Pokemon Platinum (Generation 4), Part 4 - Fantina

 

It's important to free the nipple. Let them get fresh air. Let them BREATHE.

Today on Pokemon: I take on the second-hardest fight in the game. Fantina, mistress of Ghost-types, is formidable. At this stage of the game, options are very limited. Will I have an answer prepared in time?

Dragonball Z Kakarot Part 20 - -DAIMA- Adventure Through The Demon Realm PART 2 - Second Half

 

This is it, the culmination of Daima. The big final battle. Akira Toriyama's final gift to the world. Featuring his own version of Super Saiyan 4. That's right, it's finally canon in the DBZ to Super timeline.

Dragonball Z Kakarot Part 19 - -DAIMA- Adventure Through The Demon Realm PART 2 - First Half

 

Daima was the last thing Akira Toriyama left us with, and as weird as it is, it's a pretty cool final present for the fans. It takes place after Dragonball Z and has our heroes go on a new adventure, serving almost as a bridge between Z and Super. It would have made a lot more sense if it had come out in the 2000's, between the two shows, rather than recently when most people are just waiting for the Moro Arc. Regardless, I really like Daima, and it feels almost like someone mixed DB, DBZ, and DBGT in a bowl and added all the Toriyama-isms they could.

That said, it's full of plot holes and retroactively causes quite a bit of early DB Super to not make sense (wondering if the strangely-named "DB Super Beerus" exists mainly to smooth that out and explain why nobody uses their new abilities from Daima during the first arc of Super...eh, probably not)

Pokemon Platinum (Generation 4), Part 3 - Gardenia

 

Today on Pokemon, the important questions get asked. What is Team Galactic really up to? What's beyond Eterna Forest? And is Dawn about to go on a European Sex Tour like the woman in Pokemon Legends Z-A did? Amsterdam, here we come.

Highlander 5x16 - Forgive Us Our Trespasses

 

It's Monday night, you know what that means. This episode initially aired May 5th, 1997. Considering it takes place in Winter, it was airing pretty late into the year - they really found a way to make the shorter-than-normal Season 5 last. This episode is a complex story about war, the ethics of it, forgiveness for it, and so on. It's nuanced enough to not have "good guys" or "bad guys" and present two sides as both being right in their own minds...so the normal human state.

One of the best episodes in S5, this is an episode that basically emits pure atmosphere. It feels a lot like a "final episode" of a show, and could have been the final episode of this show easily enough. Maybe the show would be better off if it was. This episode has a ton in common with the actual final episode of the series; both have Duncan questioning whether he's done more harm than good. Or at least, too much harm.

Pokemon Platinum (Generation 4), Part 2 - Roark

 

Today on Plat: Dawn slays Roark. That's right, she killed him. She takes this Poke-battling stuff way too seriously. Hopefully she can get off with the "Juvenile Rage" defense.

Dragonball Z Kakarot Part 18 - -DAIMA- Adventure Through The Demon Realm PART 1

 

I thought Kakarot was done. This surprisingly deep action-RPG has had no less than EIGHT DLCs added to it at this point. Most of them are fairly lengthy, too, feeling more like expansions or standalone small games than mere updates. This is the biggest one yet (and might be the last, though they've said that before), covering the Dragonball Daima series. It's actually split into two DLCs (#7 and #8), costing $10 each (or $15 for both), with the first being the more RPG-like open world of the Demon Realm and the second being all of the major fights that occured near the end of the top-heavy Daima show. While the Daima Part 1 DLC is very middle of the pack for Kakarot DLCs, I've heard Daima Part 2 called the best DLC they've made.

Daima itself is a super ridiculous series full of plotholes, with a lighthearted plot and nothing really serious or dark happening. It was a fun thing to watch, even if I'm not really sure why it exists. Was anyone really demanding a mid-quel taking place between Z and Super at this point? And one that creates a bunch of plotholes in Super. Well, let's go.

Pokemon Platinum (Generation 4) (Nintendo DS, 2008)

 

Man, that is one ugly box-art. No wonder I never gave this a whirl in-era on the DS. Back in 2006 I found Pokémon Diamond to be an incredibly slow, molasses-like game, so for a long time it warded me off of the series. I didn't get back into the series until a decade later with Gen 7.

Similarly, for these posts there was a ten year break between the first three generations and this one. In the interim I did the two Legends games and the Gen 1 remakes, but that's about it. Picking up with 2008 here.

The good news is that Gen 4's deluxe/upgrade version Pokémon Platinum fixes a lot of the issues with Gen 4 and speeds things up quite a bit. This is EASILY the definitive version of Gen 4, and one of the best Pokémon games period. It started a bit of a renaissance for the series, being followed by Gen 5 (debatably the best one) and super-solid remakes of Gens 2 and 3. Platinum heralds a pretty huge turnaround considering how bad Gen 4 started.

Historically, Pokémon posts were always R-Rated and weird as hell. Read at your own risk.

Resistance: Fall of Man (Playstation 3, 2006)

 

I wanted to revisit something from the late 2000's, early-HD, Brown AF, Playstation 3 Generation. I mentioned this game a few times as being Sony's answer to Halo, so it immediately sprang to mind. It really doesn't have that much in common with Halo besides that they're both first-person shooters against an alien foe. Rather than a futuristic game with laser weapons and so forth, this is an alternate-history 1950 story, with era-appropriate weaponry. It posits the question: What if WW2 never happened, and everyone had to band together to repel an alien invasion instead?

It's an interesting game, and covers my PS3 era nostalgia well enough.

Pokken Tournament DX (Nintendo Switch, 2017)

 

Released September 22nd, 2017. So like, this very week. What better way to kick off a month of POKEMANIA. Fall always makes me think of the start of a new school year, and Pokémon, since as a kid I mostly played this series when other kids were playing it.

This game is something a little different. It's a revamped port of the Wii U version, which dropped in March 2016, and was in arcades for a bit before that. It's a Pokémon fighting game, combining elements of Pokémon with elements of the Tekken series. So of course I've gotta see this.

This is a first time playthrough from somebody who has no idea what to expect.

Ranking the Five AEW All Ins

Here we go, time for another wrestling list. This is an entirely subjective ranking, and anyone else could have a completely different opinion and be just as right. As a result, this was very difficult to put together, take it from me. Any one of these shows could lay a claim to being #1 on someone else's list for a variety of reasons, which I'm going to get into as well.

A couple years ago I did a Ranking the Top 40 Wrestlemanias list that took significantly longer than this, and remember thinking it would be cool to do the same for All In events. I just had to wait for enough of them to exist! Two All Ins later, I can finally do a ranking list. See you again for the Top Ten in a few years.

Ranking the Enterprises in Star Trek

For Star Trek's 60th anniversary, it seemed appropriate to do some Trek material. This list will be based primarily on the aesthetics and look of each ship. Not the power/capabilities (which would just put them in chronological order) or how much airtime they got or how well they were used. When it comes down to it, only a couple of these ships have really gotten airtime or had shows dedicated to them. So yeah, this is about aesthetics and how much I like looking at any given ship on TV.

Side note: I think that chart above is oversizing Excelsior a bit. I was under the impression it was just a little bigger than the Enterprise-A, and closer to that ship than it is to the C or D. It's just as likely that it's undersizing the Kirk Enterprises, though.

The 1000 Games I've Beaten (#736 - 756)

#736 Valkyria Chronicles 4 (Switch) – Fall 2018

All I played from this series were the first and fourth games; not sure if I missed much by skipping the portable entries. One and four were both solid enough, with nice hand-drawn graphics and Hitoshi Sakimoto music which is always a huge plus for me. Don't recall too much about this, and what I do recall, I'm not certain if it's from the first game or this one.

Toughest Part...in either this or VC1: The blue-haired super-woman that you have to snipe from a distance...I think she was in the first game, actually

Ranking Every AEW World Championship Reign: August 2019 - August 2026

 

The AEW World Championship (more recently the AEW Men's World Championship) has had one of the better, and more protected, lineages of any modern wrestling title. The first several years of that lineage were near-perfect and the title has remained prestigious ever since; being the sole World Title in the organization means that it's the undisputed top prize. Ten men have held this title - eleven if you count Bret Hart bringing the title out to begin with - and all of them were top tier talents in the industry. Today I'll be ranking these guys, and the rich history of title reigns in the company's short history.

Current champion as of press time (shortly before All In 2026) - Kenny Omega (2nd reign)

Gradius Gaiden (Playstation, 1997)

 

This game is hands-down the best Gradius series game I've ever played, and at this point I've played pretty much all of them. It was only released in Japan, making it basically the Rondo of Blood of this series, and for some inexplicable reason it has never been put on any of the Gradius collections since then (besides the now-obscure PSP one). Hardly anyone seems to know about it; I sure didn't until very recently.

Be warned though: As good as this game is, it can also be so hard that it makes Dark Souls look like Kirby's Dream Land. Then again, a lot of things make Dark Souls look like Kirby's Dream Land. Dark Souls really isn't that bad, especially compared to its own sequels. I should rank Fromsoft games by difficulty one of these days. Regardless. if Dark Souls moved any more slowly, it'd be turn-based.

Highlander 5x15 - The Stone of Scone

 

It's Monday night at 7 PM on the USA Network, you know what that means.

Aired April 21, 1997. There was a two-month space of time between Duende and this, which normally would have contained four new episodes, but with Season 5 being abbreviated there just weren't any new ones to air. I'm guessing they ran reruns during that timeframe; wonder what episodes they did. Presumably reruns aired throughout the year when new episodes weren't available (which would have generally been the middle six months of the year, or so).

It's just as well that I took a break after Duende, because this year was nonstop difficult life stuff between watching that episode and this one. Getting back to this as things begin to approach something resembling normal / nice again.

Adrian Paul was already halfway out the door and the studio was trying to hold things together and keep it going. I still wish, to this day, that they would have just seized the opportunity to focus on some other characters. S5's missing four episodes could have focused on Methos, given Richie or Amanda a solo adventure, etc. Bring back a loose end like S1's Kiem Sum or Joan Jett.

And of course, S6 should have been used to transition to a new lead midway through. My vote is that S6's back half, and S7, had Methos as the main character. Bring back Duncan for the finale and so forth, of course, but let Methos carry the show for a season and a half. Peter Wingfield was definitely up for it.

I just wish this show had a full seven seasons rather than the sputtering conclusion it has. Either way, we're still in the midst of the best seven-episode run the show ever had, so let's go!

Elden Ring: Nightreign Boss Fight Videos

 

With the Duskbloods network test starting today, it's a good time for another compilation of boss fight videos from a game. I'm hugely into these Fromsoft games and their boss fights, which tend to be great duels that are often incredible-looking to boot. Each fight here includes liner notes about the fight., as usual. This is a super fun game if you bring your own group of friends and communicate via some third-party chat program; a bit less so if you only do randomly generated runs - with no communication - as the game intends.

Nightreign is an interesting game that I wish I liked more. Found it very tedious and difficult because of how hard it was to make any gainful progress off of unsuccessful runs at levels. You're also very reliant on how experienced your teammates are. It was nearly impossible to beat a level with a randomized group in the first week the game was out, but later I was able to go back and do more once the playerbase had more experience (that or all the noobs had quit by then) and managed to beat the game in about 12 hours.

Do yourself a favor and avoid the DLC though. Waste of $15 and the underworld levels are a real pain in the ass. Had I just quit after the main game concluded, I would have had mostly positive memories. So this is only covering the main game.

The 1000 Games I've Beaten (#729 - 735)

 

#729 Dragon Quest XI (Playstation 4) – Fall 2018

After a regression in DQIX and a game nobody stateside could play in DQX, this game finally gave us the follow-up to DQVIII that people waited ten years for. This ranked very, very highly in my Post-Milennium RPG Ranking - out of all those games, it was essentially in a three-way tie for second place - and deservedly so. This takes everything that makes the DQ series, well, DQ, and cranks it all up with modern QOL and 3D visuals. It's done in a smooth graphical style that probably won't age, either.

Killer Instinct (Super NES, 1995)

 

Not to be confused with hit 1990's movie Basic Instinct. There's no connection. At least, I don't think there are any scenes where Fulgore crosses and uncrosses his legs seductively. Sabrewulf and Spinal are both nude though. Actually a bunch of characters are nude. Regardless, this is easily one of the best fighting games on the Super NES, even though I've never been very good at it.

Fighter's History (Super NES, 1994)

 

Looking at an oddball Data East fighting game that made its way onto the SNES. This wasn't exactly King of Fighters '94 or anything. The lack of SNK fighters on the SNES is weird, but it left some room for games like this to try and compete with the MKs and SFs of the world.

The box art shows off the game's highly-unappealing roster of characters. The giant head in a turban is the villain of the game, Karnov. This is basically a clone of Street Fighter II while also borrowing heavily from the aformentioned KOF series (going for realism, etc). It's on the Switch Online virtual console as we speak, mostly just taking up space.

Someone out there likely has this as their favorite game, though.