Glen-i

Kinda? Not sure how far, but it is deffo set after X/Y. Although whether they frame it as the future, or "current time" is still to be seen. Scarlet/Violet has an android implanted with memories that totally cheats at Pokémon battling, so who the hell knows? And @Ashley there, replying with my guess while I'm typing it. Bloody mod privileges, I tell you!

This is correct. It would be amusing if Typhlosion didn't get a Mega Evolution now. Might go from best starter from Gen 2, to second best in Gen 4, to worst here. That's what it gets for being a perv.

2 starters from the same generation feels strange. Tepig just stands out like a sore thumb now! I'm not complaining though. There's a real chance that Feraligatr will pull a Samurott and go from decent to awesome, and let's face it, Meganium is the most useless starter ever, so whatever new form it gets here can't possibly be worse. I haven't been able to see the footage, but going by Serebii, the battle system seems to have some Strategy RPG positioning elements. Intriguing... No idea whether abilities are a thing though, so still sitting on the fence. I dig the HUD element that show battle messages on the side. ("Not very effective", etc) Long overdue! @Julius, you asked this in the presents thread, but I'll answer it here. 2 Flying types with one Rock Slide, you know? The main thing is that I want battles to be the focus again. Legends: Arceus and Scarlet/Violet treat battles as such an afterthought. Scarlet/Violet doesn't have trainers force you into battle, and Legends actively punishes you for engaging in battle with wild Pokémon. Although that second game is a moot point, because the battle system in Legends is utter crap. Look, nothing wrong with experimenting, but Legends' battle system does nothing right. It needs to be thrown out, but these are the biggest issues I have. - The speed stat determines how often your Pokémon attack instead of when they go, so really fast Pokémon get to have twice, or sometimes three times as many turns as their opponent. It's so incredibly unfair in a series where turn economy is so important. - There's no abilities. Which sucks. Toxicroak might as well be the same Pokémon as Sneasler, except Sneasler has a higher speed stat, so Toxicroak is pointless. - The EV's in this game are wack. You can maximise every stat like in the Game Boy games. No strategic thought needed and it makes every Pokémon far too tanky. Let's Go did a similar thing and there's no competitive scene for that. Gee, I wonder why? Then again, you can't battle other players in Legends, almost like Game Freak knew the battles sucked. - The moves themselves. There's so few. And some unique ones, like Stealth Rock, got changed to just be stuff like "Rock version of Fire Spin". It's awful, and makes the Pokémon blend into each other even more. - Wild Pokémon can run away if you decide to battle them. Freaking why? No-one likes this, if you say you do, you are a liar. Anyway, non battle stuff I'll change? The open world, that's a given. I want actual landmarks with people to talk to, not just a field with a mountain somewhere. There's been two games with that now, and I'm sick to death of it. Z-A taking place in Lumiose City is promising, but unless I can barge into people's homes and demand they spout a sentence or two at me, what's the point? I fully expect to be sent out into boring fields that look nothing like Kalos at some point though, so... The Pokédex in Legends is cute, but filling it got old, really fast. I love catching them all. But I don't love having to catch 20 Magikarp, and then watch it use Splash 15 times for it to actually count. Catch it once, get the Pokédex entry. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Legends is just a glorified catching simulator, and that's not why I play Pokémon. If it was, I would've played Pokémon Go. I don't care if you can manually throw the ball, it just amounts to sneak up behind Pokémon (Stealth? Ugh...), Huck at ball at it, done. It's boring. Glad Sca/Vi didn't do that... So yeah, still on the fence, need to know more about how progression works.

I hope there's some kind of Battle Tower style gauntlet modes against CPU's. I like testing Pokémon builds there without human unpredictability clouding my judgement, and Scarlet and Violet not having anything like that really dampened my desire to play competitively. It's also the perfect way to bring back Battle Frontier. Beat as many CPU's as you can with various restrictions. If it has something like that, I'm utterly sold! On the other hand, being able to give more then half of your team generation defining mechanics is a recipe for absolute chaos, and I'm all for it! I wonder how getting Pokémon in Champions will work? Will you just be able to choose stuff like Nature, Ability, and even EV's and IV's? How limited will the selection be? So many questions...

Had to double take here. Forgot that this is different to Monolith Soft. Was very confused for a moment.

You mean the one that has a remake on Switch already? Even more reason for never gonna happen. Anyway, ooooh! Speculation? Lemme chime in here. Someone's forgetting that Venusaur and Blastoise got only 1. It wouldn't shock me for GF to put them on par with Charizard. Hell, if it isn't that, I expect them to give Charizard (and Mewtwo) a third Mega Evo Z! I disagree. I think the fact that these feature in three separate Switch titles now puts them more at risk at getting overlooked then the others. Okay, except the Gen 9 ones, they're too new. Considering that a few Gigantamax forms were meant to be new Mega Evolutions before Sword/Shield cut that Idea, I wouldn't be so sure. It'd be nice to see them repurposed. Mostly because Garbodor deserves it. With all that said, I also think any starters that already have a Mega Evolution won't be the starters. Not great advertising if they just end up with the same Megas they already have. So for me, that leaves Gen 2, 5, 7, and 8 as the likely candidates in my opinion. But that leaves me in a sticky spot, because those are the Legends: Arceus set, plus 8. My guesses on what the starters might be, in that case, are: Snivy, Litten, and Sobble. Snivy's there because Gen 5 is not getting a remake, and it's there purely for appeasement. Litten's there because Incineroar is stupid popular. Yes, the possibility of an Incineroar that's somehow better then the base one is terrifying. Didn't stop them from giving them to the likes of Garchomp, won't stop them here. Sobble's there, because quite frankly, Inteleon is the perfect candidate for a regional variant in Pokémon France. Make it based on Arsene Lupin instead of James Bond, and you've got a winner!

Balatro has had it's PEGI rating lowered to 12. I'm guessing someone there started playing it.

Just a heads up, @RedShell. I don't use that Down B for my Mii, I use that one that makes the Mii flip forward. I can't counter to save my life!

Right, theme time. I almost didn't have much of an idea, but then the perfect opportunity fell into my lap. Sick Smash Score! It's looking very likely that we'll finally be getting the "long waited by Tony Hawk" remakes of the third and fourth games in the Tony Hawk Pro Skater series, so today's Smash roster have all used a Skateboard at some point. Yes, even Simon. That guy has an amazing track record of squirming his way into my themes in ways I never even knew about! There's a costume restriction here. Bowser Jr - Bowser Jr, Larry, Wendy, and Ludwig only This is the first time that only some of the Koopalings are allowed, by the way. The research we did for this was a ride! Miis are also allowed, but cannot be wearing any special costumes that hide the fact that they are Miis. (Cuphead, Bomberman, etc.) Stages have some nice slopes to skate off of tonight! No stairs though. Stairs are a skateboarders worst nightmare! Format: Time, 2 Minutes Special FS Meter: On See you at 7:30, for the standard Custom set.

Right, I wasn't around last week, so already behind a week more then I would've liked. Huh? Oh no, you're not getting two posts now. Don't be stupid. There's only one non-legendary Pokémon that was banned to Ubers in Gen 3 (Ruby/Sapphire), so we're moving to Gen 4 (Diamond/Pearl) now. Wobbuffet/Wynaut is a weird case of a Pokémon most people wouldn't expect to be good enough to be banned to Ubers actually getting there. This time, anyone with even a basic knowledge of how strong Pokémon can be can tell you this next one is good. In fact, @Jonnas already did. Garchomp is a Ground/Dragon Pokémon introduced in the Gen 4 games. It's our first example of what is officially called a "Powerhouse Pokémon". Powerhouse Pokémon all have a BST (Base Stat Total, the total of a Pokémon's base stats) of 600. The Powerhouse Pokémon most of you know of is Dragonite. So they're designed to be strong, but not quite as strong as Legendary Pokémon... In theory, anyway. Garchomp is a land shark, it's also a jet, apparently. Yeah, the thing can fly, somehow. It's most famous for being the signature Pokémon of the Gen 4 champion, Cynthia, probably one of the most difficult battles in the mainline games (there have been harder since). She has a lot of very good Pokémon, and Garchomp is only one of them. Here are it's base stats. See? They add up to 600. That's why the BST is 600. That's a really nice stat spread. Special Attack is not important for Garchomp, so that being the lowest stat is no problem. What makes Garchomp so much better then it's other Powerhouse counterparts of the time? Well, multiple things, but the main thing is it's speed stat. The speed stat in Pokémon determines the turn order in battles. In normal circumstances, the Pokémon with the higher speed stat will go first. It doesn't matter if you have 1 more speed, or 100 more. So ideally, you want your Pokémon to have just enough speed to outspeed your opponent, anything more then that is kind of a waste. Funnily enough, that clip @RedShell posted above is a good example of this, doesn't matter how big and strong you are, if someone goes first and ends the fight, you don't get to do a thing. A lot of good Pokémon in competitive battles have a base Speed stat of 100, this means that Garchomp outspeeds most Pokémon with minimal stats invested into it's Speed. That kind of min-maxing made it an absolute menace. As well as that, Garchomp's diverse movepool means it can fulfill a good variety of roles, which means your opponent needs to guess at what you plan to do with Garchomp. If they guess wrong, or aren't able to counter your plan, then you get an immense amount of momentum, and there's a real chance that you will procced to destroy the opponent. Oh, but that's not all. Because Garchomp has an absolutely killer ability in Gen 4 in the form of Sand Veil. Sand Veil: Raises the Pokémon’s evasion during a sandstorm by one level. So let me tell you something about the Smogon community. They absolutely loathe anything that affects evasion. If a Pokémon has any method of changing this, Smogon will go out of it's way to ban it in some way. This is why Bidoof was once banned to Ubers, BTW. Unfortunately, that's no longer the case, so you won't be seeing that Pokémon here. But you know what the most surprising thing about Garchomp is? It's only in Gen 4 that Garchomp is actually banned to Ubers! One of the most famous examples of what this thread is about is actually only relevant in one generation. After that, it got an alternative ability that's nowhere near as good as Sand Veil, so Smogon only allows Garchomp to have that not-as-good ability. For almost every other generation, it's actually in OU (OverUsed). Well, except Gen 9 (Scarlet/Violet). It's actually fallen lower there! It's now in UU (UnderUsed). The power creep has not been kind to ol' Garcho. Now, I know what some of you thinking, didn't Garchomp get a Mega Evolution? Well yeah, it did. But unlike every other Mega Evolution ever, Mega Garchomp is actually worse then the regular one! For reasons I can only imagine as balancing attempts, Garchomp's base speed goes down by 10 when it Mega Evolves, which if you've been paying attention, puts it below the ideal 100 speed threshold. Which means that most people just used their Mega Evolution on a different Pokémon instead. Does that mean it's good in casual play? Oh boy, is it ever! To be fair, most Powerhouse Pokémon are good. The big downside is that like all Powerhouse Pokémon, they're hard to find, take a while to train, and tend to evolve quite late. Put in the effort though, and you've got a ridiculously good Pokémon. You can't go wrong with Garchomp here. And remember, casual playthroughs don't have to follow Smogon's rules, so feel free to be an utter degenerate and use Sand Veil.

Walking Wake and Iron Leaves are available to catch via Tera Raids again. If you haven't caught them yet, you have until the 27th. And if any of you Violet players need help to get Walking Wake, hit me up. While I'm at it, there's a Mystery Gift distribution for a competitive Jumpluff based on the one the current Latin America champion used in his winning team. EU1C25SUNNYDAY

Darth Maul and Wolverine are gonna be a bit trickier then that, to be fair... As much as I agree that the licensed character omissions are a shame, I will give credit for recasting Officer Dick with Jack Black. Utterly inspired!

Yep, I already talked about Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia before. I played it again. Not exactly the same way, mind. Here's my original write-up for this game. The DS Castlevania games all have at least one alternate mode you get for finishing the game that has you play through the game as a different character. The locations and enemies are mostly the same, but the tools available to you are radically different. In Order of Ecclesia, this is called "Albus Mode". Albus is main character, Shanoa's, brother, he can't absorb any Glyphs, he can't use items, and he can't get any equipment. He doesn't need them, because when it comes to evil vampires and the many horrifying beasties said vampire employs, the real question we should be asking is "Why don't you just shoot them?" That enemy is normally really scary. Albus has a pretty sweet gun! It's really powerful, even against unliving things! Albus has about 5 different attacks he can do with that, and he's really OP! Do it right, and you absolutely melt through bosses. There's something cathartic about fighting these bosses I struggled with in the main mode, and breezing through them with a gun. That's not even the end of it, the dude can immediately snap to any location you touch! Suffice to say, this is very useful! I have a soft spot for games that give you an unlockable mode that lets you play as a completely different character, especially if they're far too powerful. Kirby games like to do this as well. I had a lot of fun with this one, and I'm looking forward to giving the other alternate character modes a go. Even if @Dcubed has informed me that they're nowhere near as ridiculous as this guy. Albus was right, he could've taken on Dracula himself.