Dark Type Pokémon, or The Fall of the God of Psychic

Oh, Sabrina. You remember Sabrina, leader of Saffron City's gym: the unassuming little girl who uses Psychic-type Pokémon. At this point in the game, you haven't fought very many of those, but if you were smart, you picked up an Abra early on. By now, you should have a faithful Kadabra (or Alakazam, if your parents loved you enough to buy you a Game Boy cable. Mine didn't.) by your side, kicking the ass of Machokes left and right. Knowing this, you can probably guess that Sabrina will be tough to beat.

Pokémon is like an ultra-complex game of rock-paper-scissors. Everything is strong against something, and weak to something else. So what is Psychic weak to? Bug and Ghost. Great! I picked up this Gastly in Lavender Town. And hey, in the anime, Ash beat Sabrina with nothing but a Haunter, so all I have to do is get this thing up to level 25 and I'm set!

My ticket to victory.

Aaaand then you get to the gym and realize that something the anime neglected to mention about Haunter is that it is a dual-type Pokémon: Ghost AND Poison, which makes it horribly weak to Psychic attacks. Oh, and it only has two Ghost moves: Lick (crap) and Nightshade (double crap.) One blast from Psybeam and Haunter is KO'd before he even gets a chance to whip out his tongue. Your ass: instantly kicked.

Your many painful defeats at the Saffron City gym left you with a bitter taste in your mouth and an important lesson: the Pokémon world is set up with a system of checks and balances, but Psychic-type rules all. Better start leveling up that Blastoise.

Obviously this all changed with the "discovery" of Dark-type Pokémon in Gold and Silver. Now there are good, powerful moves that are super effective against Psychic-types, AND Dark-type Pokémon are completely immune to all Psychic attacks.

WHERE IS YOUR GOD NOW

Gold and Silver also tempered out Psychic a bit with the addition of the Steel-type, which is resistant (but not immune) to Psychic-moves, as well as the addition of pure Ghost-types and more powerful Bug moves. From Generation 2 onward, Psychic-types were demoted from terrifying demigods to impotent, sorry bastards who can be obliterated by a fucking firefly.

My problem is that I still have PSYCHIC=KILL EVERYTHING deeply ingrained into my head. I still think "Bite" is a Normal move. Then I encounter a level 16 Poochyena, and half my team is writhing on the floor in agony. I realise that the game needed to be more balanced, and that the advent of Dark and Steel also meant that Fighting-types stopped being so utterly useless, but I still remember the good old days when all I had to do was feed Rare Candy and PP Ups to my Kadabra and the Pokémon League Championship was mine for the taking.

Side note: There's a lot of talk in the Pokémon fan community about the possibility of a Light-type to counter the Dark-type. I thought it was fairly obvious that Dark-type is the counter to Psychic-type, but this would imply* that Psychic-type were somehow "good", which contradicts my assumption that Psychic-type Pokémon like Alakazam and especially Mr. Mime are inherently evil.

*Not necessarily, I suppose. It may be a case of evil versus more evil.

Links:
The Top 5 Dark Type Pokémon
Pokemon Season 1 Box Set - Indigo League
Pokemon HeartGold
Pokemon SoulSilver

TM Trouble

A lot of buzz has been going around about new features in Black and White, namely that TMs can be reused. This makes sense; when I buy software or a DVD, it doesn't explode after one use. So now we don't have to stress out about which move to teach to what Pokémon. They can all learn Thief if we want them to! This is a special breakthrough for me because maybe, for the first time ever, I'll actually use a TM.

In the previous 4 generations of Pokémon games, I never used my TMs. Like, ever. Any of them. Not because I couldn't find them, or didn't care for the moves they held, or because I had some stupid notion about keeping my Pokémon "organic". I didn't use them because I was saving them. For what? Naturally, the ultimate Pokémon team that I never actually bothered to put together. You know, the perfectly balanced, fully EV trained, level 100 power team, each with a move set carefully planned to be unbeatable. I was saving my TMs for SuperAerodactyl and GigaHitmonchan.

So any time I'd think, "Hey, maybe this Pokémon would benefit from a new move," and start to boot up a TM, I would reconsider. Once I used it, it would be gone. Gone gone. It wasn't like Rare Candy, where I at least had a chance of picking another one up. With a few exceptions (like ones sold in shops or Game Corner prizes), there was only 1 of each TM in the entire game.

I think my hesitation may be trauma from wasting a TM doing something really stupid in Blue, like teaching Dig to a Diglett, but most likely the problem is rooted far deeper. I do the exact same thing with real life objects: I save them up thinking that they'll be more useful in some future event which, of course, never comes. I was so desperate to be the well-prepared ant (as opposed to the foolish grasshopper), with my giant stash of TMs just waiting to be used in the right moment. Instead I was just a dumbass lugging a giant sack of laser discs around Kanto.

Sidenote: I didn't just do this in the early games. My TM sack in SoulSilver is just as heavy.

The Weedle Controversy

I was recently ranting about how "back in my day" we didn't have online game FAQs and walk-throughs. We just had to figure out games by ourselves, or shell out cash for a game guide. The first game guide I had was an unofficial guide for Pokémon Red & Blue. It actually belonged to my brother, and we read the shit out of that thing. Last I saw of it, it was literally hanging together by a thread, every page frayed and worn.

While I'm sure I could have gotten through the game by myself, it WAS a handy guide (particularly the maps of Silph Co.), and, for being unofficial, it was mostly accurate. Mostly.

I've already mentioned in my first post on this blog that I was never able to trade in the early games, due to lack of a link cable. Since I would never be able to have a complete PokéDex, I placated my sorrow by—with the help of the game guide—making sure to capture every creature possible inside of Blue. Or so I thought.

Like most guides, this book had a list of the "version exclusives", that is—as I am sure you are all aware—Pokemon from the same generation that only exist in one version of the game. On the list of "Red only" Pokémon was the stupid, stupid, ugly piece of crap worm-mon Weedle. It was no stretch to make the assumption that—since they were found in the same areas—Weedle was Red's token bug Pokémon, and Caterpie was Blue's.

Except that it wasn't. Weedles were NOT exclusive to Red; they were found in Blue in the bug-and-occasional-Pikachu-filled Viridian Forest just as they were in Red, only at a very low rate. A rate so low that neither I nor the jerkhat who wrote the game guide that was my only access to Pokémon information for several years ever encountered one.

To add insult to injury, I only found this out a couple months ago. I have long-since erased my original Blue game (sorry Charizard), so I can't even go back and troll Viridian Forest hoping for the 1-in-25 chance encounter with a Weedle.

Meh. I'm mad, but not so mad that I'm going to track down the author of the game guide and shove a rabid weasel through his mail slot. Anyway, it wouldn't have really made much of a difference if I had had a Weedle; I would have evolved it into a Beedrill and then buried it in my PC, never to look at or touch it again. In a way, I suppose it's better that all the Weedles in my Blue game got to enjoy the freedom that Zubat and Geodude never did.

*sad face*

You may have noticed that all the images on this blog are broken. In the same moment I lost my hosting (I was planning on switching anyway, but I missed the cut-off date), I lost my computer hard drive. -_- And while I had backed up most of my important stuff like my artwork, I didn't back up the images used for this blog.

In other words, I suck, so please bear with me while I get this blog back up and running. Pokemon Black and White is coming out in the US soon! So many new things to critique and make fun of!

Koffing's Great Adventure

Went to the local dive bar with my boyfriend last night, and I asked him to babysit Toxxik, my Koffing who was on my Pokéwalker. We were standing outside, and he went to check the number of steps and accidentally dropped it.

It hit the ground on its side and started rolling down the sidewalk, off the curb and into a puddle of water! Of course I was chasing after it as soon as I realized that the black object spinning across the cement was MY POKéMON, and was able to grab it the second it hit the water.

I shook it off and dried it on my shirt, then pressed the button, praying it still worked. Well, it not only still works fine, but Toxxik had a big heart bubble and found 50 Watts! Apparently he enjoyed his little adventure—or maybe it was an escape attempt and he was just trying to throw me off the track. "Umm, I love you Ariel! Here's 50 watts! ^_^;"

A wild Oddish appeared!

Use Stun Spore, now!

I found an Oddish in my kitchen! Apparently it had been hiding there for quite awhile. When I noticed it, it ran outside. I managed to snap a photo before it scampered away.

Top 5 Tuesday: Pokémon that give you nightmares

Look, we've all had dreams about Pokémon. Usually they are fun, happy dreams, where you get to have real Pokémon battles and snuggle with your Jigglypuff, but sometimes the dreams go a little...bad. Here are the top 5 Pokémon that I have had actual nightmares about.

#5. Pikachu

Moving on...

#4. Exploud

My boyfriend and I were playing doubles in the Battle Tower, and this freak of nature was our final opponent. We won by the slightest margin, but the sight of it really unnerved us (he had never even seen one before.) That night, I had an awkward, sweaty nightmare about facing an Exploud and it just kept screaming...and screaming...and screaming.

#3. Cacturne

It's an evil scarecrow that is also a cactus. When my boyfriend first saw a Cacturne he simply said, "I don't like that one." I found out later that he'd had recurring nightmares about a scarecrow as a child, and Cacturne reminded him of that.

As a side note, does anyone else get the feeling that Cacturne kinda doesn't fit in as a Pokémon? If I saw it out of context, I'd assume it was from some other franchise (like...I dunno, Final Fantasy. Or Digimon.)

#2. Bulbasaur

Technically Bulbasaur wasn't the source of the nightmare, but I had a terrible dream once where it was the Pokémon Holocaust, and the Jews in this case were...that's right, Grass-types. In the dream, the Gestapo were at my door, and I was desperately trying to hide my Bulbasaur. :( It didn't end pleasantly.

#1. Huntail

This actually qualifies as one of the worst dreams I've ever had. It started out beautifully—I got a lovely little white fish as a prize from an ice cream store, and took it home in a jar, admiring it all the way. When I got home, I went to put it in my fish tank, not realising that there was a Huntail in the tank already. It immediately darted for the little white fish, swallowing it. I grabbed the Huntail out of the tank and threw it on the counter to try and save the little white fish, but I was too late. I woke up in tears.

My Legendary Pokémon Pinball High Score

I can't reminisce about Pokémon without fondly remembering the many hours I spent playing Pokémon Pinball for Game Boy Color. I still pick it up from time to time, and it's just as fun as it ever was.

:)

But that's not important. What is important is my utterly freakin' epic high score.

THAT IS 81,532,998,600 POINTS, SON

The game has a save feature, and this saved game went on for over 6 months. I didn't tally it, but I'm pretty sure I got at least 50 extra balls. I never did complete the game's PokéDex (even though it was technically possible to get all of them in just the one game—even Mew), but who cares? I got 81,532,998,600 points.

I've never been great at action video games. I suck at Smash Bros. I run into gophers all the time in Mario Kart. Duck Hunt...forget it. In fact, 99% of my video game experiences before the age of 12 involved me mashing buttons for a few minutes, losing, then hurling the controller to the floor before tearfully declaring, "I hate this!" and walking away with the bitter taste of shame on my palate. Even though it didn't happen until I was well past the age for it to actually matter, getting this epic high score helped heal a lot of that old hurt.

(By the way, if someone feels like emailing me with evidence that they got a much higher score than mine, just be aware that you are going to ruin a fairly large chunk of my life.)

Why I never became a Pokémon Master

My first foray into Pokémon happened when I was around 13. A classmate told me she thought the cartoon was really cute and suggested I watch it. I was instantly hooked, and of course, I now needed to play the game so I could have PokéAdventures right alongside Ash and Misty.

My little brother had both Red and Blue for Gameboy, so I started playing Blue, despite his objections to me erasing his saved game. Oh, it was love. Instant love. My trusty Charmander and I, traversing Mt. Moon and Diglett's Cave, fighting our way to the top of the Pokémon League. To be a Pokémon Master was my destiny.

C'est l'amour.

Then it came time for me to complete my PokéDex. Professor Oak had entrusted this sacred task unto me, and may the gods help me should I fail. It should have worked out perfectly. I had access to both Red and Blue. My brother and I each had our own Gameboy, and he even had a few friends that played the game. We could all get together and spend the day trading our Eevee evolutions and Kadabras. We were just missing one thing.

To trade Pokémon in the old games, you didn't just need friends and multiple $20 game cartridges. You needed a link cable. Specifically this: a DMG-04, used to connect two of the original Gameboys.

Cheeky bastard.

Thinking back, 13 years after the fact, I imagine that this small bundle of wires was not actually that hard to find. It probably wasn't even that expensive. But try explaining that to my parents. We already bought you the Gameboy. We already bought not one, but TWO of what are essentially identical games. Now you need something ELSE for it? Try getting a job and paying bills and learning what it's like to live on your own, see how you like that.

So that was it. Never, not even once, did I get to trade in the Generation I games. No Ekans. No Mankey. No Jolteon. No Alakazam. And hey, if you wanted a Bulbasaur, maybe you should have gotten one from Professor Oak in the first place.

No.

I WAS able to obtain all the Pokémon you could possibly get without trading (which is 128.) A very poor concession prize considering all the wild rumors that flew around about what DID happen after getting all 150 creatures. A guy in Professor Oak's lab gave you a Mew. You gained access to a special hidden Safari Zone. The president of Nintendo America showed up on your doorstep with a sack of pirate gold.

We didn't have the internet back then, so all I had to go on was what my 10 year old brother and his weirdo friends told me. Turns out all you actually get is a pat on the back from Professer Oak and a shitty diploma from one of the employees in the Celadon Mansion.

I want the last 300 hours of my life back.

To this day, I've still never had a complete PokéDex. I'm close in Diamond; very close, especially after purchasing a used copy of Pokémon Pearl at a GameStop and finding it had been maxed out with cheat-generated legendaries. I'll be sure to post here when I get my awesome completion certificate. At least I can look forward to it being in color this time.