Dr. Kaminko: the inventor who fails at all but the essential

Dr. Kaminko never stops inventing, and almost nothing he produces serves any purpose whatsoever. Holed up in his manor in the Orre region, this scientist has made a specialty of objects that make life harder for the people who use them. Yet Pokémon XD hands him two roles no one else could fill: delivering the machine without which the adventure grinds to a halt, and answering for an old device that makes Pokémon suffer all over the region. A failed inventor whose one breakthrough keeps the whole adventure going: that's the game's finest paradox.

Contents

• A Scientist, a Manor and Not a Single Pokémon
• The Robo Groudon, a Punishment That Turns into Humiliation
• The Robo Kyogre, or the Accidentally Useful Invention
• Eight Objects Carefully Designed to Do Harm
• The Pokémon Translator, an Old Mistake to Fix
• Dr. Kaminko at a Glance
• Frequently Asked Questions

A Scientist, a Manor and Not a Single Pokémon

His profile is short, and that alone tells you something: inventor by trade, based in Orre, family unknown, and not a single Pokémon to his name. In a franchise where the lowliest extra fields a team, the doctor goes through the entire adventure without ever sending a partner into battle. When there's fighting to be done, he sends someone else, or a machine.

The manor doubles as a laboratory and a showroom. A giant screen dominates the entrance hall, playing a video in which his assistant Chobin walks through the master of the house's creations one by one — a sales pitch for objects no one in their right mind would buy. The rest of the house serves as a permanent workshop: the doctor works there around the clock and doesn't take kindly to interruptions.

The basement, on the other hand, stays off-limits for a long time. The doctor curtly shoos away any kids who try to go down there, declaring the area forbidden, since trade secrets demand it. The rule is lifted later in the game: he admits of his own accord that the basement research room no longer holds anything confidential and lets the player walk around it, on the sole condition that Roose be left to work in peace.

The Robo Groudon, a Punishment That Turns into Humiliation

It all starts with a doorkeeper's misunderstanding. The player heads up to the manor to get their scooter upgraded, the only way to reach the Cipher Key Lair, and Chobin takes them for a burglar. The assistant loses the battle he started himself; that's when the doctor steps in, declares that a thief deserves no mercy and orders someone to fetch the robot modeled on Groudon to put the intruder in their place.

The robot's introduction is a piece of theater all by itself: thunder rolling under a cloudless sky, the heavens torn apart, the earth split open, and then the grand entrance of the so-called masterpiece. Yet the machine changes nothing about the battle that follows: Chobin climbs inside, but it has no effect whatsoever on how the battle plays out. All the pageantry is completely pointless, which makes what comes next all the crueler.

The Robo Groudon loses, and the doctor takes two pieces of bad news at once: his robot has been beaten, and the fearsome thief was just a kid his assistant knew. He files the contraption under failures, cancels the entire Pokémon robot program on the spot and orders the half-built Robo Kyogre sent off as scrap to Roose, at the mechanic's shop. Chobin gets permission to keep the Robo Groudon so he can repair it and get his revenge on Michael; the doctor gives in without argument, explaining that scrap doesn't interest him.

The Robo Kyogre, or the Accidentally Useful Invention

The story gets its revenge on him in the finest way possible. The robot modeled on Kyogre, the very one he had sent to the scrap heap, is precisely what opens the way to Citadark Isle — in other words, the machine without which the game can't move forward. So the only truly decisive device of his career is the one he had decided to throw away.

When someone comes to tell him that his robot is playing a key role in the fight against Cipher, he doesn't hesitate for a second. He bursts out laughing, calls the result obvious, praises the machine's titanic power and claims he saw it all coming: he had only pretended to hand it over to Roose. The rewrite is instant, and without the slightest embarrassment.

Meanwhile, his research is going in circles. He tries to figure out where his robot's weakness comes from, thinks he has the answer when he pictures a real Pokémon at the controls, changes his mind, switches to Trainer robots, then changes his mind again. He even admits he's tired of tricking people with bizarre objects and sets out in search of a meaning for his life, for the length of a monologue. Meanwhile, Chobin goes on a battle tour to prove the Pokémon robot's power to the world, an effort the doctor considers completely unnecessary.

Eight Objects Carefully Designed to Do Harm

The rest of the catalog follows one constant rule: every object is sold as progress and makes worse exactly what it claims to improve. Two of them go after your energy bill. The Power-Draining Light Bulb shines like any other bulb but guzzles ten times what a model of comparable wattage uses; the Power-Saving Refrigerator stays off as long as no one is looking at it and only switches back on when a human approaches, so the food spoils while the appliance always seems to be running.

Everyday household life takes just as big a hit. The Jet Vacuum Cleaner pulverizes whatever it sucks up and blasts the dust back out under pressure into the hardest-to-reach corners, the Discount Calendar costs less because it only counts three hundred days, costing anyone who relies on it sixty-five days a year, and the Time-Cut Recorder always cuts off its recordings five minutes before the end of the show. The Unhealthy Sandals round out the series with soles studded with spikes, with Chobin making a point of adding that they don't stimulate any acupuncture points along the way.

That leaves the two most unsettling ones. The Poké Pole is red and white like a Poké Ball, except it's a pole, and its entire sales pitch rests on the social chaos the mix-up could cause. The Haunted Radio, for its part, works normally until two in the morning, after which a small voice starts calling for help; the doctor swears he has nothing to do with the phenomenon and claims he discovered it by accident, which even the product description finds hard to believe.

🔧 The doctor preferred Pokémon replicas: browse the Pokémon figures.

The Pokémon Translator, an Old Mistake to Fix

Once the main story is wrapped up, the game brings back a much older invention. There are thirteen Pokémon Translators in the world, and once one latches onto a Pokémon, it can't be removed by hand. At first surprised that a kid knows about such an outdated device, the doctor quickly realizes the thing has become a problem again and gives the player the first Voice Case: the Pokémon wearing the device has to hear the cry of its own species for the Translator to let go.

From there, the quest moves at the pace of his supplies and his guesswork. He hands over a new Voice Case for each Pokémon freed, throws the fourth one in the trash, declaring it defective, then, alerted by Megg's e-mail about a case reported in Pyrite Town, pulls out the case holding the cry of the Shroomish in question. When more devices turn up in Gateon Port and Phenac City, he's baffled: he was sure he had locked them away in his basement, and he immediately suspects his assistant.

The last obstacle comes from his own memory. Each Translator is locked with a secret password that its inventor has forgotten, hence the Cry Analyzer he hands over once the Voice Cases run out: the device asks the Pokémon a question, and the right answer is enough to free it. One unit still holds out, reacting to no cry and showing no question at all; the doctor then suggests a method he finds unlikely, talking to the Pokémon in a Pokémon voice, and yet that's exactly how Senilor gets the thirteenth one off.

Dr. Kaminko at a Glance

Frequently Asked Questions

• Who is Dr. Kaminko in Pokémon XD?
  He's an eccentric scientist who lives and works at Kaminko's House, in Orre. His specialty is inventing: most of his creations are useless or downright dangerous, but one of them is essential to the player's progress.
• Does Dr. Kaminko have any Pokémon?
  No, none. He never battles himself: it's his assistant Chobin who takes the controls of the Robo Groudon when the doctor decides to teach a lesson to the visitor he mistakes for a thief.
• What is the Robo Kyogre for?
  It's the machine that lets you reach Citadark Isle, and therefore continue the adventure. Yet the doctor had ordered it scrapped at Roose's mechanic shop after the Robo Groudon's defeat, before taking credit for the result.
• What are Dr. Kaminko's other inventions?
  Eight objects showcased in a video by Chobin: the Power-Draining Light Bulb, the Jet Vacuum Cleaner, the Discount Calendar, the Unhealthy Sandals, the Time-Cut Recorder, the Poké Pole, the Haunted Radio and the Power-Saving Refrigerator. Every one of them makes worse the problem it claims to solve.
• What is the Pokémon Translator?
  An invention from the doctor's younger days, made in thirteen units, that stays stuck to the Pokémon wearing it. The post-game is about tracking down these devices all across the Orre region and removing them with the Voice Cases, then with the Cry Analyzer.

In short

Once all thirteen Translators are recovered, the doctor lets slip a confession none of his promotional videos would ever have allowed: the device was a youthful mistake, and forcing Pokémon cries into human words never brought anyone closer to understanding the hearts of Pokémon. He adds that the contraption was pointless anyway, since some humans understand Pokémon without any equipment at all. The humility lasts three sentences: he promptly proclaims himself the authority on inventions and heads back to his workshop. The whole character comes down to that one swing: clear-eyed for a second, and off again the next.