Retro Game Friday: Pokemon Stadium 2

This week for Retro Game Friday I’m back with a sequel that was better than the original. It’s Pokemon Stadium 2!

Gameplay: This game focused more on the connectivity with the GameBoy games, even allowing players to play the actual games they had loaded into the Transfer Pak. This was a big draw for lots of players. There were also some mini games like the previous game, so it wasn’t purely just a Pokemon battler for the console.

Art: The art has aged pretty poorly but considering that this was a N64 game that isn’t a surprise.

Music: Pure Pokemon music, nothing else need be said.

Overall: A better sequel than the original, which is pretty rare.

Retro Game Friday: Pokemon Stadium

Hey all I’m back with a game that has no story for this week’s Retro Game Friday. It’s Pokemon Stadium!

Gameplay: It’s standard Pokemon gameplay, you battle with six ‘Mon from the first Generation and can either battle against another player or you can take on the “Stadium Mode” where you battle AIs. Beating them got you a Pokemon you could transfer to the Gameboy games. Really it’s not that amazing a game, though it was useful for those friendless or isolated people who didn’t get the chance to trade ‘Mon with said people to complete their Pokedex in the Gameboy games.

Art: The art has aged really poorly, but back in the day it was pretty cool.

Music: Standard Pokemon music, that’s all that really needs to be said.

Overall: Not a game to play just for itself, it only was worth playing when you had an accompanying Gameboy game to go with it.

For those who like: Pokemon.

Not for those who don’t like: Pokemon.

Video Game Tuesday: Losers of 2019

Hey all I’m back for this week’s Video Game Tuesday with a look at the previous year. It’s my Losers of 2019!

Anthem: Let’s just get this out of the way, Anthem was hyped up to be the big “Destiny” killer, it wasn’t. It was, and still is, a terrible game that was rushed and completely mismanaged for YEARS at BioWare. The gameplay is repetitive and the story was utter crap. Coming off the big failure that was Mass Effect Andromeda, BioWare again proves that they have fallen since Mass Effect 3 released. Am I still upset at the way ME3 ended? Abso-freaking-lutely. That was such a letdown to what was an otherwise epic series and the fact that it all boiled down to 3, 2 if you really screwed up, choices in the end was and still is an atrocity for hyping up the series to be all about lasting consequences for choices. So when I heard about Anthem I was skeptical, not only because I’ve been burned by Destiny so badly, but because BioWare still hadn’t gotten my forgiveness for Mass Effect 3. The fact it launched so utterly broken and lackluster just proved my suspicions were correct.

The “Dexit” Issue: I understand both sides of the argument here, Pokemon Sword and Shield wanted to focus on the new ‘mon and didn’t want to be dragged down by the other 700+ Pokemon that came before. However for the first mainstream entry on a console, Sword and Shield really alienated pretty much any veteran fan with the their decision to not include all the other Pokemon. Yes it’d be difficult to animate all those individual Pokemon, HOWEVER they have ostensibly been working on this for years. I’ve always held the belief that Nintendo was holding the option for a mainstream console edition in their back pocket since Red and Green (Blue for us Americans) released all those years ago.

That they didn’t have some people working on animating every Pokemon into 3D since 1996 is utterly laughable. Yes they might have needed to update some of them, but honestly they could’ve been having people work on those for years and years in their spare time. That said I understand that actually taking all that artwork and making it fit into a single system would be a huge undertaking. However it’s not like Sun and Moon didn’t have 3D models in those games and any good Game Artist always keeps high resolution models for safekeeping for future uses. Even if said models need to be pared down to fit current systems, they should have had plenty of the original files for future proofing.

Our Wallets: For real though, there were some great games that were released, or re-released in 2019. From Link’s Awakening to Death Stranding there were tons of games that were released and our wallets were probably thinner at the end of 2019 than they were at the end of 2018.

Honorable Mentions:

Days Gone: I had high hopes as an Oregonian for this game, but it was the typical zombie game with nothing really standing out.

Activision: They end their contract with Bungie, cut tons of jobs and lined the pockets of their CEOs while alienating tons of fans. Even the Blizzard portion of the company, for all it’s supposed to be pretty much a seperate entity didn’t escape unscathed from the leftover backlash from BlizzCon 2018 and lackluster launch of Battle for Azeroth. I didn’t have a lot of respect for the Activision side of Activision Blizzard before 2019, but it certainly was reduced even more after 2019 even for the Blizzard portion.

Video Game Tuesday: Pokemon Let’s Go or No?

This week for Video Game Tuesday I’m looking at one of the recent announcements that came out before this week’s E3! It’s whether it’s Pokemon Let’s Go or No?

Pokemon Let’s Go?: This looks to be a remake of the original Red and Blue (or Green for those JP players) and features two versions. Eevee and Pikachu, which will be the starter for each version. You won’t be able to evolve those particular ‘mon, but I’m going to bet you can evolve others you capture. In addition you’ll be able to transfer Pokemon you catch in Pokemon GO to Let’s Go, but not vice versa. This will be done through Bluetooth connectivity supposedly. Maybe those ten thousand Pidgey’s I caught in GO will be useful. Ahh who am I kidding, they’ll probably be worthless. The gameplay will feature no random battles with wild Pokemon, instead allowing you to capture them like in GO by using the JoyCon to throw a PokeBall. There will be traditional turn based battles with NPCs though. Whether this will include all the Gym battles is unknown at this time. The game releases on November 16th this year.

Would you get it?: Not likely, I enjoyed the series when I was much younger, but honestly since I don’t already own a Switch this isn’t going to push me to buy one.

What about a core game?: Well luckily for you I totally called it when I said that the Switch would be the perfect system to have a core Pokemon game. It won’t come out this year, but will release in the second half of 2019.

That’s it for this week’s Video Game Tuesday.

 

Retro Game Friday: Hey You Pikachu

This week for Retro Game Friday I’m covering a game most people don’t know exists. It’s Hey You Pikachu!

Plot Synopsis: There really isn’t a plot.

Gameplay: You played the game almost exclusively with the included Voice Recognition Unit. Seeing as it’s the one of only 2 games to ever use the peripheral, you can imagine that this was mostly a gimmick game. Honestly there’s really not that much going for this game, as it’s pretty much just like a more kid friendly Seaman game.

Art: Having been made for the Nintendo 64, the art has aged poorly as you might expect.

Music: I don’t remember it, sorry.

Overall: Skip this game, it’s truly a poor excuse for a game that existed just to capitalize on the popularity of Pikachu.

For those who like: Terrible Games, Voice Controls.

Not for those who don’t like: Either of the above.