Pokemon HeartGold

OK, I wasn't planning on this being a Pokemon blog, but such is the way of life it seems.

My oldest son got me a copy of Pokemon HeartGold through a trade with a friend. He had originally traded it to get Platinum, but since I have Pearl it was decided that Platinum was unnecessary (and he already has Giratina). I finally got it the other day during one of my regular visits.

I already decided I was sick of taking Not-Fire types as my starters (Squirtle in Red, albeit with no regrets, Blastoise and all; Totodile in Silver, before I knew Cyndaquil didn't get screwed like Charmander; and Turtwig, also no regrets because Torterra and not a big fan of Chimchar) so I knew I would choose Cyndaquil. However, taking advantage of the fact that my son has SoulSilver, we reserved Totodile and Chikorita (whom I actually hate but I need the Pokedex data) as well as a Charmander he acquired from a friend and a Turtwig he reserved from Platinum. So throw in a Pidgey I caught and YAY.

Also new video is up on YouTube about Dawn Of War II: Retribution. Here it is.

Last vid (and likely last blog post) before our daughter is born.  Until next time, whenever that may be!

More Pokemon

Hi all, made a little progress with my son in White 2.

Last night at work I captured a couple more Pokemon for him (a Sunkern and a Pidove). Not that I have grand plans of using them mind you. Anyway, after I got home from work, my son got up and so we decided to go after the first gym leader.

The first gym in White 2 uses Normal type Pokemon. Normally, I don't worry about Normal types (they have no type advantages and several weaknesses), but this early in the game, the only Pokemon available with a type advantage was Riolu (Fighting). So it was going to come down to a certain degree of luck as our Pokemon would pretty much just wind up butting heads.

I got through the first 2 trainers without much incident, though, since I didn't look anything up ahead of time, they were a bit higher level than expected (10-11, our Pokemon were 8-10).  So after taking one down I would run to the Pokemon Center to heal up. Then came the Gym Leader...

His Pokemon were level 11 and 13 (a Patrat and Lillipup), and what really made the fight a hassle was the ability Work Up, which buffed their Attack and Special Attack stats so that they could one-shot just about all of our Pokemon with Tackle. It really came down to the wire, as all of our Pokemon had been knocked out save for Snivy who, with only a couple of hit points left, Vine Whipped his way to victory.

I hate taking on gym challenges when I don't have a type advantage lol. Now I can move on at least. I really need a Fire-type though. And a better Water-type than Azurill. And better luck for the poor Mareep we have, who keeps getting knocked out on critical hits...

MythicalDakka for Extra Life!

Pretty much everything is summed up in the video. Enjoy!

Pokemon White Version 2

So yesterday my youngest son's first video game arrived in the mail, Pokemon White Version 2. He's been all about Pokemon lately, which got me back into Pokemon. I had purchased Pokemons Diamond and Pearl a couple of years ago for me and my oldest son, but had lost momentum playing it after a while (we were dealing with a lot of issues with the kid so Pokemon took a back seat). Last week I took him to GameStop where he purchased Pokemon Black Version 2, and my wife had mentioned that she considered ordering a Pokemon game for the little guy (but she was scared off by the high prices meaning her brief search turned up the older games). So I made a quick check and found White 2 for a good price, so we went ahead and ordered it. The little guy is a bit young to play it himself so he mostly watches while I play it. He gets to pick the Pokemon and gets to name them though. The trainer he chose to name after himself.

As an aside, my oldest son will be hooking me up with Pokemon HeartGold (he has SoulSilver), which he traded for Platinum (the special edition companion of Diamond and Pearl for those not in the know). I'm still not totally up to speed on Generation 3 and beyond Pokemon as I played Generation 1 and 2 before going on hiatus, so HeartGold should be nice and familiar. I just need to send over my Torterra from Pearl (I like turtles).

So White 2 comes in, my boy names his trainer after himself, so now it's time to choose a Pokemon. The options (same as Black and White) are Oshawott (his big brother's favorite), Tepig (which would be my choice; I like Fire-types and the irony of a pig that can roast YOU is not lost on me), and Snivy (his brother doesn't like him due to an apparent lack of cuteness; I don't like him due to an apparent dislike for Grass-types). Naturally, the little guy picks Snivy. He couldn't come up with a nickname sadly.

We set out, promptly losing the first battle to his rival's Tepig (first time I've ever managed that; Tepig got a critical hit on a Tackle that dropped Snivy immediately).  We set out on our Pokemon journey and started catching wild Pokemon. First was a Purrloin which he named Cookie. We followed that with a Patrat named T. rex (who was only level 2 and so I dumped him in storage as soon as I could). We then travelled further and found this ranch whose owners had lost their Herdier, so in the process of finding it we managed to get a Mareep which he named Pizza, an Azurill that he named Puppy, and a Riolu that for some reason he named Dialga, perhaps to strike fear into the hearts of enemy Pokemon who think they're suddenly facing a Legendary Pokemon. Did I mention the kid is 5?

Anyway, I took my DS to work to try to level up his Pokemon a bit and snagged a Sewaddle in the process. That's as far as we got so far. I need to help him level his Pokemon some more before challenging the first gym

Until next time!

Welcome to the Den of Dakka

Greetings everyone, here's a little blog I decided to start up to give myself something to do when I lack the time/energy to record videos for my YouTube channel. I'll primarily be posting about video games but family stuff (and my other hobbies: Warhammer 40,000 and Magic: the Gathering) are sure to pop up here as well.

Now, about me. You could check out my introductory video, for which I would REALLY appreciate the views, but if you can't be bothered (and sometimes you really just can't): I'm a married father of 2 with a 3rd child due in less than 2 weeks from the date of this post. I've been playing video games since I was about 4 when my family had acquired a TI-99/4A computer console and purchased an Atari 5200 game console. I got hooked big time when we got the Nintendo Entertainment System (known as NES or simply "Nintendo") and I got to play such games as Super Mario Bros and my all-time favorite, The Legend Of Zelda (gold cartridge baby!). After my parents divorced my mom got us a Super NES for Christmas and my dad got a Sega Genesis, so clearly the battle lines had been drawn (that was the first major console war since the very early '80s). In 1994 my mom bought a Packard-Bell (remember them?) Intel 486 based PC (66 MHz processor! 4 MB RAM! 2x CD-ROM! 14.4 kbps modem!). My first PC games were the shareware version of DOOM (still my all time favorite PC game) and Falcon 3.0 (one of the best flight simulators ever made) and... it all went downhill from there.

More to follow soon!