Readers pick the tastiest Pokémon and imagine the sad business of Gyrados farming
You Teach Me, And I’ll Eat You
This week, we kicked off a new Special Topics In Gameology miniseries that’ll be looking at commerce in video games. For the first installment, Patrick Lee took a deep dive into Pokémon to see what the presence of those fantastical critters has done to shape the economy and way of life in their world. The speculation and mind-blowing realizations continued down in the comments. For instance, LotionChowder recalled early games in the series mentioning the existence of normal animals from our world living alongside Pokémon, a trend that faded as the games went on. Unexpected Dave theorized about this change:
The terrifying implication of all this is that any “normal” animals have gone extinct in the years since Gen 1. All those regular cows and dogs couldn’t compete against predators that can shoot lasers. Of course, it’s highly likely that humans had a major hand in eradicating normal animals from the Pokéverse. We bred Pokémon too aggressively, and they eliminated other species.
As Patrick pointed out, without those real-world analogs, the meat eaters of the Pokéworld undoubtedly turn toward pocket monsters for their protein. Lack of Name asked everyone the obvious question, which Pokémon is probably the most tasty?:
A couple of months ago, I had a conversation with a couple of people about which Pokémon would be best to cook and eat. We agreed that steaming a Bulbasaur with its own plant would probably be delicious.
Farfetch’d, a duck that just so happens to carry around a leek (an image pulled from a Japanese saying), was quickly suggested. For what it’s worth, it seems the people of Pokéworld agree, as multiple Pokédex entries make reference to the species’ dwindling numbers. Pokémon Crystal goes so far as to say, “In order to prevent their extinction, more people have made an effort to breed these Pokémon.” Forgetting the species’ plight for a second, Liebkartoffel tried to imagine what it must have taken to come up with a name as strange as Farfetch’d:
“So, what’ve we got here? A duck who carries around a leek.”
“A—wait, what?”
“It’s literally a duck with a leek.”
“Let’s call it…I don’t know, Farfetched. That’s kind of a pun.”