Month: December 2019

Building the Best Pokémon Team (Part 15)

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Building the Best Pokémon Team (Part 15)

I’ll say this for Generation 3, they sure gave us a whole heap of new Pokémon, over 130 new boys and girls and Claydols to get acquainted with. And unlike Generation 2, which barely even showed you a nipslip of its new Pokémon, Hoenn invited you backstage to a strip show with everything on display.

Everywhere you looked it was bouncing Spoinks and smooth Lunatones and horny Solrocks and thick Wailords. It threw its Pokémon in your face until you couldn’t breathe, and the Gen 1 Pokémon waiting for you at home suddenly looked so bookish and librarian and frumpy in comparison. You know what I mean?

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8 Gruesome Ways to Die in Gaming

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8 Gruesome Ways to Die in Gaming (2019)

It’s true – game characters die all the time, and sometimes you just can’t do a gosh darn thing about it. Still, being shuffled off this mortal coil isn’t that much of a bummer for them. Almost unfairly, they’ll always simply start over from a checkpoint or save point. Or at worst, back at the level’s beginning. Unless it’s that crazy mech game Steel Batallion, then death might very well be death. But other than that…

No, death for a gaming character tends to be merely a slap on the wrist in this day and age, but you had to look after your limited lives a lot more in retro games, especially when your poor characters suffered some pretty grisly fates. Even in some of the cutesiest games around, the methods of death could be fairly macabre, even if the designers didn’t mean them to be so. In true Christmas spirit, then, here are what I consider to be eight of the gruesomest, most alarming game deaths, in no particular order.

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The NES is like heroin, and not in a good way

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Nintendo Entertainment System (1987)

To paraphrase Gordon Gekko, retro, for lack of a better word, is good. Retro is right, retro works. Retro clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the gaming spirit. Retro, in all of its forms; retro for life, for money, for love, for knowledge, has marked the upward surge of mankind. Retro is what sells, and everybody wants to be retro.

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Put me in your best high heels, and I’d do no better

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Metroid (1988)

I saw a recent picture of Heather Locklear the other day and it was a sad sight, readers, a sad sight. You get this idea in your head that someone like Heather would be what you’d call ‘infinitely attractive’. As in, even after a thousand years, with the polar ice caps fully melted and we’re living in Water World, you’d still get Heather herself cutting about and looking head and shoulders above everybody else. I must sadly report that these days she’s a bit of a mess of collagen, puppy fat and wrinkly eyes, and her bolt is well and truly shot. I suppose it’s an unfortunate fact of life – everybody eventually declines with age. Everybody except Kylie, of course.

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6 Pokémon You Wouldn’t Want in Real Life

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6 Pokémon You Wouldn’t Want in Real Life (2019)

Any player of Pokémon has surely had a near nerdgasm at that fantastic idea of Pokémon being real. Even if it were just Pidgeys flying into your garden and eating Caterpies, you’d still lap it up. Even if these things already happen in nature, it’s all a bit mundane for you – why can’t there be 15-foot long blue worms living in the water that turn into humongous orange dragons if you feed them enough candies?

And why can’t there be a bee the size of a small child? Or an enormous squid that can take down buildings? But no – we have to get our Responsible Caps on, every once in a while. It just wouldn’t do if every Pokémon were real. Some of them are just downright dangerous, even in David Attenborough’s hands, never mind a snotty 10-year-old child. Here, we take a look at a full team of six Pokémon that one wouldn’t fancy the hassle of keeping in real life. Keep in mind that all six of these hail from the primitive first Generation of Pokémon Red, Blue and Yellow. I have to cater for the casuals sometimes, don’t I?

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Building the Best Pokémon Team (Part 14)

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Building the Best Pokémon Team (Part 14)

Toerags, Titanics and thunderous crying – it’s a pretty diverse range of emotions below, to match the pretty diverse range of Pokémon available to you in the Hoenn region. Don’t count your chickens now, because there’s still a zillion water Pokémon to get through in the Hoenn Dex. And in later regions, we obviously have to acquaint ourselves with the fact that there are rubbish bags, ice creams and carkeys all vying for a spot on our team. Next to guys like those, your Minuns and your Volbeats don’t look so bad, do they…? Ah, don’t answer that.

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The castle costs a fortune but the Succubus comes free

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Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (1997)

I always said that if I won the lotto I wouldn’t be overly extravagant about it. Don’t get me wrong, I hate when there’s a massive Euromillions win, €190 million squids and the winners aren’t virile, attractive young man like me (yes, me). No, it’s always Mary (73) and Joe (75) and they say it won’t change them and they’ll still work every day on the farm and all that rubbish.

What?! Joe, this is your big chance, and your heart hasn’t got much pump left. Get out there to Vegas and throw thousands of dollars on every spin of the roulette table. Keep the drinks and drugs coming, and even if you blow through a hundred thousand in a night, you’ve zillions left in reserve. That’ll have the “dancing girls” round your hotel room quick as well.

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