Archive
10/16/06 Crisis Averted
According to Yamato-san, the text below the video I mentioned yesterday talks about full contact being a new feature in the game. It is an old video after all. Phew.
Anyway, now to discuss some of the D/P stuff I've fallen behind on.
Firstly, they sold like hot cakes in Japan. Fwee.
Secondly, according to Serebii, every Pokémon except starters and legendaries appears to be available in Diamond and Pearl - great news for those who have been whining about how many Pokémon need to be traded from older games. However, they weigh against this with a whole bunch of version exclusives - 20 exclusive to Pearl and 19 exclusive to Diamond. At first this is a "Huh?" but in fact the number of evolution lines exclusive to each game is equal - both have ten lines. There is also a new type of version exclusive: some Pokémon require, interestingly, that you have one of the older games inserted into your DS. (Nastily enough, the Pokémon that appear are often version exclusives to the inserted version - as in the ones you could get in that version and transfer over to D/P anyway - so unless you have both FireRed and LeafGreen or both Ruby and Sapphire, it does leave the other set of Pokémon necessary to trade for.) Of course, obtaining all the version exclusives is a great deal easier now that we have the Global Trade Center.
Next... Diamond and Pearl allow a neat feature: customization of your Pokéballs. For short, you can decorate your Pokémon's Pokéballs with special stickers, and the stickers will appear when your Pokémon is sent into battle. Should be fun.
Some new abilities have been uncovered as well:
- Adaptive: Looks like basically a double STAB, although it's a bit of a waste for Eevee to get it and not its evolutions.
- After Strike: Ack... poor Sableye was bad enough already without being permanently doomed to move after the foe.
- Bravery: Heh, auto-Foresight... neat.
- Gluttony: Uh... they made this ability but did not give Munchlax it? o_O
- Ice Body: Nice, Hail Rain Dish.
- Iron Fist: Haha, that is SO appropriate. I've been waiting for Hitmonchan to get an ability like that.
- Psychic Dream: Ooh, that ability rocks. :3
- Quick Feet: Nice idea for combatting paralysis...
- Skill Link: Hmm, I'd need to know how much it raises the number, because it would need to be an awful lot to make those moves pay off.
- Sun Power: Hmm, interesting trade-off.
- Technician: "Weaker moves"? Uh... huh. o-o What is a "weaker move", and how much does the power increase? Could or could not be useful.
- Unstable Gait: Interesting one there, although I can't see it becoming particularly much used. Unless there's something more to Perappu and confusion that I'm not aware of.
A lot of the old abilities have also been updated and turn out to in fact do something completely different from what they originally said they did, and the Stupid ability has been retranslated to Disuse (the Mimiroru and Mimiroppu welfare organization can be happy now).
I really have to go to bed now, but I'll continue tomorrow. See you then.
10/14/06 ...
New Pokémon Battle Revolution video.
What happened to full contact?
That better be a video of an old build of the game and not a sign that they took it back out.
10/08/06 New Attacks
Well, well, well. Looks like we have the new attacks in Diamond and Pearl translated, thanks to Coronis.
It is a very interesting list. It looks like they got very creative with new attack effects, some of the entirely new concepts including:
- Disabling "moves that fly or levitate" (I'm not sure if that's supposed to mean that Pokémon who are Flying-types or have Levitate are affected by Ground moves, or that actual moves that involve flight or levitation are disabled) for five turns, but either way it is something completely new.
- Various moves whose power depends on the foe's stats or HP
- A Counter that actually strikes before the enemy does
- Various moves that rely on held items, especially berries (Hurl is especially ingenious)
- A regular attack which forces the user to switch after attacking
- A move whose power increases the less PP it has
- Preventing the opponent from restoring its HP for five turns
- Swapping stats (actual stats) around, either with other of one's own stats or another Pokémon's
- Preventing critical hits for five turns
- A move that, contrary to all other moves, only works when the foe has used Protect or Detect
- A very powerful move that can only be used when all other attacks have been used (I'm assuming this means all the other attacks must be used up, so it works a little like a very powerful Struggle)
- Moves changing your (or the foe's) ability
- A move that actually swaps the order of the Pokémon's turns, so that the slower one attacks first, for five turns
We also see a variety of creative damaging attacks of each type that are both physical and special. It's very funny how difficult it is to imagine that, say, a Scyther is going to be able to dish out some heavy damage using a Dark attack. My brain is just not comprehending that. It's pre-programmed to think of Dark as exclusively special and hence inherently useless for a Pokémon like Scyther. I'm really first now realizing just how much this is going to change. D/P competitive battling will be very interesting.
Purple Kecleon is apparently looking for people with D/P who can trade old Pokémon to her so she can test the rumour of Aruseusu being obtainable after completing the National Pokédex. Check it out if you've got a Japanese GBA game and would be willing to contribute.
10/06/06 Things Have Happened
They have indeed.
Let's take a look at Serebii.net, as we so often do. Highlight the Pokémon spoiler in today's update.
Major stuff below, its not 100% confirmed but the source its from has the game and hasn't been wrong yet at all
When you have completed the National Dex (Bar the Special Event Pokémon of course) and talk to Professor Oak, he will give you an item that activates a special rock. This rock will allow you to get [Aruseusu], the creation Pokémon. Remember this is not confirmed and we're looking into it
Just WHOA. The god Pokémon, obtainable in-game? That is pretty damn freaky. Is every kid and their mom going to have one on Wi-Fi? That sounds scary. I actually can't help thinking they'll probably have restrictions from using it on Wi-Fi, or do a twisty "if you have Aruseusu it takes up two Pokémon slots" thing or something. Or they'd only let you use it against somebody else who also has it...
Well, either that or they play with its godly classification. Make it permanently disobedient to its trainer, perhaps? That would be kind of interesting, actually; a major trade-off to make for its godly powers would perhaps hinder people from using it.
Well, that's not confirmed, anyhow. If you click the Aruseusu screenshot you will see a section on its ability, Multi-Type. People had some scary theories about it giving STAB for all attacks (even going as far as asserting it was confirmed, which I find rather funny - this is how urban legends begin), but it is thankfully not so. Instead, the ability allows you to attach a hold item (a "Plate") to Aruseusu which will change its type (and color palette, neatly enough) to the type specified by the Plate. Serebii technically claims it can only be 17 different forms (i.e. one per type), but a certain LonX who has posted in comments to a news item on Pokéguide insists that there is one more form - a "type unknown" kind of thing (which looks like this - his image). The interesting thing is that there are only 16 plates, so one must wonder how to change it to that last form. I had this fun idea that perhaps any other hold item will change it to that type, meaning that you'd always have to choose between hold item or STAB...
Speaking of abilities, Serebii has a page on them, too, and they are pretty interesting. Some comments on them:
- Acrobatic: I guess it makes sense. Another "Hold item or trade-off" thing.
- Anger Pot: That is the sort of ability that I would have if I were a Pokémon, given how much I hate it when my Pokémon is hit by a critical hit.
- Bad Luck: OUCH. Just... ouch. That's a very, very nasty ability. I'm actually hoping they translated it wrong and it actually gives the opponent bad luck, i.e. makes the opponent more vulnerable to critical hits. I mean, bad omens usually give bad luck to the one who sees them, not to themselves.
- Beligerence: Pretty neat, I guess. Not much to say about it.
- Body Risk: Okay, the description is pretty vague, but I'm guessing that by "retaliatory moves" it means stuff like Counter and Revenge, in which case it sounds pretty nice, but perhaps a little broken...
- Color Glasses: Another vague description; does it somehow power up non-damaging moves, and if not, does it just not do anything if it happens to randommly pick a non-damage attack, or does it only pick a damaging attack randomly? Nonetheless, it looks fairly cool and on some underused Pokémon, so it will be nice.
- Danger Anticipate: ...Okay, that one's the king of vague descriptions. I have no clue what the heck "predicting dangerous attacks from the foe" is supposed to mean.
- Detonate: Makes a lot of sense indeed.
- Download: Heh, neat one for Porygon. Much more fitting than Trace, although I suppose one could say Porygon was really "downloading" the opponent's ability when it had Trace.
- Electric Engine: Another one that makes sense. It would be nicer if more Pokémon had it, though.
- Far Sight: Neat one, although I don't get why Stantler, Shuppet and Banette of all Pokémon have it.
- Filter: Wait, does this mean super effective attacks do normal damage (half of what they normally do) or not very effective damage (half of ordinary attack power)? Either way, it sort of defeats the point of weaknesses.
- Flower Head: Not much to say about it, since it's just a necessary ability for Cherimu.
- Hard Rock: Yay for vagueness. How much is the damage lowered exactly? Either way, it will be a real help for Camerupt and the Dosaidon, what with their extreme weakness to Water (and in Dosaidon's case, also Grass).
- Heat Proof: Kinda similar to Thick Fat, except obviously Doomiraa and Dootakun wouldn't make a lot of sense with Thick Fat so they had to make a new one, and removed the Ice resistance.
- Honey Collect: Looks like a Mitsuhanii version of Pickup.
- Humble Heart: Doesn't make a lot of sense to me, but okay.
- Leaf Guard/Moist Body: Nice to have.
- Magic Coat: Heh, nice idea. Too bad only the Clefairy family has it.
- Natural: Okay, that one makes no sense at all (what has that got to do with naturality?) but it's neat.
- Nightmare: Heh, auto-Nightmare. Daakurai's coolness points just went up. :D
- No Guard: Whoa. The Machop family now officially owns everybody.
- Normal Skin: Ouch. Delcatty was poor enough before; while getting extra STAB is nice, this means a Delcatty is forever incapable of damaging a Ghost-type. Not a good idea.
- Poison Heal: Hmm, a sort of weaker version of Natural Cure. Seems a little pointless, but meh.
- Simplicity: "Hi!" said the Bippa family. "My abilities make no sense at all!" And thus, Bippa proceeded to use its bizarre broken abilities.
- Slow Start: Nice. De-00berizes Rejigigasu.
- Snipe: ...don't tell me KINGDRA of all things just got that. *headdesks* It's lucky enough already without an ability to make its critical hits even cheaper. <.<;;
- Snow Hide: Hail version of Sand Veil, basically. Not much to say about it.
- Snow Storm: Hail version of Sand Stream...
- Stupid: ...OUCH. If I were a Mimiroru/Mimiroppu, I'd be sorely offended. Game Freak really want to prevent people from using hold items this generation, don't they?
- Unconventional: We have Trace which copies the opponent's ability so that both have it, and then we have Unconventional which basically leads to a battle without abilities.
- Water Lure: Um, Water version of Lightningrod. Yay?
Anyway, the last thing worth mentioning is that according to Serebii's Elite Four section, we now have the first female Champion. :3 She has a nicely powerful team as well; those are the highest-leveled Pokémon ever in the Elite Four, of course not counting FR/LG second round. (Gary's starter was level 65 in R/B/Y; she has two at level 66.)
Oh, and they clearly got into transformation before making D/P. Go figure.
10/05/06 D/P Sprites
Let's all worship Eevee/Zhen Lin/pika/Pipian.
Oh, by the way - you're not allowed to use those without special permission until October 12th, and I would very much hate to prompt people to break their terms of use, so please don't. Just look at them.