Jirachi Comes to Pokémon Pokopia & Champions Comes to Mobile

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Quote, today, Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates national averaged 12 month savings of $197 by new customers surveyed who saved with Progressive between October 2024 and September 2020. Potential savings will vary. What's up, everyone? Welcome to the 726th episode of the Pokemon podcast. It's super effective. I'm your host, Steve. Steve. With me is Bobby. Hello. I went to a movie theater for the first time in like seven years this week. And I gotta say, it's the best way to watch movies. It always has been. It always has been. But I mean, it really is. I mean, who is it? James Cameron? Christopher Nolan? They're right. It's the best way to watch movies. So, you know, go back to a movie theater if you have a chance. What is this propaganda? Okay, firstly, what did you see? I saw backrooms, which is, it was not the best written movie I've heard. The web series is way better like that that Kane Parsons did the whole thing for. Right. But I thought it was shot really well. And so I thought, especially with all the liminal spaces and stuff like in the theater, it just gave it more. It felt, I think, better than like watching it on TV at home. Yeah, yeah. Cool. Yeah, Austin here. I want to get out of the way. I am a little sick. But Steve, I have to say, I was watching your Minecraft Stream and I was dying. That had to been the worst thing I ever viewed in my life. No, actually I kind of loved it. It was awesome. But I think this is the like the Pokemon problem. Right? People have played Pokemon for 20 some years. Yeah, no, you're right. And so they just go like, oh, it's easy. I know what I'm doing. I don't. This tutorial, I think about the people who play that for the first time of, like, no, this tutorial kind of matters and maybe you shouldn't skip it. And then in Minecraft, everyone is telling me what to do, but there's like a million things they want me to do. And I'm like, I'm five minutes in this game and I don't even know how to adjust my FOV right now. Like, yeah, yeah, no, it was awesome. But Minecraft's been around for 15 almost. Yeah, something like that. It's been a while. Yeah. So at one point, because, okay, for the. I had like a paid ad Minecraft stream. All I had to do is play Minecraft for an hour. And the ad was like, you can do whatever you want in Minecraft. And I was like, great, I'm gonna learn how to play mine. I'm not gonna, like, pre game the. The ad. I'm gonna learn how to play. And at some point, somebody was like, oh, you got a bone? You can feed that to a dog and then the dog will be your friend. And I'm like, there's no way. This was in the, like, 15 years ago. And they're like, no, they added it like three years ago. It was longer than three. Let's just say that. No, I mean, they keep adding stuff, right? There's like so many new things that, like, even I still don't even know what they are. Right. So. But I play Minecraft pretty on and off frequently. Does Microsoft still own Minecraft? Are they still the. Yeah, I think they still own it. Got it, got it. I bought it on the Switch 2, which apparently is somewhat new, I think. Well, the Switch 2 is. The Switch 2 is also new. Somewhat new. Yeah. Yeah. I think it just came out of the Switch 2 recently. Are we switching over to a Minecraft podcast then? No, I don't want that audience. And that's fair. Do not want that audience. You know, the best part about doing the Minecraft ad is when I finished it and then I saw the little payout of, like, thanks for streaming. It said, would you like to do a Minecraft ad? And I was like, yes, I will do it again. I think this is a glitch in the system on Twitch's end, but I will do this Minecraft ad again. Just looping over and over again. If I could get paid to play Minecraft once a week forever, I guess I'm going to be playing Minecraft forever. Goodbye, Pocopia. Hello, Minecraft. One hour a week for the rest of my life. In six months, I'LL finally be able to have figure out how to feed the dog. We have a show for you guys today. Nothing to do with There are Mario skins in Minecraft. I learned this. But there are no Pokemon skins. Shocking. That is true. Nintendo didn't, hasn't. Didn't sue Microsoft for Mario skins. No, no. It was like a collab. It's like official. Oh wow. When Nintendo and Microsoft work together. Yeah, yeah. Like when you go into Minecraft on the Switch too. It's like one of the top things you can buy is Mario, Luigi, Peach. But also Steve is in Smash Bros. Minecraft Steve. Yeah, me. I'm in Smash, bro. Minecraft Steve. Not the other one. Well, I guess you are Minecraft Steve now. Yeah, exactly. Finally I fit into Jaden Animation's video perfectly and it all comes back around. It's time to welcome on in change all the social media Minecraft Steve. I'm sure that person exists somewhere. No, I'm sure that's not taken. You're right. Probably not taken. What do we have on the docket today? We have. We have some Pocopia news. They did say there was going to be an event at the end of June and that event has been announced. There's some Pokemon AI stuff. Official. Okay. There's always Pokemon A stuff. Let's be real. There's AI. Everything there is official Pokemon AI stuff. We're going to talk about it and how we'll get to that segment. I. I assure you it's maybe not as bad as you think. And then for our third segment, Pokemon Champions is now out on mobile. And literally right before we start recording, there is some Sirfetch and Pichu news. If you have no clue what that is, we are going to remind you what that is during that segment. And then for our bonus segment, if you stick around, if you're on the Patreon feed or you want to sign up for, for Patreon, our bon segment, we'll be talking about the world's merch and maybe the lack of tickets for Bobby and, and Austin. What a wonderful segment we're gonna have for the. The bonus. You won't, you won't believe what Austin is gonna say during this bonus segment for $5 a month. Patreon.com PK I'm throwing all the media training away for that one. It'll. It'll come for the AI segment, but it's going away for the bonus segment. That's our show for you guys today. So let's start off with the Pocopia News. Did we talk. We Talked about the 1.10 update which allowed you to double the amount of electricity. Right. We talked about that last week. I think we did. We did. Isn't. Is there another update though? Yeah. Okay. I want to say there was another. Yes, there's a 1.1.1 update which just fixed like two or three bugs. This is the event. We'll talk about the event first. Which is a new friend is coming to town in Pocopia. This is off pokemon.compo Pokemon Pocopia wish Upon a Jirachi event is taking place June 23rd at 5am to July 8th. Two weeks till 4, 4:59am local time. Remember when they tried to do the first Pocopia event and Nintendo tweeted. I'm sure it's still on their Twitter. Nintendo tweeted the times, but the times were wrong. And then no one ever addressed it. Yeah. And we just. That was such a mess. And even it was like in official art on the like Nintendo Direct little preview they did of the times were wrong as well. It's weird to me that because. Because people had been time traveling, right? Like doing this stuff to go forward to find the events. No one also caught that beforehand who did that. No one was like, hey, this is wrong. Because they would have known when they went to load their game up that it didn't start at the time Nintendo said that it was going to start. There had to be one person at Nintendo time traveling to be like, hey, I think, I think this is wrong. This is wrong. Yeah, well it wasn't their social media team. So to kick off the event, talk to Jirachi to get a recipe for Wish Notes. From there, interact with other Pokemon to fulfill their request to transform Wish Notes into sparkling Wish Notes. Visit Jirachi at the Pokemon center to exchange sparkling Wish Notes for furniture decor inspired by Starry Sky. So it doesn't sound like we're going to a Dream island stuff to then, are we not? No, it says we have to talk to Pokemon to fill their request to transform wishes into Wish Notes. Yeah, I get me. So it's more like this like almost like a combination of Sableye and Skip Loom or Hoppip and maybe kind of like pseudo Widow where you have to talk to Pokemon to like I hated that pseudo Woodo thing though. I. I got the answers wrong every time. It was so good. It was so good. Like hehe, who am I? I don't know. 90% of you guys say hehe, I don't know. Who. Who this is supposed to be. I thought it was good. I thought it was a good April Fools. Like, maybe it was just. It was good because it was simple. Even though it was. You could get it. You get it wrong. But, like, it's not like there was, like, six options, so. Right. I mean, I don't know. I just. I liked it. I thought it was cute. Yeah. I. For. For an April Fool's event, I thought it was good enough. They don't gotta, like, do too much for it. Yeah. I just wish what they said was more not, like, obvious, but. Yeah. I think you don't talk to your Pokemon enough to understand who is who. You don't know their personalities. Well, they don't. They were so generic. Steve just shoves them into a house and forgets about them. Hey, I'm not one of those. I'm not one of those slumlords that's building, like, the smallest house and then putting all four Pokemon in with a single bed. That ain't me. My. My. My wife and I, we get switch off playing, and the other day she went into a house and was. And that I had built, like, right at the beginning of playing the game. Right. And there was like. It was like Slowpoke, Magikarp and Gastrodon were in this house that was like four by four with, like, one bed. She's like, what happened here? It's like, oh, this is like one of my early builds. That's. That's just America right there. Yeah, it's a good representation. That's just the country we live in right there. Don't forget that Jirachi can only visit towns with a rebuilt Pokemon Center. If you want to participate, make sure you have at least one Pokemon center up and running. Maybe the. The. The deeper news around Pokemon.com because obviously Pokemon.com is going to mention this. You can't time travel to this Jirachi event. So even though we know the dates, unlike the past four events that we had, you can't time travel to it. It does seem to have to check the Internet for the time now. You don't need NSO for that. Like, you can obviously get mystery gifts without needing NSO or something. So it'll. It'll still do a time check. So the question is, after this event is over, can you time travel backwards to it? Yeah, that'll be a good question. Because will it check. Will it check time later as well to make sure it's during that time period? I guess actually during that time period. Or will it just check it once to, like, allow it to download or start or whatever. Right. I would think you probably couldn't time travel if they're not letting you time travel forward. But. But yeah, maybe there's a chance it just registers the event, and now you have it in the game. I don't know. There's. There's part of me that's like, two weeks is more than enough. Like, if you don't got time in two weeks to play this event, like, do you really care that much? But then the. But then it's like, you already spent the $70. Just let people go get the event if they want to. But then another part of me is, like, it kind of sucked that the other four events were spoiled. Yeah. Yeah. I like the surprise of this one. No one knew it was coming. Right. Did you know that Bulbasaur jump rope one was coming? Because I don't think anybody's talking to Bulbasaur to figure that one out. Okay. Yeah, see, that's true. The Bulbasaur jump rope was not spoiled, but I. You had to time travel to, like, that specific day and talk to Bulbasaur. Yeah. Yeah. There were very specific requests to get that done. But also, I kind of think the jump rope event was maybe my favorite. It was, like. It was a little bit of a challenge. Not much, but it was more than just because I feel like I got the Sableye and the hoppip one done fairly quickly. Yeah. It took me two evenings to get it. Granted, the jump rope didn't take as long, but there was a little bit more skill to it. And you can't just take a picture of the trophy and lie that you did it. Like, I feel really good about the trophy. Yep. And the trophy. I love that you can, like, click on it and see your stats. Yeah. Like that. That. You got the trophy. That was so cool. Yeah. No, the trophy. Sick. Yeah. Do you. Do you think we get another one of those events? So it seems like there's two types of events, right? There's the. A new Pokemon comes to town, and you collect things so you can get new items, which. The items for this event look awesome. The ones they show in the screenshot. Yeah, they look great. So there's that type of event. Poppip, Sableye, now Jirachi. And then there's the April Fool's event with pseudo Widow. You have to do a task. Right. Bulbasaur as well. You have to do something. Do you think we get, like, two more of these new Pokemon come to town and Then another challenge event. Or do you think they'll maybe, like, randomize stuff going forward? I don't know. They. When they announced that, like, don't worry, there's another event coming at the end of June and then they said the DLC is August, it almost made it seem like, hey, we had. We got nothing for July. True. That's true. They could do. I guess I was wrong. Sorry. They didn't do. To come to town. And then the Bulbasaur, it was between. Bulbasaur was between the Hoppip and the Sableye events. Right. So. So maybe they just, they could do another challenge after this. I feel like they could do something like a challenge in July, and I feel like they wouldn't need to hype up that kind of thing. They could just drop it, like, oh, here's a hide and seek challenge or something. Because I feel like that's another game that. Yeah, the hide and seek has, like, potential. Yeah. Also, can we talk about how in the, like, promo picture they use, it's a five by five. Oh, wait, I did notice that because it was very like, they tried to get on the social media trend without which. Which, for those that don't know, Japanese Twitter started doing what are called five by fives, where they make a specific habitat slash home for a Pokemon in a 5 by 5 square Minecraft grid. And that was just like, really popular of like, hey, I'm going to make a 5x5 for Gastly. And it's going to be very spooky and it's going to fit the theme for Ghastly. And it kind of puts creative limitations on it, like being small but also being impactful. And then they definitely tweeted a five by five, like a couple weeks ago of something to advertise. But they're doing, they're for sure doing a five by five right now in this. In the screenshot for Jirachi. Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think the five by five thing, I think there was a period of time and maybe that period of time is, like, still happening. But there was that time where kind of everybody finished the game or like a lot of people finished the game. And then they were kind of like, what do I do next? And I feel like this 5x5 thing came up and it just kind of revived it in a little, in a way for a lot of people, and it just became super popular. So, like, it doesn't surprise me at all that Pokemon is like jumping on that trend because, I don't know, like, all big Corporations, they always hit it a few months, like, late. So. Yeah, it's not surprising at all. And I think, honestly, their five by five on here looks really good. I have one complaint about their five by five. Okay. The telescope. Don't even look out the window. It's staring right at the wall. Okay, well, think about this. If. Let's say there was something else on the other side of that. Right. You don't like. If you're a neighbor, you don't want to see a telescope pointing out the window at all times of the day. You have no idea what to look, so you point it down until it's time to look at the stars, and then you put it up. I want. I want the dlc. Okay. So the telescope gets fixed if there's like a half step block. Yeah. And that's technically in the game right now. The water can do half steps. You just hit left or right on the D pad when you're moving the water around. And you can either make it go a full step or a half step. Yep. So it would be cool if you could half step the blocks because that lets you get more, I don't know, like, stackability. Because things are either too tall or too short. Like, the telescope is. Doesn't hit the window, but you. You'd have to then put the window to the ground, which is a totally different window at that point. The same effect. Yeah. I don't like the window setup in this game. It bothers me. Like, I don't like having how the window, like, if you do a three. I don't know. I just don't like how the window only has, like, the placement of it. Like, I don't like having a window at the top of the. Of my, like, house or at the bottom. Unless I make the whole wall a window. And then it's, like, good. But. Yeah, I don't know. I don't like the way the window placement works. The window stuff is weird. Yeah. I heard this light rumor. I don't know if you guys have heard it, that the reason Jirachi is coming is because of Ruby, Sapphire Emerald on the Eshop. No, I don't think so. I'm gonna. I'm gonna say no. Also, I do think that's a stretch. So the reason I think that's a stretch, and I feel like people just say. People just say anything on the Internet nowadays. It's kind of crazy. Number one is like, I don't know why they would release Ruby and Sapphire this year when next year is the 25th anniversary of Ruby and. Sorry, the 20th, whatever anniversary it is. 20th, I got to look it up now. That seems like two. Yeah, that'd be like 2006. No, that's too late. 25th, I'm looking. That's like 2001. Well, while you're looking it up, I think that that like theory rumor is a little bit weird because if they were going to do like a collab type thing where, oh, Jirachi's here. So therefore Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald, they just did a whole bunch of stuff with like the za DLC with Rayquaza and obviously like Kyoka Grano were there spoilers. But I think that kind of fit a little better too than this because I don't know, Jirachi is like obviously the mythical for it. But Ruby, when I see Jirachi, I don't, I don't immediately think Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald. Yeah, Ruby and Sapphire was November 21, 22002. So yes, next year would be the 25th. Okay. So they, I just feel like Pokemon likes their anniversaries more than they like lining up Pokemon. Yeah, I think so as well. I, I think they do like. I think they do like their anniversaries. They do like their fi. Their, their. Their 20s, their 25s, their 30s. If anything, the reason Jirachi is coming at the end of June is because the end of June is the start of summer. And Jirachi is known for summer festivals. Yeah, I was literally gonna say today is the solstice. Is the solstice. And this, this event starts on Tuesday. Right. This. I think this is related to the summer solstice. Yes. Not to. What is it called? Taba. Excuse me? It's like the, the festival. Tanabata. That's what it is. Top. I. This is not. This is, this is new. New terminology to me. But also remember in Scarlet Violet, they released the summer festival in fall. Well, yeah, that's because that game was terribly delayed. Yeah, I know, but other, other surrounding factors for that. So, so wait, sorry, let's go back to this. This term you just threw out, what is this? A summer festival. And it's called what? Tana Bata is known as Japan's Star festival. It is a summer celebration that honors the reunion of two star crossed lovers from ancient folklore. And so the. So there was a. There usually. Or there. I shouldn't say there usually. There has been multiple Jirachi summer distributions. One of them being shiny. So they're known as the Tanabata Jirachis. Okay, that's a whole nother conversation about whether Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald would come to the eShop. I. I think they would eventually, because it's literally the same framework as Fire Red, Leaf Green. Sure. I just. I just think that if they're gonna pull the trigger on that, and if we're. We're making a lot of assumptions. If we make the assumption that, like, winds and Waves isn't, like, late next year, like, October, November of next year, they gotta fill something. So they could show up on Pokemon Day of 2027, say, like, this is the 25th anniversary of Ruby and Sapphire. They'll be on the ESHOP later this year or after this Pokemon Day. We're not going to give you Emerald right away because we know that you guys will all buy Ruby and Sapphire and then we'll give you Emerald later and you'll buy that. But if we do all three at the same time, you guys won't buy Ruby and Sapphire because why would you. Emerald is the better game. Yep. They've done this time and time again. They did this on the. On the ds, on the three ds when they released, like, Gold and Silver. And then, hey, six months later, we got crystal or whatever that was. And guess what? I bought Silver and then I bought Crystal, and I'm sure many other people did that as well. So, hey, Pokemon company, I want you to not feel left out. I would buy all three at once. When you bought Leaf Green and Firered, have you played both? Have you played through both Leaf Green and Fire Red? I played Leaf Green. Fire Red's just sitting there. Yep. I think the correlation of, like, Jirachi coming in Poke Opia must mean that Firered Leaf Green coming to the eShop. I. I don't think that that, that lines up Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald. Oh, sorry. Yeah, those two other two are already on the eShop. Whoa. It didn't work. My wish came true. Jirachi, Fire Red, Leaf green on the eShop. Crazy. Yeah. No, I think it makes much more sense that it's associated with potentially this Tanabata or just the summer solstice or both. Like, that's a much more current event that is actually happening. And so they're associating this Jirachi event with that. But, hey, I don't know. If Ruby, Sapphire and Emerald get released next week, then we got something else to talk about. Okay, last thing before we take a break is the. We got a screenshot of the DLC pack. And on that screenshot, we see a snubble, which is not in the Game. And we see Snubbull wearing a bow tie, and we see Pikachu dressed up as a maid. Okay, so most important question first. Is Snubbull a good or a bad Pokemon? Snubbull is good. And I will not take any Snubble slander. I like its shiny a lot. I was always a huge fan of Snubble's shiny. Then I don't leave it at that. And why do you think stubble is bad? I don't think I like that type of dog. I feel that I understand that dog is not an unpopular type of breed of dog. So I'm sure you have. We have some people here who are going to comment. Okay. To be fair, though, I'm not a dog person, so there's, like, a lot of dogs I don't like, and that's also fair. That's true. That's true. I like Rockruff. See, I like Snubble more than Rockruff. Whoa. I know. I'm sorry, Bobby. I don't like Bolton, but I do like Yamper. I don't like that Yamper evolves into Bolton. I wish Yamper evolved into a bigger Corgi. It does kind of feel out of place. Different dog. Well, I mean, they're electric. He gets, like, faster. No, I get that. But, like, he should have stayed a Corgi. Just a bigger Corgi. Make it like a longer Corgi or something. I was gonna say I like Houndoom, but I really like that. I like. I mean, I liked Houndoom when I was like, 16, and I was like, Hot Topic is the coolest store in the world. I mean, I do like Dobermans. That's a great breed of dog. The best. The best dog Pokemon is the newest one, Pom Bon, obviously. I love Pomeranians, but. Yeah, I don't know. Snubbles level's great. Like, again, good shiny. I don't know what my favorite dog Pokemon is, but I think my least favorite is Maschif and Mabosstiff. They just don't really do it for me. Hey, if you're watching. If you're watching on YouTube, please comment. Your favorite dog Pokemon. There you go. How do you feel about the dog Pokemon? Raikou, Entei, and Suicune. Oh, my gosh. Stop, stop, stop. Bobby, get out of here. Okay, so the first. The first DLC is going to be Bubbling Basin, which is the underwater stuff, obviously. Water Pokemon would probably come with that. Probably no Snubble, I'm gonna assume. And Bubbly Basin and Then they said the second dlc, which is later this year, has no new island. And then the third DLC, which is sometime in 2027, will have a new island. My guess then at that point is the that there's going to be a dress up costume, whatever mode that you can start putting bow ties on all your Pokemon. That has to be the second dlc, right? If they're going to add complete Pokemon customization, like, what is going to make a second DLC interesting? If they're right off the bat, they're saying, hey, no island. Yeah, I'm surprised that they're not making you have Pokemon Unite installed so that it can pull the clothing energy from AEOS island over to Popopia so that you can put a bow tie on a snowball. Hey, what was that dude's name? I want him to answer this question. You brought that up. Bobby Hoshina said we could have costumes and champions because there was no AOS energy. Somebody, somebody show this man Pocopia. But I do think it was very funny. They released like a preview. Sorry, a little off topic here, but they released like a preview of the Unite episode of the Pokemon anime. And like they're touching the clothes and you could see them like digitally, like fizzle or whatever. The clothes digitally fizzle? Yeah. The clothes are obviously digital. They make a point to show that the clothes are not real clothes. That's actually kind of sick. Maybe Hoshino was on something not. That was good. They media trained the heck out of him. When you talk about clothes, you make sure to let people know that these are not real close. So, okay, so going back to the dlc, I do wonder if you look at the image. The image is technically in three parts, so the leftmost part of the image is clearly bubbly basin. Like you're diving underwater with popplio and everything. And then the right, furthest right part of the image is the little pink area with the dressed up Pikachu and snubble. And then you're wearing like sunglasses and you're, you know, ditto's wearing sunglasses. And then there's like a sliver between them that is like this green section with like balloons and stuff and some more things. And it makes me wonder if actually the. The clothing and all that is the third part of the DLC, which I'm following your logic. I don't disagree. If DLC 3 is clothing, new island, and DLC 1 is dive and new island, what would possibly be DLC 2? If they're saying like, no New island and question mark, Question mark. Based on the image here with the balloons and the. And the stuff. More par. More parties in DLC 2. Yeah. Like what? Ooh, more CDs for DJ Rotom? Oh, please. No, I. I think, like, dressing up your Pokemon is pretty huge. I think it is too, but that almost makes me feel like it would be something in, like, a new town. Like, a new town would have. And then there would be, like, maybe there's clothing. Like, the town has a clothing shop or something. Yeah, but I feel like that would be, like, a new town. Then Lily shows up. Yes, ditto. Lily shows up. And it's like, my mother makes me wear this hat. I am curious if there are limitations to what Pokemon can wear. What? Well, I hope that all my Pokemon can be just maids. I hope they can all just be, like. And then I have, like, a little maid cafe, and Pikachu is there. And that would be cute, right? Like, you could dress them up to work at, like, a bookstore or a cafe. I'm really into the clothing. Like, when it. Like, prior to this picture, if you were to say, like, what do you want to add to Pokemon? I would have never thought, like, let me put bow ties on Pokemon. That sounds awesome. I mean, I'll take bow ties. I mean, I'll take bow ties. I'll take clothing over shinies. Like, I'd rather them add clothing and then, like, try to add, like, a shiny aspect, too. There are sparkles in the pink one. I know. I saw that. No, no shinies, because there's no other Pokemon showing up. What? What, are they just gonna have shiny. Just shiny snubble? Like. Oh, there is. I did. And I know this has been said before, but I. I did just get a patterned, like, bed thing from Vespiquin, and it had Kricketot on it. And there's a shiny Kricketot on the. On the pattern, which I thought was really cool. Are all the patterns from the original stitch collab? Are they? I think so. Oh, well, there's a shiny Kricketot on the, like, bed sheets that I got from Vespa. Quinn. Yes. Which I thought was really cool. Is there a shiny. I didn't know there were shiny Pokemon in the original stitch. Yeah, that was a good. You know, that was a good clap. And then they. They went at the. Pokemon could not save that company. They went out of business. Or maybe Pokemon is the reason that company did go out of business. Maybe they were taking too much of a cut. Yeah, they're like, all right, we're taking their thing away and goodbye. That's a whole nother the conversation. It kind of bothers me that, like, the Pokemon company just didn't, like, buy them out and then continue making Pokemon merch through them. And they. Did they sell other stuff prior to Pokemon? They did, right? Yeah, they sold just business clothes. So I wonder if, like, they were already failing and then the collab kind of kept them floating a little bit longer, and then it just didn't. It just wasn't enough. Maybe just buy them out. It was a Japanese company. Just buy them out. Yeah, true. I don't know. They never finished. They. They didn't even make it to gen 5. No, they had a lot more to go. A bowl. I'm sure bold or business shirts would have sold, like, hotcakes. Bold or business shirts. Oh, wait, I want one more. One more thing. Bobby, when you said the. The. The thing is split into three. The blue, the middle green, and then the pink. Yeah. If you go to the original screenshot where it says part one, part two, part three, the first one is bubbly basin, which is blue, part two is pink, and then part three is green. Oh, okay. So maybe they're just. Yeah, okay. Well, if that's the case, then. Yeah, Then. Then I would flip and say, one is. Is the bubbly basin, two is the clothing, and then, like. Or. Sorry. And then. Yeah, two is the clothing, and then three, they're gonna, like, expand on that image at a later date. Right? They'll have, like, more. Maybe they'll have another promo image down the road, and the green will take up more space or something and have more of an image of what that's going to be because the green is kind of just in the background. There's not really much going on there aside from the balloons and, like, the party theme, but it doesn't tell us anything. And so I think they probably will show more later. Well, the reason. Yeah, the reason I was thinking that was because if you look at the, like, the way they explained it, they explained part two as, like, a sliver of nothing. It felt like, oh, a big news town in part one. Oh, a big new town in part three. Oh, new features in part two. It just didn't feel like. So when I look at the image, I'm like, oh, there's a big thing for one. There's a big thing for three, and then there's that little sliver. Oh, I see what you're saying in image form, just like it was in text form. You know, but yeah, okay, let's take a break and when we come back, some news that I don't know what it is because, oh, we have the AI stuff. Okay. I was like, I accidentally lost my notes. I have my notes now. We have the. We. We have the AI stuff. We will be right back. This podcast is brought to you by Mint Mobile. When people hear that Mint Mobile plans are only $15 per month, a lot of people wonder, what's the catch? Not the Pokemon catch, by the way, but the catch of this I can tell you from a firsthand experience. There isn't one. There's no gimmicks, there's no gotchas. Just unlimited talk, text and data and fast and reliable coverage on the largest 5G network with an award winning care team. Which I guess makes Mint Mobile a catch. Since switching to Mint Mobile for the Twitch streams, I've had no problems when I'm streaming out on Twitch in the real world, which you guys can see. And I'm using Mint Mobile. 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This is off Kotaku Front of the show. Kenneth Shepard wrote this titled no Pokemon didn't just announce generative AI for the trading card game as big companies try to get away with handing people AI generated slop, Folks have been extra villagent about generative AI to the point where I'm seeing any mention of AI. Oh sorry. Where even seeing any mention of AI in any capacity can cause one to assume the worst. As such, the Pokemon company has come under fire for the announcement that they didn't mean what some people thought it meant. Pokemon has announced holding a contest for fans write AI code that plays through Pokemon trading card game simulations similar to the ones used for Chess, Shogi, I don't know what Shogi is and Poker through Google's service. The contest will include a cash prize for whichever team's AI wins the tournament later this year. The challenge of writing an AI that can play Pokemon is that unlike other games such as chess, the game has an element of randomness based on what players draw, as well as a more complex card relationship based on status effects, elemental affinities and just a general lack of predictability compared to other games that tech has been used for. You can get a full rundown on the of the contest on the official website. This article be in our show notes is that coders are going to be making AI play Pokemon cards and putting them against one each other. One each other. However, whether whether it will be the result of shoddy social media translations or just people reading the phrases AI and Pokemon cards together, some folks are having a knee jerk reaction in both the fan space and underneath the official Pokemon's post about the contest, there have been some criticisms that this appears to be a way to crowdsource labor in designing a Pokemon playing AI so the Pokemon company doesn't have to pay engineers. But according to the competition rules, entrants will retain the rights to the code but not to any of the actual Pokemon elements. Yeah, I think, I think you did. I, I, I think think that okay, to start off, I think you're going to have a group of people who they see AI, they hear AI, they're saying nope I don't want any part of this. And it doesn't matter if it's for generative AI for or for like generating images or, or artwork or for just using AI to try to play against. Right. A computer or whatever it may be. Like some people are just going to be like completely out altogether no matter what. I'm not really sure what the ending purpose of this is for Pokemon. Like, obviously the Pokemon company is going to get something out of this. And the question just becomes what exactly are they going to get out of this? Like, what does this give them on their side? I mean, maybe this helps them train ways to like be able to train cart. Like do cart. Like figure out if cards are good or not prior to putting them out there. Like, you know how they already play against, you know, they. They play the cards to make sure that they work well. I wonder if this is just a way to speed that process up on their end or something. But like, I, I just, I do wonder like, what they are getting out of this, especially because they're allowing people to keep their code after it. Words. I think I know. Okay. I think what they want out of this is they want a good battle simulator and they don't have it yet. And what I mean by that is if you look like every. Okay, so put for people listening right now, maybe pull over in your car. Don't get really upset about this AI stuff right now. I don't use AI in my life. Like I have. We were just talking on the break. Like I have Siri and I have all the AI features on my iPhone completely off. I don't use them at all. But almost everyone listening to this podcast has played TCG Pocket and so. And most of you all have all done the battle against the cpu. And I'm sure that most of you listening have turned on the auto battle feature. And I'm sure you've watched the auto battle feature and you, you all. Because I've had the same reaction. Look at your phone and you go, what are you doing? Why would you do that play? Because the computer makes really bad plays sometimes. Yeah. Or like not optimal plays or they just like don't see something on the board state. That is so obvious. Don't make that move. So I. The reason I use TCG Pocket is because I think most people have played TCG Pocket. But you could go back to older TCG games, whether that's like TCG Live or TCG Online or the. The original Pokemon trading card game on the Game Boy where the computer Makes weird decisions. Sure. I'm going to guess that there's a lot of. If we're going to stereotype like the Japanese work ethic, usually people stay at jobs for a really long time. Like people don't job hop that like they do in other countries. They're pretty loyal to the company. So I'm going to assume a lot of people working on these products have just been with Pokemon for a while and they don't know how to make it better. And I think if Pokemon wants the TCG or even like the, the vg, you could probably even apply this to like the main video game. Again, we've all played sun and Moon, Sword and Shield, Ruby and Sapphire, where you're just like, well, if the computer does the water move, I'm dead. And it's like, oh, the computer used Lear instead. Hahaha. Dumb computer. Like there are weird situations in Pokemon games where you don't even have to be like an expert battler, but like, hey, I'm already paralyzed. Why did the computer choose to use Thunder Wave again? Right. I'm already paralyzed. Yes. And that like the AI, not, not generative AI, but the artificial intelligence of, of how the computer acts to you in 30 years of Pokemon games has always felt kind of bad. Yeah. And sometimes it's bad in a way where it works like, hey, I have a flying Pokemon. There's no way they're going to use earthquake. I'm going to switch in. And then they just happen to use earthquake. Like there's really no rhyme. Or like the computer didn't predict. Like computer in Pokemon games is not smart enough to predict you're switching in. Right. They're just, there's, there's a random, randomness to the four moves where it's like, here's the optimal one, but we're gonna throw a wild card in and sometimes we're just gonna hit like the earthquake button. Even though it doesn't do anything. Yeah. So I, I'm thinking that this is them admitting that they're. That their artificial intelligence for how the computer plays is bad and they need help. And I think it's, I think it's the most apparent in Pocket and it's the most apparent in Pocket when you hit auto battle and you watch two computers fight each other. Yeah. Yeah. You're always like, what is happening? Because at least when you're fighting the computer you can, you can like walk away being like, oh, I'm so smart. Or like, aha. The computer misplayed. Sure. You can like Feel good about that. I'm not saying don't feel good about that. But again, I think it's so obvious when you put two computers against each other and you watch it play and you go, what is, what is happening right now? Yeah, I can't watch it play anymore. If I can, I can't watch it play either. It drives me up a wall. Yeah, but I think that's the point of auto battle. You press the button and walk away. I have to. I have to. Because if I look at it, I, I'm, I, I, I'm. My blood pressure rises. No, Steve, I, I think that was wonderfully said. Honestly, I would have said something similar, just less extravagant. But, but no, I think at this point, they need to come up with a different name for some of this stuff because it's all just like, bam, bam, bam in your face. You know, I don't want AI in my Google. I don't want AI in a way, you know, I don't want it. But this stuff has been around for many, many years, and it's not the same thing as a lot of people are upset with, which, you know, it's fair, but they have the same umbrella. It's the same kind of concept. But, yeah, I think, I think you're right. They just, they're trying to get a. But the confusing part is they're not keeping this stuff. They actively are saying here, we're not going to take the code. So I'm curious to see, how do they, what, what do they learn from this, though? I think they have more to gain than they lose. So if they, if they say, hey, you can keep your, you can keep the code, what are people going to do with that? What are you going to do with the code of, like, okay, draw seven cards. Sure. The poison. There's so many very specific rules to Pokemon that I don't think there's a reason for them to say, like, okay, keep the code. Maybe somebody could make, like, another game with that. But again, like, what, what does that matter? Like, and I don't want to say, like, like, what's the difference between Yu Gi. Oh, Pokemon Magic? Because there are a lot of differences at the same time. They're, they're all card games where you're drawing cards and you're playing cards, and they all have phases and they all have effects, and they all have paragraphs of text on them that you have to read. So they're all unique in that way. But at the. But they're also all same in that way. But to piggyback off what you said, Austin, I think the, that this stuff has existed forever. It's just the, the branding of AI is just what investors and what people want to read and what Google searches want to pick up and what trends are good. Artificial intelligence for chess has existed forever. Yeah, it's very buzzwordy right now. And they weren't calling it AI 15 years ago for chess. It was. Well, I mean, I guess the chess AI, the chess artificial. Like you can't. I know what you mean, though. You can't beat. Like, even the top grand masters of chess admit that playing against a computer is unfair because they can do so many calculations in seconds that. And there's no randomness to chess, that they can always pick the best move before you can even think about it. And that doesn't exist in Pokemon. Like, there are ROM hacks and there are like harder variations of that, but even those can still be like tricked and brute forced where you can't like really even like a grandmaster, cannot brute force against like a grandmaster chest AI bot. Like, they're just sure they, they. There's just so many moves and calculations that they're doing instantly that you, you can't compete with that. Yeah, I also, there was like a time, maybe it's still going on and I'm just not as involved, but there was a time where everybody was like, oh, I want my Pokemon games to be harder. I want these to be more challenging. And the question is, like, what does that look like? Is it do I just make the opponents have a higher level or do I make them smarter? And I think in this case they're trying to make them smarter using the same kind of concept they have, you know, for forever. But I think the argument to argue against what both of you are saying, there's differences, right? Like, obviously you take something like what Apple has done for years with machine learning, and that is essentially like AI, but it's not using the large language models that are now used today. It's not using. They're not like they didn't scrape all the data from the Internet in order to, to make this happen. Right. With the chess AI as well. Like, it's different in that sense. And they didn't use the amount of energy they're using with the data centers that they're building and all the prices of RAM going up and all the storage prices going up, because to fill all the data centers for all these large language models like that is all behind what is being used to make this smarter five, 10 years ago, that wasn't the case. It was different. And so I think a lot of people have issue with, like, the stealing that. That they've all done in order to get to this point. The energy consumption that's being used to get to this point. Like, that is the difference between what AI is now versus what? Like the machine learning and the, you know, quote unquote, AI was of the past. Right. Hey, I saw a picture of a very big computer in a room, and it was in black and white. And it had to do with that computer taught chess. Okay, that. But that is not this. No, I understand. I understand. Yeah. So, no, I mean, again, like, to your point, like, machine learning has been a thing for a long time. Right. Like, other forms of. Of this that don't include these large language models have been a thing for a long time. But I just think that when it includes these LLMs and stuff, people do have a different feeling toward that than what's been done in the past. And I get it. Like, I understand. I see that side of it. I also think it's very hard to have a completely logical debate or conversation that includes AI. A lot of the times I feel like people are extremely on one side or the other. It's just a very polarizing topic. And it does make like. Because some people are just like, there's no room for AI at all in this world. Like, it shouldn't be here at all. But, like, here's the hard facts. Like, it's not. It's. You can't put the toothpaste back in the tube. Right. Like, it's here now. And to what extent it gets used, that is largely up to, like, how people use it over time. Right. But, like, I think we're gonna be seeing some version of AI going forward at this point. It's what we do as a people with the toothpaste outside the tube that matters in the long run. Yeah. Brush your teeth. Yes, a lot is the. Is the thing they're. They're looking for is something that they can integrate in something like TCG Pocket, where we want something to learn from the games that are the. The thousands of games being played a day. And so it's like, yes, there's that theft argument. Yeah, but what if we build something where it's just, like, we don't need to steal from anywhere. We have thousands of players playing games every second, and we're not doing anything with that information. Whereas, like, we want to learn from all of those games happening, and then Reapply that to the CPU in the game. Right. They could be doing that, but this contest obviously won't because they're not going to give any other person that data. That specific data. Right? Yeah, so. But yeah, I mean, they could. They could just train. They could just train on the data of thousands of people or hundreds of thousands of people playing these games all the time that are good and bad, I would imagine. I mean, to be fair, like, just a disclaimer here. None of us are, like, AI experts. None of us are engine, like AI engineers or anything. You don't know what I do when the show is off air. This is true. This is true. You don't know how much water I'm pouring down the drain as soon as this episode's over. God, my hose is on right now. Ooh, hose water is real good. Brings me back to the 90s. Back in my day, we used to drink hose water, not. Not use it to cool off data centers. Yeah. So my point is, is that, like, they could train on. On the players doing this, but again, like, I think for this contest, that's not, like, how this would work, I think. I don't know, maybe Google Services and whatever they're doing has trained on, like, all of this data in the past, and they're able to use that in some way. I don't. I don't know. But. But what they aren't doing is they're not making artwork with AI. Yes. Which I think is what people have gotten real. Got real quickly, like, mad at. I don't think I need to say this, but I will stand 10 toes down. Not a fan for the most part of a lot of this stuff of AI stuff. You know, when they had the. Had the debacle of accidentally having some air slip through the TCG contest. Remember that? I was like, I was very vocally not a fan of that, you know, but I don't think this is anywhere close to that. You know, I'm, like, kind of chill with this. Yeah. I think. I think for me, it's like the. The. The marketing aspect is. Is. Is not great either. Like, two examples is I've been using Photoshop since I was 16 years old. Adobe is a terrible company. Things I've used 15 years ago, like the, like the blemish remover tool where you can, like, zoom into somebody's face and then, like, click the button and then it, like, blends all the, like, pixels and then it's like, okay, cool. Like, they have clearer skin like that. That, like, little button has existed forever. And now, like, those same buttons in the same Photoshop are like, AI enhancement tools. And it's like you just. You just rebranded it. It's the same. It's the same tool I've been using. Yeah. It's not any different, but, like, I feel like they rebrand it in a way for, like, somebody who is like a tech bro being like, oh, look at all these cool AI features. No, it's the same features that have existed. That's why at the start of the segment, I was like, they just. Let's come up with a new name for some of this stuff. Because it's not. It's. It's the same in, like, audio editing. Like, Riverside. Riverside. The. The. The app we use to record the show, it has a. It has like a AI balance thing to, like, balance the audio at the end. And they. They launched. They, like, rolled that out like a year ago. That, that thing that. That button I pressed to, like, balance the audio has existed in multiple audio apps I've used throughout the years. Yeah, like, GarageBand had that, like, 20 years ago where I would hit a button and it would try to balance it. Yeah. And there was no AI GarageBand 20 years ago. Right. So it's like these. These things have always existed. It. But it feels like they have to put this label on for be. For new people. It's. It's new people, but it's also like, if you think about it from almost an enterprise standpoint, and a lot of these companies are now going after enterprise, Right. They want the big business. They want big businesses to buy in on their stuff. And that, I think, is working to an extent. Right. I. I think we've seen. I know the Verge has done a lot of, like, stuff on this, The Verge website, and they were talking about how, like, people. A lot of people use AI, but AI is also, like, heavily disliked. Right. So it's like ChatGPT talks about having, like, almost a billion users a month, but then if you look at, like, the surveys done to groups of people on whether they think AI is good or not, it's like it's got like a 27% approval rating or something. Right. And so it's like a lot of people are using this, but a lot of people don't like it. Right. Because there's no, like, good, like, AI tool. But I think a lot of companies, what they're doing is they're capitalizing on the fact that because AI is so popular, that if they put that marketing into some of the features that they have, the businesses that wouldn't use them before are like, oh, this one has AI features in it. Right. And so now they're able to grab that business from these big businesses who are like, oh, I need to buy 500 licenses of this because, oh, this has the AI. AI features. Because I've seen that in some of the stuff I use for work where it's like, oh, this has AI features in it now. We're taking a look now. Right. Because that's, like, the way a lot of businesses want to go. So I think it's a little bit of that. Right. It's not almost like it's not just new people, but it's just like, oh, I'll keep using this service because they're up with the times, because now they have AI features in their system. Even if, like, to your point, all they did was rebrand something that, like, they had had for years. Yeah. But to a business owner or to, like, a corporation or something, who's making these decisions? They're like, oh, which one has it? Oh, this one has the AI features now. Okay, well, we're gonna switch to that one because it's got the AI features, and this one that we've been using doesn't. And unfortunately, I think that is kind of working to their advantage. At least that's the way it seems. Like it's all being pivoted now is toward the enterprise stuff, but the marketing is. It's gonna be there until, like, the bubble bursts and people really figure out, like, where this actually is necessary and where it's not. I feel like there has to be a turning point where people are just like, there are no where. Where companies are, like, there's no AI features in our software, and people are like, that's what I want. There. There is a little bit of that in some stuff. I feel like there's like. Halide is a very, very popular photography app, camera app on iOS, and they have something called Process Zero in their app where you can just take a picture and there's no computational photography added to it. It's just like a raw image on your iPhone. And I think that actually a lot of people were like, yeah, I want that. Like, I don't want my phone to do all the stuff it does when it's taking a picture. Yeah. And so I think apps and companies will capitalize on the. Like, we don't use AI in our stuff as well. Yeah, we're starting to slowly see more of those, which. I like those. And Just to wrap up the segment, the top eight teams for the AI battle challenge. This. They have a whole website. They built a whole website for this. This is like not like maybe they're doing this. They've, they've. And they do say like AI has faced other strategic tabletop games like Chess, Shogi and Go, not Pokemon Go, the board game Go. And now they want. I get it, I get that they probably want the Pokemon trading card game to have like the, the, the CPU power of like chess. I think chess is like the gold standard when it comes to that stuff. But anyways, the top eight teams which will qualify for the second round will all earn $30,000. Okay. But then I guess you would earn more money as you keep going. Right? There's. They're saying all eight teams will move into round two. Right, Right. Yeah, there's actually the, the website for this is actually pretty robust as well. Yeah, they have the English and Japanese button at the top too. Yeah, they have like a leaderboard and stuff and everything. Huh. Yeah. I mean this is, this is. They're going for it. They're all in. I'm sure it is something we will come back to. Oh yeah, yeah. Probably. Yeah. Unfortunately, yes. Maybe the silver lining here is that when, maybe in like a year when you CPU battle and CPU battle and TCG pocket, you won't be infuriated by the choices they're making. You'll be like hey, look it, they, they're making smart plays for once. Yeah, they're making smart plays. And also like 12 gallons of water just got used to make the smart plays. I know it's not like I, I'm sure there will people come in the comments. I know there's much more nuance to like that situation but either way we are using a lot more energy than we. There is nuance to it. I mean like I, I think it would take like 20 chat GPT searches to equal the amount of water for like 13 minute YouTube video. Right? YouTube, Netflix, they all waste water as well. I will say that hopefully in the being a little optimistic because again, I don't think this is going anywhere. Hopefully that in the time of doing all of this they do find a way to make it more efficient because the more you work on something, the more efficient it can become over time. Just in general, will that happen? I don't know. Look, this big corporations, you know, I don't put a whole lot of trust on them, but maybe over time like because again this isn't going anywhere anytime soon. Yeah. Well, my hose is full of algae. I'm trying to get it all out. There's too many jokes can be made right now. We need to take a break. When we come back, we. Why do I keep losing my notepad here? When we come back, Pokemon Champions is on mobile. And then we also to talk about Sirfetch and Pichu. So we will be right back. My name is Shannon Maldonado. I'm the founder of Yaoi, a gift shop. From the lens of artists and handmade objects. I chose Shopify because when I was testing other platforms it was definitely one of the most user friendly. It was important to me to think about where we would be in the future. All of the tools for reading your sales, like planning inventory, they're just right there on your dashboard. For anyone starting a small business business, the biggest thing I can tell you it doesn't have to be perfect. Shopify can help you build upon it. Start your free trial on shopify.com and we are back from our break. Pokemon Champions is now on mobile. Woohoo. I love the excitement. Bobby. Hey. I'm pretty sure Bobby downloaded it, so that's, that's a start. I did download it and I did play it for about three and a half minutes. Okay, that was enough. I, I think the, I think the mobile thing kind of flopped. I think they didn't hype it up enough. Yes. They didn't market it enough. They. Which has like been the story of champions. Yeah, but it was just kind of like, oh, it's coming and then it. And then it's there and now it's on mobile and now we're moving on. Like I don't. Yeah, that's what it feels like. Yeah. I will, I will give my reasons for this. But news wise, this is off pokemon.com There is a new monthly challenge series which will take place June 25 to June 28. If you participate, you will get a Tyranitar. You will also. You have to do at least three battles. You do not have to win them. You just have to do three battles. You also get 100 quick coupons. This is single battles. So I think they said that the official online competition monthly challenge series is single battle focus. I don't. We get the numbers from last time. I don't know if we got the numbers from last time. I guess it doesn't really matter because now it's on mobile. So we have to deal with the mobile numbers now. So not that big of a deal. When we figure out the numbers, we will talk about that, because that shows pretty much like direct interest. Regulation MB has started. We've. We learned a lot of new abilities for new Mega Pokemon. Two of those abilities are brand new abilities, so I guess we'll start there. Pyroar got a brand new ability called Fiery Main. And then Electros got a brand new ability called Elevate, which is pretty. A pretty good name, really. It is. I will admit the first time I read that, I had just woken up. Right. But it took me way too long to realize that. Just say levitate, and I'm like, why are people. This just is levitate. And then I actually read what it did, and I was like, oh, no, this is. This is kind of cool. It doesn't even. It's. It's not even a play on the word levitate though, right? It's a play on the word elevate. Whatever. Elevate. Levitate. They're close. And eel. They are close. I agree. I don't know how to read. That's why we do a podcast. I. Okay, I'm going to get this out of the way as well. I think Elevate is an amazing ability. It's ultimately Levitate plus Beast Boost. Mega. Electros and Electros are just dog water Pokemon. They're just terrible. And I understand the, like, wanting to keep the one gimmick that Electros has, which is Levit, which is no weakness because it's only weak to ground. So if you give it Levitate, it's no longer weak to that, but making its stats better and then still giving it Levitate. I said you could go back six months ago when I said this on the podcast, I was like, that's not going to be good enough. Yeah. And I don't think this is really good enough either, because in order for the Beast Boost to activate, Electros has to knock out a Pokemon. Right. Other Pokemon knock out Pokemon better than Electra. Yeah, it's a cool thing. It's really cool. Electros is just not it, like. And I'm sure there's gonna be one person on the YouTube comments that, like, I made it. I'm sure you did. I'm sure you made Electros work. Canary is going to comment. Yeah, but a good ability. I think it's a great ability just on a mediocre Pokemon and a mediocre Mega. And again, the. One of the problems with Mega Pokemon is this is the. This is the best example of this is Garchomp. One of the problems with Mega Pokemon is they have to hold the Mega Stone. Yeah. And therefore, you cannot have a held item. So Life Orb, Garchomp or Assault Vest. Garchomp or Choice Scarfed Garchomp is just. Those three variations are just better than Mega Garchomp. Yeah. If you wanted Electros to be, like, bulkier, you could put an assault vest on it. But then you can't hold the Mega Stone. So it's just like. Because there's such power creep in Pokemon, there's just better use of your Mega Slot than Electros. Yeah, you could have fun with Electros. You like. Look, I. I took Didena into Master Rank Battles. I beat and I won. I won two of the three matches with the Dene. I'm not going to come on this show and say Dedenne is awesome and everyone should be using was a miserable experience to get that to work. Was it cool when I won with Dedenne? Yes, absolutely right. But bad ability, kind of bad move pool. Not a lot going for not. Not a good place in the meta right now with Garchomps running around. Wait, I'm going to be a fake fan. Does Dedenne have cheek pouch? Because I recently learned about that one. It's pretty cool. It does have cheek pouch. I like that one. But the problem is, it doesn't matter if you're holding any Berry. You're just getting one shot by everything. Okay, a fair before the cheek pouch actually works. But did it feel better to win a match with Dedenne than it does to win a match with Incineroar? No. Oh, okay. Well then winning a match just feels good no matter what. I don't think winning a match with the Dene made it feel better. But if you could win with your favorite Pokemon, doesn't that mean something? Yeah, I. I love Incineroar, so it feels good every time. Okay, okay, okay. But if you could win a match with Cramorant instead of winning a match with Garchomp, wouldn't that mean something to you? No. Cramorant's so bad too. Also, there was nothing they could. They. There's nothing they could give Pyroar to make it better. Fiery Main is so bad. Like, on paper again, the ability is kind of cool. You just get a boost for all your fire moves. Yeah. Drought is just kind of better and does the same thing. So that. That's like. The weird problem is like Charizard comes out or Mega Charizard activates, Drought gets set. All of a sudden, all water moves are weaker. Things like chlorophyll activate, which make Venusaur Good. And then you get a 50 fire boost, and then you get to use things like weather Ball, which is stronger than flamethrower in Sun. So, like, Fiery Main is just like a worse drought. Not to mention, mega pyroar stats are like, the game freak hates pyroar. Yeah. If you look at the stat distribution of Pyro, you're like, this company hates this lion. I don't know why they made it. Didn't they just, like, equally increase all. It was like 20 across the board or something. It was like, kind of a boring update to its stats. Yeah. I was like, okay, sure. Why do they hate pyroar so much? I don't know why they hate it, but. But I think going back to Electros and having a more serious conversation, because I do think Electros is a cool Pokemon. I think Electros is, like, one of those examples of they. They gave it power creep, but they got away with it because Electros is just so bad. Sure. But when. But we. I literally made the joke of some Pokemon need to start getting the Calyrex treatment of, like, as one and as one is two abilities. It's. It's. It's ultimately Beast Boost, or, sorry, not Beast Boost is moxie. You get a knockout and your stats increase. Beast Boost is your strongest stat. Gets the increase. Right. Okay. Yeah. So for Electros, because it's a mixed attacker, you could go physical or you could go special. Although I think if you're going Electros, you should probably go special because there's so many intimidators in this meta that maybe you shouldn't go physical. And so you have unnerve on Calyrex, which is you can't eat any berries, which is pretty good for, like, competitive Pokemon because, like, there's a lot of Shoka, there's a lot of citrus, there's a lot of Pokemon holding some sort of berry. At least one berry. And then you have moxie, you get a knockout, you get stronger. And at what point do they realize some of these abilities just straight up suck and they start giving more Pokemon two abilities? Because even with two abilities, that doesn't. Because you could argue that Electros has two. It literally does have two abilities. It has levitation, essentially. It does. Yeah. Yeah, right. It's still not good enough. But then you have, like, the situation where you just have a situation where power creep is so obvious with, like, Miraidon or Koraidon or any of the paradox Pokemon that, like, how are you. It's just like, it's Just so weird, because you have Mega Pokemon that are just so good no matter what. Like Charizard or Mega Gengar is pretty good. Or sat. They didn't. Out of all the Mega Pokemon, they've. They've opted. They did not choose to bring in Salamance, which has won, I think, two world championships, right? But then you give you. You take such a bad Mega already, and then you give it fiery main, and it's like. Like just let. Give it two abilities at that point. I still don't even think that would make it better, but give it like. Like let. Let Pyroar set sun and then give it fiery main again. I don't think that would make it better than Charizard, but what you did to it right now isn't doing it any favors. Yeah. I do wonder, though, what the logic there is, because if they're willing to give a Pokemon like Electros an ability that is essentially two abilities, why not just do that for both of the new abilities you introduced? Why make one so much worse than the other? Yeah, that's a good question. You know, you kind of have to evolve a little bit to this situation where maybe, like, to Steve's point, maybe you do kind of mix abilities together, but then with Pyroar, they're just like, ah, it gets this. It's just. I don't know, it seems weird. It seems like, why not just, like, going forward, just start doing that more. But do we want to get to a point where every Pokemon is viable? No, I don't think every Pokemon needs to be viable. But like. Like, like Malam, like, Mega Malamar is, like, probably the most useless out of all of them. Sure. That's our friend, though. That is our friend. And there's, like, nothing you could do to make that better, right? Because the Malamar gimmick is contrary, and you don't want to remove that when it Megas. So when. Spoiler for Mega Malamar, it's just contrary again, but with, like, no held item because it has to hold the Mega Stone. So Malamar also feels like one of those things where it's like, well, maybe you should have gave it, like, contrary plus contrary. Like, maybe you should give it, like two. Like, really, maybe you should have given it, like, two abilities, right? Because it's. It's absolutely useless. So here are the abilities for the SO starter. Staraptor got contrary. Malamar got contrary. Scolipede got shell armor, which, like, it's kind of bad. Like, you don't get crits with Shell armor, but then you lose Speed Boost, which is what makes Sculopy good. But, like, thematically, that makes sense for. Because it puts armor on and it gets slower. So, like, that makes sense. Scrafty gets Intimidate, which is, like, kind of cool. You get an intimidate when you come out, and then when you mega, you get another intimidate. So double Intimidate is kind of cool. Dragalogy gets Regenerator, which I actually think is pretty underrated. You lose adaptability, and then you get Regenerator. But I think there's, like, potential there. Barbarical gets tough claws. Phalanx gets Defiant. It already had Defiant. Electros gets Elevate, and then Pyro gets Fiery Main. And then they brought back, like, the Hoenn Pokemon, and then they. They changed the moves, right? So, like, Grimmsnarl lost, Thunder Wave, Annihilate lost Final Gambit, and Swampert got, like, Wave Crash, so they changed the moves up, which is, like, that's, like, not that unusual because, again, when we go from, like, sun and Moon to Scarlet and Violence to Sword and Shield to Scarlet and Violet, like, moves got removed and new moves got added and. And stuff got tweaked. Like, I'm pretty sure from X and Y to Omega Ruby, they, like, was it X and Y to Omega Ruby, or was it X and Y to sun and Moon, where they had to, like, Nerf Brave Bird because it was, like, too good. Then they had to Nerf parental bond from, like, Kangaskan as well. Yeah. I mean, all I know, and this has nothing to do with competitive, is that Rowlet lost the ability to have to get roost, I think, between, like, sun and Moon and Sword and Shield, because I had to, like, go back into sun and Moon to get. To get a shiny Rowlet so I could put Roost on it and then bring it to Sword and Shield. Interesting. Yeah. I think the. The biggest change that I remember was Gengar. Losing Levitate is, like, the oldest one that I remember. Don't tell Logan Paul that. He doesn't know. I'm not gonna talk to them. I do think that, like, some Pokemon that were dominant in Scarlet and Violet, like, Annihilate, like, sure, losing Final Gambit is. Is. Is definitely a Nerf. But also, I think, like, some of those Pokemon in Scarlet and Violet literally benefited because of Tara. Like, a nightlife was so annoying because you. You'd have an answer for Annihilate, and then you would be like, I don't know what Roulette wheel I'm about to spin here for. Because Annihilate's going to ter. I don't know if it's. If it's going to be fire. I don't know if it's gonna be water. I don't know if it's gonna say ghost. Oh, they also nerfed Rage Punch as well. So Rage Punch would get fist. Rage Fist. Sorry. Rage Fist gets reset when you switch out now. Whereas before you would, like, beat up Annihilate and then switch out and then bring them back in as like a closer. Right, Right. Nerfs and buffs and anything aside, there was nothing from M A to M B that changed. It was just like these new tools that have been introduced have been changed since the last game. Not that, like Rock Slide got changed from MA to mb. Right. Yeah. Real time follow up here because I know someone's going to comment on it. Rowlet did not know roost in Gen 7. It was that there was the roost TM in Gen 7. There was not a roost TM in Gen 8. I had to put the TM on rowlet in Gen 7. So you could TM it back then. I could TM it. So I hashed a shiny one TM to roost onto it and then moved it to Gen 8. That's what it was. So before anybody comments to be like, Rowlet couldn't learn Roost. I got it. It was tms. Okay. Going. Going to the impact of champions on mobiles. I. I would like to assume that the. My algorithms show me a lot of Pokemon stuff, since that's what I talk about for a living. And I just don't think maybe I'm in the wrong algorithm. Maybe. Maybe my feeds are not showing me the excitement of champions on mobile. I still get a bunch of champion stuff, just like I still get Hocopia stuff. But I thought it would have exploded in a way of, like, all of these people coming in asking questions. And it just kind of felt. It felt like the excitement of a new season. It didn't feel like the excitement of millions of players who have never played Pokemon before getting to play Pokemon for the first time. But I don't think that those people, like, the people who haven't played Pokemon before are now playing it for the first time, would be in, like, the Pokemon algorithm of things. Like, I don't. Because they're not. Like, I don't think they're consistently posting about Pokemon. And I know it's not how algorithms work, but I'm just Saying, like, they're not. So maybe they're not posting about it now because, like, they're not. They're not consistently posting about Pokemon prior to that. Maybe. Maybe. But I. I feel like with TCG Pocket, there was a lot of people that weren't in the Pokemon space that were now in the Pokemon space because they're talking about Pocket, and I'm not seeing that with Champions. I feel the same way about Poke Opia, too. I think Pocket and Pocopia both have a much smaller barrier to entry than Champions does. Yeah, that's fair, too. I think about the person who doesn't have a Switch who only has a phone. Right. So that would be a lot of people in China. I'm. I'm gonna tell you right now, I'm not getting. I get maybe one or two, like, tweets, mostly threads that. That are, like, Chinese. India would be another good, like, huge, huge country with a huge population that don't have a lot of switches but would have phones. So, you know, I'm not getting. My algorithms aren't showing me that. But I would like to think that I would feel it in other ways. I would. I would say that you. You didn't have to play Pocket when Pocket came out to feel like maybe Go is a better example. When go came out 10 years ago, you just felt that everyone was playing it, even if you never download the app. Yeah, but Go, such an outlier. You can't use Go. Yeah. But I kind of felt the same way again with Pocket. Sure. Okay. And I thought I would feel like this big boom this past week with Champions. And even. I know Twitch is very niche, but even on Twitch, like, I'm looking at the. The category right now for. For Champions, and it's. It's 3.6 thousand. And I don't think any point this week, I saw it go above 10,000. And for the first two weeks on Twitch, on the Switch version, It was like 50k plus the entire time. Yeah. And I would feel like even if you weren't somebody who, like, tweeted or posted on social media about it, I would feel like you would still want to go to people playing this game and be like, I want what teams are using. I want to learn. How are you actually playing this? Like, I think Twitch is really good for. For that versus, like, a YouTube video, especially with competitive. Like, if I'm watching a YouTube video of competitive. Yeah, I can get the gist of it. But, like, sometimes with TCG or League of Legends or anything competitive, you can literally like ask a question and get the answer of like, hey, why'd you do that? Feedback. Is it possible that because there are some people streaming champions who are like very competitive, right? I mean like some of the top competitors in VGC have been streaming champions on whether it be twitch or like YouTube live or something. Right. Is it possible that like those players who people know are just the top are like just where everyone's flooding to so there doesn't like then that, that turns into a situation where there aren't a ton of people streaming? Because it's like, ah, well, you, you literally have the best of the best. Like streaming. Like, why, why should I like also stream if I don't really play this game that often or if I'm not really competitive and like, I'm not going to turn to stream this when it's like, oh, you've got like the best of the best streaming already. I don't know not to like self promo too much here, but when I was streaming me learning how to play champions, I feel like there's a lot of people that were kind of into watching me figure it out. Yeah. So I'm talking about like there is in between that want to like help people get into it. I think there's a level though between you learning and then people are learning along with you or like, or like that. And then there is there's like an in between space that I'm talking about that isn't learning and it isn't being completely knowledgeable about everything. It's like, I feel like there'd be a ton of people who are like, maybe they don't play champions regularly, maybe don't play Pokemon regularly, but they're like, oh, this is the hot topic. I'm gonna stream this right now. But it's like, well, if you already have the, the best of the best or you already have people that are like very knowledgeable about this, doing this, do they not then stream? Like that's my question. I don't know. I'm not like in the Twitch like life. Yeah. I mean we are talking about like a very like more niche thing, right? Like when I'm out streaming and people ask where I'm streaming, I just say YouTube because like every. No one knows YouTube. And it's like, it's like a coin flip of whether they know Twitch or not. Yeah, yeah, sure, sure. I would say one of the biggest things that helps people get into something like Pokemon would be when big variety streamers stream Pokemon stuff. So when I Think about like the last, like 10 years of Twitch. Like almost no one streamed the 3DS games. And the reason for that is the barrier to entry to stream. That was much harder. You needed a custom capture card for your 3Ds. Yeah. And then when the Switch came out, obviously most streamers, especially full time streamers or variety streamers that wanted to stream Nintendo games, they already had a Switch. Let's go. Whether or not you like, let's go, that's a whole nother conversation, but let's go Pikachu. Let's go. Eevee felt so huge on Twitch because you would have just these huge streamers that normally haven't played Pokemon games prior to that because it was on the 3Ds, but you have like big streamers like Pokimane playing a Pokemon game for the first time. And that was really compelling in a way to see that reach more people. And again, the reason I'm bringing this up is because like the, the concept here is like, is Champions reaching more people because it's on mobile now. Right. And I don't know if like other games past that, like definitely not Legend Za and definitely not Arceus, felt like it had the same impact as let's Go in my perspective. And I think Sword and Shield did that Twitch thing, like appealing to maybe more casual people better than Scarlet and Violet did. Oh, yeah, I would. I, I do think that Legends Arceus though, kind of was up there. It's better than Za, I think. Yeah. I saw a lot of people playing that one that didn't normally play Pokemon. I thought so. I don't, I don't want to get too hung up on Twitch because some people will be like, none of this matters. Twitch doesn't matter. I, I think it does. I, I think, I think, I think it's a real time way of telling things. Yeah. Here's another example that I'll bring up. There was a huge tournament called the Grand Champion Festival. And it, and it was put on by a YouTuber and they, they claim that it was the biggest Pokemon tournament of all time. I'm gonna trust that that's true. That's probably true. Sure. From my understanding, it capped at 10, 000 people. And then because Pokemon players are some of the most unreliable people in the world, only 6, 000 people actually showed up to participate. Okay. Just to be very clear, that's what happened. Sure. And so when Champions came out on mobile, they announced that they're doing Grand Champions Festival. Encore. Encore. Second time they're doing it again. Yeah. And so you would think. I'm gonna give you the numbers here. You would think that. Okay. They had 10,000 people the first time sign up. Now it's on mobile, which should have a much bigger install base than the Switch because everyone has a phone. It's been almost a week. By the time this podcast comes out, it'll be a week. They only have 2,800 signups. Wow. And so, like, I don't think I'm crazy as I. I just thought this mobile launch would be much bigger. It doesn't feel big on Twitch. It doesn't feel big on social media to me in my circles. And I'm looking at the biggest tournament of all time doing a second one with undoubtedly more players in the world having access to this game. And it's only at just shy of 3,000 signups. Yeah, I think that's not good. For sure. That does not bode well for how this is going to. If. If you were to give me champions trailers last year, I would have told you that this looks like a game for all the people who already like VGC and are now just finding a different way to play it. Right. And so when a mobile, like, introduction happens, I wouldn't have thought there would have been much more of an install, you know, rate just playing, playing off of that. However, for all of the interviews and marketing that they did do, while it was very little marketing for all of it that they did do, they really focused in on, like, this is for new players, which then got me believing, like, oh, well, then obviously, like, they're really marketing this towards new people. We're going to see a much bigger install base, like when mobile hits and these things. But now that it's like, come out on mobile and even from the Switch, like, that's just not. I don't think that that's true at all. It just didn't hit that market. I think what's happened is it literally is like, what everybody kind of thought where prior to them doing any of this marketing, to say, it's like, hey, we're gearing this towards new people. We're not putting in, like, you know, stage one evolutions and like, basic Pokemon, because we're gonna rip out all the held items because we don't want to confuse new people. Yeah. If they, like, without having said all that right, we all kind of would have been like, oh, this is just another. This is just a new way to play vgc. Or just a different, like, because they need to wait for like, winds and waves or whatever it may be. But because of all that marketing, it was like, oh, okay. They're really trying to push us onto new people. And it's just like, I don't think that that hit at all. No, it, like, I mean, you, you're on Twitch and you're, you're, you're talking to, like, real people about this way more than I am. How many people have come in and are like, I'm brand new to all this. How does this work? Like, anyone? I, I, I, I know the Twitch thing is, is, is so specific. I get. But like, when I streamed night one of Champions on Twitch and YouTube, I would say, like, my, my average viewership on Twitch definitely fluctuates. But I would say, I think if you go to Twitch Tracker right now and you look at my average viewership, it's like 200 people concurrent viewers. Sure. And then my YouTube is probably like, closer to like 30. And when I streamed Champions on launch day, I was probably up to like 400 people. My YouTube went up to 200 people. Never had that many people on YouTube before. And to be fair, I kind of ignore my YouTube channel. I just like, YouTube chat is just very different than Twitch. Right? Sure. Yeah. Like, the main reason I stream on YouTube is just for the VOD purposes. Not because, like, I care about that number going up. It's just to save the content for so I don't lose it. So that was, it was cool to see, though. It was cool to be like, oh, wow, 200 people here on YouTube. Like, I, I don't stream on YouTube every day. I don't, you know, it's, it's just, I don't have any alerts set up on YouTube. I don't care if people subscribe or not. It's just, it just kind of exists for the vodka. When I streamed Wednesday, because I don't normally stream one days. When I streamed Wednesday night for the mobile release of Champions, it felt like, it didn't feel like a new game came out, just like the normal stuff, which again, I thought, like, oh, so many people are gonna, like, get on mobile and they'll want to ask questions and they'll want to see what teams are being used, and it just, it just felt like a normal day. But again, I get that that's my specific experience, but that's why I brought up, like, the greater Twitch thing and that's why I brought up this specific festival. And I don't know, hindsight is 20 20, but do you think it would have done better if mobile came out the same time. Do you think more people would be like, oh, it would have been way bigger? I think, yeah, because I. I think the. I think the Pocket launch felt huge. Yeah, that was a big one. Yeah, but. But again, the Pocket launch, we were all playing a new game. Yes, it was the TCG condensed version of the tcg, but we were all downloading and starting from the same point of, like, none of us have any cards, we're all ripping packs. Some people could pay more money, obviously, and get ahead of that, but we were all playing the same game. Right. Starting at the same point. Whereas with Champions immediately, people could bring in these teams that were like, crazy good and then jump into battles and, you know, also, like, Pocket didn't have ranked battling against each other, which I honestly think was like, the smart move for them to do. That was smart, yeah, yeah. Because then everybody wasn't like, getting like, quickly intimidated or like, quickly like, feeling defeated that they just couldn't win battles or matches. And so they just were like, putting it down. They just were collecting and playing the computer. And everybody can beat the computer, right? So I, I feel like there was a big difference. I mean, other than the fact that that was also on mobile, to your point, like that. That also just like, released on mobile, so everybody had it all at once. But yeah, I think. I think you have like, one shot at, like, this is a brand new game and then when you hit that second level of it, you just don't. You're not gonna have that same hype. Like, even if it is on mobile, even if it's on a bigger install base, I. I think back to like, even like Pokemon Quest, right? Like, the big release of that was when it came out on its. In its first iteration, when its second one came out. I don't even remember. Like, honestly, I'm gonna be straight with you right now. I don't remember. I think it came out on Switch first. I can't even remember which one it came out on first. Okay, I agree with you, but, like, I remember the big surge of like, Pokemon Quest and then when it came out on the second platform, it was like, cool, I'm glad I can now do this. But it wasn't the same hype as when it came out the first time, so. But I agree, I definitely thought it was going to be. We were going to see a surge just because, like, oh, there's so many more people downloading Champions now. Yeah, I'm sure. I'm sure they're I'm sure the player base is at the height. Yeah. Like whatever, whatever this week is is probably the most amount of players that the game will ever have. For sure it is only going to lose players now. Yeah, that's true. So like how many. It's like okay, you have all these mobile players but in the last, what, almost two months? There was about. There was two seasons. Yep. How many did we lose from the switch that then got replaced with mobile? And then the question is how many? Lot like fell off with the switch, came back to mobile and then was like, oh wait this, I'm falling off again. Yeah. So that's why once these tournament numbers come out we can see where it stabilizes. But you know, for that first tournament was 770,000 people and the second one was 430,000. Something like that. Yeah. So that's like our really our only metric. They're never going to come out and tell us how many players they have. But like the tournament numbers are published. Are published so we can at least see the popularity of the game based off that. Yeah, yeah. Also the game has to be played in landscape. And I will say I've never truly had an issue with landscape games but like it's been a minute. I've been playing a lot of like, you know, games you hold in portrait mode. And now going back to that, I was like, oh, this doesn't really feel good. Like I don't want to hold my phone this way. Yeah, I'm feeling really justified right now. My problem with the landscape mode is because I am learning. I'm trying to play but then if I want to look something up I have to swap. I have to flip my phone over and then like the website loads sideways and I gotta wait for that and it's a, it's kind of a mess. Yeah, I, I will say also you can't really play a landscape game one handed. No telling you turning your phone is that's, that's the reason it's not succeeding in this day and age. Maybe there's really no reason why they couldn't run it vertical. I mean it would be like small though the top. Yeah. But whatever. What do they put down? What do they put below the buttons? Depressed below. Ah, yeah. Put that, put the health bars down there. Put the buttons down there. It's just a glorified calculator at that point. The, the animations just make it look pretty, I guess. I guess. Think about it. Whatever. Champions Ex, Pokemon Champions Ex where we added vertical mode. What I will say the thing that threw me off is I've talked on this podcast. I'm excited for mobile. I think I would play it more when it comes out on mobile. And I will stand by the fact. I think I've been playing more since it's been on mobile. However, when it first dropped, I think dropping it the exact moment there was maintenance was kind of an off choice. Yeah. Because you had to. I was so. I was like, oh, cool, it's out. I want to play maintenance. Okay. I guess I'll wait till tomorrow because I'm going to be going to bed. Yeah. So that was a little bit. It's like arriving at your hotel, but your room's not ready yet. Yeah. You're okay. Lobby waiting. What am I supposed to do now? And then the first match after I got in crashed, which is also not a great start, but I've been. And that's like getting into your room and finding out you don't have Ethernet and you can't use your computer there. Yeah, I usually. I usually request the hotel room with a giant computer in it. Geez. I've been having a great time. It's been fun learning. I'm actually kind of into it now. I feel like I'm figuring it out. I got my notebook with all my notes. I'm. I'm actually taking notes, which is surprising, but I'm. I'm learning. Yeah. You said the other night you went like six and three or something. Yeah, yeah, I think it was seven and three, but I had six wins in a row. And then there was like a little bit at the start where I was like, bam, bam. I was kind of like back and forth, but I was doing all right. Didn't lose a star after once, so I've never lost to a star raptor either. There you go on Amateur hour over here. This is a professional podcast. Cray Dilly. Wow. Yeah. Craig and. Yeah, Cray Dilly and Rampardos. Just to throw that in there as well. Um, okay. All right. Did you find yourself going back to Switch, though, or have you been now playing it since Wednesday? Have you been playing it all mobile? Um, no, I. I think I. Well, because I streamed it from my switch. Right. But if. But I think I've played more on the switch since I came out of mobile. Still. I think I still have, but I have. But I. I haven't played it off stream on the Switch, but I have played it off stream on mobile, and I think that's. That's okay. That's Fair. It probably also helps that the Switch 2 is great. And I don't. Maybe. Maybe the game is a little sluggish or a little slow in the Switch one. Maybe not, but I don't know. Most people's phones are more powerful than a Switch. Right. But a Switch to is in a. In a really good spot. Yeah, for sure. And to be fair, I have downloaded the game and I have recruited a Pokemon. And that literally is it. Because I don't want to battle. You can recruit once a day. I know, I know. And here's the thing. Okay? So when it came out on Switch, I recruited once and got Garchomp. And when it came out on mobile, I recruited once and got Incineroar. You're. You're on four more days, Bobby, and you'll have a. You'll have a competitive ready team. There you go. I also think that reading some of the stuff on mobile is a little bit tricky. A lot, because some of it is small to read, but on the TV or on the Switch, it's got a bigger screen. I wonder how it looks on an iPad. I should download it then. Oh, yeah, yeah. Because an iPad's not 16 by 9. It's like 4 by 5 or something like that, Right? It's like a weird. Yeah, yeah. It's so different. It's different. Yeah. All right, last bit of news here, which really isn't. It's not really news. I mean, it is news, but there was an ad. How do you say it? Admin. Aidman. Aardman. Aardman. Aardman. Oh, I think Sarah be just as a typo here. I think they forgot the R. There was a panel at the Animation Film Festival, and they showed the first key art for the upcoming series Pokemon Tales, the Misadventures of Sir Fetched and Pichu. This key art was shown in the gala region, and the series is scheduled for 2027. So if you forgot, here's your reminder that the people who made Wallace and Gromit are making a Pokemon. Do we even know how many episodes? We don't know anything about it. I don't think so, no. But we do have an official synopsis for it. Do you have it? Do you read it? An official synopsis reveals that Pokemon, the Misadventures of Sirfetch'd and Pichu is an epic journey through the wilds of Galar. Our heroes embark on a gallant quest to help and protect Pokemon across the region. Their missions rarely go as planned, but their noble deeds forge their friendship as they step bravely into the unknown peril, alliances, rivalries, extraordinary Pokemon, and endless laughs await them. Again, we were talking about Sirfetch'd and Pichu. Is this. Is it just a Pichu? Because at the end, it evolves into a Pikachu because of, like, friendship. Because Pichu evolves via friendship. And I think you just spoiled it to spoiler alert. No, I think that if. If this. But, like, the thing is, is that if Pichu, if they want them to become super lovable characters, I feel like they won't evolve the Pichu. I mean, if they're, like, killing the series at the very end. True. Okay, sure. Yeah, yeah. If it is just, like, that's true. And I. I don't. I don't mean, like, harshly killing the series, but how many small things of Pokemon that they do, and then they never touch it again. Yeah, but, like, at the same time, I feel like if it evolved into a Pikachu, like, I feel like they'd be able to sell a bunch of, like, Pichu and Sirfetch'd merch and stuff. And then if they evolved it into a Pikachu at the very end, it's like, okay, well, now, do they sell, like, Sirfetch'd and Pikachu merch or, like, do they. Look, they haven't even started selling canary merch. They've really dropped the ball on this whole Za thing. I mean, they just needed to cover time until they could release the Winds and Waves trailer. Their merchant game, their merchandise game is down right now. Yeah. No. Isn't that the theory of, like, why Ash's Pokemon never involved? Evolved because, like, merch sales, like, it was way easier to sell, like, Bulbasaur merch than it was, like, Venusaur merch, maybe. Well, I think. I think it really does come down also to, like, if you make a character super lovable, then you don't want to, like, change that abruptly. And now everybody's like, oh, I've got my Bulbasaur. And it's like, oh, well, now it's an Ivysaur. I mean, that does happen to some extent, but, like, yeah, you know, it. I feel like if you have these characters who were, like, very much main characters in Sirfetch'd and Pichu. That's why you have evolved on the very last episode. Maybe sell the merch before. Right, right. You have, like. You have, like, nine episodes of Pichu merch to sell, and then you evolve at the very. I mean, they evolved the Magikarp into Gyarados and Pokemon Concierge. And that's when I was out. That's where they lost me. All right, that's our episode for you guys today. We will be back next week. If you're on the premium feed, stick around for the bonus segment. If you are not on the premium feed and you would like to listen to the bonus segment, you can do a 7 day free trial over at patreon.com pkmncst where we post the video of that also gets you access to the premium feed. So if you just want audio only and you're listening to the audio after the credits, the bonus part automatically kicks in so you don't have to download anything else. Otherwise it's just $5 a month. That also gets you access to our Slack where now that Go Fest is over, I guess the next event we're planning for is Worlds. Speaking of worlds, that's what our bonus segment will be about. So they showed the Worlds merch at the end of Naic. So if you want to hear our thoughts on the world's merch and just worlds talk in general, stick around until if you're on the premium feed, stick around until after the credits and that will play. If you cannot make it over there for whatever reason, thank you for listening to the episode. Thanks for making to the end. Remember, if you're watching on YouTube to comment your favorite dog, Pokemon and why it's not Granbull or Snubbull. Thank you Austin. Thank you Bobby. We will see you all next week. This has been another episode of the Pokemon podcast and we are super effective. Super Snubble is good. It's debatable. Foreign. This podcast is brought to you by Patreon. A huge shout out to our producers on Patreon starting with Stuart, Courtney, Tone, Stephen, Josh, Christopher and Jared. And a huge shout out to our executive producer of Benagorn if you would like to support. It's super effective and get your name read at the end of the episode or get access to our Slack community. You can head over to patreon.com pkmncast thank you for listening to this week's show and we will see you next week.