Can't Sleep Again, So Here I Post

     Well I haven't been able to sleep again tonight, so I sat down and typed this up so I could promote another video on the YouTube channel.  Last night niether Madison nor I could sleep so we went for a drive.  I stopped periodically so we could catch so pokémon.

A Little Help For All You Pokémon Masters

Recently an new feature dropped for Pokémon GO, the ability to transfer from GO to Pokémon Home, and I found the internet very lacking on details of how exactly to make this transfer.  Also, the game itself seems light on explanations, so i dug around in the app, and have discovered the secrets of the Pokémon GO transfer process.

For those who just want a quick video tutorial, there is one right here from my youtube channel, the guy who sounds funny:

For those who aren't into listening to a guy who sounds like he has no formal speaking experience trying to bumble his way through a video tutorial, I have also prepared a purely text-based tutorial as well.

First thing you're going to have to do is to load up Pokemon GO.  

Once into GO, you can press the little pokéball down at the bottom, then go up to the top and press settings.

From there, scroll all the way down till you reach the bottom.  Your screen should look something like this:

Press the Pokémon HOME title and you should jump to this screen:

Now, the first time you arrive here the game will tell you you have to log in with your Nintendo account before you can transfer.  Tapping where it says Send Pokémon in the image above will take you to the Nintendo website, where you can log in.  You will then be brought back to the game, where you can now press Send Pokémon, and that will transfer you to something like this:

Now, this is where previous reveals about this process were a little lacking.  It was originally implied that you would have to pay coins per transfer, as well as being unable to transfer unless the pokémon was already in your HOME pokédex.  Turns out none of that is true, but it may be just a little more devious than that.  You see, you get transfer energy, and it takes a full week to restore the whole bar.  But it also doesn't take the whole bar to transfer, either.  What pokémon you are trying to send determines the amount of energy needed, and for most pocket monsters, you can send quite a few in a single week.  But shinies and mythic pokémon take a lot more.  As of posting this, I haven't been able to confirm it yet, but I suspect that a mythic monster takes an entire weeks worth of energy.  So to transfer your entire collection of 52 Celebi would take an entire year.  Unless you want to pay some real cash.

So, it turns out you can pay to transfer as well.  A full weeks worth of transfer energy can be purchased for about 1000 Pokécoins.  This translates to ruffly $10, so if it takes a full weeks worth of transfer energy to transfer a mythic, that's gonna be $10 a Celebi or Mew.

Now that we have the cost mechanics out of the way, you should be on a screen similar to this one: 

All of your pokémon available for transfer should be listed here, any that aren't available to transfer currently should be grayed out, like this:

Once you've made your selections, just tap the next button and follow your on-screen instructions to finalize the transfer, and you should be the happy owner of some powerful pokémon in Sword & Shield or the Let's GO games.  Happy hunting and better battles my friends, and I hope this tutorial helped any of you with questions.  Bye

Summer Slowdown

     It seems that summer 2020 is just all around terrible.  The west coast is on fire, the Rockies are frozen solid, and the east is having another resurgence of COVID-19.  So its little wonder that the lack of summer game releases and the continued delays of major titles have slipped under most people's radars.

     But as this is a gaming blog and most of what I've been able to do since February is play videogames, I'm a little saddened by the lack of new releases coming out for any platform right now.

     From long awaited titles like Beyond Good & Evil 2 still not making a 2020 deadline, to a launch title not making it to launch (and Halo Infinite being the only thing anyone was going to purchase a series X for), 2020 is the year of disappointment in the gaming sphere.  Everything including the number of games released on Stadia, to the lack of quality of life updates for Animal Crossing: New Horizons has let us down.

     I know that it is still September, and there are still three months to the rest of the year, and there is still Cyberpunk 2077.  But with that games history and the way this year is going I'm not holding my breath.  I just don't see any major players swooping in at the last minute to save the day, and I haven't heard any whispers in the æther of any sort of indie title that might be a light in the darkness.

     So as the heat here in the west fries  my brain and I succumb to the negative vibes of the worst year on record so far, I sign out saying that not even the greatest escapism mankind has created can hide the fear and anxiety building around the world, and that's pretty bad.

     

Weekend Rollback

     Doing these game streams for my son to have something to watch has really driven me to keep up a lot better with posting to my blog here.  I've got another video, hanging around the fifteen minute mark, ready to be viewed.  What I'm finding really interesting is just how easy it is to get fifteen minutes of streaming done.  I keep sitting down telling myself I've only got five minutes and I'll just do something quick, and then all of a sudden the video is three times longer than I expected.

     Now onto the topic today.  I've been trying to work with the equipment I have at the moment, so the videos are all mobile games so far, which got me thinking about good mobile games, or at least really popular ones, which led me to remembering Clash of Clans.  This title was once king of the land prior to titles like Fortnite, and about half a decade ago it seemed like everybody was playing Clash.  It even spawned a television show you could watch on Google Play, which I believe landed two seasons.  Still popular today, it sadly got eclipsed rapidly, as I said, by the ascension of Fortnite and PUBG.  Still, the RTS-like PVP battle-builder was revolutionary in its legitimizing mobile gaming, so I thought a quick video reminding older players, and introducing younger ones, was a great idea.  So here it is folks, an intro to Clash-of-Clans:

And Another One Down

     So, got a little free time this morning, real early, and recorded another let's play, this time for Kingdom Hearts Union Cross.  I honestly feel terrible that I haven't finished this game yet, but there are just so many levels that I could probably do two dozen videos on them.  I'll make sure to post them all if I do.

     Once again, this is just a shorter video intended to get some content up on the channel so my boy has some gaming TV to watch.  Though at this rate that might turn into something more, as he is still really excited about this project and wants more.

     Knowing that, I've set myself an initial goal to reach of recording a minimum of twenty four hours of content for the channel, and if I can accomplish that in a timely fashion, I may invest in more hardware for recording these videos, and may branch into trying to dig up gaming news as well.  Who knows, this may turn into a totally legitimate YouTube Channel.  Until then, I hope you enjoy my little videos.  Here's todays:

Starting a New Stream

     So my son demanded earlier today that I let him watch some let's play streams on YouTube, and he really wanted to watch some video game videos.  I told him he needed to wait until I could find something appropriate for him to watch.  Almost forty minutes later my son gave up waiting and went to play in his room, and I still hadn't found a gaming stream that was appropriate for his age.  This led to me thinking, 'hey, I have the skill and equipment to produce content, so I will.'

     So i sat down and recorded my first YouTube gaming stream, and now my son has something to watch.

     This first video is simple stream of Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp, and is just an introduction to this new project, really.  I hope you all enjoy it, and leave me a comment or message with any feedback or ideas.  Enjoy:

There's One Hundred and Fifty or More to See

     I really should have posted this one over a week ago when I first accomplished it, but I was able to actually collect all the first one-hundred and fifty-one original pokémon, including Mew (I had to break down and buy the last pokéball plus our local Wal-Mart had, as it turns out this is the only way to get Mew in Let's Go Pikachu or Eevee).  So, the first milestone of my epic quest to catch'em all is accomplished.  Now comes the hard part: filling in the rest.

     I've learned some things about the rest of the Pokémon Home pokédex.  You cannot trade pokémon of a mythic tier with anyone but a friend.  No GTC, no wonder box.  So any of the pokémon that can only be gotten from events like trade shows or the world championships, you can only trade from person to person.  This will make trading my Jirachis a little harder, but as I found out you can use Jirachi in Pokémon Sword & Shield, and they are a very competitive pokémon, I'm hoping that works in my favor.

     So wish me the best of luck and I'll update as soon as I can with the next big step in my journey to catch all the pokémon that are out there.