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Competitive Pokémon

This blog post might not be conventional, or about a topic many people relate to, but Pokémon has been such a big part of my life and is something that I’m so excited about that I feel like my blog would be incomplete without a post on it. 2 weeks ago, the new Pokémon game came out, and as I do on every opening day of a new main-series game, I purchased the game immediately, logged an unhealthy number of hours on the game, and completed the story line. Now that I have finished the storyline, I am attempting to do something that I was unable to do as a child, due to a lack of knowledge and patience. I am delving into the complex pieces of the Pokémon series, including breeding, shiny-hunting, and competitive battling.
Breeding is an intensive and long process that is used as a tool to get Pokémon that have stats for battling which are normally extremely rare (a perfect Pokémon has a 1/22187592025 chance of appearing in the wild!) To breed, you choose parent Pokémon that have specific traits that you want to pass down to the child, and then you continually breed your Pokémon until the child has the specific trait. Then, you breed that Pokémon to pass down it’s specific traits along with a mate which has other traits that are desired, and you repeat the process until you get your 1/22187592025 Pokémon, which is then ready to be trained and battled.
Shiny hunting is the process that I am most excited for as I play through Pokémon Ultra Moon’s postgame. Shiny Pokémon have a 1/4096 chance of appearing the wild, increasing to a 3/4096 chance once you complete the pokédex (catching all 400 odd Pokémon). There are methods of chaining that increase the odds of catching a shiny Pokémon. However, chaining is not possible with legendary Pokémon, and the only way to catch a shiny legendary is to continually reset your game until you trigger the 3/4096 chance – an extremely boring and extremely rewarding process.
            What I am most excited for is competitive battling – taking the Pokémon which I breed and catch into battle against other people who have done the same, and using my well trained Pokémon and (hopefully) well developed strategies to attempt to prevail in battle. I am hoping that in 2018, I will be able to participate in tournaments to try to win prizes, and I am excited for the success that my hard work will hopefully bring me. 

Comments

  1. yichenDecember 1, 2017 at 2:44 PM

    I never really played pokemon when I was younger, but last summer had this 2 week obsession with pokemon go, and my favorite part was just catching new pokemon! Your passion for Pokemon really shines through and I can imagine you talking about this in real life. Have you caught any shiny pokemon yet? Also is the 1/22187592025 a real stat or just you typing in random numbers? (genuinely curious)

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  2. Isandro MalikDecember 2, 2017 at 2:07 PM

    Every time the topic of pokemon comes up, I am reminded that I never had the chance to play the original games on the DS. It seems like almost everyone I know (except Yichen apparently) loved to play it and it was a something near to their heart growing up. Like Yichen, I avidly participated in the PokemonGo craze last summer, and finally felt "included" in the fun of catching, training, and battling with pokemon. Looking back, I'm sure I would have loved to play pokemon as a kid and I still remember collecting quite a few the trading cards, but never really understanding how to play.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Martin DDecember 2, 2017 at 3:33 PM

    Pokemon Platinum on the Nintendo DS lite was my game. I liked Diamond and Pearl, Black and White, Soulsilver and Heartgold, but Platinum was where I got serious. I remember having a Torterra, Luxray, Gengar (it took me a long time to find a friend :(, Lucario, Milotic, and a Magmortar. Wow.. Those were the days. I also remember playing countless frustrating hours trying to get those damn legendaries that would teleport every single time you entered an area or teleported. I also played the card game, I had all the old pokemon. Although I didn't have a gameboy color nor the cartiridges to play the classics, I have the original holographc charizard. I would go to the Urbana Free Library from 3-5 to play pokemon with grown men and I loved it. Although Pokemon isn't part of my life now I'm grateful for what it has done in my childhood (and my parents for spoiling me and getting all those cards). I have other countless pokemon stories to tell also..

    ReplyDelete
  4. UnknownDecember 2, 2017 at 3:59 PM

    I never really like Pokemon, I always thought it was a game of luck rather than skills and your post kinda proves that, just joking of course. But it was very nice to see how passionate you are about something and how much time you have spent dedicated to the game. I have never really been that passionate about and game and your post made me a bit envious. Anyway Great PoSt.

    ReplyDelete
  5. UnknownDecember 2, 2017 at 4:48 PM

    Hello friends, after reading martin's comment I would like to update my blog post by saying that Pokemon GO and Pokemon Cards are ABSOLUTELY FAKE NEWS and in NO WAY real Pokemon, and I don't even give those childs games the time of day. Thank you.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Ethan English BlogDecember 3, 2017 at 11:27 AM

    My parents never bought me consoles as a kid, so I would always have to play these bootleg pokemon games on sketchy websites or play them on my friend's consoles. However, recently I discovered how to emulate games on my phone, so I played through Emerald but then the program I was using to emulate got shut down by Apple. I got to the jungle world with the invisible chameleons. To this day I have never completed a single pokemon game but the time I had playing emerald was really fun!

    ReplyDelete
  7. Julian MontagueDecember 4, 2017 at 7:31 AM

    I've never played Pokemon. The friends I would sit with at lunch in the UMS cafeteria would constantly discuss the trading cards, but I was never very interested. I had a DS at one point, but my interests were always limited to Mario games such as Mario Kart. I never realized how much depth there is to the games. I knew the basics, of finding Pokemon, training them, and having them battle. But I never knew that you could breed them or that there's so much involved with finding rare Pokemon. Although I don't think it's a game that I'll ever enjoy, it was nice to see this perspective into the game you play every day in World Wide Web.

    ReplyDelete

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