258: Mudkip
258: MudkipOut of all the animals Starter Pokemon have ever been, a mudskipper feels like the least likely out of all of them. Yet, here it is! For those not in the know, mudskippers are fish that have taken on the task of living a decent chunk of their lives out of water, hanging around wetland areas and muddy swamps. They're also known for using fins as if legs.
Mudkip notably takes the line in a direction more along the lines of reimagining the creature as a quadruped, just being more or less a dog-shaped fish. It also gets axolotl-esque cheek-gills, because someone at Gamefreak was just really into axolotls at the time. Who can blame em though?! Mudkip is an adorable mish-mash creature that has its own original flare.
259: Marshtomp
259: MarshtompMarshtomp still very much being on par with the rest of the middle evos. It's Mudkip with growing pains and standing on two legs, a starter Pokemon staple especially by these day's standards. It does the job of bridging a gap and that feels like all that can be said about Marshtomp.
260: Swampert
260: SwampertSwampert, however, certainly feels like a Pokemon that can stand with the OGs. Maybe not necessarily in style, but most certainly in that sense that it used "mudskipper" as a starting point and very much grew into its own, wholey original creature. This line in general feels like it highlights the style shift Pokemon got on the jump from Gameboy to GBA. Now that sprites could have a lot more color and detail to them, Pokemon in turn got more colorful and finer details are more likely to get stuck on. Perhaps if Swampert were made in the GB days, its orange splotches might've been flattened and more square.
Swampert of course looks neat, us especially liking its facial region between the cool cheeks, head-fins, and the pseudo-toothy mouth. Maybe the one thing we'd change about Swampert to make it perfect would be to give it the more frog-like eyes of a mudskipper, but what it has now is closer to the real thing than its prevos.
Personal Score: 8.5/10
Mega Swampert:
Mega Swampert:Mega Swampert does kinda lose it for us, though. Not in a way that's devestating, it's still cool as an extention of Swampert. But it just kind of feels here out of obligation since the other two got Megas, but for this one they didn't have any particularily compelling ideas. Let's just make Swamper big and buff I guess. Is it something to do with sailors? That wouldn't make sense since mudskippers are freshwater fish. I dunno! It's there.
Personal Score: 7/10
For whatever reason, I was having trouble logging into Blogger and wasn't able to log back in until very recently.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, the Mudkip family is actually the very first evolution line I had ever used in a Pokemon game, so of course, I have a personal attachment to them.
I was seven years old when I first got my copy of Emerald, and the moment I was given the option to choose between this generation's starters, it was an extremely difficult decision to pick between either Mudkip or Treecko, because they both tickled certain niches that I didn't even know I had. I ended up picking Mudkip and it was not a decision I regret.
It's final evolution Swampert is a beast in-game, and I absolutely love how monstrous it's design looks. I was honestly quite surprised to find out that many people thought it was ugly, because I thought it looked rad as hell.
And to this day, it remains in my personal Top Ten. It's no longer number one, but I still adore with all my heart.
And oh yeah, Marshtomp exists. It's whatever.
Mudkip: 9/10
Marshtomp: 5/10
Swampert: 10/10