Baby Pokémon

The concept

Many fans forget that Riolu
 is also a baby-Pokémon

When Gold&Silver introduced new evolutions for existing Pokémon, they also naturally did the opposite, introducing new pre-evolutions for existing Pokémon. Gamefreak decided to go even a step further, making baby-Pokémon even more distinct by making them all unable to breed in those stages (which means that there can also be baby-Pokémon that are not necessarily new pre-evolutions for previous Pokémon, like is the case with Togepi and Riolu, who were both introduced along with their evolutionary-line).

However, unlike the evolutions, which get mixed reactions by fans as any regular Pokémon, these "baby Pokémon" often get instant dislike and are brushed aside as "pointless Pokémon" or some similar wording.

So, I realize that I am in the minority when I don't say that "baby Pokémon suck and shouldn't exist", but I am convinced that much of this talk is undeserved, rash and often hypocritical.

The looks

One complaint is that some (and out of 18, "some" isn't many) baby Pokémon don't add anything to the evolutionary-line of a Pokémon, being just smaller cuter versions of the already cute original. The prime example is probably Cleffa.

But that's not the rule. There are baby-Pokémon who do genuinely try to do something unique and fresh that makes their evolutionary line more interesting, meaning if they would have been released alongside the rest of their stages, no one would have an issue with their existence, as with Chingling for example:

They aren't all pre-evolutions of Pokémon who are already small and cute to begin with either. Some can be very deserved and make you wonder how come they weren't made initially already, for Pokémon like Snorlax:

Usefulness

Baby-Pokémon do tend to give access to one or two egg-moves or Level-up moves that a line doesn't have access to otherwise, but often, the moves they get aren't very important ones.

Pichu learns the very important set-up move
Nasty Plot if trained to Level 18
before being evolved to a Pikachu

Azurill for example can learn 7 egg-moves
that Marill does not

The more important aspect baby-Pokémon bring to the evolutionary line besides fleshing out the family design-wise and thematically, in my opinion, is early expanding accessibility. A Pokémon like Electabuzz and Magmar cannot show up in a game too early as an option for your in-game team, due to being relatively strong already, whereas their pre-evolutions Elekid and Magby make perfect candidates, adding some elemental options early on your journey, as was already the case in Black 2 and White 2, where they were version exclusive encounters in the Virbank complex around the second gym.

Pointless?

I've often seen baby-Pokémon called a "waste of dex-spots", as if their existence somehow prevented Gamefreak from adding other standalone possibly cooler designs. "Oh damn, we need to exclude this awesome Pokémon-design because the baby pokemon are taking up all the space we limited ourselves to" said no one at Gamefreak ever. That's just ridiculous.

Besides, so far, there is only 18 baby Pokémon so far (compared to 53 legendaries, 48 mega-evolutions, 35 cross-gen evolutions, 54 starter-Pokémon... at least they aren't outnumbered by eeveelutions...yet?), so it's not like the concept has been overdone, it has barely even scratched the surface!

If pre-evolutions are pointless, whatever anyones logic might be for thinking so, it is equally applicable to ALL not fully-evolved stages of ANY Pokémon in existence. If Smoochum is pointless, that would mean that Ralts and Kirlia are too.

Two of the weakest Pokémon in existence..

..including Kirlia, who has lower stats than Bonsly, despite being a middle stage.

If they would have simply put Ralts into the No-eggs egg-group, it would make for a better typical baby-Pokémon example than half of the actual baby-Pokémon.

Potential candidates

It's not like there aren't any Pokémon with potential for pre-evolutions.

A diverse selection of interesting candidates for pre-evolutions

Don't tell me you aren't curious about what at least a few of these Pokémons pre-evolutions would look like.

Unexpected twists!

There is one specific baby-Pokémon that deserves it's own mention: Tyrogue. Not only did it connect two separate but related Pokémon, Hitmonchan and Hitmonlee, by being the pre-evolution of both (to this day still the most interesting evolutionary twist since Eevee), it even added a third alternate evolution to the family, Hitmontop.

There is even other counterparts that could be put into the spotlight with the same gimmick, from the popular Tauros-Miltank idea, the too obvious gen V Hitmon-homages Throh and Sawk, to other very similar counterparts like Pinsir and Heracross.

There is room for improvement.

I do have a few issues with how baby-Pokémon have been handled so far though. One thing most people are annoyed by is the fact that (9 of 18) half of them require high friendship to evolve. And while the idea makes perfect sense especially for the most baby-like ones (they need extra care to evolve), I feel like they should also make the Base friendship much higher than normal for baby-Pokémon so they don't take too long. Since the beginning of generation VI with XY, there has been an incentive added for why going through the tedious process of friendship-evolving a caught Budew might be worth doing over just catching a wild Roselia. Namely because baby-Pokémon always have 3 guaranteed perfect IVs, just like legendaries do, because they are all in the No-Eggs group.

The other thing that bothers me are all the Breeding Incenses that are required to be held by the parents to produce a newly introduced pre-evolution. I understand that this is for the sake of consistency, but it is not an elegant solution. For one thing, they prevent you from using other breeding-related held items (Everstone and Destiny Knot), and the other potential issue is that they're yet another set of extremely specific purpose Items that are piling up as the number increases... but actually, Mega stones
alone currently far overshadow any such items, and I wonder how they intend to clean that up. The solution should be viable for Incenses when they come up with one.


There is one more interesting thing worth contemplating in this topic,

Legendary pseudo-baby-Pokémon

More than likely, instantly, Phione comes to mind. It's not really clear what the reason for creating Phione was, other than for the sake of showing that pseudo-pre-evolutions are not completely out of the question for Legendary Pokémon. And it's actually neat that someone who has a Manaphy but cannot share it, has at least the gimmicky option of distributing as many weaker versions of it as they want.

Also, if the Manaphy you get happens to be complete garbage competitively, with Phione you can at least try to breed towards a better one. Although Phione really is too weak for that to be of interest.

But what if suddenly some of the Legendaries that are so powerful that they're usually banned just for their sheer stats would gain a pseudo-pre-evolution?

In those cases, weaker versions of unique and cool legendaries might actually allow them to be viable options for serious competitive battling in at least some form!

Here is some random examples:

100-120-120-150-100-90 ---> 80-100-100-130-80-70
100-120-120-150-100-90 ---> 80-100-80-130-100-70
100-120-120-150-100-90 ---> 86-70-110-70-134-90

They'd still have a stat-total higher than most regular Pokémon (560), which is 40 lower than pseudo-legendaries like Dragonite and Garchomp, and 20 lower than minor legends like Suicune and Tornadus.

I'd certainly be interested to see how that would turn out! And of course how those lesser versions of epic legendaries would look.

Closing

I'll end this post with a group picture of all baby Pokémon so far ;D

No seasons in Kalos... yet?

Personally, I loved the seasons in generation V. 

They added further replay value (the main one was the sheer number of new pokemon to try out and build your team with), since they only changed once per month.

Similar to the day/night-cycle it's a really nice touch that makes the region feel more alive.

Unfortunately, just like with the absence of the daily cycle in generation III (just after being introduced the generation before), the seasons have not returned for generation VI.

If you've travelled through Kalos in XY, you probably noticed 2 things regarding seasons:

• well, there aren't any obviously. The places are all aesthetically/thematically locked, like in every game besides BW/BW2
• there is parts of Kalos that feel like they embody a specific season nonetheless

And upon closer inspection, they even seem to be oriented in correct order, going clockwise around the region, just like the general progress of the story is headed.

Of course there is exceptions (the most summer-like town is probably Kiloude in the far south, and Snowbelle likely being snowy only due to the Abomasnows living there rather than the climate), but overall it is an interesting case nonetheless.

It makes me wonder... what if seasons were actually planned to be in XY, but put aside in order to hold the visual diversity of the region in place for the initial gen VI games? And if they were, could it be that this is something Gamefreak intended to deal with properly for the sequels, when they have time for details like these?

Their forms being dependant on seasons, Deerling and Sawsbucks got completely ignored too of course, but they could have been retconned to work like the Burmy forms if Kalos is meant to be fixed this way (so finishing a battle in the snowy places would change it to its Winter-form)... the fact they weren't handled this way could be a hint that Kalos is getting seasons in the sequels though.

However, given that this would be quite a bit of work for a rather minor and mostly aesthetical feature, the more realistic expectation is that we won't be seeing the season mechanic again for now (and if it means the developing time will be well spent on other things, like a whole new second half of the region popping up, or an amazing Battle Frontier etc., it will barely bother anyone).

But if they did decide to go down that route, reintroducing seasons in follow-up games could become a tradition, and a permanent solution to the unclear future of this game-mechanic.

Revisiting Kanto

Most fans assume the next set of "remakes" will be DP-remakes.

Time for a reality-check

Back when Red & Green were remade in the form of Fire Red & Leaf Green, RG were 8 years old. But those remakes are now 11 years old, meaning that the first remakes of the first games are the most outdated games ocne again LOL. So it's getting more and more absurd as this chain continues. Not to mention that generation 1 has the most nostalgia-milking value and would easily generate more profit than DP-remakes would.

Therefore, I think that a Kanto revisit is inevitable and probably coming earlier than any 4th generation remake.

Not this generation though (as XY-sequels are coming next to finish it, and because Kalos has enough generation-1 fanservice as it is), but perhaps after generation VII kicks off (maybe before that if they wanted generation 6 to stick around another year while making use of the 20th anniversary).

So this post is about how I would want a Kanto revisit handled, when it does come.

Remakes of remakes?

The concept sounds very depserate and uninspired. I was already hoping with ORAS that Gamefreak would not limit themselves as much as the previous remakes, but they decided to stick to the originals way too much for my taste, while throwing the Mega-evolution plot into the mix (kind of a contradiction).

With a Kanto revisit however, the chances of them considering to actually shake things around a bit should be quite higher, because they would have more justification for making such a game than if they seriously just remade a game that was already remade once before with a bunch of Megas thrown into the mix but otherwise no major overhaul.

So a new game featuring Kanto should take a lot more liberties than any remake we've seen before, or even be a proper sequel (like Black 2 and White 2).

Personally, I'd love to see a hybrid. On one side, it would be a retelling of RG, but approaching every part from scratch, ignoring any and all inconsistencies with the originals that might pop-up.

So while the overall map of the region would stay nearly identical, with perhaps a few new places showing up, the detailed designs of locations would be completely fresh. Making use of the newest graphics available, Cities/Towns would be redesigned, Routes and dungeons reinvented from scratch (Mt.Moon with a spiral design and an explorable summit, the Power-Plant like a maze explored from a personal perspective like Glittering Cave, Cerulean cave turning into the deepest and most diverse dungeon of any Pokemon game etc..), or places added that didn't even exist (an explorable volcano-dunegon on Cinabar, which would give not only the Slugma family a legit home, but finally also for Moltres).

Gold&Silver were basically direct sequels to Red&Green

There were originally 190 Pokémon designed for Red&Green, but a bunch of them were taken out and saved for the chance that the games become popular and sequels would be made (and yes they were all icnluded in generation 2 afterwards). So Gold and Silver were a direct tie-in that was meant to complement everything that generation I did. It was that region right next to Kanto, which is why it's Pokémon are still mostly the same, while the newer ones are more like exotic rarer species that you have to look harder for (at night, on trees, as swarms, by evolving old ones, breeding etc..).

Why am I bringing this up you might wonder.

Because considering the nature of generation 2, it would make perfect sense to integrate the neighbouring region of Johto into a Kanto-revisiting game, but this time with IT as the post-game region (rather than the other way around in GSC/HGSS).

So for example we find out that some generation 2 Pokemon were not just showing up in Kanto too, but sometimes even exclusive to Kanto (Houndour/Murkrow/Slugma..), so why not make use of these "updates" (it even adds a few Dark types to the regionaldex, which is nice considering that even Fairies would be present).

Kantodex 2.0

This isn't actually that important, as the Regionaldex might as well just be the nationaldex order with all of the cross-gen evolutions thrown in (FRLG completely kept them out for consistency, HGSS had a few of them that they couldn't keep out, but by ORAS, they simply included ALL the relevant cross-gen evos into the Hoenndex, so it's a given they'd all be in there from the start this time), but I enjoyed reordering a special Kantodex that included all gen I+II pokemon with the cross-gen evolutions in an order following the adventure more closely, less randomly all while attempting to stick similar or related Pokémon together where possible.

Gym-Leaders involved in the plot

The franchise has started to flesh out important characters and make them involved in the plot regarding legendaries and villains, so naturally that is one aspect that would also be brought into these hypothetical games.

Some Gym-Leaders, E4-members would be joining in different parts of the Rocket-plot, while others would show up for other occasions. For example there could be a whole episode (akin to Delta episode in ORAS) dedicated about the origin of Mewtwo, and naturally Blaine and Giovanni would be involved in it. There could be a side-quest explaining Porygons existence too.

Mega Evolutions obviously

Looking at the amount of Kanto Megas introduced in XY and surprisingly even a few classic ones in ORAS, one wonders... is there even enough iconic Kanto/Johto Pokémon with Mega-potential left for a set of games set in those regions?

Some examples of Kanto/Johto Pokémon with Mega potential

Surprisingly, yes there are. There is Raichu, the final evolution of the franchises mascot, which still for some reason hasn't gotten a Mega yet, there is the original pseudo-legendary, Dragonite, which would be used for this opportunity the same way Gamefreak jumped on Salamence and Metagross for ORAS.

And if Mega evolution was mostly held off for the post-game, there won't ever be a more fitting moment for the Johto starters to join Kanto and Hoenn starters in the Mega department.

Cherry on top

Possible post-gameMegas
for important characters

After all this, adding a few noteworthy extras for the post-game, like Gym-Leader rematches (with Mega evolutions) in the good old Battle Dojo, making the S.S. Anne return after the credits as some kind of Battle-facility, and the aforementioned Origin Episode about Mew and Mewtwo, Johto legendaries (with the GS mascots both requiring their trio to unlock their dungeon respectively for once, and a Celebi encounter).. would probably make these games a huge success and a blast for EVERY variety of the Pokéfan in existence.

In conclusion

After thinking about this matter so thoroughly, I've grown to love the idea, and would be quite disappointed if next year we'd bear witness to an announcement of Re-remakes that turns out to be the same old copy&paste approach as the previous times....

"This one doesn't look like a Pokémon"

As soon as any amount of new Pokémon are revealed, whatever forum or community you experience it with, there is always someone who starts the "they don't look like Pokémon"-topic.

The thing is though... it happens every time (except at the beginning obviously) with every bunch of starters revealed, every set of cover-legends, every secret event legend, with new waves of mega evolutions etc.


I'm always flabbergasted when reading posts like those, because they either have no actual argument besides the assertion itself (which often happens to draw a line between whatever generation that person lost excitement in Pokémon at, ala "gen x were still cool, then it went downhill"), or the arguments are extremely flawed.

Yes it is literally trash, but it is also the cutest
and most thought through well balanced
living trash-monster design ever.

Often they would point out the weirder Pokémon, with a prime example being Trubbish. Now, when I first saw this Pokémon, I immediately loved it simply from realizing it will be the star of these topics, because it offers the most obvious pun ever: "it's literally trash".
Being a generation 5 Pokémon (a generation meant to show that Gamefreak can make fresh unique interesting designs even if they are direct homages to older pokémon, proving that even if they ever "ran out of ideas", that wouldn't stop them from making more Pokémon, but that's another of these topics), the hypocrisy is easy to point out however: one just has to realize Grimer is a thing, yet no one ever complained about it in that manner.

Taking a proper look at the vast number of Pokémon, it turns out that weird designs and concepts are actually quite common in the franchise and have always been part of it.


If pokémon only included generic animals with an element slapped on them, Or if they were only insects... or only dragon-like creatures, or only humanoid designs, only plants, only spirits etc. it would lose one of it's main aspects.
Instead the inspirations for the designs come from everywhere, with the result being that everyone finds some they like.

It's one of the aspects that give Pokémon so many levels of diversity.

I would argue that the designs usually picked on tend to be ones that are actually one of the more original and creative of them.

Pokémon would not be Pokémon without all the strange designs thrown into the mix.
Some fans like the cool badass dragon designs the most, some prefer the cute ones, some like ones because of particular themes, colors and details their designs combine, others like ones with darker or mysterious backstories... and some like the strange ones.

Personally, I embrace that whole spectrum and always find something likable about them and try to figure out what non-obvious interesting origin they might have.

So, keep expanding this colorful family Gamefreak :3

XY follow-up game prediction

It would not be surprising if we saw the next Pokémon games announced beginning of May (or not too many months later).

So here are my predictions about the basics of what it will be about. I tried to be as realistic and accurate as possible with the information, official and unofficial, that is available so far.

• Zygarde as the mascot

(this should be self-explanatory)

• 2 games, 2 Zygarde forms

The 2 forms will be meant to counter (at least plot-wise) Xerneas or Yveltal (who might get a new form, Mega, Primal or similar as well), depending on which one wasn't woken by Flare in the initial Version (X2=ZygardeX vs Yveltal, Y2=ZygardeY vs Xerneas). This quite specific prediction is implied by:

1. hackers having found that XY/ORAS are programmed to be compatible with 2 more games (the pentagon symbol has 6 origin-region values, here is the source: pastebin.com/zPgwx6mb). Unfortunately for any Kanto-fans, this pretty much confirms that we aren't getting any more cash-milking nostalgia remake-business games ... for now.
2. the 2 hidden moves "Thousand Arrows/Thousand Waves", as these are identical to Zygardes current only signature move Land's Wrath (all 90P spread-Ground moves) with an additional effect each (hitting airborne targets and trapping enemies respectively), not to mention the new moves have animations involving green hexagons flying across the screen. (It pretty much gives away that Land's Wrath will be like Kyurems Glaciate. It will change to one of the other moves when it changes form, Glaciate->Ice Burn/Freeze Shock, Land's Wrath->Thousand Arrows/Thousand Waves)

• The Versions might be called XZ & YZ

if they're simply following generation 5s follow-up games (since Zygarde seems to follow Kyurems case almost too closely) they might just slap a 2 to each Version, resulting in X2 & Y2. However Gamefreak could cleverly make use of the fact that the letter Z resembles the number 2, and call them XZ and YZ. Not to mention Zygarde itself might somewhat resemble Xerneas/Yveltal in its design.

• Third round of Mega evolutions

The only ones I am confident enough to write down about getting Megas, are the Kalos starters. Because GF would be stupid not to grab this opportunity to make the "repetition" of the newest starters in the sequel more interesting with a mechanic this generation introduced in the first place!

• Battle Frontier!

If GF wasn't planning on adding it in ANY generation 6 game, the whole tease with the Battle Resort in ORAS would forever remain a big middle-finger with spotlights (lets face it, Delta Emerald is not gonna happen just for the Battle Frontier, even by Gamefreaks standards, that would be a new low, so that only leaves XZYZ)

• Southern Kalos

a whole new part of the region will be explorable (likely even including the starting town), as well as a handful of new places, routes and dungeons popping up throughout the rest of Kalos.
This isn't merely self-explanatory from looking how the previous generation did this, this time there was plenty of places in XY already which felt unused or not fully explored, to imply that this is the case (Rhyhorn Race-tracks, all those locked Power-plants, Train stations..). And of course there is Kiloude City which is supposedly an example of southern-Kalos culture.

• Changes in Kalos

Of course the path through the region (and some of the gyms, their types and leaders etc) will be radically different as there will be new protagonists and the story taking place years after XY, with a climax in the mascot-involved plot mentioned above.

• Customization 

The wardrobe from XY will definitely make a return for Kalos-sequels at least, be adjusted to fit the new characters, as well as get expanded.

• References to XY and ORAS

There should be plenty of familiar faces and references, obviously to XY with these being their sequels, but likely also some from ORAS. In particular, what's going on with Looker at the end of ORAS should be explained, as will probably AZs background (and his special Floette might after all be made available somehow, since it has unique stats compared to a regular Floette and a signatrue move called Light of Ruin). But maybe we could see even less expected ones, like Zinnia or Emerald-exclusive gym-leader Juan.



Going any further from here is pure speculation though, so I will stop here.