Wild Spoiler appeared!... Surprise Factor fainted!

[Pokemondothon]

I'm sure I speak for a lot of nostalgic Pokemon players when I say that I kinda miss the days before the Internet, when game secrets were actually not instantly accessible... when you had to sift through rumors from your friends, study Nintendo Power, and explore every single inch of the game to discover hidden things. It's way, way too easy nowadays to find information about any new features that come with a new Pokemon game (or any video game, for that matter) - and more often than not, you're exposed to these discoveries before you get the chance to experience them yourself, despite the earnest attempts of many users to keep content from being spoiled for others.

I can't tell you how many times I fell for the "Pikablu" hoax (probably based on a pre-released screenshot of Marill from Pikachu's Vacation, looking back in retrospect ), or how many hours I spent trying to move that freaking truck near the S.S. Anne to obtain an alleged Mew. Back then, I would've killed for the smallest Easter Egg, or even a glimmer of hope that such an egg existed.

Before I continue to ramble on, my case-in-point is this: I just went to pick up a certain event Pokemon from Gamestop today, and it was truly a legitimate surprise for me. I can't even count how many times I was tempted to check out Black/White Versions' event-only Pokemon since the game came out in 2011... But it really paid off in the end to resist that urge, because the simple joy of finally unveiling that mystery silhouette made the wait worthwhile.

...Just some Pokeblock for thought.

(By the way, I'm still working on moving that truck... if anyone knows what level your Machamp has to be before using Strength on it, I will trade you a true-blu Pikablu for that information).

[Maxpphire]

Meanwhile I actively get glitch Pokemon and items because fuck you that's how.

[Hoeloe]

I know exactly what you mean, though I strongly suspect that some of the hoaxes we fell for as children were simply because... we were children. I can look at a rumour now and tell you if I think it's real or not, without knowing any information on it prior to that, because I have a better understanding of how systems work, simply from growing up.

Having said that, I do, to some extent, agree about spoilers being too easy to come across. For example, I was half way through watching "Game of Thrones" a while ago, and my brother went onto Youtube to show me some of the soundtracks. I'll spoiler the rest of this just in case any of you don't want it spoiled.

Spoiler

He put "Eddard Stark" into the search bar and the first search suggestion was "Eddard Stark death".

I was just thinking: "Great. Now I know what happens. That was fun."

It was still a good watch, but would have been better if I didn't know what happened. Although, having said that, as games get larger, searching for hours on end to find every last detail becomes harder and harder. In the first few Pokemon games, it was fairly simple, since it was always obvious where you could walk, but that's not the case for more recent games. Take Zelda, for example. If you compare the size of Ocarina of Time to the size of Twilight Princess, Ocarinas main field is only just bigger than the first small portion of Twilights. It was hard enough finding everything in OoT, let alone with a much larger area to search. Having said that, TP did have in-game hints to make this easier, and a lot of the field was very obviously completely empty.

I like to try, if possible, to play through games without a walkthrough, because I don't like spoilers, but if I'm going to be wandering around searching for things, I tend to crack them out when I get stuck.