Pokemon Gotta Catch-Em-All

Blind_Evil wrote:

Y'know, I've seen a lot of people saying they're surprised it's coming so fast after BW2. That's my instinct too, but...

If you think of BW2 as the upgraded versions of BW, then the scheduel is perfectly normal. They release a new generation game in the franchise every three years. The upgraded versions have been released one year (Yellow & Platinum) or two (Crystal & Platinum) before a new generation.

BW came out three years ago.

ccesarano wrote:
muttonchop wrote:

I'll be happy to have actual animated 3D models in the battle sequences. I'm getting pretty tired of watching static sprites wiggle at each other.

My only concern is how the animations will effect how annoying random encounters can tend to get in these games. Leveling up takes a while already unless you're fighting another trainer, and with them fancy looking animations it could be friggin' painful.

If they were going to make random encounters less annoying, I'd prefer they start by consolidating or removing some of the message boxes that show up during every battle. Someone needs to tell Gamefreak that you're allowed to have more than one sentence on the screen at a time. I really don't need to button mash my way through three separate messages to tell me how much damage an attack did and whether it caused any status effects, or 4+ messages to tell me I won a battle and received x credits and y experience.

Given SoulSilver and its Pokewalker accessory, do you think there'll be an option to level up Pokémon using Play Coins? That'd be nice.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

Given SoulSilver and its Pokewalker accessory, do you think there'll be an option to level up Pokémon using Play Coins? That'd be nice.

I think that's a near certainty given that was a really popular activity at conventions. I also expect StreetPass to play a prominent role with the game as well.

shoptroll wrote:
ClockworkHouse wrote:

Given SoulSilver and its Pokewalker accessory, do you think there'll be an option to level up Pokémon using Play Coins? That'd be nice.

I think that's a near certainty given that was a really popular activity at conventions. I also expect StreetPass to play a prominent role with the game as well.

Hopefully it'll just enhance the internet stuff.

muttonchop wrote:
ccesarano wrote:
muttonchop wrote:

I'll be happy to have actual animated 3D models in the battle sequences. I'm getting pretty tired of watching static sprites wiggle at each other.

My only concern is how the animations will effect how annoying random encounters can tend to get in these games. Leveling up takes a while already unless you're fighting another trainer, and with them fancy looking animations it could be friggin' painful.

If they were going to make random encounters less annoying, I'd prefer they start by consolidating or removing some of the message boxes that show up during every battle. Someone needs to tell Gamefreak that you're allowed to have more than one sentence on the screen at a time. I really don't need to button mash my way through three separate messages to tell me how much damage an attack did and whether it caused any status effects, or 4+ messages to tell me I won a battle and received x credits and y experience.

Hopefully they'll Final Fantasy a lot of it and numbers will just fly outta the Pokemon upon being struck or whatnot.

shoptroll wrote:
ClockworkHouse wrote:

Given SoulSilver and its Pokewalker accessory, do you think there'll be an option to level up Pokémon using Play Coins? That'd be nice.

I think that's a near certainty given that was a really popular activity at conventions. I also expect StreetPass to play a prominent role with the game as well.

My favorite memory of PAX East '10 was watching people walk around the Hynes yelling "POKEWALKER!" and trading up.
My favorite memories of PAX East '12 were filling up my StreetPasses while walking around/waiting in lines.

I'd love to be able to add something Pokemon X/Y related for memories of PAX East '14.

I've been playing a lot of Pearl and Soulsilver since the X/Y announcement, and I got curious about other how other people here play. I mean, the games can really be played in a lot of different ways.

Do you just beat the main quest and call it a day? Do you hunt legendaries? How many pokemon do you raise over the course of the games?

I've been going around catching legendaries, mostly for show and/or trade fodder. I'd like to have as complete a set as possible by the time X/Y come out (no cheating, of course). Some I won't be able to get because I've decided not to eff around with my router settings to get on the GTS.

If I beat White, it'll be the first I've beaten since the first game. Truth told, though, it was much more common for me to keep restarting the first game over and over, and that temptation rises in White. Once I've beaten the story, I think I'll be done with white.

In the last I ground the heck out of my Pokemon earning every ribbon I could for them. Battle Frontier and tower, even Contests and Super Contests. Needless to say, without those carrots, B/W has been my least played since Ruby and Sapphire.

My Pokemon are ribbon-ed up, but certainly have fallen behind with their species' improvements over the last couple generations.

Hoping X/Y brings back some kind of keepsake for achievements in it.

That's incredible. That never, not once occurred to me and I find it totally awesome that they stuck to an awesome subtle pattern like that!

All that iteration, all that time subtly following a pattern and yet... there still exists no pokemon as good as squirtle.

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/dvZzy.gif)

Honestly, the anime made me wish you could get a version of Squirtle with the shades.

Though now that I think about it, having an actual Squirtle Squad suggests there was a large group of Squirtles, and yet that's simply not how the starters work at all.

oilypenguin wrote:

All that iteration, all that time subtly following a pattern and yet... there still exists no pokemon as good as squirtle.

Cubone. The best.

So I'm conflicted about something. The X/Y announcement has me thinking about Pokemon again. Unfortunately that's under a year off. Should I bother with Black/White in the meantime?

...I just realized I answer my phone in Pokemon as infrequently as I do in real life. I'm a bad person.

DSGamer wrote:

So I'm conflicted about something. The X/Y announcement has me thinking about Pokemon again. Unfortunately that's under a year off. Should I bother with Black/White in the meantime?

Serious answer? Nah, just wait. Enjoy other stuff in the meantime, and then see what we think of X/Y; I'm hoping it will be more than just a graphical update, maybe adding more fun stuff to the end of the game like Diamond/Pearl/Platinum did (especially Platinum) and maybe some of that throughout the main narrative.

I realized something about Froakie. Sometimes they'll add features to a Pokemon to make them look more "human" in certain ways. Froakie has two white dot things that look like spectacles or glasses and a white "mane" that looks like it could grow into a beard.

I'm guessing his evolved form will look like some kind of frog wizard. Or Santa frog.

I think I'm gonna learn how to speed run Pokemon Blue. I took a quick hop over to SDA's page for it and it looks achievable, fun, and totally something I'd be down for learning how to do.

So I started getting the hankering for Pokemon again. Old school, the first 150. I have a DS, but nothing older, between that and pure convenience I started trying different Gameboy emulators. None of them made me super happy, and after checking online I heard good things about the "My Boy!" emulator, which is GBA. So I upped to FireRed and tried it out.

Just great, absolutely great, I don't know how I'll ever play a normal game of Pokemon again. The free version of "My Boy!" lets you speed the game up 2X speed. That by itself is miraculous. The walking, grinding, bushwhacking, all happening twice as fast immensely improves the game.

Not only that, but the free version also lets you trade. I got the Leafgreen rom as well, go to the pokemon center, talk to the computer gal, then in the emulator open your other rom, talk to the gal, done. You can now switch back and forth to do your trading.

There is also remote linking but I haven't done it yet. I read somewhere that it will find other Androids over wifi and Bluetooth, I'm not sure if you can just trade over the internet.

Buying the full emulator ($5) opens up speeds up to 16x. I like 4x for general purposes, but do 16x to hatch eggs. It also lets you load in snapshots of the room, letting you save the state anywhere, rather than just the normal saving (more useful for savepoint games like FF VI).

You can save in free games though. So if you get Zapdos down to a handful of hitpoints and paralyze him you can save the game, waste 50 ultra balls, reload normally, accidentally kill him, reload, kill him, kill him, waste 50 ultra balls, say "screw it he deserves my money" buy the emulator, then reload that snapshot with Zapdos in a perfect position.

That scenario was absolutely made up btw. Yep.

Playing in real time I would probably have ragequit during the 8 hours it would have taken to catch Scyther. As it is I've beaten the Elite 4 and just bred a baby Scyther that knows Silver Wind for my leaf green play through. The game thinks I've played 180 hours but it's only been around 50.

I think I'll finally catch them all.

Yonder wrote:

emulator stuff

I remember playing the original pokemon on an emulator for my palm pilot back in 1999 because my parents wouldn't buy me a gameboy (yes, I had a palm pilot but not a gameboy as a kid, very strange, I know). It was incredibly slow as the palm was way under-powered. The worst attack was "psych" with Kadabra, the animation would take like 60 seconds to complete the attack. Painful.

Yonder wrote:

Yonder's tale of a magical journey.

Are you me? Because this almost exactly describes my last week. I don't think I can ever play GBA pokémon at 1x ever again. It was excellent on my phone because I was able to artfully put all the buttons on the left side of the screen and play with my left thumb. (Also L=A is a godsend setting)

Then transferred the game's files to my tablet and enjoyed the 2x goodness without giving my hand cramps!

10/10 totally worth the purchase.

I tried on my phone, but I think mine is just a tad on the small size for my huge hands, as those tiny little buttons on the app(s) just weren't cutting it for any games. =/

dhelor wrote:

I tried on my phone, but I think mine is just a tad on the small size for my huge hands, as those tiny little buttons on the app(s) just weren't cutting it for any games. =/

Not sure what app you were using but in MyBoy (free incl) you can resize the buttons. Course if you're holding your phone like a gameboy and you've got huge hands, you'll probably face other ergonomic issues. But hey, hope it helps.

Because new and shiny means a new thread, Pokemon X/Y Catch-All.

I am playing my first ever Pokemon game, Pokemon Yellow on the Game Boy Advance SP. It's actually pretty good! I picked it up as part of a hand held retro revival and it hasn't disappointed.

So there's a new short Pokemon series in Japan based on Red/Blue that's more like the game. Destructoid posted an article with this video embedded. The title was "This is what a dying Charmander sounds like"

There's something disturbing about the suggested brutality of that sequence, and therefore the universe, and it sends shivers down my spine.

Looks like early reviews are starting to come in, Polygon's Griffin McElroy Loved it: Link

Just a reminder that there's a dedicated catch-all thread for X/Y.