Pokemon Yellow: Ugly Little Sprites

While I can't say that the first generation of Pokemon was my all-time favorite, I will always have a soft spot in my heart for it. Why? I grew up with it! I used to watch the television show before I went to school every morning in order for my life to remain complete. I owned the figurines. When fast food restaurants came out with the toys, they were the only places I had the desire to eat, just for the toys.

Now, you'll notice I'm playing Yellow instead of Blue or Red. I own Blue, but...let's just say I like Yellow better. It follows the television show more accurately, and the sprites are more pleasant to look at. What I mean by the sprites, by the way, are the images of whatever Pokemon you're using/battling with on-screen. Blue and Red's sprites unnerved me as a child, and looking at them again, I don't feel much of a difference. Here, let me show you:

Golbat

Used to freak me out as a youngster

Mewtwo and Mew

 

Were not nearly as epic sauce as they appeared in the series, and frankly, I never wanted to catch them.

(Mew's sprite is actually taken from the Japanese Red and Green versions - he looks more amusing.)

Blastoise

...Blastoise just looks obese, poor thing.

These are personal nit-pickings on my part, yes; but after Blue and Red, Yellow's sprites became way more accurate to what I was used to seeing on television, and they were more attractive in general. It wasn't just color (Red and Blue had more reddish and blueish tones to them until Yellow came out and brought color to the Kanto Region) that made me happier. It was the fact that they no longer looked like wild animals on steroids - they looked like mythical creatures. They looked like Pokemon, and they looked more in-action.

You see? :D

This is a short segment for the beginning of my epic journey through Pokemon, but there's no telling how much I'll have to say for Friday's segment. Here's a sneak peak: I'll be discussing Pokemon Yellow's difficulty elements.

Also, starting Friday I'll have a spoiler alert of sorts at the top of each blog post. If you're one of those few people in the dark about the old-school Pokemon games, be wary. You've been warned.
Anyway, thanks for reading, and I'll see you Friday!

- Cheryl-Buddy

Cheryl Used Phoenix Down!

Alright, let's start this baby back up.

I was greatly disheartened when I found out that my DS was malfunctioning, and it still is, at least until this weekend, when my most trusted source of technological maintenance - my older brother - will have hopefully found the problem and fix it. I STILL PLAN TO BEAT CHRONO TRIGGER.
In the meantime, I'm a Freshman in college now, and that means a lot of things for me:
1. I get to live away from home (YES), and I currently have a dorm room to myself.
2. I am learning how to live as a true adult. Y'know, washing my own clothes, getting to bed/waking up at a decent hour, doing my homework without being told, etc.
3. Having limited access to random games that I miss.
^
Note that, please.

Back at home, I could go to whichever gaming system I pleased, but now I have to request them personally.
With that said, I've turned back in time a few years to earlier handheld games. Yes, I'm now entertaining myself with the GameBoy. With THAT said, an idea popped into my head one evening. I can't currently finish Chrono Trigger, but I have access to most of my old GameBoy games. I am currently playing Pokemon Yellow (such a classic), and I've come to find personally that it doesn't get much positive attention these days, what with the shadowing over of the Pokemon world, the number of "catch 'em all"s sky-rocketing from 151 to 649, and if profits are decent enough, I can see more in the future. I can understand that people are no longer interested in these games as they used to be, but with the idea beginning to form in my head, I begin to wonder what truly happened behind the Nintendo and Game Freak scenes that caused Pokemon to fade into the background like it did.

So! Here's what I'm going to do - I'm not very far along in this game of Yellow. Using my intense fangirl powers, I am going to analyze Pokemon's progression from 1998/1999 to the present day, if not for my blog, then for me personally.
My journey will either start Wednesday or Thursday. Wish me luck!

It's the weirdest thing, guys..

My Nintendo DS is malfunctioning. (No, Felix, I haven't bitten it. D:< )
I'm afraid I no longer have access to Chrono Trigger until I can remedy the problem on my DS or mooch from one of my brothers.
Until then, keeped tuned in to my boyfriend's blog to see how things are faring with him.
Hopefully my DS isn't dead yet. :C

- Cheryl-Buddy

Chrono Trigger 9 - City in the Sky

Well, it's about time that Chrono Trigger's massive enemy destruction counter is laid off to the side for a bit and we now focus our attention a tad more on the plot.
Rightly so, at that. After restocking on potions, revives, and whatnot, the crater in which Lavos landed in the Prehistoric period seemed to open up a time gate, which brings our heroes to 12,000 B.C., more easily put, the Magic Kingdom.

The Magic Kingdom is a peaceful little region in the sky with luxurious, palace-like buildings inside little domes. The inhabitants seem rather whimsical - not necessarily in the whole elf, woodland creature, Middle Earth type thing, but...just the way they speak to you, the way they live, the added background music in the area, for God's sake. Plus, they can use magic, so your team (well...minus Ayla and Robo) can relate to them a tad more, with them not being an enemy and all of that.

What I find rather interesting is that the inhabitants are also quite idealistic. There are plenty of them to talk to - while some speak of landmarks and people I've never heard of before, whom I'm assuming are very great in power, others will flat-out ask you, "Do you think that we are predestined in our lives?", to which you can answer. Really makes a person think, when you get deep into the question.
What really is predestination? Does it pertain to life, or life after death, or both...or neither? Is it a path that is laid out before you, and you are to walk along it like a marionette? Is it a path laid out before you, and your free will then decides if you walk the path or not? Or is there no predestination? Are we given a mental paintbrush as a child, and told to make our own path?
One can never tell, I suppose.

Regardless, the Magic Kingdom is ruled by a queen who apparently isn't in the best of moods as of late. After breaking into her chamber via special door using a pendent fueled by Lavos' power that I found in a place called Kajah, the queen sicks her pretty little Golem on me, and kills me. The rumors are true, eh?
After being released from the palace, one of the queen's authorities banishes me from the region, sealing the time gate, and leaving me and my team to figure out how to break the seal. I currently reside back in the future, rummaging through the wreckage that is 2300 A.D. to find more of these special doors, and using my little pendant to discover something that I'm not quite aware of yet.

Take a look at my boyfriend's blog - I'm sure he may have better idea as to what I'm looking for than I do.

- Cheryl-Buddy

Chrono Trigger 8 - Whoops!

I have not posted a blog in three days. Here is my excuse.
Magus is a bitch to defeat. I don't think I've ever once had to use an ether in the game until now. Such complicated magic use and foreboding attacks that man uses.
Anyway, the point of my excuse is I spent an hour of one of my days trying to defeat him, failing, and going back through the castle to level my team up a bit more. The other day, I played my hour, but honestly forgot to blog about it (sorry!).
So now I'll be blogging about my previous two hours on Chrono Trigger.

As my boyfriend has probably already mentioned in a blog previous blog post of his or so, Lavos actually arrived in the Prehistoric period, which is where my team ends up going, after finding out that Magus is not the real threat toward the world (though, ends were definitely met between him and Frog, with the awesome sauce that is the Masamune), thus dragging us into some more Reptite quarreling.
...Maybe I shouldn't say quarreling. Perhaps heated affection would be a tad more on-the-mark. (not in the erotic way, mind you) Ayla is the main chief, therefore making it her responsibility (along with her natural prowess) to deal with the Reptites.
Azala, head Reptite, is not a force to be reckoned with. Though he sits at the shoulder of his most powerful beast, Black Tyrano, he served as quite a difficult enemy himself. Yet Ayla still offers him refuge as Lavos begins to hail down from the sky via space comet. Poor little guy should have gone. :C

But that pretty much sums up my previous two hours. Lavos has landed, our team was able to escape on the backs of Dactyls, and after I go forward in time just a tad to stock up on some potions and whatnot, I'll be taking a closer look as to who this Lavos really is. Or something..

To learn more, check out my boyfriend's blog, as he just accomplished three straight hours.
(-mumbles-)
I'll catch up with him, no worries.

- Cheryl-Buddy

Chrono Trigger 7 - Reality Check

I have little excuse for having waited so long to post a blog...
But here's my loose explanation: Due to the weekend of the Final Harry Potter movie (-teardrop-) and my days being slightly mixed up in going to bed at nearly 4am as a result (I had never been to a midnight premier before), I completely forgot to play my hour for two days in a row. Shame on me! But I suppose it's for good cause. My poor boyfriend seems to be having a tad of bad luck with his chargers these days, and now his 3DS charger is malfunctioning. He will, however, be returning to Taipei soon, so hopefully this malfunction will only be from China. Until then, here's my most recent hour of Chrono Trigger.

At this moment, I have plowed my way through the majority of the Fiendlord's Castle. After having retrieved the rare stone from Prehistory, the Masamune was reforged and given back to Frog. We then find out why Frog is Frog - poor guy was cursed by Magus, our current arch nemesis, once a guy known as Glen. He has grown much since this curse, however, a 'blessing in disguise', he calls it. I tend to agree. Anyway, after joining up with Frog and entering the Fiendlord's Castle, things get a bit real for me, personally.

I've always been quite fascinated by the horror and suspense features that some movies, video games, television programs and other forms of media are able to conjure. It's an odd and hard-to-explain feeling of mine that I often cannot accurately share with others, but Chrono Trigger certainly knows how to make the chilling feel of horror really stand out to me, especially in the Fiendlord Castle. Horror - to me - strips away the colorful cake icing and loving feelings that characters share in a video game, and makes the world naked, it makes the world vulnerable, and it makes the world as true as it possibly can be. The world's a scary place - I've been told this for years - and when these aspects are thrown into a game in the right place, at the right time, I'm shaken to the very core, as it gives me a true reality check of where I am. It may be a fictional land that I roam in this game, but it's still a world, like the world that I live in.

Chrono Trigger does this in many ways - the silence factor of the Fiendlord Castle, the roaming of souls who resemble characters in the game that you already know who are truly shape shifters, out for your blood, a vast amount of enemies that roam and the teasing feeling of very few save points...I won't go into too much detail, as not to make this blog post too long, but I often found my vision blurring from my sheer concentration on every given element.
It's hard to explain how honest and eerie this Castle has been to me. Watch a walkthrough or two on Youtube and you might then know what I mean.

Regardless, the Castle was absolutely crawling with enemies, including a few high-ranking followers of Magus, such as Slash, Flea and Ozzie. Slash and Flea were formidable enemies, difficult yet rewarding (except for Slash - this fighting was kind of douch-y), but Ozzie...not so much. He's a coward. I spent more time chasing him through the castle than I did actually fighting him, which he didn't even put up one. I rushed conveyer belts with guillotines, ran halls filled with creatures, fell down countless holes that took forever to resurface from, just to find him an easy target.
(No spoilers, since my boyfriend hasn't gotten that far yet.)

Anyway, with all three servants defeated, I gave Magus a shot. I cannot deny it, Magus is a tough son of a bitch. I'll have to do some practice rounds on him before I actually take him on.
Hopefully my next hour will be lucky on my part.
But for right now, I'll take a small break, so I can let my boyfriend fix his charger and have a chance to catch up and surpass me (like he usually does).

- Cheryl-Buddy

Chrono Trigger 6 - Prehistoric Partying

Thank goodness my boyfriend is back in business. It's not as fun blogging with someone when you're the only one blogging. X3;


Not all that much to say about this hour. After reaching the summit of the mountains, my team came across a couple of tan alien-like creatures.They produced quite a fight for the treasure they were protecting - a fragmented blade called the Masamune. Bringing it back down, we also find out that this Hero that everyone is talking about is a little kid. Cute little kid, for being naïve enough to pick up the Hero's badge randomly, but shameful for what he's done, of course.

After reuniting with Frog for a moment to take his fragmented sword hilt of the Masamune, we find out that the sword can be reforged, only with the help of a rare red stone.
This takes us to Prehistory, where we add Ayla to our team. She's quite strong, which I like, though she has an interesting beast-like walk - y'know, on all fours and whatnot. This happens as a result of a huge party that is thrown, with dancing, drink, music, food, the whole shebang. With partying, of course, comes the crashing of people's consciousness. When the team wakes up, our Gate Key is stolen, so with my team now consisting of Crono, Lucca and Ayla, I'm now off to seek out the thief.
(Little Chrono has spend quite enough time being the only male in the team, poor thing.)

I'm quite fascinated by Chrono Trigger's progression thus far, particularly in enemy combat. I hate to consistently compare this game to Final Fantasy, but I always considered it similar before I actually started to play it, and I must say, without going into too much detail with the structure of Final Fantasy (as there are entirely too many to go into detail with), it's proving itself to be a bit better.
Enemies differ in different areas. As I've now entered the Prehistoric period, I now much adjust my strategy in defeating the creatures I must face. Back in the Middle Ages where I was climbing the mountain, I had to knock large hammers from Orgons' hands with fire before I took any swings at them. Here in dinosaur territory, enemies are a lot more straight-forward. They have a higher defense, yes, but their HP isn't very high, whether I use magic or physical combat. I find it very interesting, shaking things up a bit in my battles, keeping them doable, but changing perspectives with every turn of the head I make.

I'm looking forward to see what my team will end up facing in Prehistory. In the meantime, see what my boyfriend is up to.

- Cheryl-Buddy