Never change, Pokemon (with special guest, Dragon Quest XI)

Pokemon is like the Olympics for me: it comes around about once every four years, and when it does, it's all I care about for about two weeks. Then it goes quiet again and I don't really think about it much until the next one. But I love it so much every time.

For a lot of other people, though, Pokemon isn't the Olympics, it's life, and they're getting pretty frustrated about going in the same circle over and over again for 20+ years now. A lot of those kinds of fans see Pokemon Sword and Pokemon Shield as ignorant, lazy, wasted opportunities that don't understand the fan base. On the contrary, I'm pretty sure these games know exactly who's playing them, and it's doing it's best to not-so-politely ask them to move on because this has always been a "children's entertainment property."

**If it's even possible to spoil a Pokemon game anymore, this is your warning that I will now be "spoiling" Pokemon Sword/Shield**

Some Games I Played in 2019

You know how sometimes you pretend you're in a conversation but actually you're looking at something on your phone? That was videogames this year.

GTMTM '18: Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, the Norton Anthology of Videogames

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

In my experience, if you were born before 1989,  you played Mario Kart on SNES and Nintendo 64 growing up, and had intense Mario Kart tournaments with your roommates in college. If you were born in 1989 or later, however, the most important Nintendo party game of your life was Super Smash Bros., and in college you either played the original again or crossed over to Super Smash Bro. Melee (or Brawl if you were less competitive).

However, as I said in my last post, I didn't grow up with videogames like most people my age, so while I played my fair share of Super Smash Bros. at friends' houses, the first version I actually owned myself and could play regularly was Super Smash Bros. for 3DS, which I bought in 2015 after I finally gave up and traded in my PlayStation Vita to GameStop.

I was so excited to finally own a Smash Bros. for myself and be able to sink real time into it so I could actually compete with my friends when we got together. I dove in and ran through all the single-player content the game had to offer, ready to learn and finally get it so that I could really compete.

Didn't happen. Even after putting a good number of hours in, when we got a group of friends together and booted up Super Smash Bros. for Wii U, I would still get destroyed, to a level that clearly showed that I still didn't really get the basics of actual PvP Smash. It was extremely frustrating, and when I bought a Wii U, I passed on Smash Bros. entirely because I was resigned to just never understanding it.

So, fast-forward to 2018, and Ultimate is releasing. I pre-ordered the game, but almost out of obligation. I didn't expect to love it, but I knew more of my friends would be playing this than almost any other game out there on any platform, and I wanted to play along. So I didn't even really pay attention to the announcements or anything, just placed my pre-order and waited for the cartridge to show up so I could try it out.

The day finally came, and all I can say is wow, was I wrong about this one.