So I found out about a month ago that my Crystal version that I spent 120+ hours on and had all 252 Pokemon in it got corrupted, so all of that work is nil and void. *sniff* AAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!1!!!!!!!!! *sigh* ... Anywho, this got me back to playing that addictive game of Pokemon in hopes to accomplish this feat. Again. Well, this brought me in transition back to playing Red version again. After playing for a while and reading Jim Sterling's recent blogs on Pokemon, I got to thinking though there are some strange elements of the game that can be bothersome, there are also some small, sometimes unnoticed elements of Pokemon great.

1. Trainers in themselves were a great part of the Pokemon games. You always would associate certain trainers with certain Pokemon. Bikers had Poison type, Guitarists had Electric type, Bird Trainers had, er... what did they have again? Nevermind. But another great part about those Trainers was the way the prize money accociated with them. Gentlemen were filthy rich, so when you defeated thier Pikachus and Growlithes you got some great pot, er, Pokeball money. However, those fucking annoying swimmers never had any good cash, even though they consisted of 99% of the Trainers. Though it's cool in a way because how would swimmers hold money anyway?

2. Pokemon was a twisted RPG, one of the many genres given to the game. The greatest part was the updated dungeon crawling scenario given to caves, forests, etc in the world of Pokemon. You traveled through these long, winding, dead-end places, facing wild Pokemon every step and dumbass Trainers that spend their days just hanging in the darkest part of the cave. Sometimes you were lucky, and found items or even Legendary Pokemon. Most of the time you just got annoyed.

3. You ever notice how gyms are never real gyms? It's weird how you think of Pokemon gyms and never really see the basic elements of a real-life gym. No weights, no machines, no buff guy who distracts the hot girl from you. There's just a bunch of Trainers with one type of Pokemon, sometimes elaborate traps and puzzles to the gym leader. None of these people are really gymmin' in the real sense of the word. How do they keep so fit in the Pokemon world if gyms aren't what they're supposed to be?

4. Pokemon tried very hard to make the world of these games seem as real as possible. And it worked. You walk in the forest, you encounter bugs and birds. In the cave you see living rocks and bats. In the water you find fish, squids and such. The different creatures just seem to fit in the places you find them. However, you also get the surreal part of Pokemon through their world also. You would never go out and through colored balls at purple rats or snakes. That just might get you maimed. You also don't want to set those kind of creatures on other people (at least without avoiding a lawsuit). This connection really makes Pokemon a great game. Its like real world on acid, and that's just the kind of world I want to live in.

Unfortunately, I entered the gaming world later then most. The first game I played was not on the NES, not even the SNES. The very first video game I played was on the Nintendo 64, and it featured a certain dim-witted bear and smart-talking bird.

I played Banjo-Kazooie for the first time over my friends house during a birthday sleepover. He had received that and Mortal Kombat for the 64, and my thirst for bloody games hadn't matured yet, so the mild bear-based game got my attention. It was probably the most fun I ever had up to that time. And luck would have it on Christmas of that year...

My parents surprised me and my brother by getting us a Nintendo 64. Among some games unable to be mentioned (A Bugs Life) and others which started whole other affairs (Super Smash Bros, Paper Mario), Banjo-Kazooie exited me the most. I couldn't wait to pop that game in and continue the oodles of fun I had playing it over my friend's house. Banjo-Kazooie, in my opinion, is a masterpiece. It quickly turned into my favorite game and the one game that I have played over and over without boredom. Rare was definitely at the top of their game when they released Banjo-Kazooie. The great dialogue, the creative puzzles, the all around individuality which this game contained. For starters, it features a bear with a bird in his backpack! You learn different moves from a mole! JINJOS!

From the beginning to the memorable final battle, Banjo-Kazooie began the long road of my obsession with video games. The creativity and design of this game started my affair with game design and animation. This excellent game was followed by another great one in Banjo-Tooie. Many different games and a few system generations later, Rare is about to release another one, and although they abandoned Nintendo and I'm not really exited about what they've shown so far, the awesomeness of the first installment revives my expectations of this game. But that's for another story... Anywho, if it wasn't for that unforgettable bear and bird, my love for video games and hopefully future success in the gameindustry would not be possible.

To start, I would like to say that this is the first blog I have ever done (EVR) so be kind to me. Anywho, here I sit, back from another shitty night of work, its around twelve, and I'm on my laptop with Aqua Team Hunger Force muted on my TV and Avenged Sevenfold blasting from my computer. Yea, that's right, I'm home alone on a Friday night. Wanna fight about it?

So, as usual when I'm sitting in the environment I have created for me, thoughts drift in and out of my mind, and tonight I felt that I should express them, just to get my first blog experience going. I was browsing the Destructoid home page headlines before writing this blog, and some of them jumped out at me. That new game Legendary looks awesome. Great concept cause I love mythical creatures and such, and I like the idea of fighting both creatures and humans. I'm gonna need an X-box soon.

I've also been reading up on Jim Sterling's Pokemon blogs. The one about the thirty Pokemon that were stupid designs was a gem, I especially loved the Slowbro and the observation about the horns on pretty much every Pokemon. I've recently dived back into Gold and Silver because my Crystal with ALL 251 POKEMON got erased. Yea I was pissed, but I felt more like a loser because on how much it affected me.

Metalocalypse is playing now, pretty much one of the awesomest shows in existence. As I check my Limewire, which is now downloading every album by Queen and the Wu Tang Clan (yea I know, big difference, right?) I reflect on another of the headline blogs, the one about the summer drought we always get in the gaming world. Why can't games be more like movies, who stockpile in the summer and the winter? I mean, there's gotta be some wealth in the thousands of gamers who get out of school and now have 24 hours to play all of the games they want. How come nobody's ever thought of that?

Well, the spare thoughts have been pretty much dried up (I didn't say I had a lot of them) and I probably should do something useful. Or keep doing what I'm doing now. I love it when they play Metalocalypse twice in a row.