Are y’all familiar with competitive Pokémon?

For the handful of you that clicked on this article without knowing what I’m talking about: there is a fan operated offshoot of Pokémon where players battle on a traditional ranked ladder. This predates Nintendo, and Game Freak including matchmaking, or rankings within the actual games, and is regarded very fondly by many longtime fans of the franchise. As a result, there are entire forums dedicated to discussing strategies, tournaments are regularly orchestrated, and there is even ladder support for older games.

The last point about older games is of particular note because there has been a recent surge of interest in generation 3’s competitive scene. This can largely be attributed to Youtuber Jimothy Cool who has made several videos over the past year highlighting the vibrance of gen 3’s competitive meta. Many of said videos focus on how several commonly overlooked Pokémon have niche roles within the meta-game. This is a large part of why generation 3 has such an uncharacteristically inclusive competitive scene when compared to the more rigid metas of prior, and future Pokémon games.

As a result of this generation 3 renaissance, Jim decided to host an open tournament called ADV Revival. It  started several weeks ago, with 2 rounds of Swiss where the over 200 entrants had to win 3 games a piece to advance to the next round. This helped to trim down the player pool to 128 competitors, and now we’re into a standard single elimination bracket until a winner is crowned. At the time of writing, ADV Revival has entered the top 32, meaning the tournament is finally entering the home stretch after almost 2 months of competition.

Despite having never played generation 3 competitive Pokémon, I’ve been totally enamoured by Jim’s coverage of the tournament. There’s a new set posted to his second Youtube channel, Jimothy Gaming, every day which has turned ADV Revival into a part of my daily routine. I slither out of bed, boot up my computer, and watch the latest commentated set while eating breakfast.

It also helps that many of the recorded sets in ADV Revival are highly novel. Remember how I mentioned that Jim makes videos highlighting the various niche roles that off-meta Pokémon have within gen 3’s meta? Well a not insignificant number of the participants in ADV Revival have also watched those same videos. This has led to players, both new and old, cooking up some absolutely bonkers teams throughout the tournament. At one point Butterfree had a 100% win rate. That’s the kind of cooking you’re in for if you watch videos from throughout the Swiss section of the tournament.

I will admit that there has been far less novelty as we’ve entered the final leg of the tournament though. With higher stakes, the remaining competitors are hedging their bets on safer team comps. That said, some games are won on the back of uncharacteristic Pokémon choices. When everyone is running highly optimized teams, all you need is one off-meta pick to throw a spanner into the works to dismantle your opponent’s carefully constructed team.

ADV Revival certainly won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but I wanted to share it with folks who frequent my blog. I haven’t been this interested in a Pokémon tournament in…ever. I don’t follow the pro-circuit for fighting games, so lord knows I’d never elect to watch Pokémon. That said, ADV Revival has just the right mix of scrappy, grassroot vibes, and novelty that I’ve found watching it highly worthwhile.

If you’d like to experience ADV Revival for yourself, you can check out Jimothy Gaming on Youtube. There’s several videos to go through, and many of them feature truly entertaining games. Obviously you’ll need a bit of existing background in Pokémon to make some sense of them, but I promise this is well worth checking out if you have even the tiniest kernel of interest in competitive Pokémon.

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