Gonna be the Very Best...Sort Of: POKéMON ALPHA SAPPHIRE

COORDINATING
I think is what they call it...everyone knows what Pokémon is about right? Battling- training up the ultimate team and taking them up against other people's ultimate teams, right?

 Ash Ketchum - The Art of Battle

WRONG! The true ultimate purpose of Pokémon...is Coordinating- the art of trainer and Pokémon acting in unison in contests to prove they are the most beautiful/clever/cute/cool/tough team out there!



Yes, that's right, not battling against each other but performing their skills in such a way that it...impresses judges...like a beauty pageant...yeah. The idea of Pokémon Contests was originally introduced in Generation 3, it was essentially a side-quest. The idea being that you could make your Pokémon more (see above list of adjectives and insert chosen adjective here) by feeding them Pokéblocks, small blocks of food made from berries, and then they could perform the same acts they normally used in battle on stage for millions to adore! This at first seemed like the stupidest thing on Earth to me, but by the time I was on my second play-through of Gen 3 (I believe that would have been Emerald Version) I was hooked!

 I think it's got your Pichu beat in cuteness, sir.

I specifically sat down and bred out a line of Pikachus to compete in contests, and followed that up with a series of other contest Pokémon. Sure, I eventually went on to defeat the Elite Four, but not before getting Master Rank in nearly every contest!

Why this all of a sudden, you ask? Well, I've beat the Elite 4 once already, cleared the Delta Episode easily, and collected most of the legendary Pokémon available in Alpha Sapphire. I'm working on breeding up a perfect team for the Battle Maison end game, and to take down the Elite 4 for the second time...but there are issues with that, particularly I need to get several Dittos with 5 or 6 perfect IVs (so far no good) and I need at least one Destiny Knot so I can breed those perfect IVs down. Where does one get a Destiny Knot though? There are two sources, one is to rebattle a pair of trainers over and over until they HAPPEN to drop it, or...a fan may drop it after a Master Rank Contest!

 It makes them fall in true love.

So...since I can't just rapidly rematch those trainers, I decided I would try my hand at contests...at first it seemed tedious, I used the Cosplay Pikachu the game gives you, which starts out with pretty good specks and a full Cool load out, so yeah I breezed through up to Master Rank, but then Master Rank became an actual challenge...and the more times I had retry, the more I started to enjoy the contests. Now here I am, trying to come up with a Pokémon for each of the respective contests to clear with. Current project: Beautiful Froslass. Most Ice type moves fall into the Beautiful category, and Froslass is far from the ugliest Pokémon in the game, so I figure she's probably my best bet both statistically and in preferences. I mean, we could go Gardevoir of course, but Froslass just sort of stands out to me.

 Endless Whispers' Froslass art, love Deviantart.

So, I got a Froslass today, as part of a trade with a friend, now I just gotta get her Beauty stat maxed out, grab a scarf for her, and come up with a good contest set for her. Yay! May upload some video of my contest runs to youtube, but it would be more shoddy camera work if I did...who knows though, maybe my mini tripod will work out great and I can steady my 3DS just right and I can get a decent voice-over going (not with as sick as I am right now though.) That's just one of many possibilities though. Can't quite be certain what Pokémon I'll run for my other contest types, but I definitely wanna master them all (I think that's how you get Lucarionite, and get to face off against the contest champion?)

Anyway, thanks again for reading this through, once I've got my Froslass perfected I'll be hopping online, maybe I'll see you there!

Game-Breaking Character: SUPER SMASH BROS. (N64)

We've talked about clothes, we've talked about items, what if we just talk about a character? What if we just talk about one particular character in a fighting game that, frankly, is too powerful.

WHOOPS!
I forgot about the introduction! Sorry! I'm a little short this week, one behind on My Arcade and two behind on My Cinema, but I'll get it fixed, hopefully tonight and tomorrow morning.

Anyway, like I said above, we've covered two more common issues with games where items in the game were broken, but what about the characters? A common complaint in multiplayer games is that one particular character will simply be too strong, in MOBAs and MMOs, this is generally fixed on the next patch, and patches happen pretty often, but with console games, particularly older console games, there probably won't be a patch. Enter our topic.

TITLE: Super Smash Bros.


Wow! Just wow, look at that box-art. I miss this game so much! Super Smash Bros. was the first fighting game I REALLY enjoyed, and even today it dominates my opinion of fighting games. I like Dead or Alive, and I'll play Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat, but Super Smash Bros. is where it's at!

And why shouldn't it be? The original game featured an all-star cast, with only two characters I had never heard of, Captain Falcon (because I didn't play a lot of racing games) and Ness (because I had never heard of Earthbound!). But that's not a negative, interesting new characters just makes the game better! I mean, we had: Mario, Luigi, Kirby, Samus, Fox McCloud, Donkey Kong, Jigglypuff, Link, Yoshi...and Pikachu. The mascot amongst mascots. Sure, Mario is Nintendo's mascot, and he's a pretty well known face, but a fat italian guy with a mustache isn't going to stand out quite as much as a yellow rat with lightning coming out of it!

All the more reason to fundamentally break, Pikachu. Pikachu has always stood out in the Smash Bros. lineup as a strong character, he's got one of the best return moves in the games, and it remains that way even in the fourth iteration. He's got a huge hit box on his (down) (B) attack, and it hits everything above him too. But, in the first game, it was a little too much. While everyone else has gotten a bit better since the first release, Pikachu has stayed basically the same, probably because he didn't need to change with the times.

This isn't exactly a story based game, but there is an arcade mode, and Pikachu does wreck it. It's not an entirely fair pick, but he is my pick, always. Actually, you can't play Pikachu with friends, they get mad about it, he's just got too good of a set of moves not to spam them, because of that, I actually stick to Wario and Ness a lot, but don't misunderstand, Pikachu will always be the best in the original.

Disagree? Think Samus could whip Pikachu any day of the week? Let me know, leave a comment on the blog or:
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Email: CWSherman93@gmail.com