E3 Concluding Ramblings, No More Parts to Follow

See, I was expecting that once E3 had actually gotten underway, there would be a whole host of things for me to care about and discussed, but then I remembered that I'm not a gamer. In light of a new Super Smash Brothers, there is nothing else that I care about, or could possibly ever care about. So I guess I'll just start off with a neat little observation I made.

First of all, though, you should check out http://www.smashbros.com/us/, the new most important part of my morning ritual. Well, second to the blood sacrifice, of course. Not even Smash Bros can keep the voices at bay. Sorry for making such an obvious joke, but you know what they say: The truth is stranger than fiction. Anyway, if you click the button that says "Wii U & Nintendo 3DS Developer Direct", it'll take you to a video where the game's creator talks about some of the new characters, and how he plays the game, and you can't, and how much happier he is for it. I highly recommend that you watch it. But in the video, he says something interesting. He says that the Wii U version and the 3DS version will have "the same number of characters". Well, actually, he says something in Japanese, and then the translator says that. But you will note that he does not say that they will have the same characters. In addition, he explicitly says that some stages and other things will be different between between the two consoles. So, while it may just be a translation thing, it certainly seems possible that the two games will have different characters.

So what characters will be exclusive to which consoles? Well, I can't say for sure, but if you go to the pages for The Villager and the Wii Fit Trainer, (Hilariously called "Miss Fit" by some) you'll notice that they have no images from the 3DS game, only the Wii U. All other characters have screens from both, so it seems fairly likely to me that Miss Fit and The Villager will be Wii U exclusive.

And really, that's about all I have to say. Except that Gamefreak seems really insistent on normalizing all their Pokemon. I'm sure that, theoretically, a math joke could be made about that, but I'll just blame sickness for my inability to do that. Two Pokemon so far have been announced to have Normal and another type, which is stupid, because normal is supposed to be the type that Pokemon have when they're too lame to have any other type. I guess GameFreak just decided that what they had created was too derpy to not have a Normal type.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you... The New Bidoof!

But seriously, what the hell is it doing with its legs like that? Is it lying on the ground? Is that how it stands? I just cannot imagine how such a creature could come to be, outside of the imagination of a particularly mean-spirited Spore player.

Other than that, there's not much else to say. Everyone else has bitched plenty about Microsoft, so I don't really have anything to add. Kingdom Hearts III is something that my content manager certainly cares about, if not me. And everything seems quiet on the Hoenn front, which makes me a little nervous about how confidently I assured everyone that they were very definitely going to do a Ruby/Sapphire Remake. Perhaps they figured that after seeing the above monstrosity, no one would ever want to play Pokemon ever again.

E3 Initial Ramblings, More Parts to Follow

Did you watch both of those? No? That's too damn bad. Watch them now.

Thank you. Now that your tear ducts are empty and your diaphragm is enfeebled by your unrelenting sobs of joy, I hope that you still have the mental acuity to read this, though I really have nothing to say. Just... did you see all those brothers? Did you see what they were doing? They were smashing. And there was fire, and music, and Megaman. And it was good.

You could say that I've always been more of a Nintendo Fanboy than an actual gamer, so I will likely say little about the Xbox One and PS4, except that I don't care. Also, most of the rumors about used games and always online that surround the Xbox One are either exaggerations or outright fabrications. Does that make it a good console? Absolutely not.  But I think it takes a certain amount of egotism to think that Microsoft is really going to spy on your conversations through your Kinect. They really don't care about what you're saying. At worst, they'll have some computer analyze your conversation for certain keywords, then use it to target their advertising, which sounds pretty bad, but I never really saw the problem. Would you rather see advertisements for products you have no interest in? Why not just ignore them entirely, like you almost certainly do already?

Now that everyone who takes these things way too seriously has closed their browser window while muttering something about "sheeple", it's just us, the cool kids. Honestly, I'm not sure any of the things I'm talking about are even technically E3 news, but E3 started today, and Nintendo made a bunch of reveals, so I'm just going to consider it E3. Game Freak hasn't started their E3 conference yet, but they have let slip one major reveal: Fairy type.

Indeed, it is as the rumors foretold. There is indeed a new type, and it is "Fairy". Now, those Pokemaniacs out there with souls might notice that this is stupid. What is "Fairy Type" even supposed to mean? The currently announced fairy Pokemon are Marill, Jigglypuff, Sylveon, and Gardevoir. As you may have noticed, these Pokemon share nothing in common, flavor-wise. However, the damned among us, might just find this new type to our liking. You see, Fairy type is super effective against Dragon, and if it resists it as well, then there might just be something to stop Dragons from shitting all over everything. This could help stabilize the competitive battling metagame, and since competitive battling is all I care about anymore, I'm actually taking this surprisingly well.

Now that you've had a few minutes to recuperate, let's go back to Super Smash Brothers... I'm sorry. There's really nothing more to say. Next order of business...

Super Mario 3D World. As you probably guessed, it's for the Wii U, because "Land" clearly denotes portable games, and "World" clearly denotes console games. And if there's one thing that you can count on from Mario, it's consistency. In recent times, at least, they haven't really done much to change the formula, and it seems that they're sticking to the policy of "Just add a new powerup, screw it". And this new powerup is... some kind of cat suit? I can't say I like it. I might even hate it. But that's not important, because the idea of adding multiplayer to the formula of Super Mario 3D Land is intriguing to me. But, more importantly, the music. Give this a listen.

Mario Kart 8 was also announced, so let us all have a moment of silence for the laid off workers of Nintendo's Subtitle Division. The trailer didn't really reveal anything terribly notable, other than hovercars(?) and strange gravity antics, reminiscent of Super Mario Galaxy. I really liked Mario Kart Wii, (I guess we can trace the downfall of the Subtitle Division) so I'm sure I'll pick this up, but it's not enough to make me get a Wii U. However, I might make an exception if there's a Möbius Strip track.

As it turns out, I'm not quite finished talking about the New Smash Bros, because it seems that a trailer managed to escape my attention.

Honestly, I'm not terribly confident about this, but after seeing Kirby do yoga, it doesn't matter anymore. I was upset at first, but I just can't stay mad at Smash Bros, and I can't stay mad at Kirby faced with the painful reality that he doesn't even have legs, just feet that are attached to his torso.

Well, I guess it's time for me to sign off by acknowledging that you had no real reason to read this. But thanks for doing it anyway. There are many places out there with far more in-depth coverage of E3, and I had like, three jokes, tops, so this may have just been a waste of time. But since that's all this blog is meant to do, I guess you could call this post a success.