Damn Nintendo

I am a fan of Pokemon and I have been since I was first introduced to it in primary school, even now I always make an effort to play the latest version that Nintendo comes up with despite all the conservative pokefans on message boards ranting about how Pokemon has been DESTROYED FOREVER with each new release. However, I absolutely refuse to purchase an actual Gameboy/Nintendo DS and play legitimate pokemon games. Instead, I would rather download them and play them on emulators, for one simple reason. Event pokemon.

With each new generation, Nintendo releases a bunch of new pokemon while retaining all the old ones. The goal of each new game remains the same- catch them all, a task which becomes increasingly more difficult as each generation adds new pokemon. A few of those new pokemon will be event pokemon, pokemon which are only obtainable through official Nintendo sponsored events. There is no way to get these pokemon in the games without downloading something from a Nintendo event. The problem is, Nintendo events are only held in specific countries and specific locations in those countries. If you don't live in an area where an event is held, then you will never get those event pokemon, and it is unlikely that you will be able to catch them all.

Obviously event pokemon has prompted a lot of criticism from fans and Nintendo's response? Go to this page and read the first entry.
http://www.pokemon.com/#mailbag_03152005

Nintendo does not care about those who play their games. I am certain that there are fans of pokemon in other places besides America and they too would love to get their hands on those event pokemon. It's just too bad that Nintendo doesn't bother to have pokemon events in Malaysia or even in Vancouver which is so close to Japan. Until I can get an event pokemon of my own, I will never buy anything from those bastards at Nintendo. Judging from their current response to complaints, I don't see change happening anytime soon.

Here Be Dragons

About 2 weeks ago, Wizards of the Coast released the 4^th Edition of Dungeons and Dragons, the role playing game that actually involved role playing. The local game store held a DND Game Day and a free RPG Day to promote the new books and I got a chance to sample some of the new rules through a short game with pre made characters. Before the actual release, I was quite skeptical about 4^th Edition, thinking it was just another unnecessary gimmick to make money for Hasbro. After playing it for a bit, I slowly came to like the new changes and even though I still believed that it was another money-making scheme, it wasn’t as bad as I thought.

A bit of history about Dungeons and Dragons: It was created by the now defunct company TSR which was bought over by Wizards of the Coast in the year 2000. Before the Wizards’ acquisition, DND (as the game is commonly abbreviated to) had already undergone several revamps or editions. In 2000, Wizards decided to revamp the game once more with 3^rd Edition, quickly followed by 3.5 Edition less than 2 years later. Now in 2008, we have 4^th Edition. In the 8 years or so since 3^rd Edition was released, Wizards published hundreds of supplementary books for the game, all of which are now useless unless you want to continue playing 3^rd Edition, which I assume most people would until the price for 4^th Edition book drops.

So what does 4^th Edition offer to the game? Watching Wizards’ pre-release press session for the game on YouTube is an excellent example of a bad presentation. It is so bad, that if I were not already a DND player, I would never consider trying, let alone buying this game. Now that I have played a little of it, I can say that one major improvement that they made was to give each class its own selection of special powers that can be used at will, once per encounter or once per day. Previously, in 3^rd Edition, only magic using classes like Wizards had any form of special power. Furthermore, the ability to use certain powers repeatedly means that Wizards and Clerics are no longer able to completely run out of spells, unlike in 3^rd Edition where the party had to stop and rest whenever the Wizard was out of magic. Even the races have special racial powers that they gain when leveling up. One criticism of the game that I heard from the other players was that the new rules strictly defined the roles of classes (e.g. the Rogue is the striker; the Fighter is the defender, etc.). This strict definition of roles shapes the abilities that the classes have and limits their duty in the party to the pre-defined role.

Other changes include 2 new classes- the Warlord and the Warlock, and the removal of the Barbarian, Bard, Druid, Sorcerer, and Monk. They would be included in supplements (another money making gimmick). Gnomes have been excluded from the race list and transferred to the Monster Manual and two new races- the Tiefling and the Dragonborn have been added. There are also plenty of other technical changes to game play mechanics such as new rules for Grappling, Saving Throws, and the like.

So will I buy 4^th Edition? Maybe, if it’s less than 60 Dollars.

The New Player's Handbook...with the new logo and new artwork

The new badass Dragonborn, about time they had a dragon race for a game called Dungeons and DRAGONS

The other new race- the not so cool looking Tiefling

Poor gnome, once he was the hero killing monsters for experience, now he waits in lairs to give out treasure

A Christmas Carol

For the recent Christmas celebration, I was fortunate to experience it with most of my extended family even my relatives from Singapore who came to Kuala Lumpur. As usual there was a splendid Christmas dinner which most of us (but me) helped to prepare and as usual, there were carols to be sung. I had never really paid much attention to Christmas carols before, but this year, my mom wanted me to prepare a selection of carols in MIDI format to be sung later on. After looking through the list of songs, I realized that many of them had little connection to the actual meaning of Christmas. In fact most of them had nothing to do with Christianity. I read the lyrics for ‘Frosty the Snowman’ for the first time (really) and found nothing in relation to Christmas. The song was about a magical snowman and him having fun before his time went out. Songs like ‘Jingle Bells’, ‘Winter Wonderland’, and ‘Let it Snow’ are mostly about the season of winter which would be unfamiliar to us living in a tropical country like Malaysia. Perhaps those songs originated in Europe or America where Christmas was during the season of winter but the fact remains that such songs have totally influenced the meaning of Christmas. Most people associate Christmas with snow, Santa Claus and other commercialized features and some even forget why the holiday is significant in the first place. Of course, there are some carols that reflect the Christian meaning of Christmas like ‘Hark now hear the Angels sing’ but they are too few in comparison to the other ‘commercialized’ carols. Even in malls when they play carols for the pleasure of shoppers, how often is it that one hears the carol ‘Mary’s Boy Child’ compared to ‘Jingle Bell Rock’?

I was reminded of another holiday I experienced in Canada- Halloween. Last year was my first encounter with Halloween (which is sadly not celebrated in Malaysia) and I too found it disturbing because like Christmas, Halloween has become over-commercialized. People dress up in outrageous costumes and get drunk all night but how many people know the original reason for celebrating Halloween? It started out as the Celtic harvest festival Sam Hain and people used to believe that at that time, the boundaries between the living world and the spiritual world would weaken, hence all the dressing up was to frighten away evil spirits. I asked one of my friends if he knew how the name Halloween came about and he was clueless. For those of you who are also clueless, Halloween is a contraction of All Hallows (saints) Eve as it was on the eve of All Saints Day- November 1^st. The church intentionally chose that day as it was already familiar to the people as Sam Hain.

I would give a brief history for Christmas too, but I expect more people would know it better than All Hallows Eve. I certainly hope that when I return for 2008’s Christmas, there would be more emphasis on the Christian, rather than the commercial aspect.