The 'Shroom:Issue 147/Strategy Wing

Director Notes
Written by:

Welcome to the other side of E3 2019, Strategy Wing readers! I hope the show gave everyone reading this at least one game to look forward to. You'll also note that this is the first issue of The 'Shroom out while Awards season is in full-swing, so please forgive me if I join Anton in suggesting that you vote in the polls for the Mario Awards and Fail Awards on the Main Page after you read through what all of our writers have to offer this month. And please, as you read this month's issue, be sure to look at the Community Dossier and use it to help you cast your votes for the Community Awards. If voting doesn't fill your need for Awards, start thinking about presentations you can make, or head to the forum to take part in various tournaments.

That's enough about Awards for now, though. Let's get on to Strategy Wing. I don't have any announcements for you, but what words I lack our writers deliver. We have our full suite of regular sections for you this month, so let me direct your attention to them, rather than keep you occupied up here. Go read the five sections we have for you this month, and, when you're done with those, don't forget to vote in Mach Speed Mayhem while you go off to vote for Awards.

Before you go, please let me remind you that we're always looking for new analytical or instructional sections for Strategy Wing. If you’re feel you have any kind of idea, read through our sign-up page, and send your application to our Statistics Manager, LudwigVon. Don’t hesitate to contact myself or other members of The ‘Shroom Staff if you have any questions!

Section of the Month An illuminating section on Ampharos wins section of the month for last month. He also takes second with his exploration of Mario Kart 8's SNES Rainbow Road, while gets third with his coverage of Octoman. Thank you all for writing, reading, and voting!

Meta Knight's Dream Land Journal
Written by:

I stood below the sky by the Fountain of Dreams and observed the stars, having completed my quest of finding all of the switches for Kirby's Adventure. It appeared that the sun and the moon were fighting. I shall investigate the situation to assist Kirby on his journey to handle it. Rumor has it that Galactic Nova can grant a wish of any kind, so perhaps that is the solution to this predicament. To summon Galactic Nova, the power of the stars must be obtained from each planet. I believe this should be doable. I will use the Halberd to fly to the various planets to gain intel, and it should be of great value to Kirby. I shall call this journey, Milky Way Wishes!

Milky Way Wishes:

Something about the atmosphere in this environment is off. It appears Kirby will not be able to use his copy abilities from swallowing enemies. Hmm.... it appears that Kirby will need to use a modified Ability Trophy to gain the power permanently. He will then be able to use it whenver he desires. I will search the planets for these as well to make his task easier. I shall call them, Copy Essence Deluxe! I went up to the helm of my battleship, and blasted off to my first destination.

??? When I analyzed my map of all the planets, I found something very peculiar. There was a planet in the shape of a star smaller than Planet Popstar. It lay between Skyhigh and Cavius. I decided to go there and landed Halberd on the surface. I found myself swarmed by Tac. They are known to steal abilities from unsuspecting citizens. I made my way through the barrage and entered the door. There was several more Tac as well as Bomber. Despite most enemies failing to let Kirby utilize his copy ability, it appears that Crash can still be obtained normally. I continued my way through the door, but it left me in a room with no floor. Death is imminent for those ill-equipped, but my wings were able to handle it. It seems the Tac were guarding the Copy ability, as there was the Copy Copy Essence Deluxe. Upon observing it, Kirby can use the Copy ability to bypass his inability to gain powers from eating enemies.

Floria After I was finished with my side-quest, I went over to Floria. The planet is close to Popstar, and boasts vast greenery. Upon landing, the planet initially contained lush meadows and fields, but there are several doors which manipulate seasons. I found this out by taking the first door. I switched the seasons to winter, which turns the landscape cold. From there, I went back to the start. There was a door here that was not there when it is any other season. I went inside and found the Ice Copy Essence Deluxe. Kirby will be able to permanently use the Ice ability whenever he desires with this.

I went back out the door and moved over to the right. There was a tree blocking the way. It was too massive even for Galaxia to slice through. I manipulated the seasons once again using the door nearby so that it turned to fall. The top was suddenly not there anymore. I shortly arrived to a pool of water. There was another door to manipulate the seasons, so I changed it to winter. The water turned to ice, and there was a door that was not there before. I used my sword to break the ice. The door contained the Fighter Copy Essence Deluxe. Kirby will be able to be a world-class champion with this ability.

I exited the door and went through the normal pathway. I kept the winter theme just in case there was more bodies of water to come across. I broke through the ice waterfall, and found myself in front of another tree. The winter theme did not have the tree blocked off, so I jumped over it, but then I decided to change the season to Summer with the door that was to the right of the tree. It turns out, a door appeared inside the trunk. I went inside the door and found the Cutter Copy Essence Deluxe. Kirby will have no trouble throughout his journey.

I left the room and continued along the path. It was not long before I found myself in front of another tree blocking the way. I changed the season to fall using the nearby door, and was able to get across. I entered the goal door and was confronted by Twin Woods! They posed no threat, as they are stationary foes. I quickly defeated them and headed off to my next target.

Aquarius The next planet was Aquarius, and had a body of water covering the surface. I do hope Kirby is a good swimmer. I landed on the planet and was completely submerged in its ocean depths. I dived in the water to head through the door. From there, I swam to the platform above the water. I continued to move forward when there was a series of three Bomb Blocks. I destroyed the middle one, and it opened a gap allowing me to dive into the ocean depths. I swam below and to the right, continuing along the path, when I noticed another Bomb Block on the other side of the wall in front of me. I swam to the surface to jump over to the platform, and destroyed the Bomb Block. It revealed a door on the platform above, so I entered it and discovered the Parasol Copy Essence Deluxe! Kirby will be able to gently fall down and use it as a strangely effective weapon. I went back to the main path, and continued onward. There was a cannon not too far ahead, but I did not find anything interesting in its trajectory. I went into the door and ended up in a flooded room. There were several spots where there I was able to enter an area with air, similar to a bubble. There was nothing noteworthy aside from the various twists and turns throughout the cavern. I eventually made my way into the door.

From this point, I was in a large room, with water flowing, surrounding an open area. There was a door in the middle, so I entered inside. What lied ahead were several Blade Knights. They did not dare to challenge their leader, so I passed by them with no struggle. I found myself above several breakable blocks, which could be destroyed' with any downward attack. I followed the path, carefully moving above the spikes, and I ended up in a battle with Jukid! He was no match for my blade, and upon his defeat the Sword Copy Essence Deluxe appeared! Now Kirby will be able to become a master swordsman, as I am.

I backtracked through the room I was in to make it back to the entrance. When I returned to the open area surrounded in water, I saw a door to the right below the depths. I swam through the door and not to my surprise, I was in another room filled in water. However, there were several narrow tunnels with strong currents present throughout the area. I analyzed the structure of the area, and determined that swimming right, down, right, down, right, up will lead to a Beam Copy Essence Deluxe! Kirby can use the wand to reek havoc on his enemies.

There still was the matter of finding this worlds star. Fortunately, it was not too far off from this cavern. I noticed that there are several doors leading back to the entrance fortunately. My research showed that swimming right, down, right, down, right, down, right, up, right will lead to an open area. I made my way over there and there were several branching paths with currents flowing every which way. I swam right, down, right, up, and found a door that led to a new path. The guardian of the star was Fatty Whale, a large foe capable of splashing water all throughout the area. He can be tricky for those unprepared, but my tenacity carried on, and Fatty Whale was no more.

To be continued... I stood on the bridge of the Halberd and planned out where to visit next, but there was a storm brewing, too much for even a pilot of my skills to make through. I updated my drawing board to contain the discovered Copy Essence Deluxe abilities that were found throughout my journey. May the contents of this journal be of great value to those who come upon it.



PK144's Course Corner
Written by:

Hey there! Welcome to the June issue of PK144's Course Corner, hope you're all doing well. This week, I'm gonna look at a release that I seemed to gloss over when it came out, that being "Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker: Special Episode". I feel with how much I write about Captain Toad that I'm sort of obligated to talk about this. So let's begin!

Now remix stages have always been something of a point of debate in the Mario games. A lot of people see them as lazy, but I see them as a way of adding more content to your game without taking up too much development time. This can be done in fun little small additions, like with the Nabbit chases in New Super Mario Bros. U, or maybe sometimes they'll go a little too far, like with the 120 Green Stars from Super Mario Galaxy 2. Whatever the case, the debate becomes a little more one sided when remix stages are released as paid DLC. Especially when 66% of your paid DLC is remix stages. Now granted, this is a pretty cheap DLC, only costing about £5, but even then, some of these stages did not need to be remixed, bringing us to our topic, Boo Spotting At Shy Guy Heights.

Now, to be fair, this stage looks cool. It looks really damn cool! I remember actually being excited to play this when it showed up in the trailer just because of how cool it looked! But alas, looks is a very small piece of the recipe for a good stage, so lets talk about the level design.

This stage is a remix of Shy Guy Heights, from Chapter 1, and that's a really fun stage. This remix however, seems specifically created to ruin all the things that made the original good. The stage opens with a maze full of twists, turns and ladders. This originally was really fun, because you could zoom the camera to get a better look of the area, and exploring all the little sections to find Gems, and avoiding the sight of Shy Guy's was fun because even if they caught you, you could manipulate around the terrain to escape, and there were manageable numbers of them. Boo Spotting At Shy Guy Heights has none of this. The maze is cramped, and now that you have to use a Double Cherry, you can't zoom the camera anymore, making it very hard to see whats going on. Instead of small amounts of Shy Guys, we now have massive hoards of Boos, that will always spot you, and always fly through walls, and because of how many there are, they're inescapable. The Gems will now randomly show up after melting a hoard of Boos, making them feel joyless to find, and a relief, rather than a fun effort. The ladders drive me up the goddamn wall, because they can only hold one Toad at a time, making it so that you have to climb it, find a wall to walk into, then have the other one climb it again. It's tedious and horrible. The stage drags on like this. It's a testament to how not to do a remix stage, so if you people are ever making a remix stage in your own game, ROM hack, or even Super Mario Maker 2 later this month, heed my warning! "Make sure it actually needs to be remixed before you change anything!"

Well, that's a wrap for this month! Thanks for reading! If you have any level suggestions, send them to me over the Marioboards, and I'll see you next month!

Racing Like the Staff
Written by:

Hello readers and welcome to Racing like the Staff, a section where I do 150cc on different Mario Kart games, but the twist is, I take on the Grand Prix by using the combination that a staff and expert staff member used in that Cup. If you're still a little confused, by this I mean if the track is in the Mushroom Cup, then that's the Cup that I race in. Unfortunately, I don't have copies of the Mario Kart games before Mario Kart 7, so it's only that, 8 and Deluxe that will be getting this treatment.

I'm now in a situation where I might not have access to my Wii U or Switch for a little bit, but don't worry it does mean that Mario Kart 7 will continue to get its time in the sun. And speaking of sun, we're looking at a course that although involves a lot of water does take place in a sunny environment. Piranha Plant Pipeway from Mario Kart 7 is not at all one of my favourite tracks and I was disappointed to see it return, but seeing as you'll get three sections on Kart combinations from this track, might as well get the first one out early.

The combination for normal staff for Piranha Plant Pipeway is Lakitu with the Standard, Monster tyres and Super Glider, and the stats are as follows:


 * Speed – Just under four bars
 * Acceleration – Just over three bars
 * Weight – Just over three bars
 * Handling – Just under two bars
 * Off-road – Just over five bars bars

Piranha Plant Pipeway
My initial getaway wasn't great, but as the track spilt into two, I managed to gain almost all the positions, getting up to third place. I quickly passed Honey Queen, but seemed unable to catch Mario, although the water on the second lap gave me a massive speed boost. My eventual overtake on Mario was nothing short of a miracle as I did a trick jump off a ramp just when a Green Shell was about to hit me. It went underneath me and consequently hit Mario. I feared I hadn't gotten a substantial lead when the Blue Shell came, but I had, and I kept my lead until the end.

Wario's Galleon
I thought I'd kept the lead, but Honey Queen and Rosalina overtook just before the first set of ramps. I managed to get in front of Rosalina, but she had a Red Shell and quickly dispatched me, allowing Mario to also get ahead of me. I soon overtook Rosalina again, but seemed to struggle up against Mario and Honey Queen. But on the second lap, I was able to take the inside line on the jump ramps, overtake the pair of them and keep my lead until the end.

Koopa City
If I didn't like racing on Koopa City so much, this would have been an incredibly boring race. Not even a Blue Shell could put any racer onto my minimap, such was the extent of my lead.

Wuhu Mountain Loop
Once again, I thought I'd kept my initial lead, but slipstreams from Honey Queen and Mario proved me wrong, and a Red Shell got me all the way down to sixth. I quickly got up to fifth, but it was a while before a stray Green Shell took out Mario allowing me to get into fourth. On the straights Yoshi and Mario overtook me, but Triple Mushrooms saw me get through a tight-knit crowd and up into second. But despite everything, Rosalina stayed ahead and I came second.

Despite speed being one of this combination strongest points, there is no speed. I have no idea how I gained on others, but the fact that they were able to spend so long ahead of me suggests speed was not a thing on this combination. The only reason I got second on Wuhu Mountain Loop is because of those Triple Mushrooms, without them I don't think I would have been in the top three.

The 200cc combination is Lakitu with the Cloud 9, Sponge tyres and Parafoil. The stats are as follows:


 * Speed – Just over two bars
 * Acceleration – Five bars
 * Weight – One bar
 * Handling – Just over three bars
 * Off-road – Four bars

Piranha Plant Pipeway
In all honesty, this was quite a messy race from me. I did get a better start on this track than last time, getting up into fifth place. The Piranha Plant helped me get into third place, and I overtook Koopa on my own. I thought I had Honey Queen just before the gliding section, but she hit me with a Fireball, knocking me off, and putting me down to fifth. I was able to overtake into third, and although I got past both Donkey Kong and Koopa, DK's Red Shell hit me. I soon got ahead of DK again, but Koopa was a bit trickier, thankfully Rosalina as Bullet Bill took him off, and despite it seeming like her time may never end, she did revert back to normal, and I used a Mushroom shortcut to get past her. Lightning and a Blue Shell then struck me, but I kept my lead. I also kept my lead, despite allowing the Piranha Plant to strike me, and hitting a Goomba.

Wario's Galleon
This time I did keep my lead, sort of, as Donkey and Luigi were barely in front of me. However, a stray Bob-omb from someone did throw me down to sixth position. I was able to overtake up into third and eventually passed DK on the boosting ramps, and hit Luigi with the Tanooki Tail for the lead just before the pipes. My lead was nearly threatened when Yoshi threw a Blue Shell at me, but I think one of Luigi's stray fireballs hit a crab in front of me, and gifted me a Mushroom to boost away from them.

Koopa City
I absolutely dominated this race. I saw Luigi throw a Red Shell at me on the final lap, just as he finished the third s-bend before the small inside section. That Red Shell hadn't reached me before the end of the lap, and I know it wasn't destroyed as it hit me during the cinematic.

Wuhu Mountain Loop
Much like last time, shenanigans dropped me down to sixth place. Unlike last time, I overtook on my own merit – bar Donkey Kong getting hit by Yoshi's Red Shell – and I was up to second place just coming out of the cave. Luigi seemed to have a good lead, but then he also seemed to slow down, allowing me to hit him with a Red Shell just before the end of the second section, and I was then able to keep hold of the lead.

This was a much better combination than the first one. Despite the stats suggesting that this combination doesn't have the speed, this combination had the speed. I overtook on my own merit, the leads I had felt earned rather than items. Plus Lakitu's Cloud is pretty adorable, what more could you want?

I hope you enjoyed this section, and I'll see you next month where I'll take a look at a combination from Mario Kart 8, probably. If you've got a combination you'd like me to review next, feel free to private message me on the forums.

Mach Speed Mayhem
Written by:



Hello, 'Shroom readers! Welcome once again to Mach Speed Mayhem, where you're the ones who've decided my writeup! For this month, we've got our first character who didn't debut on the SNES or the Nintendo 64. Coming from F-Zero GX, it's #00: Deathborn, the main villain of that game!

Main Series

Deathborn makes his first appearance in F-Zero GX, and he's the only character who's considered to be a GX debut. All the other characters unique to that game count as debuts from F-Zero AX, and I'll go into more detail on that whenever we first cover an AX character. So if you want to learn more, vote for those! But back to Deathborn himself. Everything about him shows that he's the big bad of GX - even his biography! He's been responsible for the disappearance of several F-Zero pilots since the Huge Accident four years back, and he's actually died repeatedly. Three times to be exact, becoming more and more of an obviously evil cyborg with each death, so now he's... basically immortal. That's a bit of a problem, considering that his main goal is to seize a power that would let him control the entire universe. To that end, he's both obtained a device that lets him teleport himself and others anywhere he likes. It lets him both go where he needs to, and banish those he dislikes so far away that they can never do anything but drift helplessly throughout the edges of space. Unsurprisingly, he's one of the racers who scares the pants off Mr. Zero in their interviews, which just play up his evilness even more. He even refuses to sign an autograph just out of jerkassery, tells his fans to say goodbye to their loved ones since they'll all die, and threatens that there will be no more Grand Prix, not now that he's won. Interestingly, he's the champion of the Underworld Grand Prix, the same one Blood Falcon and possibly The Skull participate in. Perhaps they've raced each other?



The F-Zero GX story mode has quite a bit of material for Deathborn, unsurprisingly. The prologue shows Deathborn (unseen outside of shadow at the time) defeating Black Shadow in a race, then threatening him clearly with "win the Grand Prix or suffer the consequences", to which Black Shadow pleads for understanding. He'll win it next time! Deathborn doesn't step in himself until the cutscene after clearing Chapter 7, where Black Shadow has indeed failed to stop Captain Falcon from winning the Grand Prix. He banishes Black Shadow to the distant edges of the universe, and challenges Falcon to race him the next day. Falcon shows up, and finds that he's on Deathborn's private course, which runs through hell. Like, take a look at it. That's hell. Deathborn explains that Falcon's championship belt contains the power of light within it, while his own Underworld Grand Prix belt contains the power of darkness. When combined, they have the power to turn the whole galaxy to ashes in an instant! So, naturally, Captain Falcon needs to outrace him to keep him from being able to conquer the universe. Full of bombs, lava, and plenty of nasty curves, Chapter 8 is a one-on-one challenge with lots of tricks and traps. Can't KO Deathborn, because he's the only character in the game who respawns if defeated in Story Mode - so it's all on pure racing! Once Falcon does pull off the win, Deathborn spins out of control and crashes into the lava in a seemingly fatal explosion, allowing Falcon to unify the belts and claim the combined belt to protect it from evil. Chapter 9, featuring the Creators (gods of the game world), has them mention Deathborn is - was - their best creation, and that they completely misled him about the universal forces for their own amusement. That's capricious gods for you. You actually don't get to use Deathborn yourself until after Story Mode; clearing Chapter 9 on Normal difficulty makes the Dark Schneider appear in the vehicle shop, and then you can buy it normally like the 26 drivers available to buy from the start.



As for his car! Deathborn's got the Dark Schneider, which is interestingly listed as having an unknown maker. Perhaps the Creators crafted it for him? According to the vehicle bio, it's been given a dragon-like motif, and the machine is surrounded in a veil of mystery. There's also an anti-theft mechanism, installed by Black Shadow. If you try to sit in the cockpit and you aren't Deathborn? Guess what, the dashboard will fire a series of deadly poisonous needles into your face. Like all machines in GX, the listed stats and the actual stats tend to not match up. In this case, it means that the Dark Schneider is not the megatank it's billed as, so don't go trying to survive a wave of mines to the face. It's also got terrible acceleration, as heavyweights tend to do. However, a solid top speed and strong handling make up for it, the Dark Schneider able to gain effectively without spinning out of control too quickly. Interestingly, it's the only machine outside of the original SNES F-Zero and Maximum Velocity to not have a number painted on the car. It certainly has an official number, as the pilot profiles make it clear that Deathborn's ride is #00, but you'd have no way of knowing that without the extra information.



GP Legend series

Deathborn actually shows up in F-Zero: GP Legend, and is one of the only two GX/AX characters to do so, the other one being Don Genie! He shows up for five episodes during the last section of the series, but... it's something, y'know? Episode 42 introduces him, but just barely - the episode is primarily about Don Genie and his fortress, and I'll talk about it more whenever I cover Don Genie, but we get to see Don Genie talk to a shadowy figure he names as Deathborn, who sits and watches the race of the episode with interest. In episode 44, Deathborn is namedropped, revealed as the Chairman of the F-Zero Committee, and nobody knows anything about him. At all! How strange and bizarre. Episode 47 is where Deathborn actually begins to appear in earnest. The episode opens with Deathborn watching all sorts of screens of F-Zero race after F-Zero race, focusing primarily on Captain Falcon and Rick Wheeler. He also appears watching the race of the episode, which is a duel between Black Shadow and Rick Wheeler... that ends with Black Shadow knocking out Rick and capturing him and his car, taking them to the headquarters of the F-Zero committee. There, Black Shadow and Don Genie try together to convince Rick to join Dark Million, and when he naturally turns them down, that's when Deathborn shows up and hurls Rick around like a rag doll, throwing him into a brainwashing machine. With the power of god and anime on his side (and the Reactor Mights), Rick is able to break out of the machine in time for Captain Falcon to make the save, and the two of them escape, leaving Black Shadow, Don Genie, and Deathborn behind to ponder their collective defeat.



Episode 49 is where things get... weird. In order to figure out what's what, Jody Summer and Mr. EAD go to follow Deathborn to where he's staying, which turns out to be a quite upscale Mute City hotel. There, they go see him enter his room... and then a minute later, Don Genie steps out of said room. Entering it to try and see if he's still there, Deathborn has mysteriously disappeared, and Black Shadow's hologram appears to taunt them. And to set off a bomb! Said bomb blows out the entire floor of the hotel, wiping out all evidence - Jody and EAD are only saved by EAD using his jet boots to rocket them both out of the hotel before the bomb can go off. That's it for episode 49, but Deathborn's final appearance comes in episode 50. There, he's absent for most of the episode, only showing up once Rick has landed on the headquarters of the F-Zero Committee and chased Don Genie into a building. Deathborn appears to Rick, and finally speaks words rather than just standing around menacingly. He explains that he's a deep cover agent of the Galaxy Police who's been investigating Don Genie - who, by the way, is just about to make his escape in that spaceship right over there. It's all you, Rick buddy! Rick goes to enter the spaceship, only for Captain Falcon to show up, explain that it's a trap (at which the spaceship explodes to prove it), and that Deathborn... is actually Don Genie! And that they're both actually... Black Shadow!! "Deathborn" congratulates Falcon, and then shapeshifts into Don Genie and then Black Shadow, who explains that Don Genie and Deathborn are merely his shadows.

Now, you may ask yourself, how did all three of them appear together in episode 47 when the foreshadowing in episode 49 leaned on one of them replacing the other, and episode 50 had them directly shapeshifting into each other?

The answer is, fuck you! There is never even the slightest justification given, at all, for how Black Shadow, Deathborn, and Don Genie appeared together in front of the main character of the show for two straight minutes. Not at all! Once the reveal is made, Deathborn is dropped like a hot potato, his name not even mentioned ONCE in the rest of the episode or the final episode. It's very clearly a shoddy hackjob to write out a couple characters they didn't have a proper ending for, and it shoooows. This plot twist makes approximately zero sense and does disservice to Deathborn's character... anyway. Unsurprisingly, since he's not a real character and the Dark Schneider never appears, Deathborn is absent from both the F-Zero GP Legend and F-Zero Climax GBA games. So that unceremonious writeout is an end to our discussion of anime Deathborn.



Other Information

Deathborn appeared as a trophy in exactly one installment of Super Smash Bros. In Super Smash Bros for Wii U, Deathborn's trophy can be received by clearing the full version of All-Star mode with Captain Falcon... on Normal or higher... without using the healing that comes free between All-Star rounds. You've got to really WORK if you want to see this guy on display! He hasn't appeared in any other installment of Smash, though. Not Brawl nor Ultimate - and unlike James McCloud, there's no obvious reason of "they didn't want two same named characters with spirits". An effort to pivot the series back to just X? (please no) A simple lack of ideas? Or are there other, ulterior motives of some kind? Honestly, I've got no idea. I just know he doesn't have a spirit... but then again, even half the X guys don't. So it's not all that bad, really.

Interestingly, the trailer for F-Zero GX has two scenes that only show up in the trailer, and nowhere in game. One, similar to the anime, is of Deathborn watching a whole series of screens that show him everything he could want to see. The other is Deathborn emerging from the Dark Schneider in a split second clip, striding across the track and covered by a filter. Perhaps early ideas for the prologue and Deathborn's proper appearance in-game, before they were changed to what happened in GX itself. Either way, that about covers everything to say about Deathborn. It's time for you to head over to the forum thread and tell me who July will be about!

Pokédex Power
Written by:

Hello everyone, it's me, Yoshi876 again with a new edition of Pokédex Power, the section written by the person who could possibly do with Pokémon Sleep. I don't feel like my sleeping patterns are particularly great and there are times when I'm just ridiculously tired, but not on a scale where sleeping would be beneficial. So, if Pokémon could get me to sleep better then I am entirely onboard.

But in-game I hate the sleep condition. I can deal with when my Pokémon is paralysed or poisoned, but as soon as sleep comes out that's when things begin to start to get annoying. Much like any other thing with the random number generator it always seems to favour the AI opponent with your Pokémon sleeping forever and theirs waking up almost immediately. Or, failing that their move with shaky accuracy hits with almost pinpoint accuracy whereas yours might as well be flailing around praying for the best.

This month's edition has nothing to do with the sleep condition as far as I'm aware, as Torchic doesn't learn any sleep-inducing moves, and seeing as it's a starter Pokémon its only ability is Blaze so it doesn't have any sleep ignoring or reducing abilities.

I played both Ruby and Emerald and Torchic was the only starter Pokémon that I didn't choose Mudkip resonated really well with me when I first played Ruby so he was my pick and when it came to Emerald I really wanted to try out Treecko and he was incredible. Torchic never piqued my interest, and with the first Gym being Rock, it was never going to be a choice for me. But with me ignoring it, it doesn't mean it has bad Pokédex entries, so let's find out what they're like.

Generation III

Generation III is actually a wonderful way of introducing Torchic, there are so many entries and great facts around. Showing how this Pokémon is a newborn (in a sort of way) I like how it can't necessarily walk properly, which is adorably cute. Of course, breathing fire and scorching its foes to black is a little less cute, but still good to know how dangerous it can be to an untrained Trainer. With Sapphire it would have been good if it took the leaf from FireRed and LeafGreen and specified where in the body its flames were stored. But Sapphire is redeemed to introducing us to the best fact we've gotten in the history of this section as it encourages you to hug a Torchic, and hugging cute things is my speciality. Plus, if it's warm to hug I will love it even more. Emerald is a little bit of a letdown in an otherwise stellar set of entries, however. It's good to know that Torchic knows to defend itself in a situation, but that last fact is so blindingly obvious it's redundant to have it there. Most things don't like the dark due to not being able to see, the fact could've been salvaged if there was something interesting, but alas there was not.

Generation IV

Generation IV doesn't really introduce new entries, although it does mention that Torchic is as warm as a hot-water bottle, so at least I have some reference points to how well a Torchic is for hugging. But I do enjoy hugging.

Generation V

As you will have heard me said in previous reviews in this section, I like hugs. So, giving me more hugs is always desirable.

Generation VI

I decided to do something a little different and write this part of the section as my first Pokédex review. It's a shame that Generation VI didn't do something different.

Conclusion Admittedly, Torchic's entries are only good from Generation III as the other generations just copy off of it. But on that note, I do like facts about hugging, so I've been painted into a corner here. Okay, not entirely as the entries from Generation III are some of the best I've read while doing this section, with only Emerald being a weak link, and that's only because the dark fact is so mind-numbingly obvious. As much as Generation VIII could introduce more facts about how amazing Torchic is to hug, it might be nice to see how Blaziken interact, or how it eventually learns to properly walk.