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Old 03-01-2011, 10:27 AM   #1
Talon87
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Next Gen, Will You Skip the Spoilers?

I was just adjusting and readmiring the painting of Jasmine and Steelix I have in my apartment when I remembered our discussion last night about nostalgia we have while playing certain generations. I realized that, for me, one of the most powerful moments in first playing 2nd Gen was challenging Jasmine to a gym match and her sending out Steelix. He was a ferocious-looking beast, powerful and awesome, and a complete mystery. What was he weak to? What was he resistant to? I remember sending out my Meganium to dispatch him quickly only to discover that his Iron Tails did more to me than my Razor Leafs were doing to him. He was truly a fearsome foe, and it was truly a memorable match.

While I've never looked at Gym Leader spoilers, I have to consider that few if any of the gym matches I've played in Gens 4 or 5 have felt as fearsome as the one I played in Gen 2 back in the fall of 2000. And I have to wonder if this is not at least partly because none of the creatures they send out are complete mysteries. I may not have known that the gym leader had those particular creatures, but I already know all about the creatures themselves. They don't instill in me any sense of fear or wonder. They are not mysteries but complete knowns. I know their weaknesses, I know their strengths, and in some cases I may even recall their abilities and stat distros. But perhaps most superficially yet most importantly, I know their looks. The creature design itself is powerless to impress me because it already spent its chance doing that back when I saw the spoilers in CoroCoro magazine scans.

So I'm thinking ... next gen, if I remember to, I will try to make a conscious effort to stay away from all discussion about the games until I've had a chance to play them myself. Maybe this will mean I'll end up walking into a trap everyone else was already aware of (like "oh man, 6th gen is going to be awful because they made all Pokemon only know one move!"), but I think the benefit of returning to the childhood wonder I enjoyed with 1st and 2nd gen will be worth it.

Thoughts?
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Old 03-01-2011, 10:55 AM   #2
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I'm avoiding all spoilers entirely, like I did with gen 4. I haven't looked at anything new except for the 3 starters and supposedly the entire game has no old pokemon anywhere. Also the girl trainer is cute.

That is all.
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Old 03-01-2011, 11:48 AM   #3
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Wait isn't this a Pokemon thread? You posted it in VG discussion you dork.
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Old 03-01-2011, 12:22 PM   #4
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I had already PM'ed Loki to fix it before your first post.
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Old 03-01-2011, 12:48 PM   #5
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I see how it is.
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Old 03-01-2011, 01:25 PM   #6
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theres 2 types of people: the type who mind spoilers and the type who dont...me i dont really mind spoilers
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Old 03-01-2011, 01:47 PM   #7
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Can't say I mind spoilers, personally, but I get where you're coming from, Talon. Playing Blue was such a mystery, not knowing what was around the corner, getting freaked by the Ghosts (I was 11, sue me), and all that.

I also remember battling Jasmine's Steelix and thinking that my Croconaw's Surf was super-effective on it because Water rusts Steel >>

Gotta say it's an interesting concept, and if I don't forget this whole shebang then I may well join you in a few years whenever Gen VI rolls around. Would be fun to go into a game unknowing once again.

Wait, Dave posting outside ASB? Madness, Sparta, etc.
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Old 03-01-2011, 01:48 PM   #8
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Probably, if only because my regular stomping grounds completely eschew where BW spoilers would normally roam.

It's going to be an odd experience because the last Pokemon game I played was either the TCG game or GS back in 2001 or 2002. It'll be like jumping through time for me, as it was for when I played Team Fortress 2 (my last FPS was Hexen II in 1999).
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Old 03-01-2011, 02:41 PM   #9
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B/W legebnary theme FTW btw
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Old 03-01-2011, 03:10 PM   #10
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Quote:
Originally Posted by DaveTheFishGuy View Post
Can't say I mind spoilers, personally, but I get where you're coming from, Talon.
I never thought of creatures' looks as a spoiler before. I've always minded spoilers related to the plot (even if Pokémon's has traditionally been paper-thin), but I'd never really appreciated the extent to which creature spoilers are spoilers too until today. I realized, "I haven't had a Steelix moment in forever." And I think a large part of it has to do with the fact that it's not good enough to not know the gym leader's roster in advance: you have to also not know what the creatures are even once you see them.

Reading my own post is confusing even to me, so I'll give two examples, one of each scenario, and hopefully that'll make it clear to everyone (even me!):

Example 1:
You go to fight Fantina. You have no idea she exists. You have no idea what's on her team. But you do know what Drifblim and Mismagius are. You've seen them before and you also know their typing. So you switch to the appropriate Shadow Baller on your team and OHKO them both.

Example 2:
You go to fight Fantina. You have no idea she exists. You have no idea what's on her team. And you've also never seen a Drifblim or a Mismagius before. So when she sends them out, you have no idea what their types, abilities, or moves are. For all you know, Mismagius is Ghost/Dark or Ghost/Psychic. And so you make a crucial decision: whether to test it out with a Shadow Ball or to play it safe and attack it with something you hope will be STAB neutral. Even if you end up Shadow Balling and OHKOing them, for one moment there was an intense suspense.

The Steelix moment I had in Gen 2 fits in with Example 2. My experience playing Pearl and the first third of Black fits in with Example 1. (Diamond and HeartGold aren't being considered since it's pointless to nag about a lack of memorable surprise factor when you're playing through games you've already played before.)
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Old 03-01-2011, 03:15 PM   #11
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I want to play the game and go HOLY CRAP THAT GUY LOOKS COOL and try to figure out where to get one on my own.
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Old 03-01-2011, 03:16 PM   #12
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My only regret is that I watched the most climatic scenes in the game on youtube >>; I haven't really looked at any of the areas or the plot, I don't have a clue how the dream world works and I don't know which Pokemon appear where so I should still be entering the game from a fresh perspective. Besides that though I actually like seeing the Pokemon in advance, it's exciting in itself when a corocoro issue leaks or there's a brand new silhouette to speculate on.

It also gives me time to get used to the Pokemon; Pokemon I used to hate like Mijumaru and Zuruggu have really grown on me whilst I've gone off Pokemon I used to like such as that hermit crab thing. I'd consider not spoiling Gen VI but I don't think it'd make a huge difference to my experience since I'm not a kid anymore and my initial fear of Jasmine's Steelix will be replaced with either a "what an ugly design" or "that Pokemon looks pretty cool, I wonder whether I should catch one"
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Old 03-01-2011, 03:24 PM   #13
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I don't think age matters. I was not spoilered for Shadow of the Colossus and so every beast struck fear and awe and admiration into me. Had I seen all the colossi before playing the game, I think a lot of the magic might have been lost. There's nothing like walking into what looks like just another part of the map to you and then without warning you've triggered a Colossus fight and out comes some huge, beautiful monster you've never seen before and have no idea what to do about.

It's the same way with the Steelix story. I wasn't scared of a Steelix on my GameBoy at age 15, lol. I'm just saying that it got my adrenaline pumping, that's all. I was scared in the adrenaline sense, not scared in the "I want my mommy! ;_;" sense. And I don't think that would have been any different had I been older. Maybe it'd have been heightened if I were younger, I dunno, but I'll settle for the experience I had at 15 years old.
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Old 03-01-2011, 04:46 PM   #14
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For me, this Gen, it was almost unavoidable, considering I made a conscious effort to find out about this Gen before its English release. Especially with the creation of /vp/, which was basically all B/W all the time until the Japanese release. However, I did like that genuine experience of surprise with the first half of Black that I played. It wasn't quite the same but it was pretty cool to play it with some level of genuine surprise.

But that discovery isn't really why I played Pokemon - I almost always had the strategy guide and knew what to expect, so I wasn't ever really shocked by a Gym Leader.

Maybe next gen though.
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Old 03-01-2011, 06:12 PM   #15
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I still haven't played Gen 4. My only knowledge of the creatures was gained second-hand through RPing in Fizzy Bubbles. Since I took an absence from Pokémon forums entirely last year, I'm completely in the dark on Gen 5 updates aside from the starters and the region name. If/by the time I ever get a chance to play the DS games, I'll probably be just as clueless and surprised as I was by the early versions. Perhaps more so, since I no longer receive spoilers by watching the animé beforehand.
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Old 03-01-2011, 06:43 PM   #16
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I have seen nothing of Gen5 in any great detail. Any that I randomly pick up from others mentioning it is quickly forgotten.
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Old 03-01-2011, 07:49 PM   #17
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In fact now that Jeri mentions it the only reason I wasn’t that excited with Gen 2 was because of the strategy guide that came with the game. I guess Sudowoodo and Team Rocket’s return where nice quirks, but I’d already become a Pokenerd by now and all of the spoilers had pretty much spread through word of mouth.

However looking back, there’s nothing that can compare to the sheer exhilaration of spending what would’ve been hours solving the Seafoam Island puzzle only to come across a stationary bird sat deep in the centre. I was 8 and I didn’t have a clue what a legendary Pokemon was, I must’ve saved about 3 times on the spot before pressing A. Aricuno’s cry still gives me chills now (no pun intended ) and battling and capturing it was definitely one of the highlights of playing any of the games.

Now I’ve played through the Pokemon formula so many times I don’t think I could get that feeling back. There are too many legendaries now I know what to prepare for (Lv.40ish mascot legend and a Lv.50ish legendary trio) and when it comes so battling gym leaders you still have a fairly good guess what to prepare for. In RS (which I didn’t have spoilers for) I didn’t know what type Winona’s Alteria was but a few Thunderbolts ala Gardevoir still did the trick. I guess it varies with different people, I've always been more interested in level grinding to a safe point where I don't have to worry about type.

This thread has definitely convinced me to shy away from Bulbapedia to check movesets, evolution methods and Pokemon/item locations though, I think they where some of the few things that made me enjoy RS and not DP.
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Old 03-01-2011, 09:09 PM   #18
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One thing a lot of kids in the United States got in late 1998 / very early 1999 if they were watching the cartoon and playing the games on their GameBoys at the same time was a wonderful split between two very different but very enjoyable ways to experience the games:

Experience A:
For all the gyms, trainers, and locations up through Fuschia City, playing the games was like living the cartoon show but with you in control of Ash Ketchum. It was a total thrill to fight Brock and see his Geodude and Onix, to explore Mt. Moon, etc. You would run into a kid on the route east of Pewter City who happened to have a Sandshrew in his team who mentioned something about a winning streak and you'd be like, "OH MY GOD THAT'S A.J.!" You'd reach the S.S. Anne and you'd be all like "HOLY SHIT, THE BOAT'S GONNA SINK!" and then you'd be surprised and intrigued when it didn't. Basically, the first two-thirds of the game was like living nostalgia. You were living the anime. You were living all the moments you had watched over and over on your VHS recordings (...... or was that just me? ) and had come to know and love. The power plant east of Cerulean City? Totally made you think of the episode where Ash catches Muk. The bike bridge connecting Celadon to Fuschia? Totally reminded you of the bike gang episode where Ash & Co. rent bikes to deliver some medicine. Everywhere and anywhere there were little things in the game that you could connect to your memories of the show and get all excited over.

Experience B:
And then you sailed south of Fuschia City and things got very new very fast. This was the frontier and you were an explorer exploring uncharted waters and strange new lands. This was akin to what was discussed earlier in this thread for the Gen 2 experience. You hadn't seen Blaine yet in the anime when you got to him on Cinnabar. And the revelation that Giovanni was the final gym leader? HOLY SHIT ON A SANDWICH! In the final third of the game came all of the surprise factors. Everything was totally new. You had no idea what to expect. Victory Road? The Elite Four? You found all of this out blindly by playing the games. This was before UPN even existed (Spring 1999) and the best site for Pokemon back in the day was the terrible (back then, it was ridiculously simple) http://www.pokemon.com/ . Your best bet for finding out information about Pokemon back then was by doing a search and exploring the various Geocities and Angelfire and Tripod sites you'd get made by enthusiastic bilingual fans of the franchise. In other words? It was damn near impossible to get majorly spoilered back in the day, and so for many of us the discovery that Giovanni was the eighth gym leader came directly from the game and rocked our worlds.

I think both experiences are an equally valid approach for a child to take when playing the game, but the thing is, I'm not nearly as big a fan of the show now as I was when I was a teenager, even if I have started watching it again in the last year, and so Experience A is sort of closed to me. That leaves me with Experience B, and that's why I'm planning to make my Gen 6 experience purely type B when Gen 6 rolls around.

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Old 03-01-2011, 10:41 PM   #19
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I didn't play the game alongside watching the anime, though I can testify to the effect you're describing as I went through a similar experience with Ever17 (more connections to the entertainment than envisoned by the creators).

However, though I played R/B long after I saw the anime, I liked it perhaps more because there was a percieved increase in maturity. Whereas the anime was kind of silly, the game took a lot of stuff seriously, so the tension was raised. Team Rocket, for example, was actually intimidating, despite having some silly quirks that instead came off as sinister. I think of battling the gold guy in Cerulean City right after a sudden BOSS BATTLE with Gary (who was annoyingly strong, stronger than me at the time with Pokemon I really wanted, and was bugged because I felt I was imitating him by capturing the same types) actually being a TR sympathizer/agent. It was a big shock, as was the whole gambling centre in Celadon City that was a Rocket base.

The impression was, "if the anime was intended for 10 year olds, the game was intended for 13 year olds" which was about how old I was when I played it.

Hopefully, I won't be too overwhelmed with nostalgia and will be able to evaluate B+W on its own merits...
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Old 03-02-2011, 03:25 AM   #20
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I actually got to play the first 3 gens spoiler free, due to us having no internet. I have to say that I don't really mind the pokemon looks/type spoiler as long as the gameplay itself is still a secret.
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