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Fuecoco: My divisive baby boy

Fuecoco, the new fire-croc pokemon who some of us will be starting our generation 9 journey with (myself included), has proved to be quite the subject for debate in the Pokemon community. Lets talk about him!

Some point to his design and say its meant to look like an apple, while others claim his shape, color, and typing is more reminiscent of a pepper. I’ve even seen some point to the “coco” in his name as evidence that he may even be a cocoa bean pod.

I; shockingly, am firmly on Team Pepper, and here’s why

1: His shape
Undeniably pepper shaped. I will die on this hill.

2: His color
While yes, fire types usually feature red or orange, peppers are classically depicted as being bright red, an indication of their spicy nature

3: Peppers are hot. Fire is hot.
You know whats not hot? Apples. You know what else isn’t hot? Cocoa beans.

4: The white marking on his face
Its vaguely skull like, isn’t it? There is a type of pepper called the Ghost Pepper, which is extremely hot, and holds a rating of 1,000,000+ on the Scoville heat index.
This is also why I’m willing to bet that his final evolution may very well be a Fire/Ghost type, and that is an awesome concept. A fire/ghost crocodile pokemon? Sign me all the way up

5: His name doesn’t support any of the three theories, despite what team cocoa bean claims
Fuecoco is taken from Fuego, the Spanish word for Fire, and the “Coco” comes from the Spanish word for Crocodile, “Cocodrilo”

Its also EXTREMELY important to remember that the English names are not indicative of the original design concepts. His Japanese name is “Hogator.” Ignoring the fun pronunciation of “Hoe-gater” this name is likely derived from “Ho” Japanese for “Fire” and, well. “Gator,” From alligator.

So thats my position on the great Fuecoco debate of 2022.
Regardless of which team is right or wrong, I’m looking forward to putting this little guy on my team and watching him grow into another awesome croc Pokemon. I also hope Sandile and Totodile will be available in gen 9 just so I can have all the Gatordiles together one team

I’m very excited for gen 9

Unlike Pokemon Legends: Arceus, Scarlet and Violet will be a true open world
PL:A has very open spaces to play in, however its more akin to recent Monster Hunter games than it is to what everyone is comparing it to; Breath of the Wild. You have a central hub which you must return to time and time again, and you can’t travel from one locale to another without going back to said hub. This is Monster Hunter’s structure through n through.

GameFreak has been slowly dipping their toe into open world game design for a while now. We got the lackluster open world Wild Area in Vanilla Sword and Shield, followed by the significantly improved open worlds of the Isle of armor and Crown Tundra.
While PLA wasn’t a “true” open world, the areas we did have access to were massive, with each of them dwarfing the wild area, isle of armor, and crown tundra.

Potential non-linearity
Now, there’s nothing wrong with linearity in a game. Erase that concept from your mind. Even the grand-daddy of modern open world games, Grand Theft Auto, follows a linear story structure. In fact its pretty common in open world games. The draw of the open world is all the other things you can do before, during, and after the story missions.
However, Pokemon has never really followed a “quest/mission” structure (outside of PLA, which is really an entirely different beast all together.) Its just been following a path from one town to the next, battling conveniently stronger trainers and gyms as you go, with areas beyond these gyms usually gated to the gym’s completion to prevent you from wandering too far and getting your butt kicked by strong wild Pokemon and trainers. However, given that Scarlet and Violet will be a fully open world, there isn’t going to be the usual pokemon structure of “follow path to the next gym.” My hope is that, like breath of the wild’s divine beasts, you can tackle the gyms in any order you feel like, (maybe even find them by accident!) and that maybe, as hinted at in anime material, gym leaders adjust their teams based on their challenger’s number of badges. I really feel like giving us a big open world and then saying “Go here and do this first” would not work out too well.

New regional forms
Regional forms have been a thingfor 2 generations and 3 games now, breathing new life into older Pokemon by giving them new designs and typings. There’s no reason to assume that they won’t make a return in generation 9, with a brand new set of updated classics. Undoubtedly, some won’t be great, but some will be objective improvements over the originals. Will your fave get a regional form? Will it be cool or lame? Who knows? Game Freak knows. But they’re not tellin’.

A potential new eeveelution
Pokemon recently broke its trend of adding a new eeveelution to every even-numbered generation in gen 8, with the fairy-type Sylveon being the latest addition to Team Eevee in generation 6 waaaay back in 2013. (Good lord that was 9 years ago…)
So will we get a new Eeveelution in gen 9? Maybe two? And so; what type(s)? Its time, GameFreak.

The region itself
While no name or even official map has been revealed, a partially obscured region map can be seen twice in the trailer, once in the live action segment and again in gameplay footage. Internet cartographers have thus been able to piece together that the region is based on the Iberian Peninsula, the majority of which is home to Spain and Portugal. This is exciting, as Spain is a region of the world we haven’t seen pokemonified yet. We’ve seen Japan four and-a-half times (Gen 1, 2, 3, 4, PLA), America twice (Gen 5 and 7), the UK (gen 8) and France (gen 6) once respectively.
While not every Pokemon in a new region is necessarily inspired by an actual animal or element of the region the game is based on, some of them undoubtedly are, and I’m excited to see them all

THE NUMBER
Pokemon Legends: Arceus added some new region-exclusive evolutions, and brought the overall number of Pokemon up to 905. With the new starters revealed, the number has been officially brought to 908. However, factoring in that each of them will have two evolutions, along with it being EXTREMELY likely that there will be two mascot legendaries, we can safely say that, while unrevealed, the current number of Pokemon is a minimum of 919.
While the offerings of new Pokemon have been sparce in recent generations (with no generation since 2010’s gen 5 reaching triple digits, though admittedly, gen 8 came comfortably close), even if we don’t hit triple digits for new Pokemon in generation 9, we will most definitely reach Pokemon #1000, and I personally hope GameFreak takes this opportunity to make it something REALLY cool. After all, 1000 is a huge milestone.

What do you think of the new generation of Pokemon?
Who’s your starter going to be?
I’ll be choosing Fuecoco, as his laid back personality matches my own. I hope he maintains it as he evolves.

Forgot to post this here for the Scarlet/Violet announcement in Feb.

Naturally I’m hype for our first Hispanic region!

Pokemon:LECHON(K)

conflicted Filipino noises

Now that the next Pokemon Scarlet and Pokemon Violet trailer has been released, I’ve quickly written down which “returning Pokemon” have been confirmed:

–Talonflame line (we see a Fletchling briefly, and a Talonflame later)

–Ampharos line (we see a Flaafy briefly)

–Drednaw line (an opposing trainer sends out a Chewtle)

–Tyranitar line (a Larvitar appears in a trade)

–Salamence line (a Bagon appears in a trade)

–Venomoth line (we see a Venonat briefly)

–Coalossal line (we see some wild Coalossal)

–Toxapex line (we see some wild Toxapex)

–Cryogonal (we see some wild Cryogonal)

–Gengar line (a Gengar appears briefly)

–Lurantis line (a Lurantis appears briefly)

–Raichu line (a Pikachu briefly follows the protagonist)

My take on the Sprigatito evolution debate:

In my case, I’m alright with it becoming either bipedal or quadrupedal; I like both two-legged and four-legged Pokemon equally.

I’m more concerned about what Sprigatito’s final evolution’s “secondary typing” is going to be, because whenever I construct a Pokemon team, I always try to have the following “types of attacks” spread across the team:

Fire (to handle Bug, Grass, and Steel types)

Water (to handle Fire, Ground, and Rock types)

Electric (to handle Flying and Water types)

Either a Grass move or the Freeze-Dry move (to handle Water/Ground types)

Fighting (to handle Ice and Normal types)

Ground (to handle Electric and Poison types)

Dark (to handle Ghost and Psychic types)

Either Poison or Steel (to handle Fairy types)

Fairy (to handle Dark, Dragon, and Fighting types)

So if Sprigatito’s “secondary typing” is one of the above, I may stick with using Sprigatito.

But if Sprigatito ends up becoming something like Grass/Normal, Grass/Psychic, Grass/Rock, etc., then I’ll pick Fuecoco or Quaxly instead.

So serebii.net has just analyzed the trailer and given a list of what Pokemon from previous generations we know for sure are returning to generation 9.

The list can be found here at https://www.serebii.net/scarletviolet/pokedex.shtml

But I’ll type it out here as well to let others on Tumblr know:

–Staraptor line

–Lilligant line

–Tsareena line

–Golduck line

–Vespiquen line

–Drifblim line

–Stonjourner

–Persian line

–Pelipper line

–Clawitzer line

–Altaria line

–Seviper

–Jumpluff line

–Raichu line

–Blissey line

–Magnezone line

–Tyranitar line

–Florges line

–Lucario line

–Zoroark line

Regarding the Fire starter of the upcoming Pokemon Scarlet and Pokemon Violet, usually the Fire starters fit into part of the Zodiac, and I think I figured out where on the Zodiac Fuecoco might fit into:

Since Fuecoco is the “Fire Croc Pokemon”, I think it might fit into the Snake part of the Zodiac.

It may not make sense at first, but in real life, both snakes and crocodiles belong to the same “Class” of animals, namely the “Reptilia” class.

My thoughts on the upcoming Pokemon Scarlet and Pokemon Violet:

Given what we currently know about the Generation 9 starters, I might actually pick the Grass starter, Sprigatito, this time.

This is rare, because as far as I can recall, I haven’t picked the Grass starter since Bulbasaur back in Generation 1.