We Played Pokemon Champions - Kinda Funny Gamescast!

Idol money lies in your current account picking crumbs out of its belly button wondering, should I eat them? But when you start investing with Monzo, your money's always busy. It turns on regular investments, invests your spare change and tops up your stocks and shares ICER. It even helps you make sense of risk and return. Monzo, the bank that gets your money moving. You could get back less than you invest. Monzo current account required UK residents 18 plus T's and C's apply. What's up everybody? Welcome to the kind of funny games cast for Wednesday, March 25th, 2026. I'm one of your hosts, Greg Miller alongside Forbes 30 under 30. AKA New York game awards nominated AKA jacket, poppy blessing. Yeah. Good day, Greg. Good day to you. How are you? I'm doing well. How are you doing? I am excellent. I want you to know like, Oh yeah. Wow. I'm just here. Tim's here. Of course. The four formerly Forbes under 30 or 30. Now just some of your father at Tim Getty's. Yes. We got Tim here and he's in a great shirt. But more importantly, I haven't told you yet that in, you know, yesterday we previewed Tomodachi life. Right. I made you in the game. They knew that. Yeah. But at one point, me who will remain redacted, they did your name and I started calling you poppy. And I think you'll like it. Exactly. And then joining the group from GameSpot is Jake Deckard. Hello. Hello. What is just happening to me? An absolute pleasure to be here. We love talking about Pokemon. We love having you here to talk Pokemon. You know what I mean? Cause you and blessing got to go play Pokemon champions. We did. So just we battled each other too. We battled each other. We did. And like, I felt that. That's a good one. Jake Deckard from GameSpot. It was one less one. We're like, I loosely knew that Jake was into Pokemon competitive and then he reaffirmed it when I asked him like, Oh, how much are you looking forward to this? He's like, dude, I've been, this is something I've been waiting a long time for. I was like, damn. And then they ushered us into the room and they warned us. They're like, whoever you sit across from, that's the person you're going to battle. And I was like, Jake, get over here. Jake, we're going to battle. I can't wait to dive in. Jake, your preview on GameSpot is excellent. If you want to go check it out, GameSpot.com title. Pokemon champions is something we've needed for a long time. I like this graph from it. Based on my limited hands on time with champions, it's hard to say if it will be the end all be all of turn based Pokemon battles. But what I can say is that champions is something that Pokemon community has sorely needed for a long time. It shatters the barrier of entry for competitive Pokemon while keeping most of the depth intact. And it provides clear tutorials that on board players into the more technical aspects of battling. Perhaps the best thing about it, though, is that you can obtain training battle with a new Pokemon in minutes. I want to know so much about this game. But first, of course, this is the kind of funny games cast each and every week day. We run you through the biggest topics in video games, whether they be previews, reviews are just things we need to talk about. Of course, if you like that, be part of the show. Watch live YouTube.com slash kind of funny games where you can super chat your questions about Pokemon champions so we can get those answered from our panel of experts. Of course, I am just the new voice of Pokemon. You guys know Pokemon champions and tables washed. Wash. Does that shit? I see you in a far as God. Of course, thank you to our Patreon producers who make the show happen. Patreon.com slash kind of funny. Thank you. Carl Jacobs, Omega Buster and Delaney. The some twining. For now, let's begin the show with what is and forever will be the Roper report. No. Topic of the show. No. But it's like back to back. It's so hard. I know. Break the rhythm. You know what I mean. And I love it. Well, can we just bring the Roper reporter here? No. No. No. I don't like that. No. My contract says I can only do it for games. I appreciate that. Of course, your topic of the show is the Pokemon champions preview. if you've been living under a rock, Nintendo's official description is, battle with Pokemon against other players in the Pokemon Champions game. These single and double battles use familiar mechanics from previous Pokemon series games, such as Pokemon types, abilities, and moves, enabling the rich and varied battle strategies you may already know and love. It is coming April 8th of the Nintendo Switch, mobile devices later this year, when Nintendo continues to make a gigantic big deal about, is that this will be the primary platform for the video game championships at all play. Pokemon premiere events beginning with the Indianapolis regionals from May 29th to the 31st, ahead of its debut on the main stage at the 2026 Pokemon World Championships in August. Where, Timothy? San Francisco. That's right. Right here, baby. Can't wait. On top of all that, we'll get into this, but there is the base game and then there will be Pokemon Champions plus starter pack that'll launch on April 8th on the Nintendo eShop. That includes the base game and additional in-game bonuses that support early progression. I want to know how much you guys know about that. The pay to win out here for champions. I'm not a fan of, and of course, if you have a switch to the switch to, uh, you can look forward to an enhanced visual performance for Pokemon champions by downloading a free update on April 8th. I've said everything I need to say to get all of this out there. Blessing. Yes. We sent you to Pokemon HQ up North. Yes. Tell me about that up in Bellevue, which was really cool. Um, they didn't let us take any pictures, except for in the, in the lobby area, but obviously Pokemon company, there's a lot more to the office that they're like, they're very secretive of, right? Like, hey, don't even take selfies. Don't take any videos. Like if you want to take a picture, you can take it by this Pikachu over here. Um, but that was really cool. I feel like it's always, we go to video game studios all the time, but I feel like it's always cool when you go to something that's Nintendo because Nintendo feels like more of a rarity. That feels like more of a, oh, I might, I might never come back here again. I got to cherish while I'm here. So that was fun. But yes, of course, we got to go to check out Pokemon champions. And I think you set it up really well in so much of that, specifically when you bring up in Jake's preview where Jake mentions that shatters the barrier of entry for po, for competitive Pokemon while keeping most of the depth intact, right? That shattering the barrier of entry is the part that's most important for me because one of the reasons why I'm really happy to have Jake here is Jake is way more hardcore into Pokemon competitive. I am somebody who loves Pokemon and I am, I'm competitive curious. You know what I mean? Like I'm somebody who I like the idea of getting into the hardcore aspects of it, but I feel like the Pokemon games have never really been about that. You know what I mean? Like I'm playing Pokemon Leaf Green right now and I don't really have to think that hard about the movesets I have in Pokemon Leaf Green. Even as a kid, I came up playing so much Pokemon stadiums one and two. And those games did get hard, but like that's another one where it's like, I never really felt like that was, you know, putting me into that competitive PVP, like, you know, I'm, I'm tournament ready style Pokemon player. And so can I interject too? Go for it. As the new voice of Pokemon here, happy to carry this crown, Tim. You know what I mean? You did a great job for a long time. I'm happy to be, I was quoting so many articles for the 30th anniversary. I'm the same thing. And if you remember, I got laughed at on our shows because I had done a Greg where I was like, man, all of a sudden violence kicking my ass. I was like, I have Pokemon stupid idiot. And I was like, I've never had to think about matchups. I've never had actually think about moves and strategies in any of the other Pokemon's I've played. So that even like, I remember there's a joke that Andy likes to talk about where, you know, you're creating your Pokemon move set and like you look at a growl and it's like, why do I have growl here? Like put in like a quick attack or like a flamethrower or something, you know, all by moves or all my Pokemon are like offensive moves, which is, you know, not the way that I think a true competitive game would work, right? You want to have these moves like protect or whatever it is that I don't really get to think about. And so Pokemon champions has been exciting for me for the prospect of having an accessible way to play Pokemon competitively against people in a way that's official and it is just download and play. During our time with it, we got to play about an hour of Pokemon champions started off with a tutorial that breaks down very basic mechanics, but like it seems like there's some more intricate stuff that's in there that I'm excited to get into because again, like there are some mechanics I don't often think about, right? Like things like special attack that I actually do think about sometimes, but like there's more depth there that I'm sure Jake would be able to get into. We did the tutorials. We then recruited Pokemon and then we battled. I had a fun time with it. I'm very much looking forward to this game coming out for basically the reasons of I like the idea of having a way to just jump in and be able to battle Pokemon against each other. So I'm positive on the get go. To jump in, you did miss an important step. We recruited Pokemon, trained them and then battled. Yes. So traditionally, if you wanted to do something like that, say Charizard, you know, you start with your Charizard and you want to train it competitively, that could take hours. That could take an incredibly long time in order to get the stats, how you want them in order to get the right IVs. If you're resetting to get the right nature, there's all these different grindy aspects that I would say, like with newer releases, it's gotten easier and easier. But if you're still not into competitive and you decide to get in with Scarlet and Violet, there's still hours and hours and hours of onboarding that you need to do. And that's not even counting like the money you might have to spend in order to get legendary Pokemon from the other game that you don't have and play through the game in order to catch it. There's all these different steps that you need to go through before you can actually battle. And the other thing is too, is like, so you build your team, you go through all that work, you battle, you realize it doesn't work, and then you can't just like, there are ways, they're getting better about ways to reset your stats and sort of change things around, but that still takes time and resources and energy. And the way that like Pokemon Champions seems to me is competitive Pokemon is like a full-time job. Champions seems like it could be a part-time job. That's a good way to put it. Which may sound bad. It's a lot more fun than a job, but there is a lot of time you need to invest in order to like fully understand how competitive works. And now obviously you don't need to like put, you know, you don't need to invest as much as some of these pro players in order to enjoy the competitive side, but I feel like to get that base knowledge and those base teams ready takes a lot. Yes. I think that full-time versus part-time thing is such a really, really great way to put it. One of the things that I came out of this game thinking about was Magic Arena. But I know it's right before this, we were talking about... Well, that's just you're awake. If you're awake, you're going to get out of the magic. If I'm awake, I'm thinking about Magic Arena, right? But right before this, me and Jake were talking about Magic, and Magic Arena is a mobile slash PC title where you can just like get into, uh, Magic the Gathering, Magic is against people online. You collect cards, you play online, but it's a way if you're just like trying to get into the competitive thing quicker online, that's the app for it. This feels like in ways like it's Magic Arena for Pokemon, where it's a way to recruit Pokemon or import them from Pokemon home, build a team, make it easy, use your VP, which is kind of like the currency in the game. Those are your, I believe, victory points is what that stands for. Use that to adjust your skills and like adjust your abilities and all that stuff, and then go in there and battle Pokemon in ranked or unranked modes, right? It feels very like straight to the point and straightforward in a way that I don't know is going to appeal to the large amount of Pokemon fans. Like this feels like such a more niche Pokemon product, which is funny because you think of battles as being one of the main things in Pokemon, but battles in a weird way can get hardcore. Like when I, when I battled against Jake, right? In my mind, I'm like, all right, well, we recruited like four Pokemon, we're creating these teams of six, right? Like there's only so much that a hardcore player can do against me. Like we're on the same plane. Did he just clown you? He fucking clowned me out. Yeah, I have to imagine set up like tailwind turn one and then just swept through everything. I felt bad. Yeah. But it was fun though, because like for me, that was the proof of the pudding of like, oh, if you're good at Pokemon, like there is a such thing as, oh, you're fucking great at Pokemon. Like, you know what you're doing. But Jake, I'm curious to hear more of your top level thoughts with it. But I think to your point, I'm really curious to see how much of the audience actually wants to get invested in competitive Pokemon and this side of Pokemon. Like, yes, sure, it's much easier. And there are all these quality of life things and these these these things that make it more approachable. But like to your point, like how many people actually want to get that invested into the competitive side? I think a lot. I really, you know, as a lifelong Pokemon fan and somebody that like has played these games, there's such a big part of my life. Like I similar what Bless is saying, it's like I play these games, I catch them all, I do the battles, I know how to beat the games, but I don't know how to actually be good at the games. And it's always surprised me how much the games are not the games at all. They don't tell you all the stuff you're talking about, the setting up tailing and all that. It's like that's, they don't ever explain it. They don't explain IVs. They don't explain EVs. They don't explain how to explain like special physical attack splits. Exactly. And like pretty much any game, they just don't explain it. They don't explain it. That is so core important. And so I've never really been into the VGC side of it in that way because of how daunting it all was. But the closest I got was with Scarlet and Violet, this generation, because I got so into that game and I've did everything that game had to offer, including a lot of the raids. And the raids were incredibly difficult. Like they were, it's like the hardest things I've ever done in a Pokemon game by far. And because you had the EV train, right? You had the EV train. Had to like, go, what is it, Shellbel for certain things? All that stuff, helping hand and all this stuff. It's like, I started playing Pokemon at a level I've never played and it, it made me realize like, I just, I knew, oh, IVs, EVs, I don't really know what they were, but I knew they were a thing. I learned, it's like wave dashing and smash. You know what I mean? Yeah, exactly. Right. And like, I remember, I remember learning about wave dashing and smash like maybe five years ago and being like, whoa, that's a thing. And last week when we went to Bellevue, that's when I learned what an IV was. I had never heard of an IV. So I want to stop then. So I don't know what an IV is. I don't know what's going on. And my question, even before you take it, even just the top level, did the tutorials teach you or did Jake teach you? Like what, like, what did the game, so the way they set it up, we didn't actually get to play through all the tutorials. They're like four specific tutorials they wanted us to play. And honestly, they're, they were so basic. Were they brain dead? Yeah. They're like, this is how you Pokemon battle. And I'm like, brother, I'm here. Like honestly, I wish they put us into some more of the advanced, advanced stuff. And so it was from Jake that I was hearing about IVs to, we should make it clear. IVs aren't in the game. Yes. It was a big deal for Jake. Yeah. That is, that is a question I asked thinking I wouldn't get an answer because the competitive side has been so like up in arms about whether or not IVs will be in the game. So I was like, oh, I'll ask. And the director straight up said they're not in there. But for those who don't know, IVs are basically like stats that a Pokemon is born with that affect, I don't know if they necessarily affect its growth, but they kind of affect the stat spread in a way. And basically what this would do is it makes it so like, you know, say we both have a halucha on your favorites, I know, right? Of course. And I have a higher attack IV than you, even though they're the same level, maybe they have the same EVs, we're using the same move, mine would still do a little more damage because of that. Okay. So it basically makes the same Pokemon slightly different in order to kind of make Pokemon feel different. And for a long time, these stats were mostly hidden. Like in older games, players would have to like do tests in order to see what those IVs are. The scientific research, of course. Yeah. Later games have actually introduced like whether or not these are good. However, they don't even give number values. They'll just say, this IV is best thing, right? Yeah, they'll say this is best. This is no good. And you know, fans, of course, know what that means number wise, but you don't have those numbers. I went on that whole rant, say they're gone and changed, which is kind of going to be controversial, I think. But I think it's the right move, I think. Okay. So with my experience with the raids, right, that opened my eyes to these IVs, these EVs, how to even train them, the hyper training, bottle caps, like all the stuff that like, would you believe was in a Pokemon game? It's like, you have to do so much stuff that they, the game not only doesn't explain to you, it's so convoluted, like the way to train your Pokemon to get to the level to be able to be competitive. It is a game to itself. You need to look at wikis, you need to follow all of these things that like really blew my mind and then you get into it. And then the strategies, if you, once you train them, I'm going into these raids, I'm just getting my ass kicked. You need to do teamwork. You need to understand how your moves are affecting. I say all this to say, I get to the point that for the first time, IVs, EVs, natures, abilities, these things all matter to me. Can you explain all of those things? Like just in one sentence, what's an IV, what's an EV, what's an ability? So as I said, IVs are stats Pokemon are born with, EVs are stats that are gained by training throughout the game. Another way to make each Pokemon kind of feel different, despite being the same species, natures determine like what stats they will grow more efficiently in. And usually there's a trade off. So there's one stat, it'll grow more efficiently in and there's one, it won't. Famous ones are like, I think, adamant, which increases attack and decreases special attacks. So if you have an attacker Pokemon, you'd want to give them that. I might be wrong on the exact stat there of what that does. And then what else was it? Natures. Natures. Oh, no, I just said ability. Ability. And then abilities are like, they're like passive. They're like passive abilities. But the thing is, is most Pokemon have more than one. Actually, every Pokemon has more than one and some have secret abilities, which before could only be gotten through like very convoluted ways. Now there's items that actually let you change ability, but still that would cost a lot of polka dollars, which would mean you have to grind out money in order to make that happen. I think I got everything. Shout out the IV stands for individual value. And then somebody just says EV stands for effort value. Okay. Yeah. And so to get even more into it. So the way effort values work in traditional Pokemon games is there's 512 effort values in total. A stat can have 256 or 252. I think technically 252, I think is what it can have. I love this by the way. And four EVs equal one stat point because it couldn't just be an even amount. It had to be this. In Pokemon champions, you just have, I think, 66 stats that you can divide and each one equals one point in that stat. So it gets rid of this whole convoluted system. And all these are represented with number values because in the mainline games, they are not represented. There's a little graph and you know you've maxed it when it sparkles. But if you want to do more complicated spreads, say you want some in attack, some in speed, you want some in defense, some in this, you just have to keep track of the math as you're giving them vitamins or you're equipping something. Can we call Jake kind of funny Pokemon professor? Get him a lab coat. Next time. Next time. I'll bring the lab coat. One of the things to really back into Pokemon champions, the game, right? One of the things speaking about IVs, EVs, and specifically natures and abilities, one of the things that I was blown away by, you know, Jake talks about how this game kind of pairs down a lot of like the time you need to put in. You can go into a train menu for these Pokemon and essentially like move the meters back and forth. You can like look at your Pokemon's move list and go, all right, I'm going to take out flame power. I'm going to put in ember, right? I'm going to yeah, basically choose from the list of moves that that Pokemon can learn. On the bottom left of that same menu, you can change the nature of your Pokemon so that your stats can align in a specific way. You see the stat points, you can move those up, move those down, whether it be HP attack, defense, special or speed, right? And like the abilities as well, you can go in there and choose a different ability for your Pokemon. So you can tweak, mix and match in seconds as opposed to however long it takes. Like is that endless? Like are you just allowed to do all of that or do you need to get these victory points to be able to unlock the stuff to be able to do that? So that's the thing I don't think we have like a full grasp on. So you absolutely need to use your victory points in order to change, manipulate these sort of stats and moves. However, it's hard to say like how much you get for winning, how much you get by completing missions. So I don't quite know how the whole economy of it works, I would say. I don't think, I mean, that's one of the things that's for an hour long preview, you know, that's impossible to kind of get a read on. And like, I think that's going to be one of the big factors on how people take to this game is how generous is it with the VP, because VP is also used for recruiting Pokemon permanent. Oh, we got the Professor Jack. Oh yeah, per Jake. This is perfect. I love it. So VP, again, your main currency, Chad already said it's Professor Jake from the spot region. So there you go. There you go. Pokemon Professor Jake is in the building. VPs are main currency for like buying and purchasing things, right? One of the main things you can do with VP, along with all the stat, stat adjustment and stuff is recruit Pokemon permanently. So Pokemon recruitment, interesting in this game, you get one free recruitment a day. What happens is that you go to the recruitment 22 hours, technically, I think I don't know why. Yeah, they were like every 22 hours, you get to recruit a new Pokemon. So I was like racking my brain trying to figure out why 22 hours and I was like, I don't know. It's probably some way to like get more like maybe it's like a global we're trying to make it a I don't know. That's a weird thing. How do we recruit? So you go to the recruitment you get you're hanging off, forget the name of the character, but there's a character that's like welcome on in and it's like a farm kind of thing. Sure. Sure. And then basically 10 Pokemon appear in a lineup. You can choose one of these Pokemon a day for free. Okay. That Pokemon is is yours for a trial period. It's not yours permanently. Okay. However, you can recruit Pokemon permanently by recruiting via your VP points, which is the same thing. You spend VP, you get these choices of 10 Pokemon, you choose one, and that is actually now your Pokemon now. Okay. So that's one way that you can recruit Pokemon and add Pokemon to your team. The other way to do it would be to import Pokemon from Pokemon home. And of course, games compatible with home. I assume the latest like Pokemon Scarlet and Violet probably is compatible. I don't is is Zaw compatible? Not yet. Not yet. But it should be. Yeah. And like fire red, leaf green will eventually be compatible. So you put those Pokemon and they come in with their level or early levels are just flat. So I think all the stats are based on level 50 Pokemon. So no matter what level you're thrown it in, it should be set to 50. All the style hell yeah. Pokemon go as well as compatible with home. So like you can import your home Pokemon in here. And then from there, yeah, you go in and train and make your team and like give them the items and do all that stuff. So that was one of the first things that they showed us as well. Am I missing anything there? For the recruit stuff? Don't think so. There's the starter pack. I know they talked about Greg that you had. Yeah, I was wondering what the upsell is upcharge. If we know anything like that on it. I'm going to pull up the page because I actually haven't so see I have it. But for my page, it just says not available. I don't know if there's some. So I think at the end of the trailer they released yesterday, the starter pack includes extra box space. It said like 50 plus extra box space. It includes some tickets that let you recruit Pokemon without using VP and some tickets to change stats. And I think some like extra battle music. I don't think they've announced a price at least in the United States. They have in Japan and I've seen people try to like convert the yen into the dollar to see how much it's going to cost. But I don't think that's very accurate given like how different are, you know, like I wouldn't take that as a one to one. Yeah. Are all Pokemon created equal? Like getting rid of the IVs here. So if you have a Pikachu that you're recruiting from champions versus a Pikachu that you are taking from home and putting in is essentially the level 50. They're just like making everybody equal there. But could two Pikachu be different even if you make all the same stat changes? They should be the same. Okay. Still, I think. So like no matter where you take it from, I'm pretty sure they will all be set to sort of the same level, same stats. I think their EVs might be different depending on how you train them in the game. And like their moves will be different, their abilities could be different. But in terms of like stats, they should be the same. From what I understand. I want to keep going with the preview. I want to get this super chat and remember super chat on YouTube.com slash kind of funny games. Phil, the trucker says, my first shift from casual Pokemon to entry level competitive was the card game on iOS. And I'm excited to get into competitive battles outside of the card game. And I think that's what's interesting to the top of this is it going to bring in more people as I'm interested to go in here and learn Pokemon from a new perspective. I wonder if I will ever be good enough that if we're just sitting around here like playing, if I'd actually be able to hang with anybody, but I'm excited to try. I'm excited to learn. I'm excited to at least do the tutorials and then take that information back to the other Pokemon games I play and try to do that against the computer and school their ass. Like I'm sure Jake does. But before we talk any more, I want to remind everybody that we couldn't do this kind of amazing content and have cool lab coats on demand. If you were supporting us with a kind of funny membership, of course you can pick up a kind of funny membership YouTube.com slash kind of funny games, Apple Spotify, Patreon.com slash kind of funny and get all of our shows ad free. Get your daily dose of me. Greg Miller in a series we call Greg way. And of course get good karma for supporting an 11 person, 11 year old small business. But right now you're not using your benefits. So here's a word from our sponsor. 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It sounds like it could get predatory pretty quickly. Just making assumptions here, but I'm a little concerned. Why wouldn't I just take my my Pokemon from Pokemon home and just put them in there and not worry about any of that? Good question. So you could totally do that, it seems. So as long as that Pokemon can be used in Pokemon champions, like we don't exactly know the roster of Pokemon that'll be available in champions. Did you see Hallucha? I think Hallucha is one of the trailers. So I think like, yeah, I think that'll kind of be the equalizer with people who don't want to pay for all this sort of stuff. The thing is though is Pokemon home still costs money. So they're like getting in one way or another. Right? Yeah. Yeah. One of the things to point out too, we did a group interview afterwards with the dev and I forget who it was that asked this, Jake, you might know, but somebody asked about or somebody pointed out that, Hey, the Pokemon that we're seeing in this game, they're all final evolution forms. Are there Pokemon that aren't, that are like pre final evolution in here? And they confirm like right now they're final evolution. They don't have that. Like maybe down the line, more Pokemon get added. And like it sounds like this is something that's going to be updated. It's a live service style thing, right? But at launch, yeah, like all these or most of these at least are final evolution Pokemon, which I thought was really interesting. I think I just assumed that all the Pokemon were going to be available here. And they're not. Are there any non final evolution Pokemon that are competitively viable at all? Because isn't it just by definition, like their stats are better? Actually, quite a few, really, which is kind of interesting. So there is an item called EVO light, which basically powers up the defenses of an unevolved Pokemon. So people do some strange strategies like, like what was the the tenac, the tenacro from Scarlet, the tenacro from Scarlet and Violet, like people would give that an EVO light and it would crush in certain formats, right? Or I think a really famous one is like Chansey. If you give it to Chansey, he just becomes a brick wall because unevolved. So there are actually strategies from those unevolved Pokemon, but I kind of get why they may be leaving that out at launch only because that is adds a bunch of extra mechanics, Pokemon to the mix. Some that are kind of confusing. I built a team around Mercro with an EVO light and no one takes it seriously because it's a dumb little bird that just sweeps the team. Not sweeps the team, but sets up a team to sweep and cannot get knocked out. Yeah. This is awesome. I'm a little bummed. I think I'm more bummed about the lack of unevolved Pokemon than the lack of IVs because IVs can be a pain to manage and figure out and sort of get where you want it, especially if you want Pokemon with like zero speed IV or zero attack IV can be an absolute pain. But like EVO light is kind of straightforward. So I don't know. I like Mercro. Mercro is awesome. The IV conversation I know is a big debate already. Cutting through it, let me ask you, is this something people are mad about because they've invested a lot of time in it and something's changing or is it just like, hey, now we don't need to worry about something annoying. This is a good thing. So I think part of it is maybe the time investment, but I think it's more so there is a strategy that people use called trick room. And basically what it does is it makes the slowest Pokemon on the field attack first. So when people have people will try to get Pokemon with zero attack IV so they can assure that their Pokemon will attack before that same Pokemon with a high attack IV. So I think what it'll do is you'll see less viability for trick room in general. To be fair, I didn't even see trick room when I was going through all the stuff. So I don't even know if trick room will be in it. So I think that could be an issue. There's also a move called foul play, which I'm sure people are familiar with, but that takes the attack of a Pokemon and uses it against them. So a lot of times when you have a special attack or you always want zero attack IVs, so your attack doesn't get used against you. So that gives us a buff to foul play. There's I'm sure other minor cases, but I think those are kind of the two big ones that people are most worried about. But I think the meta will adapt to whatever that is, which I'm getting probably two into the thick of it. But I think the meta will adapt. I think best case scenario is that it'll make Pokemon that previously weren't viable because of their speed tier, maybe more viable. Best case scenario, but I don't know. So hard to tell. Professor in this vein, we have a super chat from C Berry who says, Jake, are there any moves, abilities or changes you've seen that'll make a big splash for the high level competitive play? Also welcome back to him. I haven't seen moves in particular that are different. What I have seen, actually Wolfi VGC, he's like one of the best Pokemon players he pointed out because he was at a different event than us. And you notice that the PP has been changed a little bit. I saw this. Which smaller PP or bigger PP? Well, depends on the move. Does it work or no work? I think one of the biggest ones he pointed out was for Protect, which I think went down from 16 to eight or something like that, which is a very big adjustment for competitive Pokemon and Protect being a move that you're going to use a lot. Usually most of Pokemon will have Protect. And so stuff like that seems interesting. The unique mechanic that I have here currently was mega evolution, which they've shown off in the trailers and stuff. One of the questions that was asked during the group interview was, could we get like cross gen mechanics? Could we get like a mega evolution versus a gigantic max? And they did say that they're considering more mechanics outside of just mega evolution. And so it seems like that's on the table, which is interesting. The announcement showed off terastalization, I think, but this was years ago. So I have to imagine terastalization would be in it at some point, but also that trailer showed like a mega fighting a terastalized Pokemon. The bracelet, right? And it had all the different It's omnie something. Sick. Omni watch. It's like something like that. Yeah, Omni ring. Omni ring, Sounds like some Green Lantern type shit. Yeah. Is this the trailer? Or is this just footage? I think this is footage. Yeah, cool. Just make sure. Super weird question, but something I noticed was it looks like on your side you see your HP numbers and on their side it's a percentage. Yes. What's up with that? I think it's just so you have more information. You know, I think previously you don't actually see what number their HP is at. I think you just get the bar. I could be wrong. And I think this is just extra information. Like why is it different? Like why is the percentage versus like the actual number? I think their health is supposed to be like a mystery to you as far as like what the actual number is. That'd be my guess. So you don't, you're not, you know, doing the math. Yeah, you don't want to do the rain man it. It was fun doing these doubles matches. So like that was one of the things where I was interested to see what Jake would choose when me and him went up against each other of, all right, are we going to do singles or doubles? And you immediately were like, oh yeah, let's do a doubles match. Right. And I overheard other people at their stations be like, oh yeah, doubles is the way is doubles like the competitive, like is that the, all right, this is the way to play. That's, that's sort of the standard. I mean, when they do the champions or the worlds in San Francisco, all the professionals are playing doubles. A lot of these different events are doubles. There are like side tournaments where they'll do singles, but I think singles is kind of interesting because it limits your potential and, and how Pokemon play off each other in a way that I wouldn't say waters down the experience because I know there are some people who play singles that are just, they think about it in a completely different way, but for a majority of competitive players, they stick to doubles. I would encourage people who've, you know, been playing Pokemon for a long time, didn't really care much for doubles, maybe if they pick up this and they want to get into competitive, I would just go right to doubles. I don't even think I'd spend too much time doing singles unless you're in it for that sort of Pokemon stadium vibe, where you just want to like get some Pokemon together with your friend and battle it out. Do you have any control over what your character looks like or is it just you're tossed in? For our preview, we were just tossed in, but I did look at the wardrobe and it seems like there are tons of options. There were no options to choose from in the build itself, but you can, you could like focus in on the hair, the glasses, you know, so I think there's going to be plenty of that. I'll be looking good as I lose every battle. The overview trailer did mention you can use VP to buy items like classic items for your trainer. There's also different Pokeball throwing styles. The animation was really cool. And then also you can- And Scarlet had that too. There's also like unique battle music, which I thought was cool. When we battled, they had like the traditional like Gen 1 style battle music. Yeah, which got me hype and I was curious about that. One of the things I asked to was like, are there different stadiums that we could like choose from? I didn't, they said they are, there are different arenas in the game, but they didn't really go into like how to choose them. So I don't know if they're mode specific or if there's, you end up having like an arena selection, but- I mean, the one thing I did notice kind of on that is, you know, the tutorial had a different arena than the actual battles themselves. Yeah, I wonder if it's more mode specific. I think it might be mode specific. Yeah. Demon Hacker says, is there an announcer in this? I don't believe so. I don't think so. Yeah, that's the dream for me. That is something that- I can bring up audio here just to be sure. I'm- Yeah, no, I don't remember there being an announcer. I mean, it'd be crazy these days to like have that many lines of dialogue. Yeah, so many, but you know. It'd be worth it though. That's the point of this. Yeah, that's the thing is, you know, I'm coming into this as somebody who loved Pokemon Stadium and very obviously like it's this game, oh, Mousehold, I love Mousehold. This game isn't Pokemon Stadium, but it does scratch the itch in a very interesting way. Like it's Pokemon Stadium, if Pokemon Stadium was specifically locked in and focused on like, we want to usher in hardcore battles, we want to usher in PvP battles, right? Pokemon Stadium had a lot more going on as far as, yeah, the announcer, the- Mini games. Different modes. Mini games. Gym Leader Castle, right? Like Pokemon Stadium felt way more like a full-fledged game, whereas this feels a bit more like a tool slash app. Like it is a game, don't get me wrong, I don't want to insult it by saying it's not a game, it is a game, but it feels a bit more dialed in as far as what it wants to be and how it wants you to play it, which is we just want to find a way to have people battle each other in a way that's official and easy. Yeah, I also think too, something like Champions, even if you're not really into the competitive side or this doesn't really interest you, I think it does have exciting implications for the future of Pokemon, right? Because now that they have this battle simulator that in theory they will continue to update, continue to support, they can take more risks with how battles work in future games. I mean, we saw in ZA where they switched to real-time battles, which was cool, it was a nice change of pace, but I'd hope that like, they can really kind of just play around with how battles work, maybe try different styles, different ideas that, you know, you couldn't do in a mainline game normally because you might just be alienating a, maybe not giant part of the community, but a important part of the community, right? So I'm really curious to see where they go and like, you know, wins and waves. We hardly know anything other than that trailer, but I wonder if they're cooking up some like different battle style. It definitely brings me back. I remember talking, I think it was to Tim actually about this, maybe last year or so, this is pre-Pokémon ZA, and I think Tim brought up the idea of like, they could experiment with battles in like mainline Pokemon games, and like, I didn't believe it, now I believe it, right? Like to Jake's point, this feels like them preserving what this is, and yeah, this opens up that potential of like, yeah, if Pokemon wins and waves is different, like if you want traditional Pokemon battling, we got it right here in Pokemon Champions. So this is going to be, I mean, obviously we would already talk about what they use at Worlds, but in addition to that, this is now going to be competitive Pokemon going forward. You are into competitive Pokemon. How does that function with like, Scarlet and Violet, there's these seasons, and that's going to continue with Champions. What's a season look like? I guess we don't entirely know what will be with Champions, but I would say with Pokemon, Scarlet and Violet, a lot of it just had to do with which Pokemon were allowed and weren't. So like, some seasons they'd bring in legendaries, some seasons they'd bring in banned Pokemon that you could use, and that would change team building, that would change out which Pokemon are viable. My guess with Champions is they will do something similar, but I have to imagine they'll also change out sort of the battle gimmick, right? Like we're getting Megazit launch, I wouldn't be surprised if maybe the next season they bring back Thracilization or Z moves, I hope not, but like, you know, I guess it could happen. They look cool. Yeah. But so do you think that the changes are going to be more like, season based in the sense of like, oh, we're promoting something. So these Pokemon are like, the new movies coming out, so they're available, or is it going to be more like meta focused on tournament? I could see it would be a bit of both, I think. You know, I think like when a new Pokemon games comes out and they add in 100 Pokemon, I would fully predict them to do a season just highlighting the new decks and you can use all the Pokemon from Wind and Waves decks in order to make a team, and that's what people are working with that time. And then maybe another season, there could be like, this is all speculation, but maybe there's, you know, another Detective Pikachu movie coming out or something like that. And there's some exclusive, not exclusive Pokemon, but some Pokemon themed around Detective Pikachu. But it's really hard to say, because we don't even entirely know what the restrictions will be for this first inaugural season. One of the things I want to shout out, right, the game comes out officially in April 8th. It's coming to mobile later. One of the things I'm sad about is that it's not coming to mobile alongside for sure. I'm, you know, historically not somebody that's into playing games on my phone. However, Magic Arena has changed me to where now I'm like, treadmill game. It's a dude, this is going to be my new treadmill game. And I cannot wait for it for that. Like I can easily see a C taking over for that, but I can't wait for this to come to mobile. I think that'll also kind of increase the reach dramatically as far as how many hands you can get this in. Definitely in terms of installs, right? Yeah. I'm off the success of Pokemon go and that for so many people that are the, you know, sleeper agent Pokemon fans that haven't done it forever, a free game to jump jump in, try to be a free game to battle Pokemon on your phone. I think that's going to speak to so many people coming back to the Greg you're talking about, like wanting to get into this, right? As more of a casual person who maybe could learn something, right? Like, I think I'm right there with you. And one of the things they have here, one is ranked, which I think is going to be good for us, right? Hey, here's a way for us to play against people that are our skill level. And so ranked is always great for that. They also have auto team creation to where your bank of Pokemon, like you hit the auto team creation button, it'll make the best possible team for you. And so I think that'll be good for the me and use as well. Along with that, oh, I had something else I lost it. Oh, one of the things I wanted to talk about was the UI. I really like the UI of this video game. We 10 pointed out the percentages of like the health for the opposing team. But even when you're choosing your Pokemon, right? Like you go in with that six and they'll show you what the other players team is. And for doubles, you are choosing four Pokemon to go out with. And so like, it's really cool being able to see the side by side and going, all right, I know they have Halucha, Charizard, XYZ thing. I'm gonna pick in four each. Okay, I'm gonna go with this, this, this and this. And you get in there and like, it all looks good. The art style of champions, I feel like modern Pokemon hasn't had my favorite art style, obviously, or I'm not gonna say obviously, it doesn't look bad is what I'll say. But like, I wish Pokemon could look more flashy. I think it gets the job done. But the UI is something where I'm like, okay, I like how that looks, though, I think the UI looks looks nice. Yeah, there's some nice quality of life stuff in the UI too. Like now, like for a while, Pokemon is denoted denoted if something is infinite attack is super effective or not very effective, but they have extra word is to tell you if it's like four times effective versus Oh, nice. Okay, or minus two times effective or or I don't minus two times effective or minus four times effective, whatever. And there's also more descriptive moves. So like if you go to the menu and look at what a move does, it'll call out mechanics that like have been mechanics, but they don't really call out like even this boost ice type attacks by Pokemon 50%. Normally, they wouldn't have the 50%. They just say boost ice attacks, you know, so there's an extra level of transparency that I think is also really good that I think comes along with the UI. I do also want to shout out the animations, right? I think when I talk about the look of it, I'm talking more so about the character models, but the animations I think are good. I think it was Zap Cannon that I used, or I was like, this is fucking sick. Or like, I think I used Surf at one point against you and it was just like the entire field was just like, yeah, which is like flooded. Like that's some of my favorite stuff of Pokemon Stadium when they would go super hard as far as what those animations were and they're all unique, right? Yeah, so cool. I just wish they had the announcer. No, I'm thinking about that now. Jake, I got another question for, I'm sorry, Professor, I got another question for you from Superchats. Spall23 writes in, it says, as a huge fan of the site Pokemon Showdown for battling, parentheses, Jake will know. I'm curious if Champions has a random battle feature without team building. From what I could tell, I think the closest thing is what Blessing was talking about, where you can like auto build a team. Okay. But I don't think there's something quite like that. I don't know. Maybe it's something that could be added, but it doesn't seem like there's a button where you can just like, all right, just give me six random Pokemon and I want to try to make this work. And also to that point, like, I know, I'm sure some people might be worried about like, well, are people still going to be using Showdown? I still think Showdown has its uses, which is basically a team builder. Essentially, it gives you all those tools, you can adjust everything to the minutiae and test those teams out. I think that'll still be useful for people who really want to dig in and kind of pre team build before wasting their VP resources. Sure. So I think that'll still be useful for a lot of people as well. Another thing I want to shout out, it seems like this game is purely PVP. Like in the battle menu, I didn't really see an option for like fighting against a bot. Now, of course, it's probably the thing of like, why would you want to, but I always think the option is nice. Like in the battle menu, right? It's ranked battles, casual battles, private battles, and online competitions. Yeah, I didn't see it either. And I think that might be one of the bigger missed opportunities if there's not bot battles. I think just giving a safer spot to test out teams, people who are learning can maybe try out some strategies against a bot rather than going into like an actual match with someone who is doing some crazy trying hard gimmick. And you're just like, all right, well, this could work, but it's not going to work with whatever nonsense this player is doing. So I hope we see something like that. But I do think like, you know, you're talking about like the fans of stadium who might just want to like do a Pokemon battle those stakes. I think having sort of bots would be very important. Yeah. But do you think there's going to be a home in this game for the people that despite this game being the new home of real competitive, that do just want to play competitive Pokemon the way that we did when we were kids? Like is that going to exist? Or do you think that those people are just not going to have a good time? Well, I mean, there are private matches. So you should still be able to like, you know, one on one play with someone in the office. It's not all matchmaking based. So there is that aspect. And I think, I think people get used out of that. But like, I don't know, like, how often did you return to something like stadium over the years, right? Like, maybe not a whole lot. Yeah, just for the games like you played. I played a lot of stadium. Yeah, I was also a kid. It was one of my six games. So yeah. But I think that kind of like is my big question. Like this puts competitive Pokemon in a place for like anyone should be able to give it a shot and try. But I'm curious how many people may not actually want to go that deep and just kind of want to load it up and screw around. Yeah, like I know, I know because of what my personality is, like I have more faith in me getting into it because I'm sticky when it comes to games that like want me to get sweaty. You know what I mean? Like I'm sticky when it's a Magic Arena or like a competitive game, but like a Greg, right? Like I got fingers crossed that Greg's going to be into it, but I could also see Greg being like, ah, shit. No, people are trying too hard in this thing. I'm bouncing off to the next thing. Yeah. I think that's, you know, my, my concern as well, that I'm going to jump in and do the tutorials, but it'll be so much like magic where you and I started, you and I fell in love with magic on the exact same stream. Yes. But then my real life got in the way, right? Of being a dad and all that stuff, whereas you were able to just commit to it to where I can never play with you again because like, I don't even remember. I'd have to go tutorial. I don't say that. You know, and then, but so like for me, being able to log in only do a PVP thing. If I'm always ranked garbage, you know what I mean? Like, I don't know where it'll be. Like I almost want another, like another mode or something in the game that is going to be more sticky for a casual audience. But at that point it's like, well, you can also just boot up. That's my thing. It's like, I'll go do, there's other Pokemon. Yeah. I was going to say how I'm going to go, but I'll, you know, go play, try to catch them all in violent. Yeah. Going that way. I definitely do also like, because so I've been playing Pokemon since red and blue. Red was the first game I ever owned. So, you know, I have a lot of strong feelings towards the Pokemon series. Yeah. And I remember third generation, people were starting to talk about competitive and I was like, this is something I want to get into. And I remember just looking at it and be like, no, no way. I'm not going to do. So I do like, you know, I think of like a younger generation who's really into Pokemon. They're playing the games and they see this competitive side. And I think champions though is will be a very good way to sort of get people interested in that and get a younger audience in the competitive, which I think is super important for just the competitive scene. And like, to be honest, there has been a ton of growth in the competitive scene. Like we talked about worlds coming to San Francisco. I think they were here what, like 11 years ago and they like build a ballroom in a hotel. And now it's like the Moscone Chase Center. It's grown like exponentially. So I think there is a very real opportunity for this to like really blow up the scene. But I think for me, it still comes down to like, is that what a lot of the audience wants though? I don't know. Well, we won't have to wait long to find out again, Pokemon Champions comes to the switch April, April, Moldovice is later this year. You assume they're working with everybody they possibly have to have it before worlds on mobile, right? Hopefully. I mean, maybe mobile or maybe worlds is the debut. Yeah, the debut. Of course, it is August here in San Francisco. Worlds will be covering it. We'll be there. My gut tells me that the mobile version's finished. They just want people playing on switch. Sure. You know, totally. I think, I think it'll be before worlds for sure. Okay. Well, Jake, thank you so much for taking the time to hang out with us today. Is there anything I didn't ask you that you guys anything else you want, you didn't talk about that you want to talk about? I mean, one thing is, we kind of mentioned it, but just to reiterate, there has been stuff announced about like pricing and all the different models. There's the starter pack, there's season passes, there's like a monthly subscription or some sort of subscription, it seems. We don't know how any of that works, at least on a monetary level. And I think that is sort of my big holdout. And I know we touched on it, but just to reiterate, I have no idea how that's going to work. Yeah, that could really affect how I feel about it now. I would say 100%. Well, crazy that you will know in two weeks. You know, they sent you there to play the damn thing and didn't give you any of that information. That's never a great sign. It's never a great sign for what their monetization strategy will be. But of course, we'll be covering here on Games Daily, I'm sure, when it comes up. Of course, we'll get a Gamescast place in this, hopefully a review to some degree. We'll see. But Jake, where can people keep up with you? GameSpot. Okay. Yeah, GameSpot. I did a breakdown video, also the article that we referenced, and then some other fun little social videos we got out of it. You can find me at JacobDec on Instagram. That's all I use. So perfect. Well, thanks for making the time here. Everybody, of course, thank you for making the time to hang out with us and hear about Pokemon champions. Remember, of course, we're a live talk show network, meaning the shows rarely ever stop right after this. We're right into this stream. Can Nick and Mike keep another business afloat or will it fail? Is what they're wondering as they go back to their video store business in retro rewind. You can catch that stream later. Of course, if you're watching live Twitch, YouTube, of course, wherever you are, like, subscribe, share. 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