Brinens and Things – Tumblr Mirror

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brin-bellway:

justice-turtle:

So apparently today is the 20th anniversary of Pokemon.

For obvious reasons (aka IT’S A VIDEO GAME THE DEVIL WILL EAT YOUR SOUL), I never played Pokemon as a kid, and my grasp of it even through fannish osmosis is about limited to “I know what Pikachu looks like”. Recently I’ve been wanting to check it out, not unrelated to all the anniversary hype, but Google and the marketings seem to be aimed at people who at least have a little sense of what the fuck’s going on.

So. Do I have anybody that could answer some questions?

* It has color names instead of numbered game-episode-thingies like Mass Effect. Does that mean you can jump in anywhere, or do I need to know a playing order?

* I’m only seeing references to it being played on a console. Is there a PC port or an app version? If not, is it the sort of console you plug into your TV (I don’t have a TV) or the sort where there’s a little screen built in? How much does it cost and where do you buy it? (The console and the game/s both.)

* Are there guides / walkthroughs? I fail hard at video games without guides. I got so lost in the tutorial level of ME1 that I had to watch a video walkthrough to find my way down the ramp to the Prothean beacon.

* Is it primarily single-player, co-op, player-vs-player, or what? Do the older ones not have enough players to make it fun anymore / are there servers that have shut down / anything like that?

I, too, feel very left out by my inability to speak Pokemon. (*grumble grumble Crystalline Gala grumble*) Anyone want to help us out?

This thread is very branchy, so rather than reblogging each one I will just make a list of distinct branches:

https://justice-turtle.tumblr.com/post/140319581139/wingsoferebus-justice-turtle-so-apparently

https://clevernamepending.tumblr.com/post/140361008114/somethingshortandsnappy-brin-bellway

http://darkpuck.tumblr.com/post/140315691225

http://russian-wolfie.tumblr.com/post/140314375309/vaiyamagic-brin-bellway-justice-turtle-so

http://mimimirai.tumblr.com/post/140312780989/storiesintheashes-vaiyamagic-brin-bellway

http://settiai.tumblr.com/post/140301099319

https://mitoticcephalopod.tumblr.com/post/140300703701/brin-bellway-justice-turtle-so-apparently

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I have still not played any Pokemon console games (yet?), but I have played Pokemon Go, which despite its gameplay differences remains helpful for learning one’s way around a Pokedex.

Also, in related news: Bulbagarden (the Pokemon wiki) is available as a downloadable file [link] through the same people who brought you downloadable Wikipedia [link]. As of this writing, the downloadable version was last updated in October 2018, and the space requirement is about 1.4GB for a full copy and 200MB for an imageless copy.

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Tags:

#(March 2016) #conversational aglets #in which Brin learns to speak Pokemon #101 Uses for Infrastructureless Computers