So a part of my childhood memory I blocked out resurfaced tonight. Just randomly, I remembered playing through and beating both the Pokemon Coliseum games.
Those games where
WEIRD.What was up with them? The art style was so unique. It wasn't like anything I'd ever played before or after. Honestly, the closest thing I can think of is... the old Final Fantasy games for PSX? Look at this:
This is completely out of place in a Pokemon game. The only area I can imagine it in would be a Champion like Cynthia. The design is really out there for a protagonist. I remember getting used to Pokemon protagonists looking around my age then, suddenly, this guy who looks to be late twenties shows up.
And, on top of that, he saves a girl that - uh -
Yyeah. What was up with the protagonists in Coliseum? This isn't even touching on the outlandish designs of the foes and areas you battle and visit. At least the Pokemon XD protag was pretty standard material for the series.
The games also seemed to deal pretty heavily with adults themes without actually ever touching on them directly. The general art, music and gameplay direction made Pokemon Conquest look like candy land.
On top of that, the games were just downright
WEIRD sometimes.
You have a Pokemon battle with a dude in a Groudon suit. While Coliseum was arguably grittier, XD was definitely the weirder of the two. Chobin, a the very memorable NPC in said giant suit, seemed more like something out of a standard weird Nintendo game (Mario? Zelda?) than anything out of our favorite collect-a-thon. Then again, maybe it was just more jarring because of the 3D transition.
Probably the weirdest thing about either game, though, was that neither of them were
really "pokemon." Every single thing in the game felt special or unique in some way. In the first, there weren't even any wild Pokemon. You had to do the whole purification dance thing. In both, all of the normal services (Pokemon centers, Pokemarts, the like) felt far more intimate than in the main series. Perhaps that's due to how alien the games seemed. Having something like a Pokecenter was like an out-of-place, comforting relic in the weird world of Orre.
Forced double battles. Over-the-top villains. An overarching feeling of
scarcity throughout the entirety of both games. Even though Orre was weird, it's kind of unfortunate they dropped it completely. Now that I'm remembering playing these, I'm not just remembering bits and pieces. I'm remembering the whole dang ordeal, and it was glorious.
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Topic: Things that made you go "WTF?" today o_O (Read 14939223 times)