The History of Pokemon - How Did Pokemon Become Popular?

The history of Pokemon began with one single japan man named Satoshi Tajiri. It was his hobby. Over time he decided to put his idea of catching creatures into practice, to give children the same thrills he had as a child of catching insects and tadpoles. Tajiri and friends worked a lot of hours on designs and Tajiri even went with unpaid hours to make his dreams come true for the game. It nearly drove partners bankrupt, and several employees quit due to financial conditions. The first Pokemon games, Pokemon red and green, came to Japan on February 27, 1996, which fulfilled Tajiri's dreams. Because of the success rate in Japan with the Pokemon games, they released it overseas.

The anime, as well as Pokemon Yellow, marked Pikachu as the most popular and recognized creature in Pokemon history, turning it into the franchise's mascot. This led to a small spin-off game called Hey You, Pikachu!, which was released in Japan on December 12, 1998, and in North America on November 6, 2000. This was a virtual-pet game, utilizing the Nintendo 64's Voice Recognition Unit to let the players interact verbally with Pikachu. When the anime finished following the games' story with Ash's defeat in the Pokémon League in January 1999, it started a new season in a new region called the Orange Archipelago.

A major overhaul of the main game series occurred when Pokemon arrived on the Game Boy Advance on November 21, 2002 when Ruby and Sapphire Versions were released in Japan. Trainers found themselves in the southern land called Hoenn where 135 new Pokemon were waiting to be discovered. The games reached North America on March 18, 2003 and had many new features, the most prominent being Pokemon Contests, Double Battles, Pokemon Abilities and Natures for each Pokemon. Also introduced in these versions were more types of weather and two new villain teams, Team Magma and Team Aqua..

The anime began a new series, Advanced Generation series, which started in Japan on the same day as the release of the games and reached North America almost a year later. A great deal was changed in this series, including the introduction of a new main character, May, based on her game counterpart.

There are several generations of Pokemon, and there is still future generations to come. When the world changes, so does the world of Pokemon. 2016 marks the 20th anniversary of Pokemon, and will be celebrated by the re-release of the original Generation I core series games on the Nintendo 3DS's. There are currently six generations of Pokemon, and over this time period, there are many games, including spin offs, along with anime, movies, manga, a Trading Card Game, music, and a musical.

Need For Speed - Undercover Review

Any game from the NFS franchise is always awaited with bated breath and Undercover was no exception. A good amount of hype followed the game and game analysts went to town discussing about its competition with the other two racing titles it had to compete with - Midnight Club: Los Angeles and Burnout Paradise. So how does Need for Speed Undercover fare? Read on for our comments.

There are several things that are truly amazing about Need for Speed Undercover. You really get a great big kick out of riding your mechanized four wheeled horses around town. The feeling cannot be described in words, but you get the feel of being the king (or queen) or all you survey! Added to that, the music is so slick that it really makes you feel you are flying, not driving. There is great music when you are stepping on the gas or when you are starting out with your drive and when you slow down, the music slows down too, making you feel relaxed about the exhilarating drive you just had. If there is something that will take Need for Speed Undercover to cult status as most of the franchise's earlier titles have been, then it is this blend of speed with music.

Another interesting thing about this title is the presence of live action sequences interspersed throughout the game. This usually shows people talking streetspeak which truly adds to the mood of the game and allows you to go all revved up in your vehicle.

Need for Speed has done a good job of bringing its car customizable feature back into business (it wasn't present in ProStreet last year). This again gives you the joy of tweaking your car the way you want to drive it and really feel like the owner of it.

About the game itself, it is a bit different from the previous Need for Speed titles, in that sense it has an open world concept. Racing is not all what you will be doing - you will be escaping the cops, chasing people, delivering 'special' packages and even stealing cars. As you go by, you will get promotions in the Undercover world, which will upgrade both your caliber as a driver as well as your car. You are able to upgrade all your cars several times over and when you have enough dough, you are able to buy a meaner, leaner machine. This concept of evolution has existed in Need for Speed right since its earliest days and it is heartening to see that they haven't done away with it in this one.

There are some flaws though. The car detailing could have been more accurate. A very avid car enthusiast might find something amiss here. The game has a bad frame rate too which makes it not a choice for slower computer systems. Some people who have played the game have also commented about the feel of lifelessness they get in the city as they are driving along; the city seems unreal at times.

But the awesome playability of the game and its amazing music more than make up for it. After all, Need for Speed Undercover delivers what the franchise always does - extreme high-adrenaline nerve-pumping car racing. There's no taking away from that.

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Gundam Vs Gundam - PSP Review

Past Gundam related games like Gundam Seed: Rengou vs. Z.A.F.T. Portable, Gundam Battle Royale and Gundam Battle Tactics were all great games, specially the Gundam Seed: Rengou vs. Z.A.F.T. Portable with the latest mobile suits from the Gundam Seed series. Gundam vs Gundam, the newest Gundam game released for the PlayStation Portable in Japan (no date for North American release yet). Is this one worth buying at all? Read on.....

For those that haven't played the games or even heard of Gundams before, they are basically transformers but only look 100x better. The games mentioned above basically put you in one of the mobile suits, not necessary Gundams because there are different robots in the series. You will be controlling and fighting against one of the other sides, usually two sides each with different mobile suits and mobile armor (these are not necessary robots but can be fighter planes etc). Its really a third person shooter, just replace human/monsters with robots.

If I remember correctly, this game was originally from the arcade and it was ported over to the PlayStation 2, then to the PSP. Gundam Seed: Rengou vs. Z.A.F.T. Portable was a great game that offered hours of play time and great replay value because you can upgrade many of your mobile suits' stats such as how fast the weapon can fire, more ammo, more fire power as well as more health, jump higher and more booster power etc. This is pretty much level grinding though, which I think was necessary in order to pass some of the harder levels.

Game play
Gundam vs Gundam is really just the arcade version ported over to the PSP. At first I thought there was a story mode just like Gundam Seed: Rengou vs. Z.A.F.T. Portable. I should have figured that out from the name of the game, stupid me. The controls are basically the same or really similar to the other games though - jump, boost, shoot, melee, shoot 2, special shot, special melee and special. The three specials are hard to execute because you have to hold triangle, plus either the shoot or melee. The special move is slightly easier and its executed by pressing triangle, square and cross (might as well press your right thumb onto all four buttons)

I have yet to even execute any of them. How did I even figure out how to execute these hard to do moves? They are actually mentioned in one of the game options. I will update once I figure out how to execute them. I have never had such frustration over special moves from previous Gundam games.

[Update: I have mentioned to execute the special attacks (only when your special gauge is full) by pressing.....most of the buttons]

Aside from the standards, now you can assign orders to your computer teammate, commands like attack, dodge and surprise attack. You can also call in support where an additional mobile suit for a second and throw in a few more shots at your current target, as usual, the calls for support can be recharged with time just like recharging your gun's ammo. I find the support useful because, if I remember correctly it was able to take the hits for me as well as acting as a decoy for a short time.

Enough with the controls, the game has three game modes - "normal" mode (I call it the normal mode, was going to say story mode but its not a story) where you fight through 8 stages with the last stage as boss stage, quick play and multiplayer that supports 2 on 2 battles. I think the 2 on 2 is the selling point here, just like the arcade version, the fun is from shooting and slashing other human piloted mobile suits. Once you have selected a mobile suit from the list with 20+ of them and more can be unlocked by completing the "normal" mode. They range from the oldest 0079 series all the way to the newest ones from the Gundam 00 series. The objective of any of these game mode is the same, you and your enemies both have a life bar, you will lose if your side's life bar reaches 0. When you and/or your teammate dies (same goes for enemies), the amount of life your team loses is based on the mobile suit you picked. The stronger the mobile suit, the higher points its worth, which means when it blows up, your team loses a bigger amount of life. So that means its not always better to pick the strongest from the list. I picked my favorite Freedom Gundam and its worth 3000GP, I lost one of the games once by dying only twice!

In "normal" mode, you will fight in random locations and you will have a random computer mobile suit to fight along side with you. There are a total of 8 stages with the last one being the boss stage. The boss is huge, relative to your mobile suit and it took me 2 tries to beat it, I was one hit away from losing the game for the second time! I guess I just need to practice more with the controls, a training mode would be a perfect game mode for this game.

Quick play is no brainer, you pick your mobile suit and pick up to 3 other computer to fight with or against you. You can modify options like how long the match lasts for, how fast your special gauge fills up or different stages/music.

Unfortunately I haven't had a chance to try out the multiplayer.

So as you can see, there isn't any level grinding here. Although you can still unlock more mobile suits, intro movies, endings and images for the multimedia galleries.

Graphics and audio
Graphics are again, PSP quality, the mobile suits are nicely detailed, environments are plain but the game is so fast paced you won't have time to appreciate or pay attention to, not that there is anything to appreciate here. Music is actually real sound tracks from the Gundam series, so based on which Gundam series' stage you are fighting in, you will be listening to that series' soundtrack. The soundtracks bring back a lot of memories by the way.

Final verdict
Overall I think this game is OK. I still prefer Gundam Seed: Rengou vs. Z.A.F.T. Portable because it has a story mode and level grinding although you can still unlock more mobile suits, maybe its just me. For those that are looking for fast paced arcade style game play, Gundam vs Gundam should suit your needs. Skills really matter in this game since there's no level grinding where you can easily overpower your enemies by powering up your mobile suits and weapons. If you have lots of Gundam loving friends with PSP, I suggest convincing them to get a copy so up to 4 of you and your friends can fight each other anytime without going to the arcade.

7.0/10

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About Nintendo Wii

The home video console Wii which is commonly pronounced as "we" is the production of the Nintendo. The predecessor of Wii is the Nintendo GameClub. The competitors of Nintendo Wii are PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

The unique features of the Nintendo Wii constitute a wireless controller, and the 3 dimensional movement detector remote known as the Wii remote.

The idea of the Wii console was developed in 2001. Till April 2006, The Wii console was famous by the code name "revolution". The spellings of the "Wii" i.e. having two "i" is intended to convey the meaning of two persons standing side by side. This further implicates two players playing at the same time. The producer of the console gives several reasons for the adopted name of the game. One reason is as follows:

The sound of the "Wii" as "we" gives the implication that the video console is for people of every age and region, it is for everyone. Apart from that "Wii" is such a word which can be remembered easily by all the people of the world despite their language.

The Wii was released in September 2006 in Japan, North America, South America, Asia and Europe. Wii made a record sale in United States in 2007 breaking the records for the sale of Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Wii has the honor of being the second best sold video console game in the United States and Japan after Nintendo DS. In Canada as well Wii left behind the Xbox 360 and became the best selling "next generation" video game ever. With the increasing fame and selling records of Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony faced losses in their productions.

The Wii remote is available in many colors like black, white, silver, lime green, and red. The console comes with a stand and can be placed either vertically or horizontally.

Red Ring of Death (RRoD)

The RRoD or Red Ring of Death as it is commonly known has proven to be an issue for at least one in three xbox 360 owners. It's becoming more and more noticeable these days as games that really start to push the Xbox 360's hardware to it's limits have come out.

The two games that seem to bring on the dreaded Red Ring of Death the most are Halo 3 and Call of Duty 4. It is so common for these games to cause the RRoD that there is even a class action suit being taken out against the manufacturers for supplying hardware that is not appropriate for playing the games they say it should.

The Red Ring of Death according to the manufacturers was an error prevalent in the first release consoles. Customers who bought the later released premium packs with larger hard drives and High Definition connections have not had to put up with the Red Ring of Death as much.

Microsoft has extended the usual one year warranty to three years, and the Red Ring of Death blunder has forced them to set aside $1,000,000,000. Yes that's right, a BILLION dollars just to fix and replace all the faulty xbox 360s out there.

Taking advantage of the extended warranty has it's inconveniences though. You must have proof of purchase, be the original purchaser, have purchased your xbox 360 from a licensed dealer, not voided the warranty already by modifying your xbox or opening it. So hard luck to anybody that heard about the overheating problems who installed additional cooling devices to their xbox. The manufacturer will not fix your Red Ring of Death

Hard luck to anybody that opened up their brand new xbox 360 to personalize it by changing the case, your Red Ring of Death will not be fixed for free. Also hard luck to anybody who purchased an Xbox 360 secondhand or otherwise from eBay or off a friend who overspent his allowance and couldn't afford bus money to get to school. The Red Ring of Death is your problem, not the manufacturers.

Fixing the Red Ring of Death through the manufacturer can take weeks, and that's a lot of precious gaming time down the tube.

The manufacturer has tried to convince everyone that the Red Ring of Death could be caused by any number of reasons, because initially before the extended warranty was issued you as a customer had to fork out $140+ to fix the RRoD.

This has backfired on them and cost them years of revenue.

The truth of the matter though, is that the Red Ring of Death can be fixed in under an hour, and you can do it yourself with just a few household tools that you probably already have.

I wrote this because my Xbox 360 suffered from the Red Ring of Death and I was able to fix it using the information in this E-book It has video tutorials, and the information site has free preview videos so you can see the sort of quality information you get.

Yes it DOES cost money, but the repair guide will save you a lot of hassle. It'll also save you money if you, like me, voided your warranty.

Daniel Scott is an avid gamer who suffered from the Red Ring of Death and started a blog on how to fix it. Click here to find out more.

Repairing Xbox 360 - Basic Steps

The dreaded "red ring of death" is an extremely frustrating experience for anybody who is unfortunate enough to experience it. Today you are going to learn the basic steps to repairing Xbox 360 errors yourself- in doing so you will save time, money, effort and stress, and be able to get gaming again much faster.

Many people believe that the only way they can fix their console is to send it off to an Xbox 360 repair center, such as the large one that Microsoft operates. However, sending your console away means that you will have to wait quite a long period of time to get it back, plan for at least one-month/4 weeks. For this reason alone, you are better off repairing the problem yourself.

The first step to doing so is to determine the cause of the error. In most cases, it is overheating. This is something that affects almost all high-powered electronic devices, as the components will put out large amounts of heat as a waste product. Because there are few fans and heat sinks in the Xbox 360, the temperature rises rapidly, and the console will shut itself off to prevent further damage. You are warned of this by the flashing lights that appear in the power switch, as well as the fact that you will be unable to play any of your games/watch movies/go on Xbox live.

In order to repair your Xbox 360, you will need to purchase a repair guide, which is a collection of videos, photos, and text files that will show you how to find the fault in your console then fix it in the correct manner. The files will come in a downloadable package- most of them retail for around the $30-40 USD mark, which is a fairly reasonable price. Although I would love to show you how to carry out the repairs without a guide, there is very little chance that you could determine the fault and remedy it without the video and image files.

Finally, if you are tempted to try what is known as the "towel wrap trick", don't be! This may work temporarily, but will eventually increase the heat level inside your console, leading to further, irreversible damage. Also, having a bath towel wrapped around your console ruins it's styling just a little bit, don't you think?

Click here to learn more about an easy step-by-step Xbox 360 repair guide that will allow you to repair your Xbox 360 in under two hours in the comfort of your own home. Read honest user testimonials, discover even more features and benefits such as the excellent price, and download a free repair video sample for your Xbox 360..

James Philipson has been involved in the electronics industry for over 10 years and has repaired more than 30 Xbox 360 consoles since the platform's release over two years ago.

Xbox 360 Three Red Light Error

If you're looking for information on how to repair your Xbox 360 yourself, you've come to the right place.

Forum rumors are ripe on the internet that there has been a spike in Xbox 360 returns, both valid and not so much.

This has lead to an increase in the return time for repaired Xbox 360s. I've heard that the turnaround time for Xbox 360 repairs has skyrocketed to as long as eight weeks.Before the manufacturers were offering the extended 3 year warranty they were charging $140 for Xbox 360 Repairs.

They put out a story that to do Xbox 360 Repairs was something difficult, their way of controlling the masses I guess. Their reasoning was something along these lines...

If we convince people that Xbox 360 Repairs are beyond their own DIY ability then they'll all have to pay us to fix their consoles.

The truth of the matter though, is that the Xbox 360 Repairs you need can be done in the comfort of your own home. A couple of class action suits later and they brought out an extended 3 year warranty on all new Xbox 360s.

Unfortunately, the extended warranty doesn't extend to everybody. If you bought your Xbox 360 second hand, they won't fix it for you. They won't fix your xbox 360 if you have opened the xbox up. There are a lot of ways to void your warranty, choose your poison.

If your warranty isn't valid anymore, your best bet is to actually take your Xbox 360 Repairs into your own hands.

The Three-Red-Lights blog has a step by step guide on how to permanently fix your Xbox 360, no matter what the error.

It has high res videos for every step so you can see everything in action. A lot of people have done their own Xbox 360 Repairs and saved themselves a lot of grief.

If you're lazy and want a quick temporary fix, check out my blog post on the towel trick, but I'd really recommend doing it the right way for a permanent fix. The Towel Trick

Daniel Scott owns and maintains one of the most popular resources on the net for learning how to fix the three red light error on the xbox 360. Three Red Lights is a free blog with tips and tricks to keeping the Red Ring of Death at bay.