here are my buddy squads from various monster-catching games i'm playing!! gonna update this page as i play more and more, right now i'm going through the co-op temtem campaign with maunder and finishing up mhs2 for the first time ever!
Sunny
Cube
Buzzbert
Starman
Nine
Walker
Buffalo
Jibboom
Nephthys
Crowley
Block
Ratha
Pop
Star
Mimi
Noctis
Trumpet
Pantis
jibboom is named after a part of a ship! i was inspired by turnbuckle, a pirate from treasure planet whose name refers to the tool used by sailors to fasten ropes
sunny is named after sun wukong, the chinese trickster god from journey to the west!
jibboom's name can be shortened to jibby!
star and mimi were gifts given to me by maunder!
crowley was named by maunder! yian garuga is a purple and green birdy beast, so OBVIOUSLY i associate it with them!!
when sun and moon first came out, me and maunder made matching tumblr blogs to document our progress through the region. we even had a battle counter that tracked our wins against each other!
nephthys is named after an egyptian goddess of mourning and night... and a cool egg boss in archie sonic
despite being a high enough level, pop has not been evolved into brionne. i just love that little blue guy too much!
starman is named after the song by david bowie.
one of my favourite monster-catching games of all time is jade cocoon, a niche title on the playstation that featured an awesome minion fusing mechanic!! it was developed by genki in collaboration with studio ghibli character designer katsuya kondÅ, making it an awesome visual feast with over 600 pre-rendered backgrounds and a cast of colourful characters that oozed with charm and wild energy!
though maybe kinda dated these days, (the sequel is definitely a smoother ride with better controls and cuter beasties) it holds a special spot in my heart as one of the very first games i played as a kid. i remember padding around the lush, magical forests with my marrdreg and being filled with a supernatural sense of wonder, like i was discovering things nobody had ever seen before
and then beating the shit out of the wildlife with my cool metal dog
speaking of which, the minion designs!! bug-eyed dragons, walking driftwood, tsuchinoko snakes and baskets with little feet... jade cocoon had such a unique approach to monster design that always felt less like it was trying to appeal to your affection for cute pets and more to your sense of discovery. finding a new minion was always a mental journey of 'what the fuck is that thing?! where's it's face?! why's it coming at me?! now i want one!' and it has endeared me for years
my favourite minions are marrdreg, kolna, dark arpatron, hiralco, vatolka, dogpara, tuturis, arvalzak, and the classic telma, but nothing beats the beasts i merged myself!! maybe someday i'll make a jade cocoon page on my site to show off merged minions and other cool stuff!
when i was a kid, i got my copy of pokemon ruby handed down to me from my brother. it still had his save on it, so i just played with that because i was like wahoo! free pokemon! anyway, he'd caught a rayquaza and called it dragonbane and since this was way back when "the internet" referred to a fat off-white desktop computer you had to take shifts on, i had no idea that wasn't just pokemon's name. for ages i thought rayquaza was called dragonbane!
when i was a kid and obsessed with charizard, i came up with a fourth evolutionary stage called charking. it was a bigger, spikier charizard, with wings on its arms and legs and a huge crown of spikes on its head to replace its two horn prongs. sound familiar? yeah, i was blown away when i first saw mega charizard Y!
on 27/09/22 i caught my first ever luma temtem! maunder and i were visiting deniz to quickly fill out some gaps in our tempedia and suddenly a black and gold paharo jumped at us!!
i haven't played temtem long enough to give a review yet, but what i can say is it's a great adventure to take with a buddy!! i've been playing with maunder, my best friend and known pokemon uber-nerd, and we've been having the time of our lives strategizing battles and dancing around roombas!
monster hunter stories 2 is hands down my favourite modern monster-catcher! i grew up with the monster hunter games and was enraptured from the first time i saw my brother's hunter step out into the forest and slay a rathalos. the gameplay is a rollercoaster of thrills, and everything about the monsters' designs call to me - so incredibly creative but grounded in a way that makes them feel plausible enough to leap out of the screen and wreak havoc in my living room! so learning capcom was releasing a game where i could hatch them, raise them and ride them? bro you had me at 'releasing a game'!!
the battle system i gotta applaud especially for managing to get me excited for turn-based combat. normally i'm not a fan, but mhs2 keeps it simple and snappy with the kind of deeper mechanics that feel more like a fun bonus than a chore! plus, if jibby is too swole for a guy i can press two buttons and they'll do a backflip and die
what can i say about pokemon that hasn't been said already? it's a classic!! full of charm and character that has weaseled its way into the hearts of almost everyone who has played or watched it. like pretty much everyone else on planet earth, i played a ton of pokemon games as a kid and was immediately endeared to all the beasties i got to call my friends. though, i can't really call myself a seasoned pokemon player... i've barely finished any of the mainline games!! not for lack of trying, i chalk it up to my adhd making it hard to focus on handhelds
naw, the ones that REALLY grabbed my attention were the play-as-a-pokemon spin-offs: pokemon mystery dungeon and pokepark wii!
my favourite pokemon are dusknoir, popplio and lechonk!
dusknoir is so fucking shape i love him mouth
i also love dracozolt, zweilous, bouffalant, toxtricity, trapinch, arrokuda, emboar, heatmor, porygon-z, sylveon, sandaconda, heatmor, appletun, piloswine and scrafty!
my favourite temtem so far is pigepic!! i gotta play more before i can pick more!
my favourite monsties are bulldrome, popo, ludroth, barroth and bazelgeuse! i got a thing for big chunky beasties
