I have three Coca-Cola Zero Sugar cans in the fridge. I'm cracking one open now, and hopefully I'll still have one when I reach the end of this.

I also feel that, in the interest of integrity and dignity for my position as sometimes a blog writer, to the legions of fans I have, that as I critique this product, I must immediately inform you that I will be high as balls writing this.

Ahem.

Soda has been in my life as long as I can remember it, and I know the same goes for many of you. My earliest affair with soda was the wonderful Dad's Root Beer. From there, I moved to A&W, since we often went to the A&W in my hometown. This went on into my elementary years, as I branched over to Pepsi. I remember having to switch over to caffeine free, probably because I was acting like a freak after that much soda consumption. There wasn't much of a difference, in my mind. A few years later, and after a brief stint with both RC Cola and Barq's, I finally moved to the king of them all.

Coke has been with me ever since, and even as I try on new stuff, it is always reappearing in my fridge. It has a taste so good, it defines soda, and remains the standard choice in most minds. Even as I expanded into energy drinks like my usual Monster Zero Ultra or Green, and several run ins with Wired's Triple Caffeine, the cheaper option of a Coke and the (well) known quality it has makes it easy to grab. When fast food places and restaurants carry the Pepsi brand, you know it's because they got a good deal on it.

But the relationship came to a halt when I first realized that maybe I should be thinking about what I eat and drink each day. This halt became more complicated as Coke's addictive qualities became apparent. Not just the formula itself, but the carbonation. I drink water at some point every day now, but it sucks, and I didn't warm up to milk until recently. I began to reason that, being in my mid 20s, I had time to handle the John Drake life. Nevertheless, I decided on a compromise: Soda Water.

I bought a 12 pack of La Croix Lemon. I had one can.

Taking another Coke Zero Sugar.

I lasted what felt like forever on Walmart's Clear American Strawberry soda water. It didn't really hide the fact that what you're really into soda for is the carbonation, but it was cheaper than regular soda, and there were a shitload of zeroes on the back, so I ran with it. The buildup of cans, however, became something of a nuisance for my living situation with three other roommates. Having already made the first step, I decided to go all in on a SodaStream machine.

The most interesting thing about SodaStream is actually its...history in politics.

The other sorta interesting thing was that it was more of a trade off. I don't think of it as greatly cheaper than buying regular soda. Yes, it's mostly tap water, but it requires flavoring (which can be costly if you're buying the made-for-SodaStream brands, but you don't do that, you buy the Crush water flavorings in the other aisle), and it also requires the monthly or bimonthly visit to somewhere that can refill your CO2 for an okay price. You go to the store a little less than you would (depending on how you do your grocery shopping), but you end up having to go to another place to fill the CO2. Regardless, I don't think there was much difference in that respect.

And in comparison to the Clear American Water brand, SodaStream wasn't much different in taste. You got choices that more resembled the established Coke and Pepsi tastes you know, but the switch wasn't all that different. They both, however, filled the void left by name brand soda the same way: like Captain Janeway filling the void of Jean-Luc Picard. It's not bad or anything. Hell, there are some days I don't think about what I've left behind, and am perfectly content with what I have....

But in the end, it was always about a lazy attempt to get a tad healthier. To not consume so much sugar at the very least. It's what's somehow blown La Croix up, and now I'm seeing people drinking it everywhere. It's been going the last few years at minimum, by my count, and it took up until this point for Coca-Cola to finally decide to have an answer, while also attempting to wield its distinct flavor using its "Zero Calories" branding. But not, it's a new thing. Sorta.

Opening third and final Coke Zero Sugar now.

I haven't had a Diet Coke in a while, but it was definitely a Coke Light, with that heavy aspartame taste, which was present in Coke Zero and is still here in Coke Zero Sugar as well. If I remember correctly, Coke Zero was sort of the soda that bridged the gap of taste between Coke and Diet Coke. I never drank much of Coke Zero because it was a lesser version of Coke and its hook was zero calories, which I'm still not too concerned about right now. However, that was enough to convert many people, and its ousting to make room for Zero Sugar has ruffled a feather or two.

Overall, I'm satisfied with the taste. It's definitely a Coke brand soda. For those who are looking for something that tastes like regular Coke, you will be disappointed. However, this doesn't strike me as all that different from Coke Zero, and I actually like it a little better than how I remember the last Zero I drank, though I wonder if coming from drinking mostly soda water is coloring my experience. If this opinion holds, though, this will only help Coke win over people like me, which will help them gain back some of us who have decided that no sugar is what's in right now, and we'll be comfortable with what we've currently chosen not to know about soda until sometime later down the road.

For now, after years of mostly avoiding it, I've gone full circle back to Coke again, only this time with a can sporting mostly zeroes on the back, no sugar, and the interspersing of other occasional drinks like water, Monster Green, coffee, milk, and Sparkling Ice Lemonade flavored water. Hmm. You know, I probably haven't improved my health at all, but in a way I feel like Coca-Cola and I found a compromise in a small war. As I get older, I'll need to drink better and more consciously, for my own sake. But drawing Coke this way just a smidge was enough to take me back over to to an old, addictive friend for a little longer. And if that is enough of a benefit for you, maybe check this out. If not, don't worry about it, just put your hands behind your head and proudly proclaim Coke's superiority. I'll just look down on you.

No I won't, that's mean, you're a good person.

(Originally titled: "Why Pokemon Go Feels Off")

In case you haven't been on the internet the last few days, Pokemon Go has just released. From the average redditor to NBA and NFL teams, people are out and about, finding pokemon wandering around in their daily lives. As a pokemon fan myself, I'm thrilled about the new resurgence of love for the franchise, but I'm also a little disappointed by the game itself, and that makes me worry about the future of the game as a whole.

Now, many people within the Giant Bomb and Friends umbrella (such as Dan Ryckert and John Drake) have expressed a complete lack of interest in the series, and while the site has taken some time to appreciate pokemon in the past, that time is ancient history now, as is evident in the Bombcrew's reaction to the mere mention of Pokemon: Sun and Moon in Nintendo's latest E3 livestream. In the newest bombcast, however (at 1:15:15), Jeff mentions that he downloaded Pokemon Go and briefly touched on a big issue:

Jeff: "When you go to a gym, even if the gym is controlled by your color, you can go fight your pokemon and train your pokemon against the pokemon that are holding down that gym for your team. And it's weird, it's real time-ish, you tap to attack and swipe to dodge, so it becomes you watching the enemy pokemon animation and trying to swipe out of the way of its attack, and then tapping to attack, which, when you think about what Pokemon is, it's very much more of a "rock-paper-scissors" with the elemental stuff, plus...you have multiple attacks, and all this other stuff."

Brad: "It's not a timing-based thing."

Jeff: "Yeah, so...it felt inauthentic to the Pokemon brand, I guess I would say."

Will: "It's like the Mortal Kombat clones. They took the wrong part of the Pokemon games."

Jeff: "Yes, definitely. They did not capture the feel of real Pokemon at all in this thing, it just feels like a game that they slapped together, and they just happened to have the Pokemon license, so it's pokeballs and Koffings and Pidgeys."

In the interest of time...

Jeff: "The interactions felt really flimsy. Its attachment to the source material also just feels really thrown together. Like, I'm not some Pokemon purist. I think the head of Niantic got out there and said, 'Hey, our goal's not to catch 'em all,' like every other Pokemon game that's ever existed, probably in the wake of some of the criticism out of this beta getting out to some of the media, but, it just seems like a bad product. Or, you know what: it feels like a really good first beta of a product, but they're launching it this month..."

"...I just feel like it doesn't capture any of the feel of Pokemon along the way, it just feels really off, in a way that just feels like a game made by some other team that doesn't really understand why Pokemon is great."

Now, many Pokemon fanatics can talk to you about what makes Pokemon great. Oftentimes they'll talk to you about the intricacies of battle, the work that goes into breeding pokemon, the never-ending struggle of searching for new pokemon and shiny pokemon, the importance of EVs and IVs and natures and type strengths and type weaknesses and immunities and resistances and abilities and berries and other held items and the various battling strategies that incorporate all of that and more...

But other than that hot Brentwood Productions joint, I never really got interested in any of the nonsense above. None of it was ever what drew me to the game in the first place, and I believe that none of what I listed is what got kids into the game initially. But let's go back to the very basics of Pokemon, and work our way forward.

In Pokemon, you adventure through a region filled with pokemon, battling your way through gyms, factions, and dangerous routes with the intent of becoming Pokemon Champion, as well as catching every single pokemon in the region. There are plenty of turn based battles between wild pokemon, and other trainers and their pokemon.

But that's about as simple as the serie's dialogue. Let's go deeper.

In Pokemon, you start as a boy who has seemingly never left his hometown, knowing very little of the world around him. As you attempt to leave, a pokemon professor stops you and tells you how dangerous it is to go into the wild alone; not only are there wild pokemon out there who will attack you if they feel threatened, but there are trainers who are sitting and waiting to battle people and apparently take their money. I mean, I'm sure most trainers wouldn't try to battle you if you didn't have pokemon, but there are some unsavory characters in Pokemon, and I'm not just talking about Team Rocket...

So the professor takes you back into town to give you and his dick relative one pokemon out of the three he has. Like many, you take a look at all three and pick your favorite, and Pubehead picks the one with the strategic advantage over yours. After the professor gives you both a Pokedex with the mission to log every species of pokemon in the Kanto region, you go out on your adventure with no one but your starter accompanying you. As you advance through each route, you encounter wild pokemon and wandering (lost? bored?) trainers looking to battle. As you battle and work your way through each route, you are catching more pokemon to add to your team, as well as training your pokemon to become stronger with each battle. You eventually run into your first gym, which you learn is the only way to progress to the next route and to more new pokemon and gyms. Along the way, a team of pokemon thieves crosses your path, and they recognize your very existence as a threat to their operations, so you battle them as well. As time progresses, you add gym badges to your collection, showing how far you have come as a trainer. Not only that, but your collection of pokemon has grown more and more over time, and your team has slowly become more powerful and defined. You share with your pokemon the various experiences that come with exploring the region, and start to bond with them. After lots of battling and training and searching and collecting, you finally reach the Pokemon League, where you and your pokemon's skills are put to the ultimate test against the Elite Four and the current Champion, which just happens to be Cocknostril. Once you defeat Eatmyass, you begin your reign as Pokemon Champion with the Pokemon team you've trained and loved and cared for forever immortalized as one of the many Champions of the Kanto region, left only to catch every species of Pokemon in the region to complete the professor's work. After that, your work is basically done, at which point most Pokemon fans reset their save and go again.

Now let's get into some real subjective, symbolic shit.

Pokemon (to me!) is about becoming an adult. You start merely as a child, who's given a couple different ultimate goals to choose from (become pokemon Champion and/or log every pokemon in your pokedex, or whatever the fuck you want once you unlock the whole region). You are given a limited selection of three pokemon to pick your first pokemon from. But there's more to this choice.

You're not just picking a pokemon; you're picking a trait that comes to define you at your root. And while a third of all players picked Squirtle, that portion separates more when you ask why. Maybe you just like (identify) with the color blue, or maybe it's because you like (identify) with the element of water, or maybe you like (identify) with turtles, or maybe you know the evolutions and like (you get the idea) Blastoise the most, or maybe you know the type of the first gym, and you want to pick the easiest route past that gym while you're still getting your bearings. We all have our reasons. Now expand that list of three to a seemingly limitless number. While you're likely not exposed to more adult-intended influences in the world, there are many things that can come to influence who you are, even at a young age, and this choice reflects that important moment.

And it doesn't stop there. As you start to grow and mature, you gain more pokemon to add to your arsenal, with some falling to the wayside as you explore and find more that fit who you are and how you play, and sometimes you take on a pokemon simply according to your needs. This is pretty similar to the journey towards becoming an adult: someone who eventually gains the skills needed to not only function in everyday independent life, but to work towards and hopefully achieve their goals. The best trainers tend to be the ones who work towards intimately knowing as many pokemon as they can, so that they can make the best decision on how to move forward based on their situation. As you progress through your journey, you find gyms that are meant to test you, that you can't progress past until you defeat that gym, learning new skills from the experience of challenging and defeating them. On top of that, while some are willing to help you (Bill, gym leaders, etc.), others work against you (Team Rocket, asshole trainers like Joe Burglar up there), and others remain indifferent. You have friends and peers that you progress and compare yourself with (like Snotbreath, or like in later games, actual friends), and you always have family back home that checks in with you and offers advice. Your team slowly becomes stronger and more defined as you find what works for you, and you work and work until eventually you reach your end goal: being Champion.

When I started playing Pokemon, I was the first born, which meant I was the one that was kept inside the cul-de-sac, never allowed past the curb towards the rest of the neighborhood and the rest of the "dangerous" world that awaited. Knowing only a few kids within the cul-de-sac, I found myself dreaming, spending a lot of time imagining countless worlds and a number of amazing things that I would do in them, and it only got worse when I spent four years being homeschooled. Pokemon, coming out a few years before that, was the first game I had that let me explore the world and let me choose my path. Progress was obviously controlled in the game, but I could customize my team of six however I wanted. I could go backwards to cities I enjoyed if I wanted to, while still catching and working on my own team of pokemon, a group that I could call my own. It eventually spawned a love of roadtripping and exploring new places when I finally moved out of the house, and the various obstacles I've overcome or moved away from, and the harsh lessons I've learned so far have made me look to pokemon and this vague similarity between it and the experience of becoming an adult as a way of keeping me on track towards my goals in life, and through that initial inspiration from that first copy of Pokemon: Blue has continued to influence me and how I progress through life. And I'm sure I'm not alone in that.

So! Pokemon means a lot to me, and it means a lot to a lot of people out there in this way, on top of the fun that can be had with battling and trading and all that. I'm sure I could draw more similarities, but I've been working on this article for hours now, and I'm not even to the part that this stupid post is even about. Let's get to that now, shall we?

- - -

After four days of traveling, working, sleeping way too much, and extensively playing Pokemon Go, I've finally returned to dish out my feelings on Pokemon Go and tear the game apart for butchering the traditional Pokemon formula.

Well, that was the initial intent when I first wrote this article.

First, I was going to tear into Niantic for trivializing the player's first pokemon choice. It matters in the core games because your first pokemon usually sticks with you from the beginning to the end, often being the most powerful in your arsenal, and the one you're most attached to. It puts your journey from simple beginner to Pokemon Master into real perspective, and makes that first choice a notable event in your experience with the game. This choice means absolutely nothing in Pokemon Go because the only way to improve your pokemon is to catch more of them, which can screw you over if you're like my roommate who picked Charmander, with nearly zero Charmander here in our neck of the woods. And with a low combat point level, that makes your starter utterly useless to start with. Guess who you're favorite starter is now? Pidgey, 'cause he's fucking everywhere and Pidgeot is pretty cool.

The evolution system, which is instead of training that one pokemon to become better, is more of a meat-grinder that has you catch and transfer and catch and transfer, casting off one pokemon for another with 10 CP more than the last, making the process more impersonal and less like Pokemon the way I and many others have played it.

The battle system is simplified and in real time, taking away some of the strategy, customization, and suspense that Pokemon battles tend to have, that makes the battles that much more memorable and fun. There's nothing quite like that moment when you hear the two-note sound of your pokemon being near death, and pulling out the win after sitting for a moment to think about your next, potentially last move, and that's lost in this current system, especially with phones that aren't technically up to snuff for real-time gameplay, causing stuttering and timing issues.

There's also the matter of finding pokemon, which during the beta provided information saying how many meters you were away from that pokemon in increments of 20. The final version has switched to a system of one to three footprints, which is very vague and gives you little idea of where the pokemon actually is. There are times it seems like a pokemon three steps away might as well be in the next state for all I know.

Once you see that pokemon, they simply stand there and wait to be caught, with the occasional smack of a thrown pokeball, or a jump, or sometimes even running away after an attempt or two at catching them. In the games, you were in the wild. They attacked to survive a potential threat, and you had a pokemon to protect you. All of this is out the window now.

Throw onto that the fact that they erase any existence of pokemon centers so that they can charge you for reviving and healing services if you aren't mining pokestops.

Then there's the gym system that bears zero resemblance to how gyms are handled in Pokemon in any way. They are simply used to be controlled by factions so people within those factions can rake in a pitifully low amount of money, and you earn no badges for beating any of them; instead you earn tiered medals for milestones like hatching ten pokemon, or catching 10 electric pokemon, and so on. They don't feel nearly as rewarding or worth doing at all.

And yet...

I could not stop playing Pokemon Go for the last week. My roommate and I drove from Seattle down to Tacoma and over to Bremerton, then took the ferry back, solely for the purpose of finding and catching pokemon. Instead of sitting at home like we usually do on the weekends, we were out exploring areas we had never been before, and finding numerous people driving around playing Pokemon Go alongside us. Complete strangers would happily approach us and skip the pleasantries to talk pokemon and what they found where, and where people are camping to mine pokestops. We soon found ourselves in the middle of a little celebration in Bremerton, with live music and people enjoying themselves as we and other strangers found ourselves wandering through it all to find this Kabuto we saw on our radar. We cheered when we each found and caught a Lapras mere minutes before our ferry took off, and we laughed as my roommate somehow found and caught a Magmar in the middle of the waters of Puget Sound on our way back to Seattle. And earlier today, we made a gym ours, and what we found was simple, but it was an amazing feeling.

We walked the path through this area, never knowing that this place existed until today, and it was an awesome little moment. Pokemon got us to explore and find something wonderful that we never would have had we stayed inside.

This is what Pokemon has always wanted, but could never fully achieve. One of the intended purposes (from the dev's perspective, anyway) of two versions for each generation was to give each version exclusive pokemon so that kids would get out and socialize with each other. The only way to get all pokemon was to either cough up more money or trade with another player. One generation gave us a PokeWalker to encourage us to walk to level a pokemon when we weren't playing. And if that isn't enough, the recent live-action trailers for Pokemon really push it.

The whole point of Pokemon, in fiction and out, was to get out there, explore, socialize and share in life with the people around you, united simply through Pokemon. And after roughly two decades, they finally realized it through a pretty flawed phone game, and that dream coming to fruition is worth more to all us Pokemon fans than them making a perfect realization of Pokemon that might've scared off the more casual fans.

Because let's be honest. If you want to give your starter value, you can hold onto them and search for an area where that starter spawns, then camp and catch until you level them as high as you wish. Yes, it'll take some traveling and time, but it can be done. The biomes are dispersed in such a way that you don't have to go to a very specific region to get a starter, or really most pokemon out there. Collecting and hatching eggs are great for getting starters too. And prioritizing your starter can make the evolution system easier to swallow. Yes, pokemon three footprints away tend to not be found, but many others can be tracked down, and enough cross your path to make it okay. And yes, while the microtransaction stuff sucks, you can mine even a single pokestop long enough to get everything you need, since it refreshes in five minute increments, and people who have the ability and are willing to give money to Niantic are in effect helping ensure the future support and development of the game. The faction stuff is just carried over from Ingress and doesn't really apply well to Pokemon, but people are playing it, so it seems to work for most people.

But two important issues, being encountering wild pokemon and battling pokemon, were changed for one reason: to appeal to those who otherwise wouldn't play it. A lot of people who grew up playing that first generation of Pokemon stopped; they never really cared much about strategy, never memorized type advantage charts, never put a whole lot of thought into move sets. They just played because they loved Pokemon. There's a lot of work and grinding that goes into Pokemon, and while a lot of fun and enjoyment comes from that for many of us, it turns others off, and the only reason (I believe) Pokemon Go became as big as it has become so quickly is because they reduced what barriers they could while still bearing some semblance to the Pokemon world, and it's a balance that, at the end of the day, does work.

I will take this moment to say this, though: If the people at Niantic were reading this right now, I would make two requests for the game as it continues to grow and develop.

1. Give players the ability to take pictures with pokemon they already own. To have pictures of places we visit with our pokemon would be huge in growing a relationship with the player and the pokemon they've already caught. People are taking AR pictures with wild pokemon, but I couldn't take pictures of our little road trip with my boy Squirtle, and that bums me out a bit. I want to travel with my pokemon, and I don't want them to spend our adventures together sitting in my pocket, but in the photos I take like the ones of our gym area above. Contrary to the name Pocket Monsters, they're meant to be companions in our journeys, and this would help achieve that.

2. Gym badges. Defeating gyms is core to the Pokemon experience as a way of showing off what we've conquered and achieved, and the current system does no such thing. If I take down a gym, even if I don't take it over, I as a trainer should get a badge of that gym as a way of saying that I beat that gym. If the gym is "The White House", and I beat it, I'd like to be able to open up a tab that looks like the little badge case, showcasing "'The White House' Badge", along with potentially dozens or hundreds of gyms I've beaten, with the location's picture, and maybe the gym level, faction, and then-gym leader when you click on that badge. If the gym was beaten with other players, those other players should be listed in the details area as well, and maybe some way of indicating whether that gym has since been taken to a higher level than when you last beat it, just to add a reason to go back to gyms you've beaten. Some people may not be into the faction stuff (like me), and this would be a good way to keep people playing for a while. The medals aren't going to cut it. Badges mean something.

Well that's it guys. I hope you all enjoyed reading and tolerated the time it took me to finish this. I don't think I'll have much of a future as a writer for any websites anytime soon. Anyway, it's 4am here, I'm gonna sleep and get ready to catch more pokemon tomorrow. Good luck to all you trainers out there. :D

Well that's my goal anyway. After watching all the E3 press conferences and still feeling underwhelmed, I went onto Facebook, and I found that my roommate had played his game of MLB 15: The Show for the day. You see, he has started a challenge where he plays the Boston Red Sox in franchise mode alongside the actual season happening now, until the end of their season. He has, despite running into various obstacles, stayed current up to this point (though it's not much of a challenge anymore since he's unemployed; I don't rag on him too much for that, the lazy freeloader.) But it gave me the idea: to do the exact same! But not with sim baseball, ew. So I went back and found the last baseball game that I loved: Backyard Baseball 2003. It was a little after this title that things started getting weird for the Backyard Sports franchise, but this was still pure, and I loved it. There aren't 162 games or anything like that, and I'm starting way late, sooooooo I'm just going to go at my own pace, on the weekends when I'm not too busy. The season will be set on medium difficulty, and for nine innings rather than the usual six (I would later regret this decision.)

THE DRAFT

I set my home as Playground Commons and quickly went into the player selection screen. I had the first nine picks of the draft, which made me question the league's draft system, but I instead bit my tongue and enjoyed my time picking through the multitude of players offered to me. Since there was a create-a-player option, I immediately made myself and made me player-coach, which means all the other players will loathe me by season's end. After that, I made my first mistake, which was picking out of nostalgic habit. It was only when I had finished that I had missed out on true greats like the Keisha Philips, the Kawaguchi siblings, Tony Delvecchio, the Webber sisters, and plenty others. But it's a loaded draft year, I can't be expected to find the best of the best here and leave without having any regrets. I shook off that regret as I looked at my completed team and began figuring out our game plan for the rest of our glorious season together.

THE ROSTER

From left to right of the team photo:

Everything here is sorta in flux as I get a feel for everyone, so it may change as the season goes on.

Now! With everything else set up, let's get to some baseball!

Will update when I can, check replies for updates :D

Now, that title's a little bit of an exaggeration, but it fit the space, whereas my original title didn't.

I'm writing here on this blog because I'm trying to sort some thoughts out. I'm putting it up on the forums just so that at least one person can read it. I'm not looking for discussion, or anything like that, so please, continue lurking, or talk among yourselves, or whatever you'd like to do. I would just like to provide food for thought. For you, to look at my situation and my view on things, and how they apply to you. At one point earlier this year, I had a thousand people a day for about a week reading an article I wrote, but those days are no more. It was a nice feeling though, knowing that that many people read something I wrote, but I'm completely content with just you reading this. Anyway, onto the explanation of the overly-dramatic title.

After E3 2012, I felt this intense feeling of burnout. After Nintendo's press conference, I didn't want to play any game released this year. I was done. I looked at the games coming out in the future, including titles I loved like Halo 4, Tomb Raider, and Assassin's Creed III, and I decided that I just didn't care anymore. Since then, I haven't had the need to play any game made for my current gen consoles. However, I made a trip down to DC to the Art in Video Games exhibit, which was awesome. The line for the Flower demo made me feel all warm and toasty inside. I bought the Ultimate History of Video Games book while I was there, and have been reading it quite a bit since then. The history of this medium is just fascinating. It was so fascinating to me, I began playing a lot of older games. But as I have played, I've noticed a little something happening to me. Unless it's some sort of elaborate ruse that the end of the console cycle is pulling on me (likely), I'm gonna be pretty much done with most video games by the end of this year.

It's going hand in hand with this bigger life issue I've been having, which I won't get into details about here, but the big thing is that I'm traveling light now. I'll be going wherever I want to go, living wherever I want to live, from a backpack and a bag or two. The idea came after I had thrown away a bunch of useless crap that I kept around because, you know, someone gave it to me as a birthday present but I never used it. I just ignored the emotions tied to it, threw it away, and now I don't remember it anymore, and my room is roomy again. It was such a great feeling to have less material things owned, so great that I've created a plan to reduce it all down to the point where I don't need much more than the essentials. Even if I get a big room, I won't need much at all. This means no more TV, which means no more console gaming.

Now, again referring to the overly-dramatic title, this does not mean I'm done with gaming. I can, with the money from sold consoles and games, buy a 3DS(XL?) to throw in my backpack. I don't play a lot of portable games, but if Nintendo continues to do what they're doing, they'll have all the games I'll ever need to play: 2D and 3D Mario and Zelda, and Pokemon. That's what my gaming world will be reduced to. And you know what? I'm fine with that.

The target date for the completion of this transition will be December 2012-January 2013(Mayan-willing). So what will I do until then? Well, I'm going to be playing a lot of Zelda. One could say, every Zelda. Yes, I plan to at least attempt to play the CD-i ones. I do not intend to finish certain ones, like Zelda II and the CD-i games. But with most of them I will do my best. It's not like I'll have any of these fall blockbusters taking up my time, right? The reason I'm doing this is that I've always identified with Link. Probably because of the white, blonde, male, left-handedness characteristics we share. But beyond that, LoZ is a cherished franchise that one might say is the holiest of holies for video games. That status is debatable, but it always had that air about it. Each main installment is incredibly important and properly spaced between quite a few years, rather than Mario coming out every year, the whore. (They're all great games, but I wanted to make a joke, okay?) But I had never finished one of those games, though I think I got pretty far in Link's Awakening as a kid, which may have had this effect on me that I feel now whenever I talk highly of Zelda. Anyway, I had to fix that. So I'm playing through them all. I'm going to be part of a Child's Play 24 hour marathon later this year, which I'm scheduling to be my final run on Skyward Sword, completing my all-Zelda run, and if I beat it before the 24 hours finishes, my sleepless ass will go back to the CD-i Zeldas, for extra hilarity.

EXCUUUUUUSE MEEEEE, PRINCESS.

Also, guys, have you played the original Legend of Zelda? I'm nowhere near finishing it, but...AMAZING. Maybe it's more amazing when you're reading that history book I mentioned earlier at the same time. To think Nintendo created design choices (that we now take for granted in nearly every video game) back in 1987? It blows my mind.

After that, my gaming will happen on the 3DS with few games. The rest will be sold. My life will be moving on to other things, and video games will merely be a short spurt of entertainment now and then. That's kinda what they were supposed to be in the first place. Will I separate from the Bombcast? I dunno. They've really grown on me. I don't know if I'll be able to go through life without a weekly update on Vinny's Ham Radio stuff and Ryan's preference of mask to wear for bird watching, and I often play all their 2-hour videos over and over as background noise when I'm doing something else. I'll probably also keep up with Nintendo Voice Chat, but I'm pretty much done with the rest there is out there. On the blog I'm currently continuing to start up, I will be leaving reviews to a good friend of mine, while I'll be providing...well, I don't know yet. My initial idea is gaming culture humor. Don't know yet, gotta try some different things.

So yeah, I'm glad I typed all this out. Man, you guys should've seen the whole paragraphs I wrote and then erased as I went through all my thoughts. My stories about how I talked with Hector Sanchez about why there was no 360 exclusive character for MK9, how I got invited to E3, but couldn't go. Vodka, shaky interviews with Kim Swift, angry mothers, sleepless nights, CARS, Casey Hudson working for Epic Games, writing articles during work hours, meeting Greg Kasavin... and a lot of that was just this past year! (And would probably be better left unexplained :). ) A lot of me is tied to video games. But you know? I'm feeling totally okay with letting a lot of that go. I don't think of myself as throwing in the towel. I've just had my fill of what hardcore gaming has to offer. Maybe I'll come back in a few years, who knows? Anyway, I hope my ranting to myself at four in the morning entertained you for these last couple of minutes.

...I can't think of a good line to end this on. I'm a writer, dammit, I should have this down...

"Live long and you shall not pass." - Obi-Wan Kenobi

I dunno...

EDIT: Had to fix the GRAAAAVE error I made up there, where I said that LoZ was released in 83. It was released in 87. Thank you all for the replies and support! When I finish this annoying stretch of small naps and can begin feeling really awake, I shall reply. =)

Hello, everyone! My name is Ash, and I just recently started a blog called ParagonGamer.com. It's a very modest site at the moment, since I just started it, don't have a lot of time, and am trying out some different ideas, but the main idea behind it is that I want to provide a blog that gamers who care about the big issues could go to to find an opinion or two on different issues in the gaming industry.

I'm posting here because I've been following Giant Bomb since late 2008, and you guys are the exact audience that I want to speak to and converse with, and I would like some ideas, suggestions, constructive criticism, or whatever else you'd like to say about the site. The current setup I have is that I post each weekday about something that's on my mind about the industry, usually a big issue, but sometimes something more lighthearted, like a personal love note to Mirror's Edge or something. On my home page, I have a featured article from somewhere else, which stays there during the whole week. I keep track of my past posts, but otherwise, I've got nothing else on the site than showing off other articles and videos during the weekends. I want to do a podcast, but I have no ideas for it, regarding content or format. I'm also working on a video series, which is what will be taking a lot of my time during the weekends, but that won't begin for a week or two at least.

So, please, check out the site, and tell me what you think! Nothing would make me happier than to hear from caring gamers how best I could try to attack big issues in games and discuss solutions to those problems with you guys. Thanks for reading!

Welp, just finishing this quest set. Again. If I could get my old profile back, I could. I just wish I could keep this username. Oh well.