Review: Pokémon Pinball Ruby and Sapphire (Gameboy Advance)

By Merman (@merman1974)

Console: Game Boy Advance (also playable on GameCube’s Game Boy Player, Wii U Virtual Console)

Developer: Jupiter

Publisher: Nintendo

Release dates:

Game Boy Advance in Japan – 1^st August 2003, North America – 25^th August 2003, PAL – Australia 26^th September 2003 and Europe 14^th November 2003

Wii U Virtual Console in Japan – 10^th December 2014, North America – 1^st January 2015, PAL – Australia 12^th December 2014 and Europe 11^th December 2014

– Part of the colourful intro animation.

 

 

 

– US box art.

 

 

 

 

– Japanese box art.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Game Boy Advance hardware gave it more power, equivalent to the Super NES in a handheld console. It also gave Game Freak the chance to revisit its earlier generation of Pokémon games as well as the new Ruby and Sapphire games for Generation III – featuring the Hoenn region Pokédex. This would be echoed by this follow-up to Pokémon Pinball developed by Jupiter featuring the Johto and Hoenn region creatures. Its later Wii U Virtual Console release would make it the first Pokémon game released on that format. The Game Boy Player’s Rumble feature (through the GameCube controller) was supported by the Game Boy Advance Cartridge. Five special eReader cards were made available in Japan, allowing players to scan the card and trigger tricky in-game events; players had to attend the official Pokémon Centers or live Pokémon events to obtain these special cards.

– The title screen.

 

 

 

– Configuring the controls.

 

 

 

– Choosing the Ruby or Sapphire tables before starting play.

 

 

 

The major change from the original is the smoothly scrolling table. Where the original flicked between two halves, the new game had a much bigger vertical playfield. There was a choice of two tables, one for Ruby and one for Sapphire with each having unique features. The modes of play carried over from the original – Catch ‘Em, Evo Mode and Map Move. The Bonus sections were an even bigger part of the new Pinball title too.

– The full Ruby field.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

– The complete Sapphire table.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Although the Hoenn Pokédex is featured in this game, there are only actually 205 of the 210 available. Deoxys cannot be found and captured at all, while Chikorita, Cyndaquil, Totodile, and Aerodactyl are unable to be evolved. If you encounter a Pokémon but fail to capture it, its entry in the Pokédex will appear as a shadow. The battery backup remembers which Pokémon you have caught. From the Pokédex you can transfer a captured Pokémon to another player’s console and their copy of the game via the Link Cable. You can also transfer the high scores you have achieved, with a separate list for each of the tables.

– Mightyena in the Pokédex.

 

 

 

– Ready to transfer a Pokémon via the link cable.

 

 

 

The player launches the Pokéball from the plunger (the spring-like Spoink) by holding a button to set the power, and then uses two buttons for the flippers. This time it is possible to tilt and nudge the table left, right, and up – helpful to guide the ball into a target or knock it loose from an awkward point. On both tables there are sets of ramps to send the ball around a Pokémon Mart to purchase extras with Coins earned from the table. (Plusle and Minun create an electrical barrier protecting the Sapphire table’s Mart – both must be hit with the ball to make the barrier drop). Pikachu returns in the drain channel, moving left and right with the flipper. Hitting the spinner charges up his Thunder Strike, acting as a kickback to keep the ball in play – but it must then be recharged. The Ball Saver physically picks up the ball and flies it back to the Spoink plunger to launch again; on the Ruby table, it is the Legendary Pokémon Latios, while the Sapphire table’s Saver is Latias.

– The Pokéball sits on Spoink, ready to launch.

 

 

 

– Latios swoops down to save the ball on the Ruby table.

 

 

 

– The ball has launched on the right-hand side of the Sapphire table.

 

 

 

– Latias zooms in to save a ball on the Sapphire table.

 

 

 

New to this game is Egg Mode. On the Ruby Field the player must knock Cyndaquil backward into its cave a few times to hatch the egg. On the Sapphire Field, the ball must travel up the right-hand ramp to light the lights surrounding the egg. The next time that ramp is successfully climbed, the egg is hatched. Once hatched, the Pokémon inside will descend to the lower half of the table and can be captured by hitting it twice with the ball. This counts towards the capture limit for opening the Bonus Rounds.

– The Egg hatches to reveal Trapinch…

 

 

 

– …and Trapinch is caught.

 

 

 

– Light the four clamps to hatch the egg on the Sapphire table.

 

 

 

– Ralts is hatching from the egg (Sapphire table).

 

 

 

– Ralts being caught by the Pokéball.

 

 

 

– Ralts has been caught.

 

 

 

Catch ‘Em Mode works in a similar way to the original Pokémon Pinball. The player must first light two or three GET lights on the right outer loop. Then on the Ruby table the ball must be hit into Sharpedo’s mouth while the whale-like Whailmer activates the mode on the Sapphire table. Once started, the player must hit the pop bumpers (Chinchou or Lotad on Ruby, Shroomish on Sapphire) at least three times to fill in the silhouette. Once the Pokémon has been fully revealed, it can be captured by hitting it three times with the Pokéball. Lighting up three Pokéballs in the center of the screen opens the Bonus Round (see below). Catching 15 Pokémon earns an extra ball.

– Catch ‘Em Mode is activated on the Ruby table.

 

 

 

– The Pokémon appears as a shadow until you hit the bumpers.

 

 

 

– I have one more hit to catch Poochyena.

 

 

 

– Poochyena has been caught.

 

 

 

 – Catch ‘Em Mode on the Sapphire table.

 

 

 

– Achieving multiple hits on the Shroomish bumpers rapidly reveals the Pokémon in Capture Mode.

 

 

 

– Taillow has been revealed.

 

 

 

– The Pokéball captures Taillow.

 

 

 

– Taillow has been caught, ready to evolve.

 

 

 

– A chance to capture Voltorb.

 

 

 

– I have two hits on Voltorb.

 

 

 

– Voltorb has been caught.

 

 

 

Evo Mode allows you to evolve a previously captured Pokémon. On both tables, the entrance to the Pokémon Mart gains the lit Evo arrow once you have completed three trips around the outer left loop. Starting Evo Mode gives a choice of Pokémon to evolve. The player must then collect three items – including EX (Experience) and Evolution Stones – and sink the ball in the central hole to evolve the chosen Pokémon.

– Entering Evo Mode on the Ruby table.

 

 

 

– Selecting which Pokémon to evolve.

 

 

 

– Enter the Slot to complete the Evolution.

 

 

 

– The Pokémon is evolving!

 

 

 

– Time to evolve a Pokémon on Sapphire.

 

 

 

– Choosing Taillow to evolve.

 

 

 

– The EX token is sitting near Wailmer.

 

 

 

– The Evolution is complete!

 

 

 

– Taillow has evolved into Swellow and is added to the Pokédex.

 

 

 

Travel Mode – the renamed Map Move – acts in a similar way to the original Pokémon Pinball. The starting area is chosen at random when the player launches the ball.  Collecting three Gulpins on the Ruby table starts Travel Mode, while collecting three Seedots is necessary on the Sapphire table. Once activated, the player must send the ball round an outer loop and into the central hole within one minute. The next area chosen is selected depending on whether the loop hit goes left or right. The player can decline to change area if they wish to stay and catch more creatures. Each area has a particular set of Pokémon based on their type. The player will ultimately travel through seven of the nine areas available, with the Ruins only available on both tables after the sixth journey. A neat touch is that Volbeat (Ruby) or Illumise (Sapphire) will fly in to “paint” and reveal the new area reached.

– Entering Travel Mode on Sapphire.

 

 

 

– Illimuse painting the new location.

 

 

 

– Volbeat has filled in the new area on Ruby.

 

 

 

There are five Bonus Rounds, with Kecleon and Groudon on the Ruby table and Dusclops and Kyogre appearing on Sapphire. Completing Groudon or Kyogre rounds will then give access to the Rayquaza Bonus Round on both. Kecleon will turn invisible and must be knocked over to register a hit; fortunately, the tree contains a Devon Scope that can be shaken loose and collected to “see” the invisible creature. Once knocked over Kecleon must take ten hits inside two minutes to capture him. Groudon shakes down rocks, creates pillars of fire, and throws fireballs at the Pokéball. Rocks take three hits to break and the pillars take four, trying to stop you from hitting Groudon itself 30 times inside 3 minutes. Sapphire’s Dusclops round starts in the graveyard, where you must knock down 20 Duskulls. Then Dusclops itself will appear, and it must be hit in the back or while moving five times to conquer it; mistime a hit and it will swallow the ball and throw it back at the flippers. Kyogre uses Sheer Cold to freeze the ball and creates whirlpools to stop the ball from moving. Its final move is to dive under the water, with bubbles giving a clue to where it will rise again. Hit it 15 times in three minutes to win.

– The Bonus Round is open on the Sapphire table.

 

 

 

– Tackling Dusclops in the Bonus Round.

 

 

 

– You can choose not to enter the Bonus Round – but miss out on big points.

 

 

 

– Kecleon is briefly visible thanks to the Devon Scope.

 

 

 

– Ten hits later and Kecleon surrenders.

 

 

 

– Big bonus points for beating the Kecleon Bonus Round.

 

 

 

Rayquaza must be beaten twice to capture it, meaning the player must play through and complete the first two bonus rounds a second time to get back to it. When it bounces left and right, the ball will pass under it. It will pause to cast Thunder at a slow-moving ball and paralyze it, while the ExtremeSpeed move causes two tornadoes to appear – these will send the ball flying helplessly into the air for a few seconds. Fifteen hits on Rayquaza are needed inside three minutes, but it does award a juicy 99,999,999 points for winning.

Lighting up the HOLE lights at the bottom of the table activates the slot machine, entered by putting the ball into the center hole. This can be stopped by pressing the A button – or grabbed by Zigzagoon on the Sapphire table to award the current prize. Small and Big points bonuses and Coins can be awarded, Get starts Catch ‘Em Mode and Evo starts Evo Mode automatically. Ball Saver starts saving the ball for 30, 60 or 90 seconds depending on the value and the player can also be advanced automatically to the next Bonus Round.  Extra gives an extra ball while Max upgrades the current ball to a Master Ball (see below). The Pika bonus in this game sees Pichu joining Pikachu in the drain channels, charged in the same way to act as a kickback.

– The Slot is open, ready to offer you a bonus.

 

 

 

– The Slot reels are spinning.

 

 

 

– Zigzagoon is jumping to stop the reels – on the Small Bonus, unfortunately.

 

 

 

– Hitting the Spinner charges Pikachu’s energy levels.

 

 

 

– Pikachu stops the ball from draining with his Thunderstrike.

 

 

 

On both tables there are the three upgrade channels that can be lit, but as in the first game running over a light already lit turns it off again. The flippers rotate the upgrade lights and the HOLE lights too. The upgraded ball offers a larger bonus multiplier for a short time – x2 for the Great Ball, x3 for the Ultra Ball and x4 for the Master Ball – but the ball will drop back down a level after a while and revert to the basic Pokéball if the player drains it. There is a separate table multiplier that can be increased through the slot machine. Once the ball has drained (dropped off the bottom of the table) then stats for that ball are shown, including the number of Pokémon caught and evolved and the number of spinner turns. These subtotals are multiplied by the bonus multiplier in play at the time. Starting with three balls, when the player runs out it is Game Over – and if they have earned enough points, they can enter up to four initials in the high score list for that table.

– Upgrading the Pokéball gives higher bonus multipliers.

 

 

 

The game was first revealed at the E3 Expo in 2003, with GameSpy describing it as “much more than a pinball game”. When the reviews arrived, they were as positive as those for the original Pokémon Pinball – currently giving it a Metacritic rating of 82/100. Martin Taylor of Eurogamer surmised that “only the most demanding of pinball wizards would be right to turn their nose up at Pokémon Pinball [Ruby & Sapphire]’s a charming slant on the genre.” It earned an IGN Editor’s Choice award with an 8.8 score, Craig Harris calling it “the greatest pinball game for the Game Boy Advance.” Famitsu in Japan scored it an impressive 34 out of 40.

– Entering a name on the Sapphire high score table.

 

 

 

In an interesting bit of trivia, the American company Personal Pinball Inc. created a one-of-a-kind real-life pinball table based on the game. It was made for Pokémon USA and was housed in the New York Pokémon Center. Selling more than a million copies on the cartridge, the game would have a second life on Wii U’s Virtual Console. The Cutting Room Floor website (https://tcrf.net/Pok%C3%A9mon_Pinball:_Ruby_%26_Sapphire) has some interesting finds. There is a GameShark code to activate Debug Mode (allowing you to press L to freeze and then move the ball around, with R resuming play) and an unused Bonus Round Select screen. The eReader screen found in the Japanese version is still present (and its text translated) in other regions, but it was disabled for the later Virtual Console release.

– European Game Boy Advance titles usually offered in up to five languages, with a selection screen.

 

 

 

This is still a game I pick up and play, as both a pinball and Pokémon fan. The improved physics and scrolling table make it better than the original. There are more motion and animation than the original, with the hatching Pokémon from Egg Mode being particularly adorable. Control feels smoother and it is much easier to achieve the loop shots. I can certainly concur that it is one of the best pinball games on Game Boy Advance and should definitely be in your collection.

OVERALL: 9/10

– Thanks for reading! Want to continue your retrospective look at the Pokémon franchise? Well, take a look at the hub article where I and several other content creators made more retrospective content about the Pokémon franchise.

 

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A Pokémon Retrospective – Creator’s Catch Hub

It has been 25 years since the Pokémon series started its life on the Gameboy in Japan. When the series came to the west together with an anime, a huge phenomenon happened. The west got hooked to Pokémon so hard that it even got a name. Pokémania, which even got a French Wikipedia page about it. So, if you have read my blog in the past you might have seen that I sometimes do a huge collaboration with various other content creators and/or fans of the series to look to the history of the series together. Today, I want to present to you a group of people who looked back with me to various Pokémon games, and this time, we also looked at some of the spin-off games. Just like the Zelda and Tomb Raider collab I did, this collaboration will take you through various other websites with amazing articles by amazing writers. So, pack your bag and grab your Pokéballs and go on a journey with me through the various Pokémon regions and let’s take a look back together at the Pokémon series, and let’s celebrate the 25^th anniversary together.

How does this collaboration work? Well, this is the hub article that leads you to all the games we have covered in this collaboration project. If you click on the name, you will find a page on Bulbapedia with information on the game. If you click on the underlined text, you will be taken to an article written by somebody who was a part of this collaboration. All of these articles will link back to this hub article where you can go to other games as well.

1996 – Pokémon Green/Red – Pokémon Red/Blue & Yellow (Gameboy) + 2004 – Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen (Gameboy Advance) + 2018 – Pokemon Let’s Go Pikachu and Eevee (Nintendo Switch)

The Gaming Omnivore takes us on a journey where it all began.

Like I told you in the introduction, 25 years ago we were able to set foot into the Kanto region for the first time. For many people, this game was their first introduction to the series, and what an introduction it was. A lot of those people have very strong nostalgic feelings about the first generation that there is even a name for it. It’s all “Gen One’s”.

But does the first generation still hold up today or should it be left as a relic of the past? This game is the most remade game in the Pokémon series with two remakes under its belt. Is that justified or should Nintendo focus on other games in the series to remake? Let’s take a look at the memories that our friend the Gaming Omnivore shares with us on his blog.

1999 – Pokémon Gold / Silver / Crystal (Gameboy Color) + 2009 – Pokémon HeartGold & SoulSilver (Nintendo DS)

Krista takes us on a double journey. Literally, through two games and two regions.

What a surprise it was when the second generation came out. Let’s just say that the number of improvements that the second generation brings blew a lot of minds.

To name just a few: genders, berries, day and night cycle, rematching trainers, events on certain days… And let’s not forget to mention the fact that we got another journey through Kanto in these games.

Before I hand it over to Krista to talk about her memories with the 2^nd generation of Pokémon, I want to talk about a personal story. I remember one time I was on holidays in France where somebody shows me how that the cloning glitch worked. How I was able to clone Pokémon and items. Sadly enough, that glitch did a number on my save battery and my save file. It corrupted on the way home. Thankfully, I got the saved battery replaced and all is fine now. Apart from the battery running dry recently when I was playing through my Gameboy Color collection. Oh well, the memories are huge for this generation and I’m curious what other people are going to share about this generation.

2002 – Pokémon Ruby / Sapphire & Emerald (Gameboy Advance) + 2014 – Pokémon Omega Ruby & Alpha Sapphire (Nintendo 3DS)

L-One-X takes us on a journey of secret bases, oceans, and volcanic lands.

The 3^rd generation of the Pokémon series was something special. It was one of the biggest visual upgrades we have ever seen so far. The biggest difference between the first and second generation was mostly color in terms of the visuals.

The third generation also got a more involved story and if you research the message and the inspiration of the story, you will be quite surprised at the message of this game. I learned about it from Tama Hero.

This generation is one of my personal favorite generations. I still remember how people were drawing maps and sharing them during recess since bringing your own Gameboy to school wasn’t allowed. Man, those were the days. Just talking about Pokémon with kids you barely knew. But hey, those are just a few of my personal memories with the 3^rd generation. Shall we take a look at what our friend L-One-X remembers?

2006 – Pokémon Diamond, Pearl & Platinum (Nintendo DS)

McKenna takes us on a journey through Sinnoh. Where there are places where space and time can get wrapped.

Man, I still remember how I got introduced to the Nintendo DS and the 4^th generation. I heard about the Nintendo DS through the Legend of Zelda – Phantom Hourglass but through “The Gameboy Club”, I was able to play on a friend’s DS and I learned about how good the game was.

A unique mechanic of the 3^rd generation was returning in this game in a more evolved form. We got secret underground bases that allowed a sort of multiplayer capture the flag mode.

In any case, shall we take a look at what McKenna is going to share with us? Let’s dive right into the interesting story that McKenna has written about the 4^th generation. The first generation that brought online functionality to the series.

2010 – Pokémon Black & White + 2012 – Pokémon Black 2 and White 2 (Nintendo DS)

Khinjarsi takes us through the lands of Unova.

It’s a shame to admit, but I skipped the 5^th generation at first. I can’t really say why exactly I skipped this generation at first.

Now, I did play the games a few years ago when Pokémon Sun & Moon was in development. And I’m so glad I did. This generation brought so many enjoyable moments, I can totally understand why this game was quite well received.

Now, at this moment in time, this is the only main series Pokémon game that got a direct sequel that expanded on the story of the original game so much. Now, was this sequel well deserved or should Nintendo just made Pokémon Gray or something and called it a day?

Well, that’s an interesting question to ponder upon while we take a look at the article that Khinjarsi shares with us.

2013 – Pokémon X and Y (Nintendo 3DS)

TriformTrinity takes us on a journey through the first “3D”-region.

The first game on the Nintendo 3DS and the shortest names in the series. Pokémon X and Y.

I was so surprised to see that this game took heavy inspiration from the French region. That region hits quite close to home since I live in one of the neighboring countries Belgium.

When I was looking for writers for this collaboration, TriformTrinity picked up this game. He has never played these games and wants to share his opinions on these games without having nostalgic feelings towards the games. So, let’s find out what his opinions are, shall we?

2016 – Pokémon Sun & Moon + 2017 – Pokémon UltraSun and UltraMoon (Nintendo 3DS)

DanamesX takes us on the bittersweet final journey on the Gameboy / DS line of systems.

I still remember the bittersweet feeling when it was announced that this game would be the “final” main series Pokémon game on the GameBoy and (3)DS line. After these games, Nintendo would move on to console Pokémon. So it’s the final portable game.

Well sort of, kind of. Granted, the Nintendo Switch is portable so technically it wasn’t the final portable Pokémon game but on the other hand, I felt that it was the end of an era. But it was the end of an era in more ways than one. Since this game also flipped the who Pokémon formula up its head.

In this game, we took a “vacation” to a new region with a new adventure that takes us to several islands and gives us several challenges. It also did something quite unique with the day and night system. If you bought Pokémon Moon, the whole day and night cycle was flipped from your real-life location.

Now, I think it’s high time to take a look at the article that DanamesX wrote about the 7^th generation. Shall we join in on exploring this holiday? I have already packed my bags and I’m ready to go and just waiting on you to click that link above to read the article.

2019 – Pokémon Sword and Shield (Nintendo Switch)

NekoJonez takes you on a tour of the country, old chap.

Oh, is it my time to shine? So, just like with the Tomb Raider collaboration, I took the final main series game.

When this game released, I tried several times to write an article about this game but I never wrote something I felt that would tell my opinion on this game.

Now, I challenged myself to write a nice article for this collaboration and I’m quite curious what you are going to think about it while I am a bit bummed out that two of the neighboring countries of my home country got Pokémon regions based, France and England, upon them now while Belgium is sitting in the middle forgotten. Oh well, maybe one day. (In before our German neighbors get the 9^th generation.)

It’s spin-offs time

Sadly enough, we didn’t find enough writers and enough time to take a look at all the spin-offs. So, I’m very sorry if the spin-off you wanted to read about isn’t in this collaboration. We mainly focused on the main-series games and we wanted to give these spin-off games an article to give a nice bonus to this collaboration.

1999 – Pokémon Stadium (Nintendo 64) + 2001 – Pokémon Stadium 2 (Nintendo 64)

The Gaming Omnivore welcomes us in the stadium to watch the Pokémon battle.

It’s not a secret that when the first Pokémon games got released, we all wanted a 3D version of the Pokémon games. And in 1999, we got exactly what we wished for.

A 3D-battle simulation of the Pokémon games. Not every Pokémon was included but hey, just seeing these Pokémon in 3D was enough to blow our minds. So, shall we let our friend the Gaming Omnivore talk about this experience? I’m ready to cheer him on from the sidelines of the stadium.

2004 – Pokémon Colosseum (Nintendo GameCube) + 2005 – Pokémon XD Gale of Darkness (Nintendo GameCube)

DanamesX takes us on a very special journey that spans two Pokémon games on the Nintendo GameCube.

While I love playing the Pokémon games, I have to admit that Pokémon Colosseum and Pokémon Gale of Darkness XD flew under my radar.

Sadly enough, they currently cost an arm and a leg on eBay to buy and play for me so, I’m waiting to pick them up for a more reasonable price. But, I’m quite curious to see what people think about this game. Should I still try to hunt these games down or should I let it slide? I think that the article of DanamesX will help me greatly in deciding that.

2016 – Pokémon Go (Mobile devices)

Eric Fellner takes us on a walk through our neighborhoods.

To say that Pokémon GO was a hit is an understatement. Pokémon GO still is quite popular, I see various people on the train and students at the school I work for play Pokémon GO.

It wouldn’t surprise me that this game is less popular now than before but it hasn’t died just yet. Now, when Eric Fellner contacted me to talk about this game and told me his personal story about the game, I was hooked. So, without spoiling anything, I think it’s time to give the spotlight to Eric so he can talk about his story with this game.

1999 – Pokémon Pinball (Gameboy Color) + 2003 – Pokémon Pinball Ruby & Sapphire (Gameboy Advance)

Andrew Fisher plays the first pinball game.

Andrew Fisher also goes to the Hoenn region for the second pinball game.

So, Pokémon Pinball. I still remember getting the big box for Christmas and being surprised that the games now needed batteries to function.

Little did I know that battery was meant for the rumble feature inside the cartridge and not a replacement for the save battery.

Now, this battery didn’t take away the number of hours I spent playing pinball in this game. As a kid, I wasn’t able to get quite far but I kept on trying and trying.

And years later, I learned that this game got a sequel about the Hoenn region. I was only able to add that game quite recently to my collection so, I haven’t played it too much. Thankfully, Andrew Fisher is here to talk quite in-depth about the two Pinball games. Let’s see what he has to say about the games!

2001 – Pokémon Pinball Mini (Pokémon Mini)

Andrew Fisher takes us on a journey to the Pokémon Mini and playing Pinball on that.

So, in 2001, Nintendo released the Pokémon Mini. An extremely small handheld with cartridges where you could play various Pokémon mini-games on.

Surprisingly, this handheld also got a pinball game on it. So, should Andrew Fisher took a look at this pinball title and let’s see if it’s worthy to add to your collection or should you ignore it? Well, you will be able to find out thanks to Andrew’s amazing article.

2006 – 2020 The Mystery Dungeon series (Gameboy Advance, Nintendo (3)DS and Switch)

NekoJonez takes a look back at the Mystery Dungeon series.

So, one of the biggest spin-off series is Pokémon Mystery Dungeon. In 2006, we got Red & Blue Rescue Team which got remade in 2020 for the Nintendo Switch under the name of Rescue Team DX. In 2007, we got the Explorer of Time, Darkness, and Sky Mystery Dungeon games. 5 years later, we got our first 3DS game called Gates to Infinity in 2012.

In 2015, we got what we thought was the final game in the series Super Mystery Dungeon on the 3DS. But yeah, a remake on the Switch happened in the first game. But why are these games so popular to get so many sequels? Well, I’m going to tell you in a nostalgic look back on the Mystery Dungeon series.

2006 – Pokémon Ranger + 2008 – Pokémon Ranger: Shadows of Almia + 2010 – Pokémon Ranger: Guardian Signs (Nintendo DS)

WCRobinson is taking us on a journey through the land of the friendship circles.

I never imagined that drawing circles around Pokémon could be so much fun that Nintendo was able to make a trilogy of games about it.

I have to admit, that I got cramp in my hands and almost destroyed a touch screen while playing these games. I got into this game way more than I expected. If there was one series I wanted to have covered in this collaboration, it was the Pokémon Ranger series. Now, I was already taking the Mystery Dungeon series and the Sword and Shield games to cover so the Ranger games would be a bit too much. Thankfully, WCRobinson picked up these games and wanted to write a piece about them.

So, thank you WCRobinson for covering these games. Now, I’m curious to see if those loops of friendship influenced you in your opinion on the games or not. Let’s find out together and join WCRobinson on his journey as a Pokémon Ranger.

1998 – Pokémon Trading Card Game (Gameboy Color)

Solarayo takes a look at the card game… on Gameboy.

One of the biggest pieces of merchandise that this series gave us is the Pokémon Trading Card game. It’s still quite popular on YouTube and worldwide.

Now, it does surprise me that Nintendo and Game Freak only made two games about them. And on top of that, the sequel to this game was only released in Japan.

In any case, I think it’s high time to let Solarayo talk about the game and if you should just stick with the physical game or if you should consider playing the Gameboy Color game as well. Maybe I should pick it up for training since I barely know anything about the card game… Hrm, there is thought while I start reading her article.

1999 – Pokémon Snap (Nintendo 64)

Solarayo takes pictures of Pokémon and gets judged by Professor Oak.

So, while we were preparing for this collaboration we had no clue that a new Pokémon Snap game was going to come out in 2021.

It’s a nice surprise to see a spin-off getting a sequel on modern hardware. But, how is the original? Is it any fun or should we skip taking pictures of Pokémon in the Nintendo 64 game? Well, Solarayo is going to tell us all about it in her article on this game.

2015 – Pokémon Shuffle (Nintendo 3DS / Mobile devices)

TriformTrinity swipes the Pokémon away.

There was this one game called Pokémon Trozei on the Nintendo DS that is a sort of Bejeweled clone with Pokémon.

In 2015, Nintendo released a free-to-play version and not only released it on the 3DS but also on mobile platforms.

So, let’s swipe Pokémon to safety together with TriformTrinity while he tells us all about the game.

2015 – Pokémon Picross (Nintendo 3DS)

Khinjarsi puzzles away with the Picross game on 3DS.

Man, do I love solving Picross puzzles. They are so much fun to solve. I don’t have any drawing skills but seeing a drawing come together from just solving a puzzle is such a rewarding feeling!

So, I’m curious to see if Khinjarsi also feels rewarded by solving these puzzles, or was there something wrong with this game? Or did I just make up the last question to create some tension to try to get you to click the link to read the article? Who knows? Well, you would know if you read the article!

2000 – Pokémon Puzzle League (Nintendo 64)

And on the day of this collab releasing, the Gaming Omnivore streamed this competition.

Long-time readers of my blog know that I’m a game collector. One day, I was walking around on a garage sale and found a ton of amazing games.

When I was almost out of the budget I had set aside for that garage sale, I went to eat a burger with my mom who walked with me in that garage and yard sale.

Then, I suddenly saw in the corner of my eye a boxed and complete copy of Pokémon Puzzle Challenge for the Gameboy Color. The guy who was running the stand didn’t know the value of that game I was able to pick it up for 2€. I was so happy to add that game to my collection.

Now, why am I telling you this? Because I didn’t have a Nintendo 64 and I always wanted to try and play the Pokémon Puzzle games. And when I saw it for the Gameboy Color, I was so happy that I was able to grab a copy of it in that yardsale.

So, when preparing this collaboration, the Gaming Omnivore said in one of his streams that he wanted to stream the N64 version of the game on Pokémon day. So, let’s take a look at how this game plays? I loved watching the stream while I was counting down for this collab to release.

Closing words

This collaboration was a lot of fun to put together and do. I met so many wonderful writers through this collaboration and I’m so happy to be able to celebrate the 25^th anniversary of Pokémon with such an amazing group of writers. I want to thank everybody who helped in this collaboration and make it turn out amazingly.

I want to thank: Gaming Omnivore, Krista, L-One-X, McKenna, Khinjarsi, TriformTrinity, DanamesX, Eric Fellner, Solarayo, Andrew Fisher, and WCRobinson.

The impact that the Pokémon series has on today’s gaming culture and climate can’t be understated. This collaboration showed me that I’m not the only one who has so many amazing memories with the Pokémon series.

So, I’m quite curious to see what is going to be next for the franchise. Will we finally see Pokémon 2? Sorry, I just wanted to make that silly joke somewhere in this article. But for real, what will we see after New Pokémon Snap releases in late April? Will we see a special celebration game for this big anniversary? Sadly enough, we can’t be sure with the current pandemic throwing a lot of schedules in disarray.

Now, I might go and repeat myself here but the amount of memories this series created with the main series games and the spin-offs is something that can’t be understated. This series is one of the biggest series that my generation grew up on. And since the 25^th birthday was coming up, I wanted to gather other Pokémon fans to do something special together.

Did you enjoy this collaboration? What did you think of it? Did you find new bloggers and writers to keep an eye upon? Currently, I want to say in name of the whole group who worked together to create this collaboration: “THANK YOU SO MUCH! Thank you for reading and enjoying our content. We hope you enjoyed reading this and feel free to leave a comment on our articles so we can talk together and reminisce together about our memories on the Pokémon franchise.”

And with that said, I want to thank you for reading. I hope you enjoyed reading this hub article and I hope to see you in a future article but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care! And happy 25^th birthday Pokémon! Thank you for all of the amazing memories and here are for all the memories to come!

The Sunshine Blogger Award – Q and A

I think that I write a similar introduction to every community award I receive. The introduction talks about how the blogging community is one big family that supports each other and to support each other we have these community awards. You can compare them to YouTubers doing shoutouts or collaborations to promote each other and help each other grow. One of these awards is the Sunshine Blogger Award. All of these awards work in a very similar way while thanking the blogger who gave you the award, you have to answer his or her questions, write up the same amount of questions that the bloggers have to reply to that you select to receive the award.

Thank you!

The blogger who gave me the 3rd Sunshine Blogger Award is AK from Sonatano1. It really makes my day when another blogger gives me an award like this, I feel recognized and it really makes my day. Now, AK writes articles on various game related subjects. From old to new games. If you enjoy my content, I’m quite sure you will enjoy his content. One of my favorite articles is one of the Windows Entertainment Packs. It just tickles the collector and retro gamer in me.

Now, I think it’s time that we get to answering the questions that were asked by AK. Let’s dive right into some interesting things and facts about myself.

The Questions

1) What’s your favorite or most-used medium for entertainment?

My favorite form of entertainment is gaming, followed by YouTube and anime. I also love theater and stand up comedy quite a lot. Here and there, I go to the movies.

Now, if you follow my blog you might know that I play games on a ton of systems. From my phone to my gaming desktop. From my Nintendo 3DS to my Sony PSP. I even play games on rip-off consoles. So, my favorite medium for entertainment are devices that can play games. My most-used platform is Switch and my computer at the moment of writing. But, because I got some new 3DS games, I think that might change in the future.

2) What character in a work of fiction would you inhabit and why?  (Assuming you’re experiencing the entire storyline of the game/novel/film/whatever as this character.)

Oh dear lord, to answer this question I had to stop myself from cheating and counting one of the stories I wrote in the past. My biggest hobby, besides gaming and acting, is writing. Before I started writing this blog, I used to write a lot of fantasy stories on paper. I have a couple of binders full of story ideas and pitches for quite interesting stories.

Now, because I full control over those worlds, I think it would be too easy to pick one of those stories. On top of that, none of those stories are finished and aren’t even released to the public.

So, in which universe would I want to live? In that case, give me Indiana Jones in one of the Indiana Jones movies or games. The reason for that is quite simple. I’m in love with the Indiana Jones universe. My favorite game is Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine, which is released on Steam and GOG now. My favorite movie is the first movie, Raiders of the Lost Ark. While I know that the 4th movie wasn’t one of the best Indiana Jones movies and was filled with various plot holes and things of that nature; truth to be told, I still enjoyed the movie quite a lot. But,  I do agree that it’s one of the worst movies in the series. My love for the series is so big that I went dressed up as Indiana Jones three times to carnival as a child. I even own a replica of the hat Indiana wears in the movies and games. It felt so amazing when I was able to use it in a play last year. So, yeah. Indiana Jones would be my character, the adventures, and the mysteries… Do I even have to explain?

3) What work would you wipe all memories of from your brain if you could so that you could experience it all over again?

To be honest, I have a huge list of games and experiences that I would love to be able to re-experience without any memories. To name just a few: the Tomb Raider games, A Hat in Time, Time Hollow, all the Ace Attorney games, Fantasy Life, Stella Glow, Dream Chronicles and a ton more. I could be adding entries to this list all day.

Now, to be honest, I don’t think I’m open to the idea that my memories would be wiped from my brain from one or more experiences. Quite simply because all of these experiences shaped me into the person and gamer that I’m today. On top of that, this would always change since the older I get, the more works could go on this list.

So, I’m sorry, I don’t think I have one answer for this. Maybe I should play these two Gameboy Color games that I haven’t played yet from the Zelda series. One is called Oracle of Seasons and the other one is called Oracle of Ages. Maybe that might be a great answer to this question…

And for those who totally missed the punchline in the paragraph above, the Oracle games in the Zelda series are the games that introduced me to adventures you can take with you where ever you go. They taught me so many things in life and they were one of the reasons why I wanted to become a game collector. Since I got Oracle of Ages from a garage sale and after I finished the game and so the “To be continued” screen… I wanted to see the story continue so bad. But at the time, the Gameboy Advance SP was released, so it got quite tricky to find Gameboy Color games in garage sales. After a long time (2 years) I found myself a copy of the game and I played completely through it. Since then, I got quite hooked at collecting games.

4) What’s the most annoying trend occurring in your favorite medium today?

I know for a fact that my answer to this question is going to have some people disagreeing with me but still, I find it very annoying. The decline of physical media is somewhat worrying to me. I talked about this before multiple times on my blog but the reasons I find it annoying are multiple.

First of all, as a game collector, I love having a physical copy on my shelf to look at and have nostalgic memories flood back. I don’t have that with digital releases too easily. Now, let me be clear, I’m not against digital releases but I find it worrying that even big titles don’t get a physical release. Take Shadow of the Tomb Raider for example. That game didn’t get a physical release on PC but it did get one on consoles.

The second reason I’m not that fond of going fully digital is the possibility of digital shops getting deleted or shut down. For example, the Wii Shop channel. There is no legal way anymore to buy WiiWare in 2019, which is disappointing. So, if you were saving up as a retro game collector to buy some Virtual Console games on your Wii, cross your fingers it’s on the Wii U. I watched a YouTube series by Scott the Woz that talks about my feelings quite well.

And a 3rd reason is game shops. I find it mind-boggling that the biggest entertainment industry is reduced to a few shelves in retail stores. In one of my local tech and multimedia shops, I see the amount of shelf space that is reserved for gaming and gaming merch decreasing by the year. Now, there are a lot of online stores but I feel that it’s less and less present in our day to day lives. I also love to go to game stores and chat with the people about games, tech and various other things. Of course, you can do that on the internet, sure. But, I enjoyed the non-virtual contact more.

A 4th reason is that it’s a nightmare for game collectors. Apart from having nothing physical for our gaming shelves, the whole move to the digital market space is killing the second-hand market. I need to keep a careful eye on the packaging when buying a game on garage sales or during flea markets. Some game cases come with a game code you can only activate once. Even when it has a disc inside, the game can’t be installed without the code.

There are a few other reasons, but I won’t get into those in this article. I’ll leave those for when I talk more in-depth on this topic.

5) What’s the most promising trend occurring in your favorite medium today?

The acceptance of the gaming hobby by today’s community. When I was a teenager walking around with my Nintendo DS, I get strange looks by adults. “Aren’t you too old to still be playing video games?” is a question I got asked.

But, nowadays, when I talk to people and say that one of my favorite hobbies is playing video games, I usually get one of these answers:

“Oh cool, it doesn’t interest me, to be honest, but my [child, family member, friend, coworker…] also plays games.”

OR

“On which platform do you play?”

I’m also under the impression that there is a growing part of non-gamers who understand why gaming is so appealing and that a lot of cliché things like: “violent video games make youngster violent.” is less easily believed.

The gaming community is also growing each and every day. Which I find amazing. But, like my answer to the previous question, I think I’ll go more in-depth on this topic in a later article.

6) How much or how little romance do you like in your games/films/novels/etc.?

It’s quite tricky to give this a proper answer. On one hand, it depends on the story and such. It also depends on what you understand under romance.

But what I find very important is consistency and proper use. What I mean by proper use is that romance isn’t used just because “all other games in the genre do that.”. If romance fits in the story, then I don’t mind. If I’m still making sense.

7) If you had to be the ruler of one country in any work of fiction, which one would you pick?

I have rewritten my answer to this question several times simply because I always wanted to choose one of the stories I wrote myself as a kid. But that wouldn’t be too much fun since I have full control over that world.

For the sake of this article, I think it’s more fun if I choose a world that already exists and people know the rules of. So, after a lot of thinking.. and trying to avoid me getting distracted by the stories I wrote in the past, I decided to choose the Hoenn region from Pokémon Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald. Just because those games are my favorite Pokémon games and the nostalgic memories with those games are so big.

Also, who wouldn’t want to live in a real Pokémon world? There are so many possibilities in those worlds, it would be amazing.

8) Do you think virtual reality will improve anytime in the near future to the extent that it’s actually worth using?  Or are we already at that point?

One of the biggest problems with virtual reality is the price. I know that there are a lot of cheap VR possibilities with smartphones. But for that, you need a pretty powerful phone and that doesn’t come cheap either. Also, the more popular VR-glasses like the Rift and the HTC Vive just got three years old.

While there are a lot of practical uses for VR, I’m not interested enough to invest in the technology yet. To be honest, I haven’t tried VR for myself for several reasons. From not having the equipment and budget and just because there isn’t a game out yet that I would love to play that’s exclusive to VR.

Personally, I think that VR will be one of the possible platforms we will be able to play games in the future. In the future, we will have consoles, handhelds, PC and VR. I don’t think that will go away.

To call VR a gimmick or a fad like the Wii would be wrong in my opinion. There are many practical applications for VR. I think it just needs to grow and evolve. At the moment, you need to be quite tech-savvy to set it up, just take a look at the sensors and the specs you need to run VR at a decent frame rate.

Actually, answering this question gave me an idea for a future article. So, I’ll go more in-depth about my opinions and thoughts on VR in the future.

9) I’ve heard people say that a novel is a dying form of art and that changes in attention span length and the constant multitasking our generation is involved in will make them obsolete.  If you have an opinion on that matter, do you agree or disagree?

If the novel would be dying, please explain to me why companies like Audible and Scribd are so popular? Besides that, if novels would be a dying art form, why do people still write and read blogs? Now, this discussion is so popular that it has it’s own Wikipedia page about it. 

As a kid, I read a lot of books. I enjoyed reading quite a lot. Nowadays, I barely read one book in a year. I don’t feel the need to actually read books. But, I still read blogs and my favorite gaming genre is visual novels like Death Mark or Trace Memory. I still “read” novels but in a totally different experience. Besides that, my sister enjoys reading books quite a lot. Granted, she has to read a lot of novels and books for her studies.

My two cents on the subject go as follows. I honestly think that the novels just lost some popularity. Because other hobbies like video gaming and watching content online grew, other art forms are losing terrain.

Yet, I still see a lot of people of all ages during my commute to and from work who are reading books. There is still a market for novels. Otherwise, products like the Amazon Kindle wouldn’t be created. Also, if big companies like Google still provide a service to read books like Google Play Books, I honestly think that novels aren’t dying, they are evolving with time.

10) Are you optimistic about the future of the human race?

My answer to this question depends on the mood you catch me in. There are things I’m quite optimistic about like the improved awareness about climate change and the willingness to do something about it but there are things that worry me quite a lot. Something like article 13 that might ruin the internet as we know it.

I think it’s something where we just have to wait and see. There is always going to be something that makes me optimistic and something that worries me. As long as we don’t plunge the world into chaos, I think we will be just fine.

11) Cake or pie?  (There’s only one right answer.)

The fact I had to look up the difference between cake and pie explains quite a lot. Now, did you know that in my native language we have one word for cake and pie? In Dutch we use “taart” for both words.

To be honest, I like both. So, I don’t discriminate. 🙂 And if you want it, the pie cake is a lie, thanks Glad0s.

My questions and nominations

Now, for my eleven questions. Let’s go.

1. Do you think that nowadays there are too many reboots and sequels to old games instead of new IPs?
2. Can the big studio’s like Nintendo, EA, Ubisoft… make indie games?
3. If one of the games you played in the past gets an HD remake, do you get excited? Would you play the remake?
4. What do you do during a grinding session? Do you do something else while grinding for resources or characters or do you focus on the game?
5. How do you take notes for your articles? Do you write them down on a piece of paper while playing the game? Do you record your gameplay and write down timestamps?
6. What are your least favorite sections in gaming?
7. What is something unique/fun/interesting about your hometown and/or community?
8. What’s your advice to new bloggers or even, experienced bloggers looking for advice?
9. Can you answer this question with the wrong answer?
10. Do you sometimes look back at your old(er) articles and think, if I write another article about that today, it would be totally different?

So, here are the people I tag. And yes, these are all worth your time and you should seriously take a visit to their blog. For your convenience, I have linked to their latest article. I invite all these people to answer one or all the questions and share the love with the community.

LaterLevels

Sheikah Plate

Triform Trinity

ABXY Reviews

Pix1001 – Shoot the Rookie

Drakulus

Hundstrasse

OverThinkerY

A Geeky Girl

Adventure Rules

Killer Robotics

NormalHappenings

Winst0lf

TwoTall4uFool

Reaper Interactive

Falcon Reviews

GamersUnitedGG

I Played The Game

LividLighting

Well-Red Mage

TheDragonsTeaParty

Games With Coffee

The Shameful Narcissist

And that will do it. While there are a ton of other bloggers around, I don’t want the end of this article to end up as a long extensive list of amazing people. Now, I think I’ll end off this article here. Thank you for reading this article and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I’m looking forward to the possible replies to this post. I also hope to be able to welcome you in another article but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care!

Gamer’s Thoughts: Difficulty in games

Today I want to talk about something extremely objective subjective. Something not a lot of people agrees on. That subject is the difficulty in games. This isn’t unique to video gaming since other entertainment mediums can be difficult to understand, analyze or appreciate. But, the difficulty is one of the most important factors in gaming. In order to write this article, I have asked in various groups what their opinions about game difficulty are. Are games today too easy? Are difficult games fun to play? Are old school games too difficult? I got some extremely interesting replies. Now, if you have your own opinion on this subject, I would love to talk about it in the comment section down below. Of course, keep it civil down there, everybody has a different opinion.

My own views on game difficulty.

Keep in mind that the following thoughts and opinions are mine. It’s quite possible that you think in a different way due to your different experiences in gaming and/or life. Like I said in the introduction of this article, feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts and opinions on the content of this article and or the subject. With that out of the way, on with the show.

Now, with such a broad subject as game difficulty, it’s quite tricky to give a full opinion. In the introduction alone, I gave a few different angles I could take this article. In addition to that, this subject is extremely subjective. For example, I’m not rhythmic at all. When I talk about the DS, a lot of people talk about games like Elite Beat Agents, a rhythm game. I have to admit that I find this game too difficult.

First of all, let’s talk about a sentence you often hear us older players say: “Games today are too easy.” Are they really too easy? Well, they became easier in one way but more challenging too. For example, take the Pokémon games. When Game Freak remade the 3^rd generation on Nintendo 3DS, one of the biggest complaints was that the game was too easy. And yes, I finished the game without losing 3 battles during the whole playthrough and 2 of these loses were because I wasn’t paying attention during the battle and forgot to heal my Pokémon and the other loss was because I forgot that grass was weak to flying and I most had grass Pokémon in a flying gym. Whoops.

Now, why do I think that games can be too easy nowadays? That’s has two reasons. The first reason is that games just got more accessible. Because of the growth of the hobby, a lot more people play video games. So, there need to be ways for every style of player to play video games, even the youngest ones. Thankfully, you have difficulty options that can provide the other players with some additional challenges. Sadly enough, not all games do this. In most games, the difficulty settings have a small explanation of what each level means.

And this brings me to the second reason why games are too easy nowadays and that’s a skill. I have been playing games since I was a young lad. I started playing games give or take 21 years ago. During these years, I have played a TON of games and got a TON of different experiences. That means I have seen quite a lot and the chances of a puzzle stumping me or a fight being too difficult to get slimmer with every game I play.

Is this a bad thing? It depends on what you are looking for in a game. Do you want a game that challenges your strategizing skills or the ability to solve puzzles than the lower difficulty can be a problem? If you are looking for a game to play to pass the time, in that case, the drop in difficulty shouldn’t matter that much.

It’s always a difficult balancing act in how difficult you make your game. Since if a game is too difficult, people will stop playing. A great example for me is Resident Evil 4. There is a section in that game where during an already hectic fight, two chainsaw enemies spawn that kill you instantly when they come to close. There were three times that one of those enemies actually spawned right behind me, giving me no time nor room to turn around and defend myself. These moments I actually rage quitted the game. Another example is Atelier Rorona. The amount of depth in this game is just insane. You have to think about so many things like the freshness of ingredients, how long it takes to collect them and get them home, the amount of MP you have to fight and or craft… It was quite challenging to balance all of these things.

That brings me to the question, what makes a game difficult and how difficult should a game be? It speaks for itself that how more layers of gameplay and mechanics you add, the more difficult a game becomes. Take Europa Universalis 4 for example. In this grand strategy game, there are so many mechanics; it’s not even funny anymore. The complexity of a game can turn some people off. I would love to play Europe Universalis 4 with more people but most of my friends don’t understand how the game works or get too scared when they hear how many things they need to think about while playing the game.

In a way, the difficulty of a game can limit your audience. I would love to play a game like Cuphead, but from what I have seen and tried, the game is a bit too much for me. I don’t really like games that depend on memorization or trying over and over again. This makes the game boring and repetitive in my eyes. For me personally, I want to have a great time while I’m playing games. I want some parts to be challenging and test the skills I learned during the game and I want some sections to be easy to play through so I can relax and enjoy the game.

A game series that nailed difficulty, in my opinion, is the Super Mario World games. In these games, you learn by playing the game. You might have heard this explanation in various other videos or articles but if you haven’t heard it yet, allow me to explain. At the start of the level, you are able to experiment with a new level mechanic in a safe area. One where you can easily avoid the enemies and you don’t have death pits. And the further you go in the level, the more challenging the mechanic or level gimmick becomes. And during the later and last stages of the game, all the challenges are combined into one big final set of levels that test your skills and what you learned through the game. In a way, you can compare it to school. The early levels and sections are the classes while the later levels and finale of the game are the final test/exam.

Now, should games become “NES-hard” again? To be honest, I think we shouldn’t do that. In the current gaming climate, we get a lot of games inspired by the more challenging nature of older games and we also get easier games. That means we have options. Now, we’re all old school games difficult? Were games more challenging in the past? Well, that’s a tricky question to answer.

For example, I grew up with the original Tomb Raider games. When I play these games today, I don’t have a lot of trouble with jumping from platform to platform. Of course, due to the limitations of the systems at the time, it wasn’t always clear to which ledge you should jump and how you should make that jump. In more recent games, a better visual presentation helps out with that problem a lot. This “issue” became clear when I did the Tomb Raider project. Some people in that collaboration had never played an old school Tomb Raider game and gave it a try for the first time. And because they were more used to the newer style of the series or the newer style of play in more modern games, they had trouble during the game.

Something I often got during my search for writers in the Tomb Raider project was: “Also the old Tomb Raider games that aged poorly?” or something similar. I completely agree that the original Tomb Raider games aged poorly. The newer Tomb Raider games, and not per se the more modern games, play better because the developers improved their craft and learned a lot from developing the previous entries in the series.

I don’t find all retro-inspired games that difficult. I was able to beat some without much trouble like Blossom Tales or Retro Game Challenge. While I did had some trouble in Shovel Knight because I haven’t played a lot of games similar to that.

When I was researching and brainstorming for this article, I came to the conclusion that there are 4 types of difficulty in my eyes.

The first type is the intended difficulty. This is planned by the developers to challenge you during the game. Think about a Zelda dungeon where you get a new item in a dungeon and you have to learn to use it or remember the places where you were unable to progress and needed to use the item.

The second type is an unintended difficulty. This was an unplanned difficulty due to bugs, randomness (like RNG or random generation) or just plain bad game design. Or it can be because of things like certain mechanics. For example, a lot of people complained when Super Mario 64 DS came out. While it’s a good remake, the controls weren’t loved by various reviews because the original game was designed with a joystick in mind while the DS didn’t have a joystick.

The first two types can be mixed with the other two types.

The third type is a fair difficulty. With this I mean, the game provides you with a challenging and rewarding experience. Like, you finally figured out how to beat that one puzzle or beat that one boss.

The fourth type of difficulty is, you guessed it, unfair difficulty. Now, this can be because of bad and or lazy game design but this can also be a huge spike in difficulty. A great example is Suikoden Tierkreis for me. Overall, the game is somewhat easy. If you don’t skip too many battles and pay attention to what you are doing, the game isn’t all too challenging. I rarely to never saw the game over screen. Until I came to the final boss. This annoying battle gets such a difficulty spike that made me not fully finish the game and actually look up the ending online. Now, while writing this article, I actually restarted playing the game and I’m hell-bent in finally beating the game this time.

The more difficulty of type 2 and 4 you have, the worse it becomes for your game. One time a developer asked me to review an Android game. In this game, you had to feed various foods to some customers. The issue was, all of the dishes were based on Asian dishes and I’m European. I barely know anything about Asian cuisine. The unfair difficulty in this game is that almost nothing was explained in the game about the foods themselves. So, I was unable to figure out which food was what, so it became a guessing game.

Another example of unfair difficulty is more recent. A developer asked me to review a Switch game they just released. The game is a twin-stick shooter and in the shooting tutorial, there were two spawners in the room that spawned so many enemies so quickly, it became overwhelming. You shouldn’t put so many enemies in the first level of your game while the player is still learning the basic mechanics of the game. That’s unfair.

Does a game like Dark Souls have unfair difficulty? Well no, the game is quite balanced in my opinion. There is a lot of risk and reward gameplay, the punishment is just a bit too harsh in my opinion. But the game becomes beatable when you learn the finer details of the game and get used to the inner workings of the game.

The line and difference between the four types are really thin and make it still personal. Speaking of personal, some people talk proudly when they were able to beat a certain game on the highest difficulty. While that is impressive, you shouldn’t look down upon people having trouble on the lower difficulties. While my gaming buddy MiseryLC can beat the AI in Europe Universalis IV on hard, I feel that the normal difficulty provides just enough challenge for me.

I think it would be a great development if all games have difficulty sliders. The more you can adjust the difficulty, the better. Something I really loved in the Etrian Odyssey series is that you can change the difficulty setting when you are in the town without any other punishments. This is great because when I was unable to beat a certain boss and almost stopped playing, I was able to lower the difficulty a bit so I was able to beat the boss and move on. After I had beaten the boss, I set the difficulty back on normal. This is a perfect system since people can choose how easy or hard you want the game to be.

Now, I have said quite a lot about the topic now. To avoid this article becoming a bit too long or having too much rambling, I think it’s time to let some of my friends talk. I want to thank everybody for their input since they helped me quite a lot while putting my thoughts together for this article.

How others think about difficulty.

Now, I asked around on various groups on Discord and Facebook on their opinions on game difficulty. Here is what they have to say. Note, some quotes I translated from Dutch to English. Some quotes had minor edits since sometimes contained an answer to another topic in the conversation or something in those lines.

The following quotes come from a Facebook group where Belgian retro game collectors gather.

Ward: “Some games are pretty challenging due to their difficulty like Slain and Cuphead. But other games hold your hand, but that doesn’t always take away from the fun of the game. It really depends on the game and how enjoyable the story is.”

Hakim: “Sometimes a too difficult game can be really frustrating. And out of this frustration, the game can go on my shelves to be never played again.”

Kenny: “Personally, I think that the player should have a choice how difficult the game should be. Some games I play personally for the story and not for an extreme challenge.”

Mayu: “For me, a game can never be too difficult. I’ll play until the end as long as the difficulty, challenge, story and such are fun. It already happened that I was disappointed when I bought a new game and I finished it without issue. The solution for this is lately, collection or completion rewards. Some of them are really letdowns. In the past, gaming was a very niche hobby. When a game was too difficult, you just had to try and try again. But, now that gaming isn’t a niche hobby anymore, the difficult games don’t sell that well anymore. And with companies trying to make as much profit as possible…”

Koen: “Making a game extremely difficult is no issue for me. As long as all the elements of the game are fun, it doesn’t matter to me. I really enjoy the rewarding feeling of finally being able to beat a game at the highest difficult setting after trying on it for weeks and seeing the real/true ending. But, when the story is garbage and I have to replay the game on a harder difficulty setting, I won’t be spending my time on a new playthrough.”

Niels: “As long as a game stays fair, it’s worth my time. Nowadays, there are a lot of games that are too easy for everybody to play. From endless tutorial sections to special power-ups when you die a lot and sometimes even a skip button, these are just a few things that you find more and more in modern games. Now, there is nothing wrong with that, as long as they are optional or are disabled by higher difficulty settings. Something I really want to stress, a game that is too difficult thanks to bad enemy placement, terrible controls or bad decisions is a bad game.”

Xavier: “I prefer easier games. There are a lot of games that are quite enjoyable to play. It doesn’t matter to me if games are shorter, I usually buy them at a lower price after they have been released for a while. It’s better then having to play a game where you have to retry a section 20 times to finish it.”

Dennis: “I usually start a game on normal mode. Depending on my experience, I raise or lower the difficulty. So, this means that I play some games on easy, some on normal and some on the hardest difficulty. I don’t really enjoy games where you respawn a thousand times before you can continue and especially when you have the same issue 10 minutes later in the next section. If I enjoyed the game enough, I might replay it on a higher difficulty setting. Most of the games interest me for somewhere between 10 to 20 hours. But, this is absolutely not the case for me with Final Fantasy games.”

The following opinions are from fellow bloggers or friends in the blogging world.

Aiphafemaie: “A couple thoughts – I think games felt more difficult in the past because you had to rely more on yourself to figure out how to pass levels or quests. Or printing out walkthroughs from GameFaqs.com lmao.  Now when you’re stuck, you can just to YouTube and see how it’s done. I don’t think games were more difficult in the past, but “difficult” is a subjective word.  Today’s games do have varying difficulty modes, in comparison to the past. Before most games could only be played on default.”

TwoTall4uFool: “I think there was a lot of trial and error with games back in the 80’s and 90’s. Even in the 2000’s. Aiphafemaie you bring up a great point about GameFaqs but there are some games out there that I would’ve never beaten if it wasn’t for Game Genie/Gameshark. Today in games you have tutorials and of course there is YouTube. And even with plug and plays such as the SNES Classic you can rewind and try a part again if you fail. And plus suspend you point. So emulating older games have made them easier ….. sort of.”

ReaperInteractive: “I agree with @aiphafemaie . Games in the past had no clear instructions or clear, “Go here to pass to the next level.” Games nowadays are a lot more direct and I feel that developers intentianally make these instructions extremely clear as to make the game as playable and prevent people from giving up midway. A little more on the note. There have been games where the instructions were so unclear that I literally had no clue what to do and ended up giving up. Another reason I feel that games nowadays are a lot easier is because we’ve played the same basic mechanic over and over again as to games in the past, there were hundreds of different mechanics. Most games nowadays can be grouped into a couple dozen genres with the same mechanic and controls. Contrary to this, I feel that games in the past are composed of hundreds of different genres, some completely new to the people hence why I feel that why games in the past are a tad more difficult than those of our age.”

The Well Red Mage: “I think that games can still pretty hard now, some of them, but there are new varieties of games now. There are brutal platformers as a subgenre now that are built on difficulty, but then there are also walking simulators and interactive movies now that eschew difficulty almost entirely. I think some would say that the difficulty of retro games was such that it was unfair, but I think that the lives systems and the memorization of patterns (two very retro-centric ideas of difficulty) are perfectly valid; we maybe just don’t have the toleration for them that we used to. Those games were still demanding something of the player (memory or timing). So I think this is a conversation that benefits from specifics like specific games and specific features in those games that bring difficulty into the equation (memorization, level design, limited options or limited chances to complete a challenge, longer periods without save features, increasing speed, item management, enemy AI… all those things are specific features that games then and now used and use to create difficulty).”

The Badly Backlogged Mage/MrBacklog: “I think the obvious-but-unhelpful answer is “as difficult as they need to be to convey the desired experience”. Dark Souls, the Walking Dead and Mario Party are all different in terms of difficulty because they’re going for different experiences.”

OverThinkerY: “I think there are different ways of adding difficulty – Backlogged makes a good point about those games being difficult in different ways as part of the experience. There’s perhaps the most classic sort of difficulty, which is reacting and executing the right series of inputs quickly enough to proceed, and then there are things more dependent on memory, ingenuity, or sheer emotional fortitude. I think there are more examples these days of different sorts of difficulty other than simply pressing buttons accurately, which might be down to better tech or just natural progression, but it enables different kinds of experiences to be made effective in that way.”

Mail Order Ninja Mage/Daniel Flatt: “Difficulty is the hardest thing to get right in video games. If you push back too hard you lose all but your most dedicated player, if you don’t present any challenge then moderately skilled players become bored. Like everyone said above it is drastically different depending on the game and furthermore the individual playing.

That being said games aren’t necessarily easier than they were before, but they have become better at not wasting our time. Games previously were artificially hard, first because checkpoints and saves weren’t a thing, and then because many NES games are a handful of hours long without constantly starting over. They had to have that difficulty to make the game worth it, can’t have Billy coming to you after an hour and asking for a new game. I dare anyone to play B side levels of Celeste and say games are easier, but the difference is you don’t have to play through the same 30 minutes over and over to finally get through something and die 20 seconds later to start all over.

The best games have difficulty determined by the player, Nintendo excels at this, but one of the best examples is Ori. It has a function where you basically create your own checkpoints or don’t, depending on your preference. It could be brutally hard, but if I get to try again right away for a certain section it wasn’t wasting my time making me play the same section a hundred times.”

Now, as you can read, the opinions are extremely diverse when it comes to difficulty. This brainstorm was extremely interesting to do. I honestly think that I’ll return to this topic in the future. Before I close this article, I want to point you to an article created by Rob “I Played The Game” Covell that he wrote in 2017 about the same subject. “A Difficult Conversation”.

Closing off

Like I said in the previous paragraph, the conversation of how difficult a game could be or if games are too easy nowadays gets quite diverse opinions. While this topic could be discussed for hours and the opinions will go in various directions, I think I’ll close off this article here. I’m quite curious about what everybody thinks. Maybe I’ll revisit this topic at a later date.

If you have written or talked about this subject in the past or know a great resource like another article or video, feel free to send me a message with the link. Maybe I’ll include it in the next article. And with that said, I think I’ll really end off this article. Thank you, everybody, for helping me put this article together. It was a blast. Thank you for reading this article and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care.

Gaming Nostalgia: What hooked me on Pokémon?

Ah, Pokémon. The game of my childhood. I grew up playing Pokémon Blue on my Gameboy and watching the anime. When I was a young NekoJonez, I always looked forward to what the anime and the games will bring me next. So, today I want to take a look back at a few Pokémon games and what hooked me into playing them? Let’s go 100% nostalgia mode and let’s take a trip through memory lane. Also, if you guys and girls have your own stories about what hooked you on Pokémon, please tell them in the comment section below. Also, feel free to give me advice on this format, if I should do other articles like this or other game franchises. In any case, here we go. 

Pokémon Gold, Silver & Crystal

I think it isn’t a secret to a lot of you that I have never finished Pokémon Red, Blue & Yellow. I have come close to beating the final boss, but I was always unable to beat him.

Now, Pokémon Gold & Silver were the first Pokémon games I have fully beaten. For some reason, I enjoyed myself a lot more with the 2nd generation than the first generation.

The 2nd generation had more things to do and had more roleplaying in the game. It was also the first game I started to make friends with. I discussed the first-gen regularly with my cousin, but I have more memories of discovering the 2nd generation together with friends.

The day & night cycle, a visible XP bar, genders, berries, special Pokéballs and a whole revisit of the area of the first game were such amazing concepts to me as a child. There was more to do and more to enjoy then first thought possible.

It was also one of the first times I experienced the odd feeling of nostalgia. I touch upon t in the previous section, the whole revisiting of Kanto, the area you played in, in the first game. It blew my mind so much that I wanted to relive that feeling multiple times. Yes, Pokémon Gold and Silver are actually one of the games that made me decide to start collecting games. Since I wanted to replay them when I grew up and experience my childhood all over again.

Pokémon Ruby, Sapphire & Emerald

Good lord, am I going to make some people annoyed at me with saying this. My favorite gen is the 3rd gen. If the 2nd gen actually made me start talking about Pokémon with friends, the 3rd game we actually discovered together. We helped each other when we got stuck and we battled each other often.

Behind the schoolyard where nobody saw us since playing on your Gameboy Advance (SP) wasn’t allowed during school.

But a feature I adore in this game is the secret bases. I have spent too much time decorating the whole secret base and buying things for it. I always pretended they were little gyms. Back then, my imagination ran wild and I actually imagined that they will release a patch where you were able to run around in each other’s world to try and discover each other’s bases. I had no clue what underground feature the next generation would bring.

Besides that, I was just immersed in the world. I just loved exploring and walking around in this world. I have no clue why, but I love the 3rd generation Pokémon a lot. I still remember figuring out the braille in those secret caves to get the Regi’s and unlock the stronger legendary Pokémon.

Also, the amount of Pokémon ROM hacks created in this engine, is just amazing. I have played such amazing Pokémon ROM hacks using the gen 3 games as a base. But, talking about those is just for another article.

Pokémon Mystery Dungeon – Explorers Of Time/Darkness/Sky

When I had beaten the first Pokémon Mystery Dungeon game, I was extremely impressed with the game I played. Nothing was able to prepare me for the amazingness that was the sequel to this game.

The sequel had a more interesting story. But, what hooked me on the Mystery Dungeon formula. Well, I might have an idea.

I always wanted to play something else in the Pokémon universe. And that was this game. Thanks to this game, I got introduced to Etrain Odyssey and other dungeon crawlers.

While these spin-off games aren’t the best games in the respective genre, I love playing them because they have amazing stories.

It’s a bit sad to see that these games won’t have another sequel after Pokémon Super Mystery Dungeon since GameFreak doesn’t have any ideas about where the series should go next.

But, back on topic. What actually hooked me in this game? For once, the personality test. For some reason, I always got different Pokémon as my main character but rarely to never another aura reading. I always got the starly silver one. Just funny how my favorite color is, in fact, silver and I was playing the game on a silver-colored DS.

Also, I have another story to tell about this game. One time, I ordered Pokémon Mystery Dungeon – Explorers Of the Sky from a trusted online website. They deliver it and I put it in my collection. I already owned Pokémon Mystery Dungeon – Explorers of Darkness. When I was actually cataloging my collection 2 years later, I actually discovered that they put the wrong copy inside the Explorers of the Sky box. So, I re-order the game from that website; guess what happens. They deliver the correct box but the wrong game again >.<

Thankfully, I was allowed to send the wrong manual and game card back and now I have the actual Pokémon Explorers of the Sky in my collection. Now, it’s time to complete that game since I want to find out what happens in the additional story.

Pokémon Ranger – Shadows of Almia

I have played a lot of the Pokémon Ranger games. But I remember the 3rd one the most. Since that’s the only one I have currently finished.

The 3rd one is the most polish game out of all three of them. Also, it deals with an interesting story that takes place in two worlds, making the gameplay even more interesting.

If I would have to explain what hooked me on this game, I can only tell that you should look in the previous paragraphs of this article. I wanted to play something different than the usual main adventure. And that’s what this game delivered.

Catching different Pokémon and trying to figure out which Pokémon to capture to overcome the obstacles. For some reason, just writing about this game makes me want to replay this game. That would be perfect since I haven’t written an article about this game and I think that will be a better place for me to explain why I love this game so much. Or maybe a 2nd playthrough will reveal some flaws I overlooked in my first playthrough.

Wrapping up

So, that’s all I wanted to talk about for now. There are a lot more Pokémon stories I still want to share but those are for another time. I always wanted to do an article similar to this one.

Tell me what you think I should improve or change in the next edition. But for now, I’m going to end the Pokémon nostalgia here. Thank you for reading this article and I hope you enjoyed reading this article as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article but until then, take care and have a great rest of your day.

 

Game Music: My Favorites – Numerbo # 20: My favorite soundtracks ever!

More music article right here

It’s time. Time to make harsh decisions. Which soundtracks are currently my favorite soundtracks? I have thought long and hard about this, and I have come up with this list. The list is based on how much I played the game, how much I listen to the soundtrack and how much of the game sticks with me. Some might come as a surprise, but some won’t. But, I’m curious. What are your favorite soundtracks? Feel free to leave a come in the comment section with them or you can comment on my selection too. But keep it civil, that’s all I ask. In any case, here we go. Time to list my favorite soundtracks in this moment of time. Oh, be warned, this is a long article. So, yeah. 

Remember, the choices are my opinion. I haven’t played all games on each system and some soundtracks are picked for personal reasons. I’m not saying that my choices are the best soundtracks on the system, I’m saying here which soundtracks are my favorite on the system.

Side note about the honorable mentions:

• I limited myself to only list 5 games as honorable mentions. To avoid this article’s length getting out of hand.
• While I know that some games are multi-platform. When it’s listed with a certain console, that means I played that game on that console. Or if I played the game on more than one console, it means I prefer the soundtrack on that console the most.
• I only list games that I own and/or have played for an extended amount of time (at least 5 hours or more)

Favorite PC soundtrack: Rise & Fall – Civilizations At War

YouTube playlist

First Impression

Long time readers of my blog know before I started blogging, I used to write fantasy stories. One of my favorite stories was a nature fantasy medieval world where a lot mattered upon the value and amount of land you owned.

When I bought this game, I was right in an RTS-period. My favorite games were Age Of Mythology and Age Of Empires II/III. On that moment in time, I was writing a climax in the story I described earlier. Just give the soundtrack a listen and try to imagine a story like I described. Doesn’t it write itself?

Also, it helps a lot that this game had a gimmick that I find amazing. You can control your main hero during battles. I wish that this was in more games today. Well, with controlling I mean, you control your hero in first-person! Yup, first-person. This game is such a hidden gem. I rarely hear it mentioned when people talk about old-school RTS games. I even have a virtual machine setup just to play this game. Since the annoying copy protection is a real pain in the backside when you try to run it on Windows Vista or newer. But, recently I fixed an old PC and installed Windows XP on it and now I play the game on that machine.

Just listing to the soundtrack while writing this segment makes me very nostalgic. I wonder, has anybody played this game? Let me know! Since I barely find let’s plays or reviews from other people online.

Honorable mentions: Halo: Combat Evolved, Tomb Raider Legend, Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine, The Elder Scrolls III – Morrowind and Europa Universalis IV

Favorite Gameboy/Gameboy Color soundtrack: The Legend Of Zelda – Oracle Of Ages & Oracle of Seasons aka The Oracle Games

YouTube playlist with both games’ soundtrack

Oracle of Ages review

Oracle of Seasons review

Well, before you call me a cheater, hear me out. When you finish one game, you get a code to transfer some data over to the other game. In that game, you play through the whole game to see the real ending of these games. So, technically, this is just one giant game split up into two big standalone games. So, that’s why there is sort of, kind of, two games for this entry.

 In any case, this was one I was pretty certain about. While I have a lot of soundtracks I enjoy listing to from the Gameboy & Gameboy Color period, the price must to go to my favorite games on the system. In my eyes, these games are nearly flawless. Apart from some bad sound effects and sound mixing here and there, this game is flawless.

So, these are my favorite Zelda games. I love the story, gameplay, music, art design and the memories attached to these two titles. But, that are stories for another time.

Honorable mentions: Pokémon Gold/Silver & Crystal, Harry Potter and the Chamber Of Secrets, Super Mario Land 3: Warioland, Kirby’s Dreamland 2 and Tetris

Favorite GBA soundtrack:  Pokémon Ruby/Sapphire & Emerald

YouTube playlist

My review of this game

So, I decided to give the GBA a separate entry on this list because the sound chip of the GBA is so much different than the Gameboy & Gameboy Color’s so it wouldn’t be fair to put them all in one entry.

In any case, it’s time to talk about my 2nd favorite Pokémon games ever made. And the soundtrack in this game might use a lot of trumpets and French horn, but I honestly don’t mind one bit about it. The soundtrack is enjoyable to listen to it.

The secret bases in this game is a feature I messed around with a lot. As a kid, I always imagined that it was my own gym. And wouldn’t you know it, they use exactly that blur when they advertise the remakes of that game. “Build secret bases, build it like your own gym.” The childhood nostalgia is strong for this one.

Honorable mentions: Nicktoons – Battle For Vulcano Island, The Legend Of Zelda – Minish Cap, Golden Sun, Mario & Luigi – Superstar Saga and Sims 2

Favorite DS soundtrack: Pokémon Mystery Dungeon – Explorers Of Darkness/Time & Sky

Full OST

Review of the game

So, the DS is my favorite portable system ever. The follow-up system, the 3DS is an amazing replacement. I had the hardest time choosing my favorite soundtrack for this system and even deciding on only 5 honorable mentions.

In the end, I went with a soundtrack of a game that brings back a lot of memories. From both playing the game and the memories of the events that happened in my personal life.

And that “I don’t want to say goodbye” track. Honestly, when I listen to it nowadays, I get teary eyes sometimes. The writing of that part was done so good. It’s a great piece. I love hearing remixes of it since the structure of the song is just so recognizable. Just play the game until the end and I think you will understand why this song has so many emotions for everybody that played this game.

Honorable mentions: Ace Attorney Trails & Tribulations, 999: 9 Hours, 9 Doors, 9 People, Time Hollow, Suikoden Tierkreis and Clubhouse Games

Favorite 3DS soundtrack: Stella Glow

YouTube Playlist

My review of the game

I’m glad that I choose to separate the DS and 3DS library for this article. I wouldn’t have been wise to combine those two for one entry. I would never be able to choose one soundtrack.

But, I’m getting off topic. Why is Stella Glow my favorite 3DS soundtrack? Well, because the game’s story is just so well written, I love it to bits. When I downloaded the demo for this game, I was hooked on the story. I placed a note in my budget of the upcoming month to buy this game. But then, thanks to ButtonSmashers, I got a free review copy of this game. Thanks again! Since I discovered this amazing gem of a game.

I know that the game has flaws, but in my eyes; it’s one of the best games I have played on the 3DS. If somebody asks me for recommendations to play on the 3DS, I always mention this game. Just read my review if you want to know why I think this game is so good. Oh, and I decided to replay the game from the beginning. To relive the whole experience again. But this time, I’ll pick different options! A story heavy RPG with replay value, what do you want more?

Honorable mentions: Zero Time Dilemma, Etrian Odyssey Untold 2 – Fafnir Knight, Professor Layton vs Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney, Fire Emblem Awakening and Kirby Triple Deluxe

My favorite Wii U soundtrack: Hyrule Warriors

Soundtrack

First Impression

To pick the best soundtrack on the Wii U was quite a tricky one. While there are so many great games released on the system, why did I choose for Hyrule Warriors?

First, because this is one of the best Zelda spin-off games I have ever played. It introduced me to a whole new genre I never really paid attention to. And now, I’m playing Destiny Warrior games when I have the time.

Second, this soundtrack is so fun to listen to. It brings back personal memories from when I was writing fantasy stories.

And my last reason, it has amazing remixes of existing Zelda songs. So, the nostalgia is strong in this one.

While I have finished the main campaign for a long time now, I haven’t finished adventure mode yet. But, writing about this game reminds me, I should review this game and give my final opinion on it… One thing is for sure, this game has an amazing soundtrack!

Honorable mentions: Captian Toad – Treasure Tracker, Lego City Undercover, Rayman Legends, Bayonetta 2 and Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE

My favorite PSP soundtrack: Corpse Party Blood Driven

Soundtrack playlist (Includes soundtrack of sequel)

Review of this game

If you haven’t seen this one coming, shame on you. Corpse Party Blood Driven is one of the first gore horror games I ever played. I own this game one several different platforms.

The story and setting of this game are just amazing. I’m just so happy that this game is getting the recognition it deserves after famous YouTubers did a let’s play of it. The only thing I wish is that there were more new games made instead of the remakes. But hey, more Corpse Party is more Corpse Party. So, I’m not complaining that much.

Honorable mentions:  Shadow Of Memories, Legend Of Heroes – Trails in the Sky, Jeanne D’Arc, Ape Escape – On The Loose and Castlevania – The Dracula X Chronicles

My favorite PS1 soundtrack: Tomb Raider II

Full OST

My review

As a kid, I heard a lot about the Tomb Raider franchise. My first Tomb Raider game was Tomb Raider Chronicles. I fell in love with the gameplay and it reminded me of all the adventure games I played.

Fast forward to 2014. I got my hands on an old desktop and I fixed it up, formatted the hard drive and installed Windows98 SE on it. Now, I started playing all the old Tomb Raider games. While I play all 5 Tomb Raider games on that machine in any order I feel like playing them, Tomb Raider II is a special case. Since I’m trying to beat that game too on the original PlayStation. Yup, I’m playing the PC version and the PS One version. For my playstyle, I prefer the computer edition since I am not too used to the PlayStation controller, to be honest.

The only thing that I dislike about this soundtrack is that it’s rather short. The whole soundtrack is just a half hour to forty minutes long. It’s a shame since the soundtrack for TR II is pretty great. It comes recommend when you love early adventure games’ soundtracks. But, to be honest, I don’t really mind too much about the short length of the soundtrack since the lack of music sometimes sets a great atmosphere for raiding tombs. Maybe we are too spoiled nowadays with music in every single area or event.

Honorable mentions: Rayman, Time Crisis, Final Fantasy 7, A Bug’s Life, Tarzan

My favorite SNES soundtrack: Lufia II

Full soundtrack

First Impression

So, I love the SNES. It’s one of the earliest consoles I played over at my cousin’s house. But, my favorite SNES soundtrack is a game that I played in recent years.

The name of the game is Lufia II. Why is this my favorite soundtrack on the SNES. Well, because I own the boxed copy that got translated to my own mother language. Yes, Lufia II got fully translated into Dutch. The fact that I can play a classic RPG in my native language is just mind blowing to me. Dutch isn’t a widely spoken language, so it amazes me that they translated an RPG into Dutch. So, when I think about the SNES, I often think about that fact and the soundtrack comes right along with it.

Maybe the fact that when my uncle gave me his SNES, this was the first game I started playing has something to do with it, I have no clue. But hey, this game is really awesome and I should try and finish it.

Honorable mentions: Secret of Mana, StarWing, The Legend Of Zelda – A Link To The Past, Chrono Trigger and Super Mario RPG – The Legend Of The Seven Stars

My favorite Wii soundtrack: Okami

Soundtrack part 1 – Soundtrack part 2

First Impression

Do I think that Okami is a Zelda clone? Interesting question. Well, it’s a Zelda-style game, but the unique mechanic of the brush is enough for me to make it stand out.

The visual presentation, the setting, the music and the gameplay are all things that make me love this game. I think that Okami is one of the best games ever made on the Wii without a doubt. I honestly think that the game is better with the mention controls. At least for me, since I can’t imagine drawing with an analog stick. But hey, that’s my opinion.

I really have to finish this game, since I finished the sequel Okamiden. I also secretly hope that Okami 2 or a new entry in the series will be a reality one day. So, please be true rumors that went around at E3 2016. Please.

Honorable mentions: The Legend Of Zelda – Skyward Sword, BoomBlocks, Pandora’s Tower, Kirby Epic Yarn and Super Smash Brawl

My favorite PS2 soundtrack: Dragon Quest 8: Journey Of The Cursed King

Full soundtrack

First impression

I know that this game got a remake/port on the 3DS last year. I bought the game, but I honestly enjoy it more on the PS2. Just my nostalgia speaking, I guess.

So, I learned about the Dragon Quest series when I played Dragon Quest IX on the DS. I was so hooked on that game, I wanted to play more Dragon Quest. So, when I was in my local game store and saw this game second hand, I bought it. I played it here and there but never got really far. But, last summer, I played a lot of this game during my break and I enjoyed myself a whole lot. It brought back memories of me playing Dragon Quest IX on my DS when I was younger.

At the moment of writing, I’m in Peregrin Quay. I know that isn’t too far, but hey, this game is quite grindy. But, I want to finish this game but that’s gonna take a long time.

Honorable mentions: God Of War, Shadow of the Colossus, Rachet & Clank, Escape From Monkey Island and Grand Theft Auto Vice City

My favorite Android soundtrack: Game Dev Story

YouTube playlist

Review of this game

Well, I think it’s no secret that I like the soundtrack of this game after you have read my review of the game.

There are times I listen to different music when I’m playing this game, but I play this game more with the actual soundtrack playing. It’s quite good and I recommend it to everybody who enjoys catchy tunes.

Honorable mentions: Quell, Monument Valley, Lara Croft Go, The Room and Thomas Was Alone

Final thoughts

I promised a special article, so here it is! A quite lengthy article, I know. At first, I was going to limit myself to a top 5 soundtracks, but then I decided… Hey, let’s pick for each game system one soundtrack. I had to limit myself to 5 honorable mentions/system, otherwise, the honorable mentions of some systems would be longer than the talk about the game and soundtrack itself.  So, I still have a lot of tracks and stuff to talk about for another couple of gaming music articles.

I think it’s quite clear that I love game music. I often listen to soundtracks while I’m at work or while I’m writing articles. I can’t really explain why. That love for gaming music is the reason why I love writing these articles.

In any case, it’s time to wrap this article up since it has been going on for way too long! I hope you enjoyed reading this article as much as I enjoyed writing this article. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article but until then, take care and have a great rest of your day!

Review: Pokémon Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald (GBA) ~ Here Come The Horns

Bulbapedia entry

My family and I take yearly trips to the seaside. I remember on the trip of 2003, we stopped in a big toy store. There was a Gameboy SP present with a demo version of Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire. I played it in the store and knew what I wanted to buy at the end of the trip. I wanted my own Gameboy Advance SP with the new Pokémon games. It didn’t take long before I got my very own copy of the games and that I started playing it. Now, after I have finished all three games, it’s time to take a look back to the games and decide if it was a good decision to buy and play these games or that these games actually belong in the trash. So, let’s review these games. And as usual, feel free to leave a comment in the comment section down below with your opinion on the article and/or games.

Plot and such

This game starts like every other Pokémon game starts. You move to a new town where you are asked to help the professor to set out on a journey to explore the new region. In this game, the characters are rather interesting. For some reason, the rival characters and various other characters are one of the most memorable in the whole Pokémon series.

Truth to be told, I think most have to do with the fact that Pokémon was right at its absolute peak where I lived then. Everybody was talking on the playground about the latest Pokémon they caught and how the new anime season was running at the same time then you progressed in the game. This made the game more memorable for me. So, it might possibly be nostalgia blinding me.

So, I really think that the writing in this game is really well done. Also, the secrets you could discover in the game were fun too. There was a way to catch three new legendary Pokémon in a complete side quest. In this side quest, you had to read braille to enter a door. And I didn’t look it up on the internet, I actually used the guide provided to me in the manual to translate the Braille into readable letters and figured it out that way.

What’s even more interesting, you can use this three Pokémon to trade them into the next generation and unlock a special Pokémon that way. That’s a big positive in my book!

Horns & flutes

This game has an amazing presentation. I dare to argue that even to this day, this game holds up quite good. Just think about it, this game’s engine is the basis of most Pokémon Rom Hacks.

It’s the last 2D Pokémon game since the 4th Generation went into 2,5D. But, Pokémon Platinum, Pearl & Diamond are for another review.

Something a lot of people point out about this game is the soundtrack. In nearly every track, there is a (French) horn and/or a flute present. While I enjoy listing to the soundtrack, I have to admit that this soundtrack lacks variety in its instruments. But back in the day, I didn’t really mind it. The jump in quality from the previous generation was just too big.

Visually, this game is bright and colorful. I really love exploring the Hoenn region. I love exploring it so much that I even explored it several times. Yes, I played this game several times. Something that added even more life to the game is the animations in the overworld. Things like the rain and the sandstorm or the tracks you made riding your bike in the sand made the game come more alive than ever.

A lot to do

So, this game introduces quite a lot of interesting new mechanics to play around with. Let’s first start with the new battle mechanics. This game introduced double battles. This is such a great addition to the series that to this day, spin-off ideas are put into the main series Pokémon games.

That reminds me, the gameplay of this game is really good. The whole adventure in this game is one of the best adventures you can have on the Gameboy Advance (SP). But honestly, isn’t that a given with a main series Pokémon game?

So, in this game, you also have secret bases. I have to admit that this was one of my favorite features ever. I wish they implemented in more Pokémon games. I had high hopes when they were re-introduced in the next generation as bases in the underground side-game.

And let’s not forget about the Pokémon contests, berry mini-games and the truckload of changes to the battle and breeding system. This game brought so many new things to the table, there is a lot to do in this game before you have seen and done everything.

Do I have something negative to say about this game? Honestly, one thing. That this game works with a battery. Nowadays, the battery will have run dry and time-based events won’t happen. If you can look past that, you have a great game ahead of yourself.

This game’s difficulty curve is pretty great. Apart from the rematches of trainers. I rarely lost those. But that’s a nitpick since you can choose when you do those rematches and I did them when my team was overleveled.

The last thing I want to talk about is the controls. And guess what, they work brilliantly. I have nothing to complain here.

So, that’s everything I wanted to say about this game. It’s time we go to the conclusion of this article.

Conclusion

The bad:

-The internal battery can run dry.

-No multiple save slots.

-A bit more instrument variety would have been great….

The good:

+ … yet the overall soundtrack is pretty great.

+ Good writing and pacing of the story.

+ Good difficulty curve.

+ Interesting and fun side adventures can be had.

+ Trading with the next generation!

+ Secret bases

+ Pokémon Contests.

+ …

Conclusion

If you would ask me which generation is the best Pokémon generation. I would honestly doubt. Each generation has something I really love about it. And this game is no different. When I was preparing and when I was writing this review, I had trouble finding flaws in this game.

It might be because of a lot of nostalgia, it might because this Pokémon game is that good. If you are a Pokémon fan and you haven’t played this game, I urge you to check this game out. It’s really good. I might not have mentioned a few things in my review, but you’ll find out soon enough. The post-game content is the best in Emerald by the way.

In any case, thank you for reading this review and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to see you in another article on my blog but until then, take care and have a great rest of your day!

Score: 100/100

My top 10 GBA games. (Part 2/2)

Link to part 1.

After a crazy busy week, I finally found time to announce my top 5 GBA titles. The comments on the first part were exactly what I hoped them to be. Popular titles that everybody puts in their top 10 will be mostly absent in my top 10. Since I go for the more obscure titles, that deserve the spotlight. Games that are good, but never get a spot in any top 10 due to some flaws. Anyways, enough talking. Let’s take a look at my top 5 GBA games. As usual, feel free to leave a comment in the comment section about your top 10, the content of this article and things like that. 

#5: Tomb Raider Legend

I own both the PC version and the GBA version of this game. My young mind was blown when I saw how many similarities there are between the GBA version and the PC version. While the GBA version isn’t as much fun as the PC version, I did have quite a lot of fun with it.

This game gets also a special award from me, for the most easiest final boss ever. I can beat the final boss with my eyes closed, on hard difficulty. It’s just ridiculous.

One advice I should give is that the DS version is just a big mess. The GBA version is just a nice game that takes the portable Tomb Raider games to a new height. Give it a chance and remember that it’s a GBA game. Also, the final thank you in the credits is just amazing.

#4: Scooby Doo – Mystery Mayhem

A game about a TV-show, what can go wrong.. I mean, what can go right? Well, this is a great platformer/adventure game that is totally Scooby-Doo themed. The reason why I love this game is mostly because the nostalgic value to the show. This game is thankfully no cash-in.

When I discovered that one of my favorite bands at that time actually made one of the theme songs for the show, Simple Plan, my love for the game grew even more.

While I haven’t fully beaten this game, I can’t get passed the final boss, I did see a friend beat it and I saw the ending. The final boss is brutal. That’s one of the only remakes I can give at this game in my opinion. Maybe I should replay it to review it…?

#3: Nicktoons – Battle For Volcano Island

Link to my review

The people who have read my review might have seen this entry coming. I truly think that this game is one of the best platformers besides Mario that the GBA has to offer. While I don’t own a copy anymore since I mostly remember this game from rentals, I still do hunt for it.

Every time when I go to a garage sale, I hope to find it. I would accept any copy, even without the box.

If you want to read more about my opinion, go check out the review.

#2: Pokémon Ruby – Sapphire.

This game is the black sheep in the series. The 3rd generation wasn’t very well received. Which is strange to me, since the pre-orders for the remake at the end of this month are quite high.

The only complaint I have with this game is that the soundtrack has a lot of trumpets. I know that this is going to get me some hate, but Ruby and Sapphire are actually my 2nd most favorite games in the series. Most has to do with the introduction of secret bases. The next entry, Diamond and Pearl, perfected that with making it multiplayer.

I’m quite curious what the remake has in store for us. I actually have high hopes. I try to avoid reading other content to not get spoiled. Sadly enough, it already happened. The hype grew even more for me. I just wish it doesn’t let me down…

Some honorable mentions.

Okay, before I talk about the obvious number one, let’s have some honorable mentions.

• Golden Sun: This game can’t go in my list since I haven’t beaten it. Sorry Q, it might be for another time.
• Avatar – The Burning Earth: Such a great game to play. I enjoy it quite a lot. The password system is just amazing.
• Crash – Mind over the mutant: If only I finished the final area before the time of the rental was over, then this game was allowed to be on my list.
• Pokémon Mystery Dungeon – Blue Rescue Team: The reason why this game didn’t make it on my list is because the DS versions already made it on the top 25 DS games list. Yeah.
• WarioLand 4: I still have to beat WarioLand 4. I enjoyed WarioLand I and II quite a lot. I never got a hold of the 3rd game, but I got the 4th game for free.
• Metroid Fusion: I still have to beat you.

#1: The Legend Of Zelda – Minish Cap

Yup, my fans might have seen this entry coming from miles away. Not the GBA remake of the very popular “A Link To The Past” but the Minish Cap.

This handheld title is quite a lot of fun. There are sadly enough some flaws. The game is quite short, easy and the Kingstones aren’t so much fun in practice.

I had beaten this game while I was renting it. My honest advice is that you rent it, unless you are a Zelda fan. No, I’m joking. Play this game, since it’s one of the best adventure games the GBA has to offer.

I think that this game is more meant for the younger, newer Zelda fans. To get new players hooked to an awesome series. That’s the reason why it’s so… well, easy.

Closing words

This list was a bit tougher to put together then my DS list. The main reason is because my memories of the GBA time are fading a bit since the DS was such a huge hit with me. And back in those days I also played a lot of other games. So, my connection was less strong the with the gameboy or the DS.

In any case, I hope that some games you didn’t know got your attention. Feel free to play them, since I recommend all the games that I talked about in this top 10. And with this article, I close my GBA month. Thank you for sticking with me, and I hope to see you next week for a new article. Take care~

Gaming Music – Number 7: Moar good tracks

More music articles

Oh yes, it’s time to write a new article for this series again. In this article, I didn’t look for artwork that has to do with game music but I used the first screen from Electronic Super Joy. A game that’s good because of the music. Anyways, I’m a huge fan of game music. I admit that I listen to it nearly all the time. Even when going to work. It’s just addicting to listen to the amazing tunes they create for games. The atmosphere is just so… amazing thanks to the music. Now, I do have some rules. I can’t pick two tracks of one game in each article. Also, I avoid picking two tracks from the same series in one article. I hope I never slip up and pick one track twice. If that happens, feel free to leave a comment. Oh, and do feel free to comment on my music picks for this article. Anyways, here we go!

#1: The Legend Of Zelda – A Link Between Worlds (3DS) – Lowrule Overworld Theme

Link

Such a shame that I haven’t finished this game. Yet, the music is amazing. I really enjoy the melody of this tune. Yet, I have written a first impression of this game.

You truly recognize the melody of the overworld from Hyrule. This theme gives a more acapella-remix, one where the major leading instruments are taken out.

To be honest, this was my ringtone while I was playing the game. It happens frequently that a track from a game I really like becomes my ringtone.

Something I dislike about this track is how it doesn’t fit the mood of Lowrule as I image it. I honestly think it should be a lot darker. Then again, this track might be in such a light mood since our hero is bringing light and peace to this realm.

Yeah, this must be it.

#2: Professor Layton vs Ace Attorney: Phoenix Wright (3DS) – Objection Theme

Link

Remember my extremely long review of this game? Or my first impression. The game is amazing in my eyes. It really deserved all the hype and it totally met all my expectations. As usual, I ignored the posts with new screenshots to avoid spoilers. This way I can totally hype up myself.

I’m still enjoying the additional content for this game. Maybe one day, I might write a game quicky about it. Who knows. I’m changing the formula of game quickies anyways.

But I really enjoy this theme, it’s one of the best in the series. I’m hoping they are making a sequel for this game in the future since it deserves one. This is one of those kind of games where you’re sad it’s over. And be sure that I put the music of this game on replay. Just like this track. No question about it.

#3:  Pokémon Ruby, Sapphire and Emerald (GBA) – Legendary Pokemon

Link (extended)

When this track played when I found the legendary Pokémon for the first time in Ruby, I was hyped. While I think that the second generation is the best Pokémon generation, the 3rd game is the actual game I really got into the series.

This track still stays with me until this day. I fondly remember decoding the braille marking on the stones on get the Reggies.

I love listing to this track when I’m riding my bike home through the rain. I get the same vibe then from fighting a legendary Pokémon.

What kind of memories do you have with this track? Please let me know in the comments. Since I’m really curious.

#4: DuckTales: Remastered (PC ~ Steam) – The Moon

Link (extended)

I haven’t played a lot of this game. Yet, this track got posted on my forum by one of my friends who finished the game. He says that they keep this track until the end of the game. And dayum, is this a track to close off the game.

I really liked the music in the original but the remix for the remastered version is really amazing. Thumbs up for the creator of this track, or the remixer. It’s really well done. It’s almost perfect. I feel a new ringtone coming up. Yeah, I think I might take this one as a ringtone for a while.

#5: Okami (Wii) – Giving Kushinada A Ride

Link

Man, I’m so bummed out that I saved over my save file. I need to restart this game. Now, this game isn’t too hard so it’s no real pain. The biggest issue is that I have to restart. And this game is pretty long.

Strangely, I haven’t written any article about this game. Well, I have mentioned it in an article of games I want to finish. But that has been an article of last year. Now, I added this game to the list to write a first impression about in the future. Maybe you will see this game appearing on my blog in August.

This game has beautiful music. That’s why I’m mentioning a track in the article of course. The music is very amazing. You really can image giving somebody a ride (to safety). Through a beautiful painted landscape, this moment is really memorable.

The rest of the soundtrack is pretty amazing, but none is so memorable to me as this one. Yeah, when you play it and get to this moment… You will understand what I mean.

And yeah, this track is my alarm in the morning. When I need to wake up and go to work. It really wakes me up. (And my mother, who is in the room next doors.)

Final words

There we go, another music article. I hope you enjoyed this one. For my next article in this series I have an amazing idea. I’m listing the remixes and game-related music tracks I love to listen to.

I have a few great tracks in mind. And it might not be the only one of it’s kind. So yeah, keep an eye on my social media for more updates on the releases.

Anyways, I think I’m going to end this article here. Thanks for reading and until the next time!

My favorite game music #4: Turning this into a series.

Yes! I’m back. Well sort of. With a few announcements before we begin. First of all, I’m still studying. So, that’s why my laptop keyboard isn’t fixed yet. My family ordered a new keyboard but I get it with my birthday. Which is right after my exams. I have 8 left of them. So wish me good luck guys. Another announcement is that I’ll stream games again after my keyboard is fixed. And in addition to that, I’m turning this into a series. Yes! I’m fully convinced that this is a nice new series. So, I made a separate category for it and I’m now writing my 4th article in the series. Before you ask yourself where the other two articles are, I posted them on the ButtonSmashersBlog. Anyways, let’s get started now that all the personal stuff is out of the way and let’s start listing to some great beats. Oh, whoops. Before we forget. On this list, I don’t list remixes of tracks. Only the good old originals. And feel free to leave a comment or a like if you enjoyed this. 

 #1 Electronic Super Joy – Vee

Link

If you haven’t played this game, what are you waiting for? It’s simply amazing. Tight controls, fun gameplay, challenging levels and amazing music.

This track is one of my favorites the game has to offer. It blows my mind each and every time I’m listing to it.

I think the soundtrack of this game is really worth buying if you love or even just like techno or electronical music. It’s highly recommended.

#2: The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time – Gerudo Valley

Link

The orchestral version of this track is even better. But nothing can beat the original Ocarina Of Time track for me.

I used this track often as a character theme in my writing. It’s such an amazing theme for heroic characters and strong characters.

The character I wrote with it, is a general character. When you listen to the track and image an army rising from the horizon onto the battlefield, you’ll get what I mean.

If I could let myself go, this whole list would be full of tracks from the Zelda series. But I tried to keep this series open to other game series.

I’m rather curious if Nintendo is able to ever top this track. I actually doubt it since this is one of my favorite tracks ever made in the Zelda franchise.

#3: Wario – Master Of Disguise – Sweatmore Peak

Link

The amazing memories this game brings me. I bought this game judging on the back and front of the box. And I didn’t regret it. I’m actually replaying it now in order to write an article about it. Maybe you see a first impression or a review in the near future.

But this track is one of my absolute favorites from the game. It starts simple. But the track seems to be excited that some amazing music is going to come.

And it’s quite right. The longer the track goes, the better it becomes.

It’s light, upbeat, melodic… Everything I like in a good gaming track. I’m a bit bumped out that the track is sort of short. This is one of the tracks I think would have benefited from being longer.

#4: Pokemon X & Y – Collection Battle! Elite 4

Link

Ehehehe, I still need to write a review or a first impression of this game. I admit, I haven’t finished this game. And I think some tracks in the soundtrack of this game are just boring. Like the gym leader one. There isn’t much going on.

But the elite four battle music took my by surprise. I’m now trying to beat the league and I really think that this theme is perfect.

The rock elements is what makes this track so great. I was even headbanging a bit while listing to this track, while writing this article.

They needed to have a more upbeat track for the gym leaders and I wouldn’t be able to say that the soundtrack is flawed.

#5: Pokemon Ruby, Sapphire & Emerald – Frontier Train Battle 

Link

A great game I’m going to replay in the future is the 4th 3rd generation of Pokémon games. It’s honestly one of my favorite entries in the series. And the possible remakes of them is just exciting me a whole lot. (And thanks Austin for pointing out my mistake here.)

I’m rather curious if they are going to remake it. But this track really needs to be in it! I think it’s totally worth adding.

It just brings up so many memories when hearing this track. I just love it and I think it’s really at home here in the Pokémon soundtrack.

Closing words

Yes, I’m making this an exclusive article for this blog. Next article will be a new creepypasta. But I already published it on a friends Tumblr. You can find it on my CreepyPasta page.

Anyways, I know this is a short article but forgive me. I’m quite busy and when I’m done studying I prefer playing some games instead of working on new articles and such. I’m just too tired to write creatively. But give me until the end of this month and I can make my full blown return guys! Thanks for reading and take care!

Oh, and for this article I changed the design of my blog. I hope you like this theme. But don’t worry, I like change it from time to time! Just to spice things up you know?