fiction can gave bad antagonists. A sneering one-dimensional mustache-twirler whose entire gimmick is that he’s greedy, “The Greek” is a bad character in a good story. “The Greek” is supposed to represent unrestrained capitalism, but Stringer Bell shows it in a much more balanced and nuanced way. And even his own lieutenant, Spiros, comes across as a much better and more charismatic character.

The Soviet Leadership

The Politburo scene in the beginning of Red Storm Rising has aged poorly and exists to set up the excuse plot for WW3. Sneering supervillain Soviets might work in a Red Alert game, but in a serious book, it’s a headdesk moment. Their entire plan is invading Europe so they can invade the Middle East later. And this is one of the things the copycats have copied. Ugh.

Rhoodie

Guns of the South does many things right. One thing it does wrong is its antagonists. The Rivington Men are some of the worst antagonists. They exist to make the Confederates look better in race relations by comparison (ulp), and then, when they decide that Lee has to go, with all their futuristic technology, they… have guys with Uzis fire wildly in his general direction.

My Pokemon Experience

The original Red and Blue versions are the only Pokemon games I’ve never beaten. Maybe it’s because I was too young to really play them well, then by the time I got a handle on things, Gold/Silver appeared and I fell in love with that, never looking back.

Gold/Silver is far and away my most fond generation of Pokemon games. It could very well be my rose-tinted glasses as I was growing just old enough to appreciate it, but everything, with a two-region game and day-night shifts, seemed so big and grand. Ruby/Sapphire was very good, but it and many of the later one-region games just feel a little cramped in comparison.

I’d say my least favorite (and this is definitely a relative term, the game was still very good) would probably be Black/White. Simply because its story went into a higher “narrative bracket” by trying to cast doubt on the journey-while quickly and totally yanking back to the “it’s totally ok” message. But the gameplay was still very good.

Source Extinguishing

So, I got and beat Pokemon Moon. I’m impressed that I managed a totally unspoilered playthrough. The game is good, even if I think the Pokemon franchise/formula is showing signs of limits. Still, it’s a cash Miltank.

But what it quenched was my SII commando fic concept, simply because playing a cutesy kids game shows just how much force is required to wedge in realistic special operators. The one idea I had was an SII agent in Alola-on her honeymoon.

Kind of illuminating overall, and a reason why I want more fanfic writers to be involved in the source material-(which seems like a no-brainer but sadly isn’t).

 

Lore Pileups

Two years too late, I rediscovered the craziness, madness, and improbable victory of Twitch Plays Pokemon.

The viewership understandably dropped after the novelty of the first Red run. And there was something else I found, something sad but not unexpected. Forced lore.

The original run had organically developed memes and lore, from the Pidgeot to the ATV Venomoth, to of course the Helix Fossil. Later, everyone was trying to build up the lore from the start.

In other internet fandoms, however small, this sort of lore pileup happens a lot.

• The Infinite Loops started off as a pure crackfic Groundhog Day for the lols anything-goes story-and then developed into a cosmology.
• The Big One was a forum what-if about a nuclear end to WWII that turned into a massive historical “epic” spanning back to the 300s BCE.

Lore pileups make sense only to the “in-crowd” while turning off outside fans, and seem a lot funnier than they can be. While in some ways unavoidable, they’re a sign that a work is jumping the shark.

Overestimating and Underestimating

So, two instances of overestimating and underestimating.

Underestimating: The Pokemon anime was scheduled to only last for a year and a half.

Overestimating: Action 52’s The Cheetahmen were planned to be a blockbuster media franchise.

What happened?

Needless to say, both plans went awry.