h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Yeah, well, it's all reruns now. I guess having KidsWB doing cycles of new and old shows year-round instead of a three-month gap of reruns is good, but...

Whatever. I'm still enjoying Yu-gi-oh and Megaman.

I still catch an occasional Master Quest rerun on weekdays, but the sad part about Pokemon is once you see an episode once, you really have no reason to ever see it again. Over half the episodes are terribly formulaic, designed to show off a new Pokemon so that kids will buy more cards. Sad, really.

Yeah, it's all a big merchandise-fest nowadays =/ I'd love to see the old old first ever Pokémon episodes, so that I could re-record them (my videos don't play any more), but the new ones just seem the same old tried and tired formula.

We don't get Megaman. They play one episode each of Yu-Gi-Oh and Pokémon on a Sunday, but I've gotten boredish of both, lol.

Well, they got most of the "first season" on tape these days, but I've never seen anything on DVD except the movies. I use the term "season" losely because:

1: The "first season" cliffhanger was the battle for the Volcano Badge. There were only maybe a dozen episodes of Kanto after that, and then the quasi-season of the Orange Island arc.
2. The "third season" was Johto Journeys. I think there were two years of that, then
3. The "fifth season" was Johto League Champions.
4. The "sixth season" was Master Quest.
5. Now we have Advance.

All of these figures are approximate. Honestly, it's all a mess, especially with KidsWB's new strategy of doing like two months of new stuff, then a month of reruns, etc. along with a rotating cycle of what's in the eight-episode block. For awhile X-Men, Mucha Lucha, Jackie Chan, Static Shock, etc were rotating around to give Pokemon and Yu-gi-oh two episodes per Saturday. Really, it's a bunch of gobbledegook. They might as well just package Pokemon into forty-episode blocks on DVD and release it. Who cares what "season" or which "story arc" it's from, as long as it's in order?

They are confusing.

Here, they stopped Master Quest half way through, and randomly just showed the Advance series. I don't even bother to get up in the morning to watch any more, I'll watch if I'm up, but not to set an alarm to. It's so mixed up.

Just a heads up, not gonna be online for three weeks. Going on holiday! Take care and have fun!

I'm back. Seems you're not though, lol. Had a good holiday, hope to hear from you soon.

Hey there. Well, Pokemon is in reruns now, so there's nothing new to report. Man, I wish they would rerun the Silver Conference since they were mean enough to run new episodes on weekdays for three weeks just to get to Advance faster. Even worse, I've never seen anything but tapes of the first few seasons and an Orange-Islands DVD out there, so I'll probably never see them. Right now I'm still jazzed about seeing the Yu-Gi-Oh movie and catching up on Teen Titans and Megaman to care. Pokemon is getting too formulaic. For awhile they were running two episodes of Master Quest every weekday, but I didn't feel it worthwhile to watch in hopes of catching a "new" one.

How was your trip or whatever?

The holiday was good. I miss being there though *sigh*. You've actually seen that movie? Was it any good? They started showing it the day before I left, so we didn't have time to go see it anyway, lol. As for Pokémon, yes, it's far too formulaic for it's own good. That's why it succeeds. People hate change.

No, I promised to see it with a friend. I hear it's good, but even if it's not, at least I still get cards!

I do admit that given the Pokemon format, formulaix is expected. With over 330 Pokemon species, we need to see new ones all the time. Plus the big news these days is Fire Red and Leaf Green, the GBA updates of Red and Blue, complete with infrared link cababilities. Exciting, no?

It is indeed. I'm importing myself a copy of Leaf Green when it's released, because I really couldn't wait, lol. I look forward to being able to play the oldies again.

It kind of seems like poetic justice. You see, over in Japan cell phones are a lot more common, so even as far back as Gold/Silver/Crystal, there was a cell phone jack attached to the cartridge so that you could trade Pokemon wirelessly. This feature was lost in America because let's face it, five years ago the number of preteens with cell phones was miniscule. Now with the advent of Fire Red and Leaf Green, the trading opportunities are much more open. Who knows when you're gonna pass another trainer who may have a Pokemon that you need?

Yeah, I can remember the mobile 'phone trading feature, adn I was impressed. Disappointing that we lose out on such things, but there we go.

I hope that people are gonna get back into Pokémon games again. I often reminisce back to the day when you'd see every other person carrying something Pokémon-related.

It's kinda sad that the age of commercialism finally found Pokemon, so that instead of the Pokerap we get meaningless commercials for other shows. Let's face it, with almost 350 species of Pokemon now, we need the Pokerap to keep track! I am kinda glad, though, that after a year of Advance I can now rattle off a couple dozen Hounen Pokemon.

There's actually 386 of them. FAR TOO MANY. But yeah, it's kinda sad. I'm looking forward to playing my copy of Leaf Green when i ever get it, lol. I missed the old games too much. Although I've heard they've tweaked the dialogue slightly, much to my displeasure.

That is nuts. Really, really nuts. You know the weird thing? In Japan with the advent of Ruby/Sapphire, they renumbered all of them, and I call that just plain nuts. Granted, you can't expect to fit 386 species into one cartridge, especially with these new species of "legendary Pokemon" that show up and keep relegating the old ones to something less than legendary status. When it was Ho-oh, Zaptos, Moltres, and Articuno it was something approaching believable, but with these beasts and Lugia and Mewtwo and on and on, one questions what really counts as "legendary." I've come up with a definition that seems to work for me. A legendary Pokemon is a species with a population of one. Ergo, only Mew, Mewtwo, and Ho-oh are the real deal. We've even seen multiple Lugia, so they're out, because if we have a mother and a baby, there must be a dad somewhere out there. Maybe there is only one Suicune, but I doubt it. We've never seen Raikou, ever I think, or maybe I missed that one. There are at least two each of the birds, and one thinks that there may be a handful. The sad part is that I tend to unconsciously attach Digimon level names to Pokemon, ie Pichu rookie, Pikachu champion, Raichu ultimate, etc. I could give a whole tirade about my theory of three subpower categories within each level, similar to my Digimon power scheme, but that can be a discussion for another day.

Tell me about it. I can remember because Butterfree used to be #12, now it's Zigzagoon. As for legendary Pokémon, they just make them so that there's something you always play towards, in my opinion. I catch them, yes, but I don't normally keep them in my team. It annoys me when little kids have teams of "Legendaries", just because they can't be bothered to raise a decent team.

It's so annoying. I'm in that stage of Crystal right now that I'm stuck trying to defeat Snorlax and the Legendaries without fainting them. Right now I'm at the point where I'll just TKO Snorlax just to move on. Those things are just annoying. You can poison them, confuse them, curse them, and put them to sleep all at the same time, get them down to 1 HP and they still won't be caught! Just intolerable! Don't you think that <10 HP and Poison/Sleep/Confusion/etc should be enough conditions for a capture?

You'd think so. With them, get them to that low an HP, and keep htrowing the Ultra Balls. You'll get there

But Ultra Balls are so expensive! Plus, it's a matter of pride. If I need an Ultra Ball to get Snorlax, I'm basically admitting that I would need a Master Ball for anything stronger! And sadly, my only Master Ball went to Mewtwo (duh).

Oh well, I caught Snorlax in Yellow and traded it to Crystal, so I guess I don't need the Crystal one anyway. Besides, would I ever use Snorlax in a battle? No.

I know they're expensive, but save your monies. I always sell my lesser-strength Pokéballs to buy the Ultra Balls. Well worth it.