Pokémon You Simply Gotta Use (Part 6)

PART 6: Omastar - Mew

Pokémon You Simply Gotta Use (Part 6)

It's the denouement of the Kanto leg of our quest for a world-beating Pokémon team. And get this - we're getting so desperate for heavy-hitters at this stage, that we're looking at reviving fossils and lumping them together into a Jurassic All-Star team. How desperate is that?!

But it's not all bad news - we've got all of the Legendaries of the Kanto region here, waiting for due inspection, and they're bound to be quite powerful. It's a bit of a scrub move to actually use a Legendary in your team though, don't you think?

Well, be that as it may, if you didn't put Mewtwo at the very top of your lineup back in the day, you were guaranteed to run into trouble. You were just asking to be taken down to the basement, Pulp Fiction style, and left to wait there, bound and gagged, until the gimp came out. Mewtwo was the gimp, and frighteningly good at what he did.

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Omastar

The counterpart fossil of Kabutops, it has pretty stern Defense and Special Attack. But as interesting as the idea of Fossil Pokémon may be, do keep in mind that there's a reason they're extinct. Evolutionarily speaking, if I can coin such a word, Omastar's shell became so heavy and in general he became such a fat bugger that he could no longer chase prey. So I'm picturing a few thousand Omastars just lying there on the sandy shores, unable to move, just sitting there and starving to death. I suppose the modern day equivalent is a load of overweight tourists who've fallen off their mobility scooters and end up laying there like sweaty, upside-down turtles in the scorching sun. Well, thanks to some voodoo magic which probably isn't a good idea if Jurassic Park is to be believed, you can now bring this inspirational 'Mon back from the dead and into your team. Kabutops is cooler, and is the alternate choice if you don't want Omastar. Yet I would always pick the Helix Fossil out of the two. What does that make me?

Kabutops

How did a swashbuckling creature like this come about from a lowly little Kabuto? Whatever, it’s a fearsome looking beast with a mighty Attack stat, and that can be augmented even further by Swords Dance. I like to imagine that using this move entails Kabutops doing the Johnny Bravo monkey dance with its scythes, and watching his Attack stat go right the way up. I don’t think Kabutops really has the durability to be augmenting its stats in battle, mind you – these things were fossils for a reason. But stats are for nerds, so let’s talk about the more important aspect, which is the Pokémon’s looks. And ultimately, when it comes to Kabutops, what I can't get over is the shape and curvature of its head. It just isn't right. In fact, it's laughable. Not a bad design per se, don't get me wrong, but laughable. If you bring Kabutops onto the bus, kids are going to think he's a "funny man", and you'll be left red. 

Aerodactyl

The final RBY Fossil, revived from the Old Amber. As I understand it, Amber is the solidified gunk that you get on trees, so I'm not sure how exactly a full rock dinosaur can come out of there. Nonetheless, Aerodactyl has humungous Speed, good Attack, and not much else. The Electric-type blows it out the sky. It can't stand up to Water-types either. And as for Asteroid-types? Forget it. Really, Aerodactyl’s day came in the Attack of the Prehistoric Pokémon anime episode, when the gang were looking for Pokémon fossils but got trapped in a cave-in. This happened after Team Rocket, surprisingly not stalking Ash for a change, set off some explosives to try and pilfer all the fossils. Inside the cave, the fossil Pokémon have awakened, and you know what it's like when you're woken up 5,000,000 years after your alarm clock - you're pretty grouchy. Most grouchy and vicious of them all is Aerodactyl, who announces himself with evil eyes and a guttural roar. Excited at the prospect of fighting this new flying Pokémon, Ash’s unruly Charmeleon boldly forces itself to evolve into Charizard, and away they go to slug it out. Not that it was Charizard’s intention to save Ash, of course, he only did it to prove himself - Charizard serves no man.

Snorlax

A pain in the bum to deal with, but an absolute role model to aspire to, Snorlax has massive HP, and its excellent Attack and Special Defense make it one of the best tanks of the series – especially with Curse, a move which increases its Attack and decreases Speed. Snorlax is already as slow as a room full of Love Island watchers of course, so there's almost no drawback to him here. Plus, when he's had enough of daily life, he can go into the deepest sleep imaginable. No, I have to say that Snorlax is a great bunch of lads. It only wakes up to eat, and it needs to eat nearly 900 pounds of food a day just to become content. God, think of the calories. I used to struggle eating one pound of beef, and that was in my chubby child days. Let him loose in the Pokémon Let's Go game on Switch, and you can even cling onto his belly as you clamber around. Why wouldn't you have this guy in your team?!

Articuno

The first of the Kanto legendary birds, Articuno has tough stats and wields Ice moves ferociously. These days, however, things don’t look so good. It’s got many weaknesses and counters, as well as moves like Stealth Rock that cuts its HP in two, and it all means that the once proud Articuno can no longer stand up to scrutiny. This renders the legendary bird something of a legendary pigeon, unfortunately. It’s a pity, because a massive, elegant, ice-cold tweety-bird is a neat concept for a Pokémon. But all is not lost: its ability to just kill fools outright with the Sheer Cold move, and the fact that it's big, rare and looks mean is certainly enough to make Articuno worth a spot on your schoolyard-faring team.

Zapdos

Originally found in the Power Plant, one of those hidden little areas of Kanto that you never have to go to, that you’d probably never even know about until you looked at the Town Map - or more accurately, a strategy guide. These days, the Power Plant would be part of a DLC pack and Zapdos itself would be locked behind a paywall. Or something. Am I right? No? Well, either way, Zapdos looks the business, and does serious work in battle, just as you’d expect. While the other two birds can get zapped right out of the sky with Electric moves, Zapdos has little to fear there - it can throw out Thunderbolts without fearing Earthquakes. In layman's terms, this means the electro-chicken has a big leg up over the opposition. I reckon it looks the most vicious of the three birds as well. If it came down to a choice between the three, Zapdos would most serpently be my pick for battle.

Moltres

Found in the highly monotonous Victory Road, which is already a bit of a mark against it. Like Articuno, and indeed like Charizard, it loses half its HP to Stealth Rock, which just about dooms it in real-life proper battles. A shallow movepool since the early days and even to this day doesn't do Moltres any wonders on the old competitive battling front either. In a more practical sense, it wasn’t even shown in the original anime opening credits, while Zapdos and Articuno were. To be fair, Moltres was in the Japanese opening, but for some reason got cut out of the Western version; Arcanine and Rapidash had to suffice instead. So in more ways than one, Moltres ends up as a heavily-maligned, big fiery turkey. Its egg was even right in the way of your odd, on-rails vehicle in Pokémon Snap – you could hardly not crash into it and dump it into the lava, a highly ignominious moment for a so-called Legendary Pokémon. Why were the Legendary birds found in eggs in that game anyway?

Dragonite

Introducing the only (fully-evolved) Dragon type of Pokémon RBY. It has massive Attack, and I don’t mean the musical group. Good for Hyper Beam, but not so good for the Dragon Rage move, which did a fixed 40 HP of damage - and back in the day, that was quite literally the only Dragon move available to anyone. Nowadays, Dragon types are like turds in a field, meaning they’re everywhere, and there's a plethora of damaging Dragon attacks to use, as well as ExtremeSpeed and Roost and... Slam. That all helps to spare Dragonite's blushes just a little bit. And it's the Pokémon of choice for that apex predator Lance, even if his ones are horribly guilty of cheating, by being able to use the illegal Barrier move, and also by evolving several levels too early. Possibly Dragonites are liable to juicing? Maybe their veins are better suited to 'roid programs than those of other Pokémon? But even if that were the case, Dragonite is like a kind of cute, cuddly bear Pokémon, the type that Ursaring ain’t. Except Dragonite is, if you want to be truthful about it, a dragon.

Mewtwo

You know all about this fella. A product of gene-splicing in an effort to clone Mew, which is pretty heavy stuff for a children’s game when you think about it. He was the supervillain of the first anime film, and he could even talk when the mood suited him. He killed off Ash (with Mew’s help, it has to be said) but a few tears brought him back somehow. Maybe that’s why Cloud never managed to revive Aerith, not enough tears? Whatever. Mewtwo could be captured in the Cerulean Cave, otherwise known as the ‘Unknown Dungeon, when the Elite Four and Champion were beaten. This made him a post-game bonus; once you caught Mewtwo, you could truly call yourself a Pokémon Master. He was overpowered on purpose, and his stats were ridiculous. In truth, I disliked using Mewtwo, simply because everyone else used him. Most Mewtwos were so powerful that you had to have several counters in place to get rid of him, but I enjoyed the challenge. Finally, cementing its status as a high roller, Mewtwo has a few Smash Bros appearances under his belt, although he never seems to be quite as powerful or usable as you might think. Still, I can’t hold that against him. Mewtwo is an automatic choice for any team.

Mew

This tricky little blighter. Old Mew was the subject of all kinds of crazy rumours flying about the place, in the pre-internet days. Little wonder really, since Mew was snuck into the Pokémon Red and Green coding about 12 seconds before the game released. Everyone, Nintendo included, thought there were 150 catchable Pokémon - but no, Mew was the secret 151st. When rumours of a super secret Pokémon first surfaced, we were all eager to believe it. But surely not. Surely Mewtwo was the last attainable Pokémon? Well... sort of. You could get Mew on your game, but only through special promotional giveaways run by Nintendo. I really doubt any of these giveaways ever reached Ireland, but no matter: there exists a glitch within RBY which allows players to nab Mew. When they did, they may have found their expectations were too high: Mew wasn’t quite on Mewtwo’s level after all. But it still had great stats, and could learn every TM and HM move. It’s still an Uber today, banned alongside Celebi, and Jirachi, and other ‘cute’ Legendaries that are impossible to get. Mew is well worth having, if you can get one. And no, that truck near the SS Anne has nothing to do with the glitch I mentioned. That one must go down as one of the all-time great red herrings in gaming.

To Be Continued!