The Damned

Automatic Disqualification: Use of Pokémon anime material(s) in a Pokémon video game discussion. Penalty: Watch 5 episodes of the Pokémon anime.

Nah. It's obviously Banette. S&M-geared doll possessed by the spirit of a toy left behind by a neglectful child, wondering around playgrounds looking for revenge... Sorry, no orange, dinosaur-wannabe baby can top that.

Must... get... last... half dozen tracks... done. Then... I can... stop talking like... Shatner. (note to self: get new "." key)

The thing about Star Trek (at least with the exception of Deep Space Nine) is that it doesn't really lend itself well to big space battles. DS9 showed us that space battle like that went through entire fleets in a matter of minutes. Even the big, heavily shielded vessels were taken out in a matter of seconds during a battle, and you'd often see entire lines gone in the first volley (concentrated fire, battle stations, random technology that disabled ships, etc), so having the Enterprise go up against a dozen Klingon or Romulan ships isn't going to be very plausible, or even entertaining. "Oh look, Kirk and his crew are blasting away everything in sight and only taking moderate damage again... yeah, bored with this now." There's a limit to the random sci-fi bullshit they can use to justify how things turn out each time. With the new movie, they seem to be going for far more dynamic but confined battles. I could see small groups of ships, maybe three or four on each side, going at it, bu not the hundred or so you'd see in DS9.

So, there are only about 10 000 Vulcans left in the galaxy (which really limits their genetic diversity), and most of them seem to be rather old. Factor in that seven-year mating cycle thing, and it seems unlikely that the species will reproduce enough to last more than a half dozen generations. So, how will they survive? I'm thinking cloning. Throw enough genetic variations in the clones, do some of that there invitro fertilization, and bam, enough babies to keep the race going until they have the population base to reproduce regularly. That, or just write them off.

Oddly enough, I do own a Japanese Clefairy plush from years ago, back when the series was popular enough to actually find stuff like that in this hemishpere It's currently residing in the plush tree-stump that my Totoro plush came with. I think it's more fitting.

Eeeewww. They warned me about people like you, but I just ignored them, thinking it was a scare tactic or something. Now I know that you really do exist, and I feel icky. And in case no one has their sarcasm plug-in activated:

Guys, you're going off-topic. This is a thread for the project. If you want, there's at least two threads in Gen Disc (although one is so far gone, that I suspect that it will be purged soon).

And I thought you were mocking me for spelling it wrong. OK, enough of that. Back to the topic at hand. Anyone look at the new girl and think she's some sort of Mario reject? Same basic color scheme, same clothes... I think we know what happened: she's Mario and Peach's illegitimate lovechild. Knowing how the scandal would shake the Mushroom Kingdom, and fearing for her well-being should Bowser learn of her existence, her parents sent her to the Pokémon world for safety. Too bad she's too much like her father; keep all your Squirtle and Torkoal out of her sight. And for the love of god, don't let her near your Shroomish.

\But totally relevant to the lack of interesting games issue. Seriously, it's like there hasn't been anything worth playing Mario Galaxy came out.

Considering I haven't even turned mine on in about three months, I don't think have to worry about it overheating. Seriously, there's been nothing of interest to me over the last six or so months. And that's for all systems, not just the Wii.

Oh noes, a typo on a Japanese name I don't get to type out every day because I'm not a giant Nintendo fanboy! GOSH! You know who I mean.

Ramaramaramadingdong! It's from some old song from the 50s or something... it's the first thing that pops into my head when I see Rama's name. I thought it would be more original than the usual birthday salutations and whatnot.

Today, I was accused of using an aimbot by not one person, but by a whole clan! OK, only four of them, but still... On NM Finale, we were Survivors first, and that's when they started accusing me of things most foul. They even went so far as to record it and said they would put it up on their site or something so everyone could see how obviously I was cheating! Oh, noes! I wish I knew where it was, so I could see just how much a group of lemmings they are as they start going over the video frame by frame, pointing out all kinds of evidence that proves my cheating. Charts and diagrams, maybe even some of those little red arrows and circles over things! One of them could be a video forensics expert, like on CSI, and he would look at it and be able to tell everyone with zoom-ins and enhancements how I was doing it! Oh, I wish I had somehow kept a name or something so I could track down whatever site they will put that video up on. Maybe it's on Youtube right now! When asked how come I still managed to get hit and even lose a round or two, they said I was pretending to lose so I could have (get this)... "plausible deniability". That's right. I was undercover for the CIA and now Leon Panetta can say I never worked for them. They had a Smoker attack from the same spot five or six times in a row, Hunters pouncing straight up in the air over and over, Boomers walking out front like they were invisible... How could I, or any of my team for that matter, not be able to hit you? I'm sorry, I know this will probably get a few "livejournal" comments, but it's just funny to me for some reason. I've never been accused of cheating in a game before. It's not like I'm some sort of super-player or anything, I just can't believe that they said it. It's like saying any of the remixers here use posts midi-rips or something.

Ouch. No wonder it's free now. Most games have to be five or more years old, or their publisher and developer go out of business before they go for free.

Wait... that game actually came out? Last I heard, it was still in development. Did it get released and completely ignored, or did it just go straight to the free games bin?

No, not really. What happened was years ago, back at eh beginning of the GameBoy (the original one, the old grey brick), GameFreak was actually a gaming magazine. But the started dabbling in video games, notably Mendel Palace and a Genesis game called Pulseman. One day, the head of the company, Satoshi Tajiri had an idea about how to se the link cable for the GameBoy (which was rather underused back then). After about six years of development (yes, six years), the first Pokémon games were released. The series was so sucessful, that Game Freak was contracted (not bought out by Nintendo, this is a common mistake) to produce exclusively for Nintendo. Also, Satoshi Tajiri is a friend of and mentored by Shigeru Miyamoto. If you use the Japanese name for "Ash" or Red and "Gary" or Blue/Green (the main character and your rival, respectively), you'll see that they are named after the two, Satoshi and Shigeru. There's actually a really interesting history behind the whole company, from back before the company was founed all the way up to the late 90s. Too bad it's so undocumented and piecemeal...

I actually considered asking this guy to join the Missingno Tracks, but I don't think he really varies the themes that much. I like his work, but I think it sticks too closely to the original material. Sometimes, it's more like someone just added a techno beat to the source tune. But it's still pretty good, overall.

Filter the list out to only the final evolutions and it's back down to like 230. Most of the "baby" and mid stage forms pretty much suck. But yeah, it's a lot. Too bad they will never remove any, because the instant they do, someone wil write in saying how Remoraid is their favorite and they hate Nintendo now (even though Nintendo is just the publisher and not the developer).

I have every volume of every Pokémon manga sitting on my shelf. Your turn. Also, for those interested (and maybe with some Japanese to English translation skills), here's a CoroCoro scan about the game. I think it also lists some version exclusives in the middle. http://archives.bulbagarden.net/w/upload/2/2e/HGSS-Corocoro.jpg

OK, so some people mucked around with the Chrono Trigger ROM, tried to make a new game out of it, and then Square-Enix squashed it. And people are surprised by this... why?

Aside from the fact that there is no way to prove one way or the other, I'd take that bet. It's going to take a lot more than simply being a remake to get me to buy it. Getting every single legendary, especially the "secret" ones, in one game, without any bullshit downloads, Toys R Us events, or contests would be a start... and that's still pretty iffy for me. I played this game ten years ago. I'm not interested in paying for it again... although, one can easily say that that's exactly what all of us have been doing for the last fifteen years or so. Even in the third versions, there are very few changes to the story. Crystal had the most of all, and it was mainly a side-quest sort of thing. At best, you will miss out on one new character who will show up a half dozen times, say a few lines that add nothing important to any plot point, and then maybe see him standing outside some house for the rest of your game's life. There isn't one for the DS games yet, but it should follow the basic list of the original GBC cames, plus whatever other they randomly decide.

What's a mechaphone?

STOP INFRINGING MY RIGHT TO POINTLESSLY WHINE ABOUT SOMETHING ON THE INERNET! Gawd, like, fuck off. But seriously, I'm going to skip it. I'd rather wait the next few years for the next generation.

Actually, I think I will skip this one. I already played it years ago and I still have a working cartridge. I see no reason to bother with it now. Even if they threw in a lot of "extras", it will still be hard to justify it.