Porygon might be the most
misunderstood Pokémon, certainly from Generation 1: with Jynx there is a good
possibility that some of the claims of racism are true, Kadabra really is
poking a little fun at Uri Geller and while not satanic, is a psychic and if
your religion says that makes you the devil’s child then the Abra line is
guilty as charged, but Porygon did NOT give anyone a seizure. Oh children
definitely had some kind of fits from the Pokémon episode Electric Soldier Porygon but the offending clip had nothing to do
with the first artificially created Pokémon, it was that little shit Pikachu
and his lighting that caused the kids harm. But Porygon being the titular star
of the episode has left it mislabelled as a thing that causes kids to froth at
the mouth and Game Freak and Nintendo aren’t helping by keeping the Porygon
line out of the anime, it makes good sense from a public relations standpoint
but it doesn’t help my poor baby get a better rep.
I LOVE Porygon, it made so
much sense to me as a kid, that a computer-made Pokémon look like it had a
Vitura Fighter low polygon count - however I never saw Porygon as a duck, and I
still can’t, I always saw it as a dinosaur and to me it still looks more
lizard-like than duck-like, it’s head-shape and tail being the main things.
This of course made me like it more, I’m a dinosaur man, combined with how rare
and special it felt (you could only get as the top prize from the game corner, making
Silph Co – the company behind Porygon as well as Pokéballs and the Silph Scope
– look seriously dodgy as that whole place was run by the Pokémon world’s
Mafia) and it being a rare shiny in the TCG (which you may have guessed I was
WELL into) with Sugimori art no less and I end up a fan for life.
Porygon2 just made me like
the line even more, as it continued on the ‘makes complete sense’ appeal,
giving Porygon a graphical upgrade through a device. Though it did make it more
ducklike and take away some of the uniqueness of it’s predecessor, no matter how
much sense it made. Porygon-Z however is something else, a brilliant concept
that leaves us with a deranged duck thing that looks like a cross between a
balloon animal and the logo for Alton Tower’s The Smiler. If you never figured it out, Porygon-Z is an unofficial
upgrade for Porygon 2, it’s accessed by using a ‘Dubious Disc’ not obtained
from Silph Co, it’s a dodgy third-party mod - something that actually a history
of happening in video games – Ms. Pac-Man was just a sped-up unofficial upgrade
for Pac-Man, fan mods are all over the place in the PC gaming scene and a lot
of them are glitchy and fucked up as Porygon-Z. This is brilliant! What a
concept for a multi-generation evolutionary line of artificial computer-born
things! A next-gen update that perfects the concept, then an unofficial mod
years later!
Oh yeah, Bogleech poses the
question as to why no more artificial Pokémon have been produced, I think I
have a fanwank answer: it’s too expensive and not worth the money. Porygons are
the chronologically first obtained as a prize in the Kanto Game Corner where
they’re the top prize, you have to win a LOT of coins to get one, that would
imply that they have a high value, but Porygon can breed (with a Ditto if
nothing else) so once you have enough Porygon out there they can be produced
for free. It’s simply not a good use of Silph Co. resources to do anything
other than put out the presumably far more inexpensive Up-Grade items.
SPACEWORLD: Porygon2: I’m looking at this separately because it’s so different. This lion is
Porygon 2 in the Space World ’97 demo, apparently it’s based on the logo a
Japanese company had at the time so it could just have been a placeholder but
it has a back sprite and it does fulfil the same purpose as the Porygon 2 we
got: enhancing Porygon’s graphics to be able to accomplish round things, hell
this lion is ALL round things so it does a fine job of showing this off but, I
feel, the change in species takes the focus away from this concept, the
reaction is ‘holy sit it’s a lion now’ not ‘oh look it’s got improved graphics’
which would have made Lion!Porygon2 a bit of a failure and meant that the
Porygon evolutionary progression would have been less than perfect, so I’m
happier with what we got. I’d be ok with it as a stand-alone Pokémon though -
maybe a new company inventing their own Porygon as a marketplace rival?
So for the casual or
confused (though god knows why anyone but Pokémon fans would be looking for
Pokémon species reviews) there are a lot of ‘sub-sets’ of Pokemon beyond their
Elemental Types. There are Legendaries – powerful legendary Pokémon tied into
legends of the Pokémon World that commonly come at the end of each region’s
Pokedex (i.e. Lugia, Ho-Oh); Pseudo-Legendaries that are very powerful and
quite rare but still considered regular Pokemon (i.e. Dragonite or Tyrannitar);
Mythicals who are very rare – usually only given out special Nintendo events –
but not as powerful as Legendaries who are often bonus ‘mons listed AFTER the
end of the Pokedex (i.e. Mew or Jirachi); Starters – the set of three Pokémon
that you choose from at the start and can only be obtained that way and in this
case Fossil Pokémon. Fossil Pokémon are extinct in the Pokémon world and are
not catchable in the wild but instead have to be brought back to life from
items found somewhere in the game. Gen 1 introduced five of these.
Omanyte and Omastar are my
least favourite of that five, but given how much I like the others that’s not
saying much, also some fans worship it as a god so I’ll tread carefully. I’m
just not that into ammonites and never
have been, their section was the big I’d skip at the Natural History Museum on
the way to the gift shop but further Omanyte and Omastar are just more of the
‘small cute thing becomes bigger fiercer thing’ style of Pokémon evolutionary
lines, which is fine but compared to what we get with Kabuto, well it DOESN’T
compare. On it’s own though the two are ok, Omanyte is cute, Omastar is
menacing and feelings like a definite upgrade.
God damn is Kabutops
awesome, a blade handed bipedal trilobite monster, an armoured Scyther.
Fun fact: when I was a kid
I used to make fan comics about a Scyther and a Kabutops that travelled the
Pokémon World – it was a mix of World’s
Finest Comics, The Seven Samurai and Arthurian legend, I wish I still had
them.
Kabutops is excessively
cool, it’s objectively cool, it’s fucking awesome.
I like Kabuto though too, I
like the more abstract Pokemon and Kabuto really isn’t’ anything but a
realisation of the idea of what would come from a Dome Fossil, an original
creature that looks enough like real-world creatures to not seem completely
preposterous (see also Clefairy, Scyther…). It’s also deliciously creepy while
still being cute, it’s red eyes glowing amidst the blackness and it’s false
face on it’s shell, all very cool but you still wanna hug it.
I didn’t think this segment
out, I just wanted to rave about Kabutops, I apologize for how disjointed this was.
I really don’t look forward
to doing the segments for Pokémon I really like because I have to explain why I
like something and that’s way harder than explaining why you dislike something
and way, way less entertaining, especially as I usually just want to type
‘SQUEEEEE LOOOOOK AT IT SO AWESOOOME!!’ over and over again and then pass out.
Aerodactyl is a SLAISA
Pokémon, spoilers: it’s getting a gold six ranking.
I love me some Petrosaurs
(they’re not dinosaurs) but Aerodactyl isn’t a simple Pterodactyl, it’s a mix
of Pteronodon and dragon as designed by Todd McFarlane, it looks as tough as it
is and is as tough as it looks. It’s just a damn good monster AND it’s got a
reference to Jurassic Park involved in it all as well.
Which brings us to Mega
Aerodactyl, which is ridiculous but then it’s a Mega Evolution and it sure does
look awesome, it’s such a Rock Type that rocks are bursting rrom it’s skin and
it makes it look like being hit by even the most basic of physical attacks –
Tackle or Fly say – would really, REALLY hurt. But I find the rocks thing a bit odd,
it IS a Rock Type sure enough but it’s the only fossil Pokemon that doesn’t
come from a rock fossil, it comes from the Old Amber, and amber’s tree sap (Mr
DNA told me so) so shouldn’t it really have either trees or better yet, amber
bursting out of it? I mean it’s not incorrect this way but those would make
much more sense right? Right? Guys?
Snorlax spend their time
alone, either asleep or eating and making sure to strategically block Trainers’
paths while they do, but they only evolve from Munchlax through friendship. How
does this work? How do we get wild Snorlax? We know they’re a thing, how do
they come about? Snorlax didn’t need a Baby Pokémon in the first place, but it
certainly didn’t need one that makes no bloody sense.
Snorlax is lovely. A big
squishy harmless bear thing, I bet they’re great to hug and even better to
sleep on. They’re also certainly a good way of doing the standard RPG element
of a roadblock in a game about catching and taming monsters. That’s about all I
got though. Munchlax is ok, very much a Gen 4 design with all it’s triangles
and ‘not a lot of thought put into these’ markings, it’s completely unnecessary
and kind of ruins a bit of Snorlax’s mystique for me I think, knowing anything
about how or where Snorlaxs come from before they block a road (other than
‘from an egg, duh’) takes more away than it adds, plus they were an absolute
tosser to catch in Gen 4 despite being used to promote Diamond & Pearl ala
Marril. That’s about all I got there too, actually
Oh well
