Thursday, May 27, 2010

6. Charizard








As you can see, it’s somewhat difficult to make Charizard look anything but awesome.

Okay, maybe Gold and Silver’s are a bit too cartoony and the first generations make you wonder how they distinguished Charizard from Dragonite. But even the goofiest looking of the lot—Red and Green’s—appears to be blowing a fireball into its own hand. That must be a heck of a bar trick.

Although one thing sometimes distracts me about Charizard, and that’s his wings. There is no way those things could support his bulk in midair! Yellow’s sprite is the only one that even comes close to making them look flight-worthy. They’re actually almost as long as his body, and extend behind his tail, unlike in all the other sprites. Maybe Red and Blue’s as well, since they appear possibly folded. But I guess we’ll cut them some slack, because A) suspension of disbelief, B) the wings have to germinate from nowhere out of Charizard’s previous forms, and C) later sprites ditch the wings’ smoothness in favor of a more haphazard, bat-like style, which definitely earns them some cool points.

The Winner:
FireRed and Leafgreen





Because if you’re going to make a pokemon your version mascot, you’d better get his sprite right. And they did. The positioning, the roar, the upturned paws, all perfect. The next two sprites look plenty tough as well, but they just can’t match this one’s “master of all I survey” pose.

Plus, could those DS sprites be any bigger? I mean even for DS sprites. Here I was all impressed by the way they utilized space for Venusaur’s sprite, but look at them side by side:





Charizard’s not even that big! Pokémon media list him at 5’7”, and Venusaur at 6’7”. But I guess they’re not meant to be to scale, so whatever.

Finally, I just want to point out that if anything looks cooler than a Charizard, it’s a shiny Charizard:






Too bad nobody ever sees a shiny pokemon in their lifetime, ever

15 comments:

  1. You want to see a majestic Charizard, you play Pokemon Snap. Charizards are the lions of the Pokemon world. :D

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  2. I have only seen one natural shiny, and it was a shiny Golem caught by my nine-year-old stepbrother. >:I

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  3. i actually caught a shiny pokemon....granted its a lame one, but it is a shiny nonetheless. it is a shiny smeargle. oh yea. go crazy.

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  4. fr/lg sprite is a cheap knockoff of the r/s sprite, and not even an improvement

    i hear you on sprite size, but all things considered the r/s sprite blows the fr/lg one away, and the d/p sprite is, in my eyes, perfect

    it blows all others out of the water

    then it sets fire to them

    with its mouth

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  5. D/P always bugged me... It has that long dinosaur neck to it. I think Yellow looks great, because those wings might just support flight.

    HG/SS looks pretty funny. It has that whole "Are you kidding me?" look to it.
    Either way, every Charizard has that confident, awesome look to it. This thing knows it's gonna kick your ass, and he's smug about it.

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  6. At first I hated the Red/Green sprite, but now that I looked closer and see that it's kinda chilling, sitting on the ground and blowing fire into its hand, it looks pretty cool. At first glance I thought it was a really goofy-looking walking/stomping pose.

    I think my favorite out of all of these is Red/Blue. It's got this eager aggressiveness to it. There's something I've always liked about the Red/Blue art style, it's got a cool shading technique and looks really smooth, even if most of the monsters bear little resemblance to their modern counterparts. On charizard it works well.

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  7. *has a legit shiny charizard* o-o

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  8. To me, Y & HG/SS's Charizard are the best over all. The smug "oh yeah, I know I'm cool" in Y, & the scowl + "hero" pose Charizard has going on in HG/SS, it's just pretty BA. (although the size is displeasing in HG/SS.) I get that Charizard is a dragon & therefor "tuff", but the gapping open mouth in the other gens just make the faces look silly.
    > w <

    Also, in my 13 years of Pokemon'ing, I've caught 2 shiny Pokemon: Tentacool & Geodude. . . > ->

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  9. The ones from gold and silver have weird noses that sort of remind me of an aerodactyl. I also think that fr/lg had the best sprite. its very similar to the r/s sprite, and I actually like that one's arms better, but its tail curves weirdly on the left, its mouth is too happy, like it's laughing, And something about its eyes creeps me out.

    By the way, think of dragonair's wings. At 463 lbs, those tiny wings don't look like they can carry him anywhere...

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    Replies
    1. Yeah but Dragonair flies by Lady Rainicorn rules. It's ~dragon magic~

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    2. looking back at this i think i was trying to talk about dragonite but screwed up

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  10. actually, i think r/s is best. look at it. it's fudging majestic.

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  11. R/B"Charizard can not learn fly." Me"He Has Wings. Why Can't He Learn Fly? WHY, NINTENDO? WHY!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

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  12. I caught a legit shiny Durant in my first MONTH of playing? GET OWNED!

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  13. Holy crap I am a time traveler. If you want Pokemon Content sub to PurplonTV in 2024. We got pokemon and AI!

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