Fun – Pinkie's Paradise

Periwinkle: Legend of the Purple Plunderer or something like that.

POSTCARDS FROM PARADISE

My eyes shot open.

I hear gravel cracking under tires outside my hut. I look at my alarm clock. Three thirty in the morning. I see the red glow of brake lights through my window shades. I hear a car door open up.

*Quack Quack* *Quack Quack*

I know whose Jeep this is. Only one person on this island drives a custom Duck Jeep. Complete with matching Duck Quacks as a keys-still-in-the-ignition-alarm.

I hear another door slam. Then palmate up the drive. I dress quickly. What could it be this late at night? Was it something I had done? Something I had said?

*Knock Knock* Two raps at the door.

Cookie sighs, rolling over on the couch trying to catch some ZzZz’s. Some Gaurd Seal he is.

I open the door somewhat guessing what this late night meeting could be about.

“Princess?

Princess Pinkie hands me a shovel and strolls back to the jeep. I examine the shovel and she turns around at the Duck Jeep. “Well? Are you ready?”

Not soon after we’re driving through the sandy roads of Paradise in the dead of night. We pass by occasional bonfires and coconuts enjoying their night. I, blink twice as I see Sunny hanging upside down from a tree. I, shake my head. I have to lay off the drink.

“So if this is about..” I start

“It’s not about anything. Granted you haven’t been showing up for your duties but Paradise is accommodating. The only reason I’m calling upon you now is because I may have found something that would interest you.”

With my interest peaked I gaze over towards the driver side as Princess Pinkie holds up what looks like a dirty old map. She keeps her eyes on the road ahead as I take the map from her hands.

“What is it?”

“I think it’s a treasure map.”

“Here? Treasure? On the island??”

“If that map is true. We should be approaching the spot soon” As we pull up to a secluded beach across the island. The sun not yet risen painting the sky a lighter shade of blue. We exit the vehicle and see that there is already a red “X” painted on the sand. We look at one another and shrug. I throw the shovel into the sand and only have to scoop one shovelful of sand up to uncover what lies beneath. It is a copy of the PlayStation 2 game, Pirates: Legend of the Black Buccaneer…

We both look at it on the ground. “Do you think that’s it?” I ask. Pinkie seems just as disappointed. “I mean.. shit. I don’t know.”

“I’ll try digging a little further”

“Yeah do that” she says as I scoop Pirates out of the way and continue digging.

The nine o’ clock sun is beating down on both of us collapsed on the beach. Hours of digging. No dice. The treasure is unfortunately the PlayStation 2 game, Pirates: Legend of the Black Buccaneer. Defeated we both rise and walk over to the Jeep. Arriving at my hut only a short time later Pinkie tosses the game on the seat after I get out.

“Maybe you were meant to play this game.”

Looking down at it. “Yeah…sure.”

I close the door.

So this game arguably has the longest trailer I have ever seen. Especially considering the average completion time on Howlongtobeat.com is around four hours. Which four hours really doesn’t seem like a long period of time. It’s only 1/6th of a day. 1/2 of a good night’s sleep (does anyone ever get a full eight?) no, four hours doesn’t seem long at all.

BUT THIS FOUR HOURS IS A VERY LONG TIME

So.. arguably part of this is my fault but mostly it’s not. Let me explain.

Back some time ago in my early 20’s I used to work at a Gas Station/Pizzeria type place. I don’t know how most of Europe works but I’m pretty sure you guys have the same idea – in Dublin I ate at some Irish McDonald’s knock off that was way better at a Petrol station. So people liked the pizza at this place and every summer – it was right down the road from where they held the county fair.

Now this county fair is a big deal. Every year. People really dig it and every year it’d usually be the same touring carnival staff that really dug our food. So working there while the fair was operating afforded you the chance to meet a lot of colorful personalities. But there was one particular person I’ll never forget because there was a part of me that envied him. I think.

This was at the height of the Pirates of the Caribbean craze and there was a man that would adorn himself in full Jack Sparrow attire and make up and well… he was quite a hit. Twenty year old me would watch as people surrounded him for photos as I pushed out pizza dough or made subs. Watching quietly from afar thinking things like:

“Wow… that guy probably gets a lot of tail.”

And

“Pirates of the Caribbean was the best thing that’s ever happened to this dude.”

What the hell does this have to do with anything? Well… it does sort of help explain my misconceptions of pirates and piracy in general. I, a relatively unpopular and lowly pizza boy saw this Johnny Depp look-a-like crushing it. And I should add a fun loving and mischievous, Jack Sparrow cosplayer that was melting the hearts of moms the world over while everyone else swooned.

As I sat there changing our fryer baskets I glared at the local star. As people gathered around I thought to myself:

“Probably never sailed a day in your life, you fraud!”

But neither had I AND there is absolutely no sailing going on in the deceptively titled, Pirates: Legend of the Black Buccaneer.

In fact, if you missed the five minute video at the beginning of the game you probably would have no clue this is a game based on pirates at all. There is no sailing, or drinking rum or singing songs. All you do is shoot monkeys in the face and fall to your death.

The story’s premise is sort of cool, if not a bit confusing. During the height of the slave trade – there was a slave ship on its way to a Spanish Outpost that found itself ravaged in the storms of the Bermuda Triangle. Where as legend will have it the legendary slave, La Borgne commanded a slave army that waged war on the nearby Spanish Outpost. They destroyed all that was in their way because well.. they were understandably pissed off. The Outpost was deserted and in nautical lore the island was considered cursed and dangerous but also of course, a terminal for lost treasures and riches beyond your wildest dreams.

At last, hearing nothing from the outpost for quite a while the Spanish Crown sends its most decorated captain out to learn the fate of the doomed ship. The revered explorer, Dominic Roberto De La Cruz (shout out to my friend, Filipa 🤗) As legend would have it De La Cruz would land on the island and battle La Borgne and her army of slaves but the outcome of this struggle is lost to the sands of time and De La Cruz was never heard from again.

Here is where you enter – as Francis Blade. A nobody rogue who finds himself as the sole survivor of a ship wreck marooned on La Borgne Island. It is here where apes and orangutans attack you for no reason whatsoever and you’ll spend hours upon hours swearing at your television as the game’s inconsistent and slippery controls fail you over and over again.

There is an interesting element (one that I don’t like and I don’t really think it makes a ton of sense) but after a little bit of gameplay you come across an Amulet. An amulet that gives you the power to morph into the “Black Buccaneer”. Whom confusingly looks like a mix between Baron Samedi and the Hulk. The artwork on the old screens are very heavy with the Baron Samedi aesthetic as well without any real mention of Haiti or Voodoo culture whatsoever.

One could argue that it’s not necessarily the developer and writer’s jobs to spoon feed the gamer every single detail but it sort of seems like a missed opportunity when you’re dealing with subject matter as fascinating as Baron Samedi and Haitian culture as a whole.

I like the idea of an escaped slave raging against her colonial captors through the use of brute force and black magic but why not run with it? It feels like a decent idea that was never fully realized. Which is basically the entire story of this game.

If they would have just tightened up the controls and upped the story a little bit you could have had a memorable adventure but instead they ended up with confusing plot accompanied by infuriating controls.

SHOP TIL YOU DROP

I mean .. yeah .. it’s bad but it’s still worth more than one cent. Buy it if you see it for one cent.

DESERT ISLAND SONGS

I mean will any other song written about a pirate ever compare?

PERIWINKLE’S LOW HANGING FRUIT PUNCH VERSION 2.0

1.) Vin Diesel Skull Cap

2.) Shameless Voodoo Face Paint

Pretty Princess Pinkie – The Phantom of the Face Off Superhero Movie- Darkman

Hear ye Hear ye! Princess Pinkie is here with a new movie post!

Greetings my loyal guests and subjects! If you are a bit like me you will have watched Taken and thought “That is a pretty good action movie with Liam Neeson….. but that whole daughter being captured is kinda cliché.. it would be so much better if he threw a temper tantrum over a pink plushie!” If you are not like me, there is a chance this movie might have flown under your radar! So no matter if we are different OR alike, today we will take a look at Darkman!

Behind the mask

Darkman is a superhero movie that was released on the silver screen in august of 1990, it starred Liam Neeson as Dr Peyton Westlake, who would later take up the moniker of Darkman. The movie is directed by Sam Rami, and is co-starred by Frances McDormand, a name people might recognise despite her kind of lacking any iconic roles. A quick IMDB search gave me no real “iconic roles” but she has played in Fargo, Burn After Reading and did a lot of voice works such as the Mamma Dinosaur in The good Dinosaur. The Antagonist of the movie, and it’s sequel is played by Larry Drake… who is best known for Darkman and Darkman II, but also was the voice of Pops in Johnny Bravo! See there you go!

The movie scores a respectable 6,4 on IMDB, which I think is a really good score for a 1990’s Sam Raimi directed superhero movie (and yes it has a Bruce Campbell cameo). While Liam Neeson played the role of the titular character in the first movie, the character was played by Arnold Vosloo in the sequel, which would not be a big objection this time around since the movie is about switching faces… but for some weird reason in the sequel they replace Liam Neeson as if he was Vosloo all along. If nothing else this movie ins an interesting peek into Neesons earlier days of acting, which was .. a bit different, and with the early 90’s direction AND Raimi at the helm.. we see Neeson’s version of “Bully Maguire” or Symbiote Suit Spiderman from the Raimi trilogy… just done a lot earlier… and this time involving a pink elephant and let me tell you it is great.

Julie Hasting (played by McDormand) is ..I think… in real estate, or a real estate lawyer When she discovers a big player on the real estate market is doing some illegal things trough a document, a crimelord by the name of Robert G Durant begins looking for these papers, for he is in the real estate market as well and with this document he can put pressure on his competitors and own the city! By mistake or plot convenience this document ends up in the possesion of Dr Peyton Westlake, boyfriend of Hastings and the man who one day wishes to be her husband. He is researching a synthetic skin solution that can be printed into any face based on a few photos. However the chemical compound of his masks degrades by exposure to light! The masks are fine…in the dark but can survive about 100 minutes when exposed to light. Durant finds Peyton and kills his lab assistant, electrocutes Peyton so hard his hands char up completely then traps him in an explosion ruining his face.. in a very similar style as to how Harvey Dent lost half of his face in The Dark Knight.

With many burns over his body Westlake can no longer face the woman he has proposed to.. he lost his scientific work and his assistant, he lost his hands.. he lost everything, so now he swears revenge…which is amplified because the hospital severed all his nerves. Peyton no longer has any input of pain in his senses.. which causes everything else, including his emotions to overload! Drapped in bandages , a raincoat and a wide rimmed had.. he plans revenge.. rebuilding this face printing lab in an abandoned factory.. and using these masks to take revenge on those who wronged him… unknowing it will cause his old love Julie to become tied up in this once again.

Face Flourish* …..Off!*

So in this movie we get Liam Neeson with enhanced emotions, and all sorts of B-Grade actors having to play Liam Neeson playing them, but Liam Neeson with Soap Opera emotions! This concept is amazing… When you watch Face-Off it’s great to see two of the most over acting Hollywood stars, playing the other playing them..in all their overacting glory. This movie.. let’s a handful of Hollywood Redshirts, play Liam Neeson.. who is forced to over act. Which is great because we know him as someone who is very stoic and composed. This is mixed with a very strong Phantom of the Opera Influence throughout and supplemented by the camp that is 90’s superhero movies!…And it’s directed by Sam Raimi! How can this NOT be good! This concept is just so amazing! What makes it even better is that a lot of the technology that is used in this movie, kind of, is relevant in this day and age. Sure we don’t have skin that dissolves in the light.. but the whole 3d printing and phone apps that can extrapolate a lot of data on your face make this movie all the more delightful to watch.

In this movie Liam Neeson infiltrates the Crime Network of Durant by making himself look like the henchman and of course like the head honcho himself. Now this already is a very fun criminal organisation, with your classical bald bruiser type guy, the sunglasses wearing cool dude with long hair, and the scruffy looking guy with an artificial leg that can be detached and used as a weapon! We have seen machine gun legs in a few movies.. but the way how this movie handles it is the GREATEST weaponised limb I have seen in movies. What’s different?! Well normally we see the owner of the weaponised limp use it… but not this time the cool guy just yanks the limp from the other guy and uses it.. or the scruffy guy hands it over to him.. but than just stands there.. hopping on one leg… that’s ALL he does! He takes of his leg and gives it to someone else to shoot it .. while hopping! Hilarious.. but it also makes a lot of sense.. cause you can’t aim when hopping! It’s things like this that really show me the movie isn’t afraid to have fun with itself.

Have you ever wondered how the phantom of the Opera just happened to find one of those half masks .. and also the right half for his face?! Well in this movie Neeson tries to print his own face.. but because his lab exploded the one photo he had of himself is damaged in the exact same spot as his real face! He tries to make his mask.. but he can’t he has to extrapolate.. and because he only has an old junky computer which was old in the 90’s.. turning that into a 3d model takes hundreds of days. Which sounds legit but nowadays it sounds hilarious! However it also shows us a bit in what timeframe this movie takes place it helps us feel the alienation, Peyton Westlake must go trough and it offers interesting challenges.

Every mission he does..which later in the movie includes dating his former girlfriend again.. has to be done in 100 minutes or his new face will melt! So when a Carny refuses him a price he won..with only a few minutes left on the clock… with his enhanced emotion Peyton just loses it, with over the top rage eye effects added in and mind snapping animations to boot.. it’s just the flavour of bonkers I am looking for! Honestly this movie makes Face/Off seem like a nuanced movie. Take the damned Elephant.. is something I never expected Liam Neeson to say in such a threatening voice, and it gets even better when we get into the classic, Shoot Him.. No Shoot him I am your real boss moments when a character is forced to shoot at one of the two similar looking characters. I normally find that something for a Cartoon but there are little moments and motions that really sell this for me. For example Peyton is super afraid the masks comes off so he is constantly tucking in his neck, it’s so weird to see a real actor.. straighten their own face.. but it really helps sell the illusion, it makes everything silly at the same time but I really love it.

Not so Dark….Man

This movie feels quite different from other Superhero movies as well, as Peyton does not really have much super powers, other than not being able to feel pain. He has to outsmart the villains, has to stake them out and thus he doesn’t patrol the streets at night, no he constantly stakes things out and goes for the slow burn. He learns routines, practices their voices, their quirks, and since Raimi wants to make the timer element much more of a thing, almost the entire movie , except for the grande finale, takes place during daytime. It’s the light that adds the suspense rather than the dark, and while I would not call the movie suspenseful, it really does add something that all fights take place during the day and we can see the doppelgangers in full colour rather than in a dim lit room to polish out some bad effects. While some effects clearly do not hold up.. the movie really commits to it’s style!

You can see the movie was released at the back-end of the 80’s as a lot of the criminal stuff kind of reminded me of miami vice, the bright coloured suits the gangsters wear, the over the top.. cutting your finger off with a cigar cutter thing, the fact the movie has to have a helicopter chase. It feels really dated….but in a good way. Sure lady in this movie is a pretty helpless damsel in distress, their is not as much representation in this movie and the technology this movie was based on now almost is a joke, but that’s also what’s so likable about this. It is not something that could exist in this form in this day and age, in almost any perspective. There is no real development for Peyton, the name Darkman is way to on the nose, the damsel is way too helpless and durants gang ALMOST look like Jojo’s characters, fashion wise. Even the way chinese restaurants look feel dated.. which made me feel like I was watching something that has gone extinct.. like the Buddy Cop genre. .. It had a lot with that genre in common in the cinematographic style as well.

There is something about the way this movie is shot, not a lot of fancy tricks, not a lot of dark broody hero poses making the hero look cool, no! He gets the job done and is nervous, keeping checking on his watch, At the ending we are shown there is another guy besides Durant who is all part of this whole construction situation scheme and he jumps around those metal girders of a construction site with ease, he has been on so many he developed a feeling for it, while Neeson’s character wrapped in a heavy coat and bandages has trouble. Never does he feel cool, or all that hero like..the camera really shows this as well. Feeling very VERY basic for a Superhero movie, the action doesn’t feel “cool” or stylised. We really get the sensation that this is just a guy out for revenge..with a lot of enhanced emotions.
Only those emotions are stylised which is neat because that fits the silly tone of this movie so well but also never makes the hero seem immortal. He does not feel physical pain..but he can be ashamed..he can be so nervous he is forced to run away and that’s just such a neat take on the genre.

Pink Elephant

I LOVED this movie! I still love it, even though I know the IMDB score of 6.4 is probably fair, to me it is so much more than that. Yes the acting is hokey at times and McDormand really isn’t good in this movie but for some reason it blends so well. Because the movie wants Liam Neeson and the “duplicates” to lean so much into soap opera acting, the hammy acting of the rest of the cast really works as well, they fit in the same universe. Darkman somehow is extremely cliché YET has this “pragmatic” style of film making to it that really sells it for me. The big bad doesn’t get taken down in a big epic satisfying way, it’s more like as if an opportunity arises and our hero takes it. That goes for all the takedowns. It goes for the movie making as well. It doesn’t come on screen as spectacular as you might want, sometimes even a bit clunky..but it feels very much intentional.

In the end I’d have to compare the movie with the a pink elephant plushie. Sure it’s not a giant bear , it also is made with some cheap looking plastic eyes and some overly bright fur and it’s not an iconic toy such as Pikachu plushie or whatever is on your Dakimakura and in many way it’s just a generic plushie.. but once you hold it and hug it, you can really appreciate how soft it is, how good it is to hug! It might not be something you display with pride.. but whenever you are feeling blue you can pull it out of wherever you hide it and have a great time and let it and all of it’s flaws and camp cheer you up! Great entertainment even if it’s nothing else.

Amazon.com: MaoGoLan Big Pink Elephant Stuffed Animal Soft Elephant Plush Toy 20'': Toys & Games

Have you seen this movie?! Did you like it?! What is your favourite cheesy Superhero movie?! Let me know in the comments! The Princess would like to know the thought of her subjects! If you liked this post please consider supporting me on Kofi! I am currently working on tiny projects to bring more content to the blog!

Pretty Princess Pinkie Plays: Pokémon Xenoverse Per Aspera Ad Astra

Hear ye hear ye! Princess Pinkie has returned with a new Pokémon Post

Salutations my loyal subjects and island guests. Today I bring good tidings, I feel enamoured, I feel buzzed… and I also cried a bit when it was over! For the past two weeks or so I have been playing a Pokémon fan game that is SO GOOD, that it without a shadow of doubt in my head is now my favourite Pokémon fan game EVER. Yet keeping it at that would be an understatement, this game might be one of my favourite Pokémon games ever…and I just might get some more after game in the future. Today I introduce you to the second item in my treasury (Phantom Menace being the first one) today I introduce you to Pokémon Xenoverse.

Story

Did you know that the Italian word for Download…. is Download?! With this knowledge I was able to downloaded the greatest Pokémon Fan game… the very best like nothing ever was. I stumbled around an Italian website and found the download button. After fumbeling around for a bit I got the game downloaded for free. This game has rose to prominence in the Pokétubing community recently being picked up by more and more english people. What caused this strange event, I do not know. Perhaps it was the game being finished, perhaps it was the english version being fully available and kitted out. I do not know nor do I care. I got to play this game spearheaded by a man calling himself weedle.. and his team of italian geniuses. Spending over 70 levels with my Pokémon and almost every moment with them was great. It even began with a cool anime style opening and would feature a much more fleshed out story than regular pokémon games.

The game begins showing a red haired man walking nervously in a hospital. This is the happiest day of his life.. but his heart is burdened with a secret. None of it matters though when the nurse calls him to the bedside of his wife. She asks her husband by the name of Versil to guess the gender of the baby. The player picks the gender.. so I chose a girl. He guesses it’s a girl.. and Clover smiles. “Just like we always dreamed off” she then asks Versil what he thinks is a good name for the baby. I can type in a name, and he says Pinkie. Clover thanks her husband for coming up with such a wonderful name and we skip four years ahead in time. Versil is playing with his daughter showing her around the area of her house that really lies in the middle of nowhere. It is beautiful and serene, the visit the grave of Pinkie’s grandfather. Versil does not tell her a lot about him as it is not the time.

Xenoverse: Per Aspera Ad Astra - GameList

In the distance a sound can be heard and Versil goes out to investigate , his daughter tagging along. It did not sound dangerous so it was fine for her to tag along. Three pokéballs can be found abandoned by the road. A lizard with a mask, a cheeky fire lizard and an adorable blue baby dragon. Versil tells his daughter to grab one.. just in case something dangerous is along. Of course his daughter would grab the blue cutey called Shulong…it has an adorable cry! After she had chosen it, an ominous voice can be heard. A man stands in the shadow addressing Versil. They talk about something little Pinkie would not yet understand..but very quickly the man orders his Tyranitar to use a Hyper Beam on Pinkie.. Versil steps in front of the blast and everything goes white.

Pinkie wakes up…. that was a horrible dream. But it felt kind of different. Today is her 15th birthday. It has been years since her father left on a business trip… did she just dream up of a way to say goodbye to him? Walking downstairs her mother wishes her a happy birthday, gives her some gifts but as they start talking about the dream Clover goes silent. It was not a dream, it seems Pinkie has finally remembered what really happened. The Pink haired girl wants to go find her dad! Her mother sends her to her room angrily! “You are not going anywhere young lady”. Pinkie is upset in her room as her Shulong tries to comfort her. She named him Mooch! .. When Mooch finds out he can not comfort her he suddenly acts all brave and makes noises gesturing the two should flee trough her bedroom window. As Pinkie picks up Mooch Pokéball , something he never been inside of much before.. the two set out on the greatest journey of their live to find Pinkie’s dad!

Design

With a story that seems a lot like the story of Fallout 3 , you go on a Pokémon Journey that is not like the others. Though sharing similarities with Pokémon Uranium, the pokémon Gym challenge is an afterthought here, a means to an end. Everything is part of a bigger narration. Most gym leaders you defeat because you need a favour from them, even if it’s only the right to pass trough their town, sometimes you require their insight. All gym leaders in this world have second jobs. Most of them like Drayden are the leaders of their respective town, yet others are the sheriff or even hiphop icons. It allows your journey to rely on them much more and give them much more characterisation. The same goes for your rival who may turn out to be an actual love interest. The same goes for the pokémon professor, who like Sonia in Gen VIII has a much more personal journey in this story and the champion whom you meet very early in this game so you can really grow to appreciate his strength.

This game feels like an anime, and I don’t mean the Pokemon anime. I mean this feels legit like an exciting anime story, a story that can hold itself on it’s own but is increased 10 fold in efficiency if you have played through at least the Kanto and Johto region stories. This game is a tribute to Pokémon and much more Geekiness. The fact that beating the Champion gives you the Plus Ultra! Achievement already will tell you something! Yet you will encounter so many colourful characters that many of them could hold an anime show on their own.. like the Pokémon variant of Ghostbusters “Geist” Or the Hiphop Gym Leader Wallace Daddy, who adopts a lonely Pokémon even though it ruined his big concert. There are so many great characters in here… and what is even better, the Fakemon are also great.

Fakemon is the official term for fan made pokemon so do not think that the term is derogatory or anything. In fact I think these are the best starters since Gen III (excluding Rowlet). There are a lot of clever ideas. How about a Habanero styled Pokémon that is a Grass and Fire type or how about a Hercules Beetle that is a Sumo Wrestler.. as it is a chunky warrior beetle from Japan?! It is awesome! How about a Vulture that also takes design elements from the Grim Reaper?! There are great ideas in this game troughout! It also offers Xenoverse variants of certain types.. like Regional Variants but often a bit beefed up to be more relevant as well. Like an Ice Type Galvantula or a Ghost type Sharpedo. Well over 75% of them looks truely amazing with very little stinkers in the entire lineup. And this game has 3 separate Pokédexes so that is an achievement. If you do not like using fakemon, there are plenty of pokémon in the game as well, but why would you use a Pidgey when you can use a Bremand. A pokémon that is actually four pokémon all based on one of the Town Musicians of Bremen…all carrying my wished to be real “sound type”

Mechanics

The game is not afraid to introduce new mechanics and it does so on many levels starting with this new , and by fans desired, sound type. And though I do not like how the typing is flavoured and the new moves lose the ability to bypass substitutes it does really balance the game out pretty nicely. The sound type is super effective against water, flying and fairy types, while being weak to Dragon and Electric types. This gives us a tertiary typing core. After Water, Fire Grass and Dark , Fighting, Psychic we now can build our teams around a Fairy , Sound and Dragon core. It gives Fairy types a bit of a nerf which isn’t a bad thing and boosts Dragons up a bit again. The Dragon Typing has become a bit of a dud since the introduction of fairies. A lot of classic pokémon that now have the sound type appear in the game as well. Jigglypuff, Ekans, Drowzee, Loudred and Chatot just to name a few. Really giving the usage of electric types a boost as well! So while the typing makes much less sense then it could have, the way it works makes the game really smooth and balanced to play!

From the beginning of the game you can choose to use the old individual experience thing or the newer party experience style. I chose the latter because frankly I wanted to have this game beat by the time New Pokémon Snap Rolled around. Plus I want to see as many Pokémon as possible…and Fan games tend to be a tad difficult so I did not want to do needless grinding. As a result I always ended up somewhat overleveled, yet because the typings are so smooth and the movesets Pokémon learn great moves and Tm ‘s are so plentiful it doesn’t matter much either way. Individuals will give you more of a challenge , but I found myself in tough battles anyway. Your lead Pokémon gets more experience as the rest so I just had fun by going with more creative movesets rather than pressing the super effective button all the time.. and I had a wonderful time with it. There were times I really needed to step up my game.. but I was also allowed to use a team I really wanted which is great.

HM’s have been replaced by holograms you summon from your gloves, fishing at times can be a minigame and other cute things like that can really enhance your gameplay experience. You can play as you like with whatever monsters you like. This is how modern pokémon games do it and this is how it should be. It allowed me to bond more with my team.. and for the first time since a long time… I super bonded with my starter. This game FORCES you to use your starter all throughout the game. Because much like you, your starter is involved in the story. It’s as much it’s journey as it is yours. This is shown in the fact that it can enter places called Den’s , these are puzzle rooms your unevolved starter can access throughout the game, here you play your stater trying to find treasure or switches and avoid being kicked out by the den’s owner…. but how can you play the cute little guy if your starter evolves? Well the truth is your starter doesn’t evolve… it digivolves…. well kinda!

Presentation

It became clear to me that your starter could not just evolve from the get go! That is because your starter is involved in cutscenes, not only does it’s model show up on the overworld sometimes, it also has a portrait in dialogue. Everyone you talk to does, making the dialogue in this game feel much more like a visual novel in terms of presentation. This makes dialogue a lot more present to read. Important characters show expressions making dialogues seem dynamic. Like your starter padding it self on the chest to show it is brave! Or give it a worried look on it’s face once the protagonist is struggling. It would not make sense that they would draw all those portraits for all evolution stages for your starter at the beginning of the game right? Yet SmallAnt or another Pokétuber would just grind it out jut to give it a try! However this game makes the briljant choice to “evolve” your starter .. narratively.

The evil team of this universe is called Team Dimension, which is basically the sequel to team Rocket, but since they lost so much influence they use robots instead of criminals. These robots take on Daft Punk designs (even their theme does) but when facing their elites, you end up getting washed. Faced with inevitable defeat a passion burns inside you as an item you found suddenly overflows with energy, and equipping it’s sister item to your Pokémon allows it to transform shapes. It’s a sequence that feels extremely much like Digimon. The fact that your starter does not just happen to have 3 forms but 4 enforces that Digmon feeling even further. Your Starter can go back to it’s base form by losing it’s item.. so if you enter a den with your stage 2 shulong you just take it’s ring for a moment and send the little guy for a adorable stroll. This does mean your starter has to be on your team for all important story moments and those dens… which makes the bonding so much stronger.

The game goes for a Gen IV like look, much like Pokémon Uranium, but it does an even better job at it. The Eldiw Region has a very spiritual aspect to it. A religion differently then Arceus, one that feels much more in line with nature worship and a lot of villages you visit seem to be based on ancient times. There is a medieval Fairy Town, with knights in Pink Armors and a Gym puzzle where you have to entertain and host a tea party for a princess. There is an ancient egypt area where you have to bring down a false god and the gym puzzle is to explore a pyramid, and there is a Wild West style area where you have to clear a haunted Saloon and where the gym puzzles involve hunting some criminals as a deputy. It all feels unique and much more deep. Every town plays a role in your story, every location has a story line and routes are often much longer and less throwaway than in official Pokémon games. Not all Pokécenters look the same, they blend into their towns, every time zone and area has unique wild Pokémon battle music to fit it’s current theme.. and so much more, the presentation of this game is truly sublime.

The Flaws

Of course this still is and always will be a Pokémon Fan game, which means it is not as polished as a main Pokémon game…even though we do not get floaty trees. The game can crash so it is important that you save often. The English patch is not flawless and on four or five separate occasions I found characters suddenly speaking italian in half of their text to me as some dialogue simply was forgotten to be replaced. Awkwardly it happens in one of the final battle scenes against the dark forces, yet otherwise it’s not as bad. The Daycare guy does it repeatedly but most times these are just one offs. Nothing too horrible. It is just these tiny things that made me remember I was playing a fan-game.. and if these did not happen along with some slowdown (which you can reduce by playing in the old engine by clicking on settings in the launcher) I would have probably crowned this my favourite Pokémon game.

It does have some flaws that did actively annoy me though. The first one is the inventory system. For some reason the bag has been given separate controls of sorts to flip through. Being Q and W , which just doesn’t feel right to me! I hated using stuff in my bag during the entirety of my run. I never fully got used to it. The second issue I have with this game is not even a gripe as I can fully understand WHY they did it.. I just do not like THAT they did it. A great many Fakemon in this region do not evolve by level up, which makes sense given how easy it is to actually level. However since the game is moderately hard, using unevolved pokémon will not get you that far. You need the power. There are a LOT of stone evolutions and a LOT of item evolutions in this game. Vroombug for example only evolves if you give it Spare parts, while Eevee can evolve into its new Eeveelutions Scaleon the Dragon Type and Bandeon the Sound Type by learning its Sound of Dragon Pledge moves. You hear the rumor from one guy while having to find the other guy to teach it the move. If you want a fully evolved team you better talk to everyone! There is a Wiki that tells you how pokémon evolve but it’s Italian only… I luckily have an italian friend who helped me or I would be one Pissy Princess.

To make up for that you have to talk to everyone though , they really went all out to make all dialogue interesting. If characters have boring things to say their names are oftenly references like Peach and Mario being two scientists that establish some world lore. Yet there are also some references that go very far. For example in one house I saw two couples at a table. A girl named Robin sat next to a guy named Barney who said his favourite Pokémon were Legen……wait for it ….dary. While on the other side of the table Lilly set next to her partner Marshall, who was bummed out his friends made him give up his beloved hat. While Upstairs I saw a depressed boy named Ted , wondering if he will ever find a special someone… on his desk, without explanation and without the model EVER being used elsewhere in the overworld was a Pinap Berry. Which is a reference to a very specific How I Met Your Mother episode.

These references are everywhere, for example in an ancient temple I encounter Jojo’s Battle Tendency’s Pillar men! That does not change the fact though that the evolution system gave me some anxiety. You can buy evolution stones fairly late in the game and by then you might have fallen in love with a new Fakemon and that other one never gets to live up to it’s potential, what if I missed a house and missed how to evolve my favourite team member. This anxiety was also there surrounding the crashes and the bag system felt like treading a needle at times… but if you play the game with google translate and google to look up the evolutions you will have a blast. This is a pokémon game I would recommend to anybody! Even if you do not like Pokémon and just want a nice story based/anime esque game.. this is great! This is the ultimate pokémon fangame and I honestly think that it shall hold this title for years to come. It might face some challenges, but through challenges it becomes stronger. Per Aspera Ad Astra.

This genuinely is the best fan game I ever played, and since it is free, if you haven’t played it but like playing Pokémon I absolutely MUST recommend it to you! Just be sure to turn on “use old engine” in settings. This game really is THE pokémon game I always wanted. What is your favourite Pokémon Fan Game?! Have you played any?! How do you feel about Fakemon?! Tell me in the comments or dream about your ideal Pokémon. Because remember my sweeties! Friendship is magic but dreams are even more wonderful! Oyasumi!

SLEEPING ON 'EM - A Super Smash Bros. Wii U Jigglypuff Montage - YouTube

Princess Pinkie’s Fantastic Five: Spin-Off Pokémon Games

Hear ye hear ye , Princess Pinkie is here with a new Pokémon Post

Greetings to my Loyal Subjects and Island Guests. As you may or may not know I am kind of into a little franchise called Pokémon. THE game that defined the collectable creature catching genre. However there are so many great Pokémon games that do not follow that formula. This post should go live on the day New Pokémon Snap is launched which is a great example.. but what are some other great Pokémon games to play if you are looking for something besides the 8 generations of goodness?!

Let’s discuss a few games I love to bits! Like a top five.. but without any particular order OR even saying these are THE best.. if you have your own opinion that is fine. You could have had the same opinion as a Unicorn-Duck Princess.. but whatever suits you works as well!

Pokémon XD: Gale Of Darkness

Released in August 2005 a sequel to the game Pokémon Coliseum was launched. Both games were sort of in between the classic Pokémon Stadium Games and the Main Line titles. When I played this game for the first time I was not sure if I liked it. It has some very odd music choices that while great do not always seem fitting. Like using Wild West styled songs for a forest song, while using a desert sounding song for a western town. With some very odd battle themes as well and all in all being a bit clunky. You can not travel the world but use a map system to bounce between several locations that have a few static screens you can interact with. You know those kinds of static backgrounds that they used in Resident Evil and Final Fantasy 7 through 10. Static camera allows you to walk around, interact with a few items and such. It felt slightly cramped and very limited when we compared it to what we were used to. Catching Pokémon was also very limited to so called Shadow Pokémon.. and later a few places where you could place some food.

Pokemon XD: Gale of Darkness review: Pokemon XD: Gale of Darkness - CNET

What makes this game so great however.. and it’s prequel at that is the amazing double Battles. Everything is set around Double Battles and the Shadow Pokémon feature. There are some wild Pokémon you can catch.. but they are nothing compared to the Shadow Pokémon. More powerful versions of pokémon with their heart closed off. You have to steal them from their evil owners and befriend them so you can purify them. The really good Pokémon to use in this game all start out as Shadow Pokémon and are very miserable showing you this game doesn’t mess around! The double battles are a lot harder and really require you to strategise a bit. The story of the game is also pretty fun with some very colourful enemies. Micheal the protagonist isn’t as much of an Edgelord as the guy in Coliseum was which makes him a lot more charming. Seriously the other guy looks like he is about to whip out his Beyblade or something.

Pokemon XD Gale of Darkness Gameplay - YouTube

The Plot of this game revolves around an evil team named Cipher wanting to weaponise Pokémon, and will have you face off against the legendary Shadow Lugia. You really feel like you are on a goal to stop that evil team , rather than on a journey to become the very best. This character has much more tangible goals and while that sometimes does mean competing in a tournament or such, it isn’t the main goal. This time you are liberating shadow pokémon from their cruel owners and trying to nuse them back to health trough double battles and love. Which gives it a nice fresh and more dire tone. This game offers a good challenge, a nice story and is just different enough..but also similar enough to pokémon to be somewhat of a safe choice if you want to play something else.

Pokémon Mystery Dungeon (Red) Rescue Team (Dx)

For many years now, over 20 we have been able to experience how it was to be a Pokémon Trainer, we dabbled in several forms of this With many trainer variants, sometimes we would just photograph them, while other times we yell at a Pikachu trying to make him listen when we secretly know he won’t. However we have very rarely been given the occasion to BE a Pokémon. Released on my Birthday in 2005 came a game called Pokémon Mystery Dungeon Red Rescue Team for GBA.. or Blue Rescue Team for Nintendo DS. By then I did not have a DS yet so I was given a Red Rescue Team. A pokémon game that lets you play as ….a Pokémon, not only that.. this Pokémon is REALLY You.

Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Red Rescue Team Release Date, Videos and Reviews

When you start the game you get asked a few questions and that determines which Pokémon you are. For example stuff like what do you like to do when you get home after school, how many friends do you have. Back then I would be a Squirtle, when I replayed it a few years later I was a Cubone and nowadays I am either a Squirtle or a Bulbasaur. Yet there are a few options like Charmander , Pikachu the other Gen 2 and 3 Starters and even Meowth or Psyduck! I haven’t ever gotten it though. In later games I was a Skitty though, so I could not have been far off. Either way based on your personality you get assigned a Pokémon body, now you have to find a way to get your original body back and you do that by helping other pokémon. This can be various tasks like helping a Butterfree Mamma get her baby caterpie, or you explore a dungeon to find Pidgey’s favourite kind of berry.

bol.com | Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team DX - Switch | Games

In a top Down zelda-ish looking style you can walk through a dungeon with a buddy (mine was Bulbasaur) bonk some pokémon on the head and learn some special moves to use against them as well. The dungeons are randomly generated and different each time, whatever task you choose to do in the maze determines how many floors there are before you exit, you earn money from rescuing stuff, upgrade your team ranking, upgrade your pokémon and if you are lucky recruit some new friends. The first one just felt so heartwarming and sweet and while the dungeon running can get a bit tedious in later stages it is just a sweet and delightful adventure to embark upon. It is very much worth it. Nowadays the Nintendo Switch has a remake of the game that improves on a few things so the cuteness has not ended! There is also some sequels but to be fair, the emotionally journey of this one is way stronger! It made me cry and the other games did not even get close!

Pokémon Puzzle League

Released for Nintendo 64 in september of 2000 this game is the only one on the list that pretty much has nothing to do with Pokémon..but it’s still REALLY REALLY good! I could have given this spot to games like Pokken or Detective Pikachu or even Pokémon Trading Card Game 2 for Gameboy Colour, but for all of those I have a few gripes, so they wont come further than being honourable mentions here. What put Pokémon Puzzle League ahead of them is that it is the best game of it’s kind on N64. A competitive puzzle game in the style of Poyo Poyo or Tetris Attack… in fact this IS Tetris Attack. The latter game was my favourite puzzle game on SNES and Pokémon Puzzle League is it’s N64 counter part. However instead of vague creatures from the Yoshi universe we get Pokémon. Which makes the backgrounds all the more enjoyable for me.

Pokémon Puzzle League | Video Games & Apps

The story/adventure mode let’s you battle against rivals and gym leaders alike and is the only game the Pokémon anime ever got.. except for a fan game I guess. Here you can just have fun against the classic theme rocket including their theme song, you can puzzle away to reveal screenshots from the show and everyone you face is as faced in the show. As a kid this was great. Gameboy Sabrina was waaaaaaay different from her anime counterpart. Team Rocket lacks Jesse and James and Brock and Misty where they throw away characters. Not here…this game is great to play alone but is even better when you play it with friends and the threshold of this game is zero. You can fire it up, play a match and turn the console off again. Perfect between home(work) and dinner. It’s light cute and very nicely animated with a very cute tranquil music list. It is just Tetris Attack.. but it is my favourite version of a game I already love.. so it earns it’s spot on this list!

Pokémon Pinball

Released on April 14 1999 this is the oldest and perhaps strangest title on my list. A Pinball game? Does it seriously beat out Pokken or even Pokémon Go?! Yes! Quite so! I am not a fan of Pokémon Go persé, I enjoy casually checking Pokémon sometimes but I do not like the business model attached to it. I really dislike how it shines so much less special, I really dislike how it takes up so much box space with all special variants. So no… it won’t be on my list, the game I pick might be a lot more simple and less visually pleasing but boy oh boy does it have some charm. I loved Pokémon Pinball. It was a gameboy colour game with a rumble feature which was totally unique. It allowed you to play two machines, Red and Blue and you could travel across routes , catch pokémon and even evolve them by just flapping some paddles around. It was such a creative take that worked really well.

≥ Pokemon Pinball GameBoy || €9.99 - Games | Nintendo Game Boy - Marktplaats.nl

The idea of using a Pokéball as a Pinball (or is it a Pinball-ball?) already is kinda clever and they get so much mileage out of it. You first play the board to travel to one of the many routes in the game, then make a Pokémon Appear that is indeed living in that route. Then you can hit it five times to create the word Catch, after which hitting it with your Pokéball-Pinball-ball will allow you to capture it. Now you can rinse and repeat OR level up the Pokémon so it can evolve. If you do well you can even make it all the way to catching Mewtwo and beating the game.. but you need some serious pinball skills for that. This does make the game a bit weird to play though.

Pokemon Pinball (GBC) - Gameplay - YouTube

Evolution has to happen in one Pinball Session and a lot of the catches are behind an RNG element like the routes selected, the pokémon that spawns on those routes. This is fine at the beginning and it pleased kid Pinkie very much but when I recently tried it again I felt some deep frustration with it! If you make it further in the game you will need certain pokémon, for example let’s say machop. However instead of machop three other pokémon can spawn as well.. and even IF you find Machop you will need to level it up twice without losing all your pokéball-pinball-balls which means you have to be quite good at Pinball. On a device with limited battery life and visibility., which can be a frustrating task. However if you just play this game a very sessions at a time and consider the Pokémon caught a bonus to your pinball experience rather than something you have to complete in a short amount of time this game is really great and young me spend many many hours on this title that was actually owned by my sister.

Pokémon Ranger Shadows of Almia

To this day I still haven’t found a copy of Pokémon Conquest to play and the DS era of Pokémon was the one I missed out on the most. One title I did get the pleasure of playing was Pokémon Ranger 2: Shadows of Almia and it might be my favourite Pokémon game that is not a main-line Pokémon game. I mean it’s friggin adorable! It’s so good! The graphics are cute , the characters are adorable and it’s one of the few games that does really force you to use your stylus that came with the DS… because Pokémon Ranger was all about drawing loops of friendship around some pokemon. For those who don’t know what that means, this is a game in which the main gameplay has you draw circles around moving objects!

I know that sounds super lame, and to an extent it is kinda lame, especially later in the game, but this game is dressed SOOOO well it doesn’t matter. It is kinda fun to see all the special attacks a Pokémon can take to prevent being wrapped up in a laser lasso that makes it more friendly towards you. This game has elements of the old Pokémon games in that you have a world to explore.. and each time you catch something or get a new mission you open up more of the world. In a way it feels like a puzzle game, because drawing loops is mostly used to get a new friend towards a place where you can use their effect. Draw circles around a magnemite and it can turn on the power, draw circles around a squirtle and it can put out a fire, but you only have so much energy if your Lasso breaks, you lose your job and lose the game. It’s kinda interesting how much milage they get out of drawing circles!

So the gameplay is odd but satisfying but what really makes this one of the greatest Pokémon Products ever is the writing. This game is super funny! Sometimes intended, sometimes less intended. “Touch the Bidoof” is said to the ranger and I am already laughing, or how about the time that the evil team is using an ice pokémon to make snow cones and not knowing what to do with the player character, they offer her a snow cone as well. Your rival failing at everything he does but still keeping his ego up was incredibly funny as well and there is just this great vibe of work ethic in this game that makes it feel wholesome. Everyone is living with their Pokémon and working with them and it offers a very interesting peek into the non battling side of Pokémon. The music is great as well! It lacks the endgame and the “community” that other Pokémon games get but by arceus is this game the gem! Skip out on the first one though that one isn’t half as good! Just play this one you’ll have a great time……and perhaps some stylus burn from drawing so many circles.

Pokemon Ranger: Shadows of Almia :: Full Walkthrough

Those are five fantastic games that are very much Pokémon Franchise games that aren’t part of the main line! Of course the original Pokémon snap was amazing as well but I felt that would be such a cheap choice! Soon I will be able to tell you if New Pokémon Snap is any good! Until then tell me which Pokémon “spin-off” games you really like! While you do I will take a nap and wait for my game to arrive, because remember folks. Friendship is Magic, but Dreams are even more Wonderful! Oyasumi!

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Rp - Sleeping Dorms - Wattpad

It’s Impossible! … Not To Have Fun! Yooka Laylee and the Impossible Lair Review

Konichi-what a satisfying feeling, to treat yourself to a game for your birthday and have it be as good as The Impossible Lair is to me! For those who read my rambling and store them in their head a bit , it might not come as a surprise but one of my favourite Platforming franchises of all times was Donkey Kong Country. I adored those games. So the Sequel to the already amazing Yooka Laylee came out.. and it would mimic the classic Donkey Kong Country games rather than the Banjo Kazooie franchise. I was more than hyped to play this. I figured content would be a bit lacking though so I bided my time to find a good sale.. I sure as heck got my money’s worth now!

Don’t Worry BEE Happy

The Impossible Lair is the second Yooka Laylee game by Playtonics Games, published by team 17. It enjoys moderate success on Meta-Critic with about a 7.7 user score consistent out of 78 positive reviews, 17 negative ones and 9 mixed ones. I’d say the grade is slightly low.. but that is because this game comes with a bit of a warning and unique concept. The game has a self imposed style difficulty level, with a rather steep drop in the deep at the end. It is a game without difficulty settings but instead, you as the player are more or less free to determine your own difficulty level. This however.. does not apply for the final level.. which is a very harsh stage. One life.. and if you lose.. you get booted out of the level.. and since it’s a 30 minute level… it isn’t easy! Lots of people do not like this system and think the last level is unfair.. but I honestly don’t believe it is. It’s a very natural evolution of the old school difficulty system that blends in perfectly with the ban on traditional stock of lives. Most people play this game the wrong way I think.. and I might have found the perfect way to do it!

The entire concept of this game is that the final stage of the game is also the very first stage of the game. A small story tells you how Capital B, the franchise enemy uses a device called the Hivemind to control all the bees in the world. This leads the queen of the Stingdom to be overpowered and her precious shield gets stolen. Yooka and Laylee but in the fight and get to play the Impossible Lair stage from the beginning. In theory.. you can beat this game in about half an hour.. if you are a god tier gamer.. there even is an achievement tied to it.. YET people think.. because there is an achievement for it.. it should be doable.. but this game takes a different approach.. it shows you through the achievement it is near impossible to do this. Like.. offering a money fee to people who can hack into your new security system.. it’s not like you want to hand out that price.. you are confident that your thing is impossible to crack!

This rubs a lot of people the wrong way with this game.. but I , who was born without the ability to give any fudges about prestige like things such as achievements or victories over others.. and is just here for the fun, love this idea. Based on what type of gamer you are you can immediately see if pursuing “platinum” is something you can do.. and I can not! .. But I am getting a bit of track here! Once you die in the first stage you get booted out and the overworld opens up.. here you can travel to twenty five-ish chapters by exploring the overworld and exploring the stages. Using T.W.IT. Coins you find in stages and beating special stages you unlock more and more areas in the overworld and learn more about the game. Inside the stages you try to make it to the end and free.. one of the 48 beettalion bees. Why? because they become your hit points for tackling that final stage! Man I love that concept!

To BEEt or not to BEEt that is the question

_{Yes I know I spelled that wrong}

Here is how most people tackle this game.. okay so I need to free all the bees.. and then go tackle the final stage. Most negative comments I’ve seen are of people trying to rush things. Just beat all the stages and gather the bare minimum of T.W.IT. Coins to go through the final stage without any disadvantages or advantages.. This however is the WRONG way to go about that. The game technically is fairly hard.. though with infinite lives all stages are beatable.. so many people delude themselves that just by beating the game you are good enough for that final stage.. then they plunge into a half hour gauntlet of grueling challenges completely unprepared for what is to come. Most negative reviews say “I was having a lot of fun with this game, then I reached the final stage and could not beat it.. what a fricked up game 0 out of 10… Well first of all if you have 90% fun… just don’t like the last stage.. it is NOT a 0 out of 10 game. This game makes it fairly clear it’s not about beating it. In fact I would have been perfectly content with getting across the finish and just enjoy playing in some very fun stages. See how far you get!

Yet I think if these people played the game the way I play it.. they would have had a lot more fun! You see.. beating an area , instead of going to the next one first I take a crack at the Impossible Lair first.. to see how far my current Beetalion will get me! Usually that isn’t very far.. because the final stage REALLY is hard.. but this means I slowly make my way through sections of the stage.. getting a feel for the layout of the place. If I get tripped up by a section with a lot of buzzsaws .. I then will make sure that I 100% complete a stage (as in find all T.W.I.T. Coins) as a practice for that section. I then move on to get the next batch of bees and repeat this process. Yes I failed a few times in the last stage.. but this way I am not going in blind and in the end have to do a 30 minute stage blind. I notice I am keeping my bees with me for longer as I go as well. But here is the truth.. YOU ARE GOING TO LOSE… just like retro games gave you a game over resetting all progress.. this game mimics that by just yeeting you out the final stage without checkpoints. You get good by losing.. not by beating stages. That’s how these games always worked.. Now there is just a lot of stuff built in to have fun with.. without beating the final stage.

BEE a Hunter

The story in this game is practically non-existent , an evil guy causes trouble. .you have to travel to his castle to beat his ass… and that is exactly why I love this game so much. Never did I feel compelled that I needed to see the ending, it’s just a part of the skeleton that can help you have fun.. but even if you miss a single bone somewhere.. you can probably still have fun! Finishing this game is a cherry on top of a sundae.. or for me.. a chocolate pudding as I don’t like Ice Cream. It’s not the ULTIMATE goal needed to enjoy the game. There is so much to do that can give you satisfaction.. beat all the 48 regular stages! Find all the tonics in the overworld.. solve all the pagie challenges. Open all the Paywalls (These are the names for checkpoints you open with the T.W.I.T. coin resource). There is cute dialogue from familiar and unfamiliar NPC the overworld is colourful and creative and allows you to use all your platforming skills in a 3d setting.. almost in a zelda-esque way. There is so much to do! This is a 12-ish hour platform game and that is a lot for the genre!

Tonics make your life easier or harder.. you find them hidden in the overworld, once found you unlock them with feathers, you can carry three at the same time and these provide modifiers to the game world, some make your life easier.. for example I used the “do not lose T.W.I.T. coins after death” one.. This one makes sure I keep my coins even if I do not bring them to a checkpoint in time! This means I can leap to my death to obtain some of these.. saving me a lot of frustration. This does mean however that the feathers I collect at the end of the stage get reduced.. to compensate for that I use a tonic that sticks googly eyes on the enemy making them look more cute.. but gives them two hit points instead of one! Which increases my feather count. Then I use a tonic that makes Laylee the bat.. more tranquil..
In this game you start with two hitpoints. In phase one you have Laylee riding on Yooka but once you take a hit she begins to panic and flap about.. if you can collect her before you take another hit or you are fine you regenerate that hitpoint.. if she flies away.. your can not be hit anymore or suffer your demise. So having her more stable allowed me to try some zanier stunts. There are a lot of fun modifiers, such as inverted controls for more feathers, more invisibility frames for less feathers and lots and lots of visual modifiers for no other reason than just to have fun!

“But wait A minute Pinkie.. did you not just say there were 48 bees to collect.. but only 25 chapters.. how does that work”… well my sharp eyed friend.. or people pretending to be clever to the insight I just provided… Most stages have two varients. You can unlock a second mode by interaction with the overworld. For example a book on a pond might indicate a stage featuring lots of water elements but by eating an ice fruit and having Yooka spit it at the stage portal.. that same stage is suddenly frozen solid.. which completely alters the stage layout and path. These alternate stages are very fun and it’s always a surprise to see what happens. There is a stage where the book gets covered in sticky honey suddenly turning a horizontal stage into a vertical stage. There is also a certain book you can read the wrong way.. suddenly you have to backtrack this level.. chased by deadly lasers.. but since there is so little time.. you more or less travel atop of the first stage. Think of these as the reversed levels of Yoshi’s crafted world.. but done a lot better. It’s not just beating the stage that is a challenge.. it’s also finding a way to unlock the counterpart in the overworld that is a delight.

Finally there are the Pagie challenges, the collectable/Jiggy variant from the first game is back in this game.. not to be collected by you but to use that power you unlocked before in your favour.. but you have to prove your worth to them. The challenge is simple .. beat all the enemies in a single screen without dying and the pagies will reshape the overworld. Allowing you to find more tonics, unlock more alternate stages, get more hit points for the final stage.. or even just find hint signs that provide you with clues where to find a particular type of treasure. Most of the time you can choose what you want to focus on to make progress. You will need to collect some coins in the stages to get past paywalls in the next areas but I never had too much trouble getting enough of those things without straining myself or feeling I was forced to do this. Even if i did .. feel like “I really should get extra coins in this stage” I either made it training for the final stage OR I decided to reward myself with a vanity tonic and would use my hunt for the coins to reward myself with vanity! It’s super fun and motivating that way.. everything just reinforces each other.

This might STING a bit

Is this a perfect game? No!… Yet in sale I only payed like 10 euro for it and King Coconut and the Shy Coconut helped the blog get some funds for reviewing projects like those..as well as the Buddy Coconut.. so I was super content. I do have a hand full of grips with the game though. First of all I find the music slightly forgettable.. I love the overworld team and for good reason. It’s Grant Kirkhope. It is fantastic. He made music for both the original and for Banjo Kazooie and it has that distinct feel. He doesn’t do stuff for the 2d stages and that is okay.. because his style fits the overworld more.. that feels a bit Banjo-esque.. The 2d stages feel like Donkey Kong.. and two people where put in charge of this Matt Griffin, who does a very good job at capturing that DK spirit but making it feel original and David Wise.. who makes every stage he designs the soundtrack off sound like that Royalty Free Ukulele music that is everywhere on YouTube… Can you guess which one is the one I consider a downside?! A few stages in and you can really tell who is who and that kind of irked me a bit. On the one hand we hear how good the music can be.. on the other hand we see what I as an anime fan would call.. musical filler episodes. Blegh! Luckily half of the music is still good!

The second issue I have with the game is it’s level design.. well that is the wrong worth.. the level “assets” and esthetics. While it is nice that zones are themed we do not get that many themes and it all has this really familiar aspect. The buildings in the desert world look different from the ones in the forest world.. but it feels more like a skin change than an actual change in the assets.. The best way to describe this is.. that everything in the background feels a bit “Little Big Planet ” You know that game with sackboy! There are loads of assets to make your creation look unique but it is all tied to a very similar style. So a tree house looks the same like a cactus house.. the cactus house just has .. hacienda style wallpaper. It makes the stages a little less exciting than the original game or it’s big inspiration Donkey Kong. There we have a volcano world, a theme park world.. a swamp world (Okay that is the second Donkey Kong but it’s just so good) and here.. you’d get.. a Roller Coaster going to the same forest assets.. some hue shifted wood textures to make it look a bit darker.. to signify we are in the swamp.. maybe there is a pool of water.. but all in all I always kind of keep expecting sackboy to come stumbling through. The stage challenges and level design as in.. how to get from A to B is fantastic though. The set dressing is a bit stock.

The final gripe I have with this game is the tiniest one. There is not enough interaction with NPC’s .. mostly from Laylee.. I loved how bold she was in the last game. While I do get that there is less dialogue in a 2d platform game, plenty of elements in the overworld and sometimes even in the stages talk to you through a small text balloon. It would have been funny to give Laylee a bit more flavour and would make everything pop. If a Pumpkin tell “hey you are not support to be here” .. it would be fun to say Laylee tell it to shut up or she will eat squash tonight..or even give her some 4th wall breaking humor.. that once you encounter the living fans in the overworld Laylee would comment, they are really running out of ideas. Simple stuff like that could help the game pack that Yooka Laylee flavour a bit more. THe rest is there.. but the two main characters don’t shine as brightly as I would.

BEE Plus

Time for me to score this game! It is tricky to do this for everyone else so do take note that this is just for me personally. I do think fun, challenge level and time needed are all self imposed. What do you define as beating the game, what do you think is fun to do within the confines of this game?! I really like this.. it has that shovel knight.. feeling of picking your difficulty, there are plenty of ways to make it easy.. there are plenty of ways to make it hard. Neither should be a gripe as you can choose not to use it. I will admit that the plunge into the final stage is a bit too steep and I would not call the final stage a great success. It might have been better if you had a few sub tiers and chose to continue at the last checkpoint with the amount of bees you had left when you got there -1 for each try or go back to the beginning if you lost too many bees in that segment. Had they done that I would have been perfectly content with this game despite it’s minor flas like generic music from Mister Wise.. and a lack of unique polish here and there. Controls are tight..graphics are fine and in sale it is super affordable.

Now I do have to conclude that not everything in the game is as fun as it can be. Honestly if I have to give advice to people who liked the Donkey Kong Country games.. I’d say the best way to play this game is to pick it up on sale.. play the stages until you had your fill.. try the impossible lair and if you did not reach the 50-70% marker (depending on how many of the bees you got) and just end it right there! Quit while you had fun, this is a game to have fun with not one I’d say you really need to beat. It’s a neat achievement to check off your list but there is no big epic ending you would need to do it for. It’s the classical video game ending with a story wrap up.. in the vein of those classics.

There is no deep lore you will miss. No secrets that will be needed to play the third game if there ever will be one.. which I would hope mixes the two playstyles. This is a game to have fun with.. and the game knows it!You can literally put glittery effects when you defeat an enemy, or put googly eyes on an enemy to make them cuter.. sometimes those eyes are on their bumholes! Teehee! Cinematic filters, Dramatic Sepia.. tonics that make you have to play this game like a bat.. Everything screams that this is just a game to have fun with and that’s what I did ! Strawberries all around!

Pinkie Falls and Gets Up Again: My First Win in Fall Guys

If you watch YouTube , if you have even a bit of gamers’ blood in your system or if you follow anyone on Twitch you will have probably heard of the game Fall Guys! It’s a hot commodity and Fall Guy content is all over the net! Since it basically is a Free For All 3D platformer and I love 3D platformers, I decided to throw myself into the madness! And so Fall Guy 1149 was born! I made sure he was pink and together.. we went hunting what all those YouTubers I follow have been hunting for! A Fall Guys win!
It did not take me that long at all!

Pinkie becomes a Fall Guy

I bought the game four days ago from when I am writing this and the first day I pretty much knew I was not going to win. I got the game on Steam since I do not want to pay for PlayStation Plus.. I always forget I have that and let in run for months on end. I did hook up my PS4 controller to my Laptop though so if I ever can show you personal screenshots.. which is unlikely because I wanna win, so I probably take stock screenshots from elsewhere, you might see PS4 controls on there. But before I forget let’s explain the game to those who do not know about it.. I would genuinely be surprised if people miss it but maybe it’s just hyper inflated in the Pokémon and Dragon Ball community.. and the other YouTube communities I follow.

I’d describe Fall Guys as Takashi’s Castle meets Wipe-Out the video game. With fairer challenges than Takashi’s but games that are VERY much inspired on Takashi’s castle. In fact one of the games is straight from that show! Each game you start with 60 Tsum Tsum like bean-men and compete in a five round free for all. Each round a new game will be played and so and so many players will be cut! This can mean you have to reach the finish of a stage in time, be one of the so many remaining standing after a gauntlet of obstacles or sometimes a team challenge where your team has to prevent.. ending up with the lowest score. The fifth game always reduces the player number to 1 and thus gives us a winner in more unique finale games. Most of these games are obstacle courses to navigate through but sometimes you also have to play…platformer style soccer of “capture the flag” Trough competing you win credits and trough winning you get crowns which you can trade in to customise your Fall Guy as you progress. Each day the store has new items on sale! So en masse the internet is trying to be the last guy standing!

Not every mini-game is as good as the other and not every game is as fair as the other, but since we are only on season one I do expect this to be fixed over time! Yet my review of all the separate games comes later! I still haven’t played them all but expect a post about that in the future as well! I really like Fall Guys! It is probably the pinkest video game I have ever seen! There are lots of blues and Pinks and so visually I am already intensely drawn to this game and I want to play more and more of it! On day one I had nothing fancy unlocked so I went for a sprinkley looking Fall guy with a ugly yellow and bright pink looking colour scheme.. with some furry feet! Customisation options are very limited upon start up but by playing daily or tossing money at the game you can quickly change that! It’s one of those types of games! I just paid for the base game and want to earn what I wear as trophies! Rather than paying for vanity items.. even though I deep down really want to get that unicorn outfit… like really really! I don’t want to pay 10 bucks for that though!

Day 1

The best thing about Fall Guys is that it does not have voice chat, or text chat even. You just play against 59 other Tsum Tsum guys.. or minions even and all you hear is the plopping sound of the characters. No weird taunts, no stupid dances just cuteness. There are emotes but nothing seems vile or vexing. It doesn’t seem like a toxic 12 year old’s favourite pastime unlike Fortnite! Which I find to be a HORRIBLE …HORRIBLE game. Well rather than that I usually find the players horrible but the game itself I do not like very much either. Fall guys however had me hooked from the first game. All games are very self explanatory..with nuances for you to discover through play. I knew the first day I would probably not get a win as I did not know any of the games yet. Yet much to my surprise I made it to the finals twice on my first day! Just by paying attention, a bit of luck and sometimes clever thinking you can make great progress. Some platforming skills make it easier as well. Yet I discovered there are many ways to win Fall Guys! You do not need to be the most skilled, you could just be the most lucky just the more skill you have.. the more chances you have to get lucky!

I really like this type of game design! It makes it so that the guy with his super pc and mega expensive controller doesn’t always get the win. It means I have a shot to win even if I am not a “diamond tier “. The game is super competitive..but also kinda… not there is a sense of wanting to win..but it feels also if players really want to have fun, unlike some other games out there where the win means everything! You just plop into a game with 60 people and have fun for as long as it lasts. I can have fun whether I win or lose… but I can also get pretty invested so that I get angry if I lose because of other players’ stupidity. Yet that is a great choice! Even if I can get weighted by players below my skill level so do stronger players it is part of the chaos and that’s what makes it work. It can be frustrating but a new game is always around the corner so you just sigh or shout a no no word and already set up for the next game. If you want a break you can also follow the entire rest of the game and cheer for your favourite Fall Guy! Your friends if you take them! I can’t voice chat on discord due to my laptops and my voice’s limitations but hey I can easily see it being lots of fun.

The first day I had lots of fun too! I familiarised myself with most of the mini-games and came to the discovery I really liked “The WhirleyGig” mini game. An obstacle course filled with propellers to avoid or jump over. I also discovered I do not like Tail-Tag a lot.. a game where you have to steal others tail! Lag is most notable here and hitboxes are a bit weird so sometimes I miss when I was sure I grabbed a tail .. or my tail gets grabbed when the guy is super far away from me. I grew to dislike the team matches as people really tend to quit or stop trying if they are far behind. At least this was the case on day one! I reached the Jump Challenge Finale twice.. which is basically like a skip rope challenge on a decreasing space with a propeller trying to sweep your legs from underneath you.. but there is also a propeller overhead, decreasing your jump window and preventing you from sticking to a single spot.
I like this game but I also encountered a big problem in Fall Guys for now… cheating! One guy had some auto jump tool and kept making the perfect jumps.

Day 2

This would be the day I got my first win, and not even that late in the day. I was having as much fun as I did the day before! I learned some strategies for games like Fruit Fall , which was to move via the sides and do not jump but run onto the conveyor belt. This is when I noticed that some things were very counter natural for me as a platform player. Having been used to Hat in Time the dive jump lets me be faster than walking.. Mario Sunshine does that as well.. so the fact that running here is actually a bit faster unless you need a very short dash and still needs some time to get used to. I make mistakes based on platformer instincts.. but Fall Guys works a bit differently.. which is both a bit of an annoyance as it is I really like that it has its own unique flow. Fall Guys do not react like Mario! Their jumps are much clunkier, they do not get on their feet as fast in a way they feel more as a mix between actual humans combined with ragdolls that can take a lot of force. I would not say violence because I am not sure if getting hit by a giant pear or a pink windmill fan counts as such. Yet your Guy can be tossed around like a dogs favourite chewtoy!

During day 2 I really managed to get in this magical flow! I cleared the first game I got a good rank without much trouble ,being much more aware of the little details of the obstacle courses than during the first day. Keep your eye on that object Pinkie, take a left here .. the crowd is going the other way they will trip on each other you can make up for lost ground by running solo! Then I had to play the memory game and I did not find an apple ..which was the safe tile. .the memory game is a game where all tiles get designated with a increasing number of possible fruits.. then at the end of brief memorisation period you get designated one fruit and all tiles marked with that fruit will stay while others will vanish.. if you fall you get booted out of the game. Lucky for me one tile had a big crowd on them so I just jumped to that tile and it was a good one! Yay!

For the third round I had to play Fruit fall. A climb up a slippery hill with fruit and logs being launched at you! I wanted to jump on the conveyor belt again but just in time I remembered to walk on instead. I did not need to respawn and found a golden route by following the sides! I got across the line in second place and my Guy was happy he did not fall! A team challenge of jumping trough hoops was new to me but was by FAR my favourite team game I played! This was such fun and our team aced it! The final challenge was a race to a crown.. with balls being launched at us, hammers spinning around and a few gates and other things in our way. I was in third place but number one and two got impatient and missed their jump for the crown! I had my shot and with a press of R2 I latched onto the crown and onto victory!

This was my fall guy at level six! He is level 11 now!

Winning felt good! I was prepared and I knew what I had to do by keeping the pressure up on the guys before me. They had to jump at an awkward time or see me surpass them and try my desperate jump .. probably of their heads! I unlocked a new skin! I got a crown which allowed me to purchase a heart skin! I took a break from there and came back to gather more wins later.. it wasn’t that easy. At the end of Day 2 and the entire Day 3 of playing I was confronted with cheaters. Big time! Day three I had a hard time finding a fair match. One time a guy cheated so bad at the Seesaw challenge during the first round.. by clipping into it on the bottom and making the last seesaw unavailable to us that he got the win by timing us out and finishing. That sucked! This happens a lot. There were plenty of games where as soon as the game began one person already finished because they simply seemed to be able to fly or something. This is the biggest flaw of the game so far. Sure there are a few unfair games in there, graphics can be quite clippy and the controls feel a bit clunkier than I think it would need to be but those all give it a certain charm as well. The cheating however basically invalidates the entire game. You can still compete for experience but a crown only goes to the victor.

While it doesn’t prevent me from playing Fall Guys it does at least make me less invested. I pretty much assume I can’t win but there is still plenty of outfit stuff I want to grind out so advancing a round is good enough! Should I ever have enough coins ..because I am very picky in what outfits i like.. I can see the issue of cheating later on , when I have the perfect outfit later on stopping me from logging in. Luckily the creators have already said they will work on putting this to a stop and since I just play an hour or 90 minutes a day I think it will be fine! A great game that could REALLY use a “vote between one of two challenges” options to prevent the stupid games from showing up so often and a bit sharper controls but one that makes me smile by simply hearing the sounds, that Kenny like voice and the ploppity plop of Fall Guy feet! and seeing those cute graphics! It really helps that like being Fall Guy 1149 and I am hungry for more crowns.. and there are very few games that make me this competitive.. without ever feeling toxic! It’s amazing!

Imagine you got a mysterious money bonus from your boss! Or have recently acquired some funds you do not really know what to do with it. Well it it might be a sign your boss is trying to frame you for something! In that case you should NOT be a Fall Guy! Get rid of that money quick! Kind as I am I offer you a way to get out of your boss his evil ploys! Donate some of it to my Kofi! It will make me very happy and keep you out of jail! I am also here for none dubious funds! In case you feel like becoming a coconut! I promise I won’t spend it on a unicorn suit! Ah I love Kofi Promos! Of course blog participation is also appreciated!

The Time We Almost won A PlayStation 4: The PS4 Hunt!

Hello again my sweet island guests! It’s catch up week! So today I am posting something I wrote earlier! But I wasn’t fully satisfied with it! That way I can work ahead and can play around it. In this post I bring you back with me to revisit one of my geeky memories. A memory that takes me back six years. December 20th to be exact. It was the time I took part in a Playstation hunt.

What was the PlayStation Hunt

Let’s begin by explaining to you what the contest exactly was. This content was held in celebration of PlayStation’s 20the anniversary. To win a PlayStation 4 anniversary edition you’d have to travel to one of ten cities across the Netherlands in a cosplay or at least outfit based on some PlayStation games. You could download an app that would send you to a location. With it you’d get a quiz question that you’d have to answer. If you find the guy or gal working for Playstation at that location and gave them the answer for the questions and you were indeed dressed in Sony PlayStation themed outfits.. you’d be the happy owner of a brand new silver anniversary Playstation 4! While me and my friends already had a Playstation two participating.. a guy and a girl did not! So for their sake, or maybe to gather some event money for the group! We took on this challenge.

What we did not know however was this contest wasn’t really done with approval of the city! Maybe some higher ups knew but the people on the streets did not know.. and it would be that fact as well as one of my friends making a very silly mistake that would cost us that PlayStation 4. We would have won .. in fact we would have won the very first one. Instead we nearly ended up cancelling the entire competition. My amazing friend Fatima Minusima of whom I talked before invited me to join with about one week to spare. Which was amazing. I wasn’t a strong runner but I loved doing geeky things with them! Back then I was just starting to know them and I did not live in the same town as them yet. (Though 4 months later I would) There was only one problem… We had to cosplay! Outdoors…in December! Now this basically meant that any female character was out by default…unless I played that Anna woman from Tekken I guess.. but I did not have money for a fur coat! Nor could I make that outfit not look like I am .. something that is not a cosplayer. So to solve this.. I was going to have to get creative!

The Hunt for Cosplay

Luckily I do live in the best province in the Netherlands when it comes to getting cosplays. Limburg and Noord Brabant are the two provinces that celebrate “Carneval” which is a variant of Mardi Gras but mixed with american halloween.. but a wider variety of costumes. Think actual Mardi Gras outfits mixed with te Village people and you got a good idea what wanders through our streets. In Limburg (not sure about Noord Brabant) the season however already starts at the Eleventh of November, so costumes are fairly widely available for us. Even in my little home town. Of course I would not want to spend too much money on something like this because I already had a PlayStation! So I had a budget of .. what then was about 30 euro. Not an easy task. Yet our carneval store was also an army dump! In which you could get old military supplies for almost no money at all! What gave me my final idea was a big empty cardboard box sitting there next to army suits that has just been stocked.

I got myself a camo outfit I could wear a coat under or could at least wear normal clothes under, so I would be nice and toasty even if it was cold during winter. I got myself a pirates eyepatch for two euros and a jar or brown face paint for about the same amount including an application sponge! I found some gloves that looked just like the Big Boss outfit from Metal Gear Solid 3 and made a deal to get it all for 30 bucks. Those gloves weren’t priced yet and later they found out they cost so much more.. but well the owner of the store was a former classmate of mine so she did me a solid! I also could take the big cardboard box! I would be going there as Big Boss. I think that’s the character from Metal Gear Solid 3.. or was it actually Solid Snake.. I am never sure! I can’t tell them apart. Regardless! Playstation enough! So I was on my way. Fatima dressed up as Nathan Drake as well as her good friend Cherry. Fatima’s then boyfriend Joe came dressed as young Heihachi and the guy who did not have a playstation Ron came in a fox hound sweatshirt. Cherry had her boyfriend with her as well Dave. Dave wasn’t dressed up at all.. he was slightly Arab in look so I think he said he’d just say “I’m the Prince of Persia but it’s too cold here” if he was asked. It wasn’t that cold that day though! The young Heihachi Joe wasn’t naked underneath his vest he wore a old Heihachi Tekken shirt.. but I am pretty sure it was just a shirt.. maybe he had a jacket he could throw off! Not sure,

The Hunt Begins!

We traveled to Maastricht together! For us to do that I have to travel about 20 minutes in the train by myself and also 20 minutes by bus. Then we still need 15 more minutes of joined travel. I expected lots of people to be dressed up and going to this hunt so I would expect the train ride not to be that awkward. I was wrong. Apparently most people came by car. We had one person too many to drive so we opted out of that. Had we come by car.. we would have won that PlayStation. Or at least one of them. I was asked a few weird questions but luckily it was the weekend and it was carneval season. So it wasn’t all that bad. People did not dare to sit next to me though… which was nice because I saved spots for all my friends! Thank you people for not wanting to sit next to the weirdo with a huge box and a beard painted on her face really badly!

I met up with my friends and luckily I could geek out now.. at their train station a few other geeks boarded the train as well and we hung out for a bit. I at least got recognised as Snake/Boss so I was content. Coming off the train I came up with a plan de campagne. We would split up in three teams of two to maximize our chance of winning. Each group would start on one of the three major squares in Maastricht and would only run to an area that they can feasibly reach within 10 to 15 minutes. (Otherwise there would be bound to be a group there faster than you because people came with bikes and scooters and such). It would be best if we divided ourselves based on our speed. Instead the idea was opted for a girls and guys team. so we already were one chance down..but then Dave wanted to go with Cherry instead as he made their team faster. He was saying they could just abandon the slow person for a bit to win a PS4.. Since Cherry and Dave did not have a PS4 and Ron did not have on either.. the winning group would get first dibs. This resulted in the fact that I ended up being the one that would constantly be abandoned by my group because I do not run that fast, due to my issues with my motor skills. I was a bit saddened by that but we would make it work. I knew my way across town so I would be the map person, then Ron would use his internet to google the answer to questions and Joe would be the one to sprint to the goal and abandon us. So that way I would not be alone as much! It worked..except for the fact that Joe is REALLY bad with directions and never reads any signs! That last fact contributed to us losing the PS.

The Hunt goes South

My hunch that the three squares would be involved in the hunt was on the nose, the square we were headed to, became an active search zone so immediately we knew we had a shot at this. I don’t remember the question but I knew the password of the thing was Uncharted. It wasn’t a super easy question so it was not like .. “what game is lead by Nathan Drake” kind of things. When we arrived on the square the scooter squad was there already.. so I got in my box and snuck up to them.. I was slow so I just did a distraction! Which worked! I got compliments for the awesome idea of bringing my own sneaky box and they took some pictures.. literally of a cardboard box standing on the floor with a few feet sticking out…!
Sure go ahead! As my friends searched on we could not find the guy! Eventually my box disguise failed and the scooter squad went to search as well! They had a Dante with them! So while his friends weren’t a threat (as they had no PS gear on at all) Dante was still a risk! We had to find the Playstation guy first!

I realised that the guy did not seem to be on the pinged location when I suddenly realised that there is an underground parking space below this square. The entrance is just a bit further away. So we ran into the parking garage to go down below.. I was so sure we would find the guy there. I told Joe who outran me that at the end of the garage there was a stairs leading down to lower levels. If he could run there and search from the bottom up, me and Ron could cover the search from top to bottom. A solid plan! Yet Joe doesn’t listen to listen to instructions very well and he does not read signs. So when he found a door downstairs at the MIDDLE of the hallway he was thinking! Oh man! I am so slick! Despite me knowing this garage. His judgment lapsed and he missed a major sign.

Unfortunately the emergency exit sign!. Emergency exits are often foreseen of an alarm so people know there is an emergency causing people to use that door. It helps great against thieves as well. Some guards showed up and we told them what was going on. They told us if we could not present them to show our car or we would be kicked out. . We did not even have car keys to show . We got booted out and all cosplayers were banned from entering the garage. .. Well if a PlayStation representative was in that garage clearly they would not do that right?! Well after I tried to sneak in via the elevator and got a very rude security guy telling me I could not enter because dumb people like me would only get ourselves killed for something stupid as a video game. He also took a jab at my costume! So I puffed up my cheeks and stomped the floor and told him he stole 400 bucks from me! He told me to go find a real hobby! So I puffed my cheeks again! I asked him what sucked all the joy and fun out of him and left without finding out the answer.

A few minutes later the zone got cancelled no PlayStation was given away from it..as no one managed to reach the guy..and he himself got trapped in the parking garage and actually failed to get a signal out.. so his zone was just invalidated….even if I was smart enough to wait by the exit for him so I could see him pop up! Alas! Joe, now driven by frustration, was desperate to win the next one. We almost got this one after all. Zone 2 was all the way across town. About an half hour walk away. I told him we would never reach that in time because there are people on scooters and with cars as well. He ignored my advice and began running in the opposite direction. Fifteen minutes later we ended up getting a message the new guy was found.

The first guy got reactivated and had a checkpoint very close to where he was first I knew exactly where he was! But we now were well over 15 minutes out after all we just ran until I was fully out of stamina. Had we followed my advice and waited there..or even followed the ps guy I am sure we would have won still! But Joe’s Alpha moment made him command us to follow him. Now I was fatigued, Ron was a bit vexed with him and Joe was just frustrated. I was still having fun.. as I had no PS4 to lose. I do not care about winning. The other two seemed to be more driven than me though. Joe dashed off to reach the old location while we stayed behind. Ron knew nothing of directions in town so he stayed with the one person who did! Me!

The Hunt for Drinks

Joe doesn’t know the way in town though so he needed me, but he was a bit fed up with my poor condition, even though it’s medical not by pure choice. Bless him for trying so hard though. I know the shortcuts around town though. So when the fourth checkpoint came up we actually managed to make it to the location right before we got the signal the guy had been found we even saw him.. Just missed it again.. this time he was found by guys on bikes. When I say we, I meant Ron and me , Joe went the long way around arriving there very out of breath a bit later. When the next and second to last checkpoint spawned 30 minutes away we decided with a bunch of other cosplayers to go share a drink. We wouldn’t make that and even if we did we did not know the answer to the question. We could not even find it on google. Well the answer was on the internet but it was hidden in a 15 minute video or so.. not really practical. So we had some geeky fun with some other guys. Telling our story about how we blocked the other guys in the garage!. Apparently they were there as well and got chased out by guards as well they wondered who did that. We all realised that I should have just hidden in my box and then snuck past the guy! It was a nice drink and fun moment. Joe could let his frustration go.

The final checkpoint spawned way uphill and we and the other group started to travel together for a bit and honour would go to the fastest runner. So I was out! However I was needed for my familiarity with the land so I had to sprint in the second wave . However the weather was turning around. It started to storm a bit making sprinting even harder. That big cardboard box on my back was a big wind catcher so I fell on the streets as I got hit by a good gust. We all had a good laugh at how silly it looked to see Big Boss get done in by a gust of wind. As I lay down the new people helped me up . .but not before yelling SNAKE?! SNAKE?!!!! SNAAAAAKKKKKE! Halfway to our destiny we got passed by the scooter squad. I told the group that at that spawn point the guy most likely was in this garden/ small park like thing. There was nowhere he could hide and there was no way we could outrun the scooter squad! We felt more like drinking and geeking out with our new friends. Doris the Cardboard box got dumped in an alleyway and at the Mcdonalds Restroom I cleaned off my fake beard and took off my eyepatch! My eye hurt sooo much! Also running through a crowd without depth perception?!.. Not a great idea. I had several accidents. I wonder how Snake does it. While I was cleaning up my friends called the girls and Dave. They had gotten lost all the time so never got close. Together with our new friends we went to a little Irish pub.

We had a good laugh and the story of Solid Snake being blown over by a gust of wind got spread along the table.. as well the girls and Dave running into a hoard of other Nathan Drakes. When Ron began describing all the times I got hurt during this trip, I shifted the story to the parking Garage to tell Fatima Minusima about her boyfriend’s failure, in a playful way. We all agreed Joe had ruined the PS4 for Ron so we made him buy a round of drinks..for our traveled group.. not the ones who joined.. we are still Dutch after all. He offered but they refused. Instead their leader guy named Gary treated them to a round of drinks. We shared a few PlayStation stories and joked Ron would not get it..and just had some fun. Their team all had a PS4 but they really wanted the collectors edition. After three drinks we parted ways from Gary and his gang and went home..I bought a nice coat so I could carry my cosplay with me (since it came with a nice big bag to carry it in and I switched stuff over) and we went for Sushi afterwards… all in all, later I realised that with my new coat , which I still have as a warm rain coat, and the sushi I spent 80 euro’s that day hunting for something I already had and wasn’t going to get anyway! But I had a lot of fun! Even if I felt slow and could not keep up, which can be painful to be confronted with, there is something special about running around as a geek, meeting fellow geeks and just having some fun! It was worth it because I could be me! With people like me.. with friends! That in the end was what the hunt was really about…but Joe never gave Ron his PlayStation!

For Ron

Pinkie’s Day Out! Visiting Gaia Zoo

Hello Island Guests! Once every now and again , I do fairly mundane stuff. Like going on a city trip, visiting a theme park and of course visiting a zoo. With Pinkie’s Day Out , I will tell you all about these little trips! Little moments of happiness with a geeky little twist. Usually I am accompanied by my best normy friend whom I shall call Hub Hub Pilana! This is one of those tales! There might be more in the future though!

Hub Hub Pilana is a great friend who is super active, super cheery and like me very random! He had his birthday when my first blog anniversary post went live and as a gift he asked me on a little trip despite the weird times. He wanted to explore how a theme-park or zoo worked with covid regulations. We decided to visit a nearby zoo so should things be terrible and regulations be poor we could always move to do another thing. As I can’t drive that was one of the few zoos in the country that made sure he did not have to go out of his way to come pick me up. He would make a stop in my town and we would lunch together. I had a pineapple and mango smoothie which was delicious! I ate a avocado and salmon baguette. Hub Hub Pilana ordered a greek salad, along with a sandwich with Gyros and Feta plus a smoothie as well. We had a nice catch up talk. The stuff that we talked about is private so just assume that it was mostly nice! With some encouragement going back and forth as well. A wasp came to our table and I had to flee in terror!

**My Sunshine Smoothie! To start a sunny day!**

Then it was time to get in the car and move to the zoo! Here in the Netherlands mask are currently not required and use of them outside the zones where they are required is even punishable by a law against non religious items to partially cover your face. While I really hope they instate a mask rule or at least suspend the ban on masks like these, I could not afford to risk a fine so I had to make due with the rules that are set. I thoroughly disinfected myself and we were off to the zoo. Unlike me Hub Hub Pilana is very big on popular music and the music he chose in his car was RuPaul’s new album.. or at least something new on Spotify. It was a weird sensation, I didn’t really like this music but I really supported the message. Eventually I tuned the music out though and did not hear it anymore. I do that with a lot of music as music is an amplifier of things to me.. not a thing I give merits on it’s own. So instead I held a plushie parade inside my head. Now on the way to the Zoo there is this super weird roundabout, every time we need to go in that direction to a town called Kerkrade ..we take the wrong turn! This time was no exception! Which was fine since Hub Hub doesn’t really know how to drive within the speed limit.. so we would have arrived quite a bit early! Our zoos currently have time slots you can visit the zoo in and we were 30 minutes early! We managed to decrease that to 15 minutes by driving the wrong way and me trying to photograph a cow.. that was in front of the zoo! It did not go well!

**I would have given you the album cover, but I forgot all titles so here is a pink picture!**

The Zoo itself was pleasantly quiet and pathways had been slightly altered to accommodate our safety. Everywhere where you need to touch something, for example doors to the giant bird cages or the restaurants and toilets.. even the playgrounds had plenty of disinfectant available so I felt quite safe. Distance was very much respected by 80% of the other guests and let’s say those other guests you can recognise on their demeanour so while they do not account for you it was easy enough to account for them. Each building had a maximum number of visitors but it was quite enough that we were able to walk in anywhere. Now Zoo’s can be a bit boring just to walk through normally! I mean sure the animals are cute and stuff is going on but we had to make it a bit more fun! So we agreed that the disinfection stations were checkpoints! We had 3 hearts and if we touched stuff 3 times before reaching the next disinfectant station we had to walk back! This stuff did not include our own person but more like info signs, sound buttons, doors or other stuff to interact with. It was actually a blast trying to flip info signs without using my hands trying to tackle a door open or pick what button I want to press on those “hear the animal cry panels” because I only had 1 or if I felt really bold 2. The zoo had four areas Taiga, where you enter, Limburg where the petting Zoo is,Savannah which is like a big fly over Safari like walk and the Rainforest which has the Monkeys. There is also the Dino-Dome which is meant for kids so we skipped that one.. thinking kids don’t keep their distance as well as adults.

We also both gave each other photo objectives. Mine was to photograph as many duck-likes as possible and Hub Hub Pilana wanted to make “sexy” animal photos. With our goals we set off . Also the one who broke the Corona rules the most had to order food from the restaurant ..even if we had an all you can eat Dinner 3 hours from then. So with these games in mind we decided to stay into Taiga as long as possible. It isn’t the most effective route but we felt like once we were in an area we have to see that before we can progress to the next stage. As a “boss” we had to capture a Pokémon in Pokémon go! Staying in Taiga was great for my goal but not for my safety points! Taiga has these huge bird areas that are essentially big cages without you realising sometimes, meaning a lot the birds can just fly there somewhat freely. That also meant Ducks! I was charmed by the blue bill ducks.. one of them took a liking to me and kept close ..he wasn’t very good at staying on camera! I followed him and stepped over the walking direction line 2 times.. but finally I got my picture!

**Practice for when New Pokémon Snap comes out**

Not very long after that I found a nest of young ducklings which was completely heartwarming I wasted a lot of time while Hub Hub Pilana already captured a Balloon Pikachu as his Boss Encounter for the Taiga area! But at least I found a red-ish duck and managed to move ahead in my main objective.A group of nesting parrots really startled me and while trying to photograph them I walked into a fence..which send me back to the last checkpoint..we deemed it to far away though and I just would get another strike for being forced to eat something heavy in the restaurant. Like .. we reached the next checkpoint.. I just bumped into a fence before I could use it.. We felt it would be to much of a waste of time. A wolf looked at me very disapproving though. In hindsight it’s good that I did not went back because it turned out it was a one way door before that checkpoint. That would have been a complete Pokémon Go Hatch Detour!

I **decided to name this wolf Kevin Sorbo**

The next area had super relax chairs.. like an huge you can sit in, floating above the ground so you can twist and turn around a bit…unfortunately I forgot I get sea sick real easily..even on a swing as my world began to spin and swerve. I was so afraid I would start to look pale.If the zookeepers saw me like this I would surely be kicked out of the zoo. So when a few park cleaners passed by I got up and leaned on a fence twice.. so I had to reset to the last checkpoint..now I could walk off my starting seasickness from relaxing in a floating relaxy chair for 10 minutes! Hub Hub Pilana never knew any better.. but he still gave me a rule strike .. I wasn’t going to win that one! I encountered a strange cow thing that’s more like a really patchy buffalo! I decided not to read it’s sign because I loved how it now was something random to me. So here is the patchy cow/buffalo thing.Do you know what it is?

**This would be a great Pokémon Ground Dark Type.. I think Moorfur is it’s name!**

Our journey through Taiga continued by encountering a few reindeer but I was to distracted by a nest of ducks.. who also just had ducklings! It was very cute seeing them play at the edge of the water. One tried to climb a rock and slipped of in the most adorable way. It fell into the water and got a speed boost running back to it’s mamma. Hub Hub Pilana found a mosaic bench.. that is a bit like those Gaudi mosaic benches in Park Guell Barcelona! We sat on it for a while! I did not get seasick! Yet an old man was behind us.. walking in the zoo all by himself.. no matter how slow or fast we went he was always on our tail! So we made shaking him a off a bit of a miniboss. That took us through a little hedge tunnel that kind of looked like the one from my Neighbor Totoro! Still he was on our tail! We never passed us and when we came out he was there again! So we “fled” into a little aquarium that had room for five viewers at a time. A mother and her two sons was in there so we willed up the quota.. The man walked in …. seemed to search for something.. then walked out.. a fish looked at me insulted as we had fun with our made up little game. I know it isn’t nice to pretend other people are out to get you! But it made for a fun little adventure! The fish disagreed for all of those who side with the stalky old man though!

After I captured a Ducklett in Pokémon Go in the hopes of finding a shiny one we moved into Limburg! The Part of the zoo that had local animals! Like when I say that I mean it and a Livar pig, two cows two donkeys and a petting zoo. The petting Zoo was closed due to the whole Corona thing so I missed a chance to get some extra ducks to my modifier. So instead I talked to the cows a bit when a German family shoved themselves into my aura to pet a pig I was luring to my side! “Look that lady is gonna be able to push the pig.. push her away and Benny you pet the pig’ that kinda thing. It had me miffed and I vented to the cows.. in german so that they could hear I was annoyed. They did the swagger walk away from me and I was finally able to pet the pig! After which I double disinfected my hands. Mostly for the germane! Hub Hub Pilana took a sexy photo of the Donkey who had shown its Dongkey. So he declared himself the absolute winner! No one could trump that photo he took! He asked me if I ever saw such a large cock before and I told him I just saw a family of cocks!
We laughed .. disinfected yet again.. and move to the restaurant.

**Luckily this cow knew what arschlöcher** are and she agreed we just saw some!

The Restaurant marked the halfway point of our journey.. so clever the lay out of this place each big area also has its own small little restaurant but this one was the most tempting.. there was a better one we wish we would have gone to later.. but now it was time for my “Punishment” for stepping over lines to much! Our eye fell on a very rich and creamy looking Oreo cake. It was theme park food so probably It would be overly sweet as well so it would be the perfect punishment as it would fill me up before the evening. Or at least feel like stones in my stomach for the rest of the walk. Surprisingly the cake was actually pretty nice. It had some nice dark chocolate tones filled with some sweet but not overly sweet cream! It felt nice and cool and actually refreshed me! Bonus! During this we had a view of a Hippo in it’s pen! It wasn’t a very exciting sight.. the Hippo.. while one of the most dangerous creatures on the planet.. did that thing, why people don’t know it’s so dangerous.

The Savanna area was one of the nicest zoo Areas to walk trough. The Lions were up and about for once, the giraffe is always a fascinating creature and the rhino’s were playing in the mud. They also got into a fight that was hilariously awkward. One of the Rhino’s managed to get his leg stuck behind another’s Rhino’s horn and the two were trying to break free with silly little humps jumps and half rolls and head shakes, after which they butted heads. At the Cheetah place we did not get to see a lot though.. remember when I first told you about those people you can pick out on demeanour that are like “screw all the rules, I am here now” .. well there they were. Soccer T-shirts.. golden necklaces.. super large dark sunglasses and enough sunburn and sigarette air on them to look and smell like they have been inside a campfire. They had decided to make this sight their break spot and had fanned the family all across the wall.. sitting the children on the wall so no one but them could see. I gave the the Fortnite Award.. and me and Hub Hub Pilana moved on. Instead we encountered some meerkats! We came up with a new challenge who would come up with the most creative way to break them out.. of course yours truly won that challenge! One of them seemed really excited about my idea!

**I named one of these Freddie Mercury**

I missed a Squirtle with A Party Hat so I had to settle for yet another Ducklett when it came to capturing Pokémon as we moved into the final area the rainforest. This was the area that suffered most under the Corona rule. It is basically the area with all the monkeys… which means it is the area with all the crowds. Since I am adamant on the distance rule this means this area we had to rush through a bit. People would just NOT move forward and since the Gorilla feeding show was not being held.. nor that of the other monkey’s all the animals seemed a tad more cranky as well. A lot of the animals stayed in their shelter because.. they get fed inside instead of out. So with only one Gorilla out in the wild and one sitting in the visible area of the shelter both not really doing anything we were done with the apes rather soon. The other monkey pen was being fed as we spoke so there was only a single Monkey out there.. eating an apple on a rope! He was the first to get food and just rushed outside to eat it in quite. For come reason there was a Capybara in the pen as well. I mention this because the monkey photos really did not turn out well! I decided to include it anyway since it’s a monkey..but Capy America deserves some love as well! That is right I named that too! There is also a bonus pig thing because how how WordPress galeries work!

**What would you name the pig like** **beastie?**

A lot of animals here were either not present or sleeping in the rainforest. At one point we found this weird area that had like compost like heaps that are supposed to be filled with huge creepy crawlies.. but nothing was there. I got dared to poke one of the holes but I wussed out..imagining that if I poked it they would crawl over me and give me all sorts of creepy stuff .. and make me swell up to the size of a ball that had to be rolled out of the park. So instead we decided to go the to terrarium .. after we failed once more to find the ant-eater.. for some weird reason I have really bad luck with seeing anteaters in zoos. The Terrarium was empty except for Hub Hub Pilana and me and well the stuff that was there. A Tarantula hid from Hub Hub real fast which was quite funny to see his upset face that HE scared a spider. The best thing was in the Terrarium was the Tapir which was eating some witlof and lettuce. At least I think it was a Tapir.. it was a black pig like thing with no tail. Pretty sure that is a Tapir.

**Winnie was oblivious to the three second rule it seems!**

A few more duck pictures and exotic birds ahead and we were getting to the end of our zoo trip but we had dinner reservations and a tapas place later that night so we decided to sit down in the better restaurant I mentioned earlier for one more drink before we went. Why is the restaurant better than the other anyway you may ask? Well it was on the water side! Overlooking one of the largest flamingo heards I have ever seen. Flamingo’s are amongst my favourite zoo animals.. why? Well isn’t the reason obvious. However there was also a playground.. kids we playing with some old mining tools turned into playthings.. like a little water pump that made the most annoying noise I ever heard. After drowning the kids in the pool, in my head a few times those kids however led to the last challenge of the day! I do not condone actual harm to kids and typically try to be nice to them but imagine sitting in piece enjoying a drink and hearing constant finger nails scratching on a Nail Board.. even when Mamma tells the kids to stop… they keep scratching the chalkboard. But where Nails on a chalkboard is a slow process.. this one is the same sound in one second intervals. Non Stop for 20 minutes! So we had another creativity contest on how to kill someone off with a Flamingo as a weapon. We could have been more creative but there was like.. this annoying sound… that kept us distracted from going further than use it as a club! Eventually we just fled from the noise!

We had little over an hour left to burn so we ended up spending a few bucks in a nearby Slotmachine hall. It can’t be officially called a Casino here but it’s still a gambling place.
I played a gamble game where I had to collect all sort of space aliens.. you know because creature collecting is sort of my hobby! I also knew it is one of those games that is designed to give you the feeling that you are winning but you basically just keep breaking even. Prompting you to play a higher risk game with bigger stakes! This should help me pass the time without losing a lot of money with a chance to win the casino based jackpot.. which was like 80 euro’s or so. I would not have played but Hub Hub Pilana is really into gambling and this was his big day and he doesn’t like to play alone as it makes him feel like he is taking my time. So I spend about 10 euro in and actually made it twenty. After I knew I wasn’t going to lose money I spend my prophet on a fishing gambly game named Fishing Frenzy. Guess I was collecting animals yet again! I once more got to about 20 so I pocketed the earliest 10 now allowing me to drink a Cocktail or 2 in the restaurant next free of charge! The rest on my money I blew on a slot machine named Kaboom! Hub Hub Pilana was out of money so I played big and gained little!

**Not me playing this is the online version**

Then we went out for Tapas in my local town! There are two really good places but one Business owner called me chubby enough when we wanted to order another round ..so I stopped going there. This other place has great Tapas as well and we had plenty. Some pretty creative ones too! I had like a mini bowl of spicy sweet potato soup which was truly delicious and severely types of Pinchos , with beef and Souvlaki among other things. It’s one of those places where you pay an amount and then can order two small plates as much as you can eat within 2.5 hours. The Soup was definatly a highlight but I also had a very nice Sea Bream! Hmm guess even when eating I love to collect animals! Using the gambling profit I bought us a cocktail.. but Hub Hub Pilana doesn’t like alcohol so his was virgin! I had a nice Pink Gin and Tonic.. cause even on Pinkie’s day out she has to stay on brand! Heck speaking about being on brand! I disinfected myself like 19 times or so that day! My hands were so soft they almost felt like plushies!

Now taking a trip in these times might seem somewhat controversial, but know everything I did
was well within the confines of our government’s established rules. I do not go out a lot but I am a sociable creature who needs to unwind sometimes. My friend needed me to. Will I do it again soon? Probably not! This trip happend before the thing began flaring up in the neighboring countries again. While here the numbers are currently quite minimal I always aim to be safe, my mental health is part of my own safety though.

It’s a new format: Princess Talks – Episode 1

by Princess Pinkie 10 Jul 2021

I am back! Sort of…. I think?

by Princess Pinkie 30 Jun 2021

Pinkie does Random Stuff on the Internet: Random Question Generator Part 4

by Princess Pinkie 28 May 2021

Staff Introduction: Cherry the Chef

by Princess Pinkie 24 May 2021

When a Uniduck Princess gets a random idea: Dungeons & Dragon BallZ

by Princess Pinkie 18 May 2021

Pinkie Plays a Sports-Game? Ninja Baseball Bat Man Review

When you read this title you might think about the caped crusader playing a sports game against his enemies the league of Shadows… kind of like Mega Man Soccer for example. However if you read close you see it’s Ninja Baseball Bat Man not Batman and not Batmen either. However the Bat Men in this arcade delight are in a way Batmen! You see the story of this game is something along the lines of Roger, Ryno José and Straw were relaxing one day when suddenly a golden statue of their coach got stolen.. Six separate items. Now these four heroes have to travel through America and fight powerful baseball and Japanese themed foes ..also sometimes other stuff like crying airplanes or smiling orbs of nothingness, to get these six items back before the evil villain can use them to conjure up the almighty King Babe .. with them.. which he then controls! So yes.. the biggest enemy in this game is Babe Ruth.. legendary baseball player.

A batman in the english dictionary is described as a soldier who works under a superior as a servant. In a way these Ninja’s work under their coach and they retrieve a statue instead of doing their regular job so I guess in a way that would make them batmen. So if this game ever gets a sequel.. and I REALLY hope it does I suggest the title Ninja Baseball Bat Man Batmen! As you may have guessed this game is rather zaney! Combining Ninja culture with the american sports culture leads to some very interesting scenarios in this beat them up that I would describe as a relatively easy adventure across seven stages. I spend 23 quarters on this game. Well I would have if this was the old arcade days! Since this is actually my first time beating an arcade game I am not sure! We will find out in the future! Anyway as far as beat em ups go this one is really amazing! I just felt like a kid again! I played this game by myself so it was actually a bat woman not a bat man.. neither was it bat MEN. I played for myself so I would not be a batman either.. I think.. Brain ouchies!

Choosing one out of for Bat Men you move across west coast of america and make your way up to the east coast.. kinda! We get stages like Las Vegas, Texas and Chicago all ending with a big showdown in New York. I kinda forgot where the first two stages are set. It doesn’t really matter anyway because aside from Chicago and Vegas they aren’t very recognisable. The first stage is some kind of giant airport.. so I would assume it is LA based on what I know of the city. Giant halls and such. Then we get a stage aboard a big ship and a battle in the harbor.. so San Francisco maybe?! Vegas we fight our way through a casino and in texas we visit a haunted mansion. Chicago has a lot of gangsters, New York a lot of building scaffolding.. It kind of reminded me like that stage in turtles in time. A LOT! In fact?

In this game you can take on the roles of José the leader of the bunch who fights with average stats. He has a cool personality.. stern but fair! A good leader. Then we have Ryno.. he is the stormy one of the group.. using his two tiny bats, he attacks super rapidly but his attacks are super short range.. he is the most rash of them all! Then we have Roger. Roger is the big guy in yellow, his club has been made into a maze by fitting a baseball on it. He is slow but he has a breakdancing like move and he loves to eat , mostly pizza. Straw is the guy who attacks with the longest weapon almost a staff. He is the most chilled out guy of the group.. not as zany as the others. He just gets the job done.. he walks slow as Fudge though. While there are some special moves that show up as ninja abilities such as Ryno summoning storms and some other stuff that is a bit hard to explain.. These guys usually stick to their sport moves for the majority of the game. Ninjutsu is possible.. but tricky at times.

What is great is that every fighter feels unique and all of them had their moments where I found them more usable than the others. For example Ryno performs really well in bigger packs with low HP while Straw is really good at the later stages of boss fights and slower beginning of stages. Roger is great for the final tougher enemies prior to a boss and of course for pummeling the boss itself. Jose finally is good against armoured enemies, and in general the tougher stage foes. Still I am pretty sure these guys aren’t humans so they must be mutants… hmmmm I heard this before. Not sure where but for some odd reason I feel really like dining on baseball soup tonight! Gross!

I was really amazed how different characters felt from one another and this kept my adventure fun! Which was needed because this is a two button arcade cabinet. You have your directional keys, your hit button and your jump button. By pressing both jump and punch you can use a special moves but there are also some hidden behind some streetfighter like combo’s I think which I could not figure out how to reproduce. Each are character unique though. For example Straw can attack an enemy on the floor , Ryno can leap into the air and bounce of enemies with a homing like attack and Roger hits REALLY hard. This guaranteed that I needed quite a few continues as some characters are very poorly equipped against certain situations..but it also meant there was some depth to this. I liked it.. losing a live in arcade games is ..inevitable.. they are designed like that, the ability to switch character on a game over keeps the game fresh and fun!

The enemy design and stage design really contributes to that as well. So much is done to keep things fresh. While like traditionally a lot of enemies make their return in later stages they either get new mechanics, like turning invisible for a brief moment when you hit them in the haunted level. Other options are that some of the items the enemy carry varies.. thus is looks like a new enemy. For example there are some crushers that in earlier stages drop a Mani Neko.. which gives a small chance for an item drop I think (Not sure because I’ll be honest I never hit with a lot of them) and in later stages they come equipped with a Tanuki statue…which I never once hit… (I think), It ain’t much but still I never felt like … blegh it’s THAT enemy again. Other examples include that we get other methods to deal with enemies. Later in Chicago for example we get the baseball bat enemies from stage 1 again. but this time we drive around in a small car to run them over.. or get bombs that deal fire damage and if bats gets set on fire they instantly die, screaming.

A lot is happening in the stages as well, in the background baseball people hang out and play, in the foreground cheerleaders pop up shooting laser beams or throwing around food for you. In the haunted mansion level when you reach the dining room, you can eat all the food on the table..because obviously you could. It doesn’t always make sense either. For example in the New York Stage you keep seeing a stadium in the background.. at one point you see it sprout turbo rockets as it flies up towards you.. dropping of a fresh batch of new enemies. It really is a spectacle to behold and that is what makes this beat em up so much better than most arcade counter parts. It doesn’t get boring because you never know what you get to expect. From a boat you could suddenly be lifted up by a giant arm that brings you to a factory where Giant Baseball shaped machines crush Mane Neko in the background and the casino is always super vibrant. You never know what is next! A big plus in the genre.

What I really loved was the bosses! They are so creative and random! If you didn’t know yet I love randomness! The first boss fight is the windy plane ! A airplane you fight… INSIDE a PLANE! If you beat it enough it becomes a crying unicycle! So sad! I wish I did not have to put it down! I tried sparing it .. but it kept driving over it..so WHACK! I had to put it down! It’s a fairly straight up fight! But a very solid first boss! Straw is a really good match for it.. I think! I worked really well when I re-encountered it again! Straw is really a good shout out for the first stage in general.. I’d say over all he was my favorite bat man!

In the second stage we fight Mad Lax.. which is two Lego coloured baseball people sitting in a pink female-ish monster truck like buggy. Said buggy can obviously summon some wind up crocodiles toys..which are bright blue. Since this boss spawns a lot of adds I suggest taking Ryno into this fight. He can quickly deal with those pesky adds and is quick enough to catch up with this fairly fast enemy. Oddly Roger is quite good as well.. using his special move he can quickly pick off some tightly packed crocs! Blimey! This boss fight doesn’t do all that much special things either but it’s pink so that’s already amazing.

The third boss is the Deffending Slotmachine and no that is not not a typo, that’s actually how the game spells it so that’s his name. This fight is rather random. Ideal you step in first with Roger and finish him with Straw but if you want to save on quarters I’d say that Jose is actually best equipped for this fight. He is a bit of everything so no matter what this boss throws at you you can counter it. This boss mainly fights using stage hazards so the two I pick are kind of a hassle to use. I really lucked out with Straw getting him into a stunlock like state and finishing it without to much quarters relieved from my fictional pants. Wait.. I meant fictional quarters… darn it.. you are going to use that against me aren’t you?.

We then get to my favorite boss! The Ghost Buffalow of Texas.. he is a possessed refrigerator with a buffalo head mounted on top.. giving himself a chicken body by possessing a shield, two violins some chandeliers a carpet and some swords. Roger is your friend here because you want to get in those heavy hits. But in its second phase it has some pretty wide AoE attacks so switching to Straw will almost be mandatory. I couldn’t do a thing anymore. Still ever since I was a kid I dreamed about fighting my refrigerator with an animal head made into a turkey! Now I finally did!

Florida the fifth stage ends off with a showdown against the mechanical alligator. A bit of a generic boss that reminds me of Leatherhead of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.. .. wait.. is THAT the franchise that’s like this game? I am sure it isn’t ?! He is very big and one of the most tricky bosses out there! His tail can detach and become an powerful enemy itself. However Jose and Straw really do the trick here. I clobbered him with Roger at first but that got me nowhere fast. Wasted 3 quarters on this man! I could have bought some soda for that! Luckily when he is defeated he turns into a crocodile leather purse so that makes up for things!

The second to last both is the gangster boss of Chicago! This is a menacing god father who has two Kawaii twin tails sticking out besides his fedora. If you manage to get around his attacks and beat him up a lot you can reveal that underneath the hat is yet another tail! Triple Tail! Kawaii as Heck! He just wants to be loved and look cute! .. But unfortunately for him I really got good at playing as Straw.. so I whacked him until he was not cute anymore. This boss-fight was a bit of a deception.. kind of a push over. Using Straw’s basic special move i would whack him to one side of the screen then piledriver him and rinse and repeat until the chicago mobster was no more! I really liked his name and gimmick though!

The final stage is a quarter devourer.. we get a lot of Umpire enemies (which are like double shielded ghosts that drop bomb enemies when their two shields are broken) there is a small boss rush before the final fight.. and then we fight The King Babe! This boss ate 5 Quarters! Jose is definitely the one you should use here. My usual suspects were just too slow to deal with those charging attacks. Eventually I got unlocked Ultra Instinct on Straw though (Not an actual unlockable) and I piledrived this guy into oblivion! He is just the meanest baseballer you have ever seen! I did not know Babe Ruth was this evil .. but I am glad this game showed me! I wouldn’t know who the guy is though.. so unless he looks like a video game boss I have a problem still!

This game is amazing, the combat feels a bit floaty ..as if I hit air.. but weirdly in a nice way. If you play Turtles in Time.. hits feel to not do anything they just pop enemies.. Final Fight for example has really connecting hits. While I would have preferred Final Fight I liked this sensation as well. It felt as if I was making attacks.. but they did not really hit.. still I got the sensation of swinging. The weirdness and the tempo make it less serious and viceral which improves the atmosphere. The special moves DO have that nice WHACK! Sensation to it.. which makes me want to use them more and fight a bit more diversely.. which games like these need to stay varied. The special moves also do not take away HP which is a godsend and a rarity in this genre. The game can be finished in about the same time as watching a movie so it’s also a nice thing to just pick up and play. Perfect for people like me who want to show you what kind of weirdness there is in the world of video games. This is a wonderful time and with a friend to play with you it will even be more wonderful! If you can get it.. it’s certainly worth a try! As far as arcade games go, this sits among the best I have played! (Right now at least) So since it now is a favorite of mine……

Do you know of any (preferably short) but weird games I can play?! Have you ever played this game?! Next week i’ll stick with the same genre and look at other weird things that allegedly can be Ninja’s but after that I am still looking for ideas!

Periwinkle: Legend of the Purple Plunderer or something like that.

by Colin 2 Jul 2021

Cherry’s first dish(It’s actually a game Review!)

by Naarati 31 May 2021

That one time I used a Death Ray to Kill all my Friends: Pinkie Plays Pummel Party

by Princess Pinkie 26 May 2021

Random Video Game Duck: Pinkie Plays Time Lord (NES)

by Princess Pinkie 20 May 2021

Test Drive

by Colin 17 May 2021

Celebrating Badass Video Game Moms

by Colin 9 May 2021

Cowboys, Giant Robots and a Pink Dame! Pinkie plays Wild Guns

by Princess Pinkie 4 May 2021

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Sadness

by Colin 1 May 2021

Paradise Hill: Origins

by Colin 25 Apr 2021

The Haunted Mansion on Paradise Island

by Colin 19 Apr 2021

Short but sweet? Nah! Give it A Light Novel Title! That Time Pinkie Got Nominated To Be Weird!

I got so excited I could not wait for the next day to come anymore! I really love this new tag thingy so since today’s post failed I might as well do this one as it is quick and hilarious. Let’s try the “Give It A Light Novel Title Challenge” For those who don’t know, most Isekai shows hold similar titles such as. “ I did not want to get hurt so I maxed out my defence” “Didn’t I tell you to make my stats average in the next life”
Some more “niche examples can be found in visual novels ..for example “My Twin Brother Made Me Crossdress as Him and Now I Have to Deal with a Geeky Stalker and a Domme Beauty Who Want Me in a Bind!” Today we will do that.. to existing anime!

The Rules

Insert the obligatory rules copy and past right here:
Of course I would like to thank Iriina Senpai very much for nominating me for this one. This sort of wacky stuff really cheers me up and I needed a little pick me up today! So yay for her! Kinda scary if she knew. I got nominated by Shallow Dives into Anime for a Real Neat Blogger award once so you should already be subscribed to them.. if you listen to me last time! If not here are both A Wodka Mar-Rini and a Shallow Swimming Pool (that saves me on some booze) cocktails to take you the these amazing blogs

**Visit Irinina by Clicking her Magical Cocktail!**

**Visit Dewbond by clicking on this shallow swimming pool!**

Now that I made these cute drinks it is time to press Crtl+V.. and the next part writes itself.
“I am a magical girl I make text appear like POOF”

Choose up to five anime, manga or visual novel series that have a short title
- Light novels that have shorter titles (Date A Live for example) are also allowed.
Give these series a new title based on those classic overly long Light Novels we love!
If someone has already picked a series you wanted. It’s OK! Let’s see your own take on the title!
Link back to the original post so I can read people’s suggestions, I’d love to read everyone’s ideas. (it’s this post right here)
Include Give it a Light Novel title in your tags so everyone including myself can find them all easily. (my tags are getting out of hand)
Nominate around 1-6 bloggers.
Crow
Hikari
Fred
Iniksbane
Iridium Eye
Mononoke
Lyn
Megan

And now it’s time to get creative with names. I hope Senpai will like approve. Even if some of my titles are a bit META.. I think it will be alright! So here we go! Of course I will be doing six instead of five titles because six is the number of love.

The Challenge

Jojo’s Bizarre Adventures: Stardust Crusaders.

Okay.. this one is not a short title.. but the first part is a brand name so please forgive me. I think it’s clear that the actual title should have been.

Yare Yare Daze! A Vampire killed my ancestor’s dog and stole his body, now I have to punch The World to save my mother!

Catchy!

Kill la Kill

Of course I would pick this one I love this anime! The plot is so insane so we can have a lot of fun with the name! Also why do always prefer shows with flamboyant antagonists?

My family … and clothing….. is Evil,wearing my skimpy, talking outfit and using half a scissor I have to battle them.

Unlike Senketsu …. the new title fits!

Fullmetal Alchemist

Now it’s time to get to the good stuff. The next one is more of a Meta name. Rather looking at that the series is, we name it for one of the most iconic scenes.

I am not SHORT! I am the Hero! So why does everyone keep talking about that guy who Gattaid his daughter and her dog?

I guess I did not have to COMBINE this anime with this challenge.. but might as well fuse it with a meme thing as well.

Akikan

Now something a bit more niche though probably most of you have heard ot his one. I chose this one because over explanation only makes it’s better.

My melon soda turned into a cute girl, I have to keep her carbonated and win this weird war game.

There was a lot of naked protagonist shots in this show! So that is not my thing! Yet I liked the light hearted tone.. and with our new title.. we made it even more bubbly!

Brynhildr in the Darkness:

Now one more niche title before I move on to my final pick! I watched this show and felt it was a bit of a mediocre elfen lied imitation. Yet it gets so much better with a Visual Novel title.

My childhood sweetheart fell of a dam. Now she is a goverment controlled super weapon with a melt button!

This show is mediocre at best.. but with a cute title like that it can’t help but to melt your icy hearts a little .. right?

Bleach

Finally the long awaited number 6! A series everyone will know. .in most cases not for it’s qualities but for this particular trait. Which we will use in the Visual Novel Title.

This Hero Can’t handle conclusive battles! So each epic fight, he isekais to a brand new story!

Now I could conclude this with a joke about bleaching my eyes or something..but any joke here would just feel like filler content.

Which title is your favorite one? How would you name one of these? Let me know in the comments and if you like what I did do not forget to subscribe to my sweet little blog! If you don’t I will replace your bleach manga.. with bleach filler! Love you all! Keep smiling

XO

Pinkie