An Indepth Look Into A Geek's Soul

So, my friend Joel recently started up a tumblr, and I've been reading it because hey, why the hell not.  It's actually rather enjoyable.  Here's a link if you want to check it out for your own self.  Anyways, during December he was doing this thing called the Pokeddex, whos rules I will post below.

Those checkmarks I believe were created by Joel, but I could be wrong.  I'm going to go down the same basic route that Joel did, by posting about my favorite guy every day instead of actually drawing them.  Yes, I'll probably miss a few days, but I'll just do extra work on the days that I miss to make up for that.  And yes, I also realize this was for the month of December, but I don't care.  This will be a January/early February deal for me.  Anyways, here we go!

Day 1:  Favorite Normal Type Pokemon

Bouffalant doesn't get the attention that it deserves.  It wouldn't surprise me at all too hear that people much prefer the old school Tauros, and I can't say that I blame them too much; they've had all this time to get to know the guy.  However, I love the design of Bouffalant.  When I first saw the first drawings of him, he was a guy that I wanted on my team at some point in the game.  When I make my all normal team, he will recklessly lead the pack of them.  Still think Tauros should evolve into though, am I right?

Peace Out.

Oh yeah, another Pokemon blog, and in the same week.  Crazy stuff here guys.  I am going to blame it on having lots of time on the school's computers.  They have nicer keyboards.  It makes me want to buy my own desktop and use that more or less for all my comptuer needs.  Well, not all, but for most of my typing needs.  And I would probably play lots of games on it too.  Yeah, lots of money I don't have to spend at the moment though.  Moving on to the meat of this posting though.

After defeating the first Pokemon gym, the next natural thing to do is tackle the second gym leader.  This chick had a paltry two Pokemon, both of which were Normal typed.  This lead me to be worried.  Normal types are probably some of the hardest ones to defeat when it comes to gym leaders.  I remember hating them back in Pokemon Gold and Silver, and again, this leader gave me some troubles.  Lost on my first match against her (just like in the first gym, damn it all) but won (barely) in the rematch.  I basically won by sacrificing my entire team to her guy while switching in Timburr for some Fighting typed match ups.  I won it though, and get myself the.... Basic Badge?  I think that was it.  Something along those lines at least.

The match did teach me one thing though.  I love the ability Sturdy.  In all the other generations, it only prevented being killed by those moves that kill you in one hit or don't do any damage.  Now though, it saves your Pokemon from death any time that any move might take you out from max health.  It is pretty sweet.  It makes Roggenrola pretty awesome at being a tank.  I get the enemy all built up, thinking they are going to get some awesome super effective move on my guy, then switch in Roggenrolla to soak up that damage, switch back to the previous guy, and win the match.  Good stuff there.

The game is still going strong.  Right now I'm attempting to get through Pinwheel Forest to get this Pokemon's skull (which looks like a lot like a certain first generation dragon I rather like) back from the nefariously righteous Team Plasma.  It is slow going, mostly because of high leveled wild Pokemon (comparitively) and the fact that the most common Pokemon in the forest is this Bug/Grass dude that happens to be strong against three quarters of my team.  Crazy stuff happening there.  I dont' like it one bit.

For the moment though, the team consists of Venipede, Servine, Timburr, Roggenrola, Panpour, and Munna.  Venipede is my favorite new addition.  He looks cool, has an interesting move pool that doesn't seem to make sense but works, and can defeat those damn Bug/Grass guys.  Plus, he gets some cool evolutions.  I shall keep you guys up to date though.  Promise.

Peace out.

The game is finally here folks!  Pokemon Black for the Nintendo DS has finally come to the United States and I was there to pick it up on day one.  I have only played it for about four hours or so, but I have to admit, I'm rather impressed with the game thus far.  The game is a real tribute to the original games.  You can see it in the way that developers designed the entire game.  A lot of the pokemon are updated versions of the originals that you would see, while still being completely new and fresh.  The battles have this intensity to them that has slowly been getting diminished in the last games.  This may have something to do with the fact that the battle screen moves now, but who knows.  All I know is that I love the game.

The coolest thing about the game in my opinion is the way they have revamped the TM system.  TMs are no longer one use items.  You can use them as many times as you would like, just like the old HMs used to be.  This is a most excellent idea.  No longer do I have to wait to my TMs in fear that I will miss out on giving a good TM to a stellar guy later in the game.  Once I get my Earthquake TM, I can totally have a team full of earth rattling pokemon, which is just an awesome feeling, let me tell you.  Makes me totally want to get into the competitive scene a whole lot more.

The current team is a fairly diverse once.  Right now I have a ruggenrola, a munna, snivy, lilipup, purrlion, and a panpour.  No overlapping types anymore!  It is pretty sweet.  I think my favorite new pokemon is ruggenrola, just cause of the sheer punness of the name.  Not totally positive that I'm spelling any of these names right though.  Oh well, they are new!  It will take me a little while.

So far in the game I have beaten the first gym battle, which was a pretty tough one becasue of Work Up, which raisese the attack and special attack of pokemon.  You would think a couple of sand attacks would cause a miss, but no, I got hit every time.  Damn pansear.  Oh well, I beat the gym leaders on my second try, getting myself the Tri Badge.  right now I'm working on Route 3 after just having saved a pokemon from the clutches of the nefarious (or perhaps righteous!) Team Plasma.  The whole team is between 11-12, just now learning some attacks that aren't tackle and leer.  We shall see how this plays out in the end.

Other than that, not a whole lot is going on.  I might add pictures to this later, or I might not, we'll see how I feel.  These blogs on Pokemon Black might get their own section on the website too, but again, not sure if I want to do the extra work for something like that.  I will play it by ear and see how it goes.  All I know is that I will keep playing, and watch some of Joel's Lets Play Pokemon White videos, just so I can know what is coming up.  Hopefully I can catch up to him, so we can duke it out, wi-fi style!

Peace Out.

The release of Pokemon Black and White draws ever closer (March 6th I believe).  With the release just a little over a month away, I feel that my urge to play Pokemon has drastically increased.  Everywhere I go lately seems to remind me of Pokemon in some form.  Joel's blog had his list of complaints about the original game, which in all fairness, were completely terrible but yet groundbreaking at the time.  I'm subscribed to a guy (TheKillerNacho) on Youtube who is doing a Pokemon Yellow walkthrough, though I decided to watch his FireRed walkthrough instead.  Heck, even other games I have laying around remind me of how much I miss playing Pokemon.

Why bring this up?  Eh, mostly because I felt like updating, lets be honest.  But Pokemon is one of those things that tie me back to my childhood.  Pokemon is the only reason that I saved up my money to buy a GameBoy Color.  Remember those?  I had this kick ass yellow one.  I still do.  If I were to guess, I bet my Pokemon Blue game is still in there.  I'm afraid to take it out to be completely honest.  The game probably has not left the safety of that yellow harness for the better part of a decade.  Yeah, a decade.  Think about that.  Crazy guys, crazy.

So that TheKillerNacho guy has this take on Pokemon that is totally foreign to me.  He runs through the game, only collecting and catching those that he wants as a final team.  It seems really weird to me.  He doesn't worry about leveling up by grinding countless wild pokemon.  He mostly fights trainers to level up all of his guys.  Right now (as of part 12) he has four pokemon on his team:  charmeleon, nidoking, mankey, and gyarados.  Right now, as far as he is, I would probably have ivysaur, pikachu, pidgeotto, probably a butterfry, a geodude, and maybe even a raticate.  All at roughly the same level as his guys, if not a little bit higher.  Makes me wonder if I waste too much time leveling up my guys.  I won't change the way I play, but it is something to think about.  Also, the guy flys through items.  Head back to the Pokemon Center sometimes dude.  Gosh.

Peace Out.

In the long line of Pokemon games, this one is the latest to capture my eye.  Pokemon Black White has been released recently in Japan and will slowly be coming to America sometime in Spring of 2011.  You better believe that I will be getting one of them, though I'm not sure which one yet.  I'm leaning towards Black, but I'm willing to lean either way.  I finally broke down and looked at the list of all the new pokemon that will be available in the new generation (Generation V) of the games, and I thought I'd share with you guys my first impressions.  I honestly mostly just looked at the picture and typing when deciding on these guys.  My information came from Serebii.net and Bulbapedia.

Also, all the names are in Japanese still.  Also, just going alphabetically by their Japanese names, just so it does not appear that I'm biased.

Archeos is a Rock/Flying type pokemon.  I love this combination and wish that we had more choices when it came to this rather unusual type combination.  I did look a litter deeper into this one than the others and it has this weird ability, called Timid, that makes its Attack and Special Attack stats drop by half when Archeos is at half HP or lower.  However, he has the highest base stats of any non-legendary pokemon except for Slaking, so I think I'll have fun with him.  Just need to people fast and hard.

Our next pokemon, Gigigear, was picked solely on looks.  It is a pure Steel type pokemon, bring with it a lot of the defenses and restistances they all come with.  It would not surprise me if it also brings the slow speed and so-so move pool.  However, my love of Steel types has grown stronger with each generation and I'm almost positive I'll have him on my team for a little bit, if not to beat the Elite 4.  Plus, it looks a new version of Magneton.  Always a plus.

This lovely creature is named Goruugu.  I know, a lot of vowels for such an awesome guy.  His type you ask?  Ground/Ghost.  WHAT?  I know, it's crazy.  The first one of  his type?  Hell yeah.  Is it an awesome typing?  I like to think so, but hey, I don't know anything about competitive battling, so I could be wrong.  At any rate, I just like the fact that he can learn both Earthquake and and and.... some awesome Ghost move.  I think he has Shadow Punch?  That sounds sweet.

This guy will be on my team simply because he's one of the starters.  Jalorda is a rather nifty Grass type pokemon.  Interesting fact?  Only starter ever with no legs.  I kid you not, look it up. I'm a sucker for grass pokemon, despite their rather, well lets say lackluster, performance.  If I had any qualms, it woul dbe his rather hipsterish look on his face.  He's only playing a pokemon cause it's the ironic thing to do.  I'll be sure to help him get over those feelings.  Should definitely be a blast playing with him.

This lovely Bug/Steel type pokemon is Shubarugo.  I like him only because he look slike a knight and has a lance.  Or two.  It's a little hard to tell, but I think there's another one back there.  The typing isn't unique;  older pokemon had it and there is a slew of new ones that have it.  I just like the style of this one.  I think that is all that matters in some cases.  Who cares how strong the pokemon is so long as you like playing it?    I play for fun, not to win (though winning is nice).  Also, look at this dude's helmet.  Who wouldn't want to rock one of those bad boys?

And last, but certainly not least, is the mighty brute, Terrakion.  This is one rough and tumble Rock/Fighting pokemon.  In all fairness, I probably won't use him on my team, but I'll but him here anyways.  Why won't I use him on my team you ask?  I have learned that he is one of the legendary pokemon in the game,  much along the lines of Moltres.  Still, I think that he has an awesome typing, something that makes me think of a brick wall that fights back (sorta like Wall from Monster Rancher 2).  He at the very least is one of the legendaries that I'm looking forward to hunting down.

So yeah, have you guys done any investigating into the new Pokemon games?  Have any favorites?  Have any guys you just plain on hate?  Leave the comments down below.

Peace Out.

You know, I think it's time to delve into a fantasy word.  What exactly is my fantasy world?  I'm not sure.  I always imagine that it takes place in some high fantasy type of place.  You know, it would have the typical shinning castles with a grand moat, soaring towers, and a beautiful princess waiting for me with its mighty walls.  It would sit in the middle of a sweeping valley, high amoung snow peaked mountains.  The weather would be fair all year round.  The world around it would be fairly safe, too.  Sure, you would have the occasional monster attack:  a dragon attacking the peasants, goblins beseiging the castle gates, a zombie horde rising from their graves.  Of course I would beat back the threat.  It is me after all.  All and all, it would be very much like a cross between the Lord of the Rings and Dungeons and Dragons.

I think there would also be a very strong element of Pokemon thrown in.  I would have my Venusaur of course. Heck, he might be my only pokemon too.  Kind of like how in the games and show how most trainers only  have two or three guys?  I could totally do that.  Who else would I really need?  Venusaur could give me rides, use his vines to let me climb up to various places, and generally just be cool eveywhere that we go.  Would he have a nickname.  I'm not sure.  I normally don't nickname my guys, but if I had to do that, I think I would call him something awesome, like a Lord of the Rings name.  Maybe Treebeard, or Skinbark.  At any rate, we would be inseperable.

But what about you guys?  What would your fantasy world be like?  Go ahead and tell me.  Either right it in your own blog and post the URL to it as a comment or just post the fantasy as a comic.  I'm looking forward to reading what you guys come up with.

Oh, and there would be bacon.  Lots of bacon.

Peace Out.

So, it's happened again.  I'm back into Pokemon cards.  I can say this without being ashamed in the least bit.  I've been playing Pokemon anywhere, be it at a friend's house or in the middle of West Hall over at the college.  I forgot how simply addicting the game can really be.  It's super easy to just jump into and start playing, but at the same time there is a level of depth and strategy involved that I know I'll never ever reach, no matter how long I decide to play the game.

So what exactly got me involved into the game again?  I'm going to place the blame solely on Carlee, Carlo, and KFC.  You see, Carlee, my friend, invited me to go to KFC the other morning (Tuesday I believe it was).  Yeah, you read that right, KFC and morning in the same sentence.  I didn't know they opened at 10:30, but hey, I'm digressing from the real story here.  Anyways, she brought her boyfriend, Carlo, and we each were eating our own meals.  We started talking about random stuff, which lead to Magic the Gathering, which lead to Pokemon, which lead to me saying "Hey, we should go buy a deck at Meijer's and play a couple of games."  And that's when they agreed wtih me, totally changing my life.

Okay, that's a little dramatic.  Still, it's been a fun two days.  We each have our own decks and mine seems to be kicking ass.  It's this Grass/Psychic deck, I believe it's called "Cutting Edge," and it's rather sweet.  It's one of those, hit 'em hard, hit 'em fast decks.  I think the "good" card in the deck is supposed to be Gallade, seeing as how it's on the cover of the box, but it turns out that Leafeon is just a raw beast in the deck.  It pretty much causes more of a concern than any card in my deck.  They see Eevee and they just kind of go "shit" and try to take me on.  They've only beat me once though.

I'm looking forward to more sessions.

Peace Out.

After a long time of not having this, it's time to bring it back, and what better to bring it back with than a good old geeky list of my favorite Pokemon.  Lets start this shall we?

Number Ten: Ursaring

Ursaring starts off my list here.  A couple of you, especially those who talk to me about pokemon, are completely shocked right now.  I never mention him, seeing as how he's nothing all that special.  The first games he was out in, Gold and Silver, I never used him, or even caught him I don't believe.  It wasn't until Pokemon XD that I really started using him and just fell in love with him.  You slap a Return on this guy and he just destorys people.  I love it.  Plus, I like the idea of a big old bear slapping your pokemon around.

Number Nine: Torterra

A relatively new guy, and I think he's the newest Pokemon on my list, is the starter from the Diamond and Pearl series.  He's a Ground/Grass, and really think the biggest reason I like him is because he learns Earthquake as soon as it evolves.  Plus, I like the idea of a Pokemon being like a mini Earth, destorying people.  Reminds me of a random DnD monster who's name escapes me at the moment.  He just reminds me of a raw wall of grass and dirt.  Plus, he has a tree growing on his back.  Hell yes.

Number Eight:  Alakazam

I think just about everyone likes this pokemon.  In the original games, you were almost stupid to not have him on your team.  This dude is a psychic power hosue of doom and power.  Plus, his name is cool.  His whole evolutionary line was pretty bad assed when it came to names.  Yeah, his power level has changed over the course of the games, but he's always been a damn good psychic pokemon.  Almost better than Mewtwo.  Almost.

Number Seven: Lugia

Ah yes, Lugia, the only legendary Pokemon on my list.  I think I first fell for this guy in Pokemon Silver.  He's the first legendary you can get in that game I think, and he's just pretty bad ass.  Plus, I think he's the only one to naturally learn Aeroblast, which is a sweet name.  He's also a pure badass in Pokemon XD.  Dark Lugia is strong as hell and you have to very uniquely purify him.  He's just awesome, and deserves the spot it got.

Number Six:  Dragonite

Now I know there are so called better dragons out there, especially if you like your competitive battling, but this guy was the original.  He was the one you fished for in the Safari Zone for hours on end, the one you don't mind leveling up to level 55, even though he sucks until then. He's an all around great guy to have on your team at the end of the game.  Sure, others might be stronger, faster, or more defensive, but he's so freaking sweet still. 

Number Five:  Swampert

It seems that I have a thing for defensive minded pokemon doesn't it?  Swampert was my favorite pokemon from the Ruby and Saphire series and really, it was a good pokemon.  It wasn't super great or amazing or anything like that, but that doesn't mean anything.  He's another guy who learns Earthquake.  I think I just like that move.  I think everyone likes that move, it's a great move.  I'm not a huge fan of this guys looks, which aren't anything all that special as you can see.  It's just his playability.  I was never disappointed when he was on my team.  He could hang with the best and totally kick ass.

Number Four:  Magnezone

This guy is a late comer in the land of my favorites. I really wasn't all that into him, or anyone else in his line, until Platinum came out.  I think I tried out Silver again a bit before that, and realized that he's simply amazingly strong.  He goes against what I traditionally see as an electric pokemon, seeing as how he's a slow moving hunk of metal, but I can see around that.  A lot of people give him guff because he's a newly evolved guy but he's totally cool.  I think just about everyone should have a few of them on the team.

Number Three:  Scizor

This one was a hard choice.  I loved Scyther for the longst time, and then he got an evolved form!  What the hell was I supposed to do?  I picked the evolved form.  Yeah, he doesn't have the speed of Scyther, but he's just as freaking sweet.  Plus he's red, he's steel, and he still freakng kicks ass.  Seriously, he just runs through people, it's pretty sweet.  Sure, he burns like a bisuit, but whatever you know?  He's a great guy.  He doesn't learn Earthquake, but hey, no one is perfect.

Number Two:  Gardevoir

Gardevoir is a strange choice for me.  I really don't know why I like it so much.  I think it has something to do with being a kick ass version of Alakazam, only with some special defense so it can take a hit if you need it to.  Plus, I liked Imprisom, even if it's not all that great.  I think it just has to be because it's such a strange looking Pokemon.  Is it a chick?  Is it an alien?  Hell, does it even have two eyes?  Who knows?  Not this Pokemon Master, that's for sure.

Number One: Venusaur

And last, but hardly least, is the mighty, the incredible, the powerful, Venusaur.  I love this Pokemon.  He's a big old, dinosaur looking thing with a giant flower on his back, but it's still freaking sweet.  I know grass isn't the strongest of all the types out there, and poison brings it down even more in my opinion, but that doesn't mean a thing to me.  I almost never use him as a defensive Pokemon, even though you should make him one, but hell, I can't help using Solar Beam and especially Razor Leaf. He's been my favorite since the games first came out, and I dont' forsee that changing any time in the future.

So there you have it, my top ten favorite Pokemon.  Crazy isn't it?  And that's that for the Pokemon tonight, I'll let you guys go.  See you all later.

Peace Out.