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A list of major recurring themes in the Pokémon gaming franchise (updated)

I was asked to put together a list of common themes in the Pokémon franchise that you’d wanna pay attention to for a Fan Game. This is opinion based, since everything’s so vaguely connected instead of outright.

Starter Pokémon

With any Pokémon game it’s essential to have a starter trio. I don’t pay a load of attention to fan-made game arcs, but, from what I’ve seen most starters that fans design are a little out of touch in the aspect that they’re not designed with actual appeal in mind. Game Freak consistently creates starters that are supposed to be cute, lovable mascots. So whatever you choose, it’s gotta be lovable and marketable (it can be cool and badass later, it’ll evolve) this will add to the believability of a fake game. Also, it’s best to pick some real life animal to base your starters off of. This makes them more familiar to the player.

Professor

Of course, you’ll need a professor studying the region and you don’t wanna get too wild with creativity here. Rowan isn’t wearing a white jacket, Juniper is a girl, sure, but you don’t wanna go off the rails and make the professor too different from the others- stick with a tree name, keep to the idea rolling.

Region

And, of course, the region. Every pokémon core installation has a (at least one) region tied to a real earth location, Most in Japan, but since Gen V, they’ve based them off of two locations in The US and one in France. All this means for your region is it will somehow resemble the area in climate and population. Sinnoh is a very snowy region due to it being based so high in the mountains in Japan, Unova has a massive city (NYC)- so on. This sometimes has massive effects on what pokémon your game should include. Generation VII has a lot of tropical pokémon to compliment the Hawaiian setting, for example.

Lore and Legend

The lore, however, does not have to match up with the region. Kalos’ legendary trio is based off of Nordic mythology, for example, despite Kalos being a reference to France. Sometimes, though they do match up. Most of Alola’s legends are based in real Hawaiian myth. Whatever allusions you make should be vague, though. You don’t want to rob a culture of it’s mythology, just make allusions to it. It’s important to remember you are making your own mythology, in a way. Generally speaking, the main legendary pokémon in your game should represent more broad values like

life (Xerneas) & death (Yveltal)

light (Solgaleo) & dark (Lunala)

yin (Zekrom) & yang (Reshiram)

time (Dialga) & space (Palkia)

and your third should be some balance or between the option-

order (Zygarde)

refraction (Necrozma)

wuji (Kyurem)

antimatter (Giratina)

however, the secondary set of legendary/mythical pokémon in the game should usually represent more specific values like

fertility (Landorus)

disasters (Tornadus & Thundurus)

music & dance (Meloetta)

willpower (Azelf)

knowledge (Uxie)

emotion (Mesprit)

dreams (Cresselia)

nightmares (Darkrai)

wishes (Jirachi)

victory (Victini)

There’re always exceptions too- Mewtwo is a clone, Deoxys is an Alien, Genesect is a weapon, all of the ultra beasts are invasive species, Mew is the ancestor. All of this is made abundantly clear in each game, so you’ll want to make sure your pokémon are ascribed to an idea. Even Regigigas towed the continents. So the lore is directly connected to the legendary pokémon you choose and how the characters operate in the games.

Rival

You have to pick a rival, however, this is one criteria where you can use plenty of creativity. Sometimes the rival is a butthole and sometimes they’re more of an ally they are either always behind or in front of you in your journey. Sometimes you choose their name, sometimes they’re independent NPCs. Regardless, this is a facet that the game always has.

Challenges

Despite the fact that Alola has no gyms, there’re still waypoint trials to ensure you don’t use stronger pokémon earlier than you should and this is an important facet. There’s also always an elite four of some kind, so you’ll need to come up with a good roster for that. Nothing too wild. Sometimes town names are connected somehow, though not always (mostly an early game thing).

Callbacks

One thing that rings throughout every pokémon game are references to other games passed. Whether this is in characters that show up along the journey, or in names of places, it has to be there; it makes the games more of a cohesive whole. It’s also nice, but entirely optional to add new formes to old pokémon, or regional variants, mega evolutions, etc. This just adds to the cohesiveness as a whole. I’m personally against adding new types in fan-made games, because it gets confusing and slightly unrealistic. Nintendo doesn’t add types frequently. (Add an eeveelution or two!)

Title

Lastly, you’ll need a title for your game, and, again, it should generally be a marketable, likable thing that easy to say or abbreviate. There’s not really a rule to the naming other than it’s usually got a counterpart game that mirrors it in some fashion to promote sales and the lore. There was a good streak of precious metals/gems for a bit, but after Generation V they dropped that, so it can really be anything that has an easily identifiable counterpart.

Competitive Battle Team ; Pt. I: Scolipede

Yeah, I know, Scolipede is a questionable competitive choice, but I’m a sucker for aesthetic and, in addition to Poison being my favorite type, centipedes are one of my favorite creatures.

I’ve already hatched a shiny Scolipede, but as I wrote in the last article shininess won’t win battles and while Bug/Poison has a lot of weaknesses, I decided to accept the challenge.

First, we know Scolipede has Decent Attack and Defense and great Speed, but lacks a little in Sp. Defense and lacks a lot in HP. The glaring issue with that is, being Bug/Poison type, Scolipede is weak to Fire and Psychic type moves, which are majorly based in Sp. Attack, emphasizing its weaknesses.

In addition, Scolipede’s Attack is it’s second highest stat, which is good, because it’s offensive moveset leveling up is entirely Physical apart from Venoshock. It can learn a decent amount of Special TMs though.

This being the case, I decided to work towards breeding a Venipede with 5 perfect IVs in HP, Attack, Defense, Sp. Defense and Speed, forsaking Sp. Attack. I chose a Careful Nature because, like I said before, Scolipede needs to have the best chance in Sp. Defense that it can and Careful nature raises Sp. Defense by 10% at the expense of Sp. Attack.

My Venipede was actually born with the ability Swarm, but I bought an Ability Capsule at the Battle Royal Dome because I like Poison Point as an ability better (I have thousands of BPs because I use the pokémon bank so often). I didn’t worry with trying to breed it with it’s hidden ability, because while Speed Boost would be cool, I didn’t see it necessary, and when weighing all three abilities I still like Poison Point the best. (I also don’t know how to do that yet, so I’d have to study up)

As far as EV training goes, I’m leaning towards working on raising Scolipede with maxed out Sp. Defense and HP and boost Attack by one point. I don’t want to raise a tank (... can’t with Scolipede anyway), but I’m going to rely on Scolipede’s already good Attack and focus more on it’s viability as a competitive choice.

I’m going to give every one of my party Nicknames because I’m one of those people, but I don’t have a name for Scolipede yet, so if you have any suggestions, I’ll listen.

It’s on to the next party member for now >:)

Before reading this, you may want to check out this article explaining EVs and IVs

I spent a lot of time researching Pokémon genetics and training and I learned a lot, but I was missing one basic thing; how to train them. In order to make your pokémon competitively viable, you’ll need to make sure you give them proper training.

When considering a Pokémon for competition, even if playfully like me, the first thing to consider is a pokémon’s base stats. These stats indicate what that pokémon is already particularly good at. You can raise pokémon to be stronger in any of the six stats. So the main question when raising pokémon is which stats do you pick? There are limits to EVs, so you’ll want to be wise when spreading them out.

EVs top off at 510 total, but top off at 252 per stat. You can’t collect more than that. It takes 4 EVs to raise a stat by 1 point, meaning you can only raise 2 stats by 63 points and 1 other stat by 1 point before maxing out. Of course, you can spread this out however you want to, but the question here is: Is it better to raise pokémon so their weaknesses are reinforced, or is better to raise them so their strengths are emphasized?

Generally, in battle, you must do one of two things: out-speed your opponent, or out-live them. There are plenty of strategies, but most of them boil down to one of these two things.

Pokémon who are naturally good at Speed + Sp. Attack or Attack are typically out-speeders. Their goal is not to defend against Attacks, but instead strike first and strike hard. If they’re lucky they’ll be able to stay in battle via one hit KOs.

Pokémon who are naturally talented in HP, Defense, and Sp. Defense will typically have lower Attack, Sp. Attack, and Speed (and of course there’re many exceptions). These pokémon are designed in such a fashion that they can not out-speed most attackers and therefore must defend against big hits.

But what if you want to round your pokémon out? It seems logical, right? If your pokémon is already good at Attack, training it in Defense seems like the next step. That’s what I thought too, but this leaves your pokémon vulnerable to Attacks AND too weak to Defend itself.

To help with an example, I’m going to use pokémon showdown screen caps. Let’s say your opponent is Gengar. This Gengar has a Timid nature, emphasizing its Speed and lessening its Attack. It’s been trained so that it adds those 63 point boosts to it’s Speed and Sp. Attack.

Since Gengar’s Defenses are so low, we’ll need to have enough power and speed to strike the opponent first. Let’s say Scolipede is Gengar’s opponent; and let’s say that instead of train Scolipede in its strengths, we raise its defenses in hope of out-living our opponent.

This was my original plan for my Scolipede, as laid out in my article found here. You’ll notice, in that article, I lean more towards rounding out your pokémon, however, given our situation with Gengar, this is an ill-advised strategy. In this scenario, Gengar out-speeds Scolipede, lands the first hit, and deals great damage. Scolipede has extremely low Sp. Defense, so even when we make an effort to raise Scolipede’s Defenses, they will never be good enough to stand up to offensive, out-speeders, like Gengar, because they’re too naturally low.

Scolipede is not naturally defensive, so trying to make it so, limits it, and practically makes it useless in competition, but let’s take a look at what Scolipede might look like against Gengar if it’s trained in its strengths:

Notice how now, Scolipede out-speeds Gengar, landing the first hit. Gengar’s Defense is dreadfully low, and Scolipede has been trained to hone attack. Of course, Scolipede’s defenses lack, but that’s okay, becuase its goal is to out-speed opponents. Its defenses can never be high enough to withstand Gengar.

The same goes for pokémon whose natural inclination is to out-live opponents. Take Mandibuzz, for example. If we round it out so it’s modeled like an out-speeder we get this:

Mandibuzz’s speed is still too low to out-speed opponents, meaning the out-speed strategy doesn’t work here. Even though we focused Mandibuzz’s speed and attack, neither stat was naturally strong enough to be substantial. We must choose another option. When we train and breed Mandibuzz to emphasize strengths, we can see that its Sp. Defense is now good enough to withstand decent attacks from an out-speeder. If we train it as an out-speeder, its Sp. Defense isn’t strong enough.

With a spread like this, our best strategy is to out-live opponents; something Gengar and Scolipede just can’t do. There’re plenty of pokémon whose only viable strategy is to out-live. Of course there are many subsets of these two categories, for example, some strategies are to out-live opponents while dealing okay damage, whereas some are to out-live opponents while inflicting status effects or performing clerical aid.

The major thing to keep in mind is how many out-speeders vs out-livers you have. You don’t want a full team of either, because it has too many exploitable weaknesses, so, unlike individual pokémon, your team should aim to be well rounded. Your pokémon, however, should be focused.

I didn’t know this beforehand, only after posting erroneous information did I realize I was going down the wrong path. If you train your pokémon to round out their stats and breed them with 6 perfect IVs, they may still impress you against friends and in-game opponents, but when it comes down to it, they will not be able to beat pokémon trained to emphasize their strengths.

I hope this was helpful, up next I’m going to write about my Kitefight roster!

Competitive Battle Team ; Pt. II: Toxicroak

Links: Pretext ; Pt.I

Look... I promise my choices will get better, but I needed to meet my poison quota.

My choices for Toxicroak follow very closely to my choices for Scolipede, because they’re both Attack oriented, poison pokémon. They also share very similar stats, good Attack, bad Defense. Toxicroak is not as bad with Sp. Defense, which is comforting because honestly one attack via Psychic by a Psychic type, IV bred, pokémon (4x effective because of Poison/Fighting typing) and Toxicroak is dead, no questions asked- hence my choice of Anticipation as his ability.

I wasn’t going for 6 perfect IVs on this one, but got lucky. For reference, I was going to forsake Toxicroak’s Sp. Attack, which is why I chose Careful nature again. Forsake Sp. Attack and uplift Sp. Defense.

Again, I didn’t go for the Hidden Ability on this one, but I did do some studying on how to do that and woo... it seriously adds an entire NEW layer of complication that’s hard to cut down on, so you really need to WANT that Hidden Ability, which, I think, certainly adds value to your pokémon when all’s said and done.

As far as EV training goes, my current proposition is similar again to Scolipede, but this time I’m choosing to max out Speed and Sp. Defense, while boosting Attack.

Toxicroak was hatched with the ability Dry Skin, but I didn’t like the idea of having a pokémon low in the defense department AND weak to Fire Type, so I used another Ability Capsule to change it to Anticipation. Dry Skin, for those of you who don’t know, replenishes HP when hit with Water Type moves and replenishes HP by 1/8th total HP, every turn in rain. However, if it’s sunny, it works the opposite, depleting 1/8th total HP every turn, and weakening your pokémon to fire type moves.

I don’t have any names lined up for Toxicroak, but like I said, I wanna nickname all of this party.

This next party member is going to take me a LOT longer, because my starting parent is very ... poor, competitively, and it takes TWICE as long to hatch as Toxicroak. So... might be a bit. We’ll see! I’m getting close. I’ll keep you posted!

Competitive Battle Team ; Pt. IV: Porygon-Z

Links: Pretext ; Pt. I ; Pt. II ; Pt. III

I told you it was Attack heavy, and yes... Porygon-Z is one of my favorites, but I’m trying to reserve why until that article where I go awf about the reasons I love these pokémon so much.

Let’s dive directly into my choices here: Upon discovering Smogon, most of this became vastly less “choosy” and more “here’re your best option(s)”. It’s still opinion, Smogon, but, it’s very educated opinion, and so I respect that. As they suggest, I bred it with a Timid nature, forsaking Porygon-Z’s unimportant Attack stat and boosting it’s already impressive Speed. For EV training I’m maxing out it’s aforementioned Speed with 225 EVs and its Sp. Attack with 225 EVs, then boosting HP with the remaining 4 EVs.

And, yes, you read that right, I bred 3 perfect IV pokémon in one day, they share a birthday. It’s because the eggs for Toxicroak and Scolipede take no time to hatch and I already had close to perfect Venipede and perfect Croagunk, so I just put them in there and popped out perfect lovelies. The rest of the day was spent working on Porygon, because, unlike Toxicroak and Scolipede, Porygon is genderless, making the process a little more difficult. You can’t switch out both parent’s to strengthen the gene pool, only your Porygon.

I purchased my OG Porygon from the game corner in VC Red and named it ILOVEYOU after one of the most notorious computer viruses of all time of the same name. I used that Porgon to breed this one. However, as far as naming goes, I’m naming this Porygon-Z ZZDZZAZZ4ZZ after the ZZAZZ glitch in Pokemon Red and Blue.

I’m leaving this short and sweet, because heaven KNOWS I’mma ramble for ages over my love for Porygon-Z in the end piece, so, I’ll have mercy this time around.

The next party member is a nostalgic one, I’ll be working on it when I wrote this (9/26) so we’ll see what I cook up!

So, I decided to put together a list of things I’d like to see in the next core installation of the pokémon games. This list is NOT a prediction, but instead a wishlist of sorts.

First, obviously the game will be set in some region of this mirrored earth that pokémon takes place in. I’m not super tied to any specific region, but I think a mesoamerican region like Mexico would be A++

Obviously there will be plenty of new pokémon, and I have hopes of some of the things we’ll see:

Like the art implies, I REALLY WAnt something to happen with Dunsparce to improve its viability. It’s an awesome pokémon. It’s a freakING SNAKe with wings. I think an evolution or alternate forme/regional variant would be perfect.

I want to see a pokémon based on the Xoloitzcuintle (Mexican Hairless) dog. It would make a BADASS dark type pokémon or maybe even an eeveelution? Leading me to my next point

I want to see an eeveelution. I made a graph for recurring themes in the franchise and, if the pattern stays true, we’ll see a new eeveelution in Gen VIII. (Poison!! Poison!! Poison!!)

I really want to see some more deep sea pokémon. I know, Water is the largest type in the game, so the LAST thing the games need are more Water pokémon, buT THE OCEAN is massive and we know so little about it, so I think Water SHOULD be the largest group. We have Huntail, Gorebyss, Clamperl, Relecant, Anorith, Cradily, Kyogre and maybe Lanturn (+ more?) that could be considered deep sea pokémon, but out of those, really only Huntail and Gorebyss are intentionally “deep sea”. So I want to see some truly weird, water types.

Since Poison is my favorite type, I’d like to see some new poison type combos that can be used in competition/party. We had Nihilego (Poison/Rock) in Gen VII, but the Ultra Beasts are still technically pseudo-legendary, (right???) so it doesn’t count. Salandit was an awesome addition (not super competitively viable, but ok)! I’m pleased, but I want more, I want to see what other unique combos are thought up.

A Ghost pokémon that I actually like. I love Ghost type, sosososososo much, but very few Ghost pokémon are viable for competition, which can be overlooked, sometimes, but some of them aren’t as cool as I’d like. I want a real kickass ghost pokémon that has a nice, scary feel to it and ISN’T legendary. (I do like Mimikyu and Gengar, but I feel like they’re overused? Maybe I’m just awful, whatever + I understand they gotta appeal to kids too)

Okay, the idea of Alien pokémon was cool, (and already done? Deoxys *cough* Kyurem) and, unpopular opinion: I like the Ultra Beasts a lot! (yeah, even Assembly), but I hope we’re finished with the anomaly. It’s going to be very strained and old to have to keep up with two worlds, and Hawai’i + Aliens is a recurring trope, so I hope it stays over there. If not, though, I will learn to love it.

I do like the subtraction of HM moves, I hope the future games keep that feature. I appreciate being able to put together whatever party you want. Some of my friends however, will be very displeased if they don’t reinstate HMs, they like the challenge.

I’d love to see them reinstate pokémon followers like in HGSS I loved it so much, it added to the experience, and with new graphics woULD BE SO fun.

If the next installation IS on the Nintendo Switch (it is, right?) then I want to see a massive map. We’ve seen what the switch is capable of with Breath of the Wild, and I’m not expecting a huge, open world, pokémon game, BUT, if the Switch can run something as massive as Breath of the Wild, then running a hefty pokémon game should be a piece of cake.

Also, unrealistic request, but crossbred pokémon variants would just be so cool. In a perfect world maybe.

I also think it would be neat if the Alolan variants of pokémon were not available in the new games, I mean, they’re Alolan, so, unless you’re in Alola, why would they be available?

Regardless, I do have a few predictions:

We will see a new eeveelution. The pattern seems to lean towards it.

We will have more regional variants that are not Alolan in whatever region we get.

We will (probably) have some new Mega Evolutions.

We will receive some additions to old evolutionary lines. It’s been a while since this happened now, and I’m ready to see what they come up with!

That’s all, reply or reblog with what you think will be added or what you hope will be added!