Fogbound Lake. Bailey (Eevee) and Rex (Riolu)

All my DS games (like $1200 worth, not that it matters) got stolen last year, and I can't and will likely never be able to replace those cartridges. I tried an R4, but it was a time bomb. And this thing looks really promising - it should be delivered some time this week.

So I've been putting together a folder of all the games I want to play. This is primarily a project I wanted to do because, when I become a cranky old man with memory loss, I think that one thing anyone who is taking care of me will be able to give me to entertain myself is a DS. I can replay Renegade Platinum, Explorers of Sky, Crystal Chronicles EoT, Digimon Dusk, Animal Crossing - the list goes on and on. The DS had some truly great games.

And I also downloaded some I've never played! I'm particularly excited to try Phantasy Star Zero, Ghost Trick, and Solatorobo.

But for now, other than Renegade Platinum, I decided to make a small little Explorers of Sky Hack of my own - since I've always wanted to play through the game with Cherry, my favorite Pokemon and a shiny Buneary, as my partner. But I ended up going a little overboard - I got to thinking, I can make every single partner result exciting for old man me. I will likey forget some of these decisions and end up giddy as a child upon seeing some of them, too.

Imagine I get surprised by my personality quiz results and get a Popplio!! Or even a Bagon I think could be really cool. I grew to love Girafarig through PMD (because it was the first mon I was able to clear one of those super hard lv 1 dungeons with), so she felt fitting to add - all the other choices explain themselves. They're just my favorites. And Swablu and Altaria have some truly amazing portrait art courtesy of Emmuffin, gromchurch and tawnysoup. So a huge thanks to the PMD Sprite Repository for the sprites necessary to make this happen.

There's a small chance SkyTemple-edited roms can't actually be played on DS hardware - hopefully, that's not the case.

Initially I had it that they were a gift from Grovyle, as Pip also received a Water Cape from him. The goggles are supposed to act as a stand-in for the Ember Cap--which is Chim's exclusive item in PMD Sky, like how the Water Cape is Pip's! Back when I did one of my earliest gijinka designs for him he was wearing a sort of "cap" (it looked more like a tophat honestly lmao) but I later scrapped the idea of him wearing any sort of cap bc it just didn't fit the overall design. And thus the goggles were born 🙂‍↕️

At this point the goggles are such an iconic part of his character that by the time he gets them from Grovy it wouldn't be until WAY later in the story;; so I'm thinking I might design a different set of goggles for him to wear before he gets the new (better) ones from Grovyle. I've always loved the idea of Pokemon incorporating their exclusive items into their overall design/part of their general wardrobe! They are notoriously difficult to get one's hands on, so the fact that Grovyle went out of his way to get both exclusive items for Pip and Chim really shows how much he cares for them 🤧 He wasn't left out tho bc they got him a Grass Blade in return <3