Each team is assigned an appropriate pocket monster, and teams are ranked accordingly. Nobody gets to be a legendary (looking at you, Philadelphia Ho-Ohs. Generations I and II only.
#1—Rochester Dragons
(Dragonite)
Type: Dragon/Flying
Description: The
unbelievably powerful dragon that will crush (almost) all foes with ease. Final stage of Dratini.
Verdict: Dragonite
is amazing. He has one of the highest
attack scores in the game, and is immune or resistant to several common
types. He does have a quadruple weakness
to ice-beam, so you’re boned if you run into one of those, but he can know
flamethrower and thunderbolt, so it may not matter anyway. You’ll wear out your thumbs training to get
him (level 55!) but he’s worth it.
#2—Philadelphia
Phoenix (Charizard)
Type: Fire/Flying
Description: The
badass dragon of flame that has been with you from the beginning. Final stage of Charmander.
Verdict: She once
may have been a tiny, adorable lizard, but now she’s made of pure badass. Immune to ground and wielding some powerful
attacks and great stats, Charizard is going to burn out a lot of her
opponents. The quad-weakness to rock is
a little alarming, but rock attacks have fairly low accuracy for the most part,
so it doesn’t hurt as much as you’d think.
Major bonus points for being a starter-Pokémon.
#3—Windy City
Wildfire (Rapidash)
Type: Fire
Description: The
wild, stunningly beautiful, fiery unicorn.
Evolution of Ponyta.
Verdict: He’s
really fast and is a rare non-starter fire Pokémon, who can either stomp on
your face or He
doesn’t quite have the stats you’d like for a core monster, but he makes up for
it in cool.
burn you to the ground.
burn you to the ground.
#4—New York Empire
(Nidoking)
Type: Poison/Ground
Description: Regal
and powerful, the enormous king of all rodents, equipped with a deadly horn. Final
stage of Nidoran(m); evolves with moonstone.
Verdict: Nidoking
is big, scary, and imperial, and he can be acquired as early as level 16, which
earns him huge bonus points. The ability
to crush face with one-shot moves like Horn Drill and near one-shots like
Earthquake are great. But still, the
poison type isn’t a great one, so he can’t move up higher on the list. There are just too many great psychic Pokémon
out there.
#5—Indianapolis
Alleycats (Persian)
Type: Normal
Description: Elegant
cat with sharp claws and a taste for fine jewelry. Evolves from Meowth.
Verdict: Persian
is basically a lioness, who matures from the gold-adorned cat, Meowth. Being able to smack a foe and have coins
materialize out of thin air is pretty cool, and her stats are decent. She doesn’t get really good until later
generations of the games, when she picks up a couple of neat abilities that
make her quite the technician. Probably
not worth a spot on your main-quest Pokémon roster, but she’s a favorite of
arch-badguys Team Rocket, so that has to give her some cred as someone to keep
an eye on.
#6—Detroit Mechanix
(Magneton)
Type: Electric/Steel
Description: The
triple-threat magnet beast that got a whole lot tougher the second time around.
Evolves from Magnemite.
Verdict: In the
first games, Magneton was pretty bad. A
slow electric type? Lame. But in the second generation, it picked up
the new Steel type, which made it resistant to basically everything except fire-
and ground-type attacks (and it was already getting killed by ground
anyway). So Magneton turned out to be
pretty decent after all. Alas, the speed
factor is still a problem, so he can’t go any higher than here. Still, you have to wonder how difficult is to
make a decision with three separate brains linked together.
#7—New Jersey
Hammerheads (Marowak)
Type: Ground
Description: Wear
a goddamn skull for a helmet. Enough
said.
Verdict: You
thought we were going to go with some sort of shark on this one, didn’t
you? Well, Marowak fits the Hammerheads
just as well. She’ll smash you in the
face with her head and not feel a thing through the skull of a vanquished foe
that she wears just for fun. Also, she
has a tendency to haunt memorials, so watch out if she comes down to play in
DC.
#8—Cincinnati
Revolution (Smeargle)
Type: Normal
Description: The…um…actually,
I’m not really sure how to describe this one.
Verdict: Smeargle
can only do one thing: once every ten levels, he can use the move Sketch to permanently copy a move that
was just used against him. Sounds dumb,
sure, and it takes forever to get things right, but you can end up with some
otherwise impossible, but really fun combinations. Spore/Dream-Eater is probably the coolest
idea ever. Anyway, nothing screams
‘Revolution’ more than taking your opponents’ weapons and stealing them for
yourself. Go Smeargle!
| Is that an amorphous protrusion in your side? Or are you just happy to see me? |
#9—Madison Radicals
(Ditto)
Type: Normal
Description: The
amorphous blob who reshapes himself to mimic foes.
Verdict: In
combat, Ditto is a useless one-trick pony.
BUT he has the uncanny ability to mate with anything that has genitals
(no, seriously, Nintendo put that in the game), so he gets huge bonus points and
a big bump up in the rankings for being very useful in breeding baby Pokémon eggs
(also a thing). What could be more
Radical than a constantly-changing free-love hippy?
Type: Ice/Flying
Verdict: Delibird
is completely terrible, but he’s the only non-legendary ice-flyer, so in
keeping with the rules, instead of Articuno, Minnesota gets Delibird. Delibird only learns one move: Present, which can either damage or heal the targeted opponent. On the bright side, he can learn TMs like Ice Beam, and the HM Fly, so he at least has some
utility. By far his best contribution to
the gaming universe is his Supermarket-Sweep style Pokémon Stadium minigame.
#11—DC Breeze
(Pidgey)
Type: Flying/Normal
Description: Yep. She’s a pigeon.
Verdict: Able to
conjure a mighty breeze with the move Gust,
and maybe throw some sand in your eyes.
But that’s about it. Only the
flying type and the ability to learn Fly
make her more useful than the Pokémon who brings up the rear.
#12—Toronto Rush
(Rattata)
Type: Normal
Description: Yep. He’s a rat.
Verdict: Look,
yes, for about a half hour Rattata is pretty good. He’s kind of quick and he can do some good
damage until you clear Viridian Forest. His
early Quick Attack move is what gets
him matched up with the Rush. But then
what? His stats are bad, he doesn’t have
any type advantages, and he doesn’t learn any particularly interesting
moves. He can’t even learn any good
out-of-combat moves. At least a Metapod
turns into Butterfree one day. Rattata
just gets fat.
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