Glen-i

I suggested adding the "A"

I'm not gonna sit there and watch @Ugh first aid play it if I can as well. I'm not gonna sit there doing nothing and being Mr. No Fun. Make no mistake, I'm not buying it myself. FireRed/LeafGreen is a better game.

@Ugh first aid and I were playing this. All the trainer levels are a lot lower than Pokémon Yellow, a lot of them have less Pokémon as well. They definitely lowered the difficulty of the game. There's no way to turn off having every Pokémon get experience all the time. Co-op helps to redeem the game. Don't get me wrong, it trivialises the game even further. You blatantly cheat your way through the Pokémon League by using 2 Pokémon against 1. But there's something more interesting about just running around with someone else. It was entertaining. Insultingly easy, but we made our own fun. Now she has an Ivysaur following her while I have a newly caught Charmander following me. Soundtrack's nice.

I'll be on in around 15 minutes.

Worst League Night ever is always my highlight of the N-E League year! Truly beautiful!

One of the kids from my community centre. Sorry.

Actually, yes. Put them on. Even with more than 6 players. And on Hard difficulty. I'm feeling horrid tonight.

Yes, you do need to be the host to unlock later ones.

Whatever turns you on, I suppose.

I have no idea what you're talking about...

Gen 5 has no evolutions of old Pokémon at all. All 150+ were completely new at the time.

Duuuuude. Why not help me with my first deviant? I think I'm on Level 13 Hellblade Glavenus (Because I really want the armour, it's got sweet skills) and I'll be wanting to do the EX one because that armour doesn't look nearly funny enough. I'd also be up for Fatalis as well. I need some stuff from the normal version to max out my Wellness armour that I used when we did that Dreadqueen quest last week.

For me it's the challenge and the more serious plotlines. Not that Pokémon Ranger should have a darker story. It plays to a more tongue-in-cheek plot and it does it well. It hams up the silliness and that's fine. But while PMD built on it's gameplay as it went along, Ranger never really went anywhere with it after the first game. Guardian Signs has a really great co-op mode, but it just wasn't enough. I stand by what I said, if they didn't churn these games out every two years, this series could have gone places.

That kinda makes it more tragic. There was potential. The games on their own are solid spin-off's with neat ideas. But my god, they all just blend into one another! It's a massive waste. The WiiU has the original Pokémon Ranger available on Virtual Console if that helps.

Prepare yourself for a lesson in how not to handle a Pokémon spin-off series. Pokémon Ranger released on the DS in 2006. An Action RPG by HAL Laboratory and Creatures. Inc, it marked the first in a series. The player takes the titular role of a Pokémon Ranger, people who use special devices that totally aren't Beyblades to temporarily tame Pokémon and use their abilities to perform general good deeds. The basic gameplay consists of exploring the region of Fiore and getting through various obstacles using the Pokémon that inhabit the local area. Coming into contact with a Pokémon initiates a... Battle, I guess? By using the DS's Touch Screen, you draw circles to guide your spinny top around a Pokémon multiple times while it makes a kinda "woo" noise. Effectively, you annoy the Pokémon into obedience. However, if a Pokémon comes into contact with the trail your children's toy makes, then your loop gets broken and you have to start the circle again. If a Pokémon's attack hits your trail, then that's very bad and the styler's durability decreases. If that reaches 0, then it breaks and I have to guess that those things are really expensive because the music is really sad about the loss of your piece of plastic. Pokémon that you have tamed can be used to bypass obstacles, but once used, they are released. They're not yours, stop complaining! It's a pretty silly game, but it's strangely fun. Not the most spectacular, but it's decent and the sales for it show. 2.93 million sales puts this in a respectable position on the Pokémon Spin-off spectrum. Some people would say that people bought this for the exclusive Manaphy that you could transfer to the Gen 4 game. It's probably partly true. Pokémon Ranger: Shadows of Almia came out a mere 2 years later. This one was only developed by Creatures. Inc. You play as a student of the Pokémon Ranger School who gets mixed up in a dastardly scheme by an evil organisation called Team Dim Sun. I wish I could say more, but this game doesn't really change anything about the previous game. It's more refined, sure, but it offers nothing new to anybody who played the first game. It sold 2.35 million, which is very respectable for a sequel. Thankfully, Gen 5 wouldn't be out for another 2 years, so there was plenty of time to think of a way to freshen the idea up and think of ways to evolve the gameplay. Or they could jump the gun and get another game out before Gen 5 even started... Pokémon Ranger: Guardian Signs came out just under 2 years after the second game in 2010. Once again developed by Creatures. Inc. Unlike the game before it, this has something new, a co-op multiplayer mode for multiple circle drawing action. You could even co-ordinate your drawing to make different shapes for more effective Pokémon irritation. As far as Single Player goes, it's mostly the same, unfortunately. There is a mechanic called "Ranger Signs" that lets you summon legendary Pokémon to help overcome bigger obstacles. This sold 1.53 million copies. And that's it for Pokémon Ranger. No more after that, not even for the 3DS. What happened? Why did this series just cease to exist? Well, I have a hypothesis. And mind you, I have no evidence to back this up, it's just a gut feeling. This series fell into the trap that I like to call "Level-5 Syndrome" Simply put, releasing 3 games in only 2 generations of Pokémon was a mistake. There wasn't enough time to develop the gameplay and so they all feel incredibly similar. If you play one Pokémon Ranger game, then you've played them all. Personally, I blame Shadows of Almia. If that game didn't exist, I think this series might have survived the transition to the 3DS. Guardian Signs should have been the second game. And for that reason, I don't think this has a chance of coming back. Even ignoring the fact that Touch screens aren't a key feature of the Switch, I can imagine that the fanbase is burned out on the series by this point. I do recommend playing one of these games though. They're pretty fun. I suggest Guardian Signs. And that ends Gen 3 spin-offs. Gen 4 isn't as long as this one. They'll probably be done before this week is through.

GP1 GP2 GP3 Everyone who took part raised their average this week. @RedShell and @viceview51 both broke into double digits for number of 3rd places. Next League Night: Tonight 8pm Room 1: @BowserBasher is host @Glen-i @viceview51 @BowserBasher @martinist @RedShell Did you enjoy your Random Task break? Well, I hope so. Because I've got a secret task this week. It's secret because it's dependent on the amount of people who join in tonight. See you then! And bring your crash helmets.

Are you honestly surprised though? Pokémon in particular has been absolutely notorious for games getting out very early recently.

Finally watched the trailer. That Greninja actually grossed me out. And the Pokken Charizard is no longer the weirdest official model anymore. I can't get past how ugly they all look. I don't think I can look past it. It just lacks so much of the charm.

Well, yeah, that's how it is in the games.

That SP version would have been neat if you didn't still lose everything after dying anyway... Oh well, here's the funniest thing on Metroid.

New Record! 5 minutes off my previous time. I almost didn't pull it off though. World 5 really did a number on me this time. That's a really hard world to speed through. That credits music is still my favourite credits music on the SNES. Probably my favourite music from this game.

I'm on World 3 now. 41 minutes of game time. Which sounds like good time, but the levels do get long later on, so who knows? Going through as fast as I can has turned some levels into panicky states of "Which way is the right way!?" Also, Flowers are the devil and must be avoided at all costs. Lest you activate the dreaded Bonus Challenge.

UFA is, she loves Pokémon GO, so she probably sees more of an initiative to it. I might jump in through co-op if she happens to playing when I'm around. But I'm not gonna be tripping over myself to give it a go.