Keeping Busy: POKéMON

Multi-Tasking
Hey guys, what's up? Nothing? Yeah me neither.

Actually, I have a lot up. Saturday I bought Pokémon Blue on the Nintendo Market and I've started playing it, just got my Metapod! Playing a pseudo Nuzlocke, I'll be collecting all 150 Pokémon along the way, but only playing with a select group (which will all be nicknamed except my Pidgey, because I slipped.) Meanwhile I'm typing up last week's arrest report for the newspaper...and I'm watching a Banjo-Tooie Let's Play, because I NEED IT!

So we'll just real quick like take a look at my Pokémon Blue game so far. I have Freepie (pronounced Free-pee -_-) the Caterpie/Metapod. Mouzer (like the mouse robots from TMNT) the Rattatta, Squirt the Squirtle, and Pidgey...the Pidgey, I slipped okay! And I've already run into a weird situation...Metapod did not learn harden...which doesn't bother me...like at all, but why did he not learn that on evolution?

 Thanks Bulbapedia

Yeah...Harden, why you no learn?!

 Oh...it's just that he can't hack it...

Anyway, yeah, watching this Banjo-Tooie let's play is jumpstarting a craving in my mind for some killer bear/bird platforming, I may go pick up some Microsoft points today and download the heck out of that, because why not?

 That's not the right game...whatever.

On the other hand, did a bit of digging real quick, and...Pokémon don't learn moves on evolution?! Or, at least the bugs don't learn moves on evolution in Red and Blue...someone said that they changed that in Yellow, someone else said they fixed it in Gold and Silver...either way, we do not get evolution moves for poor Freepie.

 Metapod, hit him with a harden!

As a side note, I have a Wal-Mart Gift Card sitting around that's not getting used with 25.00 on it...I may go pick up a Microsoft Gift Card instead, and cash it in on Banjo-Tooie...I would get both but they're $15.00 each...so I should get the sequel right? Since it's...y'know, bigger, and longer...and harder? Right, that makes it a better game right? Little kickball, start out with all the power ups from the last game, several different characters/transformations to play with. Awesome multiplayer, sounds like fun, let's frikkin' do it!



Until then, stay strong my furry/feathered friends!

Time to Bear Up: RARE REPLAYS

FINALLY
The last of my first five video game remakes blog posts is in the process of being completed! I thought I had already hit this goal, but I was actually looking at my side-tangent post, so I've got one more post that I nearly forgot.

TITLE: Rare Replay: Banjo-Kazooie, Banjo-Tooie

Old...New!

Uh-oh! The bear and bird! Subjects of a life-time! The greatest 3D platformers of all time! Okay, maybe they're not ALL that, but they are really great. I loved these games when they first came out, played them both into the ground. Sadly, I never beat them. Some issues presented themselves and I never made it to the final levels. Since then I've tried emulation of the games once or twice, but really emulation is terrible. When the opportunity presents itself I'll have to play right through them in the Rare Replay pack, along with trying out some of the other games.

I think I'm just too much of a fan-boy for Banjo and Kazooie, supposedly the third game in the main series, Nuts-n-Bolts was a complete mess, but I honestly really enjoyed it. I was upset that the game wasn't a straight platformer, but the vehicles and their customization did add some very different experiences into the game. Plus, there was some semi-platforming going on, in the cheating one could perform anyway.

But seriously, these original games were brilliant, taking the format of Super Mario 64's success and reproducing it with an entirely new cast, new mechanics, and a...new...plot, Banjo-Kazooie stormed the N64 and basically owned it. Rare Replay brings back a lot of successes created by Rare as well. Unfortunately, since Nintendo owns the rights to Donkey Kong, what we don't get in Rare Replay, despite massive success, is Donkey Kong Country, and the Donkey Kong 64 game. Too bad really, those would really top off an amazing list.

Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie have delightful soundtracks that really stick out on their home console, and their graphics aren't nearly as terrible as you'd expect, but, with the Rare Replay update even those graphics are refined. Their gameplay is far more innovative than Super Mario 64, introducing a series of maneuvers utilizing the team's unique abilities, and the the second game only further expands on this!

Anyways...yeah, really looking forward to eventually ripping through these games!

Remakes Galore

Change of Subject
I know, I know, I was supposed to drop a series of AI based posts last week, I didn't, I can't really tell you why, I just wasn't feeling it. I had a pretty good idea of what I was going to do, mostly the AI of strategy games and how ridiculous their ability to micromanage is, but I just sort of...lost interest.

Instead, this week, I want to hit a few high spots in my own experiences with gaming and the things that have come of them from the gaming scene as a whole, most notably: video game remakes.

Obligatory Bold Text Followed by Images

And there you have it, five games that I think definitely deserved a re-release, got that re-release, and I have yet to beat said re-release. Now for the most part, these are games I have not played at all, the exceptions being: I own the Metal Gear Solid HD Collection, have not beat any game on it yet; I emulated both Pokémon SoulSilver and Super Mario 64 DS, but only played them for a brief moment to test the waters, a sort of demo, if you will.

Now, the original idea was that I would list five games that I had beaten in the past, and for the most part this is true: I beat Silver, Gold and Crystal for the Gameboy Color, alongside my aunt and mother I completed all of Super Mario 64, later playing back through a majority of it myself, and of course I've beat Star Fox 64 multiple times. Metal Gear Solid 2 was a huge game for me, probably only the third rated M game I played (next to Mortal Kombat Trilogy and Halo), and one of my favorite games of all time, alongside introducing me to the idea of playing games stealthily, prior to that I always sort of pictured games, particularly games with guns, as something you rush through and just gun people down in. Then there's that last entry, Rare Replay.

Let's be honest, unlike Metal Gear Solid HD Collection, Rare Replay embodies several generations of games and several types of game play, and unfortunately, I was not exposed to most of them, and did not beat those I was exposed to. I can really excuse my way through putting it on a list of games I've completed and anxiously awaited a remake for like I could Metal Gear Solid 2, because I never beat any of those games. To be fair, I completed arcade mode in Killer Instinct Gold...so I guess that's like beating it...right? Please don't go all Fulgore on me.

See, Rare created what is, in my opinion, the two greatest platformers of their generation, Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie, and that's just it, I've never really played a platformer after that which really drew me in as much as Banjo and the bird did. That's why, when I heard there was an official console sequel coming out, I couldn't contain myself, and after it released, despite the horribly weird vehicle based gameplay of Nuts'n'Bolts, I still played it all the way through, collected as many upgrades as I could, and never gave up on it. Loved every minute of it. Plus, there's games in there that I really wanna try out like Perfect Dark, Kameo, and Grabbed by the Ghoulies, and I always enjoy classics so the older games on the list I'd definitely like to try my hand at as well.

Anyway, that's a brief update on what to expect from me over the next several days, and I promise at some point we'll touch on AI again, but not this week.



Game cover images courtesy of Wikipedia contributors
Banjo thumbs up courtesy of RetroGamer: the greatest video game intro you'll ever see.