Thursday, May 13, 2010

Speaking of Pokemon...

The new starters for the upcoming games have been announced.

Naturally as I am very interested in the sort of punny naming that they come up with I have decided to put a couple ideas in the ring.


This dude's the grass starter, at least if he follows the same rules as every other starter until now. I think he looks vaguely like the geico gecko dude and has a smug expression in this image. I think then, that I will dub him "Gexter". Yes, he is rather snakelike (the Japanese name is something like "ivy snake" from what I can tell, probably a portmanteau, oh how they love their portmanteaus in pokemon -- perhaps will call them "poke-portmanteaus" from now on or something) but I can't get the image of this-is-as-much-gecko-as-snake out of my head.

An alternate possibility: "Ivyleague"


"Pokabu" is his Japanese name, which almost surely incorporates a pun around "pork", given that this is a pig. I think we should go with that. Given that he's a fire starter, I am tending toward "Porkroast" but at the same time this makes him seem just a little weak, as though he were getting roasted rather than doing the roasting. Perhaps "Porkroaster" would work, but that's 1 character above the normal limit for the games until now (10 characters, this is 11).


Okay, this guy is more of a challenge. He appears to be an otter, and he appears to have a slightly mournful disposition in this image. Perhaps we could make a pun on how he looks blue. Perhaps we could work the word "glum" in there somewhere -- "glum" has the sort of punch for a synonym for sad that a lot of pokemon names have. "Lachrymotter" would be one of my preferred suggestion if I had the space -- but if we go for 10 characters we can't do that, and it is a bit tough off the tongue, not like squirtle or mudkip. Still, I happen to like it because that way all three starters end with an "-er" suffix of some sort. Of course if we can only go with "Porkroast" then this guy will become something like, say "Blubglub" because he's a water pokemon and is inspired by marine mammals most of which are known for their subcutaneous layers of blubber.


Oh also listening to the music from HG/SS is uncanny because of how a number of the samples are the same ones I've used in a bunch of songs. Also, Masuda's love of leading tones/chromaticism, pentatonic scales, and syncopation are very similar to my own tastes in composition. Seriously, too many of my songs sound like rejected pokemon tunes now. :P

I wonder if something that sounds uncannily like this will be used in some sort of factory or power plant dungeon (like the one off Rt.9 in Kanto). Or you could speed it up a little bit and maybe make it some sort of battle music.

WE SHALL SEE, GAME FREAK AND NINTENDO. WE SHALL SEE.

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