Over the course of the last couple of days I have been replaying Pokemon Gold. It has probably been a good 12 years or so since I last played this game – I never even got around to playing the HeartGold/SoulSilver remakes. While I was initially wary of going back to an older Pokemon game after being spoiled by the ridiculously good Pokemon X/Y, I’ve found that, much to my delight, the game is actually really pulling me in. I do often feel like I’m m-o-v-i-n-g v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y, but since I’m emulating I just press the turbo button when I want to get from place to place quicker. Hey, it’s a valid replacement for the roller blades, right?
“But… that’s like… 1000% speed rollerblades.”
Other than that I’m having a blast. What a great game. What a great Pokemon generation.
Dear readers, when is the last time YOU played through an older game that you hadn’t touched in forever? And how did that go for you?
Genuine question. I want to know. I can’t think of anything.
Now for all three of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, well, the good old BBC has got you covered (and so does Twitch of course.) Basically for the last week or so tens of thousands of people from around the globe have been trying to collaborate on a romhack of Pokemon Red. It’s about as chaotic as you might expect, although somehow the stream has managed to get about halfway through the game.
Essentially
I keep trying to think of something that this can compare to but for the life of me I can’t. We’ve seen multitudes of people get together for a gaming event (like a game launch), even multitudes of people all in the same place in the same game (like Ahn-Qiraj in World of Warcraft), but all controlling one single character and trying to collaborate on a single player game?
I’ve been playing games for three decades and can’t think of something similar. This might be unprecedented.
Go check it out or alternatively help me think of a previous similar event of this scale so I stop beating myself up and racking my brains over it.
Pike and I have been discussing things regarding the blog and where it is going, and we have decided that in order to achieve our fiscal goals going forward we need to make some changes. Therefore The Android’s Closet is going to be undergoing an overhaul over the next week or two. Here are just some of the changes you can expect to see!
The blog’s name will be changing to Sephiroth and Naruto Discuss Japan;
Our focus will change away from any Western-made videogames, though we will still talk about Japanese ones of course;
We will be discussing all aspects of Japanese culture, from their ancient and venerable traditions to the perfect warriors that are samurai, who have never been defeated by baka gaijin in a fair fight!
We will no longer be using images from inferior gaijin shows such as My Little Pony, as they lack the art and beauty of traditional hand-painted Japanese anime;
We will now be beginning a special feature on weekends where we examine our favorite furry and babyfur fanart!
And hopefully soon, your hosts xXSephirothXx and NekoNekoKawaii~=^.^= will be actually moving to the best country in the world, Japan, in order to be a part of their superior and ancient culture!
Furry versions of Western things are acceptable, however
And here is a sample list of topics you can expect to see discussed soon:
Why Sephy-sama is the greatest character ever written in videogames, and why we want a game about The Adventures of Sephy-sama!
Why sushi and other Japanese cuisine is the only acceptable type of food!
Remaking Katawa Shoujo, but including girls from our favorite animes like Naruto, Lucky*Star, Battle Royale, and Bleach!
If this sounds like something you’d be interested in reading about, you can buy a Sephiroth and Naruto Discuss Japan pass for just 59.99 USD, and gain exclusive access to each subsequent post for just 2.99 USD per post! And if you preorder now you get to choose whether you view the posts in red, blue, or green text!
Yesterday I officially joined the 300 club in Civ IV.
This isn't counting about a dozen hours of vanilla Civ IV before jumping up to BtS, nor is it counting about a dozen hours of a particular mod that Steam wouldn't track properly.
Ahh, it feels good. I love statistics like this. I love them to the point that I have been known to buy games on Steam that I already own just so it can start tracking my playtime. (It’s like Gaben really knows how to reel us obsessive-compulsives geekwads in!)
A few other games I played a lot tracked your time as well. I was really close to 300 hours in FF Tactics Advance. I’m also relatively sure I was close to it in my original Pokemon Red file, before it was inadvertently deleted.
Of course, MMOs deserve to be in a tier all to themselves when it comes to playtime. If I recall correctly, before quitting, I’d clocked up about 220 days played in WoW across all of my characters.
That's well over 5000 hours!
I think over half of it was spent on my main, Tawyn the Night Elf Hunter. As time went on and Blizzard bumped experience rates and made questing and LFG more streamlined, and as I got more experienced at the game myself, I’d spend less time on an individual character. For example, I think my resto druid had a mere 12 days or something similarly miniscule for her /played, despite the fact that I got her to (then) endgame and was raiding with her for a little while.
So yeah, I doubt any other single game I’ve ever played could come close to what I dumped into WoW. Like I said, MMOs deserve their own tier in this “game”.
And I still wish I could see an accurate playtime counter for everything I’ve ever played. That would be fascinating.
Okay, lay it on me. What are your most played games, gentle readers?
It refers to FFVII, and specifically to a challenge of playing the game with the following conditions:
Initial Equipment – You can never change a character’s armor or weapons from the stuff they come with.
No Accessories – You can never use accessories. If a character comes with one equipped, it has to be unequipped at the first opportunity.
No Escaping – Obvious.
No Physical Attacks – does not just refer to “attack”, but also to anything that is a ‘physical’ type attack, including items such as Grenades or command materia such as 4-Cut.
No Limit Breaks – take a guess.
Command Materia Only – You can only use command materia. And obviously quite a few are ruled out by other rules.
You can’t actually do this challenge from the start of the game, because you have no way to hurt enemies until you can start learning Enemy Skills. In essence, it’s an “Enemy Skills Only” play. Anyway, it’s an extreme example – my point is to highlight how a self-imposed challenge can add life to a game, or possibly change it entirely. I’m good – very good – at FFVII, but I sincerely doubt I could do this challenge without tearing my hair out until I’m as bald as Dr. Robotnik.
Who is, incidentally, the greatest villain ever.
I have done other challenges in other games though. Sometimes games encourage something in particular, but don’t necessarily require it. You can usually shoot or slice your way through what is ostensibly a ‘stealth’ game such as Metal Gear Solid, Tenchu, or Hitman. Playing through stealthily is usually better rewarded is all. Imposing the challenge on yourself can make things a lot more exciting though. Sometimes this is a fairly loose arrangement for me – such as only ever going to war in Europa Universalis when I have a realistic casus belli and suchlike. Sometimes it’s a bit more extreme, like the time I played Civ IV and was not allowed to have more than one military unit per city (Funnily, happiness problems were larger than military ones for the most part). I can be especially enjoyable in more freeform games such as Dwarf Fortress, where there aren’t any real tangible objectives in-game, and making your own
In RPGs, because I grew up on some truly spergy, grinding-centric games, it’s really hard for me to limit my levels or anything. But I did a Pokemon play where I only used my starter Pokemon, that was interesting when I came up against stuff he was weak against.
Are any of you fans of particular challenges? Have you played through anything with challenges? Do you have any particular ones you’d recommend to others to enhance their enjoyment of an otherwise-completed game?
Like everybody else, I played Pokemon as a kid. (Well, as a 13 or 14-year-old, because that’s about how old I was when it came out.)
I played Pokemon Red, the first in the series, religiously, and then when the second generation came out I played Pokemon Gold just as religiously. I loved those freaking games, and I imagine that I don’t have to go into much detail here because I’m sure most of you loved them just as much.
Something happened then, though. When the third generation of Pokemon came out, I had just started attending university. And it’s not that I grew out of Pokemon, because I certainly didn’t. And it’s not that that I didn’t have time for video games, because if I recall correctly that was the year I was pretty dang addicted to Final Fantasy Tactics Advance. As in, I took my GBA to school and played it between classes and then doodled moogles on my notes.
Anyways, I think that maybe I just had too much on my plate. Eventually, I did buy Pokemon Emerald, and I messed around with it, but it never quite “clicked”. I’m not sure why. I quit playing after the first badge or something.
And so I didn’t play anymore Pokemon after that– with the exception of FireRed, which doesn’t really count because it’s basically just a graphical update of the original.
That changed last summer, though, when I went road-tripping for a family reunion. I’d be spending hours and hours on the road, and I wouldn’t be driving, so I’d need to do something to make the time pass.
So what did I do? I pulled out Pokemon Emerald, which I hadn’t touched in years. I didn’t even glance at my old save file, I simply started a new one.
As a matter of fact, I DO like them! Thanks for asking!
What happened next was magical. I merrily spent hours running through tall grass, catching Pokemon, training them, and battling trainers and gym leaders. I stopped keeping track of Pokemon after the second gen, you see, so I had no idea what the new species were, what they evolved into, or what they learned. Every time one of my Pokemon evolved, it was a surprise. Every time I ran into a new gym leader, it was a challenge. I didn’t have access to any sort of help websites or guides while on the road, so it was just me and my Pokemon. I was 26 years old and it honestly felt like I was 14 and playing through the original game for the first time again. It was sheer magic.
All things come to an end, sadly, and soon the road trip was over and I was thrust back into the adult world of working and paying bills. I kept playing Pokemon for a bit even after, but for some reason it wasn’t quite the same. Obligations kept pulling me away. So I never did finish that magical new Pokemon file. My Pokemon are all sitting pretty at level 38 or 39 or whatever I left them at. Waiting.
What’s this? We’re back? Not raptured? Oh well. Maybe next time, eh?
Anyways, I’m here to tell you that Pokemon Gold/Silver is brilliant. And this is why:
You beat the game by beating the Elite Four. Typical Pokemon game, right? You beat the game, the credits roll, and you get the Game Over screen.
…that’s not the end of the game. In fact, you’re only about halfway through the content at that point.
“Now hold on a minute, Pike,” I can hear you saying. “I’ve played [insert game here] and there’s plenty of content after you beat the game. It’s got all sorts of replay value.”
You know what? You’re right. There’s a lot of games out there like that. But none that I have played so far have come close to pulling it off the Way Pokemon Gold/Silver did it.
You get the box art for Gold because that's the one I played. NOSTALGIA CENTRAL.
See, let’s go back in time a little. You’ve played the original Pokemon Red/Blue a million times. The sequel comes out, and you can’t contain your excitement. You load up the game, hoping for an adventure just like the first, but bigger and better. You’re greeted with a different world and different Pokemon, which feels just a little off to you somehow, but you play anyway and soon you love this new game as much as the last.
…but something still feels ever so very “off”. Namely, that initial desire you had to revisit the friends and places from the Pokemon games hasn’t quite faded away. You’re just a bit homesick.
Then you beat Pokemon Gold/Silver and guess what?
You actually get to go back to the world of the first game.
Your mind is blown to pieces by this revelation, and those pieces are blown into further pieces when you realize that you can go through and re-challenge all the gym leaders from the first game. You’re older and wiser now, and so are better prepared, and so are your rivals. You’re absolutely giddy at this notion and carefully go through and battle all of your old opponents.
But even that’s not the end, because then you go through a dungeon very similar to the ones you carefully crawled through back in the day and then you fight… yourself.
That’s right.
The climactic fight of this game is to battle the protagonist of the original, probably using a bunch of the Pokemon you, yourself, used back then. Oh, and they’re all, like, level 80.
I don’t think anything I type here can fully express the way you feel when you first stumble across this battle, so I’ll just leave these pictures right here:
I think it’s this whole second half of the game that cemented it as my firm favorite of the Pokemon generations and that still continues to blow my mind a decade later. I can’t think of another game that has done “post-credits content” so very well. If you can think of one that has, please direct me to it, because I must play it immediately.
We’ve all done it. Hooked a Game Shark up to your Game Boy to give yourself a Mew and a few hundred Master Balls and Rare Candies. Used Power Overwhelming, Operation CWAL and Show Me the Money in StarCraft. Typed “imacheat” a dozen times into SimCity 2000 to give yourself millions of dollars.
…well, I’ve done all of those, at least.
You KNOW you wanted him too.
I just finished a rather fun game of Civilization IV wherein I used the World Builder to give myself a massively unfair advantage. I gave myself several dozen Great People right from the start, resulting in a huge leg up on tech, building, and money. Once I had done so, I proceeded to play a mostly “normal” game, except that I had nukes and the Apollo Program by the mid-1700s, a full two centuries before I can usually snag them if I’m playing at my best. (Well, I also wasn’t afraid to drop a Globe Theatre on the heads of a city that showed any sign of unhappiness. Nor was I afraid to give myself a bunch of Factories early or rifle through other civilizations’ pockets for their unique buildings. BUT. OTHERWISE. NORMAL GAME. *shifty eyes*)
It was a lot of fun! However, a great deal of that fun came from the fact that I was already very familiar with the game and knew I could win normally, and it was amusing to speed up that process.
Which brings me to my next point: I don’t tend to use cheats when I can’t win. Rather, I use them when I can win but want to add some spice to the game. Once I beat Pokemon, it was fun to do it again but with that legendary Mew. Once I was already decent at Starcraft, but couldn’t be bothered to finish a particular game the “normal” way, it was fun to wreak some havoc. And as for SimCity 2000…
…
…okay, I used to have SERIOUS money problems with that game. So, maybe that’s my exception to the rule– I’d cheat just to make that one playable. I’ve learned a lot since then, though! I actually make money in SimCity 4! Legally! No, really!
It's true, but I really can't blame Twilight for being somewhat dubious.
So how about you guys? Do you cheat often? Did you have a Game-Sharked-Mew just like I did? (Because really, how many times did we try to use Strength on the truck behind the S.S. Anne? And how much Lemonade did we give to the thirsty girl on the Celadon Department Store roof? ALL THE KIDS AT SCHOOL SAID WE WOULD GET A MEW AND WE DIDN’T. You can’t blame us for branching out, now, can you?)
Ever had a “comfort food”? Something that you know will cheer you up when you’re feeling down? I have one. Ice cream. I LOVE ice cream. Actually, it really doesn’t matter what mood I’m in, I’ll eat it. So I suppose that sort of defeats the purpose of my intro. But!
I was thinking the other day and realized that I have such a thing as “comfort games”, which I tend to play more at certain points of my life than others. Let me give you a good example of what I mean:
Harvest Moon.
AKA the world's most addicting waifu simulator!
I love the Harvest Moon games and I’ve played them a lot through my life, but I can guarantee that I’ve played them most when I’m sick and stuck in bed. There’s something just relaxing enough about it, but still just addictive enough, that it can distract me from all but the worst sicknesses and keep me well occupied and entertained, without having to do too much heavy thinking.
Here’s another game that I frequently turn to when I’m sick:
SimCity DS.
Except I always pick the robot advisor. ALWAYS.
Like Harvest Moon, SimCity DS manages to offer juuuusst enough complexity to keep myself distracted from the disturbingly large pile of tissues beside my bed without stressing me out due to having to worry about a limited number of lives or an excruciatingly high difficulty level. As such, it falls nicely into the category of being one of my comfort games.
So those are the games I lean toward when I’m sick. What about when I’m feeling particularly scared or uneasy about something? Well, for a long time, that was when the RPGs and adventure games come out. The classics, usually. There’s something about stepping into the shoes of a stereotypically heroic character that can chase away fears. I’ve told stories before of the way Ocarina of Time and Final Fantasies IV and VI all did wonders for me when I was having a tough time. It’s completely true, and I’m not afraid to admit it.
Lately if I’m not feeling too optimistic about things, I’ll multiplayer something with a friend. Nothing like going on some sort of genocidal rampage in game to cheer you up, right? (Come on, admit it. You’ve done the same thing.)
Oh, and long car rides where I’m not driving?
There is one thing and one thing alone for those:
You know it.
So what about you guys? I can’t be the only one out there with “comfort games” that I always go back to!
