Newest Updates

10/28/26: Pokéwalker Correction

With thanks to X2Brute for pointing it out, I've corrected a silly error on the Pokéwalker Battle Mechanics page, namely that both the text and strategy analysis code was missing the fact the wild Pokémon counterattacks for 1 HP of damage after you score a critical hit. I was extremely thorough in my original analysis of the precise flow of what happens in each possible case, and I had the critical counterattack written up there, but somehow it got lost when I wrote up the descriptions of the turn outcomes for the page, and then I wrote the code based on that writeup instead of referring back to the original analysis. (Unfortunately, as you can tell, I haven't actually been able to play any Pokéwalker courses myself since probably 2010 and wrote this up based purely on poring over the code and refreshing my general memory on what battles on the Pokéwalker actually look like off the scant few YouTube videos I could find - normally I always try to confirm this sort of thing myself on the real game, but my Pokéwalker is currently trapped somewhere in a drawer behind Caterpie's bed, if it even still turns on.)

At any rate, I've now fixed the text, the calculator and the strategy tables to account for the counterattack. Not too much has changed about the practical strategic takeaways - the main one is that you obviously never want to attack while at 1 HP, because you always take damage when you attack, so it no longer recommends doing that after a staredown if the wild Pokémon is at 3 or 4 HP, and the strategy after getting counterattacked now suggests evading any time your HP is less than the wild Pokémon's (previously, it suggested attacking in the case when you're at 3 HP and the wild Pokémon at 4 HP).

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10/20/26: Odds and Ends

A few different smaller things I've been doing thanks to tips by others:

  • The Iron Island B3F encounter table no longer shows swarm slots with Onix and Graveler instead of Steelix and Graveler in Platinum (those swarm entries were real in the game data, likely due to a copy-paste blunder, but Iron Island can't have swarms, so they are never actually active and showing them was confusing).
  • A few FR/LG entries have been added on the In-Game Humour page (a page I have generally not been adding much to lately despite a lot of hilarity in Legends: Z-A in particular that really belongs on there; I am also peeved by some of the writing on it so perhaps I will revamp/rewrite it to feel less reluctant to look at it).
  • The bit that properly warrants an update: the Pokémon List Generator now has both of the Pokédexes from Legends: Z-A as variables and ordering options.
  • And finally, I made some minor tweaks to the Mew trick essay (nothing substantial, just phrasing tweaks).

The main bigger thing I have been working on lately is updating the generic favorite picker repo to include some new features I've introduced to the Favorite Pokémon Picker since it was last updated, most notably split mode and the ability to easily make progress bars; people have been requesting that, and I've been wanting to do it for a while, but it has unfortunately taken longer than I wanted due to really overthinking in circles what the most sensible way would be to make the use of split mode more flexible than just an exact copy of how the Favorite Pokémon Picker works. (And also I have a thirteen-month-old Caterpie who is sadly often unhelpful when I'm trying to think about programming.) Hopefully now I've done this stuff I can get back on that and just pick a lane.

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07/07/26: Pokéwalker Battle Mechanics

So the other day Altissimo asked me about confirming some mechanics in the disassembly of the HG/SS Pokéwalker accessory, and I was promptly nerdsniped. I've now put up a new article about the Pokéwalker's battle mechanics, fully explaining how the Pokéwalker's simplified battle system works and how to optimally strategize for the best possible chance of catching the Pokémon in the end. It has a calculator and some fun visualizations!

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Page last modified October 28 2026 at 22:03 UTC