Pokémon (Not-So) Griefing Thread - Scarlet and Violet Released with 10 Million Copies in First 3 Days in Buggy States

[wmaf1488]

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[Null]

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so 15% of the internet, cool

 

[Retarded Weeb]

i fucking despise it. i'm supposed to believe these are natural animals that are born and evolve, what evolutionary advantage does being an ice cream cone have? if a human eats him, does he inject a load of parasite brood into his bowels that rip out of their abdomen? if not, it's fucking retarded.

It's supposed to just be some magical living ice monster that happens to look like ice cream. In fact, as far we're shown it seems ice cream cones in the Pokemon universe were inspired by Vanilluxe, rather than the other way around.

Garbodor is just an extension of stuff like Muk and Weezing in Gen 1. They're pollution monsters cuz those are a thing you'll sometimes see in other Japanese shit like Godzilla. Because pollution is bad for you, so like obviously if you get enough of it it comes alive and tries to actively kill you.

 

[Kerry]

There have been shit designs in every generation, but i think the absolute worst design goes to the gold stickfigure from the current gen.

 

[Friendly Primarina]

If we're talking about dumb Pokémon designs, I'd like to throw Eiscue into the mix. Yes, there's a real world reason for it to look like that. It still looks fucking retarded.

 

[spacekatguy]

i fucking despise it. i'm supposed to believe these are natural animals that are born and evolve, what evolutionary advantage does being an ice cream cone have? if a human eats him, does he inject a load of parasite brood into his bowels that rip out of their abdomen? if not, it's fucking retarded.

I used to have the same frustrations but I started to see it differently. Maybe look at it the other way around. Instead of "evolution" taking inspiration from contemporary human artifacts, in canon it's contemporary human artifacts taking inspiration from the Pokemon they know about. I realize this kicks shit in the head like the more limited Pokedexes of previous games but that's still retarded anyway.

The Casteliacone and its derivatives and copycats were inspired by Vanillite's evo family. Legends makes a strong case for modern era Pokeballs taking design cues from Hisuian Voltorb (one of the better regional or temporal variants imo). What's great about this explanation is how many times you can easily use it. Even for ancient artifacts, you could say the dogū was inspired by Claydol.

It's supposed to just be some magical living ice monster that happens to look like ice cream. In fact, as far we're shown it seems ice cream cones in the Pokemon universe were inspired by Vanilluxe, rather than the other way around.

Garbodor is just an extension of stuff like Muk and Weezing in Gen 1. They're pollution monsters cuz those are a thing you'll sometimes see in other Japanese shit like Godzilla. Because pollution is bad for you, so like obviously if you get enough of it it comes alive and tries to actively kill you.

See I like that GF finally has some regional variants that demonstrate that some Pokemon like Muk and Weezing are just as much products of the environment as the environment is a product of them (especially Muk given they explicitly point out the coloration and biology is highly depended on diet). Maybe Garbodor would look entirely different if it wasn't filled with contemporary era plastics and waste.

 

[Null]

I used to have the same frustrations but I started to see it differently. Maybe look at it the other way around. Instead of "evolution" taking inspiration from contemporary human artifacts, in canon it's contemporary human artifacts taking inspiration from the Pokemon they know about. I realize this kicks shit in the head like the more limited Pokedexes of previous games but that's still retarded anyway.

The Casteliacone and its derivatives and copycats were inspired by Vanillite's evo family. Legends makes a strong case for modern era Pokeballs taking design cues from Hisuian Voltorb (one of the better regional or temporal variants imo). What's great about this explanation is how many times you can easily use it. Even for ancient artifacts, you could say the dogū was inspired by Claydol.

Except we already have that and it looks way different.

 

[Grayback]

but i think the absolute worst design goes to the gold stickfigure from the current gen.

Ah, yes, the one that looks like a 1990s mac & cheese mascot. Gholdengo should be on the front of a cardboard box wearing sunglasses and surfing on a big orange wave.

I've sort of come around on a lot of the weirder / uglier / objectmon designs over the years, but that one is still a struggle.

 

[Seafarer]

Garbodor is just an extension of stuff like Muk and Weezing in Gen 1. They're pollution monsters cuz those are a thing you'll sometimes see in other Japanese shit like Godzilla. Because pollution is bad for you, so like obviously if you get enough of it it comes alive and tries to actively kill you.

Come to think of it I wonder if Garbodor is inspired by the Hedorah kaiju from one of the Godzilla movies. Hell, Garbodor’s pre-evolution form even kinda looks like the tadpole things Hedorah initially appears as.

 

[Deezy]

Even as a kid, it was really obvious to me how "gentrified" Pokemon became in Gen 3. All the world-building was fully hashed out for the sake of maximum marketability, any edge that you could argue existed previously was filed off, and the games fully fell into their comfortable pattern of rehashing the game structure of collecting 8 badges across a region, sometimes fighting an evil team with the climax between badges 7 and 8, fight your rival one last time in Victory Road, and then fight the Elite Four + Champion.

In hindsight, yeah, maybe it was the beginning of the Poke slop funnel. But when it was fresh, it was polished, there were fun things to do that weren’t necessarily turbo autism fuel (like the contests and the bases) and IMO overall R/S was just a more enjoyable experience for a kid, even though they didn’t bother jamming 2 continents into it. If you go back and play Gold or Silver now, it’s very obvious that they packed those carts to the absolute max—which doesn’t necessarily make a better game, just a longer one.

 

[MrSlongDong]

Old pokemon, for the most part, still looked like real animals, that's what made pokemon monsters more popular than digimon monsters. It's the same with every franchise, take Harry Potter, it's still grounded in reality, even a normal person can believe in it, if they want to. It's not just nonsense. The guy who made the original pokemon designs seem to have a real love and understanding of nature, much like Hayao Miyazaki. It's very difficult for non-weebs to explain to weebs why we stop caring about the media but there is a clear line. People enjoy Ghibli movies who don't watch anime in general. The creator of the original pokemons, Satoshi Tajiri (born 1965) was a freak bug collector when he was a kid and that's why the bug types are some of the best in the original series. There is something relatable and universal (even poetic) about the old style. You can't make this stuff up. Corporate have to keep coming up with new designs and so the original streak of inspiration is going to be lost. It's like Garfield comics, there is a point where you're going to run out of jokes.

I take Empoleon as an example of this. It's not particularly bad. It's just uninspired. It looks like a penguin mixed with the cool letter S we used to draw in high school.

 

[Anonitolia]

Tajiri stepped down and was replaced my Masuda, and Pokemon started slowly losing its SOVL.

See, I find this hilarious because Masuda's stuff is so fucking esoteric that it loops back around into almost looking generic. Generation 3 might have been based off of a real-life Japanese political happening from the time yes, I know, Poketuber, but Tama explains it more succinctly than any other place on the web so I'm recommending her anyways. If you're not interested in anything but the happening, close the video after like 15 minutes, Generation 4 had THIS schizophrenic shit to its name:



Generation 5 named characters after fucking music notes and tried to say something with its story, but in generation 6 and beyond I suppose I can agree. Masuda's soul seems to have broken after BW's bad reception, to the point where he cut Generation 5 short to get it over with and cut Generation 6 off at the knees to rush Sun and Moon for the 20th anniversary, whereupon he would step down as series director. Ohmori never seems to have given much of a shit, he just wanted an outlet to complain about his parents and fap to cute girls and Pokémon just happened to be there.

 

[Squawking Macaw]

If we're talking about dumb Pokémon designs, I'd like to throw Eiscue into the mix. Yes, there's a real world reason for it to look like that. It still looks fucking retarded.
View attachment 7230514

I hate it. It's literally just a penguin with a massive ice cube stuck to its head. It doesn't look like it'd be able to walk without tipping over and crashing the retarded ice cube face into the ground. I give Toucannon a lot of shit for being literally just a toucan, but at least it doesn't have a cinder block for a face.

Satoshi Tajiri (born 1965) was a freak bug collector when he was a kid and that's why the bug types are some of the best in the original series

They weren't all that good. Design-wise, most bug types were just cartoony versions of real bugs. Of the first two gens, only the Scyther line, Parasect line and Shuckle stand out. And competitive-wise, the bug type has always been the worst. Most bug Pokemon were stupidly weak as a result of evolving early, and for the first three gens the only good bug move was Megahorn. It took until gen 4 for it to get more good moves in U-turn, Bug Buzz and X-Scissor, and it took until gen 5 to get actually strong bug types like Scolipede, Volcarona, and the only mythical bug, Genesect.

I take Empoleon as an example of this. It's not particularly bad. It's just uninspired. It looks like a penguin mixed with the cool letter S we used to draw in high school.

It does have some inspiration. Its beak is shaped like a trident and it's clearly inspired by Napoleon Bonaparte, both in design and in name.

 

[Retarded Weeb]

See, I find this hilarious because Masuda's stuff is so fucking esoteric that it loops back around into looking almost generic. Generation 3 might have been based off of a real-life Japanese political happening from the time yes, I know, Poketuber, but Tama explains it more succinctly than any other place on the web so I'm recommending her anyways. If you're not interested in anything but the happening, close the video after like 15 minutes, Generation 4 had THIS schizophrenic shit to its name:

View attachment 7230749View attachment 7230762

Generation 5 named characters after fucking music notes and tried to say something with its story, but in generation 6 and beyond I suppose I can agree. Masuda's soul seems to have broken after BW's bad reception, to the point where he cut Generation 5 short to get it over with and cut Generation 6 off at the knees to rush Sun and Moon for the 20th anniversary, whereupon he would step down as series director. Ohmori never seems to have given much of a shit, he just wanted an outlet to complain about his parents and fap to cute girls and Pokémon just happened to be there.

The behind the scenes stuff Masuda and other GF staff wrote for Gen 3 to 6 do get pretty crazy, but that kind of just makes it all the more frustrating. Like in the Tajiri era they were just wanting to make some simple game capturing the feeling of being a kid going off exploring the woods and shit, and they did that pretty well. Then Masuda takes over and they start going all in on shit like gods, aliens, ancient civilizations, conspiracies, cults, or whatever, but then when they actually make the game it all gets filtered through some marketability filter until the final result feels like totally toothless kiddy shit that you have autistically examine to squeeze any thematic substance out of. The only reason we know any of these games could've been a lot weirder is because of someone hacked their server and leaked a bunch of stuff we weren't supposed to see, like them writing much more grand plots than what made it into the actual game or writing legends about teenage girls getting raped and knocked up by Pokemon.

The guy who made the original pokemon designs seem to have a real love and understanding of nature, much like Hayao Miyazaki.

A lot of people think Sugimori designed all the old Pokemon because their final designs were all filtered through his drawings, but even Gen 1 there were four different people designing Pokemon. Something to keep in mind about Pokemon designs is that the early ones were very much influenced by technical limitations, and when those limitations were removed it affected how they went about designing Pokemon, whether for better or worse.
They've made it very clear in multiple interviews that the original Gen 1 Pokemon were drawn directly into the game and never went through any design process on paper. That's why any unusued Pokemon from that era that have ever been shown off or leaked were all in unfinished sprite form and not sketches or anything. No sketches were ever made. A big thing this influenced is that since the game was in black and white, many Pokemon didn't have any sort of color scheme in mind. That's why most Gen 1 Pokemon have a very simple color schemes with often a single prominent color, because the colors were only designed as Sugimori was drawing up the official art for them near the game's release, and most colors are based on what color palatte the Super Game Boy would display them in. Because of this, the Gen 1 Pokemon ended up having fairly simple designs, though their final look was filtered through Sugimori's artstyle since he was in charge of drawing up the official art.

Gen 2 was the same except they were on Game Boy Color now, so they used more colors, but it was still relatively limited and the Pokemon were drawn directly into the game before Sugimori ever drew up official art for them. Starting with with Gen 3, the GBA was now advanced enough that the number of colors displayed on the screen was no longer a real concern. That meant that the designers started going crazier with the designs, you can see how they designed the Gen 3 Pokemon to have more colors and more garish colors at that. And because less limitations, they started designing the Pokemon on paper first, and although Sugimori still drew the final official art for them all, I believe he was no longer changing up the designs as much from how the other artists drew them, which means if other artists don't draw Pokemon as naturalistic looking as Sugimori does, then Pokemon in general are going to look less naturalistic.

 

[MrSlongDong]

It does have some inspiration. Its beak is shaped like a trident and it's clearly inspired by Napoleon Bonaparte, both in design and in name.

Yeah I know it's inspired by Napoleon but my point is that it looks bad and it does not appeal to me. Do you look at this Empoleon thing and think, "oh it's inspired by Napoleon, I understand this and therefore I like it". Maybe they should have made Hitlerion instead.

They weren't all that good. Design-wise, most bug types were just cartoony versions of real bugs.

Pokemons are cartoony versions of real animals. That's what I think makes them interesting. The fact is, as time went by they became less and less interesting.

Most bug Pokemon were stupidly weak as a result of evolving early, and for the first three gens the only good bug move was Megahorn.

Bug types weren't meant to be strong, there was something satisfying in seeing them get decimated only to shit out more of these aberrations. Maybe that's just me

 

[MrSlongDong]

even Gen 1 there were four different people designing Pokemon. Something to keep in mind about Pokemon designs is that the early ones were very much influenced by technical limitations, and when those limitations were removed it affected how they went about designing Pokemon, whether for better or worse.
They've made it very clear in multiple interviews that the original Gen 1 Pokemon were drawn directly into the game and never went through any design process on paper. That's why any unusued Pokemon from that era that have ever been shown off or leaked were all in unfinished sprite form and not sketches or anything. No sketches were ever made. A big thing this influenced is that since the game was in black and white, many Pokemon didn't have any sort of color scheme in mind. That's why most Gen 1 Pokemon have a very simple color schemes with often a single prominent color, because the colors were only designed as Sugimori was drawing up the official art for them near the game's release, and most colors are based on what color palatte the Super Game Boy would display them in. Because of this, the Gen 1 Pokemon ended up having fairly simple designs, though their final look was filtered through Sugimori's artstyle since he was in charge of drawing up the official art.

That is a good point, it's a bit like the star wars prequel effect: how many people think sci-fi movies looked better without the CGI when directors had to use matte painting and practical effects etc. However, I think it's only part of the picture. The style of Pokemon in the 90's was also a bit more old school. Things used to look a bit cleaner and simpler back then. Charmander today would have a bunch of cool stuff added to the design, like a fire cut and maybe ears and a cape

Ultimately, I think it goes beyond style. It's the mere repetition, the fact that they had to come up with hundreds of new designs just to get new games out. It's just not sustainable from an artistic pov.

 

[Pipi420]

the main folly of pokemon has always been that there's like 10,000 different creatures but everyone's party ends up looking the same in most playthroughs. create insane scarcity, region lock your options based on where you're physically playing from, make shitty mons more viable, force people to get creative.

dude you have no idea. The worst of this was in gen 4 to the point where it became a meme. Starter, Staraptor, Luxray, Roserade, Buizel, Garchomp was EVERYONE'S team.

 

[Sugriva]

"Modern pokemon still look co-"

 

[Squawking Macaw]

I might as well mention the unhealthy hatred I have for Baxcalibur

Look at this fucking thing. This looks like a plastic bath toy with metal plates glued to it. The single back fin looks ugly as hell and why the fuck does it have red ribbons coming out of its hands? It doesn't have a single hint of red anywhere else on the design, it's distracting.
"But it's a Godzilla reference!" Add it to the pile along with Rhydon, Tyranitar and Groudon. They were Godzilla references and they looked good. The only smart thing about it is its reference to an ancient handaxe, and that doesn't even show through in its design. Where's the axe? Is it the back fin? The red spikes? It doesn't seem like it.

It's only made worse by the fact that it looks like a naked Duraludon, which doesn't look all that great either.

They're even in the same pose ffs.

 

[30+GameOvers]

Pokemon were never meant to just be animals tho. If you look back and read all the Gen 1 material and the script to Red/Blue, it's pretty clear the original vision of them by the developers was that they were like cryptids and youkai. That's why the Pokedex gives them classifications like "Mouse Pokemon", because those normal animals were meant to exist in the Pokemon world and the Pokemon were just like mutated or supernatural versions of those animals. Considering cryptids can include aliens and other weird shit, and youaki include inanimate objects coming to life, having a few weirdos like Voltorb, Magnemite, and Grimer fit right in.

Real animals in Pokemon universe are cursed. I'm glad they nipped that one in the bud, if they wanted to seriously elaborate on this point they should have expanded on it in the original games.

i fucking despise it. i'm supposed to believe these are natural animals that are born and evolve, what evolutionary advantage does being an ice cream cone have? if a human eats him, does he inject a load of parasite brood into his bowels that rip out of their abdomen? if not, it's fucking retarded.

If I remember correctly, it's just a floating piece of sentient ice that turns water around it into violent blizzards. The snow falls on top of it and makes it look like an ice cream cone, so it's a stylistic choice/coincidence. This isn't even the only evolutionary line where the idea is that it's just a floating piece of ice that generation.
Gen 3 had this too btw

https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Glalie_(Pok%C3%A9mon)