October 2003 Archives

Safari Zone: caught a Phanpy, Heracross and a Girafirag, which I believe ends my list of Safari Zone exclusives. I forget if you can catch a Donphan in there, so I just plan on evolving up the Phanpy.

Finally did some trading with Rhon's Pokemon Ruby: Alakazam, Machamp, Golem and Huntail. One nice thing about trade evolutions is that the receiver gets pokedex credit for both monsters. So by giving Rhonda a Kadabra that immediately evolved into Alakazam she got a +2 to her 'dex. Then trading it right back to me rounded out my list. The Huntail evolves from trading a Clamperl equipped with the Deepseatooth. The Deepseatooth is one of the Ruby/Sapphire "choice" items. You get to choose either the Deepseatooth or the Deepseascale and the other disappears forever (like the Root/Claw Fossils.) Note to self: choose the scale in Ruby. Also scored a Mawile and a Seedot, two monsters found only in Ruby.

Wasted a lot of time fishing on Route 119 for a Feebas. The damn things show up in a randomized 1-6 squares out of a possible 4 million squares, so they're grotesquely hard to locate. In a weird don't-kill-the-prehistoric-butterfly moment, the squares are reset every time the popular phrase in Dewford Town changes. I have a sneaking suspicion that Feebas (and, by extension, Milotic) will be among the very last pokemon I catch.

Difficult catches: Nosepass, Crobat and Snorunt. The Nosepass can only be found in Granite Cave, hiding inside the smashable rocks. Of course he's randomly uncovered, so it takes lots of Rock Smashing to find him. I've been through Granite Cave several times before and I finally hit a lucky Smash. Nosepass is, of course, horrendously ugly.

Crobat - as I discovered about 100 hours ago - only appears if your Golbat likes you. Getting a pokemon to like you is easy but time consuming. Basically you just have to carry him around forever and try to minimize him dying in battles. I tucked the Golbat into my belt for hours, with him just shy of his next level-up. Periodically I'd take him to the lady in Verdanturf City who can tell you if your pokemon like you. Her assertions are merely categorical; it took several more hours of Golbat-sitting to get him to evolve even after she claimed he "liked [me] very much."

The toughest part about catching a Snorunt was finding time to play when the tide is out. Snorunts are only found at the bottom of Shoal Cave during low tide, which always seems to be when I'm not playing. So early one morning (around 8am) I picked up Sapphire and saved my game once I was deep in Shoal Cave's ice room. Then I continued later at my convenience. Lucky that the tide can't come in while you're innocently sitting in the flood zone.

What do you do when your Shelgon needs some quick experience? I entered him as part of my team against the Elite Four. Putting him in the catbird seat for my second run at the Championship moved him up several levels without much effort.

Shelgon level 38	Crobat level 46	"Razorbeak" Swellow level 62	Metagross level 61	Raichu level 54	Rayquaza level 70

The Metagross and Swellow did most of the work; the Raichu missed too many attacks to be used reliably. The Rayquaza was just along for insurance, and I did let him chew up a few opponents with his Outrage attack. And poor Crobat was the chump I'd throw in if I needed some time to revive/heal one of the more important fighters. I wonder if that will make him like me less.

Next entry: Nintendo's new Pokemon Battle-e cards.

Time: 130:36
Badges: 8
Pokedex: 176 (seen: 191)
Party: Shelgon lv43, Razorbeak (Swellow) lv62, Seedot lv3, Metagross lv61, Golduck lv50, Snorunt lv26

In a single month I have had two opportunities to punctuate a diatribe with the beginning phrase "at what point do you abandon your demagoguery and..."

A couple weeks ago our local news did a story on a food drive. Lots of well-meaning white people were collecting canned goods and monetary donations to be sent to somewhere in Africa. That's all fine, but it's essentially boring. It made the news because some area Catholic churches were telling their members to boycott the food drive because some of the money collected ends up buying condoms. Condoms that are carpet-bombed across the continent to stop the rampant spread of HIV.

To Mike, in conversation: At what point do you abandon your demagoguery and just do the right thing?

Tonight I was reading the latest Penny Arcade, where the lads spend some quality paragraphs extolling some silly third-party programs that make your Windows machine look and function like Mac OSX. One program, ObjectDock, re-creates the bouncy, magical OSX application launcher... complete with pastel shadowed icons.

To Matt, over IM: At what point do you abandon your demagoguery and just make the switch?

Anybody want to see me go for a triple?

The "special edition" of The Lion King is awfully underwhelming. Not the film itself, you understand, but the supposed additions to the original. What's strange is that this is a film that stands on its own and doesn't need some kind of crazy special edition 2 disc DVD to sell it. But we've become accustomed to seeing big films get a big DVD treatment, so Disney is happy to oblige.

You get the original theatrical version as well as the special edition. The only difference I noted between the two is a new song, "Morning Report." Sounds like a great bullet point for the marketing team - especially since Lion King is kinda light on songs - except that "Morning Report" isn't really a song. It's Zazu singing his report on the kingdom (which you'll remember from the original) instead of saying it... and most of the singing is muffled by the bit where Mufasa teaches young Simba to pounce. I think Zazu gets about two whole lines out before he gets relegated to the background. Simba himself wraps up the song by singing the chorus you barely heard Zazu sing, but he has to sing it through clenched teeth because he's eating Zazu's tail! All in all, a very weird addition.

Note: telling me that your DVD contains a "restored, cleaned, repaired, brightened" version of the movie is no longer a selling feature. I now expect that, particularly from a company like Disney.

One of the neater revelations in the supplementary information is the lost Timon verse of "Hakuna Matata." When they meet Simba, Timon makes a big deal how he and Pumbaa are exiles and living a carefree bum's life. In the film's "Hakuna Matata," we learn that Pumbaa had to leave the other animals because he smells, but we never heard Timon's story. Are we to assume Timon smells too?

I recall hearing a non-canon version of Timon's side, either on the animated series or in the comics. It had to do with unrequited love for the princess meerkat or something. Well, not in the original song. It turns out he's just lazy. The colony kicked his ass out.

It's a shame Disney skipped this part, because it would have been nice, judging from the storyboards. Lots of identical meerkats standing in formation, jumping in and out of holes... and stupid Timon slouching, complaining and mugging for the camera. Maybe they thought Timon's story would mirror Simba's own too closely and send the wrong message: Simba leaves his family and the Pridelands goes to shit; Timon leaves his family and no one cares. Or maybe Hakuna Matata was just getting too long. Have to get to that precious fart joke as soon as possible.

And I still didn't see the famous "SEX" image. You dumbass Christian organizations need to hurry up and die already.

Hopefully my second year of Animal Crossing will be the year I complete the catalog. To that end I am aggressively recording what items I need - although many are Crazy Redd items, which leaves me at the mercy of A) randomly generated Redd events or B) online trading. Then there's the Station Models, which I'll have to hunt down on the eCard games.

I have started keeping track of the weekly turnip prices in hopes of discovering a trend. I read somewhere that good turnip prices are the same over the life of your town. Meaning that if the turnip selling price spikes when you buy for 80 bells, then the price will always go high when you buy for 80. Could be true, could be crappy internet rumor, like the one I started about flying your Arwing. If this pattern is true, it will make the uber-rare $$$ post office items a reachable goal.

But the really good news is that Bitty is gone. I've always hated her. I have a low tolerance for the snobby personality types, and when that rudeness is combined with a fat pink monster I am even less affable. (Although I don't mind the attitude on sexy villagers like Olivia.)

So I thought I would share what I have learned about controlling your town's population. There's a lot of worthless information out there on this topic. Hitting villagers with your net, shoving them into pitfalls, and sending them mean letters will have no effect on making them move out. None. That is all a waste of time, except that it's funny. Like most things in Animal Crossing, you have to learn to increase your odds and control the game's random nature.

The first step in selective villager management is to go against your instincts: Talk ONLY to the animals you want to move (or to those you don't care one way or the other.) In my town, I was only talking to Ava, Bitty, Cheri, Anicotti... and sometimes Puck and Billy. What you're trying to do is trigger the random conversation where the animal tells you they intend to move out (or asks you if you think they should move.) I haven't exactly determined which comes first, however: either the game decides randomly who is next to move and that animal confesses, or the conversation causes it. I suspect it is the latter.

Regardless, when an animal you want to ditch tells you he or she intends to move, get on the train and go. That animal will move to whatever town you visit... this is why it is good to run a garbage town, to collect all the losers you're trying to get rid of. Bitty now lives in my garbage town, a miserable hellhole full of weeds. On the less-evil side, I'm trying to get Anicotti to move back into RhondaCat's town because she was one of Rhon's favorites... so when Anicotti decides she's got the wanderlust, I'll send her off to Holliday.

This is still a muddled area. It is possible to talk for weeks and not see the "I'm moving" conversation, so you could have no idea who is next to leave on the train. My next tip is much more controllable, easily remembered by the economics maxim Last In First Out.

Conversations aside, your animal most in danger of leaving town suddenly is your newest one. If you're not travelling yourself (and therefore instigating the follow-along move), you'll receive a new villager about every two weeks. The new arrival always kicks out the "youngest" animal. So in a town with no train-travelling, your bottom 14 villagers (the oldest) will remain the same while the 15th position constantly rotates every two weeks. If you have people visiting your town, their follow-along movers will likewise always squeeze out your newest animal.

If you get a 15th villager that you want to keep, you have to move them further down the list by letting other animals move in. The only way to do this is to travel yourself and have one of your animals move out, and thereby making room for a new animal to move in (as long as your town is in good condition, a new animal will always appear to fill an empty slot.) This will drop your 15th down to 14th, making him or her relatively safe.

Summary:
When you travel to another town...
- A random villager moves out of your town and into the town you visit. You can attempt to manipulate this by talking to villagers and forcing the "I'm moving" conversation. If this is an animal that the second town has never seen before, he or she will be the new #15, squeezing out the previous #15. If this animal has a history with the second town, he or she will keep the old rank... thus bumping #14 to #15.
- A new animal will appear in your town to fill the empty slot as your new #15.

When someone travels to your town...
- The traveller will bring along a random villager that will move into your town, squeezing out your #15. If your town has never seen this animal before, he or she will be the new #15. If this animal has already lived in your town, he or she will keep the old rank and push your #14 to #15.
- The traveller's town will receive a new random villager as their #15.

If you do not travel at all...
- Every two weeks your #15 will disappear, replaced by a new random animal.

I've learned this over the course of some very painful lessons. Like many AC players, I at first assumed that regular conversations and fond letter-writing would create relationships and keep my favorite villagers from moving away. I tested this hardcore on Samson, a mouse I really liked. I sent him a letter a day, talked to him constantly, gave him fruit. He was #15; he moved away after two weeks. I did the same with Dilbert, a geeky duck whose catch phrase was "Derrrrrr." I got Dilbert down to #14, but then a train brought a villager who had already done time in Adamsvil... pushing Dilbert to #15. In two weeks, he was gone, despite all the fun we had at the Spring Sports Fair.

Letters mean nothing. Errands mean nothing. Pitfalls means nothing. It's all about controlling who is in your 15th slot, and dealing with the random nature of the train tagalong.

My time count below isn't going to accurately reflect the lost hours to Pokemon Sapphire for this update. I've been doing a lot of quitting and restarting in my attempts to catch Rayquaza. I also made a few fresh runs at the League with a new team but the spirit just isn't there yet.

Before catching Rayquaza, the most exciting news for my Sapphire game is that I'm now playing it on a onyx-colored GBA SP. Now - except for the two hidden pokemon - the only super-rare legendary asskicking monster I need is Groudon. I haven't done any trading with Ruby yet, so the Ruby-exclusives (like Groudon) and the trade-evolutions now account for a big portion of my missing pokedex members.

Before heading into Sky Pillar for the assault on Rayquaza, I checked my inventory: still full of potions for an eventual League match and plenty of Ultra Balls from the chase for Latios. The Pillar is nothing more than a couple floors to climb, but you have to use the Mach Bike to quickly cover the weak spots in the floor before they fall out from under you. Weaving the bike through a quick series of right angles is annoying, not to mention the random battles against Golbats, Claydols, Altarias and Sableyes. Although I did snag a Claydol and Altaria en route to Rayquaza, so "nothing ventured, nothing caught," I suppose. Rayquaza sleeps at the top of the Pillar, and like all legendaries, this is a one-time-only opportunity.

His big trick is to unleash ultra-powerful attacks, and the Rest back up to full health when you get him in the red. I started my Metagross, who is generally resistant to Rayquaza's attacks... and whose Psychic attack does a reasonable amount of damage. In the many battles I lost (and restarted), I watched my overzealous Metagross knock out the Rayquaza, or the Rayquaza get confused from fatigue and knock itself out. A few times my entire team was knocked out as I lobbed Ultra Ball after Ultra Ball (and occasional Timer Balls) to no effect.

I probably should have brought in a team with status attacks so I could put the Rayquaza to sleep myself. But since I didn't, I figured it was just a matter of playing the odds. At some point I'll get lucky and capture him on an early Ultra Ball, right? And all I need is one Ultra Ball to beat the odds and get through.

In the battle where it happened, it was the second Ultra Ball that did it... you can't ask for much more than that, even though it took me twenty-couple attempts to get there. Now back to evolving and searching. Shroomish, Machop: you're up at bat.

Time: 105:37
Badges: 8
Pokedex: 130 (seen: 179)
Party: Shroomish lv25, Razorbeak (Swellow) lv56, Raichu lv53, Metagross lv54, Rayquaza lv70, Machop lv24

Played a bunch of new and new-to-us stuff this past weekend. So, a quick rundown...

Creepy Freaks. Our Origins Best of Show is finally available in stores. Expensive game though: $13 for a starter set of four figures and $5 for booster packs of two figures. Counting the freebies we netted from Origins, we have about 20 figures, plenty for good-sized multiplayer battles. As Mike pointed out, it's definitely a game of attrition; if you lose figures faster than your opponent it's tough to catch up. One rule we tossed was the concession rule, where you're supposed to admit defeat once you're down to one figure left. Since you roll dice to move, your paths are unpredictable... so it's entirely possible (but difficult) to have one figure simply roll better and out-maneuver three enemy figures. However, I think the game lacks balance at this stage of release. The figures themselves do not have any kind of numerical point value, so why not leave out the weak and only play with a team of figures with full life dials and Queen-like movement choices? Without a pre-agreed figure point limit, any Mr. Suitcase could own the field.

NeoPets TCG. Rhonda and I have already glommed on to this cutesy, easy card game. Although the initial card set is huge (300-some cards), the gameplay is a bit anemic. You field your NeoPets into four contest arenas based on their stats... but (and Mike was first to voice this concern) if you and your opponent happen to have decks tuned to different arenas, you'll just end up fighting by yourself and always scoring points. Then it becomes a boring race to see who can slap down 21 points first. Regardless, I've committed to it - if only to create a deck based around my own pet Red Nimmo and Yellow Grundo once those types make it to the TCG. I suspect that if you're familiar the NeoPets website you'll enjoy the game more. I think the game has potential, but it's no Pokemon.

Volcano and RAMbots. Both of these games are played with generic Icehouse pieces from Looney Labs (order your own from their online store and tell them Joe Fourhman sent you!) Volcano is a multiplayer puzzle game that's extremely engaging. You can hear a pin drop while four players are staring at the grid of volcanoes planning future moves. RAMbots lets you program little robots that run around a chessboard. I like RAMbots a lot, but it has a hell of a learning curve. There's a lot to grasp before you move your 'bot one single space. Highly suggested for those with a good sense of spatial relationships, because you plan out your RAMbot's path ahead of time, and then carry out your instructions simultaneous with your opponents. So the carefully planned moves you intended can get totally wrecked by the moves of the enemies.

Weapons & Warriors. The gamefield looks like this: two plastic castles, one at either end, each with a bunker and bivowac to the left... the fiefdoms connected by a winding cardboard path with a forest in the middle. Phalanxes of archers stand to one side, mounted knights await inside the castle walls, hordes of soldiers standing near and on every structure. Each player - to date primarily Mike and myself - gets four weapons that shoot little plastic marbles: two catapults (which suck), one ballista (for low shots) and one cannon (for high shots.) And everything is spring loaded with rubber bands so when you hit certain pressure points shit starts exploding. We've written our own rules for the most part, but the game's one big rule is that your weapons can't get any closer than the furthest advanced soldier (along that tree-lined path that leads to the enemy.) Of course, the closer the weapon, the more accurate and dramatic the carnage... but those scout troops inevitably get a marble at point blank range. Eventually plastic soldiers are scattered, castles are crumbling, and about 10% of the marbles are missing.

And then there was the best Doomtown game of 2003. Mike's Law Dogs vs. my retooled Maze Rats deck. Mike's gimmick is to play a ton of Flight of Angels against me and count on cheating. To increase the odds of seeing me cheat, a runs A Friendly Game, and uses the Dogs' home ability to move my dudes around unexpectedly. My deck wants to get a lot of Kung Fu abilities on several choice dudes and then sit on my opponent's deeds for double control points. A few turns in, Mike had applied some heavy pressure. I had multiple Flights on me and kept losing dudes to that. Luckily I kept pulling new dudes out, and I was able to avoid cheatin' hands often enough to keep me in the game. Once we had some shootouts that thinned down the dude herd, his guys ended up booted through various means (including the Still!) and I had enough mobile influence to takeover enough of his deeds for the win.

Mysteriously, I found myself playing Super Smash Bros. Melee for about an hour late last night. I didn't really expect to play it for any length of time; I just wanted to unlock the hidden Captain Olimar trophy, since we recently picked up Pikmin. My SSBM skills have obviously languished a bit in the year or so since my last serious play... but then again I chose a rather tough measuring stick: the target test boards.

Each character has a uniquely designed target test level, but most involve lots of floating and/or moving platforms and randomly scattered targets to hit all hovering over a bottomless death pit. To tag all ten, you have to make use of each character's special abilities... resulting in difficult challenges like Young Link's level: trapped in a tall cylinder (wall jump to get out), targets surrounded by walls (use the boomerang or shoot arrows). I actually cleared quite a few of the screens - I had never given the mode much thought back when I first got the game - but I've lost the feather touch required to differentiate between a slow walk and a fast dash, so I wrecked a lot of attempts simply by jerking Ganondorf or Captain Falcon or whoever completely off the platform when I had intended to just inch closer to the edge.

And some for reason I had never noticed the special movie before. I don't know when I unlocked it, or if I did unlock it, but it was stinkin' awesome. The movie features each of the original SSBM characters in turn, as well as sequences spotlighting items and pokemon. It's a long movie. It's all done with in-game footage, showing various unusual animations, attacks and poses. Which leads me to imagine a single Japanese programmer in a darkened edit suite recording and re-editing hours of play footage. I can't believe it took me two years to find it.

As for Pikmin, I like it. (So in celebration today's weblog update has a Pikmin decor.) The original batch of screenshots do not do the game justice. For years I've had this vague impression of Pikmin as a high-concept title that looked like ass. I was half-right. All those muddy pictures showing the bubble-headed astronaut dude standing in a sea of N64 grass textures look much, much better right in front of you. The environment looks very realistic, all tree stumps and knots of weeds... in fact, I read somewhere that the lawn textures came from photographs taken in Shigeru Miyamoto's own garden! So if you're holding out on Pikmin because of terrible screenshots, do not be further misinformed.

My other game-of-the-moment is Boktai. I can't really say much about it, since I can't play it until this weekend. Thanks to a nifty sunlight sensor jutting out the top of the cartridge, you need a steady infusement of sun to fight the game's ghouls and vampires. The sun charges your weapon, so direct sunlight translates into almost infinite ammo. (The converse is that those seeking a more challenging adventure can play at night, when the forces of evil are at full strength.) I tried it out during my lunch break. I sat outside on the company lawn and kicked zombie ass for 15 minutes. I tried playing it later at home, but with the sun down the nasties were at full power. This weekend I'll reserve some precious daylight for a trip into bat-infested catacombs.

Boktai has some of the clearest voice samples I've ever heard in a GB game. Plus a very unique visual look, an arty pastel brush look that is uncommon in video games.

I know many gamers are going to scoff, slam and ignore Boktai for making actual natural sunlight a vital component to gameplay. I think it's great. Like the real-time of Animal Crossing or the Pikachu Pedometer of Pokemon Silver, Boktai has found a novel way to extend the game beyond the screen and into your life.