Tag: Pokémon

A pearl of wisdom for you – pressure makes diamonds, but leisure time is platinum

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Pokémon Diamond, Pearl & Platinum (2007 / 2009)

I like to think of myself as a pretty patient man, willing to accept cock-ups, malaise and the problems that one generally encounters in life. After all, I don’t tend to care too deeply about anything. I’m perfectly happy to be just sat there, as lazy as a snail, watching Countdown all day. And my primary motivation in work, and anything in life really, is not money, or fame – I just want to avoid any hassle.

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Same as it ever was, same as it ever was, look where my Chatot was

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Pokémon Sword & Shield (2019)

Many enthusiastic youths fancy themselves as stayers on the quest to become a professional sportspersonmember, but very few make it. The journey to the top takes immense sacrifice, more than a bit of luck, and some God-given talent. A hefty bank account wouldn’t hurt either. Even then, you might still get hacked down before your prime. For every marquee athlete, there’s hundreds who have chanced it all, only to fail and end up with nothing but a hard luck story. Well, that’s not fully true: some of the more fortunate ones might have stolen a peek at a now-famous sportsman’s tackle in the showers, giving them a story to tell for the rest of their lives.

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What’s pocket-sized, bundles of fun and never out of a young man’s hands?

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Pokémon Gold, Silver and Crystal (2001)

I was cleaning out my room the other day, always a thankless task that ends up getting cut short by many a distraction. You’d need a team of top archaeologists to sift through everything in my room, and even if they got past the first few layers of clothes, they’d have to resort to using proper Carbon-14 dating to detail everything else that’s buried in here.

On this occasion, I found my first ever mobile phone: a Mitsubishi Trium Geo flip phone. It’d probably still be working too, if I’d had the charger for it. Actually, I’m surprised it wasn’t still holding on to an inkling of battery. This was a phone from the days when they were designed to last through a nuclear war, if they had to. Well, let’s be fair – their large battery packs didn’t need to power highly complex operating systems, architecture and dozens of applications. Still, WAP was a pretty intense deal, right?

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Building the Best Pokémon Team (Part 16)

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Building the Best Pokémon Team (Part 16)

Back to our trip of Hoenn, and we’re at that stage of the Pokédex that’s usually the most obscure: the beginning of the Dex is your starters, the common bird, the Rattata equivalent, and maybe a cute Pikaclone or two. The last section of the Regional Dex is where the mascot Legendaries, the Dragonite, and maybe some evolutions from previous Generations live. You don’t tend to forget about those guys.

Right before the heaps of Legendary Pokémon that Ruby, Sapphire and Emerald foisted on us is the likely lads below, with some of them quite a bit more forgettable than others. We’re talking chameleons, ghosties, and giant ice heads today. You can’t knock Hoenn for its variety, can you?

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Building the Best Pokémon Team (Part 15)

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Building the Best Pokémon Team (Part 15)

I’ll say this for Generation 3, they sure gave us a whole heap of new Pokémon, over 130 new boys and girls and Claydols to get acquainted with. And unlike Generation 2, which barely even showed you a nipslip of its new Pokémon, Hoenn invited you backstage to a strip show with everything on display.

Everywhere you looked it was bouncing Spoinks and smooth Lunatones and horny Solrocks and thick Wailords. It threw its Pokémon in your face until you couldn’t breathe, and the Gen 1 Pokémon waiting for you at home suddenly looked so bookish and librarian and frumpy in comparison. You know what I mean?

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6 Pokémon You Wouldn’t Want in Real Life

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6 Pokémon You Wouldn’t Want in Real Life (2019)

Any player of Pokémon has surely had a near nerdgasm at that fantastic idea of Pokémon being real. Even if it were just Pidgeys flying into your garden and eating Caterpies, you’d still lap it up. Even if these things already happen in nature, it’s all a bit mundane for you – why can’t there be 15-foot long blue worms living in the water that turn into humongous orange dragons if you feed them enough candies?

And why can’t there be a bee the size of a small child? Or an enormous squid that can take down buildings? But no – we have to get our Responsible Caps on, every once in a while. It just wouldn’t do if every Pokémon were real. Some of them are just downright dangerous, even in David Attenborough’s hands, never mind a snotty 10-year-old child. Here, we take a look at a full team of six Pokémon that one wouldn’t fancy the hassle of keeping in real life. Keep in mind that all six of these hail from the primitive first Generation of Pokémon Red, Blue and Yellow. I have to cater for the casuals sometimes, don’t I?

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Building the Best Pokémon Team (Part 14)

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Building the Best Pokémon Team (Part 14)

Toerags, Titanics and thunderous crying – it’s a pretty diverse range of emotions below, to match the pretty diverse range of Pokémon available to you in the Hoenn region. Don’t count your chickens now, because there’s still a zillion water Pokémon to get through in the Hoenn Dex. And in later regions, we obviously have to acquaint ourselves with the fact that there are rubbish bags, ice creams and carkeys all vying for a spot on our team. Next to guys like those, your Minuns and your Volbeats don’t look so bad, do they…? Ah, don’t answer that.

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Building the Best Pokémon Team (Part 13)

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Building the Best Pokémon Team (Part 13)

I’ll say this for the Generation 3 lineup of Mons, it’s certainly diverse. In this piece alone, we’ll go from Rule 34 bait to sumo wrestlers to Digimon rocks to mushroom Ryu from Street Fighterses. It’s a little bit more than 3 Magnemites stuck together or a mega pile of sludge, know what I mean? Mind you, the originality does fall down a little by the time we get to Azurill.

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Building the Best Pokémon Team (Part 12)

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Building the Best Pokémon Team (Part 12)

The third Generation of Pokémon announced itself onto the Game Boy Advance with triumphant trumpet blasts. No really, 40% of the games is the trumpety soundtrack, and the other 60% is water if IGN are to be believed. When it came to adding new Pokémon, Gen 3 didn’t take the same timid approach of barely tipping its toes into the water like Gen 2 did, with all of its Gen 1 babies and evolutions. No, the new guys in Pokémon Ruby, Sapphire and Emerald are present right the way through, with plenty of Legendaries, but even more water Pokémon. There’s also Tropius, and I can’t wait until we get on to that thing. As always though, we must start with the starters.

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Building the Best Pokémon Team (Part 11)

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Building the Best Pokémon Team (Part 11)

This bumper edition of the now universally famous Pokémon Team piece brings us to the end of the Johto times, before Game Freak ushered in the Ruby, Sapphire and Emerald era with a blaze of trumpets. It is 100% nostalgia talking and it makes me a damn fool, but for me, Generation II of Pokémon brought with them the last truly great games in the series – it’s been, not downhill ever since but it’s been a bit of a lower plateau, and I don’t mean the Indigo one. The villains were still a bit sinister, there was that sense of mystery as the internet wasn’t ubiquitous, and it even bundled Kanto into the bargain. For Generation VIII, Game Freak, you give me a massive Pokémon world with non-linearity, at least 16 badges to earn and maybe even the ability to visit one or two previous regions. Then I just might be interested!

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