Wii would like to Fit... (Azura's Work Out)

It's not possible, is it? Azura, one of the world's most renounded gamers and head of his own soft pitch little league baseball team... WORKING OUT?!

... shut up you jerks. You're the same Negative Nancy's who were surprised that I would get a girlfriend (I still love ya Lil, Shkaboink babe!) or play Pokemon: TCG with people I've never met before (even though I quit that a few months ago).

Well, I suppose I should get this done properly before it turns into a self-defence session.

Wii Fit is Nintendo's latest hit craze that no one will be able to find this holiday season. The main premise is to promote self-awareness in fitness and promote taking better care of your body. Scientific studies say that a lack of fitness in modern society leads to increases in health risks as you get older. Not that this bothers most people who live "In the Now", but for anybody who was planning on living long past your 30's, it's time to start saying "What can I do to prevent these risks?".

The solution lies in video games... as it always should, in my opinion!

The first thing you'll wind up doing when you plug 'er in is do a simple test to determine where you currently sit as far as weight, balance and body control, as well as determining your BMI (Body Mass Index) and Wii Fit Age (similar to Brain Age). It's recommended you do these tests once a day, as it helps you keep track of how well you're doing. The game will also give you a nice little measuring on where you currently rank based on your BMI, ranging from underweight, average, overweight and obese. As much fun as I enjoy being heckled about my weight (sarcasm) it came as no surprise that I was "overweight" in the game. However, I'm expecting that a lot of people were like that when they first turned it on, so I feel no shame... in fact, I feel a little more "average" than all of the people who were probably "average" when they did the test in the first place. But... does that work? Or even make sense?

... I don't really understand the system anymore, but let's move on...

The next thing you'll wind up doing is setting a goal for yourself. It's easier for you to continue working towards playing Wii Fit if you give yourself a goal to work towards that you can use to keep coming back. I wound up aiming for "-3 lbs" in 2 weeks time, so hopefully I can pull that off. After this is all said and done, you're finally going to go and do what you came to do... fitness excersize!

Wii Fit consists of four main categories of excersizes to play, ranging from Yoga (posture) training, Strength training, Aerobics training and Balance Games. Each category is set up to help you in different fields of excersize, so pick whichever one makes you more comfortable. The game isn't able to be a personal trainer, so it helps if you have an idea of what your planning on doing. I currently didn't have any set goals in mind, so I tried a little bit of everything.

Oh, almost forgot... you also get to choose a trainer to help calm you into your excersizes. There's a male trainer and female trainer, each of which has a very calming and relaxing voice, able to make you feel comfortable with the training. For the first 30 minutes of playing, I had the male trainer help me. The remaining time was spent with the female trainer. They both seemed to be exactly identical, so just go based on whatever you're more comfortable around... I mean, it's not like you want a fit woman to watch you hit the ground after two push-ups, right?

... yes... I fell... jerks...

Yoga training focuses on increasing your posture. These excersizes are calming and allow you to work on maintaining your balance and stretching areas of your body that you may not regularly be working out with. You start off with a fair number of different ways to bend your body, but it's all fairly simple stuff. The only one I had trouble with was the tree excersize (I didn't fall over you jackasses, I merely had trouble getting my foot to stay in position while maintaining that pose).

Strength training should be relatively self-explanatory... but I like explaining the obvious, so here goes. You'll be working out to build up endurance and muscle strength. This is a good set of excersizes to help lose weight, so I'll probably be working here the most. The only excersize I've done in the Strength category I can't stand is the Push ups and Side Stands excersize. My hands are not comfortable on the board and my wrists tend to grow weak quickly. The first time I did this excersize, I collapsed after 4 reps, making the game give me a horrific nickname, "Couch Potato". A little depressing, but not enough to stop me from coming back later and succeeding where I once failed.

... take that, game. Points for Azura!

Aerobics are excersizes that work on multiple fields of fitness training and merges them together. Modes such as Step Aerobics, Jogging and Hula Hoop keep this mode interesting. It's more fun than the other two modes, but it doesn't provide as big a work out as either of the others. I still enjoy it and use it as a chance to relax between heavy workouts.

Then we finally reach the Balance Games. The fun section that keeps you amused and brings you back over and over again. I like this section, as it's the "Let's have some fun" part of the game, instead of the more serious "Let's get fit!" parts up above.

Overall, Wii Fit has definately gotten me hooked with it's demonic grasp and promises of fitness. Hopefully I won't get sidetracked and lose all my progess in one fell swoop... but then again, you never really know anymore...

Hooray for the Old Man (An Update For Once...)

As Mr. Monius would so kindly put it, "It's Azura! R-A-V-E-N! Azura!"

Well then, let's get this pain train on the move, shall we?

September is amung us, and with it come a few signs of pantamonium and chaos. First of them all is the new game releases coming out over the remaining months of the year. These releases are going to continue to become more and more constant until the end of the year, making for an interesting dilemma...

Who do I buy, and who do I ignore?

It's reached a pretty bad point when there's this much to buy, but I have to make sure to make my priorities before I go around spending every cent that I earn on video games (not that I'm not about to go a few days without food if it means getting to shake my maraca's a bit, mind you). I've come up with a list of incoming releases that show my "Must Own Titles" of the '08 holiday season.

SEPT:
Wii - Samba de Amigo
Wii - Wario Land: Shake it!
DS - My Japanese Coach
DS - Kirby Super Star Ultra
DS - Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood

OCT:
PS3 - Naruto: Ultimate Ninja STORM
Wii - Wii Music

NOV:
Wii - Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World
Wii - Animal Crossing: City Folk
DS - Chrono Trigger
360 - Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts
360 - Naruto: The Broken Bond
360 - Sonic Unleashed

October would seem to be my main "Save Up The Moneyz" time for November, but even then I'm not too safe due to other expenses...

But there might be some of you out there who know me pretty well who are thinking "Isn't there something you're forgetting Azura?" "Isn't there another game coming out you forgot about?"

... Mega Man 9... *sigh*

I promised that I would be doing a video walkthrough for the game the day it came out (which I still plan to do). This means I'm still planning on purchasing the game. There exists a problem in this though, as the game is coming out on multiple different system's downloadable content features. The two big ones that I would have to choose from are Xbox Live and the Wii Shop Channel.

However, here lies the problem.

Xbox Live's version of the game is scheduled to come out roughly 5 days before the Wii Shop will be carrying it, so it turns into a battle of "What's more worth it?"

The Xbox will have it first, meaning earlier access to the game... but on the other hand, the Wii version will be able to use the Wii remote like the original NES controller, giving it that more retro-feel to it. Mega Man 9 is currently scheduled to be released this September, so I'll need to decide quickly on what I'm going to do. Odds are I'll do the stupid thing and just download it on both, so I can play it early, get the achievements AND use the NES-style control...

Azura's Birthday Battles: Conclusion and Closing Comments

Well that was a pretty entertaining experience to say the least... however, if I had the choice, I'd make sure to organize the events a little better beforehand.

Oh well, can't be helped now...

The Birthday Battles, a 5-day event for the viewers of my channel to come out and play with me in a series of games has comes to it's end. It was a lot of fun and I definately enjoyed myself, hopefully you guys did too. As promised, I was recording most of the matches and have already begun the recap videos.

The recap videos are going to consist of match highlights for each player (I don't want these to be incredibly long, so each day will be recapped in roughly 4 minutes of video at most). These seems like a pretty strong screening process for content, but concidering the steps that have to be gone through for making videos, it's not fair to ask me to spend the remainder of my free time infront of my computer. I'll be making these as I see fit and they should be finished by the end of the week (at the soonest).

I'd like to say once again, thank you to everybody who came out to play with me over these past few days! It was a lot of fun and I will be sure to let you all know if I'm ever doing something like this again.

Azura, signing out...

Azura's Obligatory Birthday Announcement #21

... okay, the title is obviously bullshit. I haven't been doing these for 21 years (maybe 3 tops) but just go with it, alright? It's a helpful potential hint incase you are bad at basic math.

The 18th approaches and I still have yet to come up with anything to do for this years "Coming of Age" celebration. However, assuming any of you still read these things see this, you are welcome to know that I will be having the entire week off for my birthday (August 17 - 23) if you want to hang out or do something. The 18th is going to be my family celebration day, so any other day on that list that anybody wishes to do anything, let me know that you're available and I'll proceed to make the necessary arrangements.

Current Plans:
August 17th: Movie with friends (Most likely to be Step Brothers), Gaming afterwards.
August 18th: Lunch and Dinner with Family (and a possible trip to Red-Deer)

... 2/7th's isn't really impressive, so I'd really appreciate if I could get some other stuff setup for my days off. Aside from eating cake and playing games, I don't really have a lot to do. I'm leaving it up to you guys to help me out here.

... what's that? A wishlist? It seems kind of pointless to throw one of these out because anything I want would be really expensive or easy to aquire on my own. However, I'll put one on here anyways, just for the fun of it all.

Wii / XboxLive Point Card(s)
PS3 - Metal Gear Solid 4
Xbox360 - SONIC the Hedgehog '06
Comedy CD's and/or DVD's
A new PC (yeah, just keep on wishing for that one buddy...)

I could probably think of more, but nothing else really comes to mind right now.

... sigh... getting older sucks more and more each year.

Azurecalibur 4

So yeah... what can I say about the new Soulcalibur game?

It's Soulcalibur, but it's pretty.  The graphics are a nice jump over to the next generation, but not "amazing" by any means for what the consoles are capable of that the game is available on.  It runs smoothly and responds greatly to controls, but it is basically "Soulcalibur with a makeover".

... but there's nothing wrong with that!

The Soulcalibur games are a great fighting game series in my opinion.  The fighting style is easy to pick up for anybody who's never even heard of it before.  I was only introduced to the series when one of my friends got me into the Gamecube version of Soulcalibur 2 and had me "bunny-hopping" with Link across the field.  Now we're all the way up to 4 and I really don't notice a huge difference in the game's combat system.  Characters that I mainly used way back when (Raphael, Kilik and Siegfreid) still feel pretty similar to their past versions, but it's not like it's a bad thing for them to feel the same.  It just makes it easier to pick the game up and keep playing, like an expansion to the past games... only prettier.

I don't have a lot of time to write up everything about this game (I should've left about 10 minutes ago) so I'll sum it up quickly.

If you love the series, BUY IT!  If you like it, but aren't sure, rent it or wait for the price to drop.  Either way, play it.

Azura Vs. Eco-Friendly Idiots

Okay, I get it.  The Earth is something that we should be trying to protect.  Littering is bad, no littering.  However, I've begun to notice something at my work that has me pretty annoyed.

Before I begin, I need to stress that the opinions expressed in this blog are those of mine, not those of the company that I work for.  Not all of the people I work with share the same views as me, so this is between you and me if you have a problem with what I'm about to say.  That said, let's talk crap.

Plastic bags.

... yes... plastic bags... perhaps I should explain it a little better.

To make the world so much more eco-friendly and prevent pollution, customers have burned the idea of "accepting plastic bags" as the absolute opposite of "saving the Earth".  I understand where they're coming from, but they're missing one key point.  The plastic bag... already exists.  You're not honoring the Earth by not using it, you're only making someone else take responisibility for it by not taking it yourself.  No matter who winds up taking the bag, odds are the end result would still be the same.

Now here's the part of the show where I'm done telling you that you're wrong... because you are!  Now I'm going to explain the CORRECT answer to this little dilemma.

If you take the bag, you can be responsible for it and do something more eco-friendly with it.  For example, leave it around your house as a spare baggie for things, like food and spare cables.  There's many uses for plastic bags, so it doesn't seem right to simply classify them as garbage the second someone offers you one.  This seems a lot better than simply allowing someone else to take it and throw it out.  I mean, you're whole reasoning for not taking the bag was that you didn't want it to just be thrown out, am I right?

I understand that there are times when you really don't need a bag for your stuff.  If it's a couple small things, odds are you don't really need one, so it seems kind of wasteful.  This I understand, but what about when you have your hands full with stuff.  You're juggling your wallet, your product AND your sanity around these things, but you're insistant on not taking a bag because it's bad for the environment?  Then you have the gall to brag about how you "saved the world" by not taking one of these bags?

I have a little secret for you guys.  I just threw a bag out while I was typing this.  Does that mean I'm destroying the world?  I'll admit it's not helping, but the truth is, you have no right to say you're saving the world if you're just not taking interested in having a responsiblility over the topic.  You want to save the Earth from pollution?  That's very noble, but you have to reflect on what you're saying and doing.  You didn't take the bag?  That's alright, the next guy in line wanted 3 of them.  If you're so hell-bent on saving the world, help carry his stuff out for him (and take multiple trips) just so he doesn't need to take a bag.  See how commited you truly are to the idea of ending pollution.

Now, this topic of conversation can be looked upon from multiple angles.  From one side, I'm making an argument about how you can say you want to stop pollution, but you're not really doing anything.  From another way, it sounds like I'm trying to force people to use more bags just so they don't wind up in the garbage from the next guy in line. Trust me, I'm not here trying to preach to you about what to do with your lives, stopping pollution is a noble cause, after all.  All I'm saying is, don't try to justify stupid actions by saying "oh, I'm trying to stop pollution".

There are several alternatives to plastic bags anyways.  Our store carries special bags made out of recycled materials (eco-friendly as well) which you can take anywhere instead of using plastic bags.  It's a good way to say "I need a bag, but I'm not going to pretend I'm saving the world by not taking one!"

To sum it up simple, pollution is bad, but stupidity and ignorance are far worse.  Take your plastic bags and reuse them for something rather than letting the next guy in line throw them all out when he's done with them.  Don't try to justify your actions unless you're willing to go above and beyond the line of duty to make sure that no one ever needs a bag again.  But most importantly...

If you're trying to stop pollution, don't come preaching to me about how you don't need a bag.

Azura's Gamertag

Yeah, it's not much to look at right now... but one day, it'll grow into something a little more glorious and beautiful... at least, as far as a "Gamertag" goes.

Let me set this straight right now.  I'm not accepting friend invites just yet (it'll be soon though, I just need a few online games to play with aside from Orange Box and TMNT 1989).  Once I get a few more games for my Xbox, I'll start accepting friend invites from people, so don't get upset if you don't get accepted (or randomly deleted if you were previously on my list).  Tip to the game companies, one-hundred is not a big number anymore.  Add another digit already and get with the freakin' program.

That is all.  Happy days!

Azura's Lucky Numbers of the Day... 49, 200 and 360

Well, a bunch of things have finally happened...  I'll try to keep them all simple, but I enjoy going into detail at some parts.

First things first, Channel Azura over on YouTube has finally reached 200 videos.  You can watch the video here, or you can watch the embeded version right.... HERE!

Yes, it's silly.  But that's why I like it.  You should've seen Jaymonius and Whitenekos' faces when they saw it the first time.  They were speechless... and Nekos just laughed the whole time.  All in all, I'm impressed.

I owe a lot of this video's existance to Tom (Squigi).  He spent a good 3 weeks working on it, but finally got it done this morning.  Thanks man, you made my day!  Sorry if I made you feel rushed a few times, but it's all good now!

Now for the weird part.  I'm always going off about how the Xbox360 is overpriced and there's nothing on it that I would be interested in buying, but something truly amazing happened yesterday...

... I am now the "proud" (sarcasm) owner of an Xbox360...

Well, what can I say in my defense?  It's only $300 now, so it was at a price worth paying for one.  I only have the Orange Box right now, and I've been plugging away a lot of time in there (almost done Portal, but always dying in TF2).  I don't really have any interest in playing Half Life 2, since I never had the chance to play the first one, but I might give it a shot if I'm ever bored.

I already bought 2 2800 point cards and have almost spent all of them on the Live Market.  I quickly grabbed the TMNT Arcade game and Worms, as well as the Penny Arcade Adventures "Precipice of Darkness".  I then saw something that drove me close to insanity when I saw it.  "Psychonauts" for Xbox was available on the shop, and I couldn't hold back for more than a few seconds until I saw the "Confirm Download" screen.

I loved Psychonauts on the PS2, but it was originally meant for the Xbox and PC platforms, so it suffered a little in the graphics department when brought over to PS2.  However, I've only plugged a short amount of time in it so far and I am currently craving more.  If I didn't work today, I'd be trying to beat it again by tonight.

If anybody can request some good Xbox360 games for me to buy, I'd really like to know what's on this console that's worth owning.  I'm not really interested in FPS (First Person Shooter) games so please don't say "GET HALO 3 YU N00B!!!" or "CALL OF DUTAY!".  Any assistance in getting a good start on the console would be helpful... I may even do some videos in the near future for it if I'm interested enough.

Azura: Powered Up!

I've been in a bit of a Mega Man mode lately...

So today I woke up at about... well, alright, it was PAST noon when I finally got out of bed.  I didn't have a lot running in my mind at the moment I woke up, so I went and reached for my DS.  Unfortunately, I had left my DS out of arms reach before going to sleep, so instead of grabbing that I found myself grasping my old PSP.

*click*

Upon opening the game-slot, I find that the last game I had played on there was Mega Man: Powered Up.  Since I've been playing a lot of Mega Man lately, I figured I'd give Powered Up another swing and blazed through Mega Man's story.  In truth, this is how Mega Man games should be made for the newer consoles.  Mega Man was not meant to be anything more than "An adorable little boy-robot in blue armor shooting at other adorable little robots in the hopes of protecting the world from a less-than-adorable evil scientist".  After beating Mega Man's story, I started touching a few of the other characters a little bit, but was quickly turned away around the time I started to play as Gutsman.

Alright, I guess I should explain a few things here for anyone who's ever played Mega Man 1 before, but not Mega Man: Powered Up.

Powered Up was Capcom's attempt at recreating the classic series of Mega Man games on the Playstation Portable.  In it, you were able to either play the classic Mega Man 1 with new graphics that made all the characters look like chibi-versions of themselves (more adorable with giant heads, like plush dolls) or you could play the new version which included two new robot masters, Timeman and Oilman.  In the newer version, if you were able to defeat a robot master without resorting to using special weapons to fight them, you would unlock the ability to use them in an alternate version of the story where, rather than having Mega Man save the day, whomever you wanted could be the hero.  This would also mean that Mega would have been kidnapped, so he would be replacing the robot that you chose.

It's a cool idea in theory, but there's a few robots that are pretty lacking when it comes to combat ability...

For starters, we have Gutsman.  Gutsman would seem to be the complete package for a warrior, but you have to remember that your default attack is the Super Arm... you remember the Super Arm, right?  The ability to pick-up and throw the giant blocks.  That... is Gutsman in a nutshell.  You're able to create a block and throw it out of nowhere, but the range that you throw it at makes it a very difficult attack to connect with, especially if your opponent is either small or not weak to it.

So what happens when you try to use Gutsman to save the world?  I couldn't tell you, I have yet to finish it because I'm too stubborn to play anything below normal mode to see.  Maybe one day I'll be able to tell you, but for now, it's a total mystery.

Another character who has a hard time playing the role of the hero is one of the newcomers, Oilman.  His default attack is... he shoots a blob of oil at the ground.  It sounds lame, but it gets better.  If you walk on it, you can ride on a surfboard made of oil which makes you zip along pretty quickly, as well as doing damage to anything you come in contact with.  So if he has an attack like this, what's the problem?  The problem is that if you're in a confined space or surrounded by a huge group of enemies, it's not easy to get a ball of oil to hit the ground.  At the same time, you can't turn around when you're riding the Oil Slider, so you have to be careful not to go riding off into the sunset... down below...

The final member of the difficult players is Bombman.  Your only attack is to throw bombs, which isn't an easy feat if your aim is bad.  Not only that, there's a limit of how many bombs can be on screen at any one time (I don't remember what that number is, but if it's similar to Mega Man's bomb limit, you can only use one bomb at a time).  He'll take some practice, but he's still a bit more practical than the others.

All the other characters have some kind of projectile attack that makes their days go by a little easier.  Each one will take a little adjusting to, but if you take the time to work at it, they're all playable... just... some more than others.

My favorite aspect of the game is when the characters will enter conversation with each other before battle.  Since the original game had Mega Man as the hero, you can see what everyone would have said to Mega Man before they entered battle.  However, there are a huge number of people to play as, ranging across the six default bosses (Fireman, Bombman, Gutsman, Cutman, Elecman and Iceman), the two newcomers (Timeman and Oilman) as well as a couple unexpected allies (Roll and Protoman also come to your aid).  This means that there are a lot of different lines of conversation, so there's a lot to explore.  The best conversations usually take place when one of the characters is weak to the other's ability.  Case-in-point, Fireman and Iceman make a great combination.

"There's something up ahead"
"FIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIRE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

And if the two game-modes aren't enough for you, there's still a bunch of other things you can do besides kick robot butt.

Challenge mode allows you to rattle your brain and fingers in 100 different challenges, 10 for each of the characters (excluding Roll and Protoman) and 10 which are kind of like boss battle gauntlets or extreme challenges with limited powers.  Completing these challenges will unlock Protoman, but some are just absolutely insulting, so don't expect it to just be a quick in-and-out mission mode.

On the other side of the board is the "Create-a-Stage" feature, which should come as self explanatory.  You can either make your own stages and play through them, or you can send and download stages off of the internet to share with other people all over the world.  It's a cool feature that can keep you coming back over and over again.

Speaking of stage creations, Jaymonius saw me playing Mega Man: Powered Up earlier today and sent me a stage he made which he likes to think of as "The Kusottare World of Mega Man".  This got me thinking of an interesting idea for something I could do for the channel, but only if I could somehow learn how to record video off of my PSP.  I probably gave my idea away just by mentioning all of this, but if anybody out there is reading this and they want to see something interesting, comment me with suggestions (don't even bother messaging me with anything involving "RemoteJoy", "IR Shell" or modding of any kind.

I think I'll be playing around with this for a while, it's got me interested for the time being.  If anybody has any maps that they'd like me to try out, gimme a hollar and I'll see what I can do.

Azure Days are Not All Good, Says I

My day was horrible, I'm not going to write anything down about it because I don't have any interest in writing anything involving it.  TOO MUCH ANGER!

Video game time, let's see if I can vent some anger...

... damnit, I haven't played anything all day, except for a half-hour of Megaman Starforce 2 sidequest clearing...

UGH!!!!!!!!

Okay, then let's try something else.  Upcoming projects and news... hmmmm...

First up, The Stampede was fun, but we were luckier than expected.  One of the friends in our group brought a camera, so we have a few pictures of the trip.  We should be expecting to see those sometime around Monday, so I'll try to get those up on here when I get a hold of them.

I already mentioned it to a few people, but for fun I was planning something special for Mega Man 9's launch date.  The day it releases, I'll be creating a video walkthrough for the entire game, without any previous knowledge or practice in it.  From first start-up to final shut-down, you'll get to see me in action, which should be pretty fun!  Since Jaymonius is also a big Mega Man fan (dude spent about $70 on Mega Man 2 and 3 seperately when he already owns the Anniversary Collection, talk about commitment) I'll see if we can come up with a collaborative effort of some sort, just to make things interesting.  If you haven't seen the trailer for it yet, I advise that you do, it'll make most Mega Man fans scream in antisipation.  I know I almost broke into tears when I heard the song.  Retro is in, and it never looked better, Blue Boy!

Speaking of Retro, Capcom has come up with a pretty interesting idea by creating Mega Man 9 in 8-bit.  Most people were expecting something else, but this gives me some interesting thoughts.  What if other game companies were to try this idea out for game series that were at their best back in the early 90's.

Sonic the Hedgehog 4 with a special Genesis feel... *drool*
Super Mario Bros. 4... or World 2... *extra drool*
Castlevania... I don't know what the number would be, I wasn't a huge Castlevania fan as a kid... 5, I think. *minor drool, but added to the additional drool for a bonus point*
Contra 4 (or 5 if you don't want to count the DS game... or how about Super-C 2?)

There were a lot of games that back in the days of old were just amazing.  The games were made in a simpler time, before graphics became a law of sorts, but gameplay was not expected to blow your mind around every corner with thousands of power-ups and equippable items.  If more companies were to go and follow Capcom's lead on this idea, we could be playing New Super Mario Bros. 2 on the WiiWare with additional downloadable content that you can play on your DS.

Speaking of downloadable content, I had an interesting idea where they took the GameBoy Pokémon games (Red, Blue, Gold and Silver) and put them on the VC, remade for WiiWare.  This would create the possibility for you to transfer your Pokémon over to your DS via DS to Wii wireless connection, making it a little easier for DS owners to get some of the older Poké's (seriously, playing through the Gamecube games to unlock Chicorita, Totodile and Cyndaquil, then transferring them over to your GBA games, then transferring them over to your DS and recapturing them?  Seems to be a pretty huge step in the sake of completing that damn PokéDex...).  Yeah, yeah, you can use My Pokémon Ranch to trade a few times with the NPC, but it doesn't have the same feel as... you know... CATCHING THEM ALL!!!!

But that's just my opinion.  WiiWare (as well as PSNetwork and XboxLive) has many possiblities for awesome things, both in the past and the future.  It's up to us as the players of these games to help give them the chance tomake the absolute best of what they show us.

*expecting heavily of E3*