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RTTP: The Pokemon. All 721 of them, and counting.

Oh I seem to have misunderstood the statement lol. Lack of sleep. :(

Crazy how its 40 places down on pokemon with highest attack stats, can't believe Rampardos of all things has such a high attack base stat.

Too bad it can't really make use of it. It's way too slow and fragile. You'll have to baton pass boosts to it in order to really do anything.

And Arcues is still godly due to how balanced it is and how wide and varied its moveset is. You have no idea what the player's plan with it is until it uses a few moves.
 
I know next to nothing about the TCG, unfortunately. :( Haven't really paid much attention since the original days, but only because there's never been a good virtual version to keep my interest + relatively low cost.

TCGO is extremely good, and you can easily get new cards without paying a single cent. Single Player is surprisingly large and has good replay value (three different difficulties), and multi-player is also good (as long you use the pre-built decks lol)


You should definitely try it. It's also on IPad!
 
It's really weird how rarely you see the broken Exeggcute's face. In most of the sprites until Generation V is facing away from the camera in both sprites so I always have to stop and think about if it even has one.
 
Bit of a stretch at the moment of Pokemon I'm not a fan of. Krabby and Kingler are decent I guess, but Drowzee, Hypno, Voltorb, Electrode, Exeggcute and Exeggutor are all pretty unappealing to me.
 
exeggcutorface.png

That face alone makes the final form alright in my book
 
Exeggutor is one of those pokemon who has grown on me with time, it just looks so magnificently silly.

The first form on the other hand I recall throwing rocks upon rocks at in the safari zone as a kid.
 
Exeggcute will always have a blacklist in my mind, being the first shiny I ever encountered... in the safari zone.

Needless to say the fucker ran away.
 
Exeggutor was pretty beast in Gen 1, but then after the Special split in Gen 2, it got way weaker since its Special Def went to crap.

Combined with it's many weaknesses, slow speed, and crap Sp. Def, it fell a long ways...

My best memory of one was probably from Stadium where a guy had one that used Explosion. (Exploding palm trees aren't fun.)
 
Man, would love an evolution or Mega for poor Kingler. Love him but yeah, definitely needs the boost. Also, the bit with Krabby in the league evolving and just absolutely wrecking that guy was great, since everybody was (probably rightfully) like "wtf are you thinking Ash, that Pokemon has never battled before." Totally felt like a setup for Ash getting humbled for getting cocky, but then Kingler just pulls through by being awesome out of nowhere.

Also, +1 for liking Exeggutor but not being super fond of Exeggcute.
 
Exeggcute will always have a blacklist in my mind, being the first shiny I ever encountered... in the safari zone.

Needless to say the fucker ran away.

You think that's bad?

The first ever Shiny I encountered was a Duclops.

In the Battle Pike in Emerald. Where you can't even catch the Pokemon.
 
Too bad it can't really make use of it. It's way too slow and fragile. You'll have to baton pass boosts to it in order to really do anything.

And Arcues is still godly due to how balanced it is and how wide and varied its moveset is. You have no idea what the player's plan with it is until it uses a few moves.
Just wait until we get Mega Arceus.
 
speaking of shinies, I wonder if anyone has ever caught a legit, shiny legendary dog in gen 2. ESPECIALLY if you wasted your master ball.

that just seems impossible to me

it was hard enough just catching one of those fuckers normally, let alone chasing them all over the world a billion times in search of a shiny.
 
It's insane to me that it actually runs a shiny roll there of all places. You'd think it would just fetch the specific sprite.

I have created a tool that can change shiny odds in gen 3 pokemon games(but it changes how shinies are determined so it's not useful for farming "real" shinies but more for having fun with Nuzlocke's etc.)

One of the side effects of my patch, that I have not been able to remove, is that all sprites in the pokedex appear shiny in Fire Red/Leaf Green.

A side effect that I did manage to remove was that sprites in display windows, like when picking a starter, had shiny or glitched pallettes. Game Freak used the same sprite loading routine(duplicated a couple of times, but that's probably a compiler thing) with shiny check for just about every pokemon sprite display in these games and it seems like they carried on doing things this way.

EDIT: Of course the sprites in the listed examples are never shiny because the game passes in a PID value that can never be shiny(until my hack broke the conventions). I guess they didn't think to do the same here or simply forgot.
 
I have created a tool that can change shiny odds in gen 3 pokemon games(but it changes how shinies are determined so it's not useful for farming "real" shinies but more for having fun with Nuzlocke's etc.)

One of the side effects of my patch, that I have not been able to remove, is that all sprites in the pokedex appear shiny in Fire Red/Leaf Green.

A side effect that I did manage to remove was that sprites in display windows, like when picking a starter, had shiny or glitched pallettes. Game Freak used the same sprite loading routine(duplicated a couple of times, but that's probably a compiler thing) with shiny check for just about every pokemon sprite display in these games and it seems like they carried on doing things this way.

Figured it was probably some kind of OS level system like that.
 
speaking of shinies, I wonder if anyone has ever caught a legit, shiny legendary dog in gen 2. ESPECIALLY if you wasted your master ball.

that just seems impossible to me

it was hard enough just catching one of those fuckers normally, let alone chasing them all over the world a billion times in search of a shiny.

I assume when you first encounter the Legendary Dog, it rolls for a shiny there, and future encounters would still be Shiny, right?
 
speaking of shinies, I wonder if anyone has ever caught a legit, shiny legendary dog in gen 2. ESPECIALLY if you wasted your master ball.

that just seems impossible to me

it was hard enough just catching one of those fuckers normally, let alone chasing them all over the world a billion times in search of a shiny.

Surely ones it's shiny it stays shiny? So if your game happened to have a shiny legendary dog all you have to do is catch it.
 
speaking of shinies, I wonder if anyone has ever caught a legit, shiny legendary dog in gen 2. ESPECIALLY if you wasted your master ball.

that just seems impossible to me

it was hard enough just catching one of those fuckers normally, let alone chasing them all over the world a billion times in search of a shiny.

I could be wrong on this, but I think the shininess is determined from the very first moment you encounter a legendary dog (possibly at the burned tower). If it was shiny on your first encounter, then you can simply hunt it as usual.
 
I could be wrong on this, but I think the shininess is determined from the very first moment you encounter a legendary dog (possibly at the burned tower). If it was shiny on your first encounter, then you can simply hunt it as usual.

This is correct. Roaming Pokemon are generated at the first encounter and stay generated when you encounter them again.
 
I've played every generation of Pokemon, over countless hundreds of hours and I've only ever received 2 shinies in my entire life. One was a magnemite in the safari zone in Heart Gold. The other was a charmander that I bred for a contest that was happening in the Pokemon Community thread here on GAF around the same era (HG/SS). I Masuda's for it and it took something like 600+ hatches if I'm remembering right.
 
I could be wrong on this, but I think the shininess is determined from the very first moment you encounter a legendary dog (possibly at the burned tower). If it was shiny on your first encounter, then you can simply hunt it as usual.

Surely ones it's shiny it stays shiny? So if your game happened to have a shiny legendary dog all you have to do is catch it.

I assume when you first encounter the Legendary Dog, it rolls for a shiny there, and future encounters would still be Shiny, right?

ok ok ok ok

so if that's true



then you'd have to replay the game over and over and over up to the encounter with the legendary dogs until you finally find one shiny. that's a couple of hours each time, at least.

THAT MIGHT BE EVEN WORSE
 
ok ok ok ok

so if that's true



then you'd have to replay the game over and over and over up to the encounter with the legendary dogs until you finally find one shiny. that's a couple of hours each time, at least.

THAT MIGHT BE EVEN WORSE

The IV's/DV's are set during the event where they are set loose, so you would save before that, go look for it, reset, etc. Which is still pretty bad.


I have a boat load of shinies from SRing while watching tv shows for half a decade. My latest shiny encounter was a double shiny encounter, which is absolutely nuts:

QkOBIpe.png


EDIT:
The fu... How is that even possible?

In theory it's quite simple, every mon in a horde can be shiny.
If you look at the odds however... If I calculated it correctly the odds for this to occur with the shiny charm would be about 1 in 186k...
 
The IV's/DV's are set during the event where they are set loose, so you would save before that, go look for it, reset, etc. Which is still pretty bad.


I have a boat load of shinies from SRing while watching tv shows for half a decade. My latest shiny encounter was a double shiny encounter, which is absolutely nuts:

QkOBIpe.png

The fu... How is that even possible?
 
I have a pile of shinies from chaining and one from straight RNG abuse, but I have I think two shinies legitimately, both in Diamond. One was a wild Roselia, and the other a Gible I hatched while trying to breed a specific nature.
 
First Shiny excluding the Duclops was a Leavanny in rustling grass in BW.

Incidentally, I was breeding it to train my own Leavanny, and hatched a Shiny Sewaddle. Now all I need is a Shiny Swadloon to complete the set.

I also got a Shiny Ferroseed in BW, and then in XY I've found a Shiny Spritzee and as of Monday a Shiny Rhyhorn.
 
The first non scripted shiny I got, that I can recall and still have at least, was a Palpitoad randomly in BW, no shiny charm. I've gotten a decent number this gen though. Only one intentional MM, a number of unintentional ones plus random encounters lol.
 
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#104 - Cubone
Ground

Well, we all know nobody really cares about this Pokemon in terms of how it performs, it's all about the lore, but Cubone is another pure-Ground Type. Unlike a lot of recent Pokemon we've covered, Cubone actually appears fairly early in the adventure, and the fact it has a neat story behind it I think likely gained it a lot of fans who wanted to give it a chance because they felt sorry for it. You know, given its backstory, I actually think it was kind of a bad choice for Game Freak to make it a common Pokemon in Generation I---when Generation II came along, of course its lore was going to be completely destroyed, but at that point in time I feel like Game Freak should've made only a single Cubone available after completing the Lavender City event, to really hammer home its role as the "Lonely Pokemon".

So, I really didn't want to get to this Pokemon, because I have to admit a really unpopular opinion---when I first played through the Lavender Town saga, I found it dreadfully boring and didn't care whatsoever about Cubone's dead mom. Even today when I can better appreciate what Game Freak was going for, which in that recent Lavender Town thread a lot of folks pointed out was pretty unique for RPGs at the time, this whole plotline never really affected me whatsoever. I'm not an emotionless guy by any means, as a kid there was numerous episodes of the show that made me cry, but for some reason sad moments in video-games just don't do anything for me, it's hard for me to get over the barriers present in the medium. The letter scene in Grandia is one of the few times I can recall in recent years that a video-game has actually made me tear up, if you know which scene I'm talking about, but that's pretty much it. Pokemon has had a few "sad moments" since, like N's goodbye in Black and White, but that scene didn't do much for me either---hell, I thought the game really made N out to be a punk and found it odd how he acts like your friend at the end after he'd been harassing you throughout the entire game. Yeah, I'm ready for the pitchforks...

If you break it down, the Cubone plotline is rather weird and confusing for a variety of reasons. I looked over the plot summary of the events to refresh my mind, and I noticed an oddity I never picked up before---that the whole reason Team Rocket apparently headed to Lavender Town was to collect the skulls of Cubone to sell for money. Does that mean the actual skulls of Cubone, or the ones that they wear which is the skull of their dead mother, which presumably is only there because Team Rocket killed it? There's kind of a weird paradox going on in the description of events. The game makes it out like they only killed just one Marowak (who itself presents additional problems as we'll soon discuss), but with all the Cubone I guess in reality they actually killed multiple yet only one remained as a ghost. Or perhaps the ghost is basically a combination of the souls of all the Marowak they killed? If you really think about this plotline it kind of bothers your brain, and to be honest the weirdness of it is probably why it's never really got to me emotionally. And then Generation II came along with breedable Cubone and yeah, the whole thing kind of blew up in Game Freak's face. But hey, let's be fair, they definitely tried to make a touching moment in an otherwise pretty silly and lighthearted game working with very simple limitations and staying within the boundaries of the game's set-up, so I think everyone can, and perhaps should, overlook the oddities present in the story and enjoy it for what it is. If you don't emotionally connect to it, that's fine, but I can admit I can see why a lot of people like it especially if you can relate to having lost a parent.

There's been much debate about what's under Cubone's skull---including a certain Pokemon I'll bring this point back up with when I get there---but I realize that's perhaps the point. Cubone isn't actually meant to be a single Pokemon species, but rather it's representative of all the Pokemon who lost a mother due to the evils of the world. Thus Game Freak gave it an ambiguous appearance who has a body-shape that resembles the "saurian" Pokemon who made up a lot of the Generation I PokeDex, and basically was kind of the blueprint body-shape seen commonly in the prototype drawings of Pokemon when it was simply "Capsule Monsters". Likewise its mother's skull is also a rather generic skull shape, bringing to mind the classic "cow skull" seen commonly in cartoons whenever there's a desert scene, leaving the appearance of its mother ambiguous as well---or, at least, I imagine that was the intent. I'll get more into it with Marowak, but I really think making Cubone's mother a specific Pokemon was the biggest flaw in the storyline and something Game Freak should've thought over more.

It wasn't till Origins that the story of Cubone was animated, and while I haven't got around to fully watching Origins, I gotta say the decision to actually show Cubone in a flashback alongside his living mother, wearing the skull, kind of highlighted the problem with the storyline. I get that they probably couldn't just make a helmetless Cubone design since The Pokemon Company probably doesn't want to "ruin" the design, but why not have the flashback take place from Cubone's point-of-view, thus getting around that issue and upping the emotional connection you have with the Pokemon where you're literally watching its mother die through its own eyes? Anyway, in the main anime, they (wisely?) didn't bother trying to adapt the Cubone plotline, and from what I recall the show has never said Cubone is wearing the skull of its mom, it's simply a lonely Pokemon due to having somewhat of an antisocial personality as shown in "Pikachu's Vacation" where it was part of the gang of bullies who picked a fight with Pikachu and friends. It's really never got a focus episode whatsoever, and the only big role was Giselle's in "The School of Hard Knocks" where it lost to Pikachu to hammer in the point about not relying too strongly on Type Advantage.

oDlqPKd.png

#105 - Marowak
Ground

Marowak is the evolved form of Cubone. I am currently using this line in a Nuzlocke of Pokemon Y, one of the few Pokemon I have left after Korrina's Lucario wiped out everyone else, and I gotta say---this Pokemon kind of sucks. Now, Marowak does have four things going for it---in Gold and Silver it got a unique Hold Item known as the Thick Club which doubles its attack, and in fact in Gen II could cause its Attack to wrap back around to being quite low, and it has three signature moves Bone Club, Bonemerang, and Bone Rush, although two other Pokemon are able to learn that move now. But all of its other stats are actually pretty bad, including a surprisingly low speed which doesn't mesh at all with its design or nature, and its move-set is pretty one-dimensional. In my Nuzlocke, unfortunately Marowak didn't come with a Thick Club, so it's a really weak Pokemon who basically lacks any coverage, but on the other hand it's the best I have at the moment, and I've actually grown to appreciate it. Of course in Generation I, it was probably even worse without Thick Club existing and even less moves, so if you let Cubone's sob-story get to you and decided to use one, you probably made a big mistake. I'm pretty sure every other fully-evolved Ground-type Pokemon in Generation I except Onix is probably more useful than it is.

Looking over Marowak's PokeDex you realize it's not even really a regular evolution, rather it seems to simply be a Cubone who was able to overcome the sadness and turned into a revenge-bent warrior. Marowak isn't too much larger than Cubone, about the weight and height difference between a toddler and a pre-teen, and visually doesn't change much at all, the main evolutionary element being its mother's skull fusing to its head. One part I think was rather neat about the older design was that in the original backsprites, it appeared to have bony spikes running down its spine, but this element was dropped and it never appeared elsewhere in the first place---probably something a Mega Marowak could bring back. The older PokeDex entries treated Marowak as an unusual mutation of Cubone, its violent nature and use of bones being the result of childhood trauma, while some recent entries have seemed to try and reconcile this with the fact you can breed Cubone bone and all, claiming that from birth they're known for being bone-wielding savages. Like I said before, don't try to think about this too hard.

I said it before, but I think it was a big mistake to make Cubone's mother actually a Marowak, as it goes against basically everything we're told about the Pokemon. I really think they should've left Cubone's mother ambiguous---you couldn't catch it anyway, so why did they need to make it specifically a Pokemon? Couldn't they have created a generic sprite and given it generic moves to leave it up to the player to decide what Pokemon the mother was, which seems like it was the original intent behind Cubone? Well, perhaps there were technical constraints that may have caused an issue though in going with my idea, so they had to make the ghost share an I.D. with an actual Pokemon or else it'd cause various glitches or waste space---I'd love to hear Game Freak go into detail about certain points in the development of Red and Green like this one day, because it does seem like the original plotline got changed a bit to fit in Marowak. In fact I wonder if originally Cubone wasn't part of the plot either, and it was just a generic Pokemon who lost its mother---but they decided to use that idea to create a new Pokemon family? Outside of its unique plotline, is Marowak even that popular among fans? I always felt it was kind of a forgettable Pokemon outside of the ghost plot, and I don't remember any kids actually using one...and without that plot, I wonder if it would've completely disappeared amidst all the other Generation I Pokemon who were memorable in basically every other way?

All the dead mother stuff was dropped from the show, and Marowak's first appearance was "Bad From the Bone", which I mentioned before in Doduo's entry is one of the least memorable episodes for me personally among Kanto. I remember it starred Marowak, some dude lost his badges, and it actually featured actual Pokemon TCG cards making a cameo. The only other Marowak I remember of note was a pretty cool one in the Hoenn League who had a fight against Ash's rival Morrison, one of the first times we had a League Battle focused on someone other than Ash.
 
My first Shiny encounter (outside of Gyarados) was a shiny Butterfree I got via headbutting a tree actually not that far away from Gyarados IIRC. Didn't even know Shinies were a thing at this point. I mean, I knew about Gyarados, but I thought that gimmick was exclusive to it. So I was quite surprised to see the Shiny animation on Butterfree. Needless to say, I immediately went into my items menu, selected Pokéballs and....box was full, so I couldn't throw any. That ruined my day :(
I later encountered a Shiny Geodude while playing Gold via Stadium 2, this time I could catch it. I obviously cloned the shit out of it and traded it to my friends. And then, while playing Crystal and training at Mt. Silver, I encountered (and caught) a Shiny Ursaring.
Though I am not really too fond of either Ursaring or Golem, so these Pokémon spent most of their time as box fodder.
But my next Shiny wouldn't suffer the same fate. Once again I was training at a late game location, this time in Ruby's Victory Road. And then, I encountered a Shiny Zubat. The Pre pre evo of my all time favorite Pokémon! I was legit shook. I had to stop myself from screaming. Damn was that awesome. It was like karmic justice for RNGeezus dicking me over on Butterfree.
I encountered my next Shiny while hunting for a Feebas in Sapphire. I played without guide or internet so I had no Idea that Feebas apparently only appeared at specific spots in the water. I thought that thing was just damn rare. So I fished in the same spot for hours upon hours. And, of course, Shiny Carvanha showed up first. Really colorful Shiny. Though Sharpedo isn't quite as colorful, unfortunately, but still alright.
And, since I already caught a Shiny Zubat, it'd only be fitting if I also caught it's marine cousin, eh? On my way to catch a Snorunt for Pokedex completion (I actually had no Idea what the pre evo of Glalie was but I had a hunch that it could be caught in the icy cave (forgot its name) where you can catch Spheal) I encountered a Shiny Tentacool. Not really my kinda Pokémon but...cool I guess?
I'll show myself out
After my incredible luck with Shinies in Gen II and III, RNGeezus whispered to me, in my sleep: "You had enough". And thus I never encountered another Shiny since. :/
 
The silliest part of Origins was Team Rocket killing Marowak, a Ground type Pokemon with an ability that neutralizes Electric attacks, with an electrical baton.

Also, Thick Club Marowak hits ludicrously hard.
 
EVERYTHING about the Cubone line annoys me. I'm fine with some pokemon having elements that don't really make sense, that you are supposed to overlook because it's a game and stuff.

But the problem with Cubone is that you CAN'T overlook its stupid nonsensical design because they ingrained it into the plot for some reason.

Its pokemon like Kangaskhan, Cubone and the Nidoran's that make me dislike Gen I because they fly in the face of the cohesive world they've been trying to build from Gen II onwards. If they had just gone back and retconned Cubone's origins/pokedex entries, added a baby form for Kangaskhan and integrated the gender mechanic into Nidoran's design they would have fit into the world much better.

But they probably didn't due to the backlash it would cause over "nostalgia", and now Gen I just sticks out to me really badly. It really could have done with a reboot to fix some of the more questionable design decisions which just look super dated at this point.
 
The silliest part of Origins was Team Rocket killing Marowak, a Ground type Pokemon with an ability that neutralizes Electric attacks, with an electrical baton.

Also, Thick Club Marowak hits ludicrously hard.

45 Speed

Legit shook when I saw how low it was. The fuck?

It's slower than Weedle.
 
EVERYTHING about the Cubone line annoys me. I'm fine with some pokemon having elements that don't really make sense, that you are supposed to overlook because it's a game and stuff.

But the problem with Cubone is that you CAN'T overlook its stupid nonsensical design because they ingrained it into the plot for some reason.

Its pokemon like Kangaskhan, Cubone and the Nidoran's that make me dislike Gen I because they fly in the face of the cohesive world they've been trying to build from Gen II onwards. If they had just gone back and retconned Cubone's origins/pokedex entries, added a baby form for Kangaskhan and integrated the gender mechanic into Nidoran's design they would have fit into the world much better.

But they probably didn't due to the backlash it would cause over "nostalgia", and now Gen I just sticks out to me really badly. It really could have done with a reboot to fix some of the more questionable design decisions which just look super dated at this point.
I don't see a problem with the Nidos other than the older forms not being able to breed.

Kangaskhan badly needs a baby, but that's not a fault with Gen 1, that's a problem with further gens for not making one when breeding was introduced and instead making babies for Pokemon that didn't need them like Jigglypuff.

45 Speed

Legit shook when I saw how low it was. The fuck?

It's slower than Weedle.
On the plus side, with the right stat layout and one Swords Dance it's gonna probably shatter the skeleton of anything it hits.
 
They must have known they would add Pokemon breeding eventually. Monster collecting games of that era all had breeding systems.

So why tie a Pokemon's lore to something that flies completely in the face of a breeding system?
 
The two shinies I found were in BW2, and within a week of each other without tricks. Sawk and Banette (both of which, outside the Mega, simply a shade off the OGs :\).
 
They must have known they would add Pokemon breeding eventually. Monster collecting games of that era all had breeding systems.

So why tie a Pokemon's lore to something that flies completely in the face of a breeding system?

Since I can't think of anything, I'm legitimately curious, what monster collecting games predate Pokemon and have a breeding mechanic?
 
Since I can't think of anything, I'm legitimately curious, what monster collecting games predate Pokemon and have a breeding mechanic?

Monster Rancher and Dragon Quest Monsters both had breeding systems, although both came out after Red and Green. I actually thought both came out as the same time as Pokemon, but they were a year or so later.

But still. You make a game about raising animal like monsters, the topic of "how do they reproduce" is going to come up as a gameplay mechanic eventually.
 
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