Reviewing Fanmade Pokemon: Quarantine Crystal, Part 1

A while back, I reviewed the fan-made Pokemon game Pokemon Uranium, which included a full pokedex filled with brand-new 'Fakemon'. A couple hundred of new designs and new variations! I enjoyed seeing what a team made up of fans can do in making their own region. You can see my review of the Pokemon Uranium Pokedex here and here. A little shameless self plug, but you can also use this tag to see the only screenshot-based Let's Play on this blog of my journey through Pokemon Uranium. 

On the comments page of the Uranium monster review segment, the amazing commentator Heckbot suggested that I check out Pokemon: Quarantine Crystal, another fan-game/rom-hack that added an entire new Pokedex filled with brand-new designs. I played through just a bit of the game to see what it's about, and I don't think the game itself is changed; they just changed all the Pokemon in it. 

Which is good, because that's what we do in this blog. We review monster designs, and an entire Pokedex's worth of new monsters to talk about! Again, this series of articles wouldn't be possible without the help of Heckbot, who took the time to screenshot every single Pokedex entry and upload it into imgur. Cool stuff! Without further ado, we'll cover the first forty-something Pokemon in this game!

Again, credits to Heckbot for providing all of these images!

So we start off with the starters, and just like regular Pokemon games, the starters are of the Grass/Fire/Water trinity. I did play the fan-game for a bit, and obviously I picked this one as my starter! It's a caterpillar, how can I not pick it? I don't actually remember a lot of the typings, and the Pokedex entries don't actually show their types, so all throughout this review I'll be making some... educated guesses on what the types are based on the appearance and the pokedex entry. 

"Cigerpillar" is, well, a cigar caterpillar! It apparently eats toxic plants to build toxins within itself, which is actually something that caterpillars of the moth Callopistria floridensis do in real life -- they feed on a certain plant to build up the poisonous substance arsenic in their body. Cigerpillar isn't quite all that poisonous, though, judging by its description all it does is make itself smelly. I'm not sure if a tobacco-based caterpillar Pokemon is meant to be based on a butterfly/moth species that I'm not aware of? Anyone who actually knows what the specific descriptions of these Fanmade Pokemon, feel free to comment down below!

Thanks to Heckbot once more for directing me to the Tobacco Hornworm (Manduca sexta), a pest to tobacco farmers that consume the tobacco plant, metabolize it in their body and eject the chemical results of it as what science calls 'defensive halitosis'. Which isn't as funny as smoke, but the principle of the thing is still the same, using what they ate from the tobacco plant as a chemical weapon against predators. Awesome!

Design-wise it's pretty much a grubby cartoon caterpillar with a leaf on top of its head (it's still a Grass-type, and I'm guessing the line is Grass/Bug?) and coloured with the colouration of a cigarette. Okay! 

The second stage is Tobacoon, so presumably this is the equivalent to a cocoon stage, even though it still clearly has visible bug legs. I do like the idea that it's wreathing itself in a layer of toxic fumes that take over the more mundane buggy coverings of more traditional cocoon Pokemon like Silcoon or Metapod. It sort of reminds me with what they did with Spewpa or Swadloon!

Honestly, if I didn't already know that this is still a Grass-type, I would've guessed that this entire line is Bug/Poison. 

The final evolution turns into a moth or butterfly monster, Okamikaze, and I'm definitely a fan of how different it looks! Normally moth/butterfly monsters focus on how majestically large the wings are, but Okamikaze focuses more on the abdomen being large and thick. And since this is a cigar-based monster, I guess it's intentional? I like the buggy head and the way that the fluffy moth antennae have been interpreted as a badass set of horns. Are the wings supposed to be part of the smoke, too? I do like how tattered they look. 

The pokedex description notes that Okamikaze is drawn to fire, which is why its wings are so burnt, and why it makes vapors so much. It's a nod on the phrase 'like a moth to a flame', I suppose, which doubly works with the fact that cigars are also things you light on flame. 

I wasn't entirely sure what Radeon was when I played through the game and looked at the starters one by one, but looking at its evolutions down the line, I get that it's meant to be a Spinosaurus! Radeon is a baby Spinosaurus, then, although it's kind of like... quadrupedal? It's a cute baby dinosaur, and I do like the massive set of chompers it has on them. They're apparently ruled by a who is the loudest one in the pack, which isn't a feature I particularly associate with Spinosaurs, but it's kind of a cute little detail. 

It's not entirely apparent until I see the three species names ('Obnoxious', 'Revving' and 'Roaring'), but I guess the Radeon line is meant to also be a play on, like, loud motorbike gangs. Which is interesting! Scaulter is a pretty cool look -- the rather awkward-looking head on Radeon has grown into this very badass spiky, skeletal head on Scaulter. Or is it a metallic skull head, since this is a bunch of biker-spinosaurs? And the Spinosaur spine has basically turned into a bunch of exhaust vents. It's absolutely creative and not something I would ever think of if you told me to "make a spinosaur weird"! Of course, being a biker gang, I do like that these are the ones that 'form intimidating packs to protect the weak'. These guys are the good sort of bikers! 

So I guess this line is Fire/Steel?

I really do like how the final evolution ended, with Scorchopper being more predominantly bone-white. It still has the spine-exhaust vents that Scaulter has, but it's also got a bunch of those... chopper-bike-exhaust vents on the dinosaur's thighs. I have absolutely no idea about the terminology of motorbike parts. All in all, pretty cool! It's a unexpected but definitely creative design choice. 

I'm not really actually feeling the water starter as much as I do the grass and fire ones, but then I've never been quite that big on bears in general. Nutanuk here is pretty cute, a cute baby bear with a huge puffy mane and adorable eyes. I definitely prefer this one to the actual polar bear cub Pokemon we got officially -- I've never been a fan of Cubchoo. But Nutanuk? Nutanuk's cute!

The second stage is Nanuqua, and, uh... I didn't notice until reading the Pokedex entry that it's actually wearing another bear Pokemon's pelt as a hoodie. It's sot of like Gabumon from Digimon! It's, uh... it raises some questions, like where the fur comes from. Do Nutanuks spontaneously generate that badass bear-coat cloak when they evolve into a Nanuqua, or do they hunt down and murder an Ursaring or something to do it? The Pokedex description did note that they are 'resourceful' and 'ferocious', so... yeah. 

The final stage of the water starter is the 'apexhunter' Pokemon Nanaturuk, and unlike its previous two evolutions, this one actually looks a fair bit more impressive! It's a bipedal bear with the same fur-cape draped over his shoulders, yes, but the simple change of those eyes into being jet-black with three glowing white pupils? That makes Nanaturuk so much more impressive than the more mundane-looking official bear-Pokemon like Ursaring or Beartric. Sometimes I feel like smaller but odd details like this go a longer way to make a design look sufficiently impressive and weird without going over-the-top.

I'm a bit more chill about the Nutanuk evolutionary line (which I assume are Water/Ice) but they're honestly still pretty neat looking! It's just that, well, they are starter Pokemon, so naturally the five-year-old Pokemon fan in me is going to immediately go and compare which of the ones I like the most. And since there's an insect and a dinosaur in the running, poor Nutanuk really never stood a chance.  

Okay, okay, okay. We're right off of the starters and we're already into something absolutely cool here. The only time Pokemon has really dabbled with parasitism was with Paras and Parasect, which adopts the parasitic, insect-brainwashing Cordyceps fungus, and even then they really downplay the 'fungus takes over the insect' aspect of the evolutionary line. 

And now we've got something else! Buzzling here is a fat green grub with little spikes jutting out on its back. Are more realistic parasitic fungal hyphae? Whatever the case, I absolutely love the fact that the game designers put in the description that 'horrific internal changes are occurring', and that 'it pleads to stay unevolved'. Unlike Paras, this unlucky Buzzling knows exactly what's happening to him. That he's got some sort of terrifying parasite within him that's going to eat him from the inside out. 

Now the sprites are completely different-looking, but the tobacco hornworm caterpillars that are used as the basis for Cigerpillar are often controlled by tobacco farmers by utilizing parasitic wasps as a biological deterrent. You can see images here to see that the little things jutting out of the Buzzling's back does match the cocoons of a real-life parasitic wasp! The image I linked is on a tomato hornworm instead of a tobacco hornworm, admittedly, but you can totally see what little Buzzling is based on!

The first evolution is the absolutely awesome-named "Hivemaim", which... my god, it doesn't even look like the dead body of a caterpillar anymore. That's kind of unfortunate, since I do feel like that does make this lose a bit of continuity in-between stages, but Hivemaim is such a fucking cool design that I can't even complain. This is the 'pupa' stage, and I absolutely love how this thing looks like something straight out of a horror movie. The Buzzling body has been converted into this blob-like structure that looks like... well, a bee hive, and it's got a bunch of glowing eyes peering out from in-between the bandage-like skin folds, and a bunch of weird bug legs jutting out of various parts of it. 

The Pokedex description notes that this is 'filled with growing monsters', so there are multiple parasites growing within the corpse of what used to be a Buzzling! Poor Buzzling is just dead, and it's corpse is being piloted by a swarm of angry, hungry parasites that shamble about with their stick-bug-feet, looking for nourishment. Honestly, probably a bit too dark to be a real Pokemon. But this is the realm of fan-made Fakemon, so I can safely say that when I get through the 200+ Pokemon in this fan-made game, Hivemaim will still probably be one of my favourites. 

The final evolution is, of course, an appropriately monstrous parasitic wasp called Vazzinate. I love that the sprite artist took the time to display the disturbingly tapering thin organ that connects the abdomen and the main body of some parasitic wasps, like the digger wasp or the tarantula hawk wasp. Absolutely approve of this. Design wise it doesn't really change a whole ton from the real organism, it just makes it a bit more... 'mon-like', I guess? I don't really know how to describe it, but it sure looks like a giant, almost dinosaurian or draconic version of a parasitic wasp. And look at that species name! "Grimneedle". What a fucking awesome title that is.

Parasitic wasps are some of the simultaneously cool and horrifying creatures on this planet that we live in, and if I ever actually sat down and made my own personal fan-made Pokemon region, you can bet I would include one in it. This three-stage evolution is definitely one of my favourite designs on this page, and while my favourite is most definitely Hivemaim, the other two stages are also pretty damn well-executed as well even if they do go the obvious route. Still one of my favourites, though! 

Again with the type-guessing: presumably Buzzling is pure-Bug, and the two wasp evolutions are Bug/Poison or Bug/Dark. I'm guessing, here!

I had to google if there is an actual 'stink bird', and turns out that there is! The South American hoatzin is alternatively named the 'stink bird' or the 'reptile bird', and I can safely say that this is definitely what this three-evolutionary line is trying to go for. The hoatzin is called the 'reptile bird' because it's got an additional, wing claw-finger, just like ancient dinosaurs like the Archaeopteryx. 

Hoatot here is most certainly an adorable baby chick who can't even fly! Wikipedia tells me that when attacked by a predator, hoatzin chicks will drop into the water and use their clawed wings to climb back to the nest. That's so adorable, and is reflected here in the dex entry. 

The hoatzin is also known as the 'stink bird' because they are smelly thanks to having a lot of fermentation in their digestive system -- the hoatzin has a unique system of digestion that we normally see in cattle, where they use bacteria to help break down their food. So obviously in Pokemon terms, they become Poison-types! Which is to say, this three-stage line is most likely Poison/Flying. Very cool, I am completely unaware that this bird exists, and I absolutely love that there's a natural non-buggy animal that can be turned into a Poison/Flying monster. 

Hoatoxic looks a lot like a more theropodal dinosaur, but I feel like that's intentional as the evolutionary line grows less dinosaurian and more avian as it evolves. There's definitely a dinosaur inspiration here, since the real-life hoatzin are herbivorous, while Hoatoxic here is described as a pack hunter. I think Hoatoxic is my favourite out of the three, I really like the black stripes and the way those clawed wing-arms look. 

Noxromaeus has a badass name! They're the final stage and I kind of feel like they lose the hoatzin bird's distinctive head-crest? Or is it cropped out by the way the Pokedex lays out the sprite? It sure looks like a big, angry bird, and I do like the way that the tail seems to end in a claw of its own. It's also interesting that Noxromaeus here uses scent to hypnotize its enemy? I feel like I like both its pre-evolutions more than Noxromaeus, but as a poison-spitting hypnotist bird, it's pretty neat. 

Oh, okay, I get it. This is a bird that builds a mud nest! Certain swallows and magpies do it, and I find Furnit here absolutely adorable. It's just a cute cartoon bird that builds a mud house around it like a full-body armour, like a hermit crab of some sort, and its little itty-bitty bird legs poke out from beneath its house. It's cute! And it obviously looks like a more man-made birdhouse. I love this concept!

Obviously, this line is Ground/Flying, right? 

I like the evolutionary concept, too. As the bird evolves into a larger bird, it outgrows its house but the mud becomes harder and acts as armour. The sprite seems to imply that the Furnit's little house ends up becoming Furdoba's helmet? I love that the two sticks that poke out of the mud-helmet resemble the 'horns' of an owl or something. Is the rest of the bird's body likewise encased in mud, or is it just the head? 

Hornampa seems to have mud-horns instead of stick-horns, and the mud armour is dripping down its chest and 'shoulder' area. Hornampa looks a bit more obviously like an owl, but a quick google search tell me that no owl species are known to build mud nests, and those that live in them stole it from another species of bird. That said, I am very much willing to admit that I know very, very little about birds compared to bugs or dinosaurs, so I might be wrong. I don't know/remember if Quarantine Crystal has abilities, but Hornampa's dex description seems to imply that Hornampa has the Weak Armor ability. 

I've never been too big on early-route bird-mon, but between a stinky poison raptor bird and a mud knight owl, these two definitely are much more interesting concepts than anything Nintendo has ever done officially for an early-route bird.

Uhh... okay, I'm not quite sure what this is. A lawn gremlin? It looks kind of like a monkey, except its arms look like noodly vine-things. The description says that it goes around stealing decorations from gardens, and I love that it's got like a plastic flamingo on its head that it presumably stole. So it's like Klefki or Comfey, except it steals lawn decorations? Do Fairy-types exist in this rom-hack? Otherwise this could be a pretty interesting Grass/Fairy Pokemon. I love Lawnie's face here, if nothing else. 

I'm really not feeling these guys, but I do really like the sprite-work! I really love that this guy has such a mischievous looking face, and how it's basically stolen like, vases and stuff to use as body armour. Orgnome (oh it's a garden gnome I get it, I super get it) has the absolutely fun feature of using the flamingo as a fantasy spellcaster staff. 

Gnomercy has a great name! Say it with us again. "Gnomercy!" It's basically grown into something that seems to be quadrupedal, like Venusaur or Torterra, and I love that it's "stolen an entire lawn". Complete with garden gnomes on the sprite! the end result is meant to look like some sort of bull, I think. I'm not the biggest fan of the designs if we're being honest, but I absolutely love the concept. 

An earthworm! Do we not have an earthworm Pokemon in the actual franchise? Really? We have Pokemon based on something as obscure as the goddamn Crystal Palace Dinosaurs, but not a single earthworm? Anyway, Wormeek here is just an earthworm coiled up like a snake, and the game designers clearly recognize that earthworms are loved by farmers because they make the soil more suitable for plants to grow. 

I forgive how mundane Wormeek looks, because it evolves into WORMACHO! It's a macho macho worm! Somehow it has coiled up and uses huge chunks of dirt and roots to turn into giant muscle arms! How does it work, since Wormacho has two arms and presumably also stands on a tail? How does the worm anatomy coil around? With the power of MACHO, of course! Earthworm Jim, eat your heart out! So presumably the first stage is just a Ground-type, and this is... Ground/Fighting? I think? It should be. It's WORMACHO.

I love the fact that the designers just handwaved this guy's strength as coming from 'the nutrients from the dirt it carries'. An earthworm is mostly muscle anyway, I totally believe it. It apparently likes to fight Gnomercy for territory, and I'm assuming that WORMACHO is on the side of the farmers, tilling their farms while flexing, while Gnomercy tries to run away with the entire farmland. 

Another bird! It's a quail called Qwail. It's a cute little puffy quail, and apparently it trains all night and day? Cute and adorable, but not the most interesting thing until...

Qwallop! The pun is hilarious, too, but I finally get what they're going for here. The quail's little plume that juts out from their forehead is now a weapon to punch people. It's not as obvious in Qwail, I think, but in Qwallop it's basically a giant muscle-y fist. It's kind of interesting for sure! And it's most certainly a fun take on a Fighting/Flying Pokemon that actually takes an interesting spin on a real-life animal's odd anatomy. It's not as over-the-top as the previous couple of evolutionary lines, but every Pokedex needs a couple of entries that's just a slightly-weirder real-life animal. 

...like this guy OH MY GOD WHAT THE HECK. It's a Nomster. It's a cute chubby hamster that nom-nom-nom's and probably eats a whole lot. It's a hamster. It's a cute fat hamster. I love it. I really cannot understate just how adorable this guy is. I've never been really impressed with any of the early-route rodent since... since Zigzagoon? Is Zigzagoon the last one that I really loved? All the other early-route rodents tend to look awkward and just not my thing. Nomster, on the other hand, is most definitely my thing. What an adorbs. 

It even has an evolutionary stage that still looks pretty cool, too! Nomsabre goes the Swinub/Piloswine way, turning into a literal giant ball of fluff. I do like that despite technically looking more threatening with those saber-toothed tiger (saber-toothed hamster?) fangs, Nomsabre still looks like a goober. Despite its goofy look, though, when you really think about what that second part of Nomsabre's dex entry means, it's pretty damn awesome-looking. Being able to convert anything it eats into energy is basically something that the official Pokemon franchise has assigned to the quasi-legendary Guzzlord.

I obviously like Nomster more than its evolved state, but I definitely appreciate how cute it still is as a giant saber-hamster. I assume they're both Normal-types? 

When I first saw the sprite, I thought that this is a cool little clam monster in the vein of Syakomon from Digimon, a clam shell with eyes, hiding a secondary 'face' with googly eyes within. That's kind of neat, but then I read the description and I kind of laughed. It's a taco monster! So that's what the "Attacko" pun is all about. A taco. It's... I don't know. Part of me wants to roll my eyes and go 'what a meme' because tacos are one of those foodstuff that people like to turn into a meme. But Vanillite and Slurpuff exist, so it's not too far off the brand to have a taco Pokemon, you know?

And Attacko here at least has a fair amount of thought put into it instead of just slapping eyeballs and hands on a food. I like that the main body of the Attacko seems to be in the fillings of the taco itself, and I do like that there seem to be some noodle-like fingers gripping the edge of the taco shell. Fingers, or tentacle-hands? Because it does have 'an indeterminate number of limbs'. Its description of a 'bad mimic' maybe means that Attacko actually serves like a Mimic monster? Like those chests-that-turn-out-to-be-monsters from D&D and all other RPG games? Except instead of a chest (or a Pokeball), Attacko is a three-foot-tall giant taco. 

The more I think about it, the more I like this. Judging by Pokemon's own standards this guy would probably be a Fairy-type, but if we're strictly using Generation II rules, then it's maybe... Normal?

OH MY GOD. Okay. Okay, a barnacle Pokemon is already a shoo-in into being a favourite of mine. But this is a goose barnacle, one of the more... animated barnacles out there. The goose barnacle has a neck and everything! And then Quarantine Crystal decided to turn the goose barnacle into an actual fusion of a barnacle and a goose. I love it. "Goosapling" has more or less the anatomy of a regular goose barnacle, rooted to one spot with a tendril-like neck, but it's got a goose head instead at the end.

Because real-life geese are utter dipshits -- they look graceful but trust me, geese are rude shits -- of course Goosaplings are rude bastards who honk at anyone who approaches. 

Ganzerker is basically the reverse, yeah? It's more goose than barnacle, but I do like that between the wings and the bill, there are obvious barnacle influences. I absolutely love this thing to bits. It's so horrible-looking, but the idea that this is a horrible goose monster that also happens to be a barnacle really ends up making me like this creature more than I really should. I still love that Ganzerker is still noted as being absolutely and utterly terribly territorial... just like real geese. What an asshole-looking guy. I love him. 

I think there's a myth somewhere about goose barnacles being born out of geese before microscopy has been really developed? -googles- Whoa, there are a lot of them. Absolutely fun. What type would this line be? Water/Flying, I suppose?

Eukub is a grass koala! And a lazy koala that stays on a branch and just waits for leaves to grow. Our actual official koala Pokemon, Komala, is honestly always kind of underwhelming. Eukub isn't like, particularly revolutionary, but at least it looks like a Pokemon with those leaf-ears instead of 'just a koala'. 

The evolutions are a bit more fun, though, where the designers clearly combined koalas and the Eucalyptus trees they are so associated with. Koagan is based on the odd modern-day myth that koalas are 'high all the time' eating Eucalyptus leaves. It is, by the way, not true that koalas sleep all the time because they're stoned -- they just have a slow metabolism! I do like that Koagan here seems to be drunk nonetheless. That's a cute expression, and I like the little detail that its belly has became a fermentation chamber. Koagan's got a Santa beard, I find that funny. 

The evolutionary line would be unremarkable if not for this final (or alternate?) evolution, though! Pocalyptus suddenly goes into a fiery koala spirit with burning branches for ears, an almost owl-like face, and gigantic clawed arms. Presumably Pocalyptus went from regular Grass into Grass/Fire, because a fact about Eucalyptus trees is that... the plant can release flammable oil and ignite dry bark and leaves into fireballs. The Eucalyptus trees have a very fascinating relationship with bushfires in that the tree itself encourages fires to happen, but in turn the tree itself can survive from severe fires.

I'm not sure whether Eucalyptus trees are actually actively burning other plants so that they can 'grow back healthy', but that's apparently what it does? I'm not entirely sure if this is accurate, I'm pretty sure only the fire-resistant plants can really grow back healthy after a massive conflagration. But anyway... monsters! Again, simply making Eukub and Koagan as a koala that's also an Eucalyptus tree is a neat concept but not a particularly interesting one. It's a 'dex filler'. But adding in a Pocalyptus, a koala-tree-on-fire? That one, I can definitely get behind. 

AAAAA IT'S A SQUID BEBE. This one has a very strong Legend of Zelda feel to it. I love everything about this one. The cute sad cartoon squid face, the name ("Cuttle"!) and the fact that the squid's distinctive trunk/mantle has been reimagined as something similar to a pointy traffic cone. The Pokedex only tells us that it hides its head and tentacles underground to hide from predators, but I kind of can see Cuttle here being a hazard in a platformer game, can't you? It hides and only shows its invulnerable spiky 'hat', and then when Mega-man or Mario moves far enough, it hops up and belches an ink ball at you? I love this guy. He's adorable. 

Interestingly, we go full in on the fact that the base form is a hard shell. Which, by the way, isn't too far off from real-life cephalopod evolutions! All cephalopods used to have shells until they mostly all go extinct (only the nautilus remains as a cephalopod with an external shell), and their modern successors (octopi, cuttlefish and squids) have internal, softer shells. Tendrill here, on the other hand, is very much happy to have a spiral-shaped shell that's shaped like a spiky anime drill. I love that its tentacles are all spiky, too, and that from the shape of its head, I'm going to assume that Tendrill can retract its entire squiddy anatomy and hide inside its hard drill shell. Absolutely love this guy. 

Oh man, and then Calamouri turns into something straight out of Transformers or something. It's a squid-tank! Its shell has turned into a 'drill'-like mouth, the eyes just peek out of an equivalent to a tank cockpit, and the squid tendrils act like spider-tank legs. The previous two are exaggerations on an animal basis and a theme, but Calarmouri really looks so creatively bizarre. I'm a huge fan! I also love that apparently Calamouri is a walking squid bulldozer that goes around levelling mountains to create a safe environment for their young... what are the mountains going to do with the Cuttles?

Really like these guys. Presumably, this line is Water/Rock? I actually wonder if they are terrestrial squids since their anatomy revolves so much around drilling into the ground...

-gasps- how freaking cute is this thing. It's a fruit bat. But a fruit bat that literally looks like a fruit, instead of a bat that eats fruit. And it's pink! My god, look at this baby. Flufffruit here looks so adorable, with the bat wings wrapped around its cute little bat face, and it's even pink. I love the description, too. It hides around fruit trees, but sometimes they get mistaken for Apricorn fruits and end up being sold by people. Nooo!

Also, it's based unmistakably on the dragonfruit/pitaya -- the shape and colours of the wings, and later on when we get to see the internal fur which is dotted with black 'seeds' like dragonfruit flesh. I guess these guys are Grass/Flying, since they are flying fruit animals?

Scrufffruit is basically the same baby fruit-bat but bigger and... bipedal? Okay, sure. I guess they're going for a bit of a dracula bat-man look? I love the little description, nonetheless, where apparently they use the sticky fruit juice on its chest to trap prey. 

Pitayrant. The Pitaya Tyrant. Okay. Okay, that name got a long chuckle out of me. This is a 'fruit king', and I guess they really are going for a Dracula theme here since the Pitayrant is rumoured to drink blood. Like most bats, though, Pitayrant isn't a dirty blood-sucking vampire bat, it's just a fruit bat! A ten-foot-tall fruit bat that looks like it's got a werewolf main body and giant dragon wing-arms! I like this idea a lot, that this is a literal 'fruit bat' that at some point evolves into a giant werewolf-vampire that, despite being powerful, would rather go around eating fruit. I like this. 

It's name is GWUBBY. Who's a good gwubby boy??? Oh my god, look at that pokedex entry. "Known to cure a fear of bugs when met". I mean, absolutely! Look at that fat grubby maggot body, and those two googly eyes! I bet it just sort of makes baby sounds. I love how cute this guy is. 

I'm not sure what the story is here, though -- Gwubby is like, the cutest bug in the world that cures entomophobia, but then it evolves into Grubboid, the 'unnatural' Pokemon that is seen as a freak of nature, and 'causes trust issues between humans and Pokemon'. Is it really that untrustworthy and evil, though? Or is it an Absol-esque misunderstanding? 

I do really like that the anatomy of Grubboid does look intentionally unnatural. We don't get a traditionally cool giant insect, or even a humanoid-bug-monster like Pinsir or Heracross. I like that Grubboid's absomen is just this giant engorged maggot tail, its legs are stumpy reptilian legs that don't look like they can support the weight of that massive girth, and it seems to have tiny ladybug wings that are most certainly unable to support the Grubboid's weight. 

I'm not entirely sure what the concept is, but I think the idea is that Grubboid's evolution isn't... isn't perfect? Is not complete? Gwubby's dex did note that it's only 'recently' discovered the potential to evolve, so is this a case where only Gwubby's front half evolves into the beginnings of a cool bug monster, but the tail remains a huge nasty grub abdomen? So many questions!

I've never been a fan of angel or demon-themed Fakemon. I don't know... I just feel like they don't fit the Pokemon aesthetic all that well. Tranquiel at least looks like it could be something along the lines of Chansey? If not for the 'Cherubim' species name, this could look like an angelic fairy instead of just a straight-up angel. It's cute, I guess. It sure has six wings and meditates all the time...

...haha hell yes. I love that cute little angel-blob Tranquiel evolves into this Allseeraph monster. I also like that the dex entry emphasizes that, yes, Allseeraph is still as angelic as it is before, being eternally loyal and kinda feeding on faith. Anyone who's actually read the Bible will know that humanoid angels are the exception rather than the rule, and most angels as they are described in the bible are much, much weirder-looking. Allseeraph here isn't based on a specific angel from the bible, but I do like the three eyes, the multiple wings (two of which are positioned in a way that resemble bug mandibles!) and giant chains that conjoin two of the larger Allseeraph wings. 

I still personally think that it's probably something that will take me out of a Pokemon game if I see it, but I can't deny that it's such a fun and great design, going from a cute baby blob into this eldritch biblical abomination... but both of them are still angels! I didn't even realize until just now that the 'smiling face' on Tranquiel are most likely intended to be like, three closed eyes that are just arranged in a (˘◡˘) smiling face when in fact, they open up into the three unnatural eyes of Allseeraph. Clever!

Mumini is sure a Moomin. I watched that cartoon as a kid, and... I don't know. The Moomins are sure trolls, just drawn as cute hippopotamus-looking guys, but I don't really like the idea that Mumini is just basically taking a different fictional character and putting it into a fan-made Pokemon game? Eh. I did like the little description that it's a happy, friendly troll, but it has to go back to their caves otherwise sunlight turns them into stone. I think that's mostly a Tolkienic invention, but there are so many trolls spread across so many cultures that I wouldn't be surprised if one of them can't stand the sunlight.

Moomin evolves into Mumagnus, who is a straight-up rock giant! I guess Mumagnus here is a Mumini who survived being petrified, and is a sentient rock troll who can cavort in the sunlight? It's kind of neat as an evolved, rocky form of Mumini, although I'm not entirely sure about the weird lion's mane it's got going on here. If not for the Moomin thing throwing me off, though, I'm sure I really would've liked the idea of a creature that gets turned into stone under the sunlight and just continues on as a rock-monster. 

I'm guessing Mumini is Normal? Or Fairy, if that type exists in this game. And Mumagnus is Rock. 

Okay, I think this is unrelated to the Moomins? This one is a rock spider! And like all Pokemon spiders, it only has four legs! Consistency. I guess it's a Rock/Poison Pokemon. I do like that all its anatomy is made up of rocks, just like Gigalith, but it's got a giant fan-like hair at the end of its butt that the pokedex tells me are sharp crystal needles that cause violent skin irritation. Reading a bit into its name, it's a rock spider that shoots asbestos crystals! Shooting irritative urticating hair at larger predators is something that many species of new world tarantulas do. And since Arasbestos here is a rock spider, it shoots asbestos hair! Terrifying!

I think that head is meant to either be a Hazmat mask or a robotic head. And I don't know, maybe it's just because I really really like spiders, but I think I probably would've preferred a normal spider face? This is so cool of a concept that I really don't mind it at all, though.

Something of a mascot for the game is this line. I love this guy! Dolmite here is a 'rockstack' Pokemon, and it's just... it's just a rock formation vaguely shaped like a chibi thereopodal dinosaur. From its name, I guess Dolmite is meant to be based on a dolmen, a type of tomb consisting of rock slabs stacked on each other? It's pretty cute, and I like the idea that it stacks rocks on top of itself to grow more and more. 

My favourite one of the evolutionary line has to be Dolmesa here, who looks like it's some sort of rock formation cut by wind and erosion. I don't know enough about geology to know just what the term for something like this is, but it looks so haunting. It's only three-feet tall here, yes, but I have a very cool mental image of mountain-sized Dolmesas walking slowly through a giant mesa, in-between winds and mountains...

Dolmesa is pretty cool. I love the little description that it gains understanding of its biosphere the more rocks it adds to itself. It looks so different from other 'pure rock' Pokemon like Regirock, Graveler, Carbink or Roggenrola. I absolutely love it when you can design something so utterly alien but also still feels right at home as a Pokemon design. 

Obviously based on a cairn (another type of rock tomb), Cairnivore here looks like something out of a kaiju movie. Like, a giant rock version of Godzilla, only instead this guy is made up of many, many layers of flat stones that vaguely resembles an armless Tyrannosaurid body. Again, just like Dolmesa, I can imagine this to be a giant creature that wanders around the wastelands, and when they are standing still they just look like they're part of the terrain. Apparently they are subterranean, though, based on the dex entry? 

Pretty awesome looking. I wouldn't think that 'rock Godzilla' would be something I appreciate so much, but the artwork and the decision to use stone slabs stacked on each other (or are those eroded parts of a mountain?) as the basis is just amazing. (Also, I'm guessing either pure Rock or Rock/Ground).

It's a bubblegum scorpion! I've always found it interesting that the only official scorpion Pokemon (Skorupi and Drapion) look so weird and awkward compared to the spider or hornet or centipede or crab based Pokemon. And I love them for it! Stinpeon here, on the other hand, looks awkward in a different way. It's like someone took the scorpion anatomy, but then assigned it to a mammal! You'd think that this weirdo here has a body similar to a Slowpoke or a Mew or something. It's... it's slightly unnerving, I'm not going to lie, but I do kind of like the idea that it's just a weird monster that has the anatomy of a scorpion without being one?

It apparently pummels rocks to 'harden their soft shells', so my imagination tells me that these guys have the flesh of newborn babies. I guess all their dangerous scorpion parts (the stinger and the claws) gets turned into clubs?

Stinpeon's evolved stage is Scorperor, and this guy has basically became a more hardened scorpion. It's still got fists instead of claws, although these are fists with spikes. It's interesting that the more it beats its foes with its fists, the more the venom their tail exudes. Okay? that's an interesting bit of biology, and I love just how the sprite artist depicts the tail, which looks less like a stinger with a gland, and more like... self-replicating play-doh or some sort of mud monster? Not the biggest fan of Scorperor, if we're being honest, but I don't dislike him. I did find Stinpeon surprisingly cute, though!

Presumably Stinpeon is Fighting-type, and Scorperor is Poison/Fighting? I wonder how many of these type-guesses I get right, and how many of them are off the mark. 

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Not every design in the dex so far appealed to me, but on the other hand, I absolutely appreciate so many of these. Some of them are amazingly creative concepts that I wouldn't have ever came up with myself, and some, like the Dolmesa line, are just hauntingly beautiful due to the sprite art. I'm going to cut it short here out of length, although the original version of this article did go all the way to 80. See you guys soon with another batch of fake Pokemon -- the one after Scorperor is actually one of my favourites too!

Once more, thanks to Heckbot for providing screenshots of every Pokedex entry in the game!