If you're going to get mad, maybe try being more involved.

My older son and I went over to my local Gamestop the other day, thinking that we were going to get the code for the new Pokémon character Volcanion.  Usually you either get handed a card with a code on it, and redeem the code in the game in the "Mystery Gift" section on the main screen, or sometimes it works by connecting to the Wifi at certain places and then going in the same part of the game. (McDonalds did that recently when the character Hoopa came out. Oddly, for that one you could just change the SSID of your own router to "McDonalds Free WiFi" and it would still work.) As we discovered later, Volcanion is not available in the US until October 10th.

There were a lot of people there trying to do trade-ins and other things, so we hung back while my son tried to go into the Mystery Gift section to see if it would work that way. After a while, we decided we were just going to wait in line, and we also noticed that they got in some of the new Lego Dimensions level packs and grabbed the Adventure Time level pack. (I would have gotten the Mission Impossible one instead if there was a Simon Pegg minifig.) They also had a Harry Potter Team Pack, the new Ghostbusters 2016 Story Pack, and some other team packs.

So, just as I'm about to be called up to the counter, a grumpy mom holding an Xbox One game, a receipt, and the arm of a not-quite-a-teenager walks in, and interrupts everybody to ask the clerk if there is anyone else working. He says no, but mentions there is someone else that is there, but on break. After a second or two, I recognize the kid as someone who was one of the people doing a trade-in while we hung back in the back of the store.  The mom is mad that her kid had just a few minutes before traded in NBA2K16, which he just got recently, and only got two bucks trade-in value for it. Moreover, he traded it in to get NBA2K17, which apparently nobody mentioned to him was just about to come out when he was buying NBA2K16, which is why he wanted to return NBA2K16. She left in a huff, presumably to get satisfaction in some other way. So, let's go over the problems with this scenario.

1) The kid's copy of NBA2K16 had been opened. For the most part, no retailers will do a return for open new software. Gamestop does do returns for used software because sometimes you end up with a bad disk here and there, or maybe you just don't like it. The kid could have just walked away with his copy of NBA2K16, told his mom that they wouldn't return it (and she could have still rolled in the store grumpy the same way that she did).

2) Knowing that the kid really wanted the new version, the store employee talked him into a trade-in just so the old version wasn't "collecting dust and taking up space". Some people do that, so I don't know how to speak to that. I'm not sure if Gamestop has a policy about minors doing trade-ins.

3) I didn't remember if the kid had had anybody with him when he came in the first time - Grumpy Mom was definitely not there the first time, though. I wouldn't send one of my kids in to try to do a return on anything by themselves just yet, even with a receipt, just because in most cases it's not exactly as simple as ordering something, and often you get asked for ID, or have to sign stuff.

4) As far as not knowing when the new one was going to come out, that's kind of a head-scratcher. From the Gamestop employee's view, they would be ecstatic to be able to sell a new copy of NBA2K16 right before NBA2K17 comes out, so I really can't blame them for not saying anything. If the kid had asked them, they would have told him, though. Moreover, the series has put out a new version every fall for longer than that kid has been alive, and the last 10 versions have all been between mid-September and the first week of October. Despite how easy the Internet has made it to look things like this up, not everybody is going to know, or even think to check.  What I'm really wondering is if when the kid bought NBA2K16, if the Gamestop employee asked if he wanted to preorder NBA2K17. My guess is that if they did, the kid said "no" by reflex and didn't give it another thought.

5) Sports games, especially ones that get released every year, have had historically bad trade-in value, so that's a non-surprise to me that it was only a $2 trade-in value. Of course, if Grumpy Mom was expecting a real return to have transpired, this wasn't even a thing that would have been considered beforehand.

I would have been a little bit more impressed with Gamestop had the employee offered to negotiate with Grumpy Mom, but I think that Grumpy Mom had already decided that leaving and taking it up with someone else was preferable to being in the store for even one more second. Clearly Grumpy Mom didn't want to go in the store in the first place, or she would have been present for the discussion about the trade-in, or perhaps she might have figured out about the new version had she been present for the original purchase.

So, what did we learn? If your kids are playing games, even a little bit of involvement will save you a lot of aggravation later.

I know what Pokémon Go is short for...

... it's short for "Pokémon Go outside where their main demographic is woefully unfamiliar with the surroundings".

Since my older son has been playing Pokémon for many years, I felt like I should see what Pokémon Go was about. The first night it was available, I loaded it onto my phone, and after a little bit of user information setup, it puts up a map of our neighborhood with locations of a few Pokémon nearby. I took my older son outside with me, we turned the camera part of the game on, and we looked at the screen where it shows what we currently refer to as "augmented reality" or AR. I flicked a representation of a Pokéball at a representation of a Pokémon that somewhat seemed to be out in the neighbor's yard. (I'm sure that he didn't know that he had a Pokémon infestation.)

Meh.

I know that I'm not really the intended audience for the game, so it's no big loss if I'm not playing it. My son doesn't have a smartphone, so he's not playing it. The game vaguely reminded me of a location-based game that was out a few years ago that one of my other neighbors wanted me try, but I didn't have a smartphone then (and frankly I was a little suspicious about the nature of a game that was GPS tracking you and all of your friends). For all I know, that game was Niantic's previous game - Ingress. It didn't have Pokémon, it just had a map with little lights all over it and it used local landmarks as control points for a team vs. team resource collecting game. While it didn't take off like Pokémon Go has, it was a good showcase for the location-based technology and apparently helped them better map places for Pokémon Go.

The Nintendo DS/3DS family couldn't play Pokémon Go because although it's fully capable of integrating the camera into AR-type games, it's only able to communicate with the internet via WiFi and doesn't have any sort of mobile data connection. (Honestly, I don't use the mobile data on my phone that often, so that was another strike for me against Pokémon Go.) Also, other than the handful of AR games that come with the DS/3DS systems, most developers have ignored AR gaming in favor of more traditional games. Also, all of the Pokémon games on Nintendo's handhelds have all had much more complicated mechanics (battles, RPG elements, interacting with NPC's) than Pokémon Go does.

I'm a little bit surprised that some adults have taken to Pokémon Go as much as they have, but I can only assume that's because they either haven't played any sort of AR game before, they're nostalgic for Pokémon, or they just needed an excuse to get outside and didn't have one.

I'm not surprised at all that kids (and some adults) have had odd discoveries and mishaps playing Pokémon Go. Most people these days aren't used to being pedestrians for any length of time, and the random distribution of the Pokémon may cause people to walk places that they otherwise might not go. This is made grossly more difficult by the fact that you're staring through your phone screen which effectively narrows your field of vision, and creates much lower situational awareness than you would normally have as a result.

Well, don't worry. Soon enough, we'll have the first mishaps with people playing Occulus Rift outside.

Happy Pokémon hunting to those of you who are, but be safe out there. To the rest of you, just remember that if you think that Pokémon Go is stupid, then you're probably not in the intended demographic.

Initial Pokkénalysis

So yesterday, Pokkén Tournament was released for the WiiU. We picked up our copy around dinnertime. My older son and I played a couple of matches before either of us knew what we were doing, and then my older son went through a bunch of the single player material to get an understanding of the battle system. Here's the character roster, with a few comments here and there where applicable.

Blaziken - Blaziken is a tall, powerful fire/fighting type Pokemon. He reminds me of a big furry rooster. He is able to break through an opponent's defenses with normal moves, but he has a few moves that cause recoil damage (damage to your own character) if they miss.

Braixen - Braixen is a fire type who looks like a fox carrying around a flaming cotton swab. Braixen has a lot of projectiles, but not as many as the next character.

Chandelure - Chandelure is a ghost/fire type that looks like a chandelier, and a lot of people's early choice in this game because of its ridiculous ability to churn out projectile after projectile. (My older son says he's "spammy".) Tekken games didn't involve projectiles very often, and some of the ones that did were very slow startup. It should prove confusing at first for most opponents in Pokkén to deal with all of these projectiles until more of the metagame is developed.

Charizard - A lot of people probably know Charizard because of his inclusion in Smash Bros. While he looks like a big orange dragon, so far his strength in Pokken has more to do with shutting down his opponent's attacks than being directly aggressive.

Garchomp - Garchomp is literally a land shark.

Gardevoir - We haven't played as this fairy/psychic character yet, but we can say that the computer is not that good at living up to the name. It wasn't guarding nearly enough of our attacks in the single player mode.

Gengar - Gengar has some creepy attacks. What do you expect? He's a ghost type.

Lucario - Another fan favorite from the Smash games series, Lucario seems well-balanced, but I only used him once.

Machamp - Machamp is a large four-armed fighting type. He only has a few ranged attacks, but is able to power through his opponent's ranged attacks easily to get in close where he can do more damage.

Mewtwo - Mewtwo needs unlocking first.

Pikachu - Pikachu is another popular choice in this game, both because of pure popularity and because he seems to genuinely be a solid character with a balanced moveset.

Pikachu Libre - At first I though this was a pretty silly choice, but my Pokémon knowledge is not quite as deep as my older son's. There are hundreds of Pokémon, and while Pikachu is rather popular, I wasn't sure why they had to build a second character variation, when it seemed like they could just have additional costumes for the characters to pick from. I mean, wasn't there Pikachu cosplay in Omega Ruby/Alpha Sapphire? Then, when you go and look it up, it turns out that Cosplay Pikachu is a different subspecies, and is only female.  The tip of the tail is black and heart-shaped, unlike a male Pikachu's pointy yellow-only tail, and a female Pikachu's yellow heart-shaped tail. My older son also reminded me that if they specifically wanted a luchador, in keeping with Tekken's inclusion of King, they could have picked the somewhat less popular Hawlucha. Pikachu Libre has a very strong (cheap?) "Double Team" move that makes it temporarily unhittable.

Sceptile - Sceptile is a grass type that looks like a tall lizard with a plant for a tail. We haven't quite figured out exactly what he's good at.

Shadow Mewtwo - Shadow Mewtwo is the character that you can unlock early with the amiibo card, but is also unlockable normally if you complete all of the Ferrum League. He's the boss of the game.

Suicune -Suicune, a dog-like creature with two tails, seems to have a lot of ranged moves which may prove difficult to get past.

Weavile - A dark/ice character, Weavile is fast and grumpy looking. Don't get clawed!

We haven't played everybody yet, but a few things seem pretty clear. The Tekken system of the buttons corresponding to limbs does not apply at all here. The only thing that seems to be the same as Tekken is the round fixed size arena and the sidestep and throw commands.

We were worried that two-player was going to be somewhat choppy, because of the system having to render two instances of the game but we didn't really feel it.

There are still a lot of other Pokémon in the game as support characters, but we don't have all of them unlocked yet, so maybe we will have to save that for another time. I'm sure that we will discover even more about the game after playing it for a while.

Also - there's a Splatoon Splatfest today, so if you're not busy playing Pokkén, get out there and ink some stuff! (Don't let my older son catch you standing around at the spawn AFK, either!)

Random gaming tidbits, Black Friday Edition.

If you go to McDonalds in the next few weeks, and connect to the Wifi using a Nintendo 3DS and Pokémon X, Y, Omega Ruby, or Alpha Sapphire, you can get the Mystical Pokémon Hoopa. It shows up as a Mystery Gift on the main menu of the game, and then you have to collect him at a Pokémon Center. Once you have Hoopa, you can go to a Pokémon Mart, and get a Prison Bottle that allows you to transform Hoopa

into the more powerful Hoopa Unbound for three days.

However, don't forget that connecting a 3DS to store WiFi can often be non-intuitive. Make a new WiFi connection like usual, let it autodetect the settings, but then open the Internet Browser and let the McDonald's splash screen come up - click on the icon that says "Connect to WiFi" and then everything will work correctly and you can go back to the Pokémon game and collect your mystery gift. If you don't use your browser to complete the connection, it won't work.

The newest Pokémon game is not a main game in the series, but the new Pokémon Super Mystery Dungeon.
Unlike the main Pokémon games where you play as a trainer, in the Mystery Dungeon games you play as a Pokémon, sometimes with one or two teammates. You and your friends are trying to unravel the presence of Dark Matter at the Tree of Life. You learn moves, explore big areas, and try to piece the puzzle together before the Dark Matter uproots the Tree of Life and sends the planet into the Sun!

 
While the Pokémon are the same from the other games, the gameplay is somewhat different. Without the guidance of a trainer, some Pokémon's moves tend to put their teammates at risk - for example Earthquake affects the entire room including doing damage to your teammates.

And, last of all, tonight's new weapon for Nintendo WiiU paint shooter Splatoon? The sloshing machine!



Happy sloshing, everybody!