Delicious, delicious tears

2002: WHATS THIS BOWSER JR BULLSHIT WHERE ARE MAH KOOPALINGS GODDAMMIT

2014: WHATS THIS KOOPALING BULLSHIT WHERES MAH BOWSER JR GODDAMMIT

So, Mario Kart 8. The roster can be explained by one of three things: they took trolling lessons from Gamefreak, they're trying to appeal to the Sonic DeviantArt community, or there'll be DLC at some point in the future. That last one actually holds some water, and I wouldn't be surprised at all if it turned out to be true. After all, the likes of Bowser Jr., Dry Bones, Diddy and others missing out on a 17-character roster is hardly abnormal, but a 30-character roster? Not so sure. And let's be honest, if that's the plan, then this is actually a solid move on Nintendo's part. Are you more likely to pay extra for DLC featuring Bowser Jr., Diddy, Dry Bones and Dry Bowser, or for Pink Gold Peach, Baby Rosalina and Metal Mario? Asking the question is answering it.

And still assuming that DLC is what they have in mind, it's kind of weird that people complain more about a 30-character roster featuring Baby Rosalina and Pink Gold Peach than they would about a 28-character roster without those two. They're really only taking someone else's place if there turns out to be no plans for DLC, and I'm using that term loosely because if they never intended to have those snubs in a 30-character roster, they probably wouldn't have intended to have them even if these "unwanted" characters weren't there. Not to mention, they've been pushing Rosalina really, REALLY hard lately, so her being given an alternate skin (albeit with different in-game stats, most likely) should really surprise no one. Pink Gold Peach I'll admit was really out of left field, and is going to be a very iffy pick if the DLC idea remains just that.

But hey, all the mainstays, the ones that absolutely HAVE to be there, are there, and they even threw in all seven Koopalings just for those of us that are old enough to have seven children ourselves, so you won't find me throwing a tantrum.

This is a post.

And it's neither about Pokémon Art Academy, nor is it not about it. To prove it, here's an unrelated sentence: why would a racist old fart own an NBA team that's mostly blacks? Because of Pokémon Art Academy.

Serebii's Pokédex: now with everything about Hoopa and Volcanion!

I don't have any time to dissect these new developments, except for the obvious fact that Hoopa's ability is freaking terrible, and how both of them have so many wasted points in physical attack (seriously, they should've been swapped with speed), so I'll get back to you later on that. The important thing is that they're there.

As for the signature moves, Hyperspace Hole has 80 power, perfect accuracy (as in, like Swift), and hits through Protect and Detect. Do you run that, or do you go with Psychic or Psyshock instead? As for Steam Eruption, it's basically a 110-power, 95-accuracy version of Scald. Not exactly unexpected.

It should be mentioned, however, that by the time they're distributed, we're probably going to have access to move tutors at that point, so let's not panic over disappointing movepools just yet. Aside from dual physical STAB on Volcanion being impossible, I mean. No Waterfall and utter lack of tail nailed that particular coffin.

The Speed Gamers' Indiethon begins this Friday!

To say I'm not very savvy when it comes to the indie scene would be a euphemism, but you know what? I don't care. TSG has a reputation for putting on a show that goes well beyond the games being presented, and I'm sure this event will be no exception. Said event was delayed by about a month for reasons I think I was told but forgot anyway, but it's finally getting underway this Friday at 7 PM Eastern, 6 PM Central, 4 PM Pacific, midnight standard time, etc. I don't think the schedule and game list have been made public yet, but I'll update this post when they do (unless I'm stupid and I just missed it, in that case please let me know!). Pretty sure Spelunky and Super Meat Boy are going to be showcased for very obvious reasons, though. Ergo, that banner above which will take you straight to TSG's new website!

Money raised during this event will go straight to Direct Relief, a name that should ring a bell among TSG fans - it's the charity that was unfortunate enough to be associated with the Star Wars marathon back in 2011. We can do better than 11k this time, right? Sure, this will only last 75 hours (unless it was a typo on TSG's front page and it's really 72 as usual), but we have all the reasons in the world to be optimistic. Our old friend Local seems to be, at least:

This event is going to be seriously crazy. I know you guys probably thinking we're just hyping, but we're not. This is the biggest and most ambitious event we've ever done and it has the potential to reach hundreds of thousands of new people.

I'm reading this over and over, and I can't help but feel my body trembling because it cannot contain the ready. Hundreds of thousands of new people... if they don't destroy the blessing of our relatively troll/idiot-free community, I can't possibly object, can I?

Edit: Schedule is up! Click the "Schedule" button to the right of the chat to see it.

Samus' new boots are horrible!

I mean, only a person who trained in acrobatics normally impossible for your typical human being from a very young age would be able to do anything with THESE heels!

Oh wait...

The old eight-chapter structure

I was wondering, why do so many games that adopt a chapter structure have exactly eight chapters (barring prologues and epilogues)? It's rarely ever 6, 7, 9, 10 or any other number, most of the time it's eight. I'm not complaining, I just find it bizarre how something like this has become sort of conventional in games. Any ideas why?

Skyrim belongs to the glitch gremlin!

I was taking a look at whether the unofficial Skyrim patches had been updated since the last time I'd updated them in late February (yeah, I have to update them manually since they're not on the Steam Workshop), when I came across this sentence in the description that I'd somehow missed or just skimmed over previously:

The goal of the Unofficial Skyrim Patch (aka USKP) is to eventually fix every bug with Skyrim not officially resolved by the developers to the limits of the Creation Kit and community-developed tools, in one easy-to-install package.

Note the words "every bug". Yeesh, talk about ambitious - we all know of Skyrim's reputation as a giant mass of glitches. But you know what? They're actually making a pretty good job of it. Look at the list of fixes they've done over the years! And the one for Dawnguard! And the one for Hearthfire! And the one for Dragonborn!

What really blows my mind is that these fixes are made by a dozen people or so, and are still doing a very thorough job of it too. They're not being paid money for it like Bethesda's staff is, they're going to all that trouble just for the rest of us to enjoy the game better. Heck, one could say they're doing a much better job than Bethesda ever did, considering the blatant stuff that never got fixed in the official patches.

Interestingly, one of these blatant bugs only got fixed very recently in the unofficial patch, which is the fact that the Black Star could previously capture any type of soul, whereas it was meant to only be able to capture the souls of NPCs. This is one of those bugs that makes you wonder "how could such an obvious issue make it to release, much less never get patched?". And yet it seems to have been a very complicated thing, because not only did the unofficial patch attempt to do something about it only recently, but their first attempt ended in failure, and as a result the Black Star couldn't capture any souls whatsoever. Luckily this was then fixed properly with a response time that can only be called amazing, coming from a dozen community members.

Of course, they can't catch and fix everything, not even gamebreaking glitches that would make a questline impossible to finish if you're playing a console version, but hey, these unofficial patches are more than good enough to make doing so... foolish, to say the least.

Edit: Speaking of terrible glitches, look what I just ran into. A staircase floating in the air, well above where it should've been. Unfortunately, this means I was stuck in a tiny area, so it was console time to get me out of there.

Wanna be trendy? Start liking Ash Ketchum!

I don't know if it's just really bad luck or something, but lately I've been seeing many apologists of the bane of every Pokémon fan with an ounce of self-respect, Ash Ketchum. Apparently we're supposed to like him because he's not some unstoppable force, but rather a relatable figure capable of showing emotion and weakness while still remaining determined and having goals to pursue. And you know what? If that description held true, there WOULD be nothing wrong about Ash.

Except for the part where it's NOT true.

Sure, early on in the show's run you could buy that, but as the seasons go on (and on and on and on and on), he makes no progress whatsoever, making him slowly de-evolve into an incompetent doofus who still has no clue what it takes to improve, or worse, DOES know what it takes but refuses to do it because of some invariably inane bullshit. And his infamously middling *coughcough* track record at evolving Pokémon isn't all there is to it, even when any normal person would've said "fuck it" and shoved a Thunder Stone up Pikachu's ass if necessary. His marketing-required team reboot at the start of every generation didn't help, either - in fact, it may be the worst offender, as the one time Ash legitimately looked like a force was when he had almost every Pokémon he's ever had on hand (including a lot of fully-evolved Pokémon to boot). Of course the outcome was history, he was eventually stopped by a bunch of legendaries shamefully low-grade writing, even by the show's scrubbish standards.

But I'm just rambling on. Point is, he's had 17 years to show some improvement, and at the end of the day he always stays near square one. Weakness stops being weakness and turns into something much worse when you never learn from what you did wrong. As for being relatable... well, I can't argue against that. If you identify with him, then what does that make you?

Still, why are all the pro-Ash zombies coming out of their caves now? Is it because Smogon's ladder is so flooded with casuals that they can actually perform decently well using nutty garbage like Eviolite Slowbro, Hyper Beam Sylveon and Ash-based teams by beating the enormous amount of similarly rubbish players, leading them to believe the old doctrine of fighting with your favorites, treating your Pokémon with love and care and all that sappy rhetoric is the key to victory? Is it because some people were outraged by that one picture that had shots of Legend of Thunder, Pokémon Origins and the mega evolution special, that said that all you needed to make a good Pokémon anime was removing Ash, and every brainless sheep who thought they were making good points followed suit?

Either way, that won't change anything for me. Ash Ketchum sucked back then, he sucks now, and he'll suck forever.

Why is Gamespot still a thing?

Not long ago, I criticized an embarassingly wrong editorial about FF10 that was published on that site. Clearly that wasn't enough, because then THIS happened. Because checking sources is overrated. Quality journalism is for pussies! At least wait UNTIL Telltale has gotten back to you to write something about it, because now you just look like the biggest morons ever. Just looking at the GIF, you can already figure out that the odds of it being a genuine glitch and not a mod made by a prankster are pretty freaking low.

The biggest scandal in Canada's history

At least that's the way it sounds like, given what I've been hearing on TV over the last week. Only one Canadian team qualified for the NHL playoffs. Give me a break with the postmortems. I don't even want to imagine what it would've been like had Carey Price not been there to make it at least one Canadian team. At least the playoffs begin tomorrow, so maybe they'll move on to something else then.

Another middle finger from an event Pokémon

CoroCoro has revealed the details on the Diancie that's going to be distributed with the movie. No special moves it can't learn otherwise, as expected, however it's the item it holds that's... insulting, to say the least. It's a Normal Gem. It makes sense that it'd be a gem, considering that's Diancie's entire gimmick and all, but... a NORMAL Gem? The only one that's already available? Why not, say, the Flying one, which several Pokémon would have a use for? We already know Diancie's going to be totally worthless, so at least they could've sweetened the deal a little bit, but no, of course we can't have that.

1760 stats' impact on tiering + Lucario in UU

I've already gone over the Pokémon that changed tiers solely because of the new weighting system, but I just wanted to push it a step further and compare some Pokémon that don't change tiers, but whose ranking varies wildly.

For reference purposes, here are the stats with the old weighting method and the new one.

So many big changes. Bisharp goes from #21 to #5, Landorus-T from #20 to #7, Keldeo from #39 to #10, Chansey from #40 to #23 (in fact it's even more popular than Blissey at higher levels of play), Landorus-I from #58 to #25... There are also several Pokémon who took a nasty tumble, especially Greninja (#5 to #21), Togekiss (#26 to #41) and Volcarona (#35 to #55).

On another subject, last month I wondered whether Mega Lucario's ban would mean the disappearance of its base form from OU, and the numbers I had back then gave us the right idea: vanilla Lucario just doesn't cut it anymore, at #82. Was Gamefreak targeting it for a mega evolution amazing foresight or sheer dumb luck? Either way, I think we can agree Adaptability was freaking overkill. Heck, there's no need for a super godly ability for previously bad Pokémon to rise to fame - Mega Manectric is currently making Jolteon quite obsolete armed with just the standard issue Intimidate, to such an extent that it should enter OU very soon. Of course it makes an amazing VoltTurn core with Landorus-T, who also has Intimidate, but my point is, even the megas that don't have terrifyingly good abilities are making a name for themselves.

Try to crack Nintendo's thought process!

So, the 3DS version of SSB4 will come out a LOT earlier than the Wii U one. Considering how desperately they need to sell the Wii U, and do so NOW, why in the world would they do that? The only reason I can think of is to try and get people even slightly interested in the 3DS version, based on the notion that we all want this game very, VERY badly - and THEN get us to buy the game all over again on Wii U this winter. But... that's a gamble if I've ever seen one. I wouldn't be surprised if many people who really want their SSB fix go for the 3DS version, then pass over the Wii U one (which, in some cases may mean the Wii U altogether).

Right, so... nope. Can't think of any logical reason. Nintendo marketing department, you dumb schmucks. Monkeys on typewriters would do your job better quicker than they would write a single word in Shakespeare's works, let alone all of them.

Smogon's worst decision since the Sand Veil ban

Unfortunately, that's not a very strong statement since that only happened a year and a half ago, but still, here's another one we can add to the category of really bad calls.

The combination of Swagger, Foul Play and Prankster, better known as Swagplay, had been under scrutiny for a while, and after discussion on the subject degenerated very, very badly, the decision was taken to give it a proper suspect test. Unfortunately, the voting ended up being on Swagger alone, instead of being in combination with Foul Play or Prankster. And words can't express the shock I had when I found out about it. I mean, sure, Swagger is a really bad move overall, except when used in combination with Foul Play, which gets its damage doubled by Swagger. So the competitive impact of a Swagger ban beyond Swagplay being forbidden would be practically non-existent, which is a step up from Sand Veil which could've had legitimate uses on other Pokémon besides Garchomp.

Still, it's the principle of the thing. Swagger alone isn't at all problematic, since as I just said it's a terrible move, and neither is Foul Play alone, which is a tremendous help to Pranksters and other support Pokémon like Mandibuzz. It's the combination of both that's debatably problematic, and as such I strongly believe a Swagger + Foul Play combo ban was the way to go. Yes, I'm not a huge fan of combo bans as a whole, but with an increasingly complex and synergy-based game, where rating moves and abilities on their own becomes borderline unfair, it's a necessary evil we have to put up with.

Obviously, this doesn't suddenly mean I believe the likes of Blaze Blaziken should be allowed in OU by just combo-banning Speed Boost and Blaziken. Nerfing various Pokémon just so they could be allowed in any tier would mean it would happen for just about everything in every tier, and of course we can't have that. On the other hand, doing it for combinations of moves, items and abilities is fine, since there's no real danger of a slippery slope effect there, as proven by the years following the Swift Swim embargo. For example, I'll point you towards the Endless Battle Clause that was put into effect a few months ago. It bans the combination of a Leppa Berry with either Harvest or Recycle, and even though Leppa Berry is completely useless beyond that, they still went ahead and did a combo ban anyway, because all the components of the ban are completely harmless on their own. So why didn't they do the same here?

Also surprising was the enormous blowout in favor of the ban of Swagger alone - 66 to 11. Not only because I would've imagined more people didn't like the idea of NOT doing a combo ban, but also because Klefki, the primary Swagplay user, is one of those Pokémon that fell out of OU with the tiering changes that only see the top 2% have a significant impact in the usage stats, suggesting Swagplay was more of an issue at lower levels of play, while better players could get around it better.

In the end, while banning Swagger alone doesn't have any effect beyond just getting rid of Swagplay, which was the intended goal all along, I still have a major problem with that way of doing things. What if someone wants to use Swagger for, say, phazing? Sure, it's far from the best way of doing it to say the least, but it's a universal move, and I guess it could work decently in certain contexts (such as opponents with no physical attacks). So I despise the notion of taking that option away, even if it's hardly a stellar one.

So, are you happy now? I did say I'd complain if something like that happened, so here you go.

Edit: Because I may not have been clear enough, let me reiterate: I see fundamentally nothing wrong with doing something about Swagplay, though I'm not nearly skilled enough to know for sure whether it's the right thing to do. However, preventing use of Swagger for what it was originally meant to do, even if it's bad at doing so... let's just say I'm not a fan. That's why I was hoping it'd be a combo ban with Foul Play.

What's the point of filling our tax returns?

I mean, they already know all the info we give them anyway. My father makes the tax returns for everyone in my family, and he was off on mine by five dollars (I'll be sure to fire him for this unforgivable mistake). Something to do with tax credits for charitable donations AFAIK. The reason why I know this? Why, of course mail from the Canada Revenue Agency telling me we were five dollars off, of course!

So if they already know exactly how much we're supposed to give them or get from them, why in the world do we have to waste our time with this?

"Replace NintendoCapriSun, he sucks at games!"

Yeah, wonder which hole THESE crawled into?

Writing protip of the day (FF10 spoilers!)

Before writing about a game for a big website, drawing parallels to other media, make sure you play it to completion. This is what Tom McShea of Gamespot blatantly failed to do with this piece, where he draws parallels between FF10 and the "Noah" movie. Having never seen Noah, I won't say a word about it, but it's very clear, reading this, that he hasn't gotten far enough into FF10 to know the truth about the overarching plot. Heck, even his wording, "a game I'm now playing for the first time", is a dead giveaway.
 
Indeed, the religious parallel between Spira and real life does exist, however it's not as the author of the article depicts it - rather, it's the story of a religious organization that holds vast amounts of power, and lies time and time again to its followers about technology, about the Al Bhed, about the eventual demise of Sin, about everything. The people are kept in total ignorance, and are blissfully unaware of that fact. The second half of the game utterly destroys the entire point the author was trying to make - FF10 (along with many other Japanese games, such as Tales of Symphonia) depicts religion in such a negative light that any game that would dare do the same, but identify a real-life religion, would get burned at the stake.

So why did he write this, again?

Does any of this sound familiar to you?

Today is April Fools' Day, and many websites are celebrating it, including Bulbagarden, who put up a few fake news articles, including this one. The reason why I'm pointing this out is because of this paragraph:

"What's been revealed sounds so stereotypically Canadian, I can't believe that this is real." reports Jeff Flocon, a Quebec competitive strategist and commentator. "The villains sound like a spoof on provincial politics, and the Pokémon choices sound like stereotypical Canadian wildlife of moose and beavers. Are you serious, Game Freak?!" Mr. Flocon did note that the new battle arena did "sound appealing".

Well well, what do we have here. Jeff Flocon from Quebec, competitive strategist and commentator. Yeah, you all know where I'm going with this, don't you? I'm from Quebec, not gonna argue against that. "Jeff", while not my actual first name, is a diminutive form used by many people who have it, and is more importantly the in-game name I used in all my Pokémon LPs. "Flocon" is French for snowflake. "Competitive strategist and commentator"? I could argue over semantics, but they had to put something there, especially since I'm not doing LPs anymore, so close enough, I suppose. And they did get the signature exaggerated anger down pat, too.

Yep, they just did that. Either my awesome Pokémon street cred is more far-reaching than I thought, or this is the eerie coincidence to end all eerie coincidences. Never expected Bulbagarden of all places to do this, especially after the YeOldeJacob saga a few years ago.

Now, the million dollar question is, had those reveals been for real, would I have reacted like this? It all depends on how far they'd go with stereotypes - after all, Unova and Kalos had some, and I didn't complain. This, on the other hand, would be pushing things to the next level, especially with political commentary thrown in. And to be honest, while I believe separating Quebec from Canada is a really bad idea, dumbing it down to a simple matter of good and evil is something I'm not willing to do (though many people on both sides are, trust me on that).

With that said, Gamefreak will never push the envelope this far, which is the whole joke to begin with. And thank the stars for that.