Tag: Dragon

Staff Introduction: Cherry the Chef

Hear Ye Hear Ye, Princess Pinkie has returned with a general announcement! 

Salutations, loyal subjects and sweet island guests! Today is a day of celebration! No, it is not my birthday!  Not the blogs second anniversary either! Though we are drawing close! No today we have yet another STAFF-member join us! So all put your hands together, and give a warm welcome to Cherry the Chef! Thanks to imagination we can replace that old drunkard that did the job before now!  Sure we had Tadokoro Megumi work in the sushi restaurant but in the alla cart place we had this nobody!  Yay for more staff!

Who is Cherry

Like most introductions before, Cherry chose to be introduced by me!  Which means we will get a bit of character backstory! Followed by my experience with the person behind Cherry , her soul as it were, after which we will discuss the content she is going to offer to the website!  I would really love it if people would interact with this post and give her a warm welcome!  She is very new to the WordPress community and making friends is important!  So I hope you guys will be kind to her!  and that you will give her a warm welcome!

Cherry is the first character that comes from a somewhat tragic backstory!  It all started on the island of Kawadrago.  A fire dragon was anxious! She had to find a mate! But she wasn’t interested in the male dragons!  Nor in the female ones for that matter. Sure she would love to have some friends, but she did not want to be fertilised to lay an egg!  She did want that egg..but the whole procedure was a bit icky to her!  Many called this fire dragon loveless! But she knew that was not true!  Because there was one thing she loved more than anything else!  That was eating cherries!  She even had a favorite Cherry Tree. Because the fire dragon did not really have any friends.. she decided this tree was her best friend!  She protected it , she talked to it and was super stoked when the tree dropped her a few cherries. She would eat her fill and then cuddle up around the tree! A nature spirit saw this and blessed the dragon with her desire!  The next day she woke up she found she had laid an egg! 

From this egg, Cherry was born!  She was a half fie dragon .. and  half cherry dragon!   Or maybe a half fire dragon and half cherry! She never got an answer to that question! Her mother loved Cherry very much and until the end of her days, the fire dragon was never lonely again.  Yet when  the fire dragon had left it’s world Cherry was all alone.. and still in pretty much dragon infancy! Like her mother Cherry was an outcast among the more pureblooded dragons! Who’d only associate with pure blood dragons of the four elements! Cherry would get quite angry and threw hissy fits every time she was excluded! Yet her inner sweetness also prevented her from getting into a fight! So Cherry would  go into abandoned parts of the forest and set it ablaze.. watching the fire!

One one such tantrums Cherry discovered she was very hungry! She found a rabbit that had died in the fire as well as some vegetables and fruits that had not burned up.. but looked different then before! A delicious scent entered her nostrils and she decided to consume the fire touched goods! It was the most delicious thing she ever had! For many years Cherry experimented with this.. whenever she had the chance she would  tease the other dragons as well by setting fire to their favourite hide and seek hiding spots! If she could not play she would show them.. and get a delicious meal out of it! Yet despite her spunk, and her newly acquired skill to make food more delicious by cooking it the village kept alienating her! One day while she was trying to see if a fish could burn a bottle washed up on shore!  In the bottle was a letter!  After breaking the bottle and getting the letter out Cherry saw the message read “STAFF wanted”.. An island that was looking for a new chef! One where all the things you imagine can come true.. and where imaginary and real things live? She must go there!

Once arrived, she met Pinkie, the princess of the island! The two became quick friends!  Both loved eating cherries, and Pinkie preferred that other people cook her food!  When Cherry asked for the job Pinkie told the dragon that maybe some normies might be a bit scared of her looks like this.. so she could be like everyone else.. by just imagining her becoming human! A lot of Vtubers do this! Once even a glass of Milk-tea imagined becoming human!  So Cherry tried as well! Pinkie loved her both ways but it would be nice to fit in for a bit!  Cherry had a bit of trouble transforming! Two buns in her hair remained big ripe cherries and one of her eyes still looked like that of a dragon! While Pinkie and the staff was fine with it! Cherry decided to wear some items to cover it up!  Just so she can play and have fun with a lot of people!   And for the first time.. Cherry had found a bunch of misfits like her.. that all joined together! For the first time Cherry was happy!

Nowadays Cherry makes all sorts of meals on Paradise and when she isn’t cooking she is playing pranks on island guests! Or throwing a hissy fit somewhere! Cherry does not like it when something .. anything.. is excluded from something! She even stomped out angrily when Kuro said Pineapple doesn’t belong on Pizza!  She doesn’t even like pineapple on Pizza but people should never exclude the poor fruit!  Kuro is her favourite victim to prank!  She would sneak up to his house at night when he is asleep, then turn bag into a dragon and leave a big footprint in the sand.. making him think a Kaiju is close, and as he runs of in the forest changing phantoms she walks in his hut and flips his mattress or changes the clocks. 

What to do when the Housing Market (and the world) get turned upside down | | REX Blog
And sometimes she uses her dragon strength to flip more than just the matrass!

Cherry and Pinkie

The Story of the Pink Sith: Sy'ra Delinda – Pinkie's Paradise

Cherry and Pinkie go back long before the start of Pinkie’s blog!  By now I think we have known each other for about ten years. We first met on the Roleplay server of Star Wars the Old republic. Pinkie had just made a Sith character that got tortured so much and mind messed so up, her brain could not really retain empty information anymore! Things like.. names would never stick.. so she had to refer to everyone.. with a depiction of a word.. a sound or making it concrete to herself. Very dangerous in the Sith community! Especially when you call a Sith called Darth Gaur, Lord Growl. Cherry’s first character did not like my Pink Sith!  My character had a hard time fitting in and had to fight to restore her mind!  Yet among the ocean of super negative Sith being a positive one.. created some magnetism! People  who did not want to play the super stereotype flocked to me.. and Cherry had a character she wanted to try to roleplay around my character as well. A shy Twi’lek who never could be touched.. met with my Sith who wanted to hug everyone!

From that an online friendship grew that lasted for way beyond the duration of our time on Star Wars, Cherry joined my online D&D’s almost every single time and alway is one of the most good spirited and creative players. She heavily veers into the archetype that is Cherry the character, so already she will do a great job in pulling that off. She is also a very loving mother, and that behaviour translates in her everyday reactions to everyone! No matter who in my roleplay chats is troubled, Cherry is always willing to hear them out and cheer them up with a virtual hug! So she in that matter she is very different from her character!

Smug Trap | Know Your Meme

We both have been through a lot together, shared experiences with our health and our family and while on occasion we talk a bit less, we always somehow end up drawing back together to become a lot closer again! Almost as if it is destined we’d be friends!  So it would be very interesting to see if Cherry will have some of that same appeal to our readers! Cherry has this beautiful fragility to her, almost like a baby bird.. but way less ugly than a baby bird!  She may not be as Seiso as me, if you look at her and see her talk normally you completely forget, you drop your guard and then BAM she suddenly surprises you!  

A mutual (former)  friend once described her as an Espeon, where he was Umbreon and I am Sylveon.. and wdo fit those archetypes pretty well! .. I guess Kuro is an Umbreon as well, Sunny is a Vaporeon , Periwinkle is a Flareon and Indigo… despite being kinda missing in action, is a Joteon!  So I guess we are just a Leafeon and Glaceon short of a full set now! … Maybe an Eevee.. so if you want to join…now that we have Cherry.. we finally have someone to translate our Ikea manuals for us.. so if you join you might get those benefits as well!

Warrior Espeon by ShupaMikey on DeviantArt | Pokemon eeveelutions, Cute pokemon wallpaper, Pokemon gijinka
Art by ShupaMikey

Cherry Cooks up Content

FEATURE: Cooking With Anime - Dragon Tail from "Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid" | Miss kobayashi's dragon maid, Best romance anime, Anime romance

My beloved friend and the most adorable Cherry-Dragon you have ever seen, will offer some quite unique content for Paradise!  She will be a bit like me , and do a bit of everything!  Some general talks about gaming, geekdom and of course her speciality.. cooking!   Having found a great hobby in creating the best meals, in both virtual as real form Cherry will bring geekdom and cuisine together in a lot of cooking game reviews and maybe even some geeky recipes!  Yet she is also not exclusively bound to this subject! Like I’d imagine a cherry based life form she is free to bounce around and offer content that is anything her heart desires! 

Pin by lisha1 on Anime | Animation, Anime, Teacher gif

For example .. in the past Cherry was known to go on big lore tangents and rambles!   Where we would just say … oh I saw a Priest with a Watch and someone said”Heh Tech Priest” and Cherry would go on and talk about the Origin of Tech Priests in Warhammer 40k… Now this particular example never happened but she did stuff like that! For example when I would ask what the correct name for Snorlax and Pikachu from Darksouls 2 was, she’d go on to tell a story that would last longer than a game of Civilisation! And I kinda love it!.. I did not process it all.. but still! I would personally love to see her do some deep dives in lore again someday! So who knows maybe I can convince her to do a series like that!

As for Cherry’s schedule, we need to figure that out still!  My dear friend , like me , is plagued with fairly regular migraines and moments of minor health failure! You know the kind that doesn’t exactly put you in the hospital or the grave but are enough to block creative writing! It’s why I moved to an every other day schedule! So how much Cherry will post will remain something we need to discover over time!  Those who are going to be mean about it.. even if you end up being a die hard Cherry fan, will have to deal .. with me! Well when I say me, I mean my fictional knights.. or me the cruel evil admin!  Let’s all agree that we will not pressure each other and just have fun together! This week her first post will go up though which will be a blog about…… I am already feeling hungry! So I will go grab a snack or even a meal! It’s already quite late when I write this! Give Cherry a warm welcome.. and look out to her delicious content in the near future! Stay random!

Animini: That Time I Reicarnated as a Slime – Episode 21 Shizu-san’s Students

Geared Greetings Island Guests!  Just when I thought I was out they PULLED me back in! It’s a famous movie quote.. from I think Godfather.. one of those kinds of movies anyway!   Yet it also applies to this episode of Slime! FINALLY I had an episode I could enjoy again!  I am really grateful for that. This show was about to lose me!  Yet I am back!

The Summary

We begin this episode exactly where the last episode left off! Rimuru is standing in front of his class and they aren’t being very respectful to him, freezing out the new teacher like classical kids stuff! Which is quite cute! Rimuru then summons Ranga to command some respect and it kind of works! They fear him and say their names.. but to earn their trust Rimuru must first gain their respect!  This is achieved by a one on one against all the children. Hoping that they might burn out some of that magic energy that is killing them. And thus we get introduced to a few new characters in a fairly organic way!   I especially like Chloe Aubert who attacks with her plushies and the other girl who fights as quite the clever mage. Using alteration and evocation at the same time! That is quite cool!  I also like how the boys more or less reflect the Barbarian, The Monk  and The Fighter in a way and everyone feels quite distinct. Kenya feels quite like Shizu so I was afraid they would all be “imprinted” on her and mimc her in some shape, way or form but no this is quite the diverse troupe.

The children get defeated easily by Rimuru and he takes an antagonistic stance with them.. saying they will never surpass him! He gets them fired up. Then we get a timeskip a few years later. Rimuru visits Treyni because he will try to put natural spirits inside the children, much like what happened to Shizu, but hopefully less harmful.  She knows of the place but does not know an entrance.. so for the entire timeskip Rimuru is stuck without a clue!  A picnic however leads to new discoveries. When a Dragon attacks the capital, Rimuru saves a slightly shady merchant, who invites him to his home. Yuuki says the guy is safe so Rimuru and his kids go to visit the merchant. A trade deal with the town might be established.  A woman living with the merchant (not sure if she is his wife) offers the child a prayer. It draws Rimuru’s attention because that prayer talks about Nature Spirits. The slime pays the woman, for the info and travels with the children.. in an attempt to keep them safe. 

The Positives

So this episode is much much MUCH better, then the past five episodes! While there are  still a few silly writing moments , the show does benefit from the smaller scope of things. I hate to say it but it’s writing isn’t strong enough to do the large political things this show tried to do before! Rimuru’s stories can be cute.. but the show has been aiming for this larger than life, interconnected world. It isn’t strong enough!  This episode ditches that feeling and makes the story much more self contained around Rimuru!  It doesn’t feel like  the world revolves around Rimuru anymore and I am very thankful for it.  The children’s style of fighting is cute as well! You really feel like you see children play fight only this time it’s real.. but it has that level of being unrefined.  That makes this episode feel a lot cosier and the jokes land because of it!  Rimuru bribing the children with Manga works a lot better than him spitting out an entire library for Yuuki! It just cute!

I also must say I like the overpowered Rimuru a lot better than the underpowered one.  The dragon our slime protagonist fights gets one shotted by him so easily!  It feels so much better than the whole Charybdis fight. As much as I can appreciate there being more powerful creatures than Rimuru,  when you don’t have consequences, which is a fine choice to make lots of other anime make as well,  there is no point.  Making Rimuru more OP and feel powerful again makes it so much more comfy.. there isn’t that sense of let down and you just end up smiling!  The pay off is right because we want to see Rimuru do well! This episode nails that appeal this show had for me .. so I really like it!

The Negatives

The episode does suffer a bit from the same writing flaws the previous episode does, but it feels less obnoxious. However like last episode it does strain your ability to suspend your disbelief. As fun as Chloe’s puppetry is , how did those plushies survive playing with her friends?  Why is that Rimuru who sees a dragon approach town it takes him EXACTLY enough time to catch up to the dragon while he is that much more powerful. It isn’t bad. I just saw it done better so I think it is fair to shout it out. Stuff like how Rimuru now can make Manga without having to have eaten paper first, maybe he had it prepared, I am not sure! It’s a chain of events that just feels a bit too easy! I compare it to Bofuri and Digimon, where the story is also very straight forward but the story in Digimon is more molded around the characters, here it sometimes feels like the other way around.

The other negative is the excessive narration Rimuru does in this episode. Normally he does narrate events happening in his village, but on a much bigger scale. You can not show building a village because  a real time visual doesn’t represent that. So of course Rimuru has to narrate. However in this episode it is very present and not for stuff you have to use it for. For example Rimuru goes on a long talk on how he paid the woman for her info. Why is that narrated? We see the scene happen. Sure it happens in the back end of the episode and it bridges into traveling but it happens a lot of times. It feels very “expositionny”  It is a far cry from the bad stuff in the past few episodes, just a bit sloppy!

The Score

Compared with the “I want to Drop this” episodes of the past few weeks, this felt like a total breath of fresh air. My critiques mostly stem from me being soured to the show so much! I am in that place where I am happy that it went the route it went.. but I am also kind of sour that THIS is all I wanted. I never needed this to be that super deep series with factions and betrayals and other stuff. The fact that this show can be this charming.. made me miss that so much and that is both feels amazing.. but also kinda painful! The flaws this episode have I’d easily forgive.. if it came anywhere but after the Charybdis arc.

What we got was a great episode,  that was fun, it did what it had to do, did some clever and colourful things.. whose only gripe is that it feels a bit “lazy”. I want to make sure Chloe is fine.. so she can be a great mamma to her plushies and have a lot of fun playing with them.  I want to see if they get a better spirit guardian then the Ifrit..because this plan.. I am not sure about this plan! This episode made me go from “I will finish the season but will pass on the second season  to, I might watch the second season when it comes out.. at least give it a chance.. So while I can’t justify my highest score.. the effect that this episode has had on me is huge!

Pokémon Top 5: My Favourite Dragon Types

We are almost done my friends! It has been a journey that with breaks and missed days took us almost six month! Today we list the penultimate favourite Top  5 Pokémon of a certain type! That type is the crowd favourite Dragon Type.. defeated by ice.. Itself.. why it is on this spot on my list and it is defeated by my favourite type! It is not a type I enjoy using a whole lot even. They are just such a hassle to raise. With most Pokémon Games having a lackluster after game..it’s hard to enjoy these before you are done with the game..so I still wonder how to train my dragon.

Rules and Honourable Mentions

This list was started to showcase as much love for Pokémon as possible so we only add one entry per evolution line and it can only make one list if it has a dual typing. For that reason Noivern is excluded from this list who’d definitely make it in the top 3 of my favourite dragons otherwise. Since evolutions are now much harder to stop I will also hold it against a pokémon if it evolves into something I don’t like. .and for this reason Axew is on my list! I love that little dragonny guy. But his final evolution, Haxorus, is sooooo boring. I don’t like the colour, it looks very murky and it just has no stand out traits. Thus I never like evolving my Axew past Fraxure.. and therefore it is a nice honourable mention.

The second rule I have always wielded is that a Pokémon has to feel like it’s part of the actual type. And The Dragon Type actually is mishandeld quite a bit. I don’t feel Latios or Latias are Dragons , I don’t think Zygarde in most of his forms looks like a Dragon, Altaria, Kindra , Sliggoo, Mega Ampharos.  None of these feel like dragons to me! But perhaps the biggest offender, yet a Pokémon I really love for it’s completely goofy design is Alolan Exegegcutor. It looks so unique for a pokémon and I love how in games you basically never see it’s head!  It is always off screen that is how big it is. Same for Pokémon Go.. that is hilarious and we did not have a better grass Dragon back then either.. we do now.. but it still earns a spot on this list.

Finally no temporary forms are allowed on this list. So Mega Charizard X is not allowed as for the majority of the adventure that pokémon comes with you as another typing. Not that I particularly love Charizard. No! My entry for this spot is Ultra Necrozma. I love it’s design I love it’s flavouring and most of all I love it’s musical theme! It is my favourite piece of music in Pokémon maybe.. though the Galar0 gym team is very good as well of course!  It is a an actual Dragon Psychic type in my eyes unlike the Latios and Latios and it is the single best boss Pokémon we ever fought. Also if you are not checking this out in WordPress Reader, check out the Ultra Necrozma theme below!

Dragon Type #5: Flygon

Flygon had the privilege of being the first Dragon Type I had in active use.  I caught myself a Trapinch as I liked it’s cry and went through the works with it! Ground types are quite useful and it matched my team fairly well. I did not expect it to turn into a dragon but that was a neat surprise. I For a long time I believed Vibrava was a Ground Bug type but I certainly had some fun with it. I really like it’s unique design , the rich green colour and heck I can even appreciate it’s shiny! Though I do feel that kinda belongs in the 90’s . It  is a bit lackluster in combat compared to some other Dragons but that also gives it some shine. I do not like how so many Dragons have super high stats but trash stats to begin with and in case of this evolution line it is all a bit more paced out. Vibrava has some usefulness. Even Trapinch is..so it is just a fun pokémon to carry around.

Pokédex entry wise there is not a lot to say about Flygon! In fact the only thing that really is explained in earlier games is that it has a red membrane over its eyes shielding itself from sand.  Its wings are powerful enough to whip up big sandstorms and as it prefers desert-like areas it has been given the nickname the Spirit of the Desert.  Even across versions this is usually the only thing that is said about this pokémon. Luckily we have Pokémon Sun and Moon.. you know those games where the pokédex entries all went a bit  heavy on the dark side?! Well in there it is stated that Flygon can beautifully sing and steal peoples heart so they wander through his deserts. It then uses sandstorms to hide Sandile and Krookodile in the storm so they can kill humans and pokémon or whatever they might prey on. They then share this prey with Flygon! So while Flygon is seen as a good boy by the fandom.. there is a dark side to it.. also there are Dakimakura of lewd Flygon’s out there so I bet it’s darkness goes even further.

In combat Flygon is pretty lackluster for a Dragon Pokémon. With a Base Stat total of 520 of which it’s physical attack stat and it’s speed stat are the highest at a total of 100 it struggles to keep up with other Dragons. However this does make it an excellent Dragon Dance user. It’s ability to levitate makes it immune to ground types, it is immune to electric types but very weak to ice. Which means you will probably want to run it as a mixed attacker.  Earthquake , Dragon Dance, Fire Blast (for scaring away those ice types)  and Dragon Claw makes a good set for this pokémon. Dragon Dance boosts speed and physical attack and while Fire Blast is inaccurate and special, it’s high base power and the fact that Flygon has a passable special attack makes it viable enough to use.  This isn’t an easy pokémon to use but if you can get a few Dragon Dance’s off and scare off your opponent it can surely bring you victory.

Dragon Type #4 Rayquaza

Rayquaza is probably my favourite looking Dragon Type ever! It should be my number one but I don’t like using legendaries.  It feels cheap. Yet Rayquaza and Mega Rayquaza look so amazing. They have unique moves and abilities as well. There is lots of lore and story around Rayquaza and it really feels like  it is a bigger part of the pokémon world. It even played an important role in Pokémon Mystery Dungeon. There is so much Rayquaza love that it really had an impact on me. Like how Zacian and Zamenzenta seemed really important.. just the story of their game was really bad. When A pokémon looks this amazing, you HAVE to use it in ORAS post game and there is significant content for it..it deserves a spot on my list

Most people know it as a part of the ruler of the Weather Trio. It was the Pokémon that put an end to the conflict between Kyogre and Groudon and it is a Pokémon that really has a beef with Deoxys.  It normally resides high above the clouds in the ozone layer. There it moves around consuming meteorites which have caused it to awaken to the power of Mega Evolution. It is said this pokémon is hundreds of millions years old and since the beginning of its life has lived about the clouds. Constantly flying through the ozone layer invisible from the land. It will only come down if Kyogre and Groudon will clash again. How exactly it stopped the Pokémon of Land and the Pokémon of water has been lost to legends. 

Rayquaza is not really allowed in much competitive formats let alone Mega Rayquaza.  Most sets are fairly similar amongst them and use Sword Dance for a powerful but trail sweeper, or Dragon Dance for a slightly less strong but more quick hitter. Personally I prefer the Sword Dance set as I love bringing Webs as hazards on my team which slow my enemy down! Equipped with it’s signature move Dragon Ascent, Victini’s Signature move V-Create (yes it can learn it but you can replace it with earthquake if you don’t want stat dropping moves)  and the always useful Extreme Speed this pokémon is a force to be reckoned with.  Like with Xerneas and Yveltal and to a lesser extent Zacian and Zamazenta these are pokémon you need to use in gameplay so this pokémon scores a lot of points for that. It actually feels cool instead of cheaty to use this legendary and the moves it has and uses really befit a legendary! I vastly prefer legendaries with signature moves that are actually useful. It gives yet another reason to use them in combat so Rayquaza is a solid pick.

Dragon Type #3 Hydreigon

There is something I really dislike about Dragons! Nearly all of them.. at least the ones that are good have a quadruple weakness. Everything except for my number two pick is quad weak to one of the dragon’s major counters. Hydreigon would have been my favourite dragon had it not had the worst quad weakness. It is a Dragon/Dark type so it can not take hits from Fairies. Add to that that it only evolves at the atrociously late level of 64! Which is 9 levels later than Dragonite.Still I LOVE this pokémon! It’s design is so fierce! It’s line mimicking that of a Hydra with it’s evolution getting more and more heads.. Dark and Dragon might be the coolest type out there. I don’t think there are any besides him either. It’s first evolution is super cute and it is the most fun line to have with you of all the dragons. It can do just about everything you expect a dragon to do and it’s cave colour scheme feels so in line with what we’ve seen in caves before! Thought went into this one!

The pokédex lore says this creature isn’t exactly the most kind. The dark type is called the evil type in Japan and this one really lives up to that name. It uses its six wings to fly in the sky but it is SO violent and aggressive that the only thing it needs to attack something is movement. It will attack and DESTROY anything that moves.Two of it’s heads.. the arm heads as they are called do not have brains so they continuously devour everything never feeling like they had enough to eat. The main head does join in for it’s fair share of violence though taking an almost equal share in all the killing. In Galar there are plenty of stories of Hydreigon that have destroyed villages entirely. As long  as Hydreigon spots movement it will continue to consume and devour until nothing but itself moves. 

Hydreigon is a very scary wallbreaker in the OU tier.. the most competitive tier so it does show how good it is. With its lowest stats being in the 90’s range and it’s special attack being at 125 this pokémon is very powerful but has no real weaknesses at least in the stat department. With the move Nasty Plot, it can continuously hail down Draco Meteor on your opponent. With a single move it can recover from the greatest weakness of  the Dragon Type’s strongest move. If you can set up beforehand it can even hit harder.  With additional moves like Flash Cannon , being a steel type move or Flamethrower being a fire type move it’s offensive coverage is great. Dark Pulse can give it a good flinch chance with high damage output still and moves like Roost will dramatically improve it’s survivability.  This pokémon both in lore as in combat is truly fearsome…unless you have a pink little creature by your side.. then you are probably fine!

Dragon Type #2 Dracovish

Generation 8 introduced me to my two favourite Dragon Types of all time.. and it is all because of the way Dragon Types are handled. Dracovish is one of the four fossil pokémon in the game and strictly theoretical this pokémon has the strongest move EVER in a pokémon game! I love it’s weird design! It feels and in a way is a science experiment gone wrong. But the positive is.. it doesn’t evolve and you can get this pokémon mid-game. This means Dracovish much like my number 1 can be an active part of your journeys.  While I did not walk around with a Dracovish the fact that it has a move that can have a base power of well over 5x that of the most powerful move in the game makes this a very odd thing in the pokémon world. I like oddities and this is what I feel Dragon’s can be like as well. Instead of giving us insane level requirements give us weird set up material for it to truely shine. Dracovish really utilised the Dynamax mechanic.. not Persé as the Pokémon that grows but one that really benefits from the weather effect.

Being introduced in Galar only we do not get a lot of trivia about this pokémon yet! What we do know is that much like Hydreigon it can be a bit ruthless. Weirdly enough even though it is a combination of two mismatched fossil halves it seemed to exist in the past like this as well. There it was driven to extinction by its own devices. It hunted for prey so fiercely that eventually it ended up starving itself due to overhunting. It has experienced other problems as well. It’s body is very much made to dwell on land and it can be fairly fast with running speeds of about miles per hours. It can’t maintain that for long though because it can only breath underwater.. as it’s head is a fish! That is just hilarious and if you have seen these lists you know I like awkward pokémon like that.

In combat Dracovish is very hard to use. With only a base stat total of 505 and his defence being his highest stat at 100, it seems very lackluster. However.. it knows the move Fishious Rend. Fishious Rend is an 85 base power move that doubles in power if the user goes First. Making it a 170 Base power move in that case. Since Dracovish is a water type it gets a same type attack bonus of 50% on that. So when it hits a Fishous Rend it would hit for 235 base power?! So far nothing that special! Most Pokémon with powerful moves get STAB (Same Type Attack)  Bonuses. Draco Meteor from  Hydreigon above would most likely still do more!  But then there is Dracovish’s ability! Strong Jaw.. which powers up biting moves by 50%. After all other calculations! So Suddenly this move takes a giant leap to a base power of 340 ish. Which is quite the number.. and then there is the Dynamax mechanic. Every water move used in Dynamax form sets up the rain. While you usually don’t want Dracovish itself to evolve, along with a rain setter, or a dynamax rain setter boosts it greatly. Because any water type  move in the rain .. you guessed it.. gets a 50% power boost post other calculations. Putting Fishious Rend’s optimal Base power at 510. With an item like a choice scarf or god forbid a choice band (you need web setters or paralysers or a trick room user)  this means Dracovish can attack as if it has been given 3 turns of set up from the get go. So unique but very cool!

My Favourite Dragon Type :  Appletun

No Dragonite is not on this list. I don’t like how it suddenly turns from blue to orange and gains the flying type after being found in the ocean. It doesn’t learn good flying moves either so it just happend to make it weaker to ice. If Ice is going to be my weakness I rather run with my Pokémon that is also an apple pie! This looks more unique, actually learns grass moves and again is available mid game! My Appletun had been with me for a very large part of my Pokémon Shield playthrough and I got so attached to it! It is amazing. Never EVER have I bonded so much with a Dragon. It’s compact design and it’s goofy animations make it a delight to have it walking around your camp and it is no slouch in combat either. It is not the most powerful or competitively viable pokémon but for the story playthrough it is incredibly good!  I named my Appletun Tarte Tartin because why not!  It sounds cute and fancy and it is actually related to Apple Pie! It is apple Pie! The fact that a baby dragon got into an apple and it evolves by eating yet another apple makes it a wonderfully wacky pokémon that I will hold close to my heart forever.

Pokédex wise we don’t see much difference from Dracovish.. it’s a fresh pokémon so there isn’t a lot to say.  This pokémon is popular amongst children because they would eat it’s skin as a treat. I am not sure if that means after it is dead or if it regrows.. but well eating the skin of something that is alive sounds kinda unappealing. No matter how sweet it may taste. Galar children are quite horrible either way if they kill this cutie or if they steal his skin! The pie of the little beast is slathered in nectar …the body is  about pie sized just fatter and higher. So dare I say it might be an American Pie?!.. Eeew… that gave me a visual I did not want. This nectar functions as an armor but it also lures in bugs which Appletun happily eats. Making the idea of kids eating it’s skin grosser… there is dead bugs in there kids! Still stay away from my baby!  It also has a Gigantamax form in which it turns into a giant apple covered in nectar! In this form it’s nectar has become more like armor but it also uses it to cover it’s opponents and drown them in the sweet goop!

Appletun has a special attack of 110 which is not bad for a Pokémon that evolves with a simple item.  It also gets a signature grass type move named Apple Acid which is a nice 80 base power move that lowers your opponents special defences  With an HP stat of 110 Appletun is quite bulky as well so it really works well with Leftovers as a held item to recover or Giga drain if it can deal super effective damage. With moves like Dragon Pulse and Draco Meteor on the side you have a wide arrangement of options available to you to deal damage. Choice Specs might also be a good shout-out as a held item. It really puts a bit of kick into this cake! It has not that many recognised movesets yet due to official tournaments and such not being a thing right now, so who knows you might have more fun with leech seeds, left over, giga drain to create the immortal apple pie!  With it unique Gigantamax move G-max Sweetness.. we get a pretty accurate description of using Appletun though! Sweet!

In the end I ended up without any of the classic Dragons all because of some piece of pie! It looks clunky, it has a bit of awkward lore with children eating it, it has good stats and the fact that both my number 1 and 2 can be a part of your journey in a significant capacity really helps. There is so much persona to Appletun and I really would love to see one scurrying across my house doing tired sighs from just moving little bits! I fell in love with this pokémon and a Dragon Type never did that before.It goes in against the stereotypical idea of a dragon and makes something still IS a dragon but also something completely else! Appletun has found it’s way into my heart like a worm..dragon-thing to an apple! The Winner is Appletun!

Who is your favourite Dragon?! Do you use Dragon Types a lot?!  How do you train your dragon?!  Let me know in the comments!   I expect to see a lot of Salamance and Dragonite.. but feel free to prove me wrong or right! Now it’s time for me to blast off again! As I found a new game in which I can catch a dragon!

A BIT of History Part 4 : Altered Beast (Sega Genesis)

My TALDIG had some issues working for a while but I had it fix. Now that we are  ready to travel back to the past that shows us the past again, I find myself asking, is this to weird?  Perhaps we should make these things a bit more straightforward? 

Change

Altered Beast is a well known classic for the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive. It started out as an arcade title in 1988 but was ported to Sega console the same year at least in Japan. The game then appeared as a launch title for the system for Europe and America and got numerous arcade releases bundle releases and was a part of the Sega Genesis Mini.
In this game you play a nameless fighter who gets resurrected by Zeus back in the days of ancient Greece (which roughly puts it at around 1200-900 BC) were you have to rescue his daughter Athena from the evil god of the Underworld Ha… I mean Neff. I distinctly remember that being somebody else though.

Altered Beast is all about changing, it’s a beat them up, the changes up the formula quite a bit. The length of the stage depends on how long it takes for you to gather three orbs that change you to more powerful forms and the final boss can only happen when you acquire beast mode. If you encounter Neff before this happens, the stage .. kind of loops on you.
You take the role of “Fighter” .. a guy in a pinkish Toga so clearly I was excited to play this one, but it left me wondering. Should I change as well?

I feel that the ‘A BIT of History’ concept might be a bit too weird to focus on. The history lessons taken from these games might be a bit too flimsy to focus on and best be relegated to a paragraph should I find such a game. So I am thinking of changing this series into “A BIT of Nostalgia’  in which  I revisit famous classic games or games that are very dear to me.
It offers me a bigger spectrum of games to play and allow me to play the games I would actually want to play, rather than have the time setting dictate which ones I should play. It took me a fair bit to get me to play this one because I wasn’t in a beat them up mood. Yet it was one of the most iconic ancient greece games. So expect some changes to this format soon. Now back to the review, because unlike the era of the ancient greeks, this game has not aged well.

Jojo’s Bizarre Adventures

This game features Fighter in Pink.. our hero that we all know and love! Back from the dead he has to stop the evil god of the underworld Neff and not Hadas..who turned Athena into a blue bird, which anime taught me mean she is a lesbian now. Throughout five stages you have to fight classic greek enemies such as cyclops (plural) and …. well there are Satyrs…sort of they have goat heads as well but I guess they are there? Though they are called Gory Goats here… then there are zombies, demons ant wasps and evil chickens with poisonous stingers. So clearly the greek setting is used very well. I can only assume all these creatures died out because Fighter in Pink really disliked them and punched them all to death.


The most important enemy in this game is the three headed wolf though, which came in two colours. The useless brown variant and the all mighty blue variant. Both will make the sound of a paper crumpling when you kick them and die right away, but by killing blue three headed wolves the ancient greeks could call upon the power of an orb, that turned them from buff philosophers into half naked Jojo characters.

Killing another  one then turns them into the old Dragon Ball Broly, and after killing a third blue three headed wolf the ancient greeks could turn into beastmen. The buffing up and the whole Neff  standing menacing before you, checking out if you are worth his time has a pretty big Jojo feel, this could be a new take on that series and since it’s set in ancient history I decided to name this Fighter in Pink. Jorges Jorda is a farmer who died from being attacked by animals.. now zeus resurrects him and by gathering the power of death…he can channel what caused his death.

The game does feel like a bizarre string of adventures with stages strung together like the graveyard, the swamp, the cave, the Greek building and the underworld/city of the dead. Wait.. if the hero died wouldn’t he already be in the underworld? Would that not be better to start? Now he gets resurrected and has to travel back to the underworld again. One could argue that Jorges would have to find his power orbs but Neff steals them at the end of each stage, assumingly needed to make him reach his final form or something.  Hmm.. clearly not all the ancient Greeks were philosophers. Zeus clearly wasn’t the smartest god either, then again that seems to be a bit of a theme with Zeus in games or movies, he tends to get blindsided a lot. So you heard it here first guys! Zeus can be outsmarted by uncle Fester from the Addams family.. because I am pretty sure that is who Neff is.

Too much bits

The Mega Drive was the first sixteen bit console, with amazing stuff like blast processing and an iconic sound chip.  Unfortunately it clearly shows that this game was not designed for this console and people were still a bit unfamiliar with the power of this machine. The enemies don’t look very clean. The three headed wolves look more like misshapen bulls to me and for a few other enemies I also had to struggle to look what they are. Now of course this in part is due to the home consoles being less powerful than arcade cabinets, but if we look at Turtles in Time, which although appearing later did it much better. Stages were changed up , difficulty was slightly adapted and  visuals and vocals were changed.  This games suffers from this being NOT the case in this port. In fact I like the Master System port more because it feels more distinct.

With the speech of Neff  included he welcomes players to their doom before the start of each boss fight, and doom you will face , over and over and over and over again. This is a problem with a lot of Beat Them Up ports. Most of these games were designed to be unrelenting so they can guzzle up as much of your quarters as much as possible. Basically in the arcade you have infinite lives as long as you have quarters. Good Beat them up ports thusly either give you infinite lives… as the price of a full priced game should get you infinite quarters or at least a series of lives and a handful of continues. Altered Beast on Genesis asks you to beat the entire game on three lives which basically equals three quarters. If even that!

There are NO healing items in this game so all damage is permanent. You get three “hearts”/blocks of life that can all take 1 to 3 hits depending on the enemies strength. Given that a random chicken enemy (who crossed over from Golden Axe) can take a complete life block away due to you having virtually no invincibility frames after being it.. this game is relentlessly hard.

Luckily by holding A (or 1)  plus start in the main menu you can at least continue on the stage you died on. Yet still finishing a stage is a rather herculean feat. Yet like most arcade games this doesn’t really come down to your gaming skills,but more to pattern recognition. If you know where the blue wolves will show up and you can manage to hit them quick and fast and gather your orbs fast enough these stages are fairly doable. Mostly because the bosses once you get their pattern down are actually quite easy. Except for the second boss.. whose tell of damage is so deceptive it took me five times to figure out that I wasn’t exactly damaging it when it flashes red when I hit it.. I needed to hit different hitboxes, which do not flash at all!?It’s things like this that show this game came out so early in the console’s life span, that actually influence how enjoyable the gameplay is.

Sega Does

I really wish I could be more positive about this game, but unfortunately there was very little that I liked about this game. That doesn’t make it is a bad game, just that I review if negatively, if you enjoy this all the power to you! I hope and know people do like this game, which is great, everything deserves love. I did like the variety in bosses and how you have to actually use your beasts powers and some strategy to take them down. I especially like the fourth stage boss, which is like a baby dragon with a huge lava ball. It releases some firebird minions as well as big strings of fire balls and avoiding both felt like a good challenge.

The third boss and the final boss however are total pushovers I beat them first try both without taking a hit just by using cheap tactics.  The third boss is a sort of dragonhead stuck on a helix fossil with some gooey egg sack material attached to it.. and it shoots purple balls and blobs. By using the Bear’s  (that stages animal)  spin jump while on it’s body you can defeat it without any trouble.  The third stage itself though has some awkward platform jumps which can be very irritating to get trough.

In the fifth stage we see Neff finally taking his true form, that of a white Rhino. Yet in the Master System it is Cyan and in the Arcade it is pink. It always grinds my gears when pink things are such pushovers. It isn’t much harder than Rocksteady from the first TMNT game on NES. You can easily jump over it and spam damage until it dies. No skill required. However everything else on that stage deals soooo much damage, especially the dark unicorns, so getting there.. is a long arduous process of learning where things spawn and when to punch it to death.

If you miss a blue wolf on your first roulation I found it rather impossible to stay alive long enough to reach the boss. The music is the same in about every stage with fairly little sound effects other as coming from the player so I am glad the fifth stage was the final one.  We see Athena standing next to some beastmen.. in the final cutscene and then we are done.
In the fifth stage we turn into the wolf again, we turned into the first stage as well..but this time he is golden. So I guess it’s a super Wolf?!

Also why go for choices like the Dragon and the Tiger? I get the wolf and the bear as those might be found in ancient greece but why not make one where you turn into a Bull/Minotaur and one in a horseman/centaur. So much potential here goes away with bad flavoring. I barely learned anything about ancient greece because.. nothing is done with the setting at all. The cutest thing is that they have  the chicken enemy from Golden Axe as a homage.

There was so much more they could do with this formula, even for an arcade cabinet. It’s not like the greek mythos is lacking in mystical creatures or cool enemies to fight. Yet according to this game it does, which by the logic of A BIT of History .. now means that I learned that ancient greek had plenty bland video game type enemies.. which in truth I never knew!

While I have no doubt that this game was amazing in 1988 and even in 1990 this game has been surpassed left and right by just about every other beat them up out there. Turtles 2 the arcade game, Turtles in Time, Streets of Rage, Final Fight and Towers of Mystara just to name a few. Nintendo in particular has time and time again shown that this does not need to happen to games. Sega more or less in their original IP’s as well. Yet even when we consider this one in the arcade , the better version it has been surpassed by just about everything. Sure the classic mario has been improved upon but you can still enjoy the original game, this just made me want to play Turtles in Time instead. I guess Sega really does what Nintendon’t . Because Nintendon’t age this poorly.

This cocktail has been sitting here for a while.. and it has fermented which leaves a Pine-Meh-Pple taste in your mouth if you can not add enough nostalgia sugar

All other posts in this series

Part 0: What is Pinkie Doing now

Part 1: E.V.O. The Search for Eden

Part 2: Flintstones Treasure of Sierra Madrock

Part 3: Joe and Mac Caveman Ninja’s

To be REBRANDED