Legendaries Aren’t Everything

(via moldbrrreaker)

There was this guy in school that kept going on about how ubers is the way to go and that it’s completely legit to win with Pokémon people considered ‘cheap.’ He saw me playing on one of my breaks and he asked to see my team (then immediately proceeded to call all my Pokémon weak and that I have bad taste in team building).

My team at the time was my standard — Gastrodon, Skarmory, Chandelure, Blissey, Goodra, Gliscor Needless to say, I challenged him to a battle. As predicted, his team consisted of legendary Pokémon, most prominently, he prided himself with how well he can handle teams with just his Kyogre alone.

He sent it out to lead and I started with Chandelure. Clearly, he wasn’t too familiar with Gastrodon nor its magical Storm Drain. I easily switched out, took in the water spout and started slowly brought it down with Toxic. After that, it was a series of switches and I was eventually able to set up Stealth Rock with Skarm. Everything that was able to take SR was slowly brought down by Toxic. Every time I got threatened, I switched appropriately to be able to ‘absorb’ the incoming moves. By the end of the battle, I still had all 6 of my Pokémon and he had the biggest look of disbelief on his face.

Just kind of goes to show that a good team *multiplies* its power while a team of stand alone powerhouses simply *add* to the overall team power.

That’s What Older Brothers Are For

(via afoXbehindthewheel)

I let my younger brother take my copy of Pokémon gold with him to a friends birthday party. When he returned, he told me of how he was boasting to the other kids of the incredible team that had assembled and of the Typhlosion that I had cultured so carefully. The birth boy scoffed at the mere mention of my fire styled starter, and laughing showed my brother the an all water type Pokémon team that would easily shame my brother and the team I had assembled. Thinking he had an easy victory at hand, he challenged my brother to a battle.

Little did this child know as he connected the link cables to the game boy colors that there was something special about my Typhlosion. Yes he was fast. Yes he was strong. Yes he outleveled all of these little boy’s Pokémon by 10 or so levels. My Typhlosion had spent time training in the hills of the city supported by golden rods until he had learned to punch a punch that would become the dread of any water Pokémon: Thunderpunch.

6-0 the brats team with ease. Even afterwards, the kid changed up his team, but he couldn’t beat my brother using my team for his life. He left that party looking like a Pokémon master. Came back to me so excited, so excited he forgot that he didn’t ask me before hand if he could take my game with him... but that aside I was stoked. Was a double victory because that was the moment my brother really got into PKMN. Grandparents got him his own GB and Silver soon afterwards, been fans ever since.

Never Insult A Cincinno

(via Frosted Mini-Wheats)

I followed the normal Pokémon interest curve. I thought the first two generations were super rad when I was a child, then fell off and didn’t like it anymore. Fast forward to college and a friend of mine just INSISTS that I need to get back into Pokémon and lends me his White version. I fall head over heels in love with it, refuse to give it back, and fill the pokedex. When I excitedly tell my friend HOW I beat the game though he was appalled. “Your strongest Pokémon was... your Cincinno? You leveled up a CINCINNO?”

There was only one way for me to resolve this grave insult to my beloved Cincinno. We battled (he still had his Black 2 of course) and I showed him precisely the power of my tiny adorable normal type Pokémon. Sing into wake up slap destroyed his Hydregion, dig dodged his solar beam, and tail slap smacked him around over and over and over again.

Cincinno will probably always be my favorite.

Stupid Pikachu

(via ElPared)

Generation 1 baby, the very first games! I had long since beaten the game, but my friend had just gotten a Blue version for his birthday. He chose Charmander as his starter and was having a LOT of trouble against Misty. It was already too late to go back to Viridian Forest and farm Pikachu, so I had pity on him and caught a Pikachu for him in my Red version.

Side note: remember when you had to have a link cable to trade? I do. Durn kids and your blue teeth and your why fly.

Anyway, I trade him a crappy level 22 Pikachu I’d just caught. Some of you may be ahead of me, but for those that aren’t here’s a little refresher: The Cascade Badge, which is what you get from Misty, makes all Pokémon up to a certain level obey you. Any stronger than that and they ignore your orders sometimes. So, the Pikachu I sent him was too strong for him and often would do nothing, take a nap, etc. He decided to use it anyway.

I’ll never forget him fighting Misty with that stupid Pikachu. He took out the entire Cerulean City Gym with it only attacking every 2 or 3 turns if he was lucky. He must have used all of his potions just to keep it alive long enough to finally make a move and only beat Misty with something like 4 HP left on it. The elation we both felt as Pikachu shot off that last Thundershock was amazing.

Afterward that Pikachu became his strongest Pokémon; it was up to level 82 by the time he fought the Elite 4 and he came really close to getting it to 100.

By the way, to this day I still have not gotten a Pokémon to level 100. (Closest was Volcarona at level 98. NO I WILL NOT USE RARE CANDIES.)

Only One Pokémon Left

(via Deadkey)

I was playing Pokémon Diamond and it was the Elite Four. At the time, I didn’t know that the Elite Four had a champion. It took a long time to beat the Elite Four themselves, as this was my first Pokémon game and I didn’t have any experience beating them before. Plus my Pokémon weren’t that high of levels and I should’ve trained them a lot more beforehand.

After about a week, I finally was able to beat the fourth person. As I mentioned above, I didn’t know there was a champion. I thought I was done with the whole ordeal and had won. So I proceeded to the next room with only my Torterra alive at 27 HP. Pokémon Diamond had a thing where when you got within 5 steps of the champion(Cynthia) it would cut to a cutscene and she would say “Congrats! You’re amazing for getting it this far! I’m going to whoop your ass now while I smile and laugh!”. I thought Cynthia was the person who said “Good Job!” at the end and gave me my prize. Turns out, she wasn’t.

She immediately drew me into the battle. At this point I went “SHIT!” and went into full revival mode. I had a crap ton of revivals and several max revives. I kept on reviving all the Pokémon I could while healing up all of them while the Pokémon that was currently in battle tried to live as long as possible(this became my strategy later on for all of the Pokémon games). The only reason this even happened is because my Torterra was a boss and could take 3-4 attacks from Cynthia’s Pokémon before he died. After like 20ish revives and heals, I had a half HP army of 5 Pokémon. By some miracle, I managed to kill 3 of her Pokémon and had one left. Once again, I started reviving all my Pokémon as fast as I could. I somehow managed to finally beat her with one Pokémon left.

Best. Moment. Ever.

The Student Became The Master

(via awesomedude69)

How things started:

Years ago when I was in secondary school I used to see some people sitting around playing Pokémon Red/Blue. I decided to take my gameboy in with me one day and sat next to that group at lunch time. Was playing the game alone. As everyone left this guy seen me playing alone and came over. He asked me if I wanted to trade and I said yes. He traded me a Mew and I given him some rubbish Pokémon. Surprisedly he accepted it. Back then I was young and stupid. Didn’t know who Mew was. It was used as an HM slave.

Few months later my mum came to me and said someone won a Pokémon called Mew and it’s on TV. I went to check it out to see what the fuss was about. Looking back at it now it must have been an event or something. The boy connected his gameboy to the machine and received Mew. Based on that show, apparently he was the first to get it. I was surprised with that cos I already had my Mew.

Now comes my best victory:

Some time later I saw that boy who sent me the Mew in the first place. He didn’t remember me and didn’t remember giving me Mew. He asked me how I got her and I said, “You sent me it a while back, remember?” He asked me for a battle and if he wins then he gets my Mew. Being young and stupid I accepted the battle without making any demands of my own if i win. So we had the battle. My Mew was a level 60 and he used a level 100 Mewtwo. It was a 1 vs 1 battle. I can’t remember what move he used but his strike got weaker each time he used it. The first attack he did took half of my Mew’s life. I used surf which did very little. Used Strength too which did alright. Each time he attacked me my health bar was going lower and lower. I regretted the battle cause I knew I was going to lose. Stuck with the battle to the end and surprisingly he changed his move. He started to use recover and it turned into a long battle as I was lowering his health and he kept recovering.

In the end I beat him. I couldn’t believe I beat him. He got p*ssed off and disconnected his gameboy then walked off in a bad mood. I was left shaking for the rest of the day until home time. I went home so relieved and still in shock. Told my mum all about the story and was so thankful I won that battle. Was in deep shock. To this day I still can’t believe I actually won that battle. Beside watching the show which was why I loved the game, that’s another reason why Pokémon Red is my favourite game ever, cause it has the best memories. Now that I’m older and wiser, I will never risk my lovely Mew again.

The Real Pokémon Training

(via Town Idiot25)

Posted this on reddit about a year ago.

So I work at Gamestop, and yesterday this little kid came in, probably around 6-7, wearing a Pikachu shirt. He took his dad over to the DS section, excited as hell, “Oh my god they have Pokémon!!” Uninterested dad is uninterested. As I approach them on the floor, I ask them if I can help them find anything. The kid turns around and yells “POKÉMON!” I tell them we got them all for the DS, and which one he is looking for. The kid tells me he just finished HeartGold, and now wants more. He had a big pile of games he was going to trade in for Pokémon. A whole bunch of high dollar Wii games and old DS games, basically Mario and Zelda stuff, because fuck those guys he is gonna get Pokémon.

After I process his trades, he comes out to around $75 (holy shit I wish I had that much to spend freely when I went to gamestop as a kid). He immediately runs over and picks up Black 2. I tell him that he actually has enough to buy 3 Pokémon games because of the deals going on. I pull out Diamond, Black 1, and Black 2, and explain our deal that will allow him to get all three games. Again, super excited, he turns to his dad and goes “I’M GONNA DO THAT”.

Uninterested dad is uninterested. “Yeah sure it’s your money do what you want”. Kid then continues going on about Pokémon, how fun HeartGold was, and how he is going to be “playing Pokémon forever”.

Normally, working at Gamestop, the kids that come in his age are loud, obnoxious, crying, screaming at their parents on why they “deserve” their game, and then I have to deal with the parents yelling at me because I try very hard to not to sell them GTA V for their 6 year old (and then dealing with the parents a day later when they claim its my fault for selling such an inappropriate game to them in the first place), but this actually was interesting to me, because this kid reminded me of me. Gold version was my first (and favorite) game. Not just my first Pokémon game, my first game ever. So I am going ahead and listen to this kid talk about his Pokémon, let him tell me how his favorite Pokémon is totodile and how sad he was that totodile evolved.

When the whole transaction was over, I showed the kid my lanyard. It has the 8 Kanto badges on it, I got from sanshee. At this point I could basically see the kid shit himself right there. Speechless, he was just staring at the badges in awe. I tell him “I beat the elite 4 before you were even born. I have been playing Pokémon ever since. You will be playing forever.” While he is still speechless, I give him a card to one of the local video game stores (they sell older system games, like gameboy advance games). Since he only had a DS, I told him to go to one of the stores on the card when he saves up money again and look for FireRed or LeafGreen, and “play where it all began” (gameboys and red/blue/yellow versions are pretty expensive if you don’t find them at a thrift shop, plus I thought he would enjoy the remakes better than the originals, since he liked HeartGold so much, but that is just my opinion. I also figured by the time he plays through all 4 of those games ORAS will be cheaper, or the local store will be able sell him one of the GBA versions.)

The kid leaves excited as fuck, ready to play his new Pokémon games for hours on end and bug the shit out of his uninterested dad. That’s when I started to feel old. I did beat the elite 4 before he was born, almost 14 years ago, when I played Gold version. I remember saving up pennies so I could get blue version, then again when sapphire was released. Fighting with friends over “you said you could clone him give him back” or “talk to professor oak 100 times then beat the elite 4 100 times without anyone dying and you will get an infinite number of masterballs”. I am wondering if these kids now have those same stupid problems as we did. I am just glad I was able to help this kid continue his adventure.

The Dirty Trick

(via axelchildofdestiny)

Do crazy ridiculous trades count? Because a friend of mine totally swindled another friend when they were in grade school. As the story goes, my friend Phil had Blue and my friend Will had Red. So Phil has pretty much already beat the game and is just trying to catch them all as it were. So he wants our friend Will’s Charmander. He tells Will that he caught this super late game legendary called Schnarmandatron (no lies, this was the name and Will bought it) to trade for it.

So they hook up those wires that go to the old original Gameboys, and sure enough Phil has a Rattata that he renamed Schnarmandatron ready to trade. Since in the original you couldn’t really see what the Pokémon was in a trade window, Will agrees to the deal thinking he will run through the game without any trouble now. The Charmander moves over first, giving Phil his coveted Pokémon (yes back in the day the trade wasn’t at the same time, they did one at a time) then the Rattata goes to Will, as soon as it pops out of the Pokéball he flips his shit. Rips out the cords and doesn’t talk to Phil for a week.

So the next time he talks to Phil he says, “You got me good, but I learned something. If I get the Pokémon in the trade first then rip out the cord, I get two Pokémon.” For the rest of his young life, Will terrorized the neighborhood by getting Pokémon in trades and ripping the cord out.

To this day Will still owns Schnarmandatron.

Oddish Is Unaffected By Poison Powder

(via Angelscradle)

This is more funny than anything.

Back when I first got Pokémon Red, I only trained my first Pokémon and left the rest to happen stance. They were in battles here and there, but ONLY my Squirtle would get to battle the trainers. Due to this fact, I entered the Elite Four with a Blastoise that was over-leveled and a bunch of random catches...maybe lvl 20...if that. I was able to get through the Elite Four with little problem, but then came your rival. I got through all of his Pokémon in a few hits, healing along the way, until his final Pokémon.

Out comes Venusaur and my Blastoise goes down faster then I have ever seen before. “No big deal.”, I thought, “I will just swap, revive Blastoise, and swap him back in.” That worked at first. I slowly began to realize that I wasn’t able to deal enough damage to finish him off by the time my team would be out. I get down to the last Pokémon I had in my team...a lvl 15 Oddish.

“CRAP! Venusaur is almost dead and I won’t make it!” I wasn’t giving up yet. I put Oddish into combat, used revive, and waited for my Oddish to get slammed into oblivion. The exact opposite happened! My level 15 Oddish beat Venusaur without taking a single point of damage!!!!

At the time, I thought it was a bug in the game. As I get older I realize it was just me tricking the AI, and I didn’t even realize I was doing it.

Oddish is a grass/poison type, as is Venusaur. Venusaur had only grass and poison moves to use against my Oddish. So, it could use a grass move that was “Not Very Effective”, or it could use a powder and try to give me a status effect to increase damage potential over time. The AI choose to give me a status ailment before attempting to attack. Funny thing though,

oddish is unaffected by poison powder.

I saw the message and just thought I got one more turn, nope. I healed Blastoise to full, and Oddish slowly used ABSORB to pick away at the little health left. After a few hilarious critical hits, I won. I beat a lvl 40+ Venusaur and finished the Elite Four with a lvl 15 oddish. I almost died laughing, I couldn’t believe what just happened. Sadly this was WAY before recording software and I only had the story nobody believed. I will never forget that moment. Now, I train my entire team equally and beating the games are a lot easier.

The Shiny That Almost Died

(via Eddie)

*First Post Ever! ^_^

We all know about shiny Pokémon and how rare they can be. About two years ago I began a play-through of all the Pokémon games (Fire Red through White 2) to get pumped for X & Y. After work one day, I was home playing Pokémon Platinum while my girlfriend was playing Halo next to me.

I was doing some grinding outside of Jubilife City with my level 12 Chimchar and other unmemorable members of my party when a shiny Shinx appeared (level 6). Chimcar was the only Pokémon I had left because the others had fainted from all the grinding. I was terrified I was going to one-hit-KO her. I use ember on Shinx and she goes down to about 2 HP and I catch her on my first attempt.

I walked up to my girlfriend like a total badass, interrupt her pvp match, kiss her passionately, and hand her my ds lite. After her shock passed, she hugged me and we named her Leia. She is currently destroying the Elite four in Omega Ruby.

She is my greatest Pokémon victory.

Bad Advice Actually Worked Out Pretty Well

(via Kloud kat)

My very first game was Pokémon Silver. My best moment was early on in the game. I was in the fifth grade when I was playing through it, and some kid on the playground gave me some advice where I was stuck. As is usually the case, the advice was false.

You see, when you get the Pokémon egg and backtrack to the lab, you face your rival for the first time. For some reason, I had stopped playing for a few days and gone back, being unable to remember where I was. So, I pressed onwards and noticed the two trainers in my path and could not progress. This kid told me that my starter Pokémon had to be level 27 before they would move. Looking back, I must have been a particularly dumb kid. I grinded for so long, levelling my starter (Chikorita into Bayleef) to 27, but there was no progress to be made. It was at that point that I figured to backtrack and lo and behold I came across my rival. The victory was so sweet when he threw out his level 5 Cyndaquil and got 1 hit KOed by Bayleef’s body slam.

That set the tone for my entire adventure, as I had a wickedly overleveled starter Pokémon for the entire game.

It’s All About The Critical Hits

(via deliangrapeman)

Went to a Ruby/Sapphire tournament held at the NY Pokémon Center (now Nintendo World). I went to support my friend who loved this sort of thing - I was never quite confident enough to attend these tournaments even though Pokémon was rabidly popular (remember the huge TCG tourneys?) Anyway I went in with my team of Blaziken, Aggron, Flygon, Salamence, Latios, and Groudon. I had trained them simply by playing through the game; no IV/EV/Nature/egg move training, nothing of the smogon sort. I just picked the ones I liked best from that generation, and went with it.

What I didn’t realize was that this tourney was double battle. Of course it was - it was the hot new mechanic in Ruby/Sapphire! But I always did single battles, so I was even less prepared, and now even more nervous.

Somehow I kept getting paired against little kids (I was like 16 at the time). I felt bad destroying someone else’s fun. But I remember one parent (clearly did not want to be there) encouraging me - her son’s opponent - to “be quick, be swift.” So I felt even worse than I already did.

So my friend lost part way through, but I made it to the finals, which was played on A GIANT 100 SOMETHING INCH TV THAT WAS VISIBLE TO EVERYONE ON BOTH FLOORS OF THE POKÉMON CENTER. As freakin’ cool as that was, I was even more nervous now. EVERYONE must have been watching. My opponent was what we’d now refer to as a smogonite (and all that that implies), so he hit fast and hard.

2 Ice beams in the first turn, and both my ‘mon were down, I hadn’t even been able to get a move in.

He brings out Gardevoir - Hypnosis to my Blaziken

I’m so freakin’ nervous - probably sweating, shaking, who knows what else...

I hear my friend on the stairs, yelling out to me “WATCH OUT FOR DREAM EATER!”

I don’t know why, but him calling that out just snapped me back in. The next turn my Blaziken magically woke up, critical hit with Blaze Kick to his Gardevoir (take THAT). All but one of my moves after that point were critical hits. With 2 ‘mon, I took out the rest of his team.

I sure didn’t “deserve” the victory, but man oh man did that feel good. I’ll never get rid of that underwhelmingly anti-climactic 8 1/2 X 11 victory paper from Pokémon Center as long as I live :)

A Tense Battle Between Charizards

(via Ronan the Accuser)

Can’t give you much context because my mind may have blocked it out due to the intensity. Just know that I was playing online in X against a friend who hadn’t played since Ruby and he had been talking a lot of trash leading up to our showdown. Even as the match began I could hear him through my speakers talking about how terrible my Pokes were.

The important thing is that, somehow, he made an insane comeback from down like 5 Pokémon to 2 or something to force a final showdown with one Pokémon left each. We both ended up with Charizard, and both of us had the means to mega evolve into Mega Charizard X. My heart was pounding as we both mega evolved for this climactic battle. My experience finally won out here, though, as he failed to realize that dragon attacks are super effective against dragon types. I threw a dragon claw at him, taking out more than half of his HP. He responded with a slash which gave him mediocre results.

The terrifying part came when his Charizard inexplicably gained the initiative in their second round of blows and he actually used dragon claw. My heart sank as it became clear that he had achieved a critical hit. I watched the health bar drain, and I heard him laughing through my 3DS speakers. And then all of a sudden, the health bar stopped falling. This time, it was my turn to laugh maniacally. The only thing I can hear from my speakers at this point is a long, high-pitched scream of “NOOOOOO!”

Obligatory TwitchPlaysPokémon Mention

(via Lou Contaldi)

Realistically, the victory in the original Twitch Plays Pokémon. I know what you are thinking — that isn’t a real personal story! You didn’t even play the game directly.

But still, as a community of tens of thousands of Pokémon fans, there was nothing more satisfying than punching in commands at the final battle on Victory Road. Everyone there, whether they were typing in commands or not, played a part in the game and had an emotional investment. It was a community accomplishment, showing that (even with absurd numbers of people) the seemingly impossible is achievable.

Newfound Respect For Gloom

(via Plutoburns)

First play through of Pokémon ever, red on the gameboy. I was in the silph co with a very poorly diversified team. My 6th Pokémon was a lvl 13 oddish I was dragging along because it knew cut. I bump into my rival. I get through all his team except his Venosaur. His venasaur basically whipped my exhausted team. I send out oddish cause it’s all I have left. Then a weird thing happens. I don’t know if it was a glitch or a he was out of PP, but all venasaur did was poisin powder, which oddish was immune to.

The only move oddish had that did any damage to it was cut, and it took two cuts for the health bar to even visibly drop. Almost kill, rival uses hyper potion. Start all over again. But cut prevails and I defeated a lvl 40 venasaur with a lvl 13 oddish. He jumped 3 levels right there and became a gloom. I had a newfound respect for that gloom.

Illustration by Sam Woolley

To contact the author of this post, write to tina@kotaku.com or find her on Twitter at @tinaamini.