Seriously. Throwing carrots? Not cool, Angel Bunny. Not cool.

I've been gone for a long time now and I'm sure that nobody really noticed, and even if they did, they probably didn't care. But I'm going to explain my absence anyway. Not because I expect anyone to read it, but because my last blog post was nearly seven months ago and I'm tired of looking at it.

To make a long story short, I was riding my horse through the dark mysterious woods when I was robbed by a short funny-looking kid wearing a sinister-looking mask. I gave chase and ended up in a strange land, then got caught in a time loop, reliving the same three days over and over, and in the end, the moon always crashed into the earth. So with the help of my faithful fairy companion and my handy-dandy notebook, I helped the townspeople with their problems, then journeyed to the four corners of the land and freed the guardian spirits from imprisonment. Then I did battle with the evil entity responsible for setting the moon on its destructive course. Finally, a new day dawned, the townspeople celebrated, and I rode off into the sunset.

No, wait, that wasn't me, that was Majora's Mask. Such a great game. I should start playing it again. Maybe later tonight.

Getting back on topic, the real explanation for where I've been is not nearly as interesting. Basically, my computer crapped out on me and the Wii browser freaked out every time I tried to send it to GameSpot. So I've had to find other ways to waste my valuable time. Mostly by playing Pokemon. HeartGold, Pearl, Sapphire. No Black/White yet because I'm too cheap to pay $35 for them and am waiting for a sale somewhere. Anyway, my comp works again so here I am.

In conclusion, Majora's Mask is awesome.

Started playing Civilization IV again. Big mistake, because now I can't stop. Stupid addictive game, eating all my free time. And I was so looking forward to making it past the first chapter of Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, too. Well, looks like that's not going to happen anytime soon. The last time I got into Civ IV I was completely obsessed for months. And seeing as how I'm just getting started up again, I don't see myself making much progress in any other game until the year is almost up.

All my berry plants in Pokemon Pearl are going to shrivel up and die from neglect. My Quagsire, Pedro, has been helplessly trapped inside my Pokewalker for a couple of weeks now. Samus is probably going to die of old age waiting for me to return to Metroid Prime 3. The land of Termina has been a smoking crater for at least ten days now. And I've pretty much given up on ever seeing the end of Final Fantasy VI even though my guys are right there ready to storm the final dungeon.

And another thing. Notice how this blog was posted at around 5 AM? Well, I didn't get up this early, that's for sure. I've been awake all night waging war against Gandhi and his army of crossbowmen and war elephants. My sleep schedule has officially flown out the window (not like I had much of a sleep schedule to begin with but still). But really, there's nothing I can do about all this except to let the madness run its course. Someday, hopefully soon, I will be able to say NO to Civ IV and return to try to piece together the shattered remnants of my life.

Got Pokemon Heart Gold a few days ago. Played it until I reached Goldenrod City, and since then I haven't made any real progress because I'm spending waaaay too much time playing that stupid Voltorb Flip minigame. I don't even need the coins or anything, I'm just addicted to it for some strange reason.

I don't know why I'm such a sucker for minigames. Especially dumb ones like Voltorb Flip. I guess it's just in my nature. The same thing happened in Pokemon Pearl digging for treasure underground, in Final Fantasy X playing blitzball, in Kingdom Hearts building Gummi Ship after Gummi Ship, and so on and so forth, going all the way back to the 2-player battle mode in Super Mario Bros 3. More than once my brother and I spent unusually long periods of time playing that minigame without ever stepping foot inside the first level (apparently he has the same minigame addiction problem as me; in the past I've seen him play FFX blitzball for hours at a time).

Based on this compelling evidence, I must come to the conclusion that my favorite game ever is Mario Party, the game made entirely of minigames. And for the record, yes, I used to play that one until my hands developed blisters (stupid tug o' war).

In other news I recently took my Magikarp for a walk. He was happy and gave me a Chesto Berry. Then we captured a wild Bellsprout together. Good times.

I know I'm a little over an hour too late, but March 14 was Pi Day, the most pi-tastic day of the year. To honor this momentous day, here are the first 500 digits of pi:

3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169
39937510582097494459230781640628620899862803
48253421170679821480865132823066470938446095
50582231725359408128481117450284102701938521
10555964462294895493038196442881097566593344
61284756482337867831652712019091456485669234
60348610454326648213393607260249141273724587
00660631558817488152092096282925409171536436
78925903600113305305488204665213841469519415
11609433057270365759591953092186117381932611
79310511854807446237996274956735188575272489
12279381830119491

Now let us celebrate (albeit a day late) with a delicious slice of pie, the traditional dessert of Pi Day!

I'm bored and I can't sleep. And because of this I have decided to rank the Final Fantasy series from worst to best.

A quick note (though it really should go without saying): this is based entirely on my opinion, and probably says more about me than it does about Final Fantasy.

Now then, here we go, starting from the bottom:

IV. How so many people rank this so highly I will never be able to understand. For a game that calls itself an RPG, Final Fantasy IV really doesn't let you do much. You can equip your characters with weapons and armor, walk from town to town, and press A repeatedly in battle until all the monsters are dead. Aside from that, the game tells you who will be in your party, when it will change, when your characters will learn new spells (and which spells they will learn), how their stats will increase, pretty much all the fun stuff that this type of game is supposed to let you play around with.

I. Seriously outdated. It may have been considered a good game twenty years ago, but it's 2010 now and a lot of things have changed. Random encounters up to your ears in this one (at one point I took a wrong turn in a cave and ended up fighting monsters literally every step of the way). And you have to grind to get enough money to buy anything useful. But hey, at least the game lets you pick your own party, unlike a certain other game I have previously mentioned.

II. Interesting stat growth system, which I think may have been a bit ahead of its time. Other than that, it's in the same boat as the first: time has not been kind to this game. Grinding isn't as fun as it used to be back in the day. And I'm not entirely convinced that grinding was ever fun to begin with, anyway.

III. More jobs than FFI means more freedom and a more enjoyable experience overall. But still suffers from the ravages of age. DS remake can't hide this fact behind updated 3-D graphics, no matter how adorable they made the characters look.

VI. A lot of people seem to worship this one for some reason. I don't get it. Lots of characters (almost too many if you ask me), but they're all fixed into jobs you can't change (ranging from completely useless to way too powerful). Once you get espers, you get to turn them all into mages and apply minimal pointless stat boosts to them. Oh goody. There are a couple of neat things you can do with relics, but that's about it.

IX. A more modern Final Fantasy that feels like an old-school Final Fantasy. Which comes with its own set of problems. Like eight characters with fixed jobs. Which I don't like. But at least you get to decide (via your equipment choices) in which order they will learn their skills/spells, and you can customize other abilities (such as immunity to poison or auto-regen) as well. And the characters feel very well balanced; you can basically pick any combination of four and have a workable party. Probably the only fixed-job-type game in the series that I can actually have some fun with.

V. Among the older Final Fantasy games, this is the only one that holds up relatively well today, thanks to its innovative mix-and-match job system. When your white mage isn't healing the party, why not have her crush monsters with her bare hands? Or make a thief who can use magic to bend time and space? Or turn someone into a dual-wielding rapid-fire spellblade monstrosity and create some real carnage?

VII. One word: Materia. The first game since Final Fantasy II to give you real freedom in building your characters your way, without the restrictions of FFV's job system (there aren't many, but they're there). The graphics didn't age very well (Lego Final Fantasy, anyone?) but that doesn't really hurt the rest of the game much.

VIII. Even more generous than FFVII in terms of character customization, this is arguably the single most customizable collection of characters in the series. Using the junction system, you can individually adjust every stat for each character, and decide exactly what kinds of skills and abilities you want them to have. Also, the card minigame by itself is actually more fun than Final Fantasy IV in its entirety. People complain that it's too easy to make broken characters, but to me that's more a matter of self-control than a problem with the game itself. If you destroy the game's difficulty/fun with your super junctions, you only have yourself to blame.

X. This is the first time I'm going to mention story, because IMO this is the first time in the list that a Final Fantasy has had a story worth mentioning. The fact that the characters have voices and facial expressions and body language just make the whole experience that much more engaging. The sphere grid starts out a little restrictive, but that goes away fast, opening up customization greatly. Also, the new battle system finally gets away from that tired old ATB gauge, letting you plan out your battles several moves in advance (which can save your life in a couple of the really tough boss fights). Some people complain that the game is too linear. To these people I say all FF games are linear; this one just does a worse job of hiding it than the rest.

XII. No more random encounters. That alone is reason enough to put this game on top. Add to that a refreshingly different story (there's that word again), a truly interesting world brought to life by all the interesting little tidbits of information you pick up on your travels (read the bestiary if you don't believe me), a gambit system that takes the tediousness out of grinding without taking the fun out of battles in general, monster hunting for that extra bit of challenge, and a fair amount of character customization via gambits and the license grid, and you've got yourself one fine game.

And that's all. I can't rank Final Fantasy XI because I haven't played it. Ditto for Final Fantasy XIII. I suppose if I wanted to, I could include X-2 somewhere (probably right before FFX), but since it technically isn't part of the main series I left it out. Anyway, if you took the time to read all this, you are a more patient person than I am. If not, then this is for you:

tl;dr version: (worst) IV < I < II < III < VI < IX < V < VII < VIII < X < XII (best); XI and XIII = no comment

Feel free to agree with everything I just said. Or, if you really think you must, go ahead and tell me why I'm wrong/crazy/a terrible person for liking a game you hate/hating a game you like/crushing you beneath a towering wall of text. Heck, even let me know if you think that Final Fantasy is bad and that I should feel bad for liking it. Or don't. It's up to you.

Picked up Metroid Prime Trilogy recently. Popped it into my Wii the first day I got it and played for about seven hours straight, then I realized that it was dark and everyone had gone to sleep. And I kept playing anyway. This game is pure concentrated awesome with a delicious creamy center. I love exploring every nook and cranny, scanning everything in sight. I love blasting space pirates and giant rock monsters. I even love the way the rain drops hit the visor when I look up at the sky. I'm really glad I grabbed a copy before the supply dried out.

The only thing that I can't figure out is how Metroid manages to curl himself into a ball like that without breaking every bone in his body. It doesn't make any sense.

Angry Sun is dead. Long live the Tonberry King.

(Though without his crown, you can't really tell him apart from the rest of the Tonberries.)

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.

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*cough*

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Yeah. I've been meaning to swap out the Angry Sun avatar for something that better fits the general Final Fantasy theme I seem to have going here. So, now that that's out of the way, the only thing left for me to do is to figure out how to spend those 500 points that have been sitting in my Wii Shop Channel. I'm terrible about making up my mind sometimes.

That's all for now. And remember, I am always lurking.

ALWAYS.

So I finally caught 'em all. Pokémon, that is. Pokédex count stands at 482. Now technically, that's eleven short of actually catching 'em all. But the eleven I'm missing are all super-rare Pokémon (Mew, etc.) that can't be caught by any ordinary means. So IMHO they don't count. Besides, Prof. Oak didn't seem to mind that they were missing. He told me I was finished. And the guy at the hotel gave me a certificate as proof of my achievement. I probably should have taken a picture of it, though, 'cause he doesn't seem to want to show it to me again. What a jerk.

Also, I found a quarter on the sidewalk. Yay me. All in all, I'd say it was a pretty good day. :)

Wow. Somehow I've ended up playing through six different Final Fantasy games simultaneously. As of right now I've got save files in Final Fantasy I and II (FF Origins on PlayStation), III (DS), VI (Game Boy Advance), VIII (PC version), and XII, five of which I've never beaten before, and all of which I've played at least once in the past couple of weeks.

The obvious downside to this is that by spreading my precious little video game time across six different games, I'm not really making much progress towards completing any of them. On the other hand, since I'm playing all of them at the same time, I get to compare them side-by-side in a way I've never been able to do before. It's quite a fascinating look at the evolution of a video game series.

Hopefully I'll be able to actually finish some of these games before I overdose on Final Fantasy and end up in a coma (though I'll probably get fed up with FF and start playing something else long before my brain melts into a puddle of goo).