Pokemon

[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“500” caption=“How awesome would it be to see this guy outside your window during a flight?”] [/caption] After a fun few days in Sapporo, it was finally time to head back to Tokyo. We were officially on the home stretch of the trip with only three teams left to see. I was starting to see the end of the trip in my sights and, I’ve got to admit, it was depressing to think that all the fun would be done so soon, but I was also ready to get back home to my own apartment. ...

[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“500” caption=“Today’s post brought to you by Coca-Cola (Not really! Please don’t sue me!)”] [/caption] Ok, so I’m being a little dramatic in the title, but with David gone and most of the day occupied by riding bullet trains across Japan, the day was definitely on the dull side. [caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“375” caption=“The thrilling remains of a lunch eaten on an exciting train ride to Fukuoka.”] [/caption] ...

Insert another credit, because it’s time for your weekly video game news and you’ve just hit the Game Overview screen. July was an interesting month for sales. It seems that if your name wasn’t EA or Nintendo, you didn’t even crack the top ten list for game sales. In fact, Nintendo’s month of dominance is even more astounding when you consider that the top sellers included New Super Mario Bros. and Mario Kart DS, games well past their prime. This tough economy is making it rough to be anyone but Nintendo, but I’m sure that the holiday season will bring other games to the forefront. There’s lots of good stuff in the pipe. ...

Insert another credit, because it’s time for your weekly video game news and you’ve just hit the Game Overview screen. Guess what guys, it’s the slow season. Not much is going on…at all… Let’s celebrate the start of this week with some Phoenix Wright! The folks over at OCRemix have put out some mixed versions of the songs from the soundtrack. Man do I love this series. OBJECTION! Classic. No Yakuza? ...

Insert another credit, because it’s time for your weekly video game news and you’ve just hit the Game Overview screen. When I was a kid I became saddled with the unfortunate notion that Japan did pretty much everything better than the United States. I don’t think I would have gone so far as to call myself a Japanophile, but it was definitely close. Their video games were all sweet (FF VI and Chrono Trigger!) and their cartoons sure beat the heck out of the asinine stuff I was sometimes watching on the Disney Afternoon. This may have had something to do with the fact that I was watching Bubblegum Crisis and Ranma at a time when the best cartoon I could watch was Timon and Pumbaa, but it would be foolish to think that the allure of the unknown didn’t factor into it too. ...

From Tim Rogers’ article on Japanese music and Sambo Master (so good, but long!): I told Sanyon, “Art is poison. The ‘art’ of the past – the words of the past set down for future generations to remember – was it not made or chosen with the best judgment, can only hinder the freedom of the future.” “That’s a very Western philosophy.” “No. It’s The Tale of Genji. Murasaki Shikibu. The world’s first novel. From your country – 998 AD.” ...

Went to the nearest Toys “R” Us today to finally get my hands on the Regigigas that I mentioned in an earlier blog post. The process was quick and easy and I was only slightly embarrassed to complete it. Probably the funniest part of it was that, since I had two copies of the game, I received double the reward pictured below: That’s right, I got TWO Pokemon movie posters, TWO Regigigas and his assorted buddies sticker sheets, and TWO $5 coupons for Pokemon games at Toys “R” Us. Too bad I already pre-ordered Platinum at Amazon.com. ...

PA I think it’s worth mentioning that the guys at Penny Arcade are universally hilarious. I was tooling around their site today and I found a couple of oldies, but goodies that I thought I would share: There’s one about Pokémon that shows Gabe at his training worst. If nothing it’s a hilarious take on the oftentimes frantic and crazy love of the game that you usually witness in small children. ...

Back on Saturday we took a look at two excellent games that didn’t quite make the cut. Today, we examine another three, all of them the superb 16-bit RPGs. You know the drill by now about the “Table of Honor” and whatnot, so let’s just get down to the clue and game: This first game I want to examine jumps out at you from the world of platforming. You might doubt his ability to manage, but once he jumps, you’re filled with utmost confidence. Yeah, it’s Mario’s RPG debut, Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars. ...

The other day when I was talking about Persona 3, I got a comment about the SMT series being a Western-based RPG instead of a JRPG. To start off with, the original game for the Famicom was based on a Japanese book about using the digital world to summon demons. From this point forward, no matter how much the first-person dungeon crawling might be reminiscent of Ultima or other Western RPGs, we cannot call the game Western, but we can do better than just this. ...