Glen-i

Pokémon Pinball was released in 1999 for the Game Boy Colour. A pinball game with a Pokémon twist. It was developed by Jupiter and HAL Laboratory. One of the selling points was that the cartridge had a special rumble compatibility. While the object of the game was to rack up a high score like a traditional pinball game, there was also a secondary objective to capture all 151 Pokémon. They could be found across two different tables, Red and Blue. You had to play both of them in order to find all 151 Pokémon. Thankfully, any Pokémon you got was saved to a Pokédex, so you didn't have to do it all in one go. Successfully capturing and evolving lots of Pokémon gave you access to special bonus games for lots of beautiful points! There's also plenty of traditional pinball aspects such as multipliers and extra balls to help the player get that elusive high score. You could also use a Game Boy Printer to print out your high scores. The game sold 5.31 million copies worldwide, making it the 3rd most successful Pokemon spin-off. So, like most successful spin-offs, it was only a matter of time before it got a sequel. CHEEKY EDIT: @Dcubed has just informed me that the soundtrack actually has some songs based off of music from the Japanese anime. Neat! Pokémon Pinball: Ruby & Sapphire was released for the Game Boy Advance in 2003. Made once again by Jupiter, (Not HAL though) this game featured 205 Pokemon to capture (Every Pokemon available in Ruby/Sapphire, the three Gen 2 Starters and their respective evolutions and Aerodactyl for some reason) across another 2 boards titled Ruby and Sapphire, more realistic ball physics and general visual improvements. It plays very similarly to Pokémon Pinball though. I mean, why fix what isn't broken? So there isn't much to talk about here that I haven't already covered. While this game didn't have a native rumble feature, playing it on the Gamecube's Game Boy Player allowed you to use the Gamecube controller's rumble feature instead. Out of all the spin-off sequels I will cover, this is the one that saw the sharpest decline in sales compared to it's original. It didn't do too bad, mind. But at 1.37 million sold, that's just over 20% of the original's sales and while there's no way to confirm it, this game probably killed off the Pokémon Pinball series. And it's a shame too, I think both of these games are great pick up and play titles. Given the choice, I prefer the sequel. I completed both of these games and the Pokemon mechanics are a great fit for the pinball game genre, it's just really obvious in hindsight. But could it come back? I'm gonna go with "It's possible, but probably won't happen" I say this because there's been a kind of resurgence with pinball games recently, especially if you look at the cheaper digital only titles. Maybe The Pokémon Company could get one of those companies to make a new pinball game. That'd be a great idea. Anyway, I'll leave you with a crazy fact. @Dcubed has managed to max out the score of Pokémon Pinball: R&S. I'm not too sure, but he might have that particular game still going on his cartridge, never to end.

Please let 4 use gyro controls, please let 4 use gyro controls, please let 4 use gyro controls!

Go to Low rank J.Frontier. Area 5. Look in the supply boxes on the floor. You might have to repeat it a few times. Don't forget to bring what you need to combine with it. Thankfully, you only need to do the combinations you could do in the 3DS version to get the award. EDIT: Oh, BTW @Mokong. If you do decide to go online, give me a shout. Gotta get in some N-E hunting while I have the free time.

Mystery American Dennis' scores are discounted and the GP's will be treated as 6-player races. Bonus points are depicted in green. No-one is this week's Player who made no Bloody Difference. I've managed to overtake @RedShell in the amount of GP's won, but he still has the higher average. That's Mario Kart! Next League Night: 1st November 8pm Room 1: @BowserBasher is host @BowserBasher @viceview51 @martinist @RedShell @Gourmetsalt The Character Choice is restricted to whoever is playable in Super Mario Party. @BowserBasher, am I right in remembering that the host has free reign over who is on what team on Team Games? If you can't remember, I can help you do a test run tonight or tomorrow if you want. If you do have free choice, I'll let you know before the night starts how to divvy up the teams.

Highlights from me.

Before I post this week's results, here's the results of last week. I'll put it in a spoiler to avoid any confusion.

Oh, don't worry. The majority of them are utter crap posted by someone just looking for attention. This one I mentioned earlier just hasn't been debunked yet, which is not what normally happens. So it still could be legit. Anyway, back to stuff that is definitely in Smash.

That's from Pokémon Stadium 1.

OK, gonna open a room, but I'm eating a meal at the mo, so won't be playing quite yet. So you two do some stuff while that's happening.

Anyone up for some hunts at around 9? Maybe 9:15?

Ok, so who was Dennis?

Mentioned them in the first game, then said that Stadium 2 had the same kind of features. It was implied.

Just the third.

Crap, crap CRAP! Abort the random Task. Go with Co-op Grand Prix! Is that @Vileplume2000?

No, screw you! Random is always the correct choice. Everyone secretly wants to do the stage no-one picked. Room is open now.

If we only have 6 people tonight and I turn on CPU's, I've got a random task specifically for that. If someone else shows up though, we'll go with the usual Co-op Grand Prix thing. Player's Choice, yeah. Just don't choose a track that has already been raced on. You can choose Rainbow Road, sure. But if it gets picked choose something else afterwards.

Pokémon Stadium was a Japanese only game released on the N64 in 1998. Made by HAL Laboratory, it's a Battle simulator game that allowed people to battle some Pokemon in 3D for the first time. Yes, Japan only. This is a weird one. Using the N64 Transfer Pak, players could transfer their Pokemon Team from Pokemon Red and Blue and battle them in 3D with either another person or a CPU controlled trainer. There was also a Tournament mode which pitted your team against a series of trainers. There was also a feature that let you play your Game Boy game on the TV. The key question here is "Why does this count as a different game?" Well, compared to the one you know, this version was severely lacking. Only 42 Pokemon were actually able to be used here. Most of them were Pokemon that were used in real-life tournaments plus a handful of others for balance. The trainers you could fight in the Tournament were based off of some of the teams used in those real-life tournaments. This had the unfortunate side effect of making the game really hard! Which is a common criticism of this. Now for the one some of you expected... Pokémon Stadium (Pokemon Stadium 2 in Japan) was released on the N64 a year later and came bundled with a Transfer Pak. Using the original game as a base, this game allowed all 151 Pokemon from the first games to be used, lowered the difficulty of the Tournament mode (Although a harder difficulty could be unlocked), new rulesets, a mode that pitted you against teams based around the 8 Gym Leaders from the GB Game and a selection of surprisingly fun Minigames. A weird feature is that you could have 4 player battles. Although these were still in the Single Battle format, each person controlled 3 Pokemon. I want to talk about the development of these two games. It's an interesting story. The late Sotoru Iwata flexed his developer's genius and transferred the battle logic used in the Game Boy games to Stadium. The impressive thing about this was that there were no reference documents to go on, so he analysed the Game Boy Source Code and still nailed it. He even fixed a few glitches there while he was at it, all in about a week. Amazing stuff. Without your own copy of the Game Boy game, this game lacked much of a selling point. While the game provides Rental Pokemon for you to use, most of them ranged from bad to flat-out terrible, making progressing a torturous affair. Despite that, the game sold 5.46 million copies, making it the 2nd most successful spin-off to date. There really isn't much else to say about this... Well, apart from how dreadful that Blastoise render on the boxart is. Jeez! Pokemon Stadium 2 is the sequel to Pokemon Stadium 2... Wait... (It's known as Pokemon Stadium Gold/Silver in Japan) It's pretty similar to the first game, but is compatible with the second generation of Pokemon games (Gold/Silver/Crystal) This means there's 251 Pokemon to use. Apart from that, it's pretty similar to the first outing with the same kind of modes. There was a new Pokemon Academy that taught the player some advanced techniques and the ability to see your bedroom from the Gen 2 games in 3D. This combined with general sequelitis would probably explain why it sold only 2.54 million. Still pretty impressive for a spin-off. I guess I should mention Pokemon Colosseum. But while it does have a similar stadium mode to these games, I still feel like that's a whole different kind of game, so I'm gonna leave that for a future entry. Instead, I'll move on to... Pokémon Battle Revolution was a Wii title made by Genius Sonority in 2006. This game communicated with the DS games Pokemon Pearl and Diamond to allow more 3D battling. And that's about all it did. Compared to the games that came before it, it was woefully feature-lite. No minigames or extras like that. The single player consisted of beating a number of colloseums, each with different gimmicks to them. It also allowed people to battle each other online. The sales for this game were surprising, 1.95 million. Lower than Stadium 2, but still decent. I think the Wii's huge success might have helped with this title. Because it's pretty underwhelming. And that does it for the Pokémon Stadium series. Apart from the weird first entry, there really isn't much to say about this series, so sorry that this entry doesn't say much. I think the average Pokemon fan isn't really lamenting the loss of this series, not these days. The actual Pokemon games are in 3D now, so there isn't much of a selling point with the "See your Pokémon in 3D" aspect. So it probably won't be coming back, and I'm fine with that. Did you play any of these battle simulators? What did you think? I remember spending hours trying to take my hard trained Pokemon through both of the original games. I guess those games are what got me into competitive battling in a weird way. If you have the Game Boy games, they're great! And those minigames were solid! I never played Battle Revolution though. Seeing Pokemon in 3D was kinda played out at that point, so I never bothered.

My word, you guys are just dropping like flies! It's a good thing @Ugh first aid and I are available tonight! Next League Night: Tonight 8pm Room 1: @Glen-i is host @Glen-i @viceview51 @RedShell @Gourmetsalt (Tentative) @Ugh first aid

Yes, every Smash game to date has kept some secret. They tend to be the unlockable ones. (Except Snake and Sonic in Brawl, but that's understandable) But seeing as every character is unlockable apart from the original 8 in this game, they're just throwing everyone out there. EDIT: OK, whoever works for the Wendy's PR Twitter account is awesome.

I'll quote myself from the Let's GO thread, because it applies here too.

I'll try to put this in as little of a spoilerific title as possible.

Oh and BTW. Heads up. HUGE MASSIVE WARNING! There are reports of a leak. Yeah, yeah. I know. What else is new? But this one actually could be legit. Because if it turns out to be fake, it's probably one of the best fake leaks in Smash history. I'm not gonna tell you directly what it reveals (It is playable character based). And I'd appreciate it if everyone else did the same. If people want to know, they can find out themselves. Apparently, someone has a photo of the final banner art for Smash. You know, that awesome artwork that shows all the characters? But this has something that's not in the current artwork you can see on the Smash Website. So you've been warned. Careful with your browsing.

I believe you need to get to 8 star Village quests to unlock the place where you get Transmog. (And Provision Divisions)

Is that really the cover art? It looks like it was made with ClipArt! What the hell is that thing supposed to be? Can you play as the blue watery goblin in the game? Oh my daze, someone finally agrees with me on this! It's a really crap cover!

That's cute. Let me know when they get to the equivalent of using 3 3DS' to transfer Pokémon around games to be as efficient as possible as well as using a fourth to train up a team while doing so. EDIT: Oh, and spend literal days resetting to get a legendary Pokémon with just the right stats and nature.