The BBS Magazine

In an earlier article, we started a series where we analyse the plots of the main Pokémon games and began with the Kanto games. Today we pick up where we left off and continue with the set of games that occur within the nearby Johto region. We’ll consider how the attempted revival of Team Rocket went, and what improvements were made in the sequels with characterisation.

Rainbow phoenix, or angry psychic bird?

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On Monday the 13th July 2015, we learnt of the tragic news that Nintendo’s President and Nintendo of America CEO, Satoru Iwata, had passed away due to a bile duct tumour. He reigned over Nintendo as President from 2002-2015, and was the executive producer for hundreds of games. The sheer outpouring of grief from his colleagues and the community is testament to the impact he has had, not just on Nintendo products, but the video gaming community as a whole.

I’d like to pay my own tribute with a quick examination of the hand Iwata has had specifically with the Pokémon franchise. While few may not realise it, he had quite an impact on the early generation games. I’ve also opted to include a number of links, many which further expand on Iwata’s legacy.

It all began here…

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Pokémon games have often been less about giving you an intricate plot and more about catching a variety of cute and awesome looking monsters by throwing capsules at them, and then telling them how to beat others up. But that doesn’t mean they’re not worth considering and examining. There is a story thrown in every main Pokémon game, even if they do follow the same structure:

– Get Pokémon from a professor named after a tree,
– Catch more Pokémon and train them to beat up Gym Leaders to get eight badges, then become the Champion of the region of Pokémon battling,
– Along the way beat up Team ___ and stop their plans,
– Maybe catch a legendary Pokémon or ten while you’re at it.

This is the first in an article series where we’ll examine the story beyond the base formula used, as well as consider the side plots, characterisation, and so forth. We may even tackle the spinoff games which deviate from this plot base. But here we start with where the games all began in Kanto, and we’ll also consider what changed in the Yellow version of the originals, and their remakes in FRLG.

Which did you choose?

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Or: Pokémon Ragequit Version.

It’s the same basic formula: get your starter, defeat your rival(s), blaze through gym leaders, fight a villainous team (or two), become the Champion. As each generation passes, beating the game’s main storyline becomes easier and easier, with little buffs to items and nerfs to opponents making a game less difficult to finish than the last. While many players appreciate the less frustrating gameplay, many other players are stuck uttering the same wish while they lazily go through the credits of the latest game: “Man, I wish that was more of a challenge.”

Fortunately, a fandom as big as Pokémon is bound to have many creative minds, and this creativity has seeped into the very way we play these games. Many players have instilled specific rulesets to their playthroughs that make it much harder, resulting into a more rewarding experience.

This list will run through five of the best rulesets that make your game runs more challenging. It will also explore variations of these Challenge rulesets, and ways to make them easier or harder.

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As a follow-up to the Fan Work Review article we made of insaneintherain’s Jazz Covers, today we have an interview with the man himself! As a reminder, insaneintherain is a youtuber who produces jazz covers of various video game tunes, many from the Pokemon games. See the previous article for examples of his videos! We definitely think they’re worth checking out.

Again, we’ll be tackling other fan work review articles in future, and may do other interviews as well. If you have any suggestions for cool Pokemon work for us to cover, or even want a fair review for your own work, leave a comment!

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A while back we started this segment on Wynaut? by reviewing a fanmade manga featuring a cool Golduck in the DPPt story. This time around we have a more musical feature for these Fan Work Reviews. In these articles we’ll feature a piece of Pokémon-themed work (be it writing, art, music, a nuzlocke, or anything else creatively inclined) that we feel is worth more attention. If you know of any pieces of work that you feel would qualify, feel free to suggest it, or even join the forums to write up a review yourself! You can even suggest one of your own pieces of work… but note that we’d still need to agree that it’s worth showing off here.

insaneintherain is a Youtube member who makes covers for a variety of video game music, a large chunk of tune from the Pokémon franchise. He sticks to the jazz style, and impressively does all the music himself. And he’s not just playing one instrument or just using a computer program – he does it all himself.

And personally this sounds better than the original tune from the DPPt games.

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Greetings again! The name’s Bill, and I’m the current owner of Brick ‘n’ Break. If you didn’t hear of us before then you should have, for we’re the blokes behind all those Gym puzzles! The Gym Leaders come up with the plans, and we make it happen, no matter how impossible or stupid the idea. It’s their money, after all!

I’ve written previously about the Gyms we worked on in Kanto, and again in Johto. Well, I was first in charge when we were giving the Hoenn region a tour. Read on to see what I made of each construction challenge!

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Before the Ruby, Sapphire and Emerald (RSE) remakes in the Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire (ORAS) games were released, I wrote an article on what I would have liked to have seen improved upon in these new 3DS games. Today, we look back on that list and see how impressed or disappointed I am by each change, from the number of bikes we can use and (Super) Secret Bases, to how the rivals fare now! We’ll also review a few other aspects of ORAS here and there, such as brand new additions it received, what has remained or gone missing from X&Y, and discuss why.

Needless to say, there are spoilers within this article.

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Warning: This list may make you feel… /KRAH-bee/.

It may not be evident, but there’s a lot of work that goes into giving a species of Pokémon a name. The name of a Pokémon usually features a play on one or two words which refer to either the real-life basis of the Pokémon or an attribute linked to the Pokémon. This leads to many interesting wordplays, word corruptions, and portmanteaus, such as Exeggcute (execute + egg), Whismur (whisper + murmur), and Serperior (serpent + superior). But with these wordplays that would make any linguist proud comes a whole set of pronunciations that would make any linguist cringe, and the latter is what this article will tackle.

Several Pokémon names have easy pronunciations, due to either a very clear portmanteau (Gogoat = go + goat), an easy-to-follow spelling (Eevee = /ee/ + /vee/), or an easily recognizable word corruption (Wynaut = why not?). Unfortunately, the converse is also true, for there are many confusing, questionable, and at times nonsensical Pokémon name pronunciations. A quick Google search would show you entire threads and conversations dedicated to figuring out whether or not this is a long or short I, or whether that C is pronounced like a K or an S.

This article aims to list the 10 English Pokémon names that always find themselves at the end of the question, “How do you pronounce _________?” The most canon sources for the “proper” pronunciations found in this article come from the Pokédex 3D Pro app (for the first five generations) and the announcer of Pokémon Battle Revolution (for the first four generations), with the sixth-generation Pokémon only having the English anime dub as a reference. But those three sources don’t always agree with each other, which shows that maybe the different translators are as confused as we are.

So don’t feel bad if you fall victim to the ten mispronunciations you’ll find here. Chances are, you’re part of a very, very large group.
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Did its horn get smaller upon evolving…?

This time, we’re back to marine life, as well as our first Ice type of these Pokémon Analysis articles. And they’re pretty adorable looking Pokémon too! Seel and Dewgong are our focus this time around. They may not win any awards in the clever/unique naming scheme and ‘based on’ categories out of all the Pokémon, but they do have a certain charm to them all the same.
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Cover your ears, for the famed Coffee Guy from Viridian City has a rant to share!

BY GUM, I SAY THERE’S TOO MANY OF THESE REMAKES THESE DAYS! I CAN’T UNDERSTAND WHY, BUT IT SEEMS WE’RE TO REVISIT THIS HOENN PLACE AGAIN! AND I FOR ONE COULD NOT BE MORE OUTRAGED ABOUT THIS! WHY ARE YOU ALL FLOCKING TO BUY THESE NEW GAMES IS BEYOND ME. WHERE IS THE APPEAL? DID EVERYONE’S GAMES BREAK AGAIN? AND WHY CAN’T WE GO CHECK OUT A NEW PLACE INSTEAD?

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A new segment we’re starting on Wynaut? is Fan Work Reviews! The general idea is that here we’ll feature a piece of Pokémon-themed work (be it writing, art, music, a nuzlocke, or anything else creatively inclined) that we feel is worth more attention. If you know of any pieces of work that you feel would qualify, feel free to suggest it, or even join the forums to write up a review yourself! You can even suggest one of your own pieces of work… but note that we’d still need to agree that it’s worth showing off here. Another word of warning is that there’ll be some criticism too within each review. Works here are definitely to be admired, but nothing is without flaws.

To start off our series is a piece of fanmade manga by a Japanese artist. While the downside is that all the text is in Japanese, it’s still something you can follow the general story of. And its art and general quirks are what set it apart and make it worthwhile to read.

The Shinx here feels you really ought to check it out. Our advice is to listen to the Shinx.

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Hello and welcome to Fashion Analysis, where I discuss what’s hot in fashion! For today I’ll be talking about the villainous teams from the Hoenn region, Team Magma and Team Aqua. Both teams not only went through different outfits, but staff changes too! Makes things more exciting, don’t you think?

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Pokémon has always been one of those games where players have access to cheat codes and devices, going all the way back to the first two generations. The Game Shark and Action Replay were staples and made you the cool kid of any school playground. After all, what kid wasn’t amused by the idea of a Sunkern with 999 stats and moves like Flamethrower? 

But there’s the other side of it. People don’t exactly like it when you beat them up with hacked Pokémon, and that can be a fair enough viewpoint. Throw in a recent event in this year’s Pokémon VGCs (Video Game Competition) in America, and you get an interesting topic of discussion. Here we look at both sides of the debate on how ‘right’ it may be to use the newest of the external devices – the Power Save – to help you prepare for a Pokémon competition, and let you weigh up both sides of the debate. Warning – a few battling terms exist in this article.

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Most of us have played more than one Pokémon game. After a game is finished, chances are that the next one will be loaded into your console. But how would you define ‘finishing’ a Pokémon game? Is it simply beating the Pokémon League? Or is it beating the Pokémon League and finishing the post-game events? To go even further, it might even be completing the entire Pokédex. An even larger extreme is to have all the Pokémon in the Pokédex at Lv 100, regardless of whether they’ve evolved or not.

But how do we get the access to all these Pokémon? Even after weeks of hard work, you’d find that certain Pokémon can only be evolved by trading and certain Pokémon need to be transferred from the other version of the game. Some are even distributed solely in Nintendo events. The general consensus is that if you want to beat the game, you’re going to need help. And that’s what we’re following in this article. We’ll also examine how various features of the Pokémon games took advantage of the ability to link between each other, across all the generations.

The owner wanted to attach an Everstone before trading Haunter over, but his friend didn’t like the idea for some reason.

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