Some of us hear the word Pokémon and think of a super-cutesy, adorable, family-friendly franchise. An RPG-lite experience for younger players to cut their teeth on, or the range of equally adorable spin-offs that it spawned.

There’s some truth to this, of course. After all, in the early days of Pokémon GO, I saw families heading outside on Pokémon hunts (three generations together at times), and it was a beautiful thing. It made my heart expand several sizes, like the Grinch’s when it broke that measuring device. A lot of that seems to have subsided now, sadly, but still.

At the same time, though, there’s a hidden darkness to the series that lots of us don’t know about. If you’ve played competitive Pokémon, you’ll have found that it’s quite a rabbit hole to fall down. Hackers, salty losers and suspect tactics run amuck here, and that’s just for starters.

A lot of this, admittedly, is all about the fandom. As with any other community of fans, the Pokémon faithful just don’t behave in a Nintendo-approved fashion at times (no, Nintendo don’t make Pokémon themselves, but you know what I mean).

Whether we’re cheating, trying to make the franchise something it isn’t or being snarky about the more recent Pokémon designs, there are some of us who will just never be happy. Let’s take a look at some of our major gripes about the franchise, and attitudes that Nintendo really would rather we cut out. Hold on tight, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.

25 Enough About Pokémon Snap, Already

Via: Syfy Wire

Speaking of series crossovers, you probably remember a super-popular title by the name of Pokémon Snap. This 1999 N64 release was one of the franchise’s first tentative steps into 3D, and was a sort of on-rails shooter/photograph ‘em up from HAL Laboratory/Pax Softnica.

The game was re-released on the Wii and Wii U Virtual Consoles, but the fanbase has been clamouring for a follow up ever since. This sort of experience, with infinitely better visuals and all the current Pokémon thrown in… it’d be like an episode of one of David Attenborough’s shows.

Nintendo, sadly, have been completely silent on the matter.

24 Snarking On Pokémon Designs

5- Vanilluxe
Via: Amino Apps

What’s your favourite Pokémon? It’s a surprisingly personal question, and psychiatrists can probably tell a surprising amount from your answer. All kinds of factors go into that, from the design alone to battle prowess and so much besides.

The great thing is, every single Pokémon is somebody’s favourite. One day, I will meet someone who can tell me, in complete seriousness, that their favourite Pokémon is Dunsparce.

Despite all of this, though, there are still some in the community who insist on judging particular Pokémon for their designs. We’ve all heard the snarky jokes about the ice cream cone, the literal garbage bag and so on.

Well, choke on this sweet, vanilla-flavoured factoid: I can appreciate Vanilluxe.

23 Refusing To Look Beyond Generation One

via: wikihow.com

Do you know what else I can appreciate, friends? I’ll tell you what: Pokémon Red and Blue, that’s what. I was right there with so many of you back in 1998, being swarmed by darn Zubat every eighth of a step through Mount Moon.

Crucially, though, I’m not there any more. The franchise has moved on in all kinds of ways, and the roster of Pokémon has increased almost tenfold. True fans should learn to embrace each new generation and the crop of new ‘mon it brings along with it. Some of us just can’t, though. The so-called genwunners will tell you that every Pokémon introduced since the original 151 is utterly worthless, which is not the way forward.

No, nobody likes change, but what the heck is this about?

22 Taking Everything Super Seriously

https://www.ign.com/wikis/pokemon-lets-go-pikachu-eevee/Red,_Blue,_and_Green_Locations_and_Mega_Stones

We’ve already touched on the competitive Pokémon scene, and it’s a real mixed bag. As for myself, I’ve dabbled in tournaments over the years, and the atmosphere was always friendly and comfortable. There are some iffy goings-on now and again, as we’ll see in a minute, but generally, this is competitive gaming at its most accessible.

Having said that, though, there’s a huge, glittery, moonwalking elephant in the room: Pokémon is not, at its heart, a competitive series. Serious players always complain about the flinches, freezes, burns, paralysis, misses and untimely critical hits that occur, forgetting that… well, they’re supposed to.

21 Cheaters Never Prosper

1- Aegislash
Via: Pokémon Wiki

Despite the fact that Pokémon isn’t exactly designed to be eSports material, lively tournaments scenes exist around the world. Grassroots and official events may not be as big as they could be, but they always seem to attract an enthusiastic community.

The trouble with this community is that they tend to like taking the easy route. Even with all of the recent quality of life improvements to the breeding and training mechanics, it’s a heck of a process to build a competitive team from scratch (particularly where there are legendary Pokémon involved, which cannot be bred).

Controversies surrounding the use of third-party cheat devices (which can give any Pokémon perfect EVs in a trice) are common. In 2014, well-known player Ray Rizzo was embroiled in drama over a Dream Ball Aegislash he used, which wasn’t ‘legal.’

For Nintendo’s part, it’s always expressed that the use of these sorts of devices can get a player disqualified from a tournament.

20 Complaining About Fire/Fighting Starter Pokémon

4- Blaziken
Via: Pokkén Tournament Wiki

As we all know, the main games kick off with the player choosing their first companion Pokémon (starter), from a selection of three. This trio constitutes a Fire, Water and Grass Pokémon, as it has since ye olde days of Red and Blue.

Over the generations, though, dual typings have shaken things up a little more (the Fire/Psychic Delphox, Grass/Fighting Chesnaught and Water/Dark Greninja, for instance). There’s one combination that we’ve seen a little too much of, sadly: Fire/Fighting. Blaziken, Emboar and Infernape are all starters that share this typing, and fans are constantly reminding Game Freak of this fact.

RELATED: Pokémon Sword and Shield: What Secondary Types Will The Starters Evolve Into?

Here’s hoping that Pokémon Sword and Shield’s Fire-type starter, Scorbunny, doesn’t follow that trend too (it looks like it might).

19 Hoping For A Reinvention Of The Wheel

via inverse.com

Many popular franchises, such as Super Mario, Call of Duty and FIFA Soccer, suffer from the same dilemma. If you stray too far from that familiar formula, fans will revolt. Often, this makes dev teams too afraid to take risks (and too eager to make easy cashtacular), resulting in games that are just incrementally different to the last.

The Pokémon franchise has also been accused of this sort of thing, and not without good cause.

The whole 'travel the region, collect badges, mess with the resident Evil Team™ and become champion' thing is just the way Pokémon works.

Fans and detractors alike persist in pointing that out.

18 Talking About The Darn Mew Under The Truck

Speaking of the original 151 Pokémon, Number 151 itself certainly was darn elusive. Back in the day, before Mystery Gift allowed Nintendo to wirelessly distribute event Pokémon all over the world, it was a major headache to get your hands on a Mew. It couldn’t simply be caught in-game, after all. Not without exploiting glitches, as we’ve detailed before.

As is appropriate for a Mythical Pokémon, all kinds of bizarre stories started to circulate around the little creature. Remember that famous truck near the S.S. Anne? Supposedly, using Strength on this particular truck would reveal a Mew beneath it. This claim was completely bogus, but the legend is still being told.

17 Now You’re Just Showing Off

Now, Game Freak have always been clear about the essence of the Pokémon message. It’s about community, about catching, trading and battling, embarking on a journey. This is true both for the characters in the game’s world and the players outside of it.

You’ve gotta catch ‘em all, but you can’t do it alone.

In terms of a single-player experience, this means developing a varied team of six Pokémon that complement each other. This does not mean going ahead and completing the entire game using just a single Ditto, but one player has done so just because they could. An impressive feat, with much Struggle-ing, but not the kind of party bonding thing that Game Freak want us to be doing.

16 Endangering Themselves While Playing Pokémon GO

Via: Business Of Apps

As I say, Pokémon GO managed to achieve something that Nintendo’s Wii Fit, Balance Boards and Fitness Boxing have tried to do (with varying degrees of success): give us off our saggy hindquarters and moving.

Dogs across the world had no idea what Pokémon are, or why they were suddenly going on four two-hour walks a day, but there it was. Poor Mr. Fluffington wore his legs down to four furry stumps for a reason: Pokémon GO was serious business.

This is all admirable enough, but the game’s real-world nature meant that many players were wandering off where they shouldn’t, onto private property or oncoming traffic. The game now displays a firm warning for players to watch where the heck they’re walking.

15 Making Those Dastardly Fan Games

via pokemon.com

In the YouTube community and beyond, Nintendo have a reputation for being more than a little heavy-handed with their precious IPs. They have squadrons of winged, furious lawyer monkeys, and they’re not afraid to unleash them on anyone and everyone. This is why the whole Let’s Play thing has historically been such a nightmare for players.

If there’s one thing Nintendo sure as heckola don’t like, it’s Pokémon fan games. Pokémon Essentials was a mod for RPG Maker, which, as the name suggests, allowed users to build fan games. In late August 2018, Nintendo of America landed on the mod like several tons of bricks (bricks with smiling faces, presumably, as is Nintendo’s wont), and that was that.

14 Creating Fan-Designed Pokémon (Which Look Cooler Than Theirs)

Of course, any design-related argument is going to be completely opinion-based. Every Pokémon has its dedicated fans and its haters (as Kanye West would say), after all.

One thing we can all agree on is that some Pokémon have far more unique designs than others. After creting this many distinct creatures, after all, things must be getting incredibly difficult. Who knows what the crop of new ‘mon arriving with Sword and Shield is going to bring us?

By the same token, fan-created Pokémon are going to run that gamut too. For every one that looks all kinds of questionable, there’s going to be another that Game Freak’s artists totally wished they came up with themselves.

13 ‘Misuse’ Of Jigglypuff In Super Smash Bros.

To stray away from the franchise itself for a moment, several Pokémon fighters have joined the fray in the Smash Bros. series over the years. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate added a new one in Incineroar, a very slow but very powerful grappler who can turn the tables in an instant with its Revenge mechanic.

Jigglypuff is a mainstay of the Smash series, a fighter characterised by its high air manoeuvrability and extremely light weight. Early this month, a Melee tournament took a turn for the shambolic when an Ice Climbers player simply gave up, unplugged his controller and walked off of stage, when faced by an evasive, timer-stalling Jigglypuff that they simply couldn’t corner.

Players and spectators have contrasting viewpoints about the tactics employed here, but overall, this was not a good time for anyone involved.

12 Unleashing The Full Force Of Mega Kangaskhan

https://www.thehindupatrika.com/mega-kangaskhan-and-mega-gyarados-revealed-for-pokemon-lets-go-pikachu-and-eevee/

Now, I’ve always had a soft spot for Kangaskhan. Ever since I first saw the rare beast in the Safari Zone and horribly failed to catch it (it would not stay in that ball; it’s almost like it isn’t fun to be pelted by rocks), I’ve wanted more Kangaskhan in my life.

Not like this, though, Nintendo. NOT LIKE THIS.

If you were playing competitive Pokémon back at the advent of Generation Six, you’ll remember what an unparalleled harbinger of death, destruction and salty despair Mega Kangaskhan was. It absolutely dominated the meta.

Fortunately, Arceus himself stepped in, and Mega Kangaskhan was nerfed in the transition to Generation Seven. Mercifully, the second hit from its Parental Bond ability now only deals one-fourth of the damage of the first.

11 Asking What The Next Eeveelution Will Be

You know the sort of games developer who hears our cries, sees our snarky memes and then just goes ahead and does whatever they were going to do anyway? Yep, that’s basically all of them. Game Freak have more than an air of that sort of thing about them too.

We’ve all seen the fan-made Steel Eeveelution designs, the winged Flying ones, all of that sort of thing. They look fantastic and all, (I’ve always imagined a Flying Eeveelution wearing an old-fashioned pair of pilot goggles and a scarf, like Snoopy) but it’s really fruitless to guess what the next Eeveelution will be.

RELATED: What Eeveelutions Could Pokémon Sword And Shield Produce?

Only Game Freak know that, and they’ll deign to reveal it when they chose to.

10 Letting Dragons Run Rampant

4- Mega Garchomp
Via: knowyourmeme.com

If you’ve been playing Pokémon for some years now, especially competitively, you’ll know that the Dragon-type has come to be an incredibly dominant force. With its super useful resistances (Water, Fire, Grass and Electric are very common types) and weaknesses that are easily handled by other team members, Dragons became the core of many a team.

Faster Dragons can also hand most fellow Dragons their lightly-roasted cheeks on a platter, don’t forget.

Fantastic Dragon-types like Garchomp, Salamence and Dragonite have been meta forces for a long time. It took Game Freak a long time to sit up and notice this unhealthy trend, but as with the Psychic-type back in the day, they certainly did. In response to the situation, they introduced the Fairy-type, which is super effective on Dragon and completely immune to Dragon moves.

9 Blaming Them For Pokémon GO’s Failings

The Pokémon name is a huge one to drop, there’s no doubt about that. As we’ve seen, Nintendo are super serious about protecting their IPs. As such, while they don’t make the Pokémon games themselves, they protect their rights to them with all the force of Beelzebub.

There was a lot of responsibility on Niantic’s shoulders during the creation of Pokémon GO, then. The app’s been hugely successful, making almost 2.5 billion dollars, but it’s been riddled with issues as well. Many of these have been the result of Niantic’s mismanagement, and we can’t blame Game Freak or Nintendo for that.

8 Daring To Stream Or Play Their Games On YouTube

via businessinsider.com

So, yes. As we’ve already seen, Nintendo haven’t historically been the best at championing the efforts of YouTubers and streamers. Their notorious Creators Program was deceptive, sounded like something that would be supportive for content creators, only to suddenly jump up and mess with them. Like a jack-in-the-box full of deception and copyright strikes.

RELATED: 5 Ways Nintendo Fails At Online Services - And Why It Continues To Do So

It’s important to note that Nintendo are hardly the only big name to be a little heavy-handed with their copyright strikes hammer, and they’ve relaxed their rules, but this is still very telling. It’s indicative of a company that still doesn’t quite understand this newfangled online thing yet.

7 Heading Off On Reckless ‘Solo Runs’

Come on, now, guys. We’ve already been through this. Pokémon is all about companionship. Catching ‘mon and bonding with them. Developing a partnership. Haven’t you been listening to all that cheesy dialogue from the NPCs?

The whole idea is make yourself a balanced team, not to role-play as an Ice-type gym leader and get yourself mashed into the ground as you realise that Ice is weak to absolutely everything ever.

You need six equally valuable Poké-partners, that’s the takeaway here. Nevertheless, some of us are perfectly content to let just one Pokémon become monstrously overlevelled, taking on the whole region single-handedly (with a couple of friends waiting in the wings for HM purposes, prior to Generation Seven).

Won’t SOMEBODY think of Game Freak’s adorable ethos?

6 No More Talonflame Shenanigans For You!

Generation Six was a wild, wild time, friends. Not only were horrors like pre-nerf Mega Kangaskhan roaming around unchecked, but all kinds of other beasts were hiding in plain sight ready to ruin your entire day too.

Talonflame being one of them. Fletchling looks like absolutely nothing at all when you catch it in that first blade of grass, but you cannot judge by appearance. Thanks to the silliness of Gale Wings, Talonflame had a priority Brave Bird at its disposal, which is one of the simplest yet deadliest weapons that standard Pokémon play has ever seen.

Luckily, this was also donked on the head with the nerf mallet too. As of Pokémon Sun and Moon, Gale Wings only kicks in when Talonflame is at full health.