Fiction...?

Making it to the semi finales of the regional Pokemon battling championships


The title says it all really. And before accusations of “nerd” get hurled this was when Pokemon was still cool (like it ever became uncool) Yep, we still just had the original 151 and there was none of this pissing about with natures or hold items or the dubious ethics of cross species selective breeding

There’s only one really important thing you need to know about a pokemon tournament. Every single person will have a team all at level 99. Stupid rare candy cheat, turning what should be hours of tedious grind into minutes of tedious item replication. In my mind here’s how a tournament should play out. You begin a new game at the exact same time, are free to trade and chat, and at hourly periods are forced to battle. It makes it frantic, strategic, and full of plenty of back stabbing and broken alliances. Good training for a corporate environment

Anyway, I’d been lucky so far, matching off against incredibly inept trainers and winning by a fair margin each time. There was one idiot that decided having team entirely consisting of pikachus was a good ploy, relying on the ever so fickle paralysis gambit. My golem and snorlax swept that dream away. Then there was the fan boy, who basically had season 1’s Ashes team. Hell he even had the hat, and twisted it each time he sent one to their untimely death. If he had had the sense to evolve, things might have gotten hairy. Then there was the small child I made cry. I felt bad until he started swearing at me.

And now here I was, in the semi finales. Now the event (held at a toys R us if you were wondering) wasn’t exactly crowded, maybe fifty people in all. But a gameboy, as you well know, is fairly small. I had about eight guys crowding around my screen, as did my opponent, and I dunno about him, but the close proximity of sweaty prepubescents was getting to me.

A Pokemon battle is a lot like poker. From the outside it seems a lot of luck is involved, what with type matches, critical hits and missed status effects. But there are loads of things you can do to maximise your odds. I knew this (from online guides I’ll admit) and clearly my opponent did too. We danced around editing each others stats, hoping like hell our base stats were higher than the others. And then got to the nitty and gritty of sweeping and blocking. My snorlax was on fine form and I was well positioned to counter his. But then he pulled something unexpected out of the hat. A Taurus. I hadn’t anticipated that, and my failure to do so was the end of me. It’s hybrid attack blocker stats meant my snorlax eventually lost out and from there it was a quick clyoister ice beam rally to death. My dragonite managed to finally take it out but the damage was done and my hopes of making it to the finals of the regional Pokemon battling championships whited out with him.

Apologies to anyone that doesn’t have a clue what I’m on about. You N00bs.