Pokémon – Thanos Version Or Gotta Catch Some of Them, Maybe

2018 – In Marvel’s incredible successful Infinity War, the climax sees the villain, Thanos, snap his fingers, deleting 50% of the population. The ramifications were anticipated by fans for nearly a decade, but nevertheless still hit the fanbase hard.

2019 – Junichi Masuda, head designer and producer of Pokemon, balked at those percentages and eliminates over 60% of the existing pokemon roster in their highly anticipated Sword and Shield releases. There was no warning for this, with Masuda himself saying in 2018 that the full roster would never be excluded. Rumors up his fingers being crossed cannot be exaggerated enough.

2019 – In Marvel’s Endgame, the effects of the destroyed universe were greatly reversed, except for T ony Stark, and a few others I suppose. In the end, the status quo was reasonable restored.

11/15/2019 – The release of Pokemon Sword and Shield caps at 400 total Pokemon. Instead of fixing the complains from the fans, the company doubled down, promising that all the monsters would never be available in the same game again. Got to give the people exactly what they don’t want.

How did we get here? How could a company who’s mission statement is “Gotta Catch Them All” manage this? Well, we can’t get there without a ramble, so let’s go way back to the beginning where a young Bloggin Hood in love with a bunch of crudely put together pixels.

Look, we all have our vices. Some people enjoy their drink. Other people like eating unhealthy food. Some people enjoy network television, god bless their souls. As for me, my vice isn’t unhealthy or dangerous – it’s just not cool. I can’t get enough of Nintendo games – truly I can’t. My addiction to Smash is well documented on this site, but I have to confess my other obsession. I Bloggin Octavius Hood, am a Pokemon fiend.

This really should be a surprise. I had a full on Pokemon week like a year ago. This wasn’t so much a confession as it was stating the obvious.

I used to be embarrassed by this. Pokemon was never “cool”. It was kiddy. To this day, that remains true. But honestly, does it matter? It’s not like I’ve ever been ashamed of my love of Duck related Cartoons. I’m pretty sure in the grand scheme of things, enjoying Pokemon isn’t in the top 1000 of weird things people like as adults. I mean, I’ve seen the internet after all. You should really clear your search history. And yes, don’t ask, I’m specifically talking about you, dear reader. You really googled that on your work computer? Give your head a shake.

I scan’t place my finger on what drew me to the games so much. The likely answer is the monsters. There were monsters for everyone here, and the diverse roster was certainly appealing. At the beginning, I was a basic bitch, so my favorites where the original starters – Bulbasaur, Charmander and Squirtle. This was the original Big 3 before LeBron stole that. We shouldn’t be surprised – he stole Plinko too. Nothing’s sacred to that man.

My favorite was Bulbasaur, but there were plenty of other Pokemon I liked from day 1. Not every design appealed to me – this is a series they made a set of keys into a Pokemon, but with the sheer volume of options, it wasn’t difficult finding ones to like. It’s odd, because growing up, I wasn’t super close to any animals. I had nothing against them of course, but I grew up with a hermit crab as my only pet. When I was small, I feared dogs or cats would attack. Now, as a person who sees dogs regularly and lives with a cat,*¹ my opinion has greatly changed. The animals are a huge part of it, and seeing the creative spins on the monster designs draws me in every time.

But I think the amount of options was the real draw. My biggest weakness, probably as a human being in general, is wanting to collect everything. I’ve always been a sucker for this. Baseball cards were a weakness before I had even heard of a Pokemon, In any game, if there’s the opportunity to collect something, I try to. And if that task got too hard, I gave up, not on the collecting, but the game itself. It wasn’t complete without 100% acquisitions.

Pokemon put collection at the forefront. It was the tagline after all – and I had to catch them all. That really kept my playing the first two generations. Once I felt like I caught everyone I could, then I moved on to the battling aspect. That was secondary. My cousin and I would challenge the N64 Pokemon Stadium games with our teams, and get devastated regularly. If I learned nothing from the old games, Computer AIs cheat without mercy to pretend to be difficult. Yeah, the collection aspect was at lot less frustrating.

The battles should not be understated, but I didn’t fully appreciate them until later in life. You know, before the “Select Attack, hope to win, complain if not” strategy that dominated my pre teen years (and well into my 20s). This is going to sound ridiculous, but Pokemon is more of  a chess than a checkers. That’s ridiculous in premise, but there are so many things to keep track of. There’s 18 types which have different strengths and weaknesses, plus most monster are duel types. There’s stats for physical and magical strength and defense, plus speed and hit points. There’s certain statistics that matter immensely – for instance, speed stats determine who attacks first, the biggest advantage in the game. You can also customize each pokemon to be better at certain roles via their natures, and hidden statistics called Individual values and Effort Values.  The games itself explain very little of this, but it’s surprisingly complex, and extremely nerdy.

Oh it’s just the best.

My first foray into the Pokemon world was when the games first hit the states in 1997. Back then, companies were allowed to bludgeon you with mail, tempting children to buy things. Pokemon actually mailed a VHS tape with information on the game, basically telling me I was a loser if I didn’t buy the game immediately and watch every episode of the show. I couldn’t be a loser, so I ran out and brought Pokemon Blue. And by me, I mean Momma Bloggin Hood. Oh the irony of it all. Also the show was terrible minus a few of the Pokemon. If you don’t like turtles in Sunglasses, you’re not living.

I remember playing a ton of the first game, and the sequels – Pokemon Yellow, which was basically a Pikachu focused version of the same game, and Pokemon Silver. Looking back, the first game was an absolute programming nightmare. There were all sorts of glitches, and it may have been the slowest game I’ve ever played. Despite the fact that my favorite game of all time, Super Mario RPG is, well, an RPG, I never loved the genre. There was too much waiting and watching whenI wanted to run and jump and do whatever. Despite this, Pokemon kept my interest all the time and I kept coming back with virtually each new version. I couldn’t stay away, even knowing the battle system was slow and there was 100 other things I could have done. Ah well. At least I busted up Team Rocket a bunch.

There were only two times I hung up my Pokedex. The third generation had a huge stain on the series. When the games moved to the Game Boy Advance, you couldn’t carry over your old monsters from the first two generations. This was a huge chunk of the previous 251 Pokemon. At the time, I didn’t understand why. This was a coding issue, and while I’m pretty sure the company could have found a solution, Game Freak and the Pokemon Company (That’s the legit name. These games are not developed by Nintendo, which is essential to this article) decided to proceed without it. There was no way to bring over the first 251 Pokemon. For the first time, you could not, in fact, catch them all. Remember this moment for later. While I played through the third gen, it wasn’t the same. I couldn’t use a ton of my favorites. About 18 months later, new releases came out to unlock all of the missing monsters, but the damage, for me, was done. I had already moved on.

My hiatus didn’t last all that long, as I jumped back in with Pokemon Diamond, the 4^th generation, while in college. I wasn’t playing in college, because now playign Pokemon made you a loser. Social status is really complex. But when I went back home, the DS was used way more than my TB. I collected a bunch of the new monsters and even prepped them for competitive battle.

And then, without any real reason I was out. Maybe it was because I was an adult, or maybe because I had nobody interested in playing against, but I hung it up. It didn’t carry the same magic as it once did. My DS collected dust, unused for years…

This should be the end of the tale, but 2018 changed things. 

On a random day, Maid Megan and I began talking video games and Pokémon came up. We both mentioned having some old monsters and how we missed it. Well, one thing led to another and next thing I knew, we brought a 3Ds and 6 different games. Yeah, we missed a bit. We also hated money.

From the summer of 2018 to the beginning of 2019, we played through all the missing generations and caught up. Throughout the games, we found some good ones (Black and White was surprisingly good) and some bad ones (X&Y makes you interact with a group of “friends” who made me consider being a silent monk). We also discovered a ton of new favorites along the way. We scooped up every new Pokemon, and with Nintendo’s additional features, we could bring forward any caught monster all the way back from Generation 3 with minimal effort. Talk about reverse compatibility and fixing an old mistake. Again, I ask you to please focus on to this concept. You’ll need it soon.

It wasn’t just about capturing though. I took it upon myself to get all of our favorites ready for competitive play. All that nerdy statistic stuff? That became my favorite after work past time. It was daunting at first, but once I learned the quirks, I could churn out a flawless Pokémon in 20 minutes. This mattered cause the two of us had a lot of favorites. I still have nightmares of training 15 Eevees for each of the available evolutions and team roles**². We have more Pokemon fully trained up for the incoming Sword and Shield than I’m comfortable sharing. It was a time commitment, but it never felt like work. It became a routine to relax after the gym or work or whatever was going on in live. In many ways it was therapeutic.

I don’t recommend massive breeding for relaxation in real life. There’s the potential for a lot of soreness, and I mean that in every sense of the word.

The point is, we were ready with an army of well trained favorites. I was ready to conquer the world playing knock off animal chess against a variety of man children and 10 year olds alike. It was going to be awesome.

And then, Junichi Masuda snapped his fingers and changed everything.

For 20 years, the roster of available monsters grew and outside of that unforgivable generation 3 decision, the new creatures exclusively added to the old list. Pokemon were never cut with each generation. Even the debacle back then was fixed by creating new games with the old monsters. Now granted, the fix was to buy new games containing the remaining roster, but at least it was something. They were listening to the players’ concerns. I don’t think the Pokemon Company is listening anymore. 

After several hype videos for Sword and Shield, the next installment of Pokémon, people were salivating. This was the first full blown console game for the series. And sure, the graphics weren’t wowing anyone, but it didn’t matter. This is the game fans had waited decades for. They could have shat in a box and sold 20 million copies worldwide. Boy, I wish we had gotten that shit.

That’s probably not what I meant to say. 

After anexciting trailer, the Pokémon company said words that haunt the community to this day. They casually mentioned not all the Pokémon would be back during a Nintendo “Treehouse” event. Normally saved for huge, exciting announcements, like new Smash characters, this was to serve to fan the hype flames for the new games. Everything screeched to a halt when these words came out. The hosts asked again, assuming there was a slip up. But oh my there wasn’t. Everyone involved in the Pokemon games deflected follow up questions. It was ugly. All of the hype was dead. Instead, everyone focused on the Pokedex – If your favorite Pokemon wasn’t in the game’s Pokedex, you weren’t getting to use them.

Past iterations of Pokemon made a habit of transferring old Pokemon into the new games after beating the main storyline. Typically, it’s a one way street – once moved to anew game, they can never be sent back. This made sense, and as the games made sequels, most players wouldn’t want to play old games anymore. This is a unique feature n Pokemon, arguable it’s defining characteristic behind “Gotta Catch them All”. For some, it was how people moved their favorites that conquered the gyms and elite 4 in past titles to keep the band together. For others, like me, it was a way to keep competitive Pokemon available each generation instead of starting from scratch. It was the easiest way to keep the full collection current, especially for rare Pokemon. Now, I didn’t have any of these rare Pokemon, but you can be damn sure my Crocodile with Sunglasses moved into every new game, ready to bite the shit out of the opponent, with style.

We mentioned the only time in Pokemon history where this didn’t happen – the jump from Generation 2 to Generation 3. The hardware was the reason behind it – going from the Gameboy to Gameboy Advance changed a lot of coding. The newer Pokemon had many more attributes than the old one, so I’d imagine the transition would be a nightmare. So I get it, I really do. However, hackers found the old Pokemon were still coded into the game, seemingly trapped with no way to access them.

People were pissed. At the time, the internet wasn’t the global force it is now, but fans of the series were not happy they had to leave their favorites behind. GameFreak listened, creating remakes of the first games that would interact with Generation 3. Of course, this cost more money, and could have been the company’s ploy the whole time. You have to assume these games were in production when the original Generation 3 began. Nevertheless, it helped satisfy the anger and gave everyone a fresh start.

This the “incident”, Pokemon has always included forward compatibility. If you dig deep into Pokemon, this feature is a blessing. It helps limit the amount of backtracking and redundancy from past games, cause let’s face it, Pokemon is redundant as hell anyway. It also legitimized the work we did in old games. Your reward for being champ in a past reason? You can bring you favorites, your competitive monsters, or anything to complete the Pokedex before you take on the next game. Pokemon games are notoriously easy, possibly easier than even Kirby Games, but the challenge came from battling others. This feature made those battles that much easier.

GameFreak’s announcement put the fans on tilt. Everyone quoted Generation 3 and the back lash the company received at the time. They also surfaced a quote from Musuda not even a full year ago that looked particularly bad. Masuda commented on the Generation 3 incident, saying he regretted it. He promised that all future titles will allow transferring Pokemon from the old games. Whoopsie.

Technically, he didn’t lie. Early in 2020, Pokemon home is set to release on the Switch. This service serves as a holding pen for Pokemon in old games, making them compatible with Sword and Shield and, presumably future titles. Originally when this was announced, we all assumed the full existing roster would be added to the games this way. After the Treehouse debacle, that was not the case. Now, only the Pokemon found in the Pokedex can make it.

I mentioned the fans were furious and terrified. Oh, that might be understating it. Every day, places like Gamefaqs and Reddit feared for less popular Pokemon that they loved, or questioned if their starter Pokemon from 15 years old could be transferred. Many fans agreed the majority would make it – with likely Legendarily and lower level Pokemon getting deleted. That’s what I thought, though the legends seemed perfect for DLC – slowly add them back in while the “standard” Pokemon made up the available roster for a majority of the game.

What everyone believed was all of the original 151 Pokemon were shoo-ins. Gamefreaks always panders to the first generation, the ones that helped them prosper. Plus, the games already had full models from last year’s Pokemon game, a dumbed one remake of the original titles. There were too many obvious reasons for these characters to be in.

Well, last week, the games were fully leaked. This happens with every major title, so it’s not a surprise. All of the new Pokemon designs slowly trickled on the internet for three days, with Nintendo swinging a sledgehammer to anyone who posted an image. These were legit, and honestly, the new Pokemon were pretty cool. New features were being added to ease making maxed out Pokemon. All of the newly worked featured seemed to be great. I was excited… Until the total number of Pokemon were revealed.

400… 400 out of nearly 900 when factoring in the new creatures. Over 60% of the classic pokemon, depending if you can call a fake Pokeball, an ice cream cone, and yes, Keys, classics, were cut. Per Gamefreak, none of the old monsters missing will be patched in later and they’ve avoiding coding the information for them in the game data. Leakers have not found any expansion to the Pokedex after beating the game. This is a huge kick to the balls.

I’d make the obvious Pokeball joke, but I respect you far too much for that.

This decision is baffling for a few reasons. Let’s go through them quickly so you can help me get #KissaMuddyAssGamefreak trending on Twitter.

1. All of the old Pokemon already have 3D models – This is probably the most egregious part. Back when the series made the jump to X and Y, all the Pokemon went from 2D Sprites to 3D. Masuda himself said this would make transferring the models to future games easier and save the company hours of work. So, either this was a complete lie, or the company is purposely holding back our favorites. Either answer is troubling.
2. All the Original 151 are already modeled for the Switch – If, for whatever reason the #D models could not be exported, namely through incompetents, the original 151 Pokemon have been on the Switch since last year. The models were perfectly reusable and GameFreaks specified they would be transferable to Sword and Shield. I guess they meant only like 40% of them as a vast majority were cut from this game. Most players’ favorites come for the original set as that’s where it all started. They’re also the monsters pushed the heaviest. Or, at least were before they were snapped out of existence.
3. The frigging tag line is Gotta catch them all – I guess we’ll modify it to “Gotta Catch the Ones we let you. Sucks to suck.”
4. This was the first console release for the series – Pokemon has always been a handheld game. Even if the roster was getting out of control, and I do understand nearly 900 characters is a boatload, this release was not the time to cut corners. Pokemon needed to prove it could be a mainline series on Nintendo consoles, as opposed to the favorite past time of people commuting or traveling. Instead of proving themselves, they cut as many corners as possible.

I think would makes this additionally frustrating is how many favorites they cut. Sure, if you have a roster of 900 shrink to 400, popular characters will be cut. But they took the Sword (pun so intended) to a lot of the popular monsters, especially the starter Pokemon from the past seven generations. On one hand, I understand skipping the starters – they would over shine the new beginning trio. On the other hand, 95% of players’ favorite Pokemon is a starter, so you’re alienating the majority of the fans from day 1. it’s a winning business model when you hate the people who gives you revenue.

However, one returning starter made it – Charmander, who serves as the primary Pokemon of the game’s champion. This is offensive. How in the goddamn Hell is one of the original three starters in the game, but not all three. For sports fans unfamiliar with Pokemon, this is like if NBA 2K promised to have the 2011 Miami Heat, and then only had LeBron as playable. Of course, that’s probably how LeBron would want it. In Pokemon terms, this means Bulbasaur and Squirtle, massively popular Pokemon are no where in the game. And since intellects like myself know that Bulbasaur is the best starter, we’re doubly screwed here. Mostly because Charmander fans are basic bitches. The blood is on your hands!

Nah, Charmander is cool, but this is bs***. ³

The fix should be simple – DLC. If this was the company’s original model, after the waves of backlash, the simple solution is to include waves of DLC for old Pokemon to return. A new feature, max raids, would serves as a brilliant solution to this growing problem. I’d argue the raids were designed to allow additional Pokemon into the game. This would even justify (albeit poorly) holding back popular monsters, bringing players back into the mix every few weeks while a new set of 20 was released. This would keep players invested in years and would leave everyone relatively happy. The PR nightmare would end, and I’d have Krookodile, Scizor and Heracross back.

But no, this will not be happening. Just this past Sunday Gamefreak double down on its decision, saying they will not include DLC and that Pokemon home exists for all the unavailable pokemon who may be added to a future title. Notice the key word of may. There’s a chance we don’t see any of these Pokemon again. Talking about giving the people what they want.

Unfortunately, I know the conclusion to this, and it’s not pretty. Pokemon has also made additional versions of their generational games. Sometimes, it’ll be a third version. Other times, it’ll be a direct sequel. Lately, they have gone with a sequel and a remark of an older generation of Pokemon. Pokemon will solve this crisis my lining their own pockets with money – Making Super Sword and Sturdy Shield in about 18 months with another 150 Pokemon. Then, they will remark generation 4, proving the remaining missing Pokemon, including all the old starters. It’ll take roughly 3 years to have access to everyone again… and then we’ll start Generation 9. You’re looking at a minimum of $200 for games just to play the complete version of Pokemon – And unfortunately, this is the most positive outlook.

There’s a world where some Pokemon never see the light of day again. If we’re getting 400 total on GameFreak’s first full foray on the Switch, this could be the high water mark. Imagine the 10^th generation having only 300? It’s in play, and it’s not pretty.

The best hope fans have are data miners, individuals that dig deep into the code of the game to see if there’s anymore Pokemon not readily available at launch, but will be soon. There’s also the outside shot of a patch that isn’t on the base cart we will download on the first day that will expand the Pokedex. Competent companies do this to play coy with their fan base. But sadly, we’re not dealing with a competent company. We’re dealing with a team willing to cut corners whenever possible. Gamefreak knows they’ll sell millions without a real effort, and this is what we can expect going forward. So Long Krookodile. See you later Scizor. Bye Heracross. And yes, a dignified farewell to you Keys. Even you deserved better****.⁴

It is kind of funny Keys isn’t in. It’s probably because one of the programmers lost their keys over a weekend and remove it from the roster on a Monday in revenge. Having you replace a set of keys is a frigging nightmare. I digress though.

As long as GameFreak churns out money, Nintendo will never intervene. Nintendo doesn’t have much control over the Pokemon series as you might think. Plus if it’s making money, why shake things up? We can hope that this backlash will force Nintendo’s hand. Remember, most people don’t realize so many Pokemon are MIA. There will be a wave of backlash this weekend when the games come out, and another when Pokemon Home drops and none of the monsters can be added to the main game. It could get messy. But if the games sell, and trust me, these things are like crack for children, nothing will bring back the missing Pokemon, until those new versions come out. And again, that’s might be best case scenario for the fans. That’s, yeah, that’s not good.

Personally, I won’t be buying Sword and Shield. All that prep work to waste. And it’s a shame, there’s a lot of good features added to the games and I was looking forward to the online battles. Maybe in 18 months, I’ll buy the sequel, get all my favorites back, and brag about beating 7 year olds for weeks straight. Until then, I’ll be catching none, instead playing through an old game to satisfy that Pokemon itch. Hope there’s a cream for that.

*I’m no fool. Cody Cat is who runs my apartment. Fortunately, we have a good relationship and I’m only 20% afraid he’s plotting my death.

**Is the plural of Eevee, Eevees or Eevee? Is it Eevi? Somebody contact Nintendo for me.

***In the interest of fairness, data mining has begun on the games as of 11/11. A few additional monsters, including Bulbasaur, Squirtle, and Mewtwo were uncovered. There were also the Gen 7 starters and a hodgepodge of later game legends. Is this better? A bit, but that still leaves 500 monsters missing, and we have no clue when these Pokemon will be available. If they are DLC, it’s even worse – it means they planned to add Pokemon all along, just not many. I don’t consider this confirmed yet either, since this info could be left over and not 100%, therefore I left it out of the main article. It gives me less hope the issues will be fixed.

****It should be noted that the data mining that starting on 11/11 also discovered missing moves – a few essential to competitive play. So even if they do give Bulbasaur and Squirtle back, we use a ton more overall. It’s incredible.

1. *I’m no fool. Cody Cat is who runs my apartment. Fortunately, we have a good relationship and I’m only 20% afraid he’s plotting my death.
2. **Is the plural of Eevee, Eevees or Eevee? Is it Eevi? Somebody contact Nintendo for me.
3. ***In the interest of fairness, data mining has begun on the games as of 11/11. A few additional monsters, including Bulbasaur, Squirtle, and Mewtwo were uncovered. There were also the Gen 7 starters and a hodgepodge of later game legends. Is this better? A bit, but that still leaves 500 monsters missing, and we have no clue when these Pokemon will be available. If they are DLC, it’s even worse – it means they planned to add Pokemon all along, just not many. I don’t consider this confirmed yet either, since this info could be left over and not 100%, therefore I left it out of the main article. It gives me less hope the issues will be fixed.
4. ***It should be noted that the data mining that starting on 11/11 also discovered missing moves – a few essential to competitive play. So even if they do give Bulbasaur and Squirtle back, we lose a ton more overall. It’s incredible.