#They played the gba game of GT and remembered it a lot

[tonitart]

[Nieces’ Request 01]

Draw Pan dancing to Touch by KATSEYE with Trunks and Goten. 🤣

[dutchyderpbox]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOTHER!

Seriously, what are the odds of Mother’s 30th anniversary falling on the year of the pig? And Porky is mysteriously absent from Smash Ultimate. Maybe there really aren’t any coincidences. All these signs makes it a perfect time for Nintendo to do absolutely nothing.  Well, I guess a spirits board event isnt ‘nothing’, per say.

So, I’m just gonna ramble about my feelings about this franchise and my journey with it. So, like I assume many of you my age, hadn't heard of an ‘Earthbound’ prior to playing Melee back in the early 2000′s. Ness wasn't a character I remember playing a lot of, but I did like his taunts (OK!) and Fourside was one of my favorite stages. Then Brawl came around and we got the shy boy named Lucas and a big ass stage. Oh, and some music. That was nice, but I was more excited for Sonic The Hedgehog being in a smash bros game.

I didn’t get interested in the franchise until around 2012/2013(maybe) that I found myself browsing on Youtube and by chance I ended up on a video called “Earthbound, The Dark Side of Mother” by Game Theory. inb4 GAME THEORY?! REEEEEEEEEEE

I was completely blown away by the video, and it remains one of my favorite GT videos. I got me interested in playing the game for myself and seeing what I missed out on.

So I downloaded a ROM, booted up my emulator and had a blast! I fell in love with the game’s sense of humor, the combat system, the music and the sprites, as well as the underlying unnerving atmosphere of it all. Walking through Onett and hearing that music for the first time was oddly nostalgic and it reminded me of where I used to live when I was 6 with my Mom. It reminded me of when you play pretend with your friends and travel to distant lands and fight strange creatures and use common household items and pretend they were swords or axes. And sure, I got stuck on some spots, like the maze with those moles who all think they’re the strongest, but it was an otherwise pleasant ride!

Next up on the list was Mother 1, or Earthbound Beginnings, which I started playing in the Summer of 2014.  Finding a translation for the NES rom I had sucked, and I had heard that there was a better one for the Mother 1+2 GBA game that we also never got, so I played a translated version of that Mother 1. It came with an item at the beginning of the game that made things easier because apparently the game has a nasty difficulty spike. I think I game over’d the most in this one of the 3 games.  While I cant say I enjoyed it as much Earthbound, I still had fun with the game, and was satisfied by the end of it. It also made me retroactively feel bad for Giygas/Giegue/Geeg/The Geek. I was surprised by certain songs originating from Mother 1 being reused in Earthbound, like Humoresque of a little dog, Snowman, and the music at Lloyd’s school.  I dont really have much to say, other than Pippi is cute chad, Teddy has Kamina shade and the Josuke hairdo, and that that one factory maze can burn in hell. Also, remember how at the end Ninten’s dad was like “Hey hold on, this might not be over yet!” I dont think anything became of that. I would have liked Mother 1 and Earthbound to have had more of a connection. Maybe answer questions like where Ninten and his crew were during Earthbound? I think they could have been cool mentor characters for the Chosen 4. Oh well.  Happy Birthday, Mother 1! If any of the 3 games deserves a remake, it’s you.

And then there was one. After beating the first two games, I immediately  decided to end my journey by playing Mother 3, which I had heard was the best one. And having played it, I can safely say that I agree.  I’m glad I didnt get spoiled on anything because this game blew me away. Not only did we have more of a story this time around, we had chapters and character development! The sprites were updated and more expressive, the humor was on point, the music fit perfectly and when this game wanted to break your heart, it did just that. I also liked that the main setting was on an island with a town of residents with names, and that we got to see them all grow older as time passed. I also liked the theme of the game being a sort of nature vs technology, as shown from the game’s logo, and how the town became more distant and empty as Porky’s happy boxes began filling every home. The gameplay was still fun as always, and certain fights, like the Barrier Trio, gave me a run for my money.  When they struck their last, spectacular pose, I was laughing hard and felt relieved! ...Too bad the Masked Man took the needle anyways. When I got the the final fight, I had a mixed feeling of sadness and dread and it only got worse as the intermissions kept happening. And the ending to that fight and the game as a whole...Sheesh, they really know how to punch your heart, huh? And when you get to the final screen with the restored logo...it’s just perfect. “No crying until the end”, huh? Well, I bawled at the end, so how’s that? Thanks, Mr. Itoi. And shout out to the team of fans who translated the entire damn game by themselves, cause they did a fantastic job!

Mother is one of my favorite game franchises of all time, and I hope it continues to get exposure and introduce new generations of players into the crazy, noisy bizarre worlds of these games. The games also served as inspirations to many other games, like Undertale, which I loved as well.  I heard that there is some official poll going on in Japan right now that’s asking fans what they want from the franchise. If I’m being honest, other than more official merchandise spanning all 3 games, my pipe dream for years has been getting a Mother Trilogy Remake where the characters and setting looked like those official clay figures. While a Mother 4 would be cool, I’m kinda content with how open-ended things are. Plus, if Itoi isn't on board or doesn't give his consent, then what’s the point? Also, I’d love for Porky to get in Smash cause we need more Mother and villain reps, but I doubt he’ll make the cut. Considering the track record so far, the last two DLC fighters are gonna be 3rd party characters, which is fine.

Anyways, that’s all I got. Happy 30th Anniversary, ya’ll! May the power that be grant us our wishes for Porky in Smash, Mother 3 world-wide re-release and a Mother Trilogy Remake.

Fuzzy Pickles!

Artwork is from here: https://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=medium&illust_id=56436164

[timegal25]

The Odd Side of Youtube

     YouTube, the popular video sharing website, has been around for over a decade. It’s had it’s over abundance of videos themed around Fortnite, “emotional apology videos” stuffed to the brim with ad revenue, a disturbingly high number of poorly animated nursery rhymes, and surprisingly graphic skits targeted at kids. But it’s also been an outlet for creative expression and connection for those outside the mainstream. For a socially awkward and isolated kid who found companionship in watching YouTube, fandom videos offered a sense of connection, belonging and reassurance that there were “odd people” out there who shared his interests and passions.

While the vast majority of people know about things like “Gangnam Style” and “Let’s Plays,” not as many can say they have extensive knowledge of the various niche fandom videos that make up a good portion of the website itself. These are the odd clips that either you only come across by looking up directly, or have randomly pop up in your recommended feed with no real reason as to why.  In my case, I remember a majority of these from watching them when I was younger, and then rediscovering them when looking deep into the site on late night nostalgia binges. It’s  a common hobby of mine, and it usually leads to me finding some of the strangest things as a result. Oddly, a great many of these strange finds just so happen to include Sonic the Hedgehog.

Let me preface this by saying what follows is in no way an attack on any of the creators of these videos, nor is it a call for others to go out and harass them. In fact, that’s part of the point. Many of the people who create some of the more odd or innovative content on YouTube are doing it as creative expression of who they are or what interests them. It’s a place to express a part of themselves, and it takes courage to do it. It’s easy for those who aren’t so brave to attack the creators.  I actually enjoy a lot of the content I’ll be referring to because the people behind it are genuine and clearly having a ton of fun making it. This is all done in good fun, and shows just how strange and odd fandom culture as a whole can be. And for some of these innovators who dared to put themselves out there, it paid off big time just by how fondly remembered they are by those who talk about them. Now that that’s out of the way, let’s begin.

Part One: Hedgehogs and Dragon Balls

To start things off, let’s look at a project that is fully animated. Before YouTube, there was the popular website Newgrounds, a place where you could watch videos, play games, and just mess around. This is where a lot of influential and important creators got their start by posting their little animations on the site. On August 14, 2006, user Chakra-X (real name Aaron Cowdery), posted the first part in a three-part movie called Sonic: Nazo Unleashed with part two coming a week later and part three following in 2007. All three parts were later uploaded all into one HD remaster under the title of Sonic: Nazo Unleashed DX on YouTube in 2014. The film follows Sonic and his friends as they take on the mysterious and powerful Nazo, an unused form of Sonic from a promotional video for the anime Sonic X.

Now what makes this special from say the dozens of Sonic themed fanfics that follow a somewhat similar premise? Chakra-X did something no one had dared to do before. The animation was very heavily inspired by the anime megahit Dragon Ball Z and its then airing sequel Dragon Ball GT . The sound effects used and the presentation of special moves were ripped right from the series and even parts from the climax are just ideas presented in the show such as two characters fusing to make one new powerful being. In 2006, it was unheard of to see Sonic characters perform such high speed anime action. What was even more notable is that it was created by one single guy on the internet.  The professionally produced Sonic X TV show that was airing at that time paled by comparison, even with a team of professional animators with high tech equipment.

In the decade since Nazo Unleashed originally came out, Chakra-X has been a part of various animated collabs and now works for Titmouse Inc , an animation company that has done work for companies like Warner Bros., Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, and even Disney. What was even more inspiring for me, Chakra-X is a young black man . This was the first I’d become aware of anyone who looked like me being a much sought after animator. It told me that I could be him, I could be in his position if I put in as much effort and love into a creative project. And with how amazing the upcoming sequel he’s working on looks, I feel that kind of hopeful inspiration even more.

The next piece I’m going to examine is another well known series in the Sonic fandom community that also is heavily influenced by Dragon Ball Z. While it is also animated and is full of high speed action packed fights, this one has its own amazing identity. The series I’m talking about is the always spectacular Super Mario Bros. Z by Mark Haynes, aka Alvin Earthworm, starting in 2006 and going until 2009. While this series was originally created on Newgrounds, it’s real exposure and popularity came from being uploaded to YouTube.

The series follows Mario, Sonic and friends as they go on an epic race against time to secure the powerful chaos emeralds from the clutches of the evil Mecha Sonic. Much like Nazo Unleashed, the influence of Dragon Ball Z series is anything but subtle, with the plot of “good guys need to find powerful objects before bad guys” being one of the key ways to describe Dragon Ball as a whole. One of the key things that makes this stand out on its own is the fact that this entire series is animated using sprites from the games. Just about every character that wasn’t made specifically for the series has their models taken right from their games. Mario and Luigi for example come from the Mario and Luigi role playing game (rpg) series on the Gameboy Advance (GBA), while the Sonic and Shadow sprites come from Sonic Battle also on the GBA. An extra step is taken by having the characters act like they do in their retrospective series. Mario and Luigi never actually use dialogue boxes in their games, with other characters still understanding them. The same is true here with the brothers’ words never actually being seen on screen. Going that extra step to emulate the games made the videos feel more authentic.

I was relatively young and new to the internet when Super Mario Brothers Z  (SMBZ) started popping up. I wasn’t fully aware of what sprite animations were, as they weren’t as easy to make or common back then as they are now, so I would see all the action and Sonic and Mario on screen together and I thought that it was an actual game. I wanted to play it so badly on my Gameboy Advance SP. On one trip to a Gamestop, my young self boldly walked up to the lady working the register and asked “Hey, do you have Super Mario Bros Z ?” She gave me this look that said either she knew exactly what I was talking about or didn’t have a single clue at all and just nicely said that they didn’t. I went on to repeat this at several more gaming stores before I realized that it wasn’t a real game, nor did it ever claim to be. It was then that I started looking for games I wanted myself because sometimes just saying a title out loud can make you look like the strangest person around.

What made the SMBZ series so attractive and so entirely different from anything found on YouTube at the time was the animated action. You might think  that since the series is using pre-made assets and models, that there must be some limitations on what can be done. However, with a bit of help from some custom new sprites as well as some fast editing and sound effects, things can get insane . Being able to translate the speed and intensity of a Dragon Ball Z fight is hard enough to copy with regular animation, yet Mark was able to do this with 2 dimensional sprites and flashing lights. And even that pales in comparison to the pure adrenaline of fights concerning the series main antagonist, Mecha-Sonic.

Originally starting off as a mostly side boss in Sonic and Knuckles , Mecha Sonic became a fan favorite thanks to this series. Like any good antagonist, he can easily prove himself as a threat to the heroes while also being able to take the hits himself. This comes across easily in the series most popular episode, Brawl on a Vanishing Island . This 30 minute episode has a variety of characters going up against each other, but the mood quickly turns the second Mecha Sonic arrives and absorbs the power of the Chaos Emeralds. What follows is an absolutely brutal beatdown of another team of antagonists, the Axem Rangers X. The speed, the sound effects, alongside an amazing remix of Sonic and Knuckles’ Doomsday Zone playing in the background, this is a simply amazing bit of animation that can’t really be put into words without it sounding absolutely ridiculous. And much like with Nazo Unleashed, so much of this was done by just one guy.

After episode 8 in 2009, things basically ended on a cliffhanger with the series being presumed over. Haynes had his own life and things to deal with, and something that took up so much time to make could be easily seen as poor use of it. In the years following, many others tried their hand at sprite animations with heavy action scenes with that becoming its very own subgenre on YouTube. Then, in 2016, Mark made a glorious return with the first episode of what was basically a reboot of the series. Fans loved it, amazed to see how far things had come. And then..there was basically nothing else. Originally, Haynes had a Patreon set up so that fans could fund him making this as well as possibly being a way for him to make this his job. It was shut down, most likely due to him directly saying it was going towards the series and Nintendo seeing it as someone else profiting off their IP. With any funding that could go towards rewarding all this time and effort being taken away, as well as Haynes having more important personal things and depression, it is unlikely that we’ll see an update anytime soon. It’s been three years since the first episode went up on YouTube, and while I still hope someday he’ll return, but as someone who knows that forcing yourself to make something others want even if you don’t want to is like, the personal happiness and health of Mark Haynes is so much more important.  He’s already left an amazing legacy on the net, and the stuff he’s given us is already great enough as is.

And now to go from flash animation, to sprite animation, we’re reaching the next logical step. Out of all the series discussed in this part, this one is my absolute favorite. And it is one of the weirdest things out there. Another crossover series featuring the world of Mario and Sonic, alongside a few notable others. One that’s full of action and character, and it’s all animated in PowerPoint (no, I’m not kidding), this is Chocobro Cinemas’ The “Dimension” Saga. Strap in, things are gonna get really, really weird.

The series started in 2007, with Dimension Mix-Up as it followed various characters from Super Mario Bros, Sonic the Hedgehog, Frogger, Invader Zim, and Calvin and Hobbes. That was all 100 percent serious, and to the credit of both this and Super Mario Bros Z, there is a feeling of self-awareness running throughout the whole series. I unironically love this entire series from start to finish, mostly just due to the fact that there’s so much creativity and love being put into something that most people would just brush aside as another cheap fanfiction. When I originally found this back in 2007, it was like the most amazing thing ever. The computer I had at the time took forever to not only load flash animations, but even playing them took like 5 years for just a few seconds. I hadn’t really known what Newgrounds was fully back then either, so Super Mario Bros Z also wasn’t something I watched at the time, and I came across this. An action filled adventure that had characters not only from Sonic and Mario, but also Invader Zim which was still super huge at time, and Calvin and Hobbes?! To a megafan of all those things who would actually spend their time on Fanfiction.net reading stories about this stuff (Yes, even Calvin and Hobbes), this was like the holy grail. Also Frogger was there, so...that was cool?

This story should not work, these characters all being together on screen expecting viewers to care for them all should not work, this idea of using powerpoint back in 2007 to simulate animation of any kind should not work. Yet somehow...it does. Even with the fact that this is clearly just a camera recording a screen at this point, there’s something rather entertaining about it all. And the action isn’t half bad for something made with a tool that clearly was never meant to be used in this way. It can actually be creative with how some fight scenes are done. The whole of episode 6 is able to show off a giant robot boss battle with some pretty decent speed, while episode 8 can trick viewers with its looping backgrounds. The best part of this comes just from watching how not only does the quality of the video improve over time, but so does the writing and the story. Dimension Takeover and Dimension Obliteration are amazing and admittedly addicting watches that have the same level of love and care put into them as the previous two series discussed in this. Giving the fans such high quality action and adventures while also doing a really great job of making all the interactions feel like they’re from their source material. Well, at least as close and one can get when you have a hedgehog talking to an imaginary tiger and a group of cartoon frogs. I can’t say thank you enough times to the people who’ve made all their series, as my love of writing stories based on my own favorite series probably wouldn’t be as strong today. And hey, one can surprisingly do a good job with powerpoint. At least it wasn’t just a slide show.

Part Two: These literally are just slide shows!

Sticking to the topic of Sonic, he seems to be a super popular subject for crossovers. Besides Mario, he and his friends have appeared in both official and nonofficial meetups with all kinds of pop culture favorites. The one series that seems to dominate the realm of Sonic crossovers online is My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic . The series itself has had quite the impressive run of nine years, with its final episodes airing this year. What probably would have been seen as just another cheap product placement by the majority of people if it hadn’t been for the rather large audience of grown up fans that for a time basically ruled the internet. While in the later years the fan base has shrunk as all fandoms do, there are still those that happily enjoy watching cartoon ponies and doing various things related to them online, myself included.  

Now how does a super fast and cocky blue hedgehog that saves the day from an evil egg shaped man and his army of robots have any kind of connection to a cartoon about six colorful and talented ponies as they go through their lives learning about and solving problems with the power of friendship? Well, both are series that have similar characters with Sonic and Rainbow Dash both being blue,fast, and cocky. Both series deal with giant world ending disasters by using powerful gems and the power of teamwork. And both believe in the real power of friendship. So, yeah. There’s bound to be a ton of fan series based on seeing these two worlds meet up. And hoo boy, Youtube sure seems to love hosting a ton of them.

The common theme in all the Sonic/My Little Pony Crossovers in this part is that they’re all going to be slideshows. There might be a few clips from the shows or games, maybe a piece of fanart or two, but 99 percent of the stuff in these videos is just going to be static text. Let’s start with the...highest quality one of the three brought up in this part, Sonic X Equestria by Speedstar Productions . The plot is nothing new. Eggman shows up to wreak havoc and Sonic must team up with the cast of My Little Pony, or Mane Six as they’re called, to help stop him. When I said most of these are just slideshows... I wasn’t kidding. The entire series will go from random screen cap to random promotional images, with text overlaid on the bottom. There is no original voice acting either, with the only voices that occasionally can be heard coming from the clips or sound bytes. There is no promised sense of consistency either, as photos of the characters can be pulled from different seasons, games, comics and shows all together. In this, Sonic is supposed to have his normal modern look but some screenshots are from Sonic Boom which is a show with different designs. Another example of this comes from shots of Twilight Sparkle. This show takes place in the My Little Pony world after Twilight becomes the princess of friendship and gets her own wings. Even shots from the first episode will use photos of her without them. It’s never actually a thing that matters to the show, as it acts like everything is on model, and that we can perfectly see everything that’s going on.

Another thing that this and many others like it seem to have in common is the idea that Sonic is the one doing all the work, while all the ponies just kinda...watch in the background. Sure, Twilight will pitch in with her magic every once in a while, but if Sonic’s taking on Eggman? He’s mostly going in solo. Sure, these ponies have easily taken on things like chaos incarnate, and powerful tyrants with black magic. But a man in a giant robot suit? Too unpredictable . Sure, one could argue that it’s because the mech being used in the fight only has images of Sonic fighting it...but in a later episode , the girls join in a fight that’s entirely animated! I shouldn’t be mad about this, yet I am!

Though..despite the rant, I still find myself enjoying watching this series. I can’t fully explain if it’s ironic or if it’s unironic. Maybe it comes from the fact that everyone still acts in character to their on-screen counter parts, leading to interactions that fans wanted to see. We want to see the ponies talk to Sonic characters, and help take down Eggman. The use of actual pictures from the shows and games helps too, making us help visualize it as if it were an actual episode.  Maybe it comes from the fact that it feels like something I would watch in the early days of Youtube. The kinda low effort yet also decent attempt of trying to make events appear coherent in some way, even if the images shown aren’t the most in continuity. Though, episode 11 is literally the Shadic vs Nazo fight from Nazo Unleashed. Those things aside...this is still kind of a guilty pleasure watch that I’ll binge from time to time.

Sometime last year, I was looking up Nazo Unleashed videos late one night, due to that time bringing out a large sense of nostalgia for days gone. As I was looking, I saw a thumbnail that stuck out to me. Or rather...a title that stuck out to me, as well as a runtime that had my interest set to max.

The Adventures of Sonic in Equestria Nazo Unleashed The Movie HD , by Adam Selvig, is a title that feels like it should be one of those videos that promises an upload of a current movie in HD that only links to scam sites that will give your computer a virus. It isn’t that. This is a slideshow that’s the length of a movie. College lectures aren’t this long. The best way to describe this one is that Sonic and the ponies must come together to defeat Nazo as well Tempest Shadow, a character from the My Little Pony movie. Also, Sonic and Rainbow Dash have a daughter called Sondash, which is literally just art of a child Rainbow Dash. This series is weird. Another strange thing is that a lot of the channels posting Sonic / My Little Pony stuff in series like this...usually have around 1K subs. That’s nothing to any major Youtuber, but the idea that even just one thousand people subscribe to watch this stuff as soon as it comes out..is just mind blowing.

This film is part of a series, one that started all the way back in January of 2018. The playlist for this thing says that the series as of March 4th, 2019...is 103 videos long?! And with seemingly all of them in the 20 minute range...the question becomes, how long has Selvig been working on this thing, and does he have others help him with it? And again...why is it always Sonic that seems to be doing everything around here? Are the ponies just lazy now that an outsider is here?

The odd thing is that there are so many Sonic/My Little Pony crossover videos on Youtube, but when looked into, so many of them are the exact same content. Stills and transparent photos with clear backgrounds with text overlaid. And so many are able to get these creators at least a few hundred subscribers. In a surprisingly deep sea of similar executions, are there any left that stand out above the rest? Good news, there is at least one series that goes in another direction. In more mixed news, well…

This is Harmony and Chaos by Michael Evans. While originally popping up as text on gradient background sometime in 2017, the whole series is now being voiced over by its creator. That’s all this is. Text on a background while one man narrates over it in various voices. And for the most part, there isn’t much there at all in terms of action. Now, I’m only nine episodes in this seemingly sixty plus episode run with multiple seasons series, so I might be wrong. The main focus of this series is romance, and boy is there a lot of it. If there’s a male character from Sonic and a female character from My Little Pony that interact a lot in this thing, there’s a pretty good chance they’ll end up smooching somewhere on down the line. This sounds exactly like what many seem to see fan bases as general as, writing overly long amounts of fan fiction that are also chock to the brim with romance and needless drama. In this series, Rainbow Dash is getting a divorce from her husband who she thought was cheating on her, when really he only made it seem that way so that she wouldn’t have to know that he was dying from a deadly disease. It’s a move right out of the soap opera playbook.

Despite all of this, I find myself coming back to all of these series and watching them in huge chunks. It comes from a sense of odd curiosity on how the story is going to play out.  It also helps that the people behind this stuff seem like just genuinely nice people that want to post their creations online and share it with the world. It’s just that the stuff they make is really weird, not bad, just strange. And even then, it’s not the most strangest thing on the net that’s out there.

Part Three: Big Adventures, Bigger Casts

The best way to start this final part was with an image. An image that perfectly tells someone everything they need to know, as well as absolutely nothing at all. Welcome to Pooh’s Adventures , a seemingly endless number of movies and tv shows that are “edited” to include characters from Winnie the Pooh, My Little Pony, Transformers, Thomas the Tank Engine and so, so many more. I put edited in quotes because really, does this count as editing in any way, shape or form? To give a basic plot outline of just about every single Pooh’s/Thomas’/Insert Character name here’s adventure, large group of characters are inserted into popular movie or show, where they help the main character of said movie or show against the antagonist who is now usually joined by other villains from various forms of media. Rinse and Repeat for every movie ever with vague hints of events from previous adventures running into this one.  Take any movie, and there’s a good chance there’s at least the idea for a Pooh’s Adventures on it. Like for example Winnie The Pooh vs. Jaws , which while not a real movie as of this writing does have a devoted page on the fan wiki . And it seems to promise quite the cast of characters.

It can actually be somewhat hard in trying to find some of these, due to the fact that they’re just full movies with other copyrighted clips put in at random intervals. Those that are still up on Youtube seem to be the ones that use the most obscure of movies as their source . And just like with the Sonic/Mlp stuff, all of these channels seem to have at least a few thousand subscribers thanks to it. Of all the adventures that still remain on Youtube, Winnie the Pooh Goes to Hotel Mario / Pooh’s Adventures of Batman Forever is the one I’m most proud still remains. There is no connection between the two, besides the fact that both Hotel Mario and Batman Forever are both seen as surreal experiences that have very little connections to their source and are enjoyed in a “so bad it’s good” way.

There are still ways to find both older and newer uploads of the various adventures online. Many of the members will just upload their older stuff to Google Drive or Dropbox , and more recently, a lot of uploads are being moved to Pandora.tv, a mostly Korean based website where they can run ads on the video.

The wiki for this fandom is massive, with there being over thirty five thousand articles as of the time of this being written, with new ones being added or updated seemingly every few minutes. Most fantasy wikis can’t reach numbers that high! Though, most of the pages on it are bare-bones with only a single line or two for a ton of characters while others are pages clearly ripped right from other fandom wikis. There’s also ideas for series that are just the title and then nothing else, along with transcripts and posters put next to dozens of dead or empty links. For a site that seems so bloated and full, it’s actually pretty empty and hollow upon closer look.

I wanted to share all of this because so much of this resonates with me in some way, even Pooh’s Adventures , since I’d be lying if I said I haven’t thought up crossovers with insanely large casts that really should have nothing to do with each other.I guess in a way...I saw these all as the things I wanted to make but never knew how to. I’ve always wanted to animate, to tell my stories with these characters that I know and love to as many people as possible, to hear their feedback on all of it. That’s why I got so passionate talking about all certain moments or episodes, it’s all the things I would do! They’re people just like me, and that’s why I wish Mark Haynes the best in his life, why I’ll say the guys who work on the Sonic and My Little Pony  seem like nice people. That’s why I’ll be so amazed by someone having a thousand subs or more. I see myself in these creations and the experiences of their creators. The pains of depression, the joy of seeing how their work has influenced others, the effort and care put into these things. I want to see them succeed and be supported, because that shows me that I can succeed too.  

[kaoarika]

My experiences with pkmn sapphire (so far) are as followed:

- Okay, battery = dry, cannot do much about it atm (unless doing electronics stuff I’m not particularly savvy). I do THINK this was a terrible idea  (not as much as entire game depending on the battery, thanks gsc) and, thankfully, the clock thing was improved with the DS onwards.

Either way, missing opportunity on the Regis pkmn, Mirage Islands, the berries thing, and the tidal waves -so, probably no Snorunt and other tiny stuff-.

That still doesn’t make me feel less annoyed by the game reminding me about it EVERY SINGLE TIME I START UP THE GBA SP.

- The limited pkmn thing. Now this kinda feels nostalgic. I remember reading back in the day the rumors about the Hoenn pkmn dex, about the obvious “uhm, you can’t transfer pkmn from gen i and ii to RS due to technical advances”, etc. And in that upfront, maybe that’s why I wasn’t so angry with the “no national dex pkmn in Unova (only after beating the games)” or the “yeah, you can’t transfer EVERY pkmn available in Galar” controversy.

Say what you want, while I do miss some of my fave pkmn from the first two gens that do not appear in this game (although LG exists, cannot transfer though)... well... yeah...

- Speaking of, kinda a shame that I did arrive to a point where it was possible to transfer pkmn from LG to Sapphire and viceversa... but no link cable and the other GBA we have is in conditions that need repairs. Also... do I miss these simple times where you were forced to trade pkmn through link cable when you didn’t have lots of friends nor acquaintances that played pkmn? :))) Not really.

Curiously enough, a wi-fi thing that was used for both LGFR and Emerald did come to our hands loooots of years after we got Sapphire and LG, but, again... not FR (the game was notoriously absent, although this thing came with a JPN FR box... kinda cute, however, and a piece of my collection, nowadays, lol) and not another SP on hand, yay.

(Maybe that explains why I went nuts with the GTS in both Pearl and SoulSilver... especially around the time Nintendo went and said “yeah, we are... shutting down the WFC”. (Luckily I still can get world trading and wonder trading whenever I get a 3DS pkmn game as soon as I replace my 3DS’ battery)

- Training pkmn for the second gym was absoultely frustrating. Fighting type, I only had Ralts on hand (on lvl 4, nonetheless) and the gym pkmn were already around lvl 14-17. Where else you can grind your party if everywhere are still limited to lvl 10-11 at best...? I don’t remember it was this hard already in the 2nd gym in PEARL, but... 

Either way, it’s a little bit more easier to train for Mauville’s Gym Leader (which is where I am right now). And lots of type variety as well, too. Geez.

- Was the routes’ music this repetitive in both Gen II and Gen IV? I don’t remember :’D

- Definitely not missing when your bag was full of items, either, lmao. Love that DPP improved that, as well.

[thatguysamaniac-blog]

It feels like it's been a lifetime folks, and in the games industry it is, but Pokémon Sword & Pokémon Shield have been out for just under four months and it's time for us to put this review out there. In case you've missed the last ten years of TGAM, we're big pokémon fans so on the one hand we're heavily invested in this ship. On the other hand we're in the guts of this series so we're bringing our big guns to bear in this review. Fuck All That Bullshit It might be poison in the lucky charms or Minamata disease but these games have been particularly surrounded by an especially stinky wall of bullshit this time by the loose collection of flotsam and jetsam that's the pokémon community online and the solids floating on the top of the septic tank that's the wider gaming community online. The recent announcement of the expansion, an astonishing helping of STFU to entitled fans, which by any normal standard would silence would-be whingers has only stirred the steaming pot more. These days it's near impossible to measure a game by it's own merit and not with the bullshit from the 'community' seeping in under the door but we're going to do our best. It's worth our time to point out too that pokémon games are one of those series that it's impossible to 'review' on it's own terms. We're 24 years and hundreds of games into this series now. Is this an accessible game for first time pokémon players? We've got no idea. We couldn't tell you. Almost every part of this game is an evolution or reworking of a previous system and we can't unremember it all to give you that fresh impression.  Pokémon Sword & Pokémon Shield Is Good Games There we go, we're going to say it up front. It's good fucking food bruv. As seasoned gamers and long-term series fans it's a good pokémon game. I think both of us have ended up running up hours into this game in that sort of painful middle age "I don't have time to play games, oh I've run up 200 hours in this game already" kind of way. There's also been a non-stop roll-out of 'new stuff' which inevitably means a review of the game as it was at launch is a significantly different prospect to the game as it is now, especially with the rotating event type stuff, the run-up to the expansion and Pokémon Home's launch. Obviously, we can't retrospectively pretend this stuff doesn't exist so consider this a review of the game ~six months in.  Good stuff. There are some welcome quality of life improving changes to the fundamental ways that pokémon functions, it's a gorgeous looking game especially on the big screen, there are some bangin' tunes and the Wild Area and Raids is a refreshing addition to the formula and folds in longevity in a way that doesn't wear as thin as SOS battles did in Pokémon Sun, Pokémon Moon and the sequels. We've also seen a thick and fast stream of games as a service type content updates already from a steady stream of mystery gifts, dynamax raid events, battle seasons, online competitions and most recently some micro content linked to the expansions coming out. Remember, we're less than four months in. Less Good Stuff. There's something staid about the box system that now sticks out more than ever given the ease of accessing it that these games give you, the loss of the GTS (Global Trade System) system but specifically remote trading of specific pokémon seems like a backwards step and this is the least stable pokémon game there has ever been when connected online.  What's The Story, Braviary? Let's start with the story. If you've even a passing interest in this series of games you'll know that, with rare deviation, the beats of a pokémon game are thus: wake up on your 10th birthday, get given a pokémon by a pokémon professor, meet your rival then journey from gym to gym earning badges to earn the right to challenge the champion to become a pokémon master. Inevitably, it ends with a rookie prepubescent trainer who hadn't even owned a pokémon just tens of hours previously standing over the ashes of the combined strength of an entire region's pokémon trainers, an evil organisation or two and a few characters supposedly 'the most powerful trainer ever known'. Power fantasy? I have no idea what you mean. The credits roll and then the 'story' part is more or less over leading to what players call endgame.  The story in this game is more or less the same. They've slightly tweaked the formula in that a whole army of trainers start together until the top few remain. Gym battles are now staged in stadiums filled with cheering fans (and a way better-than-it-should-be gym battle tune) and the final challenge is a tournament, with what feels like an endless series of interludes, before getting to THE final battle rather than fighting an elite group of trainers.  Whilst on your journey to become the best there's a plot to discover the dark mystery behind the MacGuffin requiring some MacGuffins to unleash the MacGuffins to save the MacGuffins. In line with other mainline series games, there's also a short post-credits sequence of events to go through before considering the linear content of the game consumed. Consumed that it is until the two new regions coming with the expansion.  AAAaaand it's fine as stories in these games go. Plenty of characters to draw porn of but it won't have you in floods of tears with drama or rolling around on the floor with laughter. If you really gun it not stopping to smell the roses, expand your pokédex, raid in the wild area I reckon you can hit the end credits in probably less than ten hours as early forum posts were complaining about. Quality of Life Improvements We've said it before but it's worth re-iterating because the Internet has a famously short memory. A comparative history of the pokémon games make for an interesting way to unpick the design process of these games. Through close study you see how systems have been developed, experimented with and inevitably improved. You can trace the lineage of almost every core system in pokémon games and with rare exception, what we have today is worse than previous games. For example, what started as trading and battling over a Gameboy Cable, then GBA Wireless adapter became, via some weird detours like the PC client Dream World, became a constant ticker tape presence in X and Y and then in Sun and Moon with social stuff through Festival Plaza. Today, elements of all those systems have made their way to the Y-Comm system. More on that later. It's these constant tweaks and improvements which make going back just a few games tough in a "I can't believe we put up with that bullshit" kind of way. Pokémon Sword & Pokémon Shield brings a plethora of quality of life improvements from previous generations. Here are some of the major ones. Vitamins- Finally! Finally! They've removed the cap for vitamins. In previous games, there was a limit of ten vitamins per stat that you could give a pokémon increasing the ev points by ten meaning that unless you were going for a really weird spread you'd need both vitamins and an element of training (or remote training which appears in this game as seminars). You'll still need a pen and paper to make sure you get those spreads exactly but with enough money or BP going from no effort values to a fully EV'd pokémon has become somewhat trivial. That being said, you still can't see the bloody numbers (see below). Using Multiple Items- A trivial change but you can now use multiple items such as rare candies, exp candies, vitamins and EV erasing berries. Previously you'd have to use them one by one. So if you had a level 1 pokémon and 99 rare candies you'd have to give them one by one. You can now do it en masse and the system will cap item usage so if you're looking to berry erase a stat, the maximum value of berries to erase that stat will be the default if you tap down. Tiny change, a world of difference and yes, we're aware that we've been conditioned to see these micro changes as a positive thing where they should have been that way all along. Box System- Following Let's Go's approach to party and pokémon management, you can now access the box system almost anywhere in the game meaning you can switch out your party, equip items, shift eggs around without having to visit a PC at a Pokémon Centre. This is one of the biggest changes for day to day life improvement, however, as we mentioned above we're reaching the design limit with the box system I feel. One the one hand it's great to eliminate the fussy work of heading back to a Pokémon Centre to make changes to the six pokémon on hand or deposit eggs, swap items etc. In the Victory Lap revisiting of older games to make sure that everything had been cleared out to Home, begrudgingly swinging by Pokémon Centres every ten minutes became one of those features we couldn't believe we'd tolerated for so long. However, one the other hand 'box fussing' is something you do AN AWFUL LOT in this game. There's something clunky and fiddly about it that just perpetually, breaks, the, flow, of, the, game. We can't quite think of a better way of doing it but being freed from visiting PCs has really highlighted how staid party management really is. Naming, Shaming and Move Relearning- In previous games, you could change pokémon's nicknames as long as it was one you'd caught in the game and 'relearn' moves which the pokémon learns through evolution but had forgotten by visiting specific characters and in the case of move relearning, handing over an item per move change. THANKFULLY, move relearning can now be done for free at every Pokémon Centre and at the same place you can even change the name of (most) pokémon acquired from other games, albeit just once. We're glad for the chance to finally change the names of some of those pokémon we picked up in trades called BigBallMan, Pickle Rick etc. Pokédex- The pokédex is one of those standard features in every game that is tweaked from game to game and some of those tweaks have been for the better, some for the worse. Overall, it's fine here although a lot of the searching and filtering tools available in previous games have been removed (interestingly, the Pokémon HOME 'dex' in the app has a fuller complement, the one on the Switch's Pokémon HOME kinda sucks). It does introduce a neat little feature whilst filling out the dex for the first time and alerting you to the location of pokémon not yet caught which are available in the game with the current dynamic weather system in the Wild Area. Unfortunately, this feature sort of becomes moot once you've caught them all. Again, thankfully, the pokédex has a persistent memory meaning you'll land back on the entry you were previously on after you close it. The Battle Tower Is Within Reach Of Mere Mortals- For the completionists among you, beating the Battle Tower (and it's various iterations) is one of the toughest challenges in the mainline pokémon games. In recent games to beat the battle tower, you'd need to beat twenty battles of single battle for example, to unlock super single battle. To beat that you'd need to win 100 wins without losing a single round against increasingly difficult opponents. Lose battle 7, 10 or 98 and it's back to battle 1 all over again. We're ashamed to admit that we've never '100%' any pokémon game if you add beating the Battle Tower as a requirement for completion. A number of the previous games rewarded this feat with updating the trainer card and commemorative ribbons for the pokémon used to beat the final battle, a badge of honour for the games' most difficult challenge. Here, it's much much easier. There's a single and double battle challenge that works on a rank system which is far less brutal. Get to Master Ball rank and keep battling until the champion pops up again, beat them for ribbons for your pokémon. The true battling accomplishment in this game has been shifted to online battles, the Master Rank ribbon is awarded for beating another player in the Master tier in ranked battles which is no easy feat. Double Day Care- Double day care is back which means you can have two sets of bonking 'mon on the go at all times. Much appreciated for the background breeding programmes although having to physically fly to each to pick up eggs is a chore. You'll Never Need For Money and EXP Again- In previous games, moving from one game to the newest one meant leaving behind a mountain of items, berries, rare candies and a huge pile of money. Fortunately, the sting is taken out of earning money and experience here. There's a tonne of high priced items laying about in the Wild Area that reappear every day, raiding throws experience candy and sellable items at you and after beating the game, pokémon in the Wild Area appear at level 60 meaning you can rapidly rake in that exp. Compared to previous games, this game is very generous with the handouts but it's still easy to get back to nothing by buying vitamins or if you're one of those people, buying every item of clothing in the game. It's much appreciated particularly the exp side of things as it all but trivialises levelling up EV and IV trained pokémon, if you can get over the hoarding mentality that is. Is it too much quality of life? Arguably the lack of the long-winded effort and RNG breeding somewhat cheapens the game. Where you could spend days on breeding, training, and levelling, its now almost automatic, by next gen we will just have rental pokémon at lvl 100 with all moves available to them. Don't get me wrong I welcome not having to grind it out again, especially since I need to revise all my mons. But making it this easy is detracting something, removing the mojo... Yes I hated levelling up in earlier games for instance having tail whip as a move, but there were a few tough decisions to be made to prevent you dying as you went on your adventure finding yourself finding yourself using your last potion, fraught with the crippling fear of wondering when you last saved was. The game could be considered too easy, and in essence a frail kinder egg toy version of what it once was, but now backed with pay as you go add-ons and expansion packs to keep the ADHD generation excited for a hot minute. What's New? So far, so Stockholm syndrome, here's a breakdown about some of the things which are new to pokémon games in Pokémon Sword & Pokémon Shield. League Cards- They've been working up to something like this in previous games but league cards are probably the best we've had it to show off character customisation. From the Pokémon Centre PC you can pick a background, cover, effects and pose your avatar which along with your key game stats gets printed off as your league card. You can then share this with other players and opt to share and receive when interacting with other players through battling and trading. Some backgrounds and effects are unlocked through various gameplay challenges and most players seem to put at least a little bit of effort into these glorified showing off stamps. PokeJobs- As with a plethora of games nowadays, pokémon has an idle mode, a stepchild of the Poke-Pelago, allowing you to send 'mon away to improve EV stats or get XP/money. A welcome addition for background training, or batch training of a Super Soldier army but ultimately useless unless you are really strapped for cash. Camping- Camping is this game's Pokémon Amie, it gives you a space to 'play' with your party pokémon, boosting their friendliness and exp. You can also barely interact with other players when camping in the Wild Area and connected online but interaction is limited and it can be difficult to work with the other player when cooking, another feature of camping. Using berries and food ingredients found and bought up to four players can make a curry the effects of which vary depending on the combination of ingredients and how well a curry making minigame is executed. Infamously, there is a Currydex and 151 of the fuckers to make including curries only possible to make with version exclusive ingredients and incredibly rare ingredients randomly sold by two merchants in the wild area (my kingdom for 7 eggs!). The pay off for cooking 'em all are nowhere near worth the grind, various different shaped balls to throw at your pokémon when playing in the camp and gold cutlery for getting them all. I won't lie, I'm usually a sucker for these interaction modes but the interactibility here is limited. Just throw in a proper photo mode already. Mints- Bit by bit, we're almost getting all the tools we ideally need to tweak pokémon caught, hatched or traded so that you can work with 'less than perfect' to bring them up to almost perfect. In previous games we got hyper training and ability capsules allowing the artificial manipulation of individual values and abilities respectively. This game introduces mints, which are scarce enough to require some grinding in the battle tower or pure luck, which allow you to artificially change the nature of a pokémon. Nature effects underlying strengths and weaknesses in stats so being able to change them artificially is a god-send for those random shiny encounters and difficult to breed pokémon which are otherwise perfect. Our only hope is that a nature changed with mints is a truly permanent change and won't vanish in future games, okay we admit it, we're still butthurt about the leaf crown. The Wild Area- One of the most significant areas which is different to all other pokémon games is the Wild Area, a huge area that takes up the middle of the map. Superficially, it is similar to the normal routes in pokémon games, just on the large size. It's divided up into different biomes, with lakes, ponds, pools, desert, forest, a spooky area and a few islets and patches of long grass and fishing spots throughout. This fairly open area works differently in that when connected online you'll sort of see other connected players dashing about (but it seems impossible to 'meet up' with players you know are connected). There are wandering pokémon in the long grass, hidden pokémon in the long grass that rustle with an exclamation mark when you're nearby as well as fixed spawned pokémon which change with the weather system which changes over every 24 hours and occasionally on special days the weather is the same across the map. There are berry trees to harvest daily and a smattering of shiny 'hidden items' to pick up which also refresh. Spread across the Wild Area are over a hundred raid dens too (see below). We stalled our story progress for tens of hours just exploring this area, filling the dex, collecting items and raiding and it's where you'll likely spend most of end game. It's big and diverse enough that you'll end up fast travelling from one side to the other and soon you build up a robust mental map of where the dens, fixed spawns and items show up. Dynamax Raids - Recent games have brought a gimmick to battling to shake up the meta game, however, it appears these are being treated as ephemeral mechanics rather than permanent additions to the fundamentals of pokémon. X and Y introduced mega evolution and the Sun and Moon series brought Z-crystals and moves to the table. Both are, for the time being, gone here and dynamaxing, max raiding and gigantamax pokémon are this game's gimmick. Dynamaxing is a mechanic where in set circumstances, at raid dens in the Wild Area, in gym battles through the story and in PvP battles one of your pokémon grows to a huge size for three turns. Their hit points are doubled and their moves are changed into powerful attacks, with added effects sort of like Z-moves. A limited number of pokémon also have gigantamax forms which means that when they dynamax, they change appearance and have access to a pokémon specific G-Max move. This major new mechanic is at the heart of 'raiding' in the Wild Area at raid dens. Raid dens look like little rock donuts which have a beam of light reaching into the sky if there's a pokémon to fight, the beam appears different if there's a rare spawn which may have a hidden ability or a gigantamax pokémon inside. These dens seem to pop up randomly but you can also farm specific dens with a wishing piece item. Up to four players team up to fight a dynamaxed or rarer, gigantamaxed pokémon, empty spots or offline play are filled with some infamously not great NPCs. The player team loses if ten turns pass or if four of their pokémon are KO'd before then. Only one of the four players can dynamax and this is managed by dynamax energy. The host of the raid can dynamax straight away but if they don't their dynamax energy depletes and other players in order get the opportunity to dynamax. Successfully beating the opponent pokémon who will have layers of shielding depending on their star rating, will reward the team with items and, aside from special event raids, the opportunity to catch the pokémon in the den. Depending on their star rating and the colour of the beam they'll have a higher chance of having perfect IV stats as well as their hidden ability. Dynamaxing works slightly different in the battle tower and in PvP and has shaken up the competitive meta game considerably, there's no dynamax energy meter instead each player has the opportunity to dynamax one of their pokémon during the fight. Dynamaxed pokémon become immune to some attack effects and their hold items work differently. In this player's opinion, dynamax, max raiding and gigantamax is a great addition to the game for a number of reasons. It finally gives players a reason and method to play together online beyond battling against each other, trading or 'poking each other' (see online efforts of previous games) and it adds an element of strategy when teaming up to take on raids. Aside from events like the movie-tie in Mewtwo raids, most, if you've made a sensible pokémon selection are achievable, plus players have a shot at catching version exclusives by teaming up with a host from a different game. Catch rates for defeated pokémon are tweaked somewhat so you still get that feeling of waiting for the poké ball to pop when fighting a rarer spawned pokémon in someone else's raid. As mentioned above, from the first few official regional and international events, dynamaxing is almost the perfect counter to the ingrained problem of priority moves and switching dominating the 'professional' meta game. It also makes matches a tad more watchable in my opinion. Will dynamax eventually be rotated out a la mega evolution and Z-crystals? It's difficult to believe they will be for what they currently bring to the game in terms of strategy and the sort-of online play that pokémon has always struggled to capitalise on. Y-Comm- The evolution of what used to be 'all that menu bullshit on the bottom screen', the Y-Comm is the rolling notification system when connected online the descendent of the C-gear and X/Y's online 'O Power' and scroll of online player screens. Through the Y-Comm players can find other players to battle, trade with or share a league card as well as advertise and sign up to raids. It doesn't work especially smoothly. It's obvious that compromises have been made to try to speed up the task of connecting online, finding other players and linking up with them as well as somehow presenting players with a manageable flow of notifications. Notifications aren't strictly live as we imagine it would be a never ending scroll of notifications but far too often you're too late to join raids and disconnects are a frequent occurrence too. It doesn't help either that trying to hook up with players who have already launched a raid or cancel a trade delivers what feels like an error message rather than a 'you were too late message'. Annoyingly, the Y-Comm tab is ever present on the screen in the Wild Area ruining screenshots of those beautiful vistas. Brilliant Aura- Over the years we've had tens of different systems for special pokémon in the wild from rustling grass, the DexNav, horde battles and SOS battles. Sword and shield introduces brilliant aura pokémon reminiscent of Let's Go's supersized and tiny sized pokémon. These pokémon randomly spawn but are more likely to pop up depending on how many pokémon of that species you've battled and caught. They have a higher chance of having perfect IVs in three or four(?) or their stats as well as having an egg move which takes the sting a little bit our of breeding for egg moves, at least initially. What's Lost and Lacking? It's not all positive additions to the game, some things have been stripped back for unknown reasons and there are some systems which remain nigglesome.  GTS- The GTS or the Global Trade System is the system which players used to be able to use to trade pokémon with other players online remotely. You have a spare Torchic, you want a Bellsprout, either stick the Torchic on the GTS with a Bellsprout ask and wait until someone trades with you or hop onto the GTS to see which Bellsprout are on offer and whether you can complete the trade. By Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon, unless you were looking for those really rare or event only pokémon, you were almost guaranteed to get what you were after on the deposit side. On the ask side, players are fucking ridiculous but occasionally you could find what you needed. The GTS has been dropped from Sword and Shield, most likely because it's a key feature of Pokémon HOME, premium payed up players can deposit up to three pokémon at a time. But it does mean that there's no sensible way to trade pokémon in Sword and Shield with random other players. You can link up with players on the Y-Comm but it's impossible to communicate with them what you want and what they need. With friend codes you can connect to targeted players which has made some of the dex filling possible but the lack of a GTS in HOME is really felt. A shame. Berries?- Like other features in this list, we've seen a number of approaches to how berries are handled in the game. From naturally replenishing over time trees, to planting, watering and fertilising mechanics, to Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon's pokémon pelago berry growing island. The USUM solution worked the best out of all of these systems, removing the fussy requirement of waiting for days on end or losing berry strains by forgetting to harvest. In Sword and Shield, in addition to being rewards from raid battles, berries grow in the Wild Area and are collected via a 'tree rustling' minigame. Rustle the tree too many times and a wild pokémon will attack, leaving pesky wild pokémon to take some or all of the berries you rustled up. Point being, aside from putting effort into grinding berry trees continuously, it's very difficult to gather a specific berry that you need and sadly impossible to reproduce rarer berries that you have in your inventory. We've got into the habit of doing a daily circuit to generally up the stock but there are a few berries which remain scarce, which has an impact on battle usage, there are certain combos needed for cooking up high quality curries and of course, berry erasing EV points. We had a better system in USUM, it seems unfortunate to take a step back. Let Us See The Numbers I've whinged extensively about this before but I still have a complaint about the underlying numbers in pokémon. Despite being given tools to change natures, individual values, help with investing effort values and erasing them, you still can't see the specific numbers you've invested in any particular pokémon. Individual values are viewable on a spectrum of categories (it's easy to just aim for best) and EV points are only viewable on a hexagonal graph. We still need to refer to resources on the web worked out by the wider pokémon community in order to get this stuff straight and for nuanced builds which aren't just a straight dump of EVs into one or two stats you still need pen and paper to make sure you've not mucked up by a point or two here and there. Yes, we're far from the days when the IV checker man would give you vague hints about how good an individual pokémon's stats were but just give us the tools to do this with precision and perhaps give all players a chance at understanding the mechanics behind it all without doing a deep dive on external websites. So there we have it, the review that serves nobody. Fans will already have the game (remember the boycott? anyone?) and I'm not sure the above will convince anyone who doesn't already speak pokémon but that's our review. SORT OUT THIS WEAK ENDING DO NOT LET IT GO OUT LIKE THIS.

http://www.thatguys.co.uk/2020/03/the-big-one-pokemon-sword-pokemon.html