We're doing our first themed one today! It's Porygon!
Again, similar introduction to the rest of the Infinite Fusion posts -- Infinite Fusion is a fan-game that features fusions of Pokemon as the gimmick, and often times this includes some excellent sprite-work by artists.
I did a more in-depth explanation of the fusion process in the first review. Basically, the Infinite Fusion calculator has two different combinations, with one Pokemon as the body, and the other Pokemon as the head + colours, and vice-versa. But the most interesting ones are the crowdsourced custom sprites for the fusions, the bulk of which is what we'll be talking about here!
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I think with all of the 'themed' posts, I'll go first with what happens if I mix and match the Pokemon with itself. And... Porygon + Porygon here just results in a glitchy mess with an error screen. The whole point of Porygon is that it's a creature that's rendered by a computer program, but alive. So Porygon-Porygon here is kind of a buggy fusion with a tail that splits and an extra eyeball on the forehead. Not my favourite design, but we do have three canon Porygon designs to play around with.
Porygon2 + Porygon2 ends up basically becoming the 'lion balloon doll' beta design from the Spaceworld demos, and I've reviewed all of the 'beta Pokemon' designs a while back on this blog. It's a cute easter egg for those who know their Pokemon meta-lore, but I feel like Kon-Porygon2 is good enough of a design that it works well even as a fusion of two Porygon2's. You could see the rounded-out Porygon2 anatomy kind of piling up upon itself.
Porygon-Z/Porygon-Z goes on an interesting level! I guess the custom spriter just really liked Cresselia, or associated Porygon's design with Cresselia... I've never really seen it until now, but... yeah, they're both pinkish-blue ducks! Combining two Porygon-Z's together in this universe, then, results in an almost-complete Cresselia body, but the 'rings' and 'wings' are filled in with glitchy static. Specifically, MissingNo static. That's pretty cool. The idea of glitching and graphical static is going to come up a lot with Porygon-Z, and very appropriately so! I like this one, actually, the more and more I see it.
Now we're doing fusions across the evolutionary line. Porygon/Porygon2 is... it's a visual gag. The Porygon is being updated halfway through, and the right side of the image is being rewritten with the Porygon2 sprite. Pretty obvious joke, but it works. I guess this guy is Porygon1.5?
We've got the two Porygon/Porygon-Z fusions here, and... the first one is cute but not the most interesting. We basically have Porygon-Z's "disconnected organs" design but with regular Porygon's block anatomy. Which is neat, but...
...yeah, look at that other monstrosity! It's just a pile of bad data, presumably because you're trying to combine a perfectly functional (but old) artificial program with one that's corrupted with bootleg code. I love the MissingNo static acting like kind of a glue holding everything together, I love the random crying eyeball in the middle, and there's just a bunch of random crap related to computer softwares like a window pop-up or a recycle bin stuck into the mass of static. Poor Porygon!
Out of completion's sake, we've got the two Porygon2/Porygon-Z fusions, but... they're not the most interesting, it's just a rejiggering of the body layouts and poses. I honestly can't tell you that the right sprite isn't just Porygon2 doing a 'hi there' pose. It's neat that they bothered to make custom sprites for these guys, though, and I do like that someone took the time of seeing how the anatomies would mix.
I decided to take a single Pokemon and see how they would fit with the Porygon fusions, and I thought... why not Donphan? He's been shoved through the paradox time machine both ways in the newest game, so why not digitize him? Donphan/Porygon2 looks kind of uncomfortable, looking kind of like a weird balloon elephant.
I really like Donphan/Porygon, though, with how segmented and cube-y everything looks. Donphan's anatomy is weird enough that you could definite see him as like an enemy in a N64 Zelda game or something, and his body is 'toyetic' enough that it honestly fits pretty well into the block-polygon aesthetic.
Another cute, simple one. Porygon/Misdreavus doesn't really do anything novel, but I just really like how the colours come off on Misdreavus's hair and how the spiky, polygonated Porygon head and ghostly 'leg-spikes' look. I don't know if this one really fit the idea of a fusion since wouldn't the Misdreavus hair also be polygonated? But maybe Misdreavus's hair is just that fabulous that the polygonization doesn't work on it.
I wasn't sure what I was looking at the first time, but Porygon/Remoraid is... a barcode scanner! Because regular Remoraid is patterned after a gun, duh! I've got a funny anecdote where I thought a 7-11 cashier in New York City pulled out a barcode scanner to drive away some abrasive, drunk thug that barged into the store and for the life of me I thought he was pulling out a gun. Anyway, Poryraid here is pretty neato.
Let's take a break from all that pink and blue, and add two fusions that are a bit different in colour! Porygon/Meowth is just a cube box with some features. I don't know if this is a specific reference to a specific anime or game (which I tend to avoid like the plague when I'm doing these reviews) but cube-y Meowth here looks quite cute.
I thought Porygon-Z/Unown would actually result in something far weirder and more eldritch (Unown's another one that I think is ripe to make into an article at some point) and we got something... very simple. It's just a line cutout of Porygon-Z's silhouette, but it kinda almost looks like some sort of pictogram?
Porygon/Chikorita is just here because I really found it cute. I'm not sure what I like better. Those big-ass eyes that combines Chikorita's giant anime eyes with Porygon's dot-pupils or the fact that they interpreted Chikorita's head-leaf as being textured like Porygon's legs/tail.
Porygon-Z/Voltorb is pretty great! Great spriting effort to give us the vibe of something that's vibrating in place, glitching in the continuity of space-time, but it even fits with Voltorb's "volatile and will explode any time" gimmick. Love that the colours of the afterimages don't exactly line up with Voltorb-Z's 'main' body colouration, and I could see the interpretation here as a Pokemon that not only is vibrating because of the electrically/chemically volatile composition but just out of sync with reality itself.
Porygon2/Aegislash here is one of the many 'digitalized version of the other Pokemon' Porygon fusions, but I really love them taking a Matrix-style 010101001010 code into the design. Neither Aegislash nor Porygon2 have anything to do with the Matrix colours, but I love the fact that the sword hilt and the shield seem to be made out of 'solid' matter, being coloured in Porygon2's pink and blue... but everything else is glowing black and green, like they were downloaded into existence. It's like a digital lightsaber.
Porygon2/Slowbro is another cute one. I'm not sure why the main Slowbro body gets weird scribbly bird-feet, but I like the fusion of Slowbro's body layout and Porygon2's balloon animal aesthetics. The best part, of course, is that the spriter redesigned the 'Shellder' that's biting the tail into a completely different, but still digital-looking, little blue-green blob friend.
Porygon-Z/Golurk is one of those 'glitchy monstrosities' that I expected out of a Porygon-Z fusion, but I appreciate the Infinite Fusion spriters so, so much for understanding the assignment and getting that Pokemon tends to go for wacky and whimsical almost all the time. And... yes, Golurk-Z here definitely looks 'wrong', like it's not supposed to exist in the world, but it's also not turned into a creepy digital golem falling apart or whatever. There's green lightning sparking out of the Porygon2 giant orbs that make up his limbs, and the Prague golem seal on Golurk-Z's chest has been ripped off to reveal the matrix within. That's a very cool interpretation and combination of design elements from between the two. I love the little bits and blobs of floating blue and red balls that form his 'joints', as well.
Porygon-Z/Tentacruel is here because I found it really cool and wacky. I love that we've got two sets of faces here -- Porygon-Z's regular duck face is replacing where the giant piercing fangs are in Tentacruel's regular anatomy. Meanwhile, Porygon-Z's crazy eyes have replaced the two giant faux-eyeball orbs on Tentacruel's 'hat'. The tentacles are detached and floating below Tentacruel-Z, similar like Porygon-Z's own disembodied limbs. Finally, we've got a computer notification "!" in the middle of the forehead. What a wacky-looking mofo! I could totally see this as like the security guard in a 'journey into the infected computer digital world' setting.
I really appreciate the Game Boy style spriting, by the way, with Porygon2/Magneton here. There's just something so nostalgic with these older sprites. The design of this is pretty simple, otherwise, just slapping Porygon2's snout and colours onto the individual Magneton heads. I think the intent was for each Magneton unit to have a single eyeball, just like 'canon' Magneton? S'cute.
Again, I tend to not think much of the fusions that are literally just 'let's import another character from another franchise. And Porygon2/Venusaur here technically has a Minecraft tree on its back... but I feel like they were pretty creative with this design, giving most of the Venusaur frog-dinosaur body a regular physical 'fused with Porygon2' form, and just replacing the plant with a digital one. The design still works even if you don't recognize this as a tree from Minecraft, and think that it's just a regular pixelated video game tree!
Both Cofagrigus/Porygon2 fusions are pretty cool, even if I do think that the one on the left works better as a Rotom fusion. But the idea of a smartphone replacing the coffin is an interesting one, and Porygon2's tech/digital inspiration transforming Cofagrigus's shadow arms into representations of apps -- Discord, Reddit, Youtube and Spotify -- is pretty cheesy but in all the best ways. I kinda wish that there was a bit more Cofagrigus in the design, though
The alternate fusion with Porygon2 as the base, I think I like more. Porygon2 is crafted out of pure sand, and he's wearing Cofagrigus's pharaoh headdress. It's just kinda simple and neat, and you could imagine that the Pokemon Infinite Fusion's version of the Great Sphinx might look like this.
Cofagrigus/Porygon-Z go for a 'glitchy demonic computer program' idea, and you could see this as the corrupted, evolved version of the Cofagrigus-2 app above. Instead of an app, it's now a computer program... and it's breaking out of the computer program into the real world. I assume the computer isn't actually part of the entity, just the portal that Cofagrigus-Z is using to break into the world? Again, a bit more Rotom than Porygon, but I do think that it still fits the idea of Porygon being a sentient program. It's like a digital Sadako, only instead of a stringy-haired girl it's a broken pink-and-blue duck-doll. I do like that the Cofagrigus side has taken over half of his face.
We keep mentioning Rotom, who's a ghost possessing a television, so of course the Rotom/Porygon-Z fusion's going to look creepy and glorious. It's TV that's orange -- a sign of Rotom possession -- and the entire screen has been turned into a Game Boy glitchy mess, while a ghostly, half-melted Porygon-Z body with blank white eyes is glorping out of the TV like a screwed-up reverse version of Persona 4's premise. I do really like the story they tell here with there being a pair of ominous eyes on the screen of the TV, as if the true Rotom-Z entity is the TV (or the TV program), and the Porygon-Z 'body' is like a herald or avatar it's sending out into the real world. Perhaps like a tentacle, or an anglerfish lure.
Speaking of anglerfishes, have a cute one here in Porygon/Chinchou. I just really like how this one looks, and how they made Chinchou's little frogfish-feet a bit more apparent by replacing them with Porygon's duck shoes. Love the big Porygon eyes on Chinchou's body, and how his lures have been replaced with pixel blocks.
Porygon-Z/Paras also looks rather spiffy, having a more metallic sheen than most of the other Porygon fusions on this page. I really like the random orange mushrooms with red and blue spots, and I like that Paras-Z's limbs are disjointed from the body.
Do you lik Mudkipz? I do like Mudkips. Both Mudkip/Porygon fusions are pretty pleasant to look at. The one on the left is just Mudkip drawn in the Porygon art style, but what made me really like it are the crisscrossed eyes and the square bubbles. Meanwhile, the one on the left is a 'Pokemon Quest' interpretation of Mudkip, rendering the basic Mudkip design in a blocky fashion... and there are a couple of Pokemon Quest inspired designs, but I like this Mudkip one the most. He looks like a weird axolotl!
Porygon/Aerodactyl here is glorious, just reducing Aerodactyl into a super-simplified, chibi-block design. It just looks so freaking goofy, and I appreciate just how dorky those chunky 'Lego toy' legs look.
Charizard/Porygon isn't super-imaginative, but it gets a spot here for how cool the glitchy, digital blue flame-tail looks... and how cursed merging the chunky Porygon head and turning it from a whole head into an upper jaw. Do you see it? Do you see Charizard's fully reptilian lower jaw jutting out from under the Porygon head?
Another break from the pinks and blues! I... I don't know what's going on with Crobat/Porygon-Z here, but I really like it. It's just lumping together random Crobat anatomy onto Porygon-Z, and rearranging how they are set up, and the end result is this imp-devil-being. Neither Crobat nor Porygon-Z are humanoid or imp-shaped, but I really appreciate that this design uses all parts from Crobat and Porygon-Z to make this design.
Of course Parasect/Porygon-Z gets a fucking creepy one. The main body is Parasect, but we get the limbs and body disembodied and floating around the main mushroom cap, just like Porygon-Z... but instead of just floating with the power of digital or electromagnetic forces, Parasect's bug head, abdomen and two claws are connected with white string, meant to represent the mushroom's hyphae! That's gloriously creepy. I like it!
We're closing this off with some legendaries, starting off with Mewtwo/Porygon-Z, with Mewtwo-Z looking more or less how you would expect a monstrous anime villain who's glitching in and out of existence would look like. I like that the tail and the leg has missing components, I love that the hands are completely detached from the body, and I like that the head is just a weird mess that looks like an alien design that's neither Mewtwo nor Porygon-Z.
Deoxys/Porygon-Z goes for a similar approach, only I find him a fair bit coler due to mixing up a bunch of the MissingNo static texture and the black-and-green Matrix texturing to replace Deoxys-Z's tentacles. I feel that the idea of an otherworldly creature glitching in and out of existence does kind of fit Deoxys better than Mewtwo?
These are all just going to be Porygon-Z fusions, huh? I don't really mind. Porygon-Z/Zekrom goes for the familiar 'detached limbs' vibe, but it also replaces chunks of Zekrom's body with glitchy Missingno matrices. I actually would say that it works much better for the far more angular Zekrom than the two humanoids above, and Zekrom's already mechanical turbine-tail and wings look rather home in this design.
Porygon-Z/Kyurem, meanwhile, goes for something a bit wackier, but I really also like that Kyurem's ice spikes gets interpreted as like, monitor glass or something. Poor Kyurem here looks like he's half-disappeared already, unlike Deoxys-Z or Mewtwo-Z above, but considering Kyurem's role as a creature that's not entirely whole, it fits the role!
Of course they'd go hard with Giratina/Porygon-Z fusion. The one on the left is a more typical 'eldritch final boss' vibe, looking like the final enemy in a Guren Lagann themed cartoon or something. I really love, though, that it's bursting out of a dimension made out of digital code, really affirming that Giratina-Z here is a digital demon. I love that the 'ribcage' is essentialyl clutching an empty void with a glowing red orb, I love the random pieces of Porygon legs that's hovering around Giratina-Z's head, but my favourite part has to be that head -- which interprets the space between Giratina's mandible-jaws and his head-crest as just a single hole for a Porygon-Z robotic eye to nestle. Cool!
The opposite, less-pink fusion is a bit more low-key, painting up Porygon-Z in Giratina's devilish colours and sticking some wings onto it. I'm... I'm not sure about the positioning of Porygon-Z's tail on the design, particularly with a Girattina tail also attached to the design, but the coolest part of all this has to be the puppet strings that stretch up to beyond the image. Or are those nooses?
Regigigas/Porygon2 is pretty creepy! Sure, parts of its body is dissolving into nothing, into like half-rendered photoshop background matrix or some shit. I'm not sure if Reigigon2 here is disintegrating or in the process of being 'rendered'. Regigigas is a golem that's being awakened, so maybe that's what's happening here? But the most unsettling parts of this design is putting Porygon2's face on Regigigas, so the central 'band' running down Regigigas's body extends into Porygon2's phallic beak, and two soulless eyes just peer at you from either side of that. What a weirdo!
Regigigas/Porygon here takes the cake for the most fucked-up Porygon fusion, though. Taking the huge, organic golem and rendering him in colourful pink-blue boxes is going to be neat enough for Regirygon to get a spot on this page, but it goes even further by replacing the orbs on Regigigas's body with Porygon eyes. That's just so wrong-looking in a creature that otherwise would 'merely' be a low-res golem with long arms.
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This was fun! I didn't want to go on and on and I'm getting a bit sick of pinks and blues... but I couldn't find as much 'digital' fusions as I would've expected? It's a fun little first attempt at focusing at a single Pokemon evolutionary line's fusions, though. And after playing around, I can tell you for sure that Rotom, Muk, the Duskull line, Mimikyu, the Solosis line and the Paras line would get articles of their own whenever I have the time to do it. These Infinite Fusion articles are a bit more random and yolo depending on my own personal timing, though, so no promises on when that'll happen!
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