SPOILERS! Mysteries and Conspiracies of Pokemon

NYC isn't that bad. It's a lovely city for tourism and I, at least, have very good memories of it.

The rent rates are terrifying, ofc.
I have been twice. The only thing I liked was the beautiful monument to the 10,000+ American POWs that died on British prison ships anchored in the New York City harbor during the Revolutionary War.

Should have left the British keep it.
 

QuentinQuonce

formerly green_typhlosion
For a while, I've had a theory that Absol was Game Freak's first attempt to make a Lucario. Think about it: it's billed next to legendaries (eg: first Japanese Advanced opening, Pokémon Box boxart) or has a prominent role (eg: Jirachi: Wish Maker, sort-of Rescue Team) in a lot of Gen 3 media, learns a wide array of moves, and has an angsty backstory to appeal to the edgy teenage girls... but it only has one good stat. Oops.
I think you've actually got it backwards. Absol had such immense and most likely unexpected breakout popularity that GF were then prompted to actively TRY and make a Lucario.
 
Yet even though the XY, ORAS, and SM/USUM chapters have concluded, Volcanion, Marshadow, and Zeraora have yet to appear in any capacity.
Pokespe relies on going back a couple years after an arc is released and edit that with the volume releases. The amount it changes isn't normally that big, but because of the BW2-XY-ORAS-SM crunch, expect ORAS and SM to have more additions that will probably include these pokémon in some way

I mean, we're going to get magearna in ORAS, volcanion is probably close behind. Which isn't a god thing because god that arc has too much going on already.

Sorry that this is late OTL
 
Pokespe relies on going back a couple years after an arc is released and edit that with the volume releases. The amount it changes isn't normally that big, but because of the BW2-XY-ORAS-SM crunch, expect ORAS and SM to have more additions that will probably include these pokémon in some way

I mean, we're going to get magearna in ORAS, volcanion is probably close behind. Which isn't a god thing because god that arc has too much going on already.

Sorry that this is late OTL
wait

didnt the ORAS manga already, like, get collected into volumes? It getting new volumes with new chapters???

Pokemon Special realease you are a mess
 

Yung Dramps

awesome gaming
wait

didnt the ORAS manga already, like, get collected into volumes? It getting new volumes with new chapters???

Pokemon Special realease you are a mess
I'm more intrigued by the prospect of Magearna being added to the ORAS chapters and not SM. I mean truth be told we didn't need even more damning evidence that it was once a Kalos mon but hey why not.
 
didnt the ORAS manga already, like, get collected into volumes? It getting new volumes with new chapters???
I'm in pain, R_N

For a better explanation though: Pokespe releases in magazines, then is collected in mini volumes (often just called minis), which have very little alterations from the manga, beyond fixing some art.
THEN they're collected into actual volumes, which usually add more to their epilogues, usually extends the middle of the arcs, and may have more art fixes than usual.

XY, which started in 2013, has only finished its last proper volume 3 months ago. It took 12 years to actually get the final product of the arc.

I'm more intrigued by the prospect of Magearna being added to the ORAS chapters and not SM. I mean truth be told we didn't need even more damning evidence that it was once a Kalos mon but hey why not.
ORAS already had hoopa and diance, too. Surely this will not backfire and make the arc more of a mess than it is, no sir
 
I'm in pain, R_N

For a better explanation though: Pokespe releases in magazines, then is collected in mini volumes (often just called minis), which have very little alterations from the manga, beyond fixing some art.
THEN they're collected into actual volumes, which usually add more to their epilogues, usually extends the middle of the arcs, and may have more art fixes than usual.

XY, which started in 2013, has only finished its last proper volume 3 months ago. It took 12 years to actually get the final product of the arc.


ORAS already had hoopa and diance, too. Surely this will not backfire and make the arc more of a mess than it is, no sir
and i thought the nonsense with BW2's arc was the peak...



So, like.
Why do they feel the need to keep chasing every single game the moment it comes out. The games themselves can barely stick to that pressure and they get ~3 year dev cycles with a dedicated team these are mangas who probably have like a month lead time at best across as many magazines while maintaining other still on going arcs becaue they couldnt finish anything before the next 3 games came out, I have to imagine a manga (it's not even the manga! There's always other mangas doing their own shit!) should just kind of do its own thing and wait it out because god damn
 
Why do they feel the need to keep chasing every single game the moment it comes out. The games themselves can barely stick to that pressure and they get ~3 year dev cycles with a dedicated team these are mangas who probably have like a month lead time at best across as many magazines while maintaining other still on going arcs becaue they couldnt finish anything before the next 3 games came out, I have to imagine a manga (it's not even the manga! There's always other mangas doing their own shit!) should just kind of do its own thing and wait it out because god damn
A mix of this is probably to keep the entire brand on track, so any side media that follows the games is expected to match their speed, and tradition: pokespe has always been very closely linked to the games, even before they had to deal with that many games to cover. The stories' quality suffered a lot because of this in recent years. SWSH was awful because they got dropped with the DLC and they're starting that plotline when we only have, what? 5 chapters until the arc ends? so it'll be 100% expanded in the volumes.

It didn't help that in the gen 5 era, alongside the hiatus, pokespe lost 2 magazines where they would usually post things on, which made the gen 5-6 drag even worse.
 
Why do they feel the need to keep chasing every single game the moment it comes out.
A mix of this is probably to keep the entire brand on track, so any side media that follows the games is expected to match their speed, and tradition: pokespe has always been very closely linked to the games, even before they had to deal with that many games to cover.
The concept of generations was a mistake.
 
Game Freak's success with Pokémon feels like an indie studio hitting it way bigger than they ever intended to, not knowing how to deal with the absolutely absurd demand for their product, creating a company to help deal with said demand, and then losing agency to do things their own way in their own time because of the new company
 

Yung Dramps

awesome gaming
Game Freak's success with Pokémon feels like an indie studio hitting it way bigger than they ever intended to, not knowing how to deal with the absolutely absurd demand for their product, creating a company to help deal with said demand, and then losing agency to do things their own way in their own time because of the new company
Ah yes my favorite piece of corporate fanfiction "the glorified marketing agency that is explicitly subservient to Game Freak is somehow controlling them like evil overlords because... they just are ok!!!"

If Game Freak was at the mercy of these people megas would've never been taken out and they would've been forced to make new ones
 
Ah yes my favorite piece of corporate fanfiction "the glorified marketing agency that is explicitly subservient to Game Freak is somehow controlling them like evil overlords because... they just are ok!!!"

If Game Freak was at the mercy of these people megas would've never been taken out and they would've been forced to make new ones
Okay now I'm seeing a fan blackmailing Sugimori to finish at least one Mega Flygon.
 
Ah yes my favorite piece of corporate fanfiction "the glorified marketing agency that is explicitly subservient to Game Freak is somehow controlling them like evil overlords because... they just are ok!!!"

If Game Freak was at the mercy of these people megas would've never been taken out and they would've been forced to make new ones
If anyone in this fanfiction is "forcing" its will upon gamefreak let's be real it's probably Nintendo, the one who actually owns the IP and likely approves/denies final game pitches.




But you know what's sadder than evil corporate fanfic? Corporate Truths!
Did You Know Gaming (or Dr. Lava, rather, if anyone remembers him he's the one pushing to translate and spread various magazine articles and stuff like the 90s pokedex) actually did a lot of digging while looking for information on Z Version and its like....
god

OK so you remember that period in the Gen 6 era where GameFreak put out those smaller games, most of which got later ported elsewhere like to Phones and stuff? Harmoknight, Pocket Horse Jockey, Tembo? You might, like me, remember those as happening where members of GameFreak would pitch a game and if 2 board members liked it they would give the OK to do it. You might also, like me, have thought oh that was just a side thing and they set up the little project for that purpose.
No no! Interviews in japan literally stated that this "Gear Project" (as it was called) was a major initiative in the company. It's been known they had 2 development teams for a while, that typically alternated, but during this era Team 2 was the Pokemon team and Team 1 was go Gear Projects and that wasn't coincidence they literally said Gear Project was their primary focus. They wanted to continue develop new games and IP and try to find and encourage something that can stand up alongside pokemon [my editor's note: i imagine they said this in a way of like "a more general, but distinct successes" and less "a new multibillion dollar franchise"]

And if you're sharply sucking air through your teeth now, just wait!

While the games reviewed...fine, mostly, they really didn't catch on at all despite their attempts at it. DYKG doesn't linger on it but you can probably drag a line from "3ds exclusive download titles" to "Tembo isn't on any Nintendo Platforms" and "porting those games to mobile and PC" all as an attempt, an yattempt, to reach a wider audience and get more interest (DYKG DOES bring up a quote that they quote "Always targeted" other platforms with Gear Project though which....). Likewise with the later Giga Wrecker (PC only ,I believe), and Little Town hero (ported after the Switch version came out), which were also remnants of this Project.
I think Masuda straight up said in Famitsu that like, not even 1 out o 50 of the people who bought Pokemon bought their other games. They really did try to push their games too, they even started a gamefreak-specific youtube account to just sort of detail things about their games (in addition to stuff about Pokemon, of course) and so on. That quote where he mentions the 1 out of 50 ends with just like...a really sad plea? To please subscribe to their youtube channel, and watch the videos.
They stopped uploading videos entirely 2 years ago and at their peak had about 40k subscribers. It was a japanese only channel and there WAS a pandemic (though video content like that would probably excel in a pandemic...),but, it really seems it wasn't doing what they wanted it to do.

Needless to say they also wound up scrapping various Gear Project titles and sounds like they just dropped the idea entirely by this point after the failure of GigaWrecker and especially Little Town Hero (there's a reason people just stopped talking about the game and if they did talk about it, it was not kind...)

if I might further put in an editor's note from me: I remember a quote from one of LTH's directors, when talking about working with Toby Fox on the soundtrack, akin to "We worry people will [talk about/like] the soundtrack more than the game!" and in the moment it just feels like a joke about working with a popular composer but like......was it really tho.............
 
I think its important to separate gamefreak as game developers and gamefreak as a company with higher ups and investors. Not because they're two different companies, but because there's just a sharp divide between them.

Game developers are workers. No matter how high your rank is, you only have so much influence in the game you're making. I'm not here to infantilize them or act like theyre incredible artists that are being held by gunpoint. Their code is incompetent, they have issues with making games and writing plots, that's all true. But I find it also true that they're trying, and they do want to make good games. I don't believe anyone hacking away in a company with such a tight schedule of release and such an important title is lazy, no matter how much I hate what they make.

We can always throw the multi billion company line around, and it is true in most ways, but I find it hard to believe Ohmori, or hell even Masuda after his promotion have much say in how those millions are put in their budget. Whether someone higher, or the immovable wall that investors are when something doesn't go their way, really.

I think they could be better creators. Their code is pretty rough, the games are repetitive, but I do believe they're trying. As someone who has worked for a bit in the industry, see what the directors and workers of these games have to go through, it's hard to pin them as the origin of the all evil pokemon empire. It sounds a bit obvious, but I think a lot of fans think that these men just hate good games and sleep for 15 hours before going to work, or whatever.
 
I think its important to separate gamefreak as game developers and gamefreak as a company with higher ups and investors. Not because they're two different companies, but because there's just a sharp divide between them.

Game developers are workers. No matter how high your rank is, you only have so much influence in the game you're making. I'm not here to infantilize them or act like theyre incredible artists that are being held by gunpoint. Their code is incompetent, they have issues with making games and writing plots, that's all true. But I find it also true that they're trying, and they do want to make good games. I don't believe anyone hacking away in a company with such a tight schedule of release and such an important title is lazy, no matter how much I hate what they make.

We can always throw the multi billion company line around, and it is true in most ways, but I find it hard to believe Ohmori, or hell even Masuda after his promotion have much say in how those millions are put in their budget. Whether someone higher, or the immovable wall that investors are when something doesn't go their way, really.

I think they could be better creators. Their code is pretty rough, the games are repetitive, but I do believe they're trying. As someone who has worked for a bit in the industry, see what the directors and workers of these games have to go through, it's hard to pin them as the origin of the all evil pokemon empire. It sounds a bit obvious, but I think a lot of fans think that these men just hate good games and sleep for 15 hours before going to work, or whatever.
Definitely agree on a lot of this. SWSH was...a lot, but it was clear they wanted something more and then continued to work on that through DLC, LA and SV. And while I..............ooo.......disagree, with some of the ideas of how SWSH's team functioned, that was clearly a way to look toward the future and differentiate development so it didn't get stale. And if nothing else they quickly realized their tools weren't going to cut it (assuming they didn't just break entirely) and actively worked on ironing out the development experience which almost immediately paid dividends as they went whole hog on LA development and SV development; plus they wound up being a company that handled the transition to remote work pretty well.



Incidentally...Legitimately I think, especially after BDSP (aka the "Oh there were problem problems" game) shows how easily it could mess up, it's impressive that they've managed to do this output the way they have and bottom out at, like. "Well this was a complete experience, but subpar" (this is SWSH for me). It's a far cry from the development hell, stuffed-that-cart-to-max-for-better-or-worse Red & Green days.


Probably the wrong kind of impressive, since lord knows the series could probably "skip" a year especially as game development asks become greater and greater, but until the powers that be decide that they should design their generations around an extra year they're keeping on, keeping on.
 
Ah yes my favorite piece of corporate fanfiction "the glorified marketing agency that is explicitly subservient to Game Freak is somehow controlling them like evil overlords because... they just are ok!!!"

If Game Freak was at the mercy of these people megas would've never been taken out and they would've been forced to make new ones
I didn't mean it as a certainty that Game Freak was being forced to do things one way or another, I meant this more as a "the whole series feels like it's being continually pushed forward and forced to integrate its new material within a certain timeframe because if they don't the new games will come out and may obsolete the material they were yet to include" thing. I was honestly thinking more of... whatever it is PokeSpe is doing with doing a new arc based on every single set of new games (though they're not really time-locked like Game Freak and the anime are).

I'm well aware Game Freak owns a share (I think it's a third) of TPCi and that they should have just as much say in how the series progresses as the other shareholders. I'm just speaking as a fan of video games who has learned about and become saddened by the way a lot of companies push their workers too hard. I don't know if Game Freak is one of the companies that overworks its employees, but I do see them releasing games that may not have quite the level of polish that the developers wanted to get to (ignoring BDSP for this statement, by the way). To me, their strict release schedule feels like it's the biggest part of this.
 
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I really like the theory that Kabutops, Scyther, and Genesect are all related. Kabutops is the ancestor, brought back as close to as it really was as possible, but not quite there(hence the rock type, when it was probably water/bug originally). Scyther is the modern descendent. Genesect is a relative of Kabutops from a similar time frame, brought back and heavily modified.
They all share a basic body shape, Scyther/Kabutops have similar BSTs and spreads(Genesect too, but with a bunch of added special attack because plasma cannon), and the pokedex entries for all of them mention being skilled hunters. I don't know if it's intended, but it does fit.
 
This actually makes some degree of sense, as the motors that drive hydraulic machinery are measured in horsepower, and Kingler is basically a living hydraulic vise. In other words, it isn't measuring the force exerted by Kingler's grip (as horsepower wouldn't make any sense in that regard) but rather the force driving its grip. Still kind of a weird way of measuring it but not totally random.
 

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