The Legend of Zelda; Spirit Tracks: I wasn't kidding about that train part

The DS Zelda games. Some like them, many hate them, due to specific mechanics. Maybe some of that is the Zelda cycle, some of it might be the way the game is structured, some of it may be the controls. It can be all of one, or it can be some of all. Personally, this was the first Zelda I had completed and the first Zelda game I ever owned. Its not the first I've ever played, that title goes to either Ocarina of Time or Majora's Mask thanks to emulation (this was before I knew of and had access to the Virtual Console). I enjoyed it while I played it back then, but how well does it hold up now?

Mediaholics Review: Pokemon Generation 2

Five regions down, one more to go before Sun and Moon. Now lets travel back to Kanto, and go a little to the left of some really big mountains. Clearly someone in Oak's staff didn't do their job right.

Link to review (If player isn't working): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZ5pCOkv7uU

Mediaholics Review: Pokemon Generation Four (Video)

Direct link to video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1fHScrSgmQ
Fun Fact: This image was one of Blaster's first desktop backgrounds on his school laptop

"We will be heroes, we can change the world if we try". We will stand up, for what is right, we will be brave, we're ready to fight... No point finishing those two as we still have 3 more generations to do by the end of the year. Because we can't stop talking about Pokemon, its time for the Mediaholics team to talk about Pokemon Generation IV, on the day it was originally available in Japan. How well does the first move to 3D and the jump to the Nintendo DS hold up 10 years later (no joke) and how does "It all [come] together"

You can find the Generation I review here: https://youtu.be/gsKSSXWfzQg

You can find the Generation V review written by Blaster (because he was the only one he could get in contact with that has either played the game, or has a more balanced view of the game) here: http://mediaholicreviews.blogspot.com...

Pokemon Generation 5: What many dub as the racist games

You know, using that as the title, it reminds me of one line used in the intro song for the first Black and White anime season, "It's not always Black and White". How fitting when you see some of the more bat crap crazy ideas currently getting attention.

Continuing from where we were in February, and because no one I know thinks they can be unbiased when talking about this generation, this one's going to be a written review. No one but yours truly for this, as we tackle Pokemon Black Version, Pokemon White Version, and the direct sequels Pokemon Black Version 2 and Pokemon White Version 2 (which I'll be referring to as Black, White, Black 2 and White 2 for the remainder of this review).

Pokemon Rising Rainbow: This is the actual spelling of the game this time, I swear

So right before I got to bed last night, I found this on my Twitter feed, now I was a bit skeptical at first. A well made Pokemon fan game, by a large team, with a great visual art style, playable on computer, iOS and 3DS, every region in the main series, fan games and planned dlc for more on top of a new region and Bank support, being released on April fools... surfice to say that yeah, it was skeptical. But I was able to complete it, and I do mean complete it, unlike Zeta. So how is it?

Against all odds, still very good, surprisingly good. Visually it is.. interesting, and its not without its bugs, I unfortunately had missing textures and weird collision detection at times, but with its limited development time, things like that will happen, and might get patched our. The read me was detailed and provided a lot of information about the game, but is limited by the format of .txt, maybe a link to a open reading access Google doc would have been better, to give more structure to the information. The voice acting is well done, and did get some laughs out of me thanks to the writing.

Is it worth playing? Yes if you have the time to spare, but thankfully it is, even though it has so much content, a very short game. It is free though, so if you have the time, check it out. I know I'm being vague, but its better experienced raw, akin to Undertale, though probably not for the same reasons.

Mario And Sonic at the Olympic Games: Wasted potential

Mario and Sonic, Nintendo and SEGA, the figure heads of the first major Console War. Bare in mind kids, this was in the time when there was actually a difference between hardware and devices weren't trying to see who could be the first outdated "not a PC". With such a legacy, to say that it was a big deal when it was confirmed that, for the first time ever, they were going to be in the same game is an understatement. People joke when they say that the day Sonic was confirmed for Super Smash Brothers Brawl was "the day the internet almost died", but it wouldn't be too far off... However that wasn't the first game. That title goes to... a Wii and DS collection of sport themed party games... oh joy... Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games...

A video on random tangents, and maybe a review of Pokmeon Mystery Dungeon: Red and Blue Rescue Team

Late last year, someone I met on Twitter asked if she could join in for this review. Now to those who may be asking, "How do you convey two people in a text review?", my answer would be badly/almost impossible if you saw my review of the five Ace Attorney games (trust me, it works better as a script). So, a new solution was made, and what you are about to see is the first ever Video Review on this site.

Case 1: Turnabout defense. A review of the Ace Attorney main series

*please note that I try to keep my reviews G-PG

This is one of the franchises I thought I’d never look at simply because of the genre. But thanks to a few friends of mine, I have played most of the games in the series enjoyed what I played and thought it might be time to look at gaming’s lawyer. The prosecution is ready, the defense is ready, court is now in session for the review of the Phoenix Wright “games”.

The Prosecution’s opening statement: To the keen eye, the “” around games was no accident. Some people struggle to call these games games. These are more visual novels and no matter what you do, you have to play the story out to the end. In the story, you are, for the most part, Phoenix Wright, a defense attorney who, start the start of the series, is starting out and becomes better as the games progress.

“The prosecution calls its first witness to the stand.

The testimony and Cross Examination: Before most cases (the first case in every game is a exception) you have an investigation, or to me it’s a “touch every ware on the screen” mode. While you investigate, you can search the area for evidence, talk to people who are in the room or move to another room, the more complicated the case, the more rooms you have to go through and the more backtracking you have to do. While it isn’t a problem in Duel Destinies, the newest one for the 3DS (at time of review), in the GBA and DS games, you can only progress to a specific area in a specific order, for example, to get to the boat keeper’s house in the first game, you have to go to the lake and to get to the lake, you have to go to the entrance to the park. While it might not seem that bad at first, it quickly becomes very annoying (something I’m glad they fixed in DD). Another issue that is fixed in Duel Destinies is a small prompt on your curser that shows you what you have already investigated and what you haven’t another thing I’m glad they fixed.

“OBJECTION!!!. This conflicts with the script, there is more to this then the witness is telling us”

If you give me a minute, I can explain the next phase

After you have investigated all that you can on a given day, you can begin the trial for that case, what I believe to be the best part of the game. In the trials, you have to present specific evidence at specific points in witness’s testimonies. In the testimonies, you can either question points further or present contradictory evidence, such as an autopsy report if the witness’s statement doesn’t match the report or people’s mug shots if again, the testimony contradicts the evidence. At first, the cases are pretty simple but as you progress through the games, bigger and bigger trials are accessible and require more and more evidence, it becomes a memory game trying to remember what evidence you have used already. The game is a bit vague overall when it comes to finding the contradictory evidence but it makes it more satisfying when you find the right one. The music is always fitting when you find the right evidence as well. As soon as you find the right evidence, the music cuts and a special track will play when the defense points out the flaw which, to me, makes you feel accomplished, as soon as I hear the music cuts out, you often think “Gotcha you lying jerk”. Which leads to another great thing about this, the animations of the characters, while the original trilogy might only have 32-bit sprites, the animations they make are really well done and its always satisfying to see their breakdowns (my favorite being Damon Grant’s from the 5^th case in the first game). The sprite reuse can come off as a bit lazy but I’m willing to let it slide as they are still high quality.

“HOLD IT!!! Who are the main characters?”

Again I’m getting to it. Aside from Phoenix Wright, you will also be running into Miles Edgeworth, the main prosecutor, Detective Dick Gumshoe and Maya Fey in the original trilogy, Trucy Wright in the second trilogy, Apollo Justice, The Judge and several other characters that I will leave as a surprise.

“In conclusion your honor, the defendant has told me that he believes that these games are good assuming you’re not looking for any actual game. This review hasn’t covered the Edgeworth games as they need a separate review. It’s a entertaining story that Point and click enthusiasts would enjoy.”

“Then I find the defendant…”

NOT GUILTY And worth playing

One of the most well known nerdy battles. Pokemon verses Digimon

Well, it might not be a Tamer’s review, but I thought that this might be a good intro to Digimon (my review at the moment has a lot of backstory and it that reason why I haven’t posted it yet). For this, I’m reviewing the Digimon Franchise and its pros and cons over its rival, the Pokémon Franchise.

I should note, before I cover the games, I have only played (and still working on) the DS games, Digimon World DS, Digimon World Dawn and its counterpart Digimon World Dusk so my review might be a bit biased. That being said, the Digimon World games haven’t held my interest like the Pokémon Games have. The plot is pretty simple, you’re a kid who has either been sucked into the Digital World (the world of the Digimon, they are digital monster’s after all) or has been living in the Digital World already (these are for the before mentioned games so intro might be different depending on the game). For World DS, because your being sucked into the Digital World, you can choose your partner, who are the three “In Training” forms of the partners in the, current at the time of release, main members of DATS, the organization in Digimon Data Squad, more on that latter. From there, you complete objectives to improve your Digimon’s residence, collect information about other Digimon and raise your Digimon so that they can “Digivolve”. Dawn and Dusk’s plots might be similar to the late game as DS (again, haven’t played that much of it yet at the time of post). You are a member of one of two organizations (depending on which version you play) and you have to stop something from causing havoc on the Digital World using the Digimon you already have and anymore you collect on the way. While I haven’t played a lot of the games, I do like the evolution method the games use. When your Digimon reaches a certain level and has a specific number of special experience based on the species (Insect, Machine, Dragon ect) it can Digivolve to the next level. In order, these are Baby/Newborn, In Training, Rookie, Champion, Ultimate, Mega and some species have the ability to go further, but I’ll explain latter. What makes this better then Pokémon for me is that most Digimon can Digivolve into multiple forms depending on the circumstances. Take the “mascot” for example, while I won’t explain how, Agumon can turn into either Greymon and from there it can turn into Metal Greymon and then War Greymon, or it can turn into GeoGreymon, RiseGreymon and then ShineGreymon (this is a basic toned down version but you get the point). This gives the game a lot more replay ability because you could choose the same In Training Digimon but get a different Mega.

For Pokémon, on the other hand, you’re a 10 year old kid who gets either a Grass type, Fire type or Water type Pokémon as your first Pokémon (unless you’re playing Yellow in which case you get Pikachu). You go out, get 8 gym badges from other cities, take on the Elite 4, champion, enter hall of fame and congratulations, you’ve beaten the game, go onto post game if you wish. While it might seem that I’m hating on the plot of the games (and I am) for some reason, this keeps my interest unlike the Digimon Games. My guess is because, to me, Pokémon gets to the point faster and lets me play faster than the Digimon World games have. I prefer games that get to the actual gameplay fast (which is why I dropped Skyrim after I left the first town…). It could also be 9 years of playing Pokémon to 2 years of Digimon but I digress. The Pokémon games are much easier to get into unlike Digimon because all the Pokémon games assume you don’t have prior knowledge of games (which is good until you see the “How to catch a Pokémon Tutorial for the 50^th time which often resorts to myself saying to the game “I’ve been catching Pokémon since before you were programed”. I guess the nutshell is, Pokémon is baby’s first RPG with Digimon being the next phase up, they are worth a look but you have to have knowledge of the series (for Digimon’s case anyway) to understand what you’re getting yourself into. One of the things I like the most though in Pokémon is that it feels a lot more like a world then the Digimon games ever did, but I’ll explain why latter.

And now for the ne thing that people remember the most when it comes to Digimon, the anime. I will be looking at the English Dub’s for this so to fans, I apologies. That being said, I really enjoy the anime, it does a lot of things that the Pokémon Anime would never do. For example

1.       Changes the main character. While Ash is STILL the protagonist of the Pokémon anime, the Digimon anime changes its group of lead characters at the end of almost every season and even then, the group is generally larger than the Pokémon series. While there are 3-4 primary characters in Pokémon every season, Ash still gets the most screen time trying to flesh out a character that has run dry in my opinion. Granted I still like characters like Misty, May and Dawn, its primarily due to their personalities and how they grow as trainers. The Digimon group has 3-8 characters per season and they all have decent air time and fleshed out characters by the end of their series. Because of the new characters, it is understandable for them to get information on all the Digimon, even if it is just for the viewers but for Pokémon, it is becoming harder and harder to take ash seriously because he is using the Pokédex on older Pokémon, THAT HE HAS ALERADY SEEN AND IN SOME CASES CAUGHT!!!

2.       Darker themes. While yes, Pokémon has gotten away with some dark themes, a lot of those episodes have gotten banned as a result. Remember when Ash got his 30 Tauros, I don’t. What about when Castelia City was destroyed, nothing comes to mind…. The only dark theme that I remember in the anime was in the first move, in the “Try not to cry, cry a lot when you first see it” scene where Ash dies (And after almost 20 years, spoiler warnings are thrown out the window). But in the Digimon series, they cover death quite a lot in all the seasons. The “Digi-Destined” also have to learn how to live with their decisions “when is it alright to kill”. Family is mentioned constantly in the first season. Digimon Tamers has been regarded as one of the darkest seasons to date for several reasons. In the past seasons, when Digimon “die” their data is reconfigured and they are reborn in a special area of the Digital World. In tamers, that is never mentioned so it is assumed that if someone dies, their dead for good, so when one of the heroes, Leomon is killed, on camera, uncensored (he slowly breaks down into raw data and dissolves, the equivalent of bleeding to death) and then the famous line by the leader of the group “I’ll make you hurt, I’LL MAKE YOU PAY”, which then leads into the final ark where the villain uses the hero’s mental states against them…

Probably my only complaint with the Digimon anime is the fifth season, Digimon Data Squad and its really just a personal opinion. In the past, it has been shown that Digimon are based off of kids imaginations (hence why you can have a giant dinosaur that fires missiles out of his chest) so it seems weird to me to see late teenagers-early adults being Digi-Destined. While yes, the cast of the first two seasons are shown to have matured and become adults while still having their Digimon, they got them when they were kids so I’m willing to let that slide. Again though, its just a personal thing to me

In conclusion, I highly recommend giving both a shot, to get your own opinions on both franchises. I haven’t covered anything about the other aspects of the franchises, including the toys ect and that’s just because of a lack of experience.

A loss of old friends...

A list of the names of the fallen, whose online services shall be remembered for better or worse in the years after their untimely demise.
For the DS: http://en.wikipedia.org/.../List_of_Nintendo_DS_Wi-Fi...
And for the Wii: http://en.wikipedia.org/.../List_of_Wii_Wi-Fi_Connection...

May their losses not be in vein, may developers learn from the mistakes of these fine games and use their knowledge for better or worse

Wii will remember them...

In recognition of the fallen services, for better or for worse. http://youtu.be/2Zj_oZEZcGM

Before I sound crazy... All Nintendo DS and Wii games will lose online features on May 20th worldwide. However, this will not mean other online features will be terminated. The Nintendo DSi Shop, Nintendo DS Browser and Nintendo DSi Browser will continue to operate. Similiary on the wii the Wii Shop Channel, Internet Channel, Youtube and Hulu will continue to work.