Red or Blue?
The twentieth anniversary of Pokemon arrives, with Lusipurr and SiliconNooB choosing opposite sides of the issue: will it be Red or Blue as the superior option? Or will Blitzmage’s outside choice of Yellow prove Super Effective?
DiceAdmiralInfo Blast knows how many days February has in a Leap Year
This week’s panel
Silicon Noob might
Lusipurr doesn’t
Feature
Summer Gaming Challenge Fund-raiser
Smash Wii U buy a character Tournament
Coming in June
Dice Admiral’s Cricket Deluge
I appreciate the segment dedication, but will not be outlining the covered stories in the Info Blast for the difficulty in figuring out what the hell you’re actually talking about most of the time.
NEWS
Nintendo’s Treehouse employee is just awful
I’ve seen this kind of attitude online before in relation to age of consent laws. Disgusting.
I did some more reading about this and found this tweet. “Enough with the fucking ridiculous moral panic” indeed. It also appears that she’s an advocate for Japanese culture’s treatment of minors. I’m guessing she’s not on the translation team.
Mistwalker console game
I think I own Bravely Default… I really should play that…
Alan Wake’s Return Trademark
I wouldn’t get too excited. Trademarks are super common in this industry as placeholders.
NISA announces 3 new localizations
I was about to say that I hadn’t played any NISA games (shocking, I know), but I looked it up and I’ve played Phantom Brave and Etrian Odyssey both of which I now want to return to. Good stuff.
Imitanis Literature Corner
The Once and Future King by T.H. White Part 2
Imitanis Entertainment Moment
This week I played something most readers have probably heard of: Munchkin.
For the unfamiliar, Munchkin is a (debatably) humorous take-that style card game about being tabletop RPG characters and satirizing the tropes of the genre. Players start out as generic humans and can gain cards representing stereotypical fantasy races, classes, and items. The goal is to reach level 10 by defeating monsters.
On your turn, you draw a door card and if it’s a monster then you have to fight it, if it’s not (it could be a curse or class for example) then you get to keep it and can draw an additional card (also to keep). A monster has a power level which you must exceed in order to defeat it. If you do, you gain a level and whatever else is printed on the bottom of the monster (usually treasure). If you can’t, then the monster does it’s ‘bad stuff’, usually resulting in the loss of a level or some items. Your power level is your current level plus any bonuses your equipment might give you. What makes the game more interesting is how players interact. If you can’t defeat a monster, then you can ask your fellow players to help: adding their power to your own. They’ll probably require you to fork over some of your treasure for the aid though. In addition to helping, the aforementioned curses can allow you to make monsters worse for another player, generally by increasing the monster’s power.
So the game is pretty straight forward until someone starts getting close to winning, at which point all of the other players drop their curses and whatnot on that player to prevent the win, which will work until everyone runs out. A lot of modern board game commentators say that Munchkin is “30 minutes of fun packed into 2 hours”, and this is pretty accurate. If you’re playing it for the game then Munchkin does not have a lot to offer in terms of depth or strategy. If you’re going to enjoy Munchkin it will be because you think the theme is great and/or you enjoy changing the gelatinous cube that your friend just drew into a humongous, poisonous, smart gelatinous cube and its mate.
I had a decent time, but I probably wouldn’t play it again soon. I’d only recommend this as an occasional play for those who really like their old school D&D or get a big kick out of screwing over their friends.
It does have The Gazebo though, so that’s pretty awesome.
DiceAdmiral Travel Moment
The driving! Oh the driving! I spent 40+ hours driving of the weekend moving some family members stuff across a couple states. On the plus side: The rental van didn’t have cruise control and I never wanted an ankle in the first place. But we did find an okay place to play mini-golf. It was the first one that I’ve ever played that had actual water hazards on the course.
Quotes
None this week.
Final Notes
You noticed that it was a leap year but got the podcast release date wrong?
Donators
Cumulative total record holder: Imitanis
Single Donation record holder: Imitanis
Donators eligible for end of year drawing: 2
DiceAdmiralBTW, Yellow is the correct answer.
Lusipurr@DiceAdmiral:
I appreciate the segment dedication, but will not be outlining the covered stories in the Info Blast for the difficulty in figuring out what the hell you’re actually talking about most of the time.
There’s a link at the bottom of the site for “Cricket Explained”. Read it and all will be clarified.
I’ve seen this kind of attitude online before in relation to age of consent laws. Disgusting.
Lane said everything that I could say, over on SN’s news post for last week. In short, minors cannot give consent–not because of some “super-mean oppressive attitude about sexuality >:( ” but because they lack the reasoning, judgement, and experience necessary for informed consent, and as such sexual activity with minors is by definitiion necessarily exploitative.
Pedophiles are monstrous. End of.
I think I own Bravely Default… I really should play that…
It is very good: a classic JRPG with all the mod. cons.
I wouldn’t get too excited.
Whatcha talkin’ ’bout, Willis? I’m not even *remotely* excited.
I was about to say that I hadn’t played any NISA games (shocking, I know), but I looked it up and I’ve played Phantom Brave and Etrian Odyssey both of which I now want to return to. Good stuff.
You should really play Disgaea. It’s like Phantom Brave, but good.
something most readers have probably heard of: Munchkin.
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A lot of modern board game commentators say that Munchkin is “30 minutes of fun packed into 2 hours”
This was exactly what I was thinking about the description you gave. “This does not sound sustainable.”
On the plus side: The rental van didn’t have cruise control and I never wanted an ankle in the first place
You’ll get no sympathy from me, buster! I drove from Detroit, to Los Angeles, to Long Island, to Detroit, without stopping except for naps at rest areas and to change tyres. And I only drive manuals. SUCK IT UP! If you put in the time, one day you’ll have super-strong ankles just like me!
But we did find an okay place to play mini-golf. It was the first one that I’ve ever played that had actual water hazards on the course.
I’ve played at one or two of these, but I always found the water hazards to be small and inconsequential. To really do it properly, they should be real hazards. Ten or twelve feet across and at least a couple feet deep.
You noticed that it was a leap year but got the podcast release date wrong?
Look, do you realise how hard it is for me just to get the date right? Once we start tossing Leap Years into the equation, there’s no hope.
LusipurrBTW, Yellow is absolutely wrong. Be ashamed.
DiceAdmiralI forgot to note that you now have 365 episodes, which is enough to listen to an episode a day for an entire year. Unless it’s a leap year, then you’d have to wait for next week.
Lusipurr@DiceAdmiral: Thank you for reminding me as ordered!
Pit– Drowzee remember every dream they eat; if you sleep by it all the time, it will sometimes show you dreams it has eaten in the past.
– Stantler’s magnificent antlers were traded at high prices as works of art.
– When hungry, Weepinbell swallows anything that moves.
– Quagsire hunts for food by leaving its mouth wide open in water and waiting for its prey to blunder in unaware.
DiceAdmiralThanks for the random pokefacts?
Lusipurr— Rattata bites anything when it attacks. Small and very quick, it is a common sight in many places.
LaneI meant to follow up on that discussion, but I had a trial last week, and well, shit happened.
I do think, however, that “pedophiles are monstrous. End of.” is sufficient for the last word in that particular discussion.
SebastianI admit that I have never played a Pokemon game, though in my defense I grew up in a household without a computer or a game console until I brought one home at age 17. (OK, technically there was an NES but the only cartridge was the Miracle Piano Teaching System, and it came with a keyboard. This was considered educational, and was permitted. There were no game cartridges in the house.)
With my own game console, and lacking any clue about what constituted a proper gaming experience, I started buying games at a rate of one per week; spending most of my meager check from retrieving shopping carts and bagging groceries on this enterprise.
My first purchase was a Nintendo 64, which took a few weeks to save up for. In the coming months I amassed a small collection that included titles such as Episode One Racer (it came bundled with the system), Mario 64, Rayman 2, Donkey Kong 64, Ocarina of Time, and a couple of sports games. As you can see, platforming was all I really understood gaming to be at first, with Zelda being a new and interesting experience. Is it an RPG? It has elements, at least.
I received a PlayStation for my 18th birthday, and I still remember going to Best Buy to pick out a couple of games to play on it. I had enough money to pick out three Greatest Hits titles, and I selected Gran Turismo, Crash Bandicoot, and a game that interested my primarily because of the artwork and back cover blurb: Final Fantasy VII.
I still remember playing FF7 that first time, and being really impressed by the opening animation. I also remember feeling lost, having no concept of leveling up, and eventually failing to get by the first boss so many times in a row that I put the game away for a while. I still don’t remember what I problem was, so I’m assuming I just didn’t know how to heal.
All of that seems like another life, now. I own more games (and consoles) that I will ever play, and have a library of computer games that go untouched. The games that interest me now are primarily JRPGs, which I’ve been in love with since I finally played through Final Fantasy VII and IX (there was some other game between them in the series, I think… No. I can’t remember) and Chrono Cross.
Did I play Chrono Trigger? No. I didn’t even know it existed! I found this out later when I was told that my PlayStation RPG was a sequel of a SNES game. I was green, to say the least. (Where was the internet in my life? Why didn’t I do any research?!) Fast forward to now, where after spending 16 consecutive years working most of the time, not ever playing portable games, and limiting my time on consoles to the extent that I think I went about 5 years without playing them at one point.
My life is different now, having quit working at 34; choosing instead to stay home and take care of my now 5 month-old son (while my wife works, which she inexplicably finds to be a positive scenario). I feel like this is my chance to finally play the games I wished I’d played; finish the games I started and abandoned.
I have rambled. Essentially my question would be, regarding Pokemon, is there a consensus pick for the “best” title to start with? Is it simply dependent on which handheld system one owns? I’m interested in learning.
LusipurrAn enjoyable read, Sebastian–it is helpful for us to know about gaming lineage, so we know what sorts of things bear discussing.
Pick up Pokemon X or Y. There’s no decided advantage to starting at the ‘beginning’ of the series except as a sort of gaming/historical reference point. PKMN X and Y are, however, really excellent games and are probably also the best introduction to the series that it has ever had. They also have the benefit of actually interesting characters and a neat storyline (not always the case in some older PKMN titles).
Sebastian@Lusipurr Excellent, I will get one of those. I’m releaved that you are recommending one of the recent releases, as I was not looking forward to peering at a Gameboy with no backlight.
One further question; is there an advantage to one (X, Y) over another? Is there a different story so one could play through both games, or simply different rare monsters?
