(no subject)

Left the hotel with just Mom yesterday. Dad had already left on his own earlier on, since he came separately in the van. Brian will be coming home today, but Marie is gonna remain in Boston for another week or two to finish up an internship.

Met up with Uncle Robby and Cousin Adam at a McDonald's early on to pick up Grandpa. Other than that, not much happened on the way home. Just passed the time reading volume 6 and part of volume 7 of Lucky Star.

At some point after we got home, Dad had me bring all of Marie's stuff that he packed into the van into the basement. While I was busy doing that, I noticed a Game Boy Color containing Super Mario Land 2: Six Golden Coins inside some small wooden case. Considering that Marie doesn't normally play video games due to her poor hand-eye coordination, that leaves me to wonder if that was really her's and why she got it.

Parallels, much?

A few decades ago, Atari was the king of the video game industry.

Until nearly a year ago, Pokemon had been my favorite video game series to default on when I needed something to play.

In the early 1980's, it hosted an epic competition known as SwordQuest, in which gamers would join a club, buy each of four elemental games as they came out, and strive to solve a puzzle and riddle, deriving clues from a comic book that came with each game, in hopes of winning a treasure of tremendous value and ultimately a sword of silver with the Atari logo.

Starting in October 2005, when this blog was only half a year old (and the actual date went unmarked), I started what would evolve into a Pokemon marathon, starting with the original Red. At the time, I was just playing the games for the sake of playing them, but within the next two years, due to some issues I had during that time with Sapphire (and Emerald, which I aborted an initial playthrough of), I started keeping records of Pokemon that I either let evolve or taught a TM or HM to, and it became a tradition since. While playing Pearl half a year later, I found out from the respective player's guide, about something called the Pal Park, which enables players to migrate Pokemon from any of the five games from Generation III. From this, I decided to go back after completing Pearl, and play FireRed, Ruby, and Emerald all the way through (I had already completed LeafGreen beforehand), before playing the yet-to-be-released Platinum and migrating six Pokemon from each Gen III game onto that game. Long story short, this evolved into plans to play all remaining four games of Gen IV after Pearl.

The contests for Earthworld and Fireworld went through without a hitch, with Steven Bell and Michael Rideout winning their respective prizes. Come Waterworld, the Video Game Market Crash of 1983 was already taking its toll, and Atari was about to go out of business. Thus, only the game was released, in limited quantities, without any comics or contest. Needless to say, Airworld never saw the light of day (at least not officially, though there are said to exist betas of the game).

As a whole, I had always enjoyed the games. However, at some point, the more I played them, and the more I read about on Bulbapedia, the more things I saw wrong with them. I even remember playing Silver back in December 2001, just shortly before receiving Crystal for Christmas that year, and I was constantly thinking "How many things are wrong with this game?"

I had already completed SoulSilver back in October 2010, and I do intend to finish Diamond, but only because I've done everything there is to do in the main part of Sinnoh, and now only have to do a few things in the Battle Zone before writing the record for that game. In Platinum, though, I only intend to play as far as until I establish a secret base underground, which will be determined by wherever I find the last randomly-placed trap before my trap bag is full, and will in turn determine where May will establish a base in Parasitic Trio. I have no real reason to bother playing HeartGold any further than I have (that is, having just cleared the first gym).

So, how did the game market crash those three decades ago? Many simplify things and blame it on the watered-down 2600 version of Pac-Man and the overproduction and suckitude of E.T., but the big picture is described on Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_video_game_crash_of_1983

So, what do I see wrong with the Pokemon game series? If you're thinking the changes that came with Pokemon Black and White, you're wrong. While a few things have something to do with that, most of what I'm about to describe have been true since Gen I:

( Read more... )

With the Crash came the end of game production for the Atari 2600, and of Atari's glory days. Not long after, though, Nintendo arose as the new head of the video game industry, after launching the Family Computer in Japan and the Nintendo Entertainment System in North America, and releasing far more intricate games for those twin systems than the 2600 or any of its competitors could hope to run. Atari still competed in the game and console business, but only as a shadow of its former self, going out once and for all with the death of its last console, the Jaguar... until Infogrames bought it out in 2001 and renamed itself the new Atari.

Now that I've mostly put the games behind me, here is the very first chapter of the real thing: Parasitic Trio!!! (Jake, thanks for all your effort in writing what I've written, much more elaborately!)

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/8133320/1/Parasitic_Trio_Ellens_Quest

For the record, I've already read through the player's guides for Pokemon Black and White, and I still intend to buy the guides for the upcoming Black 2 and White 2 and any games due to come out further in the future. However, I'm only talking about the guides, not the games themselves.