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Great work!  It’s been a real pleasure reading your thoughts on each game.  One of my favourite generation of games, and it brought back a lot of fond memories and brilliant to read the thoughts of others, who also share memories of them. Really interesting stuff about the prototypes too. Turns out there’s plenty I didn’t realise about the N64 era. Thanks @Cube!

According to Nate, the Oblivion remake will be both announced and released next month, in April.  ...

Does the 'F' stand for Fatal Frame?

Coming to PS5, Series X|S and PC.

So, like I hinted before, sometimes a Pokémon getting banned to Ubers does end up paving the way for another Pokémon to start dominating the Smogon scene. Because if people couldn't use Garchomp in the Gen 4 (Diamond/Pearl) meta, well, they'd just find a new Dragon Powerhouse Pokémon to use. Salamence is one of the Powerhouse Pokémon of the third generation (Ruby/Sapphire). It's Dragon/Flying and definitely has the stats to back up it's Powerhouse title. When Gen 4 rolled around, there were two things holding Salamence back. The first was Garchomp kicking around the place. Dragon types are weak against Dragon moves, and if you would care to remember, Garchomp has a base Speed of 102, so Salamence struggled to outspeed it. It was just begging to be revenge killed by the land shark. The second is that it's movepool was quite limited. That attack stat is nice, but Salamence's strongest physical moves that matched its typing were Dragon Claw (80 Power), and Fly (90 Power). Fly needs a turn to charge up, and despite Salamence being unable to be hit during that time, it just lets your opponent set up or switch Pokémon freely. So Salamence had to rely on it's Sp. Atk, and become the kind of Pokémon that functions as a "Mixed Attacker", one that uses both Physical and Special attacks with coverage moves like Earthquake and Fire Blast. Generally, spreading yourself out like that is difficult to do well. You can only put so many extra points into a Pokémon's stats, which is why most people tend to favour only one of the attacking stats. To be fair, 110 is good, so it's not like Salamence is lacking there. Garchomp was just a more appealing option, but it getting booted from OU wasn't the sole reason for Salamence's rise to glory. It was certainly doing better without Garchomp ruining it's day, it's balanced, but still good, stats made it hard to predict, but that same balanced approach meant that it could be handled with the right approach. And then HeartGold/SoulSilver happened. These Gen 2 remakes, introduced some new moves for Pokémon to learn via various tutors. One of these moves was Outrage, and well, that was the last straw. Outrage is a physical Dragon move that boasts 120 Power, and 100% accuracy. The downsides are that once you use it, you're locked into using Outrage for 2 or 3 turns, and then your Pokémon becomes confused. The benefits outweigh the cost in most scenarios as very few Pokémon can resist Dragon moves. That, combined with the general unpredictablity of Salamence made it a very dangerous Pokémon to deal with. You see, because of it's balanced offensive stats, Salamence can make excellent use of Outrage, but also Draco Meteor (Special attack, 140 Power, 90% Accuracy, lowers the users Sp. Atk stat two stages). Hell, it can even learn moves like Roost to play a more defensive role. That will throw people off! Predict it wrong, and you'll get destroyed, which is very easy to do. Because if it decides to start using Dragon Dance when you were expecting Draco Meteor, well... Sucks to be you. It all proved too much, there were barely any Pokémon that could reliably counter Salamence, and it shut down a lot of typical OU teams, so it ended up following Garchomp into Gen 4 Ubers. But unlike Garchomp, Salamence would actually find itself banned in multiple generations. Not in Gen 5 (Black/White), but the two generations after that. I'm sure most fans can guess why. The Gen 3 remakes, Omega Ruby/Alpha Sapphire gave Salamence a Mega Evolution. Apart from looking like a croissant, Mega Salamence has absolutely bonkers stats. The general thing with most Mega Evolutions is that it raises the BST of a Pokémon by 100, hence the really good stats across the board. Why they thought giving a Powerhouse Pokémon more stats was a good idea is baffling (It's because of popularity), but a pure stat boost isn't what makes a good Mega Evolution. It tends to be the ability. Normal Salamence has the Intimidate ability, while Mega Evolution changes this to Aerilate. Intimidate: Upon entering battle, the opponent’s Attack lowers one stage. In a Double Battle, both opponents’ Attack are lowered. Aerilate: Increases the power of Normal-type moves by 20%. It then changes those moves to Flying-type. These two abilities gel really well with how Mega Evolution works. Salamence comes in on a physical attacker, lowers their Attack, and then Mega Evolves and uses Aerilate. See, when Aerilate changes a Normal attack to a Flying one, it does become a true Flying type attack, which means STAB also applies! STAB stands for "Same Type Attack Boost". When a Pokémon uses a move that matches it's type, it gets 50% stronger. Multiply that by the 20% Aerilate boost, and that becomes 80%. Thankfully, Salamence can't learn any strong Normal attacks. Oh wait, no. It can learn Double Edge... So Double Edge is 120 Power. 80% of 120 is 96. Which means Double Edge used by Mega Salamence is 216 Power! That's stronger then two Earthquakes! With that sky high Attack stat, and a way to have a Flying type attack that doesn't suck, it wasn't even remotely surprising that it was deemed too powerful for Single Battles and banned to Ubers in those two generations. Fun detail, in Gen 6, Aerilate boosted a move's power by 30% instead. Seems even Game Freak thought it was too powerful. I should point out that Mega Salamence alone was banned in Gen 6 (X/Y) and 7 (Sun/Moon). You were allowed to use normal Salamence, it just wasn't allowed to use the item that let it Mega Evolve. Does that mean it's good in casual play? Much like Garchomp, Salamence is good purely because it's a Powerhouse Pokémon. Assuming you can even get one, mind. The typical trappings with these Pokémon applies here as well. Hard to catch, and hard to train.