Pokemon Gold and Silver Available on 3DS Today

Meanwhile, on the retro-nostalgia front, Nintendo is bringing more old school Pokemon games to the 3DS today in the for of Pokemon Gold & Silver.

For the GameBoy Color

Back in 2016 Nintendo re-released Pokemon Red, Blue, & Yellow for the 3DS Virtual Console as part of the Pokemon 20th Anniversary celebration.  I went in on Pokemon Blue to discover how things went way back in the day, and I was surprised by how nearly fully formed the first generation of Pokemon games really were.

Now we have the second generation available, and with that comes some rounding out of the Pokemon standard features including:

• Pokemon breeding
• Held items for Pokemon
• Dual-type Pokemon
• Steel and Dark type Pokemon
• Shiny Pokemon
• Pokemon experience tracking

In addition the games are in full on color, no longer having to support the original monochromatic GameBoy hardware.

Virtual cartridges for the Virtual Console

As with the first generation releases, Pokemon Bank will be getting an update to allow players to move their Pokemon from these titles to Pokemon Sun & Moon, or to Pokemon UltraSun & UltraMoon when the latter ship this coming November.

So I am much more likely to spend time this weekend playing retro Pokemon than anything else, and all the more so since the 2009 remakes of these titles, Pokemon HeartGold & SoulSilver rank very highly on my list of favorite Pokemon titles.

The only quest is, do I go with Gold or Silver?

Guild Wars 2 Path of Fire Launches Today!

Today is the day.  At some point around noon [or now], here on the first day of Autumn in the northern hemisphere, the Path of Fire expansion for Guild Wars 2 goes live.

Guild Wars 2 – Path of Fire

As an outsider to the game… never got much past level 40… the expansion looks to offer up some standard sounding fare for players; New story, new zones, new skills/specs, guild halls, and the seemingly now mandatory character level boost.  I think the new feature I can most related to is the addition of mounts.

Some very Tyria mounts

There is, of course, a whole page dedicated to the expansion over at the GW2 site if you are interested.  More than one actually, as there is a FAQ and such.

Expansions remain a mixed bag for me.

On the plus it brings in revenue for the game.   Expect a big spike on the GW2 chart when NCsoft releases Q3 2017 results.  It also gives players more content, gets players who have lapsed a reason to return, and can invigorate the whole game.

But expansions always bring about change.  Sometimes the change is minor and the spirit of the game remains true.  That caters to the core base but won’t attract anybody new.

But sometimes expansions change the core of the game.  I am reminded of Rift; I played the hell out of the base game, but then the first expansion changed design philosophy of the game and killed it for me.  And, of course, new gear, new mechanics, new skills, and what not also have a habit of changing the old content for the worse as well.

Then there is the ever growing gap between the new stuff, where the center of gravity of the community is playing, and where any new player will start.  I become more convinced as time goes along that level boosts are mixed blessing, a flimsy bandage applied to the gushing wound of linear, level based progression.

But I am also old and cynical and in a down cycle when it comes to fantasy MMORPGs right now.

Enough grumbling.  Today is a fresh new day in Tyria and a lot of people will spend the weekend and beyond exploring the new things that Path of Fire brings.  I wish them well on their journeys.  Among other things ANet rolled out some stats to celebrate the launch.

Also, a launch trailer: