Tag Archives: Pokemon

Pokémon Day!

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Unless you’ve virtually been living under a rock, Nintendo made a few announcements about the new and upcoming Pokémon games, Sun and Moon, today. They officially released the release date for both Japan/US (November 18th) and Europe (November 23rd). I already have it bookmarked in my agenda and have the Moon version pre-ordered.
With the announcement came a look at the three new starter Pokémon. I made my choice immediatly, I’m going for Rowlett the Grass/Flying Pokémon (first time for that type combination too!). The visuals you saw in the trailer so far looked stunning. Game Freak decided to go with an Hawaiian theme for this game and I’m very curious to see how it pans out. Ofcourse this means I will have to hurry along and finish my other Pokémon games before this new one hits. Which means figuring out where I was in Pokémon Alpha Sapphire and finish atleast the Elite Four and Delta Episode on that and finally get to play through Pokémon X completely. And yet here I am playing Pokémon Blue.
I’m not sure why I’m enjoying that emulator much more than the newer games, but I think a lot of it has to do with childhood nostalgia. It’s also a much harder game compared to the newest installments and everytime I advance it feels like I’ve overcome a real challenge. Right now I’m at Vermillion City beating some trainers along the route down there and waiting to board the S.S. Anne so I can get my first HM: Cut. Having traded with my co-worker (who owns Red) I’m now the proud owner of an Oddish, Ekans and Mankey. All Pokémon normally unobtainable in Blue. I even put Mankey in my standard team of 6, replacing Nidorina, and take it to face the S.S. Anne and subsequently the third Gym with me.

Work, Fatigue and New Lipstick
I wish I could come up with a better, more hyped up post about the Pokémon announcement and delve a bit deeper into it, but the truth is I’m just very tired. Having slept badly for two nights in a row, getting less than 6 hours of sleep in, I have felt like a zombie all day. Having to go to your job while the only thing you want to do is lay your head on a pillow and sleep isn’t the most fun to do, especially since Tuesday is usually a messy and busy day for us… I was happy when I got out at 17.00.

The happiness to come home got strengthened by my two new lipsticks arriving. I may have mentioned it before but I’ve become hugely into make-up over the last few years and have now switched from the common retail brands to the more exclusive brands as my skill with applying make-up goes up. It sounds so very cliché but I do really  notice the difference between lipsticks and foundation between the shelf brands and the prestige brands. So seeing my two new MAC pink lipsticks in a neat box today made me really happy. I’ve already packed one to put on for when I go to work tomorrow, it’s a soft baby pink, and the other one I tried on right as I got home. It’s a bright pink and I love it. Next to looking great they also smell great so I really have no regrets from this purchase at all!

All in all the Pokémon announcement coupled with my lipsticks finally arriving has made my day a lot more positive than I imagined it would be getting up this morning. Now I just need to make sure I get to bed in time and the world will look much brighter when I wake up tomorrow…

Ninja Esoterics and Pokémon Again

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For me there was a very nice surprise yesterday with the announcement of a new installment in the Pokémon series. I’ve been a huge fan of Pokémon ever since I was about nine or ten years old, my very first Gameboy game was Pokémon Blue, and I have had atleast one game of every generation bar Black and White 2. I haven’t seen much of the hype surrounding these new titles yet, apart from that there will be more Pokémon added again and that it will come out around December of this year. I guess we’ll see various snippets of information starting to show up soon so I will definately keep an eye out for any information that Nintendo is releasing.

To tie in with the announcement of a new series of Pokémon, today is also the day Nintendo released Pokémon Red, Blue and Yellow as virtual console games for the 3DS. Being a huge fan of the original games, and eternally sad that my cardridges have died, I see this as an opportunity to get my hands on some of my old beloved games again. So I headed out to the shops today and bought a Nintendo E-shop card with enough funds to buy one game. Now I just have to make the choice of which game I actually want.
My first ever Pokémon game was Blue and that’s also the one game I almost “finished”. I had defeated every trainer and caught 146 out of 150 original Pokémon. I got Red and Yellow not that long after and even though I have always had fun playing, I never got as invested as I did in Blue (and later Silver). So for me it’s the choice of picking up Blue again and relive my nostalgia, picking Red which is, in theory, the same game but with different Pokémon to obtain OR pick Yellow where I know I will get not only Pikachu but also all original starter Pokémon guaranteed.
I haven’t decided yet, I think I’ll sleep on it for a night and then decide which one I want. One of the few things that will apparently be a feature is that you can send the Pokémon you get from these original games to the Pokébank and then from there transfer them to Sun and Moon when it comes out. Apparently there won’t be a way to send them to X/Y and ORAS, which is kind of sad, but hey.

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Gearing the Classes
Patch 3.2 launched this Tuesday and I’ve spent the majority of my time after work poking around on FFXIV. Seeing that Esoterics gear has become dirt cheap now, I more or less decked out my Ninja completely in ilvl 200 gear with Void Ark pants. She looks awesome now and I almost feel sad I will change this look for the Lore gear. I will probably hang on to it and use it as Glamour if I want to.
I think this week I will finally be able to reach tome cap and I will have dinged my Astrologian level 50 aswell. Now that you can queue up with friends for level roulette I’ve been teaming up with ingame people a bit more and levelling has been very smooth.
I’ve unlocked almost all new content that 3.2 has had to offer, and only really need to stick my nose into the new Alexander wings and the Sephirot fight, but I’m sure I’ll get to do that at some point this weekend or the coming week.
For now I’m just happily running atleast my Expert and Level roulette every day, while also doing the new Vath beast tribe dailies. It’s all I was able to do on work days really, since my game time is short and I was tired.

Seeing Stars and Picking Pokémon

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It’s been another very busy week at work for me. We are seriously swamped with new articles and changes to existing ones. I’ve been trying to not be too tired when I get home but it’s hard. I barely have enough energy to stay up and game, let alone blog about gaming, so sorry about the silence. I feel like I’m adapting to my work pace more though, since I’m not immediatly falling asleep as I get home and I actually get some stuff done ingame. Something that I’ve been trying to do for a while.

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FFXIV Adventures
I’ve been slowly pushing through my Astrologian quests, finishing the level 45 one this weekend. I’m still getting chased by bandits and the intrigues are getting deeper. It seems the Ishgardian Astrologians are not happy with the Sharlayan type of Astrology and I fear poor Jannequinard will pay the price. Although I still don’t trust him and still think he’s somehow involved with the assassination attempts on Lady Leveva. Anyway I opened the fifth heaven’s gate somewhere in Mor’Dhona and got another very pretty picture of “the Ewer”. Flowing water which, as a card, replenishes your mana so I guess it’s very fitting.

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With the patch coming up I’m very excited to start grinding the new tome gear. For Ninja it’s a Leviathan inspired look which looks extremely cool and I can’t wait to wear it. With me running more dungeons I would also get my relic items faster, so it’s a win/win situation overall. I’m currently on 31/80 items, so almost half way done!
Next to that I’ve been poking around on Cactuar again, leveling my Warrior and just taking a break from all the grinding on Moogle. The only downside from playing on Cactuar is that my game times are totally different from all the US folks and I only really see people online in the weekends, so that’s a bit sucky, but well. For now I want to keep focusing on my Moogle character (Sandrian) and switch to Sarella when I’m a bit tired of all the grinding for some lazy Warrior levelling and dungeon giggles. I love being a tank and especially a tank that can also pull some decent DPS numbers. I like setting the pace in a dungeon and not feeling like I have to wait for someone to pull. I just hope that I get healers who can keep me up while I run through dungeons like a madwoman.

Pokémon Plans
I’ve been poking around in Pokémon a lot again. Mostly playing Pokémon X, but I really want to continue Alpha Sapphire aswell. I had a conversation with one of my little cousins today about Pokémon games in general and how many event stuff I actually have, and I have decided to look into Poké Bank and Poké Transporter to be able to get my old event Pokémon onto my newer games. I have a lot of shinies that you can’t otherwise get and I really want to be able to use those in some of my newer games. Especially considering my cardridges are getting old and I don’t want to lose those Pokémon forever.
I will probably look into it when I have a bit more time off next week or so and slowly being the process of weeding through all my old Pokémon and decide which ones I want to bring over. I think it will mostly be the Shiny event Pokémon I have. But I also want to save a few of the other old rare Pokémon I have like Celebi, Jirachi, Mew and Victini.  I’m also looking forward to the re-release of Pokémon Blue, Red and Yellow as virtual console games for the 3DS. I will probably buy Blue, just because it was my first Pokémon game ever and I have major nostalgia. That said, I’m not actually sure I have the time for all this and if I have to make a choice of what I want to do right now it’s probably finish off Pokémon X. So I will focus on that and then see what else there is out there.

Girly Gamer Time

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I spent a big part of my day roaming around Amsterdam, picking up various things from various stores after visiting my uncle. My main goal today was to get help with my taxes.. Which was impossible since the program I need isn’t able for download untill March 1st. So my uncle showed how everything works using the old program and now I should be ready to do my own taxes. If all goes well I get quite a sum back from the government, which will go nicely towards being able to buy my own place to live.
Once I left my uncle’s place, the first station on my journey was Game Mania (big Dutch gamestore) because I needed to pick up a Mew for my Pokémon game and I had pre-ordered a special Disney Infinity figurine: Yoda with a light up lightsaber! There will be a Disney Infinity themed post coming soon where I will show off my light-up goodies. All I can say for now is that it looks seriously cool and I’m very happy with my purchase.

I’m also super excited to get my Mew. It’s one of those Pokémon you can only obtain through special events and seeing as it’s Pokémon’s 20th anniversary they distribute at lot of legendary Pokémon this year. This particular one I had to pick up at the shop with a code. Unfortunately it’s only one code per 3DS so I could only get Mew for one of my games for now. Luckily I have 2 3DS’es so when I go to pick up my other figurine around the 20th I will most likely bring my other 3DS so I can get the Mew for Pokémon X aswell as having it on my Alpha Sapphire game right now.

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Beauty Secrets
Next to being a gamer, I’m also a very girly girl. I like make-up, even though I don’t use it that much, and am especially a big fan of lipsticks and lipbalms. Having chronically chapped lips since a very young age, I always carry some sort of lipbalm around with me, usually a clear one, to keep my lips moisturized throughout the year.
You need to understand that my lips get so chapped that they frequently end up bleeding throughout the winter and that there’s constantly big pieces of chapped skin showing, making it near impossible for me to wear regular lipsticks if I don’t take care of my lips at all.
Luckily for me Maybelline has a line called “Baby Lips” that is a lipbalm and lipstick in one. Some colours are brighter than others and currently I only have the three variants you see above, of which two are pink and one is coral. They do wonders for my lips and make me feel like I can actually wear lipstick to work, without having dried out and chapped lips after. After trying a lot (and I mean a lot) of different lip balms, I can really say I’m in love with this particular brand. I bought my first one in Norway (the white one in the picture) and picked up the two pink ones today because they were on sale. I am planning to go back and pick up more colours now that they are still on sale, since they are €3-4 a piece normally (it’s 50% off now).

So any ladies (and gentlemen, they have clear lipbalms too!) that have issues with chapped lips.. This is the product for you. I almost feel like a commercial, but I feel so much better when I don’t have to worry about my skin, whether it’s on my face, my hands or my lips, that I really feel like this is one of the products in my life that deserves some recognition.
I really think a healthy mind in a healthy body is the best way to live your life, and taking care of how you look and being comfortable with how you look is a big part of this. I might do a few more articles on stuff I use from day to day for myself to make me feel healthier and better. Because a happy gamer is a good gamer!

Work Work

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Work has been terribly busy this last week. I’ve wanted to blog a bit sooner, but after I got home I was just too tired to do anything but either mindless gaming or heading to bed. We’ve been really overwhelmed with stuff to do and ever since we had a teamday on Friday there has been some friction between colleagues.
I won’t go into details but there’s one woman who I just don’t get along with and tensions rose quite high yesterday… That I have never been so relieved to have  the day off today. I really have issues working with her, especially on days where it is extremely busy and yesterday was more or less a culmination of well, everything.

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Today though has been a really nice day so far. I’ve gone back and forth to the dentist, did some groceries with my dad and then proceeded to plant my ass infont of my PC (after starting a laundry) figuring out what I want to do first.  The only real downside is that I feel extremely cold. The weather has been odd here over the past weeks, Dutch climate sucks, so I’ve been cold often and today is one of those days. So I’m wrapped up in a big vest, comfy pants and a blanket. I feel like a burrito… But at least I’m sort of warm.

On the gaming front it has been uneventful the past few days. I’ve mostly been logging into FFXIV to do my roulettes and get my beast tribe dailies done, all working towards advancing my Dragoon relic. I’ve been partying up with a friend of mine a lot and we had a few good laughs while tackling the dungeons together.
Levelling up classes has gone by  mostly unnoticed. My Astrologian dinged 40 yesterday and my Bard dinged 57 today, so I’m slowly but steadily working towards my Gaming Goals for FFXIV. I also managed to grab my White Mage 2.0 Relic (Thyrus) so I only have three of those left to do.
For the rest I have decided to cancel my WoW subscription for a while. I’ve only been logging in to do some Garrison missions every day and then log back out again… It’s not really something worth paying money for. So my sub will end the first of March and I don’t think I’ll renew it untill I know what the release date for Legion is. I hope Blizzard can push it out sooner, but it wouldn’t surprise me if we didn’t see the new expansion untill September.

With me dropping WoW, I hope to have more time for my other games, mostly Heroes of the Storm, but also a lot of the single-player games I have lying around that I still want to finish. I’ve really gotten back into Pokémon X again and I’m picking up a special anniversary Mew tomorrow for both my Pokémon X and Alpha Sapphire, so I’m really happy about that.  I just hope I can stick to the game for once and actually play through it properly… Instead of giving up somewhere past the second gym.

My Favourite Gaming Series – Blaugust day 12

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Seeing as my brain is very tired today I decided to make use of a writing prompt from the Blaugust nook, instead of coming up with my own subject.

Is there any particular game series that you will always be attached to? What is it that makes the series as a whole compelling (as opposed to just a certain game in the series)?

I have thought a bit about this question seeing as I’ve played through very few series. I didn’t play all the Final Fantasy’s. I didn’t play all the Kingdom Hearts. And they are a few of my favourite series. I think the answer will be Pokémon though.
I have played (and own) Pokémon Red, Blue and Yellow; Gold, Silver and Crystal; Ruby, Sapphire and Emerald; Firered (and Leafgreen but gave that to an ex boyfriend as bday present); Diamond and Pearl; Black; Hearthgold; X and Alpha Sapphire.
So yeah, I guess you can state the Pokémon series are my favourite. Pokémon Blue was the very first game I owned on my Gameboy and I nearly finished it. It was one of the few games that got me hooked as a kid and I’ve been a fan ever since, getting one of the new Pokémon games as it comes out everytime. There has been one notable exception though, I never touched Black and White 2 since I found that concept ridiculous.

I’m not sure as to why I feel this series to be so compelling. I am a collector at heart, seeing the amount of pets and mounts I own in both World of Warcraft and FFXIV, and Pokémon fills my collecting need. Add the fact that there is ever more Pokémon to collect and the game is right up my alley.
I also like the challenges posed in the games in the form of legendary Pokémon. Finding and catching those always gave me a little adrenaline rush. I remember fondly the first time I caught the three legendary birds (Zapdos, Moltres and Articuno) in Pokémon Blue with Ultraballs. It was just as exhilarating to me as catching Kyogre with an Ultraball was in Alpha Sapphire.
It’s also a lot of childhood nostalgia, playing the games reminds me of playing the very first one when I was 9 years old. I’m still having as much fun in it today as I had back then.
All of this probably makes me come back to the games time and again… Unless they do something really weird to it.

And ofcourse I want to be the very best, like no one ever was!