So who’s playing this? I don’t think this should be a surprise to anyone, but I’m loving Spore. And I’m not even making any penis monsters and houses with nipples. No, don’t look at me like that — I’m totally serious! Remember, I also like cute creatures. I’d like to point out that these two interests are not related.
Uuuuuuuuugh…Pokemon. I kind of hate myself, but I went and got myself Pokemon LeafGreen, Emerald, Diamond, and My Pokemon Ranch. Take a moment to point and laugh at me — get it out of your systems.
My main goal in playing all of these soul-draining games is to fill up my ranch. I can’t deny my (platonic) love of watching chibi Pokemon run around acting cute and blasting themselves out of the Poke Rocket (not a euphemism). Of course my ranch would not be complete without a Bulbasaur or twenty, which is why I had to get LeafGreen. I have not yet achieved my goal of getting Bulbasaur on my ranch — I have a fuckbillion hours of tedious level building before that dream is realized. Woe.
I share Sam’s discomfort with capturing redundant Pokemon, but it’s kind of unavoidable when trying to fill up the ranch to its limit of 999 Pokemon, or trying to get some of the ranch special events. At least I have an Edgeworth Mii to help wrangle the fifty thousand phallic Pokemon and fuchsia ballsack Pokemon I’ve got inhabiting the place.
But the best part of all? After reading about how rare it is to run into a shiny Pokemon in the wild, I managed to catch one in the first fifteen minutes of playing LeafGreen. Yeah, that’s right — a shiny Rattata. Awesome. I might as well catch a piece of crap with glitter sprinkled on it. I commented to John that I need a a shiny Metapod, a shiny Magikarp, or a shiny Zubat to add to my shiny collection of win.
And then I caught a shiny Zubat in Diamond. Ha ha, Pokemon gods, very funny.
So do any of you have fantastic Pokemon ranches? Does Hayley insist on bringing you nothing but trash Pokemon? Do you have any amusingly pathetic stories of shiny Pokemon you’ve captured? Anyone have a shiny Metapod?
This post requires some explanation, so bear with me. 
Some time ago on the forums, someone posted a very disturbing picture in the Tingle’s Rosy Rupeeland thread. The image depicted a character named Pinkle, and as far as I can tell, Pinkle is a drag queen version of Tingle who wears a pink bra, hotpants, and fishnets. That in itself would be terrifying enough, but another comment on the similarity of Pinkle’s boob swirls to Poliwhirl’s tummy swirl triggered a mental flashback to something that happened to me many years ago.
Although I already posted the following story pretty much verbatim on the forums, I figured that it would be timely and appropriate to post it here given the recent interest in discussing Pokemon.
Back when I was in my Pokemon phase, I went around buying a veritable buttload of Bulbasaur merchandise. One of the best items I found was a Bulbasaur pencil sharpener, which came in a desk set with a Pikachu stapler, a Jigglypuff tape dispenser, and a Poliwhirl tape measure.
The Poliwhirl tape measure looks like your average plastic Poliwhirl with a measuring tape sticking out of his armpit. But even I, in my Bulbasaur pencil sharpener frenzy, did not notice what the game store clerk did. As I checked out with my new desk set, the clerk confided to me that when they’d gotten the desk set in, he and his fellow store employees spotted something very, very inappropriate about our friend Poliwhirl.
The tape measure, unlike the auto-retractable kind, needs to be wound by hand. The winder, naturally, involves Poliwhirl’s spiral tummy pattern — when you wind the tape, the tummy spiral spins around. As you may expect, the winder needs a handle. And this handle — a protruding white knob — is located along the outer edge of the white area. When it’s at the lowest point of its arc…well, you can imagine what it looks like.
(For those of you who haven’t figured it out, it looks like Poliwhirl is sporting an ERECT PENIS.)
I really need a new game to play. I have this problem where I am either incredibly excited about a new game’s release and must play it immediately, or I don’t give a crap about it at all and will likely never play it. For whatever reason, right now, pretty much every release is falling into the latter category. This means two things: 1) I don’t play that many games and 2) what I do play are old games.
This week I’ve needed a gaming fix. Nothing new (or unfinished on the shelf) sounded any fun, so I went to an old standby, thanks to my new love of this comic, and started a new save of Pokémon Pearl. Problem solved, right? Pokémon will grant me hours and hours of mindless, but familiar, gaming fun.
Not so much. I have problems with Pokémon. Continue reading
It seems that time has gotten away from me again. It’s not that I’ve forgotten about you guys, it’s just that…well, okay, I’ll confess: I haven’t been playing many games lately. I know! I feel so dirty. But it’s true. Although my game backlog is longer than the list of plotholes in Final Fantasy X-2, I’ve been occupying my time with other hobbies. And class. And work.
There is one game that I’ve been chipping away at every so often for the last…I don’t know…two or three years, and that’s Harvest Moon: Back to Nature. I am determined to beat this game sometime in my life span, even though it is obnoxiously long and repetitive. Don’t get me wrong — it’s completely addictive. But each in-game day takes me an average of 15 minutes of real time to complete. There are 30 days per season, four seasons per year, and three years necessary to “beat” the game. That’s something like 90 hours of real time if my math is correct. Compared to the number of hours I’ve spent in Oblivion it isn’t much, but that doesn’t mean it’s not daunting and kind of pathetic.
I’m sure I could think up a host of sordid backstories for the Harvest Moon cast to entertain you guys, but I hope you’ll forgive me if I don’t put in the effort. The silent farmer “hero” has less personality than the entire cast of Chrono Cross put together. Of course, he did manage to marry and knock up the town alcoholic — who looks like she’s twelve — without sleeping in the same bed as her, so maybe I’ve misjudged him.
The other “news” item which I must mention is, naturally, Gyakuten Kenji. Or Gaykuten Kenji, if you want to keep the VGR naming scheme consistent. This title roughly translates to “Gay-Ass Prosecutor” and you apparently get to play as Miles Edgeworth. So it seems that there are guilty defendants in the Phoenix Wright universe. Who knew? More importantly, since Gumshoe appears to be the sidekick, we will likely be treated to many awkward moments of unrequited gay lust and hero worship. And what better recapping fodder is there?
Also, just to create some discussion — what other fuchsia items will we discover that Edgeworth owns? So far, there are his outfits, his entire office, his knife, his pink DS, his pink apron, and I think I saw something somewhere with a fuchsia bejeweled address book, although that may have been fanart (not that it would be any less accurate). Any guesses what we’ll find out that will make Edgeworth even gayer?