PixlBit

I first heard about Pokemon when I first started college and read an article in NIntendo Power about recent games that had just come out in Japan.  They talked abuot a game called Pocket Monsters where you can trade and battle monsters via link cable.  I didn't give it much thought after that, but soon after I did start writing game reviews for The Dallas Morning News, and I thought I'd try going to E3.  Well, that first year I went to E3, Nintendo announced Pokemon in the US!  It was still fairly early and some of the Pokemon names changed and Ash was called Casey in the cartoon clips I saw.  And my Pokemon press kit didn't have the catchphrase "Gotta Catch 'Em All," but instead said "Catch "Em if You Can."  But I saw how heavily Pokemon was going to be marketed in the US, and I knew it would be a big hit.  When I got home from E3, I told my editor at the newspaper that I wanted to cover everything Pokemon when it came out.  He was like, "Yeah, sure, whatever."  But he kept his promise and when Pokemon came out, i was reviewing all the games and covering all the events and helping other writers with their Pokemon articles, too.  And this was back when i was getting paid to write, so I was making a bit more money.  I like to say that Pokemon helped pay my way through college.  I enjoyed playing the new games with my brothers, and they enjoyed going to some of the Pokemon events with me.  And that's really most of my memories about Gen 1 Pokemon.

I was a little too old to get into the TMNT toys and action figures, and I only watched the cartoon because I knew someone who worked on it and I liked seeing his name in the credits.  My main experience with the Turtles is the video games!  I loved the first arcade game and I don't want to tell you how many quarteers I probably put in that thing.  I didin't like the first NES game, but my little brother Jeff and I played Turtles in Time on the SNES all the time back then.  He was very young, like only 4 years old, so if I accidentally got the pizza in that game, he'd start crying!  We still joke about that to this day, "Moooommm!  Cary got the pizza!  Waaahhh!" 

I didin't get a PS3 until a few years after its release, and then I only got it because it was only 50 dollars more than a regular Blu-Ray player.  But by then there were some games I wanted to play and review on it.  It kind of reminded me of the SNES and Genesis.  The Genesis had a better start, but the SNES had a better finish.  Well, I felt the Xbox 360 had a better start, but the PS3 had a better finish.  I still use my PS3, but my 360 is packed away.  But that's OK, my 360 lasted me for more than 8 good years and it still works, technically.

I didn't know there was a Vita disc copy of Child of Light.  That was a very good game.

I have the first one but never beat it.  It had a lot of good things going for it, but like most modern RPGs, I felt it got too long and meandering and I don't have as much patience for that any more.

That Pokemon Direct hardly announced a dang thing.  They spent the first half of it just saying, 'hooray for us, we're 20 years old!' The only things they announced were Pokemon Sun and Moon and being able to put Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow critters in the Pokemon Bank.  Nothing about Pokken Tournament or Pokemon GO.  And a US release date of that Pikachu detective game woul've been nice. 

I've gotten to the point now where I'm more interested in the Pokemon side games than the main games since they're all kind of the same.  But that's not really a bad thing.  For each new generation of kids, there is a new Pokemon game, and it's all new to them.  And why fix what isn't broken, right?  It's a little bit of my fault for ODing on the franchise back in the Red/Blue days, too.  But I kind of had to since I was being paid to write Pokemon articles for the newspaper.

Mario and Sonic being in the same game was monumental when it first happened.  So much so that I even bought it.  Unfortuantely, the game wasn't very good.  it was trying to be like Wii Sports and failed.  I haven't bought a game in the Mario & Sonic Olympic series since.

Yeah you can thank writers' strikes for that nonsense.  Same with the glut of reality shows.

No, and you know why?  Power pellets taste terrible and they're hard to swallow.  Why do you think I give out power pellets to people on their birthdays? :)

If there was a Wreck-It Ralph level in Disney Infinity, I'd probably get the figures for it.