Across the Generations: Bad Guy Team Grunt Battle Theme (Pokémon)

Games currently playing: Brave Frontier, Two Dots, Kingdom Hearts: Union Cross

As a game generally geared towards kids, it makes sense that Pokémon’s main antagonists, the “Teams” (especially the silly Grunts), are never too awfully formidable or frightening. Likewise, their musical themes are not very scary, and can even be fun and whimsical! In today’s edition of Across the Generations, we will be looking at each gen’s Bad Guy Team Grunt Battle Theme. Each “Team” does have its own “Notices You!” theme, in addition to victory tunes, and admin and boss battle themes, but this article will be focusing on the actual battle music that plays when you fight the grunts (the track that you hear the most, relative to other antagonist themes).

Continue reading

Across the Generations – Creepy Trainer Notices You! (Pokémon)

Games currently playing: Brave Frontier, Tales of Link, Kingdom Hearts: Unchained, Chrono Trigger

As an adult, one of my favorite aspects of the Pokémon games is the diversity of characters, in terms of ages, interests, and personalities. Although the games are generally aimed towards children living in suburban and city areas, the in-game demographic certainly shows that all kinds of people can be and are Pokémon trainers. And while most characters are not portrayed much deeper than their one defining characteristic/trainer name, there’s enough variety along your journey to keep things interesting.

That said, one of the most peculiar and amusing character types for me was, as you could probably guess from the title of this article, the “creepy” trainer! Although this general type of character appears more so in the later games, the presence of the “creepy” or otherwise socially awkward/nonconforming people showed me as a kid that Pokémon wasn’t meant only for the “cool” kids—even if you were different, “weird”, or had interests that didn’t mesh together with those of other people, you could still be part of the amazing world of Pokémon!

In the Pokémon games, whenever a trainer notices you, he or she always has a special musical theme that plays while making their introductory pre-battle utterance. And as Holly mentioned in our interview, sometimes when minor characters don’t have all that much character development, the music is really what tells us what kind of people they are.

In the spirit of Halloween, let us begin our journey of the next Across the Generations installment, “Creeper Trainer Notices You!”

Continue reading

Across the Generations – Pokémon Gym Theme

Games currently playing: Brave Frontier, Kingdom Hearts: Unchained, Pokémon Black, Tales of Link, Phantom of the Kill

It’s time for a new theme on Whimsically Theoretical! This article will mark the beginning of a new series that I will be writing, called “Across the Generations”, where I will compare similar themes across different games within a video game series! Today we are going to be talking about one of the most exciting themes in Pokémon: the Gym Theme! As the music that plays when you first enter an institute that, at least in the story mode, contains the most coveted and sought-after items in the game—the badges!—this theme carries a very strong sense of optimistic triumph and urgency, but certainly in the most hopeful way. Continue reading