Pocket Monsters have long been a staple for Nintendo’s empire. With catchy songs, flashing lights and adorable pokemon, who could resist the game? Despite a repetitive storyline, weirdos like me pick up incarnation after incarnation of this series.

And come on, even if you aren’t a Pokemon fan, you’ve probably wondered about the pokemon that didn’t make the cut. Surely with the large numbers of critters in the game, an even larger number of test designs have been left out. Well, good news for us–I just happen to have the scoop on a few of the pokemon rejects.

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I’ve said, quite a few times actually, that it’s not the characters themselves that make for compelling stories, but character relationships. This month’s Round Table asks you to explore a relationship within a game that you found compelling or memorable.

Characters. We love ‘em, or we hate ‘em. Final Fantasy 8 was forever ruined for me, thanks to Squall’s petty and pointless teenage bad mood. Some people feel the same about Cloud. Some people love Princess Peach, adore her in fact. Others despise her.

What defines a character is the way they relate to those around them. For me, a huge part of the attraction in playing through a game is to witness the redemption and change of a character. Heroes tend not to be redeemed. Even if they give up, become dispirited, we all know that they will return to save the day. But a character like Linebeck, he begins the game by taking people for what he can get. He finishes by taking up a sword and trying to face down Bellum. Okay, he fails to do much damage. But he tries.

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It seemed like such a nice town. A gorgeous lake, an amusement park, a four star hotel. All the perks of a great vacation spot. It also had the added benefit of some good old fashioned small town businesses, a top hospital, and a great school system. Who wouldn’t want to visit?

Until the fog rolls in, anyway. At that point you best grab the nearest broken radio, a lead pipe, and a flashlight. Trust me, you’re going to need all of them. And while you wander blindly through the inky darkness, you’d best take note of that low, pulse-like throbbing coming from somewhere beneath you. It’s almost as if this town is alive. Clutch that radio tightly; it’s your only warning. Stumbling through the abandoned streets, you spot a wall splattered with what could be blood. Smeared through the plasma is an ominous message: “Welcome to Silent Hill.”

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Princesses. For the most part, they’re nothing but trophy wives for video game protagonists; vapid and spineless girls akin to supermodels. Many, aside from their glowing cardboard cut-out personalities, are also great at providing little or no help in sticky situations that they frequently get themselves into. Furthermore, after risking life and limb for these harlots, the biggest reward you get is a peck on the cheek. Well, okay, sometimes, you also get some sickeningly cute giggle or a bat of an eyelash. Sometimes. That’s if you can manage to behave.

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Lara Croft. Sephiroth. Link. Mario. Chun Li. Solid Snake. Sonic. Samus. Alucard.

Chances are, if you’re a gamer, you will know every name on that list, and be ready to shout out some more (how could I forget Dante? Kefka? Ryu Hayabusa?). Games are cool, and one of the reasons they are cool is that they let us step into some bad-ass shoes. We can leave behind the travails of spindly limbs and an inability to blow away hordes of zombies and enter the online world of someone who is, well, cool.

In literature, the famous characters are the flawed ones. The tragic hero, with his achilles heel - I’m sure you’ve read all about him. In creative writing courses we are repeatedly told that perfect characters do not appeal. We don’t like them. They make us feel bad about ourselves.

The video game is not quite literature. It sits uneasily beside it. Games plunder narrative conventions, ideas, philosophies from books, but they are not books. They are games. During the game, the central character is not just Lara Croft, she is also us. Link follows our movements, if we look away from the screen or drop the controller then he dies - and at the risk of sounding melodramatic, we die a little along with him.
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I have a scenario in my head. Turning to my friend I say, “I want to be an engineer like Bulma, that way I can just generally be useless and need to be rescued all the time. Then eventually I’ll somehow have a kid with a guy who seems totally clueless to anything besides standing around going, ‘HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA’.”

He laughs and says, “No, what we need to do is be namekians. You can be Flute, I’ll be Bassoon, and we can form the infamous ‘Woodwind Trio’ with someone else.”

Does this scenario confuse you? Do you feel like you’ve just stepped into a bad anime fanfiction site? What does this have to do with games? Well, I’ll tell you. Dragon Ball. Online. No, I’m not kidding. Just like Hello Kitty, game makers are looking to cash in on another big name anime.

To answer your first question, no you can’t play a Saiyan. QQ.

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