Pokemon Isn't Just for Everyone Else Anymore

Last week I talked about the immense amount of fun I've had playing Pokemon Go. After another week of riding around town on my bike and wandering the downtown streets late at night I decided that Go shouldn't be my only Pokemon game. I know so many people that play Pokemon, and when I really examine my reasons for not buying any of the games prior to now, I come up short. I don't know why it has taken me so long to get into it, but I've finally broken that cycle. Yesterday I went out to our local pawn stores and bought a 3DS and a copy of Pokemon X.

Sharing the Games We've Loved

My grey brick of a Game Boy was my constant companion as a child. I had (if childhood memory serves) quite the collection of cartridges, along with many of the bulky and cumbersome add-ons to "enhance" the mobile gaming experience. I spent long hours curled up in impossible positions, playing until my aching wrists and numb fingers couldn't support the heavy apparatus any longer.

The Sudden Realizations of a Returning PC Gamer

Last week I said some things about what my gaming regimen would look like after building my new PC. I believe I said something to the effect of "I won't stop playing my console games, but I expect I'll spend more time on the PC." Well, I've gotten the new beastie up and running (I'm actually typing this article from it) and after running a few games on it and using it for my normal browsing, I have a bit more perspective on the matter. I haven't used my consoles in about a week now and there is no sign of that changing anytime soon.

REDUX: Favorite Gaming Memories

Every platform has it's achievements these days. It seems almost every game is eager to award you meaningless points for accomplishing things large and small. Before this trend however, everyone measured their achievements in a more personal way. Those of us who grew up before the official "achievement" have our own favorite moments. These are a few of mine.

Revisiting Clock Town

I have been traveling much more often lately. The flights are long and books (while amazing) are heavy, so I've been playing my Nintendo 3DS XL. While it's not the newest with its fancy C-stick, it does more than alright.  What have I been playing on it? Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask!

Mothership: Homeworld Remastered Collection

The concept art cutscenes were one of my favorite parts of the campaign.

In 1999 I was introduced to the original Homeworld. For almost a year, it was all I played. That game and its sequel were unlike anything else I had played before. More than most, they shaped my love of strategy games. Gearbox's acquisition of the Homeworld IP was announced on my birthday in 2013; I took it as a good omen, but I couldn't help but be a bit apprehensive when I remembered the disaster that Duke Nukem Forever became. Since then, Gearbox has showcased a number of things that bolstered my confidence in their stewardship of the series.

The First Time I Played

I was recently asked to help gather some data from ladies of the gaming persuasion that reminded me of my earliest experiences with video games by a rather unique manly "gift basket" company called Man Crates  (you open it with crow bar, how cool is that!).   The women I spoke to told me of their early days in the garage with Mario Bros, Duck Hunt, and Donkey Kong on barely functioning televisions. Many of their mothers didn't approve of their pastime, preferring them to spend their days in less "tomboy-ish" behavior. Nevertheless, those early game called to them, honing their skills to a razor-sharp competitive edge that put the rest of their family's high scores to shame.  While I personally have not ordered a crate as of yet, it's definitely something I would lean towards in the future if I'm at a loss for a gift.  If you are ever looking to re-create some of those nostalgic moments, Man Crates has some pretty cool gifts that include a super retro gamer crate!  While they do cater to men in these gifts, there are some women I know who'd get an absolute kick out of them!

Sims Binge

Recently I've purchased The Sims 3 (brilliant with 4 coming out soon) to relive the glory days of the original game.  In the original, (I should mention I was around 10 at the time and played it for about 3 years), I would build articulate homes, have them die in terrible ways to make haunted houses, send the kids to military school when I got tired of having them around, and absolutely LOVED having the robot butler.  Not to mention the soundtrack (which I still listen to at work for ambiance).

An Overdose of Nostalgia

There is an old school up the road from my parents place that I remember as the first place I played video games. I remember the Nintendo, seeing people blow on the cartridges as though it were some kind of ritual. Punchout was the first console game I ever played, and I played it there, in front of a wooden cabinet TV. I also remember sitting in the office with my dad playing Scorched Earth and how excited I was when I figured out how the shields worked.

Not long after this we got our first PC at home, a Packard Bell with a 28.8 modem and an amazing 250 MB hard drive. SO much space that we'd never fill it all. I spent all my allowance on games. Space Quest, Syndicate, Dune 2000, Warcraft, Doom, X-COM; my shelves filled with games as fast as I could buy them.

More than just the place I played games, the school was where I first discovered Led Zepplin, the Ninja Turtles, Transformers, and all manner of things incredibly awesome to a child in the early 90's.

That school shut down while I was still in elementary school, but it stood there for years after, a constant reminder of where I'd gotten my start. A few years ago, someone bought the property and moved in. I didn't think too much of it, other than being perturbed that I couldn't use the dock there to swim anymore.

Three weeks ago they started tearing down the main building. I stopped my car the first time I saw it gutted. The roof gone, all the siding and insulation heaped in a giant dumpster, sledgehammer leaning against an exposed beam. It's been hard looking at that every time I drive out to visit my family. As though some part of my past I thought immovable has been stolen away. In more irrational moments I've wondered how callous the current owners must be to destroy such an important part of my childhood.

In the midst of this, my family has been clearing out old things from their house, and two nights ago, while throwing out old, crumbling Star Wars models, I came across something that nearly turned me into a six year old again. Observe...

A Toast to Video Game Modders Everywhere

Activision has become known for its hit and miss proclivities, and for the love-hate relationship it has with its consumers. In 2001, Activision commissioned Troika Games to bring to life White Wolf's pen and paper World of Darkness in video game form. Despite many challenges in the development, Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines was officially brought forth (though still with several problems) into the public world November 16, 2004. While plagued with several scripting errors which caused a horribly unstable program, Bloodlines, for its diversity in game-play strategy, in-depth story line, excellent soundtrack, and interesting characters was still playable and fun even if it was a near impossible task just to get the game to run for over an hour at a time before crashing.

Since Bloodlines still had several glitches, Troika Games was able to release 2 official patches at the behest of Activision prior to disbanding in 2005. While this fixed several issues, even more remained. Enter, the mysterious Wesp who stuck around and attempted to fix the base game through patches where Troika Games left off to patch 7.4a and solving several annoying problems before calling the modding game quits.

Others had the same dream of making this "flawed gem" of a game more fun and less tedious to play. On top of what Wesp left behind, more fixes and added mechanics (to bring Bloodlines closer to it's pen & paper feel) were added in a neat little bundle released in 2009 by a talented tinkerer Zer0Morph (Brad Bolenbaugh) titled Camarilla Edition 1.0. Until the end of 2009 Zer0Morph released several versions of Camarilla Edition (up to 1.2) and decided to take a break from modding Bloodlines. Having been alongside Zer0Morph since the beginning, Childe of Malkav took over the Camarilla Edition project.

A few months later in March 2010, Zer0Morph decided to return to the Camarilla Edition modding scene; however, he also came to the conclusion that he was tired of modding the base character models and types. Realizing this would be a large task and outside of a lone modder's ability, a super team of VTMB fans/modders was formed. Activate superhero team style introductions! Zer0Morph: team founder from America, Childe of Malkav: expert Python scripter from Germany, The Philosopher: .lip puppet master from Brazil, Scarecrow: voice actor from Bulgaria, and theRaven: touch ups from California. With their powers combined they formed Team Camarilla International!

Wanting a new game play experience, this Team began a year long project of creating new NPCs,

adding quests, changing item placements, making vendors sell you things you actually want to buy, skinning and retooling all playable characters, and improving the entire game play experience whether it be little changes for ambience, or major changes for effect. Vampire the Masquerade: The Final Nights was the end product of this undertaking. All the little changes in this new version have come together beautifully and have drastically redefined its Bloodlines roots.

In fact, playing through The Final Nights was so different from Bloodlines I hardly recognized it!

Bloodlines was an ugly duckling of sorts and has finally grown up into a beautiful, badass swan of a game like it was always intended to be. Thank you, Team Camarilla International, this is a masterpiece!

It takes a great commitment of time and patience to take a game with potential and to make that game fulfill its potential. People who possess this dedication to improvement are a rare commodity and extremely valuable to the gaming community. Without people like those at Team Camarilla International we would be stuck with games with infinite potential and no one to bring out what these games were meant to be. In a world where DLC and regular updates are becoming more and more common, it's important to remember the unaffiliated individuals who have been providing similar services to the gaming community for no better reason than the love of the game. It's people who connect to the medium and struggle to grow it solely for its own benefit who have created the community that we have today, who formed the atmosphere that allows us to see games realize their potential instead of dying stillborn on the shelf.