B – Battles

A high level of nostalgia means that this year my chosen theme for the 2016 A to Z challenge is Pokemon. Whether you yourself have a similar level of sentimentality or you’ve never really gotten into it, I hope that you enjoy this month of posts as I indulge my nostalgia.

Today for the letter B we will be talking about battles. For anyone who has ever played the game, you will know that battling Pokemon is rather key to the whole concept of the game.

You have a Pokemon, your opponent has a Pokemon (in the case of wild Pokemon the opponent is the Pokemon) and the two of you use the moves your Pokemon knows to fight each other, with the aim of knocking the other Pokemon out, or fainting as it is called in game.

Pokemon fights are important because they are the primary way in which Pokemon gain experience (more on XP later this month) and thus level up, becoming stronger. They are also important, as your will battle your rival and gym leaders, and if you can beat them, you get rewards such as money (PokeDollars), badges (from the gym members) and items.

Normally battles are one on one, but as the generations went on, more different variations appeared. Now you can encounter double battles (two v two), triple battles (three v three), full battle (six v six), multi-battle (multiple trainers), rotation battle (usually three Pokemon, but only one can attack at once), horde encounters (five wild Pokemon attack you at once) or sky battles (flying Pokemon only). These can be interesting, and add variety to the game rather than it just being one v one all the time, and I have to admit, I kind of liked the sky and horde battles when they were introduced.

In the battle itself you have a number of options, such a Fight (use a move to inflict damage or status effect on the other Pokemon), Bag (go fetch an item such as a potion for healing or a PokeBall to catch a wild Pokemon), Pokemon (access the rest of your team to potentially swap out), or Run (not allowed in Trainer battles).

Everything is animated, so each fight move has it’s own graphics, and the Pokemon makes noises when they are summoned. And of course, as the games have progressed, the animations get a little more spectuacular as graphics improve. These days it’s pretty impressive.

Oh, and if your opponent manages to cause all of your Pokemon to faint, that’s bad. You ‘White Out’ and wake up at the last Pokemon Centre you visited, minus a whole bunch of cash and items. Saving before important battles and then switching off if they go horribly wrong is totally fair.

 

Pokemon of the Day

B is for Blastoise.

The final evolution of the starter Squirtle, this Pokemon evolves from Wartortle as like it’s predecessors is a bi-pedal tortoise-like Pokemon. It stands at 5 feet tall, but is quite weighty, to better brace itself when it fires it’s water cannons.

As I mentioned in a recent comic, growing up with Pokemon means that I am fairly attached to the original generation, all 151 of them, as those were the first, and the ones I grew up with. As such, a majority of my favourite Pokemon come from that first generation. And it includes that starters.

That, and I also like turtles/tortoises, and it has water cannons. Literally, it has cannons that can come out of it’s shell and blast you away. How cool is that?

I also have a tendency to go for the Water type starter. I think there were maybe two generations I didn’t? Although replaying Pokemon Red recently, I did choose Charmander, mostly for a bit of variety, and because all three of the original starter Pokemon are pretty cool.