…At least, that’s what I thought. Videogames have started to creep into those, too, and I thought like-minded individuals might enjoy some podcasts that aren’t about videogames, but are. I’ve got two in mind right now:

• PodClack: It’s the official podcast of CliqueClack.com, ostensibly about TV (though that’s like saying Potdoid is about videogames), but actually it tends to focus more on the host’s oftentimes dysfunctional relationship with his wife, and also masturbation, topics that may or may not be related. This episode in particular features an interview with Jeff Ryan, author of the new book Super Mario: How Nintendo Conquered America, and this post is 100% an excuse to tell you to listen to this show and understand that I am pronouncing Mario correctly goddammit.

Also—and this is why I got into the PodClack in the first place—the host, Jay Black, was one of my English teachers in high school. And he’s a stand-up comic. My high school was weird. *

• The F Plus: This show’s tagline is “terrible things read with enthusiasm”—they take awful things that were posted onto the Internet, like bad fanfiction, posts from a message board about burp fetishes, and reviews of dildos that are shaped like dragons—and then read them to you. It’s awesome. This episode in particular is about Pokémon—or, to use their words, it’s about “one man’s fantasy to create an entire race of anthropomorphic beastgirls forced into sexual servitude.” If you like this show, Lou Reads does something similar, and that’s also awesome.

So, yeah! Podcasts! They exist beyond our own! What’s your favorite?


* We also—this is absolutely, 100% true—had a teacher who was moonlighting as an Elvis impersonator. I can’t make stuff like that up.

[Adapted from Paul Franzen's blog.]

The only way this could possibly be funnier is if I understood any of the references.

We here at GameCola’s crack news team are dedicated to searching far and wide for videogame news, but today I’ll be daring to traverse the very time-space continuum to bring you news from several years in the past—just for you, valued reader!

Finally, my precious Mega Drive, we are one. My plans are complete.

Normally I expect to see references to videogames in Game Informer, not the science journal Nature, but it looks like gamer geneticists have been tasked with naming the mammalian gene responsible for the growth of fingers and toes, stem cell division, and the organization of the brain. It’s name? Sonic Hedgehog Homolog. Yes, this means that Sonic the Hedgehog is inside of all of our genes, and, judging based on his love of the azure rodent, is now all over the inside of an overly-excited Matt Jonas’s underwear upon hearing this information.

Additionally, it turns out that Harvard researchers created an equally hilarious inhibitor to counteract Sonic Hedgehog Homolo: Robotnikinin.

With all this comedy, why do so many doctors and scientists insist on taking umbrage at these naming choices? And why does there need to be an inhibitor for this gene, anyway? Well, it turns out that when the Sonic the Hedgehog gene mutates, it, much like every Sonic game Sega has put out in the last decade, gets very, very bad. Mutations in the Sonic the Hedgehog gene cause problems in fetal development that keep the brain from properly forming lobes, usually resulting in stillbirth.

Oh…that’s not hilarious. That’s not hilarious at all. And, really, no doctor wants to tell a mother that she just lost her baby because its Sonic the Hedgehog gene mutated and the Dr. Robotnik compound they administered just didn’t work.

On the down side, Pikachurin is quite a bit less cuddly, and its evolutions take significantly longer.

Since comedic videogame blogs that end their articles with information about dead babies probably aren’t very good at being comedic videogame blogs, I’m thankful that this isn’t the only time that videogames and genetics have met. Scientists at Japan’s Osaka Bioscience Institute discovered a protein in human retinas that aid in perceiving moving objects. It’s name: Pikachurin.

So, what’s this one’s downside? Does Pikachurin cause Juvenile Diabetes or Harlequin Fetus? Well, actually, the story of Pikachurin is nothing but positive. Not only does it help you see properly, but research into the protein is helping treat Retinitis Pigmentosa, an eye disorder that causes tunnel vision and blindness in about 100,000 people in the United States alone.

So, there you have it: the little yellow guy that you squint and strain to see on a tiny screen for hours at a time actually helps treat blindness.

Sure, Pokémon may not generally be considered to be offensive (except by the same caliber of person who burns Harry Potter books for being evil childrens’ witchcraft manuals), but Cracked.com recently shed some light on the fact that Nintendo’s Pokémon Creation department has gone the way of Capcom’s Mega Man Boss Naming department, in that they have completely run out of good ideas. The difference is that, when Capcom runs out of ideas, they just start picking farm animals at random; however, when Nintendo runs out of ideas, things get a bit…darker.

Concept art for Nintendo's upcoming Pokémon Black/White DLC

Those playing through Pokémon Black/White know that much of the game takes place in Unova, a metropolis modeled after New York City. Modeled a bit too well after New York City, actually—right down to a recreation of Ground Zero from the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

That’s pretty awful, but where does Kyurem come into play? Nintendo may be lacking some tact here, but they at least had enough tact to refrain from referring to the Ground Zero location as ”part of the city that was destroyed by bloodthirsty religious zealots, killing thousands of innocent people.” Instead, they said that two meteors hit the city, and that one of those meteors…spawned Kyurem. That’s right: Kyurem is a Pokémon spawned from the 9/11 attacks. If that’s not bad enough, Nintendo decided to add a small touch that puts it over the top as the most offensive Pokémon ever: Bulbapedia.com lists his height as being 9′ 11″.

You stay classy, Nintendo.

Original article at Cracked.com

Plus, I like games. I do. Not all of them, to be sure; but enough that I had really started to enjoy the “gamer” lifestyle. It was a good life. It was a happy life.

Then Mike started to make friends.

Now, I’m not saying that having friends is a bad thing, or even a particularly unusual one. Mike is a pretty social person; and he has friends in quite a few different circles. Of course, most of them are nerds and gamers in some respect or another; but that’s normal, right?

Actually, I think it was the nerd factor that threw me off in the beginning. It all began so innocuously. Mike started to toss a few new names into conversation. Person A had been hanging out with the Poképals. Person B was someone he had met at a party. Person C liked to go to the same concerts he did. No biggie.

Then the same names started coming up in conversation more often; and I began noticing odd connections between them. It turned out that Persons A and B worked at the same gaming development company; Persons B and C were in a band together; Persons A and C were roommates, and so on.

And then it slowly started to dawn on me…they all knew each other. All of these people who were randomly involved in the Baltimore videogame scene were in some way connected with one another. This was bad enough; but it was soon followed by an even more alarming revelation: not only were they involved with the Baltimore videogame scene, they ran the Baltimore videogame scene.

They were the goddamn Baltimore Videogame Mafia.

From then on, it was different. Gaming wasn’t just about the games any more. All of a sudden, Mike was plunged into a world with a life and culture that was all its own. Instead of staying home every night and wading through the GameFly queue, Mike was in high demand for all sorts of events. Mega Man-themed D&D on Tuesdays. Nerd Dodgeball League on Wednesdays. Helping renovate the new theatre for the Baltimore Rock Opera Society. Running the console room at the Bit Gen festivals. Concerts. Parties. Cookouts. All with the same fucking group of people.

 They even sent members to guard—I mean, “attend”—our wedding. Try to spot them!

For me, it was hard not to get drawn in; although Lord knows I tried. I never wanted to be part of an underground nerd subculture. Before Mike came onto the scene, if you had asked me what I thought about videogame cover bands, or D&D webcomics, or Yu-Gi-Oh Abridged, I would have just stared at you blankly. And then laughed. And then stared blankly again.

I guess it’s my own fault, really, for being so “open” to things. I probably should have been more condescending and bitchy about my husband’s interests right from the get-go. Of course, if I had done that, he probably wouldn’t be my husband; but that’s neither here nor there. The point is, in spite of everything, I have come to…enjoy…much of what Mike has exposed me to. I like listening to The Protomen and The Megas. I read Penny Arcade and Ctrl-Alt-Del and Order of the Stick. I still refuse to play Pokémon; but I have come to consider many of the Poképals to be good friends. Goddammit, WHAT HAVE I BECOME?

All of this recently culminated in MAGFest 9, aka the Music and Gaming Festival, aka the social event of the year for all of Mike’s gamer friends. This year the convention attracted about 3,000 people and consisted of five days of concerts, panels, and non-stop gaming. For me, it was quite an experience. I had actually been the previous year; but that was before Mike really got “in” with the BVGM. Back then, they might have been the Baltimore Videogame Construction Co. for all we knew. This year, though, we were in. Really in. “Made Man” in. So, I figured, why not take advantage of it?

And indeed I did. Over the course of five days at MAGFest, I did the following:

• I attended the panel for “Hey Ash Watcha’ Playin’?” (an online series of short parody videos made by a brother-and-sister team), and then proceeded to stalk—ahem, “randomly run into”—them for the rest of the convention;
• I watched The Megas play live for the first time;
• I rocked out to The Protomen, Acts I and II, also for the first time;
• I sat through 20 minutes of late-night trivia with Mike before vowing that we would never go again unless we were the ones running it;
• I got my now-famous Panda Hat;
• I completely missed the Child’s Play charity auction where they raised $700 by auctioning off the right to beat a guy with his own Nerf weapons; and
• I posted updates about the whole damn thing to Twitter. With pictures.

OK, so maybe it’s not such a terrible thing that gaming isn’t just about the games anymore. I mean, it’s not like we stopped playing the games. As we speak, Mike is battling his way through Costume Quest and I am resisting the temptation to stop writing and pick up Kingdom Hearts Re:coded. It’s just that the world has gotten a little bigger, maybe a little more complex, and definitely a whole lot more bad-ass. Because now if you mess with us, Big Adam will cut you. Ha ha! Just kidding. Maybe.

In this installment of The GameCola Podcast:

• Paul defends his love of Indiana Jones 4, much to Mike’s chagrin.
• Paul defends his opinions of EarthBound, also to Mike’s chagrin.
• Paul describes his attempts to play Icewind Dale, once again to Mike’s chagrin.

Also, everyone talks about the games they hope to include in the upcoming “Top 50 Games of All Time” feature that Christian Porter is coordinating (I think they forget to explain that this is what they’re talking about—sorry!), the games they’re playing right now, and much, much more.

The majority of the time (a nice loose phrase that doesn’t require any reasonable evidence to back it), games based upon a movie or television franchise suck balls. They’re phucking awful—usually due to time constraints, or having the sort of developers on board who think that Space Math is passable. These games get released every year, routinely, to coincide with the latest children’s movies.

The Coraline game had so much promise. It could have been a brilliant RPG. No, all we got was minigames. We own a Wii, sure, but how many more games consisting of nothing but miniature games do we need? Take a step back and look at yourself! If you’re churning out games that are just minigames, then do us all a favor and stop breathing!

Shovelware comes in droves, force-feeding us manure until we’re choking on it. And some of us obviously like being made quite the bitch, because these games still sell. They still sell because idiot parents buy them for their insufferable kids. Ship your brat out to war—then he won’t have a Nintendo Wii, and you’ll be able to rent his room out.

Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs does primarily reside in the “SHOVELWARE” category, although there is something I respect it for. I respect it for doing something disrespectful, as it borrows a heap of ideas from other existing games and genres (much how The Simpsons Road Rage borrowed elements from Crazy Taxi).

I’ve seen one Ice Age movie, perhaps two of them, although I don’t remember the second one at all (gives you an idea of just how entertaining they are). A third Ice Age movie is something I needed as much as having my fingers chopped off. The only redeeming feature of the Ice Age franchise is that the great comedian Dennis Leary provides the voice of Diego, who is also a pretty badass character. He was nominated for a Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Award for “Favourite Voice from an Animated Movie” for his role as Diego.

Because I’m a fan of Dennis Leary’s expletive-filled stand-up, and always open to playing more videogames, I decided to give Dawn of the Dinosaurs a go—and you know what? It’s pretty damn competent.

Dawn of the Dinosaurs tells various mini-stories that I presume are based around the story of the film. I haven’t seen the third movie, because I don’t watch movies anymore. I did watch Coraline, now that’s a good movie. Shame it didn’t have a decent game.

I can tell quite easily that the storyline portrayed in Dawn of the Dinosaurs is only loosely based on the movie, though, because the tasks you have to perform throughout this game are so fucking menial that if the film were built on them, it would be the most dreadful-est movie ever concieved. To improve this game, Space Michael might as well turn up, and once he’s done sucking down those greaseball burgers, he initiates V.A.T.S. and kills Solid Snake with Solar Beam. It’s super effective!

Manny's five-minute playable cameo is awful, just like the whole of Sid's levels.

The first couple of levels are frustratingly slow. I understand that Sid the Sloth is, indeed, a sloth, BUT he only has two speeds: CRAWL and STOP! His movements are so sluggish that when compared to any other playable character, he is darned uncomfortable (except Manny, but he’s got a five-minute role, instead of an hour-long one).

Sid does fight really well. But this comes as a weakness, because he doesn’t get to do enough of it. Sort of like the opposite to Sonic Unleashed, where the combat is dreadful AND there’s too much of it.

Once the first block of levels (which makes up about a third of the game) is done, the gameplay really picks up. I’m not surprised that the demo chose to include one of the levels from this part of the game. A character I don’t recognise is flung at me, which means he must be the new hero. I already made the assumption that I would be playing as him for pretty much the rest of the whole game.

Buck, the marsupial with an Australian accent (crikey!), is much faster. Much more agile. Imagine the difference in agility between a Snorlax and an Electrode—that’s the leap from Sid to Buck. His moves are also quite good, but hold on, they remind me of something. Wait! They remind me of many things…

This is when you come to realise that Ice Age 3 really is the Mask*DeMasque of the gaming scene. It takes the combined platforming prowess of Crash Bandicoot, Sonic Adventure and Kao the Kangaroo, throws in a dash of Devil May Cry, and then tosses in the weapon-based combat from Ratchet and Clank .

There are sections of Buck’s levels that transform into Kula World, with clever and precise vine movements. Then, out of the blue, Ninja Gaide-style wall running and wall jumping sections are thrown in for good measure, as well as other features from Sonic Adventure , such as jumping between flat surfaces suspended in the air.

I’d like to say it’s influenced by Pac-Man, too, although it isn’t. It totally could be, though. It’s the Incarnate of videogaming.

And then, picking from Sonic Adventure 2 to finish off this mish-mash of borrowed features, Buck slides down vines in the same way Sonic grinds on rails.

"And that's why we mammals are the superior race!"

Admittedly, none of these sections play as comfortably as the aforementioned sources of inspiration, and they’re also scripted to high hell. The slightest mistake in jumping distance will kill you off very quickly. Frustrating, but not to the level where you want to lob the controller across the room, though.

There are also retro-themed levels, such as an R-Type level, and then the subsequent Star Fox 64-style level. How do we really know this level was influenced by Star Fox 64? We’re told to DO A BARREL ROLL. Then, after a recycled boss, the level transforms into one very similar to the flight levels from the original Spyro the Dragon.

If you’re a big fan of games with their heart in the right place, then you’ll like Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs.

Of course, the curse of franchise cash-ins is ever present. Broken collision and bad scripting hinders the fun, but only ever so slightly. Levels such as the Mickey Mania-inspired running scenes impress as much as they upset. The one Diego level is ever so short, even though he is a character that a lot could be accomplished with.

Other characters only appear for short sections. Scrat, who we see in the movies chasing after a lone acorn, features for three levels paced across the game’s chronology. These play like Donkey Kong Country, complete with floating barrels (now giant plants). They make a nice break from the sluggish Sid levels, and the great (but over-saturated use of) Buck levels.

G'day mate! I'm Buck, the only Australian gaming marsupial. Who's this Ky the Tasmanian Tiger cobber?

A generally enjoyable and family-friendly experience, filled with one-liners and embarassingly bad humour, makes Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs a decent platformer. A megaton of work has gone into keeping it themed and styled after the movies, but some of that time could have been better spent making the menus look better, or clearing up some of Buck’s gameplay issues.

It’s decent, and for a movie tie-in, that says something. But just how decent boils down to your love for charming games, and for blatant idea theft.

It’s a weekender at most, so if you’re interested, it makes a lot more sense to rent it than to buy it.

And before I forget, Marble Madness has been ripped off, too.

Over 8 million people purchased Halo 3. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas sold a whopping 12 million. And Nintendo can’t defecate out Pokémon and “Wii Insert Random Thing To Do Here” games fast enough to completely satisfy the masses. But with all these amazing successes, there have been numerous games and even complete series that have fallen to the wayside. Remember: for every Super Mario Bros., there’s a Shutokou Battle 2: Drift King Keichii Tsuchiya & Masaaki Bandoh. As a proud gamer, I feel that it is my privilege—nay, my duty—to take some time and offer a brief glimpse at many of the games that either disappeared into bargain bins and trash bins alike due to overshadowing from more prominent titles, as well as titles that will forever remain sequestered within one region of the world. You’d better be prepared to be educated a little, because there is much that you haven’t seen.

FEBRUARY 2010: Biometal Unitron

ALL RIGHT, WHAT JUNKY MALARKY DID YOU BRING US THIS MONTH?

Oh, snarky overseer, you know I don’t always bring you misfortune. Last month’s look at Popeye: Ijiwaru Majo Sea Hag no Maki wasn’t that terrible, was it?

NOBODY LIKED THAT ARTICLE. GIVE US SOMETHING INTERESTING. MAYBE SOMETHING WITH ROBOTS.

… You are in luck, dear friend. I happen to have with me a game that does, in fact, feature robots. Mechs—known as Unitrons in this game—to be more precise. This month, let’s take a quick look at Biometal Unitron, a game released in 1999 for the Neo-Geo Pocket Color. Remember that little handheld console? One of the many portable systems that was trounced to death by the Game Boy like a wild puma on a steaming plate of Hamburger Helper?

YEAH, YEAH, I REMEMBER THE NEO-GEO POCKET COLOR. IT HAD THAT AWESOME GAME, MELON CHAN’S GROWTH DIARY, ON IT. COVER THAT ONE NEXT MONTH.

Dear goodness, no. But let me tell you a bit more about Biometal Unitron. The story goes that, about 199 years ago, the planet Elscea was suffering from a world war, at a time when the people of that planet had been thrust into an age of difficulty and hatred. Then, out of nowhere (well, out of somewhere), a meteor came from the sky and landed in the middle of a lake. They would later call this meteor “The Unitice,” named after a popular Mickey Rourke film at that time. The lake was instantaneously vapourized, but left behind were many crystal shards, remnants of the meteorite, which contained special energy that offered unlimited power. That’s a pretty nice deal, considering that any crystals we burn tend to be used up quickly and then end up in the ozone layer. The people of the Kingdom of Rhafiace, the civilization closest to the lake, used the crystals to develop their own mechs, called Unitrons, which they then used to wipe out the opposition and win the war. Fast forward to the present, and everybody has now mended the once-broken ties, and now they use the Unitrons for tournaments and garbage collection on Wednesdays. In these tournaments, people battle their Unitrons for the purpose of becoming the clichéd title of “Master of Masters.” Will YOU be one of them?

SO, THIS IS GOING TO BE JUST ANOTHER UGLY PORTABLE FIGHTING GAME, EH?

You’d think so, but no. Actually, this is an RPG! SNK had to put their foot into the RPG market somehow, so Biometal Unitron was their answer to all the fame that Pokémon games were devouring for Nintendo. The name didn’t have an anime behind it or some sort of movie tie-in, so it had to carve its own niche based on the game’s own merit alone. The first thing you’ll notice is that, and this was a bit to my dismay, the interface in the first city you visit is actually pretty damn ancient. You don’t even get to walk around town; you only get to navigate using text commands. Wherever you want to go, pick from a list and go that way. If I wanted to talk to people and move around that way, I’d whip out a copy of Carmen Sandiego from twenty years ago, because that’s what it is. And there wasn’t much to do, aside from interact with some dull or sexy people. The town shop was closed while they were doing a frickin’ inventory check! Seriously, what game designer thought that having characters complete inventory when you need items would be of even remote interest?

The only places where you can actually wander around are in areas outside the town, accessed via a pretty static world map. This is where the standard dungeon-crawling aspect kicks in. You’re basically wandering around various areas (with those ever-so-wonderful randomly generated level designs), encountering random enemies for battle for experience points and gold pieces, all the while sniffing around for treasure chests and anything else you can get your grabby hands on. And on occasion, you can head back to the Arena and see if your level grinding was worth the trouble on other Unitrons. This game seems to do nothing particularly special to try to lure you in, or to at least say, “Hey, those other games are cool, but I’m just as unique because…” I could have made a game this banal. So could a monkey on minimum wage. I can do the same job as a monkey. The graphics are pretty fair for the NGPC, but there are occasions when there is no music playing, particularly in parts of the main town…made me think something was broken! But no…just a bit of laziness.

WELL, IS IT WORTH MY TIME TO LOOK FOR IT?

Mmmm, that’s pretty much up to you. Of course, most of us don’t even have a Neo-Geo Pocket Color, so you’d have to hunt one of those down first. But I don’t think I’m going to declare this game as a “must-have” item. It’s not a terrible game either, so the choice is up to you. But be prepared to NOT be blown out of your socks and into Grandma’s bedroom with Biometal Unitron. Maybe the name is the best part. And the nice thing is that this game is entirely in English and WAS released Stateside in the summer of 1999, so there really isn’t a dire need to import it! So if you have played all the popular RPGs out there and still feel a tiny bit empty, maybe Biometal Unitron could fill your hole.

GROSS.

True.

Magic (as in Magic: The Gathering) would be something I’d pick up three or four years later, but when it came to my cardboard crack-substitute during my time as a friendless 5th-7th grader, the source was the Pokémon Trading Card Game. I mean, I was already a big fan of the Pokémon videogame, and I wished every birthday that someday I could go on my own Pokémon Journey, so until evolution had accomplished my bidding, I had to make due with the TCG. After the card game had about a year and a half to settle into the United States, Nintendo threw out a videogame based on a card game based on a videogame. The result was Pokémon Trading Card Game.

Willing your suspension of disbelief is the rule when trying to understand this game. In a world where card games are SERIOUS BUSINESS, you are a young lad who aspires to be the greatest Pokémon card player. In order to accomplish this great feat, you must travel around Kanto a nameless continent unidentified landmass, visiting the eight Pokémon Gyms Card Clubs to defeat each Gym’s Club’s Gym Leader Club Master and earn that leader’s Masters’ badge medal. After obtaining the eight badges medals, you need to travel all the way through the dank and dangerous Victory Road to the middle location on the overworld map and enter Indigo Plateau the Pokémon Dome to challenge the Elite Four Grand Masters, duel your Fill-In-The-Blank Name rival, Ronald, obtain the Legendary Pokémon Cards, and be crowned the greatest Pokémon card player of the land! On the way, you will meet new friends, get into dangerous situations, find love, and learn why the GameCola end-of-the-year awards are bullshit collect, trade, and battle with Pokémon cards.

AWWWWWW YEAH GONNA PUNCH DAT CHARMANDER B'FO DAT AWESOME-YET-IMPRACTICAL CHARZARD GET ALL UP IN MY BUSINESS AND BE ALL "BITCH WHY YOU STEPPIN' ALL OVER MY GRILL" AND I'M LIKE "IT'S WINTER BITCH TAKE YOUR BBQ OUTSIDE" SUUUUUURVED POKÉMON STYLE SON.

And how. There’s a lot to love here if you’re a fan of the trading card game. Every card from the original three sets—Base, Jungle, and Fossil—are present and accounted for, in addition to a few dozen new cards, exclusive to the game. At the opening of the game, Professor Oak Mason presents you with three Pokémon decks to choose from based around the original three starter Pokémon: Bulbasur, Squirtle, and Charmander. After fighting and defeating other card players at the clubs, you’ll gain more cards through booster packs, allowing you to start customizing your orignal deck to make it more effective, or start a new deck from scratch. My favorite part of trading card games is taking down another player with a deck all my own, and PTCG lets you live that dream in spades.

There’s no shortage of opponents to trounce, either. Every Club has three members, plus the one Master. In addition , there’s the occasional tourney at the Challenge Hall, with rare cards for the victor, the occasional rival battle, the four Grand Masters at the Pokémon Dome, and the always bizarre encounters with the ever bizarre Imakuni? (the question mark is part of his name). Every player in the game has their own decks, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, so players constantly have to build new decks or tweak existing ones to face each and every challenge.

Oddly enough, this game’s soundtrack has some of the most memorable videogame tunes I can think of. Most of the music has a light and bouncy feel to it. The standard battle theme is a nice little toe tapper, but the Club Leader battle theme is honestly one of my favorite tracks on any handheld title. The opening sets the mood for the tension to come, and then it just goes into this awesome “you can do it, bro!” groove that makes me glad it’s the song playing during the longest matches in the game. This is, to me, some of the best 8-bit music in the world. Sitting here, hammering out this review while listening to that very song sing out of my Game Boy Pocket takes me back to a simple time when I’d have traded a Base Set Charizard (the really AWESOME one that had 120 HP!) for a holographic Physic Energy card, hoping to one day trounce some unsuspecting kid with my deck full of RAZZLE-DAZZLE.

AW DON'T YOU SMILE AT ME SAM BA DAM DIS 1 CARD(S) GONNA BE THE ONE THAT BE GIVIN' ME ALL MY PRIZE CARD SOOOOOOOON YEEEEEEEAH.

Of course, like many Game Boy games, back before the times of wi-fi and Friend Codes, multiplayer in Pokémon Trading Card Game was made possible through the use of a Game Link Cable, an item I was not able to come across in the days of my youth. What caught my interest when I was browsing through this game again, though, was its use of the GBC’s infrared port, as well. This is a feature of the handheld that I can’t remember using for anything other than Pokémon Gold and Silver’s Mystery Gift mode; there simply aren’t that many games that took advantage of this primitive form of wireless communication. Without wires, players can trade cards and share their decks with other players, which seems like a nice touch, building on the emphasis of the “Trading” in Trading Card Game.

I can’t remember the last time I actually looked at my Pokémon cards, but I’m certain it’s been at least seven or eight years since I have actually payed attention to the game, after I had moved onto Magic. The thing about trading card games is that, as time moves forward, and expansion after expansion churns its way through, the games become more and more complex, and stronger and crazier cards make their way to the surface. It makes me wonder what could happen if a kid who plays the card game today got his hands on this videogame, and noticed the simplicity of these early sets. I’m not going to be that guy who hangs around children’s card game tourneys, approaches Little Timmy, pulls a primitive toy out of my pocket and asks him if he wants to play a real game, but it’s interesting to me to see how something you loved to do as a kid relates to that same activity nowadays. This might just be me still being new to the fact that I’m not a kid anymore, but I also like to think of this paragraph as filler to make my articles longer and therefore give me a longer rod in The Great GameCola e-Penis Race of ‘010. Not that I need much help. Those guys think Master Chef jokes still pass for humor.

This game is an interesting beast. It captures the fun of playing the card game of yore, and that’s all it really needs to do. I highly suggest taking a look at it, especially if you were caught up in Pika-Fever like I was a decade ago. And if you’ve got a little tyke clutching his Piplup cards close to heart, show Lil’ Billy how it was done in the good ol’ days. Then do what my father did and turn him on to Magic.

Even though you soon, like I did, will discover that crack is simply cheaper.

Nintendo hasn’t yet announced a U.S. release date, but you know it’s going to arrive here at some point, because Nintendo would never fail to release such a widely anticipated game in the U.S.