in 2011 (12 years ago today) someone broke into my parents' car and stole all my video games while we were on vacation (my fault for leaving them in there). i lost everything - six different pokemon games i had dedicated a quarter of my life to, my 3DS which i had only just gotten a month prior, my copy of ocarina of time 3D that was my first real introduction to the series, all gone.

my parents didn't really give a fuck. on the way to our destination, after we had filed an insurance report and hastily patched the window, we stopped at a target so i would stop crying about losing all my damn pokemon - they told me they'd buy me another 3DS, along with one game. my stupid ass chose lego pirates of the carribean.

i don't know why. i should have chosen anything else. replaced my copy of pokemon black, or OOT3D (which i was playing mere hours before it was stolen). what drew me to this game? what allure did it have on my little brain? i had played the DS lego star wars and indiana jones in the past, and i didn't think they were great (the wii versions were way better). there was no reason for me to squander my one chance at entertainment on this god forsaken game.

for an entire month, that whole vacation, all i had was lego pirates. i'd spend days at a time holed up in the rental house just mindlessly playing through levels. listening to the main theme on loop in the hub world, and suffering through the click, click, click of studs slowly being collected. even today, lego pirates is still listed as having one of the highest average playtimes on my 3DS.
on that vacation, i learned how to ride a bike for the first time. that's when i first saw the rockies. but no matter how much fun i had, i'd always come back to lego pirates. that's all i associate with that vacation.

recently, i booted the game up again, in hopes of dropping that average playtime down a bit so i could stop looking at that bronze #3 in my console's activity log - a horrible testament to my own stupidity. there were two levels i had not 100%ed - just two things i needed to conquer this game. so i said fuck it and went for it.

it only took me an hour, on and off. but that hour had this really weird sadness to it. just playing the game again, hearing the bumbling, drunken sounds of the Pirates soundtrack blasting through my speakers as i rolled around in the big bone cages from the second movie. it's like i was back in that shitty house with the hard-ass mattress and the wooden floor. with the rusty metal airplane model that was the only thing decorating the room where i stayed. eleven years old, not really feeling anything anymore. just killing time.

i had to look up a guide. after a lot of searching, i realized that the 3DS version was just a lazy port of the DS version. this somehow made me even more sad.

but, i did it. all that pain from twelve years ago, culminating in just another little check on the backlog. i felt physically ill. omega ruby now proudly wore the #3 average playtime badge in my 3ds' activity log, and i'd never have any reason to play this game ever again.

life sucks. horrible things happen every day. windows get smashed for someone to make a quick buck, an eleven year old boy fills the void in what little life he's lived with youtube and pokemon, only to have it all get ripped away. for the longest time, august 3rd was the worst thing to have ever happened to me.
but horrible things still happen every day - things that youtube and pokemon can't fix anymore. twelve years to the day, and here i am doing the exact same thing. filling the void, just in a different way. checks on the backlog. little blue estrogen pills. learning a new fighting game. frozen yogurt (praying every time i go they'll have the flavor i had that one perfect summer, so long ago). always chasing the unattainable - that perfect feeling that i can't even describe. joy? satisfaction? confidence? i'll know it when i get there.

anyway. if you robbed a blue volvo in amarillo, texas on august 3rd 2011 just know that i hate you for making me play this game

Look, I've already gushed about this game at length before, but now it's on NSO so it's time for it to become my single personality trait again for the next few weeks. I'll try to cover some of the things I didn't manage to mention the first time around.

The NSO version has ONLINE FUNCTIONALITY!!! You can finally play the TCG on a GOOD official simulator!! Like this game is a fun enough RPG-ish sort of thing but it felt like it's absolutely screaming to be played against others with your shitty cobbled-together decks once you're done and now you CAN!! Anyone wanna throw down hmu, I will give you the business with whatever terrible deck I end up scraping together (if you meta deck vs me I will not associate with you)

The gameplay loop is just brilliant if you're into this sort of thing. Beat people, get cards, slowly build up a collection to put together a deck the way you want it. It's progression in the typical RPG sense (yeah your deck with four Bills and Oaks is pretty objectively better than your starting deck with none), but also progression that gives you more options and lets you explore funny different things. At the same time, the fact that you don't have all the options at the start forces you to toy around with weirder stuff instead of looking up "ptcg base set meta" and building Haymaker. Though some of these cards are seriously bad, so whether or not that's a good thing will probably depend on what you're stuck with. This time I managed to pull five Hitmonchans in the first hour so I'm living good (I am NOT building haymaker I PROMISE)

I've talked a lot now about how bad base set meta is, but part of that is what makes it so fun! Yeah, there's a lot of really bad cards, and there's a pretty clear gap between The Good Ones and most everything else. But! The meta trainer cards are so hilariously overpowered - to the point that later TCG would change most of them to Supporters just to have a hope in hell of balancing them! - that they single-handedly make the game incredibly fun to play. You have a really good set-up card in front of me? Okay buddy I have four Gust of Wind and I can just snipe your entire bench. Can't find the card I need? Cool I just pulled three Bills in a row and then pulled Professor Oak and it pulled another Bill and I just went though 80% of my deck in one turn and now all my guys are set up. They make the game extremely fast-paced and volatile and using them against the AI to get a full setup going in like 1 or 2 turns is an unbelievable power trip

Thematically the game is so funny. Like, the culture of this entire world is built entirely around Pokemon cards. Nobody talks about literally anything else. The only building on the island that isn't there to facilitate the TCG is some guy's house and- oh that's for the TCG as well. They have legendary cards that are protected by magic and shit?? Yeah there's magic in this world?? And it has the standard Pokemon message of treating your companions with love and care and focusing on the fun of the adventure rather than getting fixated on winning, except these guys are talking about trading cards instead of real creatures! No Ronald I will not love and cherish each of my pokemon trading cards shut the fuck up

Disney's The Lion King 1½ is a standard The Lost Vikings style platformer from Vicarious Visions, and probably the first one from them. I mean, I haven't played all of their games, but this is the earliest one I know, acting as a precursor to other Lost Vikings style games from the same devs, such as Shrek 2 and... Shrek The Third. Also, apparently this game released earlier than the movie by a few months.

You play as Timon and/or Pumbaa in platforming stages to solve simple puzzles and platforming challenges to progress. Timon can jump high, climb on vines, dig certain surfaces and distract hyenas, while Puumba can charge or burp at enemies and push heavy objects, as well as act as a springboard for Timon to reach higher areas. There are also chase levels where both run away from some danger, these levels feature prompts right before obstacles that need to be crossed, which is very helpful. Every level has 40 bugs, collecting them unlocks a puzzle piece for each world, unlock all of them and a bonus level will be revealed, which is a timed challenge which awards an extra health pickup. These challenges are decent, though there are moments where you have to wait, like in first Timon challenge with spiders on vines, breaking the pace. Looking around for bugs can be beneficial, although collecting and recollecting them all can be frustrating, since the game doesn't feature checkpoints, and the bugs are like high score and won't stay collected when reentering the level, but especially in chase levels, where you practically have to memorize the layout. Aside from bugs, rarely, upgrades for Timon and Puumba's abilities can also be found, allowing for longer distraction period or burp attack more often, which end up being mildly useful. Lastly, there are one time use items, such as a remote that stops time and enemies for a brief time or clear screen bomb. The level design itself is alright, although later levels do feel like they drag on, and dying means repeating them all over.

Graphically, the game is odd. Timon, Puumba and some other characters look like they use pre-rendered sprites, even though the source material is traditionally animated. Not that they look bad, they're decently animated, but they do stand out from other hand-drawn sprites. The foreground and some backgrounds also have realistic feel to them. The music is pretty good. The game advertises animated clips from the film, available after each world, and they honestly look pretty good given the hardware, although they are brief and lack sound.

Overall, this is a pretty average Lost Vikings-style platformer. The level design is just alright and there's not that much variety and later levels get pretty frustrating because of their length and lack of checkpoints. 100% completing it can be a chore, but casually playing it, it's not a bad time.