Everyone remembers Pokemon cards, right?   They were the hottest things on the street for kids back in the late 90's.   Everyone wanted that Charizard, worth over 100 bucks on eBay.   I hunted around for Charizard, and every booster pack I opened came up empty.   Until one day I took a trip with my parents to Cooperstown NY, and I walked into a small hobby shop selling Pokemon Base Set booster packs (that was the first thing I looked for in any store back then.)   My parents asked me if I wanted any, so I took 4 or 5 packs out of the box.

As we were walking down the street later, I started opening them.   One after another I pulled crap.   I was starting to lose hope, but then that last pack was opened.   I shifted through the cards and there he was, Charizard, the legendary beast was finally mine!   I actually ran back to the shop I got it from to thank the owner, even though he really had nothing to do with it.

So anyway, lately I've been playing the Pokemon TCG with a friend of mine online through this nifty program LackeyCCG.   It's this global card game program sort of deal.   You can load plug ins for various card games and then play online.   The only problem is that the plug ins are pretty outdated, and the Pokemon TCG plugin is missing a good deal of cards... but hopefully that will soon change.


Man, this game is a lot different than I remember.   There's all these crazy ass cards out now, like EX and Delta Species pokemon, and support and stadium cards, then theres Level X cards which are like ultra pokemon that can destroy worlds.   It's definitely a lot more intense and strategy oriented than it was back when everyone just ran Haymaker decks.   I've been trying to find a community of players that would be up for playing more, but it seems like anyone that does play online uses the boring text-only programs that suck.   The great thing about Lackey is the fact that you can load full card images into the program and use them, and that makes the game so much better.

So if anyone is looking to revive the Pokemon TCG to its former glory... online is the place to start!   (Actually, apparently the nationals tournament was a few days ago and there were 900-something players there.   I guess it's not as dead as people think.   Also, anyone who denies ever liking pokemon cards did not grow up in the proper environment.)

It looks like Games Radar has snagged some details and images from the new Megaman game that will rock us all with its 8-bit glory.



There are a lot more details in the article, like the fact that some of the music is right out of Mega Man 2, while is nice, I would've enjoyed new tunes.   The charging mega buster from Mega Man 4 is missing, which makes me less excited because charging up is my favorite thing to do in Mega Man games.   There are some details about the Robot Master's levels as well, such as Galaxy Man's level containing portal like warp points that will fling Megaman about the stage with his momentum preserved.

I don't think this 8-bit revival of the series will disappoint the fans at all, but I'm curious to see if it strikes the hearts of anyone that doesn't follow the Mega Man series.   Only time will tell!

Usually I don't get excited about yet another Square-Enix port or remake, but with Chrono Trigger I'm strangely intrigued.   I get excited because this may open up the possibility to perhaps a resurrection of the Chrono series.   Chrono Trigger is an amazing game, and although Chrono Cross was a little weird I still enjoyed it thoroughly.


There hasn't been any sort of announcement from Square-Enix yet, so I'm not trying to get too excited about anything, but I'm hoping for the best.

Ah, man.   Summer just seems to be flying by and I can't do anything to stop it.   Not much has been going on recently in terms of my own life, besides trying to work on a lot of projects and work on some other issues.

For now, this post serves one purpose and that is to wish my sister Alicia a happy birthday!   Here's a little image I did for her that is inspired by the doodles that I remember her drawing in her notebooks.


Now, I must go back to trying to figure out how to program games with C++...

I already posted this over at Bonesaw.org so I'll just mirror the post here.

Holy crap.   I saw some stuff posted about Megaman 9 earlier this week, but it was just a fake blurry screen shot.   But now, the real deal about Megaman 9 was been revealed... and it is oh so sweet.


Honestly, I haven't been this excited about a game in awhile.   A game from a big shot commercial publisher, that is.   It's going to be 8-bit Megaman action like the days of old, and its going to be all new content!   And it wont be some terrible fangame!   This is going to rock, and I hope that... hm, maybe more games will follow this trend?

Kaz Hirai of Ridge Racer fame is back with some new comments on the Playstation 3.   I would love to tell you when and where Hirai said such things, but apparently Kotaku did not feel like posting where the quotes came from.   Maybe he emailed his quotes to Brian Crecente.

But anyway, here's the important part.


Whoaaa, now its TRUE GENERATION(TM).   What the hell is it with the word Generation and making it extreme and into a marketing buzz word?   I think Microsoft was the first company to bring out the term Next Generation, and that has completely ruined every discussion about video games from that day on.   Now everyone just uses it as this arbitrary word that can mean about 70 different things.


Now, the above was a dramatization, but for some reason just the uses of these terms irritates me to no end.   It's like to Sony, the term Next Gen was no longer good enough, so now they just make up a new arbitrary term to mean "better than next-gen."   As far as I'm concerened, there is no next-gen.   There's current generation, as in we are in the current generation of consoles on sale at retail which are the Wii, Xbox360, and PS3.   It has nothing to do with graphics, gameplay, sound, online play, or any other aspects of games.   Unfortunately though, I cannot stop the hordes of internet enabled gamers from using the term to describe their favorite brown games.   (I also cannot stop them from murdering the word "pwn" by using it 70,000 times a day.   Rest in peace.)

Everyone Loves Active 2!   Well, at least 40 something people do.   The results for TIGSource's Procedural Generation competition came in last night and Active 2 placed in 5th out of all 60 of the entries.   Not too shabby, and to be honest I'm quite surprised!


The top games were Rescue: The Beagles, Dyson, DropTD, Self-Destruct, and finally Active 2.   Thanks to all that voted, because now my internet rep has increased by a fraction of a point.   Oh yeah.   Check out all the games on TIGSource.