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What would you have changed?

SeanWheeler

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If you were to go back in time to 1995 and replaced Satoshi Tajiri as the creator of Pokémon, and became responsible for every decision with the franchise, what would you have changed?

For me, in the anime, I would want Bill to have the role of taking care of Ash's Pokémon instead of Professor Oak. I would have Ash win every league and catch more Pokémon than he did. In fact, his Pokédex should have a checklist like the games. And I would like the contests to be like the games. Ash would battle Drayden for his final Unova badge instead of Roxie.

In the games, I would have the regional Pokédex listing to be the same between the originals and remakes. Each region will still have their own Pokédex but Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire's Pokédex would be the same as Ruby and Sapphire. In HeartGold and SoulSilver, I would take evolution-inducing moves out of Pokémon level-up learnsets and put move tutors for that move in Kanto. I would change the Sinnoh Pokédex to include every Gen 4 Pokémon. And I would limit what Pokémon to get in trades until players get the National Pokédex. I would change up the Kalos Pokédex so that is just one listing and remove some of the old Pokémon that aren't really important to Kalos.

Anyway, what would you want to change? Please note we're talking about changing the past, so Sun and Moon and Gen 8 and later can't be discussed.
 
Games
- I would have given the player the option to change their skin tone starting with Black and White since the region was based on North America. I also would have Black hair styles which hopefully they'll add in Sun and Moon. A

Anime
- I'd demand that the original Japanese versions of the films and the TV series be made available with English subtitles for the North American distribution.
 
Well, I don't think Mr. Tajiri was ever responsible for all the decisions made in the entire franchise, but I don't think that really has to do with the topic here. d:

I guess I would just change the games to have more intriguing stories, less predictable events (looking at you, secret champion Diantha), and better level curves and equal usage of regional Pokémon. That's really it I guess.
 
Bring Original Dragon into gen 5. Create sequels to both XY and ORAS and add Zygarde into the story with forms with Hoenn as post game. Make Ash lose the Kanto properly with all his pokemon knocked out. Top 4 of Unova league and defeated by trainer from Kalos. Reduce the hype of the Kalos league or have Ash win. Give the fans DP remakes for gen 7 or 8. Better post game for both XY and ORAS. Gym leader rematches for XY, ORAS and B2W2.
 
Make Ash lose the Kanto properly with all his pokemon knocked out.

I would have gone in the opposite direction, and had him visible struggle to win more matches beforehand. Here's why:

Ash at that point isn't a very good trainer. He wins his battles on nerve, banking on his pokémon's sheer bloody-mindedness with the occasional eleventh hour brainwave to win. So far all his important matches have been with Gym Leaders, who he could rechallenge if he lost. It's a running theme in the run-up to the Indigo League that he keeps procrastinating on doing any real training.

And then there's Charizard. Ash never tries to train Charizard - from the moment Charmander evolves, he does nothing to curb it's arrogant attitude. There's that running theme where he sends out Charizard, gets fried or whatever, and then wails "Charizarrrd!" but does nothing other than just recall it. The Cinnabar Island Gym match should have shown Ash that it will only ever battle when it feels like it.

So we have spotty preparation, a habit of rarely ever strategising before the battle begins, and a powerful pokémon that's been allowed to do what it likes for months. It's entirely appropriate that Ash should struggle against the trainers who did prepare, and then lose when his Charizard with the inflated ego ignores him (as usual). The character development is him learning that just wanting to win isn't good enough, and that he has to actually work for a tournament victory
 
For me, I would think it would be better for Ash to win every time. They may be trying to avert the cliche of having the hero win, but when he loses every league, it just makes it seem too hopeless to watch. I wouldn't show Tobias in the Sinnoh League because, really? A guy with a team of Legendaries and one-shot the gyms with his Darkrai? That's just unfair. At least Ash had managed to put the biggest dent in his team, but really? Cameron had only 5 Pokémon and was incompetant so Ash should have won. Ash should have beaten Alain because a six-time losing streak for the hero is bad enough, and even worse when he has to go on a long journey just to lose six times. Ash could lose once in a while to show that he's not invincible but he shouldn't lose in the climax! Also about Serena, I would either not make her crush so obvious that Amourshippers are the biggest shippers in the fandom that they demand Serena to return to Alola, or if I were to go the AmourShipping route, I wouldn't make her dream Kalos-themed. I would replace Pokémon Showcases with contests and have her go with Ash to Alola for more contests. I did say in my original post that we can't talk about Generation 7 or 8, but whatever. We don't know if there's going to be Diamond and Pearl remakes and we don't know if Serena is going to Alola (though it is unlikely at this point). But I guess if you want to state future events, fine. But I would encourage talking about changing the past (even though without any way to time travel, it's impossible).
 
For me, I would think it would be better for Ash to win every time

From a storytelling perspective (As much as you can tell a story with a format like this), that doesn't work. For one thing, if you have the hero win each tournament, then the pattern sucks all the tension from it. It doesn't matter what tricks his opponents pull, because the audience can be almost certain that it won't matter in the end. It's almost irrelevant if he loses some battles prior to the tournament if the writer's going to save him when it really counts.

You could say the same thing for the tourney loss every time, but, it doesn't carry the other problem of constantly having to explain why Ash always moves on to the next tournament instead of moving up to the ranks of the Pokémon Masters or something. Which is in itself a problem because there's only so many challenges you can dump in front of a hero who keeps winning pokémon battles and becoming steadily stronger. There's only so many times you can keep airing epic battles with epic Charizard pokémon before it becomes completely routine cut and paste action.

The real problem, as usual, is that the anime's format simply isn't conducive to telling a great story. The series has to go on for essentially forever - there's just no way to pace a story like that. So, aha, there we are. If I could have changed any one thing about the franchise, I'd have each anime generation focus on a different character, based on whoever the game protagonists are this time round. The anime would keep going, but at least each generation would have some sense of pacing; characters could be retired when they need to be rather than recycled
 
I would have gone in the opposite direction, and had him visible struggle to win more matches beforehand. Here's why:

Ash at that point isn't a very good trainer. He wins his battles on nerve, banking on his pokémon's sheer bloody-mindedness with the occasional eleventh hour brainwave to win. So far all his important matches have been with Gym Leaders, who he could rechallenge if he lost. It's a running theme in the run-up to the Indigo League that he keeps procrastinating on doing any real training.

And then there's Charizard. Ash never tries to train Charizard - from the moment Charmander evolves, he does nothing to curb it's arrogant attitude. There's that running theme where he sends out Charizard, gets fried or whatever, and then wails "Charizarrrd!" but does nothing other than just recall it. The Cinnabar Island Gym match should have shown Ash that it will only ever battle when it feels like it.

So we have spotty preparation, a habit of rarely ever strategising before the battle begins, and a powerful pokémon that's been allowed to do what it likes for months. It's entirely appropriate that Ash should struggle against the trainers who did prepare, and then lose when his Charizard with the inflated ego ignores him (as usual). The character development is him learning that just wanting to win isn't good enough, and that he has to actually work for a tournament victory
No. Ash losing because Charizard disobedience is terrible for the anime. I rather see it get knocked out than costing the match with it's disobedience.
 
Games only:
--No limited distribution Pokémon or events.
--IVs wouldn't exist. EVs and Natures are enough to distingish them.
--Trade-induced Evolutions wouldn't exist, unless there was an alternate method to trigger it, like some sort of item that you can purchase with BP in the postgame.
--Better postgame areas with fun challenges outside the Battle Tower and it's equivalents. Something with full teams but still offering a good challenge.
--Battle Tower and it's later equivalents would allow--and use--Mewtwo tier Pokémon, like Stadium.
 
No. Ash losing because Charizard disobedience is terrible for the anime. I rather see it get knocked out than costing the match with it's disobedience.
Ash got most of his badges in an equally half-assed way. Were all those gym "victories" just as terrible for the anime too?

Anyhoo, I would change the mascot Pokemon to Eevee and I'd make the GS Ball subplot go somewhere.
 
Ash got most of his badges in an equally half-assed way. Were all those gym "victories" just as terrible for the anime too?
Well Ash could won them instead of being handed to him but it wasn't as bad as the league. Pikachu should not have beaten Onix even if Onix was covered in water.
 
Let us not forget: "Pikachu! Aim for the horn!"

-Nidorina and Nidoqueen can breed.
-An egg can be the species of either parent. "But then people could more easily obtain-" shh. Shhhhhh. We're taking about a pet monster raising rpg it shouldn't be complicated like this.
-Tweak the egg groups. *kicks Wailmer and Whailord out of the field group seriously mammalian or not why are the whales outside the water groups*
-Items required during breeding for certain effects, like incense? Give it to daycare person to set up. No more requiring someone to hold incense while they do the do. That's just silly.
-*fires anyone who suggests trade evolution be a thing*
-Now that we're not limited by a strict pallet set, lets redo shinies!
-Let's put pokemon in evolutionary families together in the National dex. WE NEED BETTER ORGANIZATION.
-NO MORE OUT-OF-GAME REQUIREMENTS FOR MYTHICAL POKEMON! They're side quests now. Post elite four sidequests, but now you don't have to wait for an event/risk missing them due to an event's timing.
-More important characters that have well trained pokemon so players don't just say "Well, duh" once they get to the Champion room and see the only NPC outside of gym leaders who ever does anything and isn't the local professor or already defeated along with the local band of costumed ne'er-do-wells.
-Blaziken: Fire/Fighting. Infernape: Fire. Emboar: Fire/Dark.
-You know those apricorn pokeballs? Wouldn't it be cool if you could obtain them outside johto? Yeah, man that'd be swell.
-Let's not make features basically useless for people who don't have people to play with. Underground? Have the ability to remove rocks in secret bases based on either amount of captured flags or the amount of treasures unearthed. That way if someone is good at doing one, but not the other, no one misses out on game content!
-Hidden abilities are now just exceedingly rare to find on wild pokemon and not acquired in special methods that may or may not be available to players later on down the line.
-People seem to really like the pokemon following the player feature, lets use that again.
 
Ash starts with a Grimer and dates Misty's sister. Gary Oak is the GOAT and Professor Oak goes into retirement after forgetting his grandson's name.

Keep TMs one use and have less N and more fun. Also no megas.
 
Games: All starters and similar pokemon have 50/50 gender ratios.
- Let them know Pikachu clones are a bad idea
- better post games for recent generations
- give ice some resistances

Anime: Have Ash win the kanto league and replace the protagonist each gen with the new male player character. The Female PC will be a secondary protagonist with her own goals or a rival. Each main character (Ash included) has a proper starter (Ash would have Charmander) along with a secondary mascot based on popular/marketable pokemon of that generation like Pikachu for gen 1, Lucario for gen 4 and so on..
 
I've already written my proposal for the anime, and I've also written a quite a lot about the games as well (particularly Gen 3-5). So, I'm just going to post the links here:

Anime: http://forums.bulbagarden.net/index...-of-the-pokemon-anime-with-system-error.1763/
The summary is essentially this: I'll keep the general light-heartedness of the anime (with the exception of XY), and I'll keep Ash's general carefree attitude. What would change is Ash's previous achievements actually carrying over to the next, and some better application of logic in terms of time progression. For example, Ash would go to Hoenn in AG, not because of whatever, but to mentor Brendan/May by Oak's request, and also to eventually investigate Team Magma/Aqua upon Lance's request.
...though, I thought the anime was mainly TV Tokyo's thing - not Satoshi Tajiri's exclusive background.

Game: SPECULATION: - If you were GameFreak
Mine is Post#24 on Page 2.
 
Make a Pokemon's stats and movepool match (Klingklang stats being a physical attacker, but has mostly special moves).

Fix some questionable decisions like making ghosts physical until the physical special split.

Have more reliable grinding methods.

Do SOMETHING about the Natures, like preventing them from hindering the Pokemon.
 
Make a spin-off where you can join an evil team. You start as a grunt and work your way up the positional ladder, eventually becoming the boss or second-in-command.
 
Please note: The thread is from 7 years ago.
Please take the age of this thread into consideration in writing your reply. Depending on what exactly you wanted to say, you may want to consider if it would be better to post a new thread instead.
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