Smash Bros. Countdown - #3 - Zelda Series

The Legend of Zelda series lives up to name. The games are god damn amazing. Every one follows our hero, different incarnations of Link, and he usually ends saving the princess. Each one named Zelda and all are part of the Hyrule Royal Family bloodline. The villian is almost always the evil Ganondorf, who uses his powers to survive throughout multiple generations.

Dang he's cool. He's like if Ryan Gosling was unbelievably evil.

Now all of the games are fantastic. They all start off with a young guy who has no real skills and by the end helps out everyone in the world and the princess and blah blah blah who cares. None of the individual stories really matter all that much.

Except Majora's Mask. That game is a god damn miracle.

It wasn't until 2011 when Nintendo released the coffee table book, Hyrule Historia, and in it Nintendo revealed the official timeline. Fans had been guessing up until this point what order the games went in. They came up with multiple theories, most them involving the game Ocarina of Time. At the end of that game, Link defeats Ganondorf and sends him to a magic prison, and Zelda sends him back in time to warn a young Princess Zelda in order to stop Ganondorf before he has a chance to be evil. So while some fans assumed there was merely a simple, straightforward timeline, some people thought it split after Ocarina of Time. Since Link was sent back in time to alter history, the timeline splits in two. One timeline stays in the future where people deal with the world after Ganondorf, and the other is if the events of Ocarina of Time never happened.

Nintendo blew everyone's minds when they revealed the time line they made us shit our pants. They showed not a regular timeline, not even a split, but the mythical double split.

It's like Nintendo retroactively made this. COULD YOU IMAGINE?!

The timeline have both theorized timelines from Ocarina of Time, but also includes one in which Link is defeated by Ganondorf.

The timeline in which Link warns Zelda of Ganondorf's intentions sees Ganondorf's execution go awry. He escapes and leads an invasion on Hyrule with help from the Shadow Realm.

In the one from the future after Ganon gets sent to magic prison. He escapes and mounts an unstoppable invasion. The three Goddesses flood the world in order to stop the invasion. The people Hyrule are then forced to find new land. Eventually the people found New Hyrule and begin advancing their technology.

The timeline where Link loses sees Link and Zelda constantly repelling Ganon and his forces as he is constantly revived by various followers.

Look at this dastardly plan. What pure evil.

The whole series is very solid. Every game sees challenging puzzles, interesting and powerful enemies, and all kinds of weapons and equipment to get. As they've gotten newer, they've only gotten better at playing with that formula. The first one just threw out a bunch of concepts and didn't really think them totally through.

For example, thanks for straight up hiding entrances to places you needed to go under a random bush.

Oh. I guess it's not that--

  Son of a bitch.

The game holds up for the most part, but just throws you into the world without any kind of indication of what the heck you're supposed to do. Granted, this was the mid 80's and players got their money's worth from games in the form of cryptic nonsense and difficulty. If you look at it that way, it's great. If you look at it from a modern perspective, this game is kind of a mess.

That being said, I've played it like six times.

As much as I like the series (I'd say it's my favorite), I'm gonna keep this short. Otherwise I would go into the lore, and the world, and all of the characters, and the fictional history, and everything and it would get really freaking long. 

The series is so rich and has created such a full fictional world on par with Hogwarts or Middle Earth. Now that the series has started paying attention to the timeline, the stories are starting to fit neatly into the timeline and it's easier to piece together what direction the story is taking.

In Smash Bros., we get Link, Zelda, Sheik (Zelda's alter ego), Ganondorf, and Toon Link (Link as he appears in the New Hyrule timeline). For stages, we get a stage based on Gerudo Valley, the desert of Hyrule, and a Spirit Train, one of the trains that was built in New Hyrule.

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Now I can see what Mario will be like in an Indiana Jones movie.

The next series on our list doesn't have as much lore or story or anything terribly complex. All it has is walnuts, peanuts, pineapple smells, grapes, melons, oranges and coconut shells. So we'll see how that goes.

Smash Bros. Countdown - #4 - Metroid Series

The Metroid series is easily one of my favorites. They games always have an eerie atmosphere, what with you being alone in space and all. The series follows Samus Aran, a bounty hunter who travels to various planets on various missions and uses her power suit's arm cannon to mow down enemies.

The first game, Metroid on the original Nintendo, saw Samus visit the Planet Zebes, and traverse through the areas known as Brinstar, Norfair, and Tourian in order to defeat the main antagonist group of the series, the Space Pirates. The Space Pirates were cultivating a deadly, parasitic life form known as the Metroids, whose cardinal trait is their ability to suck energy out of living things and their only weakness being extreme cold. The Space Pirates were planning to use those life sucking aliens for intergalactic domination. Samus infiltrated the Space Pirate's base of operation and defeated the three Pirate leaders, Kraid, Mother Brain, and Samus' archrival Ridley.

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He's a dragon in space. That's fucking awesome.

In the end, all traces of Metroids were wiped from Planet Zebes.

If you finish the game fast enough, you would be treated to one of the earliest twists in video game history. You learned that your fearless bounty hunter, who has bee shooting aliens and blowing shit up, was a woman this whole time.

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Oh cool! A strong female prota-- aaaaand she's in a bikini.

The game was later remade in 2004 with the title Metroid: Zero Mission. It added another section to the game in which Samus loses her Power Suit and must pass a trial of the Chozo, an ancient race that once lived on Planet Zebes.

The next game got rid of all the colors in favor of portability. Metroid 2: Return of Samus followed our heroine as she journey to the home world of the Metroid, a planet only known as SR388. The Galactic Federation that regularly employs Samus decided that Metroids are too big of a threat to even exist. So the sent a team of researchers and the like to destroy them and report some of their findings. The Federation lost contact with the team, so another one was sent. One after the other, the teams were disappearing, so the Federation decided that the best person for the job was Ms. Aran herself. Once there, she destroys every single Metroid on the planet. While doing so she notices that on their home planet, they mutate into giant monsters compared to the smaller parasites we had seen prior. Samus eventually finds herself confronted by the Queen Metroid and makes short work of it.

It's like they want us to shoot them with missles.

As Samus leaves the planet, she stumbles across a Metroid egg as it hatches. The baby Metroid believes Samus to be it's Mother and doesn't inherently attack Samus. Samus brings the now domesticated Metroid back to the Federation in the hopes that researchers can learn more about the species.

The third game, Super Metroid for the Super Nintendo, takes place immediately after the last one. Samus visits the colony where she had left the baby Metroid. Research has shown that the Metroid's ability to draw energy into their bodies could be harnessed for good. On arrival, she finds that it had been attacked and the baby had been taken by the Space Pirate, Ridley. She chases him back to Zebes, where she explores the familiar setting once more.

 "This is where I got drunk and peed in the bushes."

She defeats her old pals Kraid and Ridley again, and also squares off with two new Space Pirates, Phantoon and Draygon. She ultimately ends up shooting all kinds of missiles at Mother Brain again in a similar fashion to the first game. The boss goes down, just like the first game, and all seems good. Except, OH SHIT, just kidding, Mother Brain has a new terrifying form that looks like if a Godzilla monster had a baby with a terminator.

Gaming Precision

Metal as fuck.

The new and improved Mother Brain puts up quite a fight and nearly defeats Samus. Things look bleak for our armored friend as Mother Brain charges up a huge laser beam attack. But then, HOLY BALLS, the baby Metroid, now a large normal Metroid, swoops in and takes the full blast. The Metroid then uses it's energy transferring power for good and, rather than suck out energy from Samus, transfers all of the energy from the laser blast into Samus' suit before dying a hero. Samus shoots the balls out of Mother Brain with her newfound laser and escapes the planet as explodes.

Metroid Fusion for the Game Boy Advance saw Samus investigating an abandoned space station. A new parasite simply called the X Parasite had been discovered on the home planet of the Metroids and had gotten stuck on Samus' power suit. The X fused Samus to her suit and it had to be surgically removed. Turns out the only predator of the X was the Metroids, but since Samus single handedly shot every single one with missles in Metroid 2, there wasn't a whole that could be done. One scientist, however, managed to scrape together some cells from the domesticated baby Metroid and was able to slap together a vaccine. 

The vaccine's side effects included the Metroid's weakness to cold, but also let her be able to interact with the X without any problems. Samus learns that the X will copy whatever DNA it attaches to. As a result, she is confronted with genetic copies of aliens, humans, and even a clone of Ridley. As she explores the station she soon finds that she is being pursued by a genetic copy of herself. One that carries the weapon used to destroy Metroids, the Ice Beam, which Samus is now weak to.

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Sup.

Between running from the copy of herself and trying to figure out what the hell is going on, we learn that the space station is a replica of the SR388 environment, and it was being used to raise Metroids for some of the good purposes that had been discovered. The Samus clone, being made of the thing Metroids eat, is not psyched about that fact and decided to start shooting everything Metroid related.

Samus says, "Fuck this shit" and blows up the entire goddamn space station and flies away. So now the only trace of Metroid DNA resides in Samus' blood, thanks to that vaccine.

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Thanks Obama.

The next three games are all one trilogy, referred to as the Metroid Prime Trilogy. The three games are Metroid Prime and Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, both for the Nintendo Gamecube, and Metroid Prime 3: Corruption for the Nintendo Wii. The games switch gears and make the action seen through Samus' eyes. Gameplay is in a first-person perspective but other than that, the games are still Metroid. There is a fourth game that takes place between the first two called Metroid Prime Hunters, but literally no one has played it and it's pretty much boring filler in terms of story, so who cares.

The Metroid Prime Trilogy has it's own story that fits in between the first game and the second one, but doesn't really impact the story. It's kind of just what Samus was doing between games. What she was doing, was traveling to the planet Tallon IV to check out some disturbance. There she is introduced to a substance called Phazon and sees that the Space Pirates are all about that shit. Turns out that, SURPRISE, it's the Metroid's fault. More specifically, it's Metroid Prime's fault for being the source of the Phazon on Tallon IV. Samus blows it up and walks away, but not before the Metroid Prime absorbs Samus' suit and is reborn as Dark Samus.

metroid wiki

Half Daft Punk, half Tron, all baller.

Metroid Prime 2 sees Samus go to the planet Aether and solve their problem of an evil race called the Ing. Metroid Prime 3 ultimately brings Samus to Phaaze, the source of all the Phazon and blows it up along with Dark Samus.

Don't take the short explanations as me not liking the games. They're fantastic, some of Nintendo's best work, but I like the storyline with the actual Metroids more, and the Prime games are just kind of 'Adventures with Samus' so, not too much story there.

That being said the most recent game, Metroid: Other M, was part of that story line and it's a mess. The game received a lot of criticisms specifically for the story. The gameplay was different from the rest of the series as well, but, personally, I liked the way the game played. Rather than explore a planet and find a bunch of stuff, the game was now shoot everything that moved. That was fun. 

The story though was horse shit.

It sort of seemed like Nintendo had everything wrapped up nicely at the end of Metroid Fusion. No more Metroids, no more Ridley and the Space Pirates, no more anything that had been in the previous games. The Metroid Prime series was able to have it's own thing going on, so you would think that this game would do the same. 

Nope.

The game is set between Super Metroid and Metroid Fusion and the important things are that Metroid cells that were found on Samus' suit were used to genetically recreate Metroids to use for good, but UH OH, I guess some of the cells were from something else, that something else turns out to be Ridley.

So Ridley's alive, I guess.

The Metroids start going apeshit, because someone thought it would be a good idea to engineer them without their weakness to cold, and so Samus quarantines them all in a part of the ship and then blows up that part of the ship.

metroid wiki

"How come every place I go explodes?"

This is where things get retarded.

So, I guess Mother Brain had always been kind of a remote control thing for the Metroids. With out which, they just kind of, do... something else... so they created this android lady, MB. to act as a controller for the fake Metroids. They must not have thought it through, because even with this MB shit, the Metroids still went apeshit.

At the end of the game you fight another Queen Metroid and blow it the hell up, and then ultimately blow up the entire space ship, cuz that seems to be Samus' thing now.

The whole thing with the MB android and all the nonsense about Metroids being all controlled by radio waves or some BS is just stupid. We had these cool, feral, alien parasites that occupied space and for some reason, it was decided that they need radio waves to be more feral. Never mind the fact that we've seen both evil and good Metroids before now. No, now we need some dumb ass robot to control them so we can make them into a bio weapon. As if them sucking your life out of your head wasn't deadly enough.

I don't know. That whole segment of the game was just so weird, I'm not even sure I totally get it.

"Fuck it! Just put a robot lady in here!"

Ridley doesn't even survive the game. By the end, the Queen Metroid sucks his life out. The theory is that his body was moved to the space station in Metroid Fusion and that's how there was able to be a clone of him in that game.

So basically, the game's story just exists because, and at best fills in one tiny plot hole.

Not to mention they made Samus all introspective for some reason. Granted, in her older games, she was silent because 8 to 16 bits were not enough for deep narrative. In Metroid: Other M, they kept giving her monologues and flashbacks showing Samus being a teenager and decided that, as a teenager, she was a piece of shit.

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First it's this. Next thing you know, she's telling someone they smell like a butt.

For seemingly no reason, young Samus was all about opposing authority, even though she pretty much joined the military. After a while she grew up, but then became this overly obedient stooge. Throughout the game, your commanding officer will let you use various weapons and stuff. 

He doesn't at first because fuck you.  

There's one part of the game where Samus has to run through a lava filled section. Understandably, it's hot as balls and just being in room takes health away from her. It isn't until you've been running throught this hot ass room for a good 10 minutes does Mr. CO contact you and say, "LOL you can use the heat suit now."

Up until this game, if Samus was dying or something, she would do what she needed to, you know, not die. Here though, she's like "Tee hee, don't wanna break the rules," as her head melts.

Whatever. Aside from the stupid story, the gameplay is alright. 

So that's Metroid. The games are amazing. You get new moves that let you progress further and further into the game and feeling of growing and progressing is really satisfying.

For Smash Bros. 3DS we get Samus, as well a version of her without her Power Suit, called Zero Suit Samus, as playable characters. We also get the area Brinstar, from Planet Zebes, as a stage.

serebii.net

Come out you damn game.

We are just winding down with these write ups. After this there's only three more. THREE. I really want these next few days to just go by fast, but as the next series taught me, I shouldn't try and force it.

Smash Bros. Countdown - #5 - Yoshi Series

The Yoshi series has the unique distinction of being it's own series, while also being a part of the Mario series. While Yoshi has had multiple adventures without his mustachioed buddy, his first appearance was in a Mario game. Super Mario World, for the Super Nintendo, saw Mario travel to Dinosaur Land and come into contact with one of the many Yoshis.

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Close physical contact in front of a fireplace.

The game introduced us to Yoshi's trademark ability to eat enemies with his long tongue. He could spit out whatever was in his mouth and use the projectile to defeat enemies that weren't lucky enough to be in Yoshi's mouth.

Yoshi's next platforming venture was the first game in Yoshi's personal series. Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island, took place during Mario's infancy. As a stork delivers Baby Mario and Baby Luigi to their parents, the evil Kamek tries to kidnap the tykes. After using his magic to see the future, Kamek saw that the Mario Bros. would grow up to be a problem for the Koopa Troop as well as Bowser, who was also an infant at the time. Kamek manages to kidnap Baby Luigi, but Baby Mario falls into a clearing. He's discovered by the Yoshi's who ultimately decide to help him save his brother. Using the ability to transform into vehicles using Morph Bubbles, he helps the tiny plumber save his greener half.

At least, that's the reason I was given to kill these screaming flowers.

The game gave Yoshi his other cardinal trait of turning the enemies he ate into eggs, which could then be tossed at his enemies. It also debuted his ability to kick his legs while in the air to gain extra height.

The third game also took place during Mario's diaper days. It didn't feature Mario in any way, but instead made Baby Bowser the source of unhappiness. He earned that title by literally stealing the happiness from the world by stealing what's known as the Super Happy Tree.

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I'd be sad too if someone took my Lisa Frank plant.

The game used familiar Yoshi concepts and had Yoshi eat an absurd amount of fruit along the way. It wasn't until the next game that game decided to try something crazy.

Yoshi Topsy-Turvy, for the Game Boy Advance, had a gyroscope built into the cartridge. By tilting the Game Boy Advance, the world's gravity would alter accordingly.

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See? See how I'm tilting my Game Boy right now?

It's hard to convey through screenshots alone, but the game would have obsticles that would need to be physically altered in order to progress. The game got very mixed reviews, but it's fun just to play with tilty landscape.

The next few games acted as sequels and sister games to Yoshi's Island. Yoshi's Touch & Go had you use the touch screen of the Nintendo DS to guide Yoshi to the end of each stage. Yoshi's Island DS was a direct sequel to the Super Nintendo game and not only saw Baby Mario help Yoshi on his adventure, but Baby Peach, Donkey Kong, Wario, and Bowser also go on Yoshi's adventure with him. Yoshi's New Island, for the Nintendo 3DS, had Yoshi and Baby Mario once again set out to save Baby Luigi.

A new Yoshi game is in the works. Yoshi's Wooly World for the Nintendo WiiU sees Yoshi as we all know and love him, but this time he's been given the appearance of a yarn doll.

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Warning: Game may be so cute you shit flowers for the rest of your life.

More often than not, Yoshi serves as a secondary Mario character. Most of his appearances have been in Mario sports titles and the Mario Party series. 

In Smash Bros. we get Yoshi as a playable character and Yoshi's Island, as it appeared on the Super Nintendo, as a stage.

serebii.net

My son drew this.

With this article, there are only five days left until Smash Bros. I can count that shit on my hand. The next series helps me remember that all I have to do is not screw anything up and just roll with the punches and maybe things won't suck for too long.

Smash Bros. Countdown - #6 - Kirby Series

The Kirby games are great because Nintendo FINALLY addressed the one concern that had been plaguing gamers for so long. We liked video games a medium, but there weren't enough games where the main character ate everything that existed. Nintendo decided that, yes, this was a very valid concern and gave us the Kirby games.

Named after a lawyer who defended Nintendo during a case against Universal Studios over the use of Donkey Kong, Kirby's claim to fame is the ability to inhale next to anything around him, swallow it, and absorb it's powers. He's like if X-Men's Rogue was not southern,  not a woman, and was Kirby. The games were simple platformers in which you made your way from point A to point B, avoiding death and eating only everything. The games were set in a dream land, called Dream Land, so not only was Kirby the sole insane concept in the game, pretty much everything you saw was equally weird.

Even the boxes tell you that you're about to see some shit.

The first game in the series, Kirby's Dream Land for the Game Boy, saw the pink puff take his first steps towards fame, and his first leap into our hearts. Despite being designed as a pink character, the promotional artwork for the game portrayed Kirby as white, even though the director of the game Masahiro Sakurai, wanted him to be pink. Sakurai, by the way, also directed the Smash Bros. series, so, yeah, you could say he makes good games.

This was Sakurai's first game that he directed. Compared to the rest of the series, and the other game's he's directed, this game is very simple. you can almost feel him taking it safe in order to solidify his position at work. This is the only game to lack his ability to steal powers, there are only 5 levels, and the entire game can be finished in roughly 30 minutes. Kirby's Dream Land almost felt like a test to see if we could handle the hodgepodge that was Dream Land.

nerdbacon

Jesus Christ, what IS THIS!?

The game introduced us to the core concepts of the games to come. Kirby can fill himself with air and float, he cant eat things forever, and Dream Land is filled with equally weird enemies. One of the more important enemies of the series was the lazy King Dedede. No, there's no fancy way to pronounce that, he just has a goofy ass name. King Triple De usually found himself as the primary antagonist of the series despite the fact that his actions were usually due to the influence of some greater evil, but in Kirby's first outing, he was just there to steal food and be a dick.

  I straight murdered Santa for this robe.

Dedede never really does anything truly evil, but regardless you usually end up fighting him for one reason or another.

The second game, Kirby's Adventure for the original Nintendo, introduced Kirby's, now famous, ability to absorb powers and abilities by eating enemies. So if you ate a guy made of fire, Kirby could now turn into a fireball. If you ate a guy with a razor edged boomerang, you could throw them yourself. If you ate a guy who just sleeping, minding his own business, you would fall asleep.

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Aww, he looks so cute after devouring the innocent.

The second game also introduced us to Kirby's other reoccurring rival, Meta Knight. He shows up during Kirby's quest to give Kirby helpful items. Other times showing up to fight Kirby in an effort to test his skills and make sure he is the right man for the job of defeating evil.

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     He was also the first Nintendo character to try and bridge the gap between badass and adorable.

In a later game, Kirby Super Star, for the Super Nintendo, Meta Knight attempts to take over Dream Land and put an end to it's lazy attitude. This marks the only time a Nintendo villain ever resembled your dad.

The game also introduced Meta Knight's ship, the Halberd, and helped solidify his place as one of Nintendo's more memorable characters.

Later installments of the franchise would introduce concepts such as multiple players, touch screen antics, and the ability to combine two enemy powers into unique attacks.

For this one, he turns into fridge, leaves his door open, and raises your electric bill by a lot.

Kirby also gave another genre a shot with Kirby's Air Ride for the Nintendo Gamecube. This time Kirby hopped on various dreamy vehicles and raced other Kirbys for fun and profit. There were three modes to choose from. Air Ride, was your typical racing game fare, Top Ride was a top town racer in which characters controlled like an RC car, and City Trial had players gather power ups to be used in one competitive event. Being a Kirby game, players could also inhale enemies and use them to attack other racers.

Awwwww, now he's being negligent by sleeping while operating a vehicle.

Aside from the one racer, the series stuck with its adventure formula up to this day, every new game providing new challenges and mechanics to help get from point A to point B. Every game also introducing new characters, new powers to absorb, and new evil to destroy.

The series kept gaining popularity and in 2001, the pink puffball got his own Saturday morning cartoon. Kirby: Right Back at Ya! Followed Kirby as he fought various baddies all over Dream Land. King Dedede would get jealous of Kirby's popularity amongst the townspeople and would order a monster over the internet to try and get rid of Kirby. Being a cartoon, things didn't usually go well for Dedede, and I'd be lying if I said hi-jinx did not ensue. 

Also, jazz.

The show lasted for one 100 episode long season before reaching it's conclusion and going away forever.

The Kirby series is straight forward and fun. Every game has a very easy goal, and makes it fun to accomplish. Discovering all of the different abilities that Kirby can absorb makes every enemy encounter exciting, especially to first time players. The music and setting of Dream Land also add to the games' charm.

As the games progress, you see Sakurai trying more and more things and working harder on his games, something he was very transparent about during the development of Smash Bros. 3DS.

For Smash Bros. 3DS, the Kirby series is represented by the pink ball himself, Meta Knight, and King Dedede as playable characters, and features, Dream Land, as it was seen on the Game Boy, as a stage.

serebii.net

Just in case you needed more beeping and booping in your life.

The Kirby games are filled with cute, likable characters that go on little adventures and eat stuff. The next series has a lot in common with this one, but with more of an emphasis on breakfast.

Smash Bros. Countdown - #7 - Star Fox Series

If someone told me to describe the Star Fox series to them, I'd say "Google it dummy," and then laugh at my own edginess. After that person told me to stop being an anus, I'd have a hard time explaining to them what the game was like without sounding like a crazy person.

Star Fox is about four animals who fly plane-like spaceships and use those to fight aliens and bad guys. There's a fox, a bird, a rabbit, and a toad and they always give you advice and the bad guy is a monkey who is sometimes a face or a brain and every now and then you go toe to toe with your rival team, who is also four animals.

Yep, that's about it.

"And you thought it would sound crazy," said the bird with the bazooka.

The Star Fox games have you take control of Fox McCloud and fly around shooting things in his spaceship called an Arwing. If you need help figuring out which one Fox is, he's the one in the cool suit. The other obviously named members of the team are Falco Lombardi, the cocky cool guy of the group, Peppy Hare, the wise advice giving one, and Slippy Toad, the technical advisor with the voice of a thousand headaches.

"Hey Slippy, why is your ship crashing?" "My ship isn't--"

As annoying as that damn frog was, part of the charm of the series was the fact that the all of the characters talked to one another over the course of each mission. In the original Super Nintendo game, Star Fox, the characters made speech like noises at one another accompanied with text. It wasn't until Star Fox 64, for the Nintendo 64, that the characters got real voices and, subsequently, actual personality.

If you listen to this with your eyes closed, this neat thing happens where you go insane.

Falco always says something cool but rude, Slippy would whine about something, and Peppy would give you advice whether you cared or not. Peppy's interjections of random advice seemed to stick with a lot of people. In particular, his suggestion to 'do a barrell roll' (0:17 in the above video) has gone on to become a thing all on its own.

zeldainformer                                                       

Go google 'Do a barrel roll' right now. Yeah, that's how big it's gotten.

As for the games themselves, they're your standard 'fly all over the place and shoot down everything that does the same' genre of game. You fly around different planets, shooting down everything that exists. Sometimes you shoot things on a desert, sometimes you shoot things over lava, sometimes you shoot things underwater, and sometimes you get to have a dog fight, or should I say a FOX fight, with the rival pilot team, Star Wolf.

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 You will never guess which one of these guys the team is named after.

Almost the entire series stuck to the formula of fly around and shoot things forever. Only one game dared to stray of that path and had Fox explore a planet on foot. The planet in question? DINOSAUR PLANET.

Named after the rich history of paleontology the planet has.

The aptly named Star Fox Adventures, for the Nintendo Gamecube, saw Fox go an adventure without his ship for the first time. The game received generally positive reviews, but longtime fans of the series were upset that the game deviated too far from the classic formula.

As a standalone game, it's pretty solid. You solve puzzles, fight enemies, and collect artifacts. For the most part the game holds up.

As for the voice acting, that's a whole other planet.

You know, I can't imagine why.

Almost all of the voice acting sounds like an American kid who just heard British people for the first time and is trying it out by speaking with an obnoxiously blatant cockney accent.

The only character who doesn't have a weirdly British voice is the character of Prince Tricky, the young dino who follows and helps you on your adventure. What he lacks in tea and crumpets, he more than makes up for it by being an in game reminder as to why you threw your Tamagotchi away.

"Hey Tricky, why are you choking?" "I'm not--"

While Tricky did help you out in a number of ways, he would get all grumpy and not do anything until you fed him. Walking around made him hungry, helping made him hungry, complaining he was hungry made him more hungry. The only thing he would eat were blue mushrooms that, of course, bounced away from you as soon as they spotted you. In order to collect them for your annoying dog, you either had to wait for nightfall, so they would fall asleep, or hit the with your weapon so they would get dazed.

"And, coincidentally, the reason you hate yourself right now."

The game also introduced the character of Krystal into the series. She would go on to be Fox's love interest and later a member of team Star Fox. More importantly, she's the character that gave furries validation for what they believed in.

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If you can't guess what a furry is from this picture, don't google it. Seriously, it's weird.

All in all the Star Fox series is great for both serious gamers and those who just want to shoot shit. The characters are all very likable and the locations you visit are all unique.

For Smash Bros. 3DS, the series gave us both Fox and Falco as playable characters as well as Corneria, the first planet you visit in both Star Fox and Star Fox 64, as a stage.

serebii.net                                          

That does not look like regulation flying height, SLIPPY.

There you have it, Star Fox games. Fun for the whole family, but challenging enough that you're not gonna fall asleep. The next series is somewhat like that as well. Cushy at times, but at others, it can be a bit of a nightmare.

Smash Bros. Countdown - #8 - Pokémon Series

Oh man, Pokemon, or if you want to get technical Pokémon. I'll just mention now, that accent won't be making very many appearances in this post since it's not as easy to type as a naked 'E.'

Anyway, who hasn't heard of Pokemon? I'm just kidding, everyone has heard of Pokemon. If you haven't it's probably because you were deaf and/or blind in the late nineties because it was goddamn everywhere.

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Even INSIDE OF YOU.

Pokemon, Pocket Monsters in Japan, was the genius idea of Satoshi Tajiri a man who decided one day that he wanted all the money in the world. He was a fan of capsule machines and the idea of little things in balls that you could collect and thought a game based on that would be fun and help add a house to his house. Boy, was he right. To date the Pokemon franchise has made roughly 24 billion dollars. For reference, Bill Gates only has three times that much. Pokemon is a freaking goldmine.

There are games, movies, CDs, trading cards, manga, and toys. They also slapped their collectable faces on Kellogs products, Lunchables, Burger King toys, even Welch's jelly wasn't safe from the original 150 money makers.

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It came in two flavors, grape and hoarder.

It was impossible to escape the money printer that was Pokemon. The series' motto of 'gotta catch 'em all' was shoved into our dumb heads from day one and there were 150 of these things that we needed to catch (read: buy). So that's 150 toys, 150 cards, 150 shirts, 150 everything. You can begin to see why this shit was amazing to kids and horrible to wallets. 

Don't think you could get away with only getting your kid two or three of them. Kids knew who all of them were, what all of them did, which ones were good, and which ones were awful. You asked any kid in 1998 what they liked about Pokemon and you'd have to cancel your plans for the rest of the day. Adults, however, couldn't give two shits about Pikamanders or Bulbapuffs and always let their eyes roll into the back of their heads when their offspring began listing the names of the Gym Leaders they had beaten that day. It's too bad though, because had parents paid attention, they could have taken a slice of that pokemoney pie for themselves. The reach of the pocket monsters managed to reach the higher ups at Who Wants to be A Millionaire, as in the trivia show for adults.

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"What is this, Italian?"

I've barely even mentioned the games. Frankly in the late 90's the games, while they were the catalyst, were almost not important. The fact that it was on everything made Pokemon so much more than a game and made it a way of life. Although, if they weren't games, they wouldn't be represented in Smash Bros. 

The first two games were released simultaneously in 1996 in Japan and 1998 in America for the Game Boy. Titled Pokemon: Red Version and Pokemon: Blue Version, the two games were nearly identical. The only difference was each version had a handful of exclusive Pokemon that could not be obtained on the other. Since the motto of the franchise was "Gotta Catch 'Em All," the inability to do so was sort of an issue for players. In order to get the version exclusive Pokemon one needed to buy a Game Boy Link Cable and find someone with the opposite version of the game. To recap: you need two games, two Game Boys, and a link cable to fully enjoy the game. 

A freaking goldmine.

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"Haha, my parents have such cool money!"

In 2000 Nintendo and Game Freak, the companies behind the games, decided 150 things was not enough, so the sequels, Gold and Silver Version, were released. With the new games added color graphics and brought the grand total of collectable things to 250. So now there were 100 more faces to slap on t-shirts and toys and now you needed the new Game Boy Color in order to get the most out of the new games.

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"They're right next to all this money"

The number of Pokemon continued to grow in 2002 with Ruby and Sapphire Version for the Game Boy Advance, then again with Diamond and Pearl Version in 2007 and Black and White Version in 2011 both pairs on the Nintendo DS. The last expansion to the growing roster was in 2013 with the release of X and Y Version. This brought the final monster count to a whopping 721. 

For those keeping score at home, including the original Red and Blue, we have 12 games, 3 link cables for the first three consoles, and a total of 10 handhelds so everyone can get the version exclusives. Not to mention, there's almost five times the number of creatures as there were when this whole thing started. So now there are more cartoons for you to buy on a folder or a plate or a plane.

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I can only assume they're flying to the bank.

Not to mention the third games that correspond to each pair of games. This new 'third game' had it's own group of unique Pokemon and is sort of a director's cut of whatever original games it pairs with. Those games being Yellow, Crystal, Emerald, Platinum, Black 2 and White 2 Versions. Yeah, that's roughly another 400 bucks you can throw at your child to get him to stop screaming.

So now you have to buy Red, Blue AND Yellow version, then buy Gold, Silver AND Crystal version and then buy a third Game Boy to truly catch them all. For all your hard work, Nintendo will enjoy some cigars on their yacht. 

Pictured: Some Japanese kid going to college.

There are also the spinoffs such as Pokemon Snap where you photograph Pokemon or Pokemon Puzzle League, a Tetris type game, but instead the theme of blocks, it's theme is anime monsters and children.

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Something something stacks of money.

There's also the remakes of the first three pairs of games, so you can re-buy the games you already own and have played. So basically what I've been saying is Pokemon is a good game, and you should buy them all.

In terms of gameplay, every game follows the same basic outline. You start your journey sans Pokemon until you reach the point in the game where you have to pick one of three Pokemon that you will never see again. The only way to get the other two are by trading with someone who has them.

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The cutest blackmail alive.

Once you choose your starter, other than 'catching them all' you are tasked with training the monsters you catch for combat and using them to defeat eight bosses called Gym Leaders. For winning you earn the badge that they were holding as proof that you beat them. Along the way you face off with a villainous team of criminals and stop their plans, again by fighting your monsters. Once you're done saving the world, defeating the Gym Leaders, and catching 150+ monsters, you make your way to the Elite Four, Four Master Pokemon Trainers, and then finally the Champion of the Pokemon League. Keep in mind, your character is a child. 

Hey kid, wanna see my pocket monster?

The thing that sets the games apart are the sheer number of Pokemon to collect and raise. As technology advanced, the games offered new ways to raise and train your Pokemon. So every game offered a fresh new take on a familiar journey and we were given so many new faces to take that journey with. Even though they were just zeroes and ones, you easily found yourself growing attached to the Pokemon you raised and fought with. 

Despite their insane demands.

In Smash Bros 3DS, the Pokemon Series contributes the Pokemon Pikachu, Jigglypuff, Charizard, Lucario, and Greninja as playable characters. It also brings us the Unova Pokemon League from Pokemon Black and White as well as Lumiose City's Prism Tower from Pokemon X and Y as stages.

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This is, of course, the arson aspect of Pokemon at work.

At the end of the day Pokemon is a really fun game that lets you indulge both your adventure brain as well as your collector brain and since there are now so many different Pokemon to catch, different moves to teach each monster, and different ways to train them, each time you play, you can have a slightly different experience.

The next series is a bit less open world. It's a real straight shooter.