[Su/Mo Spoilers!] Fangame Ideas That Got Incorporated Into Sun and Moon

[Lord Chespin]

So, I was playing Pokemon Moon, and after reaching the Aether Foundation for the first time, some of Wicke's dialouge struck me. In something of a throwaway line, she mentioned that Pokeballs don't work in the Aether Paradise because of a jamming signal emitted within the facility, preventing trainers from catching Pokemon within the Paradise.

The first thing that came to my mind? "Holy shit! Pokemon Rejuvenation's mechanics on how Pokeballs work are canon now!"

That then opened the floodgate for other realizations. Aside from the obvious one (Alolan Variants being inspired by Insurgence's Delta Pokemon), I noticed other parallels to fangames I've played. For example, Mega Evolution being incredibly painful and destructive to the Pokemon involved reminded me of the PULSE Pokemon from Reborn, and Lusamine attempting to murder you with her Nihilego after fusing with it brought forth memories of Solaris using his Garchomp as a personal assassination tool.

Have you guys noticed any other similarities? Let me know if you did!

[Ice Cream Sand Witch]

A jamming signal has been used before in the official games. Ghetsis's cane in BW2 worked like this to prevent the player from catching Black/White Kyurem.

Also, the way you worded this: "Alolan Variants being inspired by Insurgence's Delta Pokemon" makes it seem like you're saying that Gamefreak got the idea from Insurgence. I don't think they'd knowingly take an idea from a fangame (they'd probably have to take action against Insurgence if they knew it existed, like with Uranium), and Delta Species existed in the TCG in 3rd Gen. It was Insurgence who was inspired by the TCG, where the concept originally comes from.

[Lord Chespin]

A jamming signal has been used before in the official games. Ghetsis's cane in BW2 worked like this to prevent the player from catching Black/White Kyurem.

Also, the way you worded this: "Alolan Variants being inspired by Insurgence's Delta Pokemon" makes it seem like you're saying that Gamefreak got the idea from Insurgence. I don't think they'd knowingly take an idea from a fangame (they'd probably have to take action against Insurgence if they knew it existed, like with Uranium), and Delta Species existed in the TCG in 3rd Gen. It was Insurgence who was inspired by the TCG, where the concept originally comes from.

Oh. Good point; hadn't realized that. Sorry.

[AuthorReborn]

Gladion and Lillie's relationship was screaming Cain and Aya to me, especially with Gladion practically being a rival and Lillie's lines all about how Gladion abandoned her there with Lusamine.

Other things I noticed from fan game experiences were the lovely HM Replacements, which reminded me of games like Insurgence (particularly how people will hand out the old HMs later on for free since they're pretty worthless).

[Autumn Rain]

You know, I use to think fangames are better than the official Pokemon games because of their unique features, enjoyable characters and interesting plot.

But ever since Sun and Moon came out, they changed the game into a whole new level of experience with unseen features and better story.

Kudos to Gamefreak for creating an awesome game.

[Commander]

Let me try to put this in a perspective that people can kind of understand that fan-game (moreso fans specifically) makers that actually believe GF took or saw ideas from fan-games and used them are very arrogant and way over their head. I mean Mega Pidgeot could have been in the works before TPP even began for example. Fan-games in terms of Pokemon are like tiny little specs that I doubt GF, a Japanese company, even knows that much about them. They are aware they exist and that's probably the biggest thing about them. It's like me asking y'all what Pokemon Raptor is about and expecting you to know.

Storywise I feel GF has been building moreso off the BW roots again from what I've seen. They did quite a bit this time in terms of plot as I'm guessing they were tired after making so many games off the gym leader formula. I think this game was also to make up for the lack of areas gen VI didn't touch. New Pokemon? While it isn't evolutions, Alolan Pokemon are similar to Gen VI's extra evolutions that helped out a whole bunch of older mons and the amount of stat buffs they gave this gen was a lot more than usual for older mons.

Most of the like fun features definitely give off B2W2 Vibes including the battle tree and Poke Amie sounds just like that one thing where you could upgrade and build shops in B2W2. I mean I could list a number of complaints in previous games that GF tried to fix or address such as Sucker Punch and Gale Wings. Weather setters were also rather limited so adding a few more really did a lot so Ninetales doesn't have to be your only drought user anymore.

As for the region and Z-moves, I'm sure there was a lot of inspiration towards creating all that jazz, but not being there for those discussions really makes it hard to tell what came from what, but I highly doubt anything fan-game wise went into this game. If you come up with an idea, it really shouldn't surprise you if some medium out there uses something near identical to what you're doing which sometimes it's not even intentional (cough Titania cough Ezra cough).

From the looks of it, there could be a lot of mythology involved around ultra beasts which quite a number of rpgs throw a little bit of culture into their games (not always their own country either). Sorry to be a kill joy, but I'm pretty sure they were probably looking at hawaii (or quite a number of tropical islands) when looking for how to build Sun & Moon which is a huge building block for them. So many things could've been the inspiration after that though. Only thing I can guess is that the Orange Islands probably wasn't their inspiration for Alolan mon due to the lack of they Crystal Onix.

[Rot8er_ConeX]

Do I think Game Freak knowingly took inspiration from my game? No, but I've seen so may parallels to my game that sometimes I do get paranoid.

- Alolan Forms/Regional Variants are very similar to the way my game in particular handles Delta Pokemon. Most games code them as if they're an entirely new species that has the same base stats as the original and is unbreedable. I made it a point in my game to code them as if they were a new kind of Shiny, so that they could be layered on top of the existing form code to make different forms for the same Delta Species.

- The fact that you can see your stat mods in the middle of battle is something else my game can do. To be fair, I took inspiration from Insurgence, but didn't do it the way they [Insurgence] did because it looked like too much code for something like that (making it auto-stack and only show the stats that are changed).

- The type effectiveness display on your moves was something that I had perfected approximately this time last year. In the early version of this feature in my game, it was an option in the Options screen and always displayed regardless of whether or not you'd seen that species. I have since edited it to match Game Freak's requirements for making it appear. Unlike Game Freak's version, though, mine accounts for abilities, doesn't display in online battles (to not give away sets), and knows the difference between a Delta Pokemon and its non-Delta counterpart (so will only display if you've seen the proper variant of the Pokemon).

Jumping outside of the mechanics and into the story, we have (FUCKING MASSIVE SPOILERS BELOW) :

- The death of an entire timeline. In my game, the way I'd explained the existence of Delta Pokemon was that they came from another timeline whose very fabric of spacetime was breaking apart, and the people of that timeline had managed to find means to send themselves and the Pokemon of their realm to another reality. The people, who had found a technological solution, went to the Original Timeline, and the Pokemon were helped via Hoopa, ending up in the Mega Timeline. They didn't realize until they were too late that they'd been sent to two different timelines.

As it turns out, the postgame of Sun and Moon heavily implies that the Original Timeline was attacked by Ultra Beasts after Lusamine's plan succeeds (presumably due to the player having died at the beginning of his/her quest because Tapu Koko had no reason to save him/her, and as such he/she was unable to stop the initial Nihilego), and without Mega Evolution and Z-Moves, the swarm of legendary-level pseudo-Pokemon managed to overwhelm even the strongest trainers.

Not exactly the way I'd handled it in my game - Game Freak's way was much, much darker, since it was a timeline that people knew and loved. But it's still not a concept to be casually thrown around without knowing what you're doing.

And in the combination of mechanics and lore, we have (slightly-large spoilers below) :

- The ability to go to another dimension with basically the same geography. In my postgame, after obtaining Delta Hoopa from his/her Deltaverse counterpart, the player can enter the decaying Deltaverse and in it, find and catch the Delta Legendaries and Mythicals, who were staying behind to hold spacetime open long enough for everyone else to escape.

In Sun and Moon's postgame, you can revisit the Alter of the Sunne/Moone and if you have your Box Legend at the front of your party, open a wormhole that takes you what is essentially the dimension of the other game. It's intended as a way to help the player have better control over the time-based evolutions and encounters, but the way it's handled lore-wise means it's actually an entirely new dimension.

All of this, combined with the fact that Red appears in Sun and Moon, and is - as far as I can tell - still single and as such directly contradicts some backstory I'd made for my game, I'm considering scrapping my game entirely and just making a Gen VII Pack with what I've got now.

Edited November 26, 2016 by Rot8er_ConeX

[Guzam]

Do I think Game Freak knowingly took inspiration from my game? No, but I've seen so may parallels to my game that sometimes I do get paranoid.

- Alolan Forms/Regional Variants are very similar to the way my game in particular handles Delta Pokemon. Most games code them as if they're an entirely new species that has the same base stats as the original and is unbreedable. I made it a point in my game to code them as if they were a new kind of Shiny, so that they could be layered on top of the existing form code to make different forms for the same Delta Species.

I keep seeing these arguments that alolan mons are like delta mons, when the truth is pokemon has been doing delta mons since before these fan games were a thing. They weren't used in game, rather in the TCG with pokemon such as ludicolo being fire type, MAROWAK being FIRE TYPE, Feraligatr being Electric, etc. Gamefreak and Pokemon could've done all of these things with regional variants looooooooong before any of these fangames even came to be. Different forms with different stats or types also isn't a new a concept, it's been done with pokemon like wormadam. I know it isn't comparable to delta/alola mons, but it does show GF was quite capable of making different variants of pokemon with different stats and types.

- The fact that you can see your stat mods in the middle of battle is something else my game can do. To be fair, I took inspiration from Insurgence, but didn't do it the way they [Insurgence] did because it looked like too much code for something like that (making it auto-stack and only show the stats that are changed).

This is something gamefreak and pokemon could've done earlier as well, but I feel it's mostly because they thought most players would pay attention to it themselves.

- The type effectiveness display on your moves was something that I had perfected approximately this time last year. In the early version of this feature in my game, it was an option in the Options screen and always displayed regardless of whether or not you'd seen that species. I have since edited it to match Game Freak's requirements for making it appear. Unlike Game Freak's version, though, mine accounts for abilities, doesn't display in online battles (to not give away sets), and knows the difference between a Delta Pokemon and its non-Delta counterpart (so will only display if you've seen the proper variant of the Pokemon).

Again, this is something Gamefreak and Pokemon could've done on their own as well, the reason it's happening now is because the games have gotten a lot more hand-holdy and easier imo. Back in gen 1, you were expected to discover and learn what things were weak to and good against. As more and more types have been added and as the audience broadens, not everyone is going to be able to remember it all, so gamefreak decided to make it easier.

Jumping outside of the mechanics and into the story, we have (FUCKING MASSIVE SPOILERS BELOW) :

- The death of an entire timeline. In my game, the way I'd explained the existence of Delta Pokemon was that they came from another timeline whose very fabric of spacetime was breaking apart, and the people of that timeline had managed to find means to send themselves and the Pokemon of their realm to another reality. The people, who had found a technological solution, went to the Original Timeline, and the Pokemon were helped via Hoopa, ending up in the Mega Timeline. They didn't realize until they were too late that they'd been sent to two different timelines.

As it turns out, the postgame of Sun and Moon heavily implies that the Original Timeline was attacked by Ultra Beasts after Lusamine's plan succeeds (presumably due to the player having died at the beginning of his/her quest because Tapu Koko had no reason to save him/her, and as such he/she was unable to stop the initial Nihilego), and without Mega Evolution and Z-Moves, the swarm of legendary-level pseudo-Pokemon managed to overwhelm even the strongest trainers.

Not exactly the way I'd handled it in my game - Game Freak's way was much, much darker, since it was a timeline that people knew and loved. But it's still not a concept to be casually thrown around without knowing what you're doing.

I'd like to see when and where this is stated in game as I was never able to find it. Anyway, the alternate dimensions theme has been going on since X and Y's release and was even further expanded upon in ORAS and here.

And in the combination of mechanics and lore, we have (slightly-large spoilers below) :

- The ability to go to another dimension with basically the same geography. In my postgame, after obtaining Delta Hoopa from his/her Deltaverse counterpart, the player can enter the decaying Deltaverse and in it, find and catch the Delta Legendaries and Mythicals, who were staying behind to hold spacetime open long enough for everyone else to escape.

In Sun and Moon's postgame, you can revisit the Alter of the Sunne/Moone and if you have your Box Legend at the front of your party, open a wormhole that takes you what is essentially the dimension of the other game. It's intended as a way to help the player have better control over the time-based evolutions and encounters, but the way it's handled lore-wise means it's actually an entirely new dimension.

This feature was added for convenience sake, not as a major plot point or anything. And again, alternate dimensions has been an issue tackled long before sun and moon.

All of this, combined with the fact that Red appears in Sun and Moon, and is - as far as I can tell - still single and as such directly contradicts some backstory I'd made for my game, I'm considering scrapping my game entirely and just making a Gen VII Pack with what I've got now.

Of course, we may never know, none of us actually make these main series games or discuss with the developers, so there's 0 chance we'd know.

[Rot8er_ConeX]

I keep seeing these arguments that alolan mons are like delta mons, when the truth is pokemon has been doing delta mons since before these fan games were a thing. They weren't used in game, rather in the TCG with pokemon such as ludicolo being fire type,

MAROWAK being FIRE TYPE, Feraligatr being Electric, etc. Gamefreak and Pokemon could've done all of these things with regional variants looooooooong before any of these fangames even came to be. Different forms with different stats or types also isn't a new a concept, it's been done with pokemon like wormadam. I know it isn't comparable to delta/alola mons, but it does show GF was quite capable of making different variants of pokemon with different stats and types.

I'm not saying the fact that I have Delta Pokemon is proof of them copying. I'm saying that the way I coded Delta Pokemon, which is different from the way most fangames do Delta Pokemon, is more akin to Game Freak's way than anyone else.

This is something gamefreak and pokemon could've done earlier as well, but I feel it's mostly because they thought most players would pay attention to it themselves.

Again, this is something Gamefreak and Pokemon could've done on their own as well, the reason it's happening now is because the games have gotten a lot more hand-holdy and easier imo. Back in gen 1, you were expected to discover and learn what things were weak to and good against. As more and more types have been added and as the audience broadens, not everyone is going to be able to remember it all, so gamefreak decided to make it easier.

I agree, They could have added these features in their games before, and in the case of the stat modifier indicators, other fangames and Pokemon simulators have added it before I did.

However, it's funny that you say that the games are getting "more hand-holdy" when this is the first game that actually makes the important characters hard to fight, by giving them IVs and EVs in the relevant stats.

In regards to your responses to the spoilers:

yes, Gen VI hinted at alternate dimensions. But there were no hints that the dimensions would ever interact, or that an entire timeline would end up dying. Or that we'd ever go to the other dimension.

Yes, the Alter of the Sunne/Moone is just there to help you have easier access to time-based encounters and evolutions. But they could have easily gone the Skyward Sword route and made it so you could sleep in a bed and change the time by taking a nap. The second Cosmog could have easily have been obtained with the same method as in the official game, but in the main dimension rather than the alternate one. Instead, they made the names and appearances of landmarks change when you went to the alternate dimension. They even refer to it as another world when you go there. They're building lore with this. Pokemon is going the A Link Between Worlds route (not A Link To The Past because you can't switch at will but can only switch in specific locations.)

And as for not having seen anything like what I'm talking about, it's something that you have to figure out by reading between the lines, like the way ORAS treated the original revelation regarding alternate dimensions. Anabel came from the Original Timeline, which is basically known already. But you may have missed what is so important by the wording of what she remembers.

She defended some tower there. Which means something was attacking the Battle Tower. Considering she fell through the Ultra Wormhole, it's easy to figure out that she was defending the Battle Tower from the Ultra Beasts. What were the Ultra Beasts doing in Hoenn? The Ultra Dimension connection is in Alola.

Considering he lost his memory, something Anabel also did, it's easy to assume that Looker in ORAS is also from the Original Timeline. In the Original Timeline, Looker's last known location is Unova. If he also fell through the Ultra Wormhole, the UBs also attacked Unova.

We also have the fact that when you fight her in the Battle Tree, Anabel uses the original Frontier Brain music, despite that song having gotten a remix in ORAS that would fit in Sun and Moon's music style better. What else did this? The legendaries scattered throughout Hoenn in ORAS. Which means they, too, came from the Original Timeline. Could Hoopa been trying to save them? If so, from what?

[phand1]

All of this, combined with the fact that Red appears in Sun and Moon, and is - as far as I can tell - still single and as such directly contradicts some backstory I'd made for my game, I'm considering scrapping my game entirely and just making a Gen VII Pack with what I've got now.

Don't you dare give up on your game