That guy's a Maniac...

We've not been this excited for a new game for a while. Yes, there are National Dex (or lack thereof) 'woes' but we can't wait to jump into a new region, on the big screen, we're relatively spoiler free and there seems to be a tonne of quality of life improvements including, finally, thankfully being able to change natures of pokémon (easy mode though?). Will the open fields and valleys actually be open? Will the end game content be more Alpha Sapphire/Omega Ruby or X/Y ? Will the new additions to the pokédex end up as fan favourites or niche beasts? Has Omastar made it in? Funny how games can sometimes still get us like this.

Pokémon Sun introduced the idea of regional forms or variants of pokémon previously known and loved from other games and it looks like the same is going to be true for the Galar region in Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield . We got a first glimpse of four new form pokémon as well as a newbie Morpeko so we'll take a look at that too. Flaming Galar Region On the brink of the UK's collapse, Game Freak have seen fit to commemorate the end of the state by setting  Pokémon Sword  and  Pokémon Shield in a region, heavily inspired by the UK. In particular it seems that the British Empire and industrialisation are being celebrated with the coal pokémon Rolycoly and a new Weezing form inspired, it seems, by factory owners. What better way to celebrate colonialism and the tens of thousands of children that died working in factories for a pittance? Here's the new Weezing: Richie: Yaaaaas Fairy/Poison, dig that shit! Maining Weezing, calling it now! I cant abandon my fire-rabbit

The community is up in arms, pitchforks have been raised, picket boards have been lovingly crafted with catchy slogans for social media. The mob is revolting. What's This Noise Then? There is no National Dex (terms in bold appear in the glossary at the end) in the upcoming  Pokémon game, Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield , it's not #brexit, its #dexit. There is a grumbling controversy fluttering in the forums and the social medias as people are furious that a thing has been 'taken' away from them because not all of the currently available Pokémon will be catchable or transferable in the upcoming games for the first time in the mainline series of the games since last year's Pokémon Let's Go Pikachu and Pokémon Let's Go Eevee  2002's Pokémon Sapphire and Pokémon Ruby . And as semi-professional contrarians, we straddle that high horse and RP a bit of devils advocate. Is taking the  National Dex away a bad thing? As of the end of Generation

With the, how shall we say, 'fan backlash' to the recent confirmation and reiteration that some Pokémon would not be compatible with the upcoming  Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield for Nintendo Switch it's perhaps timely to check in with Dactylocer, the Omastar that, alongside a few others, we've transferred from game to game, region to region and hardware generation to generation since 2004's  Pokémon Fire Red for the Game Boy Advance*. The Story So Far We last checked in with Dactylocer back in 2013 in blogpost  An Omastar is for life  charting one spiral pokémon's journey from Game Boy Advance to Game Cube to Nintendo DS to Wii to a pedometer and even exploration of the Dream World on PC. Unova had been conquered and we were waiting to hear about compatibility with Pokémon X and Y and the chance to take on the Kalos region. Generation Six Fortunately, after a little longer wait that anticipated , thanks to the delay in  Pokémon Bank and a quick st

Flame rounds lets us fulfil our yearning passion to be Frank Skinner, taking on his role as Judge, Jury, and Executioner in Room 101. We will be presenting a case for a particular Trope/Character/Item/UI element that pisses us off and then trying to justify whether this thing should go into room 101 (get flame rounded?) Richie: And following on from last Flame Rounds, round two is all Cunzy1 1's  Cunzy1 1 : Right this one might need a bit of explaining, I'd like to flames round (verb?) the grass and psychic Pokémon Exeggcute. Even if you've got only a passing familiarity with Pokémon you'll be aware that most of them are based on animals, plants, myths or household objects. Exeggcute is an egg cluster Pokémon made up of six egg-like creatures with faces. However, it's not just the whole clutch I want to flames round, specifically, it's the one which has a cracked shell. I don't like the way it's brain(?), yolk(?) is just exposed like that. F

  Oh boy, Many moons ago we covered Pokémon Go in our regular/not-so-regular bit: Are mobile phone games any good yet ? And our list of gripes beyond not being able to log in included: Does this actually have anything to do with the actual games (is it canon?) Whats the point, beyond collecting them with an annoying catch mechanic How do gyms work, why is no one explaining this? Two years on and even though there is still login problems (particularly trainer club accounts), the question of whether this will ever be compatible with the real games is still being asked, the game has improved! Not massively, it has not arisen like a mighty Ho-oh from the ashed of its former self, but neither has it eeked out like a wet quagsire queef. Niantic have bothered themselves to include a friend system, this allows you to connect with your IRL friends and rival each other, and even help each other out with trades. This only seems like a little thing but it has re-kindled a little b

Dear God Richie, where have you been?  - Yeah it's been ages since I posted but I can definitely say that a "significant percentage of my time has been spent on SoSing" What is SoSing?, you ask fervently, surely something capable of taking up a "significant percentage of your time" must be amazing? Well in in short, it is the means by where to find certain types of Pokémon and capture them with higher stats, or if you are luckier find them in a different colour (shiny). Since completing Sun/Moon I jumped straight into this, forget actual end game stuff like battle tree, I want to catch me some shinys! I accidentally started SoSing happening upon a magicarp, and thinking to myself, why not, everyone else has a cheaty "free" Red Gyrados I'll aim to get  this one done for realsies, with a gold magicarp and all: Job done! All it took was setting up a "chain" where by you set up the circumstances where by a Pokémon will call a fri

Remember gaming? Remember this blog? Ha! Well if there's one game to bring us out of apathy-driven retirement it's a new Pokémon game. I've not read many reviews, does anyone do reviews anymore? Is Zero Punctuation still going? There's something fairly unique about Pokémon video games in that we here at TGAM have been playing them for 20 years now and to the casual Pokémon player who dips in and out, it's easy to think that it's been the same game across all of those 20 years with the occasional roster update. But for those who are in deep. Too deep. The mainline Pokémon games is 20 years of iterative design and with Sun and Moon they've finally expunged many of the 20 year old mechanics and choreful quirks and built on designs that have been experimented on since Red/Green and Blue. Of course, some old skool players are going to hate these changes. If you've wasted spent hundreds of hours breeding and training that perfect IV shiny Pokémon then yes

And so the sun rises, and the moon sets on a new pokemon challenge. And we bid farewell to the ORAS generation of games. Fittingly we at TGAM decided the best way to celebrate this was with a Pokemon Battle. Using only Gen 3 Pokemon. Here is the annoyingly lengthy, boring and  low quality vids. and: Shockingly this actually only counts as our first foray into videos on the TGAM site... well whatevs.. We were bloggers, not vloggers. Love and Mimikyu Richie X

A while back my 3DS was dominated by the Pokemon flavoured Diablo clone: Pokemon Rumble World, a F2P game I actually spent money on... It was a great wee game but it got pretty grindy/repetitive/boring towards the end... I hit 719 Pokemon (yes I know there are more, but not in Rumble World!) And I'm done... Why am I telling you this? What is so fucking brilliant about completing the game? Whoop-dee-doo? Well, first of all that last one is not a question, and secondarily clearly you are interested since you are posing more questions. The real reason is I am not done, there is a plethora of other "achievements" one such would be to get every version of Areceus. This is the opposite of fun, this is grinding upon grinding. And there is plenty more like this, gaining all the "formes" of all the Pokemon with formes... So this is it, line has been drawn in the sand. I'm done, no more Pokemon Rumble world for me, no sir. Kaput. This is an Ex-F2P time sink.

Almost all of us play mobile games, as a time-waster (or avoiding eye contact) waiting on or in public transport. I tend to have a few on the go at one time, I recently "Finished" the Family guy: quest for stuff game, which is wholeheartedly one of the most shallow city-building/farm building games out there. I have not spent a penny on that, it wouldn't even be satisfying to spend a penny on that either. Another gem I have been plugging away at for the past few months is Evoker  which is an oddity you set 5 cards which have different attributes and abilities. You level up cards, through solo play which uses and energy mechanic, or PvP which uses a second energy mechanic. Essentially you can only play for roughly 3-4 mins before you are locked out for about 2 hours (more at higher levels). But that was fun collecting the "team" you wanted to face off your opponent with... etc. BUT Its suffers as a Pay2win title, if you spend money on it you, and I suppose this

Last month was a hard time for me. In part I was overjoyed at the exposure thatguys.co.uk was getting with that Kill Screen article. However it was also a dark time, my Pokemon Black Cartridge got put in the washing machine corrupted. This cart contained many of the pokemon who were on a par with the length of time played and connection with that Omastar , so as I am sure you can appreciate the joy of being featured was ever so slightly tainted... As you can imagine, I was more than distraught. I considered trying to salvage my save using PC adaptors, or perhaps re-starting with a new save and using editors re-create my pokemon with their original stats. I could even send some of the “event” pokemon, those pokemon I queued for, or downloaded that are no longer available. That would be legit right, its not so cheaty is it? I decided against it, to follow on from the Omastar article there is an emotional attachment to these guys, if I were to re-create them what would I create