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. 

A Sense of Urgency

     The first goal of my pokédex quest is to try and get a special Magearna by collecting all the 151 original pokémon from Kanto before a month has elapsed since starting my Pokémon Home account.  I was looking on the cellphone app today, and I started twenty days ago.  I have a short ten days to play through Let's Go Eevee (which arrived yesterday and my kids are loving), and to beat the Elite Four of Black 2 and transfer over all the pokémon I need from Diamond.

     This urgent push has left me desperate, and maybe I'm doing things I normally wouldn't, like moving my clock forward this morning so it was dark in the game so I could evolve a Sneasel into a Weavile to help beat Iris, the champion.  Or uninstalling and reinstalling Pokémon Dream Radar so I could catch a bunch of pokémon all over again.  They say desperate times call for desperate measures.  

     So, I'm up to 59 of the original pokémon registered to home, and I'm scrambling to catch them all.

The Great Pokémon Quest update

     So, I'm currently in a mad scramble to beat the elite four in Pokémon Black 2, as that is currently the lynch pin in my process of updating all the way from the Gameboy Advance games all the way up to the Switch.  I've honestly been playing almost nonstop since Wednesday, and my wife has been a little upset, leading me to put playing on hold for Mother's Day, and just take a break.  Consequently, I'm feeling a lot of stiffness and soreness in my left thumb, which I did attribute to the gardening I spent some time on while i waited for my 3DS to charge, but again, my wife pointed out that this was a side effect of playing too long.

     All this mad gaming marathon happened because I had no idea where I was at in my original Black 2 save, and I hadn't picked up the game in probably six years.  Fun fact I learned when doing this, though, is that Game Freak put in safeguards against overwriting you game save in Black and White 2, so the game would let you start a new game from the menu, but you couldn't save it to the cartridge unless you had done a manual wipe of the last save.  It gave me instructions on how to do a manual wipe, but I had to lose four hours of gameplay just to do it.

     I also played around seven hours of FireRed, as well, to capture a single Zapdos, (Let's Go Eevee hasn't arrived yet, so I'm seeing if i can get Zapdos transferred before it arrives).  He was the only legendary bird of Kanto I didn't have already on a GBA title, or Diamond where I've been storing the bulk of my old collection.  I must have traded him at some point, because all of the old saves had him in their pokédexes, Zapdos just wasn't saved in any of their boxes.

Gotta Catch'em All! (Pokémon Shield)

     My son got me sucked back in to the world of Pokémon recently with the release of Pokémon Shield.  He's been really competitive about the game, and very proud of the fact he's already beaten the elite four and I just got past the first gym.  But since we have been on shelter-in-place, my son has had to continue to do his schooling, while I have been unemployed.  He has had to watch on in horror as I have been catching up.

     And just to rub salt in that wound, I've been trying to figure out how to get some of the more powerful pokémon into my roster on Shield, which led me down a dark path of discovery.  There I learned that through some serious pokémon voodoo, you can trade up pokémon all the way from Ruby and Sapphire into the Pokémon Home app, in turn making the compatible pokémon available in Sword and Shield.

     I've now committed myself to a terrible task I share with you all now.  I propose that by 2021 I will have traded my way into a complete pokédex.  To achieve my goal is going to take a large number of games and quite a few trades.  So here's the list of titles I'll be using to try and accomplish this mission:

1) Pokémon Ruby

2) Pokémon Sapphire

3) Pokémon Emerald

4) Pokémon FireRed

5) Pokémon LeafGreen

6) Pokémon Colosseum

7) Pokémon Colosseum Bonus Disc

8) Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness

9) Pokémon Diamond

10) Pokémon Black 2

11) Pokémon Y

12) Pokémon Ultra Sun

13) Pokémon Shield

     Also, I'll be procuring Pokémon Let's Go Eevee to help make this process easier.  I'm going to see if I can accomplish all of this with just these titles, but I may need to add more to facilitate a faster transfer of legendaries.  Wish me luck, and I'll try and update as frequent as I can.

A Trainwreck You Can't Look Away From

     A trainwreck is always a disastrous thing, and not to make too light of that, I have to say that people who make a train simulation game should be very aware of that.  Imagine my surprise then, when I download the gorgeous looking TrainStation 2 for Android.  It only took me five minutes of game play to realize it was a flaming trainwreck of a game.

     When I had initially saw the commercials for this title, I was awed by the beautiful look of the trains, and the countryside you get to take them through (disclaimer: I am a sucker for trains).  I was excited by the possibility to set up and run trains down the tracks, figuring that even basic free-to-play mobile titles like this have a certain element of base building, to keep you vested in the growth of whatever group you are supporting, and to keep you dropping real cash into loot-box bin.

     But no, this game seems like it's developers know it is nothing more than just whale bait, so much so they don't waste any time on a real game tutorial, and within two minutes of starting just show you the shop and the in-game currency, telling you to just by new trains to get things done faster.  This nonchalant manner is illustrated best by how the whole game seems to be just dispatch train from home base, fetch quest resource, deliver resource, return to home station.  You don't get the opportunity to lay your own track, or decide the layout of your buildings, it's just buy a new train so you can fetch faster.

     And as I said in the disclaimer, i am a fan of locomotives, so when you offer me a train simulator, I want it to work, and I'll even play a bad one, if it seems well intentioned.  TrainStation 2 did not.  It felt immediately like a visual pandering of popular theme to get people to drop loads of money in microtransactions for nothing more than a battery drain.  Publisher Pixel Federation Games should get a clue, people don't enjoy an obvious rip off, and will find something better to play.

     I have to give this a 0/5 ⭐.  This game was lame, and I mean that like a wounded animal, in need of pity and possibly being put down.

     Well, that's all I've got to say on TrainStation 2, and I'll catch you all next time.