As some of you have gathered from my previous posts and even my journey into Gaming, i prefer to be portable in my gaming life, as i get older as I always seem to be going somewhere i find life easier to have something portable to play with. Each one of my systems has a story to tell and a journey to note and I am finally going to tell our story.
Special note: All handhelds pictured are my very own systems, all are well cared for and still playable today.
Special note: All dates when i got these systems could be off as i get older i tend to forget little details.
The Game Boy Color [1999-2002] : This were I started my handheld journey, one Christmas or birthday (i really cannot remember, what do you want this was over 11 years ago!) I got my Game Boy Color with Pokèmon yellow. I do remember wanting yellow over red or blue because i didn’t want to have to choose a starter and it closely followed the cartoon i had come to enjoy. I quickly grew to enjoy having this system with me, my family who traveled a lot to visit relatives over 3-4 hours away have a Game boy color became a nice way to pass the time. Eventually my brother would get his own GBC a teal one along with Pokèmon blue and we would battle each other along our journey. Coupled with the n64 (our first official Nintendo system in the house.) Pokèmon would go on to solidify its place in my heart, i fell in love for the first time with my long time friend over this system. This system also saw my first heart break, the death of my grandfather and the most impactful moment in both mine and America’s life. As my journey with Pokèmon continued with silver and then eventually crystal this system gave me comfort in those troubled times. I however never journeyed beyond the Pokèmon games with this system, i think it was more of the people i knew at the time did not really play the system so i only played what I knew.
Game Boy Advance [2003 3 months]: As news of a new Pokèmon game started to grow it quickly became apparent i would soon need to upgrade from my Game boy Color to a Game boy advance. I hesitated at first, just freshly off a two hand surgeries for carpel tunnel i had given the systems a break. Instead choosing to play console games with my brother (Namingly Twisted Metal, but that’s another story for another day). I was actually probably one of the few that sort of liked the new bulkier design for the GBA, but i yet had a real need to upgrade to it. My brothers new girlfriend (soon to be sister in law) at the time, surprised me one day with an old floor model GBA from the store she worked at. She had apparently won it and her sibling already had one. This poor little thing was already quite beaten up, it didn’t have a battery backing to it, so i used duck tape to hold the double A’s into the system. That vacation i picked up the spider-man skin for it, along with a spider-man light. ( i am not sure were the light is, i know it is in my room, i am just not sure were in my room). As pokèmon Sapphire launched it became apparent this poor little guy just wouldn’t suit the needs i had, but there was another a better option.
Game Boy Advance SP[2003-2006]. This one in my humble opinion was a huge jump forward for both Nintendo and myself. the first system to offer a rechargeable battery, back lighting and most importantly for me a closeable screen. As i started to travel more with my system bringing it to and from college with me having a gba whose batteries constantly popped out wasn’t a feasible option. At the time the friends I had recently made at an anime club at my college already had a few sp’s among them, so i wanted my new little GBA sp to look different then theirs. I wanted one one with the old Nintendo background on it, (which is weird for me because i have no real history with Nintendo up until my game boy color, I was a Sega girl.) The store didn’t have that one in stock but this tribal one was. To be honest now looking back on it I am glad I got this one. Maybe its because its been with me for over ten years but if i had to do it over again and my original choice was there, I think I might pick the tribal one all over again, there is just something about the design I really like. This one also launched me on a different journey for me. With these new friends they started to recommend other titles to me, and making a trip to GameStop with them was not completely unheard of. I started to play other titles such as Advance Wars, Wario Wear and Golden Sun, I still played my Pokèmon games but i enjoyed the different titles as well. This little one came every where with me, its small size rechargablity and the foldable feature made it perfect for me.
DS LITE (2005-2008) : This little one is actually my second ds lite. I never bought the original ds, I would wait until the ds lite and when i was officially at my four year school before I bought this one. It appealed to me because of its wireless capabilities allowing me to connect and play with the friends I left behind when i moved from a community college onto to a 4 year university. Even though its not pictured here, this would be the first system that i would purchase a grip for. Just before my first gba doctors discovered I had carpal tunnel in my hand, due to my muscles growing in a different directions, i had always had trouble gripping so after two surgeries to “correct” the issues, my hands would remain in pain. Carpal tunnel and gaming are not friends. (just FYI and the Surgery does not work, i am still in pain years later and have bad days were my whole hand just is ache)
Anyways I ramble, as i mentioned earlier this one wasn’t my original lite, my first one another white one (i refused to get a pink one!) I was talking to my roommate one evening when my original one jumped from its perch and to the solid floor below, its little hinge went flying off into another direction why the console went in another. To the damn things credit it, it still played and acted as if nothing was wrong. (Nintendo really builds these things to be beaten up.) After realizing i could not repair it, i traded it in for a new one. this one would remain my system for a good 4 years. It was this system i would truly explore other games with. I quickly became a fan of game series like Puzzle Quest, Professor Layton, and Ace Attorney. I would also pick up ds versions of Final fantasy 4 (which i loved), the newest sets of Pokèmon games including ones that would appear for the first time on the ds. I really enjoyed ranger a lot (although my hands beg to differ on that one) This little system open up so much for me and i think even today it was a ground breaker for me.
DSI: (2009-2013) I actually had no intention on buying the DSI , my lite gave me everything i could have asked for, but one Christmas shortly after I had completed college my brother asked me what i wanted for Christmas. I told him either a psp (to fill my need for portable twisted metal and final fantasy) or dsi (because my intrest was peaked with the new Nintendo handheld), to my surprise he actually got me the DSI. He picked it because I already had a good library in which to use it. At first i didn’t use it sticking with my well known and well loved DS Lite. Eventually however little by little i started to warm up to this new system. I gave it new little wings (the grips you see pictured with it and i started to download a few titles. without even realizing it this quickly became my go to system forcing my beloved lite into retirement. I continue to accumulate more titles including pearl, soul silver. i even downloaded a few titles as well, including a longer version of the paper airplane game which i had come to love from my old Wario wear title for the gba. It is funny it is also because of this system did i even return to the handhelds after the disaster.
Not pictured Original 3ds or
useless piece of crap.
When the 3ds was announced I grew excited, given my enjoyment of the previous ds models i thought i would enjoy this system as well. So over the course of the months leading up to its launch I traded in the PSP that i had bought (brother was right i just enjoyed my DS more) and a few dozen titles towards the purchase of the new 3ds. I put a little money aside every couple of weeks so the day of launch i would have it all paid off, treating the pre-order system at game stop as a layaway system. Paid off it was day of launch…but that 3ds started a 2 and a half year long break from Nintendo. I put a lot of hard earn money and time into getting the system only to on launch day have no titles i was truly into and 6 months later they would drop the price by nearly a 100 dollars. The games they gave me to compensate me was much of a compensation in my opinion because they were titles i had no prior interest in playing. it was a slap in the face for me i had given up a lot to get that system, including my PSP and beloved ds titles which i am still trying to track down again including my digimon game. This system itself was a disappointment as well, its battery didn’t last nearly as long as my dsi’s battery, I was hurt badly by Nintendo and even the newly release pokèmon black could not ease the betrayal i was feeling by Nintendo and i walked away from them for two years.
I filled my time in those two years with games on the android, from Mystery of the Crystal to angry birds, to most recently Simpsons Tapped out. AAA Homer i hope you never stop entertaining me. My android cell phone became a companion to me but it alone could not fill the void.
(2011-present) I also explored the world of MMRPG’s, being too cheap to afford something like World of Warcraft I look for Free to Play options, it was suggested to me to try Lord of the Rings Online even though i had never read the books or seen the movies. i was told i would be fine..and you know what i was. I went into the the journey online looking for new friends and a new world to explore and i got both. I have been playing happily now for almost 3 years now on the riddermark server. At the beginning of this month the kin i helped found celebrated its second year of being together. I do love the people i play with and admittedly i now pay for the game, i still found myself missing something. After three years of exploring middle earth i found myself dreaming of my ds again.
3ds XL (2013-current) On a Whim recently i broke out my old Dsi (the 3sd still very much in time out) growing bored of the often short cell phone games I started to play pokèmon black, a game which i had bought just weeks after buying the 3ds, but by then my heart was already broken. With my sudden resurgence to play my friends encouraged me to upgrade once again, this time however I was reluctant. after all i had burned before, but they persisted promising me the XL had better fixed the errors of the original. They both had a 3ds xl’s and after a while i gave in. Knowing I would never get over the hurt the original one caused i traded it in for a fresh start (and got a great deal for it, GameStop sent me an e-mail promising me more then what they were going to offer, i showed the e-mail and got that promised amount back on it, (Go older and wiser(ish)!) I got my new blue 3ds for half of the amount, with in days i found a new grip for it and i was off an running. They were right this ones battery is much better then the original and it feels different. It feels like a new start of me and nintendo, for the first time with access to the new store i found myself remembering how happy i was with my ds and DSI , i was both surprised and a little pleased to learn the two systems could talk to each other and i could import almost all the games i had bought for the dsi onto the 3ds. I think for the first time i felt like i had come to terms with the pain Nintendo has cause and was now ready to move on with them. Now with a pokèmon at my side (and a new one almost here) middle earth in my lap and homer…well doing what homer does. I feel like my adventure is bright with my handhelds, we might have hit a rough patch but portable is always the system..the home where i belong.
Well that’s my long winded and probably boring story.
next time, my top 10 favorite non-pokèmon titles…thank you for reading
Wobbuffet: Talk about useless, I am still not sure what they were thinking when creating this purely defensive pokèmon. It learns four moves..that is it no more, no less. It is designed to be a punching bag, and other then some admittedly funny moments in the anime it really doesn’t serve much of a purpose. For me however my time with it comes down to a pokèmon stadium moment when you are using rental pokèmon and so is the opposing player, I am forced to send out out a wobbuffet and so does the opposing player leading to a headache inducing moment. since neither one can attack it leads to me having to reset the game. Now i know why it it is always holding its head, because it causes so many headaches
Exeggutor: Ugly…that’s all I will say. What you say that’s not enough…fine. Keep in mind I came into the pokèmon world in my high school years, and I found the whole concept of a walking tree, that evolved from eggs to be a little ridicules. On top of that the widely popular bird pokèmon could easily turn this guy into scrambled eggs. I just could never get past its designed and found it on the verge of useless to me. Strangely enough Sudowoodo doesn’t earn my ire as much has Exeggutor only because I have to tip my hat to them on creativity, I mean it is a tree, that is rock type so players not knowing what is can have to birds with some very sore beaks…but Exeggutor..ug.
Miltank: I know Miltank was created to be a female version of Tauros…so why does it look…so disturbing. On top of that if your going to make a male and female version of something you need to either A: Have a pre-evolution for the two that makes having male and female make sense, or B make a joined final formation. This doesn’t give other and to be honest brings down poor Tauros just a little for being associated with this. On top of that, lets talk briefly about players first encounter with Miltank, and that is Whitney in as far as i can remember (and i can have a bit of a short memory) the only real normal gym. Her Miltank was was a difficult beast, flattening a good many of my Pokèmon, but if it wasn’t for that Miltank and the other two starting gyms my appreciation for Geodude would have never grown…so I guess I ought to thank that cow…
Durant: My hatred for this pokèmon actually doesn’t really have much to with the critter itself, I am actually quite terrified of ants. Yup that’s right I like most bugs, and even spiders don’t bother me, (I actually have a small soft spot for Spinarak and Joltik) But i just cannot do ants in any form. I think it goes back to when i was little and attacked by a swarm of fire ants *Shudders*. So I don’t care how good this pokèmon is or isn’t, you will never see it in my team. It is going into the box as far away from me as humanly possibly. *gets out her Blazikin for protection*
Cofagrigus: There is something very wrong about a pokèmon in the shape of a coffin, I know it made sense to someone out there, but for me having a floating living casket just does not seem right. It is also a pain in the behind to take out. When first encountering it in the Elite four there is a small huh..that’s a bit weird oh well lets just kill it. *twenty minutes pass* how the heck did that just take out half my team? You think by now i would learn not to underestimate elite four pokèmon…sadly its a lesson I have yet to learn.
Mesprit, Uxie and Azelf: God do I hate these three. I have never been a big fan of the roaming pokèmon, I prefer them to just sit still and do into the ball, but i hate it even more when there roaming and useless. Pearl and Diamond had about four different roaming pokèmon in the game Cresselia and these three obnoxious roaming morons. Yes I know gold and silver had started the roaming, but at least they are useful in combat. So were Latios, and Latias but these guys. When I caught the three I subsequently named them Pain, In The, Ass. and threw them into my box to sit and sit.
Ludicolo: I encounted this pokèmon a lot over the years, but it is because of Pokèmon XD does my hatred grow to a burning ember with this guy. Those who read my previous entry, My Top 10 Favorite Pokèmon know that Umbreon grew as one of my favorites during this game, him along with Espeon battled loyally along my side though out the game, however it was this pokèmon that would spoil my fun, along with its disturbing dancing in the game and admittedly powerful move sets this made my two little guys easy pray for this *Lets out string of swear words* pokèmon.
Jynx: I have never really been fond of human shaped pokèmon, Mr. Mime, Magmar, and Electabuzz just never did it for me, but i never hated them, I just didn’t really like them. So what did Jynx do to piss me off so very much. My first pokèmon game that i played was Yellow, so my partner pokèmon was Pikachu, my very first run at the Elite Four I watched my beloved little electric rat repeatably get taken down by this ugly horrible pokèmon, not only that I watched it take out my Zapdos, my Dugtrio even Lapras go down to it. Admittedly I know a little better now to send those types in against an ice type now, but yellow was my first pokèmon game and Jynx was standing between me and my final victory. I have never forgiven this pokèmon for those early defeats, and I probably never will. So say hello to the ice box Jynx because you are not moving any where for a long…long time.
The Regi’s: Just looking at these four makes my blood boil, the amount of time put in to catching these horrible bastards…ok. *takes a second to breathe.* You might be asking yourself, how could you possibly hate these guys, there legendary pokèmon. I have been playing this game for years now so i know pokèmon I like and ones i don’t. I cannot tell you the amount of hours I spent trying to catch these rotten pokèmon, they would have 1 hp be paralyzed have 0 accuracy due to me flashing the crap out of them and they still would not go in to the freaking ball, and all four of them were like this. I would go though countless timer, dusk, and ultra balls trying to get them to go in. I would be sitting there an hour after I should be in bed begging with them to just go into to the pokèball and they still refused. When i learned recently i would have to recatch these horribly stubborn pokèmon again in black 2, I think I started to cry a little bit. I don’t think there is any other pokèmon out there on this list that makes my blood boil with the passion of a thousand red suns then four guys. I can’t tell you the small joy i get in taking these suckers out with one of my Top 10. So Regi’s go into the box and think about what you have done!
Gamerwoman 