#and the pokemon choices are all RNG

[aegagrusscholarship]

pokemon be upon ye… 2

this does not properly show how tiny patrat are compared to the binary sword due to the perspective. seriously it’s hilarious

[prismit]

<- their ass has NOT been shiny hunting mew (23 days remain)

[lucabyte]

what would your ocs be as pokemon? or if you've already done that what would they be as bugsnax??

Oh I have never been asked this publicly before (for I have not been asked... anything publicly before this week LOL) but I don't know if you're prepared for how much I have thought about my ocs as pokemon or how much effort I am currently putting in to... Well. You'll see.

So. I have Thoughts.

Here are my thoughts (names quickly added for this to be understandable by anyone but me. But I've had this image made for quite some time)

(I love that regular wingull appears on here twice. It was kind of the only choice for both of them LOL.)

(also I like how this shows you who my brain considers In A Group with each other... hee hee)

So this is like.. The whole cast of MYMK lmao. Even down to background characters. These are like... PMD style pokemon assignments. I tried to balance "literally looks like them" with "has the right vibes, thematically". So you can see a couple thematic pairs of pokemon like the cherrims, meowstics and such. Then other fun picks like Charizard for Hainu, since he's a, well, hypebeast more than he is a person. Then, Markus and MacGuffin get Silvally and Type: Null for (wink) reasons.... And Miao is Marowak because don't even worry about it. Lupus is Lycanroc-Dusk because funny doggy shounen protagonist :)

Also there are ABSOLUTELY pokemon that fit Tabitha better than Persian does but I've been saying hes one of those since 2015 and I'm attatched to it now.....

The reason I went ahead and planned these out and finalised these recently though.... Is because I also assigned them all ideal ribbons/marks/pokeballs and am going to hunt them all! Right now I'm prioritising getting ones where the ribbons/balls necessitate getting them from gens 4-7, but they're all nearly done and are sitting in ultramoon while I grab the royal master ribbon for a few!

(Obviously I've named pokemon after OCs before but these will be The Definitive Guys... Until next gen inevitably introduces the perfect guy for someone lol. C'est la vie!)

I've got a couple more already in swsh and scvi (recently I caught Lazulite in swsh! Go Raid RNG!) but this is the big first step. As for how many other steps there are....

Don't.

Don't even worry about it.

Anyway! Most of the main characters have fully assigned "if they were a pokemon trainer" Rosters too with some lore. (Chrome does contests, All of Tabitha's pokemon have been gifted to him, Lupus has insane shiny luck, Ali Will Summon Giratina....)

Also! The Alighieri triplets map perfectly onto the shiny meowths! They were the first three I went out of my way to hunt back when I saw shiny G-Meowth and realised!!! Pink Yellow Blue!!! My little guys!!

And lastly the thing you almost certainly weren't asking was "what would your OCs look like if they were fakemon, but I also have that for, you guessed it, Chrome, Tabitha and Ali.

Now... As for bugsnax. I have not played bugsnax but I DO have a resident bugsnax fan... So I asked him out of curiosity and they Extremely Delivered. So, Courtesy of @thebrightesteyes....

(me, going on the wiki for the first time: WHAT DO YOU MEAN THERE ARE 112 BUGSNAX I THOUGHT THERE WERE LIKE. 20)

these things are cute i should play this game. i hear there's divorce.

Anyway I've been trying to rotate a PMD AU in my brain for some time now (purrgatorio lends itself well to it, obviously...) I wonder what I'd make the antagonist...

Also, of note. Ali (and their siblings) does actually have a canon favourite pokemon and opinion on pokemon because they're from a real-world setting. Thing is they are like, not a gamer. So...

Ali likes Dusknoir and Seviper because they saw them on trading cards as a kid and likes Hoopa Unbound because Ari showed them on pokemon go knowing they'd like the design. If they gamed though they'd LOVE Giratina but Hoopa would probably stay top spot.

Ari likes Raichu, Lurantis and Toucannon. (Gamer)

Avi likes Clefairy, Meloetta and Brionne. (The kind of person to seek out fanart and gifsets online to reblog)

[kafus]

earlier i posted about getting the gold print in the soulsilver battle tower with a furret team and i'm finally getting around to explaining the team some cause i think it's really neat

this is the team in some more detail! for reference, i use the PC markings to designate which IVs are perfect in HP/ATK/DEF/SPA/SPD/SPE order. this was really helpful while doing the breeding process... all three of these guys were bred manually in gen 4 without the use of RNG manipulation. i mention this because it's a known fact about me that i love RNG manip but i did it the long way this time. oh and trick on furret, nasty plot on mismagius, and curse on umbreon are all egg moves. as you can imagine this took forever because gen 4's breeding mechanics are wack. getting anything more than 3 perfect IVs is pretty much a lottery crapshoot, the fourth perfect IV on mismagius was insanely lucky. but ANYWAY

i made this team because i really like furret but it's known to be a pretty weak pokemon. it has the normal type curse of a wide movepool but not enough stats to support it, and it doesn't even have a particularly useful ability or anything. i thought it would be really funny if i made it work despite that, and i saw the way: furret gets trick!!

trick swaps the user's held item with the opponent's, so in this case furret gives the opponent a choice scarf and it receives whatever the opponent is holding. "trick scarf" strategies have been used in pokemon for a long time, since it locks the opponent into using the same move over and over unless they switch - and that's the important part. "unless they switch". see gen 4's AI has a weird quirk - the opponent will never switch out if they have a choice scarf tricked onto them, it just doesn't seem to register what's happening. this issue with the battle logic was fixed in gen 5, and choice scarf doesn't exist in gen 3. (choice band DOES exist in gen 3, but giving your opponent a choice band is a lot more dangerous. also, choice scarf has the added benefit of letting your trick user more easily outspeed the opponent to use trick first, locking them into whatever they pressed that turn)

TLDR; gen 4 is pretty much the sole place furret would ever be able to fill this trick scarf role effectively, and i wanted to capitalize on it. because it would be funny. it's main other two moves are substitute and baton pass because the hope is that the scarf locks the opponent into a status afflicting move, a stat boosting move, etc, pretty much anything that doesn't deal damage, causing furret to be able to set up substitute completely for free and then baton pass that substitute over to the next pokemon. knock off is to give furret a little more utility (coming back in later in the battle to knock off an item can be useful) and also just a damage option - like what if the opponent is on their last pokemon and it's on 1 HP from a focus sash and all i have left is furret, lmao. that sort of thing.

while breeding furret i made sure that its HP, one of its defensive stats (ended up being special defense), and speed were perfect. more HP = more substitute health for the incoming pokemon it's baton passed to, more bulk = furret can last a little longer even if the opponent is locked into a damaging move, and speed...

well the fastest pokemon in the battle tower that isn't already holding a choice item is a specific electrode set - it reaches a speed stat of 211. i did calculations and determined that with a perfect speed IV and jolly nature, furret would only need exactly 156 speed EVs to outspeed that electrode with choice scarf, effectively letting it trick scarf everything in the tower without fail, barring opponents getting lucky with quick claw/brightpowder/lax incense. that gave me a lot more room to dump a bunch of EVs into HP and defense, rounding off the furret well. she has 244 HP EVs instead of the max 252 because having an odd HP value (191 in this case) allows furret to use substitute four times from max HP, while 252 would push her HP stat to 192, only allowing the use of substitute three times. the rest of the EVs are dumped into defense for a bit of extra bulk (108 defense EVs to be precise)

the other two pokemon are more straightforward. i needed pokemon that could take advantage of the trick scarf strategy and mismagius and umbreon ended up being really appealing options. first off, they can both stack stats behind a substitute if the opponent is locked into a status move - mismagius can freely spam nasty plot three times to max out its special attack and umbreon can freely spam curse to max out its attack/defense and minimize its speed.

as for specifics, mismagius is pretty frail so the rest of his movepool is oriented around type coverage, and both his special attack and speed are maxed for maximum fast damage. life orb is added for even more damage, and to let mismagius still get off a powerful hit if in a situation where he can't use nasty plot. (it's worth mentioning i put the extra 4 EV points into special defense and not HP to once again keep the HP an odd number, allowing for one more hypothetical use of life orb.) mismagius also has a whopping three immunities - normal, fighting, and ground moves (because of levitate) all don't affect mismagius, which means if furret locks the opponent into any of those three move types, mismagius can STILL set up for free, although maybe not behind a substitute. (furret even baits fighting moves because it's a normal type! lmao)

umbreon on the other hand is incredibly bulky in the EV department and has the ability to toxic stall with protect and its defense boosts from curse + leftovers recovery - i needed a bulky pokemon to round out the team because furret and mismagius are both frail. i wanted to toss more EVs into special defense, but physical defense before curse boosting just ended up being too important of a consideration due to extremely powerful threats like choice band aerodactyl running around, so he has 244 HP EVs, 220 defense EVs, and 44 special defense EVs, with an impish nature. payback was the chosen damaging option because it doubles from 50 base power to 100 base power when umbreon goes last, and uh... well with all those curse boosts umbreon is pretty much always going to underspeed lol. similar to mismagius he also has a pretty nice immunity to take advantage of, psychic!

oh and on top of all of that, mismagius is weak to dark and ghost moves, both of which umbreon resist... and umbreon is weak to bug and fighting moves, which mismagius resists and is immune to respectively! so they really complement each other.

anyway this team isn't perfect but that's kind of not the point, you can only do so much with furret lol. the main issue is when the opponent leads with an extremely strong attacker, such as a muscle band or wise glasses pokemon with a lot of coverage - this team really relies on being gifted time to set up to work, and since i lead with furret there are occasional games where furret can't do a whole lot before going down, and then it's like a 2v3. umbreon's bulk is handy for these situations but it can still result in some close calls.

but yeah i just wanted to write this out because i put a lot of thought into this team and it would pain me if no one knew how much i thought about it LOL. hope someone got something out of reading this SDFKFSDK

you can view the pokepaste of the team here!!

[teecupangel]

If we're gonna keep putting Desmond in as The Isekai Protagonist then we should whole hog and add in the iconic System or Gamer System 'gift' so many other Isekai/Tensei Protags seem to get like it's the New Age Syphilis.

But with my own little twist I once proposed when I was more into KHR (Katekyo Hitman Reborn!) fandom though it never really caught on. Desmond's Gamer System functions like some other games instead of the usual adventure RPG. Maybe its one, maybe its some, maybe its all of them- either way, it's certainly not something like Pokemon or the Final Fantasy series.

Instead, it's like an idle game, a match 3, a rhythm game, or a merge game. Hell, the one time he got a bingo game; he won Mega Bingo, almost got brained by the giant chest full of gold and jewels, and then it never appeared before him again.

He did like the idle cat games though. (The cats were very cute. A bit hard to explain all the cats though.)

“New Age Syphilis” lollol. Yeah, let’s give Desmond the geek-syphilis. XD

Okay, okay, okay.

If we’re going for other genres, my first thought is the scourged of the land, the anti-christ of the modern gaming world:

Loot-boxes/Gacha-mechanics

And it’s the worst kind. The kind that does not give pity ‘roll’ or have the ‘if you roll 300 times, you can pick one of these choices because goddamn your rng sucks wtf???’.

And that’s not even the genre, no, no, no.

That’s the “REWARD”.

Even if Desmond clears something via idle game, match 3, etc, he still has to do a gacha roll to get his reward.

And, to make it more annoying for him, the world he is in right now, everything has different game mechanics and it’s a whiplash at times. Sometimes, it feels more like minigames which is fine. The idle cat game is really just Desmond relaxing for the day and playing with cats.

But then, there are instances where Desmond gets a headache because…

Car chase? Boom! Racing game controls and gameplay!

About to assassinate someone? QTEs! QTEs everywhere!

Desmond gets his own land? He suddenly has game notifications and tutorials for town-building mechanics.

There’s supposed to be some kind of monster infestations? Welp. Desmond, your town-building mechanics just got pushed for tower-defense mechanics. Oh, and the shit you can build? You guessed it! GACHA ROLLS!

Want to fuck with Desmond even more?

The tutorials are just pages and pages of what he can do like someone from Koei-Tecmo made the damn thing.

You know what would be funny?

If Desmond realizes that some of the rewards he gets from the gacha rolls are his ancestors, they’re the highest USSR/6Stars reward with a probability of 3%. Goodbye slacker life, it’s time for Desmond to grind for those Isu shards just to get some sweet, sweet rolls.

(Nobody tell him that there are also Holiday alts that have a possibility of 1%)

……………………

It would be funny (in the worst possible way) if Desmond gets a final notification just when he has a very cozy life in this world and it’s:

“Thank you for playing [REDACTED]. Due to lack of interest, [REDACTED] will be ending its live-services at exactly 180 days. All data will be deleted and there are no plans to create backups. Thank you for understanding.”

And now the final arc of Desmond’s story in this world begins:

Desmond needs to find a way to create a private server from inside the game. XD

[flowergirlmiwa]

hey friends i've fully completed both pokemon stadium games released in the west (R1 and R2), so in honor of pokemon stadium coming to switch, here's some advice!

don't bother! like literally don't play it! lol

i have a few reasons to say this

you must only use rentals in this version of the game since you can't import pokemon. already we've basically lost the entire fucking point of pokemon stadium, but anyway rentals only is just not that fun! either you look up the best teams to use and then the entire game is dice rolls, or you come up with your own team and have even more dice rolls. my point is that either way you're both restricted by being forced to use RNG-heavy moves with low accuracy and shoved into situations where the rental pokemon are intentionally underpowered

the RNG is literally rigged. this has been proven various times on stream, the opponent decides what it will do after you do so it can always react to your choice of attack or move. this is how it always worked in gen 1 but it's really annoying in pokemon stadium because

all the battles are so slow! so goddamn slow! no way to turn off move animations you just have to deal with these extremely slow battles the entire game! so if you lose in the final battle to some complete nonsense RNG then get fucked moron you just lost two hours of your life for nothing, actually nothing

they LOVE putting moves like confuse ray and thunder wave on your opponent's pokemon so the RNG can fuck you over even harder. again you will lose several hours of your life, probably multiple times, to being parahaxed 5 turns in a row. if you play this game at least know your time IS being wasted and you WILL waste your time playing it

pokemon stadium games were very much at their best when they're used as companion games to your gen 1 and 2 games. quick & easy pc and item management, convenient trading, seeing your pokemons in 3d and preparing your own personally designed team to tackle the game's (kinda bullshit) challenges. all of that is just completely lost in this version. you're basically roleplaying me as a 5 year old when i didn't have a transfer pak

in summary, the stadium games are amazing... but as companion games NOT as standalone experiences where you play using rentals. i genuinely would recommend... you just don't bother! just don't play it! it's a waste of time. thank you for reading

[pokemonratingblog]

My experience (& review of) Pokemon Crystal

As part of the entire gimmick of this page, I am replaying and ranking the pokemon games in order.

Due to my experience with pokemon mystery dungeon and also adversity to the other 2 choices, I went for the only reasonable option of Totodile. The naming scheme is pizza ingredients this time, so I named it "Pepperoni". I then did the Mr. Pokemon stuff and immediately caught a zubat, naming it "Sausage".

After some grinding I ended up in Violet City. Because of this, I trespassed into Bellsprout Tower. Zubat in hand, I sucked off a whole lot of bellsprout. Alas, I didn't have a big enough PP to suck them all off, so I had to go back to the pokemon center numerous times.

After successfully sucking off all of the bellsprout in the building, I decided to grind my zubat to lvl 12 (when it learns a move that isnt leech life) and challenge Falkner's gym. In the process of getting my zubat to a reasonable level, I also got my totodile to lvl 13, when it learns water gun. And let's just say… I didn't realize his ace was lvl 9. I won't blame the game for this because it was entirely my fault for not looking at the gym leader's levels. It was an easy win.

After that, I did the ruins of alph puzzle, saw some cool unown, and ended up back in violet city. I went through the cave, caught a geodude (who i named cheese), did the team fodder slowpoke quest, and entered the gym. Bugsy is really no different from a fodder trainer so I swept him with my geodude. Silver used a mix of good flinch rng and an unusually tanky lvl 14 zubat to give me some trouble so I ended up losing, but I won on the 2nd try.

Afterwards, I ended up in the ibex forest. which has lvl 5 pokemon. I'm once again starting to see why I hate gen 2 so much. I found a level 5 oddish and I'm willing to bring back the time honored tradition of having an oddish that knows cut. This time I'll actually use it though because this game probably won't be as easy as red and blue. I named it pineapple.

I reached goldenrod city. the home of whitney's infamous miltank that really isnt even that difficult. I went to route 35 to grind up my team to lvl 19/20. It was here my totodile evolved into croconaw. As for the whitney fight? As I said earlier, She was pretty easy. It's questionable how she has a reputation for being so difficult when all you need is anything that resists rollout/stomp (eg. any rock type) to win. I spent quite a bit wandering around aimlessly all confused before I realized I needed to talk to her again to get the badge because she's too busy crying about it. Amazing.

After obtaining the squirt bottle, I headed to route 26 to beat the shit out of a tree. I wanted to catch it but the geodude I have is already a rock type and I don't need two rock types.

I ended up in ecruteak city, one gym leader until the game truly opens up into the worst nonlinear experience of all time. I beat all 5 kimono girls because geodude is comically overpowered and shouldnt get magnitude as early as she does. Before fighting Morty, I decided to grind my team to around lvl 22-23. Why? because zubat evolves into golbat at that level and my zubat has bite to deal super effective damage. Though Morty's team consists of exclusively poison types and gen 2 was before the era of levitate, so i could probably sweep with geodude, I want to have a bit of fun with this gym.

I enter the burnt down tower in ecruteak and face my rival, silver, who I've affectionately named "Fuckwit". It was about the furthest you could get from a difficult fight because I have a golbat and he has a team that's very weak to golbat. The magnemite isnt an issue so long as I remember that I have a ground type. I then proceeded to fall and break both of my legs on the way down. I also met some cool dogs.

I enter morty's gym. It seems that he was taking notes from gen 1's gym leaders because he was a disgustingly easy fight. Literal clean sweep with golbat. Horrible gym leader. And to think that this guy is the 4th gym leader? that this guy is the halfway point for the Johto region? shameful.

Before leaving ecruteak, I got my surf HM and taught it to my croconaw for a powerful stab move (and the ability to reach the 5th gym leader, RNG god Chuck. After reaching olivine, I healed my pokemon, checked out the sick pokemon lighthouse (where my oddish evolved into gloom and geodude into graveler), and then once again began a voyage, setting sail to Chuck's RNG island for medicine and also the privilege of fighting a guy who spams hypnosis. I then had to go back to olivine city because the HMs are hidden in random ass spots in Johto. After that, I cleanly swept Chuck with my golbat, not taking a single hit of damage. This is because he did not have good rng. This gym sucked.

After my beautiful encounter with the divine goddess of luck, I fed the sick ampharos an unknown concoction and fought jasmine. Her ace was actually hard to beat. Certainly a hard fight, which is a pleasant surprise for a game as easy as this. I ended up losing the first try after her ace oneshot the only pokemon I had that was capable of taking care of a magnemite. Some lucky crit RNG made the 2nd try a breeze though.

I then proceeded to enter Mt. Mortar, AKA random encounter hell. In random encounter hell, my Golbat finally evolved into a Crobat, marking the first time i've ever used crobat in a pokemon game.

Afterwards, I entered Mahogany Town, home of the worst gym leader in Johto. A gym leader who's highest level pokemon is 4 levels lower than the previous gym leader's highest level pokemon. On my way to the lake of rage, I encountered Entei, who broke out of my balls and fled. Unfortunate but I probably wouldn't have used it anyways.

I then proceeded to the lake of rage with one goal in mind: kill the red gyarados :3. In fulfilling this goal, I have killed the red gyarados. I already have croconaw I don't need another physical water type with good all around stats. After meeting with lance, I went to the team fodder emporium to dispose of more lvl 16 zubats and grimers 6 badges into the game. Truly wonderful game design. This is actually where I dropped HGSS at when I first played it. Every time you pass a statue you have to fight 2-3 rocket grunts, each of which having about half a team of pokemon who are way lower level than they should be. Had it not been for god's gift of emulator speedup this game would be completely fucking unplayable. As much as I love lance this is easily the worst section of the game so far.

After going through team fodder hell, I was finally able to challenge the easiest gym in the game. My team has a poor matchup to ice though, with 3/4ths of them being weak to ice. This gym was actually decently difficult for me because of my team's poor matchup, but it still only took me 1 try. After the gym, my croconaw evolved into a feraligatr.

After this, I went to the ice cave. My goal? to catch a jynx. I want an ice type and I want a psychic type and I haven't used jynx before. Alas, it was nighttime so I got a sneasel instead. I don't mind using a sneasel, but the issue is that ice and dark are both special types. and sneasel has pitiful special attack. so I had to pass on both the jynx and sneasel. I still wanted a 5th team member, But I wasnt sure what I wanted.

It was at this point I realized I do not have the HM for fly. So I had to backtrack all the way to cianwood for the HM so I could teach it to my crobat.

I flew back to blackthorne only to realize I still need to defeat team rocket. Which is confusing because I thought I had already did that. But I had managed to completely miss wherever it was said that team rocket would be in the goldenrod radio tower. It's not the game's fault but I felt like I had to mention it.

I notice this random rocket executive has 6 pokemon. This is notable because no other trainer has had 6 pokemon yet, not even the gym leaders. However, the pokemon are all koffings, which is a shame. I was hoping for at least a semi-interesting fight.

I made my way to the underground area. This silver fight has 5 pokemon but one of them is a lvl 28 magnemite and another one is a sneasel. Thus, this silver fight was a major pushover. I like silver's character arc but there's been no story apart from it and a bunch of team fodder fights. This switch puzzle is unnecessarily complicated and confusing, and It's making this area feel more like a puzzle game than a pokemon game. Especially considering all the trainers in this area are terrible jokes.

I made my way to floor 3f of the radio tower to hopefully cap off the single most mind numbingly boring part of this game. I got swept by the last trainer because I got really shitty paralyze RNG because my crobat was paralyzed earlier so I had to do the fight again. Because I did the fight again I oneshot all 3 of his pokemon with my feraligatr's surf. Moving on.

I headed to Blackthorn to fight 3 dragonair clair because they couldnt bother giving the last gym leader anything interesting. The gym puzzle was one of the cooler ones, i'll admit. However, I literally just led crobat and did nothing but spam fly and won. She's literally the 8th gym leader. Why. Why couldnt they give her more pokemon. This game is mind numbingly boring so I was actually kinda hyped for this fight but ig not.

I did the dragon cave stuff and got a Dratini. I named it Anchovy. I'm starting to regret getting it because I know I'll have to grind it up to a usable level. fun.

I struggle to even figure out how to reach Kanto in the first place. I had to google it.

I reached victory road. My morale here is at 0. I just want to get to the elite 4 and get it over with because this shit sucks. I'll cover the rest of kanto in a seperate review because I'm not sure I can handle this slog too much longer. Or I wont at all. Depends on if I'm willing to give this game a second shot. But this review isn't over until I beat Lance so I'm looking forward to that.

I ran into silver in victory road. Unfortunately, this was seconds after a random graveler self destructed on my feraligatr. So I was basically going 3 pokemon against 6 here. I still won though because his team fucking sucks AYOOOO. No but seriously his team still has a golbat on it.

After an incredibly painstaking victory road grind to get my 5 pokemon to lvl 42-44, I was finally ready to challenge the elite four and champ. Will's 2nd xatu and exeggutor gave me some trouble, but he was easy apart from that. Koga was an incredibly easy fight, with a horrible team, mediocre typing, and a bunch of evasion-reliant movesets. Bruno was also incredibly easy, all his fighting types were fodder for my crobat and his onix is a very questionable choice. Karen was a very hard fight and lord knows that vileplume was utter hell to face. Also her strong pokemon weak pokemon quote is corny as hell.

The lance fight. I really, REALLY regret not having a 6th party member. This is a genuinely fun and interesting fight but my brain can't enjoy it because i'm too tired because of literally every fight before this one just being time wasting slop. It's 1 am and i've lost to lance an uncountable number of times.

Finally beat lance. Genuinely super great champion fight, like a beautiful cherry atop a mound of shit.

Here was my team:

POKEMON CRYSTAL MAIN GAME (no kanto excluding victory road/e4 & champ)

RATING: 6/10

PROS:

Great champion fight against lance

Solid early game

Lots of content

CONS:

Horrible region design

Horrible level scaling

Has multiple of the most boring sections I've ever had to deal with in a pokemon game

Horrible pokemon diversity

Easy as shit

Tons of content locked behind kanto postgame (such as evolution stones, pokemon like houndour, etc)

Genuinely just really fucking boring holy shit. I cant stress this enough. The hardest battle in this game is fighting sleep. I'd have died without emulator speedup.

[tobiasdrake]

Episode 75 - The Pokemon League Opens! The Water Field!

The League Challenge is a much more formal affair in the anime. Rather than just showing up whenever and challenging the Elite Four, Ash has to compete in a grandiose competition with the other Trainers who made it this far. I think Sword/Shield in particular took a lot of inspiration from this.

Ash's first opponent is a Juggler NPC named Komu/Mandi. He'll be competing in a water-based arena. Misty wants him to borrow some of her Pokemon, but he retorts that he's already got Squirtle. And. Like. Yes? Yes. I agree with Ash. Misty's Gym Leader-ness has kept her from grasping this concept, but going all-in on a single Type is generally poor team-building.

Of course, Ash then immediately recants this good choice when Oak calls to remind him of his vacant sixth slot. He's got a Muk and thirty Tauros who could fill the space, but he picks Krabby. Okay, Ash. Misty points out that he's never once used Krabby (which is also true of his other options, mind), but Ash is confident with his choice.

Time for the battle to begin.

This being the Water stage, Ash should anticipate Water Pokemon for the same reason Misty was badgering him about using hers. In fact, the match right before Ash's came down to Tentacruel vs. Seaking. Everybody's breaking out their favorite Water Types.

With that in mind and only three Pokemon allowed to be used, Ash would do well to field Pikachu and/or Bulbasaur. With Charizard in the Hell No column for multiple reasons. (Honestly, he should probably just swap out Charizard entirely for a Tauros until he can figure out what he's doing with them.)

Round 1: Exeggutor vs. Krabby

Mandy leads with Exeggutor. This is a fantastic choice. Not only does Exeggutor counter any potential Water adversary but their rare Psychic subtyping gives them a huge edge over most of the Grass Types that Ash might have led with following that same logic - And Grass resists Electric attacks, to boot. Just. An all-around strong starting choice. Good job, Mandy.

Ash. Leads with Krabby. Okay. I probably don't need to say it but Exeggutor, tied with Arcanine for #4 most powerful non-Legendary Pokemon, has an incredible stat edge over Krabby. Krabby does have very slightly stronger Physical stats. But Water, Grass, and Psychic are all Special Types. And Exeggutor has a 100 point lead in base Special. As in, 125 to Krabby's 25. Not to mention probably having some EVs, which Krabby explicitly does not.

And yet, it's not the most bullshit when Ash wins. Mandy uses Psywave and Egg Bomb, the former of which deals direct damage while the latter is Normal, playing to Exeggutor's weaker Physical stats. And Ash gets off a Harden before the Egg Bomb comes in, widening the gap.

The Psywave, having only 80% accuracy, misses. He also goes for a Hypnosis when it's too late and Exeggutor's already taking damage. And Hypnosis only has 60% Accuracy, so that misses too. Mandy got screwed by RNG. We've all been there.

Ash, meanwhile, plays to Krabby's strengths with Vice Grip and Stomp. It's still pretty bullshit since he might as well have just caught Krabby yesterday for all the XP and EVs they have, but it's not the worst victory he's ever pulled off.

On the plus side, Krabby picks up so much XP from this grotesquely improbable victory that they evolve into Kingler on the spot. And. Yeah. We're at Indigo Plateau. That checks out.

Round 2: Kingler vs. Seadra

This is pretty even. Like Kingler, Seadra's a fairly blunt Pokemon. Kingler's tied with four other Pokemon for #2 highest Attack, while also #7 for highest Defense. Seadra is slightly faster than Kingler. They favor Special, but their Defense is just as strong, so they can take a beating from Kingler without going down.

Mutual Water Disadvantage means Kingler's signature Crabhammer won't be very strong, but neither will Seadra's Hydro Pump. So their best edge is going to go to their off-Type moves. In that regard, Kingler's built to deliver powerful Normal attacks while Seadra favors Ice, a Type that Water Pokemon also resist. That gives Kingler a powerful edge to beat Seadra to death with.

Kingler's still got DEF +1, but that won't be relevant against Seadra. However, the damage they already took from that Egg Bomb could clinch it for Seadra. This looks like a tight match.

Seadra leads with Agility, which the anime has always interpreted to be an Evasion increase. Ash panics and tries to land some of Kingler's weaksauce Water Gun and Bubble moves. But when the opportunity arises, he goes for Crabhammer, crushing through Seadra's Water resistance for a one-hit KO. (I would have gone for Stomp, but to each their own.)

Round 3: Kingler vs. Golbat

Mandy warns that Golbat is his ace. They're easily the weakest Pokemon he's fielded by stats and their damaging move selection is piss. But Golbat's got some decent status moves they could pull out, most notably Toxic and Confuse Ray?

I admit, I'm at a loss for where he's going with this. G1 Golbat's trash. They're faster than Kingler and have higher HP and Special, but that's all they've got going for them. And their movelist doesn't even have anything to take advantage of their higher Special; But for the Mega Drain TM, they're purely Physical. So. I guess if they have Mega Drain, that's nice. It gets advantage against Water Types?

Golbat uses Double-Team to boost Evasion. This allows them to evade Kingler's Vice-Grip and buys them the turn they need to charge up Razor Wind.

Kingler's modified 195 holy shit Defense lets them take the hit from Razor Wind without too much difficulty. But then Mandy reveals that he does, in fact, have Mega Drain on his Golbat. Before he can land it, however, it's Kingler's turn. And Ash pulls out his trump card: a Hyper Beam that blows Golbat away and ends the match.

And Hyper Beam's still a Physical move right now so, yeah, that hit like a truck. Good time to use it, too, since clinching the match means Ash doesn't have to deal with the cooldown turn. Well played.

Winner: Ash!

Oh man, Mandy got so screwed here. Exeggutor should have had this but got dropkicked by RNG so hard, and from that point there was nothing he could do to stop an entirely reasonable Kingler sweep that Ash never should have been able to set up in the first place.

And if that Hyper Beam's anything to go by, Ash may not have trained his Krabby but he did not hesitate to apply some last-minute TMs just before the match started. So that's something, at least.

Takeaway for Ash: Go. Like. Put some time into EV training for Kingler before you bring them out into another one of these matches. Luck was a major factor in why you pulled this off.

Takeaway for Mandy: G1 Golbat is not an appropriate ace. Make better choices. You basically threw that last round.

[1358456]

Pokemon Yellow Random Team Run Part 1

Okay. Here we go... again.

Rules are simple. I start the game, run a random number generator 6 times and I use whatever Pokemon whose Dex number corresponds to those random numbers. I will have to use cheats to get them at level 2, however. But evolutions are allowed. So if I get a Goldeen, I can use a Seaking, which means I can actually use Waterfall! ... Did you know that Waterfall is a Generation I move? Only Seaking has it! ... And a certain glitch Pokemon... Oh, and if I get Mew or Mewtwo, which can solo the game, I'll replace their moveset with 4 copies of Metronome for chaos.

Now. I've done a lot of Yellow version runs, so I would like to avoid using the same Pokemon as before. But that depends on RNG. So far, my top Pokemon in Yellow version were... Mew (duh) and thereby Mewtwo, Starmie, Charizard, Jolteon, and surprisingly, Omastar. So I would like to avoid these this time.

I am the randoman. My name is just a random function with no parameters, which usually generates a random number between 1 and 100, though I think that varies from programming language? Meh. Now the rival... what's the opposite of random?

I was going to use "Scripted", but that doesn't fit. So he's just a try-hard. He really wants to win while I'm messing around with random stuff.

Now then. The first choice. ... I really should throw the first two fights so I don't face a Jolteon at the end. But am I a coward, or will I rise up to the challenge?!

... The try-hard kind of let me win? So... there goes Vaporeon out the window. So if I throw the next fight against him, I'll at least end up facing Flareon. ... Ah, screw it. Jolteon it is. In that case, I'll level up Pikachu just enough to beat the try-hard a second time with some Thunderwave cheese and then run the RNG...

... How many years have I been playing this game? And I just find out NOW that you can actually get free Pokeballs? Wow.

It's such a hidden gift that even the game text messed up. Anyways. Time to run the RNG.

... What if I don't get any Pokemon capable of Surf? ... Well then. I'll just have to walk across water again! ... And then be stuck in the Victory Road since that's an inside cell...

The results are in! Pokemon 1: Grimer. Pokemon 2: Bellsprout. Pokemon 3: Beedrill. Pokemon 4: Snorlax. Pokemon 5: Rattata. Pokemon 6: Paras.

... Well, the good news is I'm not critically weak to Jolteon, and Snorlax can learn Surf. The bad news is... these are some hot garbage. Oh boy. ... Snorlax also doesn't learn any new moves until level 35, since you only ever run into it at level 30 in the wild. Same deal for Articuno, Zapdos, and Moltres, who all learn their first moves at level 51. ... Well, TMs exist, and I'm not shy about using glitches to... wait. I don't have access to Fly. Uh oh. Well, there goes the glitch abuse. No Teleport and no Fly means I can't use glitches.

... Good thing I didn't throw the second fight, because this team is pretty damn weak to Flareon!

What a random-ass team. And because this Beedrill was caught as a Beedrill, it doesn't have Poison Sting. This is decades before X-Scissors, Poison Jab, and a Mega Beedrill!

Time to grind some levels! First opponent, a wild level 4 Pidgey!

This wild level 4 Pidgey is kicking my ass!

Well, after that sudden boss fight, I think I learned that wild Pidgeys are... devastating. So I'll have to resort to level grinding in the Viridian Forest, against Caterpie and Metapod! What could go wrong?

... Oh that's right. Wild Pidgeottos... that are stronger than Falkner's "dad's cherished bird Pokemon". Uh oh. Help. ... This is a boss fight worthy of a Yakuza style intro...

Well. Everyone's dead except Snorlax as usual. Obviously Snorlax will fare better than the rest because... stats. I'm "learning" that Paras sucks ass, which... well, I knew for a long time. It's also 4x weak to THREE types in this generation: Fire, Flying, Poison. So it dies to a Weedle. ... And I like how a level 5 Pidgey can completely negate Beedrill. Sand Attack when the only move Beedrill has is Fury Attack? Amazing.

So this is my team going into Mt. Moon. This is taking a lot of effort, as expected. So I'll stop here for now.

I did some research on the team here. And... So, Grimer. The first move it learns is Poison Gas... at level 30. Until then, it only has Pound and Disable. The only other damaging move it gets is Sludge at 37. Bellsprout's only real moves are Razor Leaf (level 38 as Weepinbell) and Wrap, which is... sure. Wrap, Bind, Fire Spin are super powered in this game, so that's fine. Beedrill gets Twinneedle at level 20, and until then all it has is Fury Attack. Snorlax is fine the way it is right now. Rattata is an early game thing, so it learns Hyper Fang early on. It really is like a Zergling, except it gets Adrenal Glands much earlier, but I only have 1. Paras... gets Spore and Slash, but... not for a while.

This random run is doing what I thought it'd do, which is provide quite the challenge. I don't have a plan for Sabrina or Agatha. Half of my team is weak to Psychic, and I'm sure Alakazam and Gengar will run laps around my entire team. But that's a future problem. I'll probably end up doing some Amnesia related cheese with Snorlax. ... That thing has to pull its weight, and it has a lot of weight to pull.

[thatminister]

How would had other games used Randomization.

Pokemon

Pokémon uses random encounters when occasionally walking on grass you are faced with a random encounter of a "wild Pokémon" if your a new player this would have you surprised however if your an older player these can get annoying having a wild encounter pop on to your screen every now and then

Library Of Ruina

A game from Korea and how it uses RNG, it is rather interesting, there is a dice mechanic in the game, there is randomized cards in the game you pick as bonuses, and damage your characters do is randomized.

(Skip to 19:12) for battle

Subway Surfer

Subway surfer is random in the way each playthrough is random with different obstacles each time, the difficulty increase is good, the game generates more and more difficult routes until you eventually lose

Hearthstone

A card game set in the world of warcraft universe, those said cards you get are usually random, all you can do is play the best moves with your given hand.

Apex Legends

A obvious choice, literally randomly generated loot throughout the game, but wait cant you say this about every battle royal game? Yes you can. So why apex legends? Because the first battle royal that comes to mind when I think of it

Ofcourse there ARE others like clash royal and fall guys. But Ive decided to focus on these ones.

[anderswelten]

How to start event trading

So, you got hyped and you decided to start your event collection. But you don‘t really know how or where to start? Well, it is understandable that entering a new field can be overwhelming. Basically said, there are plenty of possibilities how and where to start. More or less, it is only limited to your imagination.

But first things first, you need to clarify a few things before you start. The following questions can only be answered by yourself. They define your „event trading path“.

Which events do you wanna collect? All events, just shiny events, just your favorite Pokemon, etc.

Which conditions do you accept? Only legally obtained events? Are you accepting clones? Is it ok for you to accept save file managed events?

Do they have to be proofed? If yes, do you accept all kind of proofs or only specific types?

Are there any other limitations? Do you accept only Generation 6 or later events?

As an example, I tell you my answers: I have no general limitation of the kind of events, but I consider if an event is way to over-rated from my point of view. If I own already one kind of the event, my general interest is lower, depending on the events overall value. All events, I collect (and trade) have to be legally obtained and unique - I don‘t accept clones. I prefer to not trade save file managed events, but considering that was a standard while Generation 7, I may accept exceptions. I only accept proofed events (A-button, image, video) - I do a very few exceptional cases (age of the event, trade history, etc.). There are no additional limitations for me, I‘m just very careful about all pre generation 6 events and a bit less (but also very) careful about all pre generation 8 events.

OK, so you have defined your path. Now, you need to know where to start. Literally, where should you start? Well, you have to look for a community of your choice first. There are plenty out there. r/pokemontrades, r/casualpokemontrades, Naver, neoseeker, X (former Twitter), serebii - to just name a few. Please check as well if there are some requirements you need to fulfill before you can start trading event Pokemon, e.g. one rule on r/pokemontrades is you need to have at least 10 approved casual trades before you can trade event Pokemon. You should check as well if the rules of the community of your choice match with your requirements. For example: if you accept clones, you can only trade on communities where clones are accepted.

When you have chosen your community, you just need to… start! Oh wow, it sounds so simple, at least. But that‘s it. You can do several things even if you don‘t own any event Pokemon yet you could trade. Don‘t worry, I‘ll give you some ideas what you could offer in exchange. However, be aware that trade rates are personal and subjective among other things; and obviously, my list makes no claim to completeness.

Redemption services - You redeem recent events (universal codes or codes given to you) for another person. As a reward, you get what you have agreed to like codes of recent event Pokemon or past event Pokemon

Code trades - If you life near a store where code cards of recent event Pokemon are given out, you can go there and ask for it. In many cases they will be given out for free. You can take a friend with you to get two instead of just one. Since the distribution takes place not only on one day, you can go there a few times. But be aware that code cards can be limited

Farm events - and trade them later, because there will always be someone who missed an event. Sometimes it takes a bit longer to find that trading partner, but don’t lose your patience

RNG/playthrough services - If you are able to RNG or play through some games, this could be a door opener for you. The most popular rewards are CHANNEL/WISHMKR Jirachi and Ranger Manaphy.

Trade shinies or shiny eggs - the more rare they are, the mor value do they have. How many you have to trade, depends on the other trader and if he/she is more into collecting shiny Pokemon. Some of them prefer shinies with their own OT only, some want to have them in a matching Pokeball, with good IV‘s and egg moves, etc.

I‘m pretty sure that you‘ll find something that suits you and is fun for you to d. - because the fun is the most important thing when trading!

And that’s it! Subscribe to a Pokemon News Channel that you don’t miss out the next event distribution and let’s get started!

[patchun]

Time for another insane battle. I don't know what I was smoking in the beginning of this run when I decided that somehow, picking Piplup was the best idea, because then I wouldn't have to face Empoleon. No clue. But we're here.

In case you haven't noticed, my ENTIRE TEAM loses to Mamoswine. Literally every member is either weak to ice or ground, or is a piece of paper of a Pokemon. Lickitung is kind of an exception, so I'm going to bet on it.

Dear sister, I'd be amazed if I don't lose a mon here,

Here's how I think it's going to happen:

Yuuma kills Alakazam, but then Infernape comes in and tries to kill Yuuma. I switch into Eirin on a Fire Blast, which should then bait a Close Combat, so I switch into Sekibanki and kill Infernape with Psychic. This should bait in Jolteon, who wants to use Shadow Ball, so I switch back to Eirin and kill it with Seismic Toss. This should bring in Granbull, who wants to Close Combat, so I switch back to Sekibanki who is immune. The Granbull has a Choice Band, so it will probably switch out, so I'll hit either Lickilicky or Mamoswine with a Choice Specs Moonblast. From there, Hina (not pictured in the team above) can probably beat the entire rest of the team, including Mamoswine if needed.

Okay. It did not happen that way at all. Now I'm going to be honest about something - this run is more of a proof of concept, a means of figuring out strategies. Which means, yes, I lost two mons in this battle over the course of two tries, where I reset and tried again with new strategies. Rather than using Fire Blast like in the first attempt, Infernape used Close Combat, which killed Chansey, which brings my total amount of deaths in this run to 3.

Yuuma died to a trainer's Roserade which was easily avoidable had I remembered to equip the Expert Belt. Eirin died to a crit Hydro Pump from Wake's Ludicolo. Koishi died to Lucas in the previous battle's first attempt, and Eirin died to Lucas in the previous battle's second attempt.

You could say that as a result, I'm hardly playing a Nuzlocke, but to that I say, fuck off I guess lol. I'm not trying to replay through this game getting the exact same encounters in the exact same places every time, what's fun about this is figuring out how to use these really weak Pokemon in efficient ways to manage to beat some absurd battles. And with how I actually did this Lucas fight, that's exactly what happened! When I reset, I'm not just relying on RNG to be different, I'm creating a new strategy each time that better fits the situation, and I feel that's exactly what's appealing and exhilarating about a Nuzlocke.

So, what did end up happening?

I led Yuuma, who killed Alakazam with Faint Attack, which brings in Infernape. Because I couldn't be sure if it would Fire Blast or CC, I gave Yuuma a Focus Sash and taught her Dig. Yuuma Dig'd Infernape twice, taking one CC and using her Sash. This brought in Granbull as expected, so I switched to Mokou (on a Crunch for some reason) who was holding a Sitrus Berry to ensure it survived two hits. I Will-O'd Granbull to ensure that Tangela would wall it, then I switched to Kutaka, who resists Crunch, and killed Granbull with Fly. This brought in Jolteon, who landed every Thunder and also paralyzed Eirin, but thankfully Eirin broke through and killed with three seismic tosses. Finally, this brought in Mamoswine, who, despite being weak to ice, Hina completely walled. Hina easily finished off Mamo and Lickilicky for deathless Lucas.

Definitely the biggest MVP of the run right here.

Okay! Restarting the Nuzlocke on the basis that it was boring and I had way too many encounters so I started subconsciously WANTING to let mons die so my box wouldn't be such a nightmare. This time...

Renegade Platinum with only unevolved Stage 1 mons that evolve cross-generationally. This means none of these will be evolving into their superior forms, which should make the run quite challenging if not impossible. Yes, Togetic is there, because it's technically Stage 1, as Togepi is a baby, whereas something like Seadra is not allowed because Horsea is a Stage 1. Speaking of Horsea it seems as though there are no water types on the above list.

So ya know what, what the hell, I'll add three more to the roster.

These guys technically don't evolve in later generations but the idea is the same.

I was using Sangria the Sneasel in my last playthrough and was really appreciating how strong she was, how of all the individually released Pokemon who didn't evolve at the time, Sneasel is probably one of the most actually viable when it comes to stat distribution, and I thought it would be cool to show appreciation to those mons. So here we go!

[zenlesszonezero]

Join Zenless Zone Zero with Tsukishiro Yanagi, the deputy leader of Hollow Special Operations Section 6! Beneath her ordinary office lady exterior lies a meticulous, emotionally intelligent big sister to the team.

[charaznablescanontoyota]

“marn, i missed sgdq 2022! which runs should i watch?”

hello and welcome back to another rec list curated by me and my very subjective opinions. a couple weeks ago was summer games done quick, an annual speedrunning marathon raising money for doctors without borders and also a great way to get into watching speedrunning. a lot of their content is tailored towards being both clearly explained and fun to watch for an audience outside the speedrun community, so you can jump in with basically no knowledge besides “this person is gonna play a game really fast”. here are my personal highlights that i think you should check out!

kirby and the forgotten land: it’s always great to see a game that’s just been released in the past few months hit gdq!! this was my first time watching a forgotten land run and my takeaways were that: a) this game is beautiful and b) the runner was having a GREAT time sharing it with everyone.

spyro the dragon: spyro is one of those early games that has a lot of weird cool movement tech that is still being discovered to this day, and the fact that it shows up at gdq every couple years with some completely new strats to showcase is awesome, imo.

phasmophobia: if you are staring at this link wondering “how the hell do you speedrun the co-op ghost hunting game that relies entirely on randomization and luck”, just trust me and click it. the ghosts did NOT want to cooperate with these runners at ALL.

pokemon emerald randomizer (evolution chaos co-op): i am not usually a person who has the patience to sit for all 3 hours of a pokemon run, and i figured i would just tune into this one for like half an hour while i got some other stuff done, but i was immediately enraptured. it’s a modded randomizer where your pokemon evolves into something random Every Time it levels up, with 4 runners passing the controller around on every evolution. the game was not kind to these runners. it’s one of the funniest things i’ve ever seen at gdq.

donkey kong country: tropical freeze: spikevegeta’s tropical freeze run from gdqx a few years back is still The speedrun i love showing to people, but this one is an INCREDIBLY clean run that is just a joy to watch. spike is also a GREAT runner/commentator who you’ll notice pops up on a lot of gdq commentary couches, he loves to explain not only what’s going on in the game but little anecdotes and fun facts about the community around the game/speedrun.

banjo-tooie: i love duck and hagginator’s banjo-kazooie race from 2019 and have watched it multiple times since it happened and i am happy to see duck back at gdq running banjo-tooie. :) the community around the b-k games seems really nice and if i had to pick a game to get into running myself this might be in my top 5 choices.

mi scusi: you should watch everything from this early morning silly block, i shotgunned basically all the vods for it and loved them all, but this one was the standout. a speedrunner who woke up way too early in the morning plays a spectacularly broken, floppy physics game that was a student project that is about [checks notes] a guy dealing with the mafia, stealing the world cup, and going to space. if you like this one, watch the rest of the silly block, esp turnip boy commits tax evasion and jimmie johnson’s anything with an engine.

stepmania/noitg doubles showcase: what if dance dance revolution was evil and the only way to defeat it was a 45 minute synchronized dance routine

happy’s humble burger farm: stressed runner makes burgers as fast as he can while janky jumpscare horror game tries to give him the worst rng imaginable. i watched this one kind of on a whim because i like teddyras (the runner) a lot and his commentary is like. laugh-out-loud funny. if you have an hour or less to kill and want to watch one of these vods, this is the one. if you like this, you should check out teddyras’s run of gone golfing, a similar janky horror game set at a minigolf course (sort of).

control: this is an all bosses run and something about hearing the extremely sparse 6 am crowd politely golf clap after every boss fight just took me out. also this game has SO many cool out-of-bounds skips and sequence breaks that are SO fun to watch.

mario 64: m64 is basically a staple game at gdq at this point and because it’s basically the grandfather of speedrunning they often try to dress it up with new challenges like the runner being blindfolded, or the game being randomized, or it being a race. this is not that. this is a guy playing regular vanilla mario 64 very nearly on world record pace, pulling off tricks that have never been successfully completed on the gdq stage before, and casually showing the audience completely new movement tech and clips that have been discovered while the commentators lose their fucking minds in the background. also he never died a single time in this run.

mario maker 2 relay race: two teams of 3 highly skilled mario runners go head to head in a blind relay race of 9 extremely fucking difficult mario maker levels. it’s SO cool to watch them figure out routing and strats in real time, and the level designers shoutcasting the race have some really great insight into the design of the levels themselves.

[brownfrogs]

honestly adore how well you can articulate these things, like u get it u dooo!!!!

and the pokémon iv breeding reminds me of an irl of mine and like you are so correct he absolutely would have!!

I could imagine Hana and Hanzo doing a nuzlock soulink together which ensues immediate chaos because whilst they would both have all the gamer knowledge they would of course become victims to RNG. I’d like to think they would do it on random evolves too! So Hanzo is like super proud of the team he has and then they evolve into truly abysmal choices and Hana is just laughing at him the whole time.

They would hold little funerals on her stream, playing dramatically sad music whilst whoever killed it hangs their head in shame. Despite them having gamer knowledge I think they would make some mistakes (definitely didn’t do this myself nooooo) but one of them forgets the move memento and just uses it in a battle and is like oh. oh no. The whole chat is like :00 and it’s a great stream highlight at the end of the day.

also ur so so right about the interaction, apologises i’m rambling about Hana but she deserves all the talk in the world I have to say

Like with her and Lúcio having that celebrity status I always think about the possibilities of it all.

Them posting behind the scenes of Overwatch stuff and at first a lot of the higher ups are against it, Winston is like guys this definitely feels like a security breach if anything. However, they both argue saying how Overwatch really needs a better public image and this might just be the way to do it, to make them seem more human.

Hana, who has always been shown in the media as unbreakable even when she does suffers is a little hesitant about the whole thing at first but everyone makes an agreement that any severe injuries probably shouldn’t be put publicly.

After all the important things at out of the way we just get a bunch of selfies of random game nights, midday naps, late night snack runs. Hana has been trying to collect photos of everyone with her signature face paint but it’s proved a difficult challenge for some, though it does not deter her!

As well as this, I could see her being a prime choice for whenever Overwatch has to attend fancy galas because she is so well loved. Hanzo would obviously be a great option because he would have a great sense of decorum but at the same time I think he would sneer at the idea of spending time around a lot of people who pretend to care about those they consider less than them. Hana couldn’t agree with him more.

But aside from the company you just know they would look so so good, like the outfits, the hair and makeup they would look immaculate. Maybe Hanzo would treat us with his hair down for once and just looking immaculate. *chefs kiss* they would look intimidating but in that way when you could still stare at them in aw. and come on who doesn’t love a masquerade scene !!

- sabs

Heehee thank you, I just love overanalyzing things :)

BUT THEM DOING A SOULINK NUZLOCKE TOGETHER IS SO BIG BRAINED!!!!! (I can totally see Hanzo as Jan from PokemonChallenges and would absolutely do the extremely difficult nuzlockes) Hanzo with his bad luck and always gets pokemon with the worse abilities/ivs and Hana keeps getting legendaries. But they def both make hilarious mistakes and there is a montage of them once they’re all done. Hanzo absolutely got her Xerneas killed and she still hasn’t forgive him for it. A chaotic but super fun time.

And no apologies, Hana deserves to be rambled about!!

I absolutely agree, Hana along with Lúcio incredibly improves Overwatch’s public image. She captures all the best moments ranging from embarrassingly funny (Cole in Lucio’s skates) to heartwarmingly sweet (Mei’s birthday party). Ooo, I could see her doing little interviews with all the members, charity subathons with crazy goals, MAYBE EVEN A VARIETY GAMESHOW??? She finally gets everyone in the facepaint for that one haha. The potential is limitless!!!!

IT’S TRUE I LOVE A MASQUERADE SCENE!!! Hana and Hanzo serving looks, attitude, just everything. Hanzo has his hair down while Hana has her up in some really cute buns. Hanzo absolutely hated attending these types of events growing up, but Hana livens it up so much he doesn’t mind it anymore. While Hanzo is technically her bodyguard, she def carries her pistol in her purse. The only time he ever needs to step in is to intimidate some overzealous fans that won’t leave her alone. Which she v much appreciates so she can enjoy the night with her fellow creatives. Afterwards though, once she’s socially exhausted, make-up wiped off, heels traded in for flats, she and Hanzo get some boba tea and watch cute dog videos on the community lounge couch together.

[radramblog]

Ultimate^2

Super Smash Brothers Ultimate has finally unveiled its final DLC character, with reactions ranging fully across the spectrum. Hot takes abound.

I mean, statistically, just about every possible opinion is going to be represented. There were at least 500,000 people watching the reveal stream, and that’s not including those viewing through restreams. That’s insane for a trailer of any kind, let alone for a console-exclusive video game DLC.

Now that it’s been like… a day and a bit, I think most of the spciest takes have probably been made, which is the perfect time for me to chip in with my own milder opinion. More of a butter chicken, really.

(no images in this one i’m lazy tonight)

I figure I’m this late already, might as well drop some notes on the other ones first.

Piranha Plant was kind of the definition of an unexpected pick. Not only was it from an already well-represented franchise, being fucking Mario, it’s also just…not a character. As such it makes an odd choice for a DLC fighter…except for the part where it was free. If you owned the game in its first month. And frankly, I don’t think people would have been happy if it wasn’t. As it is, though, it’s a perfectly fine character- surprisingly cute, actually.

I’m unsurprised about Joker’s inclusion. With how huge Persona 5 became in both Japan and the west, capitalizing on it to make a shitload of money makes perfect sense. The character plays well enough, though the meter gimmick was kind of a daunting sign of things to come. All that in mind, though, the most surprising thing about Joker being in the game is that they still haven’t put P5 on the Switch. Atlus please.

Hero and Banjo/Kazooie were announced on the same night, and I distinctly recall someone saying that this was one for the Japanese audience and one for the Americans. I mean, I’ve never played Dragon Quest, so I guess I fell into the latter? Both series have a long, well-regarded pedigree (Banjo’s lack of recent offerings notwithstanding), so both arguably deserve their respective positions. Hero is the much more notable character gameplaywise, though, with the incredibly complex mana and spellcasting mechanics. Complaints about RNG in Smash aren’t completely unfounded- though it has existed in the past in the form of, say, Luigi’s misfiring side-B- but I know a lot of people think Hero took it too far. If I’m honest, though, the weirdest thing is just having Akira Toriyama-ass 3D models in the game. Banjo’s gameplay is…awkward. The kit is kind of a mess, but at least the gimmicks weren’t going too hard, you know?

Next was Terry, perhaps the most obscure character on the entire list in 2021. I actually really like Terry in this game- while he’s still trying to emulate a similar feel to Ryu/Ken, the difference feels more natural, if that makes sense. Maybe it’s because I’ve never really devoted significant time to them, but Terry’s kit feels easier to work within than the Shotos when going between characters.

Finally for the first Pass, we had Byleth. I think it’s for the best that they announced the second Fighter’s Pass before this released, because if both 4 and Ultimate had ended their run on Fire Emblem DLCs then people would have been pissed. I mean, people were already pissed, but like…moreso. As someone who has played Three Houses, I do think the game is worth celebrating, but having yet another Fire Emblem Protagonist (read: basically a blank slate) in the game over all the substantially more interesting characters 3H has to offer is just really frustrating. Also the final smash looks like dogshit, like FE3H has overall worse animations than Smash for obvious reasons but I’m pretty sure this attack looked better the first time around.

FP2 opened with Min Min, which brings ARMS to the table. ARMS. The only first-party fighting game Nintendo has outside of Smash, so it looks a bit less weird next to everything else but…come on, man. I think this was the most confusing pick of all of them- the game came out in 2017, and having Min Min in Smash would serve as promotion for a sequel…which hasn’t been announced. There was a graphic novel in the works, but it was cancelled earlier this year. Oops? At least the stage was fun.

As much as playing them is awkward and complex, the Minecraft addition was fitting. Only the best-selling game around. I think people weren’t sure if Microsoft would go for it, but they let us have Banjo, so sure. I’m mostly just annoyed that they couldn’t get any of the songs from the actual game in there- like, you got one in from the fucking mobile game, but you couldn’t just get C418 on the phone?

Sephiroth is definitely one of the hype-ier releases from this pass. The character is iconic, as is his theme and his home game. I’ve never played any Final Fantasy game, but I can still respect the name. Once I remember how to spell it. The whole bossfight aspect to his release was also quite cool, while it lasted.

On the other hand, I have no love for Pyra nor Mythra. There’s so much wrong with these ones, frankly. They’re another swordy character, immediately following Sephiroth too, and they go back on Smash’s very deliberate decision to split characters like Zelda/Sheik and Samus/ZSS up (Yes I know Pokemon Trainer does the same thing but I have a lot more leniency for them). Add in their being from a JRPG much less well-known or remembered than the previous couple characters and the designs being…questionable, I have a big issue with the whole thing. This was also around when I kinda stopped playing the game in general, and they definitely didn’t help pull me back in.

Kazuya might have, though. With the exception of him and Sephiroth, all the characters from the Fighter’s Passes were pretty much protagonist-types, but this motherfucker pulses with the essence of bad guy. What I’m saying is that he’s fucking cool, and while he’s ludicrously complex, that makes perfect sense since…I mean just look at the combo lists from Tekken 7. His inclusion also kinda rounds out the list of biggest fighting game franchises out there being rep’d in the game, though I imagine now I’m going to have stans from Mortal Kombat or whatever on my back. They’re not going to put a fatality-capable character in Smash, guys!

Finally, this rounds us around to the original point of this article. Let’s talk about Sora. And by that I mean…I don’t really have a huge amount to say about him. Kingdom Hearts is a franchise that completely passed me by growing up, and I don’t think I have the time or energy to devote to it now. I’m sure it’s good, people seemed really excited for him to be in the game so they have to have gotten that love from somewhere, but I don’t share that feeling.

That’s not to say that I don’t think he deserves a slot. The idea of “deserving a slot” in Smash Bros is kind of an odd concept, even though it’s come up a lot so far this post. But a slot in this roster isn’t just a place in a popular fighting game, because at this point, Smash is kind of a museum of (mostly Nintendo) games- and so having representation is a forever acknowledgment that the franchise is, or has been, an icon to so many. Kingdom Hearts, to my knowledge, has 100% earned that position, and so Sora getting to be playable here makes perfect sense. He wasn’t my pick (Touhou representation never I guess), but I’m happy for those who wanted him.

As far as the actual gameplay looks, he reads like a character that kept in mind what people didn’t like about Hero when he released. It’s another sword-based character, which I think at this point speaks more about the demographic of video game characters than it does about Smash. But I appreciate that the Magic Bullshit is toned down, and that it’s also his only real gimmick (The 3-hit combo feature is A Thing, but other characters e.g. Bayonetta have already done that, so whatever). His recovery potential looks patently absurd- like he just gets Pikachu/Pichu’s Up-B as a Side-B that can also be chained with his actual Up-B? This guy better be light as hell or he’s going to be super hard to take out. I dunno, I think he looks solidly fun enough- more dynamic and aerial than the other swordfighters, at least- and that’s good enough for me.

And I guess that marks the end of Smash Ultimate. Not with a bang, but with a key…dude. It’s been a very solid run, the game managing to keep itself fresh across several years of development, even as other games have risen and fallen. Smash is kind of forever at this point, I think, though the finality of Ultimate’s ultimate character implies that this particular iteration may be coming to its end. And seeing as it is always one Smash per console, I wouldn’t be shocked if the Switch itself was nearing its endgame as well.

Okay but also it’s pretty funny how they heavily censored everything Disney out of Sora’s DLC except for that little Mickey charm on the trailer, like how much must that one shot have cost them, was it even remotely worth it, I don’t know but I kinda want to

[askkrenko]

Krenko’s Guide to Pokemon: Ditto

Krenko’s Guide to Pokemon: Ditto

DESIGN:

Ditto is a formless, shapeless blob with a smiley face.

It’s perfect.

I have nothing more to say on the actual design of Ditto, so let’s talk about Mew. Ditto is almost certainly the result of the Mew Cloning project. Many of you probably knew this already, but for those who didn’t, here’s the rundown…

Mew was discovered in South America, and DNA samples of it were taken to Cinnabar Island in Kanto. A team of scientists there tried to clone Mew. It went… wrong. They created Mewtwo. The theory is that the species Ditto are all failed Mew clones. Here’s the evidence. 

While DItto’s habitat has changed over time, their are heavy Ditto concentrations in Pokemon Mansion (where Mewtwo was created) and Cerulean Cave (where Mewtwo lives)

Ditto and Mew both have light blue shiny forms.

DItto and Mew both weigh 8.8 pounds.

Smeargle Sketching aside, only two Pokemon can learn transform: Ditto and Mew

A Ditto appears in the Detective Pikachu movie, owned by someone working on Mewtwo

If you cheat a Mew into Gen 1 or 2 and catch it while it’s transformed you get a Ditto

While none of these alone are smoking guns, evidence continues to mount, and each re-release makes the evidence clearer. In Let’s Go, for example, Ditto are ONLY available in the Pokemon Mansion and Cerulean Cave. 

Art by Paleona

TYPING:

Ditto is a normal type initially, but it’s not actually normal type once things get going, so let’s not worry about that part. Ditto’s type usually winds up being the same type as the thing it’s fighting, which is great defensively because most things resist their own attacks but not so good offensively… because most things resist their own attacks.

STATS:

Ditto has garbage stats of 48 across the board, which would be a real issue if Transform didn’t change its stats. Unfortunately, Transform only changes most of Ditto’s stats and no matter what Ditto becomes it’s stuck at 48 base HP. This means the only thing worth training your Ditto for is HP.

Bubble Monkey by TamarinFrog

ABILITIES:

There are two types of Ditto: Ditto with Imposter and Ditto who are completely unplayable jank.

While Limber itself isn’t a useless ability on most Pokemon, taking a turn to actually set up with Transform with Ditto’s speed and defenses means that a Ditto with Limber is usually just dead. Imposter, on the other hand, makes Ditto automatically transform when entering a battle, allowing it to get right to being whatever it needs to be.

Art by BlackCat5643

MOVES:

Ditto’s only move is Transform, but it’s not going to use that because it has Imposter. So Ditto has no moves worth noting, except that it has whatever your opponent’s moves are. This means Ditto can be weird to use. Still, there’s one go-to strategy for literally every tier of play.

Raise your Ditto for HP. It’s the only stat that matters.

Give the Ditto a Choice Scarf.

Wait for your opponent to get something big and scary out and knock out one of your Pokemon.

Put in DItto. Imposter turns it into whatever the big scary thing is, complete with any stat buffs it might have (other than a Gigantamax boost, but including Mega Evolution).

You have a Choice Scarf. You’re faster. Now you’re the sweeper. Have fun.

This is the only strategy for Ditto, but it’s a decent one at every tier of play. Any strategy that does not use Choice Scarf runs afoul of speed ties literally every turn and thus can get seriously screwed over by RNG.

Family Visit by SillyFoe

OVERALL:

I love this stupid little pink blob. I also love that it’s a hardcore gimmick Pokemon. Really, it’s the only fully-evolved gimmick Pokemon in Gen 1, and Gen 2 only had Smeargle. It wasn’t until Abilities occurred in Gen 3 that gimmick Pokemon became more common. Sure, Ditto only has one actual combat option, but it’s a cool one, it’s unique to Ditto, and it’s hilarious. 

Also I’m like 80% sure somebody just microwaved Kirby.

Creepy Gengar is Creepy by Super Tuler