Closest In-Game Pokemon

[UberSkitty]

Closest In-Game Pokemon
(as seen in title)

What are your three closest mons between all of your games?​

I had this fun thought a while back so I thought I'd make a thread about it. My original thought was "if you lost all your games and could only keep three of your mons (and a 6IV Ditto for breeding), which would they be?" But that question is just a downer, so I rephrased it. I would like to clarify that this is not overall favorite Pokemon species, but individual mons you own in specific save files. Generally mons you have personal/humorous backstories with. There's also probably better words to use than "close", but I'm just rolling with it.

Close mons can include stuff like:
- First starter
- First Legendary
- First Shiny
- Any of the above just not your first
- Mon you used in a wacky/special playthrough
- Nuzlocke MVP
- Competitive battling MVP
- Gift from friend
- Other

Here are mine, and if this is confusing they can also be seen as examples. I admittedly don't have three, but it's not like it's a strict requirement or anything.

Ocean the Samurott (M)
Quirky Nature, Somewhat of a clown
With White being my first game, this Oshawott was my first starter. As you can see, I was quite creative with nicknames. Also, similar to a lot of first-time players, it was by far my highest level throughout the game. By the closing credits, Ocean was lvl 70 and would become my first lvl 100. What's also a fun detail is that I find it being quirky and somewhat of a clown to be somewhat similar to myself. Overall, I find Samurott to be okay design wise, but to this day Dewott remains to be one of my fav mons. Just your classic first starter stuff.

GENGAR the Gengar (F)
Naive Nature, often dozes off
I used this mon in my first playthrough of Platinum. It wasn't the most "ordinary" playthroughs though, since I had gotten the same used and the player had only just reached Eterna Forrest. Oh yeah also they had a Ho-oh, Moltres, and Zapdos on their team for some reason, and no starter (they had Piplup and Prinplup regiester in the dex tho). I caught this Gastly in Eterna Forrest, not sure if it was my first encounter or anything, but it eventually became my "starter". Bcuz lvl 50 legendaries at 1 badge will only listen to you so much. It was a Haunter for most of the playthrough, but is now a Gengar sitting in my White save file alongside Ocean. Gengar has come to be another of my favorite mons, and I even main it in Unite. While this Gengar didn't have a nickname, I often name my Gastlys/Haunters/Gengars Toni, after the name my trainer had in that Platinum save file.

Since I'm not sure what I'd put in third, I thought I'd just give some shout outs!
- Weavile, White: Got this Sneasel to mid 70s before finding out you needed to hold an item to evolve
- Altaria, White: It was a random mon I caught early postgame, ended up being my second lvl 100
- Zekrom, White: First legendary
- Shiny Lunatone, White: My first shiny ever and I accidentally KOed it, but recently reclaimed after ~3 months of hunting
Them all being from my White save file is somewhat coincidental, although it being my first game probably contributes.

End of example.

So yeah, post your closest mons between all your games and why you love them so!

 

[Ishiftyounot]

Threads like these make me regret ever restarting my games, because I love seeing people keeping Pokemon from their first or most fun save files and dragging them through different consoles to reach the latest game! I have a Tiktok saved of someone showing off their Ninetales they caught in Ruby/Sapphire (I think) back when that first came out that's now sat in their SM/USUM file (and will soon be sent to SwSh judging by their comments) and I just think that's neat. I did not do that though - all my original files have long been restarted, and my iconic first team members have been deleted from existence. I've stopped doing that now though - I got as close to 100% as I wanted to on my Let's Go Eevee and Brilliant Diamond file, so who knows? Maybe in a decade or two my team members from those games and the rest of my Pokemon-Switch catalogue will be on the latest Nintendo console and I'll have more stories to tell then.

The issue I have with things like this is that now I'm older, I don't really have wacky or wild experiences that form memories and bonds with particular Pokemon - they're usually just my favourites and I clear the game without any major difficulties. Whilst I like all the Pokemon I use, I don't bond with them which is the point of this thread. Should probably get into challenge runs and see if that changes!

That being said, there is one Pokemon I'd consider fitting...

Darren the Dunsparce - Pokemon Crystal, October 2020

In my final year of university back in 2020 I decided I wanted to play through every single Pokemon generation, starting with Pokemon Red and eventually making my way to Pokemon Sword/Shield. I never actually started Gen IV, so I didn't get very far, but I got to play through both Red and Crystal for the first time which was cool! Darren the Dunsparce features in the latter - I was hunting for a Teddiursa since I'd bought Crystal to use Ursaring and Donphan earlier on in the game (in Gold/Silver/HGSS they're only available around the eighth gym I think). Teddiursa is a 5% encounter rate in Dark Cave, but has a 50% chance to flee the battle because... reasons. My roommate, who was also a major Pokemon fan, remembered that Dunsparce were a 1% encounter rate in that very same cave. He joked that if I found one before I found Teddiursa, I had to catch and use one! You can probably guess who my next encounter was.

Now this may be hard to believe, but Dunsparce was actually pretty good! I had a moveset consisting of Glare, Screech, Dig and Strength and it put in some solid work throughout the game! Falkner, Bugsy and Whitney all fell to my lil oddball, and it could've cleared out Morty too except my team didn't really need the support. It helped out against Jasmine and Clair, and then did absolutely nothing against the Elite 4. But it did sweep Lance's Gyarados! Consistently as well, since I kept rematching them for experience to beat Red. Speaking of, it was great for supporting my (severely under-levelled) team against Red via Glare and Screech, preventing us from being swept by Snorlax. Dunsparce is great, and the Darren memes live on between me and my roommate! I've not started Scarlet or Violet yet but I am tempted to use Dunsparce again, and evolve a new Darren Jr. into a Dudunsparce! Make a new adventure, or at the very least I could get Bank to transfer Darren into HOME -> Scarlet when that becomes compatible...

 

[Jungle cruiser]

Alright, this seems like an interesting topic!

Medusa the jellicent - Pokemon Sword
This guy was my very first shiny, and it was the perfect first shiny experience ever. I was just calmly running errands with my rotom when I decided "Eh, I'm gonna exp farm a little" so I rode to the nearest pond and started a battle with the nearest frillish. But as it turned out, this one was green!

I remember I ran around the room screaming in happiness and singing praises to the line before catching him. This was during the postgame tho, so I didn't rly use him outside of the battle tower. Still, the experience was certainly worth it, and he's a very good tank in said battle tower too.

Jockey the scrafty - Pokemon white
Sadly, I didn't get to play this wonderful lil game in its heyday, so it didn't rly get to experience all the online stuff (tho, then again, little me was extremely dumb, so I probably wouldn't have appreciated it much). Anyway, when I finally got around to playing it, I didn't realize that a lot of the pokemon that I wanted to use happened to evolve pretty late, which complicated things significantly. However, there was one pokemon that made the whole thing doable, Jockey the scraggy/scrafty. This guy, to put it simply, was the whole package. He hit hard, was bulky enough to stomach some hits, and could eat up whole teams with moxie boosting his attack. Hell, he even somehow got to land ALL his high jump kick attacks. I never saw him miss once!!!All in all, the best in game pokemon I have ever used

Tineo the mothim - Pokemon legends arceus
Lastly, this lil guy! Unlike jockey, this guy didn't carry the team, that title goes to Lodo the whiscash (who did pretty much everything jockey did except even tankier but a little less powerful). However, what Tineo did here was being completely random. He had to put himself in so many situations where he shouldn't have come out on top, but he somehow did, due to either lucky dodges, the opponent doing something stupid, somehow hanging on with little HP, timely critical hits or a combination of all of those. That way he got around a high leveled alpha ryhorn, the hisuian electrode lord battle, akari's pikachu, kamado's Snorlax, the electivire and magmortar at snowpoint temple that I talked about in other thread and even arceus themself!!!! Ofc, he wasn't invincible (he couldn't keep up with a random carnivine...). But at the end of the day, he did much more than any of his kind has ever done, and for that I have him some great respect. And now my headcanon is that he became a badass warrior of legend in modern sinnoh bug folklore!

 

[Nokocchi]

Dunsparce in Crystal -2001.

I spent around 100 dollars to get external devices to move my original Crystal Version save to the 3DS Virtual Console version. It is now on the Switch, going between SwSh and BDSP when needed, and it will be able to evolve after over 20 years in the spring.

 

[STEELDRAGON]

It was my first ditto that I caught in early 1996. I must have played with it in close to like a million games. I can't believe it's been almost 30 years already. All the memories

 

[bdt2002]

Oh, now this is my kind of thread. Few things in Pokémon give me more joy that having an excuse to talk about close memories. I have a story I would like to share, if you don’t mind.

(Hisuian)

Ever since my introduction to the Pokémon franchise in 2010, Johto’s been one of my favorite regions. Despite me being one of the few people I know that likes all three of the Johto starters, I’ve historically been more of a Totodile kind of guy for nostalgia reasons. That being said, one of the reasons I grew detached to Cyndaquil in comparison wasn’t because of its performance in the games, but because its Shiny coloration ever since it was changed in Gen 3 felt like a straight downgrade from the sharp purple aesthetic of its original Shiny.

Fast forward to January of 2022. Legends: Arceus just came out, and while I wouldn’t pick the game up for about another week or two, I already knew I wanted to pick Cyndaquil as my starter. What I didn’t know was that Hisuian Typhlosion would bring back the purple flame effect and look good doing it. I haven’t had that much fun with a new starter in a long time.