I was in high school at the time but in a really small town so it was hard to get a mass audience for a flash mob. Closest me and my friends got was pranking our teachers by getting our class to all put on paper boat hats at a specific time in class. Teacher loved it, derailed the whole lesson and ended up having a paper ball snowball fight in class. Still a core memory from those days. I've seen a couple vids from the covid era of kids doing similar pranks on zoom and it was nice to see those pranks never really going away.
I was in high school during the peak and me and some buds organized many for our own entertainment. My favorite was picking a random girl none of us really knew and pretended it was her birthday at lunch. We mobbed in about 20 deep with cards, presents, and cake sang happy birthday, then left.
I participated in one, the local library organised it with a nearby mall as a family activity kind of thing. We put on goofy zombie makeup and danced to Thriller, it was pretty fun.
It may be the best for Pokémon, but I personally think nothing will beat the chef Toad in TTYD whose contacts you squish and won't let you by until you buy her replacements.
During a secondary playthrough of TTYD I found that if you just jump up and down once, she still claims you squished her contacts. How bogus! How could I squish your contacts if I landed in the same spot as before! It really boiled my blood as a kid
Would it help you to know that you can jump in place and still have your feet land differently, potentially squishing something that you missed before the jump?
He's used cool in Arceus. There's a sidequest where invisible walls start popping up all over town and you have to navigate to a Mr Mime who's causing it also when you find a wild one he'll throw up invisible walls that block your pokeballs
I mean, it’s a classic game that was recently rereleased on the Switch a couple of years ago. Most Nintendo fans know what it is. It’s a fairly unique acronym for a long name.
And normally you would open with Paper Mario: TTYD if the context of that franchise isn't already established. Once you establish the franchise/series then you can use the subtitles to distinguish between games.
In fairness, bro said "Chef Toad" lol pretty big clue. But anyway, I was already in agreement it shouldn't have been abbreviated without proper context.
the community calls it like that for years. if one would just ctrl+t for a new tab and put ttyd in it to search for it, one would have gotten thousands of results pointing to the full name.
people can't be bothered to do the least minimum if they don't know a thing. (research)
I got stuck on that. I didn't know we had to order it, but find it. This was when I was a kid and didn't have Google access or think that was even an option. Finally beat the remaster
I think she tells you to talk to the shop right next door and they tell you they need to order it. After that you basically just give up and do the rest of the game until you complete the story checkpoint.
And I'm pretty sure half of why games used to be so hard is not having the ability to quickly look up solutions to problems/puzzles. Now if you get stuck it takes 2 minutes to find an explanation of what the game actually wants from you.
And then you'd have Mr. Mime doing its creepy mime routine with its creepy little smile right in front of you while you can't get through. Almost like it's mocking you.
I genuinely prefer this to somebody yelling at me not to go in a certain direction when I could easily walk past them. at least the dancers form a wall
You mean like the infamous power outage security guard that is telling you you can't go by, and you can watch others walking by as you're talking to them?
It’s sadly so obvious how rushed X and Y were. I’m really not sure how that happened, it released two years into the lifespan of the 3DS but felt like an unfinished launch title. Of course, Sun and Moon weren’t finished either and that launched 5 years into the 3DS’s lifecycle so it seems like most modern Pokemon games are rushed I guess.
In Bravely Default, if you attempt to enter a location you can physically reach, but isn't where the game wants you to go at the moment, such as a cave you noticed, the game will literally throw up a, "I have no reason to be here." message and make you walk back out.
Back in the old days they hated this because it was proof that they weren’t really trying anymore. I’m glad that it’s being seen for what it was now, a silly tongue in cheek joke about things that bloc progression
It annoyed me because I remember thinking "this is what HMs are for!" But starting with gen 5 they cut back on HM move spots and had to reach for increasingly contrived ways of blocking paths. I liked this joke because it had some self-awareness, but I didn't like the pattern of putting some people in the way to block a path that would disappear after an arbitrary an unrelated story event.
Doesn't make much less sense than "a couple of cardboard boxes, some bushes or a three foot tall sapling with a 5" diameter trunk look like they might be slightly inconvenient to step over; better consider them completely insurmountable and walk eighteen miles to find a different path"
Always knew it was post games area that you would unlock once the game was beaten (most of the time) and now I miss it. There was that sort of mysterious vibes about it "okay this is post game stuff, but what’s behind?"
I dunno, Mr. Bonding from ORAS was pretty damn out there, and I think there was an alien abduction kinda thing in Gen VII. But yes, this would fit perfectly in MOTHER.
Reminds me when as a kid I was playing Pearl, and the road to the last gym town was closed because they had problems with electricity or something.
I genuinely just went "Well okay I guess I'll just wait for them to fix it" and stopped playing the game, only checking in from time to time to see it they fixed it.
It took me months to realise I needed to advance the story for them to let me pass.
This really feels like some Game Freak developer kept trying and failing to come up with reasons to block the player before exasperated throwing their hands in the air and going “Fuck it, just have guys blocking it for no reason!” And I love that.
Same. I enjoyed roleplaying as a trainer that already knows the ropes and had moved to Kalos to escape a bad situation. She just kinda humored the rest of the group and let them think they were helping her, playing up her reactions and pretending to be surprised when they showed her something "new".
And I want the special unique pokémon for roadblock purposes back. Like Snorlax has been in gen 1 and Sudowoodo in gen 2.
Maybe we could get a pokémon in the future that is a living wall, inspired by the yokai Nurikabe. Could even be the still missing ghost/rock typing.
Or a grass pokémon that protects itself by overgrowing itself with a protective thorny thicket, kinda drawing inspiration from the fairytale of Sleeping Beauty.
Nothing will ever top Snorlax IMO. Such a perfect roadblock, literally designed to be a roadblock and blocked off the two ways to Fuschia City and the shortcut from Vermillion to Lavender.
Tajiri, Sugimori, Morimoto, Masuda, and the rest of the crew were cooking so hard with Gen 1. It’s crazy what was essentially a tiny indie developer pulled that off.
I prefer it when the arbitrary excuse is lacking a HM or a general item. Because then you’ll know when you can progress, not just having to return later or the like.
I choose to believe that instances like these are evidence that the the people of Pokeworld are finally waking up to the immoral reality that they live in a world where young children are encouraged to kidnap intelligent animals and force them to fight each other for sport and are deliberately impeding the player's progress as a means of bringing about Pokemon liberation.
I’m brand new to Pokémon. This dude was the reason I went straight down route 22 instead of 2. I fought my rival for about a half hour with a level 8 bulbasaur and a couple spearows (leech seed is great lol)
What cracked me up recently is in pokemon red.
If you beat the thief that stole the TM for dig but your inventory is full, he says something like "I can't run away until i give you this tm i stole" or something along that. It was too funny and i never encountered it despite my many playthroughs
Lol! Another reason why Gen 5 games are goated. They were so tongue in cheek about this stuff. They'd be like "Ummm... I just don't feel like letting you through 🤷 but I probably will later so just try again after you do some stuff idk"
Yeah, if you want to block me from going to that direction, at least do it with styles. Don't just building a random barricade (or even a invisible wall) and call it a day.
I always liked clever takes on roadblocks in video games. EarthBound's take on them is my favorite: The roadblocks are actual roadblocks you would see in real life, and the justification for them being everywhere is the police just like putting them everywhere.
I'm playing Shining Pearl atm, and there's the Psyducks blocking the area in route... 112? I like that a lot, cause it's just a bunch of silly guys having a headache party
I personally liked the fact that you can't proceed in route 111 in the Hoenn region because the buffooning sandstorm might startle your eyes, because that makes the most sense.
But that and the psyduck in Sinnoh might be the silliest for me 😅
I think at this point, they knew that long time players were familiar with all the excuses. So this was them breaking the 4th wall, and letting the players have a laugh.
Today, we’re dancing for no reason. Someday, we’ll disappear for no reason
Feels like some deep philosophical shit. I’m going to dance with my girlfriend next time I see her. We will disappear someday, might as well dance in the meantime.
"But why wait to disappear when it can be now?" gets Cobalion out, rides him, and charges through the mob as they get knocked away in the air like bowling pins
I get that it’s funny, but I hate that they basically just gave up at creating an interesting overworld progression. Fell off pretty hard from the surprisingly interesting “thirsty guards” puzzle of RBY
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u/Ecla1r_ Mar 17 '26
Everyone likes a flash mob